Section Al-Furqan – Part 21

We are continuing with our study of Section Al-Furqan. The last few verses we investigated mentioned that the Prophet (pbuh) will complain that my people have discarded the Qur’an. We related that verse to our living in this life when we do not study the Qur’an seriously and fail to live according to the message of the Qur’an. The verse following the prophetic complaint mentioned that God sets up enemies for the prophets, but God is sufficient as the Guide and Helper. We are given enemies that we need to watch out for as well. For example, in our living we are bombarded with false ideologies, advertisements, and secular ideas taking our attention away from remembering God.

We will now investigate the following verse:

وَقَالَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ عَلَيْهِ ٱلْقُرْءَانُ جُمْلَةًۭ وَٰحِدَةًۭ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ لِنُثَبِّتَ بِهِۦ فُؤَادَكَ ۖ وَرَتَّلْنَـٰهُ تَرْتِيلًۭا

25:32 The disbelievers also say, “Why was the Qur’an not sent down to him all at once?” We sent it in this way to strengthen your heart; We gave it to you in gradual revelation.

This verse can be investigated by breaking it into three phrases where the first phrase presents the scenario where the disbelievers are asking why the Qur’an was not sent down to the Prophet (pbuh) all at once. The second phrase is the response from God mentioning that the Qur’an is not sent all at once to strengthen the heart. The third phrase is stating that the Qur’an is revealed gradually. The phrase “وَرَتَّلْنَـٰهُ تَرْتِيلًۭا” translated as “gradual revelation” will be paid much attention to.

We will investigate the first phrase as to why the Qur’an was not sent down to the Prophet (pbuh) all at once. Why do the rejecters of the prophetic message claim this by feeling that this is the problem? It is not only the disbelievers at the prophetic time but nowadays those who look for an excuse to criticize the Qur’an as being revealed by God say that the Qur’an was revealed during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) and he made the message up according to his day-to-day lifestyle of that time. Why are they asking for the Qur’an to be sent down all at once? 

It is not possible to have the whole message of the Qur’an altogether if we want to apply it to our life. We must be going through living experiences and should be able to refer them to related sections of the Qur’an. The Qur’an has some practical guidance, but most of the verses deal with how we should understand our existence and the purpose of our life. We are here in this life being educated by our Creator. We must keep in mind, belief in God, belief in Revelation, and Prophets are the most important subjects that we should have confidence in practicing in our daily life. We should pay attention to the universe where God is introducing Himself to me by creating things in the universe. The meaning in the way that the universe is being created is referred to as the angelic side of creation which I can communicate with, to get to know God who is their Creator. 

The belief in Prophets is extremely important. When I read something in the Qur’an, those verses were needed by the Prophet during his life. That means I will also need this in my life. Whatever I have in this life, I must look for guidance from the Qur’an as the prophet needed guidance from God during his time. I should see how the Prophet (pbuh) handled events that he went through. We must be able to relate our experiences to the narrations about his life experience and connect them together. Whatever he did must have been under the guidance of the Qur’an. God spoke to the Prophet (pbuh) and now God sends his guidance in written form to me now. I also have access to the prophetic exemplary life as he was guided in his life by God. 

All the 23 years of prophetic life were full of life experiences. In the education system that we go through, we don’t learn everything all at once but make progress through stages of learning and understanding. There are many criticisms about this subject and one must reflect on this. What is the purpose of revelation, the purpose for God to speak to us? Do I need it? I need to know what the purpose of my life is, why am I living here going through so many experiences? I need guidance to live my life with purpose, with contentment and peace. 

In order to have a peaceful life, how will God help me? Everyone wants to have a peaceful life. What do I need to do to have that? Some will say to eat healthy food, exercise and have a good sleep. Are these enough? I need to live a meaningful life and must have satisfaction for my spiritual needs which yearn for permanent happiness.  I also experience many different problems in my life that relate to family, work, social life, etc. If there are family disputes, how can I solve them in the best way? If someone bothers me, how can I defend myself? If there are problems in society, I am concerned with them hoping that I can do something to change that, to help others. There are many other aspects, how can I reach full satisfaction with all these things happening in my life?  

The purpose of the Qur’an is to provide guidance to get the full satisfaction we need that is not found in this universe. There is no guidance in this universe to have a peaceful, satisfactory life which the Qur’an provides. I will try my best to do something, but that would provide me with bodily pleasure temporarily. I may have the perspective that if I have a particular job then I would be happy and satisfied. That is my perspective as I don’t know if that job is going to be good for my future or not.  In terms of one’s perspective, some declare war and say this is for the benefit of my country. The criteria are according to their perspective. We need a criterion that is valid for all beings where only the Creator of the universe knows what is best for us. In the Qur’an, God comes to explain the meaning of my life, and gives me guidance to have a satisfactory, peaceful life. This guidance must be practiced throughout my life according to the living conditions. 

We see in the lives of the prophets, particularly in the details of the life of prophet Muhammad (pbuh) from the very beginning of his prophetic mission to the end of his mission where he went through all sorts of human conditions, practical life experiences, everything that a human being or society can experience; he (pbuh) went through all of it. He started his mission with the pagan society as an uneducated, poor, orphan he started receiving the message which provided guidance completely from scratch. Over the course of his mission, he went through life experiences and continued experiencing them when he became the administrator of one of the biggest communities. During his time, there were the Roman and Persian empires as the big powerful communities. In Medina, he became a part of the third biggest community. Later, this community had a conflict when the envoy or ambassador that they had sent to Persia to convey the message of Islam was killed which meant the declaration of war. The community of Muslims responded back and destroyed the Persian empire. It is important to realize that the prophet was not an emperor but lived as an ordinary person, like any other citizen of Medina. He went through every problem, family problems, war problems, looking to have a peaceful life. In the wars that attacked him, he was the winner sometimes and he was defeated at other times. Some gave him a hard time performing his mission and later some joined him to help in his mission. He had to deal with family problems, tribal problems of the community. Every possible problem of human society, he (pbuh) went through it. The Qur’an was guiding him step by step, walking along with him through all these experiences: “Treat people in this way, answer the questions of these people in this way, do this in this condition, etc.” By doing so the Qur’an demonstrated that it is a guide for life or with today’s experience we can name it as the GPS of our life. We can apply the experiences of the life of the Prophet and the people who followed him to our life by updating today’s living conditions.

Muslim community defines the Qur’an as the living guide, or the guide for life. If the Qur’an was not practically guiding me, I would just have a set of laws but not know where to apply which law. The Qur’an educates human beings not only in having a legal system to arrange their life in a legal pattern, but there are events in my life which I need to make sense of that relate to my feelings. The law by itself does not guide my feelings or make me grow with my living experiences. 

The laws do not address my questions as to why I exist and how I should communicate with the One who creates me. What kind of relationship should I have with my Creator, how am I going to live my life with a satisfied heart in this universe. I must bear in mind that I am living not for my personal interest, community interest, or the interest of the state but because God guided me in this way, I must act in the name of God which requires a great awareness of the purpose of my existence as a human being.  I cannot act in the name of a nation, state or power. This guidance of the Qur’an must not contradict the way I am made; it must be conformable to my feelings so that I have a peaceful life. 

The life of this universe is only for training and education purposes. While I am interacting with my personal and social life, I must prepare myself for when my life ends, all that I did in this world should not end in nothing, should not be meaningless, purposeless. I know that I am brought into this world by a Conscious Being and will be taken away by the same One who brought me into existence. I must relate my practical life to the Hereafter and prepare myself here. 

How can I prepare myself for after I die and experience eternal life in the best way?  There is no eternity here, my spirit is waiting for eternity. The One who created me gave me this sense of desiring eternal happiness. How can I prepare myself for eternal life?  I must learn to be able to live peacefully in this world and move on to the eternal world. I must not be under the stress of fear of death, of disappearing from existence. The Qur’an guides in these matters as well. I must prepare myself for a life where I will experience an eternal satisfactory life. I need to be guided to turn all these temporary experiences into preparation for an eternal life. No one else but the Qur’an guides me as nobody else knows the Hereafter which is the most essential news we receive from Revelation. If there was no Revelation from my Creator, I would think I would disappear from existence when I die in spite of my feelings yearning for a permanent satisfactory life; I would never know that after I die, I would be taken to another type of creation. Everything I do here, I must bear in mind that this thing has something to do with my life in the Hereafter, how can I connect to it? 

For example, when I help a poor person, I am happy. Is that enough? If I die as I was a happy person in this life will it help me to satisfy my feelings while they are suffering from the fear of disappearing from existence when I die. The Qur’an says to do it with God-consciousness. All the help that I am giving is created and facilitated by God. The sense within me is given by God. I am doing this by sharing what I have been given by God. I must give it in the name of God by acknowledging that I am not the owner of the property, I am not the owner of my feelings and happiness. After helping, I must say “Thank you God for giving me this opportunity to share what you have given to me to the needy one.” It is God’s favor to me that I am practicing this opportunity to help. The verse in 2:3 mentions: “ٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ”, translated as “who believe in the ‘ghaib’ (Absolute Being), keep up the prayer, and give out of what We have provided for them”. We must learn to live with this God-consciousness in our practical life here. The Qur’an guides us in this matter as well.

Many of us have gone through at least 15 years of education. Have I ever been taught about my life after death? If it is going to happen, how am I going to prepare for it since my education does not provide any idea about it, just ignores it? The Qur’an comes to introduce me to an Absolute Creator to whom I belong. This Creator has arranged for me to train myself so that I may have a happy life in this world and the next world as well.

In terms of whatever I do here, one side looks at my bodily satisfaction and the other side looks at my spiritual satisfaction. I have a body where I need to eat, have shelter, peaceful worldly life but at the same time my spiritual side must be satisfied as well. While living in this world, I must experience everything to satisfy both my body and spirit. If I don’t connect with God, then I cannot satisfy my spiritual needs. I need God, my Creator who created me with these needs to satisfy my infinite needs that seek infinite satisfaction. The Qur’an teaches me to connect this worldly life to belief in God and belief in the Hereafter. 

The Qur’an guides me through practical examples that took place in the life of prophet Muhammad and those around him. They physically experienced a lot of things, had questions, problems, where the Qur’an practically guided them. I must also benefit from the guidance of the Qur’an to guide me in my practical life experiences. For the Qur’an to fulfill its mission as a guide, it must practically guide me in my life experiences. Revelation must be practically experienced and learnt. As mentioned, the Qur’an was revealed throughout the life of the Prophet (pbuh) starting from the first day when he started receiving the Revelation to be a pattern for his living conditions, and now for me. I must learn to apply that pattern to my living conditions.

Let’s examine the second phrase of the verse where God answers to their inquiry by saying that “We sent it this way to strengthen your heart”. This means that only God is the guide for me in my life if I want to have a satisfied heart. 

What are the benefits of gradual revelation for the Prophet’s contemporaries? The Prophet (pbuh) and his contemporaries were convinced that God is guiding them in their practical lives. Sometimes preparing their minds as to what will happen in the future, sometimes explaining to them the purpose of creation when they experienced some event before the explanation given to them later on through Revelation. When the Revelation explained why the event happened as it happened they understood the Divine Wisdom in the creation of those events and their heart was satisfied. They were sure that God was walking with them in their living which kept their hearts satisfied. If we work on ourselves alongside with the teachings of the Qur’an, we can also get a satisfied heart knowing that God is always with us. I must take the Qur’an now for my guidance as long as we know what the Qur’an is teaching. We must also know what verses were revealed in what conditions to guide the Prophet (pbuh) and his contemporaries. It needs expertise in order to make sense of them. That is why we are studying the Qur’an from a chronological pattern of Revelation.

The final phrase “وَرَتَّلْنَـٰهُ تَرْتِيلًۭا” is translated as “We gave it to you in gradual revelation”.  The phrase “رَتَّلْنَـٰهُ” literally means putting the component parts [of a thing] together and arranging them well, expressing elegantly, as well as endowing it with inner consistency. For example, the arrangement of teeth that are perfectly arranged with consistency. The shape of every tooth is different but arranged to function in the best way. The Qur’an uses this phrase for Revelation, the organization of the language of the verses, the interrelationships between the words of the verses and also between the verses with the preceding and the proceeding verses according to the context of the Sections of the Qur’an. The whole literal expressions of the wordings of the Qur’an are perfectly intertwined with each other according to the purpose of the Qur’an that none of the verses of the Qur’an can be taken on its own alone. That is why the Qur’an challenges that no one can find any discrepancy in the Qur’an. Thousands of scholarly works displayed this feature of the Qur’an in their volumes of commentaries on it. 

Another explanation of “وَرَتَّلْنَـٰهُ تَرْتِيلًۭا” is to put [something] together distinctly, in a well-arranged manner, and without any haste. That is to phrase the verses elegantly, articulately and slowly. According to the condition of one’s life, appropriate guidance is sent, so that one’s heart will be strengthened knowing that God is guiding them. 

All these meanings are included in the phrase “رَتَّلْنَـٰهُ” where God is guiding me in a well-structured way, clearly and slowly step by step.

There is another verse we can investigate related to this:

  وَرَتِّلِ ٱلْقُرْءَانَ تَرْتِيلًا

73:4 recite the Qur’an calmly and distinctly, with your mind attuned to its meaning

Many understand this verse as reading with the “Tajweed” (pronunciation) rules which is also included in this but is not enough. We must know that there is more to it. The verse indicates a calm, measured utterance with thoughtful consideration of the meaning that is entailed. That is how we must be reading the Qur’an, without hurrying, but by articulating and bearing what it says in my mind. As my tongue recites the Qur’an, my mind would follow what it is saying. My feelings (heart)  should be walking along with it, being aware of it, at least having a general idea that God is speaking to me.