Section Jathiya – part 1

Section Jathiyah (The Crouching/The Kneeling), part 1, 12-12-23

We are going to explore the following two verses from Section Joseph, which introduces us the main topic from Section Jathiyah.

12: 105 “But how many a sign is there in the heavens and on earth which they pass by [unthinkingly], and on which they take their backs!”

وَكَأَيِّن مِّنْ ءَايَةٍ فِى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ يَمُرُّونَ عَلَيْهَا وَهُمْ عَنْهَا مُعْرِضُونَ

“ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ” (the heavens) and “ٱلْأَرْضِ” (the earth) refer to the whole universe and anything in existence.  This verse refers to creatures in this universe. The Arabic structure “مِّنْ ءَايَةٍ” means that there is no exception in the universe which may not function as a sign.  Sign means the truthfulness of the message of the Quran.

We may say that each thing is the sign to the qualities of its Maker, which is also a sign to confirm the existence of a meaningful side in everything.  Even God’s Speech is a sign, the reality that God speaks to us is a sign to the existence of the Angels.  We must see the interrelatedness of the Angels to how the message of the Lord of the universe is disseminated to us.  Angels are the employees and the executors of the will of God, whatever God wills, the Angels transform it into a limited form within this universe.  Each Angelic being necessitates the existence of its Maker.

Example: In the material side of the screen of a computer, there are pixels (dots), but we see a picture but this picture appears on the screen not because of the pixels but because the conscious engineer has programmed it so that the pixels will function as they appear on the screen.  Similarly, in the material side of the universe, the meaning side of things is coming through angels, but we see objects and experience events.  Angels are created with the ability to declare the qualities manifested in the things as belonging to its Absolute Creator, which means that they are manifesting the Creator’s qualities, who must also speak.

Just as sound waves are material existence, and through the material existence, we see meaning. Human beings understand the meaning.  The One who creates human beings with the ability to speak and communicate is the One who must have the ability to understand our speech.  Whoever created you with the ability to speak must also have the ability to speak and understand when someone speaks.  Therefore, we must understand that the Creator of the universe must have the quality to speak.  

• The meaning/angelic side of the universe must be referred to the necessary existence of Something which is not physical but exists. 

Therefore, existence cannot be reduced to a physical existence only.  Look into your feelings, your intelligence, your ability to speak, analyze, and ability to connect with others, are these physical entities?  

Example: when you are looking at a beautiful garden, what is happening?  You are admiring beauty; it means that you are communicating with the qualities in the garden.  Every creature is a sign to the Necessity of the Existence of its Creator through the qualities they announce about the qualities of their Maker.  When you admire the design of a raspberry, you cannot ignore the beauty, its unique form, smell and its taste.  A knowledgeable Wise One with good quality of Design must have given it existence.  

In this world, everything is created in a circle, dies, and a new one is created.  Every moment is changing, just as this universe is not stable, it cannot sustain its existence, it stops and if it is not created anymore, it cannot exist again.  Why? Because nothing has the ability to create itself.  Can you create anything?  When I eat, the food is not sustaining my life, rather I am asking the One who is sustaining my life that you taught me through the order of the universe what to do i.e.  if I do not eat, then I ask for my death, and if I eat, I am asking for the continuation of my life.  When I eat, I am asking the Creator of the universe who established this order in the universe that I want to continue living.  Hence, every eating and drinking activity is a prayer to the Creator.  Whichever way we pray, the Creator of the universe responds to us.  There is a Quranic verse: “Pray to me and I will respond back to you.” (Qur’an, 40: 70 and 2: 186) That is, if I eat, then I am praying for life, if I do not eat then I am praying for death. And He responded  by creating what I have prayed to Him. That is God’s promise to us through creation and His verbal message.

That is what we learn through the signs of the ways that things are created.  The message of the Quran is fortified and confirmed through the signs reflected in the existence of the universe. That is why the Quran and the Speech of the Creator must be combined and studied together, each explains the other. The people who do not pay attention to the signs of the creation, they do not look at the material side of the universe and benefit from them as signs carrying messages from its Creator.  If we do not pay attention to creation, then we cannot take notice of the Speech of our Creator.  Why? Because the Speech of the Creator  cannot be confirmed without witnessing the universe and vice versa.  Otherwise, we will look at the universe without knowing what the signs mean.  We must communicate with Him through the world He creates, and His Speech that He sends to us through His messengers, and combine them together, i.e. Speech will explain the universe and vice versa.  That is the fundamental base of the Quran.  If someone does not pay attention to the creation and take the sign (ءَايَةٍ) of the creation to get meaning from it, then they do not benefit from their existence.  Example: if you pass an advertisement without paying attention to what it says, then you may not benefit from the message it sends.  Similarly, the  Quran says that such person will never understand the message of the Quran in the right way.

12:106 “And most of them do not believe in God without [also] ascribing divine powers to created beings rather than Him.”

وَمَا يُؤْمِنُ أَكْثَرُهُم بِٱللَّهِ إِلَّا وَهُم مُّشْرِكُونَ

Who are they?  The people who live in this world, especially the ones who specify their profession as Material Scientists, study in the lab.  They are liars to the signs of the discipline of science i.e. disbeliever.  Why?  Because they look at the universe, and don’t read the meaning, and claim that it exists by itself.  Unfortunately, they don’t pay attention to it, pass by it, and claim that matter exists by itself.  Does matter carry any meaning? If we pay attention to the universe, we will see that it says in its existence “Yes, I do.” But the materialist scientists say No!  They study an atom and say that it is just composed of particles.  Doesn’t the matter proclaim that I do not have the quality to create myself?!  The atom is created to function in a meaningful way and it declares that “I have a conscious Maker who has made me this way, and I have no potential on my own.”  They claim that the atom comes into existence as a result of random happenings as if it can survive on its own, more clever than human beings.  We need teachers and guidance to let us know what to do, but according to the scientists matter does not need a conscious giver.  If they do not take notice with an open-minded attitude, then we cannot do anything about that.  As the Qur’an says, “Most people do not believe in God without ascribing Divine Powers to things of this universe.”  They say that matter exists by itself, rather than it is created by its Creator.  They do not want to believe in the existence of God.  Believing in God means believing in the existence of God and what God does in this world.  What is the purpose of creation?  What is the message that He is giving to me?  Why is He creating me?  The content of the Quran refers to these points.  Hence, they do not believe in the message of God i.e. revelation, verbal form.

If you do not believe in God, then you cannot believe in the Angels and the Hereafter.   Although some people believe that there must be a Creator of the universe doing everything, and if they do not get their evidence for their belief from creation, then they may still attribute His qualities to the things that He has created.  Example: The Globe of the Earth must have been created, but now it is producing plants and creatures by itself.  Similarly, I am the creator of my learning, thinking, skills and feelings, but I am created.  What does this mean?  I am the owner of my human qualities.  Going back to the food example, food is giving me health. Rather, when I eat food, I ask the Creator to give me health.  Can I create the next day?  No, I cannot create anything, let alone the next day, the next moment!  In our daily activities, for example, we do not know what happens to us when we cross the street, we just take precautions, which is asking the Owner of the universe by obeying His order of creation.

If someone says that I believe in God, and now I am taking care of my family and life, then is that belief in God?  As per the message of the Quran, we must check ourselves on how we are believing in God.  If I believe in God as a Creator of the universe, then I think of the things in it to be acting on their own without taking notice of the evidence in the existence of each being where they do not have the quality to act by themselves independently of this Creator.  As per the verse we just read, it is referred to as “mushrik” (ascribing divine powers to created beings rather than Him) in the language of the Quran.  We must be careful to realize the nature of this creation, i.e. everything is witnessing that the Creator of the atom must be the Creator of the whole universe.  Example: look at a table, in its existence the leg of the table says that I am made by the maker of the table.  Thus, every single being is made in the universe by the One who made the whole universe and employed me in the right position to witness it.

“Shirk” or disbelief means that a piece of the universe is functioning by itself.  If the leg of the table is giving existence to itself, then God created the universe and I created my child, for example.  We are proud of the good actions we do.  Rather than saying, I am a good person, we must acknowledge that my being good is the creation of God, I am only using my free will not to choose to go against it by obeying the order in the universe  .  That is how we can turn our life into prayers with this awareness.  Otherwise, our life passes by, and we do not pay attention to the signs around us introducing us to its Creator.  That is, I am unconsciously inferring that God is my Creator, but my actions are my creation.  The Quran warns us of this.  If you do not pay attention to the combination between signs in creation and what I am saying/concluding, then you cannot save yourself from falling into shirk.  Disbelief or shirk is the weakness of the realization of what belief in God requires.  That is the missing point and weakness: God is continuously changing and renewing the universe.  Otherwise, I go on living my life wrongfully saying that God created me, and I am doing my life here, climates are changing, and as if, God has nothing to do with the universe, He just left.  

Now, let us begin the section “The Crouching”.

45:1 Ha- Mim

حمٓ

In the Quran there are some interesting sentences with letters only.  What does it mean? It is a verse, it carries a message.  It is not an acronym for anything.  Scholars spent pages to come up with possibilities on the meaning of these types of verses (disjointed letters).  The people around the time of revelation of these verses said that Muhammad as a Prophet (pbuh) was going crazy when he shared these types of verses like “Ha-Mim.”  If the Prophet was not a true recipient of the revelation or Speech of God, then he would hide these disjointed letters and not share them with the people.  Out of other evidence which proves him to be a messenger of God’s message, this claim also proves that he was honest with the message from God.  Why? Because scholarship shows that he did not defend or make many comments on the verses of the Quran including disjointed letters like “Ha-Mim” when he was accused.  In other words, there is no narration on the Prophet that he sat with people to make commentary on the Quran.  It is interesting that the companions of the Prophet did not ask him what these verses mean.  They must have gotten some message from it, and we do not have any comment from them.  Therefore, the way that we take the conclusion would be only our own interpretation.

We notice the disjointed letters in lots of sections of the Quran (Qaf, Yasin, Nun…)  Most of it refer immediately to the Quran after these verses.  That must have something to do with the nature of the Quran, and that is why they are called “disjointed letters” or hurufu’l muqatta’a.  The significance of the letters says that I will tell you something, a book, and in this book, you will find some paragraphs, sentences and words written, which are made of letters.  Be careful with each letter because it is consciously placed there.  By itself the letter does not make sense, just like the brick by itself means nothing without a building.  However, when you put it in its proper place, it completes the building.  Let us take another example, if you take one leg of the table out of it, the table is not meaningful.  These hurufu’l muqatta’a letters say that each part of these words by itself means nothing, but when put in its right place, it means everything.  After that, it asks to pay attention to the whole message of the Quran.  This is telling us that we must pay attention to each letter which has its own meaning within the words of the verse, and you cannot change one letter of the Quran.

45:2 “The revelation of the Book is from God, the Mighty One, the Wise One.

تَنزِيلُ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْحَكِيمِ

“تَنزِيلُ” means the second form of the verb “Nun-Za-Lam نَزَلَ “, which means continuity of it.  Example: An Engineer continuously has a potential to design apps.  Similarly, that is, continuous revelation.  We may argue that revelation took place within 23 years and now it is finished as if limited by time.  However, the Quran says tanzeel, it means that it continuously reveals its meaning to every person at every time and does not stop.  The morphology of the words gives us this meaning.  The mighty and wise God is continuously revealing this book. We say that the Quran consists of approximately 600 pages with a beginning and an end.  Also, we say that meaning wise, it is revised.  But how am I going to understand the message of the Quran relating to my particular life right now?

As we studied with the two verses of section Joseph (on pg. 1-3), if I do not pay attention to whatever is created out there, then I will never be able to reach a good understanding of God and believe in God.  I must look at the verses and take notice of the universe, how it is coming into existence, and make a parallel reading together both of them (action wise revelation and verbal revelation).  The Quran says that this book is continuously being renewed in its revelation, but I say that it is finished after being revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).  So, how is it continued then? 

The Quran says to look at the universe in order to understand how God speaks continuously by renewing its creation, you have to see the universe (action-wise) and see the messages of the Quran (verbal). You will notice that as the universe is renewed in its existence, when we read the Qur’an with the witnessing of the universe, its meaning for us also is renewed.  Do you think that the universe is static or dynamic?  Dynamic is not linear like a train, but continuously renewed.   Example: If you look at a flower, it is different every day.  I am getting old every day, which means that I am being renewed every moment.  If someone says that God created me and I am growing by myself, there is no tanzeel, continuous creation in such understanding.  It seems to me as if God created you and you are growing now.

Comments: What does “ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ” or book refer to, the universe or revelation?  Also, does the meaning I extract from revelation expand as well with the idea of continuity.

“ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ” refers to both the Quran and the Universe depending on the context.  Although they both need to be analyzed separately, in this verse, it refers to the Speech of God, revelation.  As the action of the Creator continuously reveals itself every moment, His speech in the Quran continues, and the meaning is renewed. We cannot read the Quran without the universe.  You cannot listen to an actor without looking into their actions.  Verbal speech and actions come from the same source.  It is obvious that His actions are speaking, the content of the speech is also speaking to me.  His action is changing, and the content of the Quran is also changing.

Every generation must study the Quran according to their conditions and needs. Historically, we know that in some centuries, the commentaries were taken more seriously.  The message of the Quran always needs to be re-understood and reinterpreted because the creation is always renewed.  That is why, if anyone reads the Quran without paying attention to the universe, then something is missing.  At the same time, we must also understand the Quran within its historical context and bring it to our time and space.  

Comment: Wouldn’t that mean that our understanding of the message of the Quran changes a lot if we are taking meaning based on our living conditions?

Jurisprudence (Fiqh) rules are instantiated by the Prophet (pbuh) and it was ordered by the Creator of the universe, God.  Example: connect with God during certain times by glorifying Him and praising Him.  How am I going to do it?  Through the practices of the Prophet (pbuh)  which is a necessary element in understanding the Quran.  Human feelings are also continuously changing.  The four elements (the Universe, the Quran, the Messengers, and the human feelings) work together.  At this stage of our study of this verse, we must focus on the Universe and the Quran. The Quran is limited in mentioning its prescription of prescribed actions. The Prophet (pbuh) teaches us that these prescribed duties are alongside reading the universe and, as a result, our understanding of God’s speech expands.  For example, the Qur’an mentions examples like the moon, stars, and mountains and invites its readers to pay attention to the creation.  Following this invitation now, in our day and age, we see things at a quanta level, there is DNA which has huge information coded in it, who is doing it? When you look at the sun, you understand that it needs to be located there. I understand it. It seems that it is happening by itself.  Is that so?  Every cell in our bodies is changing.  Is the change happening by itself?  It does not register in our minds that a cell is still being renewed in its existence. Can it renew its existence in a way that the best result will be accomplished?  Every moment an Actor, God is operating over things.

Example: a thousand years ago, the verse “كُلُّ شَىْءٍ” (everything), meant to its readers at that time to be animals, trees, human beings…The meaning for us in our age is not only in the existence of the animals for example, rather in the structure of the DNA of these animals or any creature. Now, you can go into the deep galaxies, and analyze that there is meaning in the rays received from galaxies.  The meaning of the Quran is going alongside the discovery in the creation, and His act, therefore  “كُلُّ شَىْءٍ” means every element in the DNA.  We are not going to explain the Quran within the Science discipline, which provides a physical uncovering, rather I use the Science discipline and interpret the meaning I discover from the way that the things are brought into existence according to the guidance of the Quran.  

Comments: Within their own living conditions, our children will have to learn to understand the Quran according to what they learn from the information on how the universe is being brought into existence by a Conscious Creator.

In summary, the parallel reading of both the speech of God (action and verbal) and each letter of the Qur’an and each being of the universe must be taken seriously. A thousand years ago each being meant camel or date palms, but now each cell, each particle. Also, the structure and words in the Quran must not be reduced to the dictionary meaning. We need to be aware that when we read a translation of the Qur’an we are not reading the Quran, rather we are reading the understanding of the translator of the Quran according to his/her capacity.  The translators have done a great job but as far as the content and the quality of the Quran is concerned.  Please note that translation can in no way do justice to the meaning of the Quran. Translation does have some flavor of revelation, but that needs further explanations.