Session 54 Notes
The Purposes of the Qur’an
(Al-Maqasid Al-Qur’aniyyah)
We will delve into the objectives or purposes of the Qur’an. We have been discussing the various definitions of the Qur’an and last looked into the aspect of Shari’ah, divine laws. There is a difference between purposes of the Quran and the purposes or objectives of the Shari’ah. The purposes of the Qur’an encompasses the purposes of the Shari’ah and vice versa as well. However, each is specialized in different directions where the purpose of Shari’ah aims at the physical, personal and social life of an individual, the objectives of the Qur’an looks more into the spiritual side of human beings.
Historically, the purpose of the Qur’an has been studied by various serious scholars but this topic is not commonly known or dealt with by the general Muslim community who mostly concentrate on the practical side of Islam. For example, there are questions that are seen as weird, such as:
- How can I believe in the Hereafter? Is it really true?
- How do I know that the Quran is God’s word?
Such questions are now in the minds of the modern man in this century. For example, we discussed in our previous sessions how we can confirm that our Creator must speak, we discussed the institution of prophethood and how we can confirm the Hereafter. Please refer to the previous session notes for those topics.
Let’s now consider how we can benefit from the purpose of the Qur’an. First, one must digest that the Qur’an is the speech of our Creator, the Creator of the universe. Before we engage with the Qur’an, the challenge is knowing who we are? How do we define ourselves? We don’t usually question this as to who we are as an individual. What is expected of us living in this universe? One may easily say that God created us. This still doesn’t work because one first has to define themselves, their capacity before benefitting from the Qur’an. Once we define ourselves as a human being, with our given capacity, we would be able to expect guidance from our Creator, who would speak to us according to our capacity that we could apply to our feelings and in our living.
Let’s examine the human reality:
Bodily limitations: We cannot go back to the past, nor can we go into the future as we want. We are experiencing only a slice of fleeting existence at every moment.
Let’s think about this. The Qur’an speaks to us as we are experiencing this existing moment. For example, no one can be in two places at the same time. Let’s say we traveled to some place yesterday and are planning to travel somewhere else tomorrow. We think that our world is so large. Today, we are here, tomorrow it will be somewhere else. The reality is that we are experiencing only one slice of fleeting existence at every moment. The past is no longer a reality anymore but it is in our memory, the future has not come yet but we keep it in our imagination. Our bodily limitations means that we must accept that we exist right now as we are experiencing ourselves. No one is denying that we existed yesterday but that yesterday is gone as far as we are concerned. Tomorrow is not guaranteed as no one knows what will happen to the universe or to us tomorrow. For example, one may schedule a meeting with a friend tomorrow which is in the future. One of them may become sick, die or be unable to go to that meeting place. Maybe one of them has to take care of something else. That is what our bodily limitations are. Our existence is a fleeting moment right now where no one can guarantee their life even now. As one says and experiences the “now”, that moment is gone, our existence is fragile, totally dependent. We may think that we are in control of our lives, we cannot control anything, not even our living for a moment, which is a fleeting existence. There are some who say we have this present moment of now, the Qur’an says that we have nothing. That moment of existence is given as a gift, it’s not something we have. We don’t own anything in reality.
We must know who we are, know our reality of being a 100% dependent being. The big question is: “dependent on whom?” We may speak with confidence as if we can guarantee what happens next. We must admit our reality, we don’t know the next moment, we don’t know whether we will wake up from our sleep or not. No one can guarantee their existence. This humility is necessary; we don’t exist by ourselves. The Qur’an speaks to us in this reality that we are in.
The One who gives us existence is so merciful, compassionate that He creates us in such a way that there is no way for us to claim ownership of our existence, or the existence of anything. Otherwise, we become arrogant individuals. The Qur’an does not speak to one who is arrogant. No one can say that they existentially own something. The Qur’an says “No”, it reminds us that everything is transient, we own nothing. We were nothing and our Creator is creating us at every moment out of His Mercy. One only exists at this moment because their Creator willed them to exist. The Qur’an cannot speak to a person who has a grain of arrogance, no matter how small the arrogance, this person cannot benefit from the Qur’an. Even if the person claims to believe in God. For example, the person says “I know God, you exist up there, but I exist down here”. The Qur’an doesn’t speak to such a person. Our realization of our reality is a must in order to benefit from the speech of our Creator. Once a person claims that they exist by themselves without questioning whether this claim is justified, they will have difficulty engaging with the Qur’an’s message, because the Qur’an calls people to question, reflect, and examine its message with an open mind. If a person claims that they exist by themselves, this view will inevitably expand to the universe. The Qur’an’s response to such a claim is simply: “Bring your evidence.”
Intellectual limitations: Our intellect asks countless questions about what the universe is referring to, in its existence. It yearns for eternal satisfaction but cannot find the answers in this transient existence. It can only analyze what is available within the universe. For example, when we investigate a plant: “What is this beautiful thing? How does it come into being? How does it cease to exist? We can only investigate and analyze what is available. When we look at the sunrise, how is it happening? How does the Sun follow its course? Why does it produce its own light, while the Earth does not? To simply say, “The laws of physics work this way,” cannot by itself be an answer to the deeper question of why the universe exists or why it has this particular orderly existence.
The laws of physics are our mathematical descriptions of the regularities and relationships we observe in the already existing universe. They describe how things behave; they do not, by themselves, explain why the universe exists in the first place.
Therefore, the laws of physics cannot simply be assumed to be the source of the existence of the universe. They are our formulations of the order we discover in an already existing universe, not an explanation of why that universe exists at all and how its perfect order came into being.
Our intellect asks endless questions but we have no answers to them. We don’t know the answers but we just observe what is out there. All the scientific discoveries are nothing but observations of what is present out there.
Intellectual limitations require that evidence must be observational, one should be able to observe within their human experience; it cannot grasp what the observed evidence refers to. The Quran gives evidence from the universe and teaches us the indicative meanings of what we have experienced.
One materialist chemist says: try to find out how a molecule of water is made, but you should not try to understand how it happens as it does. The ‘how” question is not answered. Rather than describing the observed chemical reaction, tell us how and why H2O became a water molecule. The so-called explanations given by materialist scientists are portrayed as if they speak reality; they just observe and describe what they have seen. They do not bring any new explanation more than what is already in existence. But we wonder how a thing comes into existence in a particular way rather than in another way and what its existence means for us. The material scientists speak big saying that they are studying the universe and know much about it. We discussed extensively the materialist view in our Session 37 and Session 38.
The Qur’an doesn’t speak to those who claim to know but just warns them by saying: “No, you don’t know.” If they accept to listen to what the Qur’an says, only then can they benefit from what it says. The materialist scientists should admit that they are just reading/describing what is already out there. For example, a sentence is written and spelling out only its letters and claiming that I know the sentence. They do not admit that they have not read its meaning. The Qur’an says: “You don’t know, you are just reading the letters of what is written. You don’t know the meaning. You are just experiencing already existent things. You can not explain how they are happening. You need guidance”. To describe an observation never means it is an explanation. These materialist scientists are cheating everyone. They never answer: how does the universe exist? They just make up speculative assumptions which have no evidence at all. If you ask them how did the universe come into existence? They say that the universe exists, that’s how we found it. When they have no answer their counter argument usually is: “Do you deny science?” It is not science that is being denied but the material interpretation that makes no sense. Unfortunately, some Muslims fall into their interpretation of claiming that science explains the “how” and religion explains the “why”. Some minds are just conditioned with their interpretations. The Qur’an says: Nope. Science cannot explain how the things come into being, come into existence. There are many verses in the Qur’an asking conscious beings the question: How does it come into being? How is it there? (29:20, 71:15, 88:17, etc)
It is to be appreciated that there is a group who call themselves “creationists” in the believing Christian tradition, they defend the creation of the universe from the materialist interpretation. They recognize that the existence of the universe necessitates a Creator. We keep hearing the materialist scientists talk about some chemical explosion that happened some billion years ago. How did this explosion happen? They just describe their mathematical equations and talk about the event that occurred according to these equations. Nevertheless, these equations may be correct according to the level of the experience of human beings today but they never explain how the universe came into existence. For example, describing energy with a mathematical formulation does not mean to answer the question, “what is energy in reality?” No one knows; it is an abstract, mathematical property of a system. They talk about electricity which they define as the movement of electrons. No one can describe what electricity, electric current that results from the movement of electrons really is, how does it exist? We must be careful with those material scientists who interpret the “how” to the matter itself and then claim that they explained it. They didn’t explain it but just gave a description of what is experienced out there. They can’t even explain how one strand of hair is growing; they just describe what is already there, as if recording a “video” just at the atomic level of sequences of the growth of a hair strand, stitching the frames together, and calling the sequence a “law” or a “mechanism.” That is all human intellect can do. Human intellect can never explain how this stitching of the frame happens in the way it does, rather than another way. Human beings are forever trapped in just describing what we find. What does it mean for us? Like reading a sentence, which symbolizes the universe, by only spelling its letters and describing how they are arranged in the way that they are now. On the other hand, if we look at this sentence and see that it is perfectly arranged in a meaningful way and try to see there is a meaning in it, only then we start wondering what it means. The structure of the sentence demonstrates that it is purposeful, useful, perfectly ordered. Therefore we realize that there must be a conscious “writer”. But still we cannot know who this conscious writer is. We can only say “There must be a one who is consciously arranging everything.” That is it, no more. It is understood that this argument starts from ontology and necessarily goes through epistemology and ends up in theology. If we know the answer to the “how” then we don’t need the Creator, God to tell us anything.
However, there are some honest scientists who agree with this question of how it came into existence as a legitimate question for which they don’t have the answer to.
The limitations of the universe: Scientists estimate that the universe is 93 billion light years wide. They don’t explain how it comes into being but just describe the different observations. However, the Qur’an gives us the news that the universe is given existence at each moment. The universe is like a magnificent piece of art. It is intellectually deep and points to the skills of its Artist. However, the artwork itself is silent. It cannot speak to us or verbally explain who its Artist is. It does not tell us why this art exists, or what the Artist expects from us. It just declares the qualities manifested on it.
The universe provides us with evidence and expects us to find out what it refers to. We will ask the universe: what are you telling us? We try to understand the meaning of existence but remember that our intellectual capacity cannot go out of the universe. It cannot make sure that our conclusions are logically, intellectually, sensually confirmed. That means we need to be able to experience the universe within our human capacity. That is why we say that there must be something, there must be a Creator, there must be an Artist, there must be Someone who is entertaining us with this beautiful creation. Someone has brought us into this world. We don’t know who brought us. We don’t know how we are continuously changing, continuously growing older. We don’t need the doctor or biologist to tell us that we are getting older as we already see and experience it. How is our change happening, why is it happening? There is no answer from the materialist scientists. The way we are changing tells us that someone else is operating on us, someone else is continuously creating us, telling us something. Everything looks meaningful but we don’t know what is happening.
The materialist philosophers say that when you say “someone else”, you are referring to “God” and we are not going to submit ourselves to Him. That is arrogance and the Qur’an doesn’t speak to a person who doesn’t realize their reality, their limitations. We must admit that we are completely 100% needy creatures, who are in need of being given existence at every moment. When one says they don’t need anyone to tell them what is expected of them in life, they don’t need anyone to operate on them, they are just aging; that is arrogance. We may think we have money in our accounts, have a house, a car so we are doing great, and are self-sufficient. The Qur’an says: “go ahead if you are self-sufficient to stop yourself from aging and dying” (16:70; 36:68, 3:168).
We must be human beings who question as we don’t know what is going on in this universe. We don’t know why we are here. The Qur”an comes to our aid to answer all of our questions. If one is arrogant that they don’t need these answers then the Qur’an doesn’t help them. For example, if you stop someone from doing some harm on the street. This person could either be thankful for saving him from harm or he could be arrogant and say that he knows what he is doing and doesn’t need anyone to tell him. This attitude of arrogance does not attract any help from anyone. That is why the Qur’an does not benefit those who are arrogant.
As human beings living in this universe, our most dangerous enemy is familiarity with things and events. For example, we think we are static, go to sleep, wake up, eat food, etc. We need to realize that every day is a new and different creation that is continuously changing at every moment and is not static. We are a new creation in our being at this moment, different from yesterday.