in this episode i want to explore a simple question : what is the quran ? and the answer to that
question will be determined by which of two groups you are a member of . are you a member of the muslim
group ? in which case you will say the quran is the actual speech of god himself the word of god
wahi revelation or if you are a member of the other group non-muslims you obviously will believe
it is the product of a human mind muhammad this 7th century arabian and he produced it
or maybe a succession of editors unknown to us who produced it as some scholars have suggested
so that's a simple binary option but i want to address it in a slightly different
approach by looking at it in in simple terms phenomenologically by which i mean
an approach to the question that seeks to describe the essence of a phenomenon by exploring
it from the perspective of those who have experienced it so what is the experience of those
who have heard the quran recited or they read it in a book or read it what do they how do they feel
about that so it's a phenomenological approach and to explore this there's a book there's
always a book this case it is god is beautiful the ascetic experience of the quran by navid kamani
who is a german scholar it says here on the inside back cover as a scholar who lives in cologne
in germany he's been awarded numerous prizes for his literary and academic work
and this book he tells us in the forward is his phd thesis which has proven to be hugely
influential and the reviews on the back cover from harvard and university college
university of california berkeley saying that this is you know highly
accomplished work and outstanding work that fulfills that fills a major lacuna in both
the study of the quran as scripture and the wider study of muslim faith practice and spirituality
that's from harvard university so i just wanted to read a short extract from this which explores
the the experience of the quran and what that tells us about the quran itself i'm just going
to quote from page 110 and as always i will be making a few comments on root so he says
as akashi too recounts among the miraculous qualities of the quran the fact that it is quote
always fresh and flourishing in the ears of the listener and on the tongue of the reciter
this may also be an echo of the following sentences of khadi iyad quote one of them
the miraculous properties of the quran is that the reciter never tires of it and the listener cannot
forbear it and on the contrary the delight of the recitation only increases the longer one
devotes oneself to it and repeats the words so that one cannot but love it its bloom and
its freshness never cease other recitations even if they equal the quran in beauty and eloquence
finish by producing weariness if constantly repeated but our book fills one as often as
one returns to it in seclusion with enjoyment and the recitation of it brings happiness even
in adversity this is not found in other writings so that their admirers have composed melodies for
them and devised external means of enlivening their recitation that is why the messenger of
god described the quran with words that it does not grow stale no matter how often one recites it
and that its teachings never run dry and its wonders have no end end quote we must realize that
this testimony to a miracle is perfectly aligned with umberto ekko's description amber echo was a
recently deceased italian intellectual and academic and literary figure with amber echo's
description of the reception of works of art according to echo and no one would contradict him
we cannot imagine that an aesthetic form would not be exhausted if we receive it too
often in too short a time and it is beautiful to us only because we have long considered it such
and the enjoyment we now draw out of it is merely the memory of the pleasure we once felt while
listening to it when that happens it is necessary to put the work of art away for a while in order
to be affected by its suggestions anew ekko would deny that any text could be immune to this process
of habituation it would contradict all empirical findings and could only be called a miracle
kadhi eyad would agree with one exception to him the quran is exactly that miracle now the book
continues with many fascinating discussions al ghazali khazali's views as well which are
absolutely very very interesting and just on a personal note i i remember a book that's often
called the greatest novel in english language it's by it's called middle march by george
eliot who's a 19th century writer and you'll find often in in polls of the greatest works of english
literature that this novel is seen as the greatest in english obviously the other great novels say in
russian like war and peace and dostoevsky's work and so on but this one is the greatest
and i first read it i don't know 10 15 years ago and i was absolutely bowled over by i i had to
put it down at one point i felt as if it was such an intellectual and psychological feast
that i was being overloaded my senses have been overloaded and i had to put it down physically
and because it was just too much it was just too rich and intellectually powerful and i needed
to distance myself from it and i did finish it amazing amazing book now i think about a year ago
after much chewing and throwing i decided i would re-read it
to obviously revisit this extraordinary story and i got halfway through and it was so it wasn't
not flat but it didn't in any way energize me and engage me the way it did the first time around
and i didn't finish it i felt well yes i know what's going to happen next i know the
story and so-and-so is going to do this and this is going to happen and i i have feeling
relatively flat i mean it's still enjoyable but it didn't meet my expectations at all
now this passage i've just read suggests that people's experience of the quran is very different
that no matter how often one revisits it it has this amazing quality of to revivify
and refresh and renew uh the mind and the soul and the heart of the person who
encounters it so phenomenologically it is a work of transcendence it encounters one from a
a source outside of oneself and renews and heals and changes transforms the reader and that is
extremely unusual for books even the greatest work of english literature uh george eliot's middle
march even after a 10 15 year gap i can't remember how many is but a lot of years
even then it left me disappointed because of my memory of what it was like
the quran doesn't have that second or third encounter of deflation it seems to if anything
raise and elevate the mind and the heart even further now the one thing i would disagree with
navid was : he obviously is a book about the quran so but the quran isn't unique there's
another book that i am also more familiar with in the quran of course the bible and when i was
a christian i certainly found this book to profoundly engage me and disturb me and raise
questions but nevertheless it wasn't just like a novel and i would still say today although
i'm not a christian now i don't believe in the trinity or the incarnation anything like that but
there are passengers here for example in the psalm psalm 23 for example which still enco i
still phenomenologically i still engage them as transcendent as word from god i don't dismiss
this at all but there are passages in this book which have always left me cold i mean the great
genealogies you know they go endlessly someone begat somebody begat so and so who begat so and so
and some of the levitical laws and leviticus and some of the bits and pieces in deuteronomy
i suspect that christians never read or if they do it's just once and that's it
i don't so that there is there is this st in the bible too and christians will testify to
a similar experience but the quran strikes me is slightly different in that the whole of the quran
is like that from beginning to end if it has a beginning and it seems to have no ending
there doesn't seem to be any part of it that doesn't uh refresh renew and stimulate in some way
whereas parts of the bible maybe even most of the bible if christians were honest is something they
ignore they go to the purple passages the juicy bits of the gospels than the psalms and perhaps
maybe isaiah maybe bits of genesis but great chunks of it christians will not ever revisit
again because once you've read it why would you want to go back they they they're not very
interesting to be honest for a reader today but the quran has doesn't seem to have that problem
for its people who read it spiritually and so there we are should you buy this book ? i think
it is of a beautifully written book . it is very dense and though it is a phd thesis
but there are many wonderful stories about conversion stories about how people
just heard the quran out of the blue and immediately were immediately converted to islam
right from the time of the sahaba up to today . but yeah , so there we have until next time