Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Books of ALLAH and the World (part 2)

The reason of these divine signs, whether they are to be found in the Quran or in the "book" of nature, is the same: it is to educate human beings about the natural world of the Divine truth. To be an individual of knowledge, one must learn two registers of divine communication: the Arabic text of the Quran and the "text" of the natural world.   The world is a book to be considered and educated by the person of knowledge, just as the word of God is a book to be studied and learned by the religious scholar. In Quran ALLAH has called the people of intellect to ponder on the world and to find ALLAH. 


“Verily, in the alternation of night and day, and in all that ALLAH has created in the heavens and the earth there are signs for a God fearing people.” [Quran 10:6] 

Therefore, from the Quranic point of view, Muslims are People of the Book, but they do not study the Book in an ordinary way. Considerably, the Quran most repeatedly uses the Arabic verb "to study" which is referred as darasa in Arabic; this word is used when directing the speech towards Jews or Christians. These earlier "Peoples of the Book" are clearly told by ALLAH that they are gone astray from the spiritual point of Islam. An example of such a depiction can be found in the following verse: 

“Then, the unworthy and evil generation succeeded them and inherited the scriptures. They chose the benefits of this lowly temporal world and said, “We would be forgiven all our sins.” Yet, whenever the (chance to attain the) worldly gains of a similar kind came by, they grabbed it again. Hadn’t they made a covenant by the scriptures that they would not say anything about Allah except the truth? And they have studied the scriptures! The abode of the life-to-come is better for those who are righteous. Then, do you not understand?” [Quran 7:169] 

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