• If you were to ask: It is the mark of guidance and eloquence to elucidate, provide clear explanations, and to save minds from confusion. But the Qur'anic commentators have been at variance over verses like this and have suggested different possibilities, and have propounded conflicting aspects of the phrases. So how can the truth be recognized among all these?

You would be told: All are right, for the listeners vary greatly. For the Qur'an was not revealed for the people of only one century, but for the people of all the centuries; nor for only one class, but for all the classes of mankind; and each of these has its own share and part in understanding the Qur'an. Between people there are vast differences of understanding, and their tastes vary greatly, and they incline to different sides of the Qur'an, and appreciate different aspects of it, and their pleasures are diverse, and their temperaments are all different. How many things there are that one nation deems beautiful which another does not even notice, and which one enjoys greatly while another does not even recognize their existence. You can draw further analogies in the same way.

It is because of this mystery and instance of wisdom that in most places the Qur'an is not specific and makes its statements general so that everyone can appraise them according to their own taste and appreciation. The Qur'an has ordered its sentences and positioned them in such a way that numerous different possibilities unfold from its various aspects, and [different people with] their diverse understandings may reflect on them and each may receive his share. You can make further analogies. That is to say, all these different aspects are permissible on condition they are not opposed to the sciences of Arabic, are approved by the science of rhetoric (eloquence), and are acceptable to the science of the principles and aims of the Shari'a. Thus, it emerges from this point that one of the aspects of the Qur'an's miraculousness is its word-order and its arrangement in a style that conforms to the understandings of the people of all ages and all classes.

First PagePrevious(47) Next Part