The Quran 101

I have often read that the Quran should not be read without the guidance of a learned moulvi. It has also been written that by reading the Quran without such guidance one can become ‘gumrah’ and may forever lose his soul to the devil. So, being an eternal rebel and a reader, I decided to take this risk. Whether I lost my soul or not, I leave for you guys to decide but I would definitely like to share why I consider this Book to be truly sacred and a gift from God to mankind.

First of all, it was very puzzling for me to think that a book which was meant to challenge the intellect of a nomad sitting right in the middle of a desert almost 1500 years ago cannot be understood by a modern man, is it so complicated? If a man is at risk of losing his soul by reading it, then why make it public? If I do accept that it is complicated then why did our Prophet (SW) and his companions took so much pain to compile and write it down? Why did they not allow it to be passed from one generation to the next verbally? What secret things have been written in it which only a moulvi can decipher and I cannot?

As I cannot tell you what I lost by reading the Quran, I want to share with you what I gained from it:

· In sharp contrast to what we have been told, in so many places in the Quran, Allah tells us to THINK about His creations and see things around us because in His creations we will find clues which all point to a presence of a single Supreme Entity; Himself. So when Allah is asking us to think then, why do we close our minds and label everything unconventional as “un-Islamic”?

· Every time I go back and read the Quran again, it opens some new avenues for me to think. Every single time I read it, it seems that I am reading it for the first time. It always gives me something new to ponder. No other book till date has given me this feeling.

· The Quran is based on simple facts; I have yet to find a single Ayat which can be termed as disputable or refutable. The Quran is solely based on logic. Here, I dare others to read and find something which they can claim as controversial.

· In so many Ayats, a single incident has been described and always from a different angle in order to highlight a different aspect. This is the true beauty of the Quran.

It is about time that we realize that the Quran starts from the word Iqra (read). Now if I lookup the word “read” in the dictionary, it means “interpret written material”, “learn something by reading”, “understand something intuitively”, “give particular interpretation to something”. So now you tell me, do we really “read” the Quran?