A Formula For Success
Dr. Pasha
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
It Is All You
Life seems to continually throw you into situations and among people that require answers to all kinds of questions. Often, these are questions that you may have wrestled with at one point or another in your own life.
And then Allah guides whom he wants to the kind of answers he pleases.
Best answers are found in the Qur'an.
But to get to the Qur'an is not given to everyone. No one comes to the Qur'an without a personal invitation - directly from God.
And then the Qur'an is like an ocean.
Each gets from the Qur'an what they want - and what they can. And what they are able to take away from it depending on the motivation they have and depending on the equipment and the container they bring to it.
So, what you get from the Qur'an is not so much a function of the ocean, but of the vessel that you bring to it.
In that sense, it is all you.
"In that case I will bring a whole tanker," said a friend of mine when he first heard me say this during a Qur'an program I was conducting - called for convenience sake, Dr. Pasha's International Qur'an Program.
What I am trying to say is, there are limitations on your part and there are barriers and hurdles you need to cross - to get to the Qur'an and to be able to successfully interface and communicate with the Qur'an.
That is why I say when it comes to the Qur'an it is all you.
It Is All Qur'an
But looked at it from another angle, and in another sense and context, it is all Qur'an.
It is almost as if to say that the Qur'an will talk to you when, where and how it pleases.
And on its own terms.
The challenge then becomes not only to locate the answers in the Qur'an, but also to read and understand them right.
Everybody reads the same Qur'an, you may think. But do they really? They don't. Even though the Qur'an is the same changeless, immutable, eternal word of God that it has always been and that it always shall remain.
Yet the Qur'an is like the one whose immortal speech it is.
As for him, who can say in what state of glory he is on any given day.
Kulla yaumin huwa fe sha'n, is how the Qur'an puts it.
Implication: Everyday the Qur'an is new, fresh and in a different state of glory even though its permanence is eternal and constant.
In this sense, it is all Qur'an.
That is why not all those who read the Qur'an get the same answers from the Qur'an. It is because they are who they are and they bring to the Qur'an what they do.
That is also because the Qur'an is what it is: God Almighty's own immortal word in mortal human hands.
When the right interface occurs, right answers emerge in the human domain.
Some of What It Takes to Communicate with the Qur'an
Here is some of what it takes to communicate with the Qur'an - some of what it takes to be able to read the Qur'an properly and receive the right answers from it:
- First of all, you should know that the Qur'an is read with your heart and not just with your mind, even though having a sharp and cultivated mind is a basic requirement of coming to Islam in the first place.
- That means Iman - lots and lots of Iman. No Iman, no Qur'an. This may appear a bit circular, but it is not. People who come to the Qur'an are generally those whose Iman is already in a working condition, or those whose hearts and minds are hardwired for Iman, even though for the time being their Iman may be pointing in the wrong direction and focused on the wrong objects.
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Superior human qualities such as true humility and personal integrity and the courage required to submit to the superior logic and evidence of the Qur'an. Without these things a person may not get far with the Qur'an.
Unless, of course, Allah has already decided to bring this person in anyway and the Qur'an breaks down this person's arrogance and personal barriers and overwhelms him and drags him bound hand and foot to the mercy of Allah.
This the Qur'an does when and how and with whom it pleases.
Some More Requirements for Communicating with the Qur'an
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An insatiable curiosity about the world; a brain full of all kinds of questions about life; and a general and indomitable hunger for knowledge - for truth. Without these things a person is more or less brain dead. And life and its challenges and their solutions mean nothing to dazed, bemused and befuddled individuals like that.
Such people live on the margins of space and time and they wander the vistas of life like zombies, getting out of it only the dregs and refuse life throw away from time to time. Qur'an and non-Qur'an, life and death, success and failure, are all the same to such people.
- An underlying discomfort with the surrounding darkness of social injustices, moral wrongs and general human degradation and wretchedness. A general aversion to what the Qur'an calls Zulm - all the terrible things people do to people.
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And an active and growing knowledge base - Ilm. All kinds of knowledge. Knowledge without limits or borders. And that includes knowledge of all the accumulated common wisdom of the present and the past as well as of all the sciences and historical facts.
The more you know, the more you would know what the Qur'an is talking about - provided all the other conditions are met.
And yet, it is the amazing miracle of the Qur'an that the simplest heart and the least sophisticated of minds can read and understand it. Just like the Bedouins and nomads of 7th Century Arabia.
