Understanding

Now we know that the Reading had meaning for the community that were present to hear it,

but muslims in Scotland speak a different language, and the world we live in is very different to theirs,

so how can we approach an understanding that fits our experience, in our local community, in our current world?

When we read different versions of attempts to translate the Qur'an, we find a variety of meanings expressed by different translators,

all different facets of what meaning can be gleaned from the original text.

Which translation we prefer will be a matter of taste, of personal inclination,

some like what sounds poetic, while some prefer prose,

some are happy with arcane vocabulary, while others prefer things said more simply.

Your preference shows what you are looking for in the text,

which mostly defines what you will find there.

To each their own.

But this predisposition also affects our views on opinions from the past.

When classical commentators disagree, how do you choose which, if any, you want to agree with?

From the earliest days of the community, there were disagreements as to the meanings of the Qur'an,

and its very nature, whether created or uncreated, was an opinion with major political repercussions.

The Mu'tazilites once ruled much of the muslim world.

How do you decide what to think of their opinions today?

What does the Reading mean for you?

Does the Reading speak to you directly?

Is it personal?

These are questions to ponder when considering our relationship with the Qur'an.

Do you find it beautiful?

Do Heaven and Hell feel real to you?

How do you reconcile Adam and Evolution?

Do you really believe in angels and jinn?

What do you understand by the Book?

Does it include the Book of Creation,

the Book of Moses and the other various Messengers,

or the Book you will have read to you on Judgement day?

Do you really believe in miracles?

All these issues and so many others are there to be studied in the text of the Reading,

for that text can seem an extraordinarily tangled place in which to search for answers.

But those that experienced it understood the need to remember and record the words and order precisely,

including all its strangeness of composition.

From the earliest days of Islam,

from the time that the Reading was complete with the death of the Messenger,

there was discussion as to why the verses of the Qur'an were structured the way they are,

different themes scattered across the verses in an apparently haphazard way,

and whether there is an underlying thematic structure that was not visible at first glance.

This was not necessarily of any great concern to most muslims then or since,

as they learned the Reading piecemeal and just accepted the text as a whole.

But young muslims living in Scotland have to align their view of the Reading with their own understanding of literary balance, proportion and cohesion, in the everyday language that they use and read.

The view of the Reading from this cultural context might well be summarised by Thomas Carlyle

who described it as “A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite”,

deploring its “endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement”,

and considering it to be “insupportable stupidity”.

The famous Scot was never one to mince his words,

any more than most of his modern compatriots,

so young Scottish muslims need to be able to see the cohesion in the Reading that counters such disparaging perspectives.

Considerations of thematic relations between verses and between suras, and their relative positions in the text

have been a subject of study in Islamic sciences from Al-Jahiz in the third century through the work of numerous renowned muslim scholars since,

culminating in recent years with a clear recognition of an extraordinarily cohesive thematic pattern running through the entire Qur'an.

Raymond Farrin in his “Structure and Qur'anic Interpretation” expertly outlines this coherence as displayed through symmetries within and between the Suras.

Within Suras, themes can be seen to form circular patterns, symmetrical around a central point,

but this form of symmetry also applies to the Suras themselves.

The paired relationship between Suras has been commented on for centuries, but these pairs can also be seen to form groups with a similar internal symmetric structure,

and those groups themselves have a concentric symmetry over the whole of the text of the Qur'an,

nine groups reflecting each other on either side of a central group,

the group that begins with Sura Qaf.

The arrangement of these Sura groups in this symmetrical way, reflecting the symmetry of their inner thematic content, takes a simple structural idea and uses it to display a miraculously subtle and complex inter-related structure across the text, that is only beginning to come to light in recent years,

this shows how ongoing study of the Qur'an can constantly reveal new aspects of the Revelation,

as it displays its Divine source in different times in different ways.

The nineteen circular symmetrical thematic groups also have an intriguing link to the result of recent computer analysis of the Qur'an,

revealing number patterns down to the level of the letters, also linked to the number 19.

Now, as computers begin to display the amazing power of AI, it is exciting to imagine what they might show us of what remains to be revealed.

As is clear from our knowledge of the universe around us,

God's creation is always full of surprises.

Number patterns in the text