Purification to learn the Book and wisdom and to understand the verses

We are living through the bustle of the domestic and foreign political agenda while also trying to realize the blessed month of Ramadan. This bustle must not prevent us from realizing Ramadan. Ramadan comes every year to remind us that all times have an Owner and that everything we are living through is no longer than a moment in human history, to awaken us from heedlessness. It calls us to be able to look from beyond the times we live in and not remain buried in this life, and above all not to fall into the error of taking this moment to be eternal and overstepping our bounds.

After all, in this life, to which we have come equal to one another by our birth and our death, the only thing we live through between two moments is a series of trials. The surest tip for these trials we get in the months of Ramadan and the days of Hajj. That is that we are mortal in this world and that we will give an account of everything we do in the next world.

Neither we nor any of our works will remain in this world. The only One who will remain is Him. And He is the only Being who can call us to account for what we do today, for what we could have done but did not do, for our intentions and our deeds, for what we have made manifest and what we have concealed.

All our struggles in this world are solely and only for that Great Day. That Day will come for everyone. What matters is to be conscious of that Great Day and to prepare for it. Being aware of Ramadan brings us closer to this consciousness.

Ramadan is the month that contains the Night of Power, in which the Quran was revealed, in order to prepare for that great day. That is why the surest way to realize Ramadan is to read the Quran abundantly, to reflect on it, to try to understand it. In one respect Ramadan is also the month of the Quran. The Quran is of course a book to be read at all times. But reading it in Ramadan has a distinct effect, a distinct meaning.

Ramadan provides an atmosphere that brings a person closer to understanding the Quran as the One who revealed it wants. An atmosphere in which a person feels death before dying and lives it through to his very marrow with soul and body offers an atmosphere closer to understanding the Quran as well. We need atmospheres that purify a person, train him and make him ready to listen to the Quran.

On this occasion we can recall some neglected conditions of reading the Quran.

The positivist understandings widespread in modern times have had a strange effect on our understanding of how to understand the Quran too. An effect that almost reduces understanding the Quran to a matter to be settled by analyzing its semantic content. With this effect the Quran becomes the subject of soulless semantic analyses but does not in any way penetrate the personality, the soul or the mind of the one who understands it.

In the name of so-called exalting the Quran, emphasizing its perfection, even placing it at the center, one can go to the excess of claiming that to understand the Quran we need neither the prophet nor any intermediary who would explain it to us. This is an idea that has appeal within the modern paradigm. But it is an ignorant approach that shuts its eyes to the Quran's own particular nature. Of course there are very clear differences between one who reads the Quran believing and one who reads it without believing. Moreover, the idea that the Quran benefits everyone who reads it and leads everyone to the right path on first reading is itself rejected by the Quran. On the contrary, this Quran increases the guidance of some people and the misguidance of others. So what is the secret of this?

God knows the mystery of the matter exactly, but the following noble verse contains very important indications on precisely this subject, on why and how God did not send His book to people alone:

"God bestowed a favor on the believers by sending among them a messenger from among themselves, to recite His verses to them, to purify them, and to teach them the Book and wisdom, though before that they were in clear misguidance" (Al-i Imran, 1647).

The verse is repeated in similar forms in three other places (Baqara, 129, 151, Jumu'a 2). In each of them it is explained that the divine message,

1. Was sent to the people addressed through a messenger from among themselves. That is, through one of them who, while knowing the divine message well, also knows well the language, culture and feelings of his own people. Of course one can dwell at length on how important this mediation is. The one who conveys the message is the message itself. The untrustworthiness of the messenger, however strong the message he carries, renders its content too untrustworthy, unheard and uncomprehended. His being "one from among themselves" will at the same time form an effective hermeneutic setting for how the content of the message is to be understood.

2. "He will recite to them the verses of God," but immediately afterwards,

3. "He will purify them." We have countless examples every day that merely reading the verses may yield no benefit at all. In the hands of unpurified people these verses can turn into a dangerous weapon, a misleading inspiration.

What is purification? It is the training of the personality, moral preparation, knowing oneself, and therefore knowing one's Lord. One who does not know himself can know neither his Lord, nor himself, nor other people. One lacking this knowledge cannot understand or see the verses that are recited. When the Prophet Moses went to receive God's verses to recite to the Children of Israel, whom he had saved from Pharaoh's oppression, and returned, he saw that in the short time his people had been left alone they had begun to worship an idol. It was understood that the Children of Israel had to go through a serious process of purification. In that state they could not possibly properly understand God's "recited verses." This process took the Prophet Moses a full forty years. In this process many could not withstand the trial and fell away.

4. and 5. "To teach them the Book and Wisdom.." To the people to whom, after an intensive process of purification, God's verses are recited, the messenger from among themselves teaches the Book and Wisdom. Even in this case he teaches not only the Book but also Wisdom. Wisdom is the deep eye and perception that sees God's verses, sees what light they shed on which event and how they can be adapted to that event.

A messenger does all of this. Is it not understood from this that in order to properly understand the Quran in our hands we must get to know that Messenger very well and look for ways of being one with him? So it means we must read the Sira abundantly. Of course, both to know him better and to understand better the verses he recited to us, we must enter the paths of purification. We must know ourselves. We must know time and the Owner of time. We must die before dying, we must realize that we exist in this world only for a trial. Of course, we must not remain heedless of Ramadan, which is the greatest opportunity to purify us.