The risk taken in reading

Ramadan is a time when a person leaves the dungeon of his own selfhood and opens out toward other worlds. Fasting is the act that provides this opening. The material conditions of this opening are met by not eating from dawn to sunset even when hungry, not drinking even when thirsty, not speaking ill even when provoked.

Of course, these material conditions are completed by a sound intention. Together with the people who take part in this act of worship all over the world at the same time, and with those who have performed this act of worship from the earliest times of history to the present, in a sense of continuity, a person also slips out of the dungeon of the local and the present. By his fasting he himself represents the truth that the property he thinks he owns is in fact not his, that he has no right of disposal over it as he pleases. Giving up at least a part of the goods he thinks he owns, giving them to their real owners, is another representation in the same direction.

Another act of worship, which completes Ramadan and is interwoven with it, and which is in fact the most important, is reading. Reading life, death, existence, creation, other people, the poor, the destitute, the oppressed, and, as the summary of all readings, reading the Qur'an, which was sent down in this month.

Is this month blessed because the Qur'an was sent down in it, or was the Qur'an sent down in this month because it is a blessed month? The predominant view of the ulema points to the first. That is, what makes Ramadan blessed is the very fact that the Qur'an was sent down in this month. Is not fasting itself, in fact, an opening that prepares a person to read the Qur'an better, to understand it better, to grasp it better?

Reading is a risky act in itself. Being open to hearing new things, opening one's ear and heart to hearing those new things... Everything you read with that openness can put your thoughts, your feelings, the direction of your existence at risk. You can read a book and your life can change.

You have surely heard the stories of countless people who have lived through this experience throughout history. The stories of those who, through a book they read, plunged into a new way of thinking, the opposite of what they had thought before. That is why reading is a task that also requires courage. It is the task most fitting to our existence as human beings. That is why reading is the first command of the Qur'an that was sent down in the month of Ramadan. Addressed to people living in a corrupted comfort of thought and life, reading will be the most effective act inviting them to change their lives. God does not change a people unless they undertake to change themselves.

So is it not possible to read a book without taking on that risk of change?

Why not? There are, of course, those who can be open only to the dimensions of the book they read that will reinforce their own rote assumptions. There are readings that brush past without lending an ear to anything different they hear, that add one more brick to thicken their own dungeon of selfhood with every sermon. Thus there are those who try to preserve the comfort provided by the dungeon of selfhood. Let it not sound strange here that comfort is mentioned together with a dungeon. The comfort of thought is a dungeon that is often lived in without being noticed and that continues to please the one who lives in it.

The Ramadan fast weaves an atmosphere that prepares one to read the Qur'an by listening to its sermon, seeing the truths it shows, taking its warnings, being affected, and thus by taking the risk of change. The state of fasting breaks the excessively officious resistance toward what you will read, removes instrumentalizing interventions, opens your ear even more. It widens the heart paths along which the messages that may come from what you read will advance.

The Qur'an is, of course, a book that must be read differently from other books. We do not read it as we read any other book. We do not regard it as a textual material that we can render passive and perform operations on as we wish. Those who see it so have different ways of reading, of course. As well as where the Book read without ablution takes a person...

When you read believing that the Qur'an is a message from God, both its whole content of meaning and its power to affect you change. God has mercy on you and sends you a sound guide by which you can find your way in this dark world. Through the Ramadan time you are living today He connects you to the time when the Qur'an was first revealed.

You! You are the primary addressee of this message. The Exalted Creator addresses you directly, putting no one else in between. You need neither anyone's mediation nor anyone's brokerage...

Reading other books has its own particular material conditions. You read alone, you read aloud or silently, you read together with others, you read believing or not believing, in every case whatever you read, whether you are aware of it or not, you in fact live the risk of change because of what you read. But when you read the Book properly, that is, knowing it as a word from God, having taken your ablution out of reverence, reading aloud and also listening to what you read, and especially when you do this together with the Ramadan fast, you have opened out toward a vast horizon.

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Reading in Ramadan should also bring to mind reading other books. In fact I had it in mind to write a reading piece or two every Ramadan. As is known, there are fairs, there are new and very good books. A publishing house had a nice slogan (it was İz Yayınları, as far as I remember): All books are for the better understanding of a single book. In fact a whole life should be enabling the better understanding of that book, for one who knows how to read. In the next piece, God willing, I would like to share my impressions of the books that have fallen to our lot these days.