Spending as a condition for understanding the Book

The Qur'an al-Karim, as a guiding book of hidayah, is presented as God Almighty's answer to the prayer we make in Surah al-Fatiha, which we recite every day in all our prayers and many times on different occasions: "Alif, Lam, Mim. This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for the muttaqin." But not for everyone: a guidance for the muttaqin. It is not possible for it to be a guidance, to show the way, to those who are not muttaqin. This book does not open itself to everyone who takes it in hand and reads it, whether he be the world's best linguist, the greatest expert in Arab history, or the best semanticist.

Postmodern theories of interpretation, which try a reader-first approach instead of a text-centered approach in understanding and interpretation, in fact capture an important part of the matter. In classical theories of interpretation, when you place all the semantic elements and linguistic components within the text in their proper places, you have solved everything. Yet even if you could carry out all the semantic analyses, a text answers you only to the measure of your approach, only as much as your capacity, your intention and your horizon. Even if you understood everything in the best way, there is a possibility that the Qur'an would not give you guidance, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with relativism as we know it. Of course a diversity of meaning that opens an apparently very large space to relativism may arise, but this does not mean that the truth about the text does not exist.

This book is a guidance only for the muttaqin. And the muttaqin are defined immediately: "Those who believe in the unseen, who establish the prayer, who spend out of what We have provided them, who believe in what has been sent down to you and what was sent down before you, and who are certain in faith of the Hereafter."

I think that these conditions being put forward as conditions for understanding a text is something one will not encounter in any other text.

This is a book from which one who does not believe in the unseen cannot benefit. Indeed, to understand the large amount of information narrated, whether about events, times and persons that can never be known historically, or about what will happen in the future, about angels, jinn and realms that our eyes do not and cannot see, one must believe in the unseen. Otherwise many of the things narrated remain up in the air and sound like mythological information. It has also been possible for many people to mix up this information with mythological narratives and, in their own minds, to embark on mythological analyses. Can it be possible for those people to benefit from this book as a book of guidance?

Nor is this a book from which those who do not establish the prayer can benefit. The prayer is a very special form of relationship between the servant and his Creator, yet at the same time the form of relationship that suits the human being best. Within this relationship there is the rejection of servitude to servants, and, with the states of standing, bowing and prostration before God, the definition and continual practice and nourishing of a magnificent stance in which the relationship with other people is defined as well.

Then the third condition: "spending out of the provision We have given." The wisdom of such a thing being put forward as a condition for understanding a text and turning it into guidance is without doubt far deeper than we suppose.

First of all, a person's knowing himself begins with coming to the awareness that nothing he thinks he possesses belongs to him. Everything that joins a person's existence in this life is a provision, blessings given to him by his Creator; nothing is in essence his own. But by seeing this provision purely as his own gain and as belonging to himself, and moreover by withholding his gains from others in need, he falls into a great ignorance about the truth of his own existence. The human being's existence in this world is founded upon indebtedness. This debt is the most fundamental state of our existence and makes us responsible both to God and to all people, especially to the weak, the poor, the hungry, the helpless. A state of indebtedness that is paid by fulfilling the requirements of this responsibility is precisely another meaning of "din," which comes from the same root as dayn, that is, debt.

Infaq is defined in the Qur'an as the most important character trait of a believer. At the very outset it is presented as a condition for this book to give him guidance. But in the following surahs and verses, with concepts such as infaq, mutual aid, sadaqah and zakat, a level of consciousness is aimed at in which everyone in society always thinks of others besides himself, and going to bed hungry while one's neighbor is hungry is perceived as truly a great deviance.

For a person to see even what he thinks he has earned as a provision that God has given him, and to feel that he is not the sole rightful claimant to this provision, is a very radical difference of outlook and approach. This is not a debt that is merely calculated and paid temporarily; it is a philosophy of existence. Not turning away the one who knocks at your door, listening without a frown to the one who asks something of you, and, when giving, not reproaching and not posing a superiority as if giving something of one's own. These are at the same time the etiquette of infaq and the outlook underlying it. Otherwise infaq turns into an investment, an attempt to gain prestige. That is another matter that could be dwelt on separately. But in order to try to understand the Qur'an as it deserves and to merit it as a book of guidance, it is very important to look at one's gains as "provision" and to make "infaq" a trait of one's personality.

This is a point generally overlooked in Qur'an commentaries or in debates about their interpretation. From the standpoint of hermeneutic debates, it is a point that should steer the debates, both as "infaq and other matters as a condition of understanding" and, of course, in the original activity of the Qur'an in setting out at the beginning of the book the condition of its own reading.

Proceeding from this point we can say that it is not possible for the Qur'an to give guidance to the miserly, the selfish, the heedless, those who put themselves, their clan, their tribe, their people at the center and feel superior toward others.

Of course in every reading some flashes may come and kindle a light of guidance in a person, may make the person aware of these traits and create an encouragement toward overcoming them, and on that occasion this book may lead a person to believe in the unseen, to pray, and to spend. But whether, thereafter, this book fulfils its function of guidance depends on the person making these conditions a trait of his personality.