Multiple Interpretations Of Verses Of The Quran Resulting In Confusion
Dear Diary. Indulge me, please. “And Allah wants to lighten for you (your difficulties), and mankind was created weak” 4:28. “Allah intends for you ease and does not intend hardship for you” 2:185 “Allah does not intend to make difficulty for you” 5:6 “He has chosen you and has not placed upon you in the religion any difficulty” 22:78 It’s prudent not to invoke Sunnah and Ahadith to reiterate what the Qur’ān is saying, otherwise, the list will be too long. There is ONE God, ONE prophet who taught us ONE book about ONE message. Over time, singularity became plurality (monotheism to polytheism). Hence deterioration! The singular book became multiple versions of the book (Torah, Zaboor, Injeel, Quran). Hence deterioration! The singular message became multiple messages (multiplicity of religions). Hence deterioration! “A toilsome reading as I ever undertook, wearisome confused jumble,” Thomas Carlyle, the person who considered Prophet Muhammad, a hero, once said. Us, Muslims couldn’t figure out the coherence/singularity and hence settled with multiplicity and labeled it “diversity” to glorify it. Is diversity in the message really a blessing and beauty? Is incoherence (or limited coherence) really diversity! Did multiplicity not create extremists and terrorists and pacifists and Sufis, and atheists who say, why did God make it so difficult to understand. Aren’t we created weak? One thing I must say, it wasn’t God but humankind who made it difficult. We still promote hardship in religion and abhor ease and actually criticize appropriateness as if it was laziness. We misappropriate ease as laziness. Remember lesson 1: Receptive thinking. Understand what is being said. Lesson 2: Critical thinking. Analyze what is being said. If we have a rebuttal, it should prove the reverse is true, in principle, i.e. multiplicity is better than singularity. Once we realize that plurality is the handiwork of a singularity, we can begin to understand the human obsession with a unified field theory. Plurality only exists because of the expression of the singularity’s ability and creation. A singular artist creates several paintings, a singular musician produces several symphonies are fitting examples of the former philosophy. We have been trying to combine the four fundamental forces of nature into one and despite our efforts, gravitational force resists the amalgamation. The hunger is for that ONE force that defines all, the Numero-Uno of the universe. We also find this in polytheism where plural Gods have a Supreme God. We also find this in humans, where they want to be the one, the most this or the most that, a manifestation in the comics would be “conquer the universe”, to be the most powerful ONE. The ONE is always desirable. The Farahi approach is an attempt to reconcile plurality to the minimum. If Qur’ān is coherent and self-explanatory then many factions cease to exist and will amalgamate into a limited number of interpretations. This is contrary to the popular image that this approach yearns to divide us even further. Qur’ān’s coherence gives it self-reliance and independence from many external sources. We cannot eliminate all the sources since we need them to understand some of the mysteries that are embedded in history and the Qur’ān. By depending on Qur’ān’s coherence, we can filter out the importations from personal or popular or political perspectives. There is another amalgamation witnessed by history, i.e. 7 qira’at. They were amalgamated from 20 to 7. The question arises then why not amalgamate everything to 1, when we did manage to reconcile “20” qira’at. Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t reduced them to 7, and what would have happened if we had got it down to 1. Farahi approach also makes it easy to dialogue with non-Muslims, as it filters out the most controversial and problematic interpretations. There are less dangerous rapids to surmount . Stay blessed, always