THE QUR’AN AND PHILOSOPHY

The Twelfth Word

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحٖيمِIn the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

وَمَنْ يُؤْتَ الْحِكْمَةَ فَقَدْ اُوتِىَ خَيْرًا كَثِيرًاWhoever is granted wisdom has certainly been given abundant good. – The Quran 2:269.

This treatise offers a brief comparison between the sacred wisdom of the Qur’an and the wisdom of philosophy, together with a concise summary of the educational lessons the Qur’an provides for both the personal and social life of man. It also points to the superiority of the Qur’an over other divine words and all forms of discourse. It contains four fundamental principles.

The First Principle

Look at the difference between the wisdom of the Qur’an and that of philosophy through the telescope of the following comparison.

Once, there was a highly skilled and deeply believing artist, a ruler of great renown. He wished to write a copy of the Wise Qur’an in a manner worthy of the sanctity of its meanings and the miraculous beauty of its words. Thus, he wished to clothe this wondrous message in an exceptionally beautiful garment. Moved by this intention, the artist began his work with great mastery and wrote the Qur’an in an astonishing manner. He used the most precious jewels in his work. To symbolize the diversity of the truths in the Qur’an, he wrote some letters with diamonds and emeralds, others with pearls and agate, still others with rubies and coral, and some with gold and silver. He adorned and embellished it so splendidly that everyone, regardless of education, was captivated by it and admired it with wonder. Especially for those who believe that the Qur’an is the word of Allah, this outward splendor symbolized the extraordinarily radiant beauty and profound adornments hidden within its meaning, making it an exceedingly valuable work of art.

Then the ruler showed this beautiful and adorned copy of the Qur’an to both a foreign philosopher and a Muslim scholar. He instructed them each to write a treatise on its wisdom, both to test them and to reward them.

First the philosopher, and then the scholar, each wrote a work about this copy of the Qur’an. But the philosopher’s work dealt only with the patterns of the letters, their relationships to one another, their positions, the properties of their materials, and their characteristics, and had nothing to do with the meaning, because that foreign man could not read the Arabic script at all. In fact, he did not know that this adorned Qur’an was a book expressing meaning. Rather, he regarded it as a beautiful work of art, since he could not read Arabic. Yet he was a very good engineer, an excellent illustrator, a skilled chemist, and an expert in precious stones. Thus, this man wrote his work according to his skills.

But the Muslim scholar immediately understood that this was the Wise Qur’an, the Book of Revelation. Therefore, this truth-loving person did not attach importance to the outward adornments, nor did he occupy himself with the patterns of the letters. Instead, he concerned himself with something far more exalted, valuable, refined, noble, beneficial, and comprehensive than what had occupied the other man. In his work, he spoke of the sacred truths and mysteries of the Qur’an proclaimed through the adorned letters, and he wrote a beautiful and profound explanation of them.