Surah Ar-Rahman, part 1

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Dispenser of Grace

This Ramadhan, I thought I needed to get back to Quran memorisation and to learning Arabic.  That said, I wanted to choose a Surah which has long fascinated me...Surah Ar-Rahman.

As part of my memorisation, I wanted to also appreciate and understand the meaning.  So I thought I would write my questions and reflections here as a way to reinforce my learning.  I will be breaking the Surah into several parts which I feel is natural.  It may not be the way scholars do it but this is to aid in my memorisation.

Part 1

بِسْم الله الرحمن الرحيم

الرحمن

علم القران

خلق الانسان

علمه البيان

The Most Gracious,

He taught the Qur'an

He created Mankind

He taught him Al-Bayan

I have always been fascinated by the order in which God revealed His favours and wondered if there is a significance to the order.  In this case, the Qur'an comes before the creation of man.  

Another question to note is God said He taught the Qur'an but didn't specify who to while in the case of Al-Bayan, He specifically mentioned that He taught it to mankind.  I deliberately omitted the translation of Al-Bayan as it is another fascinating concept.

Going back to the word taught, what does it mean that God teaches?  And what does it mean for those who He teaches?  

These are but some of the questions that can be asked of just 4 verses out of 77 in the Surah.  To answer my questions and give me more/better insights into these verse, I have relied on a number of sources: Nouman Ali Khan's lectures, Syed Qutb's tafsir, Maududi's tafsir, Muhammad Asad's translation and Qur'an corpus (word by word).

The first verse emphasises one quality of God which is Ar-Rahman, translated by Asad as The Most Gracious, inseparable from His Being.  The root word is the same as that of the womb.  Nouman Ali Khan mentioned of the Hadith Qudsi where God says He names the womb with His name.  In a sense, symbolically a mother's love, patience, nurturing and protective instinct represent a tiny window into the meaning of Ar-Rahman.  This then is the quality He brings into teaching.  It is interesting to note that recently several Singaporean teachers lost their lives in the Mount Kinabalu earthquake because they were protecting the students.  That protective instinct is a reflection of the quality of Ar-Rahman in a teacher.  Therefore, teachers should try to emulate the qualities of Ar-Rahman.

Teaching the Qur'an is the highest of His favours even before creation whether of man or anything else.  That is agreed by all the sources I have named above.  The Qur'an is the fulfilment of God's promise to Adam a.s. of guidance so as to have a small taste paradise (where there is no fear nor grieve) (2:38).  The Qur'an is not only the name of the Book but in Arabic, it is the superlative form of "reading".  So God taught the ultimate form of reading and that Qur'an is the embodiment of reading.  Nouman Ali Khan said that it is as if God is saying that a person has not truly read till he has read the Qur'an.  

So why has God emphasised that He taught the Qur'an?  Maududi explained that it was to remind that though the Prophet s.a.w. was the deliverer, it was God that is the ultimate source.  Therefore when we learn the Qur'an, our ultimate teacher is none other than God and we are His students.  With that realisation is the realisation of the covenant between teachers and students.  Quite possibly, most of us, myself most of all, forget about this covenant - the respect and obedience due to the teacher and the diligence, commitment and effort to study.  Most of the time, I skim through the Qur'an or read it hastily without any effort to understand it.  Or I would stop reading it for weeks or months...definitely that is not the attitude of a diligent student.  But "luckily" the Teacher embodies Grace and Mercy, ever welcoming when the recalcitrant student turns up again to "class".  Perhaps knowing our weaknesses that is why God chose to emphasise that it is Ar-Rahman who taught.  There is also another aspect to the teacher-student relationship and that is the student ought to emulate the teacher.  When the teacher is Ar-Rahman, so too should we as His students need to have that quality in us.

The other point is that it is not only mankind that He taught the Qur'an to.  In this Surah, (and a few others) we come to realise that there are other beings, namely the Jinns, which the Qur'an addresses.  That the Qur'an is not only mercy for us but for other creations too.