Islam: Why is the Holy Qur’an so easy to hijack? Part-II
Zahir Ebrahim | Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Friday, August 19, 2011, 19th day of Ramadan in the United States, Muslim year 1432
In Part-I, the logical Mr. Spock from Star Trek had picked up the Holy Qur’an out of curiosity, and with a cleansed heart as is natural to him on all matters, i.e., without prejudice and socialization bias, to learn what was in that Holy Book of 1.6 billion Muslims on planet earth. While it will take a good book-length report or two to fully disclose all that he learnt, this Part-II and sequels to follow will each narrowly focus on one or more of those factual and analytical portions of his discovery as pertinent to the inquiry question that was raised in Part-I:
What are the inherent impediments for studying the message of the Holy Qur’an which make the Book so amenable to self-serving interpretation, socialization, and even bastardization by anyone?
Before we can follow Mr. Spock’s trail of discovery however, some further elaboration on the Mr. Spock metaphor is evidently necessary based on the comments I received for Part-I.
Briefly introduced at the conclusion of Part-I as a lead into the analytical study of the Holy Qur’an, Mr. Spock is an imaginary creature from the 1960s television series Star Trek. Mr. Spock is a useful literary device for logical and analytical exploration of any subject matter because he possesses no intuitive understanding of, or susceptibility to, faith or to faith inducing artifacts including socialization, love, hate, emotional attachments, etc. Mr. Spock only goes by facts and factual logic alone in a very sterile methodical manner.
Since Mr. Spock is entirely “left brained”, the spiritual aspects of the Holy Qur’an which often impact the human heart and human soul, have no impact on him. This “left brained” behavior evidently requires explanation for readers unfamiliar with the anatomy of the human brain.
The human brain is in two halves, the left and the right. For an undamaged brain which hasn’t re-mapped its functions to its non-damaged parts in the self-healing process of an injured brain, the left-half typically deals in the more concrete matters of logic, analytical reasoning, engineering, math and science. And the right-half typically deals in the abstract, creative, verbal, imaginative, poetic, spiritual, insight, intuition and inspiration related matters.
Narrowly specialized scientists generally tend to have left-half brain dominance which is what makes many of them such dorks on spiritual matters but brilliant in scientific endeavors. Whereas narrowly specialized artists and touch-feely people generally tend to have right-half brain dominance which is what often makes some so hopelessly romantic, and some others great sensitive poets. The rest of humanity is somewhere in between that spectrum, more or less on a bell curve.
This is obviously a first order model because human beings are clearly multifaceted and rather complex. Scientists have barely scratched the surface of the human mind even though the human brain has already been under the modern microscope for well over a hundred years, and even though much understanding has been gained on behavioral and cognitive psychology fronts which form the core basis of modern behavior control via perception management, advertising, and propaganda (see Behavior Control: Architecture of Modern Propaganda).
All of Mr. Spock’s brain is what would be only the left-half brain in humans, multiplied by two to occupy the entire cranial space which is the same physical size as in humans.
Thus, using Spock to perform this narrow study is equivalent to using an IR filter in a camera to block out unwanted infra red wavelengths from being captured in the image and leaving its indelible artifacts upon the image, when one is specifically only interested in seeing what the image looks like in the narrow visible light spectrum. This is also called controlling the selectivity in engineering parlance. Mr. Spock’s limitation of not having what we humans have in the right-half brain, lends a natural selectivity switch for intellectually understanding the Holy Qur’an without interference from the spiritual right-half brain which typically drives matters pertinent to human faith.
This is only a useful abstraction, an intellectual tool, and not to be taken too literally – for first and foremost, the Holy Qur’an is a spiritual message to mankind: to believe in an unseen Creator يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْغَيْبِ on faith alone! (verse 2:3)
The Holy Qur’an asks man to believe in several matters of Divine provenance which defy man’s analytical and experiential logic, such as Revelation, Prophethood, Resurrection, Day of Judgment, Hereafter, Heaven, Hell, etc. But these do not defy the spirit of man whose essence is clearly spiritual, i.e., non material. Empiricism indicates that man, despite the overt formulation of his material body, is not just a collection of atoms and chemical reactions which can be analytically reasoned about in a laboratory or in philosophy (despite the insistence of scientists & philosophers). Love, moral-sense, self-sacrifice, the language of the heart and its tribulations, all defy pat formulations of the materialist. The intellect which enslaves the heart often turns it into stone. (See Morality derived from the Intellect leads to Enslavement!) The twentieth century poet-philosopher of Muslims, Muhammad Iqbal who endeavored to free man from the shackles of all servitude to fellow man and to his enslaving intellectual ideologies, put it this way in a famous verse in Urdu:
صبح ازل یہ مجھ سے کہا جبرئیل نے
جو عقل کا غلام ہو ، وہ دل نہ کر قبول
Subh-e-Azal yeh Mujh Se Kaha Jibraeel Ne
Jo Aqal Ka Ghulam Ho Woh Dil Na Ker Qabool (transliteration, listen)
‘Gabriel on the Morning of Creation a piece of useful counsel gave:
Accept not the heart from a beloved whose mind enslaves it’ (Kalaam-e-Iqbal, Zarbe-e-Kaleem)
What gives “life” to this collection of atoms and molecules called man is a spiritual essence, and it is to that essence that the Holy Qur’an speaks for imparting spiritual guidance, to the هُدًى لِلْمُتَّقِينَ who believe in the unseen يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْغَيْبِ (verses 2:2-3), while also inviting reflection with logic and analytical reasoning (verses 67:3-4; 6:76-79). Neither is sufficient by itself for human beings as we require both reason (left-half brain) to understand cognitively, and faith (right-half brain) to perceive spiritually. The left-brain parses the language of logic. The right-brain parses the language of the heart. To ignore either brain function is to deliberately be one-eyed when most are endowed with two for full depth perception. Such full spectrum comprehension with both eyes, the eye of logic and reason, and the eye of faith and intuition, enables thwarting cognitive as well as subliminal infiltration used for perception management and behavior control by the vile among mankind. It helps man perceive and react to reality the way it is rather than the way it is made manifest on the screen of Plato’s cave. (See Introduction Prisoners of the Cave)
Abstractions like the one employed here therefore can help formulate and understand an otherwise intractable problem by breaking it down into logical components. This can be done recursively to each component until one gets down to a level at which one can completely (or at least satisfactorily) comprehend or manage it.
To engage such analytical methods one requires a great deal of selectivity as a tool to enable focussing on matters pertinent to each level of abstraction. After the decomposition exercise is completed, reassembling the smaller well-understood pieces into the greater whole enables conquering the once insurmountable problem.
This additive reassembly is often termed superposition in engineering parlance. In the illustrative example, it is akin to removing the IR filter from the camera to see what the composite image finally looks like in the presence of the unseen-to-the-naked-eye infrared wavelengths.
Since human beings are a combination of BOTH, left and right half brain which perform different functions, it would be foolish to take a one-half brained understanding of any matter as the complete understanding of the matter when we actually possess two distinct halves to yield to us a much greater and richer understanding when we maximally use both halves. But it can be quite insightful to use each half independently, employing tools pertinent to each, and superpositioning the understanding gleaned separately from the two different halves into a greater whole.
It is pertinent to recall from Star Trek that the captain, James T. Kirk, is a human being who draws upon Mr. Spock’s analytical abilities as needed, but runs his ship as a human being, full of intuition, full of insights, gut feels, and other non-logical things which bedevil Mr. Spock. But doing so enables the ship’s captain to do far more than the solely logical Mr. Spock ever can. The interesting characteristic of Spock is that he does not deny nor oppose the understanding acquired via the right-half brain by the captain. He merely accepts that it is not within his limited capabilities, being a solely left-half brained creature, to fully comprehend the captain’s intuitions. Such logic of acceptance might shame the humility challenged who reduce human beings to the material lives of a cell!
So we use Mr. Spock just as Captain Kirk uses him for logical analysis, and no more.
Let’s now follow Mr. Spock’s trail of discovery on that aforementioned narrow question whose exploration is surprisingly very broad.
The Holy Qur’an is not a book of literature
The first thing Mr. Spock did before he began his study was to classify the genre of the Holy Qur’an as a law book, as a rule book, as a specification manual, as a specific message conveyed through a Messenger, rather than as a book of literature, fiction, poetry, philosophy, theosophy, mysticism, science, or history. Spock recognized the import of such a core classification. He understood that the Holy Qur’an was a message by its Author to its audience. It was like an important letter conveying a crucial message. Therefore, accurate understanding of the message was essential in the exact context conveyed by the Author of the Message, and not in the context of the reader – or the reader can misunderstand and misinterpret the message or parts of the message, and believe and act in ways not intended by the Author. And Mr. Spock of course was embarking on his study of the Holy Qur’an in order to learn exactly what the Author of the Holy Qur’an had specifically intended to convey in that Message as opposed to how he might interpret it on his own terms.
Being of logical and sensible scientific acumen, Mr. Spock well understood the difference between reading literature which is amenable to personal interpretation and localized understanding, such as what does a poem or philosophy mean to a human being or to a culture in their particular circumstance, and reading a rules and regulations manual delivered in a particular cultural context, or a design specification manual in a particular technology, where there is no room for personal and localized interpretation otherwise one gets it wrong. One has to comprehend exactly what the author has stated and meant, both in the letter and the spirit of the specification in the totality of the specification.
Imagine trying to interpret the DMV driver’s manual for the rules of the road, or the income tax code by one’s own fancy. It is empirical that in the latter cases one endeavors to exactly understand what the relevant authority has meant to convey in their own language of expression and cultural context, or one does not pass the driver’s license test and gets a tax audit, respectively! Foreigners coming to the United States for instance have to learn English and the road rules and road signs which are in English, in order to pass the DMV driving test which is particular to each of its fifty states. No Pakistani can try to interpret these traffic rules in his or her own Pakistani cultural context for instance – which would be absurd and rather hazardous in any case if one is driving in the streets of America.
Even though Mr. Spock is left brained and does not interpret based on personal inclination by definition, doing his due diligence to address the posed question, he classified the Holy Qur’an as not open to personal interpretation. Instead, he classified it as requiring the best effort in understanding the message which its Author has meant to convey in it.
The result of this classification has far reaching consequences for the question posed at the top. And this is the first commonsense conclusion Mr. Spock reached – without even opening the Holy Qur’an.
Knowing that human beings are generally prone to the right-half brain interfering via personal subjectivity in even logical matters, he logically deduces that people would also try to interpret the Holy Qur’an according to their own proclivities and socialization contexts just as they might a fine book of literature or poetry.
That instead of first judiciously trying to comprehend the principles which the Author of the Holy Qur’an had laid down in its specification in both letter and in spirit (as when using the DMV manual for instance to pass the driver’s license test) and then applying those principles to one’s own epoch (just as one might apply the DMV traffic rule book to one’s own specific road conditions), the believers of the religion of Islam would be naturally inclined to interpret the Holy Qur’an in their own respective socialization contexts.
And therefore, when they did that, they would each understand something different from reading or hearing the same text and that would explain the empiricism of Muslims being always divided on the meanings of the same verses of the Holy Qur’an ever since the demise of the Messenger of the Author of the Holy Qur’an who had acted as its Exemplar.
This condition is akin to different human beings reading the DMV driver’s handbook interpretively and coming away with a different understanding of the traffic laws because no DMV inspector is sitting next to them in the car and being their exemplar for every emerging driving condition. Wouldn’t that create chaos and mayhem on the road?
The same chaos is seen on the spiritual road of Islam in the mayhem of sectarian divides and mis-interpretations when people mis-classify a spiritual specification book and sub-consciously or deliberately read it as fine subjective literature because they are taught: read and see what the Holy Qur’an means to you!
Imagine if the DMV inspector said that to the learner waiting patiently for his turn to pick up the DMV rule book to pass the driving test: here take this DMV driver’s manual and see what it means to you! The burden is always upon the prospective driver to exactly learn what the DMV driver’s manual intends to teach, and not what it might mean to him in his flights of fancy as a race car maniac.
The Holy Qur’an is not primarily a written book
The first thing Mr. Spock discovers upon checking out the Holy Qur’an from his space ship’s library is that there is no name of author imprinted on the cover page of the Holy Qur’an. Since a name is always a proper noun, Spock decides to call its author, Author of the Holy Qur’an, or just Author (with a capitalized A).
The next thing Spock discovers is that the Holy Qur’an is really an aural tape, in Arabic, and its medium of ingestion is primarily through the ears. He is initially delighted because he has big pointed ears. So he quickly learned the Qur’anic Arabic from the computer library to the point of understanding the Arabic language (but not the lingua franca of the day in which the Holy Qur’an was made manifest as a Book – Mr. Spock hasn’t as yet discovered the pertinence of lingua franca in his study). After mastering Arabic grammar, syntax, and semantics quickly (remember his left-half brain is twice the physical size of humans and thus carries an exponential higher capacity to learn), he listened intently to the entire Holy Qur’an. It made no soulful impression on him (as expected). So Mr. Spock delved directly into its contents.
But since Spock was used to reading specification manuals with his eyes-brain combination rather than ears-brain combination – despite large ears – he decided to focus on the written version of the Holy Qur’an so that he could easily sift back and forth as he would a science encyclopedia, but much more complicated in the case of the Holy Qur’an.
The Holy Qur’an, he discovered to his consternation, did not read contiguously for a topic like every other specification manual he had ever read – and being a well-traveled man of space, he had read most works of science as well as literature of not just mankind but also of many other beings in the galaxy. His captain usually quoted from the Bible and Milton, and Mr. Spock was quite familiar with their contents, if not their appreciation. Reading the Holy Qur’an as a Book and digesting its information wasn’t going to be as straightforward as Spock had imagined, having given himself only a few hours for the examination – which now stretched into days.
The Holy Qur’an is complicated to understand
While reading the Holy Qur’an sequentially, Mr. Spock discovers that the context of the verses, such as which verses are related to which verse, the antecedents and the precedents, unless the subject matter is explicit and obvious, is impossible to determine from the text of the Holy Qur’an. The Holy Qur’an does not carry the context for all the verses within it, nor the order in which the verses were revealed by the Author of the Holy Qur’an to His Messenger to convey to the people, and nor on what occasions and in which local contexts did they apply and to whom did they apply. Therefore, to infer the general meaning of a topic without having the local context is subject to error. As the causality among the various verses is impossible to ascertain with certainty in all cases from the Holy Qur’an except where it is patently obvious, it also introduces error by not always knowing all the verses and their full contexts pertinent to a topic. Mr. Spock also discovers that nor is it possible to determine the meaning of many of the allegorical verses.
Mr. Spock uncovers that verse 3:7 of Surah Aal-’Imran even confirms that no one may know their full meaning and import apart from the Author of the Holy Qur’an, and none will grasp that Message except men of great understanding:
“He it is Who has sent down to thee the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established meaning); they are the foundation of the Book: others are allegorical. But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah. And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: ‘We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:’ and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.” (Holy Qur’an Surah Aal-’Imran, 3:7)
هُوَ الَّذِي أَنْزَلَ عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ آيَاتٌ مُحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ الْكِتَابِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ ۖ فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ابْتِغَاءَ الْفِتْنَةِ وَابْتِغَاءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ ۗ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُ إِلَّا اللَّهُ ۗ وَالرَّاسِخُونَ فِي الْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ آمَنَّا بِهِ كُلٌّ مِنْ عِنْدِ رَبِّنَا ۗ وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إِلَّا أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ
The implication of this statement made Mr. Spock ponder: why have verses in the Holy Qur’an which is supposedly a guidance to all mankind which none but the Author Himself can understand: “but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah”?
Mr. Spock pushes that puzzle on to his puzzle stack which was steadily growing.
The verse 3:7 identifies two main category of verses in the Holy Qur’an, آيَاتٌ مُحْكَمَاتٌ , the foundational verses whose meaning is plain and straightforward. The verse proclaims that these constitute the heart of the Holy Qur’an. And وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ , the allegorical verses whose meaning is not so straightforward, and whose layered meaning is hidden and known only to the Author.
What Mr. Spock found fascinating in this self-description of the Holy Qur’an is the cold prediction made by the Author of the Holy Qur’an that those with perversity in their heart, or from sheer ignorance, will pursue the latter deliberately, sowing discord instead of harmony. But those who are firmly grounded in knowledge and faith, will not fall for this trick!
Thus a major source of misunderstanding of the Holy Qur’an was made known by the Holy Qur’an itself.
Mr. Spock further notes that the Author of the Holy Qur’an in verse 4:59 had delegated Its command Authority to its Messenger and Exemplar at the same precedence level of obedience as It demanded for Itself:
“O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.” (Holy Qur’an Surah an-Nisaa’ 4:59)
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنْكُمْ ۖ فَإِنْ تَنَازَعْتُمْ فِي شَيْءٍ فَرُدُّوهُ إِلَى اللَّهِ وَالرَّسُولِ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ خَيْرٌ وَأَحْسَنُ تَأْوِيلًا
But what the Messenger had conveyed to his people based on this delegated authority and which was made binding upon the people by the Author of the Holy Qur’an, had not been recorded in the Holy Qur’an apart from the fact of this delegation of authority!
Mr. Spock is perplexed by the fact that only the Author’s own message is preserved in the Holy Qur’an, and not those articulated by the Messenger even though the Messenger has equal command obedience authority. While the Exemplar was living among his peoples, his followers surely knew all the contextual matters pertaining to all the verses, as well as what the Messenger conveyed to the people on the authority vested in him. But Mr. Spock is baffled that the Muslim flock is ordered to Obey the Messenger in all that the Messenger conveys, but these articles of obedience are not recorded in the Holy Qur’an by the Author of the Holy Qur’an. How are the succeeding generations to know? This seemed very illogical to Mr. Spock.
Thus, Mr. Spock realized that a perpetual open ended gaping hole in reliably learning the localized context, as well as the directives of the Exemplar not recorded in the Holy Qur’an, is left in the Qur’anic guidance to mankind. Spock wondered if that was deliberate, just as the presence of مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ verses described in verse 3:7 was deliberate, perhaps as part of the process of spiritual guidance itself – for the verse fragment 4:59 states: “If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if ye do believe in Allah and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.” Since the Messenger is no longer present in subsequent epochs, that 4:59 verse logically can only mean to refer all matters of disagreement to Allah. And Allah, who introduced the Holy Qur’an as “A Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds”, also asserts that it has made Its definitive reference handbook available to all peoples for all times “In a Book well-guarded”:
“That this is indeed a Qur’an Most Honourable, 56:77
In a Book well-guarded, 56:78
Which none shall touch but those who are clean (purified): 56:79
A Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds. 56:80
Is it such a Message that ye would hold in light esteem? 56:81” (Holy Qur’an Surah Al-Waqia, 56:77-81)
إِنَّهُ لَقُرْآنٌ كَرِيمٌ
فِي كِتَابٍ مَكْنُونٍ
لَا يَمَسُّهُ إِلَّا الْمُطَهَّرُونَ
تَنْزِيلٌ مِنْ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
أَفَبِهَٰذَا الْحَدِيثِ أَنْتُمْ مُدْهِنُونَ
Mr. Spock further observed that the Holy Qur’an refers to itself as al-Furqaan, the standing criterion by which to judge all matters pertaining to Islam’s proclamation of right and wrong, to distinguish between the true and the false:
“Blessed is He who sent down the criterion to His servant, that it may be an admonition to all creatures;” (Holy Qur’an Surah al-Furqaan 25:1)
تَبَارَكَ الَّذِي نَزَّلَ الْفُرْقَانَ عَلَىٰ عَبْدِهِ لِيَكُونَ لِلْعَالَمِينَ نَذِيرًا
Therefore, Mr. Spock concludes that the gaping hole which he had identified as an impediment to understanding the Holy Qur’an, indeed appeared deliberate, but that its resolution according to the Author of the Holy Qur’an was indeed also present in the Holy Qur’an itself.
But that comforting realization based on the logic of the statements of the Holy Qur’an does not by itself solve the problem for the logical Mr. Spock because of the inherent incompleteness of context specification, causality specification, and verse 3:7 statement which bizarrely asserted “but no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah”?
Which author ever composes a major specification like that which it claims is for everyone to follow as essential guidance (as opposed to optional guidance)? Not only is it enormously time consuming to figure it out, but it is replete with subjectivity because different human beings having different levels of brain-power and perception bias might understand things differently when they try to figure it all out based on their own study.
And here Mr. Spock realizes is the next core-reason for human beings to understand the same text of the Holy Qur’an differently from each other. The moment they step outside the pages of the Holy Qur’an to gather what was incomplete in the Holy Qur’an – what the Messenger had commanded on the authority vested in him by the Author of the Holy Qur’an, the causality and contexts of verses, the Exemplar’s acting and living the message of the Holy Qur’an called the Sunnah of the Prophet – by perusing the pages of history or vicariously from within their cultural contexts as most are wont, they fall victim to socialization and history-writing artifacts. These are books upon books, and treatise upon treatise of opinions compiled by people other than the Author of the Holy Qur’an under the suzerainty of the most oppressive kingdoms and rulers among the Muslims. (See Part-I , Islam and Knowledge vs. Socialization , and Islam vs. Secular Humanism and World Government for what socialization and history-writing artifacts mean.)
Mr. Spock is struck by the remarkable disparity of preservation given the nature of socialization of human beings, despite the assurance from the Holy Qur’an that it contains the criterion for deciding all pertinent matters. Why is the full and complete message of Islam not straightforwardly recorded within the Holy Qur’an itself? Why is it left to the human scribes who are not immune to socialization artifacts? Is such localization merely ephemeral, advisory at best, and only binding for the time of the Exemplar? Or, is the Holy Qur’an itself to be used to separate the chaff from the wheat from all the socialized recording of human scribes?
The mathematical incompleteness of this system is inherent as anyone who understands Mathematical closure will instantly perceive. It is like having a closely guarded cipher protected by a superpower, while leaving its cryptographic keys (the Sunnah) in the protection of the ordinary peoples. Unless of course, these apparent keys are irrelevant to deciphering the cipher by succeeding generations, and some other keys within each human being is to be utilized – such as engaging the right-half brain for spiritual reflection (which Mr. Spock of course is not capable of).
Given the assurance of the Holy Qur’an that it contains all the necessary and sufficient criterion for evaluation and adjudication, Mr. Spock decides to dig deeper more systematically. He decides to identify all that was precisely knowable, and all that was not precisely knowable, from the text of the Holy Qur’an alone.
Mr. Spock noted that there are 114 Chapters called Surahs comprising 6236 verses, with topics not necessarily contiguous even in the adjacent verses, or even within a Surah, and there is no explicit indication that a verse is co-related to another verse within the Holy Qur’an. He also noted that within a verse, a verse fragment could be speaking of some entirely new topic from the rest of the verse. Mr. Spock further discovers that the subtleties of Arabic grammar enabled changing the point of reference suddenly and it wasn’t obvious who or what those new points of reference were without the localized context. He wondered whether such context was perhaps attainable by acquiring the lingua franca of the epoch. Mr. Spock had already recognized that he would also have to study the epoch of the time when the Holy Qur’an was revealed to acquire its sociological context. The task of studying the Holy Qur’an suddenly became monumental and not at all akin to reading Milton, Plato, Shakespeare, or the DMV driver’s manual.
Nevertheless, intrigued by the total lack of traditional structure and cohesiveness to the Holy Qur’an which he deemed typical of any major system specification where everything pertaining to that specification is usually clearly and unambiguously specified within the specification itself without requiring reference to vicarious outside sources to ascertain them, Mr. Spock decided to treat this as a solving a most complex puzzle under time pressure. He began his systematic analysis by classifying the text of the Holy Qur’an according to the following nomenclature:
Determinate: A topic, or the full meaning of a verse or verse fragment, in context, is fully determinable from the full context of the 114 Surahs of Holy Qur’an.
Indeterminate: A topic, or the full meaning of a verse or verse fragment, in context, cannot be fully established from even the full context of the Holy Qur’an due to insufficient information in the Holy Qur’an.
Layered: A topic, or word, or verse, or verse fragment, or context has obvious multiple bindings or points of reference, and which meaning or point of reference is implied in a given context is Indeterminate.
Nuanced: A topic, or word, or verse, or verse fragment, or context is highly nuanced, even when not Layered, and the context for the nuance is Indeterminate.
The Sociological context
Being a well-traveled science officer aboard the starship Enterprise and having visited many different worlds and civilizations in their differing stages of sociological development throughout the traversable universe, Mr. Spock is well aware that the general knowledge of history and other sociological material can always lend some context to any matter when it pertains to living creatures.
But Spock is also well aware from the blood-drenched history of early civilizations that history is typically written by the victors of history. Only the works of those scribes typically survive in the libraries or in the cultural memory of the majority of the people, who either echo, or don’t challenge, the core-axioms of the victors. All narratives consequently harbor a germ of untruth and falsehood in them even when they appear to narrate honestly, due to ingrained biases, vested interests, loyalties, infidelities, and other psychologically and sociologically induced tendencies of the living authors. Mr. Spock also well understood that this characteristic was common to most if not all species in the universe he had visited. Even the history of his own planet, despite being all logic and event based, was not devoid of falsehoods and power-plays of hidden motivations of his peoples – for good and evil are merely tools for the superior intellect to achieve their end. Whether an end is noble or not is merely the moralizing semantics put on it by those who wish to see them in that light. Whereas, these have no a priori moral and spiritual bounds put on them by beings who lack the right-half brain function to feel and to moralize. (See Morality derived from the Intellect leads to Enslavement!)
In addition, human beings especially are most subjective. Mr. Spock well knew that humans have feelings, emotions, loves, hates, and hidden motivations which weren’t always logical or quantifiable or even observable except by forensic examination, and that these subjective tendencies naturally color their perception of events and epochs which they record no differently than those who sanction the history. No scientist, historian, and sociological commentator is immune from it with the consequence that myths and falsehoods get amplified with successive generation of historians just as much as unpopular truths get attenuated.
Nevertheless, Mr. Spock also realized that facts are facts. And so he began searching the vast computer libraries of millions of books on Islam written from its earliest days in search of reliable and authenticated facts pertaining to the epoch of few centuries of the Messenger of the Holy Qur’an.
A fact is of a type: A Muslim ruler slaughtered the grandson of the Prophet of Islam along with other male members of his family save one. And of the type: no written records exist of the early period of the advent of Islam until after about 200 years of the death of its Prophet. Several generations until then had presumably carried the Messenger’s portion of the “Obey the Messenger” in their memories, or word of mouth, and passed them from father to son. Both these twisted facts indicate a great deal of sociological context obviously. And Spock immediately recognized that all works outside of the Holy Qur’an (including the Holy Qur’an itself) have been written and compiled in sociological contexts and not in abstract or sterile vacuum. And these sociological contexts are most essential to identify and perceptively comprehend, especially when the early history of the advent of religion of Islam after its Messenger’s demise is soaked in so much internecine violence and obfuscation.
To understand those outside written works therefore, Mr. Spock ascertains that the full sociological context under which all these books were compiled must first be understood – as facts in a void can convey any meaning its compiler wants. Therefore, Mr. Spock decides that facts alone will not be sufficient to establish clues to resolving the Indeterminates of the Holy Qur’an and nor for cradling them in the rich sociological context which caused the strange recording artifact – that the Author of the Holy Qur’an chose not to protect its Exemplar’s Sunnah within the Holy Qur’an itself. That, such historical facts would have to be forensically cradled in the sociological realities which gave birth to those facts, and to their narratives.
And Mr. Spock immediately surmizes that as the evidence of history in every civilization indicates, these are invariably the sectarian narratives of partisans taking sides. Historians, compilers, exegeses writers, essayists and poets, all taking sides, omitting and attenuating facts and contexts inconvenient either to their narrative, or to their socialization, or to the sanction of the rulers under whom they scribed, while amplifying myths and opinions conducive to their narrative and socialization whereby the victors ruled, and the victims mourned. This natural cause and effect relationship of history narrated by those most affected by it, becoming the de facto source of exposition and explanation of the Indeterminates of the Holy Qur’an. The divine irony poignantly strikes Spock’s analytical mind: Mortal fallible pens completing a Book whose Author claims it is “Perfection” (5:3) and “A Revelation from the Lord of the Worlds.” (56:80)
To be continued in Part-III
Source URL: http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/08/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-pt2.html
Alternate URL: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2011/08/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-pt2.html
Source Mirror: http://bloghumanbeingsfirst.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/islam-why-is-quran-easy-to-hijack-pt2-by-zahir-ebrahim/
The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley ( http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents ), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by numerous publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org. Verbatim reproduction license at http://humanbeingsfirst.org#Copyright.
09/04/2011 15:00:07 6110
Islam: Why is the Holy Qur’an so easy to hijack? Part-II By Zahir Ebrahim 16/16
