The Quran

Midterm

Phenomenology

what appears: In our context, it means approaching the Qur’an as a lived scripture

dhikr

remembrance/mention: Practices that “remember God,” from quiet repetition of divine names to reciting Qur’anic phrases and litany. It trains awareness, gratitude, and reliance on God and is central in Sufi devotion as well as everyday prayer.

Qur’an

recitation: Islam’s central revelation to Muhammad (610–632 CE), preserved in Arabic as 114 suras made of āyāt (verses/signs)

āya

In the Qur’an an āya is (1) a verse of the scripture and (2) a sign of God in nature/history (e.g., night/day, rain, deliverance).

tafsīr

explanation/clarification: Qur’anic exegesis that draws on Arabic grammar/semantics, context of revelation, prophetic reports, reason, and earlier scholarship. It explains vocabulary, resolves ambiguities, and accounts for why multiple accurate meanings can coexist.

Hidden Treasure

A widely cited mystical saying (hadith qudsī motif): “I was a Hidden Treasure and loved to be known, so I created creation.”

mukhlid

to last/abide: everlasting youths/attendants,” symbolizing the abiding, un-wilting quality of the Garden and the permanence of the hereafter.

aljamiado

Romance-language texts (e.g., Spanish) written in Arabic script by Iberian: Shows how Islamic learning—including Qur’anic teaching—traveled across languages/scripts, preserving religious life under cultural pressure.

William C. Smith: best approach for non-Muslim students

Treat the Qur’an as a living scripture inside its community rather than a museum text. Smith’s point is to bracket one’s own truth-claims and ask: how does this book function—devotionally, ethically, ritually—for those who believe it? Read with humility, notice performance/recitation, and situate verses within practice (prayer, fasting, charity) and history (Mecca/Medina). This approach prevents reducing the Qur’an to either “mere literature” or “mere law,” and it keeps the focus on meaning-in-use.

Muhammad: life, context, and experience of revelation

Muhammad (c. 570–632) was a Meccan merchant known as al-Amīn; he married Khadīja and lived amid tribal honor codes, economic inequality, and polytheistic cults centered on the Kaʿba, alongside a minority of monotheists. In 610, in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, the angel commanded him to “recite”; he described revelation as overwhelming yet lucid—sometimes “like the ringing of a bell”—after which he recited the words given. Opposition in Mecca led to the Hijra (622) to Medina, where a community formed; revelations continued across changing circumstances until his death in 632

Jāhiliyya, Qur’anic transformation, and Izutsu’s “desperate hedonism”

Jāhiliyya (“age of ignorance”) names a worldview of tribal pride, vendetta, status rivalry, fatalism, and cultic polytheism. The Qur’an transforms it by announcing tawḥīd (divine oneness), moral accountability, mercy for the vulnerable, restraint in retaliation, and the birth of an ethical community beyond tribe. Izutsu’s “desperate sort of hedonism” means a present-tense indulgence born of insecurity—if death ends all, grab what you can. The Qur’an reorients desire toward enduring goods, justice, and the Hereafter.

Prophets (with Moses as example)

Prophets are warners and bearers of glad tidings who summon to tawḥīd and justice. The Moses cycle highlights resistance to tyranny (Pharaoh), public “signs,” liberation, covenant, and the moral education of a people. The lesson is transhistorical: truth confronts power, and deliverance requires patience, trust, and obedience.

Reading Adam as the human story

Human potential vs. angels: humans bear language/knowledge and moral agency, able to rise above angels by freely choosing obedience—or fall below by vice. Satan’s role: the whisperer who exploits pride and vulnerability, turning the test into a pedagogy of vigilance. Ibn ʿAjība on evil: evil is relative/limited within divine wisdom; trials polish hearts and reveal mercy’s primacy. Nursi on vulnerability: human faqr (poverty) and ʿajz (impotence) are keys to reliance—Adam’s fall exposes need that opens to grace. Why God’s creating evil isn’t evil: enabling a moral arena (like a publisher enabling speech) is good; blame attaches to agents’ misuse, not to the Creator’s granting of capacity.

Michael Sells: why fear isn’t primary (al-Qāriʿa)

Sells argues the affect is awe/astonishment, not cheap terror. In al-Qāriʿa the sound-shape and rapid images startle the listener awake, then pivot to the weighing of deeds—a sober call to attentiveness. The aim is a clarified conscience and reverent awareness, not paralysis.

Faith ↔ practice; choice ↔ consequences

In the Qur’an īmān (faith) is inseparable from ʿamal ṣāliḥ (righteous action). Belief flows into prayer, charity, truthfulness, and restraint; mere assent without deeds is hollow. Because the world is morally ordered, choices have consequences—they shape the heart (“sealing” vs. guidance) and culminate in an exact reckoning, even for an atom’s weight of good or evil.

Signs of God in nature; shirk and its existential cost

Signs” (āyāt) include rain reviving dead earth, the alternation of night and day, and ships borne by the sea—ordinary processes read as clues of a wise Creator that invite gratitude and trust. Shirk is giving ultimate loyalty to what is not God (idols, ego, tribe, wealth). Its cost is existential: inner fragmentation, anxiety, and moral drift, because finite things can’t bear the weight of ultimacy.

Life after death: critique & response; evidences; terms

Critics say constant afterlife talk breeds fear or escapism. The Qur’anic response: the Hereafter grounds justice (especially for the powerless) and energizes ethics now; it is not flight from the world but accountability for the world. Evidences include God’s first creation (re-creation is easier than creation ex nihilo), the revival of barren land by rain, and God’s precise knowledge (“even fingertips”), all pointing to resurrection. The Hereafter is named al-Ākhira, Yawm al-Dīn (Judgment), with baʿth (resurrection), ḥisāb (reckoning), mīzān (scale), and destinies of Jannah (Garden) and Jahannam (Hell).

Shirk

refers to the sin of associating partners with Allah — that is, attributing divine qualities or worship to anyone or anything besides God