UNDERSTANDING THE QURAN

Need for Piety

IN order to understand the Quran, Quranic commentators mention the need to know several disciplines. This is right, but there is another way to understand the Quran, and which is undoubtedly the most important. And that is taqwa, or God-consciousness. We learn this point from the following verse of the Quran:

Be mindful of God; He teaches you:
He has full knowledge of everything. (2: 282)

Taqwa (God-consciousness) builds up a certain kind of mindset that makes one turn to God for help in every matter and for everything. To ask God for help is simultaneously a supplication or dua and a form of worship or Ibadat. One obtains great help in understanding the Quran from this sort of supplication. And along with this, one also obtains the reward for worship.

To pray to God for guidance in understanding the Quran is very important. It is to consult the author of a book in order to understand it. It is a quality only of the Quran that its Author is present every moment for consultation.

There is no doubt that God provides guidance to every person. But this guidance comes, not in the form of words, but, rather, in the form of inspiration.

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To pray to God for guidance in understanding the Quran is very important. It is to consult the author of a book in order to understand it.

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From the Quran we learn that God inspires the heavens (41: 12), the honeybee (16: 68) and that He inspires human beings too (91: 8). Given this, it is not strange at all that God helps one who prays to Him to be able to understand the Quran properly.

Of the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, it is said that when he found it difficult to understand any verse of the Quran, he would pray to God thus: “O Teacher of Abraham, teach me!” The Quran mentions God providing knowledge to Abraham.

God-consciousness is what will invoke God’s help which comes in the form of inspiration for us to understand the correct meaning of God's guidance in the Quran.