In the name of Allah, the Compassionate the Merciful
?What Quran is, why it has been revealed and what its name refers to
When Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was appointed by God to invite people to His true teachings, there had been many prophets before him like Abraham, Moses and Jesus who had been sent to their contemporaries to reveal to them the God’s teachings. To prove their truthfulness, they offered astonishing miracles to convince people to listen to them and concede the revelations -which |with the people’s mindset at the time was inevitable. However, their miracles being purely physical, their contemporaries accused them of sorcery –which rather than following the prophet’s teachings led many people to follow the sorcerers and astrologers. Although many of them were convinced and converted from idolatry to the true God’s religion, the real effect of what they showed on the people’s minds was rather temporary and later on their opponents denied such miracles ever happened.
Worst of all, the people of power and influence started tampering with their teachings and tainted them with what suited their own interests best. Accounts like the Almighty wrestling with Jacob and almost being overpowered, Lot the prophet getting drunk and sleeping with his daughters, making usury somehow legitimate, etc. etc. were but some of such alterations. More notably is the concept of trinity, which, considering the God’s attributes defies logic.
Finally, after so many messengers had done their job and somehow cleansed the minds of people, came the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). His society was a very backward society. The deserts of Arabia would not let a complex civilization to thrive; people were mostly nomads tending to their herds. Composing poetry in which they were skilful was their most prominent art. Their beliefs, having originated from the teachings of Prophet Abraham, had comingled with idolatry and in the house of Kaa’ba that was built by Abraham and his son, several idols had been placed and Arabs regarded them as intermediaries between them and Allah. So many wrong practices like burying alive their daughters upon birth were common amongst them. (Those who wouldn’t would have to bear the shame of raising a daughter).
In such an environment, as promised by messengers like Moses and Jesus, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was assigned by God to deliver His final messages and establish God’s pure and most perfect religion. Monotheism, belief in the God’s message sent through the messengers, belief in the hereafter, shedding the superstitions and taking to piety was his message.
To prove his truthfulness, his miracle was Quran; a scripture that was brimming with what would make mankind truly prosperous and would prepare them for the afterlife. The miraculous magnificence its verses, their astonishing beauty, fluency, purity of message delivered by them and many linguistic and grammatical characteristics thereof astounded the Arabs who were proud of their literal skills. That still stays in the modern times. It is the final torch that calls mankind to the real terrestrial and celestial happiness.
However, the verses of Quran that are intended to guide mankind in all ages utter things that were –and many of them still are, ambiguous to the minds of people and therefore had to be explained/ interpreted by those who inherited the prophet’s knowledge; i.e. his true successors. Imam Ali (peace be upon him) used to say: this Quran has a beautiful appearance and profound underlying messages. He would call himself “the speaking Quran” meaning that to understand it well, people had to listen to him. He proved it true through his orations and words that are dispersed in diverse books and the book called “Nahjul balaghah” contains many of them.
Unfortunately, the powers to be, being unable to tamper with Quran, isolated Imam Ali and his infallible successors in the first place and then encouraged the Muslims to regard Quran as a sacred text that only had to be recited! Even some objected to using flourished representing vowels! (In Arabic alphabet, there are no short vowels so some flourishes were innovated that are placed on top or beneath a letter).
Contrary to them, our infallible Imams tried to explain the verses and their underlying meanings to the Muslims. Quran was like a gold mine that its contents had to be dug out. Without their teachings, people would have superficial understanding of this magnificent scripture.
In spite of all that, the pressure of the common sense, and converting great number of non Arabs into Islam, brought forth great endeavors to translate and interpret the contents of Quran; but being conservative and deprived of the teachings of our Imams, led to writing books in this subject in which many profound teachings of Quran were lacking.
Ayatullah Salehghaffari, being well versed in the Islamic teachings offered by the Prophet himself and his true successors, with the blessings of Allah has managed to author interesting books that satisfy so many enquiries of the contemporary people one of them being the present interpretation of Quran as comes below. It is in my opinion, the best translation/ interpretation of Quran authored to date. While being fluent and easy to understand, it gives satisfying inroads into the depth of Quran’s teachings. It is fluent, easy to understand, based on the teachings of the Prophet’s successors, and responsive to the very questions that the young generations have about religion, Islam, ethics, Islamic rites and humanity’s future. I highly recommend to those who are willing to read a new view of Quran to review this good translation.