The Divine Guidance
First of all, the reader should understand the real nature of the Quran. Whether one believes it to be a revealed book or not, one will have to consider, as a starting point, the claim that it puts forward, as does its bearer, Muhammad (s, peace be upon him), that this is the Divine Guidance.
Allah, the Lord of the universe, its Creator, Master and Sovereign, created man and bestowed upon him the faculties of learning, speaking, understanding and discerning right from wrong and good from evil. He granted him freedom of choice, freedom of will, freedom of action. He gave him authority to acquire and make use of the things around him. In short, He granted him a kind of autonomy and appointed him as His representative on earth and instructed him to live in accordance with His Guidance.
... He organized all those who accepted the Divine Guidance into one community, which in its turn was required to reestablish its collective way of life based on the Guidance and to exert itself to reform the world, which had gone astray. The Quran which was revealed to Muhammad (s) is the Book which contains that Invitation and that Divine Guidance.
The
SUBJECT it deals with is
MAN: it discusses those aspects of his life that lead either to his real success or to his failure.
The CENTRAL THEME that runs throughout the Quran is the exposition of the Reality and the invitation to the Right Way based upon it. It declares that this Reality is the same one that was revealed by Allah (SWT) Himself to Adam at the time of his appointment as His representative, and to all the Messengers after him. The
AIM and OBJECT of the revelations is to invite man to that Right Way and to present clearly the Guidance which he has lost because of his negligence, or has perverted by his wickedness. If the reader keeps these three basic things in mind, he will find that in this Book there is no incongruity in style, no gap in continuity, and no lack of interconnection between its various topics.
As a matter of fact, this Book is never irrelevant with regard to its Subject, its Central Theme and its Aim... That is why it states or discusses or cites a subject only to the extent relevant to its aims and objects and leaves out unnecessary and irrelevant details, returning over and over again to its Central Theme and to its invitation around which every other topic revolves. When the Quran is studied in this light, no doubt is left that the whole of it is a closely reasoned argument and that there is continuity of subject throughout the Book.
The Style
The revelation of the Quran continued for twenty-three years. The different portions of the Quran were revealed according to the requirements of the various phases of Islam. It is thus obvious that such a book cannot have the kind of uniformity of style which is followed in formal books on religion and the like. It should also be kept in mind that the various portions of the Quran, both long and short, were not meant to be published in the form of pamphlets at the time of their revelation, but were to be delivered as addresses and promulgated as such. They could not therefore, be in the style of the written word. Moreover, these addresses were necessarily of a different nature from that of the lectures of a professor. The Prophet (s) was entrusted with a special mission and had to appeal both to the emotions and to the intellect; he had to deal with people of different mentalities, cope with different situations and various sets of experiences during the course of his mission. He also has to train and reform his followers and to imbue them with spirit and courage, to refute the arguments of opponents and to expose their moral weaknesses.
This also explains why the same issues are repeated over and over again in the Quran. A mission and a movement naturally demand that only those topics should be presented which are required at a particular stage and that nothing should be said about the requirements of the next stage. So the same instructions are covered again and again as long as Islam remains in the same stage. Of course, they have been differently worded and styled to avoid monotony, and couched in beautiful and dignified language to make them impressive as well as effective. Moreover, it repeats at suitable places the basic creed and principles in order to keep Islam strong at every stage.
All the surahs of the Quran contain references to its basic creed: the Unity of Allah (SWT), His attributes, the Hereafter, and accountability, punishment and reward, Prophethood, and belief in the Book. They all teach piety, fortitude, endurance, faith and trust in Allah (SWT) because these virtues could not be neglected at any stage of Islam. If any of these bases had been weakened at any stage in even the slightest way, the Islamic Movement could not have made any progress in its true spirit.
