The material in this blog is now available at amazon.com under the title: Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an.
Contrary to the usual self-talk that defines us as individuals, or the social talk that has formed communal narratives and national identities since before history began, the Qur’an is a recitation of ‘GOD-talk’ – how AL-LAH proposes a new or higher standard of discourse. By speech alternately literal and figurative, peremptory and allusive, plain and surreptitious, GOD unwearyingly works to erode our complacency, our sense of entitlement, our egoism, and ultimately our conviction that we are at the centre of things. For as long as we consider ourselves to be separate from Him, His message will be felt at best subversive, and more commonly intolerable. By this imagined separation our ties to GOD are turned into knots.
KNOT
When your life is in a knot, Every strand of is taut With the strain of 'I cannot.' If you fight it, well, you've fought Many times before, and shot At your soul when it forgot, Lost in garbage that you bought, Or the trash that you were taught By those friends who said you ought To have this, get that, or rot In the system -- draw your lot For the world-disease you've caught . . . Then there comes to you the thought That the only one you've got Is the One Who laid this plot. Isn't He the Help you sought On your knees, in tears, distraught, And in the dark, when you were brought To wish unravelled all you wrought? Gently touch that pain, that spot; There's His Hand, where you are nought . . . Softly working on your knot.
Every individual has his or her own unique knot, and so in the Qur’an and the hadith literature we find a vast array of self-noughting strategies to undo them. Here are a few of them:
Dissipated Illusions
Now you have come to Us alone, as We created you at first, and you have left behind what We bestowed on you. Nor do We see with you the intercessors you believed possessed a share in you. Now are the ties between you cut, and what you used to think has now forsaken you. (Q6:94)
وَلَقَدْ جِئْتُمُونَا فُرَادَى كَمَا خَلَقْنَاكُمْ أَوَّلَ مَرَّةٍ وَتَرَكْتُمْ مَا خَوَّلْنَاكُمْ وَرَاءَ ظُهُورِكُمْ وَمَا نَرَى مَعَكُمْ شُفَعَاءَكُمْ الَّذِينَ زَعَمْتُمْ أَنَّهُمْ فِيكُمْ شُرَكَاءُ لَقَدْ تَقَطَّعَ بَيْنَكُمْ وَضَلَّ عَنكُمْ مَا كُنتُمْ تَزْعُمُونَ
For many of us, the first step in dethroning the self is to expose that throne as a potpourri of crutches, toys, and swaddling clothes. The onset of death forces us to release some of these, but most of us die with our illusions intact, believing that we possess powerful justifications for ourselves in the form of our friends and family, our achievements, our ‘legacy’ as set out in obsequious obituaries, or the idols we worshipped, such as our nation, our culture, our civilization, or humanity, not to mention the traditional deities, saints, sheikhs, and boddhisatvas of the various faiths and cults. But GOD is not done with us, especially after death. That is because the prime tie – the only one that matters – can finally be explained when all those others have been definitely and willingly relinquished.
The GOD You Already Know 