Appendix 1: The Qur’an as GOD’s Speech (7)

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To conclude, there is no basis in either reason or revelation for the assumption that the Qur’an is coeternal with AL-LAH, an assumption that Al-Ghazzali so assiduously defends to no avail. If he and other scholars had stayed within the bounds of GOD’s own speech, they could have found enough ways to remove their opponents’ doubts about the integrity and inviolability of the Qur’an.

As I mentioned earlier, the main problem for theologians in referring to the Qur’an as created is that “created” connotes in Arabic what it may not convey in English, namely that it is material, changeable, and hence perishable and unreliable. (That is why, out of courtesy, I do not say that the Qur’an is created, but rather that it is His Word, i.e., produced as speech.) To avoid this conclusion, theologians resorted to what I have termed the deification of the Qur’an, resulting in it becoming an attribute of GOD Himself.

But this idea is not found in the Qur’an, nor was it ever mentioned in the first years of Islam. Early Muslims accepted the truth of the Qur’an as the Word of GOD without having to assume that the Qur’an was subsumed in or coeternal with AL-LAH. Later theologians saw a problem they needed to solve, but for the first disciples GOD’s Authority was sufficient to confirm the invulnerability of His Word, just as His appointment and defence of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) sufficed to validate his role as Messenger, one whom all Muslims admit to be a created being.

In any case, GOD is certainly capable of giving everlasting life to whatever He has created or spoken into being at a particular time, such as human souls. We believe that Paradise, a creation of AL-LAH, will last forever. Scripture, likewise, can be unchanging and unperishing without having to be an attribute of GOD. A book, once written and published, can stay essentially immutable for all time. That is particularly true for one that achieved a definitive form not long after revelation, has been memorized by heart on the tongues of hundreds of millions of believers over the centuries, and is now globally extant in a digital format that could quite conceivably continue until the end of the universe. History, in other words, supports this declaration and promise:

This verse makes no sense if the Qur’an is inherently eternal and unchangeable. Why guard something that needs no guarding? And if GOD is guarding it, well, AL-LAH is best as Guardian. (Q12:64)

One might object that AL-LAH also says, There is no alteration in the Words of GOD. (Q10:64). But this is an argument for their irreplaceability once written, not for their pre-existence, since the Qur’an itself refers to scriptures that preceded it. The very definition of pre-existence is that there is nothing before it – not even GOD Himself.

Not only is the Qur’an guarded, but the tablet in which it is recorded is also guarded: It is in fact a noble Recitation / In a guarded tablet (Q85:21-22). The Qur’an is given a symbolic location on (or in as per Arabic usage) a surface for writing. This is significant, considering that a tablet is blank until it receives the written word, and because of the following sound hadith from At-Tirmidhi:

This accounts for the fact that perishable things have a permanent record, even before they come into being. Yet this record exists in time, and is itself the product of a created thing, the Pen.

The Qur’an, then, like the souls whom GOD creates, was intended to be everlasting. We do not call it eternal, however, because it does have a beginning, i.e., is not pre-existent. There may be no holy scripture after it, but the Qur’an itself makes it abundantly clear that there were scriptures before it. This corresponds to our common conception of what a book is – composed in time, with a production date, but written to last, theoretically forever, i.e., with no expiry date. Once again, GOD employs language not clinically but strategically – not to encapsulate what is of Divine origin and hence essentially incomprehensible, but rather to evoke images of what we can barely imagine, such as how an Infinite Being deigns to communicate in time with mortals, using their terms and idioms. And when we come to the mention of a guarded tablet (Q85:22) or a book that contains GOD’s knowledge of what is in the sky and on the earth (Q22:70), we need only accept the image without trying to pin down its meaning, like a butterfly in a display case, to fit our narrow, ordinary concepts of what a book looks like or how it should behave.

As I pointed out earlier in this Appendix, Aristotle has a particular idea of what a ‘thing’ is, one which not only is of no use in referring to GOD but is also problematic for discussing objects that are basically conceptual or imaginal, such as a book of cosmic proportions. Thus his definition of the “first science” (i.e. theology) is that of “things which both exist separately and are immovable”, in contrast to physics, which “deals with things which exist separately but are not immovable”. (Metaphysics, Book VI, Chapter 1 (1026a)) Is motion, then, “immovable”? Is my idea of motion something that exists separately from motion itself? And as I learn more about it, does my idea remain immovable? Aristotle may have answers to such questions, but they are neither easy nor obvious, since his only distinction between physics and metaphysics is that of movable and immovable. No wonder that the odours of the dissection table pervade his metaphysical discussions – discussions in which much of Islamic thought about the Qur’an has been bogged down for over a millennium.

In contrast to this, I believe that the best way to approach this matter of things, and so to decide on how to classify the existence of the Qur’an and much else besides, is to remember this simple rule: There is no thing like unto Him (Q42:11). AL-LAH is utterly unlike a thing, and things are utterly unlike AL-LAH. Things are partible, temporal, and perishable (regardless of whether they actually do perish or not), and GOD is none of that.

So what is a thing? A thing is that for which there is no ultimate necessity. AL-LAH is Necessarily Existing (wajibul-wujud), and all His Names are necessarily existent insofar as they represent Him. If we can imagine GOD without something, then that thing is not GOD or fully representative of Him, but ‘only’ something. Thus GOD’s Names, such as Knowing and Speaking, are not things, because GOD in His Perfection cannot be ignorant and mute. But what He knows are things insofar as they are occasional instances of His being Eternally Knowing. Insofar as He has Knowledge, He knows Himself, and thus even as an object of His Self-Knowledge He is not a thing. GOD-as-Object is necessary to His being GOD. But everything He knows other than Himself is only a thing, as it possesses no necessary existence. GOD can freely exist by Himself, Alone; nothing else can.

The same applies to His being a Speaker, or having a capacity for speech that is His eternally. But particular instances of speech, such as the Qur’an, are not necessarily existent, especially since they contain references to things that are, likewise, not necessarily existent. It would be absurd for the Qur’an to exist in any form if its contents did not exist, i.e., if there was nothing to be recited (since “Qur’an” means “recitation”), yet that is what is implied when we say that the Qur’an is uncreated, on the one hand, and yet on the other hand admit, as we must, that its contents or referents are created. Even when we abstract its meanings from its expressions, we still have multiplicity: in it are verses of established meaning, which comprise the basis of the Book, and others allegorical (Q3:7). Absolute, Indivisible Divinity, on the other hand, has no contents; He cannot be said to ‘contain’ anything but Himself. Neither does AL-LAH absorb things or emanate them as extensions of Himself, as per the Neoplatonist conception, but rather creates and speaks them into being. AL-LAH is the Creator of all things. (Q39:62)

If GOD’s speech is taken to be not what He says, but what He means, and if all things are ‘meant to be’ (which they are), then it is not just the Qur’an that is GOD’s speech, but the entirety of things. His affair is only that, when He intends [desires] a thing, He tells it “Be!” and so it is. (Q36:82). Every thing, including the Qur’an, is intended, i.e., spoken by GOD as a deliberate act, which means that this entire universe is one tremendous love letter, to which the entire universe responds in kind:

The Qur’an is the leader in this hymn, a glorious dialogue in which AL-LAH takes on all possible pronouns – “I”, “We”, “Me”, “Us”, “You”, “He”, and “Him”. It is from the Qur’an that we get the strongest sense of why AL-LAH created anything at all – so that we, as conscious, intentional beings, may participate in this grand symphony of speech from, to, in, and by Him. So overwhelmingly close to us is He in this cosmic conversation, and so intimately involved are we in this epiphany of divinely heartfelt discourse, that we can finally both speak and listen to Him directly, without the mental barrier of intermediary attributes. It is as if He wants us to say, whenever we listen to the Qur’an, not “I hear Your Speech”, but rather “I hear You.”

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