5-minute read
In our time, the Quran is often approached in ways that fragment its unity. Unqualified interpreters lift āyat from their place and place them into frameworks foreign to their nature, scientific, political, or social, and then shape them to their own purposes. The effect of this is twofold: the immediate aim of the interpreter may be served, but the deeper aim of the Quran, hidāyah (guidance) and ḥukm (law), is compromised.
Any meaningful approach to the Quran must begin with a clear understanding of the relationship between ḥukm and hidāyah. The first is the divine ruling, binding in its authority, precise in its application, and governing the believer’s conduct in matters of worship, ethics, and social interaction. The second is the divine guidance, a broader orientation of the heart, mind, and soul toward Allah, which infuses the ḥukm with purpose and situates it within the totality of human existence. To separate the two is to dismantle the Quran’s own structure, for every ruling is revealed within a framework of guidance, and every strand of guidance finds its form in law.
The same revelation that is a light for some becomes a cause of further darkness for others. This is not because of any deficiency in the revelation, but because of the state of the one approaching it. Rūzbihān’s reflective tafsir returns us to the heart of what it means to approach the Quran as kalām Allāh, divine speech that reveals itself in accordance with the receptivity of the one who hears it. His words remind us that the Quran’s light does not unfold through analysis only but through tajallī, divine disclosure and the humility of ʿubūdiyyah. To read the Quran rightly, then, is to not only interpret its ayat but to be transformed by them. This principle was embodied most perfectly by those who first received the revelation.
