Renaissance - 2

The central notion of Islam is to remove everything that becomes a permanent veil between God and humans. Oblivion to this fact brings about mistakes at different levels and magnitudes. Solution to all of these mistakes is simple: bring people face to face with God. In the coming episodes, God willing, I am going to elaborate on several solutions that can be helpful for the next renaissance of faith, where people can have a chance to see their Creator as clearly as possible.

Speaking of being face to face with God, the most readily available form of such experience is through His revealed word, the Quran. Accordingly, a person being a direct addressee of God without intermediaries is inline with the central notion of Islam, whereas erecting permanent and indispensable walls between individuals and the Quran is against it, hence a lethal error. Now, let's scrutinize what these mean, why they happen, and what a few solutions are.

When the Quran was revealed, it was readily available to everyone, because its addressees had the same language and it was being sent during their life time in context of actual events. So, Quran was not only a holy book but also a private communication between the first Muslims and God. However, after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh, things started changing in irreversible ways.

First of all, Quran reached people whose mother tongue was not Arabic. Therefore, the language barrier automatically necessitated translators. But, the very people who were supposed to undertake this task, i.e. scholars, did something puzzling for the lay people. On one side, they translated the word of God into other languages, but on the other side, they firmly insisted on the "untranslatable" nature of it. Why untranslatable?

1. from any language to another, there is always a loss of meaning upon translation, and Arabic is no exception,
2. word of God is a manifestation of all names of God, each of which have infinite depth; so, it cannot be perceived in its totality by the human mind that is limited in time, space, knowledge,etc. So, the Quran must be re-translated and re-interpreted again and again over time and by different minds.
3. a major issue with the previous revelations was the fact that their originals were lost, for which translations played an important role, and the Islamic scholars knew better than emphasizing or focusing on the translations in order not to repeat the same mistake.

As a result, the public either stayed at a distance from the Quran due to the language barrier and sufficed with memorizing it, or they did a simple peek at its meaning without really thinking on it and relying on the scholars for understanding it. After all, who are they to claim anything about the word of God when there are scholars who are well trained and devoted for this task! So, in the eyes of a public who are unable to attain a face to face talk with God, scholars and their interpretations of the word of God gradually became impenetrable walls between people and God. However, it must be noted that even if these scholars had been perfect minds and had the purest of intentions in their hearts, their understandings and expressions would/could become obsolete or even wrong due to time. And we know that such perfection and purity was not the case always... So, as humanity came to the 20th century, Quran was surrounded by large and thick walls erected by the scholars and maintained by the public.

One of the revolutionist scholars at the beginning of the 20th century, Said Nursi reports a dream of his where the walls around the Quran are blasted away, and he interprets this dream as violent and open attacks to Quran when nobody is around to defend it. Looking back through the lenses of this article, we can interpret this dream differently. It can be claimed that in fact those walls (scholars and their works) were the obstacles that hindered a direct access to the word of God, and the authority of those scholars were "functioning" as idols that were intermediaries between God and people. Since the believers insisted on not destroying such "mental idols", God did that through the hands of the non-Muslims.

Now today, in this context, what can we do for the renaissance of faith in the 21st century? This is an open-ended question, and I would suggest that people do their own brain work on the issue based on their own experiences and share with each other their opinions. Without needing to generalize any given suggestion, a large set of different applications can be conceived. Below, I am sharing my ideas based on my experiences:

1. Every believer must acquire at least a basic level of Arabic language skills so that, when they are reciting the Quran during their prayers or at other times, they can feel an un-intermediated communication with their Lord (12/2).
2. A believer must compare the word-by-word translations and the regular translations in order to formulate questions about why the scholars preferred to express certain things in one way and not others? Such questioning may help overcome at least some of the limitations of a single-mind (2/170). 
3. Believers must scrutinize the Quran, and wherever they come across with something that sounds strange or discrepant, they must pursue it to the end. Only through such scrutiny that one can be truly guided and achieve a certainty of faith. Don't worry, this is exactly what the Quran challenges the people to do (4/82). As you read, compare and contemplate over the different verses of the Quran, the hadiths or historical events about them and the scholars' interpretations of them, you are going to exhibit your intention to connect with your Lord. And He is the best of those who respond to invitations. (2/186)
4. Increasing the Quran memorization and implementing its recitation to the daily prayers are essential to encourage exploration of the ocean of the Quran. As is, despite their advanced biological ages, believers are like little kids playing at the beach with the few short verses in memory, without ever venturing towards horizons beyond or under water. This suggestion can be inferred from God's invitation towards the unbelievers, which must be even further pronounced for the believers. (9/6)
5. Just like Quran is composed of verses of God, so is the nature and universe. Modern urbanization trends are ripping people from these two immense books of God. One simply cannot understand Quran well without developing close ties with the nature and universe. Otherwise, why is God making countless references to them? (2/164)