Quran: The Book in your hand or Allah’s Words in your Heart?
Can you hand me your mushaf?
Hand you my… What?
Your mushaf, it’s right in front of you.
You mean this Quran?
That’s not Quran, that’s a mushaf.
Seriously?
Yes.
Most of the time we find ourselves opposing change, but when reasoned properly, we embrace it and everything changes. Such was my experience when I found out about The Quran. And it was a very interesting one.
“What is a mushaf?” I asked incredulously.
“It’s the book with pages in which the Quran is stored in written format,” my teacher replied knowingly.
So this book is not Quran. It’s a mushaf. How?
My teacher starts reciting:
Alhamdullilah e rabil aalameen. Ar Rahman nir Rahim. Maalik e Youmiddeen…
This is Quran. The audio that you hear. The Kalam that comes from my Qalab (heart) and reaches yours through your ears. This is how our beloved prophet Muhammad PBUH got it through Angel Gibrael and this is how he conveyed it to his companions.
So Quran has always been audio?
Yes, because the Hafiz-e-Quran have Quran stored in them and they recite from memory. You don’t do an open heart surgery on them and implant a pocket version of Quran from Darussalam there, do you?
Sir, are you sure you are not from Faisalabad?
“No, I am not, but I teach people like you,” laughed my teacher.
It is this teaching style of his that keeps all our classes so interesting…
Jokes aside, the information about the true Quran being the audio recitation that we hear and not the hard cover book that we all respect so much, was overwhelming for me. I remembered by science class, where I learned that all sound was actually vibrations emitted in different frequencies. I related it to how different recitations of Quran seem to touch our hearts so deeply. The vibrations, the frequencies coming from Allah who is Nur (the purest form of energy) of the heavens and the earth…
Wait! I have read that before somewhere…
‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.’
Nikola Tesla
The remembrance of this verse was followed by some visions in my head that included Nasa sending audio messages in space, a girl screaming and the glass in front of her shattering into thousand pieces and the verse of Quran (59:21) where Allah says:
“Had We sent down this Qur’ān to a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and bursting apart out of awe for Allah. We set forth such comparisons for people, ˹so˺ perhaps they may reflect.”
Feeling goosebumps, I shared this with my teacher who smiled again. This time quite broadly.
You see, this is the main difference between the Bani Israel (Jews) and Bani Ismail (Ancestral family of Prophet Muhammad PBUH). Both these two tribes were from the two sons of Ibrahim AS, Issac (Ishaq) and Ishmael (Ismail).
Bani Israel had most of the major Prophets that came with great miracles. Moses parted the sea, David could bend steel like wax, Solomon could command the winds, the Jinns and all the birds, animals and insects and Jesus (Isa AS) had a miraculous birth and could speak from infancy along with many other miracles. Allah loved Bani Israel and he gave them such powerful prophets with so many miracles so they can strengthen their belief in Him. But they were disobedient and ungrateful.
And then Allah replaced them with something better…
Allah replaced them with Muslims and gifted us a prophet from Bani Ismael. You see, Bani Ismail had no prophets before and Bani Israel had all the famous ones, so to even the odds, Allah gave us the Leader of all Prophets and blessed him with the most powerful Miracle ever known to mankind, The Quran. It is not a visual miracle like the prophets of Bani Israel had, it is far powerful than that. It is an audio miracle. You can not see it, but you can feel it. It fills your heart so an extent that your eyes spill with tears. This is the Miracle all Muslims are blessed with and guess what we do with it?
We store it in a book format, then secure it in a cloth wrapping and place it on the highest shelf in the room and never recite it. We never feel the vibrations that change hearts. How unfortunate we all are.
That day, I decided that I will recite Quran and feel the words of my Creator every day. Trust me, it is a beautiful feeling. If you want to experience it too, the IQRA bot on QforQuran’s Facebook page can help you. This unique bot sends you friendly messages every day at the time of your choosing and tracks your progress in reading Quran. Try it out and tell us how it worked for you.
