How Can a Qur’an Connection Look Like?
Here are the scenarios I came up with for all the possible ways myself and my adult children could connect with the Qur’an in the future.
This depends on how we undertake their Our’an education right now, during their childhood years.
Admittedly, a couple of the points below made me shudder with apprehension:
1- Reading the Qur’an in Arabic script silently, the way Urdu is read, without scrupulously adhering to each and every one of the Tajweed rules. Never recite the Quran aloud, ever.
2- Reading a fixed portion of the Qur’an daily, at a fixed time, without reflecting, with the intention of attaining barakah (blessings) and peace in the home, job/business (provision), and family. And for preventing calamities, illnesses, and grief from befalling/adversely affecting the same.
3- Relating any and all current affairs and events witnessed in life (on a personal, communal, or
global level) to the verses of the Qur’an.
Continue Envisioning What Your Connection to
the Qur’an Could Look Like, Good and Bad..
4- Studying tajweed, translation, and the detailed tafsir of the whole Quran thoroughly. Using a
course at an Islamic institute, under a teacher, at least once.
5- Being able to understand the Arabic of the Quran directly without needing a translation.
6- Having listened to the recitation of most of the qualified reciters in their era, they have a favorite one. Their recitation touches and moves the heart the most.
7- Being moved to such an extent while listening to the recitation of the Qur’an, in seclusion, that
our soul is shaken, our heart trembles, and our eyes begin to weep hot, heavy tears that lead to our sobbing in prostration upon the ground.
8- Teaching the Qur’an to others part-time or full-time, as Islamic scholar.
9- Turning to the Qur’an to seek the solution to every problem; guidance in every matter relating to practical life. Finding answers to every doubt and question.
10- Accepting every command in the Qur’an as the final, authoritative decree that decides every matter. Liking it or not, and obeying, no matter how illogical or difficult it seems.
11- Not being able to spend more than a day or two away from Qur’an without feeling your heart
becoming dead and rusted.
12- Going through life as an ardent student of the Qur’an. Always jumping at the opportunity to attend a talk, class, seminar, or workshop by a learned Islamic scholar who teaches, or has taught, the Qur’an.
13- Having special connections to specific surahs that make you forward to reciting that surah again and again.
14- Memorized the whole of the Our’an because of coercion by parents. Struggling to maintain their memorization intact, reluctantly.
Considering it an unasked-for burden that was placed on their shoulders, which they are unable to carry (shudder). [FYI: I didn’t just make this up. The wife of a hafidh once confessed to me that her husband feels this way now, as an adult.]
15- Having only some short surahs of the Qur’an committed to memory, enough to perform salah
(daily prayers), without any desire or motivation to memorize more of the Qur’an.
16- Not wanting to listen to the recitation of the Qur’an while alone or in a congregation. Preferring to listen to music and songs sung by pop/classical/hard rock singers instead.
17- Having doubts about the authenticity of the Quran. Wondering if some of it was ever changed
over the years, just like the Bible?
18- Having successfully acquired accredited-university Bachelors, Masters, and/or PhD degrees in one of the branches of the sciences of the Quran (tajweed, jurisprudence, tafsir, linguistics, etc.), by studying under several rightly-guided Islamic scholars of the era.
Writing and submitting a thesis, and going on to serve Islam through leading prayers at a masjid, teaching Islamic courses, writing books, and/or giving lectures around the world.
To continue…
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This article, from our archive, is originally written for a previous year, and slight modifications have been introduced to it for its importance and general relevance.