Surrendering the Desire for Linearity

For the first thirteen years the Prophet (peace be upon him) is persecuted in Mecca. During this time, these people were learning by memory the Qurʾān that was being revealed. The Qurʾān was not revealed linearly, which is important, because it is not a linear book; and that is something that anyone who really wants to understand the Qurʾān, or to be able to read it, has to accept: the desire for linearity has to be surrendered. Plato would probably have been able to read the book. Aristotle, definitely not — he would have had a very hard time with this book, because it does not begin in the beginning and end in the end. It just does not work like that. So, in a sense, what the Qurʾān is really demanding from people is that they submit to the book itself.

And it is very fascinating that the first verse of the Qurʾān after the opening chapter is three letters that nobody knows the meaning of:

Every commentator on the Qurʾān will ultimately say about these three letters: God knows what they mean. It is a very interesting phenomenon — to open up a book and find that the first three letters that one reads are letters nobody knows the meaning of. And part of the message there is to let us know that there are a lot of things that we do not know. If we are not going to admit that as a starting point, we are not going to benefit from this book. If we go to the book filled with ourselves, and superimpose upon the book our own ideas, then we are not going to get anything out of the book.

So for thirteen years these Meccan verses are being revealed. If one looks at the Meccan verses, even though eighty-five of the chapters in the Qurʾān are Meccan — eighty-five — thirty-nine of them are Medinan.^** Only eleven out of the thirty equal parts of the Qurʾān are from Mecca. Only eleven; nineteen are from Medina. So the Meccan sūrahs, or chapters, are very short, and they tend to fall towards the end of the book, even though they were revealed at the beginning of this dispensation. So, although the Meccan verses are the first verses, they are generally the ones that are found at the end of the book, which is very interesting. And when Muslims learn the book by heart, they will generally begin at the end. That is where they will begin: with the last thirtieth of the Qurʾān.