The Qur'an Switches Style

Now Allah (swt) changes His manner. He changes His mode and method of explanation. And this is what the Qur'an does. It is a question raised by readers of this tafsīr: that for one reading the Qur'an for the first time with understanding, one of the difficulties will be the constant movement from topic to topic and from subject to subject. Sometimes the subject is the same but the arguments differ. It gives a cosmic argument; then a microcosmic one, from the human being; then something from history, a historical anecdote; or it carries one forward to the Hereafter and speaks of the Day of Judgement; or it strikes terror into the heart by speaking of some punishment and warning; or it gives the gladness and joy of Paradise, a depiction and a picture of the beautiful and endless bliss of the gardens. It moves continually. And once a man grows used to the manner of it, he begins to appreciate it.

The Qur'an is a genre of its own, if one wishes to put it so. There is nothing else like it. Hence, when the Orientalists looked at it — there is a German Orientalist, Nöldeke — he said: what kind of writing is this? For one is generally told, in composing something that is not a poem, to begin in the first paragraph by telling them what you are going to tell them; then to tell them; and then to give the conclusion by telling them what you have told them. So you tell them what you are going to tell them, then you tell them what you are telling them, and then you tell them what you have told them. That is how it is supposed to be. It is supposed to be ordered so. But no. The Qur'an's object is altogether different. It is not there to tell you a pleasant story; it is there to pull at your heart.

Hence there are numerous kinds of argument to be seen in it, and numerous themes. It is of a genre of its own, of a manner of its own. It is not poetry and it is not prose; it is not anything else. It has a great many different things in it.