A Summary of Quranic Architecture

Unlike most studies of the Quran including studies of its form and structure, this is a vision for the whole Quran in one image, developed using the Quran as a guide, fitting the 114 Surahs in a spiral shell shape like that of the chambered nautilus, in which each surah (the word surah meaning “enclosure”) is envisioned as a separate “chamber,” with 12 surahs per completed “turn” or circle of the spiral, making 9 complete circles and one half-circle. This spiral shape forms a symbolic calendar where each chamber/ surah is one “month”, for a total of 9.5 years. This corresponds to the symbolism of Noah’s ark as his message or Divine revelation whose construction was guided by Allah’s revelations in the same way sacred books were sent. The ark’s being a vessel that protected those who boarded it from the cataclysmic flood symbolically correlates to the Quran as our “ark” protecting those who “board” it—that is, read and be guided by it—from the greatest cataclysm of them all, Judgment Day. The Quran describes Noah as having lived among his people “a thousand years minus fifty years,” or 950 years. Move the decimal point 2 spaces to the left, and you have a match between the time period Noah spent with his people, a kind of “testing” period, and the time period embodied in the Quran’s Architecture as envisioned here, a nautilus-shaped “ark” carrying within it a complete guidance system to safely bring those it “carries” through this life and the coming cataclysm to gardens of unimaginable delight.

The Quran & Allah’s Unlimited Knowledge

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One of the ways one can appreciate what it means to be omniscient is to consider that Allah knows things that are unimportant to us in any conceivable way. Of course, what makes these things seem unimportant is our ignorance of the whole. 

Surat Al-An’am 6:59

۞ وَعِندَهُ مَفَاتِحُ الْغَيْبِ لَا يَعْلَمُهَا إِلَّا هُوَ ۚ وَيَعْلَمُ مَا فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ ۚ وَمَا تَسْقُطُ مِن وَرَقَةٍ إِلَّا يَعْلَمُهَا وَلَا حَبَّةٍ فِي ظُلُمَاتِ الْأَرْضِ وَلَا رَطْبٍ وَلَا يَابِسٍ إِلَّا فِي كِتَابٍ مُّبِينٍ

And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry [thing] but that it is [written] in a clear record.

Consider what it means to know whenever a leaf falls anywhere—on planet earth or any other place in the universe. When we think about knowing everything, we think more about, say, the “theory of everything.” And of course, only Allah keeps the “clear record.” We might think it superfluous to record every moist and dry thing in existence, but when examining the genetic code (for this discussion of Surah 112), I found that the hydrophobicity (water-repelling) or hydrophilicity (water-accepting) of “codons” (the building blocks of DNA) directly relates to their functionality, and how all life is created and differentiated. So this rather unheralded statement of seemingly unnecessary knowledge is “key” to the genetic code!

The Quran’s Message for the Anthropocene

(Actual nuclear explosion superimposed on city.) Anthropocene: a name given to the modern era where human activity has caused major possibly irrevocable systemic changes to planet Earth.

Empiricism as scientific method excludes values, scrupulously avoids assigning value and meaning to things as these are “non-objective” or non-empirical and cannot be scientifically proven, but if a system of knowledge actively denies or excludes meaning, always preferentially validating (thus in fact assigning value to) randomness and coincidence as explanations for phenomena or observed things—in effect limiting their search for knowledge to that which is meaningless—, they have created in effect a system that is systematically avoiding meaning or in another sense purpose in any wholistic sense, thereby rendering the entire system, as a guide to living, invalid (considers nothing as intrinsically “valuable”) and meaningless. The point was to avoid the illogical interpretations associated with religions. At the same time, God is by definition uncontainable by the limits of empirical evidence. Thus we have a “guidance system” whose knowledge has been used for destroying the balance and system of our “home” source of survival, the Earth.

Time Meets Timelessness: How the Quran Was Sent Down

(Page from the Blue Quran)

One could say the Quran is a book from the timeless perspective sent down in time. Indeed, it was sent down on a specific night, Laylat Al-Qadr, the “Night of Decree/ Meting Out,” a single night in Ramadan described as being “better than a thousand months” (Surat Al-Qadr 97:3) in which “descended the angels and the Spirit …with the permission of their Lord to carry out every matter.” (Surat Al-Qadr 97:4) The sheer power of that night indicates the weight and importance, from the Divine perspective, of the event of a timeless message being “sent down” (one envisions here a physical event, not merely “inspiration”) in time.

For Ramadan: 30 by 30 Quran Series

Last year I posted this series and it is indeed a wonderful way to get the most meaning out of Ramadan, the month of fasting and repentance which also commemorates the sending down or revelation of the Quran. As a part of the Yaqeen Institute’s programs and content, in this series each night of Ramadan explores one juz’ or “section” of the Quran, of which there are 30, giving us a chance to study one section per night, completing the entire Quran in Ramadan.

Host Imam Omar Suleiman along with co-host Sheikh Abdullah Oduro have a different guest each night, all of whom have some area of expertise from which they share their insights on each juz’.

Ramadan Mubarak!

A Blessed Ramadan to all! May this fast and the worship you offer this month bring great blessings, enlightenment, and mutual cooperation towards what is good.

What Is the Law of Reciprocity in Islam?

Of all the major guidelines given us in the Quran, one of the most important is the Law of Reciprocity, repeated frequently in the Quran but of course, not using that term. I use the English term to convey its universality, as it is the Divine comprehensive application we discuss here, analogous to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” What makes it so fundamental is that it applies not only to the physics, biology, and human social behavior of this life, but also to Al-Akhira, the Hereafter, insofar as what we do in this life brings consequences in the next. Not only that, but Allah the Exalted applies it not only to humans, but to all of creation in a sense, and even more stunningly, Allah applies this principle to Himself, as in the expression that Allah has “decreed mercy on Himself.”

Major Islamic Scholar’s Book: No Stoning in Islam

One of the major stumbling blocks to the presentation of Islam as a religion promoting compassion, human rights, and justice, has been the notion that the Islamic punishment for adultery in the case of married people is stoning to death. Despite the fact that the Quran never mentions stoning as a punishment at all, let alone mandating it in such a specific application, this idea has been propagated widely and appears to have been considered accepted Islamic practice. The scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi had already expressed the opinion that this practice is not mandated at all in Islam, and now his student, the Egyptian scholar Sheikh Isam Talimah has written a book, just published on March 29, 2021, entitled No Stoning in Islam.