Quran Blogger

They drip from our tongues like honey, and yet we rarely taste their sweetness.  Their appealing rhymes regularly fill our ears, and yet we often fail really to hear them.  They are the surahs of the last part of the Quran, the 30th part.  Many Muslims can recite the words of the surahs of the 30th part by rote, having committed them to memory when they were very young, or when they first found Islam.  Being very short and rolling off the tongue with melodic ease, the surahs in the 30th part are conducive to easy memorization and thus lend themselves to regular recitation in our daily prayers.  Despite their brevity, however, they are packed with meaning and busting with the significance of powerful messages.

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After we pray for guidance regarding the Straight Path, the ayah continues with some further identifying descriptions: The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, Those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray.

I have seen two common ways in which this language is interpreted.  The first implies that the two identifying descriptions that appear at the end of the ayah (“those whose portion is not wrath” and “those who go not astray”) are counterpoints to and elucidate the meaning and identification of the path. The second (A.Y. Ali’s view) is that those two identifying descriptions are counterpoints to and elucidate the meaning and identification of God’s ni’mah (translated above as “Grace,” but which can also be translated as Blessing/Favor/Tenderness).

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For most of The Opening, God teaches us how to ask.  In the last part of The Opening, God teaches us a different, intensely profound lesson: what to ask for.

Before we get into the text of the final ayahs of The Opening, let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t know what the ayahs actually say.  Let’s ruminate then, in our state of feigned ignorance, about what we would assume the last few ayahs of The Opening ought to say.

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I do not, with this blog, intend to go through the Quran commenting on each word in every line of every ayah.  However, because The Opening is so ingrained in the daily lives of Muslims and is such a fundamental part of so many rituals in the Islamic faith, I feel that it warrants some extra blogging attention, even if that means parsing some of the ayahs so closely that this blog begins to teeter toward the over-technical and risks making readers yawn uncontrollably (assuming, perhaps presumptuously, that the prior blog posts were not in their own rights boring to you readers).  May God guide us to a proper understanding of His message. 

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