Ramadan: Daily Verses from the Quran
Wed Oct 05, 2005 at 06:19:31 PM PDT
Ramadan is a month of fasting, and it is also the month when Muslims believe that the revelation of the Quran began. In honor of this, Muslims traditionally try to read the Quran through, and it is recited in mosques during long prayers in the evening. The Quran can be divided into thirty parts, one for each day of the month.
Several years back, I was able to complete a reading of the Quran in this fashion during Ramadan, and as part of it, I made notes of a verse or passage from each of the thirty sections that I found particularly striking or important. Inshallah (God willing) I would like to present these each day this Ramadan, so that those who are interested can learn a bit more about the Quran.
Each verse is linked to a page where you can click to hear the verse recited in Arabic, see the Arabic text and a transliteration (the Arabic words written phonetically in English) as well as reading translations in English and other languages. This is to give a bit of the flavor of how Muslims recite the Quran.
After presenting each verse, I make some brief comments on it. I am not a scholar and this commentary will generally focus more on how I feel personally about the verse or what it means to me, rather than providing interpretation or commentary. However, in some cases I may cite from well-known traditional commentaries on the Quran or refer to other texts. One of these sources is the hadiths. These are the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Muslims consider these to be authoritative and guiding in support of the Quran and they are often an important part of understanding and interpreting it.
Inshallah, I hope that this feature may be of benefit to someone and that it will open a bit of a window onto Muslim belief and teaching.
Here is the verse for Day 1, to start things off.
Quran 2:62:
Surely those who have faith and those who are Jewish and the Christians and the Sabaeans - whoever has faith in Allah and the Last Day and does right, so their reward is with their Lord and they will neither fear nor grieve.
Will all non-Muslims end up in hell? Most non-Muslims would say that according to Islam the answer is yes. Many Muslims would say so as well. But the correct answer is not necessarily.
According to actual Islamic teachings, a person who has been given a true and complete understanding of the basics of Islam and knowingly rejects it, then dies without repenting, is destined for hell.
But a person who has not received a true and complete understanding of the basics of Islam will be tested on Judgment Day. If they disobey God and fail the test, then they will go on to hell. On the other hand, if they obey God and pass the test, they will enter Paradise.
Notice the phrase "true and complete understanding of the basics". This applies not only to people who lived before the coming of Islam and people who have never heard of it at all, but also to people who may have heard about it but what they learned was not correct or was not enough information for them to understand the basis of the religion or to make a proper judgment of it.
Those who have faith in God will be rewarded, even if they didn't convert to Islam, as long the reason they didn't convert is that they never received a true and complete understanding of the basics of Islam, and as long as they obeyed what did come to them from God.
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