Quran and Me

Today I happened to get hold on a nice unique exegesis on al-quran"tafsir mufradaat al-quran"by samir atief zain.It sit among my other books but only today did I had a more time to look into it.The book is unique because he explained quranic word in very clear and yet complete with its ramifications in alphabetical order.

Me now has a journey and I pray that Allah SWT give me enough time to complete my journey.The journey is to memorize quran.Alhamdulillah about a third or more or less has completed.It is getting slower as the load getting heavier with more ayaat and suraah to memorize.I wish to share my method in other time but in short it was and still the method I used to memorise my medical subjects such as anatomy,pharmacology,microbiology and etc.It is also a challenge to my fossilised cortex and neurons to develop more linkages.I believe and ask for strength from Allah.

So my acquaintance with this book is in the context of memorising qur'an.Many time the simple translation ignores a lot of meaning and this really a great loss to the understanding.Alhamdulillah,Allah gave me some rudimentary arabic language understanding to help me to feel some of His greatness.If we look carefully(I'm just raeching) in early parts of Qur'an, the surahs seem to be place in pairs.Thus Al-baqarah with Al-Imran,Al-Maidah with annisa',Al-Anaam with Al-Araaf,Al anfal with altaubah.They look like similar siblings and sometime certain ayat repeat almost similar in these pairs.But of course each surah has its own taste.That is why probably the reason in hadith that alRasul SAW said al-qur'an is ma'dubatullah(Allah's meal).The rhythm ,the intensity and the stroke is all unique for each surah.

In the preface of the Sheikh Samir's book highlighted the magic of numbers and how these cannot be just coincidence.There are 12 times the word syarh(months) is mentioned,yaum(days)365 times.Angels (malaikat) and Syaithan both 88 times,Life and death similarly 135 times.For me what strikes most is that the work usr(difficulty) is mentioned 12 times but the word yusr(easy) is mentioned 36 times.(3x more).He then quoted Dr Mohd Rashad Khalifah regarding the number 19.

Then the book started with meaning of aban(father)and explained its connotation why in quran the doa by sons of prophet Yaacob include prophet Ismail as part of their forefathers eventhough he was their uncle.

For me al-qur'an is the indicator of my inner strength.When I'm down I feel laziness and boring to read qur'an.I know I must work hard to lift my spirit by keep reading and pray that Allah shelter me from evils.Fortunately I usually lead congregational prayers at nearby surau so this push me to maintain the hafazan.