Alif Laam Meem

Alif Laam Meem

MashaAllah how perfect is the Quran. 

Before declaring that His speech is “without  doubt, a guide to the pious” the Most Gracious starts with what many construe to be Mystic letters as if in response to the Celestial Pen mentioned in the first revelation. (S Alaq):

In that God declares that He taught by the (Celestial) Pen, taught man(kind) that which he did not know. 

Indeed the Quran as a revelation is a question on many levels. What does God mean by prefacing the statement that this is from a book without doubt, a guide to the pious, by those letters?

On one level the Quranic revelation was response to the supplication of Ibrahim (as) for God to send a Messenger to the unlettered people of the Arabian peninsula. The Umiyoon whom he said had never received a message before, precisely because all other messages were heavenly books, sent down. 

And the Umiyoon were a people without writing, without a circumscribed alphabet of letters, and therefore without the knowledge of books. Theirs was a verbal tradition, of stories and poetry. 

And that necessitated the sending down of The Recitation, literally al-Quran. 

Such a phenomenal event that the Quran declares that if it had been sent down upon a mountain, then the mountain would rent asunder, and fall in upon itself, in awe of the Most Gracious. 

Then we see the dual nature of those beginning letters. 

1- That whilst it is a recitation kept alive on the tongues, and in the hearts of the believers, the Most Gracious wanted it to be written down, studied and deliberated upon so He begins with the circumscribed  letters: Alif Laam Meem: and not with their respective sounds: Aaa Laaa Maaa. 

So much so that the Messenger (saw) declared a reward for every Alif Laam and Meem recited even though we cannot really fathom their outward meaning. 

That they are there, as is much of the Qur’an, to develop mankind, to act as a spur and here specifically to teach us the written Arabic language. 

For that is another miracle of the Quran, even aside from it’s protection. We know that the order of compilation of the revelation was as much a part of it as the words themselves. And that it was compiled and that the writing styles evolved to make it easier to read. 

Remember that the original texts had no harakaat, no vowel sounds and no dots to distinguish a “ba” from say a “noon”. 

The script functioned in those earlier days as a tool for memory, as a mnemonic. 

Alhamdolillah thot the Most Gracious made clear the need to write it down and deliberate upon it simply by starting with those three letters and then following them with an undoubted statement of fact. 

And therefore to literally teach the whole of mankind by the pen, that which we did not know. 

The pen then, on this level of understanding, is the command to study, and write and deliberate. 

Indeed when we deliberate and write, something magical happens, and words flow and ideas develop just by the very act of writing. 

Furthermore it is the writing of it that caused its words and ideas to spread far beyond the confines of Arabia. 

2- And then too He prefaces certainty with doubt. That we cannot know with full certainty what He means by these letters, but we can know that something will follow that changes everything. 

And so He annexes the letters that we cannot fully fathom, with words that we can test to see whether they bear truth or underly falsity. 

And so He says that certainty always follows on from doubt for those who believe, and spend out of what the Most Gracious has given to them - of their wealth, whether it be monetary, time or knowledge. 

And that what follows is something majestic  that we need to struggle with to understand, by virtue of His declaration that it is from a book, without a shadow of doubt. 

Indeed just as the cosmos is a sign that points to the Most Gracious, so to does the Quran with its ayahs and signs that demand deliberation. 

And it is these that advanced mankind, wholesale, on an upward path. 

And it is these that when we each deliberate upon them will advance each of us upon the upward paths. 

And indeed God knows best. 

And knowledge is kindled through study and reflection. Not lectures, nor talks, nor this above.