Originally this book was written when I was living in the United States and had met many people with a strong spiritual thirst but who were completely engulfed in the competitive world of ambition and material excellence. I had realized that many of these people preferred an esoteric and less demanding path than that which I had been committed to.

This book was written mainly to highlight the truth that if you wish to nourish the heart and nurture the light within, you need to make structural adjustments to your way of life as well as the all-consuming material drive. This book is a challenge to our modern lifestyle that is out of balance.

Now it is being reprinted as the gap widens between the sustainable inner happiness and ever-increasing outer frenzy.

Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
May 2001

by Mahmoud Ayoub, Ph.D
Professor of Islamic Studies
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.

Say: Were the sea to be ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Lord are exhausted, even if We brought the like of it to add [thereto].

The Qur’an 18:109

The Qur`an is the transcendent Word of the Transcendent Lord, Creator and Sustainer of all things. With it, creation began when God took our covenant with the question: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ (Qur`an 7:172). With it, history began, when He announced to the angels: ‘Behold, I am about to set a representative (khalîfah) on earth!’ In it, history will continue its cosmic journey from the multiplicity of things and names to the One, when ‘the earth shall shine forth with the Light of its Lord’, and the eternal voice of the Ever-Living and All-Sovereign Lord shall challenge all creation: ‘To whom shall all dominion today belong?’ The resounding answer will then echo: ‘To God, the One, the All-Conquering!’ Yet, God in His infinite mercy willed that His timeless Word, the Qur`an, should enter into our finite history to shape and guide it to its fulfillment on a day when He alone shall be King and Master.

The Qur`an, which we write in our books (masâhif), preserve in our hearts and recite with our tongues, was sent down onto the heart of Allah’s (Allah in Arabic means God) beloved servant and Messenger, Muhammad, may God’s blessing and mercy rest forever on him, his family and his righteous Companions.

The science of writing, understanding and interpreting the Qur`an has occupied the best minds of the Muslim ummah (community) throughout its long history. The fruits of these labors are contained in the vast literature of tafsîr (interpretation). The Qur`an, in its inner and infinite dimensions, is known only to God. Yet, to the Prophet and the chosen few of his followers, the veils were removed, and they were able to touch the inner mysteries of the Qur`an with their purified hearts and minds, ‘for none but the pure shall touch it.’ The righteous friends of God (awliyâ Allah al-sâlihîn), who purified their hearts in this ocean of knowledge, left for us allusions and glimpses to guide us in our journey (sulûk) to Allah.

Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri’s commentaries are dedicated to the task of making the Qur`an available to the men and women of the present age, that they may contemplate, understand and be guided by it in their daily lives, and in their spiritual quest. He has undertaken to present the Qur`an in Arabic, its original language, and to study its inner and outer meanings. The present work, in addition, presents the Qur`an in both its exoteric and historical dimension and its inner dimension to the Western reader. In the task of tafsîr (interpretation), standard works in this field will be used, but in ways that are relevant to the present age and its needs. This volume is the first of five volumes aimed at achieving this objective.

The Qur`an must speak to the condition of every age — this it can most effectively do through an inner and primary exposition of its revelations. Thus, through the reflection of Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, as God shall illuminate his heart, the inner dimension of the Qur`an will be touched.

Say: Work! For God Alone shall see your work, His Messenger, and the people of faith. In Him alone do we trust, for with Him is right guidance, and to Him shall be our return.

The Qur`an 9:105

Bismi’llah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem (1)

Al hamdu lillahi rabb il alamin (2)

Hamd, is praise. Praise comes if there is knowledge. You can only praise something if you have knowledge of it. Knowledge of something is an aspect of experience. You praise the rabb, the lord-sustainer. Rabba, means to be master of, to have command over. It also means to raise and bring up. Rabb is the attribute of that entity which brings what is under its domain up to its full potential, towards the ultimate end which is huwa, He, because it has come from Him, from Allah.

We said that when you praise the Ultimate, you must have some knowledge of it. That knowledge could be that of avoiding the non-Ultimate, which is what we are trying to do now. The way to that knowledge is by avoiding that which is unreal, unconducive, unfulfilling; that which does not permanently rehabilitate our hearts.

Up to a certain point, it is alright to praise an aspect of it since we do not have complete cognizance of rabb. If we are true to ourselves, we aim for the ultimate in everything. We only want to praise the Ultimate.

Real praise belongs only to the Lord-sustainer, and that which sustains the foundation of Tawheed (Unity). When you say, Al hamdu lilla, you are only stating the fact that praise is indeed for Allah. Furthermore, you are only able to praise in the first place because you mirror Allah and His Attributes, since you are the created being, having been created by the Creator, Allah. When you abuse the use of hamd, instead of shukr, you reveal your own shatteredness, for if you have truly witnessed that, La ilaha il Allah, you will understand that Allah’s mercy comes not only in bast, expansion, but also in qabd, constriction, and you will recognize that above all else Allah is truly ar Rahman ar Rahim, so that every state reflects the mercy of Allah. This explains why it says: Al hamdu lillahi rabb il alamin, Alamin, encompasses all states, all worlds, in the seen and the unseen, in sleep and in wakefulness, here and in the hereafter.

The man of greater perception sees the rabb, Sustainer, even in times of constriction. To use hamd as an expression of a mood or feeling is shirk. Praise is for Allah at all times and under all circumstances. Hamd does not allow for the separation between you as a praise giver and the object of praise: you merely echo hamd.

Ar-Rahman ar-Rahim (3)

The characteristics of the Lord whom we love and adore are ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, the all-beneficent, the all-compassionate. There is only mercy, but we do not see it because of our ignorance, expectations, and desires which only arise from the use of our intellect. Was the mercy not there when you were in your mother’s womb? You stayed there for nine months and yet you were unequivocally content. It is the mercy of Creation that we are able to die, so that there may be breathing and standing space for others to come. It is only we who interfere. It is the ego, the nafs, the vanity of expectation which frustrates and sabotages our recognition of Allah’s mercy. It is the evil I which we hear whispering in our ear. Shaytan is only a name. He too is from the Creator. If you know how to tackle Shaytan, then you would see nothing other than ar-Rahman. There is a cult in the Middle East of some two to three million people that worship Shaytan. They say that we know the Lord through Shaytan, and that at the Yowm al Qiyama, Shaytan will be forgiven because he has been testing all the good ones and the bad ones. They say he will be the first to be forgiven. If you see anything other than mercy, it is your own doing. It is your own expectations, desires and illusions. You yourself are the author.

Maliki yowm ad Deen (4)

Malik means owner, master. We come from the Owner. We own nothing, but are all owned. Yowm ad Deen: the day of the Deen. Yowm is not only a day, but also a span of time. Deen, life-transaction, finds its root in dana, to owe, be indebted to. It is the debt of man to want to recognize reality. It is incumbent upon everyone of us to know how to pay the debt upon us.

The deen with Allah is Islam. It is a life-transaction. Our way of behaving towards ourselves and towards others is deen. It is the way of correct transaction. But if you cannot discipline yourself, you cannot be of any use to anybody else. If interaction is not at least two-dimensional, nothing will work. You will only accumulate more wealth and cultivate more attachment. Eventually, you will be toppled over. Therefore, you have to exercise yourself in order to discipline yourself. The inner discipline begins with the outer discipline. This is the meaning of deen. The outer is easier because if you yourself do not stop from overshooting the limits, someone else will. It is the inner that is more difficult, so we start with the outer in order to gain the inner meaning. We go from the gross to the subtle.

Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nasta’in (5)

Once you recognize that you are in love and you are worshipping the rabb, you admit it openly, we worship You and we depend upon You. If you are worshipping and you are in love, then you are in adoration. Abada, is to worship, adore, serve, and in its second form, it means to make accessible. You depend upon the Merciful. This is only meaningful if there is knowledge, for otherwise it can be considered a tyranny.

Ihdina as Sirat al-Mustaqim (6)

Show us the direct way. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. A straight line is also one point traveling in only one direction. Therefore, you ask to be shown the most direct route towards this knowledge.

Sirat al ladhina an’amta ‘aleyhim
Ghayr il maghdhubi ‘aleyhim wa`l ad dalin (7)

Sirat al ladhina an’amta ‘aleyhim, is the way of those upon whom delight has been bestowed, not those upon whom anger burns, Na’ma is delight, happiness. There is no anger in this life. If you do not see mercy, then you have brought darkness upon yourself. Your ignorance is not the fault of someone else. If you do something inane and as a consequence harm comes to you, then Reality is angry with you, angry in the sense that you are not in unification with it. Anger implies a high degree of discontent on the part of one entity with another, which leads to severing of the relationship between the two.

There is only Allah. There is only Reality. Consequently, there is no place for superstition. It is you who decide whether Allah is angry with you. Rahma must encompass everything. Your loss is, in fact, within that rahma. The condition you are in is appropriate because you have brought it about by your heart. This is cosmos, not chaos. It is total ecology. As human beings, we are all occasionally at a loss and often unsure. It is for this reason that we have to keep healthy and correct companionship. Existentially, we need guidance.

Surat al Fatiha can be divided into three sections. The first section includes the opening line up to Maliki yowm ad Deen. It is an exposition of reality. You find yourself awakened suddenly and you say: I am in gratitude, praise to Allah, Who has these attributes. You are inspired after having been in wilderness and bewilderment, so you say, Al hamdu lillahi rabb al ‘alamin, out of contentment and sanity. In the next section, (from Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nastain to Ihdina as-Sirat al-Mustaqim), you are the adorer, the abd. This now is transaction and demand. It is a request, it is action. In this section the heart cries out. The third part is like the echo of reality in order to confirm what you are saying and to answer your question.

Surat al Fatiha is the most important Sura in the Qur`an. If it is completely absorbed, and if every word comes from a pure heart, you will cease to talk about opening and you will recognize that the vastness of Allah’s mercy is never-ending, so you can only strive to increase, for after the constriction of ignorance, there can only come the expansion of knowledge.