In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).” (Qur’an 49:13)
Uhn! What does this mean? The Arabic language of the Qur’an is clear, simple, and straightforward. The attempt to render this aayah (“verse”) into English is clumsy and awkward. Among other annoyances are misplaced parentheses: the parentheses around “pair” should encompass the phrase “a single pair of”; and there should be no parenthesis before the word “each”. Bad editing.
The parenthetical phrases are insertions by Yusuf Ali, the translator. Assuming that these are attempts to clarify, I disagree with all of them: The phrase “a single pair of” is either unnecessary or interprets the original in a way that narrows its potential meanings. Allah is telling us that he created us from a male and a female. This has more than one possible meaning. Leave it alone; Allah knows how to express himself.
The phrase “not that ye may despise each other” ruins the meaning of the original and allows those who are simply not interested in other cultures to slip through the loophole by saying, “We don’t despise those who are different from us.” That’s not the point. Clearly, Allah intends for us to know each other (the meaning of ta`aarafoo); not despising each other is not enough.
The phrase “he who is” is simply unnecessary.
Yusuf Ali (1872-1953) was an anglophile, specifically in his love of the language of Shakespeare and of the King James Bible. (He was also an anglophile in his love of the English way of life, living much of his life in England.)
The languages of Shakespeare and King James are no longer spoken today. We say “surely” instead of “verily”, and “you” instead of “ye”. There is nothing — nothing — religious or sacred about these words (and many others); they are simply archaic. It is virtually impossible to render the Arabic of the Qur’an into English, but using the archaic language of King James only makes matters worse.
Yusuf Ali was born in Bombay, British India (now called Mumbai). His mother-tongue may have been Hindi (the national language of India) or Marathi or Gujurati. (Hindi, Marathi, and Gujurati are Indo-European languages, along with English; they are distant relatives of English, and not related to Arabic.) He was fluent in English and was a barrister (a form of lawyer in the UK). In order to translate the Qur’an, he must have mastered Arabic to a great extent. But Arabic was neither his first nor his second language. He learned Arabic the same way you and I do, and he never lived in an Arabic-speaking society. His translation of the Qur’an is a monumental and very helpful work — and may Allah reward him for it — but it is not the Qur’an, and reading it is not obedience to the command, “iqra’!” (“Read/Recite!”), to which we are all subject. (The Qur’an is a message to all people.)
The Qur’an and the Cultures of Symphonic Music
Allah wants is to be familiar with other cultures. This helps us to grow.
Symphonic music is not white. Culture is not white. Culture is colorful. There is joy in the great varieties of culture. And there is growth.
I am particularly fond of the music of German composers — the “three B’s”, Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, and others. Among other virtues, their music was multi-cultural. Bach wrote “English Suites” and “French Suites” for keyboard (usually harpsichord). Each of these suites include an allemande (German dance), a courante (French version; also known as corrente, Italian version); a sarabande (a Spanish/Arab dance), and a gigue (based on the British jig).
My research into the word “gigue” indicates that it originally referred to a bowed string instrument in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria (goge); carried across the Sahara, in Arabic this became ghooghaa. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea, this word became giga in Italian, still referring to a string instrument. In Germany, this word became Geige, a name for the violin.
In its various forms, this word — goge, ghooghaa, giga, Geige, jig, and gig — came to refer to the musical instrument we call a violin or a fiddle, or to a lively dance, or to a musical performance (in the form gig, a performance for hire, and by extension, any task performed for pay). Thus, the name of a musical instrument in northern Nigeria traveled to Europe and North America, as the name of a musical instrument, a dance, and a task performed for pay.
Of particular interest is that the primary instrument of African Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries was the violin. The primary function of African American fiddlers in the 18th and early 19th centuries was to provide music for white Americans to dance the jig.
In addition to the gigue, and the other dances mentioned above, Bach wrote a notable chaconne as the last movement of his second suite (called a partita) for solo violin. The chaconne and the sarabande are virtually the same musical type. The primary differences are that the sarabande is normally a single movement of a Baroque suite, whereas the chaconne almost always takes the form of an extended series of variations.
According to Janheinz Jahn, in his book Muntu, the chaconne was originally an Afro-Cuban dance. The chaconne and the sarabande are based on a traditional and primary African rhythm (which is also heard at the beginnings of the 37th, 51st, 77th, 79th, and 100th surahs of the Qur’an). You cannot make Afro-Latin jazz without it; it’s the claves beat. And it is heard throughout African American music — in the traditional spirituals, the blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm-and-blues, hip-hop, and others (and therefore in country music and other varieties of white American music, as well). In other words, the rhythm of the chaconne is pervasive in the musical life of our society.
The harmony of the chaconne, which is frequently characteristic of the sarabande, is pervasive in the harmonic system of symphonic music — so pervasive I cannot even begin to discuss it here. This fundamental and inescapable aspect of European symphonic music came from Africa.
The “32 Variations on an Original Theme” by Beethoven are based on the harmonic scheme of the chaconne. The rhythm of the theme is also based on the chaconne.
In addition, Beethoven wrote music based on Russian dances, Italian arias, Turkish marches, and music from other cultures.
The fourth and final movement of Brahms’s fourth symphony is a chaconne. The second theme of the first movement of this same symphony is a tango (an Afro-Latin dance from Argentina).
Throughout the period from Haydn and Mozart, through Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, and beyond, there was a craze for Turkish marches.
So, this is the variety of cultures that we become familiar with when we listen to symphonic music. Allah created this variety of cultures for us to become familiar with. You may notice, in the aayah of the Qur’an quoted above, that Allah associates this with righteousness This is no small thing.
Symphonic music benefits us in four aspects of our development:
- the physical (especially muscle tone, but also other aspects of our physiology)
- the emotional (wide range and subtlety of interacting emotional expressions)
- the intellectual (listening to symphonic music increases intellectual strength, acuity, and attention span)
- the spiritual (music is spiritual expression by nature; we are not human without it)
Mastering the skill of hearing symphonic music will help us to appreciate the symphonic structure of the Qur’an — which is a fundamental aspect of its benefit to us. This is no trivial aspect of this great blessing from Allah.
My experience of the Qur’an seems to be quite different from that of almost all of the Muslims I know. For me, my journey begins with the Qur’an. As soon as I realized that, I began learning to read it (in 1975), and Allah blessed my earnest efforts with success, and I was able to recite the Qur’an that Allah has sent down to us by March 1977.
As best I can tell, we become “ins” (normally translated as “human beings”), as distinguished from “jinn” (who are people), through the agency of the Qur’an. (We could be good ins or bad ins, or good jinn or bad jinn.) I absolutely do not understand people not having learned to read/recite the Qur’an who have been calling themselves Muslims for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years. (Out of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, I suspect that hardly more than a couple of million are reading/reciting the Qur’an. The Muslim ummah jumped the track 29 years after the passing of Muhammad, and have not gotten back on the track since. I am not following them.)
Calling a book a “translation” of the Qur’an is, in my opinion, less ambitious than calling it “the meaning” of the Qur’an:
- Allah and only Allah knows the meaning — or, more precisely, meanings — of the Qur’an. He is the creator and knower of the entire vastness of the cosmos and of all its intimate details. He is the one who has given us intelligence and language and the ability to grasp meanings. How can any human being know and convey “the meanings” of the Qur’an, other than to simply and accurately repeat the original language? A trillion human beings working together for a trillion years cannot learn and convey the meanings of the Qur’an. Allah knows, and we don’t know.
- The English language is not capable of conveying the meanings of Arabic words. In brief, we were born and raised in the English language. Our minds are molded in an English language understanding of reality. We need to read/recite the Qur’an over and over and over and over and over in order to begin to be reformed into an Arabic/Qur’an understanding of reality.
- “The medium is the message.” This expression was coined by the Canadian journalist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). The medium is the message. Do you think Allah is being trivial? The Qur’an has rhythm and rhyme, repetition and refrains, variations on themes, and overall symphonic structure. All of this — down to the slightest detail — has meaning. It is meaning. The word “qur’aan” refers to the medium, as well as to the meaning (in the narrower sense).
- Living in a society in which music is considered by definition a form of entertainment, it is difficult for us to grasp the idea that the various musical aspects of the Qur’an are not only important and essential but are actually the core of its meaning. Having some kind of conscious understanding of the meanings of the words is actually the smallest part of grasping the meaning of the Qur’an. The essential meaning of the Qur’an comes to us through the process of reciting — which is why it is called “qur’aan” (“reciting”). (Music is falsely defined and diabolically utilized in this society. Music is called music because it comes from the word “muse”. A muse is what the pyramid-builders called what we call an angel. The most famous muse is the one we call Gabriel.)
- This muse brought the Qur’an to Muhammad. Therefore, by definition, the Qur’an is muse-ic — music. The proper purpose of music is not entertainment. The proper purpose of music is to create human beings.
- Just recite it — or sit with someone who can. All of this intellectualizing is a distraction — debating the virtues of this or that translation or meaning — from simply doing what needs to be done. Where is your heart?
- “None of you believes until your desires follow what I have brought.” Muhammad brought us the Qur’an. If are starving (and we are all starving, if you understand) and someone brings you a platter of food, do you say, “What does this mean?” Or do you eat?
The Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims (after the assassination of Ali) have been imitating pagans — building temples, engaging in traditional rituals, having priests called rabbis, reverends, imams, shaykhs, and so forth.
None of this is what the prophets brought. No prophet brought a religion. Muhammad did not bring a religion; he brought a message. He dressed the same as people of his time and place. Those who knew him called him by his name. Strangers called him by his name. His closest companions and followers were not called by titles. I mean no disrespect when I do not address someone as “imam”. To repeat, I am not following the Muslims who went astray after the death of Ali. The Qur’an is my anchor and Muhammad is my guide.
It is a historical fact that the leaders of the Muslims have not wanted the general population of Muslims to read the Qur’an. What will be their reward from Allah? When I heard W.D. Mohammed tell us to read the Qur’an, that’s what I did. That was 43 years ago. Followers of W.D. Mohammed — where are you?
Lester A. Knibbs
6 Ramadan 1439 / 3 Muharram 1442
May 22, 2018 / August 22, 2020
Which Way Is Up? 