The Qur’an
365
Selections For Daily Reading
OR
Mohamed Elmasry, Ph. D.
Language: English | Format: PDF | Pages: 479 | Size: 1 MB
The need for relevant and accessible daily readings directed toward
achieving spiritual fitness TM motivated me to write this book.
I began by selecting 365 passages from
the Qur’an[1], using similar parameters of length and topical value so
that each daily excerpt takes only about 15 minutes to both read and
contemplate. These daily readings also stand alone in terms of the
topics or issues they address.
I have no wish to preface these passages
with exhaustive commentary. Rather, I prefer to stand back and allow
them to work their miracles in helping the reader to achieve spiritual
fitness: they have been potent in the past and I believe they are so
again.
In choosing the topic for each day, I
followed traditional Islamic guidelines for attaining True Success, True
Happiness and True Peace of Mind.
These three steps are:
1. To Know
2. To Love
3. To Serve
The first step is about coming to know
God – through divine creations, one’s own being, the purpose of our life
on earth, our life after physical death, and our final destination to
be with God.
The second step is coming to love God —
again through the wonder of divine creations, one’s own being, in the
sacred gift of life, and in meeting God through our daily activities and
awareness.
Finally, the third step is to learn to
serve God — in preserving and respecting all of creation, in caring for
others and oneself, in giving God our daily praise and prayer.
The order in which we learn these steps
is very important, for one cannot love someone who is unknown, nor can
anyone genuinely serve someone they do not love.
Ideally, however, the steps of knowing,
loving and serving should be pursued in parallel, so that even as
imperfect human beings, we can always be in the blessed state of knowing
a little, loving a little, and serving a little. From there, we can
increase our spiritual fitness toward knowing more, loving more and
serving more.
In the Qur’an, God speaks and the Prophet
Muhammad is the mouthpiece for God’s Divine Word. That is, the Qur’an
contains none of the Prophet Muhammad’s own words, nor his own
interpretations. The Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet through the
Angel Gabriel, in order to answer questions, to explain, and above all,
to guide humans into the way of Truth.
When God speaks in the Qur’an using the
pronouns I, Me, or My, in the first-person singular — e.g., “If you
remember Me, I will remember you” (2:152) — or We, Us, and Our(s) in the
first-person plural — e.g., “We spread out the earth” (15:19) – these
figures of speech always indicate that there is only One God. In
addition, God also speaks in the Qur’an using the third-person masculine
singular, as with He, Him, and His — e.g., “God. There is no god but
He; there is no other,” (64:13).
Here again, these are God’s words, and do
not indicate gender in human terms, for God states in the Qur’an that
“no one else is like God” (42:11). Thus, God is unique, despite the
limitations of human language and grammar.
Daily meditation has long been upheld as
the high road to spiritual fitness. But a daily reading of Quranic
passages additionally offers a special type of meditation in which God
is the speaker, where every word is God’s own. As God explains the
Divine Natural Law, these passages offer a means of in-depth meditation.
When God teaches us how and why we should pray for Divine Mercy, this
is also an attribute of fruitful meditation.
In offering my English-trained reader
these particular groups of daily Quranic verses, I have consulted
several renowned English paraphrases of the Qur’an, as well as a number
of scholarly works of Quranic interpretation in their original Arabic
language (see Appendix). But the actual translations (or rather,
interpretations) in these pages remain my own.
The original classical Arabic of the
Qur’an flows in a rhythmic style of prose-poetry (sometimes called blank
verse) whose powerful and beautiful effects cannot be fully duplicated
in English or any other language.
Nevertheless, I have tried my best to
keep this interpretive translation/paraphrase as faithful to its given
text and context as possible. My aim and purpose throughout has been to
make each daily devotion able to stand alone without any need for
disruptive footnotes or explanations.
To derive the greatest benefit from these
daily devotions, I recommend that each be approached in a receptive
meditational and reflective mood, preferably during the early hours of
the day, or just before retiring at night. In this way, each daily
passage will, Insha’allah (God willing), guide the reader through the
enriching experience of what it means To Know, To Love, and To Serve.
For most of us, living in today’s world
means living in a stressful, fast-paced society where it is increasingly
difficult to find the time, the inclination, the mood, and the desire
to slow down a bit to reflect, contemplate, think, pray, and communicate
with God.
Thus, my dear reader, I sincerely hope
and pray that this modest book becomes your faithful companion on the
road to ever-greater knowledge, love, and service. I trust that each
passage —one for every day of the year — will suffice for regular
contemplation, meditation, and communication. Your success in this
spiritual quest will be mine as well.
Above all, in everything, I ask the blessings and guidance of God — the Most Merciful, Most Loving One.
Mohamed Elmasry, Ph.D.
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada May, 2003
-Acknowledgments:
First and foremost, I acknowledge the
blessings of God Almighty in my life. I hope He accepts every humble
deed I have done and forgives all my sins, faults and shortcomings.
As with many other projects, my wife
Elizabeth, my daughters Carmen and Nadia, my sons Samir and Hassan, my
daughter-in-law Amal, and son-in-law Peter have been generous in their
unfailing support, for which I am deeply grateful.
My late mother, a woman of amazing faith and perseverance, continues to be my lifelong inspiration.
My teacher and spiritual guide, while we
never met in this life, has been Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad al- Ghazali
(1058-1111 AD). I admire his writings greatly, for he is one of the best
Muslim scholars to introduce Islam to Westerners. His book, Jawaher
al-Qur’an (or, The Jewels of the Qur’an), in which he chose significant
verses from throughout the Qur’an as a means of guiding readers toward
God’s blessings, was my motivation to write this book.
I would like also to express great
appreciation to my University of Waterloo colleague, Professor Judith
Miller, for her valuable comments and excellent suggestions. Many thanks
are due to my copy editor, Pauline Finch, who did an excellent job with
great interest, and to Debbie Loney, who patiently typed many drafts of
this book. Hesham Sabry’s comments are most appreciated. As well, I
found the supportive staff at Pandora Press most helpful.
-Contents:
Cover
Acknowledgments
Preface
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Appendix
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