5. The Allah of the Quran

The Allah of the Quran
A special contribution to the structure of pre-modern civilizations
Book review


Thus thy Lord will…teach thee (Joseph) the interpretation of events….
Quran[1]
……..science describes the kind of world that philosophy tells it to describe.
B. Register[2]

…..it is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena that to direct observation appear to be quite separate things. Einstein[3]


The Glorious Quran. Text and explanatory translation by Marmduck M. Pickthall. Iqra International Foundation. Chicago. (year n.m.)

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936) translated the Quran in the heydays of Orientalism. But he was no Orientalist. He embraced the civilization to which he converted, and died in it. The son of an Anglican clergyman, who died when he was six, he was destined to become one of the chief English translators of the Quran. He was born in London and was educated at Harrow, the most prestigious private school in England, where he befriended Winston Churchill. Before he turned to the translation of the Quran in 1928, he had already earned a name as an accomplished novelist, journalist, political and religious leader and commentator.[4]

It is a pity that even the students of English literature know little of his literary achievements which were acknowledged by his great contemporaries such as H. G. Wells. According to one of his biographers, his novels “contain the circumstantiality of Sir Walter Scott, the exuberance of Charles Dickens, the moral strength of George Eliot, and compassionate tragedy of Thomas Hardy and the universality of E.M. Forster."[5] If his work has been to this day ignored to the point of having gone to virtual extinction, one wonders if this was the price he had to pay for his conversion! If that be the case, then it must be the task of the Islamic intelligentsia to rediscover his literary legacy.

He had a special talent for languages. He learnt Welsh and Gaelic (native language of Ireland) in his teens and developed a passion to travel in the East, especially the Islamic lands of Egypt, Syria and Palestine, where he would experience the traditional life and learn Arabic. Thanks to his mother who respected his youthful enthusiasm to see the world for himself, he was in his dream world even before he was twenty. Perhaps he was a born rebel who felt compressed and straitened in his state-oriented society that took great pride in its colonial possessions and the culture that it promoted. Later in his life he recalled those moments in his travelogue, Oriental Encounters: Palestine and Syria, 1894-6, which he opens in these words, worth quoting at length:

Early in the year 1894 I was a candidate for one of two vacancies inthe Consular Service for Turkey, Persia, and the Levant, but failed togain the necessary place in the competitive examination. I was indespair. All my hopes for months had been turned towards sunnycountries and old civilisations, away from the drab monotone of Londonfog, which seemed a nightmare when the prospect of escape eluded me. Iwas eighteen years old, and, having failed in one or two adventures, Ithought myself an all-round failure, and was much depressed. I dreamedof Eastern sunshine, palm trees, camels, desert sand, as of a Paradisewhich I had lost by my shortcomings. What was my rapture when mymother one fine day suggested that it might be good for me to travelin the East, because my longing for it seemed to indicate a naturalinstinct, with which she herself, possessing Eastern memories, was infull sympathy! I fancy there was some idea at the time that if I learnt the languagesand studied life upon the spot I might eventually find somebackstairs way into the service of the Foreign Office; but that idea,though cherished by my elders as some excuse for the expenses of myexpedition, had never, from the first, appealed to me; and from themoment when I got to Egypt, my first destination, it lost whateverlustre it had had at home. For then the European ceased to interestme, appearing somehow inappropriate and false in those surroundings.At first I tried to overcome this feeling or perception which, while Ilived with English people, seemed unlawful. All my education untilthen had tended to impose on me the cult of the thing done habituallyupon a certain plane of our society. To seek to mix on an equalitywith Orientals, of whatever breeding, was one of those things whichwere never done, nor even contemplated, by the kind of person who hadalways been my model.[6]

So he had not gone there as the English or most Europeans did, i.e., as representatives of a superior civilization, but with ‘a sneaking wish to fraternize with Orientals.’ Luckily, as he set foot in Jaffa, he met a native of Syria who helped him ‘to throw off the European and plunge into the native way of living.’ To acquaintance ourselves well with him it might be instructive to go through the following paragraph of the line just quoted:
With him I rode about the plain of Sharon, sojourning among the fellâhîn, and sitting in the coffee-shops of Ramleh, Lydda, Gaza, meeting all sorts of people, and acquiring the vernacular without an effort, in the manner of amusement. From dawn to sunset we were in the saddle. We went on pilgrimage to Nebi Rubîn, themosque upon the edge of marshes by the sea, half-way to Gaza; we rodeup northward to the foot of Carmel; explored the gorges of themountains of Judæa; frequented Turkish baths; ate native meals andslept in native houses--following the customs of the people of theland in all respects. And I was amazed at the immense relief I foundin such a life. In all my previous years I had not seen happy people.These were happy. Poor they might be, but they had no dream of wealth;the very thought of competition was unknown to them, and rivalry wasstill a matter of the horse and spear. Wages and rent were troublesthey had never heard of. Class distinctions, as we understand them,were not. Everybody talked to everybody. With inequality they had atrue fraternity. People complained that they were badly governed,which merely meant that they were left to their devices save on greatoccasions. A Government which touches every individual and interfereswith him to some extent in daily life, though much esteemed byEuropeans, seems intolerable to the Oriental. I had a vision of thetortured peoples of the earth impelled by their own misery to desolatethe happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the after years.But in that easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance,as everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat thehosts of joyless drudgery.[7]

He had ‘gone native’, so to speak, and when his mother came to know of it, he was called back home. Before his departure he wished to convert to Islam. The Muslim Shaikh in Damascus to whom he expressed thus would, however, not agree. What would be his mother’s reaction back home when she knew of it, he asked? She would be devastated, he replied. Then do not do so at this juncture, he advised, for it was a serious affair which required a prolonged reflection. This was indeed wise counsel, for it would take Pickthall another twenty one years after his return to England to become a Muslim. In the course of these years, during which he traveled again to his ‘beloved East’ and also visited Turkey for a few months, he produced fifteen novels and three collections of short stories. Said the Fisherman, his second one, published in 1903, received good reviews, becoming a bestseller in England. H. G. Wells wrote to him that ‘I wish that I could feel as certain about my own work as I do of yours, that it will be alive and interesting people fifty years from now.’[8] Little did Wells know of the turn waiting further on the course of his life.

In the coming years he wrote regularly for the New Age, a literary magazine, contributing alongside such luminaries as Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, and G. K. Chesterton. As the First World War approached, he found himself on the side of the Ottoman Empire which entered into the War as an ally of the Central Powers. When he was conscripted, he announced that he would only serve his country where she was not directly engaged with the Ottoman forces. He was thus appointed at a hospital while he continued to write in the defence of Turkey. The War, and especially the Christian fanaticism displayed variously, became a catalyst for him. Being increasingly pulled towards Islam inwardly he underwent a crisis of faith, finally announcing his conversion in November 1917. ‘He took the name of Muhammed and almost immediately became a pillar of the British Islamic Community.’[9] He worked for a year at Islamic Information Bureau in London which issued The Muslim Outlook, a weekly paper.

He moved to India in 1920 accepting an invitation to edit Bombay Chronicle, a prestigious Indian newspaper, doubling its circulation in six months time. In India he would spend the next fifteen years of his life, returning to England in 1935 where he died a year after. Almost as soon as he set foot on Indian soil he became an associate of Gandhi whose ideas of non-violent resistance attracted him. This affiliation grew stronger when Gandhi joined Khilafat Movement.
So the Englishman became an Indian nationalist leader, fluent in Urdu, and attending dawn prayers in the mosque, dressed in Gandhian homespun adorned with the purple crescent of the Khilafatists. He wrote to a friend: ‘They expect me to be a sort of political leader as well as a newspaper editor. I have grown quite used to haranguing multitudes of anything from 5 to 30,000 people in the open air, although I hate it still as much as ever and inwardly am just as miserably shy.’ He also continued his Friday sermons, preaching at the great mosque of Bijapur and elsewhere.[10]
The letter that Gandhi wrote to his widow on his death says much about his character:
Your husband and I met often enough to grow to love each other and I found Mr. Pickthall a most amiable and deeply religious man. And although he was a convert he had nothing of the fanatic in him that most converts, no matter to what faith they are converted, betray in their speech and act. Mr. Pickthall seemed to me to live his faith unobtrusively.[11]
Pickthall disengaged from politics with the establishment of modern Turkey and with this, the Bombay Chronicle having been closed by the government, he moved to Hyderabad in 1925 where he accepted a post of school principle on the invitation of the Nizam. Two years later there he founded the scholarly journal Islamic Culture (that runs to this day) and in the same while delivered a series of lectures on the cultural aspects of Islam in Madras.[12] Since, as he himself put it, ‘All Muslim India seems to be possessed with the idea that I ought to translate the Qur’an into real English,’ in 1928 the Nizam agreed to let him go on sabbatical for two years to complete his work that would leave his mark in the cultural history of Islamic civilization. During his devout years of Christian faith he had drunk deep from the Christian scriptures which the Quran speaks of as its inalienable historical predecessors. Thus he became the living witness to the Quran’s chief claim made to the Jews and Christians, that if they let their self go for a while, they will inevitably reach to the Quran.

The need to translate the Quran into English arose foremost from the fact that it had been already rendered into this language by some English scholars who would now be termed as Orientalists. Missionaries from all over Europe had followed in the heel of their colonial armies and there was a widespread suspicion that the English translations of the Quran by Orientalist scholars were deeply imbued with their vested interests. Hence the whole Muslim India getting ‘possessed with the idea’ that Pickthall take up the challenge.

During his work he traveled to Cairo to seek support for his project from the leading scholars of Al-Azhar. Somewhat to his surprise he found little backing from them. In the Islamic world, as Kidwai has noted, ‘whereas the idea of interpreting the Quran has not been so controversial, the emotional motives behind rendering the Quranic text into languages other than Arabic have always been looked upon with suspicion,’[13] more so by an Englishman in the contemporary colonial setting. However, Pickthall’s sincerity and scholarship prevailed upon the Al-Azhar scholars, and his The Meaning of the Glorious Quran was published from London in 1930 where each surah or chapter is given a brief introduction. The present edition contains a short though very valuable biography of the Prophet. Four years after its publication Abdullah Yousaf Ali, a Britain based Muslim scholar, published his translation of the Book.[14] Though various other Muslim scholars have carried out their renderings, Pickthall’s provided a solid foundation for improvisation to all of them.

Pickthall was emphatic that his was a kind of interpretation as translation of the Quran was impossible. This goes well with the contemporary understanding that translation from one language into another is always an approximation. And this is especially so when it comes to revelation where a word in original language would normally require more than one words to convey the meaning of the original. It is thus always advisable to consult more than one translations of the Quran if one seeks to get somewhere near to the original meanings. Abudullah Yousaf Ali’s translation, then, is a good source to correlate with Pickthall’s. The way the latter absorbs the idiom and metaphors of the Quran, though, speaks for itself. The following two verses, taken from different suras, illustrate the point well:

Wa li-rab-bika fasbir (74:7)
Fasbir sabran-jamiilaa (70:5)

Pickthall: For the sake of thy Lord, be patient!
But be patient (O Muhammad) with a patience fair to see.

Ali: But for thy Lord’s (cause), Be patient and constant.
Therefore do thou hold patience, -- a patience of beautiful (contentment).

A small point of difference with Pickthall on my behalf is his rendering of al-kitaab as Scripture instead of Book. He might have availed the opportunity of having two words in English for where there is apparently one in Arabic. This seems to be an oversight thanks to his Christian legacy of which the separation between the sacred and profane does not go well with the Unitarian vision of the Quran. The inadequacy of translating kitaab as scripture should have been apparent to him when he was translating, for instance, the following verses:

‘In-nahuu la-qur-‘aanun-kariim,
fii kitaabim-mak-nunn,
laa yamas-suhuu ‘il-lal-mutah-haruun (56:77-9)

That (this) is indeed a noble Quran
In a Book kept hidden
Which none toucheth saveth the purified.

Perhaps the chief limitation that he himself set on his translation, as also Abdullah Yousaf Ali later on, was his failure to employ the English of everyday usage. Did these translators still harbour the prejudice that revelation was too sacred to be put in everyday speech? Whatever the answer but the constraint and artificiality that such usage imposes on the text becomes evident when we compare Pickthall and Ali with, for instance, N. J. Dawood, who chose to render the text in plain simple English.[15] The effect is apparent when we see, for instance, the following verses:

Pickthall: Seest thou not how Allah coineth a similitude: A goodly saying, as a goodly tree, its root set firm, its branches reaching into heaven,
Giving its fruit at every season by the permission of its Lord? Allah coineth the similitudes for mankind in order that they may reflect. (14:24-5)

Ali: Seest thou not how God sets a parable? - A goodly Word like a goodly tree,
Whose root is firmly fixed, And its branches reach to the heavens, --
It brings forth its fruit at all times, by the leave of its Lord.
So God sets forth parables for men, in order that they may receive admonition.

Dawood: Do you not see how God compares a good word to a good tree?
Its root is firm and its branches are in the sky;
It yields its fruit in every season by God’s leave.
God speaks in parables to men so that they may take heed.


Pickthall was not merely a translator of the Quran but also its scholar. He ‘warned against the danger of adoring the book rather than its content.’[16] In a separate note, he posed two inter-related questions to the contemporary Islamic civilization: how can we enter into the world of the Quran ‘as if Allah were speaking to us through it now and today?’ And secondly, how it can, once again, become relevant and power of transformation in today’s world.[17] Needless to say, both questions are as relevant today as in Pickthall’s day. Furthermore, the two questions are actually one, because once we enter into the world of the Quran by locating the necessary code, or, to be more precise, employing the requisite methodology, we enter into the world of power, the power to comprehend, control and transform the events that constitute our world. Only then, as he put it bravely, ‘instead of being a mere revered book, a sacred fossil, or a source of magic-like blessing, it will change into a mighty force, impinging, stirring, moving and guiding us deeper and higher achievements, just as it did before.’[18] To this end the rest of this article is devoted.

The hypothesi,s or the fact, the event to be interpreted

It is one thing to recite the Quran, which is an art in itself, but quite another to destructure it as a text. It is indeed the problem with all revelation, in which Plato’s dialogues occupy a special place. For the moment, though, we would focus on the Quran.

The Quran presents itself as a complex structure which makes its claim to be the greatest wonder, or miracle as the Islamic tradition knows it, of the pre-modern civilizations worth considering. It does not imply belittling of the other wonders, for it repeatedly claims to be the inheritor of all of them.

The hypothesis that I want to suggest in this regard may be stated thus.[19] The structure of the Quran is a mirror image of pre-modern civilizations, on the one hand, and of the nature of reality as perceived by these civilizations, on the other. Or, the structure of the one, that is, of the Quran is the same as that of pre-modern civilizations, more particularly of the Islamic civilization of pre-modern times, and of the nature of reality to which they adhered. The Quran, it needs to be emphasized, claims to be the final text or book of the revelation which began with the creation of Adam, or the appearance of the human in the universe. This means that while the revelation prior to the Quran, or the texts/books of it, such as those which it mentions (e.g. the Torah, the Psalms of David and the Gospels) and those which it does not, each created its own civilization or community, the Quran not only created its own civilization but, being the final chapter of the Book that began with Adam, it is the most succinct and clear statement of reality of which the pre-modern civilizations as a whole were the embodiment.

Now the immediate point that needs to be clarified here is the notion of pre-modern civilizations, or, let us say, pre-modern Islamic civilization.[20] For I am intending to make a clear distinction between the pre-modern and modern Islamic civilization (a distinction applicable to all non-Western civilizations), that is, the one prior to the rise of modernity and the other which was subjugated by modernity, a subjugation that continues to the present day. What I am suggesting, then, is that, to put it succinctly, the prevalent idea that the present day, or the modern Islamic world is a continuation of the pre-modern Islamic civilization is an illusion. What implies is that while the structure of the pre-modern Islamic civilization was the mirror image of the structure of the Quran, the modern Islamic world is not. I am not positing an absolute discontinuity between the pre-modern and modern Islamic world. But what I intend to argue presently is that the discontinuity between them is as important as the continuity between them and it is only by a full view of these opposite aspects of our history that we can make sense of it, or truly interpret the event that we call Islamic history. We would soon turn to the continuity between them, but presently we are emphasizing the discontinuity between them. What follows is that while it is not a mistake to say that the cotemporary Islamic world is a continuation of the pre-modern world, it is also equally important to see that there is a difference or discontinuity between them. The difference is so pronounced that, as just noted, while the structure of pre-modern Islamic world reflected the structure of the Quran, the contemporary world does not.

If the contemporary Islamic world is not the reflection of the Quranic conception of reality, what follows is that, as argued earlier in a paper just cited, the vision of pre-modern Islam as expounded by the modern or contemporary Islamic intelligentsia is seriously modern, that is, seriously flawed and therefore does not accord with or correspond to the pre-modern Islam and the Islamic world. Therefore their contention that they represent and are fighting for the original Islam is mistaken. Their vision of the structure of the Quran and of their ideal Islam and Islamic world of pre-modern times has been constructed under the influence of and the tools provided by modernity and the modern mind that originated in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries. Thus, in spite of their much proclaimed hostility to modernity, they (the modern or contemporary Islamic intelligentsia) tend to see the pre-modern world and the supreme knowledge of it as embodied in the revelation and the Quran, the last book of it, with essentially the same eyes as do the modern intelligentsia (both Western and non-Western).

What follows from this is that the conception of reality that the modern intelligentsia (MI) and the modern Islamic intelligentsia (MII) adhere to is essentially same and essentially different from the conception of reality of the Quran and the pre-modern world. The conception of the pre-modern world, of religion, of tradition, or of the pre-modern knowledge or conception of reality as embodied supremely in the revelation, as perceived by the modern mind, is a modern construction, that does not correspond with the fact or the event that it purports to be describing. And the modern Muslim mind has succumbed to it.

The whole difference between the pre-modern and modern conception of reality arises in response to the ultimate philosophical problem and which is: what is there? For modern mind it is matter alone, for nothing else exists, is real but matter and its varied variations or forms such as the plant, the animal, or the human mind. There are various philosophies of social science in vogue presently, from empiricism or positivism to (Marxist) materialism, realism, phenomenology and hermeneutics and so forth.[21] But all their differences fail to conceal their common, founding premise, that nothing exists beside the material. In order to account for their differences, let us say that for all of them only that is real which can be reduced to the human’s sensory experience. Any human experience that cannot be traced back to sensory impressions is false at the best and illusion at the worst. Thus the modern mind defines knowledge as the formulation of human experience furnished ultimately through the sensory organs, or that can be reduced to the activity of human senses. Since the natural sciences, so the argument goes, adhere to this principle most faithfully, they constitute the highest form of knowledge, to which the social sciences and philosophy must also aspire.

Since the experience underlying the revelation, the ultimate embodiment of pre-modern knowledge, cannot be reduced to the sensory experience, it is an illusory experience for the modern mind. Therefore the knowledge constructed on this experience must also be false knowledge. We will investigate this claim, for what is apparent is that the modern mind has only changed the definition of knowledge and by thus doing relegated the knowledge of the pre-modern civilizations to the dustbin of history.

The chief problem with this claim is that it is founded on a premise proclaimed as self-evident by the modern mind, but which is neither self-evident nor true. It is purely a construction of the modern mind. And this is that, as Marx and Engels famously put it, reality is either material or non-material, either matter or mind. So whereas the modern, or scientific mind adheres to the reality of the former, the pre-modern mind adhered to the reality of the latter. Common sense, it was argued, shows that mind, or the human came long after the appearance of the material world, so the reality must be accorded to the material sphere alone. The pre-modern perception of the reality of the non-material sphere was therefore an illusory perception.

It is apparent that the whole support of this argument is common sense. We will see that this is the same common sense which once supported the geo-centric world. Einstein too, who was called the new Copernicus by Max Planck, the founder of the quantum theory, when he came up with his theory of relativity, found this common sense in staunch opposition to his vision of reality. The mention of these two giants of what is known as the early 20th century scientific revolution has been made advisedly. For if Planck destroyed the absolute opposition or separation between the particle and wave natures of light (thus unifying the two contraries of light and particle natures of light), Einstein demolished the absolute world or standard of perception which could be visualized to exist independent of the human observer. With the further evolution in the quantum theory, with which Einstein himself became uneasy, the so-called common sense view, which continues to be the chief dogma of modern science and of the mind built on it, that there is an objective world existing independently of human experience of it was undermined.

The idea that the world is inseparable from human experience of it, let us remember, is the founding premise of the (knowledge of the) pre-modern civilizations. And if the knowledge revolution of the twentieth century, spearheaded by the early 20th century scientific revolution, reached to the same premise, so much the worse for the modern mind.

The human is the centre of the universe in the pre-modern world and so is it for the world as envisioned by the relativity and quantum. The latter perception thus unifies the two contraries: the geo-centric and helio-centric worlds in so far as the former implied the human as the centre of the world. One of the chief arguments furnished by the modern mind to debunk the pre-modern vision of the human-centered world is that it allegedly was based the geo-centric world view of the world. So, since the geo-centric world was discovered to be an illusion, so the human centered world, a world invariably tied with the human experience of it, must also be an illusion.

The point is that the pre-modern mind did not base its vision of the human-centered world on the physical fact of a geo-centric world. The 20th century knowledge revolution has demonstrated that the world is indeed inseparable form human experience even though it is a helio-centric world.

So now we come to the structure of reality as envisioned by the Quran.


It is not easy to enter into it. For, it has a very complex structure hidden behind a blinding simplicity. The simplicity is so perfect a ruse that the reader gets carried away by it. It is almost like the structure a palm-date stone in which the core seems to have been concealed with great care; as if demanding a struggle to enter into it. And for which the Quran frequently incites.

So one must be clear what one is looking for. We find what you seek for. As the Quran puts it, if you are asking for this world you would be given. If the higher, which is the realm of the inner structure, you would find it too. But it’s a struggle. What follows is that there are two perceptions, one for the exterior, the other for the interior or core structure whereby each generates its own knowledge, or each unfolding its own world. So the Quran operates on two modes or plains of being, one normal, the other higher. For instance if speed of light is finite in one perception, it’s infinite from the other. The Quran for instance speaks of stairways to heavens, on which the angels are ascending and they travel the distance of fifty thousand years in a single day.

From Allah, Lord of the Ascending Stairways, (whereby) the angels and the Spirit ascend unto Him in a Day whereof the span is fifty thousand years.[22]

Apparently it makes little sense. Or at best a legacy of mythology. But it is not nonsense though the heritage of mythology is underlying it. It’s just a different experience of light that the normal perception cannot generate. The idea is perennial, from the age of mythology or the rise of civilization, the age of the so-called archaic or primitive man. But it took very long for its final formulation which the Quran claims to be. It stretches the revelation, of which it is the final heir, back to the first human, or Adam, who received the names of things from Allah. It is the recasting of the biblical view in almost a new language.

Within normal behavior or given framework, in both its religious and modern representations, it is difficult to enter into the interior structure of the Quran. Both fail to enter into it. This failure takes the power of this work away. Instead of being cognizant of their failure, they think it’s simply not there. For each, unity is the exclusion of either this or other mode of being. So, they appear different or enemies of each other, yet they are same in their inability to see that unity without difference cannot be conceived.

All violence and war generates from this perception of unity in which difference and opposition are identical with violence and war. Once it is understood that opposition is inherent in unity and thus unite apparently contradictory entities, as Einstein meant when he unified mass and energy in his famous E=mc2 equation, war and violence would cease to be the inherent condition of opposition and difference.

This pluralist vision of the Quran, in which pluralism defines unity, the sectarian consciousness of the religious and the modern, which incites the exclusion of opposition from unity, is transcended. This thing is at the heart of a social change through violence, a belief in which the existing social theory, whether religious or modern, concur.

The Quran then opens up a huge and immense potential of peace and universal harmony on this planet once its internal structure is entered into.

The Quran helps us to comprehend and decode the structure of pre-modern civilization of which it claims to be one of the chief documents. The structure of pre-modern civilization is raised on the structure as conceived in the Quran. So, what is the Quran’s structure?

We have seen that it is made up of two spheres, internal and external like the structure of the atom. The structure of the pre-modern civilization, and of the Quran and the atom, concords with each other.



Now what follows from this is that if the velocity of light is absolute as Einstein suggested and built the subsequent scientific development on this premises, then this does not imply that it should be absolute in the subatomic world, in the entire of the cosmos. We already have plenty of evidence for it. For we know that the subatomic world phenomena behave almost as it was almost alive. We know that the phenomena behave differently under the human gaze than they would otherwise. As if the internal structure of man was same as that of the world, where the observer and the observed discover each other as the one and the other in one whole.

Neil Bohr drew attention of this remarkable fact that it is the apparatus that man employs that largely determines what he perceives in the subatomic world, for there is no such thing as world itself. Different perception creates different worlds.

This leads to the idea of the physical world as human construction.

The idea of the social world as being human creation may not surprise as much but that of natural world sounds against the common sense. But it is the same common sense that once supported the geo-centric view.

Incidentally once we comprehend that there are mainly two perceptions corresponding to the two plains of being, there would be little difficulty to see that the two natures of light, those of particle and wave, must have varied velocities too. For it is possible to suggest that the speed of light of 300000km per sec is only the velocity of particle motion of light, and that the wave motion of light is infinite. In other words there are two speeds, finite and infinite, corresponding to its particle and wave natures. Once we come to grip with this the eternal enigma that exhausted Einstein to death, the problem of the unification of the four forces, would be resolved.

The idea of the finite, the so-called absolute speed of light, let us remember, was Einstein’s creation. It was earlier presented by Leibniz if I am not mistaken. Newton, as we know adhered to infinite speed of light which he had inherited from his studies of the structure of pre modern civilizations. He was deeply involved in the science of the day which was alchemy. This science claimed to be the science of interior structure of the pre modern civilizations. The hypothesis of Newton, of infinite speed of light along with its particle nature of light was upheld by the modern science.

Newton failed to see the contradiction in it. If light was infinite, it meant that it did not belong to the world of matter, of particle nature, which was finite. So Newton begged down there, and Leibniz, on the other hand, was equally confused, who opposed Newton, on both counts. Newton was, it seems, all the way involved to resolve this contradiction but failed which probably caused his nervous breakdown in 1694.

The puzzle took a step towards its resolution when in the 19th century the wave nature of light, largely at the hands of Faraday, the discover of the electromagnetic fields, was discovered. Now the infinite speed of light looked sensible. But then came the bomb shell of the discovery of the interior structure of the atom at the hands of J. J. Thomson in 1898. This new phenomenon created problems. Instances were observed where it didn’t seem to conform to either wave or particle nature of light. The loss of ether at the hands of Michelson and this strange behavior of light were the two great challenges that physics as the queen sciences faced at the turn of the century.

Two giants appeared, one older and the other younger one who together resolved these crises by abandoning the world which the existing concepts of physics described. Common sense was going to face a challenge greater then it faced at the shift from geocentric to heliocentric world: the mental habit or the hypothesis that light must behave either as particle or wave had to be abandoned.

New concepts had to be created to describe the new experience of the world as Planck and Einstein both emphasized.

Planck wrestled with himself as he prepared to challenge the two greatest dogmas of physics. That light behaved only as wave and second that it could only do as particle or wave. The eternal law of logic of modern rationality of either /or, of being and not being, as two hostile opposites, had to be abandoned. Light as Planck discovered must be behaving both as light and wave in that particular epiphany of it which Plank was observing and studying at that time. To overcome this lasting absolute of science, Planck had to struggle hard. Of this he spoke to his son during a walk a short while before presenting this paper in October 1900. He thought it was a discovery equal to that of the great Newton’s. Einstein generalized this plural nature of light, thus asserting its two natures universally. While seeing the slipping of the earth from under its feet, he went on to create a dogma of his own. This was the new the absolute, the absolute velocity of light.

But did it occur to anyone even after the atomic explosion, that the energy released could be different than that of which the speed was fixed, 300,000. This figure was already too large. To think that light had also an infinite nature was impossible to conceive So the implication is obvious. Light must behave both finitely and infinitely, though not at the same time, just like particle and wave. The classic double slit experiment proves Bohr’s point that all phenomena behave differently under a different apparatus. The human is inseparable from nature, the cardinal belief of the pre modern civilizations.

Neil Bohr, in spite of his tremendous effort to lead quantum away from Einstein’s dogmatic slumber, could not get to question Einstein’s ultimate dogma and thus paid the price of his beloved theory of complimentarity getting little attention. Had he been able to take a step forward to see and insist on the dual velocity of light corresponding to the wave and particle natures of light which he did so much to establish in spite of all Einstein’s intellectual assaults especially at the Solvoy Congress of 1927, he would have broken through. But the breakthrough they had made was exhausted.

In order, then then, to resurrect the discarded hypothesis of Newton of the infinite velocity of light we need to turn to the roots from where Newton derived it. Planck had resurrected his particle hypothesis in a new setting. We need only to extend a little and affirm that it is both particle and wave, finite and infinite.


(III)

The roots go back, as already stated, go back to the age of mythology, of which the Quranic revelation is the ultimate continuum. Mythology is an essential component of human psyche. The human must make myths which in its essence, is the human construction of entities which are invisible but which provide the necessary connections between the phenomena of the material world. Since both correspond to different perceptions, both are unlike each other. The world of invisible events cannot be reduced to the world of visible entities or events. But the images and symbols employed to describe each undergo change. So the suggestion by the modern mind that it has freed human mind from mythological psyche is false.

Ether was the greatest god that physics created in the 19th century, although its earlier forms had a long history. On its death, though, another one was soon to be created by ironically the great iconoclast Einstein himself. If we can decode the duality of Einstein rightly we can get the heart of the Quran. The new god was the absolute speed of light. The Quran demolished this god ages ago, in its longing for unity. Light is the ultimate image of Allah, the chief concept created and employed to expound the nature of reality, which the Quran calls Allah. Although Allah as ‘the light of the heavens and the earth’ is an often repeated simile in the Quran, perhaps the most beautiful is the following one:

Noor an ‘ala noor Light upon light

Allah sounds strange but not Ether; why? Allah sounds strange but not the absolute speed of light; why?

What is the nature of light in the Quran? Simple! Relative and absolute character of light, with the difference that what we know as absolute velocity of Einstein, turns into relative and the infinitude of light becomes the absolute. This means that it is possible for light to be at two celestial bodies at the same time, without any time interval, just like the electron emerging in two orbits at the same time. So to hypothesis that there is an absolute divide between the micro and macro nature, subatomic and atomic world, is false. A leap of imagination that Einstein dared not take. They are opposites of each other and yet one is unthinkable without the other. It is the harmony of opposites that defines its unity. Their inner unity is that mass and energy in that great equation of E=mc2.

What this equation suggests in that the energy that manifests itself or is created after the interaction of mc2 is not the same that interacted with mass. After all the energy created by mc2 is not part of our ordinary experience, it does not fall within the view of our ordinary, given perception. That which is beyond our sensual experience must be the reflection of the infinite; that must be the realm of infinite.


(IV)

The revelation describes itself as inimitable. This was the point of contention between the exterior or inner tradition, the rationalist scholars and the Sufis within the Islamic tradition.

The scholars and the Sufis understand inimitability of the Quran differently. The Sufis did not deny that experience of revelation can be shared; that it is almost universal to mankind or it could never be understood, because this is invisible and beyond our sensory experience, of outer and inward perception, against all the false accusation of the modern mind is never denied. The seed structure of reality is never denied.

If the modern mind denies the inner experience, it assumes that the traditional, pre-modern mind denies the sensory experience. What is difficult for it, though, is its self-imposed difficulty that one of the two perceptions or the experiences is false. This so called logical law might be the law of sensory experience, but it does not hold in the subatomic world. The logic or the rationality of the mind, which it considers to be absolute, then is the law of the constitution or structure of the external and sensory experience. Its limitation is evident is so far as in the realm of finitude alone. Revelation is inimitable in the sense that it cannot be copied, which is the realm of the finitude. That is, you cannot parallel it with anything in physical plain.

Reference:

The religious intelligence did not realize that if we restrict revelation to exceptional events in natural, as violation of the law, then the sensory realm emerges as partner to Allah. It becomes in between the human and the world beyond, the realm of infinite. It simply disappears behind the veil of sensory experience. An experience, that at times is common to the religious and modern intelligentsia.

The Quran insists that it is the most common form of shirk, the unconscious association of Allah and the sensory world as partners. You reckon this world, or the life in it……… as the ultimate and you have made it God’s associate.

Revelation is the chief source or testimony of the world beyond, so it is never-ending. If there is a world of infinity that it must continually manifest. That is, what the Quran calls revelation.


A.R. Kidwai. ‘Translating the Untranslatable: A Survey of English Translations of the Quran’ http://www.soundvision.com/Info/quran/english.asp ((Originally printed in The Muslim World Book Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 Summer 1987)


‘Marmaduke Pickthalla brief biography,’ http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMM-AHM-pickthall_bio.htm


[1] 12:26

[2] http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/essays/text/bryanregister/ bohr_compliementarity.html)

[3] Holten. G. 1996. Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion Against Science at the End of the Twentieth Century. Perseus Books. 1996:114)

[4] For a brief biography of Pickthall see Abdul Hakim Murad, http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMM-AHM-pickthall_bio.htm

[5] Cited by Rentfrow, D. http://islam.thetruecall.com/

[6] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19378/19378-8.txt; pp. 3-4.

[7] Ibid., p. 5.

[8] http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMM-AHM-pickthall_bio.htm; p. 9.

[9] Rentfrow, D. http://islam.thetruecall.com/; p. 3.

[10] http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMM-AHM-pickthall_bio.htm; p. 17.

[11] Ibid., p. 18.

[12] It was later published under the title The Cultural Side of Islam (1984). Lahore: Qadiria Book Traders.

[13] Kidwai, A. R. ‘Translating the Untranslatable: A Survey of English Translations of the Quran,’ http://www.soundvision.com/Info/quran/english.asp; p. 1.

[14] The Glorious Quran, 1991, translation by Abdullah Yousaf Ali, transliteration by M. S. Tajar, Maktabah ar-Rasul al ‘Ammah, Kuwait.

[15] N. J. Dawood…

[16] Hadhrami, A.A. ‘Marmaduke Pickthall: A Servant of Islam,’ http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Articles/scholars/marmaduke_pickthall_a_servant_of_islam.htm

[17] The New World that Awaits You

[18] Ibid.

[19] The hypothesis presented here originates in my study of the Quran initiated nearly two decades ago while I was working on my Ph. D. thesis, which was incorporated in the work subsequently published as A Forgotten Vision: A study of human spirituality in the light of Islamic tradition, 1996, Vanguard Books: Lahore.

[20] It would be instructive to see my article ‘Islam and Modernity: Towards a new paradigm,’ appearing in this issue especially for the clarification of the terms such as modernity.

[21] Outhwaite, W. 1987. New Philosophies of Social Science: Realism,

[22] 70:3-4.