The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 1) — Page xxix
GENERAL INTRODUCTION commentaries on the book which experts in the language or in the subject may have written, but also requires close study of the book itself and insight into the terminology, idiom and fundamentals which the book employs and from which its comments derive their significance. Those who seek to interpret the book without a study of the book itself will have little help from the commentaries. European translators and commentators of the Quran do not seem to have made the necessary close study of the Holy Book. No wonder, therefore, that their comments often border on the ludicrous. (v) Every age gives rise to new sciences in the light of which every book which professes to teach anything is exposed to a new criticism. The value of a book is either more securely established, or it becomes more doubtful than ever. The Quran, being no exception to the rule, demanded a new commentary in light of new knowledge. Without it we cannot judge how far the Quran is still effective as a teaching or how far it has surpassed its own record. When the first commentaries of the Quran were written, the Bible in Arabic did not exist. There was not even one complete copy. The fragments which had been translated into Arabic were not available to the commentators of the Quran. Whenever, therefore, they had to discuss parts of the Quran containing references to the Bible or the Mosaic tradition, they had to rely on hearsay or their own speculations. Needless to say, their comments are at times disappointing and at times ridiculous. European writers attribute their mistakes to the Quran and hold up the Holy Book to ridicule. They forget that these commentators did not know the Bible. They relied on popular accounts or on what they heard from Jewish and Christian scholars who passed on to the unsuspecting commentators of the Quran material drawn sometimes from their books of tradition instead of the Bible and sometimes from their own mischievous imagination. In this transaction the commentators no doubt betrayed simplicity and lack of caution, but the Jewish and Christian scholars betrayed lack of honesty and piety. European writers of our time, therefore, have far more reason to deplore the dishonesty of their forefathers than to ridicule the Muslim commentators of the Quran. But now it is different. Now knowledge of the Bible has become common. Arabic, Latin and Greek works have become accessible to Muslim scholars and we are able to comment in a new way upon parts of the Quran which contain references to the Bible and the Mosaic tradition. (vi) Until our own time, controversy between one religion and another related less to moral and social ideals and more to belief and ritual. Because of this, the teaching of the Quran bearing on moral ideas and moral training and on social, economic, and political relations was never discussed. Today, however, the world thinks much more in terms of these practical matters. It 111