I want to be changed by the Quran in the way the Companions of the Prophet, on him be peace, were. What do I do?
About a decade ago, the Muslim scholar Ruqaia Al-Alwani addressed this very question. Here’s a summary of her well-grounded advice, in six steps:
Remember why you are reading the Quran
Take stock of what you make your senses consume
Detoxify your spirit
Detect poisons in your soul
Fortify your ‘self’ (nafs) with God’s signs
Make changes that let the Quran change you
Step One: Remember why you are reading the Quran
God has told us exactly why and how He wants us to read His Book, which is, crucially, His final, culminating, superseding, and sealing Revealed Word to all of humanity.
To reflect on its verses (li yadabbaru)
To become ever mindful of what the Quran says (li yatadhakkara ulu’l-albab)
For the Quran to change us, first and foremost, God tells us we must (a) make the physical and mental effort to read the verses He revealed in it; (b) think about what God intends by them, their meanings, and the importance of what their statements imply; with (c) a decisive purpose in mind: to do what they command us and not do what they forbid us from.
In other words, we are to internalize full belief in what they say. This is the meaning of His verse – “so that they reflect (yadabbaru) on its verses, and so that those endowed with … understanding may be ever mindful of its commandments (yatadhakkara).”
A most blessed Book have We sent down to you, O Prophet, in this Quran, so that they who hear its tidings may reflect on its verses. And so that those who are endowed with discretion and understanding may heed its admonition and be ever mindful of its commandments.” (Surat Sad, 38:29)
About this, the early Follower (Tabi‘i) and great ascetic and Muslim sage, Hasan Al-Basri (d. 110 H / 728 CE), born under the caliphate of ‘Umar ibn Al-Khattab, said of tadabbur, reflecting on the Quran’s verses as you read them:
By God! Contemplating the Quran’s verses (tadabbur) is not merely memorizing their words while neglecting what they enjoin. Sadly, some dare say they have recited the entire Quran, yet one detects hardly a trace of it in their manners or deeds.” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Surat Al-Nisa’, 4:34)
The great Quran commentator Ibn Kathir (d. 1373 / 774 H.) of the Mamluk Sultanate in Damascus (the one who gave us Hasan Al-Basri’s preceding assessment) had this to say about tadabbur (reflection on the Quran), after God’s pointed reprimand a handful of verses later (Will they not, then, reflect on the Quran?):
God orders His faithful servants to contemplate and ponder the Quran. He forbids them from heedless recitation of its verses and from lax effort to understand their clear meanings. This command is unambiguous – and when God commands, it must be obeyed. As such, tadabbur, reflecting on the Quran’s verses, on the Quran’s meaning, is obligatory.” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Surat Al-Nisa’, 4:82)
In this regard, Ibn Al-Qayyim (d. 751 H /1352 CE), one of the great scholars and spiritual commentators, said of those who do not “reflect” on the Quran when reading it that their understanding goes no deeper than their “mere uttering” of its words and letters. (Ibn Al-Qayyim, Bada’i‘ Al-Tafsir (Striking Explications of the Quran)
What is remarkable about tadabbur – reflecting on the Quran’s meanings, lessons, parables, stories, instructions, and moral imperatives – is how unremarkable the expectation of us doing this when we read the Quran is among virtually all Muslim scholars.
So, Step One, then: read the Quran’s verses, think on them, then act on what they tell you – knowing that our hearts, like our limbs, also act.
Step Two: Inventory the knowledge you give precedent access to your prime senses
God classes three primary human senses in the Quran for which we are accountable: hearing, sight, and the sensory heart. Their hierarchy of eminence, interestingly, occurs in both directions at once, from most fundamental to most susceptible.
In your quest for the Quran to change you, it is of primary importance that you first open, unclutter, and focus each of these senses when you read God’s Own Words, for they are the means (whichever of these senses God has placed at your disposal) through which we take in the revealed imperatives, admonitions, and edifying ayat, or sign-verses, of His Quran, and for the acts of which He shall call us to account:
And you shall not ever follow that of which you have no sure knowledge, without first verifying its truthfulness. Indeed, hearing and sight and conceptions of the heart – every act of each of these faculties shall one answer for in the Hereafter.” (Surat Al-Isra’, 17:36)
The sights, and sounds, and notions that we give passageway through our senses exert a massive, shaping influence on us physically, conceptually, and spiritually. We must, therefore, vigilantly guard these, the blessed gateways to our soul (nafs).
“There’s the rub,” Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously said, meaning the impediment, or the thing that blocks, in our case, our wise selection of what we will willingly allow our eyes and ears to take in, which they infuses into our hearts and suffuses our souls.
Step Two is a difficult one: forgo things that distract our hearts, overwhelm our thoughts, and inflame our desires. These are attractions that have become competitors for our attention to the message of the Quran and impediments to focusing our senses on taking in the Quran’s meanings unhindered.
It is hard because it requires a sustained act of self-denial, of abrogating harmful habits, to free our senses to transmit to our organs of purity and belief – the heart and soul – the Quran’s verses.
Remember from Step One that internalizing the Quran’ begins with tadabbur, reflecting on the meanings of its verses, their instructions, moral enlightenment, and the life stories of its exemplary figures – alladhina an‘amta ‘alayhim, “those upon whom You have bestowed grace” (Surat Al-Fatihah, 1:7).
For what is the aim of God’s command of tadabbur? “Now truly, indeed, We have varied in this Quran something of every kind of illustration for the good of all people. God knows we need these altered states of reflection to penetrate our willful, combative even, human psyches to power our spiritual transformation, for of all things, man is most argumentative. (Surat Al-Kahf, 18:54)
The purpose of this is to let these diverse divine lessons He has interwoven in the Quran imbue our souls with what the Quran calls “the true hue of God.” For this spiritual rinse to take hold, our hearing, our sight, and our contemplative heart (s. fu’ad, pl. af’idah) must be free and clear of corruptive contenders:
Say, O believers: It is the hue of God alone that is upon our religion. And who is there better than God to endue the human soul with the true hue of His religion! Thus to Him alone we do solemnly devote all our worship.” (Surat Al-Baqarah, 2:138)
It is through Revelation – the Quran and the ways of the Sunnah of its Messenger, on him be peace – (along with our sages’ transmission of knowledge and their own reflections), that the mirror of the human intellect, the soul of man, is polished, so that we may reflect in our clay natures the beautiful, luminous Names of God, so that the image of these attributes may come to earthly life in our character.
This is what being changed by the Quran really means. This is what our mother, Aisha, God be ever pleased with her, meant when she described the character of the Prophet, on him be peace, when asked, saying: “Have you not read the Quran? … It was the Quran” (Muslim). Her rhetorical question and then statement are profoundly meaningful. To read the Quran with understanding is to see the character of the Prophet, on him be peace. And to have seen the Prophet, on him be peace, acting is to witness the complete character the Quran envisions for man. It is as if the Prophet, on him be peace, were a living Quran walking upon the earth.
This raises an urgent divine question to us:
Did you think, then, that We had created you in vain, and that you would not be returned to Us for Judgment?” (Surat Al-Mu’minun, 23:115)
Save yourself.
So, Step Two, then: catalog the real priorities for which you use your senses, and be ready to humble yourself before your Lord, renouncing your arrogance, your laziness, and your self-deceit.
Step Three: Detoxify your spirit
We willingly poison our spirits by letting past the citadels of our eyes and ears what we know God has forbidden, and through the sustained, aberrant imaginings of our own hearts – something the modern ethos insists is “healthy” for us to indulge without limit.
These toxins silently enshroud the spiritual senses, like cataracts that grow over the eyes, plugs that fill the ears, and rust that gathers over the heart – until we can perceive things by their true nature no longer.
God describes the human transformation:
They have eyes with which they do not see. They have ears with which they do not hear. Such as these are like cattle. Rather, they are more astray! It is these who are the heedless!” (Surat Al-A‘raf, 7:179)
Ibn Al-Qayyim says that this comes down to a matter of training and exercise, by which all things – including memory, mental capacities, and the spirit – like the body, become strengthened.
God exhorts us to build up our great powers of remembrance like the truly God-fearing, who, quickly “remember God’s covenant when touched with a passing impulse from Satan – and at once they see things as they truly are” (Surat Al-A‘raf, 7:201).
So, Step Three, then: guard the access ways to your heart and soul by actively and vigilantly selecting what you permit your eyes to view and your ears to listen to, something you can train yourself to become adept at doing.
Step Four: Test your soul for five spiritual poisons
Here are the five fatal toxins that blind you, make you go deaf, and turn your supple sensory heart to a lifeless stone, if you allow your senses to keep drawing from their venom sacs. And be forewarned: the link between the eyes and the heart is direct!
ARROGANCE: The deadliest poison, for which God forever banished Satan from Paradise, is arrogance. It addles the intellect, disables the senses, and discombobulates the moral compass. When left to flow freely into us, these contaminants will progressively diminish our heat’s native ability to discern, comprehend, and process the divine sign-verses of both the revealed Word (the Quran) and the created Work of God (the natural world) when they come to us, until we but wander astray.
This loss of innate human function to comprehend the Heavenly signs of God, revealed and natural, is a divine promise:
I shall turn away from My signs those who have grown arrogant in the land, without any right. For even if they were to see every natural and revealed sign of Heavenly truth, still they would not believe in it. Moreover, if they see the way of faith and right guidance, they do not take it as a way of life. Yet if they see the way of perversion, they take it as a way of life. That is because they have belied Our revealed signs and have been heedless of them. (Surat Al-A‘raf, 7:146).
The caution here: return humbly to God, neither despairing of any sin nor turning away dejected because of any deprivation. God’s mercy is ever in reach.
INDECENT GATHERINGS: God has forbidden believers from joining people who partake of any kind of obscene or vulgar behavior – whether in their talk, viewing, or activity. This prohibition refers especially to gatherings in which people belie what God has revealed or mock any of His signs. If we remain present when they indulge in indecent behavior, “indeed, you would then be like them,” meaning God counts us as one of them, and we bear the same sin, even if we ourselves are not directly engaging in the vile conduct. (Surat Al-Nisa’, 4:140)
If you are in a gathering where such vile talk or conduct begins, you are to “turn away from them until they take up some other discourse. And should Satan cause you to forget this command” in that setting, “then do not continue to sit with the wrongdoing people after remembering” God’s command (Surat Al-An‘am, 6:68).
Take note - this includes our virtual participation in prohibited behaviors by digital means (online, TV, radio, etc.)
LISTENING TO UNDIGNIFIED TALK: God gives high praise to the believers who refuse to give ear to offensive speech. “When they pass by those uttering ‘vile talk’” (al-zur), they don’t grace it with acknowledgment. “They pass by it with dignity” (Surat Al-Furqan, 7:72). Not only do they “turn away from it” when they hear obscene speech, but when it is directed at them in mockery of their religion, “they do not seek to emulate those who are ignorant and belligerent” in their response. “Rather, they say: For us are our deeds and for you are your deeds: Peace be with you!” (Surat Al-Qasas, 28:55).
VAIN SPEECH: What we say is crucially important to God. Islam counts the things we say as acts, deeds, like physical actions. Speech can be harmful, beneficial, mixed, or neutral. To prepare for the Quran to change us, we should:
Avoid harmful speech.
Say what benefits us with God and those who hear us.
Filter out the good from the bad in speech that has both.
Increasingly minimize saying what has no value.
We have repentance (tawbah) ever at our disposal if we say or listen to what we shouldn’t – speech categories 1, 3, and 4 – out of neglect, weakness, or anger.
WORDLY OVERINDULGANCE: Many people have observed how life in these latter times seems to be defined by our intense and relentless distraction with the stuff of the world (al-dunya, literally what hangs near, cloaking our senses). Whether or not the diversion of the human senses is more tempting for us than for people of ages past, we certainly know that almost everyone feels a loss of time for self-reflection, time to repair to our own, alone, to amend our souls.
This reduction of time to self-assess, to regather our energies and inner direction, has caused massive damage to our personal and communal relationship with the Quran.
And what are the dimensions of this relationship: (1) its consistent, correct recitation, (2) its daily, systematic memorization, (3) learning its Arabic language, (4) comprehending its meanings, (5) devising strategies for implementing the best of its verses’ commands and high moral exhortations in our lives, (6) its sustained study and reflection, and (7) its presentation and establishment in our lives, families, and communities.
So, Step Four, then: the hard, hard reality is that we must learn to banish from our daily lives all sorts of intemperance and excesses. This cannot be accomplished without our wholehearted embrace and practical commitment to the virtues of modesty and restraint that characterize this religion of Islam, and then using these twin qualities to begin gradually replacing our many fruitless, distracting pastimes and mental indulgences with a resolved, categorical striving – in all seven phases of our personal engagement with the Quran.
Step Five: Fortify yourself with the ayat (signs) of God
What we have been saying here is simple: we are – most of us, as human beings as Muslims, and as an Ummah – are in need of spiritual guidance and cures. The Quran is literally, by its own name for itself, Al-Shifa’, The Panacea, the universal cure.
Then what are this cure-all’s prescriptions for humankind. The Quran repeats its twin prime remedies for us over and again: the ayat, or sign-verses of the Quran itself, and the ayat, sign-marks, of creation.
The first we are to take into our hearts by copious attentive listening.
Indeed, in this Quran, there is, most surely, a reminder for whoever has a living heart or lends an attentive ear, with full presence of mind.” (Surat Al-Qaf, 50:37)
The second we are to rationally absorb both by (a) sustained meditations on the the natural world …
Indeed, God alone is splitter of grain and pit. He brings forth the living from the dead. And He brings forth the dead from the living. That is God! How, then, are they turned away from worshipping Him alone?
Splitter of morning light from the darkness — He alone made the night for repose and the sun and the moon for reckoning. That is the decree of the Overpowering One, the All-Knowing.
And He alone is the One who made the stars for you, that you might be guided by them through the veils of darkness of land and sea. Truly, We have made the signs in creation utterly distinct indications for a people who would know God and His way.
And He alone is the One who has produced all of you from a single soul. Then there is habitation for you upon the earth, then a repository in it, in the grave. Truly, We have made the signs in your lives utterly distinct indications for a people who would reflect on them and understand their wisdom.
And He alone is the One who has sent down from the sky, water, by which We have thus brought forth plants of every kind, and from which We bring forth anew green sprouts. From this do We bring forth lushly layered grain. And so too from the spathes of date palms issue clusters of dates, hanging near in easy reach; moreover, there are gardens of grapevines and groves of olives and pomegranates – alike in their foliage yet unalike in their fruitage. Look at their fruits when they fruit and again when they ripen upon them. Indeed, in this there are sure signs of God’s might and mercy for a people who believe. (Surat Al-An'am, 6:95-99)
… and by (b) studying the traces of the nations come before our own:
So have they who deny faith not journeyed through the lands and seen enough of such ends of the peoples God devastated before them, so as to have their hearts awakened to understand with them, and their ears opened so that they may truly hear with them? For it is not the eyes that become blind but the hearts within the breasts that go blind. (Surat Al-Hajj, 22:46)
When we awaken our senses to the revealed and created ayat, or signs, of God, the entire world becomes a mosque, a place to bow the face down to the ground in worship of its Sole Creator (the meaning of the Arabic ‘masjid’).
Then our sense of hearing (sama‘a) open, at once, to the cantillation of the Quran’s verses singing God’s praise – and to the tenor and treble of the universe and creations’ constant hymning of His glory – and the human heart breaks, like the earth that quivers and splits, and comes to life.
So, Step Four, then: to clear the senses leave off the poisons and purify the flesh and spirit with the prescribed medicaments of the Quran, taking in the paired signs of the Word and the Work of God – the Quran’s revealed sign-verses and the natural world’s created sign-marks, rampant within us and without.
Step Six: Changes that let the Quran change you
Do not doubt the Quran’s immense miraculous powers to bring about utterly altering physical and spiritual changes.
God said in the Quran – and behold its raw, syncopal power:
For if ever there were a Heavenly Recitation with which mountains could be moved, or with which the earth could be cut to pieces, or with which the dead could be spoken to [then it is most surely this Quran].” (Surat Al-Ra‘d, 13:31)
And also:
Had We sent this Quran down upon a mountain, you would have most surely seen it utterly humbled, split and crumble, from fear of God.” (Surat Al-Hashr, 59:21)
Yet, for you to activate this incomparable transformative potential of the Quran in yourself, you need to commit to three kinds of behaviors first, and thereafter perfect your resolve with five convictions.
Three Simple Commitments to Essential Quranic Change:
Determine to always do your best, that is, to reach the high behavioral state of ihsan.
God said:
“Blessed be the One … Who created death and life to test and reveal which of you are ‘best’ (ahsan) in deeds.” (Surat Al-Mulk, 67:1-2)
Keep renewing your intention, of resolute determination, to let the Quran change you.
God said:
“And very truly, We have made the Quran easy for remembrance. So is there any to remember?” (Surat Al-Qamar, 54:17)
“Remembering” the Quran means to memorize its verses; continuously call them up; keep them in mind as you act; honor their commands by upholding them, be they initiated by time passages or life events; and strive to live by the best of their moral standards and highest admonitions.
Increase the time you dedicate to the Quran.
Approach the Quran with the intention – not simply to read a surah or a thirtieth part of it (juz’) each day (these may be part of your strategy) – but with a plan to reflect on its verses’ meanings; to follow their divine counsel, instructions, and warnings; and to know and keep their commandments ever in mind, such that you abide by them in your life.
God said:
“A most blessed Book have We sent to you, O Prophet, in this Quran, so that they who hear its tidings may reflect on its verses. And so that those who are endowed with discretion and understanding may heed its admonition and be ever mindful of its commandments.” (Surat Sad, 38:29)
Lastly, there is great, great wisdom in following the strategy of the Prophet’s Companions, peace be upon him and God’s pleasure on them, in their prophetically taught and approved methodology of internalizing the Quran.
The Companions would learn to recite 10 verses from the Messenger of God, God’s prayers of blessings upon him and peace; and they would not take another 10 verses [from him] until they learned all that these verses held in them, as to sacred knowledge and deeds. They would say: ‘We learned sacred knowledge and action concurrently.’” (Musnad Ahmad)
These are the three behavioral resolutions you need to make and keep in your quest to let the Quran change you.
Now, here are five convictions you need to resolutely incorporate in your outlook to guide you through your striving with the Quran for change.
Be certain the Quran is speaking directly to you.
Have no allusions that the Quran is for people of bygone ages. Despite the utopian nonsense of inevitable, self-directed human progress that modernity’s advocates have hammered into the last 16 or so generations, since the Enlightenment, know that the primordial earthen-transcendental human nature (fitrah) upon which God created man does not change.
Do not hurry your recitation and reading of the Quran. Rather, seek its meanings.
Such was God’s command to His Prophet, on him be peace, and we should, as in all things, emulate him:
“For most high above all is God, the King, the Truth! Thus make no haste with the Quran, O Prophet, before its revelation to you is completed. But say only: My Lord! Increase me in knowledge.” (Surat Ta Ha, 20:114)
The Companion Hudhayfah, God be pleased with him, reported his experience when once, as a boy, he joined the Prophet, on him be peace, for the late-night prayer known in Arabic as tahajjud (keeping vigil).
I prayed with the Messenger of God, God’s prayers of blessing upon him and peace, one night and he started reciting Surat Al-Baqarah (2). I thought he would bow [at the waist in ruku‘] when he reached the hundredth verse, but he continued. Then I though he would perhaps recite the whole surah in one standing [rak‘ah] of the prayer. When he finished the surah, I thought he would then bow [in ruku‘], but he started Surat Al-Nisa’ (4) and recited all of it. Then he started Surat Aal ‘Imran (3) and recited all of it.
He recited leisurely. And whenever a verse included a prayer of supplication, he asked God. And whenever a verse included the Lord’s refuge, he sough His refuge.” (Muslim)
Do not let things you cannot change (worries, sorrows, or bad thoughts) inundate your mind and distract you when you are reading the Quran.
Do not let preoccupations with people, possessions, or your position in life divert your heart’s focus from your ultimate aim: magnificent triumph in the Hereafter, that is, admission to God’s Garden, beneath which rivers flow, to abide therein forever (Surat Al-Nisa’, 4:13).
Most importantly, follow the Prophet’s authentic advice to you, on him be peace: “Say a good word. You shall be enriched. And say nothing of evil. You shall stay safe.” (Musnad Al-Quda’i)
So, Step Five, then: give the Quran your all. Keep locked in.
This outlines how the seekers before us phased into the Quran to let the Quran phase into them.