A short while ago we began reading the Quran together with friends. Our intent was to grasp and to internalize the essentials of this divine message; our hope and our wish was that it become life to our life. We have so far found great profit; some things in our lives have genuinely changed for the better — and we wish to share this experience.

Our aim is that a renewed bond with the Quran arises everywhere — that it become a balm to our wounds, a guide to our personal and social life — and that, in the end, we meet with the Quran in the same valley.

With friends of differing backgrounds, we study one or two verses each week. For this work to be sound, we first establish epistemic and hermeneutic principles and weigh our approach to the verses against them.

The tradition accepts most of these principles. Perhaps only a few will draw a question mark from the exegetical tradition. Our personal conviction is that, in order both to understand the Quran with knowledge of nature / society / the individual (the cosmos) and to make sense of the cosmos with the wisdom of the Quran, all of these principles are critical.

Let us now set forth — very briefly — the 9 principles across these two categories: 5 epistemic, 4 hermeneutic.

The Quran is comprehensive in its subject matter — it encompasses everything created. The Quran is a projection of al-Kitāb; and because everything moist and dry is inscribed in this Kitāb al-Mubīn, all of it falls within the Quran's scope as well.

When the Quran leaves a concept (a ruling, a law, a command) general, it is because it intends it to be comprehensive. To narrow the meaning by particularizing it ad hoc — without grounding the narrowing in principles — is wrong.

Bediüzzaman speaks on this:

For the Quran to be self-interpretive, we must assume that its topics are taken up across different passages around a coherent shared meaning. For example, if the human is said in one place to be created from water, in another from clay, and in another from mud — by the consistency principle we can infer that these are different stages / phases of the same process.

Otherwise, with a superficial gaze that does not think through the form, that does not perform tadabbur — should we declare 'contradiction' and stop — we will find no benefit and no guidance.

In the Quran there are no fully synonymous words. Even when near-synonyms exist, the Lord's preference of one over another always carries a wisdom. Words taken to be synonymous diverge in their roots, derivations, and idiomatic uses. By the Principle of Generalization, these divergences ultimately yield new inferences.

There are countless examples here. Each could be its own essay. Setting their full wisdoms aside for other writings, let us mention a few in brief:

— Pharaoh vs King: The king of Egypt is named Melik in the verses of Yūsuf — and Firaʿawn in the verses of Mūsā.
— Iblīs and Shayṭān: In passages addressing God He is Iblīs; in passages addressing Adam, Shayṭān.
— Medina vs Yathrib: In the words of the hypocrites — who desired their pre-Islamic authorities — Yathrib; everywhere else, Madīna (alluding to Madīnat al-Nabī).
— Qawl vs Kalām: Kalām when conveying God's speech; qawl for what is said by Jibrīl or the Messenger (peace be upon him).
— Mūsā and ʿĪsā's addressing of the Children of Israel: Mūsā says 'O my people'; ʿĪsā says 'O Children of Israel'.
— Rain — but which rain? Maṭar, wābil, māʾ al-samāʾ, wadq, ghayth, midrār — these names of rain are deployed with consistent precision throughout. Maṭar wherever it appears carries a negative connotation — a harmful rain (no such distinction in the hadith corpus).

The Quran provides us with a model for interpreting, making sense of, and tying to God the observations and inferences of the inner and outer world (anfus and āfāq). The human draws information from anfus and āfāq by observation — but seats it upon the rail where it ought to sit by means of the Quran.

We receive this message from the very first verse revealed. (Felsufi's earlier essay — 'Sūrah Al-ʿAlaq 1: The First Bismillah, the Big Picture, and the Metaphysical Paradigm' — opens this topic.)

In one sense, the modeling principle is to accept that the Quran reads the cosmos. In Bediüzzaman's terse phrasing:

Another example of the modeling principle — that is, the Quran reading the cosmos — is the verse Bediüzzaman places as the frontispiece of the Resurrection Treatise (Risâle-i Haşir): Sūrah Al-Rūm 50.

Note how it takes an observation from the outer world — autumn's deaths, the falling of leaves; spring's risings, the trees filling with verdant foliage — and gives it as a model for the death and resurrection of human beings, drawing out the laws of imāta (causing-to-die) and iḥyāʾ (giving-life).

Through this model, that we might draw inferences across so many other topics, it places in our hands a 'staff of Moses' — and from wherever we strike, the water of maʿrifa (acquainted knowledge) springs forth.

This modeling principle is — for the reading of the cosmic projection of al-Kitāb through the projection of the Quran — like a bismillāh; it is a key.

Without the Quran's tawḥīd-centered holistic message, neither physics nor biology nor sociology nor medicine nor psychology can grant the human maʿrifa and be a step that directs him to the ascent (miʿrāj).

The observations of the cosmos undertaken upon the bismillāh of the Quran — even when the findings and inferences of physics, biology, and sociology are, by their nature, incomplete or at times wrong — remain powerful means that make us read the Names and Attributes of God and that bring us nearer to Him at every step.

Alongside the 5 epistemic principles we accept for now, the next essay will mention the 4 hermeneutic principles: (Felsufi's continuation — 'Our Principles for Reading the Quran-2: Hermeneutic Principles'.)