I was asked to expand a bit on how I “read” the Quran now. I was initially motivated by a linguistic analysis of the Quran: a method I am trained to use not limited to just syntax and morphology, but also pragmatics, semantics, historical linguistics, and even psycholinguistics.

This brought me to semiotics, the study of how signs work. When talking about signs, it’s hard to say we “read” them without muddying the waters of what we mean. So instead of “reading” in the linguistic sense of extracting sentential meaning (semantics) from the sign , I prefer to “respond” to signs. Revelation as a system of signs communicating meaningful signals or messages to its intended recipient: ultimately me. I can relay or reflect it, accept it or reject it, but from my own subjective vantage point, my “I” is the end of the line and my observations while relaying that signal are all I can know. I cannot see beyond my vantage point.
My approach is to respond to the Quran as God’s revealed speech directly without the mediation of historical theorization as we find in most commentaries, legal doctrines, sufic traditions, creedal polemics, and other lenses. Lensing is an unavoidable activity in reading. If I’m unaware of the biasing effect of my lenses, then I am likely to never know its limitations; never to know what is the subject, the object of inquiry, or the artifacts of the lens. The goal is to read the Revealed Speech intentionally and thoughtfully as an authentic communiqué, not as a history book (naqlism), or a user’s manual (neo-salafism):

I try to suspend all that I think I know, all that I’ve grown accustomed to with my interactions with the Quran and with the world…the Creator’s creation. I set time learning to learn again with the faculties I am given – my senses, my reasoning, my feelings, my empirical and rational endowments. Most especially the boundaries of my first hand experience, which will take a lot of time to (re)acquaint myself with.

In suspending all the colored lenses I’m accustomed to using, I try to make the following minimal assumptions and a priori commitments:

1. The One who speaks the Quran speaks eternally, so when I encounter it, He is speaking to me NOW eternally. Only the present can be termed “eternal”, while the past and future are demarcated by the ephemerality of this moment.

2. The One addressing me is also creating me, giving me existence. Therefore, what the One has to say to me MUST be intended for me, and it must be urgent. Like a master teacher, He has created me with the perfectly corresponding human faculties for me to understand the lesson as I am supposed to.

3. He has put in me the urgency to ask the questions he inspired in me: “Where am I, how did I get here, where am I going?” And He has provided the environment to investigate using the perfectly corresponding faculties.

In short, the Creator creates the student (me), the lesson (the world) fitting perfectly together to teach me what I cannot learn without His Guidance.