Page 284 - Quranic Wisdom - New.indd

Read the Quran with a Positive Mind

But there are others who are of a different, a more negative
cast of mind, whose reading of the Quran produces different
results. They read the Quran with their own objectives in view.
And their preoccupations become a great obstacle to seeing the
true face of Islam. They are not ready to correct their thinking
and, consciously or unconsciously, try to find some word or
phrase in the Quran, on the basis of which they may claim that
the Quran endorses their own personal ideas.

Those who read the Quran with a positive mind,
or with a questing spirit, will find the truth in its
pages.

For example, there was a certain communist who was a great
believer in the concept of state-controlled economy. While he
was studying the Quran, he came across this verse:
Moses said to his people, ‘Turn to God for help and
be patient. The earth belongs to God. He gives it
to those of His servants whom He chooses, and the
future belongs to the God-fearing.’ (7:128)

This example shows how one can be mislead by careless
misinterpretation of the Quran. The above verse had nothing
to do with the socialist philosophy of a communist, but there
was a word—earth—which the reader, being a communist, easily
converted into ‘land’ and from that came to the conclusion that
the Quran endorses state-owned economy. Without further
ado, he formulated the following principle: ‘The land is owned
by God, the state is a representative of God, so land should be
owned by the state.’
Such was the strength with which this self-styled knowledge
imbued him that he proclaimed that the Quran was a book of
socialist philosophy and that Karl Marx had only reiterated the
Quranic philosophy in modern terms.

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