COMMENTARY STUDIES
Year:2015 | Volume:6 | Issue:23|Papers Count:10

Various verses of the Holy Quran imply to the principle of Raj`at. The verse 82 of Surah An-Naml is one of the verses in which it is pointed to the emergence of “beast of the earth”. The word “beast” means a live creature attributable to humans and non-humans. Regarding whatness of “earth live creature” and the manner of its plan and mission, the Holy Quran briefly says that: it is an animated and living creature God makes it to be appeared on the eve of Raj`at. He speaks with people and his words imply that people would not believe in the revelation of God. Given the context of the verse and what is received from narrations, emergence of “beast of earth” is an event being mentioned as one of the signs of Raj`at and certainly, it will be before the Raj`at. This matter could be nothing except return (to God) to which many narrations refer to.

Verse 24 of Surah Al-Anfal known as “the verse Hailulah” is one of the most eloquent and comprehensive allegorical verses of Quran including intellectual, doctrinal, ethical and educational m’arifas well as the area of the Quranic commentators and thinkers’ ideas. This verse includes three parts from which the middle part says: “Allah cometh in between the man and his own heart” leading to some ambiguities taken into consideration by Fariqain’s commentators and the source of serious conflicts among them. Two general viewpoints of deterministic and non-deterministic inferences are reported in this paper and while the deterministic viewpoint is criticized and rejected, the other viewpoint is strengthened. As for the next step, the non-deterministic viewpoints such as “Hailulahof wrath”, “Hailulah of affection”, “Hailulah with the meaning of sovereignty and power of God”, “Hailulah with the meaning of ultimate nearness of God to human” have been explained and criticized. Analyzing the concept of the word “hawl” (power) from the viewpoint of the scholars in terms of historical evolution, the authors have adopted a clear basis and proposed their autonomous viewpoint under the title of “Hailulah of affection and wrath” by presenting their reasons and evidences.

The feature of educating names has made human to have a higher position than the position of the archangels. The present study intends to investigate the whatness of the names mentioned in verse 31 of Surah Al- Baqara by analyzing the discussions of the Fariqain’s commentators. Shiite commentators have proposed three theories about names: the words pointing to external objects i.e. objective and external realities realized as the cause of creation of all possibilities of the world; and the unseen resources as the world’s origin. The Sunni commentators have proposed two theories including similarity of these verses, and means of creating communication and surviving on the planet earth for human. Implementation of the Fariqain’s interpretive comments indicates that the commentators’ conflicts about interpretation of these verses are arisen from their differences in interpretive principles and resources.

Among the Fariqain commentators, the verse Tathir is one of the most controversial verses in the Holy Quran about innocence of Ahlul-Bayt. For Shiite commentators, Ahlul-Bayt is known to be limited to the Pure Five while some Sunni commentators believe that it is attributed to the prophet’s wives, and for some others it is attributed to the prophet’s wives and the Pure Five and, again, for some others, it includes the prophet’s relatives. Meanwhile, one of the Shiite commentators’ arguments about this claim is the “change of pronoun” from feminine plural to masculine plural in the verse Tathir. Applying an analytico-descriptive approach to criticize and evaluate this issue, the study deals with terminology of the word “Ahl” and its uses in word and in Quran, and the results show that despite of proving allocation of “Ahlul-Bayt” to the Pure Five with reference to the historical evidences and certain verses, the reliance of the Shiite commentators on “pronoun change’’ is a matter of debate and reflection.

Spirituality in organizations has gained universal attention in the field of management during recent years. Spirituality is the product of organizational culture having behavioral, conversational, and believing dimensions in such a way that should be turned into a common perception among the personnel of the organization. Since the Holy Quran and its data are derived from revelation and it is concerned with illustration of innate religion, it includes a unique feature in the data of sacred spirituality. Having adopted content analysis method to explicate the data, the paper proposes a comprehensive definition from sacred spirituality by epistemic principles of the Holy Quran. According to the provisions of this definition, the indicators of sacred spirituality have been investigated from the Quran’s viewpoint to achieve independent variables of the conceptual model as well as the indices, intermediate variables and finally the dependent variables. At the end of this process, the conceptual model of sacred spirituality with a Quranic approach has been designed.

The Holy Quran has a form and a meaning; this feature is one of the reasons of Quran’s eternality according to which the public people cannot have a full understanding of its reality and secrets. The verses pointing to this reality are verses 77-79 of Al-Waqi’a being called “Mass” verses. Investigating the commentary resources of Fariqain shows that there is a deep relation between the verses ‘Mas’ and ‘Tathir’. The results of the study indicate that a regular jurisprudential inference of the verse ‘Mas’ i.e. forbidden touch of the Holy Quran’s verses without Taharat is void of a strong reason. In accordance with this verse, the real commentators are those who have been in contact with divine verses with their pure existence and have reached the degree of innocence. Therefore, enjoying a pure conscience and having moved effectively in the path of journey toward God and having achieved an amount of appearance and conscience purity, they have had advantages from that source of reality to the extent of their existence capacity, spiritual greatness and conscience purity and they make it available for other people.

The Holy Quran’s ontological foundations about interpreting the ranking of the worldly creatures are different from the prevalent view attributed to Aristotle. According to Quran, the ranking of creatures depends upon the amount of nearness of each creature to God. Based on this assumption, human will not be the noblest of the creatures, and even if this condition is not realized in a man, he will be like animals or even lower than that. There are verses being discussed by Allame Tabatabaie among which are the ones about “human misguidance compared to animals”. Having analyzed the probabilities in interpretive discourse of Allameh about the discussed verses, the study attempts to discover his final viewpoint in Tafsir Al-Mizan about two main topics on “similarity of some people to animals” and also on “how some people will turn inferior to animals”. In general, four probabilities could be inferred from Allameh Tabatabaie’s viewpoint in this commentary. It appears that some of these probabilities could be retractable by no means and not being compatible with his viewpoint in commentary of the similar verses.

This paper aims at investigating the existential philosophy of God’s trial and its role as an educational strategy in the verses of the Quran. To achieve our goal, anthropology and ontology as well as their conceptual relation must be studied in Quran to realize the definition of education and its principles based on content analysis and deduction; and consequently, to apply the criteria of achieving this goal as educational strategies. In accordance with this analysis, human and God have been related to each other by a divine relationship. God has created human and determined a goal for him to be fulfilled through this divine relationship, i.e. based on the knowledge he acquired from God’s divinity and his servitude which is the same as education, and dos and don’ts falling under the category of legislative duty and guidance. Based on this duty and guidance, human’s hidden talents will be actualized and they will be rewarded or punished accordingly. The God’s trial is a certain, definite and universal tradition having degrees. The hidden and potential talents are not the criteria for qualification and competency but these talents must be actualized by the God’s trial. By this description, the aim and philosophy of the God’s trial is bringing human to the esteem of God i.e. human servitude and slavery based on educational strategy.

 ‘Almaraqi’s Commentary’ is among the important contemporary commentaries. Its writer is Ahmad Mustafa Almaraqi, former chancellor of Al-Azhar University and he is a follower of Almenar commentary school. Relying on some principles and methods, this commentator has dealt with commentary of the Quran’s verses. Appearance validity of the book, lack of validity of individuals’ news in commentary, lack of distortion in Quran, prohibition of interpretation by personal opinions, and believing in proportionate nature of the verses are among his principles of interpretation. However he has not been bound to his own principles of interpretation in some cases such as commentary on the verses 3 and 4 of Surah Al-Fil and 243 and 259 of Al-Baqara. In some cases such as commentary of the verse 55 of Surah Al-Imran he has ignored mutawatir reports or the reports full of truth evidences by the Sunnis and he has interpreted the verses against their appearance and those narrations. To provide his commentary, he has applied various commentary methods. Some of his commentaries being under the influence of Wahhabi ideology or originated from materialistic analysis of the verses are criticized in this paper.

Methodological discussions in the fields of humanities are among the most important effective factors in development of humanities especially Quranic studies. This issue will help the researcher to have a better understanding of the process of religious studies as well as the background formed to the religious texts. Accordingly, by developing new methods, it will be possible to discover and extract the deep semantic layers of the verses of the Holy Quran. Applying descriptive methodology and qualitative and quantitative content analysis, the paper deals with the study of Tafsir Al-Mizan and describes its methodology. Selecting Surah Al-Qafir, the study has investigated Allameh Tabatabaie’s methodology along with taking each commentary proposition of this methodology into account. Finally, Allameh’s methodology in Surah Al-Qafir has been analyzed through quantitative data, tables, and statistical diagrams by using SPSS software. The results of the study suggest that Allameh has interpreted the verses of surah Al-Qafir by enjoying rational interpretation method more than other methods and the most statistics of quantitative analysis are related to this area.