Summary
THE FOUNDATIONS
These are the verses of the Quran and of a book making clear,
a guide and good news for those who believe,
those who perform the (ordained) prayer,
give the (prescribed) charity,
and who have confidence in the hereafter…
Truly you receive the Quran
from One who is wise, all-knowing.
These words, taken from the Quran, are a typical expression of the basic and fundamental importance of the Quran in Islam. The status of the Quran as revelation is such that the Quran forms the basis of all Islamic life and thought:
The departure point of the Islamic religion, the central article from which all else flows, may be stated as follows: God (the only God there is…) has spoken to man in the Quran… The Quran is the Word of God, for Muslims. While controversies have raged among them as to the sense in which this is true—whether it is the created or uncreated Word, whether it is true of every Arabic letter or only of the message as a whole, that it is true has never been questioned by them.
This does not mean that Islamic life and thought is confined to the Quran, since Islam, like any other religion, has its own principles of continuity and development as it moves on in time and confronts new and previously unforeseen situations. But it does mean that Islam is grounded in the Quran, ‘the Book in which there is no doubt’, and that any consideration of the Islamic understanding of suffering must begin with a study of the Quran.
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- Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World , pp. 99 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1970