Website: www.aaiil.uk

“Books” as mentioned in the Holy Quran

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 7 November 2025

“This Book, in which there is no doubt, is a guide to those who keep their duty” — ch. 2, Al-Baqara, v. 2

ذٰلِکَ  الۡکِتٰبُ لَا رَیۡبَ ۚۖۛ فِیۡہِ ۚۛ ہُدًی  لِّلۡمُتَّقِیۡنَ

“Read in the name of your Lord Who creates —creates man from a clot (of blood, or clinging substance) — read and your Lord is most Generous, Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.”  — ch. 96, Al- ‘Alaq, v. 1–5

اِقۡرَاۡ بِاسۡمِ رَبِّکَ الَّذِیۡ خَلَقَ ۚ﴿۱﴾  خَلَقَ الۡاِنۡسَانَ مِنۡ عَلَقٍ ۚ﴿۲﴾  اِقۡرَاۡ وَ رَبُّکَ الۡاَکۡرَمُ ۙ﴿۳﴾  الَّذِیۡ عَلَّمَ بِالۡقَلَمِ ۙ﴿۴﴾  عَلَّمَ الۡاِنۡسَانَ مَا لَمۡ  یَعۡلَمۡ ؕ﴿۵﴾

The words “book” and “books” occur frequently in the Holy Quran. In the first short verse that I recited the Quran is called a “book”, and it is commonly called a book in the Quran. Previous scriptures are also called “book” or “books” and their followers are called “People of the Book”. The deeds of every human are also said to be recorded in a book, which will be placed open before that person on the Day of Judgment. The Quran also mentions a book containing the laws of nature and know­ledge about the workings of nature. It also mentions books which people read.

That first, short verse I recited is a well-known verse at the opening of chapter 2 of the Quran. Its placement there shows the logical arrangement of the Quran. This place­ment refutes the criticism that the Quran is not organised in an orderly, systematic way, and that its verses move haphazardly from one subject to another without any connection or reason. Here we see that the first chapter of the Quran, the Fātiḥa, contains a prayer right in the middle of it:

“Guide us on the right path”‏.

This verse in chapter 2, follow­ing on from this prayer for guidance, says that it is this book which contains that guidance. When this verse was revealed, it was just after the Hijra. The Quran did not then exist in a book form, written down as a compiled book. Much of it had not even been revealed. It was not clear to people if the Holy Prophet would succeed in his mission or if he and his followers would be destroyed by their enemies. So it was a prophecy at that time that the Quran would become a book. But that prophecy would not have been very meaningful or of much significance to its Arab hearers because they had little concept of the importance of books. Before the Quran, although Arabic writing existed, there weren’t any written books in Arabic. Its literature was mostly oral poetry which was recited and memorised. Only a few docu­ments were written down. The Quran was the first Arabic book as such and soon after the death of the Holy Prophet its written copies were produced.

Apart from the prophecy here that the Quran would become a book soon, this verse also shows the importance of books, because a book was being made a guide for people. Just as the “book” is mentioned at the beginning of the Quran in its present arrangement of Surahs, reading and writing were mentioned in the very first revela­tion to the Holy Prophet. That revelation is now in chapter 96 of the Quran and is the second recitation I gave at the beginning of this khutba:

“Read in the name of your Lord Who creates — creates man from a clot (of blood, or clinging substance) — read and your Lord is most Generous, Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.”

This begins with the command to “read” (iqra’) and in fact the name “Quran” is derived from this word and means that it is a book to be read. Here the attainment of knowledge by reading and writing is mentioned along with the development of a full-fledged human being from a single cell embryo. What is the connection between the two? One connection is that just as a human being reaches its full bodily development starting from an embryo, that fully physically-developed human being is itself like an embryo, and this new embryo needs nourishment from knowledge in order to reach its full development and become a real human being. And God was now revealing that knowledge to the Holy Prophet and also revealing ways of acquiring more and more of it. But we can also look at it in another way. When these verses were revealed, the Quran itself was in the embryonic state. It had only just started being revealed. What these five verses might be saying is that just as the embryo develops into a human being, similarly that revelation would develop into a complete and perfect book. Hence when the revelation of the Quran was complete twenty-three years later, the following well-known verse was revealed:

“This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favour to you and chosen for you Islam as a religion” (5:3).

It is mentioned in those verses in chapter 96 that God taught man by the pen, taught man what he did not know. It is, of course, not meant that God used a pen and wrote out something for man to read. It is human beings who wield the pen and it is the law of God that that action by man brings him knowledge which he did not know before. Writing gives you knowledge when you write down what someone, like a teacher, conveys to you. Or, we might be observing something and noting down what we are seeing. But even when you sit down to write something by yourself, without an external source of knowledge feeding you, you have to think and organize your ideas, and that act of putting them in writing clarifies them in your mind. You may well need to look up and consult something else while writing. By the time you finish a piece of writing, you have more know­ledge of that matter than you did when you started.

Of course, the Quran is con­cerned primarily with knowledge that strengthens our faith in God and improves our moral behaviour. But that kind of religious knowledge cannot be separated from know­ledge of the world around us which is studied in sciences and subjects of various kinds. To be able to act on the religious teachings of Islam, if you merely studied books of the religion this would be inade­quate and insufficient. So the statement of the Quran that God “taught man what he did not know” includes every branch of knowledge. But God taught man by giving him the means by using which he can increase his knowledge.

Books in general are mentioned in another early revelation in the Quran as follows:

“and when the books are spread, and when the heaven has its covering removed, and when hell is kindled, and when the Garden is brought near.” (81:10–13)

What we have translated as “when the books are spread” is generally taken by other Muslim translators as meaning that on the Day of Judgment the records of the deeds of people will be laid open before them. They give it this interpretation because of the mention of the coming of hell and heaven. But the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Move­ment, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, explained that verses of the Quran relating to the Day of Judgment often refer also to events to happen in this world. He took this verse as being a prophecy that a time will come when the means of the publication and distribution of books will become easily available and commonplace. And it is a fact that starting in the last four or five hundred years, i.e., a thousand years after Islam came into the world, due to the invention of modern prin­t­ing techniques, the produc­tion of books, magazines and journals and their availability has increased to an enormous scale, previously unimaginable. It was because of this spread of knowledge that the heaven had “its covering removed”, meaning that things previously unknown about the heavens were discovered. For example, people thought that the sky was a solid dome over the earth and a covering for it, and they called it the “firma­ment”. With the develop­ment of knowledge, through the spread of books, it was discovered that there is no such solid dome. In that way also, the covering of heaven was removed. Man can now travel right through what looked to him like a solid sky.

How is this connected with what the next verses say, that: “and when hell is kindled, and when the Garden is brought near”? Through the advancement of know­ledge, by means of the spread of books, hell and the garden of heaven have appeared before us together at the same time. For example, when atomic energy was first developed, it was done in order to make and explode an atomic bomb in the Second World War. Those explosions brought hell before people’s eyes. But the same atomic energy was then used to produce vast amounts of electricity, bringing people all kinds of comforts and prosperity. So the garden of heaven came before their eyes as well; in fact, we live in it. There are numerous examples of the advancement of knowledge, science and technology bringing both hell and heaven before us at the same time.

The word for “books” in the verse “when the books are spread” is ṣuḥuf. The same term is used in the Quran for religious scriptures in the words:

“the scriptures (ṣuḥuf) of Abraham and Moses.” (87:19)

If we take “books” in the verse “when the books are spread” as being religious scriptures, it is certainly true that these became widespread in the world in the 1800s and 1900s to an extent that could not be imagined before. The Bible was spread all over the world by Christian organizations such as the British and Foreign Bible Society, and not only in English but it was translated into a vast number of other languages. And this was not only with the Bible. A German professor of languages, F. Max Muller, along with other scholars, undertook a massive project around the year 1880 to publish all the scrip­tures of eastern religions translated into English. They produced a series of 50 volumes under the title Sacred Books of the East. This series includes scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism etc. and also a translation of the Quran. As regards the Quran, many Muslim Ulama regarded it as forbidden in Islam to translate it from Arabic. Despite their opposition, today just in English there are more than thirty-five translations by Muslims themselves.

The people to whom the Quran conveyed this prophecy, about books being spread, had hardly seen any book, they had no idea of the importance of books, had no interest in them and they did not know what revolution for mankind could be achieved through books. The Holy Prophet Muhammad belonged to the same community and society, and he could not have made up this prophecy through his own human knowledge because a human being in his situation had little concept of the role of books. This goes to show that the Quran was indeed a revelation from God and not something made up by the Holy Prophet from his own ideas and mind.

Website: www.aaiil.uk