160 No god but God
Another way in which Muslims experience baraka is through the
art, or rather the science, of Quranic recitation. As William Graham
has observed, the early Muslim community undoubtedly understood
the Quran to be an oral scripture that was intended to be spoken aloud
in a community, not read quietly to oneself. Recall that the word
“Quran” literally means “recitation,” which is why so many passages
begin with the command qul, or “say.”
The early efforts of the Qurra, or Quran readers, to memorize
and preserve the sacred scripture eventually led to the creation of a
technical science of Quranic recitation called tajwid, with strict rules
regulating when one is permitted to stop during a recitation and when
it is forbidden to stop, when to prostrate oneself and when to rise,
when to breathe and when not to take breath, which consonants to
stress and how long to hold each vowel. Because Islam has tradition-
ally been suspicious of the use of music in worship, for fear of compro-
mising the divine nature of the text, a recitation can never be outright
musical. However, the use of spontaneous melody is encouraged, and
some contemporary Quranic reciters exhibit an extraordinary degree
of musical virtuosity. Their recitals are akin to rock concerts at which
thousands of boisterous listeners are encouraged to respond to the
recitation by shouting their reactions—whether positive or nega-
tive—at the performer on stage.
But it would not be entirely correct to call these recitations “con-
certs,” or even “performances.” These are spiritual gatherings at
which the reciter transmits the baraka of God’s word to what is, in
essence, a congregation. Because while the Quran may be God’s dra-
matic monologue, when read aloud, it is miraculously transformed
into a dialogue between the Creator and Creation, a dialogue in which
God is physically present.
By far the most significant development of the Traditionalist posi-
tion regarding the eternal Quran can be observed in the science of
Quranic exegesis. From the start, Muslims had an inordinately diffi-
cult time interpreting the meaning and message of the Quran. As the
direct speech of God, the Quran was recorded without interpretation
or commentary, with little concern for chronology and almost no nar-
rative. To assist them in their exegesis, the early Ulama divided the
Revelation into two distinct periods—those verses revealed in Mecca