The Qur'an Is Our Miracle

This month, Muslims reenact the first scene of Muhammad's prophethood, when the angel Gabriel ordered this illiterate man to "Read!" The prophet protested, of course. He could no sooner read, than write the words that would eventually become the Qu'ran. But he had no choice: God had chosen this prophet to get only one miracle, and that miracle was a book.

So it should come as no surprise that Muslims everywhere revere the Qur'an, purifying ourselves before touching it, clearing our top book shelf for it, committing it to memory. We dust it, kiss it, touch it to our foreheads. Yet in the end, the Qur'an, like all books, is there to be read.

Ramadan is when we oblige. Muslims try to read the Qur'an, cover to cover, this month. Some, including those who can't read, hear the verses at

prayers, the month's marathon sessions of group worship, which can last for hours each night. In groups or alone, we read the Qur'an aloud -- one-thirtieth per day -- to catch a glimpse or hear the crackle of what is, after all, our Burning Bush.

How does one

a miracle? Anyone who's tried to get through the entire Qur'an, or even one of its longer chapters, can tell you: It's a test of endurance, with many rules for the exercise -- when to stretch a vowel, when to cut a consonant short, when to double it up (such as the L in

.) The rules help us find the Qur'an's groove, which can sound like a sonnet or haiku, depending on the lesson.

Still, if the Quran is indeed our Burning Bush or our Parted Red Sea, we need more than grammar to uncover its mystery.

Sometimes the book drops hints about itself. Suppose God sent the Qur'an hurtling down upon a mountain. What then? The mountain would be "humbled and cleft asunder"--that's what. In Arabic, these words read like waves in crescendo, a sequence of vowels crashing into consonants, which then linger like a banged gong. Or a plucked chord. Or an echo. (Click

to listen to the Qur'an.)

Most of the time, the Qur'an seems like an enigma. We approach it wide-eyed but end up squinting, sometimes stumbling over familiar phrases. The most familiar are those we learned first, like the lines we use to make the 17 prostrations of our five daily prayers. These include the

(literally "opening") of the Qur'an:

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds The Forgiving, the Merciful Master of the Day of Judgment You alone we worship and in You alone we trust Show us the straight path...

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