The First Verses: A General Prelude

Formulation of the claim

The first verses perform a general introductory function within the surah.

Explanation

This opening prepares for the narrative, instructional, and exhortatory units that follow within the surah. It makes the inner structure of the surah gradual, moving between multiple rhetorical functions and not settling on a single pattern.

Its place in the book’s argument

This observation is consistent with Arkoun’s concern for the internal structure of the text, as he reads the surah as a dynamic composition in which functions are distributed, not as a single passage closed in on a direct meaning.

What the atom does not say

It does not confine the opening to a single meaning, nor does it detach it from the rest of the surah; rather, it places it in the position of a prelude to what follows.

Brief evidence

Toshihiko Izutsu applied this new methodology to the Qur’an and produced encouraging results.37 What does this methodology tell us? It tells us the following: instead of focusing on isolated single textual units (such as phonemes, words, short sentences, and phrases), it is better to focus on the text as a whole on the basis that it is a system of interconnected internal linguistic relations. Meaning lies in these relations themselves, not in the miniature linguistic units isolated from one another within the totality of the text. And if we discover all the internal linguistic relations that make up the Qur’anic text, then we also discover the structure of the Arabic language and its specific dynamics; not only that, but we also discover a pat

Nearby links

• The words of al-Fatiha are not exhausted
• Rereading the Qur’an Historically
• Four postulates governing traditional exegesis