Understand the Quran in 4 minutes

The Quran is not like any other book ever published. For one, it’s the most memorized book on the planet! And two, it’s the only book on the planet without mistakes or editions. Those who are trained in the Arabic language and the tafsir (exegesis) can witness the miraculous nature of the Quran.

But, if you are a novice like me, you might think its formatting or how it switches topics in an apparently random way is a little bizarre. Well, for us novice readers, here’s a breakdown of it in five easy steps:

1. The Quran as a whole

The Quran is a book of answers to life. It comprises of 114 chapters. It speaks about your relationship with God, with yourself and with mankind. It is broken up into two parts:

• information (ex. stories of the past, science, people etc.)
• rulings

2. Index

The second and longest chapter, AlBaqarah, acts as an index for the Quran because it speaks about every main topic in the Quran but in a brief manner. If you study this chapter in depth, you will get a great foundational understanding of the Quran.

3. Table of Contents

The first chapter, AlFatihah, is like the table of contents of the Quran. It only has seven verses and each verse mentions a main theme across the Quran:

• Acknowledging God
• Attributes of God
• Worshiping God
• Guidance
• People who obeyed
• People who disobeyed despite having knowledge
• People who disobeyed but didn’t have knowledge

4. Key phrase

The chapter, AlFatihah, has a verse that is the key phrase you would google to get the jist of the Quran.

ٱهۡدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٲطَ ٱلۡمُسۡتَقِيمَ  

Guide us to the straight path.

The most prominent theme across the Quran is based on this verse because at the end of the day, it’s God who decides if you will enter paradise or hell, not you.

5. Keyword

When you get right down to it, you can summarise the entire Quran in one word: guidance. If you google this into the Quran, you will pinpoint your exact target.

It’s unfortunate though because people are always looking for the magic answers to life, wealth and happiness, and some even pay big bucks to find it. If they only knew it’s all in the Quran.