Part 4: Toward Renaissance18

Chapter 18: Contention in the Quranic Balance: From Understanding to Self-Purification

In its final chapter the book returns to where it began, to a single word in the verse of Al-Baqarah: dafʿ, “repelling”. Everything that came before, the centuries and continents, the wars and revolutions, was in the end a commentary on this word. The chapter weighs what the journey revealed on the Quranic scale: trial as refinement, when the fire is a mercy; falsehood given respite until it exposes itself; the battle over meaning that comes before the sword; and the rotation of days among people, one day for them and one against them. It arrives at the first battle on which every other rests: the contention within the self. And so the circle closes, from understanding to self-purification.

The book is being prepared for publication, in Arabic. These pages offer glimpses of it, not its text.

Cases in this chapter

This chapter does not open with one of the numbered cases.

The Cases