Epigraph

If all the trees on earth were pens and all the seas, with seven more seas besides, [were ink,] still God’s words would not run out: God is almighty and all wise. (Al Quran 31:27)

By TOBY MAYER, who is a Research Associate in the Qur’anic Studies Unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. A specialist in the fields of Islamic philosophy and theology, Shiism, Sufism, and Quranic exegesis, he has published Letter to a Disciple (2005), a translation of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī’s central book on pedagogy, and Keys to the Arcana (2009), a study and translation of Shahrastānī’s Ismaili commentary on the opening chapter of the Quran

Source: The Study Quran, Chief Editor: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

A paradox of fundamentalism is that it sacrifices what it champions. If it restricts by scripture (as voiced by such slogans as al-ʿawdah ila’l-Qurʾān, “Back to the Quran!”), then it does so only by a restriction of scripture. The textual material must be controlled, its vital semantic range lost in enlisting it as a utopian template, namely, for al-niẓām al-islāmī, the Islamic “system.” By a suppressed premise equating multivalence with doubt, Muslim fundamentalist exegesis founds univalence on texts such as, This is the Book in which there is no doubt (dhālika al-kitāb lā rayba fīhi, 2:2), that is, in which there is no plurality of sense, no mystery beyond the plain text. A corollary is the trend to shun the traditions that reflect multivalence—of which the mystical and sapiential commentaries introduced in this essay are surely most characteristic. These long running traditions in fact show that, historically, deep faith in the text was seldom grounds to restrict its semantic range. On the contrary, the sense that the Quran was of Divine origin implied that its meanings were fathomless. It was actively experienced as a portal within the finite into a transfinite, Divine dimension. The self-description of the Divine Speech as intrinsically transfinite is clear in verses such as 31:27: If all the trees on earth were pens, and if the sea and seven more added to it [were ink], the Words of God would not be exhausted (mā nafidat kalimāt Allāh). Celebrating the scripture’s boundless meaningfulness typifies Islamic mysticism.

For example, the great Sufi visionary, Quran commentator, and love theorist Rūzbihān al-Baqlī al-Shīrāzī (d. 606/1209) presents the verse just quoted in association with the following statement:

I found that the pre-eternal Word had no limit in the outer and the inner (lā nihāyah lahu fi’l-ẓāhir wa’l-bāṭin), and that none of God’s creation had reached Its perfection and the ultimate degree of Its meanings—because underlying every one of Its letters is an ocean of secrets and a river of lights (taḥta kull ḥarf min ḥurūfihi baḥr min biḥār al-asrār wa-nahr min anhār al-anwār), which [in turn] is because It is the description of uncreatedness; and just as there is no limit to His Essence, there is no limit to His Attributes.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī (d. 736/1336), one of the greatest Sufi hermeneuts, expresses the same sense of semantic boundlessness when he speaks of the first onset of his insights (futūḥ) into the Quran:

It was as though perpetually, at the time of the evening draught
(ghabūq) and the morning draught (ṣabūḥ), meanings were being
unveiled to me beneath every verse, in describing which my tongue
would get tired. There is neither power enough to grasp them and
number them (la’l-qudrah tafī bi-ḍabṭihā wa-iḥṣāʾihā), nor the
strength to hold back from making them known and disseminating
them!

For the rest of the essay please find it at the end of this recent traditional commentary of the Quran, published in USA: