The Quran states that human beings attain maturity at age forty. This rings very true to me. As with the majority of Muslims in the world, I was born a muslim into a Muslim family. As the only girl in the family, I learned by following my mother's example-praying, observing the fast, memorizing chapters/suras recited in prayer. All of us siblings learned to read the Arabic Quran at an Urdu school/madrasa, where we went early every morning before we walked to our regular European school, and generally followed traditions celebrated/commemorated by most Indian Muslim families. I am greatly indebted to my dear widely read and self-made father who had a wonderful collection of books, from which I have quoted, and also the English transliteration of the Quran by Marmaduke Pickthall. On many occasions, I tried in vain to understand what was being said in the Quran, but it seemed very disconnected and did not convey any meaning to my teenage mind. Prayers and few traditions were one constant after arriving in the USA and having to face various travails in life. I soon discovered the wealth of material available here, on Islam, in English. I would also read the Quran on and off, especially when my personal life went from bad to worse. I am sure most people who read the Quran read and understand it differently at different stages in their life, and so it was for me. In my forties, I turned to a serious study of the holy book, initially reading the Arabic (told that we had to read in Arabic) alongside the English transliteration. After few years, I decided to read only in English-to understand, as the Quran exhorts us to do. This led to the study of multiple recognized authors who had undertaken this task, the worldwide-acknowledged AbdullahYusuf Ali's The Holy Quran being my base, along with Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Quran. At this time, I also had the good fortune of coming across Concepts of the Quran by the late Fateh Osman of California. This erudite and modern scholar presented the chronology of the Quranic revelations, and this opened my mind to such a wonderful clarity and understanding that one evening I felt a eureka moment when I wanted to shout from the rooftops about the simplicity of what God wants of us mortals and how clear it had become to me. In his preface to the Holy Quran, Yusuf Ali, in all his wisdom, states that each of us should make every conscious effort to understand the word of God according to one's own capacity. "If any one of us attains some knowledge or understanding of it by study, it is his duty, according to his capacity, to instruct others, and share with them the joy and peace which result from contact with the spiritual world." After much debate with myself, being a laywoman and not a scholar of religion in any sense, I sincerely wanted to pen my understanding of the last incorruptible message of God, particularly to the youth, in the hope that it might form a basis of understanding for them and promote unity of thought and action within the larger Muslim community, thus this undertaking. It is my sincere prayer and hope that this brief ) and factual though personal view of the Word of God in the Quran will help all first generation Muslims whose parents left their homelands and settled in foreign, mostly Christian lands and those who are left confused by cultural and traditional accretions to the real faith. Even today, fractious cultural and ethnic baggage rules the day, with each group proclaiming their version of Islam as the absolute truth. How best can we live as Muslims in this society and generate a positive image without compromising any of the basic tenets of the faith? This dilemma has been terribly complicated and made more difficult by the ignominious deeds of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their ilk in recent times. Even the most scholarly of scholars have humbled themselves to our Creator, begging forgiveness if they have misjudged or misrepresented any fact in the Quran. Thus, it is with an awesome, reverent fear of having misunderstood any transliteration and commentary of the Quran that I beg forgiveness of the Almighty Creator. Anyone who may give my view even a cursory glance may not agree with me, but it is my hope that it may stimulate the reader to think for herself/himself, remembering that God states, "I have made this Quran easy for you." The principles in the Quran are universal, immutable principles-the foundation upon which each succeeding generation must build their society's needs. May God guide us to use our intellect and reason to understand His will. Iffat Zamani Khan, MD
