THE LIGHT VERSE: QUR'ANIC TEXT AND SUFI INTERPRETATION

Abstract

Throughout the ages, has been valued as the most beautiful phenomenon of creation and the eye that perceives it as the most important human organ of sense perception. Monotheistic religions such as Islam seek the origin of natural in God, the eternal source of light, an unapproachable without darkness, and they actualize the desire to know God in an act of seeing the divine light. Maintaining the distinction between Creator and creation, earthly is understood as an image of eternal light, though following the principle of like drawing to like, can only be known through light. God can be seen only through an inner eye, the spirit or the intellect, and this vision of God cannot be achieved by human effort alone. Rather, it is ultimately a gift of God, an illumination. God is not identical in essence with light, and natural does not coincide with divine light, although is the most inclusive attribute by which God is described. At the same time, is the most exalted image by which the invisible God can be represented in a visible and temporal world, and the most powerful symbol by which the eternal God can be apprehended in the human realm of sense perception and intellectual insight. In the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Islam, the theme of light, God's light, is most directly addressed in the famous light verse, Q 24:35, which this article analyzes in two stages. First, explaining the Qur'an by the Qur'an, the wording of the qur'anic text is compared methodically with parallel passages, and this inner-qur'anic evidence is set against the cultural and religious background of Arabia during Muhammad's lifetime. Second, relevant Suftl interpretations from the Qur'an commentaries of Sulaml (d. 412/ 1021), Qusayrl (d. 465/1072) and Daylaml (d. shortly after 593/1197) are selected to illustrate the overlay of the qur'anic text with various themes