The Qur’an For All Humanity
The Book of Guidance
~ 95 ~
THE BOOK OF GUIDANCE
Read in the name of your Lord who created-created
man from clots of congealed blood.
Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, who
by the pen, taught man what he did not know.
Indeed, man transgresses in thinking himself self-
sufficient. For to your Lord all things return.
(The Qur’an 96:1-8)
These verses of the Qur’an were the first to be
revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. They tell us
what God’s purpose was in choosing this particular
way of sending His revelations through His
messengers, namely, to inform man of what would
otherwise have been impossible for him to learn on
his own.
For example, man leads his life in the present world
for a fixed period of time, then passes away. During
his life-span he appears to be free. This gives rise to
two kinds of misunderstandings. One is that man’s
life is nothing but what it appears to be from birth
