ABSTRACT
The Quran contains magnificent praise of God, edificatory and monitory accounts of sacred history, systematic critiques of the ‘deviant’ monotheisms of Judaism and Christianity, and legal provisions written in sapid prose.1 Part of its literary prowess is, however, focused in passages that speak of an artfully concealed divine providence, permeating nature and human nature, mysteriously undergirding the fragile human enterprise. The Quran repeatedly mentions ‘signs’ (a¯yah; sing.; a¯ya¯t; pl.) of God as manifestations of the divine presence in the world but transcending it. A universal system of such signs, runic tokens symbolizing divine generosity and mercy, encompasses us in external nature, history and society and, inwardly, in our nature and humanity (Q:2:164; 14:32-4; 16:10-16, 66-7, 79-81; 40:13; 45:3-5, 12-13). Constant and continuous intimations of the transcendent are conveyed evasively to us through the ‘open books’ of nature and history in addition to God’s explicit revelation of his will in the privileged form of language, especially in the finality of the Arabic Quran.
