How this book is to be read

The ayah in tafsir

Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari read afaq as the reaches of the world — the rise and fall of nations, the signs in the sky and the earth — and anfusihim as what a person finds in his own creation and in the news that reaches him. The promise is that the Book is haqq. The method of this volume follows that order: the ayah, then the self, then the horizon.

What later eyes saw

A sign is not a laboratory proof. Science describes regularities Allah has placed in creation. It changes its models. The Quran does not. The honest meeting-place is this: the verse is older than the telescope; when the telescope later shows a pattern the verse already named in ordinary Arabic, the believer says subhan Allah, and the careful student does not claim more than the words carry.

Where we stop

We do not say “the Quran predicted NASA.” We do not date-stamp iman to a paper that may be revised. We do not treat Bucaille, Moore, or any later writer as a mufassir. Tafsir first. Wonder second. Silence where the Arabic is wider than our age.