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_001.jpg) Poetry owes its lure and luster to lies and fiction. The
poet lets his imagination run wild, and roams about unbridled beyond the realm
of reality. The more he indulges his imagination, the prettier is his poem. The
further he flies into the land of fancy, the more fanciful and fabulous is his
fiction. Truth is an early casualty of his excursion into the land of fantasy.
Phrases are his toys and fiction is his field of play. Words are his tools,
and his workshop is the beauty parlor, where simple becomes sensual and
sensational, and plain facts are dressed up to appear pretty and presentable. Beautiful
and befitting words are his profession, and he aims to spark and kindle the
imagination of his audience. He plans to plunge his listeners into an arena of
illusion, the unreal and ethereal world.
Exaggeration is the specialty of the poet, his
special calling. Even a simple simile for a poet is a flight of fancy. He
stretches the truth to a fault, till it becomes a lie. With a little
embellishment, he turns a bland event into a tantalizing tale. If the truth is
not to his liking, he proceeds to dilute the effect of the fact. If the fact
does not fit his fancy, he mixes it with a lavish measure of myth, and throws
the fact out of focus. With words, he can knit a shield to deflect the fact. Thus,
he trivializes the truth. He will twist and turn the words, and tug at the
truth till it yields the meaning he desires. He covers the truth with layers
of interpretations, until the truth becomes a stranger. With deft use of
words, he can baptize a fiction as well as fictionalize a fact. He circulates
lies by wrapping them with layers of known and irrefutable facts. He lends
credence and respect to baseless assumptions by surrounding them with respected
facts. Falsehood thus becomes fortified. Poetic text is the priority of a
poet and his talent consists of fanciful phrases, not truth. Poetry pleases
the aesthetic and tickles the intellect, but truth it is not. About the poets,
the Quran says:
"And the poets - [only] the deviators
follow them; Do you not see that in every valley they roam And that they say
what they do not do?ˮ (Quran 26: 224-226)
"And We did not give Prophet Muhammad,
knowledge of poetry, nor is it befitting for him. It is a message and a clear
Qur'an.ˮ (Quran 36: 69)
[That] indeed, the
Qur'an is the word of a noble Messenger. And it is not the word of a poet;
little do you believe. Nor the word of a soothsayer; little do you remember. [It
is] a revelation from the Lord of the worlds. (Quran 69: 40-43)
The difference between it and the work of the
poets, writers and philosophers is not only that of degree or quality, but also
that of character and class. It did not stoop down to the earthy model of
distortion and dishonesty. Rather, it aggrandized and sanitized the standards
of literature, and introduced it to a new height. It imposed a tougher
requirement for literary standard and demanded absolute honesty and accuracy. It
refused to espouse fiction and the art of fictionalizing facts, and spurned
exaggeration. It did not win by using the ways and means of the other literary
works.
The literary giants know the rules of grammar
and diction. Yet, they cannot comply with the rule laid down by the Quran. They
are handicapped because their expertise is of no avail without falsehood and
fiction. If exaggeration was to be edited out of their work, they would not be
left with much of their work. They cannot imagine poetry without a degree of
lies and embellishment. Thus the Quran unfettered the facts and liberated the
truth from the clutches of its captors - the poets, the writers and the
philosophers of the past, present and the future. It exposed their craftiness.
When it comes to matters pertaining to this world, they do know the facts but
do not always choose to be honest and accurate. However, when it comes to
matters past the grave, they are actually the charlatans relying on guesses and
conjectures.
And most of them
follow not except assumption. Indeed, assumption avails not against the
truth at all. Indeed, Allah is Knowing of what they do. (Quran 10: 36)
"And if you obey most of those upon
the earth, they will mislead you from the way of Allah. They follow not except
assumption, and they are not but falsifying.ˮ (Quran 6: 116)
The Quran defied the accepted norms of
literature and achieved eloquence and eminence without resorting to
exaggeration of any sort. Because of that, every literary classic created in
any period of history and in any language of the world, would fall in a class
lower than that of the Quran. It has a unique character all its own. It lays
down facts plainly, and meticulously adheres to accurate narration. Even when
it quotes a parable, the comparison is never misleading and it does not twist
or bend the truth. The words and phrases it uses bring out the unadulterated
truth. It is sworn to tell nothing but the truth. Precision is its priority,
and all of its text can be accepted literally. Scientific treatise should be
that exact. Its adherence to accuracy when it comes to matters pertaining to
this world infuses faith and confidence into its believers. They become
convinced that the events scheduled to occur beyond death are also depicted
with the same accuracy and precision, and without exaggeration. The reason the
Quran has remained matchless in substance and style is because it is the
absolute truth. About itself, it says:
"These are the verses of Allah which
We recite to you, [O Muhammad], in truth. And indeed, you are from among the
messengers. ˮ (Quran 2:252)
He has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in
truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.
(Quran 3:3)
"Alif, Lam, Meem, Ra. These are the
verses of the Book; and what has been revealed to you from your Lord is the
truth, but most of the people do not believe.ˮ (Quran 13:1)
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