The Ruling on Studying Metaphor in the Noble Qur'an
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
We are teachers of the Arabic language, and we study rhetoric. We come across the chapter on literal and metaphorical meaning as part of the curriculum, and we are required to extract from the noble verses in the exercises whatever metaphor they contain, applying the rule. Is there metaphor in the verses of the Noble Qur'an? And how do we clarify this to students of the sciences in schools?
The Shaykh:
As for it being called... the field of...
The questioner:
Where one knows what metaphor is and what its types are.
The Shaykh:
There is no objection to studying it, but one should not believe that it is correct. You study it, and when you have studied it and come to know it, you say, "This is not correct." The speech of Allah is literal and contains no metaphor, because metaphor admits of denial, whereas the speech of Allah the Mighty and Majestic is literal and does not admit of denial. So there is no objection to your studying metaphor: what is metaphor? What are its types? And... you study it for the sake of knowledge.
The presenter:
Only, not in order to believe that it is correct. And if you are asked to identify the metaphor in a verse, you say, "It is said that it contains such-and-such, and it is said that it contains such-and-such," and then you follow up by saying, "The correct view is that the speech of Allah contains no metaphor." You follow up on this by answering what they said, and then you clarify what you believe at the end. Yes.
We are teachers of the Arabic language, and we study rhetoric. We come across the chapter on literal and metaphorical meaning as part of the curriculum, and we are required to extract from the noble verses in the exercises whatever metaphor they contain, applying the rule. Is there metaphor in the verses of the Noble Qur'an? And how do we clarify this to students of the sciences in schools?
The Shaykh:
As for it being called... the field of...
The questioner:
Where one knows what metaphor is and what its types are.
The Shaykh:
There is no objection to studying it, but one should not believe that it is correct. You study it, and when you have studied it and come to know it, you say, "This is not correct." The speech of Allah is literal and contains no metaphor, because metaphor admits of denial, whereas the speech of Allah the Mighty and Majestic is literal and does not admit of denial. So there is no objection to your studying metaphor: what is metaphor? What are its types? And... you study it for the sake of knowledge.
The presenter:
Only, not in order to believe that it is correct. And if you are asked to identify the metaphor in a verse, you say, "It is said that it contains such-and-such, and it is said that it contains such-and-such," and then you follow up by saying, "The correct view is that the speech of Allah contains no metaphor." You follow up on this by answering what they said, and then you clarify what you believe at the end. Yes.
Source
المجاز في القرآن — alfawzan.live
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.