“Each Ayah of the Qur’an is not just a verse but a universe. A universe of unending knowledge, learning and meaning.”

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَـنِ الرَّحِيمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Al-Suhrawardi [1] captures with great eloquence and insight when he said: “All of the knowledge of previous scriptures are contained within the Qur’an. And the whole of the Qur’an is contained within the Surah Al-Fathihah, and the whole of the Al-Fathihah is contained in the opening line, ‘In the Name of Allah, the most Gracious and the Most Merciful’, and the essence of everything is contained within the beginning of the beginning, the first letter, the ‘ب’, which contains within it the secret of ‘Whatever became, became through Me, and whatever will become will become through Me’. And the essence of all essences is in the dot under the letter ‘ب’.”

In other words, the body of knowledge that exists today, and has done so in the past and will do in the future originates from Allah’s beginninglessly eternal knowledge.

Allah was when there was nothing besides Him and everything in the entire cosmos, the celestial realms and all the creation that are within them became manifest through Him (via His Attributes of Knowledge, Will and Power) and they remain so in existence because of Divine Awareness and Support, and soon everything will perish and return back to Him. The entire cosmos came into being by His Supreme Name, Allah. Be and it was – space and time came into being. The dot under the ‘ب’ represents that atemporal moment and that point of singularity of what was not and what became. The universe is then a theophany of God where His Names and Attributes manifest so one can come know Him – Allah.

The secret of Basmallah is that it tells the story of the whole creation, followed by an introduction to Himself as the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful and thereafter to His unending manifestations.

The secret of each verse of the Qur’an is it is from an infinite source with infinite eloquence and wisdom. Each Ayah of the Qur’an is not just a verse but a universe. Within each verse is contained a universe of knowledge, learning and meaning. And all of this is captured in the Basmallah, and the Basmallah is captured within the dot of  ‘ب’.

[1] Hayakal Al-Nur (The Shape of Light) – Shihabuddin Yahya Al-Suhrawardi – page 40