What obligatory (vajib) means and what recommended (mustahab) signifies.

What obligatory (vajib) means and what recommended (mustahab) signifies. He mentioned the cancelled verses and the verses that superseded the cancelled verses. He told you about certain situations of distress where you could use your own judgment and where you had to follow the rules unconditionally. He pointed out to you the specific and the general. He made you aware of certain events that you could learn lessons from. He identified the deeds you could do and the ones you were prohibited from.

He also talked about the facts that were easy to understand and the ones that were difficult for ordinary people to comprehend.[^2] By referring to the Last Prophet (S) Hazrat Amir (as) wants to tell the people that Quran belongs to everyone and is for the benefit of all. Also in order to spread its benefits the Holy Prophet explained some of the more difficult portions.

However, can a sane person honestly say that points identified by the Amir (as) are so easy that anyone can get to the correct meanings and the purpose on his own? Will he be able to gain enough understanding to perform his deeds? Anyone with a conscience will holler that absolutely not; until there is someone to guide properly, it will not be possible to understand everything.

So this continued insistence on Quran being a very easy book; that we should consult only and only Quran to find answers to all our questions; and that whatever intelligence we have, with the help of a dictionary it will catch every hint given in Allah’s Book is rather illogical. One other point: it will not be inappropriate at this time to recall that this holy book has gone through some tough moments when it was subjected to a use against its spirit.

The first such terrible moment was when the Great Prophet (S) asked for a pen and a paper to write his will and the answer he was given was, “there is no need for any writing, Quran is enough for us”[^3]. Thus the foundation was laid to detach from the holy book its most trustworthy and most understanding companion, the sacred family of the Prophet (Ahlul Bayt).

The second sad episode took place at the Siffin war when one platoon of Imam Ali’s (as) army instead of obeying the Imam, raised the slogan “we will accept no one’s order except Allah’s”.