One of the indisputable aiding instruments of Tafsir is literacy. The more literate the Muslims are in the relevant language, the more they are likely to understand the Qur’an through Tafsir. And no one who thoroughly understands the Tafsir of the Qur’an will be ignorant of Islam or even life.
Muslims who are deeply schooled through the Western system of education will discover that virtually all the sciences, social sciences and arts, that are studied in higher institutions universally today originated from the study of Tafsir. Even some scientific terminologies and the invention of figure zero, by Muslims, which paved the way for digital system in mathematics have confirmed this. It therefore takes real scholars, not just reciters of the Qur’an or mere speakers of Arabic language, to be exponents of Tafsir. This is a rare factor that is conspicuously missing in some parts of the Muslim world today.
There is a sharp difference between translating the context of the Qur’an and interpreting it in expository manner. The one is shallow. The other is deep. Ordinarily, Tafsir is not supposed to be an annual Ramadan affair. Rather, it should be a daily intellectual exercise for all scholars who are ardent in it. And no field of educational study is irrelevant in the scholarship of Tafsir since Tafsir is an amalgam of all scholarly fields.
Although Tafsir gains more popularity in the month of Ramadan because every true Muslim wants to get closer to Allah through familiarization with the Qur’an, it is not limited to that sacred month alone and it should not be seen as such.
Judging by the limit of the available knowledge of Tafsir, for instance in most African Muslim dominated countries, and the extent of unwillingness of our ‘Ulamas to learn more, only a few Muslim scholars in some of these countrie are qualified to tutor the populace on Tafsir. Most of the so-called African Muslim ‘Ulamas have turned Tafsir into an annual commercial jamboree which fetches them what they regard as Ramadan booty. Their motive of engaging in Tafsir is more pecuniary than spiritual. And that is one of the problems confronting Tasfsir in Africa today.
What most of those Alfas often dish out in the name of knowledge is mere unverifiable hearsay that has no place in scholarly references. And that is why majority of African Muslim audiences at Tafsir Centers can hardly benefit from what they hear in those Centers.
Tafsir is a special field of discipline, the dissemination of which is meant only for research oriented scholars and students. But unfortunately, it is one area of study which has very few institutions of learning in Africa.
For example, because of this problem, the Qur’an has been translated into very few Nigerian languages so far. And today, the few copies of vernacular Qur’anic Tafsir in circulation can hardly be found on book shelves even as most of them are virtually out of print. The solution to this problem is for philanthropic Muslims to rise up in financial support of Tafsir facilities to boost the knowledge of Tafsir for posterity sake.
It often sounds ridiculous and laughable to hear some African elites and moneybags calling for the immortality of one of them after death. How possible is it for a mortal being to immortalize a fellow mortal being? Naming ephemeral substances like buildings and roads after a dead person does not amount to immortalization of the dead. It can only retain his memorial for a while. The real immortalization of the dead can only be found in the archives of history. That is what an American intellectual and Statesman, Williams Webster had in mind, in tacit emulation of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) when he coined a poem that went thus:
“If we work marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill in them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity.”
That is what the rich Muslims among us can do to keep their footprints on the sands of time in order to remain immortal in the archive of history. Ramadan Karim!
