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486conclusionwith its content through the process of ‘becoming’, that is,through a gradual growth and expansion of our knowledge.We believe that the text of the Book is fixed but that its contentmoves. Its content moves because every reader will approachthe text differently. Some will find things in the text that othersdo not, and some are better than others at understanding specificpassages of the text. Even if the text’s form itself is fixed,its content displays the flexible qualities of everyday life thatconstantly changes. To put it differently, even if the text constitutesself-sufficient ‘being’, it contains sufficient ‘becoming’and ‘progressing’ for its readers. Hence, the Book always allowsits readers to understand the text in a contemporary manner(qir§"a mu#§ßira). Whether a reader approaches the text in thetwelfth century or the twentieth century, the resulting interpretationswill have been ‘contemporary’. Even if the two readingsoccurred at different times in history, both readers have realisedto the same extent the logic of the dialectics between theform of the text and its content. In the twenty-first century,however, both readings have lost the status of ‘contemporary’,as a new, more contemporary reading is required for our currentcentury.6. The Book is the indirect speech of God (kal§m All§h). Our interpretationsof the many verses of the Book are based on theunderstanding that we grasp the meaning of God’s speechthrough His words (kalim§t All§h) that exist in our universe. Thewords of Allah have both a natural and historical component,since they encapsulate all the universal laws that govern cosmos,nature, and human society. Through the study of theseuniversal laws, manifested in our objective human and naturalreality, we learn to know the words of Allah (kalim§t) throughwhich, in turn, we come to learn His speech (kal§m). The wordsof Allah and His speech are not the same thing. While His speechrepresents self-sufficient ‘being’, which is eternally fixed, hiswords, that is, nature and human existence, are subject to‘becoming’ and ‘progressing’. This means that our understandingof Allah’s speech is changing and developing becauseAllah’s words are changing and progressing, while the speechof Allah is fixed. Allah’s speech is present in the ‘being’ of thefixed divine text of the Book.