About the Meritorious Chapters and Verses

In the Name of God, Who created Man, taught him the Quran and made His Holy Book—the Last Testament—a source of guidance, exhortation, mercy, and healing. May God’s peace and blessings be upon our beloved Muhammad, the Interpreter of the Holy Quran.

The best spiritual station that Man can ever seek in his worship of God is that of showing absolute servitude to his Maker, the Lord of all creatures. The sensible is therefore the one who works to achieve that end by seeking permanently to satisfy his Lord and renew his sincere repentance, longing for meeting Him.

Man cannot actually achieve such goal except by dedicating his efforts to performing the best of deeds whereby the diligent servants of God seek His nearness—reciting and rehearsing the Holy Quran day and night. Certain hadiths singled out the merit of some chapters and verses of the Holy Quran.

The Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) urged us to recite these meritorious chapters and verses regularly and memorize them, for they preserve the one who reads them from all evils and raise him in the stations of nearness to God—Almighty is He. Before reading them, you should begin with al-Isti’ādha [that is, seeking refuge with God from the Evil One] and al-Basmala [that is, saying ‘In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful’]. Then you end the reading by recitingChapter 1 [al-Fātiha] and Chapter 2 [al-Baqara], Verses 1-5.

Lastly, we should remind that everything that has been reported to us from God’s Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace) suffices us amply. May God grant us—and you—a sincere return in repentance to Him, make us sleep while cherishing in our hearts and minds the best of intentions and future undertakings, and awaken us to meet Him, stand before Him in prayer at night so that when the morning comes, our hearts may become— like Abu Damdam’s heart—purified and fit to host one sole concern: He—Blessed be He. God’s Messenger (God bless him and grant him peace) said: “Can’t anyone of you be like Abu Damdam [the simple-hearted, the kind-hearted]? When he woke up in the morning, he used to ask God to forgive all Muslims who harmed him in the past, or may cause him any harm in the future.”