“I read Qur’an and nothing happens.”

If this is your sentence tonight, you are not the first to say it — and you are not being told anything is wrong with your iman. The tradition wrote down, in detail, what a person does about exactly this: not the theory of it, the treatment of it. Named masters, named books, numbered steps, and how long each one takes.

Two rules before any practice, and they are the tradition’s rules, not ours. First: one practice at a time, kept for two weeks, before you consider a second — the rush is the problem, not the cure. Second: do the practice and leave the result alone. Do not take your own spiritual temperature afterwards; the checking is itself a turning away.

The practices the book sends you to

• One page slowly 10 min daily
  Cut the amount to a single page and give it ten real minutes. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly
• Reading as if addressed to you No extra time
  Take every command, warning and promise on the page as spoken to you by name. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly
• Reading the translation as its own practice 10 min evening
  Understanding what you have just recited — a separate act, and a necessary one. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly
• Living with a short surah for a month 2 min/day · 30 days
  One short surah, read, understood, prayed and carried for thirty days. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly
• Reading aloud at fajr 10 min after fajr
  Ten minutes of recitation in your own voice, before the house wakes. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly
• The verse that stops you Unpredictable
  When a verse halts you, stop the page and stay with it. — Section 9 — Reading the Qur’an Inwardly

Where the first one comes from

Al-Ghazali, in Book 8 of the Ihya’, The Etiquette of Qur’an Recitation, treats how much to read and is unimpressed by volume without presence. Among his ten inward tasks are presence of heart, tadabbur — pondering — and tafahhum, working out what is actually being said. Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi narrate from ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr that the one who reads the Qur’an in fewer than three days has not understood it. Al-Nawawi gathers the same discussion in al-Tibyan fi Adab Hamalat al-Qur’an.

Other sentences

• “The dhikr moves my mouth and nothing else.”
• “I have been asking Allah for the same thing for nine years.”
• “I am angry with Allah.”