The Difference between the Bismillah of each Surah

It was always a Question in my mind that why in Quran every Surah has a separated bismillah. It’s like you enter a house and you just say a salam, and when you come out to leave you say another salam too. It’s true that we start reading every surah with a bismillah at first -even in the middle of a surah, for starting to recite Quran in the name of Allah. But when we finish a surah, there is another bismillah for next surah that we usually say. Now after sometimes i found this interesting article about it.

The ‘bismillah’ preceding one surah is different from that preceding another surah.

We were saying to which word the preposition and the noun it governs in the ‘bismillah’ are related. One of the possibilities is that the ‘bismillah’ of every surah is related to some appropriate word of that very surah; for example in the Surah al-Hamd it may be related to the word, al-Hamd. In that case ‘bismillahi al-hamdu lillahi’ would mean: With the name of Allah all praises belong to Allah.

On the basis of this possibility ‘bismillah’ would signify differently in every surah, for in each surah it would be referring to a different word. If it was related to the word ‘al-hamdu’ in the Surah ‘al-Hamd,’ we would have to look for some other appropriate word, for example, in the Surah ‘al-Ikhlas’.

According to a rule of theology, if somebody pronounced the bismillah with some surah and then wanted to recite another surah, he would have to repeat the bismillah, and the previous bismillah would not be enough for him. This rule shows that ‘bismillah’ does not have the same meaning everywhere. It has a different significance with each surah, although there are some people who wrongly maintain that ‘bismillah’ is not the part of any surah and it is quite a separate verse revealed as a benediction.

If it is accepted that ‘bismillah’ was related to ‘al-Hamd’ then ‘hamd’ might include everything to which the word ‘hamd’ applied, that is every kind of praise expressed by anybody on any occasion. Thus the verse would mean that every praise expressed is with the name of Allah, because he who expresses it is himself a name of Allah; his organs and limbs are a name of Allah and the praise he expresses is also a name of Allah.

From this point of view every praise is with the name of Allah. We all are His names, or manifestations of His names, because we all are His signs, He is our originator, who has brought us into existence. The Divine Originator is in several ways different from a natural cause or agent. One of the points of difference is that anything that is brought into existence by the Divine Originator, or in other words, anything that emerges from the Divine source disappears in that very source.

To illustrate this point to some extent, let us take up an example, although this example falls too short of the relation between the Creator and the created. Anyhow, let us take up the example of the sun and its rays. The rays have no existence separate from the sun.

The same is the case with the Divine Originator or the Creator. Anything coming into existence from this source depends on it for its existence as well as continuation. There is no existing being which can continue to exist if Allah withdraws from it even for an amount the light on which its existence depends. As no existing thing has any independent position, it is said to be lost in its source.

Book: Light Within Me – Murtaza Mutahari