What is the “Preserved Tablet” in the Holy Qur’an?

It is not a tablet of stone or any other material. It refers to a system of preservation created by God, in which nothing that has once happened is ever completely erased.

When God speaks, He speaks in His own language, and there is nothing material in it. The Preserved Tablet is therefore not a slab of stone, clay or parchment on which the Holy Qur’an is written somewhere. Taking it literally even leads to a contradiction. For then a tablet would have had to exist alongside God from eternity, and someone would have had to write on it.

Something else is meant. God has created a system of preservation. Everything that happens in the universe leaves a trace in it. That trace can grow fainter, but it is never completely erased.

The Holy Qur’an gives indications of this. It says that on the Day of Judgment even a person’s skin will bear witness against him. Skin has no tongue, and yet it will speak, because what was done is preserved in it. And it describes a book that leaves out nothing, small or great, but has recorded everything.

A comparison from science makes this easier to grasp. The beginning of the universe lies unimaginably far back. And yet scientists can still measure its trace today, a faint radiation left over from that time. It grows weaker, but it does not vanish. In a similar way one can think of the Preserved Tablet as the blueprint of creation, which comes from God and remains preserved. What lies beyond our senses we understand only through such comparisons, and even then only in part.