scholarship that went into this this is worth 10 phds in my estimation
um the uh yeah so
and then the book this is arabic this is a very nice uh edition of imam al-bagui it's a slightly
abridged edition but imam bawi and imam al-bagawi were the two
most popular madrasa tafsirs
the jellalain was a a very basic tafsir and it's very useful and there is an addition
that was done by uh the translator aisha beuli who's an american she actually did her
arabic at university of berkeley nearby berkeley university uc berkeley but she
lives in england and she's translated many works but she actually did a translation for faja publications of the
jalalene the jalalene is an incredibly useful aid to understanding the quran because
it fills in a lot of the lacunae and one of the [Music]
students that was at a regular in singapore were actually in malaysia but she was
from singapore really wonderful um somebody did a lot of work for the
singapore muslim community but she had taken a course uh at university that really unsettled
her and one of one of because one of the things that the professor said is that
the quran is filled with lacunae in other words things that have to be filled in by commentary
and she couldn't understand how a revelation why would god
give us a book that has these lacunae and at the time
i don't think i gave her a uh the best answer but it really got me thinking a lot
about that and one of the things that occurred to me was
in in the ayah in which allah says this is a reminder for you and your
people imam malik said it's saying so and so said about the quran
so and so said about the quran so and so said so it's the is not tradition and
one of the really important aspects and something that i've focused on for probably 30 years since i've come back
to the united states is really trying to drive home to our community the importance
of traditional chains of transmission one of the few areas where it's really
left is in tishweed because people still do learn tischweid based on a synod
but in most of the other sciences and there's undeniably been a delusion of islam so
a lot of people you know go collect is not and people give them freely and
um so it's not it's just like you have diploma mills so are you gonna get
the doctor who trained at johns hopkins or are you gonna get the doctor
uh that you know is a quack and and uh you know
got got a naturopathic diploma from a uh
you know an online course they did for six weeks
i mean there are people that do that you know it's quite and that's not to say because naturopathic there are
naturopathic colleges that are are reputable
um like the one in portland and i think harvard actually has now a naturopathic program
so uh that that's the difference so it's very important to know
that um you know the importance of of chains of transmission
and and that's why i think there are lacunae is because allah
has forced us to be reliant on transmission
that the quran has to be transmitted in that way the prophet explained the quran to his
people his life was an explanation of it and in in any uh
in any case those are just some initial reflections um
so uh the first question comes in how much of the quran is literal and how much is metaphorical and ambiguous can we rely
on one particular approach in understanding the quran or should we apply different approaches there are
the quran has there are very few actual hazy verses in the quran
that are problematic but there are many things in the quran that can be taken metaphorically the the
methodology of sunnah is not to esotericize the quran
but to recognize that there are esoteric interpretations the prophet saws said in a hadith that the
ayah has a had and it has a vahron and a botnun and a muthala or a matala
so the he's indicating that there are four
levels of interpretation and in even in traditional western uh
christian interpretation they had four levels of interpretation so they had the the historical the out the allegorical
the the moral and then the anagogical so there are ways multiple ways of
interpreting things so for instance uh in allah says that some of the verses are
hazy with the shabby hat and then others are they're they're they're they're they're
come they're they're they're clear in their meanings and those who have sickness in their
heart tend to esotericize and wander off into the occult um so we we uh
we we're people of the inward and the outward and we assert that there has to be a balance between the two
that's that's the sunni tradition and and the shia really also
next question for someone beginning to read the quran in translation how can the jews of the quran be discovered
without one being overwhelmed was a good question i mean we have to recognize the limits of translation but also we have
to recognize the benefits of translation so even reading the quran in arabic if
you're not trained in balara and sarf
you have to be very careful and not many people even modern arabs who've gone through 12 years of arabic education or
even into college they don't have the type of grammatical skills or rhetorical
skills that people that went to traditional madrasa acquired and still acquire in places
where where they they're focused on so you still have i mean there's great grammarians in mauritania geraldo benbe
is an extraordinary grammarian he's a rhetorician he's a logician and so
you have to be careful translations are problematic they they um
there are many possibilities some verses literally you will get it's not that
common but in some of the contraries you'll get very extremely different interpretations as if they're almost
like completely opposite so imam al-khazadi's work can sometimes
roughly be divided into works for scholars and works for the average muslim that's true where did the jewels
of the quran fit in i think it fits in an educated muslim i think if you're if
you have a good level of education and i'm not talking about so much islamic education i think you can
benefit greatly from the jewels of the quran but it's a really good question because
there are works that are for scholars and then there are works i i look at it like prescription and
over-the-counter um you know there's things you can buy over the counter
and they're not going to be harmful you read the side and it says you know it might say we recommend that you
ask your doctor before you use this so but generally over the counters are are
pretty safe but even tylenol can kill so
even with just going um you can get into trouble so you just
have to be careful but i i do believe that we should if we don't have access to the arabic my first reading i became
muslim from reading the quran dr almar became muslim from reading the autobiography of malcolm x
there's different ways to get to islam but my experience was with george sales
quran which is pretty amazing because as a really old that was that 1734
was and george sale the first one was uh robert of kenton
uh back in the in 1643 was the first translation into latin
which is actually considered a good translation apparently in latin my latin's too rusty to read that but
um [Music] but uh george sale there was an argument because it was
reprinted in america in 1832 i think and they actually in the introduction
claimed that he was probably a crypto muslim because he he was too he was
he was too uh relatively neutral not entirely i mean
he does you know they you people people have to realize that at that time you had to say nasty things
about islam or you'd be accused of being a muslim and could really get into trouble
it was a different world and so a lot of people don't understand that that that
about that nature of that time is there any methodology method methodical common ground between how
al-khazadi approached the quranic text and the way ibn arabi approaches it well there's two even arabies i mean there
are more than two but the two main ones when you're talking about the quran tend to be
abu bakr binarabhi who was a student of the imam al-ghazadis
and he was largely although he had a commentary that was apparently multi-volume
unfortunately it it was lost with the fall of andre lucia but he did do a four
volume known as if you're talking about mahidin ibn
arabi who was a 13th century scholar
and mystic and he's more known for what some people term theosophy which is
like spiritual philosophy but i uh if so i don't know which one you you
you mean but i would say in terms of even out of the aldi
he's very much focused on camera quran but it has beautiful insights if you
want his more [Music] spiritual book it's called
which is a fantastic book that got published beautifully it was a book i waited for 25 years for and it was
finally done in a really good edition by a friend of mine from algeria um so
it's it's a stunning book rajon and has just amazing insights into it
and he does deal with the quran ibn arabi did there is a a tafsir there is a tough
seer attributed to him which i bought in fez in 1978 my first trip to fess
i actually bought it in a bookstore and i i could have no it wouldn't be possible for me to
have been able to read it at that time but but i did buy it so i have that copy still in my library
that was probably written by his student al hashani but it uses a methodology in which
is consistent one if you read just a few chapters you will learn his methodology
and then it becomes relatively easy to navigate what he's doing so usually for instance
he'll interpret as the heart allah brings the earth back to life
after its death so the heart is the place of cultivation it's where you cultivate good deeds or you cultivate
bad deeds so you're sowing seeds in your heart and you water that that heart with either good deeds or bad deeds so the
seeds grow and the heart either becomes virtuous or vicious and so
what he's that that that's one of his approaches um it doesn't deny the outward either
and so he was not a esotericist i mean even
and even tamiya has his criticisms particularly but even tamiya does say
that he benefited greatly from his book the future so even to me i read ibn aarovi i would not recommend ibn aurobi
i am not an ibrahim scholar by any stretch um i i have read in the future
but i i would not recommend it's that level of
is for it's like trying to go to a a quantum physics book before you've
learned basic physics so i i would not recommend it and see
who i feel more close to uh asked his sheikh about ibn arabi and he
said in other words i don't want to say anything and he asked him again he said
look some people say he was a kotab and some people say he wasn't a muslim he said i say it to sleep you know just
stay out of the debate yeah you don't want to make took fear of people that aren't kafir and
um there's there's a book by uh i think it's called tambihal rabbi
lehmann you know waking up the idiot uh in his making tak
fear of ibn arabi that uh siuti so
you know even arabi was highly honored in the ottoman tradition um
and but he is a he is a contentious um uh even amongst some of the great
scholars uh one of the greatest scholars of islamic tradition is the great
the renewer of the second millennium he did not agree with ibn aurobi and he
actually wrote his own understanding of tohid to
counter the understanding that was presented by ibrahirovi but he didn't make takfir
these are debates so we should be very careful about these
i just want to ask if there are any tips for a mother who struggles with a baby and at the same time wants to finish the quran and understand it well first of
all you get a great reward in struggling with your baby don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater so sometimes you know you just have these problems one of the great
stories that we have in in the western tradition is the story of
the pied piper of hamlin which is about a rat infestation in this
town and so this piper comes to town and says he can get rid of all the rats
and and so he pipes them all out and they follow him and he he destroys them but then
they won't pay him so he gets really angry so he pipes the children out and they all go into a cave and disappear
and they lose their children i i liken that to people that use the
television to get rid of the rattiat the pesky aspect of children um you're gonna pay the piper by losing
your children so it's very important just to be patient with children
the idea of leaving a child crying uh a young infant
crying uh like this that's how the they say the generation of the nazis was a result of
a kind of dr spock book that was published in the 1880s on how to raise
children and and it was all about punitive measures it was all about not
you know letting them cry themselves to sleep it created a generation of people that lost empathy so it's really important to
have empathic children the way you get that according to erickson a psychiat
psychologist that i really liked when i was a read psychology in college you know he had the
these um crises developmental crises and the first one was trust versus mistrust
so if a child knows that it's in a trustworthy family it's going to resolve that crisis but if you're ignoring the
child it's going to really traumatize that child early on
and i'm more and more convinced that most of the problems in the world are a direct result of childhood trauma
um do you have any reflections on nj dawud's attempt to present the quran in the order of revelation rather than
compilation how reliable is the order he offers nj dilutes an interesting
this is one of the important translations that emerges in the 19th century
it was published at the turn of the century in i think the everyman library or something so it
actually became quite widely read it's still in print
we do know that imam ali had a a must-have that was based on
the actual dates of revelation so imam ali kept
that and but it's lost and even jose and kelby said if we had it we
would have access to great knowledge so it's unfortunate
there there are some interesting aspects to what he did it's not entirely
uh verifiable but some of it is i mean we do know when some things were revealed
although one of the miracles of the quran is that as it was coming down gibril was saying
put this here put this there and so which is a much more miraculous way to
do a book i mean it wasn't just given to him in any linear fashion
so um yeah i would take that with a grain of mila
next one
okay i got it you don't have to spell it out
can you please shed light on the idea of a poetic translation of the quran we have a popular product translation of
the quran in the sindhi language by murphy i mean i would argue that
the quran is stunningly powerful we don't call it out of adapt to the
quran but to use the word uh you know somebody
who watched gary wills is what is the quran they we got some emails saying oh he called
it poetry well if you look up poetry in the in the dictionary it has different
meanings and one of them is just beautiful language like we could say his speech was pure
poetry just meaning it was really beautiful and eloquent that's all it means so
there is a translation right now i think it's being done by dr bruce lawrence i don't know if he's finished
it but he wrote this book on the quran in english and he's actually doing one in verse which i personally
wouldn't do because the quran says
you know we did not teach him poetry and it's not appropriate for him
the great algerian mujahid and scholar
who fought the french and was a scholar in his own right has an incredible commentary on the quran
called it's really one of the most amazing books i've ever read
but he and he has a book called tempeh rafi
that i read many many years ago and really benefited from it he says in that book
that the reason that the the they call the prophet's poets is because
a poet is doing something that other people can't do
and and when you hear a great poet uh it just it's quite amazing
and and so there's a there's a there's an inspiration
that is clearly part of a great poet in fact many poets will
tell people that they just the poem was there
frost talks about that and then there's the craft of poetry also
but um the the quran is definitely not poetry
but whoever translated translates it should really have an extraordinary
gift with the language he's translating it into one of the reasons why i really really
like dr cleary's translation is that
he he has this minimalist style which and the quran is very very
minimalist despite its extraordinary eloquence it has a really stunning
um conciseness what's called e-jazz it has ilpanet but generally
e-jazz is is and and he really he has that and he has a
just a very interesting word diction um one of the things that um
bruce dr bruce uh says about
dr cleary's translation he says
that he actually mentions me in light of because he does say um
and he does he he that there's an american who who did his own uh translation of the quran
he's not a muslim but his name is sandal burke and he mined cleary for constructing his
own hybrid version of the quran but he had read he he did it because he wanted americans to know more about islam after
9 11. but one of the things that he said is he read all these different commentaries but it was dr cleary's commentary that really
grabbed him but because it was in copyright he didn't use it he ended up using one that
was out of copyright but dr clear he says here that the translation is
it can be problematic right because for instance that
he seems to lose his way in rendering evil as ill a drastic d metaphysical reading of what
are often used as apotropaic texts and that's because in in
in the the chapter anes he says in the name of god the
compassionate the merciful he says or in dawn rather right he says
say i take refuge in the lord of dawn.
from the ill of what is created and from the ill of darkness when it's
gloomy and from the ill of those who curse and from the ill of the envious when he envies now
dr lawrence was criticizing him because he's saying it's d
it's a d metaphysical reading because he's not using evil but if you actually look up the word ill the fourth meaning
of it is evil and it's actually related etymologically to evil
and one of the things about in arabic it is not just evil the arabs
call anything that's deficient like poverty is
so one of the things that really struck me about using ill there is that
the last two surahs were given to the prophet as a protection
because he was unsettled by some people who had
who had done this these knots the 11 knots that they did and that's why there's 11 verses because 11 is the
devil's number and so there's 11 verses and and in fact 9 and 11
because they they it bypasses 10 which is one with power and and that
this is in like a cult tradition anyway that's what i've read in in these
books on occult numerology so dr cleary understood
that these eyes were revealed to protect people
from mental imbalances from losing their way from having wasa
which is what we today know as compulsive thoughts right so obsessive compulsive people
those are illnesses but but but they have there's an evil when it's comes from a
demonic source as opposed to say a natural imbalance that can occur from
not sleeping eating or drinking properly so that's just one example of that so i
my argument is that whoever translates the quran must have an extraordinary knowledge of arabic
and an incredible sensibility in the english language if it's they're going into english in urdu into urdu persian
into persian that's what i would say alhamdulillah subhanallah
[Music]
we'll see you on thursday for those of you that are going to come back and uh
we'll see uh the the the reading club the first command club
is going to be open for everybody i mean technically it is in that if somebody
can't we've never turned away people at zaytuna college if they if they warranted acceptance we've never turned
anybody away from lack of money and it really bothers me because a lot of people put out this propaganda somehow
that zeitung is elitist and that oh it's too expensive and this well
education is expensive but fortunately we have a lot of really generous uh muslims in the united states and
around the world that have helped us build this college we still want to do a lot more so we really appreciate the
support but we never turn away people for lack of funds it's never been our policy people i i read this criticism of
the regala oh how it's this bourgeois adventure where these rich people go and
have a we've always had uh poor people uh that were given
scholarships we've never gone the prophet said there's no good in a gathering that doesn't have poor
people and so we've never uh promoted that but the idea of not having
beautiful environments our whole civilization was based on creating beautiful environments i mean this is
islam it's a religion of isan and we love so unfortunately there's a lot of wealth
in the world and we hope that the wealthy people will support the other people to do
so alhamdulillah thank you for allah
you
Part 2
Music]
this is the second session inshaallah looking at the jewels and the pearls of the quran from
imam al-khazadi's famous work jawahar quran based on the translation of dr
thomas cleary so inshaallah
i wanted to before that just start with a nice hadith
to remind us of the blessing of this month the prophet sallallahu alaihi was reported to have said imam al-bayhaki
relates this
the quran fasting and the quran both intercede for the servant on the day of judgment
so fasting will actually
so everything that allah determines will speak will speak including the hands the tongue when they ask the prophet sam how would
he do that he said the one who did it for all things will do it for the hand and the tongue so fasting itself
some kind of personification will say
oh my lord i prevented him from food and from his appetites during the day so allow me to
intercede for him
and and the quran itself will say i prevented him from sleeping during the night and so allow me to intercede for him
and it and allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala will allow them to intercede so you shaft their given intercession
another interesting hadith which is in the most not of imam ahmed
ibrahim in ramadan that the
ibrahim and this in our tradition the sahel it was given to ibrahim these are the
the actual um revelation that was given to ibrahim was
in the sahaf which are like we would call them today folios uh ibrahim al-salam was given them on
the first night of ramadan
in ramadan and then the torah was revealed on the sixth after the six days had passed of ramadan
so that would be now with injilli ashara
the quran was revealed after 24 days had passed from ramadan so
25 or 27 or 29. so the this is an indication of the power of this month that all of the
previous uh revelations had been revealed uh in this month and the quran was given
to the prophet saw isam in this month it came down in in its entirety and then over 23 years
it was revealed piecemeal to the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam the this hadith which is related by more
than one but it's important in uh in terms of imam al-khazad's methodology
[Music]
there's another reward that says that every ayah that comes down has a hadoon
so there's two different uh recessions of this but they differ on the meaning of this but
one of the meanings that siri zarok points out in his book he says that it has an outward meaning
an inward meaning and then it has the hadith for the fukaha and the matlab is for the
so the quran has outward meanings that use the exoteric meanings then it has inward meanings and
then it it has hudud and then it has a position that allah subhanahu gives
with what imam al-qazadi calls the mukash this unveiling that occurs for the for
these people so imam al-khazadi has his own taxonomy of the quranic verses and sciences in
jawahar quran and that's why the books were studying because he's really giving you his methodology
and even though you'll find some of the ulama disagreed with him overall it's been accepted by
the ummah this was considered a a very important book historically so he talks
about the six types of quranic verses the first one
is it deals with the knowledge of allah's attributes and his work so these are what he calls the jewels the second
is the knowledge of the straight past in other words how do we get to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to knowledge of god
and to his pleasure and these he calls pearls now one of the reasons that he does this is that jewels and pearls you
don't find them on the street jewels you have to mine for them
in the mountains pearls you have to dive into the ocean to get so he's he's
really letting us know that these are things that we have to struggle for they they're they're not simply i
mean one of the uh in the gospel it says don't cast pearls to swine
in other words don't give something precious to something unworthy of it and this is why
and it's important to remember that imam al-khazadi sees everything in the world
as a having a hidden meanings so he would see jewels
and pearls the physical ones that people hold precious and will actually kill to obtain
that that these have spiritual significances so he's using them in that spiritual
sense the jewels and the pearls and then people's condition on meeting allah subhanahu wa ta'ala there's different
foreign says one group is in paradise and other groups in hell and
we don't know our condition with allah we hope that we're from the nejun the people of najat the people of salvation
but only allah knows those conditions and then the conditions of believers and
unbelievers in if you look you can see the people here their conditions
allah says that the the believers have who are they they're people that they're
they're present in their prayer they give out from what they've been given they have quality so he's saying that
the quran will give us these indications here and then also arguments of the
kaffiron and the rudud so arguments against people that deny the quran that attack the
quran there's arguments in the quran one of the things that the quran does almost immediately is it gives a taxonomy of
the three types of human beings so there's believers there's disbelievers and then there's hypocrites so already
it's telling you you're going to be in one of those three categories not a fourth category
and then the six are the stages of the path to god and how to prepare for it so these are all really related
and the knowledge of the straight path you're going to find them in these others and one of the things
that he says is that there are verses in the in the quran that will contain
more than one he will always look in order to determine which category goes into he
will look what is the most important element so if it's a jewel despite the fact that it has other aspects in the
verse he'll always put it with the jewels if it's a pearl despite the fact that it has other
types in it he'll put it with the pearls so this is his methodology and then he has
the science the the ten sciences so one is he calls the pith which is the
lube what's at the essence of it so knowledge of god in the last day knowledge of the straight path
and these this is the order so he considers uh
the knowledge of allah on the last day is all is going to go under obviously kalam will be knowledgeable on the last
day and of the prophet but kalam is the
the science that emerges out of it just like fick is the science that emerges out of the knowledge of the straight
path so these are sciences that develop later so the quran has the usual of these things in them
but the were brought out by the scholars over time and this takes about 300 years
before they're really solidified and then you see a continual development but overall
within the first 300 years you see the solidification and then also there's
wow and there's preaching and there's story telling so these are at the essence of
the quran and then he has what he calls the shell which protects it so one is the exoteric exegesis which means tafsir
of just what it means outwardly and then also the arabic language because you need arabic to understand the quran
in the quran and arabia we sent it down as a arabic quran so it is in arabic and
although we use translations translations were really debated for for a long time in fact when uh
marmaduke pickthal muhammad marmaduke pickthal went to al-azhar to get permission to translate the quran a lot
of the scholars didn't want to give it because they did not they actually were opposed to translations
traditionally the earliest translations come out of persia where you got interlinear notes so they helped
persians to understand the quran but generally the the the ulama were of the
opinion that the quran cannot be translated that it's an untranslatable work and this is why
al-azhar actually as a prerequisite for giving any seal of approval that it's an
interpretation or the meanings of the quran that it's not the quran and in
fact i thought it was interesting that dr bruce lawrence who wrote this very interesting biography of the history of
the quran in english he actually says that he prefers to leave quran k-o-r-a-n
in english to mean the translation and al-quran which is now the new transliteration for it to mean
the arabic quran so it's it's very interesting but when we say the quran says and then we
quote english that's actually not really the quran and inshallah there's something that the
arabs call majasa where you leave something
ask the village but it really means it's like shahrukh ramadan some of the ulama said you shouldn't say
ramadan you shouldn't say ramadan without saying ramadan because ramadan was considered
by some to be one of the names of allah so you don't say ja ramadan
these are inshallah [Music]
doesn't inshallah take people to account for um
these type of things i think there's there's a generosity with our lord inshallah but
we do make mistakes and um especially when we're fasting
so i'm hoping my brain is going to keep working but the arabic language is extremely
important and then arabic grammar because arabic language is knowing like the the the
sahaba knew the arabic language but they didn't know arabic grammar if you asked one of the
sahabah what's the difference between uh
he wouldn't know what it was if you asked him what uh what's said and what's him he wouldn't
know muktada and khabar he wouldn't know a joomla ismia from a jumble
but he would understand them so it's you can know arabic
the arabic language without knowing arabic grammar grammar
uh is it can go on for a long time to actually really get deep into grammar if you end
up with mullah jammeh for instance which is the great central asian scholar
you're you're in the philosophy of grammar most of the ulama
now will do the alfie of ibn malik which traditionally was an intermediate
grammar but now it's considered an advanced grammar in muritania the the ulama tend to do
the after the alfia and that's three thousand additional lines of of
of uh the alfie is a thousand lines of grammar that's another three thousand for all
the things that alfia doesn't deal with so grammar is really important and it's
highly neglected and one of the things that sheikh abdullah says in his book on
ahmadiyya dallalet which are actually amali in other words he the book was just his lectures from from
his memory and then they were transcribed that's what those are called amalia in our tradition so there's a lot
of amali books where the ulama were just giving lectures and people would transcribe them
so he says in amalia
that the and that it could be dilalat is the way they say north africa it's one of those it's called the muthellath
because it has all three dalala and dilala in arabic but he says that there's a
inficac there was a separation of arabic grammar from sharia studies so the a lot
of the students in the sharia colleges they learn grammar but they don't learn it to the degree that's necessary to
really navigate also because a lot of us deals with grammar and with loha with
diction and things like that and then you have to know the quranic recensions so these are also outwardly
so the ascensions there's 10 karats that are considered
seven are in the shalta bia from the great anderus not the sahih but
but the so or the mokhari rather so imam ashatabhi put all ten of the
seven of the karat and then imam al-jazeera did a
versification of of of the seven so if you learn the sha'atabiya and the dura
which is traditionally what studied to learn the ten karat
then you basically know all the different recessions and then obviously there's riwayat of those recessions but
these are not significant differences but they they do different in their pronunciations of things
not in the actual letters the attributes but in in in the
mudud uh in things like hamza in things like the taklil or the imala so
saying things like or like for instance in in wash you have
pahi it's the only time you'll have a little diamond under the ha to let you know that it's uh it's
it's a kasra it goes to kasra as opposed to between kasra and fatha
so these are these are the recessions and then you get into the haroof
and um and people spend their whole life studying
this it's it's pretty amazing that we have this i mean it is a miracle the recessions themselves and then you have
points of articulation this is really tajweed so learning tajweed
so so it's what it's due and then what occurs to it like idram so
you have it learning those things these are the 10
sciences that he puts forward now if you look
he begins the jawahar with the opening al-fatiha
and the opening is al-fatiha
so it's really the the one that is opening for you um
so surat al-fatiha opens the quran and there's a khilaf of whether or not
bismuth is an ayah in some karat it is in some it's not for
so in the learned it's not from from the fatiha it's
considered a um a mark between the sur so that was imam
matic's position so and the hadith
indicates that
proofs but in any case there is a hit up about it imam shafiri who considers it an ayah and considers that the prayer
invalid if the bismid has not recited so there's a hidal about that
whether or not it's from the fatiha in any case if we begin with bismillah
we always begin the quran if you read the quran seek refuge in
allah so allah tells us to seek refuge in allah minister regime from the
accursed shaitaan so awadha
is is uh is to to ma'ad is a place of refuge so we're
seeking refuge with allah subhanahu wa ta'ala from shaitan because shaitaan
wreaks havoc on our species now when when we say
shaytan is that word there's there's a difference of opinion does it come from
or does it come from so so is the root sha
sheen ah noon or is it
there's a difference is is it uh from or is it from falan
the difference if it if it's shaytan with a shattana then it has to do with the one who's
mubat he's he's far from allah or he distances others from allah he causes
others to become distant from allah spiritually if it's
from shito then it becomes the meaning is halaka
so it's either the one who's halak or the one
and both are true the word rajeem which is interesting also because
regime is one of those really interesting words in arabic that can either mean
or it can be an active or a passive a passive
now when it's here which is a regime it could be marjumb
the one who's stoned or it could be rajim the one yarjumu so in other words
he is the one that does it to you he makes you accursed
by following him so when you become a minion so it could have both meanings according to imam
al-aqbari
so allah begins this
is basically saying that all praise belongs to allah alone and he is
the lord of the world alhamdulillah so
that that pr that lamb there is let us step up praise is due to allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala alone which is why whenever we praise anybody in the dunya we say masha allah
because we're we're acknowledging that it's a creation of god and we're
acknowledging that whatever good came from that person is actually really a good
that allah brought into the world so all praise goes back to allah subhanahu and
and whoever we praise you know ultimately we are praising allah so it's an awareness that all praise is allah's
alone because this is his creation so whatever is good in his creation is from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and then he he al-rahman is
if if you believe that the bismillah is an ayah then it's repeated imam rahzali
was so he clearly saw this as being repeated but one of the things
imam al-khazadi says is there's no replication
without meaning in other words if allah
and then the bismillah is the islam that and then the rahman or raheem are attributes rahman is fa lan
these are hyperbolic forms in arabic rahman fa lan is is more hyperbolic in
other words it's a stronger sense than rahim they're both hyperbolic
forms what what hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which you use to really emphasize something so if you say
a lama that's hyperbole he's not just a scholar he's a great
scholar so rahman is he's not just merciful he is really merciful he is
compassionate and and and and so that's these are both
hyperbolic forms which indicate the immense rahm of allah and the reason he
he says that this is repeated after alameen is because it is from his mercy
that he brought everything into existence so his rubobia is an attribute of his mercy the fact that he brought
everything into existence is is from his rahmah and the the greatest rahmah that that he
sent to us for us is the prophet sallallahu isaac because it's guidance
so his guidance is the greatest rahmah he gives us after his creation he created us but
then he provides us with guidance now malaki yomideen dr cleary transit is ruler of judgment
day that's one way and that would actually be probably milik which is the
recession and i there's a few others so you have malik and malak and malik and
malik is the possessor and milik is the sovereign or the ruler
what's interesting is these two forms both indicate something about
allah so not every medic is a malek and and and not every malik is a melech
so the reason for that if if if you have a king a king doesn't necessarily own
everything in his dominion if he's a tyrant he can take whatever he wants but if he's a benevolent king then he owns
what he owns but then he's a caretaker he's somebody who is responsible for his
subjects but he's not going to steal their wealth whereas the malik he owns
and so melik and malik indicate that allah not only is the sovereign of that day but it's all his dominion
there's nothing that does not belong to allah subhanahu ta'ala which means he
cannot oppress his creation there's nothing that he can do that will will be will be warranted
giving god the name of oppressor it's impossible for god to oppress because you cannot oppress
your own possessions if if if you own something
that and and you say you burn something like take you take a coat and you burn
it and somebody sees you burn it they say why are you burning that you say well it's it's got to it's infected
um and i i have to burn it so you're explaining to him but he really
has no business asking you if it's your coat you can do what you want with your own property so that's the point of
medic and malik that he is both yom dean the day of judgment or the day of acquittal in in in his larger
translation he he translates it as the day of requital this is the day when debts fall due so
dean and dane are related it's the day when there's a reckoning an accounting
it is you that we worship and to you we appeal for help so
when you have yaka when you put the
the what would normally be in in the ulambihi position because it's not buduka but when you say buddhuka in
arabic it doesn't create the it doesn't eliminate other things so
you could say that somebody with the shems he worships the law and
he worships the son but you can't say
means that only you alone we worship so when you say it means you alone it is you that we
worship and no one else we are gonna stay in and to you we appeal for help
like the prophet saws gave his advice to his uh his his uh cousin
when he was very young he told him if you're going to seek help seek help from allah which doesn't mean that you don't
seek us babe but you understand that it's only allah even the asava from allah so you have to
understand everything is from allah so it's you alone we help so even when when we're seeking help from creation we know
that it's you that has facilitated for us help from others
he's the one who gave you victory allah gave you victory and he gave you
the believers to help you but that's from allah so the help that the prophet got from his companions was from allah
so only seeking help from allah subhana with that
guide us to the straight path is uprightness so this path is the path of
uprightness and then
the way of those you have graced show us a straight path the way of those you have graced
you've blessed them you've graced them not of those whom is your uh on whom is
your wrath so the allah is on them
is on them nor of those who wander astray so these are the two ways of going astray one is with knowledge
so you know what you should be doing and you don't do it and that's why
the the muslims are in such a precarious situations because so many muslims i don't know any muslims in the
muslim world where i where when i live there that doesn't know the hadith
that the the one who bribes and the one who takes a bribe is they're both in hell
i don't know anybody doesn't know that it's a very well known hadith it's you could almost say it's
not but you can almost say that it is because so many people know that hadith and yet there's so much of bribery so
that's when you incur the wrath of allah is when you know what you should do and
you don't do it whereas those who are astray
those are people that don't know and and they're just wandering in in the
verse in the quran where allah says that the prophet was
like didn't he find you it doesn't mean that he was astray it means that he was seeking
that's why he was going into the doing these things so don't make us from people that don't
have guidance that that might be looking for guidance or just astray so these are people like
for instance um traditionally a lot of the scholars put
the religious categories in there i don't think it's a good thing to some unfortunately some of the translations
actually put between parentheses um you know other religious
traditions and things it's not really um i don't think it's a good thing to do in a translation because that goes under
commentary and uh it it just makes it look like it takes away the moment level
it takes away the moment level which is the general statement those are the two ways people go astray if you want to see it
archetypally that it's in all religions and it's certainly in the islamic religion there are people that know the
truth and they don't practice it those are nahim uh if if
if if they continue on their way and don't make taubah and then allah are people
they're ignorant there's ignorant muslims that just don't know and so they don't practice what they should learn
these are the sciences the meanings and the sciences of the quran so
this is from ibn juzail kelby's and i think it's a very useful because it adds
to imam al-ghazalis the first one he says these are the ma'ani the seven meanings of the quran
that that allah subhanahu revealed these meanings to us the first one is
which is knowledge of our lord who is our lord so this goes to imam's
jewels and then nubuwa which is the communication that allah has given
us through these people that have this special quality this this extraordinary angelic quality
of purity and allah has prepared them for revelation the third is the ma'at
eschatology what happens after we die what's the eschaton what's coming later
and then the fourth is the basically how to live in the world so this is transactional it's a cam between
the vertical alignment with your lord that relates to all the devotional rules that we have and then in the horizontal
alignment with with creation transactional things of learning how to um
to basically buy and sell in what in marriages how to behave all these things
and then the which is the promise and then the which is the threat so
allah so he's both giving us a promise if you
obey allah then here's the promise and then there's a threat and then finally
which really inform us of all these things so the the the one of the most beautiful
uh stories that we have and all of the quran are uh are ah
they're the most beautiful stories but yusuf ideas you will find all of these in the chapter of yusuf so you're going
to find enmo
you'll find all of them so that embody the the the they're they're really
embodiments of all these meanings and then he he gives certain knowledges that you should not go into the quran and
imam al-ghazalian he talks about
he talks about the this hadith about uh whoever
attempts to interpret the quran with his opinion with his opinion and
comes from from how you see things it's your perspective that's what an opinion is
it's it's your perspective about things so you know he saw something
um and and it's it's it's how you're looking at something he says that that is misunderstood that
it doesn't mean that scholars can't interpret the quran an imam
uh who has a a tough seal that has a lot of in it
facading says that it is not just because it was not said by the
prophet isaiah or the senate that we can't find meanings in the quran that that that's a methodology that's
permitted to seek out new meanings in the quran but it has its requisite knowledges and so
imam al-qazadi says what that hadith means that you know whoever manifested
whoever interprets the quran with his opinion let him take his seat in hell he said it means
like just out of desire to to conform with his own desires so he
has his own nufs desires and and he interprets the quran to suit
his opinion like recently you've had commentaries that try to interpret the story of lult
to say that it wasn't about homosexuality well what's what's the agenda behind that
like who who's who's actually making those interpretations because nobody in the history of islam ever made those
interpretations and so it wasn't just homosexuality but that
was a central part of why they were condemned for acting on their homosexuality
so that would be according to imam al-khazadi interpreting it with opinion
and the same is true and then he said or not having
recourse to the exegetes which means the science of tafsir so you have you have
to know tafsir you have to know the i mean one of the things about that there was a
south asian man who claimed to be this the the seal of the prophets like the last one
because because uh you know you have khatam and nevi but in in nafee it's khatim
so there's hatam which is seal so he said the prophet was the seal but in
nafta it's khattim which means the last the final so
right there because he didn't know the quran he made a huge mistake about the nature of the prophet's
mission the prophet islam abi abadi there's no prophet after him um
this is a really important area imam javas the great hanafi scholar wrote a book on this
the imam kortobi the great monarchy scholar called the abu bakr raven arabi has a
book called the quran in four volumes assays there's many
books that deal with just the quran these are about 500 ayahs in the quran that deal
with specifically with legal matters and so knowing that and then
knowing abrogation and there's a big hit up about this some of them have over a hundred verses there's only a handful of
verses that are agreed upon about and generally with the abrogation
the tell me his principle is sound that if the conditions
of abrogation come again then the they would be mahkama so
many of the hadith the verses that relate to kitab they don't apply in
places where you don't have state authority or anything like that that in those places you actually apply
all of those hadiths all of the ayahs that deal with patience and um
suffering the tribulations of the place you're in if you can't make hijrah and then the hadith
you have to know hadith because the hadith some of the hadith quran and the prophet saws is the
greatest commentator of the quran in his sayings and his actions he was the quran
[Music] the saying that he was the quran or quran yamcha
is is ara it's it's not a literal uh meaning but but uh
aisha said in a sound hadith he he he embodied the
quran like all of his character was from the quran and then
six knowing the stories of the quran there were many stories in the quran knowing them musa and faraon the story
of suleiman story of dawud with the man who comes asking him
he has his question and then tasawolf tasawolf
is a valid science of islam if you get into torokh and into
some of the ways that tasawaf has manifested then that's a completely different thing
but the idea that tashow is not from islam is a completely modern view of some people it has
nothing to do with traditional islam everybody accepted the idea of tasawolf
and and all of the great scholars of islam speak well of this science including
even samia
many many of the scholars so but there are deviant sufis like there's deviant grammarians
there's deviant fukaha there's deviant there's deviant every group has deviants
and so and there's a lot of charlatans in tesol traditionally in fact
you know i've mentioned this before but i'll say it again when i was studying
arabic years ago i i read the makamats you know you have this uh
genre and and the characters in the they were like uh
religious charlatans which was a little shocking for me at the time you know i was
22 23 years old and i read these stories and they would they'd do things like
they'd go to the mosque and claim they saw the prophet and tell all the people that the prophet told him to that they should all give charity to him and then
he'd just steal the money and go off but i realized later as i got older and just the fraudulent nature of so many people
on this planet and i'm dealing with some fraud right now so you really might when
i wrote the purification of the heart my father read it and he was like one page on fraud and i don't think so
that was that was his comment so and he you know so he he he was defrauded
of by some really nefarious people so fraud is part of life and the worst
types of frauds are religious frauds i mean i'll take a a
a goomba from queens or new jersey over a over a
religious fraud you know these people that trick people with um religiosity
so you'll get that you'll find that you know and then also which is basically knowing
um the the akita of the muslims so you have also
also which some people call it this term um
is knowing how to derive the rulings out of filk and then loha
which is really important in our deen to know the language of the quran the quran
uses there's quran there's words in the quran that you think you know what they mean
because you know arabic but then when you look in the tafsir you find out that they don't mean what you think they mean
and there's a lot of that in the quran and then now absolutely necessary you have to learn
grammar and then finally rhetoric al-bayan that's the the 12th so
those are his now when we get to um just beginning with
uh back to the jawahar so i just wanted that as a prelude to this when we get to
the jawahar of the quran imam al-qazadi identifies these what he
calls the jewels and then what he calls the pearls so the jewels
are those that relate directly to allah and to his
attributes and his acts the pearls are those that relate to the muslims so this first verse would be
really a pearl because it's indicating here's the guidance like this is the book that's going to take you to god
so valik and kitab and that's for ta'aleem vadi kadkitab
it's a type of what we call a demonstrative pronoun but it's a dermostative pronoun not for something
close but for something far generally but it