o 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's for tao lim so it's this book

this magnificent this momentous this great book

and some stop there there's no doubt in it

that la is nephilim so it's very interesting to start a book by

letting you know from the very start of it that there's absolutely no doubt in the book

in other words rest assured this book is free of doubt

here the huda is put into the what we would call indefinite so it's a

neck it's tenkir litavim so it's nekera for talim uh in in grammar in uh sorry in rhetoric

so so the the nekera here indicates again that this is divine guidance this

is not ordinary guy this isn't guiding you on the road to the marketplace

this is something [Music] it's real guidance

dr cleary and and he i think he's the only person

probably i don't know if ever but certainly

i don't know anybody else but there i think maybe there might be some others

but he could read the hindu scriptures the buddhist scriptures

the the christian scriptures the hebrew scriptures and the muslim scriptures so

those are the five major world religions in their in their original tongues

and and really well i mean he he knew sanskrit he knew pali he translated the

dhammapada from pali and he actually identifies something in there of a prediction of the prophet

sallallahu isaam but he knew greek he knew hebrew and he knew arabic

and so when when you see his word choice

you really have to think about it and one of the things that he says in his um the reason why he chose this word

in fact is one of the most interesting things about this

translation are are the notes that he put in the back because it really shows you the the kind

of extraordinary insights that he had

but he says conscientious this is from the root wakaya which has

primitive meanings of guarding preserving safeguarding protecting

comes from the fifth or the eighth measure of the root and means to be aware to be wary be on guard protect

oneself and fear the wrath of god i have used the word conscientious to render

this on many occasions because its original meaning in other words the original meaning of conscientious in the

english language combines these ideas fairly well and

because the word conscientious has weakened to such a degree in contemporary usage that the connection

between duty to god and duty to humanity is no longer clear and needs to be

revitalized by using the word in such a way as to retrieve its original meaning and force so he's very specifically

choosing this because he feels that it combines both your duty to god because conscientious

traditionally meant somebody who was scrupulous in his moral activities

that's one of the meanings and one of the problems with language and this is where a lot of

people don't understand is that language has multiple usages

so so you can have very specific words like in arabic you can have a really specific

word that's used for like kas cuss in arabic has to have liquid in it if it

doesn't have liquid it's not a cuss so this is a book without doubt

has guidance in it for the conscientious that's how he's chosen to translate it

and now they're described

as [Music] those who believe in the unseen now what

is the right well the reib is anything you can't see but

the question becomes are things that we can now see in

electron microscopy from the unseen uh these are

problems now but um generally the unseen

would be the spiritual world not the material world so anything that's in the material world and this is very

important in imam al-ghazali's in his entire world view because he

really sees the binary of shahada the unseen world and the seen

world and this is constant through his his works so he really sees the mulk and

the manicure occasionally not that often he'll bring in a third

term which is the jabaru but generally

he has this binary of the seen and the unseen so there are people that believe in the

unseen in allah in the angels in the afterlife

all these things that we can't see it's very interesting it doesn't say you

saloon right you could have said you saloon but it says

allah right so the salah is it's an established

practice allah so you can say you sali

but ikama is to be muhim in it it's something that's constant so they

they're constant in their prayers so

this is really really important and also establishing the prayer the congression the congregational prayer is very

important and from what we have provided them they

give out now this is in other words it doesn't say from what they were provided we gave them

we provided for them so this is a risk and your risk has

obligations because you're mustache you have been given a trust that was held by by people

before you if you inherited wealth it was your parents trust or your uncle or whoever you inherited it from but if you

have earned the money here it's a sacred trust nonetheless that allah has given

you because he's the one that gave you your physical strength he's the one that gave you your intelligence he's the one

that provided all the things that enabled you to work in order to get that so whatever

you have earned is actually from allah which goes back to alhamdulillah

all praises do to allah all provision is due to allah so this everything belongs

to god he possesses everything that's in the

heavens earth but he has in essence loaned it to us and and and that loan is an amana now

while we have it we have it's our property so we are the malik by sharia but in

reality we're only renters and and we're going to have to pay that

rent by using it what he has the the conditions of rent the rental agreement

that god has given us is that we follow his sharia that's the payment that you do what he commanded us to do

if you do that you've paid the rent and and then on piano you have no debts

now most of us are going likely going to have debts on the day of judgment and that's when

the renter says i'm going to let you slide that's what

renters do if they have a good renter but okay he he got laid off and he's having a hard time and he's trying to

get a job and then so that the landlord says you know don't worry about it i ca i can

handle this well allah subhana wa allah

has no need for anything so like a kind person here who would

give you a break allah subhanahu wa is the most merciful of those who show

mercy so we should always give out from what allah has provided us now what does

allah ask for right allah says in the quran they ask him what do we give out he says

say whatever they have extra it's tafawi it's what it's what they can give out

allah is not asking for everything he's asking for something

he's given you everything he's asking for something back and not for himself

right he's asking you for something back for others in need and and that's that's that's basically

it [Music] um

and those who believe in what was sent down before you so we believe in all the prophets that were sent down before us

all the prophets that that we gave those 19 that are mentioned in that verse those are all prophets

that were given revelation from allah subhanahu wa so we follow

the prophets by following the last prophet he's our prophet sallallahu alaihi but

all of them are our prophets in that we believe in them and we accept their revelations but our but the prophet

isaiah came with the most updated version and this is why we believe uh in our prophet saw saddam

as being the only one that we need we get the guidance from him directly

and there's a hidden about the verses in the quran that deal with previous dispensations whether or not

they apply to us or not but generally we have all the guidance that we need from our prophet saw isam and the prophet i

said when he saw omar looking in the torah he said why are you looking in that like you have the quran we don't

need that's that book it's a good book right

you know the in it it has guidance in it immense uh wisdom in the bible both an

old and new testament um so but we have been given this and what was

sent down before you and are certain of the hereafter they have a yakin about the achara

so they don't doubt now people i and many people have asked me this you

know that like i have doubts you have to distinguish between what dr cleary often refer to as the

host and the guest so the the host is who you are

that's your essential nature the guests are uninvited thoughts

and so you can you can have uninvited thoughts that come into your heart

and don't take them seriously but they'll come shaytan

you know shaytan is i mean that's one of his names he's the obsessor he's going to

assail you with thoughts and make you think that it's you so we have that differentiation and in

fact some of the traditional christian guilt was based on not having that differentiation of not realizing that

your thoughts are not necessarily yours there's there's

any you know but what is your true nature so if you're a believer that's your host

and then the uninvited guest comes in says

what what comes into your heart from shaitaan and your heart rejects it that's iman

that is iman so don't debate with him don't try to

fight him just let the thought go let it pass these are they're just

what the arabs call sahabu safe clouds of the summer you know they just dissipate they're gone

or sahabi will save

[Music] so these are the ones who are

they are the ones that follow the guidance from their lord they're on the guidance that god gave them here he

translates here he translate there are the happy ones which obviously if you're

successful you're happy in in his larger commentary his a larger interpretation

which is this unfortunately this is no longer available but um it it is available on on

on kindle but inshallah try to get that out again

in here he calls them the successful ones so this was later he did this

several years after this he did this after the gulf war he was very troubled by what had happened

and how muslims were being demonized so he wanted to do the essential quran

to just show people basically what imam

identified as the central essential meanings of this book which is why it's called the essential quran

as for the ungrateful who refuse it is the same to them whether you warn them or not they do not believe so

kaffir is a really difficult word in arabic even theologically it's a problematic

term kafara means to cover over in fact

arguably cover which has the same sounds in it might have some it might just be a

one of those coincidences of language but who knows i actually have a book

that attempts to prove that all language goes back to arabic a lot of it's stretching but believe it

or not in 1828 mr webster

noah webster who wrote the first american dictionary and and noah webster was a very pious

man he actually has a really brilliant little book called advice for the young which is all how to stay on the path

but anyway noah webster felt america needed to have its own

english and not be tied to the old country he was had that real

uh american kind of independence right we're not english we have our own

way of speaking our language so he created this dictionary but what he wanted to prove

in that dictionary believe it or not was that all of english went back to

hebrew as the source language of the world what

he found though was there were more cognates in arabic than in hebrew so he

ended up putting a whole bunch he knew arabic from uh he studied hebrew and arabic i think i

think at harvard but anyway so if you look at the you can get a facsimile of his 1828 edition and it has

got all these arabic words in there which is like he says cave is calf cave calf and then art is earth

earth and then cover kaffar so he's got all these baboos baby

he goes on and on it's very interesting but what what is fascinating is where did

they get lithographic type setting in 1828 in the united states in arabic that's what really surprised me

like where did they get the lithograph to do that amazing

so kafar kufar what's important to know it means in gratitude like the prophet saws said

that that that women in particular had to be very careful what he called quran al-ishara

to be ungrateful for the companionship of their husbands because husbands can be very difficult and can have you know

they can get grumpy they can do all these things and but you know they're important right they're

they're taking care of you they're hopefully paying all the bills and things like

that so the proposal is said you know it was important not to fall into a kind of

ingratitude and vice versa the man said ilano once a man came knocking on his

door to complain about his wife this was in medina was a small

city and so he went to come and then he heard there was a fight inside the house

and his wife was kind of saying things to omar he said oh my god if that's omar's wife what am i

complaining about so he's going to leave omar open the door so where are you going and he said no no i

made a mistake he said no you came for a reason what'd you come for and then he explained to him and he said omar laughed and said my wife takes care of

me she does all these things you take care of the children i should be patient if she gets upset so

it's a it goes both ways so that's kufran it's an ingratitude and then

kafir is also somebody who knows the truth and rejects it i mean that's

really the essential aspect so the truth has become clear and they reject it

that's real kuffar and that's why

we're going to get to that don't put idols beside god knowingly

so in other words you know what you're doing don't do that wittingly don't do it knowingly

so kofar allah always spoke before

the hajja was on the arabs he spoke yay hanes so all

the meccan they even though they were not muslims he's calling them ness he doesn't call

them he calls them nes because they're being invited to the calling once the was

established once they saw the miracles of the prophet once the quran they understood the quran which was their

language and they knew they couldn't imitate it then they had no excuse

so to apply that to the rest of humanity most of the people that you see are nests and in fact one wonders should we

really assume people are muslim before we assume they're not muslim why why would you make the assumption

that people i mean i was sitting with an uh was with me from canada we were sitting

with john taylor gatto and i looked at john taylor gato and i said you know john because he he was a wonderful human

being that really loved people and loved education and and did amazing things in education

unprecedented teacher of the year out of 54 000 teachers in new york four times

like nobody else had ever done even it twice so i said to john you know john you're a

muslim and he looked down for about 30 seconds and then he raised his head and

he said i accept that now according to abu hanifah that makes him a muslim

in fact according to abu hanifah anybody that calls the prophet prophet so if somebody calls the prophet

sallallahu islam muhammad the prophet that must mean that they think he's a

prophet so i mean obviously you can get into details and push people that's fine if

you want to do that but having a good opinion just generally is a good thing to do

but there are kofaar i mean there are kuffar and there are evil people in the world and we shouldn't be polyanish

about that so you know he says

it's it's the same to them whether you warn them or don't warn them well we know if you think about you they could

have said that about abu sufyan because abu sufyan fought the prophet all for that look at how many years he

fought the prophet so could people could have just written him off and said oh it's

right he's not going to believe well he ended up becoming a muslim so just because somebody rejects it

initially doesn't mean this is that these are people that it's allah has sealed their fate

because they're they have rejected the truth and they're not amenable

to remediation so that's the kafir so we should be very careful

about that just about people there's a lot of good people that if if we

were more upright as a ummah if we were delivering the message as an ummah maybe

they would respond but when you look at the muslim world there's a lot of places where it just

doesn't look too appealing and a lot of people think that has to do with islam so in some ways we have become

you know i had a saudi friend who said islam has the best case with the worst lawyers

so um

allah has sealed their hearts there's a khatam on their hearts

and on their site there there's a covering there's a rishawa they can't see

there's an amazing story that leopold vice who became muhammad assad i

don't know if people know but he he became muslim in 1926 and then he

went to arabia and he ended up he knew arabic he knew hebrew he was

actually trained in the torah he comes from a long line of rabbis but his father i think was a successful

businessman anyway he was raised with the torah and then he um he in 26 he converted to

islam and then he went to um saudi arabia and he actually became an

adviser to abdar aziz king abdulaziz

he was he was living in mecca at the time and then and then he ended up after that he in

1932 he went to pakistan which was not pakistan yet because it

becomes pakistan 47 but in 42 in 42 32 he goes to pakistan

and he actually lives there learns i think urdu became a

pakistani citizen and help them he translated

and then he lost the translate got burnt down his house burnt down lost the whole translation it was tragic because he

really knew arabic well but anyway he tells how he became muslim

which is an amazing story in uh in his book road to mecca

he said that he and his wife elsa they were on a train in vienna he was from austria so they're on a train

and he's he's looking at a man across from him he was a businessman a portly businessman and he said he looked like a

well-educated well-fed and wealthy man but he said he looked at his face and he

saw this pain and worry and torment on his face he said his lips were pursed

as if he was troubled by something and then he looked around and he noticed everybody on the train looked like that

and if you've ever been on a subway in new york you know exactly what he's talking about after you know the five o'clock subway

after a day of that horrible grind

you know surely in the afternoon man is that loss so he he he's look and then he looks to

elsa and he's and he says to her what he's noticing and then she looks and she

says you know you're right he actually says she looks like

somebody who a painter would look at faces that they're about to paint you know she really inspects them

and she says they look like they're suffering the torments of hell

so he goes back to the apartment and he had been reading the quran and it was open

and he goes actually to put it away but his eyes fall on al-hakuma takata

that vying for more

has you bedazzled until you go to your graves and then it says surely you will come to

know surely you will come to know the hell that you are in

and you will see it right

[Music] and he he like he said he started shaking

physically and then he called elsa and he says read that isn't that what we just saw

and she said yes and he said i knew at that moment this book was true

because he said he felt it was predicting a state that that would come towards the latter

days in this mechanized world of alienated people living these empty meaningless lives

because the peoples of the past had generally religion they had sacred

they have festivals and things now they're just they're lost without they have spiritual

alzheimer's completely unaware of who they are where they come from who

created them where they're going all of this nine months in the womb

being fed through an umbilical cord and kept at 98.6 degrees fahrenheit

with oxygen coming in through the blood from your mother's breath

forming the brain the spinal cord all of these things all of this for what

billions and billions of cells coming together almost instantaneously

with incredible order an opposable thumb to create all these tools with

a tongue to articulate our needs subhanallah

malakum what's wrong with you allah says that several times in the quran what is wrong with you

what's wrong that you don't help one another

what has deluded you from your generous lord the one who fashioned you and formed you

and then assembled you raqqa and they literally called dna in modern

arabic they used tarqibah as the word assembled you

into this extraordinary creation and so the people that can't see that they have

a rishawa and that's why believers christian believers muslim believers jewish believers believers of any stripe

just don't understand why some people can't see this so clearly well there's your answer

i was with my son yeah we were looking at this incredible sunset

uh up at the upper campus just this palette of incredible colors

and i just looked down i said how can people not believe in god

and he looked at me he said dirty windows

it's about as good as a good good as an answer gets so

painful torment they're already in it you know demonic people living demonic lives all these people defrauding old

people you know all these people cheating and stealing and robbing they're already in hell

you know they're just going from from one hell to another one they're already there

and among humankind one of the things that dr cleary did and i think it's worth

and i'll end with this i think it's really worth

looking at his explanation because you know he was a deeply

contemplative man and just had great insights

but he says here another special problem in translating

from the quran into modern english is in the treatment of pronominal reference to god in contemporary english there is no

third person pronoun perfectly well suited to making reference to the transcendent god beyond all human

conceptions the ultimate shortcoming of human language is natural of course and not

peculiar to english but there are particular reasons for attending to the problem of the third person pronoun

many people of jewish and christian background feel alienated from their native face by what they call the

quote-unquote angry old man image of god with which they have been taught to

associate religion furthermore what has been perceived as the masculine bias of this image is

particularly well known to have alienated many western women from monotheism

this would seem to be an unnecessary waste to avoid short-circuiting the attention

of significant segments of the modern audience at such a rudimentary stage in

other words i'm just trying to get them to think about this and one of the things that he told me once is he said

americans can't think about thinking about islam

so in order to prevent that right i have translated the third person arabic

pronoun on as referring to god as god or god as

truth rather than referring to the english pronoun he or him now remember this is a man who probably

knew around 30 languages so

this is really worth thinking about in technical terms this

means that since the fundamental linguistic resource is the power of reference

one technique for handling difficulties in translation begins with considering language from this point of view

in as much as languages do differ it is axiomatic that manners of reference can never be completely or

perfectly aligned from language to language and therefore the attempt to do so does not in itself reproduce

equivalent powers of reference thus the first priority of translation in terms

of meaning is to seek to engage the power of reference as efficiently as possible in

whatever manner the target language may afford in this case the principle means that a

pronoun in one language is not taken to refer to a pronoun in another language but to the original nominal referent in

other words back to what it's referring to for which the pronoun stands and by which name noun it can thus be

meaningfully translated in this case following the injunction of the quran to call god by the most beautiful names i

have generally rendered pronominal references to the divine by god a name

which is in this context uniquely unambiguous and that's really quite stunning what

what what he's saying there so and so if you read his translation he has no male pronouns

to use for god even though we know in arabic who can apply to god without any

gender reference like it is for somebody to say you know my god is a he or a she that's totally unacceptable

in islamic theology because god is is not a gender god is not he has no binary

god has no is diwajiya god is unique

enough said say god unique

say god unique god is unique god is independent needs nothing

he neither produces nor reproduces in some wilada type of way he creates but

he doesn't produce there's no production

be and it is

and there's no thing there's nothing there's no peer there's no

there's nothing like god god is peerless

alhamdulillah so can you uh delve a little deeper into imam razadi's spiritual crisis doesn't mean

he question the existence of god i don't think he questioned i think what he did was a kind of

cartesian radical doubt as as a type of intellectual exercise i think he really

wanted to to try and he proceeds

descartes in that so i think he he really was doing a uh i mean he was a trained intellectual he was a great

scholar but he was also a trained philosopher like he really knew logic and so i think for him it was much more

of an intellectual exercise i mean not the the the crisis the crisis was

psychological but the exercise was uh

was philosophical so i that that's how i would view it i don't think he would have had any doubts

about that but inshallah we'll get to ask him when we meet him vietnam

in the great library jorge is you know the great writer from south america who won the

nobel prize he's one of my favorite favorite writers in english i wish i could read the level of spanish that he

writes at but he was great he had great interest in islam

but louise jorge his name was jorge

he he said that with the first thing that he was going to ask the angel when he got to paradise

i mean if if he gets to paradise is where's the library

so how is one so in any way

his crisis i mean i would read the uh his savior from error

because that uh that really he goes into great detail how is one supposed to view the bad things that are happening around

us at the personal and global level how do we not lose hope how do we develop and sustain strong torque

well remember that imam al-razadi in his genius

put tawakkul which is trusting god with taheed in in

so it's it's kitab so it's

it's really important to have a strong tohit an understanding that everything's

from god to and also to understand that this is

in fact one of the things that imam al-junaid says is that he took a ka'ida

in life and once he took this axiom this principle in his life he said nothing ever

bothered him after that and it was that he said dunya is [Music]

and it is an abode of tribulation of trials of depression

and of anxiety like that's that is the wasp

that's that's the description of the abode and so he says once you accept that

he said after that nothing bothered me that came from virginia because i said i was just done yet

that's that's that's how it is so there's a stoic element to that but

and then he said whatever comes that's not that doesn't have those qualities is fuzzled so just be grateful

right that what you come be patient with any tribulation but be grateful so it's important everybody has tribulation the

wealthiest people have tribulation the poorest people have tribulations sometimes the wealthy people have

i mean i i've known some really wealthy people that i wouldn't there's no way i'd trade places with

them uh knowing what i know about the tribulations that they have so this idea that peo people don't

suffer you know because of their color of their skin or because of the wealth that they have i

mean that's just not knowing the human condition every human being has his trials and tribulations

and and so it's just important to that we're all here together

watch out for the demons because they're around and the and the human demons are worse than the than the

the ones from the spirit world they are they're worse so you know you have to develop a

an understanding of your lord and an understanding of the abode reading the quran with meaning and one

of the things imam al-razadi says and i actually really appreciate this in the jawahar you know he says that muslims

should think about the quran you have to be careful when you have limitations of knowledge but you should

reflect do tadabur of the quran you can do it in english these these meanings you can reflect on these meanings

but the quran has an embedded metaphysic that that that is not spelt out like a

book it's it can only be determined by a real engagement and imam razadi

says this is a lifetime of work i mean he says it's going to take a lifetime

for you to do this work and allah has given you about just about enough time and inshallah if you you know for those

who die before that time allah is he's merciful and he's just so he's

going to take into consideration i'm sure people's the amount of time they had but if

you've had a lot of time i mean imam al-ghazali says if you've reached 40 and your good doesn't outweigh your bad get

ready for hell because 40 is a lot of time to work things out

would you say that we can treat the pronunciation of different that's providing different aspects of meaning well they do

provide different aspects of meaning and also one of the things about tajweed is that

a lot of the rules of tajweed actually have meanings embedded

in them you know so i mean if you look uh like

you know

i mean that that uh med med lasm there has should have six harakat so in that

med you it it's indicating something about going astray

like you just keep going down so tashweed i mean a lot of the you

know a lot of the the rules of tajweed enhance i mean if you look

[Music] from

the the rules of tajweed they enhance the meaning like shay usually has a med

it can go two four six and wash you know

i mean shea is thing and think of all the things in the world so in that med

there's an indication of something of the nature of things that they just go on

so and and then you have um you have

the arabs because the prophet saw is was sent first to all the arabs and then

to the but first to the arabs he was first sent to his own people

one way of honoring them was to put all of the lahajats into the quran so you'll

find all the arab dialects have a they'll they'll find their dialect in

the quran which is a way of saying marah you know we include you so it wasn't

this qurayshi hegemony where you just impose your language on the rest of the

arabs in fact house which is the most recited quran today is benitamim it's

it's the uh it's the excuse me it's the arabs from the neged

they're modar arabs but they you know the people in qatar are from benitami like the uh

the ruling family of qatar they're they're from benitameem so that's their language to say yupman the prophet said

human he didn't pronounce the hamza so nafi on has uh the the hamza but wash has

no hamsa that and that's why matic considered nephi to be a sunnah and

particularly the reward of which is why the monarchies all read it as a sunnah so malik actually saw warsaw sunnah

and that's why all the the the libyans recite because they they were next to egypt and

egypt uh house became the dominant is very close to house but the rest of the monarchies all over

north and west africa recite with varsh in the malikis in sudan recite with

like that beautiful reciter sheikh nuren who died right when he was becoming

famous it's like allah said time to take you and he'd already done the whole quran the beautiful reciter

so they definitely give and then also with the recessions you have things like

you know allah says

so one has the passive the other has you know the active form of the verb so

they were given permission those who were being fought but also because they were being fought

but then it also says they were given permission to fight so it has both

and then and that's why because you know when they when they when they got into the fight in in the

i mean the quran revealed that it was you know it was permitted for them to do that because they were being oppressed

would fit into akbar men would fit into a shed al qatari so there akbar was shed so one says

the other says so you have all these nuances you have for instance in um

muhammad you have a confess

in in in that's one is another

if you look at how it's written without the diacritical marks it's written the same way in the rashmani but the

diacritical marks which were added later during the time of

the the meaning of tibet you know is make sure you understand the meaning but better is make sure that the source

is sound so in that one verse are both those meanings and there are many examples

he's not like withholding he's not it's not he's not making it up

it's not just his uh um opinions about the unseen so the the the

karats are really

but the reason it's interesting is because the dialect that you find in the gulf arabs kef harish you know

they use the calf they pronounce it like a sheen or a ch sound that's a that's a

very ancient arabic dialect so the karate have preserved also and then things like rome and ishmael

i mean if you look at the ishmaem one it's a proof that you have to take the quran from aquari because there's no way

you can learn ishmael without doing it shepherding you can't read how to do it

it's just something you have to you know you have to learn how to get that from a party it doesn't change

the [Music] i mean that's just a really interesting

aspect of the quran so to me is one of the real proofs of of uh

of the preservation of the quran just the fact that we all of the sects of islam agree on all

ten i mean what religion has that like they don't debate it

and the shia used the shatta bia and the dura which are both from sunni scholars

they don't have any problem they use the alfie of ibm he's a sunni scholar so so there's no even like ahmadiyya

have the same they have the same quran as as as the rest of the muslims so

every group whether the ismaili or the borah

dawudis every group they have the same quran nobody differs about the quran

the christians differ the the protestants only accept the hebrew bible they don't accept the

the the some of the apocryphal texts it has to be in the hebrew bible whereas the catholics accept

texts that are in the apocryphal as well so anyway

is that

Part 3

[Music] welcome back for those coming back and welcome for those

uh coming for the first time cello we're going to continue with this

examination of some of the verses that imam al-azadi determined were

at the essence of the quranic narrative but before we do that i wanted to

introduce many of you might know this but it's it's a very beautiful dua

all the prophet sallallahu alaihi sam supplications are beautiful but this one has a particular

just beauty to it that um is really worth learning and the prophet sallallahu alaihi sam encourage people

to learn it it's

that is used um for the quran

and it's there's a lot of secrets in this dua but it begins saying uh

there's a etieroff there's an acknowledgement of your ubudia to allah subhanahu ta'ala and and the fact that

you not only are a servant of allah but you're the son of a servant of allah and

you're the son of a maidservant of allah subhanahu ta'ala so there's an acknowledgement getting back to that

quranic injunction on the to abu dhabi

that he created you and those who came before you so we are in this chain of

createdness so i am your servant or your slave the son of

your servant the son of your maidservant naasi the nausea is the forelock uh

traditionally it's something that you control animals with generally is is uh it's something that um

but it's also aloha refers really also to the frontal lobe

this is really where the higher cognitive thinking occurs and um

so that the nausea is in your hands one of the uh in the traditional muslim

uh scholastic tradition they had the tassels that came off the tarbush that you see in western academia

that was actually to remind the sheikh when he graduated they were given the tarbush with that tassel which was like

the nausea and the idea was to remind them that that nausea is in the hand of allah subhanahu ta'ala and if you give a

hukum a judgment from allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala you should be aware that he could seize you at any time so you

should be very vigilant in when you answer questions i was once

with sheikh abdullah he's a great great scholar one of the truly great ulama of muritania of of

this time allah he was this he was a student of um

and he um with the famous he was from the tribe of tajikanit the famous tribe in muritani known for

knowledge in fact the mauritanians knowledge is from tejakanet

but he um he was a brilliant brilliant scholar

who um who was once i was with him at the

sharia court in abu dhabi because i used to spend time with the the mufti's and with the quad with shaykh

i was very young in my early 20s but i remember these two men came from egypt

and they wanted to ask a question in barack and it was a complicated thing so muhammad al abdullah

was a very he was muttaqi in his fatwa he said come back tomorrow and i'll give

you an answer and one of the egyptians looked at me and he

said dab out of haga like does he know anything

because they're so used to people answering immediately so the idea that somebody actually wanted to think about

it and was just completely uncommon for them and i and i said to the man you

know so um that

reminder is very important that we can be taken any time in our lives

your judgment your hukum is what will occur nothing else in in

terms of my life it's your outcome whatever allah has decreed and he is al-haqem and his hakim

so he's both the ruler but he's also the wise and that's both related to hoko it's

also related to the ich kam in fact we have uh speaking of nausea in

in the the jokama or the hokuma if you google this you'll see it is actually a

type of halter that's used to control the horse and it comes from hakima

because the spanish got it from andrussia and then they brought it to the americas so it was a unique arabian

halter that still used uh for people that know about horses

just is your judgment what your and there's

which one is the the pre-existent which one is that is the the one that's uh

implemented in the world but these are semantical differences largely so the adhd

whatever you have decreed for me is just and and the reason for that is because

allah he cannot

his his attribute is justice he cannot be unjust he's also a rahman or raheem

he also has mercy so these these are two they're not contradictory they're working based uh these attributes will

manifest to us based on how we behave if we're constantly demanding justice and

allah will judge us by that accord if we want forgiveness if we're

showing mercy to others have mercy on those on earth and the one

in heaven will have mercy on you well

be just with people on earth and god will be just for you in heaven so justice is important

it's it's it's a beautiful attribute of a ruler but in human interactions between one another in a community you

want more mercy than you want justice and uh there there's a

there's a play by shakespeare called the merchant of venice which is about this conflict in christianity between

the jewish trope of being a religion only of justice without mercy and then the christian being a

religion of mercy that overrides justice and and so they're they're both

important but the point here is that whatever comes it's going to be uh just

and this is about things that happen to you that you might not like

whatever comes we have to see it that allah is he he is our malik

and the malik can do whatever he wants with his property he can do whatever he

wants and you cannot claim that he's oppressed you or he's wronged you because you belong to

allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because

i'm asking you by with the istiyana or

with the name every name that is yours samayta bihinfsek that you have called

yourself or that you have revealed in your book

some of the uluma have worked out that there's about 121 names of god in the quran the 99 are the

famous names that are related in the hadith

but if you go into the ishtar names like khadal for instance in for yacht

and there's a hilar about that about words that allah uses a verb

then can can uh can the name be taken out of that to

give a name of allah so but the actual names of allah are unknown to us the the

number o or you taught

anyone from your creation and some of the ulama derived from this that even people that aren't prophets can might be

given a name that that is uh allah reveals to them

or you it's a name that you have kept hidden inside

this unseen realm so you've you've kept it for yourself

so you're asking through all of these for what and

the spring of my heart which means that which brings my heart

to life in allah brings the earth

back to life after it's dead there are spiritual deaths of the heart but just like that you can have a type

of defibrillation you can you can have a cardioversion a spiritual cardioversion so in in

medicine when somebody's heart uh stops or if they go into like a um

a a type of ventricular fibrillation it's very dangerous um they can do this

cardioversion where they they basically introduce electricity which is energy into the heart uh to get it to uh back

uh to its um its normal rhythm well like that

there's spiritual cardioversion allah can literally

take a dead spiritual heart and i'm saying literally and bring it back to life

and and there's a beautiful one of the most extraordinary hadees in my estimation

is a hadith of ubermen cab when he actually had he had momentary doubt this is called

the hather so it's not he's not doubting because he was a believer but he

actually heard some people and this is in imam bukhari's collection of he heard some people reciting the quran

and it was different from the way the prophet saw isaiah had taught him and he's one of the great quran reciters

obey even so he he hears it and then he hears another one and it's different

and he said where did you get that reading from they they said the prophet sallallahu isaam taught us so he he

takes them to the prophet and he said ya rasool allah these men are reading the quran different from the way you taught me

and and and so the prophet isaiah said and he told them and they recite and he

said that's the way i taught them kadadika owns it like it came down like that and

then ube when he said that he had this he said it

came to him some some doubt in his heart and it's very clear in the commentaries

that this is not doubt of iman it was like a khatar that came into his heart it was from iblis it was waswasa and

this is very important there's a very important distinction between waswasa and between your own inner what's called

hadiths are two different things so you can have

thoughts that are very foul that are horrible that you don't like these you should see them

and i mentioned this earlier you know dr cleary talked about the uninvited guest and the host you

have to distinguish between the thoughts that are uninvited into your heart they just come in as uninvited guests and you

have to dispel them and so he had this and then he said the prophet saw what was what had come over him like

some kind of something a spiritual state and he struck him in his chest

and he said it was is as if i saw god before me in complete awe

and it's extraordinary hadith like he suddenly had like an enlightenment

and he's he's one of the most important people for transmitting the quran but the prophet did a type of you know like

a type of cardioversion a spiritual cardioversion on him

which is quite stunning the prophet saw i said also a man once came to him

complaining about his heart and the prophet put his hand on his heart and he said in the kind of food you have some heart trouble and he said

go to hadith who was the great yemeni physician who'd studied in june de

shapur in iran with the traditional he studied in the medical school in persia so he was one

of the few arab doctors so the prophet i think was like scan he was doing like a

like echocardiogram with his hand and and then uh referred him to the

specialist in any case

make the quran the spring of my heart it's such a beautiful dua

bring my heart to life with this book and make it the light of my breast of my

chest make it the light of my chest you know alumnus

you know that there's an insurance and no as you know spreads out so

make it this this radiating light within my breast

and the difference between the two is is subtle but it essentially has the same meaning

if it has a fat then it's kashif it's it's to

yikshif to uncover um if it's jila ahuzny then it's uh

it's the muthib it's the the hab it's the to make it go so one is to uncover

the others to make it go so they essentially have the same meaning so that you'll see that both related

and the removal of my anxiety and hum is very interesting because the prophet saw

is

that stress and and this is what i i really think this word if we translated it today would be

stress that's the word we use hum is whatever's preoccupying you it's

what's really troubling your mind it's what you're thinking about it's

what's occupying your thoughts and when people are stressed out then they have whom

so the hum is is the prophet isaiah said

stress is half of aging and you can see people when they go through very trust stressful situations

you can see them within one year it's as if they've aged 10 years many people have seen this and experienced this

people's hair turns gray they grow they go bald just from from so much stress

so stress really can age people and and that's the releasing i mean we know all now about free radicals and all these

things but the prophet saw is was really a stress-free individual because

he had complete trust in allah subhanahu wa and because this dua which he recited often was answered

obviously um so the quran would remove his his

so that's something to think about it's a beautiful dua though and i i

would recommend it i mentioned you know i i wanted to do a little bit on the the uh

because i didn't talk about them so one of the really unusual aspects of the quran is that it begins if if we see

al-fatiha as really what introduces the quran and in fact

it's it's a methane it's it's the seven verses that really essentialize the

quran itself so the whole message of the quran is in surat al-fatiha which is why

we recite it every day and it was one of the earliest surahs given some say it's the third

surah the first was ichara the second was mudatyr and the third was al-fatiha there's others

say that it was revealed later and and some of the ulamas say

it's not it's not out of the out of the idea that it was actually

revealed twice to the prophet because of its importance so the the fatiha

really opens the book bismillah there's a big debate i mentioned that

about whether or not that's from the the quran everybody agrees that it's from the

quran in surat

so everybody agrees that it's an ayah in in the quran

but is it an ayah at each one of these and

some of the ummah said that it was a fossil and that was imam malik's opinion imam malik said

and this is opinion and he's reiterating what

imam al-baqalani said that the proof that it's not from the quran is that there's a iftiraf

about it he said that that is just a proof because the quran

there's no about it it's yes

in the letter that was sent to um to

to suleiman from the queen of sheba so uh

alif lam neem and then you have what's called the med de las verhafi here so

the uh the the mujahideen have a mnemonic that they give which is come

how much of the has diminished so those are the the calf

the meme the iron the scene the lamb

the noon the the cough and the sod so those all have the med which is

sit harakat so when you recite the haroof and

the ones those have um just the normal med but these have six

so alif has the normal med eddie fla [Music]

and what do they mean well what's interesting about the hero

i mean to me what fascinates me and i haven't seen this in the tafsir but all of the mufassirun are in agreement

that they mean something what they mean is they say aloha adam

some of them and even abbas is one of them said that they're actually letters that indicate that words

so for instance the arabs in jail the arabs one of the things that

ibn ashur says in his tahrir with which is a great tafsir one of the

things he says in there is that he said the arabs were known for their intelligence they're very brilliant

people and they had an incredible gift with words and one of the things that they did was they would speak with

letters so for instance um and and they give the example and this is from azad the great

grammarian he says it's not far-fetched that these are literally words because

uh the arabs would say things like

so i said to her stop so she said which means

so she used a letter to just to to say a word so some of them say like adiflamim is

like and some say it's allah jibril so the lamb is for jibril and

then meme is for muhammad these are all you'll find them in the uh the com the commentaries

um and uh uh ibrahim mentions this even

actually says that they're names of angels and so when you say them the angels respond because they want to hear

the quran recited so it's like calling angelic presence because the prophet saw i saw him said that the angels want to

hear the quran and they actually travel the earth just like we look up at the sky and see stars the angels look at the earth and

they see places where dikkar is being made those are like stars for them and then they'll go to those places

so the are very important they've put the people have attempted to

see how many of the mukatta's how many sentences you could get from them and

there's only a few but one of them is that has all the muqatta'at is

this is a absolute nus a text from god

that that is wise and there's a secret in it so that so that contains all of

the there are fourteen letters in the mukha they show up in 29 surahs

now what's interesting about that is it's half of the arabic letters and and yet

the number of sodas they're in is the number of arabic letters there are and so it's almost as if

when the quran is coming into language because we have to remember

that the eternal quran that when we talk about i'm only using this as a talin because

generally the ulama say this should not be said unless you're teaching

when we say the quran is karama kadeem

it is the eternal word of god it is not the letters

or the the most half that we have here it's the eternal meanings

and it's as if here you have these letters are taking form as they

come into meaning and and one of the things and i'll talk about this uh inshallah when allah says

and so the kerimat is the uh because it's the it in that case it's

actually the fat in so it's saying and the the power of this is that

meaning is there are two things happening in meaning there's meaning coming to you

and then there's meaning that you are perceiving so

what that those two indicate is that meaning is not limited

to a perspectival approach in other words it's not subjective

this is the whole modern philosophical madness that everything is just in your

head that there's nothing that you can know except what's in your head

what that ayah is indicating in its is that there is a relational

there there is a relation between meaning which is real and between the one who is

decoding the meaning who is also real and it's allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that's

facilitating that through this extraordinary bringing these two things together which

is this world that he's created that is all of his to jelly yet and then the human being which is

divinely created in order to recognize all of the

attributes and the names of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and see allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala's creation as as

this incredible epiphany of divine reality that allah is revealing himself

to his creation through the alam through the world the alam in arabic is called

ismu allah it's the the noun of instrument so the world is an instrument

to know god that's why it's from the root alimah which is to know so the world is the means by which allah is

enabling us to know him and so it comes into language and language according to

to many of our ulama is when allah

he taught adam the names it it meant that that god gave us he's

imprinted in us the ability to articulate reality and that that our

articulation of it if it's true it corresponds with reality if it's false it doesn't and so

this is the book it begins eddie flamm meme

and then the book comes it's the meanings come to us that book

and this is the beauty of this uh this is the nature of the

and one of the most amazing things about the quran to me is

so there are some will prove that you can't stop on by consensus but many of the

there are different ways that you can stop and it will change the meaning completely and so there's this

inexhaustible potential for meaning in the book of allah and this is why arabic was so important to be the vehicle for

this last message because arabic is uniquely positioned amongst the languages to contain all of these

possibilities and that's why it's inexhaustible muslims will always find new meanings in

the book of allah somebody asked if um what was the best

what was the best way to understand the quran he said time it's just time is going to reveal all of the

the the miracles of this book and so he huddled

in it is guidance for the conscientious and but i one of the things i want to just say about the the

before we go on and this is really amazing the people of tajweed are going to

appreciate this and if if you don't get it don't worry but just understand it really is something extraordinary

so uh if i show a quotes the kashaf which is the great

book by the famous muaticity scholar zamachari

it's a book that all of our great scholars recognize as being an exemplary book despite having some problems uh in

some of the tafsir but it was later basically rewritten for the sunni

tradition by imam marbel baui i mean he took most of what was in the kashaf and

rewrote it for so more students learn from imam bail bawi's

commentary than they did but the kashaf is a really important book because it's a rhetorical analysis

of the quran but he says here in the kashaf they're called

and they're also called and abu bakr radhilanu said that

was every book has a secret and the secret

of the quran is these opening letters of the the hijab so he says

so it's half of the names of these that we have these letters

so there's 14 of of that are found in the in the uh

and they're in 29 chapters based on the number of the letters in totality so all of the meanings these

inexhaustible meanings of the quran are in 29 letters half of those letters

are in 29 surahs now here's where it gets really

interesting so he says that those 14 contain

half of all of the attributes of the hadoop so all of the attributes of the hadoop

are there in those 14 but only half of them so

what that means is so like for instance you have mahamusa nilswaha assad with kaff with how was

seen what so that's half of the mahmoosa so the mahmusa letters

these are the attributes of the hemps so then he says the majora has half

mean

would mean

so there's there's that's the the the right so he's saying that you have there

so

so he says they're all mentioned the ones that aren't there are throughout the entire

quran and he said glory be to the one whose wisdom is so refined so that's

something really unusual about those because i just can't imagine somebody

would have ever worked that sat and worked all that out but it's

these this is called you know it's like the salt but it's it's very fascinating one of the things

that um some of the arifin said is that

allah gives openings to these letters to the people the closer you get to allah

in fact says something really beautiful he says

that allah has the oceans of knowledge and the prophets are the valleys

and the scholars are the rivers and and so allah gives from his oceans of knowledge

the valleys to the prophets for salat right

so so so so the the water comes and then the prophets

give to the ulama so they inherit from the prophets from

the the valleys of water not the oceans because they they can't they can't contain the oceans

they can't contain the valleys but they get the rivers and then they give they become the rivulets

for the common people the people that don't they become like they give the just enough for them to

get their sustenance so each group is getting a different

amount of water the the amount that they can take without

drowning so um oh here we go

so alhamdulillah that's uh i mentioned also

there's a lot of fat about but it's definitely what

it's not material so now when now that we can see things with electron microscopy for instance

we we don't consider that even though it's less it's not seen with the eye the raib is

something immaterial according to our ulama

the in fact that um that this is all of the infalcat

that allah has obliged us to do and those that he's

encouraged us as well because believers give us like charity is a proof of faith

and so it's also like what you should a husband supporting his family

is also from this

so those who believe in what was real to you which is the quran and what came before you

all the previous dispensations and with the afterlife they have

certainty yaquin comes out of istitlad and this is why allah is not

it's not one of his attributes mukin he's not the one allah doesn't have japin

because japin is is it's something that you gain through

experimentation and istidlal you get yakin like they say you know you you get burnt by

the fire you have yapping that the fire burns so that's not one of the names of allah for that reason and that's why we're

told to worship allah until the yakin comes to us which is death

because that's the ultimate absolute certainty of the afterlife is once you're dead

everybody's going to be 100 certain and the uh the atheists are gonna it's gonna

be a tough day for for people that rejected the truth but they had their chance and they had their

choice

and then allah talks about those who disbelieve

[Music] so as for the ungrateful and this is a

good translation that dr crew is using because kaffara means to be ungrateful so he put

there together as for the ungrateful who refused so he's really getting both meanings of

the word because when you just say refuse or disbelieve you're losing that

essential meaning of what disbelief is about it's about ingratitude to the one

who created you muhammad ali used to say that service to others is the rent that you pay to god

for the space you occupy in this world but service to others is one way of serving

god but service to god and service to others is the rent that we pay

so i would just add that addition but it's a it's a beautiful statement by the great

muslim boxer and and uh said he was a people's theologian

muhammad ali because he said that he spoke with real clarity about if you watch some of his arguments about why he

believes in god they're very powerful a lot gave him a lot of inspiration

so it's the same to them whether you warn them or not they they don't believe

and that's why uh some people they they just will not

believe you can show them everything is to seal over something like a khatam

on a letter and the khatam is a the stamp that you use to seal something

and then there's a uh over there hearing about him

and and there's a covering over their eyes so for them is a great torment and i

mentioned that last time about that amazing statement that leopold vice muhammad

assad wrote in his book about just seeing the hell that people are in

women what's interesting about this is amongst

humanity are those who say we believe in allah in the last day

what's really fascinating is if you look at the verses allah took four verses to describe the

believers two verses to describe the disbelievers and 13 verses to describe

the hypocrites so it's it's very interesting the hypocrites

are a very complicated um uh creature

because the inward and the outward are um disparate they're not they're not they're not the same

and everybody has some degrees with the exception of the purified the ambia and the siddiacon

and everybody has a degree of hypocrisy if you think you're free of hypocrisy you're

definitely a hypocrite and and i didn't say that that was hassan al-basri he said whoever feels free of hypocrisy

it's a sign he's a hypocrite so if sayna omar could go to hudaifah ibn

yaman and say i swear to god you have to tell me am i one of the hypocrites that

the prophet salallahu told you about that's um he was worried about being considered a

hypocrite and that's partly because invariably we have we play different

roles and we have we have inner lives and outer lives and sometimes they're not always congruous so people but if

it's kabalyer if it's then you're dealing with hip real hypocrites and so there's there's a

complete hypocrites and then there's a whole spectrum of hypocrisy so the the

monafic charles a complete hypocrite when he speaks he lies when he makes

promises he breaks them either

when he gets in a fight either when he gets in a uh

if he makes a promise he breaks it either either if he gets in an argument he starts

using foul language so these are all signs if they're all four or in a person they're just complete hypocrites

so so we have to work on that all of us in our own selves and do that so what what they do

now allah in the arabic language is to attempt something

they attempt to fool god so they try to fool god

but they do not succeed in deceiving anybody but themselves now what's interesting

there's uh imam in his

own so they only are really attempting to deceive themselves so it's it's it's

that thing of cognitive dissonance that people they they have to believe so they're

going to try to convince themselves that that they're actually doing this

for good reasons and things like that so there's a real self-deception here and

in the end self-deception is exactly that you're only deceiving yourself

in other words if you really really were honest with yourself you would see the

self-deception yeah so there's this kind of schizophrenic

attitude maya is really a beautiful word uh the the

arabs in modern arabic used for the subconscious when they translate freudians psychology they'll

call it the lesher or you know it's under the shore it's what you're

not sensing means to feel and

is poetry because the poet is somebody who feels more than other people he has higher sensibilities his sensibilities

are heightened is hair because

it's a very subtle thing to touch when you touch the hair

and also because it spreads out so sheen has is har tafashi so anything with sheen in it tends to spread out

like musha shims radiates ashiya like

rays there's a whole bunch of words that have that letter in it

so they they they only succeed in fooling themselves

in their hearts is disease

here is they have the mara of shubohat which is

doubts in their understanding they don't have any certainty about anything they're modab the boon you know

they they oscillate uh some that when they're with the believers they're with the believers when they go back to their

shelter and they're with their shelting so they they're they're sick people uh

this is allah allows them to get sicker

and they have a painful torment they're tormented in their own beings

because of what they were because of the lies that they tell to themselves and to others so they're lying to themselves

and they're lying to others

this is really i think one of the most amazing

qualities that you see in these people if you say to them don't make trouble he uses make trouble

so corruption i mean there's a lot of different ways i don't know how he does it in the um

in his final translation but here he says make trouble in the earth

if it's if they're told don't make trouble in the earth they say

they are only doing good they say we that we are only they say we

are only doing good so isla

one of the commentators of the quran said the first proof that their mufsidum is they claim to be

muslim because a true uh person who's doing good they never claim

they're doing good they just do it so the fact that they're saying oh we're

muslim that's a proof that they're musin what does the prophet say

i only want islam he doesn't say i'm muslim he says i want islam which is

very different from saying you're a muslim because it's not a claim

either i or you are on guidance or astray the prophet was told to say that to the disability even in even though

we're certain that he was on guidance he was told to say to them allah knows who's guided one of us is guided

it's it's a right making opposite claims one of the claims

has to be true it's either raining or it's not reigning god exists or he doesn't exist

the prophet saw i see him as a prophet he's not a prophet one has to be true because that's the

law of the excluded middle right it can't both be true so

for those who accept they have ammon that's why it's called

eman because they've entered into this state of security for those who reject

we have to wait let's all wait we'll see and

let's just wait allah says wait we'll see we're going to see so nobody should just hurry hurry this

thing up we don't want to hasten the just let it take its course we'll see

who's who's true and who's not true we're gonna yomo qiyama we believe it's real if somebody doesn't believe it's

real that's their prerogative allah has given them that prerogative allah out of his generosity to his creation has given

them free will they can either accept his gifts with gratitude

or accept his gifts with ingratitude it's one or the other but they're all

getting the gifts of allah and the greatest gift is participation in being

the fact that we exist that allah has enabled us to come into the world and participate in this extraordinary

epiphany this extraordinary theophany of divine attributes i mean it's just incredible

so

it's like a subconscious thing they're they're doing this if sad and they

really don't they're not even aware of it they're fooling themselves

and this is the people that all these do-gooders that go out and do these horrible things i mean somebody said to

me you know it was they were like talking about helping the women of

afghanistan here and i just my you know i felt like you know i think they've had enough of america's help

you know it's just i think they've had enough you know people need to be left alone to

sort their problems out in this poor situation in pakistan you know

i mean the all so many hopes were put on because the people live in that incredible

corruption and it's horrible and many of the the best and brightest of that country live now in america for one

reason because there's rule of law and that they could actually flourish here

many of them would much rather be in their own culture with amongst their own family but it was it was unbearable

for many people it's just unbearable to be in those situations and so opportunities arise for them to have a

better life for their children and for and that's a very natural thing to want to do to

better your situation but it's like in the reluctant fundamentalist when you know he tells

his classroom you know in america they have this thing called the american dream

what's the pakistani dream to get a green card to america

it's you know so somebody shows up and people can say whatever they want people say all these things i personally

i have hassan al-ban he appeared to me to be a man who

lived a very big life made a toba to allah subhanahu ta'ala and wanted to do something for his

country and was trying to do something and actually invited us to be part of that

in his rahmalullah and the universe i mean he was trying to do

something but it's like sultan abdul hamid and i'm not comparing the two but sultan abdul hamid

he was a lone figure amidst all of this corruption

what how much could one person do if you don't