Ali Ataie – The Qur’an is For Our Self, Not For Our Shelf
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
And keep it short.
Just wanted to mention I wanted to begin
by mentioning something that,
I heard from one of my senior teachers
recently.
I thought it was
extremely important and extremely relevant,
for our situation.
He said that,
who was a great,
mystic. He was a great scholar,
Egyptian scholar.
He experienced a bit of a spiritual crisis
during a time in his life.
And spiritual crises are something that are quite
common actually.
And,
it affects a lot of people.
And sometimes they're minor, just a few issues
or even one issue that bothers people, and
sometimes they're major.
Right?
One of my colleagues,
told me recently that he spent 3 or
4 hours on the phone one time,
convincing
a Hafid of the Quran.
That the book that he had spent 5
years memorizing was the kalam of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Hours speaking to this Hafid, a person who
had memorized the Quran.
So memorization of the Quran, hifid of Quran
obviously is extremely important, and is and there's
a lot of barakah in doing that. And
we have to do that.
But we have to engage
substantively with the Quran even more.
Quran. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
tells us in the Quran,
do they not have to dubbur? Do they
not try to penetrate the meanings of the
Quran?
To have real engagement, deep engagement with the
Quran. The Quran is an ocean. Imam Al
Ghazali
he says in his Jawahirul Quran,
he likens the Quran to a Bahar, to
an ocean.
And he says that,
obviously
the entire Quran is a revelation from Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala. So it has the of
a revelation, of a 10zil from Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
But he divides the ayats of the Quran
into different levels of exaltedness.
And he says that he says don't be,
content with walking on the shore and just
receiving,
basic meanings of the Quran.
Basic meanings that we even get in translation.
Right? That we need to we need to
plunge into the ocean of the Quran. We
need to plunge into the loha, the Arabic
language. And he actually says that the waves
of the ocean that crash on the shore,
these are the Arabic ayaat of the Quran.
So he says we need to get into
a vessel, a boat of some sort and
go out into the ocean and negotiate these
waves.
This is difficult. Learning Arabic is difficult. People
try to learn Arabic and it's like a
wave that takes them and smashes them on
the shore, but you have to keep trying.
And there this is not to belittle, you
know, reading the Quran and end translation and
getting something from it. Obviously, people have converted
reading the the translation of the Quran. There
was a brother years ago who told me
that he went to a bookstore. I think
it was a Barnes and Noble's or something.
The the they don't these are dinosaurs now.
But he went to one of these bookstores
and he was a Christian at the time,
and his intention was to go to this
bookstore and purchase a Quran so he can
read it and he can refute it. And
he went there and he opened the Quran,
and he looked at the table of contents,
and he saw Surat Mary.
So he started to read it, and he
said his tears were falling on the pages.
Right? This is obviously someone who's reading the
Quran
in a translation,
but we have to penetrate the meanings of
the Quran. So Ilham Al Azadi says the
Quran is like an ocean. And then he
says you get to the the,
the islands and you find what he calls
musk meanings. And these are the meanings that
are analogous
to the
of the Quran.
The illegal injunctions of the Quran.
And people sometimes they have this warped idea
about what the Quran is. Even many Muslims,
they think the Quran is this book of
statutes.
These do's and don'ts. Like what we see
in for example the the covenant code in
in the Torah or something or the the
code of Hammurabi or something like that. No.
The Quran is very different. There are only
about 600 ayaat of the Quran that have
legal injunctions that have
akham. Only about 600 ayaats. There are over
700 ayaats in the Quran
that command us to reflect and to use
our intellects,
to use reason.
This this this, Cheetah, this revelation requires our
aqal,
deep
penetrating analysis to understand what this what this
book is saying. It's not a simplistic book.
It is not a simplistic book
ulama have spent years decades
trying to understand what is this book trying
to tell us? And it classified the different
ayat. Some of the ayats in the Quran
are meaning they're specific. They're only for a
specific time and place. Some of the ayat
aram, they're more general. Some of the the
ayat of the Quran are mukayed. They're conditional
upon certain shurud conditions.
Some of the ayat of the Quran, they're
mutmak, they're absolute. This takes deep scholarship.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
That that,
these are the verses of a book of
a clarifying book. Verily we sent it down
as an Arabic Quran In order for you
to intellect,
to use intellect as a verb,
in order for you to use your intellect.
Right?
It's it's our intellect interacting with the with
the
the the the text of the Quran. This
is how we derive meaning from the Quran.
It's not a simplistic text.
And then Imam Al Gazari says, the highest
type of ayat in the Quran, he calls
them pearl meanings.
And these are ayat of the Quran that
deal with the
And the greatest,
exemplar
of the straight path is the holy prophet
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He is the
according to many of the exigits.
And then you have the ruby verses, he
calls them, of the Quran. And these are
ayats of the Quran that deal with,
these are theological verses that deal with the
the essence, the character, the essence, the, attributes,
and the actions of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
This is an extremely deep book that requires
deep deep analysis.
So anyway, ibn Atta'ina Sikhandari, he was having
some sort of and by the way, ibn
Imam Al Ghazari, he had a personal crisis.
Ibn Imam Al Ghazari, put you through Islam.
And his personal crisis actually was, you know,
at one point he was teaching a class.
He was a professor at the in.
And at one point he got in front
of the class and he couldn't
even open his mouth. He couldn't make a
sound. He couldn't lecture anymore.
Because he had this tension within himself.
Am I doing this with sincerity for Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala?
Or is this out of ostentation?
So he went on a 10 year long
sojourn.
Right? And eventually he came out of this
personal crisis he was having. And he said
it wasn't some sort of logical argumentation
that took me out of this, but it
was a light, it was a nur that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had cast into my
heart.
This doesn't mean that he became a total
mystic and an esotericist
and things like that. No, he can actually
continue to teach. He came back to the
to and he was teaching.
He was teaching dialectical theology.
And he said the purpose of that was
for Rudud, for basically,
formulating refutations of of heretical
theological positions.
But he said experience is also extremely important.
So Ibn Atayla Sikandari, he went to his
teacher,
Abu Abbas al Mursi, who was a great
saint from Morocco who later moved to Egypt.
And he said that the answer from his
teacher felt like the like it's like the
weight of the earth being lifted from his
shoulders.
So,
he said, Al Amorosi, he said that
he said that the human being is in
4 states, in in 4 conditions.
And sometimes you're in all 4 of these
conditions at the same time, but one sort
of takes precedence.
He said that these 4 conditions,
he said the first one is in a
state of blessing. You should recognize
that you're in a state of blessing, in
a state of nirma, and that we are
inundated with the niyam of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
If you just look at,
your health, you have health. You you have
Masha'Allah. You have wealth. You have your families.
You,
you have as our khateep said today, Sheikh
Hamza, may Allah preserve him. You have opposable
thumbs. You stand upright. You have fingernails. You
have toes. These are all niyam of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala that we don't even think
about.
So he says this is the first state
to recognize that you're in a state of
blessing. And the response alfathail
as
imam
al
Ghazali
calls them. You have cardinal virtues, umahaatlfatha'il,
as Imam Al Ghazali calls them in Saint
Thomas Aquinas. They're the same virtues actually come
from Aristotle.
But unlike the Catholics who have 3 theological
virtues, Imam Ghazali enumerates,
up to 19 or 20 theological virtues.
And one of the greatest theological virtues is
shukr, is gratitude.
Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions shukr in
the Quran many many times.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran,
if you are grateful indeed I will increase
you.
And there's a lot of emphasis
grammatically in this statement that if you are
grateful we will increase you. And Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala here, he doesn't give a a
or specifying element of some sort. Like in
another ayah he says oh
my lord. And he's he's telling us to
make this prayer. Oh my lord increase me
in knowledge.
Increase me with respect to knowledge.
If you are grateful I will increase you
presumably in all good things.
So shukur is extremely important to be the
shakir and to be shakur. And shakur is
the intensive form.
The prophet shakurah alaihi wasalam said, shall I
not be a grateful servant? The shakur is
the one who is thankful to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala even in a time of loss
or deprivation.
Because he knows, he's wise enough to know
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala may be depriving
him of something
that might actually harm him.
So this takes spiritual discipline.
Allah
says,
Allah
says, have regard for me that I might
have regard for you.
Be grateful to me and do not disbelieve.
Now this is interesting in this ayah, this
famous ayah that we all know, that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala is juxtaposing
shukr with kufr,
that these are antithetical, these are opposites.
In other words, another way of saying
in gratitude in Arabic is kufur. The kafir
is the one who is ungrateful
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So this is the first state we find
ourselves in. We find ourselves in a state
of blessing
called Abu Abbas al Mursi. This is his
advice to his student,
ibn Atha'il al Sakhandari.
And then he says the second,
state that we find ourselves in is tribulation,
bala.
And everyone's in a state, in some degree
of tribulation, it's part of life in the
dunya. Dunya means the low world.
Everyone's in a state of tribulation.
And the response to tribulation is is patience.
And this is another great theological virtue
that is all over the Quran.
Be patient and enjoy patience.
Right?
Allah says in the Quran. Allah is with
the patient.
Allah
says in the Quran, indeed we will
try you
with with something
of of,
of of of loss of of of hunger
and fear and loss of wealth
and loss of lives
and the loss of the fruits of your
labor. But
give patience to those who are patient.
So this is the second state.
And then he said, obedience, to recognize that
you are in a state of obedience.
And the response
the the response to that is not to
gain this type of sanctimonious,
holier than thou attitude,
but to witness the tawfiq of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala in your life, that you make
that connection, that the reason why you have
tawfiq in your life, the reason why you
have health, you have a job, you have
a family,
the reason why things are working out for
you is directly correlated to your obedience to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And we've seen this
many, many, many times. People who enter in
a state of disobedience to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, their lives start falling apart and they
wonder why. And that leads us to the
4th state, which is the state of masiya,
a state of disobedience.
And the response to that is tawba.
To make Tawba to recognize. 1 is in
a state of disobedience,
and to make Tawba. And Tawba is a
beautiful thing. Tawba is a great thing. Allah
is at tawab. He's the one who's who's
always forgiving.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
said,
The one who makes tawba is like the
one who did not have a sin against
him. The prophet
says in a beautiful hadith in Bukhari,
he says that the similitude of the joy
that Allah
experiences when a sinner makes toba. This is
a joy that is that is beyond human
comprehension.
There's nothing like Allah
But he says, it's analogous to a man
who is in the desert with his conveyance,
and he's traveling through the desert, and he
dismounts from his conveyance,
and his conveyance bolts away from him.
And now he's walking in the desert, the
hot desert, knowing he's going to die an
agonizing death.
And he's about to collapse, and he sees
his conveyance under the shade of a tree.
And he falls to his knees, and he
grabs the reins. And he looks up at
the heavens, and he says, you Allah
And he says, oh Allah, you are my
slave and I am your Lord. He was
so overjoyed,
so delirious
in rapturous
ecstasy
that he he lost control of his speech.
It's called the shatakiyah,
theopathic utterance that is outwardly wrong
because he's delirious with joy. This is a
hadith of prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is more overjoyed.
In no anthropomorphic way. More overjoyed when a
sinner makes tawba than that man is at
that moment.
So tawba,
a great theological virtue.
Now, just to say a few things about
Leilatul Qadr.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran.
And Khari Umar, may Allah preserve him. He
he told us
the beginning of the prayer
that this ayah indicates the of the Quran.
The descent of the Quran
from the guarded tablet,
to the which
is a celestial Kaaba
in the first heaven or sky.
That's called the Inzaal. The entire Quran was
brought down.
And then
from there to the sunnahul dunya, the Quran
was revealed piecemeal.
It's called 10zil. So there's an inzaal of
the entire Quran descending, and then a piecemeal
revelation
coming from the Samat al Dunya
to the heart of the prophet Muhammad salallahu
alayhi wa sallam. This is called the Tanzil.
And if you look at the story of
the initial revelation that came to him, this
is very interesting.
There's a,
a a an agnostic,
Jewish woman. She's she's by by ethnicity Jewish,
but she identifies as agnostic,
who actually wrote a seerah of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Her name is Hazelton.
That's her last name. The the text is
called,
it's called, the story of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. And she focuses on the
sort of psychology of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. It's a good text and she mentions
something interesting. This is obviously mentioned by many,
many traditional scholars before her, but the way
she frames it is quite interesting. And she's
famous because she's done a lot of TED
talks about the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
But it's interesting if you look at the
the story of the initial revelation. So the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
around 35 years old or so, he starts
experiencing what our mother Aisha said,
true dreams. And the dream of a prophet
is the heart.
When a prophet dreams, that's truth. And if
you see a prophet in a dream, that's
also truth. Especially if you see the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
In another tradition,
Whoever sees me in a dream has indeed
see me, shaitan cannot imitate me.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
sees true dreams, and he starts losing interest
in the tijara.
So he goes, he seeks halal, seclusion, seclusion.
In,
Jabal Anur,
Gorehara,
he goes
for tahannuth
which has a root meaning of fleeing from
idolatry.
The prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam was never an
idolater.
He always worshiped Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And there were actually a group of of
Meccans,
a group of Quraysh in Mecca
that identified as Khunafa, as monotheists.
They rejected the idolatry
of of the or the the henotheism,
a type of polytheism
of the Quraysh in Mecca, and they worship
the god of Ibrahim alaihi sallam. So the
prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam would go to this
cave. Now we know the story that Jibril
alaihi sallam,
he came to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam and he said to him,
This is an imperative.
And the prophet said,
Iqra means read, and he said I'm not
a reader, I'm not a reciter. This happened
three times. We know the story. Now it's
interesting that's that's pointed out here in this
serum
is that the reaction of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
The reaction of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
after this initial revelation
that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did
not storm out of the cave and float
down the mountain,
you know, with his chest puffed up and
then halo around his head.
No. This is not how he came out.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he was in
a state of fear
and he goes to his wife Khadija tul
Kubra.
And he says,
cover me cover me. He says,
what happened to me?
I'm afraid for myself.
And Hazleton points out here something interesting about
the psychology of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. He says, these are not the confessions
of a deceiver.
This is not someone who's trying to pull
the wool over your eyes.
This is someone who's being very sincere.
He doesn't know what happened to him.
He fears for himself.
He wants to know. He asks his wife.
And his wife says to him, Allah would
never ever debase and humiliate you. And she
starts naming his virtues. But then she says,
I'm not a scholar though. Let's go to
a scholar. So they follow the proper protocol.
And they go
to who has Christian relative, who is a
Christian.
The hadith says, that
he converted used to read the Injeel in
Arabic.
And he listens to the story of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And it's a
Christian
that says to him, that confirms his story.
This is his diagnosis of what happened.
A Christian scholar
that indeed the great Namus. Namus is probably
from the Greek nomos, meaning the law of
God or pneuma, the holy spirit of God.
The great spirit
of God has come upon you
just as it came
to Musa alaihis salaam.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
his message is something that took the world
and lifted it up.
And this is something that we have to
be cognizant of.
Now
something that's very commonly done today
is
people like to go to certain hadith of
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
certain one liners here and there, and wrench
them out of context.
Right?
And then try to claim
that the prophet
he advocates violence. And this is interesting.
You have extremists that identify as Muslims who
are doing this and you also have hardcore
anti Muslim Islamophobes who are doing this. They're
quoting the same Hadith,
and they have the same conclusions that this
religion is teaching this type of violence. It's
very, very interesting.
2 people are diametrically opposed to each other,
yet using the same methodology.
Right?
At at at Itch Tzap.
Their is
segmenting the Hadith of the Prophet and the
Quran,
and taking things out of its siyyah, out
of the context of the Quran.
And just to give you an idea of
what I'm talking about, without even looking at
context,
If I took a statement in English
like I did not see that
and just, you know, you see that in
print. You have no idea how the speaker
intoned that statement. Which word did he emphasize?
Because it makes a difference.
If I say I did not see that,
and I emphasize the first word, I did
not see that.
Meaning what? You saw that or he saw
that. What if I emphasize another word? I
did not see that.
This suggests the context that somebody is claiming
that I did see something and say, no.
I did not see that.
What if I emphasize another word, I did
not see that.
I heard that.
Or I did not see that.
I saw this.
This is just looking at intonation
and and emphasis.
But looking at context
is a whole different ball game. This takes
deep deep scholarship.
A hadith that is quoted all the time
by both sides
in this interesting dynamic
is a hadith that is a sound hadith
in Bukhari. It's in the of Imam Anawi,
which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said,
Now the first thing you do when you
hear or read a hadith like this is
you have to check it against the normative
ethos of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
The agreed upon ethos or hoodooq of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
What is the overarching,
character, virtue, character of the prophets, prophet's Virtue
trait of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
It's rahma.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he said,
I was sent as a teacher.
I am, I am the prophet of mercy.
I am a a gifted mercy.
So it's interesting if you look at this
hadith
that I I was commanded to fight.
Right?
I was commanded to fight,
the people until they submit that there's no
god but Allah and that Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam is the messenger of god.
The ulama say it's not as simplistic as
it sounds, not nearly.
That even the word anas
used in this hadith. Anas which is translated
as humanity, it can be, it has different
meanings. Anas could mean humanity at large.
Right?
So, qul a'udu barabbin naz.
Nas can also mean a group of people.
A specific group of people.
Produce a surah like unto this and if
you cannot and you will not, then fear
the fire whose fuel is man and stones.
Humanity and stones. Not everyone, not all of
humanity is in the fire.
This is obvious.
Or a mask can refer to 1 individual.
1 individual. There's a verse in the Quran
that says that after the The context says
after the Mujahideen returned to Azwat Badr,
there was one man,
that there was Nas. But the Ulam must
say, This was really just one person named
Nu'ain ibn Masood Al Asjari
who said indeed the people are gathering against
you. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the
Quran uses the word,
humanity, the people, to denote one person. So
this takes a
people to denote 1 person.
So this takes a lot of this takes
deep analysis.
And then
is form 3. Verb form 3, it's not
form 1 which indicates an associative
or engagement.
That I've been ordered to to fight a
specific group of people, all of the ulama,
most of the ulama say,
are are champion ulama. They say that this
refers only to the and
this is engaging with them because they have
been engaged with.
And fight those who are fighting you but
don't be extreme. Allah does not love the
extremist.
So this is very, very important
that the hadith can be confusing.
And you know, I get emails all the
time from Muslim youth quoting this and that
hadith or quoting this and that verse in
the Quran.
The verses of the Quran,
they are they are
extremely deep and they require incredible analysis. And
people don't understand that there's there's different types
of of
of of of ways of of approaching the
Quranic ayat.
And there are different shurud of the Quran.
There's the aham of the Quran. They require
certain conditions to be fulfilled before they can
be
enacted. They have different
They have different preventatives that can prevent them
from being enacted.
So it's important for us to engage in
that type of with the Quran.
May Allah
give us the to have higher understandings
of the Quran. May Allah
give us the to understand the normative ethos
of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi sallam. He's
the one who said,
Here he uses the word nas.
Love for humanity what you love for yourself.
So here in this hadith, love for humanity
what you love for yourself,
the meaning of humanity here cannot be the
same
as I have in order to fight to
people.
Love for human do you love to be
aggressed upon? Do you love to be fought
against? It doesn't make any sense. That's obviously
not the meaning.
Love for humanity what you love for yourself.
What do you love for yourself? You love
for yourself to have a family, to be
in in in safety and security, to have
a job, to have the good things of
the dunya, to have the good things of
especially.
This is what we should love for for
other people as well. This is the normative
teaching of the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam.