Mohammad Elshinawy – Dawah Training
AI: Summary ©
The conversation discusses the use of the Quran in English, including its impact on the world and modern times. The importance of writing in English is emphasized, along with its use in perception of the century before the Quran. The speakers emphasize the need for people to be aware of their emotions and allow them to play an important role in their lives, using examples such as The Lion King and the recent pandemic to illustrate the need for flexibility and empowerment for employees to take their time and make decisions based on their own interests.
AI: Summary ©
You know why? Because at the end of the day,
believing that there's a God is something that almost all people do deep down inside, right? So the fact that you have to do convince someone that there's a God
usually makes it very challenging to speak with that type of person about anything. Because God needs to be proven, then it's going to be hard to prove anything else. Some people have some, like, basic confusion, like how somebody does it, but there's like evil in the world, or how come there's a God, okay. But in general, if you're going to, like, master the logical arguments, and probably, if you're going to need to use all of that firepower with someone just to get them to not exist, it could mean that they're not being logical and to begin with, it could be that they are coming with a mindset that is all about doubting anything and everything, right psychology of doubt, comes
psychology of being too skeptical, radically, extremely skeptical, meaning suspicious, meaning second guessing everything. And so it's not necessarily a problem, but your quality tools problem with the person not being able to, you know, actually value what you're telling them, what you're sharing with them what you're calling them too.
And even when it comes to women's rights in Islam, those are extremely important. And on some level, they may strike a chord within a person, right? That, ya know, this seems to be a nice religion that treats people nice and treats, largest men, nice women nice as well. But niceness also was not a very clear concept. Right? Like,
a really long time ago, it was believed to be nice.
If
you're good to your parents, you serve your parents, nowadays, just weird. Like why you're even holding yourself back from life trying to be nice to your parents. Forget your parents. What about you, right? Your future, you know, the concept of just like, Out with the old in with the new, being nice to your parents, as easily appreciate. or long term, you flip it a long time ago, it wasn't seen at all, you know, as nice to be greedy. The whole world agree that being greedy is a bad thing, right? But nowadays, we celebrate greedy people, right? Like people that are just after the next dollar after the next week, next after the next big bang. And instead of like taking even our wisdom
in life from from prophets, or philosophers or thinkers or otherwise, we want to hear like what the guy is the guy the Tesla guy had to say, right? We want to hear what you know, this big tycoon in the business industry had to say. And I just use all of that as an example, as the concept of knights being nice is actually very unclear. It's blue. Right?
And so that is why trying to prove that God exists or trying to prove that Islam has been nice to women, right? has its value, but if you overestimate it, it's not going to get you very far. You may not actually get it. Okay. Slam is nice little. So what does it mean? It's true? Does it mean it's from God? Does it mean I have to like, sacrifice all these things in my life to start living like a Muslim, right? And so believing, convincing someone logically that God exists will not get you very far a lot of times, and convincing people that Islam is nice. does it prove that Islam is special or divine or from God? And so these are good things to have. They can be conversation starters. But
what you really want to get to is Islam itself, what is what is Islam? Where does it come from? How can we prove it comes from God? That is a far better conversation, and there is nothing better
towards that conversation,
then discussing the Quran, why was that say the miracle of all miracles because the Quran is the clearest miracle. It really is the clearest miracle. There's a hadith of beautiful Hadith you should remember, in your doubt, that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he said, Ma'am, in the beginning levels, now Allah literally m&s We cannot let the booty to go and fall to Laguna counterman. Yama Piana says there was never a prophet Allah set to guide people to call people except that he was given some signs, which would help these people believe this is actually from God. That's the whole point right? Now, this is a nice religion, it's actually from God. He said,
what I was especially given was this book, this way, this special revelation. And because of this book, not because of any other reason, not because it proves rationally that God exists not because of niceness to women or otherwise, right because of this book. I am hopeful that I will have the most followers on the Day of Judgment, I will be able to save the most amount of people on the Day of Judgment because of this book. And so what that hadith means is that you need to be sure that the format is extra effective.
extra special and bringing people to the fold and bringing people to Islam. That clear. The hadith, by the way, doesn't mean that other prophets had other miracles. And I was given a book, because other prophets, that book is too, right. And also, he was given other miracles, that weren't the book, you get it. So there's an overlap, they received books and other miracles, he received the book, and he had other miracles, moons flipping and otherwise. But this one book
is really special. It is the miracle of all miracles. That's the point of the Hadith.
Any questions on this point?
Don't be naive. Don't be silly. Don't think that you're just gonna say the miracle is all a miracle people just gonna believe this one is really, really special.
Because think about it, like imagine, you're trying to think like a non Muslim? It's very good. To be honest, it's really hard to imagine how a book can be American doesn't sort of like how can any work of literature, any book, be a miracle? Just
that a lot of work to do. And you probably don't just want to like, give someone a 234 hour lecture, right. And so the point of the rest of the discussion today, or next 40 minutes or so together, is to give you angles for you to explain this, and you should be crafty, you should be sensitive to what may work with this person, and what may work with that person. All right. Don't sit there and say, okay, oh, that first point, you know, is that again, hear me out, right, and you rattle it off. That's just bad strategy. And the person probably had shut off. And there are people that do this all the time, by the way, like when they get into a conversation with a non Muslim. It's just like a
cookie cutter approach, like, this is how we're going to do it no matter who's in front of me. No, no, it's like medicine, you know, medicine, when when doctors are trying to apply medicine, they just don't have a list of medicines, the first thing they do is they try to understand the patient in front of them. Right? I'm not trying to say the whole world is safe, because he's
what the idea is, you want to be sensitive that you don't trigger a person, what if they have a certain allergy to a certain concept? Right? What if they can appreciate it, you have to understand these things. I remember one of the craziest examples I ever had when I was in college, speaking about
women's rights in Islam, ironically. And
there's a sister in the crowd, I used to speak to her weekly, she used to work in the computer lab, older woman.
She was actually a Christian missionary.
She used to like be very, she studied well, she used to have these long conversations with us on downtime, about why he sounds wrong.
But basically, she gets up in the middle of my talk. And she's like, it tends to talk, she gets up and she storms out. She walks out. And I was like, I'll ask her later, when it's sad. It was obvious she was upset. And after that, she said, You know, I appreciate everything you said. But it just makes total no sense whatsoever. That, you know, you say that the Prophet said, your mother, your mother, your mother than your father is a Hadith The Prophet said that right now oh my god, it's crazy. Like I've never expected, especially going home. Right. And it turns out, she just had a really rough relationship with her mom this system. So she couldn't wrap her head around this
hadith. This hadith, by the way, is like an all time favorite for almost anybody, anyone hears this, oh, it's so beautiful. There's a bit of a concept. Your mom did, you know, carry you and deliver you and nurse you three things your dad never did. So it makes sense that at least give her three times the rights of being reminded about an ad that just fits. And you don't even need to explain it just emotionally it fits yet mom deserves this. But for this particular patient, right? It just is unacceptable. Right? And so you just got to be able and versatile, like flexible enough to explain your case in different ways. That's very important in doubt. Any questions on this?
So here are some of these ways?
Well, let me ask you first before I unveil my
How is the miracle
Adam, because it's only because that is the true Word of the Lord wants us to to work on what it is. It's a miracle. How because it already shows over here.
It tells us the miracles
Okay, anyone else?
How's the final miracle the dimension the different ways you can try to explain the plan as a miracle? In what ways?
What would be the thing No, you cannot find the fault in it like any other book Karang is faultless you know and it has some
predictions that really happened.
And you know, and people have been trying to, you know, replicate it or, you know, fight for them and be able to do that. And it is.
There's no other book like that. They're
very good, exactly what they've given us.
On the last name dedicated by Buffy, like there's no any other books that said, this book has not any false, like any mistakes except, of course.
Okay, science,
science.
really struggling, by the way, I mean,
this last month really challenged that anyone to bring just an eye or to like run. Yeah. So in that itself, it does seem that some breakaways, you need to be
okay, could it be compatible? For someone who hasn't spoken? At least you want to speak?
I mean, there's a lot of different things, I would say mostly unchanged.
Preservation preservation, how does that prove that it's American?
I mean, it's really philosophical about it. But I think, mostly, it's if you will, over 1000 of the last 1400 years, anytime that someone has attempted to change anything by a bow, you have hundreds of 1000s people coming out saying, No. When I listen to someone say I was reciting one day and I mentioned one thing wrong. My grandpa said, saving it. He said it wrong again. And he's like, look at what you're reading. And he goes, that's just my grandfather. But you've got hundreds of 1000s of people that are coming on saying you cannot change this. So I think the preservation of it is one way of showing it's the beautiful Americans awesome aspect, right?
Very good. So I'm going to try to bucket the miracles that we discussed today into four dimensions. That's not to say there are only four, but just for the sake of keeping it brief and get the sake of also, hopefully, we have like a lively conversation, shuttling back and forth. Because I'm tired of hearing myself speak. Okay, bang, where's my picture?
Okay, fine.
I remember there being a digital.
So first and foremost, the Quran was recognized as something super special in terms of its language.
And I think I mean, I didn't always used to do this, but I think it's important for us when we tried to say the Quran is a linguistic miracle, there's nothing like the language of the Quran. Now, just to realize the people we're speaking to, because they're not traditional Arabs will not be able to really appreciate this firsthand, they're going to take it on trust, I think we need to recognize that we ourselves are not traditional Arabs. And we're not going to be able to really explain this in a way. Because we haven't experienced it firsthand either. Right? Like, we say, there's absolutely nothing like in terms of its language, it's an absolute masterpiece, in terms of its
language, nothing like it, say, okay, you know, the Arabs were really were the masters of language, they were on the planet, and they their poetry was unparalleled. And the Fortran totally dominated their poetry. But if I were to take off or do something like old, archaic, Arabic poetry and say, God for your personal currency, okay, can you explain that to me? How is this superior to this, we would all be dead in the water, right, myself included, by the way. I'm not a linguist. Okay, and so, I still think we can make this point, we can make this point without having that skill set without being able to actually explain to people how the Fortran, in its composition in the
structure of its language is so superior.
There's so many ways to do this right way number one is just to notice or the reaction of the Quran first audience, this is very, very, very important. So, you know, as one of the scholars said, the fact that the contemporaries meaning the people living around the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, when they wanted to reject his message, because like he wasn't from their tribe, or whatever, other reasons, right?
They tried everything, except to simply meet the challenge of the Quran to produce a book, like there's a challenge in the Quran that says, if you are in any doubt that this is from God, that to be actually super alpha to the surah. Bring about one chapter like it. The shortest chapter in the plan is like two lines, right? Bring about one chapter like it, and you go call your own witnesses to testify that you're right in Superior production. Like it's currently one chapter, right, two lines. This could add is 1000s of verses right?
Give me two mines. And you go call your own supporters your own bias judges to agree with you. Right. And they never did that they did everything but that they threatened the Prophet Muhammad a persecutor, His followers, they killed their own family members, they waged war against like a campaign, the Islamic message and they did all of that. But they never just brought like, you think if it was easy enough, you just do it is they call it the low hanging fruit, right? Just you guys get your master's holds together to produce something to just embarrass Mohamed and say that he's just, you know, making stuff up. So this book is so great.
And so that's what you know that the early scholars, his name was about the land, that the land he said the fact that they reached for their swords, meant that they were failed by their words. That's the idea of like, why would you reach for your soldiers and Star Wars, and lose your chiefs and go through all this man spend so much money, do all this, you got to just produce another book like, it's just it's that simple.
Why go through the harder option.
Okay.
Another way to appreciate this is the fact that they themselves admitted behind closed doors, that the Quran has something unique about it's like a certain charm to the Quran and certain powers, the language of the Quran, we've never seen anything like that the second way to do it.
A third way to do it, is to tell you that these, you know, traditional Arabs.
These traditional Arabs, many of them retired from poetry to say, you know, after the Quran has come down, I refuse to put together anymore poetry.
Like, and this is, I think, part of understanding how they can do that. Being a master Polish was like the tier one.
You know, right? In early Arabian society, like people would only congratulate you on two things, really, when you had a newborn, or when I tried when I went on a public rose in your tribe. Those are basically the two festivals for early Arabia. The Arabs use the claw and I say this is right, it's pretty slim. They used to call non Arabs agile, agile. We translated as non Arabs, but not IgM literally means speechless, like inanimate objects are called XML acts like a rock is agile. So they're basically saying these people, all these other people in the world, all these nations, Rome, and Persia, and all the other countries, they're all subhuman, basically, because they don't know
how to speak the way we speak in animals or know how to communicate. We're the only people on planet earth that know how to communicate, right? Pre snap pre snap, show. So this is how the degree of mastery and skill they have with the Arabic language is what made them now have their master bullets at the highest echelons of society, the highest rank in society, those master poets of them retired from poetry of the became Muslim. Everyone else waged war against Muhammad. Something was odd here. And one last part here talk to appreciate how the Quran is a linguistic miracle when they were trying to figure out ways to campaign against Mohammed, do you know what they settled on?
And this is also once again, undisputed, historical,
you know what they called him, they call them anything, they call them crazy. They call them you know, like, selfish, greedy, trying to like become, you know, the king among us they ever had. Right. What they settled in the end is that, you know, the best our best bet is to align on the allegation that he is correct that he's, he's a magician. He's a sorcerer. So they started telling everyone the sorcerer don'ts. If you just listen to Mohammed, he's gonna like, you know, he's gonna brainwash you. You just listen to him, he's gonna put you under like a spell, so don't even give him here.
They don't even realize they didn't realize that when they called him a sorcerer. They were admitting what
is beyond human. Right, and he is human. I'm saying that this Quran is supernatural. You understand? Why would you say sorcerer? And so this is one of the ways to argue the fact that they themselves all agreed that when he brought this Quran was beyond human capacity. There's that's five, four or five points. There's a six point that's here. That I think is so much easier for us to appreciate how the Quran in its language is a miracle. Because the reference point is far closer to home. Some people, some scholars, non Muslim scholars on Islam,
orientalist, they're both
some of them
I believe this was Arthur Jr. Very easy, anonymous installer, or endless scholar who actually knows Arabic pretty well, but he actually has his own translation of the Quran you can buy in the markets is not just
So what'd he try to make the claim? Sorry?
Because I can't turn it on.
on one slide.
Yeah. So he tried to make the claim that
Yeah, sure. The Quran is absolutely unique in its language, but that doesn't mean it's supernatural. You get it like, Okay, fine. Quran is top notch, best thing ever written or were produced in Arabic. That doesn't mean it's a miracle. We just got a little too far here. We're exaggerating, he was gonna get carried away. That's basically what he's arguing.
For so
he says that every language has its supreme literature. You have Shakespeare in English, you have what he had in Greek
trophies in Greek.
The Iliad of Homer, right? That's like the number one in Greek. The
the sonnets of Shakespeare are number one in English. He sings he's saying this. And so the Arabic is no different. Like, yeah, we all agree Muslim and non Muslim in the Arabic of the planet and masterpiece, nothing like it. And that's true. By the way, no one disagrees on this. They only disagree on whether it's from God or not. That's the only part of the conversation we're having right now. Is it justified to say it's from God? And so he says, No, it's not justified. It's like, you know, Shakespeare stuff, it's real special, impressive league of its own, let's put it down.
But that is really, really, really like.
interesting, fascinating that he says that because he's overlooking a whole bunch of differences between the Quran and between the works of Shakespeare.
So one of them is
all of these appointees never use one of these.
Okay, focus on
who had access to education, books and libraries. The problem is also leveraging experience, knowledge experience, the Prophet SAW said Love was not school taught. Shakespeare school, taught English school taught Latin, prophesy, Salah was from society that was largely illiterate. And that is why spoken poetry
evolved in such an impressive way. Part of it was a dependence on spoken word.
Like their honor, their history, their lead all of that, anyway, who had access to books in literate society versus Shakespeare had access to libraries at a time library at his disposal. So that's one huge difference, right? You can imagine the Prophet SAW Selim never uttered a complete full sentence of poetry in his entire life. And then he crushes all of the master poets overnight, at the end of his life. Something doesn't add up here.
Who wrote for a living definitely wasn't the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu is that as Shakespeare used to get paid to write his place, he was a professional playwright that had the luxury of spending eight to 10 to 12 to 15 hours a day, and improving his craft with every new play. He writes, right? Every new production makes sense. The Prophet SAW Selim was a trader and a shepherd and that's it off in the remote desert somewhere completely different experience and career path. Who changed? Who brought about a complete different use of the language they come? The composition of the language, and its structure was completely different. It makes
you think Shakespeare invented silence, you guys know songs, alright. What are songs?
With
let me embarrass you actually, like,
Can you define? Yeah, so
in the interest of time, sonnets are a form of poetry in English. You know, poetry has forms, there's, you know, whatever, the Haiku and other ones, right? So sonnets have existed this way of writing poetry, this measure of writing poetry, five lines, three lines, and otherwise, these things existed hundreds of years before Shakespeare. Shakespeare just mastered it. He's really good at it. So with the Prophet SAW Salem, he used Arabic in a way that was not Arabic because they know what Arabic looks like. They know the structure for the language highly sophisticated for them, they spoke better than anyone else on the planet. He steps away from their structure
doesn't follow any of the 16 for example, you know, structures of Arabic poetry, but yet what he's saying is crystal clear. And that's where it became a paradox for them like this is perfectly Arabic, we understand perfectly was trying to say, but it's absolutely not Arabic because it doesn't meet
meet any of the structures. You understand. Matt is someone trying to speak to an English jumbling up the nine parts of a sentence, right? So he steps away from all forms of structure in Arabic, yet his words are the most eloquent Arabic ever heard by people?
And you're saying this is illogical? How can it be Arabic and not Arabic at the same time, that's why it's a miracle, a miracle that can that is logical is no longer a miracle, right?
And then the stylometric test, this is just a nice, big fancy word. psychometric test is actually a statistical study that people invented nowadays with computers, to basically they call it author discrimination, how can you basically measure down to numbers, what how people speak their style of speaking, to figure out whether this person actually said those words or not. So for instance, if you're able to, this is how, like, if we today, we're able to pull out from under the ground here, on a manuscript that says Shakespeare's long loss on a brand new play that we never heard of before, they would actually go and take it through psychometric tests based on what we already know about
Shakespeare style, and through math, through math tell you that this doesn't match up with Shakespeare's patterns, Shakespeare style, right? That's actually how through stylometric, they say that certain parts of the Bible that are attributed to Paul, for example, are actually no way written by Paul. That's one of the ways they aren't us. And so they actually perform 12 experiments that compare the Quran, with the everyday words of the Prophet Muhammad SAW study, which we have, we have the Hadith, right? And so when they compare these two, they tell you, for example, 60, whatever 2% of the words enough, in the Quran, don't exist in the Hadith, in the everyday conversations of
Muhammad, right.
And like that. So with these sorts of tests, they wind up saying, wait a minute, it is absolutely impossible for someone to police their vocabulary that way, like I use this half of my vocabulary for these conversations, and only this half of my vocabulary for those conversations, that's humanly impossible. You can't do that, especially over the span of 23 years, you just can't, humans are not capable. And and by the way, this thing is just like a cool scientific way that they measured it. Now. The people around the Prophet Muhammad, as I said, they knew this, they didn't say you speak like that everyday. Anyway, they knew that at 40 years old, or 43 years old, when he went public
with the message that even you don't speak like that no one speaks like that. So they didn't actually need all of this, but this is like for your own first as appreciation of the style. The style of the Quran was too different. When tested, even from the style in which Muhammad spoke, Salah Adios, and it couldn't have been the same offense.
And then unwavering eloquence.
Shakespeare is not always at the same level of impressiveness all human beings have these, you know, just like lecturing nowadays, right, they find a sentence that just came out really well they take a snippet and turn it into a short to turn it into a nugget or something they call them gems, or whatever it is, all humans are like this, you have like these just moments of brilliance that just, you were inspired, just you, you framed it in such a nice way, Shakespeare the same exact thing because Shakespeare is human. So there are parts of Shakespeare that all English professors love to just dwell on. Wow. You know, look how he knocked that one out the park, right? With the Quran.
There's none of this, you know, because the Arabs liked poetry so much. They had this really really brutal literary critique tradition. What that means is that they have this this thing
where for fun, they will poke holes in common language, like that poll that was hot and everything, but this because of that should have been this. All they do is poke holes in each other's language, right? No one has ever been reported to pick out a segment of the Quran that could be bettered in any way that line could have been this or could have been that could have been shorter could have been more brief, more concise, more succinct, more eloquent. So there's no wavering eloquence there's no you know, segments of brilliance in the Quran. The same way there isn't in.
In human writing, challenged his peers. did Shakespeare ever tell the world I dare you to produce anything like my poems?
No. is Shakespeare the undisputed number one? No.
Matter of fact, sorry, they dragged me through English literature. my Bachelor's is my first bachelor's in English literature. There is no agreement on Shakespeare being number one in English.
You know
To you, Craig from from Newcastle University is a famous professor that, that wrote in his book on the fact that there are seven famous playwrights in English. He actually can't he counts Shakespeare as number seven people, six people in front of him. But Shakespeare just had really good like social
position. Right? He was popular basically doesn't mean not everyone was possible there means he's the best scientist or poet or whatever else, right? And so eat so Shakespeare is the most famous, but he knew and everyone knew that he was just like, the most popular or the most award winning in an arena of like worthy competitors, right? It wasn't a contest, where the Prophet SAW Selim, he challenged them, chastise them or Andy, bring something like it, I challenge you bring something, a fraction of it, and no one ever met the challenges. No one ever could.
I'll be quick now because I already use my whole hour on this.
The flexibility of fiction who wrote fiction, I'm under Shakespeare.
Right? And if when you're writing fiction, it's far easier to be more appealing. You know, the Quran is not just storytelling, actually, the storytelling style is not like what we're used to at all. Because it's very intentional about how to lie and when to share stories. No fillers, no complete story, we just get lost and stop reflecting very rare because I couldn't do that. Shakespeare is taking you on a ride. It's really entertaining, right? It's a drama is conspiracy and scandal instead of the third. And he gets to add whatever he wants. It's not reality, the Quran, the Quran is talking about really uncomfortable topics, whether they're philosophical, what does it mean to
exist? who God is? Isn't? Who's going to be saved? and who isn't? What hypocrisy deep within our hearts looks like, you know, who are these are uncomfortable topics. The fact that these topics can be as you know, worded in a way that can keep people coming back for more and more and more and more that brings us to the next point universal appeal. Like if I was to pull fire on the university and I wanted to you know, host an event
a Shakespeare play Who's gonna come
Yeah, I mean, generally, generally speaking, upper to middle class, high school, probably more college educated, you know?
predominantly Caucasian,
right people, this is just like that is the very tight niche where it's Shakespeare could be appreciated. Step outside the Muslim majority world even right here in America, we're we're a minority, a scattered minority, you put it Quran, you know, an expert recite or competition going on for an night somewhere where kids or adults are reciting the Quran, who's going to come?
every sector of the community, right? The young and the old, the white and the black, the rich and the poor, the edgy, everyone's any car, right? How did the friend pull that off? There's really no book like.
And then these two are my favorite, I think,
who had this is a little close to fiction, creative liberty, Shakespeare. It's not just about creative liberty. Shakespeare independently wrote his books he wrote on whatever you want to write about whether fiction or not, he wrote about what he wanted to write about. You get it, therefore and imagine how hard it is for you to try to write anything. That is responses to people talking to you, and events happening to you where you can't control them external factors. For example, there are 13 places in the Quran that start with Yes, Aluna can they ask you about this? Oh, Muhammad, tell them that they asked you about this. So imagine when your audience gets to dictate what you
write about. Your writing would be should be expected to be one all over the place. Like I'm trying to talk about this here. And someone's coming in asking me a question about that, right? How am I going to pull this off? Make sense? And yet the Quran not just a response to questions people are asking, the Quran is also coming down at times of like, emotional distress, but there are times when his family members, the Prophet Mohammed found him to be massacred. Do you think he's he's expected to be as eloquent when he gives people a new flat these verses just came down right new format. At that time versus a time when things are calm. I'm just you know, sipping on some tea under a
candlelight, you know, being real eloquent right now. There shouldn't be like a huge difference between this time when I'm under all this stress. But the Quran is just immune to all of this. You want to ask questions God and ask questions. Muhammad himself so Allah Azza was going through all this turbulence in his life. All right, before I
is still gonna have its unwavering eloquence, very unexpected. It's beyond you.
The last one, here's the kicker
Do you know of any human being
any human being
that writes back to front, not right to left, or left to go back to front.
Like imagine a book, the last line of the book.
Right?
Then the second last line of the book. And the third last one, the book, not a book they memorize either like, I don't want to say from the hip, but you understand the challenge you.
So Shakespeare, of course, didn't do that. Shakespeare knew from the beginning, probably how his plays would play out how they were beginning to end. What the Quran did, or how the Quran came. Now, people don't really realize this, the order that you have the Quran today was the final placement of the verses, as confirmed by the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. Now it's fine, right? But over the course of 23 years, they were coming down. The word is interspersed, basically like this, I want you to imagine this is a gorgeous tapestry of a work of art. This is a work of art, right? It's just it's a gorgeous, you know, image. fully coherent, so eloquent. So beautiful. So salient has
such appeal. But it was put together like this.
Kind of like those Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy thing, but not words, right? Can you imagine this? Can you imagine hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of Quran put together like this? Would you expect it to be this beautiful, seamless tapestry? No way the world, right? So you get why arbury was wrong, but trying to compare the financial experience. This is not possible for any human, any one of these would have crossed out. Right? Imagine you had these 10 factors together. That is why people realize something is different about this book. Any questions about this? Yes, you're doing
ordinary English today?
Correct. So as simple in linear fashion, how does that gentleman because the current day existing Cron is in a different order to what it was
some documents the assembly wasn't in a linear fashion, right? That's what I mean. I mean, that who assembled their work in a linear fashion, Shakespeare All
right.
Let's do it.
Moving on from language altogether
the four and came down with so much knowledge about the last pass.
That leaves no explanation
for those who delve into this topic, except that God was communicating with
this is a source in God, the origin of this book is God.
And there are different ways to appreciate this subject, right. One of them is to simply compare,
not simply compare, simply learn how the original audience reacted to the knowledge of the last pass. Sorry.
How they reacted, you see, I'm going to share with you a few deep dives very quick, deep dives about, you know, knowledge of the last pass a friend spoke about and it was only later discovered, but that is all extra that is all unnecessary that yes, it may be more appreciated people nowadays. What I want you to realize that this point doesn't require that, but it doesn't require dig up fossils and archaeological excavation to pull out this artifact to realize Oh, snap, but I was right. No, no, no, I'm just gonna do that for fun. Okay. But well, before this stuff there, the excavations and the tombs and the digging God and all that the people around the homeless acela
would ask him questions about things he was sure they were sure he could not know about. Right? But they'd like he speaks like Jews and Christians. He must have stolen from them or something. So they would travel away and say, Okay, let's go get some questions from them to prove him wrong, right. Let's go stuff.
And then they will come back with the questions like look, automate are the boys in the game are other prophets and messengers from the past and otherwise, and they asked him
if you're really a prophet, tell us what they said in the third. And not only does he answer their questions, and answer their trick questions, but also, he tells them more than their reference points new
So what are the boys in the cave boys through seven boys who slept in a cave for 309 years? That's just the story, right? He gives them a whole explanation about exactly how the events unfolded with the boys in the cave.
And so they many of them, that's why many Jews in Medina, they
do felt like it was
so difficult to continue arguing that Muhammad wasn't a prophet. So what they used to say to him is, okay, fine, you're a prophet, just not for us. You're a prophet for those illiterate people in Arabia. You don't want to be Israelites, so we don't have to listen to find your prophet, because they could not get around saying he wasn't a prophet, when he's bringing all this, all this knowledge of the laws passed. And so all they could do, I mean, some of them became Muslim, but there's some who didn't become Muslim. They didn't say you're not a prophet, is it? Okay, you're a prophet for the other nations that goes right to the non Israelite nations.
So I just wanted to point that out that the simple fact he stated to people around him, made them sure that he was a prophet.
But what are the three examples I want to give you very quickly, about knowledge of the last pass, so I'll use three examples. And maybe two in the interest of time, let's just try regarding Ancient Egypt.
So Mohammed Arabia, very, very, very far away from Egypt. Even if he was in Egypt, in that way, Egypt knew this stuff.
It was lost already at the time of the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago, it was already last for centuries. Basically, what the ancient Egyptian civilizations look like they were nobody knew anything about this stuff.
And so
he spoke on it. The Quran spoke on Pharaoh, Pharaoh, Moses, and Pharaoh drowned, and so on and so forth. Someone can say someone can say, he got this stuff from the Jews and the Christians maybe had like a secret helper whispering in his ear telling him this stuff. Well, here's the problem. The story diverges between the Jewish Christian narrative and the Quranic narrative in certain places, in one place. For example, it tells you
that
when Pharaoh drowned,
God saved his body to be a lesson for tyrants forever until the end of time. Basically,
that tidbit is not in the Bible, that the body will be preserved.
The Quran mentions
79 or 200 years ago, the polio invades Egypt and all that good stuff. They basically discover our tablet called the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone teaches them how to dissect and cipher like translate hieroglyphics, ancient Egyptian language, it becomes a thing because what 100 years 50 years becomes a thing becomes a science. It's called Egyptology. Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. They are very confident that either morainic top or Ramses the second was, in fact, the pharaoh of Moses who died by way of drowning, forensic forensic.
Forensic studies have proven this right that those Pharaohs that Pharaoh died by drowning, you know to say I like appreciate it, this will take a long time, but to say that the body of the Pharaoh will be found is already a way to set up beforehand as delving into risky guesses. Because you know, most Pharaohs most mummies their bodies are gone, right? So the same, this particular Mummy will be found, will the body will be preserved and that they drown, right? It's splitting hairs here. And the Quran has no problem doing it. Because I'm guessing
that's one. Another example from ancient Egypt is that the Quran says when Pharaoh drowned, it says, and the skies never worked for him. The skies never worked for him. And this is just straightforward like good riddance basically right everyone's reading this
poem again remembering
that the skies were not saddened by his death. So neck generally speaking, the believer is blessing wherever he is, and those defiance of God like the drainage basically, right? No, what No, no. What's the story?
No last one
is a word for God's
law lost love or whatever it's called. So the skies didn't love him. They're happy he's gone from Planet Earth. They're happy he's not under them anymore. That's the face value meanings still sets the new Egyptology they discovered that these hieroglyphics used to basically write these like exaggerated adulation, this praise for the pharaohs and say, when they die, the heavens wet and so on and so forth. And so the Quran is saying 2000 years before we discover this
So No, they did it. Right? Who else would have known that ancient Egyptian speak this way about their Pharaohs when they die? You get you get the point here, right?
The third example very quickly on this point,
I have four minutes left. Almost you guys give me 10 more.
The third point is all throughout the Bible.
The king of Egypt is called federal you guys know that Pharaoh is not a name. Federal is a title. It's like President rezar or, you know, Emperor, federal.
It means the upper most leader, the monarch ruler of Egypt.
I'll leave it translated like that for now.
They call the king in the title of Abraham and the rule is they call him federal in the Bible. And the king in the title of his grandson Joseph prophet Joseph told the federal right and the king in the time of Moses is called the Pharaoh.
That's fine. If the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was copying off of Judeo Christian scriptures, he would have done the same thing. Right? He would have said king of Egypt, Pharaoh, right?
But the Quran is a little bit different here. The Quran uses the word Pharaoh 65 times and restricts its usage of the word Pharaoh to the story of Moses always. Time of Abraham in the time of
Joseph, they are called kings and make right. At best, they're called kings. Never once Pharaoh. See odd coincidence? No. 65 times to zero times. Right? There's something glaring here. What is glaring? We discovered recently, that the term Pharaoh was reserved for the uppermost king of Egypt, from Egypt, because it meant elite house Elite Bloodline, because they believe that he was the highest Egyptian, right half man, half god, right? This is what they believe.
And so you can don't believe me like, oh, it's like video Britannica. And let's just look up when was the term Pharaoh coined. It was coined during the reign of footnotes, the third, which is way after the reign of Abraham, the age of Abraham and Moses, I'm sorry.
Abraham, his son, was the son
Ishmael and Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob had Joseph, stop there. All those are well before the reign of FET, most of the third where the term Pharaoh was going, okay.
There's something extra interesting here. It's also mentioned historically established that, you know, even if this term had existed a little earlier, from what Encyclopedia Britannica, everyone else already knows. Now, even if the term existed in the time of Joseph, it still would have been wrong to use it. Because during the time of Joseph, centuries before Moses, Egypt was not run by pharaohs. Egypt was invaded and occupied by invading force from Palestine
for two generations. So if you look at for example, that the chain of pharaohs look it up in a history book, there's an interruption when there was no pharaohs. That's because the Hyksos dynasty had invaded Egypt and taken over before the federal deputy country back, you get it? Heat so literally means foreign kings, because they're not indigenous rulers that from the outside, they're occupiers. And so even if the term had existed, it still would have been wrong to use it for Joseph. And the Quran never made that mistake. And had the Quran been copying plagiarizing from other books and would have made that mistake. So when Muhammad get this information from
one person trying to be
which he said, Well, maybe he had his own manuscript of the Bible that has never been discovered.
Why would that not be a possibility? Tell him
before we get to the next point, quick
reading rights,
right, maybe had like an elephant's copier.
I'm being extra silly here on purpose. So he couldn't have gotten it because the whole world knows he can't read and write Excellent. How do we know he didn't have someone whispering into his ear?
He had like a secret tutor. Can you say how
to say this? How do we know language is totally different from any of those scholars of Christianity? Yeah, like first of all. We need to know that nothing existed in Arabic for 200 years after the Prophet Muhammad in terms of Scripture. You go to the
The greatest authorities in the academic space today and tell them when were the first copies of biblical scripture translated to Arabic. They say partial, bad translation. So the incomplete and their poor translation, right? existed in like the ninth century, ninth and 10th centuries. The Prophet Muhammad existed what century?
Yeah, sixth century, right, sixth and seventh century. So 200 years that's written. And then if you're saying, okay, maybe it was in person, someone telling him in person? Well, that's just ridiculous. Because they would have to basically train him for a lifetime. How do you hide something like this? Right? We wouldn't the world would have known this the apprentice of this guy. He walks around with them all time, right? The Student No one ever noticed. And let's imagine he was a ghost. And then no one ever noticed because that man is a ghost. You're only explaining where he got it from. You're forgetting
the end product only explained the source and not the end product.
So it causes more problems than it solves the chart to go these these fascinating routes.
Okay, preserve this promise.
Compared with any other book, sister, I mean, I'll just defer to anyone on this one is the Quranic spected to be preserved, no way. Like even nowadays, you have like edgy education and mass literacy and your spellcheck. And what's it called Grammarly? And we still send embarrassing typos in our text messages, don't we? Right or wrong? Oh, I wish it was unsaid. And that's why we love WhatsApp, right? Because you can unsend the message after you finish cursing somebody out. Don't do that.
I mean, unscented. Yeah, my daughter's.
So the fact that the Quran can actually be preserved and the, you know, the first century manuscripts all exist and alive and all this other stuff is not to be expected. And this was a prophecy in the Quran. But unlike all the other scriptures, since this is the last scripture there'll be no more clarifications because Islam right, the prophets came to clarify complete the message of the previous prophets with this, since the last one that you want to be able to ruin it. Sound like it Listen, did a better job, right? It took God, you know, placed it in a way that it cannot be corrupted. What's even more amazing, to be honest, is that you know, some people just say,
Yeah, but this manuscript was discovered that has this variation in it, and sometimes even Muslims continuity. Like as if, first of all, we discover these things, and there's nothing scary about them whatsoever. But the fact is, the Quran is not preserved on paper.
The Quran is preserved in the hearts of the believers. The fact that the Prophet Muhammad this imagine it's like he taught some people grand, those people want to talk some people, those people want to talk some people, those who want to talk, like if we had time I play I play telephone with you guys. I tell my daughter, there's something in here a year, one sentence, not a book, imagine just one sentence, by the time it gets to the last person. Right?
So I love you, maybe one is gonna get there. And and of course, mine is gonna be like, you know how he speaks? Right? It's crazy. And it's one sentence. So the fact that the Quran was decentralized, there wasn't like some closed door committee that keeps putting out the Revised Standard Version. I don't mean take a shot at people. But like, even when it's centralized, it's still problematic. The fact that there's no centralization of the Quran, everyone's teaching it for 1500 years. And you still have the, the the memorized versions matching up with the written versions. That's divine care. That's divine intervention here. Like that's not to be expected at all. Like 1/5 of the
Muslims in the world are Arabs. The Quran is memorized in Arabic 80% of them are not Arabs. Shouldn't they note that? Shouldn't they, like overlook the times they're mispronouncing Right? Like there's so many ways to cut this apple? Right? It's impossible for this to be preserved by human effort.
And here's the last one, and I don't want to spend time on it because we're done.
Yes, one question on the question. So if you were to be asked, What's the oldest source where all communication has been compared to a written source? Is it does what does it backdate 13th century upon century manuscript of
No, there are in in academia, you know, because Because raising and also, testing manuscripts is actually a very early thing. It hasn't been happening for long.
Yeah, yeah. Birmingham is one of the the earliest copies but basically, in academia, there are ongoing investigations
about copies that are here.
Erikson from the Sahaba themselves. So that would make it early seventh century.
And there is agreement already in academia, that first and second generation exists. Right now compiler generation, companions, just one generation like copies of the most top of Earth man are less than right established with Man is the one who standardized the written copy during his reign, right. And he's a direct Companion of the Prophet Mohammed, copies of the original copy, by agreement exists. Now, how many
many copies if any written at the hands of the companion to live with the problem exists, that's still open investigation. And again, it's a very new enterprise and it's garnering more and more interest and hundreds of
other questions.
So I'm just gonna give you one example about just how potent the Quran is.
Like
there's there are so many, of course and how the Quran transformed lives how Quran, you know, was
beyond any reasonable question, you know, the the inner workings that started in the right and the, you know, the European Renaissance. This was all Islamic culture grounded in the Quran or the Quran propelled by the progress and advancement and otherwise, and even non Muslim historians agree on this. And there's so many books I can refer you to about this issue. But just the Quran in and of itself, not just the positive impact and transformation had on the world. I often tell people just consider the best selling book in English. Because English is not,
you know, English speakers, we'd expect them to like English books, right?
Or read English books more than anything else. I have done this exercise with you some of you before some of my students here. What is the number one best selling book in English?
The Bible, right and the last 50 years, the Bible has sold over 4 million copies
what a second place
Harry Potter
some Chinese guys,
no racial slurs in my classes.
Yeah, the wisdoms are the quotations are not saying. I'm saying that.
So that's the second best translation. What's the second best soul English book? last 50 years. Third place is really
sorry, I didn't even mean
sort of busy.
And so if you add up the sales of Harry Potter and the quotations of the Chinese thinker, together, combined, they don't even represent a quarter. They don't even think 1 billion copies, like 300,000,002 50 million, something like that. They don't hit 1 billion copies. So in less than two years, okay. As for the Bible, it's more than four times as many sales. Okay, pretty impressive.
Now, take the Bible, which basically, you know, eclipses the competition in English, and compare it with
not how many people bought a copy of the Quran. But how many people memorize the Quran cover to cover by heart?
Do we know 10 people on the planet in any language? They memorize Bible by heart?
Don't think so? I don't think they exist.
So
we know 10 People in the World memorize the entire Quran by heart.
I think we want to cry. How about 10 people in America? We're only 1% of the population. We have some people in America.
We do. Do we have 10 people in Pennsylvania?
Do we have 10 people downtown
How many do we have in this room? Yeah, how mad sorry. We have probably close to that
did the same they walked out of Catholics with the same brothers comes out it was obviously he memorized the Quran. Right?
We easily easily just in this Masjid near 10 memorized.
It's pretty staggering, right?
Anyway, so this is a lesson book uniquely bless it, even in terms of how Allah facilitated
the ease of memorizing it. Even among people that are not
speaking it's it's language in their day to day.
Any questions on any of this?
Again, for high level, I tried to give you like really examples of each but don't be that person that just dumped
SR doubt, right? When you're inviting someone to Islam be emotionally intelligent, be sensitive, try to understand the person in front of you. As you are sharing this message
Oh question. You brought up a point about the Jews of Medina say that they came to a point they realize he was a prophet, but they just said, He's not our Prophet. He's for them.
How would you respond to someone using the same argument in in today's war like, oh, well, yeah, he's, he might have been a prophet and I have been a prophet where he's is, you know, is his Quran in Arabic is, it's not my people, you know, something like something along those lines.
I mean, human beings are extremely talented and believing whatever they want to believe, and thinking they have justifications for it. But that's why also the whole process of that when we tell you being emotionally intelligent, why? Because the real arts of that rock a lot of times is about getting past people's defensiveness helping without accusing someone of being arrogant, calling their attention to their double standard, or the ego in the room, or, you know, there because it's also natural, like human beings, as they say, in very simple terms. Everyone likes to be right. Everyone likes to be like. So sometimes when you're inviting someone to slam, you have to factor
these things in,
you know,
that it's not emotionally, you know,
an option for a lot of people to rock the boat with my family and have them not like me if I become Muslim, for example. So you need to be considered and sensitive to these things. And likewise, it is not emotionally an option for me to admit that you're right. I'm wrong. I take it back.
I follow your bandwagon. Right, it feels that way. I'm not saying it is our bandwidth. This is Allah's deep, right? Because factually, it's actually very simple. Like, how do you know, it's for me, while the friend said, it's from God? Here's the proof. It's from God. God said it applies to you. And it applies to everybody. Right? Slam is the religion of humanity. Universalism, like the universality of Islam is a glaring in the, in the text of snap. And so if you believe it's from God, listen to God. Right? What the layers between this and that
are what people would cause people to not want to say it's from God to beginning
and you pray
call them by day and pray for them. Why not? We want people to
benefit from this message. We are concerned that people's lives expire before they make amends with their makeup. It's actually something that weighs heavier hearts as well.
People will tell me are you trying to convert me it's like I can't control that as we neither can you like our hearts are in God's hands with what I want you to become Muslim? Yes, I do. SNAM is the most valuable thing of my life, my life. And I want to share that with you. And I'm obligated to as well. So there's no secret about this. Yes, I want to be able to serve
anyone? Yes, sir. Just a small part of the point the shift to the Arabic government.
Okay, you will find that won't be
the best region who are very strong with the Arabic grammar with don't say Libya, August
by the Syrians and Lebanese, typically the Christians, the Palestinian Lebanese and the Christian series, and the very good or very known that the
patient very, very well. And then along with them in order to move the series
in a way to say okay, look,
here's the translation of the of the novel. Okay. And to prove the theory the comparative
to make a stamp that our Oh yeah, and fast forward, bla bla bla bla, yeah, is correct. And here's a parallel look at the operands because they know that and this is a superseded statements.
And that's what I tried to say before there is no disagreement among experts past or present, that the Quran is the gold standard. The only thing they're discussing is whether it's from God or not. Right, but Muslim and non Muslim experts agree that it is the top of the chain linguist you can speak Yeah, I felt the same. I mean, they were Muslims, but the Syrian students in our one of our seminaries knew that they would always shame us with their grandma and grandpa, very strong shamans. Very impressive.
Any other questions?
Okay, I My only complaint is you guys didn't eat the doughnuts here. I'll take that.
Away
When examining