Mustafa Khattab – The Amazing Quran
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AI: Transcript ©
And I bear witness that Muhammad salallahu alayhi
wa sallam is the seal of the prophets
and the final messenger to all of humanity.
Whoever Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala guides, there is
none to misguide, and whoever Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala leaves to stray, there is none to
guide
So I'm going to begin by
referring to a couple of,
stories related to the Quran. The first story
is about a man whose name is Gary
Miller, Doctor Gary Gary Miller. I'm not sure
if you heard the name before,
but back in the 19 seventies, in 1977,
he debated Ahmed Diddeh.
So Gary Miller,
was basically or he still is. He,
from Canada, Ontario,
and back in the 1970s,
he used to teach mathematics
at the University of Toronto.
So he became famous after his debate with
Ahmed Idat, and he challenged the authenticity of
the Quran,
and he started to study the Quran very
closely,
and by 1978
he accepted Islam. He was a preacher,
very well versed in the Bible,
and he was a debayr, a mathematician,
and so on and so forth. And the
man the the good thing about this man,
he when he approached something, he was very
fair minded, and he was very objective.
So when he started the Quran for about
a year, he became a Muslim. Alhamdulillah, and
he started to do Dawah. And there is
a very important lecture by him. You can
go to, YouTube.
It says the amazing Quran.
And the lecture was later transcribed into a
small booklet. You can read the booklet. It
will give you some insights about the beauty
and the power of the Quran. It's an
amazing book, the amazing Quran.
I meet some Muslims,
and they tell me when they first heard
the Quran, even before they became Muslim, they
come to the masjid for observation,
or they listen to an audio about the
Quran,
and SubhanAllah,
automatically
tears will come down.
They don't understand a word,
but their recitation moves them, and they start
to cry,
and so on and so forth. The stories
are so many. Even SubhanAllah, some people who
never accepted Islam, they were moved by the
Quran. Where even in the books of Tafsir,
when this Ayah was revealed and the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam recited the Ayah,
in Allah They say that when
Abu Jahl
heard the ayah Ayah, Ta'wala him Nahu laiamu
bimakarim al-'Afla. He says, this Quran is inviting
people to good manners.
So even Abu Jahl and Abu Jahl, they
were impressed.
And they would go at night. We know
this from Sira.
They will make a promise to each other,
we will never listen to the Quran,
but in the dark when the Prophet SAW
would decide by the Kaaba or in His
Salah, they would come and they would listen
secretly to His Qara.
And then when they pop on each other
in the dark, okay, what are you doing
here? I thought we made a deal that
we'll not listen to the Quran. They say,
oh, I was
heading to my mom, or I was going
to the store.
They make up stories. But the the Quran
moved them, and it touched their hearts.
So now a question is,
if the Quran
touched the heart of gay men
and those who accept Islam all the time,
even by just reading the translation, people become
Muslim, and I've seen this all the time.
People read the translation
in English or French or any other language,
and of course this is, like, less than
1% of what the Arabic says. It doesn't
reflect the beauty and the power of the
Arabic, but still Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala touches
hearts through translation.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala works in mysterious ways.
And if the Quran moved
someone like Abu Jarrad Abu Lahab to say
beautiful things about the Quran, how come
that these days some of us they don't
feel the connection with the Quran?
Like you listen to the Quran in Dharmir,
the Sheikh is residing in the front and
some people are crying, some Some of them
are non Arabs, they don't know what is
going on.
And you you hear them crying in the
salah, and you feel like, why are they
crying? What's wrong with these people?
The question is, what's wrong with you?
Especially if you understand the Arabic. Why it
doesn't touch your heart? Why it doesn't move
you?
And people always come with questions like, I
don't feel the connection with the Quran.
Yes, I understand the meaning, but it doesn't
move me.
And and people say, well, my my children
ask questions that I can't answer. Like, they
ask, why does Allah say this?
And the other day, last week, I I
got a, you know, you know, a question
from a brother. And he said that his
son, he goes to high school, and his
friends ask questions about the Quran. And I
said, where are these questions? And he said,
my son is asking this and this and
this. And I told him, your son would
never come up with questions like these. These
questions that are, commonly asked by missionaries, and
they try to put doubt and attack the
Quran. Your son would never ask something like
this, and he would never know that something
like this exists in the Quran. He doesn't
read the Quran. How come that he comes
up with all these questions?
Someone is trying to put doubt in his
mind because he doesn't have the knowledge of
the Quran, and you cannot answer it because
you don't know either. Right?
Some people will say, well,
you you know, the Quran is good. We
use it for Barakah. I put it in
my car in the, you know, in the
front,
in the dashboard, or in in the back,
just for protection, especially back home if you
don't have insurance. This is what most people
do for Barakah.
They recited when someone dies,
and so on and so forth.
But this is all what the Quran is
all about for most people. So they think
it is outdated.
Why would I have to read about Firoun
who died like 3 4000 years ago?
Why do I have to read about Tabat
Yadah Abila Habim? Why do I have to
read all these things? What what kind of
benefit do I get?
So they feel like the Quran is not
relevant to them. It talks about people who
lived and died 1000 of years ago. What
does it have to do with me? It
is not relevant to my life. It doesn't
deal with all the challenges that I go
through every day. I'm suffering. I'm trying to
buy a house in
Mississauga, and the, you know, the the the,
the the real estate market is going up,
and what does the Quran have to do
with this?
Corrupt politicians back home, social problems, and so
on and so forth. What does the Quran
have to contribute to my life? So sometimes
I get these questions.
So the key
to solving this problem is the word Tadaqbur,
reflecting on the Quran. And Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is asking us in the Quran, Afarayatadabbaroona
Quran.
Why in the world do you not reflect,
read and reflect the Quran?
Some of us, or many of us actually,
have taken upon themselves
to memorize the Quran. I've seen, I've seen
schools
and health programs, which is a fantastic thing.
People go, they spend 2 3 years, day
and night, they memorize the Quran, they become
Haft, they read Salah, Alhamdulillah.
For them, memorizing the Quran is the end.
But in Islam, memorizing the Quran, which is
an amazing thing, and I encourage everyone to
teach some, you know, their kids to memorize
Quran. It's an amazing thing. It's a beautiful
thing. It's one of Awjul and Arjaz because
I don't know of any other faith community
that can memorize their scripture. The Quran is
the only book that is memorized by millions
of people.
But again, this is just the means. It
is not the end.
So memorizing is good, but there is another
levels of relationships
with the Quran. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala is telling us,
in the Quran,
there are two things,
preservation
and Tadaq,
reflection and applying the Quran.
He said,
Halb is my duty. I will take care
of the Halb. Halb. You don't have to
worry about protecting or preserving the Quran by
committing it to memory.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not telling
people don't memorize the Quran. I'm asking everyone
to memorize whatever they can of the Quran,
the whole thing or some of it. Alhamdulillah.
Preserving the Quran is the duty of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Allah says it in the Quran. I'm the
one who revealed the Quran and I'm I'm
the one who's preserving it. Don't worry about
it.
Your job Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
and zalnahu ilayka Mubaraku Sura Saat Kitabun Anzalnahu
ilayka Mubaraku
li'ataba'u
Ayati
We have revealed this blessed book to you
so you can reflect on the meaning
Most of us say, no, we will take
care of the hiv.
You Allah, you take care of the Tadabur.
Right? We will preserve it and you do
the Tadabur.
We do it, you know, the other way
around.
So what happens when you do Tadabur in
the Quran? When you read the Quran
and memorize it and reflect on it and
apply it to your life. So what do
you get from that?
Number 1,
we
realize by reading the Quran
that the Quran is relevant to your life,
and you develop this personal relationship with the
Quran. It talks about you, and it talks
to you.
Before this connection with the Quran, when you
hear Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala saying in the
Quran that, Treba is haram, do this, don't
do this. You feel like,
bikalib nikhhatak masay, he's not talking to me,
he's talking to my cousin.
But when you do tadakkur and you reflect
in the Quran, it actually talks to you.
If it says riba haram, he's talking to
you. If it says eat from Haram, he's
talking to you. So you apply it to
yourself, and you know that it is relevant.
Okay. What about the stories in the Quran
that are repeated all the time? The story
of Musa, and the story of Yusuf, and
all these prophets and figures in the Quran?
I'm gonna digress a little bit.
Last year I was,
you know, giving a marela to the students
of them being in Islamic Academy, and I
said to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala there's a
Hadith
and in the Hiban, the Prophet SAW says,
from the beginning till the end,
till the time of Muhammad SAW Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has sent 124,000
Prophets.
From Adam to Muhammad SAW Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala over 1000 and 1000 of years, Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sent
124,000
Prophets.
Not every one of them had a scripture,
like the Quran Zaboor. Few of them had
books, but the majority of them were MBF
to just deliver the message, like, Harun and
and Suleiman and so on and so forth.
Alayhi Musaam.
So the question came from one of the
students, if Allah subhanahu wa'ala sent a 124,000,
how come that He only tells us about
25 of them by name in the Quran?
What about the other, like, 1,000? Why Allah
didn't mention them? Right? And Allah says it
in the Quran. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, I told the student
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is giving us
samples
from the lives of these Prophets
so we can live a good life. So
for example, 1 Prophet had to deal with
political problems or political corruption in the case
of Musa and Far'un.
1 Prophet had to deal with the challenges
facing the youth, like Yusuf, alaihis salaam,
challenges with the other gender, challenges with
siblings rivalry, and and so on and so
forth. 1 prophet had to deal with financial
issues and financial corruption. Shoaib alaihis salam. His
people were shor, thieves,
called them Tugh and Samadhi.
So every Prophet had to deal with a
totally different issue, so collectively
they give us a standard to live by.
So this is why when Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala spoke about political life and how to
live,
you know, a political politically acceptable life, He
would give one sample. When He talks about
financial issues, He would give one sample. When
He talks about social life, He would give
one sample. He didn't have to repeat all
the stories, because imagine if the Quran talks
about a 124,000
prophets,
it will have more names
than the yellow pages.
But the Quran
is the book of life. It talks it
gives you samples that you can live your
life according to.
So this is why when you read in
the Quran any issue that you face in
life, you will find something relevant in the
Quran.
And it will hit you and it will
touch you when you come across all these
Ayatik.
So the Quran is relevant to your life.
Number 2, you realize another aspect about the
Quran and Marjisa tul Khaleelah, the eternal legacy
and the eternal miracle of Muhammad Sazal.
We read in the Quran, if Ta'ala madissa'at
when sheptab Tamar, the,
the the moon was split as a Marjisa
from Muhammad
And I challenge anyone here
to prove to me that they saw the
moon splitting. It happened 1500 years ago. None
of us was there.
We didn't see it.
The prophet
multiplied food by his
and multiplied water. We didn't see any of
that, and there are so many other merges
out. We didn't see them, but Allah
left the Quran as a proof till the
end of time
for
the honesty
and the prophethood of Muhammad,
plus other prophets,
Isa,
giving life to the dead and giving cure
to the blind, and Musa,
his staff, and his hand, and
we didn't see any of that.
The only in the Quran is a surviving
Marjisa till the end of time, and Allah
Subhanahu Wa'ala is using it as a proof
to all nations that this is truly from
Allah Subhanahu Wa'ala.
Marjeezah Fil Sa'idah, till the end of time.
And to prove that this is Marjeezah from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, not from Muhammad SAW
Salam, who couldn't read, who couldn't write.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is give is is
challenging us in the Quran. If you don't
believe that this Quran is from me,
there are a couple of things you need
to do. And this is, by the way,
mentioned in the amazing Quran by Gary Miller.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is challenging us in
the Quran.
If you don't believe that this Quran is
from me, there are 2 things you need
to do.
Number 1,
produce another Quran.
You can't. Even the people of Mecca,
who were the masters of the Arabic language,
they couldn't do it.
They the challenge was reduced.
Produce 10 Surahs. And subhanallah, in Surah 11
of the Quran, Surah Hud,
Fatu bi'ashri Surahimin'
Muftayyah. In Surah number 11, Allah says, produce
10 Surahs, referring to the 10 before.
And in Surah Baqarah, Faratu bisurati mimidlihi
Surah Baqarah, Surah number 2 it refers to
Surah Fatihah, produce 1 Surah like the one
before Surah Fatihah.
So this is amazing and the challenge is
still up, no one was able to meet
the challenge.
So this is one way. The other way
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is telling us, if
you don't think the Quran is from me,
here find the mistake.
In Surah
Alissa.
If this Quran was from anyone other than
Allah, you will find a lot of contradictions
inside.
So people have tried,
they come up with
things that just show their ignorance of the
Arabic, or their ignorance of Islam, or their
ignorance of the Quran. But there is not
one realistic
mistake that people can find in the Quran,
and the challenge is still out there.
Find a mistake in the Quran.
Now, I know some of you are students,
they go to college, and they submit papers.
When you write a good paper, no matter
how perfect your paper is,
you don't go to your professor and say,
man, you,
here is my paper, it's perfect, and I
challenge you to find a mistake.
He will fail you, of course.
But no one does this.
No other book, no other scripture.
The Torah of the ancient, no other book,
the Zabun, none of them ever made these
challenges. Find a mistake.
You can't.
No one ever made this challenge.
And to prove
the eternal message of the Quran and the
Hajjaz of the Quran, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will put
some scientific
references and some things that no one knew
at the time of Muhammad Sallal, like Hulibaturum,
Allah says in Surah Rum, Surah number 30,
that the Romans have been
vanquished, they were defeated
badly at the hands of the Persians.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
in 3 to 9 years, the Romans will
be victorious.
And after 8 years, the Romans defeated the
Persians.
Who knew that at that time? No one.
Scientific references in the Quran. In Surah, for
example, Surah Hajj 22 and Surah 23, Surah
Ummeinu.
It talks about the developmental phases of the
baby inside the mother,
And this became like knowledge in in North
America, in Europe, in the last 101150
years ago. Because they believed,
yes, the father puts the seed, and it
develops, and the mother has nothing to do
with it. But in the Quran, Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala says, minutu fatim and shajid. It's
a mixture of the sperm and the egg.
Both
come together and they form the baby. Allah
says it very clearly in the Quran. No
one knew that at the time.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala talks about
the big bang in Surah Amir, Surah 21.
Don't the believers see
that the Earth and the Universe,
they were one mass, and I split them
apart? It's mentioned very clearly in Surah and
Biya, Surah 21 of the Quran. Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala speaks about the constant expansion of
the Universe.
I built the heavens with might, and I'm
constantly
expanding it. The heavens most of the time
in the Quran means the universe at large.
All these scientific references in the Quran and
more, people come across it, and they are
touched.
Because no way in the world someone like
Muhammad, who lived in the desert 1500 years
ago,
with no knowledge available for him. He couldn't
read. He couldn't write.
No telescopes, no macroscopes. How come that he
could have come up with something like this?
It's it's unbelievable.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is showing us
the proof that this Quran is from him.
Now, in the last few minutes of the
life of the Khutba,
I hear things about the Quran all the
time, especially from missionaries
and some Hinnies like Robert Spencer and some
others.
And SubhanAllah, the problem is they can't read
the Arabi.
And every time they they attack the Quran,
they don't attack the Arabic, they attack someone's
translation.
And I tell them, You Ambi,
the translation is not the Quran. It is
just a Tafsir
by someone.
It is not the Quran. The Quran is
totally different. This is in Arabic only. If
you want to find a mistake in the
Quran show me in the Arabic.
But they can't read Arabic so they can't
do it. Right?
The other thing is,
yazar some Hayat in the Quran, they are
so meridious,
so miraculous
that sometimes it's beyond our comprehension. And I'll
give a couple of examples.
I can ask you kindly to move up
a little bit, people are waiting outside.
No one in the people of Mecca or
the pagans of Arabia
attack the Quran, they say, oh, it has
a grammatical mistake, it has this mistake. It
never happened.
It never happened.
This is a new thing.
And the interesting thing is, it is coming
from someone who doesn't even speak Arabic. Right?
So this is the amazing thing about the
attacks on the Quran.
There are some challenging ayaat,
some more of these ayaats in the Quran,
and the first people to discuss them and
talk about them are not missionaries or evangelists
or, you know, people who are Islamophobes.
No. It was big scholars of Islam like
Azam al Shari in his book Al Kashaf,
his Tafsir.
One of the most amazing linguistic Tafsirs of
the Quran. Al Fakhrul Razi.
They say, if you ask me,
So they always ask in their Tafsiyum. If
if you ask me, why does Allah say
this?
I tell you that they explain it in
a very logical way.
So Muslims took took care of that. There
is no problem in this case. So people
say, okay, what about these ayat in the
Quran that we don't understand?
The letters for example, alflam, iptasim, i'mham.
What what does that mean? Right?
So the Alama Yari
have a lot of theories to explain.
And
the Gadigiyya, it always comes down to this
is from the knowledge of Allah, we don't
know, this is from the Mursis of the
Quran.
And if you are able to
produce some letters like these, put them together
to form a Surah, or the beginning of
a Surah, do so.
You can't. So, this is part of the
of the challenge of the Quran. Some of
the Haram had tried,
to explain these letters at the beginning of
the Quran, the huwuf and qata'at at the
beginning. So some say for example, that I
have checked it and most of the time
it's very accurate.
They say,
like, for the map, there is a legend.
These letters at the beginning, these are just
like the legend of the map.
It is like the mining or a small
table of contents.
Most of the time, and I've checked it
with myself,
most of the time these letters at the
beginning refer to Prophet's mission in the in
insight.
Every single time you see at the beginning,
know for sure that Musa alayhi salaam is
mentioned in insight.
Surah,
Marya, for example. Refers to Zakaria
Zakaria,
Harun, and so on and so
forth. So this is amazing, but we don't
know for sure the knowledge is back to
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. In the Kathir in
mister
He says,
it's very amazing
that when I took all these 14 letters
that are repeated at the beginning of the
Surahs of the Quran, I tried to form
a sentence,
this sentence came up.
It says when I put all these chapters
at the beginning of Surah's I
took every letter that that is repeated, I
took it once.
I formed a sentence, and the sentence that
came up,
a wise decisive
text full of wonders. This is the sentence
that came in Arabic. Nasul Hakimul Qadrullah
Husin. So isn't that something? This is something
amazing from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Another point, just because of the time,
the Quran repeats stories all the time. Why
is that so? Like, Musa Alaihi Salam is
mentioned to lower the place, Ibrahim Alaihi Salam
will lower the place. Why is that happening?
One thing, we know that the Quran was
revealed to the Prophet
in 23 years. And although the stories are
repeated, there's no contradiction.
This is amazing about the Quran, except especially
to someone who couldn't read or write or
record whatever was revealed to them. And number
2,
this is also amazing when you read the
Quran, you see, yes, the story is repeated,
but the focus is always different.
The focus of the Ayat that are repeated
is always different.
The story of Musa Alaihi Salam in Sura
Kaf is
about Musa Al Khidr, which is not mentioned
in any other Sura. If you read the
story, of course, of Musa Alaihi Salam in
Sura Alaf, the focus is the suffering of
Bani Asahi.
If If you read Surah,
the story of Musa Alaihi Salaam, in Surah
for example, Al Tasus, the focus is the
childhood of Musa Alaihi Salaam, when he killed
an Egyptian by mistake, he ran to Medhim,
he got married. The focus is always diff
the same form when he talks about Jannah
Jahanu. The focus is always different. 1 at
one time it talks about the quality of
life, one time it talks about the food,
one time it talks about the dress, and
so on and so forth. So the focus
is always different, but there is never a
contradiction in the Quran. So when you think
of these repeated stories in the Quran,
think of a human being.
When you look at a human being,
no one ever came and said, okay, when
I look at this brother,
SubhanAllah, he has 2 10 fingers,
and he has another 10 in his feet,
and he has 2 ears, 2 eyes. No
one ever criticized your perfect form because some
organs of the body or some elements in
your body are repeated. But when they look
at you, they see the beauty of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So think of the Quran
in the same way. When you look at
the Quran, Surah Baqarah Surah Al Imran, of
the stories are repeated, they are like the
hands. The story of Musa Al Aghran, they
are like the fingers, they complete each other,
and so on and so forth.
Another aspect the people
use to
discredit the Quran and put doubts about the
Quran, and I'll mention this in just one
minute inshallah. And please, if you find space
in front of you, move forward. Jazars lokeh.
Alkira'at.
So,
when missionaries, for example, they debate, they always
say, oh, you say, you know, Christians, we
have different versions of the Bible.
Yes. We know that the, you know, the
the Catholic Bible has 7 extra chapters that
the Protestant Bible doesn't have. And in some
other sects they have books that have excerpt
chapters like the Russian church, and the Ethiopian
church, and the Egyptian Coptic church. They have
more. Egyptian one has about 81 chapters.
And the Protestant one has 67.
So 67.
And the Coptic Egyptian one has 81 chapters.
So there are hundreds of pages of differences.
So we tell them the Quran has only
1 version. We're not talking about versions here,
but the style of recitation is slightly different,
and the meaning is always the same. They
say, for example, in Egypt, in Turkey, in
India, Pakistan,
they have Tura'at Khars. In Libya, they have
Qalun. In Morocco, they have Warsh. In Somalia,
they have a Durie and a Susie.
The meaning is always the same. And this
is one of the beauties of the Quran,
that you read, the pronunciation is slightly different,
but the meaning is always the same. And
the reason is, there were tribes in Arabia,
they spoke different dialects,
and when they came to Muhammad SAW to
teach the Quran,
he taught them in their own dialect. So
if someone couldn't say a in the middle
of the word like Al Mu'minoon,
they the Prophet SAW will teach him say
Al Mu'minoon.
If someone couldn't say, Assama
we don't speak like this in Egypt, we
say, Assama.
We don't say, Assama.
Assama.
And this is in Korah Khalaq and Hamza.
Assama.
So, the Korah was taught to people or
different tribes based on the dialects
they spoke to make it easy for them.
And the meaning is always the same.
The meaning is always the same. Only the
Dashkir or some of the DaaS are slightly
different in these different Talar, but the meaning
is always the same.
And the easiest way to explain this to
someone,
when you read for example, you see this
example I give all the time. You see
the word water,
w a t e r.
If in the Querah, for example, in the
American Querah, I'm just gonna use an example
from English to make it easy for everyone.
The American Querah would be water.
The British Querah would be water.
Then the Egyptian Querah would be water.
Like,
the word is the same, but the pronunciation,
the style is slightly is almost different, but
at the end of the day, it is
Wotem, the water will drink.
It is not different. So we ask Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to give us the best
in this life, life and the best in
the life to come, and give us sincerity
in everything we say and do.