Nadim Bashir – The Best Roadmap To Understanding The Quran
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The importance of learning the Quran with proper pronunciation and reading with a correct pronunciation is emphasized, along with the importance of picking up a basic translation of the Quran. A flexible class for individuals with Arabic language needs to be recommended, and the importance of understanding the Arabic language for better understanding of other books and the Quran is emphasized. The need for supervision and scholarship for students is emphasized, along with the importance of reading the Quran for a better understanding of the title.
AI: Summary ©
What I've noticed throughout the years is, there
is a lot of love and zeal and
desire
to study the Quran
and to pursue the Quran.
But see, the problem is, if you don't
have direction in life, and you have no
idea where you're going in life,
then you might put so many hours into
something, but you may not get to your
objective.
So today, inshallah, in this brief khatra, I
wanna I wanna share with you
that what is the road map?
What is the road map for a person
who wants to understand the Quran?
See, we don't know. Should we go for
tafsir? Should we do this? Should I study
Arabic? Should I do word for word translation
of the Quran? Should I just pick up
an English tafsir? What do I need to
do in order to continue my journey with
the Quran? And there's a lot of misunderstanding.
So today, inshallah, I wanna share with you
that what is a ro a proper roadmap
for our understanding of the Quran. And by
the way, I will say this, that there
is no hadith of the prophet
that clearly hides. This is a purely a
subjective matter. But this is based on, you
know, I, myself, I memorized Quran when I
was a very young at a very young
age. I started at the age of 8,
I finished at the age of 11,
and there was no Quran programs here in
the United States. So I had to travel
overseas to do this. But over the years,
then I kept on reading Quran, reciting the
Quran, and then later on I went to
go study,
Sharia, and and Deen, and and Usul, and
so forth. So this is just basically my
understanding, and over the years of working with
the community that what journey and what are
the proper steps to take that journey. So
we'll begin with step number 1 when it
comes to the Quran. Before we do anything,
before we pick up a tafsir book, before
we do anything,
the very first thing
that must be done when it comes to
the Quran is, we must learn how to
read the Quran with tajweed. Simple as that.
That is the very
first step.
Any person who says, I'm gonna bypass this
step, and I'm gonna go to tafsir, and
I'm gonna go this and that, and Arabic
and so forth,
then this is not the right way to
start the Quran.
Because what we find what we find in
the silah of the Prophet
is that there was so much of an
emphasis on reading the Quran.
Even nowadays, when there are many people who
say, okay, in Ramadan pick up tafsir, do
this, do that, but gain access to the
Quran.
The reality is that if you study history
in general, the life of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, the sahaba, the tabi'in, the
tabi'in,
in the month of Ramadan,
there was no tafsir.
There was nothing else but
simple as that.
As as you have heard before many times,
there used to be no
none, no There was nothing.
This entire month of ramadan
was dedicated
to qira'atulquran,
To reading the Quran.
Because there is no other month that's gonna
push you as hard to read the Quran.
So this is why the very first step,
when it comes to the journey of the
Qur'an, is that a person must learn
how to read the Qur'an
with the correct pronunciation.
And we find this in the Qur'an when
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
Ali radiAllahu an, he explains,
and he does the tafsir of this ayah,
and he says that Waratilul Quran means
Tajweedulhuroof
is to
is to
is to pronounce the letters correctly
with their correct
makhadich,
and
is to know how to stop, and where
to stop, and how to continue in the
Quran.
Once a person has done that, then part
part of, step number 1 is, that they
should try to read as much as Quran
as they can to gain fluency.
So this is also a very important part.
Often what I see people doing is, there
is no emphasis on tajweed. So whatever they
whatever
and however they've been reading the Quran all
their life, they just continue with that, and
then there is no emphasis on fluency, and
picking up fluency. So this is why I
would say the very first step is learning
how to read the Quran with tajweed,
and making sure that you gain some fluency
in reading. And by the way,
I you know, here at Alhamdulillah EPIK, there
are many programs, especially for the sisters. For
the sisters, there are plenty of programs during
the week,
to learn how to read the Quran and
memorize the Quran.
And for the brothers, we usually have it
after between Maghrib and Isha. I'm the one
who usually teaches that class. We have people
who come, they you know, they're some people
are just reading the Quran with tajweed,
some are learning how to read the Quran
with tajweed, some are memorizing and so forth,
and this is a very flexible class. So
anyone who wants to learn how to read
the Quran with proper tajweed, And this is
a you know, you come in, you you
say your lesson, and you can leave also.
It's a very flexible class in terms of
a schedule. So inshaAllah, we have this, and
we're gonna continue this after Ramadan. Insha'Allah, it's
from it's between Maghrib and Isha, usually. The
next step, after a person has gained fluency
and read the Quran,
now comes the desire that, okay, I'm reading
all this, but what does it mean?
That is when the first step you must
take is you must pick up a very
basic translation of the Quran.
And there are many translations of the Quran.
And though many of the Quran translations that
we see
are they they have the old classical English,
thou art and you know, these kind of
words, though thy art and they use these
kind of words. That is why you have
to find
a translation of the Quran that is considered
as contemporary English.
Many of you have seen,
when Al Furqan came here, they were handing
out and distributing those Qur'ans called the clear
Qur'an. You saw that? It's it's a black,
it has like a black and gold cover.
That is a really good translation. Another good
translation
is Mas'adul Halim. You can find it from
Oxford. It's a really good translation of the
Quran. It's very simple, to the point. It
helps you understand it. And there are some
others, they're not coming to my mind right
now, but there are some good contemporary
English,
Qurans that translate the Quran.
That In my recommendation,
after you have learned how to read, you
should go for that first, and get a
just a basic glimpse
of what the Quran is.
But then after that, a person says
that, Okay. Now that I have a basic
understanding, I still have a lot of questions
regarding the Quran. I still wanna go deeper
into the Quran. I want to stand behind
the imam, and when the imam is reciting,
I want to understand the Quran. Now, here's
where
the the issue takes place. Some people they
say, I'm gonna go and start learning the
Arabic language. And here's the problem with that.
There's nothing wrong in learning the Arabic language.
But when you start learning the Arabic language,
and you start going into grammar,
and you start going to the rules of
grammar, and
so forth. What is considered as a ism?
What is considered as a fahl? What is
considered as a harf? And then you have
fahlilmawi. Fahlilmubari.
And then fahlil amar and nahi and
ala, and so forth. You have all these
different classification and so forth that are taking
place,
and the properties of the islam and so
forth. It becomes very confusing for the for
the person who wants to gain a basic
understanding of the Quran.
So what they do is that they start
going into all these different courses.
After a while, they take a step back
because they're not gaining what they want.
At that particular time, my recommendation would be
is, after you have a you read a
basic translation of the Quran,
go for a word for word translation of
the Quran.
A word for word translation of the Quran.
Let me tell you why.
Majority of the words of the Quran, they
repeat itself.
There's 1 juz, I would tell you, which
is very unique in terms of all the
other juz, and that is juzza amma by
the way. There are a lot of vocabulary
that you will find in juzza amma, you
will not find it in many other places
in the Quran. You understand? It's You know,
even as a student of knowledge, when I
was studying, the the
the juz that was the most difficult.
In fact, many of the,
many of my teachers, whenever they would test
their students in terms of Quran translation,
they would go to Juz'amma. Because Juz'amma translation
is the most difficult, by the way. You
would think that it's the most easiest because
of Juz'amma,
but the the vocabulary that's used in Juz'amma
is very difficult.
Then you go to the entire Quran, and
you will see a lot of repetition.
What does mean? Indeed.
Those,
those, I mean those who have iman.
They do righteous deeds. You'll find these words
repeating themselves over and over again. So when
you go for a word for word translation
of the Quran,
and you come across the same words over
and over again, then when the imam is
reciting,
or you hear a dua and so forth,
now slowly and gradually you're able to connect
the letters, and you're able to connect the
words. So that is why I would say
that part of step number 2 is translation,
a basic translation.
Then after that, you can go for a
word for word translation.
Then, still a person who reads word for
word translation,
they so wanna go deeper into the Quran
then. And by the way, one general rule
one rule of thumb is, when it comes
to the Arabic language in the Quran,
you cannot just study something for the sake
of studying something.
It has to drive you to learn something.
So when as I said, when you study
Arabic but you don't know how to apply
it, that's why people, they lose interest in
Arabic. Although the Arabic language is a very
beautiful language, and it's a very deep language.
So that is why you have to take
it step by step. Step number 3 is,
try to go for a basic explanation of
the Quran. A very very basic
explanation of the Quran. Now, I would tell
you this.
In the in the English language, you won't
find many.
A long time ago, there was an abridged
version of tafsir ibn Kathir in English.
Later on, they actually took the original tafsir
ibn Kathir,
and they and they created a an a
replica of it in English.
Meaning that it has all the footnotes and
all the other notes
that is found in the Arabic tafsi ibn
Kathir, and they translate it in English. Yet,
based on my observation and what I went
and I was trying to, you know, compare
and contrast side by side, they are still
missing some information.
The there is no doubt in the fact
that when it comes to all the access,
okay, all the work that has been done
in terms of Quran, and the work of
the Quran, and tafsir, and so forth, is
all in Arabic. Okay? Majority of it the
major majority is still in Arabic that has
not been translated in English. However, nowadays, now
they're trying to push forward, and they're trying
to, you know,
you know, provide tafsir for many for many
of these, for for the Quran in the
English language. You can go for tafsir.
Don't go for the abridged version. Try to
go
for the full version. There is tafsir al
Saadi. You can go with that. There is,
Mu'ari Fil Quran, a great scholar in Pakistan
today.
Mufti Taqi Uthmani Saab. His father, Mufti Shafir,
wrote a very beautiful
tafsir called Ma'arif al Quran. It was first
written in Urdu, then it was translated in
English. So there are good tafsirs that you
can actually go to, and these were tafsirs
written for the general public. So you can
go for those kind of tafsirs, and it'll
give you a basic understanding of the Quran.
But I would say, for go with a
simple explanation.
After that, you can go for a deeper
explanation.
The next step after that is that a
lot of times, a person now is reading
the Quran.
They've already read the translation. They've gone through
word for word. Now they've gone through the
explanation, and they've gone deeper into the Quran.
But still there's a lot of questions.
And that is where you can then start
learning the Arabic language
to gain access to first of all the
Quran, and better understand the Quran.
But if you're already done word for word
translation, you already have a good understanding of
the Quran. You then can learn the Arabic
language to gain access to the other books.
Okay? To gain access to the original
Arabic copies. And this is where you see,
and inshallah, I'll finish all of this very
quickly.
Every single tafsir, by the way, written. A
lot of times people will say, what's the
difference between this tafsir and that tafsir? And
that tafsir and this tafsir? What's the difference
between all these different tafasir that are written?
And you find them in the Islamic libraries.
The answer to that question is that every
single tafsir has its own objective.
You'll find that he provides the ayah of
the Quran, and then he'll provide a hadith.
His focus was a hadith. A hadith related
to that, to that ayah of the Quran.
Then you find you find a narrative series
such as Kashaf,
written by Imam Zamakshay Ahmadtullay.
Imam Zumakshay Ahmadtullay Ali has some issues in
his aqeedah, but if you open up his
tafsir,
his tafsir is purely linguistic.
It's all linguistic.
That why did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala And
it's purely from a
perspective, a grammatical perspective. And he He's explaining
in his tafsir that grammatically, why did Allah
use this word? Or why did Allah subhanahu
bring this format instead of that format? You'll
find it imam zabafshari.
Another tafsir that many people have come across
is tafsir baylawi. Tafsir baylawi is an
is an abridged,
tafsir of tafsir al kashaf. Then you have
another tafsir called tafsir Jalalayn.
It's written by 2 people, 2 scholars whose
names were Jalal. Jalal
ud Din Mahali was a Shafi'i scholar,
and he wrote the tafsir of the Quran.
And tafsir Jalalain is a very different tafsir.
I studied tafsir Jalalain. A very different tafsir
compared to all the other tafasir.
In tafsir jalalayin,
they bring a one word of the Quran,
and they might bring 1 or 2 words
to explain that word, and they keep on
breaking it down word for word.
So tafsir,
Jalaludim Mahali was a great scholar in the
past. He wrote the tafsir from Sutal Kahf
all the way to the end, and then
Sutal Fatiha.
And he finished with Fatiha, and he passed
away. Later on, another scholar by the name
of Jalaluddin Suyuti
came, and he continued. And he finished the
tafsir from the from Sutul, Baqarah, all the
way to Sutul Kahf.
So all these tafasir The point is, each
one of them, they have something unique to
offer.
You see, al kurtubi,
jamul akamulquran.
It's all about akam. You pick it up.
1, masalatulullah,
masalatulthaniyah,
masalatthalis,
and so forth. You read his tafasir. It
said eye opening tafasir. Another
eye opening tafasir. But once again, all these
tafasir are in what language?
They're only in the Arabic language. You understand?
So if you really want to go deeper
into these surahs and into these tafasir, you
have to learn the Arabic language. Then after
that, you can go to the next step
which is Then people will start wanna learn
other things regarding the Quran. Like when I
share you with you the surah summaries,
this is already work that's already been done.
There's a great scholar of the past, he
actually took every single surah, and he wrote
down what what is the connection between all
the Surahs, what are the themes of each
Surah, and so forth. When you talk about
why did Allah use this word instead of
that word and so forth, there's a word
done for that also. And for those of
you who know how to read and write
Urdu, there's actually a word I mean, there's
a book that I can recommend. It's called
Mutaradi Fatul Quran. It's written by a person
named,
Abdulrahman Kilani. So he wrote actually in this
book, it's all in Urdu, but he actually
wrote that in each place, when Allah talks
about the word friend, friendship,
there are almost 10 different words in the
Quran for the word friendship. What's the difference
between each of those words?
This author, he has put it in this.
And there are so many other Arabic works
in this matter. So the point I'm trying
to make is, a lot of times when
we when we talk about Quran, and we
wanna we wanna start that journey of the
Quran, many times we're trying to jump around
in different places. And when you try to
jump around and you don't have a clear
path and you don't have a direction,
then you're gonna be spending a lot of
time, and you may not achieve anything. So
that is why Of course, you achieve something,
but you might not achieve your achieve your
full objective. So that is why take it
step by step. Read the Quran, tajweed, fluency.
That's the first step. Then the second
second step is translation,
a basic translation,
word for word translation. Step number 3, basic
explanation.
Basic explanation,
and then a little more detailed explanation.
The 4th step then you can take is
going and studying the Arabic language, and going
deeper. And by the way, inshallah, even after
Ramadan, we're planning to start some classes here
at at at EPIC for Arabic grammar and
so forth. It's a long journey, but you
can, inshallah, take the classes. We're gonna you're
gonna hear about it, inshallah,
soon after Ramadan, but we're gonna start those
classes. But then that is when you can
study the Arabic language. And once you have
a good grip on the Arabic language, then
you can start going into these books. Finally,
I will say this. The last thing I
will say, I promise
this. I'll finish all this inshallah. In this
whole journey, in this whole journey of the
Quran,
do not go about your journey alone.
Have some kind of supervision.
Have some kind of scholarship
supervision in place.
Have some sheikh, some scholar, some person
who has a good understanding of the Quran,
who has studied tafsir and so forth, go
back to them and get their get their
opinion, get their suggestion,
and work with them. Let them suggest you.
You know how many times people come to
me and say, sheikh, give me a book
to read. What book what book am I
gonna give you to read? You understand? Then
I have to usually ask them, what is
your preference? What is your passion? Is tafsir
your passion? Is sila your passion? Is aqidah
your passion? What is your passion? And then
you have to you have to chase that
passion and read the books according to your
passion, sha Allah. So I ask Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala that as we finish Ramadan, may
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala do not may he
keep us on the path of the Quran.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala keep us connected
with the Quran. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
keep us associated with the Quran, and may
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raise us on the
day of judgement amongst the people of the
Quran.