The Qur’an : The Word Of God
Date:
Channel: Nouman Ali Khan
File Size: 41.24MB
AI Generated Transcript ©
Bismillah
salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. That means peace and blessings to you and on behalf of Johns Hopkins University Muslim sociation, which is nicely abbreviated Juma. Welcome all of you tonight, to this event.
And it's my great pleasure and honor to introduce the man on the con. So stage is yours.
100
I was told that about 3035 minutes, I identified myself for this talk,
I'm going to try to keep my conversation focused to a college student audience, I don't want to cater this as a general talk, but I wanted to kind of focus it to a student audience inshallah, on the subject matter of appreciating the Quran. And I'm cognizant of the fact that there may be even be some non Muslims in the audience. And so I'll try to avoid Arabic terminology in this conversation. And at the same time, if I do use some Arabic terms, I'll try my best to translate those here to process okay. So I want to start with a very straightforward phenomenon. And that is that the Koran, for most people, Muslim and non Muslim is a veiled text, what that means it is very
difficult to just pick up and read and process. And the reason for that is, there are several reasons. And the primary reason for that is it's being introduced to most of the world Muslim and non in translation. Most Muslims do not have qualifications or training in classical Arabic, the original language.
And so either they're reading the translation of the Koran in Persian or do or, you know, Somali, or you know, even Chinese, Cantonese, English, French, German, etc, etc. And like any literature, there's a lot lost in translation, there's quite a bit lost in translation, especially older languages, because older languages had something what the prophet called jalopy weakening
the ability to encompass a lot of meanings and very few words. So even if you translate, for instance, one line for another line, like a line of Arabic to a line of English, there's a lot more nuance in the Arabic line that is completely lost. So you got kind of a droplet of the meaning that was suggested in the Arabic text, and you got very little of that communicated in the English text or whatever other translators, there's an additional problem. And that is that in all languages, they have their own figures of speech, they had their own, you know, sort of things they said that didn't, they didn't mean them literally, and figuratively. And that's not just true, ancient
languages. It's true. Our language is also okay. You know, for instance, in English, when you say to someone that is, that is extremely cool. That is so cool. That can't be taken literally, unless you live in, you know, Boston or something. But generally, when somebody says, It's cool, it's nice, you know, it's not to be taken literally. And these are things that are dependent on context. So even though the English language has been around for a while, if you said that is cool to somebody 100 years ago, they probably wouldn't understand you the same way. Right? So language isn't just about translating a word from a dictionary, it also evolves in a context. So the original context of the
Koran is very particular. And a lot of times those figures of speech, that are in and of themselves very beautiful and very deep and very contextual. They get translated literally, in our translations, and then we read them and we just scratch our heads and go, what's this talking about? What's that? What does this even mean? You know, so this is probably I would argue, the biggest problem in art education, or awareness, even or literary appreciation for Muslims and for nuns, it is in fact, a veiled text, and to unveil this text, so now you say, well, translation doesn't suffice? What else can I do? What else can I study, or maybe access to maybe try to understand this
book better? Well, you've got two options before we write them out. One option is become a student of classical Arabic, which is probably not an option for most people. Maybe some very driven motivated individuals like myself, 1012 years ago, I decided that I want to learn this language and take it seriously. And, you know, Allah blessed me with opportunities that made that easy for me, but that I can't say that that's going to happen for everybody. Right? And it's those, those opportunities aren't necessarily going to present themselves to you. So the primary access is probably not going to happen for most people. Primary access means you have you have access to
language and mastered it, or you have a degree of proficiency in it. When you read it. You kind of know what's going on. Well, the only other access then is secondary. Secondary means translation was limited.
As I just tried to present to you, but then there's an additional body of literature that seeks to help people understand
that literature that body of literature is called to see it in our in Muslim discourse. The technical academic term is exegesis, right text analysis. And so these books that I've seen are written in foreign languages also. So in English, you'll find some books of this year dedicated to explaining the contents of local Han contextualizing the ayah the versus the surah. Surah is the term for chapter but they're not the same. So I'll stick to the terms. So these units of the Koran and these statements are explained and contextualized in detailed conversation, etc. But personally, myself, I'm still not satisfied with where we are in producing good heavy literature, and, you know,
accessible literature, and deep enough literature in the English language, which is probably the most universal language in the world today. I don't think we've done our job as Muslims, in producing good enough literature on the Koran, in the English language. That's my personal opinion at this point. And one area that particularly hasn't even gotten attention in any language, even in Arabic much yet, is the genre of literary appreciation. So I'm going to spend the rest of the few minutes I have with you guys to see me an idea of what does it mean to engage in a study of literary appreciation of approaching the Koran as literature, just as literal, you just want to you're
looking at this ancient text with no forget your, you know, religious background or, you know, your your philosophical inclinations, you're just looking at this text, from the point of view of literature, of course, the Muslim looks at it for spiritual guidance, the Muslim looks at it for, you know, as the word of Allah divine, the Divine Word that connects to us and makes us shed tears and prayer, etc, etc. But for the rest of the world, at least it should, we should have a direct some way of them also connecting with this text in a meaningful way. And kind of unveiling some of these things. And, you know, removing some of these veils that are keeping people from a direct
understanding. And so before I go on one last tangent, and that is, what if we don't do this? What if we, as Muslims, some of us, at least, don't take up this task, and don't produce this kind of genre, this kind of literature?
Well, then what you get is the kinds of quotes you see on St. CNN, from the Koran, or on Fox or whatever else, where a verse of the Koran is quoted, I personally, I live in Texas for the last couple of years. And one of the things I do as a hobby is I listened to the Christian talk radio I really enjoy
especially as I travel in the in the Bible Belt, I traveled Louisiana, Arkansas, etc, etc, I just find a nice, good old, you know, Christian talk radio station and listen in. And a lot of times the conversation happens to be about Islam and how evil it is, and how demon, you know, demonic it is and how evil the Quran is. And then they'll even quote, verses from the Quran to show us how evil it is, right. And those kinds of things are not just found on the radio. Now, there are YouTube videos about this stuff, there's blogs dedicated to it, there's, there's all this, you know, literature about how corrupted the book is, and how evil its teachings are, etc, etc. And I can argue, outside
of the biases, a lot of the problem also is people feel like they read the translation of the text, and they are ready to say, I know what's going on. I know exactly what's taking place here. And they don't they're so far from what's actually taking place in the text. it's laughable, like, I listen to that stuff, and I laugh, and then I cry. Right? I cry because there is somebody listening to that stuff. And is actually saying, Yeah, that's what it says. You know, that's, that is in fact, what it says. So instead of producing tafsir literature, because the seer literature is mostly written for Muslims, so it has a lot of Muslim terminology. So it was some reason they might know what this
means. And that means what anonymously means that they're not going to know what that's talking about. They're really not going to understand what their kind of literature is talking about. So there's some good efforts that have been made Towards this end, a handful that personally encouraged me. So I'd like to at least introduce you to one of them. One of them's called select passages from the Koran by a professor near from Michigan State University or select passages from the book, you know, dedicating itself to an analysis of certain passages in the Koran, from a literary point of view for a general audience, not for a religious or a Muslim audience, for a general audience. And
that's important, because at least it's a start, at least that gets us started in, you know, appreciating it somewhat. But I don't want to talk entirely in this conversation with you guys. In theory, I want to leave you towards the end with at least an example of what it means to appreciate the Koran in a literary way. You know, in every old language, in every old body of language or literature, there's something of parables, and they have a lot of parables and examples and stories that are honest
Have parables. It is absolutely full of parables. And some of them are very just, if you read them in translation, they're really confusing. So I'll share with you a parable from the Koran or maybe two if we have time. Okay. And I'll try to stick to as I as I recite the Arabic I'll try to translate it into English so everybody can follow. Okay? So Mufasa Balu. Coming by the Radek genre, our shadow cassava, then your hearts became hard like stone, or even harder in terms of stiffness. What in the minute Java da da da gentlemen will allow? Even out of stones there are ones that burst open and you know, rivers gush forth. Okay, so the first part was your hearts became hard like what?
Just to see if you're awake, their heartbeat became hard like what? stone even harder. The next discussion same is a verse.
Even out of stones, there are those that gush forth with water coming on, rivers come out. What I mean had done is Chicago is booming.
Even out of stones, there are those that crack open, and water is found. So the first kind of rock burst open and reverse came out entire waterfalls, you can imagine. The other kind of rock the the verb used in Arabic is shokaku means something hits it and it cracks open, and there's water inside. Look on the outside, you wouldn't know there's water inside this rock and something hit it and it cracked. And when it cracked, the water started trickling down deep inside disrupt something totally unexpected. That's the second kind of rock. And then it says we're in Devin Hallam is Bill Tobin associate in law, even out of rock there is one, the kind of rock that just falls from the fear of
God, from the fear of
rock falling is basically I think like a landslide. You can imagine just rocks trickling down a mountain, right? How many kinds of rocks were given in this parable. Three, right rocks then burst open rocks that crack and waters found inside and the third one a rock that falls off of a cliff.
And yet, the entire discussion wasn't about rocks. The discussion was what became hard.
Hearts became hard. And then they became like rock speaking of rock, there are three kinds of them.
Actually, what we're learning here is according to local ons, you know, this this bit of wisdom from the Quran, it's not talking about three kinds of rocks, it's talking about three kinds of hearts. It's talking about three kinds of people. Three kinds of spiritual tendencies.
These, these things were very understandable to the original audience, because they use this kind of imagery all the time. I want to hold off on explaining this parable a little bit. I'll give you another parable. This is not from the Koran. This is from classical Arabic, one of my favorites.
There was this poet in ancient Arabia of pre Islamic Arabia, very famous poet, people loved his poetry. And yet he was extremely poor. So people love him, but he's doesn't have anything to show for it, basically. So one day, he's reciting this poem at home about how generous he is. Just kind of ironic. You kind of have to be wealthy before you can be generous, right? So he's making poetry by the generosity and his wife tells him what do you do.
We don't even have food to eat. And you're making poetry about generosity. And he turns to her and he makes another poem to her. He just kind of on the fly, recites a bit of poetry to her and he says, a seagull, how to put it on the cannon it heavy rain. Listen, imagine this guy's in a fight with his wife, he turns to his wife and he says heavy rain doesn't get along with a house on top of a mountain.
I always thought you're crazy. Now I know you're crazy.
Heavy rain doesn't get along with a house on top of a mountain.
Very famous piece of poetry. What he meant by that is something interesting. It's imagery. Imagine a house on top of a mountain and also imagine what's going on.
It's raining really heavily. Okay, where does the water go?
Does it flood the house? Or does it trickle to the bottom of the mountain?
Does the water stay on top? it trickles to the bottom. He's saying look, wealth comes from God, like rain comes from the sky.
And people that are higher up in their spiritual level in their ethical character. They're higher up, it's like they live on top of a mountain. And so when both does come, they keep giving it away.
And so let it form the puddles on the bottom. The people that are down there, drained and well then lowly people on way too high to get rich.
But he says all of that by saying look heavy house rain don't get along.
So the spoken this kind of code, you know, and it's really fun to decipher the code to figure it out. And then they have this thing with people who could figure it out. They call
You know, one of the meanings of arrow, the word RV is depth. This guy's deep. He got it.
And the one who didn't get it, the column item is impaired. His mind isn't that sharp.
So the spoken these riddles. So let's go back to this parable for a minute. Three kinds of hearts represents what
represents three kinds of those kinds of rocks represent three kinds of hearts. Okay.
So there is a person who hears, you know, they've been thinking about God, a purpose in life. Why am I on this earth? What am I going to go after I'm dead? You know? What, you know, why is there injustice in the world? They asking themselves these deep philosophical questions. That is not most of us. But there are people like that in the world that ask themselves genuinely ask themselves, not what's for dinner. What, what am I doing here? What is truth? What is justice? They ask themselves these deep philosophical questions. You call them geeks and weirdos, you know, history, call them philosophers. You might even have friends like that, that are really like,
their thinkers. They don't really like to go to the party. They want to go hang out. You know, every time you see them, they're reading a book, or they're just gazing into the stars, just lost in thought, you know, those kinds of people, they're always lost in that kind of deeper thought. So when the solution to those problems is brought to them, and it clicks, is there any hesitation before they just cash out and say, yes, this is it. This is what I was looking for.
Immediately, there's an excitement, just like a rock that what happens to it?
There's just gushes on water. By the way in the Quran. Water is is representative of purity.
Water represents purity. And water also represents faith.
But it also represents faith. So water inside the rock is faith inside the heart. This person had a faith inside of them. They were looking for something to confirm that faith revelation came and it clicked with what was already inside and a rock just Burstow.
Okay,
then there's another kind of person. This kind of person isn't exactly a philosopher. They're hyperactive. They're never they're never they can sit still too long. It'd be that type of person sitting in the audience right now texting a friend or updating the Facebook status.
I saw you know, I didn't
get it. I had to call you out.
If you felt called out the joke's on you. Okay, so the hyperactive the constantly got to do stuff. You might have a friend like that. Hey, what are you doing? What do you want to want to go somewhere? Or get some pizza? Can I come home, you want to come over? I gotta do something jittery, can't sit still busy in life. These are not the kind of people who think about what is the purpose of life?
Why create these heavens and the earth?
You know, I just my soul bent for a deeper meaning. They don't ask themselves these questions. They ask themselves, when will the pizza gate? Right? They're busy in the day to day of life. That doesn't mean that they're not spiritual creatures that they don't have a soul that they don't have, you know, some water is not in their art. It's just harder to get to.
It's harder to get to. But you know what happens with people like that? a traumatic experience.
A near death experience. sickness in the family death in the family, the loss of a friend, something really strong happens in their life and they're shaking. And that rock finally cracks in what comes out. That faith that was always there. Now it comes out.
There's lots of people in the world like that they go through a traumatic experience. And after that they straighten out.
I found God afterwards.
And before that I was a different person. Then this thing happened in my life and oh my god, I changed. The Muslims in the audience are familiar with the story of Allah.
A Companion of the Prophet, pre Islam, basically, the description of a party animal. If he's not if he wasn't womanizing, or hunting, or horseback riding or killing dudes.
He didn't know what else to do with
this in six years, he's in the same city as the Prophet himself is has doesn't know what Koran is for six years. You ask yourself six years in Makkah, it doesn't work for us. How did that work? Because he was kind of busy.
And even the way he became a Muslim, he heard his sister converted
his furious, stormed into his sister's house. She had she had the scrolls that she had written them to put on she hit him. What do you reading refuses to show me hits her across the face is a big guy.
So when he hits her across the face, her face bleeds and when it bleeds, he softens up like what am I doing?
Okay, okay, just show me what it is. I want to read. You know, that traumatic experience was a little bit of a what
Correct.
That was enough. That traumatic experience was enough for me.
That's to
two rocks. And both of them had water inside of them. Water one came out easily one came out with a little bit of a force. Okay? How many kinds of rocks were in the parable? Three?
Who remembers what was said about the third kind of rock?
falls under federal law? Was there any mention of water
in the third kind of rock? That's interesting, huh? So the first two waters mentioned and the third one, just falling as mentioned, the outward state, the outward motion is mentioned. But the inner state hasn't been mentioned what's inside is water. And in two cases, the water did come out come forth. And the third one the water, maybe it's there, maybe something it hasn't come out yet. It hasn't come out yet. But on the outside, at least this water is falling from the fear of God.
This alludes to another beautiful teaching in the Koran.
Most Muslims here will know there are three states of faith, there's a son, I won't translate yet if son What else.
I'm going from the top to the bottom son, Eman Islam, the famous hadith of gibreel. Right, Islam starting point, graduate a little further, you develop in your faith, you have one email, and then you eventually have a son. Now let me translate for the rest of the audience here. As far as basically the acceptance of faith, you've, you've come to the conclusion that you're going to submit to God, you made your declaration of faith. That's your starting point.
That doesn't necessarily mean you felt the sweetness of faith in prayer, that you felt connected to Allah, that it's moved you to tears, that the waters come out of your rocket, but you keep worshiping God and you keep trying, and you keep trying to stay away from things that stick in your heart, you know, and eventually you'll start tasting the sweetness of faith. And that's
when you can truly feel the power of the faith. It's a spiritual experience. And then if that matures, you will allow it to mature and not fluctuate and allow it to grow. Then the third state which is described as excellence, if Sun is reached, Assam was described as the profit on top of the lava and the catarratto in Limpopo, terracotta rock, that you should be enslaved worship worshiping God as though you can see him
as an interesting statement, worshiping God as though you can see him. We can't see God you can see a lot. But you know, I'll give you an example. It's easier to understand you guys, how many people here have jobs?
Okay, not all college students are useless. Wow. It's pretty awesome.
So if you have a job, you're sitting at your desk, you're doing work and maybe alt tab and maybe control tab and go to the YouTube and control that a little bit of Facebook drop down a little bit something else. But your walk boss walks by
back takes hell
did you know he took the elevator. Oh, Alton back to YouTube again.
If you know the higher power is just watching, you can see him You can see me being used clothes, your behavior changes or no,
it doesn't it. There's this you know, if you want to appreciate what fear of God means, you know, there's there's a guy who doesn't care about traffic laws or whatever blows by stop signs. But he sees the comp. And all of a sudden in a spiritual fear takes over. And he abides by the law because that's the law for you, right?
Fear of consequence will stop. If you see the authority in front of you, there's going to be a different reaction. And it's not just out of fear, even out of respect. Maybe you're talking among your friends and you're speaking kind of inappropriately or mom walks into.
Your teacher walks into the room, someone you truly respect walks into the room. You know, when we are around people that we respect a lot, we watch ourselves more. We you know, we don't just say anything that comes in our mouth, or behavior changes. axon is when you realize God is constantly watching. And not just out of fear, but out of respect, out of love, out of consideration. Out of appreciation, I'm going to watch myself and that little luck. To be in that state all the time is pretty amazing. That would be called excellence, the highest state of faith. Now let's come back. A person who's just starting out may not have tasted the sweetness of fake yet, just like a rock that
hasn't experienced what yet. water coming out.
So the water the rock that have the most water is in a state of a heart in the state of
the rock band has a little bit of water at least is in the state of demand. And at least you should have what is now an insult of gelato in the 49th soda for us alive.
Say Khalid Abu Amanda, listen to this beautiful. He says the veterans claim some people became Muslim. They claim we have faith, we have faith in our hearts well known to me. No. Can you you don't believe you don't have faith yet? Well, I can tell you just accepted the faith. You just started out with a milestone in the modern economy calm and imagine that sweetness of faith hasn't yet entered your hearts.
That water hasn't yet entered your rocks.
That's the third state. That's what the third one doesn't mention water hasn't happened yet. Beautiful. The parables beautiful. And interestingly enough, how you know, towards the conclusion of this parable, this parable belongs to the second slot.
And the first half of this sort of this chapter of the Quran is a disc discussion with some people from the children of Islam in the Israelites, the that were living in the city of Medina, there were some Israelites that were living in Medina. And this is a conversation between the Muslims and their first interaction with what the Koran calls the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, and specifically this conversation, what was Christian what was was with Christians, and in Arabic rhetoric, you study that when you give an example, because God here is giving an example, when you give an example, it's important that the example be relevant to your audience.
And we learn in our tradition and Muslim tradition. This particular example was in the midst of a conversation happening with the Israelites.
Why is it important to mention that, because the Israelites, in their experience, have a beautiful story of water coming out of rock.
Moses tracks this tap, water comes out that's mentioned in the second song, it's easy to visualize and easy to think about. Because it's something that's easy, that's fresh in the mind, of those who belong to the faith who have experience with that revelation, so that even the parables that are given, they're specific to an audience, they take into consideration who's being spoken to. It's a beautiful thing. All of this stuff, unfortunately, is not easily accessible in English literature. What I just told you, I read in Arabic books that were written maybe 800 years ago, that even an average you know, Arabic speaking student, if you tried to read those even just say, I don't know,
let's talk about it takes a while to decode that stuff. But I think it's it's really, really high time that we start producing this kind of literature that makes Quranic studies more accessible to people. I really think it's high time. And I'm sad that it hasn't happened yet, or not to the level that I think it should happen. But there are some good efforts that have taken place that I really do appreciate. If you're looking for for I think I know what's going to come up in QA because my time is done. If you're looking for a translation of the Quran, it's very hard for me to recommend translations because what I started with despite that, if I was to recommend a translation of the
Quran at gunpoint, I would have to recommend the Oxford University Press translation of go put on by a professor of the honey AB de LHL. Em, published by Oxford University Press, if those of you who don't know Professor Lehman's, he's the one who signed mentoring the PhD paper for professor
and he he's written several papers on honors literature. He's also published a translation of the translations I write I find his probably closest to the text. And I had the honor of meeting him a few weeks ago in London, I went to his house, really pleased to get a chance to meet him. This is about 90 years old. He's been studying the Quran for 70 of those 90 years. And he said the craziest thing to me I was so depressed after he said it. So I'm sitting there because I had these big questions I wanted to ask him in my own studies of the Quran. First thing he said was, you know, after all these years, I think I've finally beginning to understand
take it back Please don't say that.
Joe is the man that he's studied it out have graduated, you know, in Vedanta and Arabic rhetoric and classical Arabic studies and chaotic studies, has been doing research in the Koran for seven decades. And then he's and I think I'm beginning to get it somewhat.
This is I believe, slide number 7777 of the
invention, some of the beauties of paradise of heaven. And it talks about drinks three times. This particular passage, talks about drink three times, progressive talks about drink, then there's some other stuff that talks about drinks and paradise again, then talks about some other stuff then talks about drinks again a third time. I want to set the scene for you because I want you to appreciate what's happening in this beautiful, beautiful salon. You guys ever go to a barbecue
and get together in somebody's backyard?
You know one of those Costco tables
You got the plastic plastic cups from Walmart, you got the you know, brandless soda. And you basically go help yourself. Right? You go grab yourself a cup. everybody's having a good time with drinking or whatever. It's not like they've got those expensive champagne coughs and like, exotic but it's a barbecue.
You know, it's plastic bottles, plastic cups, paper plates. That's how we do, right? It's simple.
One of the first discussions in the civil law in
America, the righteous no doubt about it, they're gonna be drinking out of cups as we go in, and they're just gonna grab cups and, and help yourself. Self Service. Okay, that's one scene.
Now that's a barbecue, let me tell you, have you ever been invited to like a really fancy wedding or reception or all those fancy halls? You know, where they have those, you know, nicely covered tables and vases on every table and glasses placed upside down. And guys, just like penguins coming in filling your brain with
other stuff. Exotic setting, isn't it? In this time, you have to go and help yourself for a drink or it's served to you.
It's a more elite setting. And part of that is you don't even have to get up. The guy comes and fills it up. Sir, would you like some more bandwidth? Like some more, just keep pouring in it?
By the way cups already placed or they come later? The cups already they're replaced later. They're already placed well answers what like wobble mobile cups already placed. 14 115 100 years ago, we still have. But anyhow, a few verses later.
When you scold them into action, they will be given to drink in cops. A few verses ago, the beginner service was like a barbecue, you go and get a drink. Now what's happening, you are being given to drink, the passive form is you suggesting you don't even have to get it yourself. Your cup is filled for you. Elite service. That's the second time drinks are mentioned in the store. How many times did I say drinks are mentioned in this four? times?
How much better can you get
pretty good already.
The third time around Harlem, da da, da da da da da they're mastered their Lord God will serve them a drink a purified drink.
Allah Himself for the drink.
He will give them to drink. So when somebody asks me, what do you get at paradise? drinks?
So how long
will it take something so simple a drink. And it makes it something so spiritually rewarding. I'm going to be drinking from
Allah will offer me the drink himself.
Drinks are enough.
Drinks are enough of a motivation. This is one of the powers of the Quran, it takes things that are all around us that you would think take for granted. And just makes them so magnificent. He really just you don't look at them the same way again, you don't look at them. Same I can talk about this stuff forever. But I won't, thankfully. So.
I'll stop here. And if anybody has any questions, if I can entertain them, I'm qualified to I will if I'm not, hopefully I can point you to a resource that can
I can go on with questions. Right. Okay, cool. Any questions?
Yes, I really enjoyed that short piece of Arabic poetry that you shared with us.
It seems like that would be like good practice.
To try to get a good grasp, oh, I have a recommendation for that. A lot of our work has been done for us.
You know, classical poetry was scattered, it was all over the place. And a lot of it just had to do with just any subject at all. A lot of it's about you know, I can't kick the habit. He's addicted to alcohol. Another guy lost his girl and he's writing like 20 lines of poetry just about that, although it's very scattered poetry subject. But a really great resource on a collection of classical poetry, and Arabic Idioms and Expressions
is, there's two, one of them, I can think of the name off the top of my head is called verbal idioms of the Koran, verbal idioms of the Quran by mere it's an academic book, it's boring, it's going to be difficult for just laypeople to read because it's a lot of it's in transliteration. But it's a fantastic resource, only one of the best I've ever seen on collecting classical poetry that is directly tied to certain verses of the Koran. Like we'll find the same expression used in poetry and the same ones being used in the ones that was familiar to the Arabs. So he collected about 430 such cases in this book, so it's a fantastic resource on that subject.
Other questions?
Going once
going?
Okay, welcome. Thank you so much for listening attentively, and not having any more
Can I make a quick announcement?
Tomorrow from about 10 to three at the isbd Islamic Society of Baltimore, some of you might know where that is, I think
I'm going to be teaching a class on one slot. one chapter of
the 55th Solo is basically a picture presentation. I'm trying to make the content some bit easier to understand. And I'm going to try to present it in language that Muslims non Muslims, even kids can hopefully process the stuff. So if you have the time inshallah, I'd like to welcome you to come at the ISP tomorrow from 10 o'clock to three o'clock. Thank you so much for listening.