Nouman Ali Khan – Allah’s Unique Standard – Surah Al-Qamar
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the use of "has" in the Quran and how it can lead to "monster" feelings. The definition of human creativity is not complete standard, but rather a series of elements created by "has" in the writing process. The implementation of the 3rd person versus the second person in Surah chapter is also discussed, with the third person representing anger and the second representing anger. The speakers also discuss viral moments on TikTok and encourage viewers to help others sign up for a course on the Quran. The discussion also touches on the definition of "we" in the Quran and a study on the implementation of the 3rd person versus the second person in Surah chapter.AI: Transcript ©
Are you impressed with them?
You're
impressed with them? Because the likes of Dal
have led nations before into destruction.
So they led their people like sheep off
the edge of a cliff. And they've done
it over and over again.
Are you
in the same position as that? Are you
going to be influenced by your leaders? By
the way, do leaders have enough influence to
take
people
that they don't care about, but make them
lump them anyway?
We are now starting the final section of
Surat
I told you at the beginning of this
series, there are 3 parts to the Surah.
We've covered the introductory part, we covered the
5 nations, and now we are entering the
end of the Surah. That's from ayah number
43
all the way to 55. That's the conclusion
of the Surah.
Probably about half of that, I will try
to cover today, and the other half, tomorrow,
insha'ba.
So what's going what's going to happen here
is Allah is going to address the conversation
back to the people of Makkah.
So there's a lesson in history in the
beginning.
At the opening, there was a commentary about
them. At the closing, there's a commentary about
them again.
But there is a small it's a significant,
difference.
And to understand this difference, you have to
know the difference between the second and the
third person. And this is an important thing
even if you're reading translations of the Quran,
something you should be paying attention to all
the time.
So in English class, you learned there's 1st
person, 2nd person, 3rd person. Right? So I
and we is first person, you is second
person, and he, she, and they, and it
are 3rd person. Right?
So in the beginning, when Allah said, they
say that it's magic.
Right? Or they turn their backs.
What what was that? 1st person, 2nd person,
or 3rd person?
That was 3rd person. Right? And when Allah
started talking about the previous nations, the people
of Nuathlai, the people of Thamud called it
a lie, etcetera etcetera, all of that was
in the 3rd person.
But then by the time we got to,
Noot alaihis salam, there was some extra anger
in the middle of that. There was a
second person, taste the punishment.
Because when you say taste my punishment
and taste my warnings, that's not 3rd person
anymore, that is 2nd person. Right? So what
happens in nufraal sometimes is there's a switch
between the 3rd person and the 2nd person
and the first person. These switches happen very,
very quickly. Now because I know there's kids
in the audience, you guys are sometimes asked
to write an essay for school or a
homework assignment to write, you know, a paper
or an essay or something small. Right? And
if you are writing a paper and you
were writing it in the 3rd person, and
in the middle of it, you started using
the 2nd person, your English teacher will say,
hey, you can't do that. You have to
stick. You started with the 3rd person, you
gotta keep going with the 3rd person. If
you started with the 2nd person, you gotta
keep going with the 2nd person. If you
started with 1st person, I or we, then
the whole thing's gotta go with what? 1st
person. But what happens in the Quran is
very very different. You you get a within
the same ayah, you can get 1st person
to 3rd person, 3rd person to 2nd person,
2nd person to 3rd person. It's it's a
quick switch all the time.
And this seems
like chaos for someone who was coming from
an English literature background
or is coming from, like, you know, these
these other kinds of literature where there's everything's
very regimented and and set. So this is
one of those things that when people read
the Quran and they see these quick switches,
that they get they can get confused about.
By the way, there are other kinds of
quick abrupt switches in the Quran. There's switch
of subject,
there's switch of person,
there's a switch of tense, like you could
be talking about the past tense, and all
of a sudden there's talking about the present
tense.
There could be switch of of actually moment.
So for example,
turn away from them, the day on which
the caller will call them. Turn away from
them is right now, the day on which
will the caller will call them is on
judgement day. So we went from the present
all the way to judgment day in a
snap immediately.
Right? There's also switches of scenery,
like, one of my favorites is in Surat
al Shoah.
Allah was talking to,
Musa alayhi salam,
and he was on the mountain talking to
him and telling him to go to
Firaun. Right? And anybody really that knows where's
that conversation
happening, it's on happening on top of the
mountain. And in the very next ayah, Allah
said to him on top of the mountain,
go to Fir'aun and say this.
Tell him
tell you and your brother go tell him
that we are messengers of rabi'alameen
of the master of all peoples. You better
let the Israelites go. So that conversation was
Allah telling Usa what to say.
In the very next ayah, Firaun is responding.
The next ayah, Firaun is responding but Firaun's
not on the mountain. Where's Firaun?
He's at his castle.
And what happened then is in a split
second, we were transported
as if Musa, alayhis salaam, was came off
the mountain, traveled all the way to Egypt,
had a reunion with his brother, probably slept,
probably hid off away from soldiers, got through
security, and got permission to get inside the
palace, got her and find a
so has the conversation and has already now
declared what Allah told her to declare. And
now fa'aun is responding, but we don't get
all of that. We just switch over to
that scene immediately. You see that?
So,
directors in film, which is hard for you
to understand because you don't watch movies,
they cut they cut scene a lot.
They cut one scene to the next scene
quickly. Right? So this kind of these kinds
of cuts from third person to second person,
from scenes, from tenses, from subjects.
This is actually a big part of the
style of the Quran.
And it's something that, you know, western academics,
non Muslims, orientalists, in Arabic, we call them
al Mustashlipeen.
They've been studying the Quran for a couple
of 100 years, maybe 400
years. German orientalist,
French orientalist, British orientalist, you know. And now
they're all they're worldwide. There are people studying
Quran, non muslims studying Quran all over the
place. I went to a a library in
Palermo
in Italy,
a Quran studies library that's 3, I think,
400 years old.
Right? Where non muslims are studying tafsir. They
had every tafsir imaginable they had it in
the library. It was a nicer library than
I've seen in any masjids.
It was their library.
It's all oriented to study. And they're they
study until, like, lunch break, and then they
go out and walk together.
You know, that's what they do, but
but they have they have that history. Right?
So when they I'll I'll Some of them
like Nudigi, for example,
an orientalist, when he first read the Quran
and translated it and did some work on
it, he said the Quran is chaotic. It
just jumps from one thing to another. It's
not it's altogether
unimpressive text because it's incoherent
because it's making these switches.
And that's because he has a a standard
in his mind for how
a story should be told. He's got a
standard for how litters literature should be. Like
your English teacher has a standard for how
an essay should be. Right? And if you
don't meet that standard, what happens? Oh, this
is not good enough.
But we know something. Just this is a
quick side note. We know something about literature.
People that make a breakthrough,
somebody comes up with a new genre of
music, a new style of poetry, a new
style of of, you know, of storytelling,
a new art form, a new way of
making film. They always break the existing standard,
don't they?
And whenever they break an existing standard, they
come up with something new. It takes the
world by fire.
And then everybody starts copying it because it
was so amazing.
But then after a while, that becomes a
standard
and that becomes boring. And then somebody has
to break that and do something crazy new
altogether again. And then the the in the
beginning, I was like, you can't do that.
Nobody does that. That's not gonna work. That's
not how successful people do it.
Left up the benchmark standard and then something
else comes along and breaks that standard. Right?
So the Quran actually broke even the standards
that existed
within Arabic poetry, within Arabic literature. And actually
I would argue within the genre of literature
altogether. The Quran stands unique as a as
a body of literature
that really can't be compared to anything in
the existence,
in the possession of of of the of,
human intellectual
heritage. Like, doesn't matter if it's Russian literature
or if it's Semitic literature or it's Mesopotamian
literature or it's English literature or fresh literature.
You can't find anything structured like the Quran.
And because you can't compare it to anything,
the easy answer is it's chaotic.
The easy answer is why are these switches
happening? But there is actually a method and
a and it's it's got its own standard.
And this is the last side comment I'll
make for you on this subject.
You know, in in every subject, there's a
standard.
Right? And you are judged based on how
close you are, how much you met the
standard. Like at school, they have a standard.
This is how much you got a score.
If you meet that standard, you can move
on to the next class. Right? So there's
always these standards that we have to meet.
Standardized tests. Standardized exams. Standardized requirements.
But artists and and and creativity
always like I said earlier, what what does
it do?
It it breaks the standard. It keeps on
breaking the standard.
Because a truly creative artist
actually has their own standard.
They actually don't look at anybody else and
wanna copy what they've done or
they they wanna see what they've done or
that they actually wanna do something entirely new,
entirely themselves.
But actually, in if you really explore this
idea,
human creativity
isn't actually creativity at all.
Human creativity is
some people built a house this way, other
people built a house this way, other people
built a house that way. I'm gonna build
it a totally new way. But
still,
some elements of your house were still a
little bit of this and a little bit
of that and a little bit of that,
who still used essentially the same ingredients.
You still use essentially the same science, but
you produce something new altogether. You understand? So
there's all we're always
build taking up taking from what somebody else
has done and adding our own twist to
it. Like recipes, for example. Right? It's not
like somebody invented a tomato.
Right?
There there's a new recipe. It's delicious,
but it was based on something somebody else
did, and then you added something more to
it and created the world's greatest burger or
whatever you did. Right? The Quran,
Allah is the owner of all speech.
So he's not speaking,
you know,
living up to a standard that already exists.
Allah created a standard.
Allah created a standard in literature, a new
standard altogether,
a standard in which surahs
can never be compared to chapters. Books have
chapters. Quran doesn't have chapters. Quran has what?
Surahs.
Surahs are not like chapters.
Chapters go in an order. Chapters don't repeat
the subject matter. Chapters have similar sizes.
Chapters have certain standards. Suras don't follow any
of those standards.
The you know, poetry has verses,
and books have sentences
and paragraphs.
The structure that I showed you over and
over again is one way of understanding the
structure of the Quran. Does that look like
a paragraph?
Is that how you've seen paragraphs organized in
a book? Is that how that works? No.
It's absolutely not.
And even though the Quran isn't even made
up of sentences. Alifilamim is not a sentence.
Is not is not a sentence.
Even in Surah, the next surah, is
an ayah.
It's an ayah, but it's not a sentence.
Actually,
is a sentence.
So the way that it breaks, it doesn't
break like
a a book of grammar should tell you
how to break.
You know, an English book should tell you
how to break, or a French book should
tell you how to break. So this this
this is a I dragged this a little
too long, but the point is, you have
to come to the Quran.
First, you have to surrender to the idea
that Allah has his own standard for speaking.
And you cannot bring your own preconceived
standards
for what you're used to reading,
and then bring that to the Quran. And
then that's when you ask the kinds of
questions, why is it repeating? Why is it
telling it this way? Why isn't it, you
know, sticking to the kind of standard I'm
used to? That's because it's not based on
a human standard. This is a divine standard.
It's a different kind of standard. So part
of that standard is this, switch. 3rd person
to 2nd person. The reason I brought this
up is because up until now, even in
the opening of the Surah, when the kuffar,
when the disbelievers
were addressed,
Allah used the 3rd person.
Allah said, they turn away. They say that
it's magic. Yes?
And
and they have called it a lie.
And they have followed their desires.
Right?
Turn away from
them. It's all they, they, and they.
But now we get to ayah number 43
at the conclusion and the first thing we
find is a shock to that system.
Is are your disbelievers
better than all of those people that were
destroyed?
Or do you have some kind of immunity
in ancient scriptures?
You you don't hear the word they. What
do you hear?
You.
Allah started addressing the disbeliever
directly. Now this is an important switch because
actually it's go it's not going to last.
We're going to In the next ayat,
you know, ami yahuulunal.
Or are they saying? The next ayat 44
is going to go back to they again.
So, actually, the the normal of the surah
is actually they.
And the break from that normal is the
you. So, you have Then you have to
read the surah again and pay attention to
where did the you happen.
Because everything is supposed to be in the
3rd person. Where did the break happen and
where did we go back to you? Now,
we go back to this the second time
we're going to you.
This this the first time we're going to
you, the term the word you, is for
for disbelievers, is when Allah was talking about
the nation of Luth and he said,
And now the second time is,
Are your disbelievers better than all of them?
And so we're going to have to pay
close attention to this switch.
What does it represent? It represents an extra
anger from Allah. And I'm gonna explain that
in simple language and move quickly from there
and talk about some of these things I've
written in my notes here.
So if you guys are in class, like
you're in a lecture right now. Right? I'm
talking to everybody. But I noticed 1 or
2 guys are talking to each other, whispering.
I'm not calling them out. I'm just saying
some some people disturb a lecture, etcetera, etcetera.
But then imagine I know one of your
names. Let's say your name is Ambu Karim.
I don't know if there is. Let's just
pretend for a moment. Okay? So I say,
you know, some people think they can just
talk to each other in the middle of
a lecture, and I will, and I won't
call them out because, you know, what's he
gonna do? He's too Islamic for that kind
of thing. And I said, by the way,
I'm going to Karim, you
need to
Now, if I do that, I mean, I
your line is definitely not obligatory. If it
is, I have some kind of spiritual powers
I didn't realize I have. But the point
is, when I look straight at you and
I did that, did that make you nervous?
Yes. Even if you're not gonna admit it
because you're a teenager and it's hard for
you to admit things. I will admit it
for you that made you nervous because I'm
call feels like I'm calling you out. And
everybody's looking at me now like, oh my
god.
My life's over.
Right?
So this is gonna be a viral moment
on TikTok for you. Like, some you know,
like but the the point that I'm making
is that if you're talking in the 3rd
person
and all of a sudden the speaker switches
over to what?
The second That's a terrifying thing.
Because when you're saying they, they, they, you
feel like, yeah, he's talking about them.
All of a sudden, by the way, you.
You know? I I do this experiment. I
to to teach this lesson one time because
I used to teach Arabic in in campus.
I had students in front of me, adults.
But I treat adults like
juvenile children in my classroom. So I do
these psychological experiments, torture really, but enjoy It's
called teaching, but I call it torture.
So I I do this experiment where I'm
like, I I gave an exam
and I have the exam in in front
of me and, you know, all the scores
and everybody. And everybody's like
right? The the soul has reached the throat
because I've got the papers in my hand.
And some of you remember when the the
some teachers, they'll just email you your exam
back. Other teachers will actually call your name,
and you have to do the walk of
shame up to the desk,
and then you have to, you know, see
your results for judgment day, and then you
have to roll up the paper and walk
back in hiding.
And then some people who got a 100
or 95,
they walk back they walk up different and
they walk back different. You know that. Right?
And then when they're walking back, they accidentally
drop their exam on somebody else's. Oops.
Like, you know, the cover.
And the way somebody folds their exam, you
can tell how much they messed up.
You know? Like this. They walk back almost
half in.
Guys, sorry for the interruption in the middle
of this lecture.
Just before you continue, I wanna let you
know and encourage you that I want you
to sign up for bayenatv.com
and help others sign up or even sponsor
students for baynatv.com
so we can create worldwide communities of students
that are studying the meanings and the benefit
and the wisdom of the Quran,
and
are spreading that in their own circles. Thanks
so much.
So what I did one time, I was
like,
they did well on the exam, but I
wasn't gonna tell them that.
So I come in looking angry. I like
I don't even know why I spent these
many hours explaining something to you that I
think I've made clear. And I asked multiple
times, did you understand? Did you understand? Does
anybody have a question? And nobody asks for
a question. Nobody asks for a review. So
I'm assuming you people are doing your part,
because I know I'm doing my part.
And then you do this on the exam.
I just I I don't get it. I
I don't understand.
Zayd?
So,
man, Zayd's soul left his body.
Zayd, the color from his his skin tone
completely changed.
His mom wouldn't have recognized him that day
because I would have zing.
Could you come here, please?
They just come here.
What's is that is that with New York?
*, stop.
It's happening.
Just look at your we'll do it. It'll
be okay.
Eventually. Just come here.
Zayd's a grown adult. He's, you know, he's
he's in a he's a professional. He took
a year off to study Arabic, but, you
know, I'm gonna mess with Zayd. So Zayd
comes all the way up. I hand him.
You did a really good job. Thanks.
But the reason I wanted to do that
is because when I started, I started by
saying some students feel like they can just
sit here and not pay attention, and they
think they're just gonna get away with that.
Zayed.
I went from 3rd person to.
2nd person. Zay the second person. You. I
went from they to you.
Allah does that in the Quran because when
you say they, and you could feel people
who are ignoring you, they can also feel
like it's not talking about me, it's talking
about them.
And all of a sudden the finger gets
pointed and oh.
So a kuffaro goon
And by the way, right before this who
was Allah talking about? Firaun.
Before Firaun, the nation of Lut. Before the
nation of Lut, Samud. Before the nation of
Samud, Ad. Before that, Noon. 1,000 and 1,000
and 1,000 of years ago, they, they, they,
they, they, they.
Your disbelievers,
they're better than all of them?
Why not just say are you all better
than all of them? Why say
are your disbelievers better?
Before we go there, I want you to
understand something about the word kayid. I keep
translating it as are your disbelievers better? Kayid
is translated as better. But kayid actually comes
is re related to and
in Arabic is the word for choice.
And
is also choice.
This is my choice.
So the word for better and the word
for choice are related to each other in
Arabic.
They're related at a simple level because when
you choose something, it's because you think it
is what?
It is better. You choose which candy to
eat because you think that candy is better.
That's why you made that choice. So that's
your Ikhdiyaar because you consider it khair. It's
you consider it better.
But the other meaning here is do you
think you were just some specially chosen people
more than any any of those others?
You were given some special privileges like nobody
else was given before you?
You know this is a human tendency. Right?
Human beings think that they are special and
everybody else is just a what do they
call them? N p c?
N p c. Right?
What what What's the n p c style
for them? Non what?
Non play Non play Non play Non play
Non play Non play characters. Like, where you're
playing a video game, there's these people just
crossing the street forever
until about then.
Right? They just they just cross the street.
You're just going, coming back, they're just crossing
the street. And you drive your car, they
jump over to the curb. Then you come
back, they're still crossing the street, they jump
over the same curb again. Their life is
just jumping the curb.
Right? That's that's what they live for. So
you're the main character, everybody else is what?
An NPC. Your situation is special.
You're especially chosen. Everybody else is just in
the background.
Right? This is your story. This is so
you think you're especially chosen.
All those people, yeah, they died, but who
cares? They're dead.
I'm the one here. This is about me.
This self centeredness is what's being questioned. So
you're the ones that deny among you, so
they think they're more chosen.
They're more special, are they?
They're better and and and then let's go
further. In what sense are they even better?
Like, khairi could be better.
Are you saying that those people were really
bad? I'm not that bad. I'm not Faraun.
I'm not like the nation of Nood. I'm
not like, must have been like really bad,
but I just, you know, I just a
little bitter.
You know, you can't compare me odds,
or some mood.
Those guys were like walking around Sha'ilauns like
they were really bad. This is I haven't
done anything that serious.
Just chill on a little bit. So Allah
is basically saying, oh, so
you think you're not as bad as they
were.
You know those people were bad as a
nation.
Right?
But Allah is not In the Quran, he's
not talking to nations anymore. Who's he talking
to?
Individuals.
So there's a important distinction we have to
make between the nation and the
individual.
And all these punishments, these destructions of nations,
they seem like they're not destruction or punishment
for an individual person. They're they're punishment for
an entire
society. And we we know that difference. We
experience that difference all the time.
You have, for example, somebody who could say
when they go when you when I travel,
they say, I hate America.
I hate America. You do? Yeah. But I
have a lot of American friends. I love
them.
But I hate America. What do you what
exactly do you hate about America? I hate
your foreign policy. I hate you this. I
hate you that. I hate you So, the
America as a nation, as a government,
as a body politic,
is something else. America as the people,
something else.
Right? You could say you don't like this
country. You don't like that nation. But But
when you actually go there, or you meet
people from there, you can be friends with
them. It's completely different for you. Because we
in life always make a distinction
in reality
between the nation and the individual.
We do that all the time. That's part
of life.
But then in the Quran, Allah seems to
be condemning nations,
And yet the message is meant for what?
Individual.
Everybody will come before Allah as an individual.
So how do you connect what happened to
nations
with what happens to an individual? This is
again a very important Quran consent.
Hey, guys. You just watched a small clip
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