Nouman Ali Khan – Raising How We Study & Call to the Quran – World Quran Convention
AI: Summary ©
The Surahs of the Quran are designed by Allah himself and have a unique beauty, location, and significance. The World Quran Convention is a conference to study and appreciate the significance of the "characteristic" aspect of the Quran, which is designed to be a unique structure. The convention is a chance to share ideas and learn the Quran, and it can benefit the entire world. The shift from traditional media to creative media is highlighted, including the rise of entertainment and the need for creative media to be produced creatively. The segment concludes with a promotion for a convention on the topic.AI: Transcript ©
The problem with that, what I want you
to appreciate is every Surah is a unique
castle built by Allah. A unique palace designed
by Allah.
And yes, when you walk into this palace,
it has its own unique location,
its unique beauty, its unique walls and windows
and arches and chandeliers, all of it.
And some of them remind you of another
palace.
Some of them connect with another. But this
is its own beautiful design.
It has its own significance.
My job in the next 15 or less
minutes is to introduce to you what we're
going to be doing today. And I'm truly,
truly excited about laying out
some of the features. There's so much going
on today, but I'm going to focus on
4 things because I want you
to take that with you and remember it.
So as I speak to you for the
next 4 minutes, I will be quizzing you
also.
Because that's the way that I make sure
that you are not falling asleep already. It's
early.
So
the first first thing I want to share
with you is how, why, and and and
really why seriously I got involved with the
World Quran Convention. In my own studies of
the Quran,
one of the thing one of the principles
that I hold very dear
is that the Surahs of the Quran
are a unique
unit designed by Allah himself.
So when Allah revealed 114
Surahs, it's as if he revealed 114
books.
One way of looking at it is a
114
books.
Yes. Each of those Surahs can have relationships
with each other. You can read an ayah
in a surah and it reminds you of
an ayah from another surah. That can happen.
It can also be that you're reading an
ayah in a surah and it connects to
a hadith of the prophet
It can also happen that you're reading an
ayah in the surah and it connects to
something that you may that somebody might think
about from the Bible
or from Jewish scripture. It might be something
that connects to world history. It might be
something that connects to a a phenomenon in
nature, something in the skies, something in the
earth. So the Quran has lots and lots
of connections, but one of its
fundamental
requirements
to be understood properly
is the fact that Allah put these surahs,
these ayaat together in one particular surah for
a reason.
He didn't just take all of the ayat
that are similar and put them all in
one place.
And he didn't just take one subject and
just address it one time and nowhere
else. Now this is a pretty amazing thing
that, first of all, as a believer, I
we take the word of Allah
as he says it,
that it's ayaat
are stitched together. You know when stitching happens
and you put a cloth together?
It's the same imagery
that Allah uses for how the ayaat of
a Surah come together.
What excites me about this convention and its
legacy
is that there's a focus on 1 surah
at a time.
Instead of generically saying it's a convention about
the Quran or about a variety of messages
from the Quran,
This principle that we must respect,
where in the Quran did this ayah come
from? What is the surah? What is the
message of that surah? How are all of
the ayat of the surah that Allah himself
stitched together, how are they making sense together?
Before we go outside, we must go inside
because Allah put this inside first.
And so just that principle
becoming so important that an entire year of
World Quran Hour,
session after session after session,
groups dedicated to studying the surah and contemplating
the surah, and at the end of that
entire year, an entire conference,
one of its main objectives
to celebrate
the Surah.
It's such a powerful concept
because and I'll this is the last thing
I'll share. I'm I'm gonna share 4 things
with you. This is the first of them
in now 11 minutes.
But the first of them is that
we Muslims, forget about non Muslims, Muslims
tend to underestimate the Surah.
And what do I mean by that?
There could be a Surah that was revealed
in Mecca, it talks about the akhirah.
There's another surah revealed in Mecca. It talks
about the There's
another surah. It talks about take a guess.
The Akhira. There's a few ayat in the
Quran, they're talking about the Tuhhid. They're talking
about the oneness of Allah or Allah's creative
power. Go to another Surah, same subject. Another
surah, same subject. Now, if that happened in
a TV show, you would say I've already
seen this episode.
If that happened in a movie, oh, they're
all the same.
And when the khatib opens his mouth and
says, today I'm going to talk to you
about the akhirah, you're like, here we go
again.
I already know this.
So there's a tendency to underestimate
what's happening in the Surah because it sounds
familiar to
other Surahs.
The problem with that, what I want you
to appreciate is every Surah is a unique
castle
its unique walls and windows and arches and
chandeliers, all its unique walls and windows and
arches and chandeliers,
all of it. And some of them remind
you of another palace.
Some of them connect with another but this
is its own beautiful design.
It has its own significance.
Another way you can think about this is
I I like to give easier examples.
I think most of you are probably familiar
with Legos. Are you familiar with Legos? No?
If if not, make a stighfar. But that's
okay. If you give if you give a
100 pieces of Legos
to a child, a creative child, and you
gave the same 100 pieces to another child,
and the same 100 pieces to another child,
and you said, build something,
would they build the same thing?
No.
Because their creativity is different.
But they're made of the same pieces.
They're made of the same pieces.
A painter, you can give 5 different world
class painters the same four colors.
Here's a blank canvas, paint. Are they gonna
come up with the same painting?
No. But at the end of it, it's
just the same colors, it's the same canvas,
it's the same paintbrush,
but the final product is so so different.
The way the colors came together,
the way certain things, certain shapes were emphasized
over other things. Isn't it?
The same way you could say this surah
has akhirah, this surah has akhirah, this surah
has tuhid, this surah has tuhid. But the
way Allah paints them together,
the way Allah takes those same elements and
puts them together
every time is a unique divine painting.
It is a unique divine palace. Is that
clear?
So that's what we're one of our goals
today. There will be multiple sessions today
focusing on the unique beauty of Suratul Insan.
Multiple scholars and,
intellectuals from around the world have come, are
going to be presenting piece by piece
some components of Suratul Insane, and that is
the backbone of today's convention.
That's the backbone, Suratul Insane.
That was the first thing.
Now I have 8 minutes for 3 more
things.
Okay. Here's the second
thing. When I first came to this convention,
I was really excited at the prospect that,
Masha'allah,
Malaysia being such a great example of a
successful
Muslim society
that is celebrating the word of Allah, I
shared so many thoughts about the potential of
this convention and how can be something that
impacts the entire world. It's not just something
amazing that's happening here, but actually something that
can impact the whole world. And I was
just throwing all these ideas at Datuk Hussam
and the team, and they're like, why don't
you become its director?
And I said, I I I'm the idea
guy. I'm not the work guy.
I I could give you the ideas, but
the execution is gonna be a lot of
work.
But somehow, because Datu Hissam's smile is so
difficult to resist, he said
and then that's it. That's all. He didn't
even say anything. He just smiled, and here
I am.
But I'm so grateful that they allowed me
to share some of those ideas and not
just take those ideas, but turn those ideas
into execution.
And these other three components are actually part
of that execution.
So the backbone is Suratul Insan, but there
are these other three pieces. Here's the first
one.
I wanted to make this an opportunity for
people to discuss
sometimes tough subjects related to the Quran,
and help build our the way we approach
the Quran as Muslims, I want to raise
the level of that. So
obviously many of you, if not all of
you, have read a translation of the Quran
but you might find it difficult to understand
sometimes, or you might have heard a tafsir
of the Quran, or you might have it
may be difficult to understand sometimes, or you
hear somebody talk about the Quran, a video
you may have seen, a lecture or something,
and you might wonder,
they're saying something new about the Quran. Is
that how they used to think about it
before? Is this a new interpretation or is
this the original interpretation?
Which one is better? Are we supposed to
stick with the old one or do the
new one or what's happening here? Right? So
one of the one of the discussions that's
going to happen today that I'm super excited
about is actually called studying the Quran yesterday,
today, and tomorrow.
What is the relation how was the Quran
studied in the past?
And what's the connection between that and how
it is being studied now? Is there a
connection? Is there a comparison in the context?
And what is coming in the future?
And how are how are Muslims supposed to
think about all of 3 of these things?
And what's really exciting about that is instead
of talking in theory, we've chosen a particular
place in the Quran as an example so
you practically can see the discussion
around particular ayaat, and those ayaat have to
do with Bani Israel
and how Allah told us that they are
going to have great power 2 times.
And there's a lot of conversation nowadays. Does
that mean great power that they had 2
times in history? Or is that talking about
the rise of Zionism? Is that the second
time? Is that what it's referring to? Because
obviously, somebody
8 centuries ago, 6 centuries ago, when they
were writing their tafsir, they were not thinking
about the state the formation of the State
of Israel.
So how are they interpreting it? How are
some people interpreting
it now? What are the arguments on both
sides? So we're gonna look at that as
a case study of studying the Quran yesterday,
today,
and tomorrow.
Now there's 2 items. The first one was
Surat Al Insan. The second one is the
study of the Quran yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Now the quiz begins.
Be ready.
I have 4 minutes. Two more items.
The 3rd item, which I'm super excited about,
is another panel discussion.
And this discussion
is about something that I've been worried about
for some time now.
Everybody here knows social media has become
a new power in the world.
Just like oil and gas used to be
a power,
resources, material resources used to be a power,
banking and money used to be a power,
and they still are. Now there's a new
power that has emerged in the world and
that is social media.
Right? The way human beings communicate, the internet
has become a power by itself.
And it's so powerful that even governments that
don't like each other,
like Russia and the United States,
can have wars with each other without weapons
thing we're
talking about. It's impacted the entire world,
in many different ways. But one of the
ways that it's disrupted the world is that
there used to be a time some of
you, you know, you all look young, but
some of you are not.
There's no time when you used to go
to a store and rent a movie and
astaghfirullah and then come back home and put
it in the VCR and then hit play.
But
now entertainment
became accessible.
And
anybody can become an entertainer.
Used to be, there was the funny kid
in your family that used to do a
little dance in front of the cousins, and
everybody used to laugh? And now, they have
a TikTok page,
and they have 20,000,000 followers.
Everybody became a content producer.
Everybody became an entertainer.
So
just like nations are obsessed with gathering oil
and gas and
funds and gold, now nations are now interested.
The world is now interested in gathering human
attention.
That's the new resource, human attention.
In this age of creative media,
we want the world to pay attention to
the Quran. Isn't that true?
Which means the competition has gotten a lot
tougher.
That's what that means.
Because
human beings' attention is being taken by
cats playing pianos.
Human beings' attention is being taken by
all, you know, funny videos. It's being taken
by essays, writings, all kinds of all kinds
of creative stuff.
So we need to have a serious conversation
about how do we represent
divine wisdom,
the revelation that Allah has given us, how
do we use it as an inspiration
to produce creative media?
How do we create media
that looks like
entertainment,
but it actually in it has the message
of the Quran?
On the flip side, there are lots of
entertainment media,
cartoons,
movies, TV shows, you name it,
skits, comedy, that do a very good job
of doing da'wah to atheism.
They do a very good job doing da'wah
to different kinds of social agendas.
They do a very good job to promote
for example LGBT values.
And they do an excellent job.
And they do it very creatively.
And the amount of books I met somebody
who went to a library convention in Chicago
here, and she told me that she was
shocked at the number of books that have
been presented in at children's level, the thousands
and thousands of books that have already been
produced
to promote LGBT values to children
that are now available in the library. You
know what that means? Creative media is being
pushed for being produced for a certain agenda.
Well, the only way to fight that battle,
you cannot bring a sword to a gunfight.
If the war is happening in the world
of creative media, the Muslims need to understand
creative media and fight back.
So there's gonna be a discussion
with some really esteemed panelists
that have background in creative media and in
the Islamic space about divine wisdom
and creative media, and what Muslims can do,
what Muslim creatives can do, what is the
scope of it. In my last 30 seconds,
one of the most exciting components of
today's convention.
Inspired by this creative media idea, what surah
I forgot? What was item number 1? What
surah are we focusing on?
Oh, look at you paying attention. Okay. Good.
Surah Al Insan. I know I'm over I
have 7 minutes left. This will take me
1 minute. I promise. I'll get
off.
One idea I had and the team had
was why don't we tell creative Muslims around
the world, hey, here's an ayah from Suratul
Insan.
We guided him to the path. He has
the choice either to be grateful or to
be ungrateful.
Simply speaking, that's the ayah.
If you can think of a creative 3,
4 page story
inspired by this ayah, a creative story that
could turn into a short film, that could
turn into a small book, a children's book.
If you have a creative idea, write us
a story
inspired by this ayah. And from around the
world, this was very last minute, just in
the last couple of months, from around the
world
almost 900
stories were submitted.
And
my team and I, the people here at
World Congress Convention went through all of them.
Some of them very good, some of them
But And actually we selected a winner.
And that winner has flown all the way
here from Egypt. He's a dentist from Egypt
that's that's flown here.
And
quite a remarkable beautiful story because I don't
just want this convention
ummah needs to see, hey, he can do
it
while doing root canals.
I can do it too.
We can do this too. We can get
creative also. We can we can contribute something
too. The impact of this convention
is going to be global. Every one of
these discussions,
my hope is that it sparks new kinds
of activism,
new calls to action, not just across Malaysia,
but across the entire Muslim world. But I
ask Allah azza wa Jal to bless this
effort and to truly make it a new
beginning and a renewed sense of commitment to
the word of Allah and a new kind
of service
through the word of Allah that benefits the
ummah and humanity in ways that has never
happened before.
Thank you so much.
I hope you guys enjoyed that video clip.
My team and I have been working tirelessly
to
try to create as many resources for Muslims
to give them first steps in understanding the
Quran all the way to the point where
they can have a deep, profound understanding of
the Quran. We are students of the Quran
ourselves, and we want you to be students
of the Quran alongside us. Join us for
this journey on tv.com
where thousands of hours of work have already
been put in. And don't be intimidated, it's
step by step by step so you can
make learning the Quran a part of your
lifestyle. There's lots of stuff available on YouTube,
but it's all over the place. If you
want an organized approach to studying the Quran
beginning to end for yourself, your kids, your
family, and even among peers, that would be
the way to go. Sign up for bayinatv.com.
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