Suhaib Webb – Ibn Juzay’s Introduction to Tafsir Part Two The Purposes of the Qur’an
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So we've been going through
the tasir of Imam Ibn Juzay.
And Imam Ibn Juzay, as we mentioned, is
Andalucian
giant, and I found out from one of
my colleagues,
Sheikh,
Suhaib
Saeed, that it has actually been translated, the
entire tafsir.
It hasn't been edited. So he is now,
he actually translated,
the tafsir of Sayna Imam Ar Razi,
Rahimullah,
a part of it.
And he's now working to finish
this entire Tufts year, which would be like
an amazing thing. And if it happens,
we would adopt that then as our textbook
at SWISS.
The translation that we use at Swiss,
that we recommend people use, is the clear
Quran
translated by Mustafa
Khabab. If someone can, like, find that online,
I think I spelled his name
wrong, also one of my classmates, well, not
my classmate, but the same university, alhamdulillah.
His translation of Quran is really really nice,
alhamdulillah.
So Bismillah
So Alhamdulillah, we started to go through these
foundations of tafsir,
and as I explained to you
in a more,
disciplined setting, the way of studying the tafsir
of the Quran is to go word by
word,
first to study these foundations that we're going
through, and then go by go word by
word,
and then to study what's called like
Tafsir Mubtari'in.
So like someone will read, for example, Tafsir
Jalalayn
with a teacher,
and then they would read like the
explanation of that by Imam Sheikh Hasawi
Al Mariki.
Then after that, someone would go to say
tafsir of, like, an abridgment of al Tabari
that gives, like, the the narrations of of
the words,
and then they would begin to explore
other facets,
of Tafsir,
Insha'Allah.
So first we went through the revelation of
the Quran as a foundation,
and we went through,
kind of what that means, right, and how
that plays out.
The history of revelation,
the narration of Sayyidina Aisha Radiallahu Anha and
unpacking
what that that narration means, taking and gleaning
some of the gems from it. And we
talked about the compilation of the Quran
briefly, and then the spelling and the organization
of the Qur'an, the names of the Qur'an,
the meanings of those names, went through some
of the important personalities like Abu Asura, Dua'i,
Abu Abbas,
Abdullah
al Mamoon Rashid, we talked about his role,
of course, the Khalifa
who dies like an 833.
We talked about Al Hajjaj, Abdul Malik ibn
Marwan, and people
who had an impact on the history of
how the Quran is,
how how we have it now, right?
Then we started to talk about the division
of the chapters of the Quran into Meccan
and the Medina
chapters. And we defined what that means, we
we noted,
you know, the chapters that are from,
Medina, we noted them.
And
we also noted the chapters that scholars differ
over, we talked about some of them.
And then, alhamdulillah, we talked about, you know,
the subject matter of those chapters.
How do you recognize those chapters? And that's
where we stopped.
So today,
we're going to talk about the 3rd foundation.
And if we have time, we'll move into,
the 4th foundation,
of the Quran
as presented by Sayna Imam Ibn Juzay,
radiAllahu anhu.
So he says the purpose and the teachings
of the Quran. It's a it's a great
question, like, we should ask ourselves
what is the purpose of the Quran, and
we shouldn't just give, like, an answer,
like, that we may have heard constantly repeated,
but in our in our in our bare
essence, like, to me as a person,
what role does the Quran
play in my life? Because if I quickly
say it's a guide,
am I using it as a guide?
If I say, like, it's a healer of
the hearts,
am I using it for that? So that's
why I encourage people, like, take a few
steps back,
breathe deeply,
and then answer that question.
The sheikh, he says,
and he's speaking now. I'll address this in
a general and a specific way.
Generally,
the purpose of the Quran is to call
people to worship to Allah alone
and to invite them to accept the religion
he sent.
So one is Ibadah
and number 2 is dawah.
We all know the Prophet
in Sahih Muslim, he said the hour will
not start
until the name of Allah is no longer
mentioned,
because
dhikr is one of the greatest forms of
Ibadah,
and it's the easiest form of Ibadah.
So what that means is people are no
longer even engaging in the
base form of Ibarah, therefore the purpose of
creation is no longer there.
Right? And I create jinn and men except
to worship me.
So when people are no longer even able
to remember the name of Allah,
then the purpose of creation will cease and
therefore the hour will start. SubhanAllah.
So the first is Ibadah.
And and what the Sheikh means,
by Ibadah here worship, isn't as people understood
defined by the fuqaha. And this is one
of the biggest challenges of Muslims,
that inadvertently they may be restricting the meaning
of a term
according to the most common science or popular
science
that religious science that kind of, you know,
orbits around them.
So oftentimes when we talk about worship, we
think of salah, we think of zakah, we
think of Hajj, we think of fasting in
the month of Ramadan,
but that those are considered acts of worship
as defined by the fuqaha.
As far as
the broader
sciences of Islam,
Imam Ibn Taymiyyah Rahimullah,
he said
worship is anything that Allah loves,
right? So expanding
the degree of worship,
and that's why SubhanAllah last week I told
you I would explain to you why Doctor.
Abduhaifa Ramawi told me that Surat of Fatiha
is revealed in Mecca and Medina
is because in Mecca you have a focus
on
developing faith,
improving a person's spiritual capacity,
tahdiba
al akhlaq, refining character.
And then in Medina you have laws,
right, you have this legal component of Islam,
the establishment of the Muslim State,
so the Sheikh he told me in Mecca
those things were
called, so you said it, you admitted it
as you were trying to learn and grow.
And in Medina, as you're trying to implement
and live, you say,
So he said the reason that Surat of
Fatihah is revealed twice in Mecca and Medina
is so that no Muslim will confuse
that Ibarra is only spirituality or that Ibarra
is only about
So that's why SubhanAllah,
it's very nice, Mashallah.
The second purpose he said of the of
the Quran is dua.
Allah throughout
the Quran,
Whether the prophet
is
starting his message
in isolation
and
in secrecy,
whether he is proclaiming
his message to people,
whether he's in Mecca or Medina,
in any situation,
Dua is always there.
Soon later,
go and warn
people. Go and warn your family.
Then
then call people
with wisdom.
Look and insult,
Yaseem, something very powerful. You see the story
of that man,
that man who came from the other part
of the city to help the prophets, and
then he stood
for people's religious freedom.
Right? For those prophets religious freedom.
And then he was killed.
And before he was killed, what do you
say?
All my people follow prophets.
Then they killed him. Then even in the
grave, he said,
later, In the bliss of the hereafter, he
said,
I wish my people
knew of the honor that has been bestowed
upon me and the forgiveness.
Sayyruna ibn Abbas
he He
said,
He called them while he was alive,
and he called them even after he died,
his commitment to dua, Allahu Akbar.
So the second foundation of the Quran is
dawah. That's why in the in the Shafi'i
Madhab,
Imam ibn
Hajar al Haythami you
know, he was asked by a group of
people
in Europe,
do we have to migrate to Darul Islam
because we live in Darul Harb?
He said
no. In fact, the Muhammed,
the strong opinion in the Madhab of Sayna
Imam
Shafi'i
is that you have to stay there if
you're able to practice Islam.
And he said, because you will accomplish
Al Maqsad. Al Maqsad,
Al
Oola. You will accomplish the great objective here.
One of the great objectives of the Quran
is dua.
And that's, of course, based on a hadith
of Sayidina Fudeik who came to Sayidina Nabi
sallallahu alaihi sallam.
Imam Ahmed with a good good sound chain.
When he came from Yemen, he said, oh,
prophet,
I live amongst the Christians and the Jews,
and now Hidra is a migration. Do I
have to you in Medina? He said,
establish prayer.
What
more
call to the good, forbid the evil.
And you must live with your
people. Why? Because of Dua.
So we should be careful sometimes with some
of the messaging that came out over the
last few years
that would immediately make your your your staying
in the west suspect. Some people mentioned the
hadith of the prophet
and I'm
free from those people who live amongst the
Mushuki.
That's a sound hadith,
but as you study with me in and
I need to put some new lectures up.
It's not enough to know a text, we
have to know how to apply the text,
and one of the conditions of hadith is
to know the the context of what the
prophet is saying
if there's a context.
Look at the explanation of this hadith of
the Prophet
I'm free of those people who live amongst
the disbelievers.
Some people use this hadith to say you
have to leave the West.
Where are you gonna go, man? First of
all, that's the question.
But subhanAllah, the context of the hadith makes
it clear that there was a group of
people that the
prophet he sent out a warning, he said
leave these towns because these towns have been
waging war against us and
we have to go and now wage war
against these towns because they are harming our
community in Medina.
And a group of Muslims, they refused.
The Sahaba,
they came into these cities and they killed
not only their enemies, but inadvertently
they killed believers. They killed Muslims.
The narration says some of them, they tried
to make sujood
to let them know no we're Muslim and
they and they were killed, some of
them. Then their families came to say, and
asked for the blood money
for for the death of their Muslim relatives.
And the prophet said, Anaburi, I'm free of
this now we understand the hadith. I'm free
of this situation.
This has nothing to do with someone living
in Seattle, or someone living in Brooklyn, in
New Jersey.
This hadith shouldn't be applied this way. This
is a misappropriation
and mis application
of this hadith SubhanAllah. And this is what
happens when we take religion from forums and
chat rooms, man,
or memes.
So the Hadith of Sayyidina Nabi
and Abari from those people
who refused to leave
when we commanded them to leave.
So
the importance of dawah
according to the Sayna
and is that we should stay in these
places as long as we're able to practice
our Islam and in some of these countries
we can practice our Islam better
than in some Muslim countries.
So the Sheikh, he says the general purpose
of the Quran and how should that how
should that shape your life as a Muslim?
Then you should think about the Quran, its
general purposes are for me to worship
in
dawah. So he says
generally the purpose of the Quran is to
call to people to Allah
and to invite them to accept the religion
He sent,
Both of these rest on two concepts that
encapsulate the essence of the Quran.
The first is clarifying the definition and purpose
of worship
that it calls the people to embrace.
The second is it mentions things that motivate
them to accept a life of faith and
worship,
and also mentions those things that will deter
them from disobeying Allah
and
living a life
which is irresponsible
and untethered
from faith, meaning what we call tarieb and
tarieb, right? Encouragement
and discouragements.
So now he's gonna talk about types of
worship.
He says in the Quran, worship is divided
into 2, the foundations of a creed
and the foundations of religious acts.
And when he says religious acts that means
2 things,
number 1, the actions of the body,
so Allah says,
you know,
right, don't put your hand in destruction, right,
you're using your body,
right.
I'm using, it's a physical act.
The second is what's called
the actions of the heart.
That's why some Ulema like Imam Abu Qayyim
when Allah said
here, you know purify your thighab, your clothes.
Another
meaning of thighab is
purify your heart.
So here number 1 creed,
faith
is a component of worship,
and then number 2 are
physical acts
and then the inner,
to.
Again, if you look at this, you see
the hadith of Jibreel,
the foundations of,
the foundations of religious acts is, and the
foundation of the heart.
Right? The physical religious acts,
the corporate religious acts is,
the science of this of the inner is
tiskitanas
or tissof.
Those things that motivate faith and practice and
discourage negligence fall under what scholars refer to
as, as I mentioned earlier,
encouragement
and,
tarhib.
Specifically now, and this is really, really nice
man, this is
a gym.
The Quran's purposes are 7. So
generally the Quran is about
faith in Allah, right,
and
excuse me, right? So worshiping Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala
and calling to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Specifically,
he says the Quran's purposes are 7.
Number 1 is what's called
right? God's divinity,
prophethood,
resurrection,
rulings,
promises,
threats,
and stories.
So God's divinity,
prophethood,
resurrection,
rulings, promises, threats, and stories.
Talks about divinity and he says Allah's existence
is addressed in the Quran with proofs that
establish his existence
and we're using the creation as a tool
for critical reflection.
So any verse in the Quran that brings
attention to the creation of the earth and
the heavens, animals, plants and vegetation, wind and
precipitation, the sun and the moon, the night
and the day, and similar things are all
evidences
of his existence.
Added to the concept of his existence is
his oneness
and responses to the polytheists,
information about Allah's names and attributes,
and most importantly establishing his transcendence.
Islam places a tremendous focus to Quran in
particular on the sacred
on the sacred.
The second is prophethood. He says the Quran
establishes faith in prophethood in general,
and specifically faith in the prophethood of Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Additionally, it demands belief in revelation, the books
that Allah revealed to them, the angels who
taught them,
his commands, as well as responses to those
who rejected belief in any of those things
while exposing those that who deny that by
attesting to the purity and special gifts
bestowed upon Sayna Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
The hereafter, if you heard me say this
before, the hereafter is so much that it
is almost mentioned
on every, subhanAllah,
chapter of the Quran, every page of the
Quran.
The first four pages of the Quran there.
First, first, verse, verse, mentioning
the hereafter.
The Quran calls to faith in the resurrection
and the gathering using clear evidence and proof
to respond to those who deny them. It
details the reality of the hereafter paradise and
*, the accounting and the weighing of deeds,
direct
records of people's good
and evil and the extreme punishments and
rewards that will happen in the hereafter.
The next is religious rulings. Rulings of the
Quran are 2, it's very important to remember
this, inshallah, we have a class coming in
Fiqh in the future,
that the rulings fall under 2, we talked
about this in
right, that the commands
and prohibitions, right, Quran, its rulings are based
on
to do or not to do.
Or
If it's an absolute action as mentioned in
then
this is
if it's an encouragement to do, this is
Mandub or Sunnah.
If it's a non negotiable prohibition, this is
Haram.
If it's a negotiable
in a disliked makru,
and the rest is what
Imam Sayna, Imam Ibn Hazm called
and what the 4 methods called
right the foundation of unspoken things
is permissibility unless there is
a text which would
infer that it's impermissible
or a strong scholarly consensus on these.
The comprehensive nature of the rulings of the
Quran, some of the Quran's rulings are related
to physical performance,
like prayers and fasting, while others are related
to income, like Zakat,
while others are related to the heart and
attitudes like sincerity and fear. And I would
add to this, but I don't wanna add
to someone's book.
And some of them speak to
the interactions that we have between each other,
like marriage and divorce,
raising children, and so on and so forth.
The Quran's promises and threats,
the promises of the Quran include good in
the temporary life,
and good doesn't necessarily mean monetary success,
right? We we it's very difficult to to
separate ourselves from the values of any age.
It's almost impossible.
We live in an age now,
post enlightenment,
the creation of the interest bearing state,
the new deal,
you know,
in the way
that neoliberalism,
as well as conservatism have
molded
people into thinking about
good as being
like parallel to
financial
opulence.
So, when it says good in this life,
what it means is
worshiping Allah, having a kitty and a heart,
not hitting bitcoin necessarily. If that happens, alhamdulillah.
Like Allah's help in victory as well as
good in the hereafter, like the details of
beauty, bliss and delights of paradise,
and the latter,
the
promises of the hereafter appear more in the
Quran than the former. SubhanAllah.
Why? Because the Quran was to motivate
and encourage people.
The threats of the Quran include worldly punishments
as well as all punishments awaiting sinners and
evil doers in the hereafter,
like the torments of * in its descriptions,
the day of judgment in its descriptions.
Again, as with the promises, the threats in
the Hereafter are addressed more in the Quran
than the threats to the temporary life. So
the promises, excuse me, I made a mistake,
The promises of bliss in the hereafter are
mentioned more in Quran than the promises
of a good life in the dunya.
And the threats in the hereafter are mentioned
more in greater quantity than the threats
related to the world. So that we shift
people,
we shift people, masha'Allah,
to faith
and thinking about what's coming. Think about what's
coming, masha'Allah.
If you ponder on the Quran, he says
you will notice that threats and promises are
usually connected,
often mentioned one after the other to create
this balance.
The reason is to create a balance of
fear and hope and to draw a distinction
between the 2.
We say
Fabildudihah
Tetabeyanol
Ashaah. It's very nice, right?
Like opposites clarify things.
When things are compared, they become distinguished.
The next are the Stories of the Quran,
which make up actually a third of the
Quran.
This includes information about the prophets who preceded
Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
as well as the righteous such as the
companions of the cave and Dhul Qurnayn. You
may ask, what is the wisdom sometimes maybe
you've noticed
in repeating the stories of the prophets in
the Quran, and like from like different perspectives
with different details? Some places
it's embellished, in some places, it's, like, summarized.
And
the answer he says has 3 parts. The
first, certain events related to a prophet's story
may be mentioned in one place and not
another
because each has its own lesson at that
moment in the context of that chapter or
verses
and benefit that animates
even the other story,
the other mentioning of the story. 2nd, in
some places the events surrounding a prophet's story
are embellished while they are summarized in others
to establish
the eloquence of the Qur'anic style.
3rd, the level, the lives of the prophets
are filled with important objectives and lessons.
Thus, the different styles of presentation
are meant to capture different, and you can
think this in education,
we have different learning styles. People learn differently.
So this is a way to touch different
people and accomplish and capture
the lessons and objectives of the story for
different types of learners.
He talks about the purposes of these stories,
and he says, the Quranic stories established a
prophethood of the prophets who preceded
Muhammad
by mentioning their miracles and the different fates
and punishments
that fell befell people who rejected them.
Chronic stories establish a truthfulness of Muhammad, alayhis
salatu salam and his prophecy
because through those stories he was able to
provide
great deals, details about things which no one
knew,
and which no one knew about their prophets
before him
as Allah says after
You didn't know it nor did your people
know this before
this revelation came to you.
There are some other
objectives of the Quran that are very important.
Allah's Oneness
is an objective of the Quran.
He says pay attention to Allah describes the
annihilation of communities of disbelief.
Another objective of the Quran is to appreciate
the power of Allah
His ultimate power and his his control of
the universe.
The objective of the Quran is to support
the dawah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam in the face of the intense rejection
that he dealt with, how Allah helped him,
how his community helped him,
and also how we should be an extension
of that help.
Allah and and also that we can understand,
like, it's not always gonna be good, it's
not always gonna be easy, you're not always
gonna have people like you.
Allah says in short
verse 34, the prophets were you before you
were dealt with, had to deal with doubt
and rejection,
and they were resilient until
our ancestors came to them, until we helped
them. Added was Allah's protecting him and granting
him help and victory over the enemies of
truth just as the Prophets before him were.
And finally, an objective of the stories of
the prophets was to frighten the disbelievers that
they will meet the same punishment
as those who preceded them, and many other
blessings contained in the stories of the prophets,
such as the miracles, incredible tests that they
incurred during their lives,
calling to the truth, and the evidence they
used to prove it. Right? It's very important
to think about the style of Dua.
Since the benefits of Prophet are abundant, their
stories are mentioned generously in the Quran.
So quickly,
before we move on to the next one,
the third foundation is talking about the purposes
and teachings of the Quran.
2 of them are very general.
Right. The first general purpose is Ibadah, worship,
and defining and clarifying what Ibadah is, and
along with that is shirk, associated partners with
Allah and disbelief.
And then the second is to call people
to worship Allah alone through
encouragement and discouragements, right.
And then the 7 specific topics found in
the Quran
are Allah's divinity,
prophethood,
the hereafter and resurrection,
rulings,
promises and threats,
and stories. There's some overlap in these things,
right, as you can see.