Suhaib Webb – Quran For All – Part Four- How Islam Locates Free Will
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of human agency and pushing through relationships with God in order to achieve success. They stress the need for human agency and the need for people to push into relationships with God to become an active participant of the metaphysical process. The speaker also discusses the importance of actions and trusting in God's plan for achieving success and achieving the ultimate.
AI: Summary ©
The first verse I encountered blew me away.
And that is the verse with the name
of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
What's called the Basmala, the Basmala, Bismillah ar
-Rahman ar-Rahim.
That verse is going to inform our discussion
briefly today about the relationship between the creator
and the created.
And I alluded to it earlier when I
talked about the need for human utility, the
need for human agency, the need for people
to push into a relationship with God, not
just sit back and wait for a miracle
to happen.
This is an incredibly powerful verse.
It says, with the names of Allah, then
there should be actually a colon.
What are the names that are most important
for you to know?
The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Bismillah ar-Rahman
ar-Rahim.
There is a lot that can be said
about this, but to keep it brief, but
deep, if you will, is that if you
notice, this verse actually starts with an article
of preposition, with.
And in Arabic, there's a very important rule
you need to pay attention to, that in
order for an article of preposition to give
a complete meaning, it needs a verb.
It needs an action.
And if you look at this verse as
it is, there is actually no verb there.
So if you look at it, Bismi, with
the names of God, names and God are
nouns, colon, the Most Gracious is a noun,
the Most Merciful is a noun.
So the question comes, if someone's strong in
Arabic, they're going to say, this is an
incomplete sentence.
And there's a mystery to this.
There is a mystery to the Qur'an
that is lost in translation.
That is lost in translation.
And one of those mysteries is from time
to time, the Qur'an, and this is
something which is very normal in Arabic, words
are left out of phrases in order to
entice the reader and to encourage the reader
to become an active participant of the narrative.
That's very important.
The Qur'an is not going to give
you everything because then you'll get bored.
But at times the Qur'an may hide
things from you so that you have to
stop, ponder and think and insert here.
And what would you insert is what's contextually
appropriate to you, what you're experiencing, what your
life is.
And this is one of the reasons that
we say that the Qur'an is an
everlasting miracle.
Because those actions are going to change through
the ages.
They're going to change through the ages.
So maybe 150 years ago, someone said like,
I ride a camel or I ride a
donkey.
Now someone's going to say, Hey, I ride
a whatever, a Tesla.
I ride, you know, a Prius, whatever I'm
driving.
The verb changes.
The Qur'an doesn't change.
And this is important because if you look
at Bismillah with the names of God, the
most gracious, the most merciful, you have to
stop and ask yourself, where is the verb?
And the job of you as the reader
is to insert the verb that you are
experiencing at that moment.
So I recite with the names of God,
the most gracious, the most merciful.
I eat with the names of God, the
most gracious, the most merciful.
I sleep with the names of God, the
most gracious, the most merciful.
And this informs us of two very important
things.
The first I talked about in the beginning,
and it's the subject of our discussion, the
relationship between human action and God's transcendence.
The need for me to push in, in
religion, to bring my sociology to the moment
and marry it with the divine.
And it enhances what I said very early
on about Fatiha, the idea of humans needing
to act and trusting in God's plan.
Not waiting for miracles or not hoping in
God, but both.
So for the Basmala, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar
-Rahim to be complete, the mystery is solved
in front of us.
I have to insert my verb.
I have to insert my action, which means
I need to be doing something.
So maybe some of you who are interested
in Islam, you're like, look, I seek guidance
with the names of God, the most gracious,
the most merciful.
I recite the Quran for understanding with the
names of God, the most gracious, the most
merciful.
Without your actions, it's incomplete.
And without God, it's incomplete.
So that informs us about the subtle marriage
between the need for human utility and agency,
pushing through and acting and relying upon Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, God almighty, to bless
and guide those actions.
And this is something which is fundamental to
the Quran, acting and trusting, working and hoping.
Now, sure, we're going to make mistakes.
In that process, we're going to make mistakes.
So out of all of the names that
God wanted to introduce us to, after he
says, Bismillah, with the names of God, why
is it the most gracious, the most merciful?
Because our actions are always going to come
up short and we may be overcome by
a sense of suffocating guilt and losing hope.
But don't worry, in your attempts to live
right, God is the most gracious, the most
merciful.
And that will lead to our second discussion
around Surah Fatiha, how Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala, God almighty, has introduced us to himself
through certain foundational beliefs.
May Allah bless you.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.