Minute with a Muslim #070 – Youre Applying The Quran & Sunnah Incorrectly

everybody and their mother says that they use the Quran and the Sunnah as a source for their personal guidance. But what does that conceal that conceals two things? What are your other sources that you use for your personal guidance? Are you also also using the the fortune teller and astrology symbols and the zodiac signs and whatever you could be using pop psychology, you could be using what you pick up from tick tock, right? So there could be other sources, and then it doesn't show how you're interacting with that source. Yeah, you can maybe quote from the Koran or you can quote from the Sunnah. And you can say that this is my source, but how are you understanding those

two things? Are you understanding them in an authoritative way, the way that the Prophet saw that he said, I'm understood them or the way that the Companions understood them? Are you applying them in the ways and emphasizing the things that the Companions they applied? And they emphasized? Or are you interacting with it in a different way? Are you cherry picking? Are you refurbishing? Are you reinfecting Or re emphasizing Are you taking things out of context and changing them according to a different sort of agenda? So that's the importance we say okay, Islam is my is the source. There's countries today such as Tunisia and Egypt that say that the Quran and the Sunnah are the source of

their constitution. And yet we know that the way that they govern is completely different from the way that the prophesy said I'm going to govern and the Companions govern and things like that. So it doesn't mean much to say that the Quran and the Sunnah is a source of your guidance, what we're going for is something that's better than a source. We're going for the Quran and Sunnah as a paradigm for your existence. And what does that mean? It means that it is the thing that you filter everything else through. It's the lens that you see and experience everything that you come across, right, you are not cherry picking things or taking things from these sources and then twisting them

or reapplying them in creative and interesting and unorthodox ways you are experiencing you're looking out to your daily your relationships and your job and your your friendships and your co workers and everything and you're trying to make the lens that you're experiencing everything through the Quran and the Sunnah. How would Allah want me to interact with this person? How would the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa salam think about what I just said to my mom, to my dad, to my brother's to my sisters? Would he be happy with me? Either he set out to a sinner or would he have some tender and merciful advice? Or would he have a stern rebuke of what I just did? Or what I just

said, Oh, this is the difference to say that Islam is a source or that the Quran and Sunnah is a source puts us in a little bit too much control when it comes to how we interact with that source. Whereas saying that the Quran and Sunnah is our paradigm puts us in a position of submission, which is the name of our faith and surrender to that paradigm and letting it form our sensibilities letting it form the way in which we go out and we see and we experience the world. So that's the first thing you know, and I had a really interesting comment from somebody that I lead on hedge that said to me one time, they said, you know, and I really appreciate their honesty, because this would

be a very hard thing for a lot of us to say this, that when I read the Koran, and I read about bad guys, the kuffar the people in hellfire, I've got specific people in mind.

said there's people in my life I said, Yep, they got a comment.

And I said, Wow, that's really interesting, because that's pretty much the opposite way that we're supposed to interact with the Koran. We're supposed to put ourselves in that situation and say, How am I like that person? Right? It's not a it's not a rubric by which you're going around judging everybody. Okay. It is supposed to form your own sensibility of how I interact with people, right? But ultimately, it's supposed to be so you can fix yourself. And so there's a degree to which by taking it as a paradigm, taking it as a lens. We are submitting ourselves to it and we're the ones who are changing. We're the ones who are letting it do work on us, as opposed to us doing work on

it.