Yousuf Raza – Ramadan Conversations Episode 4 Surah AlQalam 17
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As-salamu alaykum everybody, we are live, hopefully
without any glitches today.
We're moving right along to our fourth episode
for the day and diving right in.
After the first three revelations that Rasulullah ﷺ
has gotten, and of course there is a
lot of interpretations as to and opinions with
respect to how they don't necessarily have to
be in order that we spoke about them.
There is a consensus about Surah Al-Aq
in particular, but the other may not be
necessarily in the order that we discussed them,
so that needs to be out there.
However, there's strong opinions that say that this
is the order that they were in.
And somewhere along the way is also Surah
Al-Fatiha, but we will talk more about
that in our episode tomorrow.
In any case, when the idea started to
spread, now bear in mind that Rasulullah ﷺ
did not openly proclaim his prophethood straight out
just after the first couple of revelations.
No, it was after Fasda'a Biman Su'mar,
a particular revelation, a particular ayah in a
surah that was to be revealed later where
he was asked to proclaim publicly that he
actually did that.
But before that, Rasulullah ﷺ is only sharing
it with people very close.
Even the family invitation in which the close
or rather extended family and friends are invited
in the meal that Rasulullah ﷺ gives them
and then makes the announcement even prior to
that, word is spreading from person to person,
through trustworthy people of course.
Nevertheless, those who hear about it, whether they
hear about it from Rasulullah ﷺ or directly
or they hear about it indirectly through someone
that he has told this to, he's getting
one particular feedback.
Whether that is coming from a place of
concern and sympathy, oh my god, is he
okay?
Has he gone crazy?
Or it is coming as a straight out
blatant looking to offend, criticism that is he
crazy?
What's wrong with him?
So this is one of the two ways
that for now a few people and of
course when the proclamation becomes more and more
public, a lot of people are going to
tell Rasulullah ﷺ that this is craziness, this
is madness, he is mad.
And because this is not the first time
that this idea is being put in front
of Rasulullah ﷺ, that this experience that he's
having may be a symptom of madness, of
possession, of being crazy.
Rasulullah ﷺ has pretty much by himself thought
of it as we spoke about in when
he got the first revelation and he's coming
back down from the mountain, this is something
that he's constantly thinking about, afraid of.
This is something that he shares with Hazrat
Khadijah where he tells her that I'm afraid
that this is something demonic, this is something
of some sort of possession, some sort of
craziness.
And we spoke about how she reassured him.
So he has thought of this himself, he
has had this suspicion about himself, about these
experiences before people bring this suspicion in front
of them.
Before people in whatever way, whether they're doing
it out of sympathy or they're doing it
out of spite, whatever the motivation, they're bringing
this suspicion in front of him, a suspicion
that he's had before, that you're crazy.
And so Rasulullah ﷺ, something that he struggled
with initially, overcame as a result of Khadijah's
reassurances, further revelations, his own following in with
what those revelations asked him to do.
In standing up in prayer, in reciting that
Qur'an again and again, in taking the
message person to person, at least to the
people that he trusts.
So he's following in with what the revelation
is asking him to do.
So he's overcome something that he did harbor,
something that was troubling him quite a lot
before.
But now that that suspicion is brought out
again by other people, it's triggering, it brings
back those fears.
Those reassurances then become necessary again.
And so the Qur'an does provide that
reassurance to Rasulullah ﷺ that no, you are
not crazy.
And so the way the ayat are, how
they phrase it, the surah begins, this is
surah al-Qalam, this is surah number 68.
One of the very earlier revelations, I'm not
going to put a number that this was
1, 2, 3, 4 necessarily, earlier revelations, maybe
second revelation, maybe third revelation, maybe fourth revelation,
we can't really precisely put a number to
it, but right down at the beginning.
Rasulullah ﷺ is being told, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, noon.
This is the first instance of the use
of, within chronological order of revelation, a harf,
just one letter is being, we know alif,
la, meem, from surah al-Baqarah and other
surahs as well.
This particular surah uses one letter, noon.
Walqalam, Allah swears by the pen.
Wama yasturoon, and what they write.
Pause here.
The context, we're going to bracket that tool
aside, come back to it in a little
bit.
Whenever the Qur'an swears upon something, whenever
the Qur'an takes an oath by something,
one of the implications of those oaths is
a degree of sanctity, a degree of sacredness,
definitely a validation that the Qur'an is
giving to that which is taken an oath
by.
As human beings, we know that this, that
within language, swearing by something, you don't swear
by something which is lowly.
You don't swear by something that is unworthy.
You don't swear by something that is unreliable,
unreliable, pathetic.
Rather to the contrary, you swear by something
that is as reliable as it gets.
You swear by something that is honorable, respected,
sacred, right?
So the Qur'an takes all these oaths.
And of course, as Muslims, we're required to
take oath by the most sacred, the most
high, the most holy, the most reliable, which
is Allah.
When Allah himself takes oaths, he doesn't swear
by himself.
He swears by outside of himself, by other
than himself.
And in doing so, he accords to those
other than himself, you know, non-god, non
-creator.
He ascribes to them a sacredness.
He ascribes to them a holiness.
He ascribes to them a dependability of reliability.
That these are to be taken seriously.
The Qur'an takes them seriously.
How seriously does the Qur'an take them?
How seriously does Allah himself take all of
the objects that are sworn by?
It takes them so seriously that its own
validity, its own claim to being true, is
put on the line, is being subjected to
their affirmation.
One of the consistent understandings that interpreters have
with respect to oaths, that you reflect on
the oaths, you look at the oaths, and
those oaths are telling you something that affirms
what the muqsam alayh is, right?
So whatever it is that is sworn upon,
and whatever it is that is being, what
this oath is taken for.
So whatever the oath is taken for, what
is to follow, right?
Whatever the Qur'an is claiming, a reflection
on the object of the oath is going
to lead you to the conclusion or the
statement that the Qur'an is making.
What is the statement that the Qur'an
is making?
That you, by the grace of your Rabb,
are not mad, you're not possessed.
Majnoon is used in both connotations, madness, craziness,
possession.
Neither of those situations is true, neither of
those explanations is true.
And what is the testimony for it?
God's word, yes, but God's not leaving it
His own word.
What He's saying is that, I swear by
the qalam, I swear by the pen, and
everything that they write.
Who are they?
Other than Allah.
People, human beings, people of knowledge.
So the people who accumulate knowledge, people who
are known for passing on knowledge, the teachers
of knowledge, their pen, their gathering of that
knowledge, it bears witness to what?
That Rasulullah ﷺ is not crazy, he is
not possessed.
That you look at that, you don't take
God's word for it.
Of course, God's going to say that His
Prophet is not mad.
Of course, the Prophet is going to say
that the God says that I'm not mad.
What Allah is affirming Himself with or His
claim with is outside of the source.
It is not a self-reference, so to
speak.
He's asking for that reference to be cross
-checked by something external to it.
You want to check the validity, the truth
value of the statement that is being made?
Of course, the one making the statement is
going to say that what I'm saying is
true.
And they should say that, they have all
the right to say that.
That's why they're making the statement to begin
with.
But then when they're calling for evidence outside
of themselves, and this is where the qalam
comes in, what they write, there is a
very explicit otherness.
Who writes?
They write.
Not what I write.
Not what we've written.
Not by this revelation.
Those oaths are going to be there as
well.
But here in this particular context, it's what
they write with the qalam, what they write
with the ban.
Again, going back, we spoke about it with
respect to Surah Al-Alaq, the very first
revelation, Iqra.
The qalam was mentioned there as well.
And we spoke at that point that there's
two types of knowledge that are being alluded
to, which are made more explicit in other
parts of the Quran, particularly the fourth passage,
fourth ruku of Surah Al-Baqarah.
One that is revealed knowledge and one which
is understood to be acquired knowledge.
And over there, we said that the way
it's represented is that qalam, that Allah teaches
with the qalam and how the qalam allows
for that acquired knowledge to be documented, to
be passed on, generation to generation, teacher to
teacher, person to person, from one time to
another, right?
So there is definitely that sort of knowledge
that human beings painstakingly, as a process, learn,
acquire, pass on.
And the qalam is instrumental in all of
that, of course, as is the human capacity
for knowledge.
But then there's that other side of knowledge
that we said was knowledge that is just
given to the human being that is inspired
upon human beings intuitively.
And the best and highest form of that
intuition, of course, is revelation.
But it is important to note at this
point that these two types of knowledge are
not mutually exclusive.
Rather, they are in very important ways related.
And how do we know that?
We know that because even inspired knowledge in
its highest form, which is revelation itself, finds
explanation and finds itself communicated through the qalam,
through being written down, passed on.
It is verified through human process of education,
which is external to it, as we started
out with.
So even revelation, as given as it is,
that people acquire and did not know of
it before having experienced that inspiration, intuition, revelation,
that too is then subjected to processes of
affirmation validation from outside of itself, which is,
again, that painstaking process of acquiring evidence and
knowledge, right?
The second acquired knowledge that we said, which
is step-by-step, which is acquired, which
is painstakingly what we understand now in its
most refined form as the scientific method.
That too is not simple step-by-step
labor entirely of a human dimension or entirely
of consisting of human effort.
There is within that very refined, very modern,
a very rigorous scientific process and an initial
experience of intuition, given that which the human
being did not know.
So there is a very definite element of
intuition involved within the scientific process, without which
it was impossible for human beings to have
discovered what they discovered, for human beings to
have developed what we've developed.
It was, we had to choose from infinite
possibilities, a very small amount of possibilities which
were actually true and to actually experiment on
them and then figure out that it is
true.
To have chosen from infinity, all of that
takes place unconsciously, intuitively.
So there is a given element in that
as well.
There is an inspired element in that as
well.
Both types of knowledge are deeply related.
That is what Allah swears by.
The Qalam and all that is gathered, all
that is written, that they written, they write,
they have written, they do write with it.
And important to also use, look at the
tense that is being used here, not that
which they've already written, but what they are,
what they write.
So they're writing and then they will write
in the future.
All of that knowledge, wherever it's coming from,
whatever its source, if you really look at
it holistically, I know that term is abused
quite a bit, but nevertheless, I can't think
of a better one right now.
If you look at it in a more
comprehensive way, what conclusion will you be bound
to draw?
مَا أَنْتَ بِنِعْمَةِ رَبِّكَ بِمَجْنُونَ You, by the
grace of your Rabb, are not mad, not
possessed.
Again, the emotional state that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam is in, the degree of empathy that
is being exhibited within the ayah, within the
ayat, that Allah is reassuring him, literally taking,
holding him and saying, don't worry about it.
That is not true.
What they're saying is not true.
Don't let this bother you.
Because it is bothering Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He is hurt by it.
So Allah is saying, no, you're not mad.
You're not crazy.
You are not crazy by the favor of
your Rabb.
Rather, whatever it is that you're experiencing, it
can be explained, it can be understood once
that Rububiyyah of Allah is understood.
How Allah is the Rabb, how that process
of Him evolving the universe, humanity in particular,
towards the direction that it has to go
to, how utterly necessary your prophethood is for
that.
Hindsight is 20-20.
In retrospect, we can see that for human
society to have survived, that it was on
the brink of destruction and a multitude of
historians have borne witness to it, that the
state of affairs as they were with the
Roman Empire and the Persian Empire, human beings
had practically, they were on the verge of
committing suicide.
And it was the stability of the civilization
of Islam that allowed for that survival to
take place.
And where did that civilization and that stability
come from?
It came from the prophetic experience.
It came from the revelatory experience.
This experience, which in that point is being
referred to as madness by some people in
Mecca, that allowed for that survival.
So it was completely in sync with the
order of things, with how Allah wanted to
protect humanity for its higher purposes, for its
better future.
مَا أَنْتَ بِنِعْمَةِ رَبِّكَ بِمَجْنُونَ You are not
by the favor of your Rabb, crazy.
And it wasn't just the knowledge at that
time, Khadijah رضي الله تعالى عنها and Warqa
ibn Nawfil using the knowledge of that time
reassured Rasulullah ﷺ that this is not madness.
It does not make sense.
Even the knowledge that we have at this
time, if we were to honestly take a
look at it and we are able to
look through the biases, the presuppositions, the unwarranted
assumptions, unexamined assumptions, then we would see that
this accusation still does not make sense to
question the truthfulness of Rasulullah ﷺ's claim.
So there are shallow people today claiming to
be experts who would accuse in centuries later
based off of a very superficial reading of
the original sources that whatever this was, whatever
this experience was, it was psychosis.
It was epilepsy, schizophrenia, whatever the case may
be.
Whereas if you were to look within what
criteria need to be fulfilled to qualify something
as a psychotic experience or an epileptic phenomenon.
For one thing, not being there, not having
an opportunity to interact with the person themselves
automatically disqualifies you from making any such diagnosis.
That's one thing.
The other thing that is necessary is for
you to believe that this methodology of knowledge
is the only method.
It is absolutely correct.
It is universal, applicable for all time periods.
It gives you exact information and it arms
you with the ability to diagnose people centuries
ago and that other sources of knowledge, other
avenues of knowledge are completely invalid.
And if these particular claims, these particular epistemological
or these ideas about what constitutes true knowledge,
believing in them requires stronger faith because of
what you have available to you in order
to back it up than having faith in
religious percepts.
So there is an entire dogma that you
have to proclaim blind faith in to say
that a materialistic belief understanding of science is
universally applicable.
This particular statement itself cannot be scientifically demonstrated.
Simply put, the belief in itself requires stronger
faith, a stronger commitment than believing in prophets
or God or revelation.
And it requires for you to denounce, to
deny any and other forms, any and all
other forms of knowledge, including that intuitive experience,
which is necessary for scientific process to proceed.
So it first has to chop off its
own roots before it can be believed.
So I hope it was, I didn't complicate
it in my explanation, try to simplify it
as much as I possibly could.
But the idea being that this corpus of
knowledge testifies to how Rasulullah ﷺ was not
mad.
And definitely for you, there is an uninterrupted
reward.
Simply the outcome of Rasulullah ﷺ's effort spanning
23 years, of course for Rasulullah at the
time of revelation, that is something that is
being shown to him or prophesized for him,
that that is going to come in the
future.
And so that is a reassurance, that is
a hope that he's being given, that the
reward that you're going to get is going
to allow for you to see how this
could not have been madness.
Mad people, possessed people do not change the
course of history in a span of 23
years, impacting not only the way, as the
Sahaba themselves said, not only in the way
that how they use the bathroom, but also
to the economic political affairs through which not
just they, but after them people govern their
countries in centuries to come.
Mad people don't get to do that.
The reward that Rasulullah ﷺ eventually got in
terms of the love that humanity in his
time and after him conferred to him.
The reward that of course Rasulullah ﷺ is
going to get in the hereafter itself.
وَإِنَّ لَكَ لَأَجْرًا غَيْرًا مَمْنُونَ And that for
you is an uninterrupted reward.
وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَى خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٍ And you are of
a great moral character.
The morality of Rasulullah ﷺ, the character of
Rasulullah ﷺ, that speaks, and that is if
you would remember Khadijah ﷺ has reasoning before
him as well for whatever knowledge, whatever the
pen and what they write with it had
gathered for them at that point.
It said that people of this great moral
character, the likes of Rasulullah ﷺ, of course
nobody came close, but those who are good
and moral and have this incredible character, they
don't experience this majnoon stuff.
They don't go crazy.
They don't get possessed.
That was the consensus.
That their knowledge had that Rasulullah ﷺ heard
from Khadijah ﷺ as well.
And to this day, whatever psychosis or epilepsy
or whatever phenomena that you accuse Rasulullah ﷺ
of based off of shallow readings, inconsistent readings,
based off of very absurd beliefs, internally inconsistent
that cut themselves off.
If you do make those claims, even within
those claims, even within those claims, the character
and the morality of Rasulullah ﷺ cannot be
explained.
The goodness, the virtue that he manifested, it
cannot be explained.
Because by necessity, if any such experience is
too much for a person to handle and
they lose their bearings, quite literally, then the
first thing to be encountered is how their
character, how their personality, how their attitude with
other people is antisocial, to say the least.
They become aggressive.
They become unrelatable.
It's difficult to contain them.
And even if they're not doing anything negative
or any harm that they're ascribing to other
people or that is extending from them towards
other people, they are simply incapable of holding
real genuine relationships.
Rasulullah ﷺ, his helping formulate relationships was as
a result of this Qur'anic experience, this
revelation and Islam became multiplied.
He had that before.
But the way he tied bonds of kinship
after Qur'an, after experiencing Tawheed and living
Tawheed, the people of Medina were on the
brink of war, destruction.
He brought them together.
فَأَلَّفَ بَيْنَ قُلُوبِهِمْ He brought them together.
The people in Arabia, Arabia was an area
of bandits.
There was peace in Arabia.
There was a bond.
There was a bonding.
There was a joining of bonds of kinship.
And that extended to a good part of
the world in the decades to come.
That's how closely he was able to bond
that we, at this point, sitting, talking about
Rasulullah ﷺ centuries later, I tied to him
and with each other on the basis of
his character, on the basis of his living
that Tawheed.
وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَى خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٌ فَسَتُبْصِرُوا وَيُبْصِرُوا So soon
you will see and they will see.
At the time of revelation, of course, this
is not obvious.
This hasn't happened.
So Allah says, okay, they're making a claim.
We're making a claim for you about your
truthfulness.
The results, the effects are going to be
the judge.
Let them be the judge.
بِأَجْيِكُمُ الْمَفْتُونِ Which of you is suffering from
madness?
Which of you is bereft of all reason?
We'll soon find out.
We will soon find out.
Time will tell.
And time did tell.
Rasulullah ﷺ apparently bringing this extraordinary experience, which
they classified as an abnormal experience.
But the sort of madness they were suffering
from, it was more subtle.
It was far more, you know, it was
socially acceptable for them.
But in the long run, it proved to
their own detriment, to the detriment of their
society, to the detriment of the people.
People suffered on account of that.
And they bore witness to it themselves.
Those who were accusing Rasulullah ﷺ thus were
the ones begging him for his mercy at
the time of Hudaybiyyah.
And acknowledging that they wrought grief and pain
upon them own selves by the judgments that
they made before, that they got it wrong.
بِأَيِّكُمُ الْمَفْتُونِ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ هُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِمَنْ ضَلَّ
عَن سَبِيلِهِ وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِالْمُؤْتَدِينَ And for sure,
only your Rabb has the best knowledge of
those who have lost their way.
And He knows best about those who are
rightly guided.
Even in the light of all of this
and what is to come, you still need
to extend towards them this positive regard, this
understanding that there is time for them.
There is to label them and judge them
immediately, prematurely as being absolutely misled because they're
saying all of these things about Rasulullah ﷺ.
That is not on either.
Having received revelation, having this knowledge does not
give you the right to pronounce absolute definitive
judgments.
That right is reserved with Allah Himself.
He alone knows who is rightly guided and
who is not.
وَآخِرُ دَعْوَانَ أَنِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ