Beauties Of Islam – EP34

Bismillah Al Hamdulillah you're watching the beauties of Islam, and I'm used to Festus. And today we've got a special program where you're talking about the beauties of Islam. In the past, we've discussed the Koran, the teachings of Muhammad and the preservation of the teachings of the scholars of Islam. Now, what I'd like to do is talk about some of the history of the universities and the great centers of learning that came about and how they were also preserved. You might be surprised to learn that one of the oldest universities, for Islam in the world is in a place called Cairo, Egypt. It was founded more than 1000 years ago, during the fatimid time, and in that very University

was the first ever to have a woman as the rector. She was the Dean of the whole entire university, a woman, teacher, scholar of Islam, amazing. There's a lot of amazing and beautiful things in Islam.

This university is even open today. And if anybody would like to go to that university, they can put their children in there from from first grade, primary school and take them all the way through high school. And they will memorize the entire code on and learn so many other IDs and have the Arabic language then they can continue their studies and go on to learn more, and learn about the Quran. How does it come? And how are the verses in context? And how do we understand these things, along with the Hadith and teachings of Muhammad, something called fick is also explained and taught there in that school in that university. And there is something like maybe in English schools of

jurisprudence. When I visited all Azar, I was shown a place where they used to have all four schools represented outside, it was really cool, they would sit outside and they had their places where they would sit and their teachers would teach them. And they were all within just a hand reach of each other. If they would like to go over and share any information back and forth. It was very easy for them to do so. Of course, now with air conditioning, you wouldn't want to sit outside and do that anymore. But back then you see that was really something.

This teaching is continued on along with the teaching of what's called the Syrah or the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, talking about his life from the time he was born, the time that revelation came to him,

his contact with non Muslims and their relationships, his migration to Medina, then the development of the full Islam as it comes, the companions and their stories, and then up to his death, peace and blessings be upon him.

This is all called Syrah or the biography of the Prophet peace be upon him. There are other things like for instance, how to pronounce the words from the Quran called Tajweed. Carefully being able to say it exactly as Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said it. And as he approved of this of the pronunciations of his various companions, there are some different pronunciations that he permitted on certain words. And even this is known and taught at this great university called aulas harm.

I had the good fortune to also visit another university while I was visiting in Maghreb, or Morocco. And when I was there, they took me to a place called fast. And when I saw the way that they preserve this whole community, the whole setting there was as though it was on a movie set. When I went into the walls and saw how they had everything there, they even still had camels and donkeys and people selling in the streets, the little awnings that come out, the people even dressed in the traditional dress. It was an amazing sight. And I was very taken with that, then I got to go to the university that they have there. And this university is even older than our laws are. And the books the library

that they have, they're so fantastic to realize that they have been memorizing and teaching and teaching and memorizing and passing this on for so many generations. It was so amazing and beautiful. And all I could think about was I wish I had more time I would love to enroll and go to this university, it would just be great. I did have a chance to visit with the scholars and teachers there. I found them to be very knowledgeable, impressive, humble and lovely in their way of delivering and talking. You know,

there are other places that you can find that they've been teaching Islam consistently and steadily in Mauritania in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, of course, Medina and Mecca in Kuwait, and amazing place to is to consider the teachings that they have going on now even now in in Europe.

In Turkey, because you see turkeys been a part of the Islamic empire for centuries upon centuries upon centuries, maybe since the 1400s. And they've had these centers for learning. And again, I emphasize that the teaching and the preservation has always been exactly the same, that it's first of all, mouth to ear, so that you know what you're saying from memory. The Quran is memorized, in the Arabic language, that classical Arabic language and then the teachings of Mohammed called Hadith are also memorize the same way. Now, you might be surprised to find that some of the characters are written differently when you write it down. But they're pronounced exactly the same. This is true.

If you compare, for instance, you go to Margaret, Morocco, and compare it to what you find in Saudi Arabia, or even in Egypt. Because, for instance, the letter called far has one dot over the top of it, but in my grip in the Quran, they use the one.on top to be the letter off.

And when they want far, they put the dot below it, you might say, Aha, there's a discrepancy, or I heard that maybe somebody said there could be different neurons, right? That's why we want to bring this subject up. Did you know that there's something about this, that a lot of Muslims don't even know, and we're going to talk to you about it, as soon as we come back from the break. So don't go away, you're gonna want to hear about the different writings of the

be right back after this shot, we're back and you're watching the beauties of Islam. And we've been talking about preservation of the information of Islam, we've been talking about the universities, the institute's schools of learning, and then desperate for one to break, I decided to give you a little taste of something to keep your curiosity piqued. And that was a subject about the different writings in the Koran, and how could it be that there are different krons? Well, in fact, you can go to the museums where the Koran is still preserved today.

And what I'm talking about here, though, it's preserved two ways. When I was visiting in Istanbul in the Topkapi Museum,

which is

really now set up as a museum, but it used to be a part of the, the high lifts compound, it was very beautiful setup that he had. And now they have such things on display as the swords that were used by the companions and different clothing and articles and headgear, and so on to preserve them. One of the things they have is the text of the on, written out by hand, of course, so long before printing presses. And you look at it and you say, wait a minute, that's not Arabic. I know Arabic, it doesn't look like Arabic. What is this? Well, they have the same thing Exactly. If you go to the museum, which is located in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, this is the home of the great moms, such as a man

Buhari, a Muslim, mm, tirmidhi and many more. Now, in that place, you will find the unwritten there unexist exhibition.

But you're gonna say the same thing, this doesn't look like Arabic. And if you go to England, the museum there, you're gonna see again, this doesn't look like Arabic. The reason is, because at the time of the revelation to the Koran, none of the Arabs used any cash Gill marks. And it was assumed that if you could read and write in Arabic, you knew how the structure of the sentences and words were, that you would be able to pronounce it, you see, there are no vowels. In Arabic. This is also true of the Hebrew language of the Bible. There are no vowels. These were added much later the what's called vowel markings. And then you substitute different consonants to represent vowels kind

of like an English word try try the vowel is the consonant why. And so in the same way, in Arabic, you would find the yas sound used pronounced the sound of a like the word bait has that yarn used to be represent the the vowel but for those who are not familiar with the structure of language, they wouldn't be able to do that they might pronounce it wrong. And this is not acceptable for Quran. It might be for her deep and teachings of you know, just Arabic itself and talking about stories but we're going to talk about the Quran it has to be exact. So how can we do that how we preserve it, what they did, they use marks, they put these dots so that if you saw a round circle, you could

quickly tell the difference without knowing the size of the circle.

how it compares to another circle with a bigger tail on it and so on. Then we just put one dot above which was the sound of like in fan, or two dots for the sound of cough. We like in

qu we use in English don't have it Arabic in English. But each one of these like a dot below the line would be a bar like in bait. A dot above would be noon, the sound of n. And then do.da. All of this was added it was not in the Quran in the time of the companions because they didn't have it in the language yet. It wasn't there it came in the next generation.

So in the seventh century is about the time that the Muslims began to add what's called the test kill the harkat to these letters. Now, it was after that, that the Jewish Maseratis began to add their test queue to their text, and that's why it's called the Masoretic text. Prior to that time, they also had none of these markings.

Another thing that they did was to put something over and below the letters So you knew how to pronounce it with the sound of an E and oo. Otherwise, again, I'll repeat to you there are no vowels in the Arabic language. So this is how they made it for the non Arabs made easy for them to begin to correctly pronounce, and teach and memorize the Quran. That's why you find these differences. However, when you hear the Quran recited, you'll agree as many millions have over the centuries, there really is no difference whether I hear it recited, in Azar University in Cairo, or if I hear it in first, in Morocco, or if I hear it recited in Istanbul, in Turkey, or if it's recited in

Malaysia, or Indonesia, Pakistan, India, or even in a place called Texas where I'm from, you will find it still starts with a bond Bismillah Ar Rahman AR game, and it ends with the scene at the very end of the Quran, minimum janati, oneness. All of this is preserved exactly letter for letter word for word. And it's because of the efforts of these great and wonderful teachers of Islam and their universities and institutions that have been going on century upon century. Today we have these places of learning my dresses, and the masks or massage around the world. And also these Jamia or universities, all of them are there for anyone to go and learn. And by the way, you don't have to be

a Muslim. To learn about Islam. You're most welcome to come explore and enjoy the beauties of Islam. Remember to visit our website beauty service lamb.com. Until next time, peace Salaam Alaikum.