Zakariyya Harnekar – Understanding the Quran
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Okay. I think you guys are through stage
again. I
said,
I'm a little bit, intimidated to be standing
there because my teacher was standing here last
night,
And,
other people who were speaking were,
much more appropriately positioned when they were here.
But, alhamdulillah, I was given a task, and
and I was too kind to inform that
we would like to have.
I would like to start off by just
reciting a short passage of the Quran
and doing a little bit of an experiment.
Alright. So let's see.
I want you to listen it into him.
Allah
says,
So from the outside, I want ourselves to
ask for each and every one of us
to ask ourselves a question.
How much
did that recitation of Quran
impact me?
What will that recitation of Quran
force me to do?
How did it impact?
Okay. Tell me, how did it impact?
The reality is that for most of us,
the impact is minimal.
We might have learned something that sounded nice,
okay, there was a little bit of flow
in it. Alhamdulillah, we say wow because we
know that it's Quran. But how much did
it really impact my life?
How much did it change the course of
my life?
He was on his way to kill the
man who who said these words.
His mind was sick. He was going to
kill that man, and on his way he
happened to be,
diverted a bit to his to to his
sister, and he heard these verses.
And on hearing these verses of the Quran
being recited or on reading them himself,
he then decided to change his course of
action.
Instead of wanting to kill the person who
was reciting these verses, he decided no, I
want to meet this person and accept his
religion.
And that person became known as I'm Omar
ibn Al Khattab
That Rasool was also said that if there
were to be a prophet after me, then
Omar would have been that man.
But prophethood is is complete.
He was the person who became the 2nd
greatest man after the anbiya.
Merely because of hearing these verses of the
Quran.
And the reality for most of us is
that the Quran will not have an impact
for us.
It will not have that impact, it will
not be that meaningful to us because we
just don't know what is being said.
I give you another lesson.
In the Raja of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
he was he was preaching his message
in Makkah
to the Quraysh, to the people that were
present there, and he was creating upheaval in
society.
He was changing the concrete way of life.
Everyone and the leaders obviously didn't like
that. So it so happened that one of
the the the chiefs,
Utba ibn Abi, Utba ibn Rabiha, he went
into the Masjid Al Haram and he saw
Rasulullah sitting in one side of the mosque,
and and he was on one side of
the mosque. And he asked his people, oh,
my people, would you not have me go
and speak to Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam?
He didn't obviously say that, but would you
have me go and speak to him and
and give him some offerings that if you
were to to accept these things, we might
be free of of the problem that he's
posing us?
And so he goes to Muhammad
and he offers him, oh Muhammad,
if the the the objective of what you
are saying is that you want to attain
worldly gains, then we will make you a
wealthiest man.
If
if it is that
you want women by what you are saying,
we will marry to the best of us.
If you want leadership and power, we will
make you our leader and the leader of
all of the Arabs.
We will give you all of them.
And he got he went on offering Rasulullah
SAWS things. And Rasulullah SAWS responded to him
and he said, oh, Akbar, have you now
completed? And when he said, yes, I'm finished.
Then he said, will you now listen to
me?
I want to say something in response, will
you not listen to me?
And he sallallahu alaihi wa sallam went on,
and he didn't answer for himself, but he
recited some verses of the Quran.
And those verses are in Surah Fusilah.
Allah
says,
Allah he he recites some verses of Surah
Fusilah wherein Allah
mentions that I'm going to return to this
point a bit later. Where Allah
says that this is Quran.
That this is a an Arabic Quran. But
we will get to that in a moment.
Goes on and he recites some verses of
Surah Fusili
until he he gets to a certain point.
And some of the narrations, the the incident
is mentioning in the Arabic Quran and there's
an English copy of that translation that you
can read. It will be beneficial for you.
And he cites, Ibn Ishak as mentioning or
or the other narration actually, Al Barabbi is
narrating that when Rasulullah salami recited these verses
of Quran
to,
he
he
his his mannerism started changing. He placed his
hand on the mouth of Rasulullah and he
told him, stop reciting. Stop reciting.
Don't make us hear this. And he went
back to his people and he said to
them something.
This was the the opponent of Islam, and
he died in opposition to Islam.
But he went back to his people and
he told them,
Indeed for the words that he is mentioning,
there will come a time of prominence.
If you are to to to, abuse him
today and you are to sue him today,
then he will suffice himself with people other
than you.
And if that happens,
or if if if it happens
by the hands of the Arabs, that the
Arabs are the ones to assist him in
in in in giving over this message of
the Quran,
then his dominion will be your dominion. His
kingdom will be your kingdom.
And you people will be the the most,
happy people with whom you you would have
paid from you the most.
This is the impact
that some verses of Quran had on the
person who was most opposed to Islam. He
stood to to lose his power from his
because of Islam. He stood to lose his
his rank in society because of this Quran.
But this is what he had to say
about it. And many of the the opponents
of the Quran, when he when he heard
the Quran, he he he was sent to
go and hear about this Quran and come
back and say bad things about the Quran.
That's what he was tasked with.
He came back to his people and he
couldn't say anything bad, he said,
This this Quran that Muhammad's coming with its
sweet words, there's a cap of excellence on
it.
What Allah speaks about in in the Quran,
he says,
He he he came he heard the Quran.
He heard the excellence of the Quran.
And he knew it to be excellent. But
because of his the worldly losses, he decided
to turn away from that and he decided
to make up other things, other excuses and
say, no. This is only magic. This is
the the words of of human beings that
said it.
But that was the impact that the Quran
had
on people who never ever accepted Islam.
What about those people who say that this
Quran is a miracle?
What impact should that Quran have on us?
And how will it have an impact on
us?
We'll get to that in a moment. The
second thing that I must mention, as was
mentioned
by my teacher last night,
as well as Sheikh Hiryal.
That this Quran
is our miracle.
This Quran
is our miracle.
We might think
that Ayesha Alaihi Salam you could cure the
born blind.
SubhanAllah, that's cool.
Musa Alaihi Salam could throw down his stick
and spit the seed.
That's the that's the reality of the thought
sometimes. I thought it to myself when I
was little kid, and I didn't know that.
Those guys are really doing miracles.
This is our miracle.
You see,
Sheikh Riyadh alluded to this point when he
spoke about the that the prophet comes with.
A miracle that the prophet produces to attest
to the fact that he is in fact
a prophet of all.
But the reality with Rasulullah
is that
he had a message,
and the message itself was the miracle.
The message itself was the miracle. Such that
as long as that message continues to be
relayed,
the miracle remains.
The miracle
remains. And that's why Allah
says many places in the Quran that this
Quran
is.
Quran
It's an Arabic Quran.
It's an Arabic Quran.
And what by what Allah Subhanahu wa'anahu wa'anahu
wa'anahu wa'anahu
wa'an,
it means that that is the Sifa of
the Quran.
It is its quote.
It cannot be anything else.
It's not English.
It's not Arabic. It's not Afrikaans.
So do I say another thing?
Yeah.
It is Arabic.
It's not anything other than Arabic.
And that's a very very important
point
to note.
Translations of the Quran, they have, a role
to play, and they give access to people
who don't yet have access to the Arabic
language. But should that be the end of
the world?
You see, from learning the English or reading
a translation of the Quran,
you can somewhat get some of the meanings
of the Quran.
Some of the meanings of the Quran that
were relayed to you, that were translated
by a person. So that translation is firstly
going to have that person's bias.
Secondly, it's not gonna convey all the contents
of the Quran because the Quran is is
Arabic and we know that in translation many
things are lost.
If you say something in Afrikaans and you
say the same joke in English, you think
that okay. Jobber people, do you guys know
Afrikaans? I'm from Cape Town, so we speak
African.
I don't know what you guys if you
can. Only English.
Yeah. You speak all the other things. Anyways,
the point of the thing is,
when you translate things many meanings on us,
and this year is the Quran, the kalam
of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
How can it be that another person
can put all of the meanings that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala wanted to convey to you
in his words in a manner that has
the same impact that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
wanted in his speech there. Is it possible?
It's impossible. And that leads us to the
point
You cannot convey the maker of the Quran
in another in another language.
And Allah specifically
chose this language of Arabic
because of the the richness and the depth
of the language.
And the the way through the people was
was I told him
took my hotel and he said it in
5 minutes or so.
But he mentioned this and and and he
said that, you know, there is an aspect
of the miraculous nature of the Quran and
the depth of the language.
And really,
you cannot appreciate that until you appreciate the
language of the Quran, and that's the Arabic
language.
For example, I give you the word,
What does
what
does
what
does
it mean?
That, that verse we've written before. What does
it mean? Ali tells me success.
And in most translations you will find success,
to be successful.
But did you know that that word Falah
comes from
the word,
which
means a farmer?
And so, just knowing that, it adds so
much to the depth of the word.
The fact that now,
success is somehow whatever linked to a phone.
And Allah speaks about when
he speaks about the
Those whose scales are heavy in the Afra,
those are the
Those are the successful ones, but it has
something to do with the farmer. So now
an entire image is created in my mind
of someone who sows his seeds.
Someone who sows his seeds.
And on the day of harvest, you harvest
the
But did the English word success convey all
of that means to
you? Did the translation give you that? It
doesn't give you that. You will not understand
that lesson
that the scale will only be heavy if
you planted the seeds
on the day of planting.
And now is the time for harvest and
then you will be successful. All of that
is lost.
Let me think of another example.
Allah
says,
by time.
And if you look in any translation of
the Quran, is that what it says? By
time. But did you know the word comes
from the word
And the verb is connected with is 'asr'
to press.
'Asr' means juice, 'asr' means to press and
'asr' means time.
I was still connected.
Why did Allah use the word Asriday and
ad dahriday?
Why did Allah not use another word for
for timely?
But Allah specifically used the word Asr.
And
and just those that that imagery that's connected
to the the root of that word, it
teaches us so many things. What time were
the days Asr?
The time before Maghrib. Right? And when does,
when does the Islamic day stop?
Maghrib, isn't
it? So Asr is the The last. The
last part of the day. And Asr means
what?
Juice.
How do you get the juice?
By squeezing the last bits of juice out
of the of the fruit. So there you
get squeezing, you get the juice and you
get time, the last bit of time.
So what image do you have of time
now? Little drips of time that's coming up
at the end of the day, the lost
bits of heat that you have. So Allah
says, by
that time that's running now,
that lost drips of time.
Indeed man is in a state of loss.
And then he goes on to to give
the the solutions to the to get yourself
out of that state.
But would you have understood all of that
by just the word time?
And I'm going to translate the word exactly
as I'm going to translate the word.
Both of them is gonna be time. You
don't understand those meanings of it.
There are some words like
and,
or
Well, those who are used to the one
word,
is in English, where the translator is? To
guide.
And then you have another word or rashad
or irshad, which also means to guide. And
if you look in any translation of the
Quran, they will give both meanings.
Hidaya means to guide, and ishad means to
guide.
But some places in the Quran, Allah uses
the word hijayyah, other places Allah uses the
word Ishayyah.
Why? What's the difference? Allah is not haqqani,
is He being wasteful, and He's showing you
that He has a large vocabulary?
Definitely no. Definitely
not. It's precise.
That's why Allah uses his his words. This
Quran, it is a it's a it's a
precise Quran.
The Arabic language is very precise. No two
words are the same. So the connotations of
the word hidayah
means to guide, but it doesn't mean to
just show one the way, it means to
take someone along the path. That's why we
recite in a Surah Fatih, high Muslims who
recite in Surah Fatih,
the most
And in other places he uses the word,
irshad. And irshad means to guide, but it
means to show someone the word.
Not to do it for him.
Not to pull him along the way, but
just to show him to him.
So can it really come across in in
translation?
I doubt it.
And this and that's just the tip of
the iceberg. There's so much more. When Ata
spoke about the concentric circles in the Quran,
panoramic speech that,
Each one of them, I'll speak about the
Indian body.
Each of them
is in its own mood.
Moves in its own
moves in its own mood.
Okay.
So
what you see there? Oh, speaking about those
orbiting.
And spend time.
That's an entire,
verse.
In fact, if you look in the Surah
of the Quran, the beginning is related, the
end of the Surah, the middle piece is
related.
But there is another aspect of the miraculous
nature of the Quran. You cannot get it
in another language. Because if you translate this
into English, you're gonna lose that whole palindrome
thing.
Because
is not gonna be a palindrome in English.
It's gonna be
It's gonna be
and glorify
or establish and proclaim the greatness of your
lord. Is that a palindrome?
Even if I translate a 1000000 times, I
don't think I'll get it into a palindrome.
So there is something
in the Quran that is held in the
Arabic.
And you cannot get it unless
you study the Arabic of the Quran.
Right? There's something in it that you cannot
get unless you study the Arabic of the
Quran.
If you merely study translation of the Quran
if you merely study translation of the Quran,
when hearing the Quran, you will not appreciate
the excellence of his language.
In fact, I know that personally because I
learned and my learning of the Arabic language
was,
very unnatural.
But it was the best possible way at
the time. And I think it's still a
very,
good way of learning.
But I didn't appreciate these things until much
later
when I started reading the Quran and I
actually knew a bit more of the language.
And now I'm in my 5th year of
study, but it's like my maybe my 7th
year of studying Arabic or dealing with Arabic
language. And now these things open up, and
you appreciate the language
more than just what is being what is
being said. But you must remember that the
Quran itself was the miracle. So the language
of the Quran was a miracle, and you
can't you can't translate it.
So we're left with
a conclusion to profane.
You have to learn the Arabic language.
Every single person
has to learn
the Arabic language. In fact, before I get
to that,
committee of the verse,
He says
He says He he says on the verse
where Rasulullah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is complaining to Allah.
And the messenger said, Yeah, Rabbi. Oh my
Lord.
Indeed my people have have ran away from
this Quran, they have fled from.
This is that this doesn't only refer to
these disbelievers who run away from the Quran.
Who do not accept it or simply speak
to it.
Over the Quran and looking into the beginnings
of the Quran.
And
another form of of running away from the
Quran is leading tending the to the Quran
for cleansing yourself of all the defects and
the ailments of the heart.
But if we look at ourselves,
how many of those forms of migration from
the Quran apply to us?
How can we really ponder upon the Quran
if we don't even understand what is being
said?
So is that complaint by Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam applying to me?
That I am the person that Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam is going to be complaining about?
That he's saying, oh Allah, my people have
left this Quran and have ran away from
it?
I need to ensure that I'm not from
them. I need to ensure that I'm not
from them.
So I need to give myself and equip
myself with the tools to be able to
understand the Quran. To ponder on his means.
To reflect on it, etcetera.
And that comes with learning that every time.
How much time do I have?
Yeah. Can I just take 3 minutes?
2 minutes. So I don't wanna leave with
the whole any, any, theoretical thing. We need
to do something. How do we do?
How do we do? Now not everyone has
the opportunity to go to Arab country and
stay there. In fact, even if you go
stay in Arab country, they don't
speak proper Arabic, so you're not gonna learn
Arabic because of Quran.
We need to learn Arabic.
I come from Cape Town and so I
know the scenario and the environment.
And, in fact, I'm involved in teaching Arabic.
So
some of our teachers,
another one of my teachers,
they have devised a system whereby they have
taken out the essentials of learning the Arabic
language,
put it into a couple of very thin
textbooks,
and have created a system whereby you can
learn Arabic very quickly. At least the essentials
of that. The the the the fundamentals of
that that can allow you
to at least understand
the most superficial meanings of the Quran. But
it provides you with groundwork that you can
build on to to add depth to your
understanding of the Quran.
So Darul Maji has a syllabus.
And that syllabus is available to anyone.
Whoever wants to do it, I'm
I'm a teacher there. I'll tell you all
the secrets if you want.
It's not the secret. We want everyone to
know,
in fact.
And there are lots of there are lots
of people here in your own.
All that it takes from you is to
have firstly,
as I will get to in a bit.
I'll take 1 10 seconds maybe, inshallah, when
I get to that. But
if thus and then to go to those
people who have the understanding of Arabic,
go to them, and sometimes that's not always
the easiest thing to do, but go to
them and ask them, look, teach me Arabic.
Teach me Arabic. And you know what? These
are the things I want to learn in
Arabic, and then you give them a small
textbook which comprise of like 20 pages,
And it tells me, yeah, just teach me
this stuff. If you want it okay. I
have to get it from that name.
If you want it, you can go on
the website of the part time class that
I teach. It's all there. Www.dnsi.c0.zeda.
It's like four letters.
So it's it's 4 letters. You can't forget
it. Dnsi.co.za.
And we upload all our classes and stuff
over there. If you can't make it to
a class and you can't get anyone to
teach you, just listen to that stuff. Well,
actually, there's probably better people to listen to
on the Internet,
but find someone to listen to from who
you can who you can learn.
It's it's not hard. It's not easy. In
fact, just to show how easy it is,
last year or 2 years ago,
I thought
that that those textbooks of that name to
a 8 year old and a 12 year
old and adolescents.
Now it's not usually done like that. It's
all pretty bright.
Kids.
But,
but if, in the context of a 8
year old and a 12 year old can
do it in 8 lessons,
then I'm sure we can do it in
a 100 lessons.
No. I'm not saying but those are very,
very intelligent
The
reality is that it's not odd. In fact,
Allah says in the Quran
Allah says in the Quran,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, indeed we have
made the Quran easy
to take a reminder from.
And the only way you're gonna take a
reminder from the Quran is if you understand
the Quran. So thus, Allah must have made
all the means to taking that reminder from
the Quran also easy. So to learn the
Arabic is also easy and I'm telling you
that it is easy.
That all the row of students there from
Cape Town
and
almost every Tom, Dick, and Harry in Cape
Town,
they are learning Arabic.
Because,
alhamdulillah, it's become very accessible. And hopefully it
will become that accessible here as well. But
it's easy. And you can ask all of
them, it's easy.
Allah said it's easy, so it's easy.
So make your intention that I want to
learn the Arabic language so that I can
take a reminder from the Quran and it
will be easy.
But Allah
into the first beautiful.
Just remember that. Literally, don't learn Arabic so
that you can go speak to Arabs.
They don't even speak proper Arabic.
Don't learn Arabic so that you can read
newspaper articles or anything like that.
Learn Arabic also that you can watch Arabic
soap operas or something like that. Learn Arabic
because you want to take a reminder from
the Quran. Allah promised you then that he
made it easy.
There was a 70 year old man in
my class. In fact, there's a 70 year
old man in my in, 2 years below
me at the now.
He was one of my he was in
the 1st bachelor's student at Attaul.
He's nearly 70 years old.
So let us be ashamed
if we are not 70 years old and
we are not learning.
But he says, Allah's
we have made the Quran easy to take
a reminder from.
Fahalmi
muttaqir.
Fahalmi muttaqir.
Is there anyone that will take the effort
to take a reminder from that Quran?
Is there anyone that will do that?
Fahalmi muttaqir.
And I leave you with a question for
yourself.
Will you be the one to say, oh
Allah,
I am the one that will put in
that effort to take a reminder from Musquran.
May Allah make all of us be those
that are always ready to gain a that
will take us to the remembrance of Allah
And then I just have a small notice
here.
Can he mention that Quran Arabic classes are
offered at and islami in Johannesburg?
The main branches in Cape Town. I actually
taught for them last year as
well. They also teach you the online service.
Crosby,
Saturday mornings.
So today, it's available to you guys over
here as well.
It's easy.
I promise you it's easy.