on the tabloids It's wonderful to have you back, those of you who have been continuing with us and insha'Allah today we should finish out the content that we have provided, that we have prepared and so that Allah SWT has provided we just put together. We're talking about the marbles of the Qur'an, 7 keys to unlock 70 meanings and there are many many keys and many many more meanings but we're just giving us a taste here of different ways that we can approach the Qur'an and unearth meanings that are not readily apparent for our own spiritual benefit and reflection We're just going to reiterate this, this is not tabseer but these are giving us the tools for tadabbur Allah SWT calls upon us He says Do they not reflect deeply on the Qur'an or is it that some hearts have locked themselves out and so we want to be able to reflect deeply but we also want to have accurate reflections We want to make sure that our reflections are based in something So that was the purpose for, that was the intent behind this course is to give us those tools that will enable us to have good reflections Reflections that are spiritually beneficial that do not contradict the tabseer tradition Reflections that submit to the tabseer tradition and do not contradict but that are for our own spiritual benefit and growth As gifts from Allah SWT when we're reading his book that we say Isn't that interesting? Isn't that amazing? And then our iman grows accordingly Insha'Allah So we talked about, let's see here We went through the three of these meanings Three of these keys, coherence, grammar, morphology, etymology We spoke about that at length And then yesterday we did what is really the introduction to this course Remove your sandals And we are still in, we still haven't finished the points that I had wanted to discuss in the inward and the outward etiquettes of approaching the Book of Allah that we call the remove your sandals We haven't finished that so we want to finish that up and then go on with the next four keys Which are orthography, elliptical speech, concentric pauses, and transition Those are the next four that we have in store for today And then we'll close out with prophetic dialects of influence What that means is the way that the prophets addressed their Lord You know the etiquette that the prophets had when addressing their Lord And the etiquette that the prophets had and observed when addressing their peoples And we want to close out with that insha'Allah because that will also inform the way that we discourse with one another and the way that we address our Lord as well insha'Allah So going back then to remove your sandals Remove your sandals Allah swt says to Musa So when he came to the fire he was summoned Musa, verily I am I am your Lord so remove your sandals For you are in the sacred valley of Tua And we talked about that at length yesterday How many people were not here yesterday? Raise your hands We talked about that at length yesterday So we have a lot of people here today I cannot repeat what I said unfortunately But everything I've said thus far has already been said yesterday So when we're trying to move right through just to get everyone on board again Ideally this is a weekend retreat You go from Friday Saturday to Sunday Everyone's there for the whole time And you don't have the attendance that's sort of recycled So this was the verse that inspired the title Remove your sandals The outward and inward etiquette So we're approaching the book of Allah So outwardly we talked about Faisal Al Qiblah Slowing down your recitation Adorning your voice And the cycles for the khatam You do the khatam Some do it once a day Some do it once a week Some do it once every 30 days Some do it once every 40 days And we talked about the happy medium What does the Imam al-Ghazali describe? Once every No, three is an extreme And thirty is the other extreme Seven days Which is the khatam of Ibn Masrood Is the khatam of Ibn Qab Is the khatam of Zaid al-Mathabat Is the khatam of Uthman al-Ba'afran That's their khatam Once every seven days And we talked about the seven parts of the Quran The first three surahs, that's the first part The next five surahs, that's the second part The next seven surahs, that's the third part The next nine surahs, that's the fourth part The next eleven surahs, that's the fifth part The next thirteen surahs, that's the sixth part And the rest of the Quran is the seventh part So that's the ideal Of course, living in the west Whatever you can read of the Quran On a daily basis is your ta'am That's your worship If it's five verses Then just hold on to those five verses And don't let them go That's what we want to say If it takes you a year to get through the Quran Let it take a year And Hasan al-Basri was asked What is your khatam of the Quran And he said I have a khatam of the Quran Once a week Once a week Which is the ideal Once a week I have a khatam of the Quran once a week I have a concurrent khatam of the Quran Once a month I have another khatam of the Quran That's concurrent Once a year And I have a khatam of the Quran For the past thirty years I haven't finished it So he's got four different Paces at which he is reading the Book of Allah The seven is just for Tabarak Just to keep his tongue moist with the Quran Slowing it down into thirty days Now it's slowing it down And now this is sort of for his For the meaning This is for the meaning now Slowing it down over a year now Now this is getting deep and intricate Into the tafsir of things Not just the meaning to permeate But now he wants to understand the tafsir of things Slowing it down over thirty, forty, fifty years And we don't know when that khatam was over Now it's getting into Exactly what we're talking about For Tabarak at the deepest level The things like I showed you Before I go there Like Ayatul Kursi What I presented yesterday about Ayatul Kursi And we'll look at that again today Just to remind us But what I mentioned That can only come out of a khatam of thirty, forty years You're not just going to You're not going to get an insight like that By reading the Quran quickly At the pace of once a month You see what I'm saying You've got to slow it down To have a reflection like that Fall into your lap You've got to slow it down So that's the circuit cycle And then we have inward etiquettes of the Quran And we just spoke about the origin of the word And we're going where this word is coming from Exalting the speech and the speaker We spoke about that Having presence With the book of Allah SWT Having presence, reflection Invest investigation, focus Personalization and ascension And so this is where we want to continue then Since we spoke about presence yesterday And we finished there We want to talk about reflection now And so In the name of Allah SWT It says Do they not think Reflect deeply on the Quran Or is it that some hearts have locked themselves out That some hearts have their own locks placed on them They've locked themselves out They don't have access to the book Now And this word Means getting to the double of something Getting to the backside of it Getting to what's behind Right, what's behind the verses Right, and since most of you are not here I just for the barakah I'd just like to read the statement of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali on this Right, on what's really there Behind these letters that are on the printed page He said And That had it not been For the veil of the essence Of the majesty of his speech With the attire of letters Had it not been for the veil of the essence Of the majesty of his speech With the attire, with the clothing Of letters No throne or earth would have remained To bear hearing it And everything between them would have been annihilated By the grandeur of its power And the radiance of its illumination And the proof of that Is that had God not firmly established Moses He would not have been able to endure Hearing his speech just as the mountain Could not bear the traces of his majesty And so was pulverized powder Right, so this is the When we reflect on the book of Allah's We're getting into some of the The essence of the majesty of his speech What's really going on behind these words What's really going on behind These letters that we're seeing And the meanings that are contained In these letters And trying to access Trying to access some of those Means at different layers Right, and that's what we're trying to Do in this course, insha'Allah So The reflection, right Reflecting on the book of Allah's Very deeply There's the The sahabah themselves And the salaf, the Taba'i Taba'i They were of such They were of such Sincerity in their prayers That if they happen to Recite a verse Without giving that verse It's due right upon them In terms of reflection They would not go to the next verse In their prayers Some of them said that That a verse that I haven't firmly That hasn't permeated my heart I don't Consider myself being rewarded For having recited it Even though Allah SWT Rewards for every letter For every letter from His generosity But for Him Himself, He's selfish He's a little selfish Says yes, that reward That's all good and bad It doesn't satiate me It doesn't fulfill me And so the full reward Can only come through allowing it And so they said That an ayah Any ayah that They didn't allow That they didn't actually feel They would not Go to the next ayah Without repeating it And some people would spend All of tahajjud reciting just one ayah Some people would spend all of tahajjud Just to profit himself As-salamu alayhi wa s-salam He spent, there were sahabah Who prayed tahajjud with him And they noticed that he was only reciting One ayah the entire night And that was the The quote of Sayyidina Isa alayhi s-salam Right That if you forgive them If you punish them Then you are Then they are your servants And if you forgive them Then fairly you are exalted in power Wise And he continued to recite that ayah Throughout the night That was his tahajjud that night So how Is the Prophet s-salam experiencing this ayah That he can't leave that ayah For the entire night He made that ayah into a vikah He made it into a vikah And there were a lot of sahabah And people who came later Who did the same thing with the Prophet s-salam That as the Prophet did They would just have their tahajjud on one ayah Their entire tahajjud just on one ayah Just eight nakahs and you're over with it Right But they would have tahajjud for two or three hours of the night Just reciting one ayah You see Imam Shafa It's known about him that he used to do this Right, that he used to do this And he said that there was one ayah I don't remember what the ayah was But he was thinking about the ayah And he kept reciting the ayah Throughout his tahajjud like this And then when he was finished with his tahajjud And derived more than 40 rulings from it You know So reflecting Allowing ourselves to just dwell On a verse This is one of the most important things to do And this is one of the arts that the Muslims have lost Shah Waliullah We mentioned this three weeks ago Shah Waliullah says that it is a crime To teach our kids tafsir Before we teach them to dabbur Right And he was a 17th century scholar In Delhi In India And he said that it was a crime To teach them tafsir before we teach them to dabbur Because once you teach them tafsir It closes off the channels for reflection Say, someone so said this Such and such an authority said this about this verse Then you've already closed it Closed it off for that person With what boldness Will they venture into their own Contemplation On that verse It is a rifle from the very beginning So ta dabbur is something That we have to feel empowered to do And Allah SWT commands us to do it You know Don't wait for more empowerment than that Right Don't wait for more empowerment than that It comes from Allah Himself But then what do we do? We take these reflections and we submit them To the experts of tafsir So is this a good reflection? Is this an accurate reflection? This is something that I'm missing here And then they are able to Inform us And then the next thing is Investigation So Allah SWT says Do they not consider the camel how it was created? Right And then the other verse And to the skies how they were raised high And to the... Do they not consider the mountains How they were fixed firmly in the earth And do they not consider the earth How it was spread out? Right The geology of mountains To study What exactly are mountains doing And in holding tectonic plates together That Allah SWT calls Al-Tada Pegs These mountains are like pegs Keeping the whole thing Stable under foot You know Don't they consider the camels And how they were created When you recite a verse like that When you recite a verse like that Well, wait a minute When am I actually going to take the time out To investigate the camel and how it was created? Right Allah calls me to do that Think about the camel and how it was created So I've got to now pick up The next encyclopedia And see about the anatomy of a camel The physiology of a camel What is it exactly that Allah Wants me to find in that camel As a metaphor for myself What is it that Allah SWT Wants me to know about that camel And to know about reaching the heights That the skies above me Are constantly calling me to Reach my own spiritual heights There's a metaphor in each one of these Where is that metaphor? I've got to investigate to find it And so when we read about the camel And how it's the ship of the sea The ship of the desert The ship of the desert It'll drink And then for an entire month It won't need to drink again It's the treasure of the Arabs Right? It allows them to go Far into the desert Without fear That was not The trips of the winter And the summer Where are those trips? Those trips are to Yemen In the winter and Sham in the summer And they were not doing that They were not They were not doing that on donkeys or horses So as you're riding this camel And you're the one drinking Every hour or so drinking Making sure that you ration it out Here's this camel that drank two weeks ago That hasn't found water And it's still going It's still going So don't you think About the creation of that beast Investigate that Investigate that What you sow in the earth What you sow in the earth That's... You can go on for years Thinking about the miracle Of plant growth And fruits and vegetables and trees And that whole process Right? How these biologists not believers You know? They're not believers They're not believers They're not believers You know? And Allah calls us to that To strengthen our belief Just look at that miracle Look at the miracle of plant growth After I hit one Not too soon Don't you consider the drop that you emit That the men emit Right? That despicable drop I have to use a euphemism to even refer to it Right? It's so despicable But look at that Just consider it That in that drop In that one drop The finger... The coating from my fingernails Is in that drop Fingernails, hair follicles Right? The limbs That's all encoded into that drop The systems Of the body, the nervous system The respiratory system The digestive system Right? That's all there In that drop The faculties Right?  So investigating this Investigating this is all part of Tadabbur This is all part of Tadabbur And then focus Right? Focus Right? Focus Having focus in our prayers And in our reading of the Qur'an And focus here entails Inward focus and outward focus That outwardly There should be no distraction Outwardly there shouldn't It would be nice to turn off the lights And to turn on the candle The candlelight To read the book of Allah by candlelight By something natural That reminds you of Allah SWT has created for your benefit Instead of the Electricity that's coming in That's wasteful Waste energy And it also creates this white noise in the background There's too much light At all times, right? But if you have candlelight One, two, three, ten candles You're able to read But it brings in a tranquility to it It sets a mood and ambience You're in a place in the house That is set apart for the recitation Of the Qur'an, for salawat Right? Like in my house I have a musanda You don't enter that space except To commune with God Right? And so this is to make a place Like that, right? That this is where I am in communion With my Lord, right? And to do it by candlelight And to cut off distraction To turn off your cell phone Right? No Wi-Fi going on That is a technology freedom In the house To totally dedicate yourself To Allah's party in that space And then inwardly To cut off distraction Inwardly meaning that we leave off sin We leave off those things That are barriers Between us And receiving The light As it descends upon us To cut off sin And also To forsake certain Let's say When we're reciting the book of Allah's party We don't come to it with our bag of Certainties, with our isms Right? That when we're reflecting on the Book of Allah, we don't reflect Through the filter of our own isms That I define myself By way of identity As As a humanist Right? So I'm going to read the Quran Through the lens of a humanist And that is going to sort of be The filter through which my reflection Will come. Well you're not submitted To the book And there's parts of humanism that we Have no problem with. There's parts of humanism That we have That are antithetical to the prophetic guidance You know, to be honest with you Right? And I'm not going to take This discussion and go there Should connect the omdats in your head Basically, a rule of thumb Every ism Is a prism of a mind in Prism Every ism is a Prism of a mind in Prism And this book Demands us To submit to it And every letter, every word Of this book has rights over us Imam Al-Fazali says that there are Ten aspects for every Single word of the book of Allah And each aspect has Ten spiritual stations For every single word of the book of Allah So you have With respect to If Allah comes If Allah comes If Allah comes Six words. Each one of these Words has ten aspects that we can All look at this word through And each one of these aspects has Ten, what? Spiritual stations Among them is Being content with that word As shukru alayha Having gratitude for that word As sadru alayha Being patient with With the embodiment of that word Right? And so on Repenting toward that word For our shortcoming That we fell short of that word So I repent to Jaha Jaha came Every one of these words is A symbol When they're put together They form a miracle An ayah, a sign It's called a sign It's called a sign Ayah is a sign, it's a miracle So every one of these words Has rights upon us And we're going to come and try to Do words through some kind of Man-made ism of the time and place Some fleeting Thought in somebody's mind Who has too much time, too much idle time On his hands In some western institution, some western university And we're going to bring That garbage to the book of Allah SubhanAllah And call ourselves submitters The only way that we can Get away with that is if we've turned Islam into an identity That I'm Muslim But in the same way that you're black Or you're white That's the only way that we can rationalize that Next is to So when we come To be focused When we come to be focused And there's a verse There's a verse that Will be noble Quran A lot of us don't Have access to Arabic But there's noble Quran Controversial topics So I'm just going to let you guys know That I did this I actually did this but I don't know if I'm going to be invited here again You guys remember Terry Jones Who remembers Terry Jones The pastor That pastor in Florida right He passed away I don't know So the one who wanted to burn the Quran He had that kind of pain of burning the Quran I called this church I called this church one day And his secretary Answered the phone So my intent in calling the church is Look if you guys are going to go through with this I don't suggest that you go through this But if you guys are going to go through with this We can send you The noble Quran by Muhammad Nusra Khan If you want to I urge you to Get your hand on that copy of the Quran And make you rewarded for it Anyway You read that They open brackets Throughout the The Quran Which is very helpful But in the translation they open up brackets Which means now we have a license Because we've opened up brackets We have a license to say whatever we want And infuse So the verse about The women And now They open up brackets and they say That the women must cover everything Except In the brackets Including the face Except And including both eyes But if necessary They can cover just one eye To see the road ahead of them Something like that They have to cover their faces Including their eyes If it's dangerous If it's out of necessity Then maybe she can uncover just one eye To see the road ahead of her As if this was the Where Where, where is it And how can I have any reflection After how can I reflect on this verse If this is where Where the meaning is taking us Where the author is taking us Now you're totally Because of your dogmatic Commitment To one interpretation Let's say that's a valid opinion Let's just assume it's a valid opinion Just for the sake of argument If that's the valid opinion To impose that opinion On everyone else And then to only read the Qur'an In light of that opinion Limits it And I'll give you another example From that same book And it replaced Yusuf Ali All throughout the country It was a crime, that's a crime If that book is here in this message I have to talk to the board We're wearing crisis mode here That book should not be on any shelf It's a crime what they did To the book of Allah swt The word tahada, what does that mean? Purification Do you need a definition of that? They open up brackets saying Without urine or stools Whenever that word is used In the Qur'an I needed that to be spelled out for me And now I can't think of tahada In any sense Other than urine and defecation There's no spiritual purity No, no, no, that's all Metaphorical fairy talk And you can take that Metaphorical fairy talk out somewhere else But the book is clear The meaning is literal And you can't understand who are stools This here Imam al-Qazali when he's talking about focus He's saying Letting go of all of these preconceived Commitments that we have All of these foregone commitments that we have Let go of wrong Don't even pay attention to your own Makhanej al-haruf When you recite in the tajweed He says do all of your tajweed Outside of the Qur'an I'm just recite, just recite. You're going to recite with correct eduane because you learned eduane but don't be so Oh, that's it wrong there. That's not here. That's not mean. This is just don't bring that there I mean you're not you're stifling your own reflection. You're stifling it. You say I'm saying so So that's a distraction and like some of them said in a manal mohijat, right that knowledge itself It's acquired. It's a veil in a way. It's a veil. It can veil you from from receiving Right, even knowledge can be a veil No, so the next thing I want to talk about is personalization to personalize the verses as they're as we're reciting them And in this, you know, when we say Surat al-Ladina Ehdina Surat al-Mustaqeem Surat al-Ladina an'amta al-Aleem, al-Aleem, al-Mawdubi al-Aleem, al-Addaaleem, al-Aleem Yes, we talked about that last time we were here. What did we say? What is Ehdina Surat al-Mustaqeem? Surat al-Ladina an'amta al-Aleem Who are the people who Allah has found as blessed? Right? Who are those people? Muslims, right, al-Aleem, al-Mawdubi al-Aleem Who are those? Jews, right, those who have incurred the wrath, wala b'alim, those are? Christians, no. Just, no, just stop it already. No. Okay. That is all correct That is all correct, but that is only going to get you so far That is only what's going to get you so far al-Ladina an'amta al-Aleem When we're talking about personalization, al-Ladina an'amta al-Aleem These are the people you want to be raised with on the Day of Judgement The Prophets, the Siddiqun, the Shuhidah, the Salihin, the, these are the Saints, the Awliya These are the people that you wanted, the Sahaba, the Taba'een The Imam Malik, Imam Shafi'i, Imam Ahmed Muhammad, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Al-Hazzali These are the people, Rabia al-Adawiya, right, Nusayba al-Nafisa You want to be raised with these people Fatima al-Zahra, right These are al-Ladina an'amta al-Aleem Right, they're not Muslims, right al-Ghayl al-Mawdubi al-Aleem Except for those who have incurred the wrath, who are those? That's me That's me, I've incurred the wrath of Allah swt upon me, and I've got to get out of that state Walab al-Aleem Who's that? That's me, that's me It's personal, right So if you find attributes of people who are praised in the Quran That only increases your yearning to be among them And to be raised with them Not sort of, oh that's where I am That's me, I'm in that Because now you're part of Bani Islam Now you're part of the saved sect Now you've accepted that you're part of the saved sect But when you see the attributes of people that Allah swt is calling to account Or is calling out on something That's where you say, I see myself in that place I see myself with them And Abdullah bin Auma And I don't know you from Abdullah bin Auma Who is Abdullah bin Auma? Is there anyone who is closer to the Sunnah than Abdullah bin Auma? The golden chain in the words of Al-Bukhari himself The golden chain Al-Bukhari is the one who has all the golden chains, right? What did he call the golden chain? As-Silaq Dahabiyah Is Malik an-Nafa an-Ibn Umar An-Nasuri la-Yasr al-Masri That's the golden chain That is the strongest chain of Hadith Out of all of the hundreds of thousands of chains of Hadith that are out there That is the strongest one The opinion of Al-Bukhari which means it's the strongest one It's the strongest one, right? No one is going to trump that opinion, right? What did Abdullah bin Auma say? They came across him and he said Allahumma inni a'udhu biqa lam-zulmi wa kufri Allah, I seek refuge in you from my zulm and my kufr They said, hadad-zulm fa ma baalul kufr He said, Thulm we understand So what are you talking about with kufr? What are you talking about? And then he recited Mankind is oppressive and ungrateful Mankind is indeed oppressive and ungrateful Me reading that, if I were to say Mankind is oppressive and ungrateful I would have said that's divine social commentary on everything that's going on around me That's divine social commentary on this whole culture that I'm a part of and everything And Allah, get them, Allah, get them Yeah, you see what I'm saying? Because I've excluded myself from that because I'm guided I've excluded myself from that because I'm not part of them Inna bin sanana fi khustr Inna ladina aaman wa hamdu s-sa'rihaati wa tawasobun fahmi al-haqqa wa tawasobun sabr So where do I see myself in those verses? If I see myself as, oh I'm the one that Allah has made the exception for Alladina aaman wa hamdu s-sa'rihaati I believe I do great with these I call people up and I counsel them with truth and with patience You know, those are my attributes I'm not in the attribute of the losers I don't have the losing attribute But then I've lost the game Why? Because Qalit al-Arab wa aamanna Qul lam tu'minu wa laqin kulu aslamna Wa lamma yadukhu l-ilimanu fi kulubikum But the Bedouin Arab said We have iman Right? And Allah says, he says Don't say that Do not say we have iman Don't claim iman for yourselves But just say humbly Say, we have submitted And iman has not yet penetrated our hearts Because one of the Proves that iman has not penetrated your heart Is your claim that you have it That's one of the proofs Like Dr. Omar said He said, what did he say yesterday We called him yesterday, do you know Dr. Omar, he said that Your own perception Your perception of your own spiritual growth Stunts your growth Right?  So when we're personalizing this Every single verse of the book of Allah SWT Was revealed to whom? To whom? To us To you To you Personally Through the Prophet SWT But it was revealed to you personally And it means something Imminent for you personally Every single verse was revealed to you It just so happened that it had to come through A pure vessel than you and than me It had to come through a pure vessel into the world And the Prophet SWT was that vessel But it was revealed specifically to you for you For your sake And it was given to you That's the personalization of the book Now Allah SWT has revealed this book to me Do you see the weights? We are going to throw upon you A very weighty word We're going to cast it upon you We're going to cast it upon you And we are now the bearers of that word We are the bearers of that word But to personalize it Now we have an intimate relationship With Allah SWT through his speech Now we have that And it's not just some historical Revelation that was given to the Prophet Some of which applies to me Some of which doesn't apply to me And we are not going to read in Arabic Without permission I have his books But I haven't opened a single one of them I don't have permission to open his books But in his tafsir Everything you think relates to To something he relates it back to the nafs In the entire tafsir Everything you know Firaam and Musa That's you That's all the battle that's going on inside Khidr and killing the boy And what he does with the ship And erecting again the wall All that is inside All that is inside here All that is personalized to the nafs So that's why reading his book You have to have a master who reads that book with you Because it's easy to misunderstand But this is the point And then ascension Ascending There was one of the Salaf, Salih He says that I used to recite the book of Allah SWT And these people Allah increased their rank I used to recite the book of Allah SWT And I didn't have The sort of delight I wished that I could have had for years and years and years I would just recite the book Does this sound familiar? Is this vaguely familiar to any of us? That we recite the book of Allah But we're not feeling the connection He said So I began To imagine That I was hearing it from the prophet Salih al-Mahdi al-Ali was And that I was a companion Hearing it from the prophet Salih al-Mahdi al-Ali was And I began to delight In the book I began to taste it I began to feel that I began to see the scenery I began to smell the breeze It took me back to Mecca and Medina I began to relate These verses to these places and these times And these battles in the Seerah I began to see the book In light of the Seerah And I began to delight in that Until I was I felt a different kind of yearning I felt that was not enough I felt that that sweetness Was not sustaining me And so I yearned for more And so I began then To hear it from Jibril al-Ali I began to imagine How was the prophet Salih al-Mahdi Experiencing these verses from Jibril al-Ali And now he's wedding From the state to the state of the prophet Salih al-Mahdi In every verse that comes down He's imagining how is the state Of Rasulullah as this verse is coming down And as this verse is coming down As the verse about Abu Nahab is coming down As the verse about Hadith and Ifq is coming down And now he's connecting his states To the states of the prophet Salih al-Mahdi al-Mahdi And he said that took me out of this world That took me out of this world And that sustained him for a time Until this yearning then Started to Started to creep up again Right? But something was still missing It was still missing a little bit And now I can only Hear it from its speaker Now I can only hear it from its speaker As Musa al-Ali salam was on the mountain Receiving the words of Allah swt The speech of Allah swt in words And Allah spoke to Moses with words And now he begins to hear it From the speaker of it himself He begins to imagine How will it be when the Rahman Recites Surat al-Rahman How will it be when the Rahman Recites Surat al-Rahman And he says now the Quran has a delight That I cannot bear patiently To be removed from it I cannot bear patiently I have to be back in that light I have to be back and I I have a He grew impatient with the speech With any other speech Now this here is essential This is essential because this book Descended so to And it was the It descended to us From the law of Nahfud With his heart he ascends Into the heavens inshallah As though he's reading it from the tabla As though he's taking it along Jibir al-Islam And now everything he looks at Is worship when he opens the Book of Allah it's all worship He's reminded of the law of Nahfud The well preserved tabla So this has to do with some of the Outward and some of the inward Etiquettes when approaching The Book of Allah swt I think maybe this is a good time To stretch We're going to get right into And maybe I'll give you 30 seconds But do not leave the room Stretch for 30 minutes Come back down And then we're going to take a deep breath Maybe count to 10 And we'll continue with The fourth key to unlock The 70 meanings Just a minute Okay Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim So here we are On the seventh key is the unlock 70 meanings For every verse from the Book of Allah swt There is 70 meanings Right, 70 meanings And what does that mean? It means infinite meaning For the Arabs the word 70 Means count this meaning You cannot count the number of meanings That the Book has because it comes from The Divine, it comes from Allah swt It is the speech of Allah And there is no limit to the meanings That the speech of Allah couldn't tell Right, so 70 meanings Means that we come To the Book and we Come with a yearning That Allah swt unveils some of these Meanings to us And orthography is the next Key that we want to talk about But to go back to coherence I want to talk about coherence Just a real quick We looked at this verse yesterday Right, ayat and kursi We looked at this verse yesterday The only point I want to make about this verse here How the beginning of ayat and kursi The first verse This verse has Nine breaths If you can imagine Nine breaths And the first verse relates to the ninth The first breath relates to the ninth breath The second breath relates to the Eighth breath The third breath relates to the seventh breath Breath The fourth breath relates to the Sixth breath And in the middle you have the fifth breath Which means he knows what is before Or after or behind him He knows that which comes before and that which comes after Right, that's the midpoint And so The point that we talked about this Right, we talked about this yesterday So I don't want to go into it again today Except to mention that this Insight This insight Did not come from any of the sahabah It didn't come from the prophet himself Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam This is one of the proofs Of the prophecy of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Of the truth That he had The sifq that he had In conveying the message Because if, as is the charge The allegation of Orientalist That he wrote the book Don't you think he would have actually Mentioned to one of the sahabah That look at the deliberate Rhetorical Don't you think, why would he Have just left this verse For some guy Or some woman Centuries later To say, wait a minute There's something going on with this And leave it to chance Because maybe they wouldn't have found out Maybe they wouldn't, maybe It wouldn't have been a reflection That anyone would have had Don't you think that he would have mentioned it to someone Right, to say that And he would have put it on Allah He would have said, look how Allah has Done with this But there are so many reflections That later generations had That the prophet himself Was silent upon, he didn't mention And the sahabah were silent upon Because they didn't know This can only come As a result of the person slowing down The book of Allah And saying, now wait a minute There's something going on here There's something going on here And allowing for that opportunity For itself So this is one of the miracles It's called the anachas It's the incapacitating Ability The incapacitation Of the Quran That it incapacitates anyone else To come up with a book like it Just like it Which means to come up with a book That has all of its treasures And not even know the treasures that it has Basically The book that is Filled with treasures That are unknown to you even That are unknown to you Right? And then when they become known to you You're silent about them You don't tell anyone about them We want to speak about orthography today It's a very academic term For how the Quran is written Right? How the Quran was written So I want to talk about Three different types of What are known as half Before we get into this Right? And so We need to just talk about this Very quickly A little bit bigger for us Can everyone see this? Is that too small? Okay we'll go to 64 Very good So you have three types of half Is that better? Okay You have half Ishaara And then you have Half Okay So half Ishaara Right? And so on Right? That's half This means that Every single time You see the word It's going to be written as And not as That Is never going to be written Is never going to be written as Ar-Rahman Is never going to be written as Ar-Rahman As-Sama What? Is never going to have this Alif after the Meen Do you see what I'm saying? So it's a contraction It's a saving ink Right? So this is where the word Is constantly going to be like this Where the words They were such common words That they would just take off the alif No need for it So that's half We're not going to be looking at any of that And then you have Half When I say Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem So this word Malik I said Malik What do most people in America Hear recite for this word? Malik, right? But it's not written in any book In any Mus'haf as Malik Although that's the way that you guys recite it In Hafsid's recited is Malik In Wajshid's recited as Malik So it's taken off In the Mus'haf of Ar-Rahman That alif was removed For a certain wisdom And what was that wisdom? That alif If he wanted to In the recitation Or to stay as it was As Malik So it's Malik in Medin But you have a little dagger alif They write that dagger alif in there Sayyidina Al-Athman and Sayyidina Al-Thabit And that whole enterprise of the Sahaba They never had a little dagger alif But if you had memorized from the Prophet Sayyidina Al-Malik You could come to that It would have negated It would have obviated The other Narrations If that alif was written Then no person reciting Wajsh Could have said Malik Because there's an alif there So you can't take away but you can hand to it You see what I'm saying? In the oral recitation You cannot remove, you cannot omit But you can come in And we're not going to be looking at that Alright? But what we are going to look at Is this third This third type of Haaf Haaf means to cast off To take off And this is Haaf al-Iqtisar And it has Basically what it means is Let me get this for you here It means two words So basically Two, let's see One word Sorry Means Exactly the same thing Recited Exactly the same way Written Two different ways That's the definition of Haaf al-Iqtisar So you have one word It means exactly the same thing It's recited exactly the same way It's written two different ways While you're getting that in your notes Say salawat and I'll be right back So Haaf al-Iqtisar is what we're going to look at This is one of the things that we're going to look at When we're talking about orthography You have one word It's repeated throughout the Quran It's repeated throughout the Quran So it's one word One repeated word We'll say one repeated word That means exactly the same thing Every time it's repeated It's pronounced exactly the same way Every time it's repeated But it's written in two different ways And what accounts for that? And what does that mean? Why write it in two different ways? And where does that come from? We have to first establish that this comes from the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam That this is also Tawqeefi And one of the proofs for this Is that when you had the Sahaba Who was writing this And the others scribed And there were more than 20 scribes And Sayyidina Uthman had the Sahaba to do this This is after Abu Bakr Had the Sahaba to do this So the Sahaba did it twice And you don't have Any disagreement whatsoever As to how the Quran is written They disagreed about what was the Quran They disagreed Like Ibn Masro did not think That Falaq and Surat al-Nas Were part of the Quran He had never heard The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Reciting that in Salah He thought that they were Dua And he had to be told otherwise No, he's actually righteous in Salah And he had to be told otherwise Imam Malik And Imam Shafi They get into this debate Is the basmala Considered part of the Fatiha Imam Malik's Proof that it's not part of the Fatiha Is the fact that we're even having this discussion The fact that there are so many people Who say it's not Means that it's not mutilater And in order for something To be part of the Quran It has to be mutilater So the fact that there's all this disagreement Of opinion, it's not just Malik and Shafi But there's a lot of people who did not recite The basmala in their prayers This is all The people of Medina did not recite The basmala They didn't recite that But then there's hadith That Imam Shafi and others relate That the basmala is there So there's a disagreement here Imam Malik says the fact that We're even having this disagreement Means the hadith is weak And that it's not mutilater The point is The grander point that I'm making Is that the Prophet ﷺ had these Scribes And these scribes memorized from him And he was able to Check everything that they had Recited back to him If there was ever any mistake He would correct a mistake But also, whenever he got a verse He would tell his companions To put this verse in this passive In this surah behind these verses And he orchestrated that whole thing But it is also Writing of the Quran was also It also came from the Prophet ﷺ That the Prophet ﷺ Had to be written in a certain way He would have them Write it in that way He would have them write it in that way But wait, I thought the Prophet ﷺ Didn't know how to read or write That's the question You don't need to know how to Read or write to be able to say That this is a W My son is three years old Because my mother taught him W And he says W, W, W And he doesn't even speak English And he's able to recognize it He can't read, he's three years old So there's stages of illiteracy And Ibn Hajim Asqanani said In the Hadith of I am not a reader He said what that means And he quotes Ibn Suyuti and others Is I do not read well I do not read well It doesn't mean that I have zero ability It doesn't mean that Arabic to him Is like hieroglyphics to us It means that He's not fluent in reading He's not able to read the way That readers read or the writers write Right? But it doesn't mean he's clueless Absolutely clueless about how a tat looks like Or how a ba looks like Or how an adif looks like Right? It doesn't mean he had no clue It means we're all of nothing We're all of nothing That's the way we are We're all in No, there's nuance There's degrees of literacy You can have a child who is learning how to read Until they know how to read Every degree under that Or before that Is a degree of illiteracy Until they're literate You see what I'm saying? And so the prophet said There's zero So then we have We're talking about Porthography Let's look at some examples That I have for you These are all the slides that you missed Porthography In the name of Allah He says Had you mutually appointed a time You would have surely missed the appointment So you guys look at You guys see the word that I'm focusing on In Arabic, what is it? Al-Miha'at You will surely gather mankind Against the day hereafter Of which there is no doubt Verily, Allah will not fail the appointment So it's the same word Miha'at Miha'at It means the same thing Appointment, appointment It sounds exactly the same But one of them has an alif The other one does not One of them has the alif The other does not This one has an alif And this one does not So this is an example of Should the alif be there It should be there So we have to account For why is the alif missing In the other word We don't have to account for why is the alif here We have to account for why the alif is missing here That's the point So why do you think the alif would be missing In this word Whereas it's present in this word Different writer Different writer As in the scribe The scribe who wrote it He copied it He copied it from the From the bones And the palm fibers And all of that He didn't copy it from that He took it from the companions orally He went orally to all the companions And wrote down what they gave him And what he himself had memorized But he was trying to be objective about it And if he found two companions Who had the verse Then he would take it from them And write it in his own hand So this is all from Zed and Nathabit Why do you think the alif is missing Yes Remember we're doing reflection here Reflection So what is the importance of this With respect to reflection How does this inform our reflection Reflection talks about An appointment between people And the other one Exactly yes Very good And what is the meaning of what is being said Or asserted about the appointment That people make with one another Right Case in point, case in point This class was supposed to start at what time Ten, what time did it start Ten twenty That's the point That's the point That we do not take our appointment seriously And the alif is not going to stick around Right When it has to do with the appointments that we make The alif is not going to stick around So just as we cast off time We just throw it out We just say 10, 10, 15 Well the alif is thrown out with it The alif is gone from that word But the alif is not going to read it But with the appointment that Allah sets The alif is there The alif is not going to miss that appointment Allah doesn't miss the appointment The alif is there The alif doesn't miss the appointment either So this is one of the ways that A person looking, paying attention Someone paid attention In their reflections And they were able to notice that wait a minute There's a missing alif here And why is this alif missing We can ask that question Because this is not just random from Zaid in Nathabad That he ran out of ink And then finally he got some ink And he continued with the dab That's not the point That's not what happened here Zaid did not run out of ink Or it didn't get erased Later on So we believe That this came from the Prophet SAW That when He had his scribes Writing down This is not Zaid in Nathabad But he had to be told this This came from the Prophet SAW This is also part of the secrets That the Quran holds for us I know we have a couple questions But we also have a lot of material to cover I would prefer that you write down these questions Insha'Allah And then we can cover them toward the end Or else we will have to come back And do a part 3 I don't know if you guys want to do that We in ta'udu ni'mat Allah He la tuqsooha Inna Allah al-awafoor al-raheem And were you to reckon The blessings of Allah You would never enumerate them Low Mankind is unjust Ungrateful Okay Now these 2 verses They start exactly the same way Wa in ta'udu ni'mat Allah He la tuqsooha They start the same way But they end differently Inna Allah al-awafoor al-raheem And were you to reckon The blessings of Allah Were you to reckon But they end differently Inna Allah al-awafoor al-raheem Inna insana al-awafoor al-kafar That was what Sayyidina Abdullah ibn Omar had mentioned Allahumma inni a'udu biqamin Dhunni wa kufni He was quoting that verse Okay And were you to reckon the blessings of Allah There's a couple things going on here What is the difference Orthographically What is the difference It's hard now This is just a different There's a different feature Of writing This is not casting off a letter What do we have here Ta'ab marbu'ta The same exact word Pronounced the same way It means the same thing One's written with the ta'ab marbu'ta One's written with the ta'ab marbu'ta One We can ask that question why As a result Why do you think it is in the case It has to do with the meaning of the verse But again this is not tafsir We're not making tafsir This is what I when I'm reflecting on the book Allah if I get a reflection As a gift from Allah I say Subhanallah Allah you're so amazing Ya Allah Allah has me awestruck And then that reflection I submit it to the table of the Mufassirun And I say is this tafsir Is this reflection okay Does it contradict tafsir at all Because if it doesn't I'm holding on to it But I'm not going to go to the Limba on Friday and say And by the way this is what Allah means When he says no that's not the claim That I'm making it's a gift I hold it personally I share it with people But I don't say this is why Allah said So just to reintroduce that Because we really emphasized that Alright so What's going on What does the word mean What does it mean What does it mean What does it mean What does it mean What is the word What does it mean What does it mean You're talking about What does it mean Anyone So say Niaan is blessings Niaana Is what One blessing That's why I didn't have The S in red here You see the S is not in red Because the word Is actually blessing Which on its own We can think about that We can reflect about that That if you were to enumerate The blessing of Allah Enumerate it Wait a minute It's got a number It's singular It means one The blessing of Allah I just counted it You didn't recommend Enumerate it Because you take any one blessing Just think of one blessing Just one blessing Sait Sait The ability to perceive something The eyeball itself Through which you perceive The camera behind the eyeball That actually sees everything upside down And it flips it We actually see everything upside down And there's something in the I don't know what it's called But people here who have studied this thing It flips it For some random reason It just flips it upside down Just because Allah could do it The pupil, the iris The lindas Around that The color of it The ability to perceive depth You have depth perception You have shades that you can perceive You can perceive at night The adjustment of the eye To night conditions You have lights that you turn on You turn it off Everyone's blind for an instant And then you're able to see again in the dark What happened? You can't enumerate this thing You can't enumerate The ability to see something for a distance The ability to read with what you see And that's why that Jewish man The Prophet S.A.W. said There's a man among the Bani Israel No sin to his name whatsoever Ever in his life Just a life of pure ta'a Pure obedience to Allah And he will say through my mercy Or through your deeds And so all of his deeds are placed on the scale He has hitham All of his deeds are placed on the scale Eye sight is placed on the other And eye sight outweighs all of the deeds of his life Because he wouldn't have been able To do any of those deeds without eye sight He wouldn't have been able to do it Without eye sight And then he says By your mercy, by your mercy, Allah And Allah smiles Meaning he has compassion over him And he enters him through his mercy And Allah, the one, the single blessing of Allah You wouldn't be able to do it You wouldn't be able to do it So this is one of the things To mention Aside from We didn't even get into the difference between Ta'a Marruta and Ta'a Mamsuta We didn't even get there We're just talking about singular versus plural In the verse Now the plural Oh no, the Ta'a Marruta And the Ta'a Mamsuta Allah is forgiving, compassionate And mankind is unjust Ungrateful Which is the stronger Ta'a? The stronger Ta'a Which is the stronger Ta'a? Mamsuta Mamsuta is the stronger Ta'a Mamsuta is the stronger Ta'a It's Mamsuta There's no... Even visually You gotta deal with it Even visually It's making its presence known The Ta'a Mamsuta like that So there's an affirmation that comes with that There's an affirmation that comes with that And also that Ta'a Gives you a sense Of grandeur Because what is that Ta'a Usually used for at the end of nouns Feminine what? Feminine? At the end of a noun, if you put a long Ta'a Like that, usually it indicates what? Plural Alif Ta'a Even though it is not the plural But that's the sense that it gives Just visually You have words Banat Alif Ta'a You have Jamiat Universities So the Alif Ta'a Is the sound feminine plural Visually If you see a Ta'a like that There's a lot more There's a lot more built into this word Right? This word is built into a lot more So even though it's singular Even though it means blessing It gives you the sense that there's That the blessing is spread out Right? So that with all of the blessings That mankind has received Mankind is ungrateful Unjust with those blessings Ungrateful with those blessings But with all of the blessings That Allah SWT has given us He counts them all as a single blessing With a Ta'a I'm just singular I'm singular in my singularity Just one You see what I'm saying? And that is the proof of Allah's Because there's no Shukr for all of the niaan of Allah SWT There's no amount Like Isa A.S. he said Oh Allah, how can I be grateful to you For the countless blessings you have given me With my ability to be grateful Is in itself a blessing For which I must be grateful You know, there's niaan Right? And Allah revealed to Jesus Saying, your du'a is the very essence of gratitude That is the very essence That prayer Is the very essence of gratitude Which is bewilderment And Allah SWT takes all those blessings And he treats it as though it was just one blessing You say, thank you Ya Allah for that blessing And the rest is on Allah Right? So, we continue No say of anything I shall be sure to do such and such Tomorrow, except as God so will it Okay, so We have a shape Right? A shape here You guys see it? And shape Here We have shape and shape Same word It means the same thing It's pronounced the same way It sounds the same And the other is written without an adif And Which one do we have to account for? We have to account for the adif Because throughout the Qur'an it's written without an adif But we have it here in this verse Written with an adif Where does this adif come from? And how does it inform our reflection How does it impact our reflection Right? We have to go back to the meaning And see what's going on in the meaning To see if there's a correlation In the writing So, verily, his command When he wills a thing Is no more to say to it Be and so it is No adif there No say of anything I shall be sure to do such and such Tomorrow, except as God so will it Now we can have several different reflections On this If I had time, I would turn the whole class Over to you guys and hear from your reflections All over the place But you guys do not want me to come back A third time So, we have to finish feeling the channel So here we say When the adif is When the adif is there This is This here This example is given For the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Was asked The Jews asked him And he said Come to me At a different time And I'll have the answer for you And he was waiting for revelation And I forgot the question that they had They had a question that they asked him I forgot that question, please forgive me for that I should have been more prepared But they asked him a question And he said come to me on such and such An occasion and I'll have the answer Waiting for that revelation to come And it didn't come And Allah is teaching his Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Teaching us, sorry, teaching us Through his Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam What he had to endure for us to learn Allahu Akbar What the Prophet had to endure to be embarrassed Just imagine the Jews coming to him On that day and he just doesn't have anything to say to them He has nothing to say to them It is another proof of his prophecy And his siddh in it That he had nothing to say to them And so he had to And then that was the occasion Of the revelation of this verse Don't say to anything that I will do Such and such tomorrow except as Allah so will it Right, okay So what's going on with the elif here We can see with this elif That it all It brings us to the Mashi'a of Allah We even say Here's that elif And this shade here Is also related to The Sha'a Which is the verb when Allah wills So here we have the thing As it is willed The thing as it is willed A thing and a will They come from the same root Shade and Sha'a Come from the same root That Allah wills things into existence And he wills things To remain in non-existence Right So when Here that the Prophet s.a.w. Is experiencing this You have the elif there Pointing him To Allah It is as though the elif here in shape Is pointing itself To Allah s.w. To what comes From the heavens You see what I'm saying And Allah transcends time and space I'm not saying that Allah is in the heavens or anything But that little girl that the Prophet s.a.w. Said that she was mute, she didn't know how to speak She said He asked her Who is your Lord And she pointed her It's the only way that she could have said Allah She points out So in this sense the elif itself Is Reaching for the skies That I have to descend I have to be willed into existence And I have to descend By what Allah Yasha'u It has to come back to Yasha'u Actually it reminds us Of how Shah is mentioned So it's sort of Leaning the Prophet s.a.w. Back to that meaning Bringing the Prophet s.a.w. Back to that meaning And that's just a small reflection on that But the fact that it's not there Here It's the same meaning Okay, why didn't the elif Get written here Why didn't the elif get written here Because it also talks about The will of Allah s.w. When he wills a thing he brings into existence Why not Because when Allah s.w. And this is again a reflection This is my reflection When Allah s.w. Wills a thing into existence It comes into existence There's no barrier For it to come into existence It's in the will of Allah s.w. So it is It's shape And there's no extra Additional thing to that There's no extra step to that There's no barrier to stop That from happening And the elif there is gone The elif is gone It's nowhere to be found Because Allah s.w. Must come to pass Do you see what I'm saying Just like that So there's this whole Evolution All of that Allah s.w. Couldn't will the evolution He couldn't will that But he will to create Adam And Adam came without having Evolved from anything So when Allah wills It comes to pass By the removal of the elif It's like angels being created That's not a process It's just there Like in the Old Testament Let there be light and so there was light Done Do you see what I'm saying Now And they ascribe daughters unto Allah Glory be to Him But they desire them not for themselves Right He said Here are my daughters If you are hell bent So they ascribe daughters Into Allah The word here is Benat So the word is Benat and Benat Daughters and my daughters But the word Benat is recited In the same way It means the same thing It's the same exact word But it's written two different ways And which one do we have to account for The one that is Without the elif We have to account Because the elif is there That's the plural I was talking about before Why do you think it's gone here And it's there in Benat We have to account for Being gone here They ascribe daughters unto Allah Glory be to Him But they desire them not for themselves Because you want to use that To associate my daughters The daughters with mine Exactly Beautiful The ascription of daughters unto Allah Doesn't stick You can't ascribe daughters to Allah The elif itself shies away from that ascription Right That I have no place here As an elif If you were an elif And you were ascribed in a word To Allah swt You didn't belong There's no way you'd show up in that word When it's ascribed to Allah But when it's ascribed to the prophet That's where you are You're there because you want these people To stop What they're doing And you want them to prefer you Over other men That's where that elif is going to come through Strong I belong here I belong here Because I am one of lots I am one of lots daughters I am in the word that is ascribed To Allah But when you ascribe me in a word To Allah swt I don't belong in that word That ascription doesn't belong to Allah And I don't belong in that word So you see that the elif here has A haja There's a certain modesty That the elif has That is That is That is preventing it From showing up in a word like that Do you see Am I stretching it too much? It's a reflection It's a reflection And the thing is There's no right or wrong about this Because we're not doing tabseer But for me personally I benefit from this spiritually And to each other Waqsid fi mashlik Waqdud min sotik And we'll see if you guys agree with What I just said about the manateeer After we get to this verse Waqsid fi mashlik waqdud min sotik Inna ankara al aswati la sotun hameer Yawma idin yattabi'un ad-da'iya la'i wajala Aswatu l-ar-rahmani Fa la tasma wa illa hamsa Tread the gate of modesty And subdue your voice For the donkey's bray Is the most repugnant of voices On that day They will follow a herald Who marches straight on And all voices will be subdued Before the compassionate lord Nor shall you hear art but faint murmuring Now the word here is Aswat Aswat The same word, pronounced the same way It means exactly the same thing Voices, but written in two different ways Which way should it be written Should the alif be there or not The alif needs to be there But it's not there in the way So the one we have to account for Is the first one We have to account for it's missing It's missing here So why do you think it's missing there Naqman is telling his son Tread the gate of modesty And subdue your voice For the donkey's bray Is the most repugnant of voices And remember we said alif have personality If you were an alif Right If you were an alif Now we go back to this person We say, do you guys see what I mean Do you guys see what I mean, the shyness of the alif Here we have a little shyness going on here The shy alif again It's not showing up where it doesn't belong Right Naqman is telling his son do not He says subdue your voice Because the most repugnant of voices Is that of the donkey And so it's not even going to show up In the voices It's not even going to show up Because what did Naqman tell his son Subdue your voice And the alif is going to show his son Exactly how to be subdued So you have an example Like the alif is taking The advice of Naqman And it's following It's implementing that advice of Naqman The alif itself The alif itself is being commanded By you know through Naqman's son Just as we said We personalize the Quran The Quran was revealed to us through the Prophet The alif is being commanded By Naqman through his son In that way But then when we have it Shouldn't that also be the case With the next verse That That's where we have the very meaning Of modesty and the very meaning of fear Of Allah SWT Why is the alif there It should be there But why wasn't it cast off there Why wasn't it cast off there It's in the presence of the Rahman So we can't go anywhere Allah Akbar Is there anywhere to run to Anywhere to hide You're in the presence of the Rahman On the day of judgment Show me where you can hide So the alif has to be there I've given this course Maybe three or four times This is the first time I got that reflection And I'm going to co-opt that as my own reflection That's going to be my own reflection And I won't even give you credit for it You've noticed that I've been talking yesterday I didn't cite one person And I'm the biggest plagiarist Because if I were to cite my sources You'd just be hearing names all over the place And we wouldn't get through the content So I just take And I take and I repangatize And I put it out there But this is a beautiful, beautiful reflection Never dawned on me And that's why we say there's no right or wrong to it What I was thinking Is that you have All of mankind From Adam al-Islam to the last man standing All of mankind Is there Present in a hash In all the different languages In all the different dialects In a situation Where you would expect People to be screaming Screaming You can't get After Salat al-Juma You can barely hear the announcer From the microphone From people who are speaking the same language In English But what about all of mankind Gathered in one place For all of human history All of those languages So aswat here really means It amplifies The amplification of all these voices Is there with the edif But even then You can only hear faint murmur From the power and the majesty Only hear faint murmur But the edif is there just sort of to symbolize All of us So that was my reflection You know I don't think it's You know it's wrong But I definitely like that reflection a little bit better I like that reflection more So Thank you Now we get to elliptical speech How much time do we have Ahsan? We have 30 to 45 minutes Thank you Elliptical speech This is where if I were to write In English If I were to write in English You have to have a subject You have to have a predicate If you have an if statement You have to have a then statement If I say When you wake up this morning Okay Stop already You're being annoying You want to know I'm not going to be able to sleep at night I'm not going to wake up this morning Because I'm not going to be able to sleep the whole night Thinking about what I need to do When I wake up in the morning So that's what But you can do that in Arabic You can do that in Arabic It's called haf Again casting off And haf bit taqdir And casting off With the rhetorical intent Of allowing your listener Your audience to fill in the blank Okay To fill in the blank And you can do this with English Let me see Yeah, you would say something like If only I were young again Exclamation point That's a grammatically sound statement But what does it do It leaves it open For you to figure out What I would do if I were young again So that's the rhetorical effect Of casting off Parts of the speech that are essential To the speech But in Arabic you can do it With more flexibility With different siyah With different With different expressions Okay, anyway Not different expressions But different grammatical syntactical Structures Okay, so let's look at that This is dot dot dot So this is elliptical speech And those who fear their lord Shall be ushered to heaven in companies Until when they reach it And its gate shall be opened And its keeper shall say unto them Peace be upon you Well have you fared Enter in to dwell forever Any problem there? The problem is created in this letter That's where the problem is created Let's try to read this verse again Without the word end And for those who fear their lord And those who fear their lord Shall be ushered to heaven in companies Until when they reach it Its gate shall be opened And its keepers will say To the end of the verse Any problem there? No problem there Because you have completion now You have completion You have closure with the sentence But that end creates a problem And those who fear their lord Shall be ushered to heaven in companies Until when they reach it And its gate shall be opened And like when they reach it And when its gate shall be opened And when its keeper shall say unto them Well have you fared Enter in to dwell forever Then what? Do you see what I'm saying? So it leaves it open Which is basically imagine yourself Being addressed in this way Imagine yourself, now it's putting you there It's putting you because it's not Because it's not descriptive anymore Allah is not describing something He's not describing something He's teleporting you into that moment Itself If you were describing it It could be exterior to yourself If he was just going to say And those who fear their lord Will be ushered to heaven And when they get there Such and such will be said to them Wonderful May Allah make me among them But that's not how he said it He said that when they Are ushered into heaven in companies Until when they reach it And when its gate shall be opened And when its keeper shall say unto them Peace be upon you Now you're imagining it Now you're imagining it Because of that wow you're imagining it And as you're imagining it There comes the cliffhanger There comes the cliffhanger Allah leaves you suspended In that space Now you're suspended You don't have closure now And the only thing that you have Is a sense of yearning And a desire You have a sense of yearning That you now have That Allah has created in your heart With that wow Do you guys see what I'm saying? Do you see the rhetorical Import of elliptical speech? Sometimes And by the way You have to be very careful About how the book of Allah is translated Because I went through This whole slide I went through two weeks of I had seven translations In front of me for every single verse I did not allow a verse To be translated except after consulting Seven different translations And in a lot of times I ended up translating it myself Because they missed the points of rhetoric That I was trying to focus on They missed the points of rhetoric They didn't bring it through in the translation Because they're being descriptive And they can't afford to have Right? You can't afford to have it incomplete Not all of them missed it But some of them missed it You see what I'm saying? May Allah reward them It's a tremendous feat Say Whoso is an enemy of Jibril Indeed He is the one who Brought it down on your heart By the leave of Allah As a confirmation of previous revelation And guidance and good tidings To those possessed of faith Is there a disconnect here? There's a disconnect here Whoever is an enemy of Jibril He brought it down to your heart It's a total shift It's a total shift What about those who are enemies of Jibril? Well, it goes without saying That's the whole point It goes without saying And the affair is Allah's The affair is Allah's Just leave that to Allah Whoever is an enemy to Jibril Let's not even go there Do you see what I'm saying? So this is the power of Elliptical speech And if you're not careful You'll miss it This is all throughout the Quran That's why people just don't Realize That they come to this book And they say it's such a random book All the verses they're all In random order And some of the sentences they're not even complete When you have no access to the book Allah has not purified you Allah has not purified you No wonder This book He guides there with Many people And he causes to go astray Many people reading the same Book, they'll go astray The Quran misguides people With his revelations That is God That is God Who is the enemy of Jibril? Whoever is an enemy of Jibril That is an answer for Tafsir We're not doing Tafsir So So when they took him away With them Resolved upon throwing him into the hidden depths of the well And we reveal to him You shall yet tell them Of this their deed They shall not know you Okay So when they took him away with them Resolved upon throwing him into the hidden depths of the well And we reveal to him Now without that end it would have made perfect sense Right When they took him away Resolved upon throwing him into the hidden depths of the well We reveal to him At that point we reveal to him Right But there's an end there Right It brings something back from the previous clause Like before So when they took him away Resolved upon throwing him into the hidden depths of the well And when we reveal to him You shall tell them of this their deed When they shall not know you What? Cliffhanger again You're suspended in midair Now what are you doing? What is the first done for you? We're totally speaking You are now in the well with the use of Right And what use of is experiencing at this moment You're experiencing in your In the imagination of your own heart Right Now you're connected A lot of connecting you to use of Emotion You are now emotionally connected to use of In this young boy cast into the well By his own brothers By his own brothers Who are all sons of a prophet And when Allah revealed that Who will inform them of this their deed Now what is the use of experiencing Having had this revelation Having had this revelation Having had this revelation Yusuf was a young boy And we revealed to him So this could be I don't know We have to check the tips here This could be his first revelation Now what is the use of experiencing Allah is experiencing his bored With words With words So that's what the wow brings you That's what the wow brings Without the wow It would have just been descriptive like I said And when this happened And they threw him into the well We revealed to him at that moment You will tell them Beautiful But the wow there The wow being there It allows you to be there It transports you to that moment again And you are now in me And now with your own imagination You are trying to figure it out Now with conditionals And conditionals is if X then Y If X then Y Right Walaw anna qur'anun Suyirat bihin jibalu Aw kutti'at bihin ardu Aw kulli ma bihin mauta Bal lillahi anru jami'a If there were qur'an Where by the mountains You could be set in motion Or the earth be cleft Or the dead be made to skip Now sorry Or the dead be made to speak Nay But all sovereignty is unto Allah Now you as a second grader Writing a statement like this And you submit it to your English teacher And you get it back saying B minus What? You have an incomplete sentence here It's totally incomplete You can't do this in English Right The protosis has to have an apodosis Right You have an if statement You gotta have an if statement You gotta close it But it's not closed here If there were qur'an Where by the mountains Could be set in motion Or the earth be cleft Or the dead be made to speak Reflections what? How do you fill in the blank? If there were qur'an That could do these things They would still not believe? Any other fill in the blanks? If I'm in such thinking There is nothing That don't come across Any other reflections? We're not hearing anything from the women here You have the ears So you're not speaking much No they're saying if there were qur'an Could be set in motion Or the earth be cleft or the dead be made to speak Who would have believed I'm not thinking of it that way This would have been that qur'an It would have been this one If there were qur'an This would have been it There's no other better revelation There's no other revelation that could come To do those things before their very eyes If there were qur'an This would have been qur'an But Allah prevents that from happening In this qur'an If we were to fill this qur'an To a mountain That you would have seen it In other reverence before it's lowered Totally pulverized to powder From the fear of Allah And these are the parables we mention for people In order for them to reflect In order for them to think In order for them to think So this is the qur'an If there were qur'an And this is it This is the very qur'an that you have You see what I'm saying Yes Again we have a wow here That's going to give us a problem And when they both submitted And he lay him on his brow And we called out to him Ibrahim you have fulfilled the vision Thus do we require those who act with beauty And this end Should have been in red So let's read it without the end And when they both submitted And he lay him on his brow We called out to him O Ibrahim Anything remarkable about that? I mean that's descriptive And it's beautiful How it would have been like that It would have been beautiful Why is there a wow there What can we mean And when they both submitted And he lay him on his brow And we called out to him Ibrahim you have fulfilled the vision Then what Thus do we require those who act with beauty But then what And when he did that And when we called out to him Ibrahim You have fulfilled the vision Fill in the blank on that one You know what I'm saying It just brings such Such magnificence to the moment It's such a momentous Point in human history And when this happened Oh and when that happened Oh and when Ibrahim put him on his brow Oh and when Ibrahim took the knife Oh and when they both submitted Oh and when we called out You have fulfilled the vision Oh When all that happened If you were only there So that's what it brings It invites us to that place To witness that scene And see That that is the That is the historical event now That all of us celebrate Until now It didn't appear That's what the wow does That little wow That's what that does Yes When it does to me It makes me catch my breath Because it stops the action So he He's laid to the ground And We called out to him And he laid to me to catch my breath Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar And we called out to him Just in the nick of time And it stops it And it stops it for all of us To sort of bask in Allah Akbar Breathe Okay listen Oaths We see this with oaths You know That we swear by oaths We take oaths as to the veracity Of something that we're about to say And Allah swt takes oaths To render greatness To what he is swearing by And to also render greatness To what he's swearing to Okay When Allah swt says He's swearing by the nerves But he's also swearing to something Okay Forget about the nerves Take that idea back Because that's also an example But with elliptical speech But Allah is giving greatness to us And greatness to The fact that To what he's swearing to That mankind is in loss And that is a great reality For us to wrap our minds Around and to perceive In ourselves So here we have Okay Allah swt is swearing by these things By those who wrench out souls By those Who with joyous release Release them By those who swim Gliding along By those who swiftly surpass By those who thereby Bringing the matter to its end Upon the day Wherein the first last convulses What did he swear to? What is Allah swearing to? Hmm He's not swearing to anything That he mentions Right He's not swearing to anything that he mentions But he's swearing to something in our imagination You see what I'm saying And that's going to be The result of our own reflection On this verse It puts you in that scene Where Allah swt is swearing By all these things and you're witnessing it As it's happening You're witnessing those who Wrench out the souls Those angels that wrench out the souls And those who with joyous release Release them The believers who release their souls With joyous release You're witnessing that It goes by all of these things But then in the end Swearing to what? I mean the day of judgment Is in there for sure This brings us right To the Akhira It brings us right into the Akhira And it's swearing to that Which cannot be expressed in words Swearing to that Which cannot be described in words In a way that we can actually understand You just have to be there To get the full To get the full experience Of what is actually being sweared to here It's beyond words Qaf When Quran in Majid Qaf by itself Let's not deal with Qaf We already talked about Qaf The last time we were here We talked about Alif-Laam We talked about this Qaf when Quran in Majid Qaf by the magnificent Quran Qaf Qaf Qaf in Majid Qaf Qaf Rather, they marvel and come by the magnificent one rather they marvel that one like That's what that means is rather I translated as yet, right yet. They marvel Yet they marvel that one like themselves is common to them charged with warnings Thus those dispossessed of faith exclaimed this is an astounding thing What when we are dead and turned to dust shall we? How far fetch the return so you can't translate this book you can't translate it you can't translate the book If I would meet now, we couldn't have to Robin Don't don't that I got a job that if we were when we when we die and become dust Da Da Da that's a that's a far fetch claim Okay, so what did our last one spent on us where to Cough first You guys hear that your cough when our last one I thought it says cough the cork and in Majid by the magnificent cork and then He brings it down to earth yet. They marvel that someone like yourself comes to them with clear warnings Right, but where does the verse begin? It begins with a cough and it begins with the magnificent Right, it begins heavenly, right, and it doesn't even it doesn't even finish it for that far as there Then it comes down to our to our level There's so much beauty in the expression of upon Well, Fajri, well, I am in Ashley was shafri. Well, what's the well a lady if I ask me I'll feed I'll cut them with the each other. I don't talk if a father book a beyond By the dawn by the ten nights by the even by the odd By the night as it journeys its course Is there not in this an oath for a mindful man? Allah Akbar Allah Akbar Allah Akbar is there not in this an oath for a mindful man by the dawn by the ten nights by the even by Allah swears by the even in the odd Allah swears by the even in the odd And by the night as it journeys its course is there not in this an oath for a mindful man Well, the oath is incomplete. Oh Mindful men The oath is incomplete. The oath is incomplete. Where's the hope? Are you guys feeling this are you guys feeling it? Am I just in a world on my own here? Are you guys feeling this? Allah is taking these oaths left and right left and right and swearing to what exactly and then calling us to account for not understanding the oaths So this year, this is you know, I think we're done Yeah, we're done with the elliptical speech component But this here is to see how elliptical speech then how it when we notice it when we when we're reading the Quran That we we have to be alert to it because we can easily pass it along. We can easily let it pass right and This when we allow ourselves to slow down inshaAllah and we allow ourselves to taste what's going on in the verses Then we cannot but Pause you can't just go to the next verse You can't just go to the next verse. You got it. You've got to allow your imagination to run wild a little bit Right because that is the rhetorical effect of just leaving things out for our imagination For our imagination to fill in the blanks and when we do that there is it There's a drawing closer to our Lord in those moments There's a drawing closer to our Lord Allah. I understand. Yeah, Allah. I got it. I got it. Yeah, I got it You see I'm saying You bought me and then and then when I went when you think you've got it you that that Gift you know that it came from Allah's Pantheon directly You see I'm saying And then you take that you nourish it you allow it to grow and then you recite these verses and every time You recite the same verses you you you reenact that same feeling that that you have of all before your Lord So I think with that do we have time for Q&A? 15 minutes. Yeah, I think this is a good place to stop before we go to the next Section we have what we've got orthography a little political speech Concentric pauses transition I Have been asked to do something You're done You can make a lot of drama. There's there's a lot of projects that I'm working on right now And you try that this is going to be one of the Components of a project and I'm working on a major project Where the seven keys are going to be part of it, but it's not going to be focused on the plan or on the seven keys it's going to have And a number of it's going to be a template of what what I inshallah intend to Contrude it and we ask that Allah accept But the seven keys if you follow what would if you follow anything that I that I teach or anything Some of these keys are always going to be there In and what I in what I seek to bring whenever I'm speaking about the one I I try to employ as much as this is possible So stay tuned Yes One thing I'm observing is a lot of What are some of the keys that really require understanding of our yeah, some some with an other Illegical speech Coherence no Coherence no electrical speech no concentric how does no transition Yes, yeah, so three of the keys don't we don't require Arabic, right, right? For us to get kind of Full benefit like are there? What do you recommend? How do you go there? Well, you can go learn Arabic, right or you can sit with someone who's got Arabic and Still read the full benefit in shahma depending on where you're So let me just ask you a personal question After sitting through a couple hours of this and then the last time we went through this Did you feel that you received the full benefit of? The insight of whatever I was talking about those specific. I have okay for those specific I have then that would be that would be the next best thing to sit with someone who knows it You'll get the full benefit of those I add and then Pukita book But then you're nothing, you know learning Arabic is a lifelong long process I'm still learning Arabic, and that's not a statement of humility. I'm actually learning Arabic, right? Every Thursday, I have a class with my check and I learn more and more Arabic So this is not this after teaching Arabic at you know Whatever you mentioned in the bio, right? So for more than 10 years, right? So it's a lifelong commitment and the more in Arabic you learn the more these insights becomes Rarely apparent to you. I mean, there's there's stuff that My favorite novel of all time is the consulate dictionary It never reads the same way twice That's where Questions or reflections your own reflections if you have if you want to talk about your own reflections on some of the verses So that we can we can benefit from those as well. Yes I'm not reading the put on the present like isn't right so identity markers that you make I'm wondering if you have like I just find it to be very difficult to do that especially in the content like Social political context that we live in How do you do that? That's a very good question and and I don't think it's possible to do a hundred percent I mean, we're all going we're always going to come with our own filters, right? And getting rid of those filters entirely is Is going to be a constant struggle but to be aware of those filters? I think is the most important key that you know, I'm coming seeking as an interpretation right, I'm coming seeking a certain meaning and Why am I coming seeking that meaning questioning those presumptions that I have questioning questioning those foregone conclusions and being on Alert that wait a minute. Is this the meaning or is this what I want the meaning to be? Right, so this kind of awareness I think is half the battle, right and then the other half is Unlearning what we've learned or or reading ourselves of those filters And we can only do that by sitting at the feet of the greatest scholars And when we sit at their feet and we take this deem for what it is, right? The more and more we do that the more more we feel we see that When the truth has manifest and falsehood has Retreated because it is in the nature of falsehood that it retreats right that it that that it just that it Disappear the nature of falsehood is that it doesn't when the truth is manifest falsehood does not appear But so to to ask a last-minute time to turn to a last-minute time and say guide me out I want to submit to you. We are not You know, we are not used to words like submission even though we know that that's what our religion means The religion itself means to submit not to surrender. Oh, I surrender my will to the will You know, that's all very, you know, that's all very new ageing or no It means to submit to obey right these are words that are taboo. They're dead words You know in the English language, we don't use these words anymore, right? And that's because there's there's a pretty there's a social Political history behind these words, right and there have been abuses no doubt There have been abuses, but that doesn't mean that we that doesn't mean we get rid of the word It means that we reclaim the essence of the word We don't get rid of the like sin You don't hear this word anymore, right because because you're in a culture where oh don't judge me I don't judge you right. That's the culture. So I can't even use the word sin anymore Whereas a lot come a lot commands us to command the right and forbid the wrong, which means to judge Right, he commands us to make value judgments that this is an immoral app And this is a moral app and I command you to morality and I forbid you for immorality You see I'm saying this is this is what Allah calls us to so when I come to the book of Allah with my Don't judge philosophy. You say I'm saying then you know I'll be reinterpreting all these and basically be putting on a lot what Allah did not say Do you say a lot of love with what Allah would you have no knowledge of and basically you're supplanted You're reading yourself into the text projecting your own Your own interpretations onto the text and the text is free of you Right, the text is free of you the text was there before you it will be there after you and it is not in need of you Right, and we are in need of this text and this guidance. So our Relationship is a video from the Quran is a relationship of total and utter submission and obedience To our Creator right that we should be looking for what does my Lord expect of me? What does my Lord want of me and may Allah help me to fulfill what he orders me to do what he Prohibits me from doing right. I am a slave of God right. That's where we have to begin or else We don't get anywhere with this book We don't get any and Allah will take this in like I do an example. It was a very controversial example But but it doesn't need not be when you sit at the feet of scholars So all controversies dissipate when you fit when you sit and you take from scholars All all all these and I've been very privileged to sit and take from some of the greatest minds that the West has produced Alhamdulillah, and there's not a single question that I have brought and I bring many many questions Except that the explanations come through like like shining light And this is this is promised right? So there is an answer out there But when you come look at this this verse about this the disciplining of the lives Right One of the meanings of Darabah Right Darabah Fadri Buhun one of the meanings if you look down the 50 meanings on the list Right, you got it. You got it. You got a fish down One of the meanings is actually to have sexual relations to have conjugal relations Do we have them people? Conjugal conjugal relations. I apologize for that. One of the meanings is to have conjugal relations with your spouses Right, so so I actually heard one of these You know one of these people who you know Are sort of plagued by their isms, right? Say that the intended meaning of this verse was lost on all of the Fouqaha on all of the scholars We're all men who are all patriarchal were all this and all that and that whole line of discourse The madah had been all of that Because one of the meanings that was lost on all of these generations 14 generations of scholarship on the issue was to have conjugal relations so basically the Correct interpretation of the verse and translation of the verse based on this definition of the word Darabah is that if you Fear their new shoes, right, which also needs to be correctly Defined right, and I don't think we have a good understanding of what the shoes is Right a lot a lot of people say oh, she's just buying new shoes all play now all the time She's just buying new shoes new shoes new shoes If you feel the new shoes, right, what do you do? Admonish them Refuse to share their beds Admonishing and if that doesn't work Refuse to share their beds, and if that doesn't work didn't have conjugal relations with them again Right, and if that doesn't work right then again an arbitrator for both sides of the family Does that make any sense? That we refuse to share the beds with Not me but men who are in this situation refuse to share the beds with their with their their wives And if that doesn't work, okay, then let's bring them back into our beds. Maybe that'll work Do you see I'm saying so this is where a person who is plagued by their isms is going to make the quran conform To their own understanding of what the quran should mean vis-à-vis feminism humanism egalitarianism and all of these other isms, right because then who then what is the danger in that? I Do you not consider the one who is taking his own desires as his board? And so we're just worshiping our own selves in the end of the day We actually will we end up worshiping our own selves at the end of the day You serve say and Allah is irrelevant His book is irrelevant basically whatever conforms of his book to my ism is Guidance and it's prophetic and it's moral and whatever it doesn't needs to be reinterpreted because This person's to blame and that person's to blame and this person's to blame and that person's to blame and Allah does not preserve his religion Allah does not preserve his religion for 1400 years. He didn't preserve it and he's going to preserve it in your mind Right, so it takes a good deal of humility and an awareness that I have isms being a modern Muslim in the West I have isms and I can't bring any of that into the sacred Valley of Dua I've got to remove my shoes and removing your shoes means moving your isms as well with the shoes Right removing all of that taking all of that out and just sitting with the book of Allah and allowing it to address you That did that help? really It's a journey. It's a struggle It's a struggle and it's a it's a process and that's that's the whole thing That's what Islam is Islam is a verbal noun. It's submitting. It's it's failing and succeeding. It's trying again It's striving is struggling. It's praying Right, but it's not identity You start saying it's not an identity. It's a relationship and relationships have successes and failures, right? relationships have growth over time Relationships you you can fall in love from the very beginning or you can fall in love two or three years into it Right, but you will have that point where you fall in love utterly in love and then And then everything that the beloved wants is beloved to you Fiaalul Mahbubu Mahbubu everything that the beloved commands is beloved to me everything that Beloved forbids is is abhorred to me Zayn and I will The last point I says We're coming to you He says Zayn and I come Eman Zayn, what is it? Zayn of equal to become Was a Yenah will be equal to become something about Eman That Allah has given you Eman and he has adorned it in your hearts and he has made you a hold kufr and fussur and asian disbelief and vile deeds and Disobedience he has made you hold that in contempt He has made you look upon that with disgust and that is only after a while, right? That's not that's not that's not the state of every Muslim, right? But there are Muslims who they look upon kufr as you know overall pluralists and pluralistic Zayn and you have your right to your kufr. I have my right to my Eman and I love you You love me with your comedy and they don't they're desensitized to a totally desensitized Right, but the movement is the one who looks at kufr and he had any feels disgust in his heart for it He feels repugnance in his heart for for disobedience to Allah He feels it and this is what causes him to come out and say this is moral This is immoral This is more this is what we have to support and this is immoral and we cannot support this That's the role of the Muslim Muslim So it's in my diverse for 104 and sort of my diverse one time Reading those two verses over again And that is what we are called to to be that vanguard that commands to the right that forbids the wrong But we can't do that in a culture that says oh it is it is sinful to judge another person Yeah, Allah is the ultimate judge, but I judge an act. I can judge an act for sure I won't judge a person, but I'll judge the act You see I'm saying there's acts that we judge acts and we judge them according to Sharia to show a sharia rulings acts are forbidden or they're obligatory and they're what's in between they're Reprehensible to Allah and they're they're encouraged by Allah and then they're just permissible, right? That's that's a judgment call on every single human endeavor every single act that a human can even can do We have judgment calls on that you we value that we have that value judgments on that Right, so so yes, I am a judge. I'm a judge of acts not of perpetrators Right now not of practitioners the person their judgment is with Allah But the act the act I can say that that is a forbidden act And I can say that with full confidence without any hesitation and I can say that that is a reprehensible act That act is reprehensible That is a judgment that I'm making and I am a judge and I am a witness against these people And Allah will raise me up on the day of judgment as a witness So what witness couldn't judge? Well what witness, you know Allah is going to give me that role as a witness and strip me of the ability to judge It doesn't make sense So I hope I don't know why I'm going on this long Tangent here, but we realize where we live and we realize You know the day and the age that we're living in and then we allow all that garbage out there To cloud our minds when we read the book of Allah seeking guidance You know it's a crime against us Asana I think this is going to be the last time you invite me here to this You shouldn't have left We read Tavik Okay, so reflections reflections One more reflection a question I don't have a directory related to this reflection But you know when you come across like stories in the Quran like Huzad Musa story and Huzad Yusuf story And then there's all these contrasts You know like Huzad Musa is like someone who's raised his royalty Leaves Egypt or goes and leaves Egypt or Huzad Yusuf comes into Egypt as a Was a shepherd comes in as royalty like and when you kind of seen these parallel How do you really contemplate those is it specific to that story or do you look at the contrast between the stories and There's like 50 plus contrast and it's probably the most amazing stuff from across the broad So how do we what's what can we take away from those differences and each so like one example Huzad Yaqub is part of you Huzad Yusuf's taken Other use of leaves with the brothers and all that but Allah doesn't tell that Yaqub like when he'll be reunited with it But Huzad Musa's mom, I mean as she parts way with Huzad Musa But Allah's month tells it that you will be soon reunited with him So when you like think about these what's like a takeaway we can have You have to look at every one of these examples in isolation and and then compare them You know and and and there's not again There's not going to be one answer that this this is not something that you can find in tepsi it So your reflections on this are just as valid as anyone else's But just as long as they don't run contrary to tepsi it But I think it's one of the most fascinating aspects of the Quran and we're going to talk about transition That's going to be that's that's going to be the last of the keys We'll talk about transition and not on this metal level that you're talking about but more with respect to the the passages themselves and Transition within what is said Right and not comparatively with other prophets, but there is historical transition, right? That is the key to Unlocking and unlayering other meanings as well historical transition, which is what I think you're talking about so Yeah, that's that's that's above my pay grade SubhanakAllah And we will see Hopefully half of you after a lunch and We have lunch and go hopefully half of you will stay The question itself is the indication of the beginning of the month the moon birth is not right So that's that's the whole point of she comes as paper, but then I read this person I said isn't it interesting isn't it amazing how they ask about the crescent moons and a lot tells them that righteousness Is not by taking the back door the righteousness is that you go to the front door And so I mentioned this to she comes up That's the thing you get a reflection like that you need to take it back to the scholars, right? So I mentioned this to she comes up and I said she can what do you think about that? I mean, I just I was thinking about this person in this Reflection cross my mind He said I had that same exact reflection, right, but I didn't want to put it in the paper Right, so it's interesting. Yeah, so anyway This is a lot of time because what comes after is not Apparently Related to what comes before you actually have to look in the tips here and see what's going on here Right because it seems like there's a break in the in the flow That's a good place to stop and then you have a walk from Kathy, right? And this is where there's no relations syntactically with what precedes but there is a connection in meaning, right? Our scholars left nothing out They left nothing out. So syntactically There's no relation, but there is a relation in meaning. So if you say Khatam Allah wa ala quloobihim wa ala san'ihim wa ala aabsa'ihim Insha'Allah, wa ala ma'adabun alzim, right? You see how I stopped here at a gusha'wa That's a good place to stop because the sentence has completed the thought has completed itself But if I stop here at san'ihim and I say khatam Allah wa ala quloobihim wa ala san'ihim What does that mean? Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing Right, that's a good place to stop. That's actually a good place to stop But if I would have said khatam Allah wa ala quloobihim wa ala san'ihim wa ala aabsa'ihim and stop there That Allah has placed a veil over their hearts and their hearing and their eyes Then what do I do here? Insha'Allah A veil.  That is that is not a good place to stop when we're reciting the book of Allah You see that? It's not a good place to stop because even though Allah, ala quloobihim, wa ala san'ihim, wa ala aabsa'ihim, this ala is not like this ala It stops here and this ala is connected to the shawa Wa ala aabsa'ihim ghishawa, and there is a ghishawa on their site You see what I'm saying? So it's even though it's connected in meaning, right? The meaning is connected if you were to stop at aabsa'ihim. It's connected in meaning But it's not syntactically sound Grammatically, it's not sound to stop there because you would start here again with the ghishawa And the ghishawa means nothing on its own You know what I'm saying? Ala aabsa'ihim ghishawa, that means something, right? But ghishawa by itself doesn't mean anything and that's not a good place to stop Right? So you cannot say Khatam Allah wa ala quloobihim, wa ala san'ihim, wa ala aabsa'ihim and stop because now you've changed the meaning of the verse You've made site related to the khatam, whereas site is actually related to the ghishawa Okay? They God seals their hearts in their hearing But He places a veil over their eyes Those are two separate things Okay? And then you have the waqf al-hasan And this is where the meaning is sound for what precedes But unsound grammatically for what follows So it's the opposite Right? It's the opposite of what we just covered So you say Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen So if you stop here, right? If you stop here, the meaning is sound, right? But if you say Alhamdulillahi and then Rabbil Alameen, right? Glory be to Allah and you stop there and you say the Lord of the worlds Right? The Lord of the worlds That's the meaning is clear, right? But grammatically it's unsound Because you have Rabb that has a kasra and Allah has also a kasra So I know that this is a little bit technical But we're going to get to the good stuff, insha'Allah We've got to get through this before we get to the good stuff So here, this kasra is because it's following a preposition, the laam And then this kasra here is because it follows Allah So you cannot stop there If you stop there, then there's no justification for the daa having a kasra And it should be Rabbil Alameen Right? Rabbil Alameen And it's like he is the Lord of the worlds Right? The Mubtada, the subject would be implied Anyway So that's an example of Al-Waqf Al-Hassan Okay And then you have Al-Waqf Al-Qabih This is where you absolutely cannot stop Because you totally change the meaning, right? So if you look at this long verse If you don't take a deep breath reciting this long verse And you say He said Here you're in big trouble, right? Here you're in big trouble Because here it means that they said Our father, we went racing with one another Leaving Yusuf behind with our things And he ate it all If you stop there and you say We left Yusuf behind with our things And so he ate it He ate everything And then you're stuck here with a dip Right? What do you do with the wolf here? So you actually have to say You've got to get to a dip, right? And if you can't get to a dip, you've got to stop at Mata'ina You've got to stop at here, this word Our belongings And so Whereupon a wolf devoured him Whereupon a wolf devoured him Whereupon a wolf ate him Whereupon a wolf ate him And he didn't eat our possessions You see that? So you've got to stop in the right way So Musa A.S. watered their flock for them And then retired to the shade Fakal And what did he do? If you stop there What does that mean? He retired to the shade And so Fakal And he Well, you're in the shade, right? What are you going to do?  Then he said Oh my Lord, I am in need of the goodness That you have to provide So stopping at Qala changes the meaning Totally changes the meaning Right? And it makes sense if you stop there Grammatically it makes sense with what comes after That he watered their flock For him, then retired to the shade And napped And then So then you have Oh my Lord, that's where it would pick up But we have to continue here We cannot stop at Qala Because we totally change the meaning Right?  And then what? And then what? He's going to fall down His reward is with Allah So grammatically it makes sense But in the meaning you've totally changed the meaning Right? So stopping there Is going to change the meaning If he, you know And should death overtake him Then his reward falls on Allah His reward falls on Allah His reward is And I didn't like that His reward from Allah is sure Right? But his reward literally His reward falls on Allah Okay? And I didn't like that translation So I said his reward from Allah Is sure But that's the meaning here His reward falls Not he's the one who falls if death takes him You see that? Okay? So you have to be very careful where you stop Alif, Lam, Meem You can say You can say You can say Or And that's going to change the meaning Right? And this is Another example of Of that A pause that It's not abhiah This is one of those justified pauses That is marked by the three little dots On the right And the three little dots on fi And the meaning that you get That is the book Wherein is guidance for the God fearing? Right? Let there be no doubt La raya If I stop there La raya ba fi Right? That is the book That there be no doubt Wherein is guidance for the God fearing And then that is the book Wherein there is no guidance Wherein there is no doubt Are guidance for the God fearing Okay? So if I stop at right Right? That's where That's the first meaning If I stop at fi Then I get the second meaning This is another very famous example So So you can stop at Allah Or you can stop it at Ain Okay? And it changes the meaning So if I stop at Allah I say no one knows it's interpretation Except Allah And you stop there And then you start again And those who are rooted in knowledge We believe in it It is all from our Lord Or I can say I'm not going to stop at Allah I'm going to stop at Haydn And no one knows It's interpretation Except Allah And those rooted in knowledge Period They say We believe in it All of it is from our Lord Do you see the difference? It's interpretation Either only Allah knows the interpretation Or Allah And those to whom he gave that interpretation Who are deeply rooted in knowledge Do you see that? Everyone wakes up? No Do you guys see what I'm saying here? So you can stop at Allah Or you can stop at Allah And these stops, whether you stop at Allah Or at Haydn They don't contradict And this is why it's very difficult to translate Because where are you going to stop? There's not a period There's no punctuation in Arabic There's no punctuation There's no comma, question mark, all of this stuff None of that So where you stop has to be grammatically sound And you can stop here As a grammatically sound stop here Or as a grammatically sound stop here But you're going to change the meaning And in this case Both meanings are valid And I put a period there To indicate that you have Actually I don't know if this is 16 to 18 It seems like it's 16 to 17 Or 17 to 18 These are two verses So the period there I put in To indicate that it's two separate verses Okay So receiving And receiving And receiving Okay, so Receiving what their Lord has given them For though a four time With beauty their deeds They slept very little at night Right, so this is Allah's definition Of the muhsini The Prophet ﷺ how did he define the Ihsan? And Allah Himself here is defining the muhsini He's defining the people who have the Ihsan And he's saying That they receive from them What their Lord has given them Because a four time In the world They imbued with beauty their deeds They slept but very little At night They slept a little bit at night If you say And you continue That entire thing without stopping The entire recitation of this That they slept but very little At night They were A little bit at night A little bit at night A little of night Is how they slept A little of night A little bit of night That's if I continue But if I stop At Qalila Then it changes the meaning That They received what their Lord has given him For a four time They imbued With beauty their deeds And they were few Qalila They were few They were few And they wouldn't sleep at all at night And they wouldn't sleep at all at night And this This talk is actually justified Not just by the loss of breath But this talk Is justified by the different recitation Of nafaa So nafaa when he recited this verse He stopped at Qalila Asim When he recited this verse He continued So the meaning is complementary And it is different Based on the recitation So the recitation of hafs on nafaa Is the first one That They would sleep a very little bit at night And then The recitation of warsh On nafaa is Few They were very few And at night they didn't sleep at all Where do we get this at all This word ma here is going to change Depending on where you stop If you say The ma here is It has to do with time They would sleep a very little bit of time At night But if you stop at Qalila Then this ma is negative And it doesn't have to do with time anymore From the night They slept not From night they slept not They slept not at all from night Right? So that's an example Of the pauses And how where we pause Is also going to affect How we interpret the verse And how we understand the verse And what are the implications So if I'm reciting warsh It means that I'm not going to sleep at all at night If I'm reciting hafs It means that I can sleep a little bit at night You see what I'm saying And then there's degrees after that But this is very Important to inform our reflections To know where we stop And where we continue And what is okay for us to say Because like this example here What do we say about Those who know What do we say about What do we say about the Interpretation of the Qur'an Do we say only Allah knows The interpretation of his book We can say that because that's what the verse says But can we also say that Only Allah and those who have A deep rooted knowledge That Allah has given them Have access to the interpretation Of the book yes we can say that as well Because the reading Of the verse carries both meanings You see what I'm saying So we can say only Allah knows Or we can say only Allah And those who have knowledge know You see what I'm saying Okay so Transition This here is Is a very important feature Of the book of Allah Transition it's called Itifat It's one of the most Rhetorically Refreshing Features of the book of Allah That Will constantly call us To I see you guys are sidetracked here It'll constantly call us to An awareness When we're reading that this book Is coming to us from all fronts From all directions From all quarters Allah addresses us from the From the side, from the above From the passive From the third person to the second person To something totally unrelated And then back to the passive voice And then the imminent I comes in And then it goes to we I mean it's all over the place It's all over the place And it keeps us awake Keeps us present and alive As we're reciting the book That this book It's alive and breathing It's not just telling a story But it's coming from All fronts So you don't know where the Qur'an Is going to hit you next Where the next verse is going to come from And in that sense it sort of Surrounds you Itifat means To To be Itifat Means to have his attention Diverted Itifat means that his attention Was diverted So as Allah is addressing you Forward right Here comes the address from another place And your attention now is diverted from where it was It was looking here But now it's coming from here Oh and now it's coming from above Oh and now it's passive I don't even know who's being Implied now And now it's ambiguous I don't know does the pronoun go back To Who is saying this We don't know who is saying this Who said that Was that That the man is not like the female The male is not like the female Was that Maryam's mother Was that Allah who was saying that Well that's Itifat That's Itifat And the Qur'an Is alive like this The verses are alive like this And you have to deal with that You just can't translate that So Itifat And I wanted to give different colors Of this First Itifat That this is Diverting one's attention Between the past tense And the future Between something that happened in the past And the future So Allah says Falata sta'ajilu The command The decree of Allah has come It's already come So do not hasten it for yourselves This is Itifat Between the past tense And the future So it's already come The command of Allah has already come So don't hasten it What does that mean To say that the command Allah has already come But don't hurry it forward But it's already come It's already come How could you hasten something That's already happened You can only hasten What's coming What's yet to come But if it's already come to pass How can you hasten it And therein lies That Allah hits you from The past tense And then like a ton of bricks You get swiped off your feet From the future So I am to say You put me in the past But now it relates to my future That the command of Allah The decree of Allah has already come And here this brings us into the decree The rufayat al-aklam Mujufat al-suhat That the pens have been lifted And the pages have been dried But from our vantage point From our perspective All of this is yet unfolding For Allah swt all of it is all said and done It's all said and done Allah swt says To the prophet That you are dead And they are already dead You are dead And all of them are dead Could you not sing that Every soul is already tasting death Every soul is already tasting There is already something that you are tasting That that is a All of it is a fan And all of it is already Annihilated Everything is already Annihilated All of it is already Annihilated And only the countenance of your Lord possessed of nobility And honor remains That already happened That is now As it always was And as it will be And yes All three of these examples that I just related Relate to the future also But the use of the active participle Means that it's now in the here and now As well So when the command of Allah The decree of Allah already came From our vantage point We are hastening it on When is the help of Allah And Allah swt already told Of it When the help of Allah And the opening came If it came When it came And it still hadn't come It still hadn't come So this is all the fact between The past tense and the present And the past tense and the future What has already been written It's already been Decided and decreed as though it came into the past Like the Ashari say You are compelled In the Surah of Muhtar You are compelled In the Surah of Muhtar That you are compelled With the illusion of choice That's all decreed But we have the illusion Of choice We have the illusion of self control Of control over our own But the reality is That Allah swt decreed everything You are compelled In the Surah of Muhtar So the command of Allah has already come to pass So don't hasten it forward for yourself That's between the past tense And the future And the future Now We see An attention diverted Between two different Scales For the noun That you have a scale that's given And then a switch In the second noun So Allah swt says And the verse didn't say It didn't say It said So you have And these are two different scales Of a noun Two different scales of a noun Basically, if I say This is a person who is Grateful If I say What does Shakur mean? Exceedingly grateful What does kafur mean? Exceedingly ungrateful So the verse says That we have shown him the way Whether grateful Or exceedingly ungrateful So it throws us off So you're expecting Sort of a harmony In the mention of the verb The denouns Shakur Shakur They follow the same pattern They mean the same thing In terms of the intensity But Allah switches the intensity So Shakur Is a person who's grateful Occasionally so In general, he gives Gratitude But he doesn't go overboard with it It is Shakur Shakur is a person who is exceedingly grateful He will go out of his way to show you The appreciation for all of the favors That you have done for him Gifts and he will give you far more Greater than what your gifts Have worked in You've done him a favor He buys you a house When he's able to do so Remember that $50 you lent me 13 years ago Here's the key to your new house That's Shakur That's not Shakur Who sends you a little card in the mail It's all good But this is what happens Fa'il to Fa'ul And Allah swt There's divine commentary Divine social commentary going on here That mankind is either Occasionally grateful Or what Exceedingly ungrateful And what did the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam say When Haisha said Ya Rasulullah, you keep praying Your feet are going They're going Swalded All the hours that you stand And what does he say And he says Has forgiven you all of your past sins And all of your future sins Everything is forgiven for you Yes, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And he says Shakur Should I not then be An exceedingly grateful servant Right? Should I not try to do my utmost In showing gratitude to my Lord I mean is it sufficient That I just be Occasionally grateful when I Remember it When I remember the favors that I give Or should I not Push myself to the task And show utmost gratitude That's Shakur Okay And then we have an example of Diverting one's attention between The past tense and the present tense And Allah SWT says Do you not see how Allah has What? Sent down water from this guy And the earth Becomes cloud with verdure Right? Plush with greenery For Allah is subtle acquainted Right? So you have the past tense The switching now between the past tense And the present tense That he brought down water from this guy And then what? The earth becomes cloud with verdure Right? As opposed to he brought down water from this guy And the earth became cloud Don't you see that? That he brought down water from this guy And the earth became green No, he says Water from this guy in the past tense And the earth, behold The earth becomes green Right? Notice it as a process Notice it as it Continuously becomes green All throughout the place That whole process of it's becoming green Right? That it's alive That the earth is alive And that whole process you can observe You can witness that miracle It's not some kind of past tense thing that happens It's remained over time It's again and again and again From the very day that Adam and Islam received the keys to the earth To tend it Right? From that day, whenever Allah brought down water This earth Renews it's greener It's in the process of it's becoming green With the earth, with fruits And with all that it gives Right? That this is an ongoing process An ongoing process And the water that Allah brings down That's part of His decree He brought it down He's the one who did that So you can see that switching it to the present tense Means that it's a living thing It's a living thing It's a living thing that you can Observe day in, day out It's a process that's alive So here we have the opposite We have diverting one's attention Between the present tense And the past tense That on that day That day wherein we shall summon We shall summon We shall summon from all peoples A witness against them And we summoned you As a witness against these people It's related to what? It's actually not the present tense To the past, it's actually the future To the past You go from the future to the past Because this is a future tense The day that we shall bring forth Right? The day that we shall Summon from all peoples A witness against them And we summoned you as a witness Against these people There are some prophets that I said about The past tense is used But when it comes to the others The future tense is used You guys have been listening to me far enough I think we have some time in the schedule Yes Is it because he was speaking to the prophet That the prophet is a witness And brought with him an A witness that we live by Okay Love to hear some more reflections I guess it's one part The prophet is known Yeah The end of the prophet is known Whereas the others are not In terms of his intercession I wasn't thinking of that Just in terms of his station His station The station of the prophet Is known And the station of the others is unknown Okay, very good You had something to add? Anyone else? Anyone else want to offer some reflection? The hand almost went up over you Yes Okay, very good It's written The past tense is used because this is written into the past Right? It's part of the decree When I read this I read this as an honor To the messenger Exalting his rank Like you said That his rank is so exalted That this is something that was already Preordained Before anyone came into the world That the prophet Muhammad Would come forth as a witness Against his people But also the Maqam of him as a witness And as an interceder That he has that station And on the day of judgment All the people will go to all the different prophets And say They will go to one after another One of the prophets after another and they say Don't you see what has come upon us Don't you see what we are Suffering and enduring Will you not intercede with us With your Lord And on that day Go to the next prophet Go to the next prophet Until they come to the prophet Muhammad And he will say He will say yes That is for me I am for that I was meant for that station That is my station I am for that And so It's said and done It's said and done It's said and done And we have brought you As a witness against these people So it's said and done With the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam It's written into stone It's something that is part of the decree Of this entire creation Before Adam came into the world That the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam Would be the interceder For all of Mecca And that's the first of eight stations Of intercession on the day of judgment That's the first of eight different types Of intercession That's not called intercession That the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam That's the very first one where he was Interceded for all of Mecca Just to get the judgment started Just to get the judgment going No You know the first one, the slide before This one, when it said The decree of Allah What was your commentary on the hasten part? From our perspective It still hasn't come From our perspective It's still unfolding itself Right So we're hastening it on Bring it on I want to see Issa come down I want to be there with the jihad I want to be in the army of Issa Bring it forward So that's the idea And then you said that connects to the idea of choice And the Asheris were saying You don't really have choice No, the comment I wanted to make was How I kind of see this You can tell me if I'm right I'm saying that the decree of Allah Everything is already decreed That in the knowledge of Allah He's decreed all things But on that note, the revelation Once I had was not a revelation But the confrontation At any point we can make An infinite number of choices And God is not limited by time So He knows every single way Every choice that we were to make How it plays out And so it doesn't need to play out for God For Him to see it But you would already know The infinite number of combinations that can happen And they already exist in front of God But it's our choice that we're making along each path Which shows where we end up in that infinite web From our vantage point From our vantage point It seems like it's choice From Allah's vantage point It's decree So that's what the Ash-Ariz meant That you are compelled By the decree In the illusion of choice With the illusion of choice Surat al-Muqtad So we'll leave that for Al-Qaeda Of course We're going to come back to this here Because that will definitely take us You know So we summon you as a witness Is it also kind of appointing That Prophet Salam is a witness Like a proof that he is a witness Over us Whereas the other From all people We shall summon from all people A witness against them It's like undecided Who's going to be a witness against who But for the Prophet Salam He's a witness over all of them So it's kind of like that No So these witnesses Are the Prophets These witnesses are the Prophets Every Prophet is a witness against his own community Every Prophet is a witness Against his own community But the difference here is that Allah is treating the Prophet Muhammad Differently from all the rest of the Prophets By giving them the present The future tense And giving the Prophet Salam The past tense There's an exaltation in his rake You know Allah SWT So this same as in Ata-e-Naka Ata-e-Naka, exactly That we have indeed We've already given you Kelfa Fasalbi So pray to your Lord And sacrifice The one who cuts you off He's the one who's cut off The one who takes you as an enemy He's cut off He's cut off He's just totally severed Cut off So we have already given you Kelfa And it hasn't come yet But it's come Do you understand? And such as the These are the reflections that we can gain From the use of past tense Versus present versus future Now At the very beginning Of his advent Allah SWT And your Lord will surely g