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Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.
Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family.
Dear brothers and dear sisters …
Assalaamualaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ASUNPhVCQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z8GwFWOB_M
THE QUR'ANIC MESSAGE PART 2
I begin by thanking each one of you for taking this part of your weekend off. Saturday evenings are usually family evenings or evenings of taking time off and relaxing from the stretch of the week but here you are and I think you are making an investment in some type of knowledge this evening and I hope I can deliver. I would also like to thank those who made this program possible. They had graciously afforded us a place where we can sit which is supposed to the character of the Masjid. The Masjid is supposed to be an open place (which is) accessible to everyone and we are very grateful for that. I'd like to also express my gratitude for the liberty to choose the topic that I think may be of benefit of you this evening. No one came to me and said "can you speak about this or speak about that"; that is obviously well appreciated by your truly here. So I think I would like to begin with a type of mild approach to the subject even though the subject matter that I will dwell on is, from my perspective at least, an extremely important one. I know some of you if not all of you know that I am working on a tafseer which means an exegesis which further means simply an explanation of the meanings of the immaculate Qur'an. This has taken at least the last fourteen years of the time and the effort to try to put together an explanation that doesn't have the chains of tradition on it, it's not limited by the religious language of the Judeo-Christian context. Many of the translations that we have are weighed down (or) they have a heavy weight on them and now is probably not the exact time to go into any detail even though if you have and questions that will follow the presentation I would be more than willing to try to respond to them. So this explanation of the meanings of the Qur'an is more than just a translation. A translation obviously is a very important element (and) you're going to have to know very thoroughly the original meanings of the Qur'an to be able to lift those meanings from the Arabic language of the Qur'an to the language that it is translated into, in this case into the English language. I've encountered so much barriers to the types of words that we have around us. First of all we don't have a tafseer that's written directly into the English language- that doesn't exist. This humble effort of yours truly is the first such effort to bring out the meanings directly into English. You do have translations of other tafseers but we don't have a tafseer that has been written directly and immediately and forthwith into the English language so that overcomes one of the obstacles that exist.
Now I'm going to try to explain to you just a couple of things so that you can get a feel (and) you can understand better what I'm trying to say. Imam Nahidian just a few minutes ago quoted the short surah that we all know. The first ayah which is two words which is translated in much of the translations that you have and Imam Nahidian repeated it as it exists in these translations and it says.
By the token of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
The token of time is a way of saying maybe
By the transient value of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
That's another way of trying to explain what you're saying when you say by the token of time and that is not an accurate translation. Now all translations are an attempt- we are all humans, we are not deities (and) we are not gods and therefore when we try to move meanings from one language to the other it's not going to be thoroughly complete and it's not going to exhaust the whole meaning, especially when we are speaking of the translation of the Qur'an- not what one person said and what another person understood; this is what Allah says and what we try to put in our human language. Now if I were to tell you, (I'm going to try and explain something here and I'm going to be very simple about it), the word asara in the average usage of the word is to wring something. You know- if you have a wet cloth and you wring it so that the water that was soaked up by the cloth drips out of it that is called in simple terms asr. We're talking about a material thing but here al asr is speaking to us, human beings, and the meaning here is relative to time. No one can squeeze or twist or wring time. Has anyone seen anyone do that? (That someone) brings time and then wrings it? You can't do that. So when the word itself, which has a physical representation, is applied to the aspect of time- because time is one of these concepts that also has a lot of philosophers trying to deal with its definition, but to avoid the philosophy of all this- when we say wa al asr we mean
By the depletion of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
Time is depleting (or) time is going (or) time is missing (or) time is withering away- that's what it means.
By the depletion of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
We say salat al asr. Salat al asr is towards the end of the day, i.e. after the day has been depleted (or) the juice of the day is already out and we're about to reach maghrib time. So that's the asr of a day time. I'm not in Surah Al Asr, I'm years and years away but when I get there I'll probably be translating it not by the token of time which is something someone says and something another person really doesn't understand but when you say
By the depletion of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
which means time is running out (or) by the fact that time is running out- that's what this ayah means, by the fact that our time is running out. So when we give it a little though (and) this is where we are absent- the Qur'an is a book of unending information but what happens to us is- and this has been happening for hundreds of years; the issue is not in the Qur'an, the issue is in ourselves- we are incapable of running our minds (and) turning our minds on with this Qur'an so the problem is in us. The problem is not in the Qur'an. Even though I'm breaking it down for you to the nitty-gritty and the real basics of the language and the origin and all of this some of us are still going to need a little more to understand this and a little more would be like this… If Allah is saying in this first ayah
By the fact that time is running out (or) by the depletion of time. (Surah Al Asr verse 1)
In a practical sense that would mean that the fact of the matter is we are done because many of us think "I'm living today so I'm alive. I'm going to live. I lived yesterday so I'm going to live tomorrow." Most of us think like that- "I'm alive. We are living our days." What this ayah is telling us is we are dying our days; we're not living our days, we are dying them because time is something (that) once it's gone it's gone. It never returns. So when you think about yourself (and) you envisage let's say you're going live seventy years. OK-
Man is in a process of losing. (Surah Al Asr verse 2)
Because you're losing this time- your lifetime is not something you're gaining, your lifetime is something you're losing- so when you look at it like this you say and you begin to think "ok I'm dying but the dying process is taking seventy years." Our definition and the way we read this surah, because we don't understand it, is we lived for seventy years but if we had this hands on knowledge of what this short surah is saying we'd begin to realize that time period, (give yourself how many years you want, seventy (or) eighty (or) ninety- whatever the time period is), is a period of dying because our definition of death is that moment when we leave this world. When we come to that minute we say "he died (or) he passed away"; but no one ever looks at it in the range of the years that they were given knowing that this time is going away and when time begins to going away you reach the end of your time line (and) you die. So actually you've been living a life of dying. I'm not trying to give a course in tafseer, the thing I'm trying to say to you is we don't have a hands on understanding of the meanings of the Qur'an and this is just one simple example being that this is a surah that everyone knows and it was mentioned at the beginning of this presentation and so this is just another example of our distance from the meanings of the Qur'an even though we recite them, we memorize them, our children memorize them we teach them in school and we have certain types of competitions where people compete in reciting the Qur'an. One issue I bring up from time to time is has there ever been any competition in explaining the meanings of the Qur'an?! It's nice to have a good voice read the surahs and the ayaat of the Qur'an obviously. Sometimes it goes right to our hearts and it makes us feel that we are in a type of condition with Allah but it doesn't stop there. The Qur'an is meant for a range of involvement that goes much beyond just the emotional condition that we feel when the Qur'an is recited with a melodious voice.
I'll take another example or two maybe to try to give you a sense of why there is a very big distance between where the meanings of the Qur'an is and our understanding of it.
The other ayah that was read in the salah (or) in the namaz was
The germane and the root meanings of the Qur'an are accessible to you in this night of homeostasis when all of your appetites, all of your potentials are brought within their God-measured range. (Surah Al Qadr verse 1)
This surah is repeated so many times, especially in a particular school of thought in Islam, in prayers- so you hear this many times. The word anzala- you can check your own translation yourself; I don't want to go into these different translations that exists, you can go back and check your own translation whether its in English or Farsi or Turkish or Urdu or whatever language its in, because most of them even the Arabic explanation of the word falls into the same gap (or) falls into the same discrepancy- and when you say anzalnahu in the physical sense is like when you bring something down. This is up here and you anzalahu means you brought it down like this- that is anzala. That's how many people understand it. Even choose the word that you want for what I'm just showing you- OK. I hope I'm not going to lose anyone here because I wanted you to understand that that's not exactly what it means in this context. May be I can explain this using another word. There's another word in the Qur'an that's used frequently in the Qur'an. I don't know how familiar you may be with it (but) I hope you are familiar because the more familiar you are the better it's going to be for you to understand what I'm saying. There's a word that says ta'alaw. Now what does it mean when someone says ta'alaw? The mainstream understanding if this and the way the average person would understand it is come. That's the way it is understood. If you look at these translations it says something along the lines of
… come to a common understanding (or) a common word (or) come to a common phraseology (or) come to a common agreement… (Surah Aal Imran verse 64)
There's the word ta'ala which means to go upwards. Some of these translations give the flavor of it but they don't give the exact meaning. They say exalted or extolled but the word has this meaning, (i.e.), to go upward. So when the Qur'an says
… come to a common understanding (or) a common word (or) come to a common phraseology (or) come to a common agreement… (Surah Aal Imran verse 64)
it doesn't simply mean come like we're in the same room (so) come to a common understanding or common word between us and you; it means raise yourself. It's true that you're coming but in the process of coming you raise yourself. (Do) you understand this much? I haven't lost anyone, have I? So in the process of you moving towards this kalimah you are also raising yourself. The other side of this is anzala. When Allah expresses Himself- just like we make an effort to come up- Allah makes the effort to come down. Of course Allah doesn't have any place. We are not here in the process of trying to physicalize Allah. No. There's no place that He is in and there's no time that He is in but for the purpose of just understanding ta'ala and anzala are two complementary words because the motion of ta'ala is a human motion and the motion of anzala is the motion of a divinity (or) of Allah. So He says
He has made the meanings of the Qur'an accessible in layl al qadr. (Surah Al Qadr verse 1)
Now layl al qadr is another (subject) but the meanings had to go through another process or a distance from these meanings being from Allah to them becoming humanly accessible- that is anzala. I'm trying to explain with so many words but I guarantee you (that when) you go to your preferred translation of the meanings of the Qur'an in whichever language you understand and try to obtain these meanings- try. You going to say "hey wait a minute- I listened to what brother Muhammad said that evening. I was listening and I think I understood what he said and here I am tracing these words of the Qur'an…" You go and take a concordance of the Qur'an open it up and go look where these words anzala and ta'alaw- in the plural, in the singular, in the past tense, how ever way you want- and see whether these meanings are what you are understanding from what you are reading. This is the problem that we have. One of the problems that a person who's trying to explain the encounters when he tries to put it into the English language. That's one issue.
Now, another issue is, for those who bother themselves (or) for those who take the effort to count the ayaat, the Qur'an has around seven hundred and fifty ayaat in it that deal with what is called today scientific subjects. Many ayaat in the Qur'an speak about as samawaat wa al ard, ash shams wa al qamr, al bihar, an nujoom, an anhar, al layl, an nahar, al falaq, so many. Seven hundred and fifty ayaat speak about today what is called issues of science. Now, on the other hand there's about one hundred and fifty ayaat in the Qur'an that deal with the issues of what we call fiqh; you know- how you make your wudhu as one example, at tayamm'mum (is) another example, beginning the fasting (at) what time of day and what time to end. These are fiqhi issues. There's about one hundred and fifty ayaat in the Qur'an that deal with these fiqhi issues. Now, I challenge all of you ((and) everyone who's going to listen to this or see it or however way this thing's going to be reproduced), to bring me these individuals who have done their homework on writing the meanings of the Qur'an to give you the impression when you are reading the tafseer of the Qur'an that the fiqhi issues are about one fifth of the scientific issues in the Qur'an. (Its) a simple mathematical thing! One hundred and fifty over seven hundred and fifty equals one over five but when you go to the libraries- you have libraries over here, you have a library in this Masjid, you have libraries in other Masajid, you have libraries in universities, in hawzahs (and) all over the place- and look for yourself and see whether you have that proportionality of books. If we were thinking in sync with the Qur'an (then) for every one book on fiqhi issues we'd have five books on scientific issues; but you go around here and look at the books that exist in the library- do you see that there are five books explaining to you the meanings of the ayaat in the Qur'an as opposed to one fiqhi book explaining other ayaat in the Qur'an. Do you see that? No, you don't see it. The question that becomes (is) why? What happened? Are we in tune with this Qur'an? If we were (then) when these seven hundred and fifty ayaat are speaking about observable, earthly, sensual things that you can put in laboratories that you can discover, that you can investigate (and) research then we should have a lot of these books. When Allah speaks about conception (and) how we are brought into life (and) how that process goes through the womb there's a sequence of information there that is accurate and that is precise. All that is needed is for us to observe what is happening and today we have so much scientific information available to us to bring the meanings out of these ayaat because everyone understands these meanings to a certain degree. When the Qur'an was first revealed over fourteen hundred years ago people understood the general meanings of these ayaat but the human condition and mind has gone a stretch since that time. The fetus, today, with the access that we have to the development of life in the womb is not what it was fourteen hundred years ago. Fourteen hundred years ago when they wanted to abort they couldn't do it. So if they wanted to end a life they would immediately after birth within the first minute or first hour (carry out) an "abortion." With today's information around that's not the way things are done. They will abort life in the womb or they will abort life before there is life. They have these IMF and World Bank managed programs around the world, contraception programs, in which they don't want populations to grow. That's another method at getting rid of life that Allah has made sacred. We can't do that. Anyways, the point here is we don't have the necessary output. This Qur'an is meant for our minds. Let's take away our minds (and) let's for the moment assume we can't think. What's the Qur'an meant for? (If) you can't think the Qur'an is not meant for you! So registration of acts and responsibilities is annulled when there's no thinking in him or her. Finished! It's done- as is the case with a person who is sleeping, as is the case with a person who is unconscious. So these six thousand and a few hundred ayaat in the Qur'an are meant for our minds- primarily; but because the Qur'an is so giving (and) it has so much to give even if your mind cannot latch on to its precise meanings it still has the capacity to fulfill your emotional being- that's another expression of Allah's rahmah. Don't feel sad that just because you can't understand the full range of meaning and the depth of meaning and the precision of meaning Allah is going to dismiss you and say "Oh- tough luck. You can't make it. By bye." No. Allah's Rahmaan and Raheem. Therefore you feel Allah. If you can't think Allah you feel Allah.
I just remembered an event that was related to me many years ago back in the 1960's or the 1970's when there used to be a Soviet Union . There used to be scholarships to the different organizations that were leftists and socialists and communists and these types. So one of these recipients of Soviet Union scholarships was the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO. They used to allocate certain scholarships to the Palestinians and they dispersed to certain students who qualified (and) who get good grades to go and study in the Soviet Union . So one of these persons who got this scholarship was a committed Muslim, an enlightened Muslim- that type. So he went to a city, (I can't remember exactly), I think it was Bukhara Soviet Union . They had Tajikistan , they had Turkmenistan , they had Kazakhstan , they had Dagestan , they had these places. This person went to one of these places where the majority of the people out there are Muslims, at least by name. They are Muslims. So after he began studying there for a while he began to know some people and they began to know him and when these Muslims who were living in that particular university area that he was attending realized "seems like this is a very sincere and very enlightened Muslim. Let us invite him to one of our (meetings)." You see- at that time the practicing Muslims were Sufis and they had their weekly or their by-weekly meetings that were underground, away from the authorities where no one would know what is going on. So they had enough confidence in this person. They knew him for a while so "let's invite him. Maybe he can help us out with understanding our Islam." So he went. Because he didn't know what was going on someone invited him and he went there. He sat down. There were brothers and sisters and then they brought a copy of the Qur'an to him. They said "could you read it." Then he opened it up and said "sure." It was this person himself telling me. By the way. It wasn't some third person saying this. So he opened the Qur'an up and he began reading the Qur'an. I can't remember, maybe it was a few pages just like this Qur'an (or) any Qur'an that you have. You just open it up and he began reading. He's an Arabic speaker so this is not a foreign language to him. The page that I opened up right here says… He's reading just normal and they're watching very closely. They were paying so much attention. You know- is he going to make a mistake? Is he going to fumble? Is he going to mispronounce some things? He was just normally reading. There was no issue here. So as he was involved in reading the ayaat he actually was not watching what was going on around him. So after, (I guess), he read just a couple of pages and he looked around and he saw these people- it was tears coming down their cheeks. He said "almost all of them." Then he wondered in himself (do) they understand these ayaat in such a way that made them move to this extent but obviously that wasn't their language. They couldn't understand his recitation of it. So after he read then they told him "can you explain to us what you just read?" He said "yeah, of course." So he explained to them what he just read and he said "it's my time to ask a question." They said "what is it?" He said "why is everybody emotional? Why is everyone in tears?" They said to him "because you can read the Qur'an and you can understand it and we can't." That is something that, (I guess), you can't appreciate unless you realize that there's distance but even though there's a distance you might be reading the Qur'an (and) you might be trying to understand what is said in the Qur'an and just because you don't understand Allah is not looking the other way. The effort is what counts; but then the blame is on some of these people who understand very well the meanings of the Qur'an. It's not a matter of they can't understand what the Qur'an means; they know exactly what it means but after knowing exactly what it means they have a clash with it. This becomes a problem. Don't think simply because somebody is going to read the Qur'an and is going to understand the ayaat in the Qur'an they're going to follow what the Qur'an is saying. No! That is not necessarily so. We have some people- some of them could even be scholars- in some quarters when we use this words some people get offended. We're not trying to offend anyone. We're not trying to get on anyone's nerves. We're just trying to look at reality and see what's out there in the real world. There are real people who've went to school (and) they've studied this for years and years (and) they understand the meanings of this but when it comes to real life they say "no, no, no. Don't remind us of what the Qur'an is saying" or worst yet, they will take some of these meanings and they will try to adjust it (and) to turn it in a way that will serve either their own personal interests or larger corporate interests. They will do that. This reminds me of another incident. There was a TV program in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia
Whoever wants to commit themselves to Allah has the freedom to do so and whoever wants to deny Allah has the freedom to do so... (Surah Al Kahf verse 29)
This is guaranteed in the Qur'an. What's this?! But this is what happens when we begin to close our minds and we don't have the horizon of the Qur'an- we begin to suffer. Who's suffering? We are suffering. Who's losing lives? We are losing lives. Who's playing us as the fool? Our common enemies. And "don't rock the boat." (If) you get someone to speak to these types of issues they throw him out of the Masjid. So they throw him out. This is not an isolated incident. Alhamdulillah- in about two weeks we are going to begin thirty two years. What's going on all around the Muslim world? Many people (who) want to speak their conscience are told "you can't give the khutbah." The Masjid has become someone's private property. You can say whatever the "owner" says you can say or whatever the "landlord" or "proprietor" says you can say and if you cannot say it "keep your distance." What happened? No one arbitrates to the Qur'an. No one wants to arbitrate to this because nine tenths of it doesn't exist. Why arbitrate? (They say) "what's in this? How is this going to solve an issue if nine tenths of it doesn't exist? What are you talking about?" That's where we are and I guess with that my time has come to an end.
I ask Allah to accept from me and from you and I hope I have communicated some message. As I said from my perspective this was Muhammad Al Asi light. So I hope with that Allah will reward us for our intentions and our sincere efforts.
Wa Salaamualaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh
This khutbah was presented by Imam Muhammad Asi at Al Manasid Masjid on 22 April 2014. The Imam previously led the daily and Jum'ah prayers inside the Masjid. His speeches were revolutionary and thought provoking, and eventually irritated and threatened the Middle-East Ambassadors who control the Masjid. Finally, the Imam, his family, and other Muslims faithful to the course of Islam were forced out, into the streets. His khutbah originates from the sidewalk across the street from the Islamic Center, currently under seige.
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