Quran Study 03 Dec 1982 By Dr Rashad Khalifa
Transcript
0:14 Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. As-salamu alaykum.
0:29 Okay, the first one.
0:32 I'm sorry.
0:33 First one.
0:35 Yeah, yeah.
0:39 The number is around 140.
0:42 100.
0:43 The number is over there.
0:44 The chapter key is off.
0:45 I think it's 142.
0:49 Right.
0:50 100.
0:52 142.
0:52 142.
0:54 142.
0:56 Now we can go there.
0:58 Yeah, we can.
0:59 It's not the same.
0:59 It's not the same.
0:59 I'd like to understand what's going on.
1:02 But there are days when one foot is going and there are no feet.
1:07 Did you talk about the fitna last week?
1:10 No. No.
1:11 No, he's got the one foot.
1:14 Right. Right. That's right.
1:18 But they're not doing it here.
1:20 This is a very important session.
1:27 I just want to comment on Abraham from the previous page, page 13, the section is "Abraham Passes the Test."
1:40 Now, Abraham is the father of our religion.
1:42 And he set the example for all of us. So, Abraham set a good example for us.
2:02 Now, Abraham was asked to—he was not asked, it's a general notion and we have to take this out of our minds—
2:10 that he was asked to sacrifice his son. He was not asked to sacrifice his son. The Quran tells us that he saw in a dream
2:21 that he is sacrificing his son, and he thought, or he got the impression from the dream, that he is receiving a divine command to sacrifice his son.
2:32 And then,
2:33 just thinking that God
2:35 wants him to sacrifice his son,
2:36 he said, "Yes, sir," and he went
2:39 to sacrifice his only son.
2:42 Now,
2:43 he had no children for a long time,
2:45 until he was eighty-some years old.
2:47 And finally,
2:49 he got this beautiful boy,
2:51 Ishmael.
2:52 And then he thinks that God wants him to sacrifice
2:55 his son, and he didn't hesitate.
2:57 And that's what makes him Abraham.
3:01 And this is the great example that we learn from him.
3:04 And then Ishmael was an even better example—well, not better, he was as good an example.
3:11 That he said, "Well, Father, you think God wants you to sacrifice me? Then go ahead before I change my mind."
3:19 He didn't hesitate. He looked at his son and said, hurry up and do it before I change my mind.
3:27 He is supposed to submit to God.
3:30 So, God is not asking any of us to be sacrificed.
3:35 God is not asking you to stick your neck out and put a knife to it.
3:39 Like this.
3:41 God is not asking you to sacrifice your children.
3:44 He is asking you to pray five times a day.
3:51 And some of us can't do it.
3:56 So, this is the example that is set here. It's an extreme example. Now, God intervened and saved him with His mercy.
4:06 And this is one thing that I, for the rest of my life, I will always be in awe of this truth.
4:10 Oh, thank you.
4:11 Really. I was, you know, the Bible, the distortions of the Bible carry over to us.
4:18 Because the Bible says that God ordered Abraham.
4:21 The Quran, when I thought about it, the Quran never said that, never said that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, but God said you shall not kill.
4:31 I think five times the Quran says, "Do not kill your children."
4:35 Right, that's right.
4:36 Four, four times it was, I don't remember, how many times?
4:39 Yeah, four or five times.
4:40 In fact, it is prohibited by Allah.
4:42 So if God forbids this, how can He tell the founder of Islam to be a killer?
4:49 Yes, that's it. So murder, killing is prohibited, period.
4:53 So we have to check the Quran,
4:56 because the source of the problem is these additions.
5:00 You know it is from God.
5:01 And it supersedes anything else.
5:05 I think John Milton, the guy who gave us the story of Adam and Eve,
5:08 and the whole saga of Adam and Eve,
5:10 the Quran supersedes that.
5:12 And he mentioned it.
5:13 He must have told the Quranic story after that.
5:16 So this is the lesson we learn from Abraham. Now we get to the third lesson.
5:23 Ustaz, can I just interrupt you? Maybe you can help me. I cannot find the verse, but I am sure you will be able to find it.
5:30 Or as we discussed it last time, on page 13, verse 128. There is a verse that is the answer to 128.
5:41 Our Lord make us submitters to You, and from our descendants a nation of submitters to You.
5:49 From our descendants, no?
5:51 And there is a verse, I think in Surah 2, which says that
5:58 It's almost the same language in Arabic, and it says that
6:03 Now, Allah is addressing the Arabs, the Muhammadans, with the answer to 2:129.
6:10 I think it is true.
6:11 In Surah 2, verse 129, it prays, "send a messenger to them"?
6:15 Yes, and the continuation of 129...
6:21 Because later on, Allah says, and We have sent a messenger from among you.
6:27 What surah is this? Can you tell us what surah this is?
6:31 Well, I think this is Surah 9.
6:34 No, it's not Surah 2.
6:41 Oh, is this Surah 2?
6:43 I think this is Surah 2.
6:46 It's almost the same language in Arabic.
6:48 There's another one in Surah 3.
6:49 Surah 3, I think. Can you help us?
6:52 Yes, is there another one among you?
6:54 What's this?
6:57 I think it's 2:3 or 2:8.
7:02 2:3 or 2:8.
7:06 I don't know.
7:11 I don't know.
7:36 I want this to relate to 2:129.
7:54 Even your translation is almost word for word.
7:58 This is really an answer or a continuation of 2:129.
8:08 But the... ah... it's in Chapter 2... well, never mind. I'm sorry.
8:32 I'm sorry that I can't. But eventually we will come to it. Even your translation is very, very...
8:41 The way you translate it, it is an immediate answer, actually.
8:46 What?
8:49 No, it's still too far.
8:51 I think two or three.
8:53 Two or three.
8:54 Yeah, two or three.
8:59 We'll come to it.
9:02 When you get people to do that, they do... I don't have to... no need to...
9:08 mention it.
9:22 Okay, we're going to start now at 2:142.
9:25 A'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem. Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.
9:31 The fools among the people will say, "Why did they change the direction of their Qiblah...
9:36 ...which they used to observe?"
9:38 Say, "To God belongs the East and the West.
9:41 He guides whomever He wills to a straight path."
9:46 We thus made you a balanced nation,
9:49 that you may serve as witnesses among the people,
9:52 just as the Messenger serves as a witness among you.
9:55 We did not appoint the Qiblah you used to face except as a test,
9:58 in order to distinguish those who would follow the Messenger
10:01 from those who would turn back on their heels.
10:04 Indeed, it was a difficult test, except for those guided by God.
10:10 God would never let your faith go to waste.
10:13 Indeed, God
10:14 is Kind towards the people, Most Merciful.
10:20 We have seen your face, O Muhammad, turning towards the sky.
10:24 Therefore, We will now assign for you a Qiblah that pleases you.
10:28 Henceforth, turn your face during Salat towards the Sacred Mosque.
10:34 Wherever you may be, you shall turn your faces towards it.
10:39 Those who were given the scripture know that this is the truth from their Lord.
10:45 God is never unaware of anything they do.
10:49 However, even if you show those who were given the scripture every kind of miracle,
10:55 they will not follow your Qiblah, nor will you follow their Qiblah.
10:59 They do not even follow each other's Qiblah.
11:02 If you were to acquiesce to their wishes, after the knowledge that has come to you,
11:07 you would be one of the wrongdoers.
11:09 Okay, so going back to 2:142, what happened here was
11:14 that the Prophet Muhammad and the believers, the Submitters, were ordered to pray towards Jerusalem.
11:24 Ever since Abraham built the Ka'bah, the prayer was towards the Ka'bah, and for the Arabs,
11:34 that was their religion, Submission, as founded by Abraham. Then Muhammad came and he said,
11:43 Now the Ka'bah is full of idols, and We are going to test you.
11:48 Gabriel then gave him the message that he and the Muslims will be tried from now on.
11:58 By facing due north.
12:00 Which is the opposite direction.
12:03 Because the Ka'bah will be behind them.
12:06 Most of them anyway.
12:07 Except for the very few who were, say, in Syria.
12:14 So, some of the Muslims actually refused; they disobeyed the commandment,
12:19 because their tribal prejudices were stronger than their belief in God and His messenger.
12:27 So it was a tough test. They had to get rid of their prejudices and submit completely to God.
12:35 And if you remember the movement that I showed you,
12:39 I recall a mosque in Damascus with the two Qiblas.
12:43 When you go for Hajj or in Sana'a, you see
12:47 the mosques had both Qiblas, the one towards Jerusalem and then
12:51 as you see in verse 144,
12:56 it says, now that the test is over, you shall
12:58 face the Ka'bah.
13:02 Well then,
13:04 they can't
13:05 look back;
13:05 they can't
13:06 even
13:06 turn
13:06 their
13:06 neck.
13:08 Yeah.
13:09 Yeah.
13:31 You...
14:14 and so forth. And among these instructions were the commandments to observe the Contact Prayers.
14:22 Gabriel taught him how the Contact Prayers are to be done. These directions are not part of the Quran,
14:30 but they come with the Quran. So Gabriel brings the Quran from God into his heart, and to his
14:36 mouth, and then he gives him directions to go with every revelation. And the directions place the
14:43 verse in the Surah and give the name of the Surah; these are not part of the Quran. And also among
14:48 the directions are the timings for the prayers for people of truth.
14:55 Was that you, sir?
15:01 I don't know.
15:02 Sir, did you think that the last quote was the last one?
15:05 No.
15:06 Does anybody know?
15:07 Yeah.
15:07 The word is Salat.
15:09 I don't know.
15:10 I don't know.
15:12 I don't know.
15:14 I don't know.
15:14 I don't know.
15:15 But I would like to say something on the Qibla, but before we go there I want to point to what I was looking for.
15:23 Verse 151 of Surah Al-Baqarah. It's exactly the same language that you...
15:29 Now let's go back to 129, no?
15:33 In 129 it says,
15:34 Abraham and Ismail
15:36 pray to Allah, our Lord
15:38 and raise among them
15:40 that is from our descendants
15:42 a messenger who would recite
15:44 for them your revelation
15:46 and teach them the scripture and wisdom
15:48 and sanctify them.
15:50 You are the Almighty, Most Wise.
15:51 So from 129 we go to
15:55 151.
15:56 It really, the Quran
15:57 answers itself. Such blessings:
16:00 we have sent a messenger
16:01 from among you
16:03 to recite to you our revelation and to sanctify you and to teach you the
16:09 scripture and wisdom and to teach you what you never knew. So here is the answer, or
16:16 Allah's action, or Allah's answer to their prayer.
16:23 Word for word. Yeah. I would like to mention something about the Qibla. I have talked of this more than once, and I
16:33 want to relate this problem of the Qibla with a Quranic verse which says, I don't know
16:38 if we have passed it, that Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian.
16:43 That's in Surah 3.
16:44 Surah 3, alright.
16:46 The Jews captured Jerusalem during the time of David.
16:55 And David was the first one who built a very simple temple.
16:59 And after David's death, his son, Suleiman, made a better temple.
17:07 And this is the beginning of the Jewish religion.
17:12 Now we can see very carefully that the Quran is always telling the Jews now, go back to
17:20 the religion of Abraham.
17:20 Abraham.
17:21 It seems that the Jews also have abandoned or gone astray, because they
17:27 had these temples and all of these rituals, and the Jewish religion began to alienate
17:34 itself from the original teachings of Abraham.
17:40 So when the Quran is telling us Muslims to go back to the Quran and forget all of the
17:48 traditions and extra prayers and all of these things, and unnecessary rituals, and so on.
17:56 It is for no different reason that the Quran is also telling the Jews that you have gone
18:04 way ahead of the religion of Abraham.
18:11 Now, the first temple dedicated to Allah was the Ka'bah.
18:18 And if you look at it chronologically, if it is during the time of Abraham, it must be so many generations before David, before he captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, and therefore it is very logical now why the Quran will have to tell people, the Muslims in particular, go back to the original one.
18:45 that the one of Jerusalem is simply
18:48 an addition.
18:50 In other words, before
18:52 Jerusalem was ever heard of,
18:56 there was already
18:56 a Qibla.
18:58 The Qibla that
19:01 Yeah.
19:03 It's correct
19:04 historically, chronologically.
19:07 And therefore, there is no reason
19:08 anymore why Muslims
19:09 should go to a latter Qibla rather than
19:12 the original one, considering that
19:14 Abraham is the founder
19:15 of Submission. So it's a very simple analogy.
19:18 Also we are told in here exactly why
19:21 the fools among the people say
19:23 what they say.
19:27 And it says in 144
19:31 and in 143,
19:37 it was only to check,
19:38 in order to distinguish those
19:43 who would follow the Messenger, from those who would turn back on their heels.
19:48 So, this was the purpose of this major test.
19:54 What concerns us here is the commandment, that at the end of 144, it says,
20:02 "Wherever you may be, O believers, you shall turn your faces towards it."
20:08 And it says that
20:10 even those who received
20:12 the scripture
20:12 know
20:13 that this is the truth
20:14 from their Lord.
20:14 The reference is to Abraham,
20:16 and this is right in the Bible.
20:18 And God is never unaware
20:19 of anything you do.
20:20 And now,
20:21 145
20:22 repeats the command
20:23 to you and me.
20:24 However,
20:25 even if you showed
20:26 the followers of the scripture every miracle,
20:30 they will not follow your Qibla.
20:31 Nor
20:31 are you to follow their Qibla.
20:34 And they do not even
20:35 follow each other's Qibla.
20:37 This is why the repetition is so important.
20:42 The commandment is repeated to Muhammad and then to us,
20:45 to all the believers. So, therefore,
20:48 it is very important that we face the Qibla
20:54 that is in Mecca, in obedience to God.
20:57 And here in Tucson, we have a classic example
21:02 of the Qibla, the right Qibla,
21:04 the wrong Qibla, and what makes it right and what makes it wrong.
21:09 And also, we even have here the kind of inspiration where God sets the believers on the right
21:16 path, or in the right direction.
21:19 We had a great debate.
21:22 This debate is very quiet now, about the Qibla.
21:25 If you go to the Islamic Center, to Masjid Muhammad, you will notice they are facing
21:30 north-east.
21:34 Now, the line, the latitude line, they take this direction, not, you know, the direction we take.
21:44 If you look on the map, now their excuse is that, look at the shortest line to Mecca.
21:57 Because this is how the planes go. The planes go north-east and fly over the North Pole, and go to Mecca.
22:06 Now this is, in my opinion, a sophisticated way of saying this is the closest distance,
22:11 because we are now civilized, we realize that the Earth is round, and that the closest distance is across the North Pole.
22:20 The closest distance to Mecca.
22:22 Now, what they forget is a few things, not just one thing.
22:28 That the shortest distance to Mecca is actually through the earth.
22:33 And that the chord does not cross by the wall.
22:37 The chord goes through the wall.
22:39 The chord doesn't reckon a curve, and it goes through the earth.
22:46 So the shortest distance to Makkah is a straight line from Tucson which will be straight east.
22:54 That's the shortest distance, now they don't know that.
22:57 Also, they ignore the fact that God treats the globe as a rectangle.
23:04 You notice all the vegetation, the equatorial vegetation, is all in a strip around the equator.
23:15 If you go to the, what is that line, the Tropic of Cancer, the vegetation around it is like a rectangle.
23:30 The land regions on the earth are treated like a strip, like a rectangle.
23:38 So if you open the globe, make it like a rectangle, and draw the lines on it,
23:42 you notice that Mecca is slightly south of east compared to Tucson.
23:47 Slightly south of east, which is exactly the way this building is oriented.
23:53 And exactly how all the houses in Tucson, almost all of them, are oriented.
23:57 because the streets go north, south, and east-west.
24:02 So it doesn't matter where you are, you'll find a wall that is already oriented towards the right direction.
24:08 So we had this big debate though, and I think Juma went to the geography department at the university
24:17 and asked what would be the right direction from Tucson to Mecca, and they gave us our direction.
24:22 But more important, Tariq al-Zabi was here and he saw a dream, he was living here in this mosque.
24:33 And right in the midst of the debates, he saw a dream that our group, the whole group that was in the mosque at the time, was in Mecca.
24:41 And we were praying in Mecca with the Ka'bah visible. And we were praying in Mecca
24:46 with the Ka'bah visible. And we were facing the Ka'bah, while everybody else was facing the wrong direction.
24:52 And we were looking at the Ka'bah. This is the kind of inspiration
24:57 that God sends to the elect people on this day. But aside from this,
25:06 the shortest distance to Mecca is right through the earth.
25:30 Thank you.