How to read the Qur'an: Diverse Approaches & Different Understandings -Mufti Abu Layth

see few insights people not sure if let's seize that can hold I take it that should be working to some extent Shawa

[Music] these some people are tuning in must be working right in hamdulillah wa kafa salatu salam ala rasulina mustafa why that I read in live in October Oman Bay Hotel method or Bea Arthur Medina fell apart Salam Allahu Allah from people animal silent all right so just want to share a few insights I'll just let one two other

people kind of tuning those of you that are sorry it's on this I've got I'm not using my iPad here and I've got it on this table so sometimes it might shake a little okay so sugar and I know Satnam right all right Mohammed I like him ha all the way from Kashmir aleikum assalam - shut up rough night - shut rough map right people I wanted to take a few moments today just share some insights which I do believe are incredibly important it's to do with I've been asked sometimes

about many different topics and questions to do with the Quran and sometimes these things can be summed up in two methodological responses okay so a lot of them fall under the same kind of once if you just understand the key methodological difference the answers to the other questions would make sense to you anyhow so time I'm actually no I'm

not in my mufti cave right so this is post if the sessions so they're not in the regular Mufti cave right so that's with all my library and everything but I want to take a look at how to read the Quran okay now when we read the Quran and I don't mean by that eight edge we'd perspective on how to actually read as in recite the Quran I'm speaking more from a perspective of understanding how do we read the proper now when we

there's different approaches to how this can be done one approach that I'll be taking a look at in contrasting it with another and that is a kind of dogmatic a dogmatist approach compared to a relativist approach so these two avenues if you like that can be taken to understanding the Quran one way is that this Quran Allah has sent this and he is explaining everything there is ever to

be really known anything else in life will always solve something not mentioned in here we can learn about it but it's not really that significant everything is just the Quran will teachers of us science it will teach us about technology will teach us about medicine or teach us about taxonomy will teach us about economics it will teach us about everything you can imagine that a perspective some people have that perspective they think that the Quran come and they use certain verses like Allah will take tibia and literally

shape that it's come as a clarification for everything and they will understand this to mean this is a clarification of everything really ever that's one way to look at this and I'm gonna kind of come back to that the other way is that the Quran came as a connection between the creator and the Cree and creation it was a rope a lifeline and Allah says what does he move a huddle Allah hold on and this connection was to reach mankind

indefinitely right throughout the time but in order to do so it had to focus on the society it was revealed him they were the primary target therefore they were a make-or-break deal so the first effective community of Islam were it all depended on them so the Quran the style the language actually the language but the language the style even the imagery the key concepts not all concepts but

several had to tie in significantly with the lives of the people the first recipients of the Quran so that's two very different ways on how to look at the Quran and this makes a huge difference on the outcome when you're reading the Quran so I want to go into this as an example so let's take I want to take a look at a verse of the Quran that I was actually pondering over today and this is why I thought well maybe

you'll be worth sharing some insights on this and it's verse from surah at-taubah where Allah is explaining the months in the year but before we go to that in order to highlight these two different ways that I've said how we look at the horror on one being a dogmatist approach that everything we take it as dogma we do not question we do not try to necessarily I mean we can understand the actual wording but we don't try to understand

beyond that we we take this as this is how it was always meant to be it's not about this came for the people it came for it came for ever like that so let's take an example to clarify this let's go to surah Saad yes okay so in sort of variance which begins right that Bismil aaron was there yet a third one so in this surah lot goes on to say when he's

explaining creation well are the freshner phenomena he dune that allah laid out the earth and so on and i've discussed this previously when people have asked me about the Flat Earth perspective and no it's got nothing to do with that but then Allah goes on to say one thing clearly she in Holika nozzle chain and from everything we created two genders okay so chain partners from every single thing from

every space species they was two sexes two binary gender won't mean currently Shaitan from everything Helana xoJane Lila come to the car in the hope that you may come to think about this or reflect or that he may be a a reminder for you and then Allah goes on to say that turn back to a laugh of every table now what's interesting is the dogmatist approach here would say well okay Allah

has taught us a and everything must forever fit in that if we find anything in the real world that goes against that we just ignore this because that is how it always must be a relativist approach would be to look at that and say well know Allah was addressing primarily the the first recipients of the Quran in a general way in how they understood the Quran how they understood the world and things generally do come in binary gender so now when we've discovered let's say

there is the Mexico whiptail lizard as an example which has a single gender it doesn't have it's a single gender species and there are other species as well that are single gender now when you come across that does that mean oh my god the Quran is wrong does that mean there's a mistake in the Quran because Allah say is warming could we change jalapenos okay we create from everything could Allah Sheikh xoJane but how can they be a single gender species then

well the answer to that the answer to that is that when Allah is addressing the people he's addressing them relative to them and their immediate surroundings and world he's not addressing everything in its entirety because if you do take that as a dogmatic approach you will then struggle in saying well oh well this doesn't add up with the real world then because there are certain species in the real world that are single gendered they are not binary gendered as

in male and female so that's an approach I want to highlight people unfortunate I say unfortunately but there are Muslims we push sometimes this very dogmatist approach I think there's another philosophy and why they push them that's usually because a very sectarian mentality carries a dogmatist approach because it serves obedience to the actual sect so usually any kind of denominational sectarian groups do not like critical thinking because critical

thinking will make you question the group and which by net bites nature undermines the authority of the group so usually a dogmatist approach has no room for critical thinking okay now coming to this verse that I wanted to speak about in surah 2 Toba right now Allah subhana WA Ta'ala says here in night of the show this is verse 36 in night that the Shahada and Allah if not a shara shara Nikita be Larry Omaha lavas sama wotty

wot min ha are Barton through the likud dinner by him philately movie Hinojosa come right so opted up to thee now this verse Allah is saying that the number of months according to Allah or our 12 week it happened now what does this mean in the book of Allah Oh some people have said in the knowledge of Allah some people have said feet up women in the sunan of Allah that he has laid up

Yamaha lacasa Marathi well up the day he created the heavens and the earth min ha arbitral forum of them are for holy or sacred months Vella kadhi not by him that is the precise being filete totally movie him nanosecond do not oppress yourselves or others amongst you in these months now what is what does this mean why am i why do I wanna why do I want to focus on the verse because this verse caught my

attention ye caught my attention 1 obviously the aspect of the holy months which I'll come to by the way the Ramadan is not one of those holy months so but I'll come to that in a moment to this this thing of does that mean 12 months in a year is a sacred kind of is this a divine decree in measurement of time and that is important to understand because how the lens you now pour on

will entirely change the result for you so this one way like if we put on now the dogmatist lens and read that we would understand they would read that like this and this is what I want to show diverse ways of reading the Quran they would understand that in narrate that Ahura in the Lada a life telling us indeed the months as they mean laid out are only twelve that is according to the decree of God from when he created the heavens and the earth and all of them are four sacred months so these four

sacred months have existed since time immemorial and from the beginning of time they've mean four holy months and and these four holy months are they begin with little character the ledger Muharram and then Raja okay so that's a dogmatist way of looking at this the other way is what hmm that so if have all cultures always had twelve months in a year and this is what kind of got me thinking when I was thinking about this the other day and I

thought I'll share these because it's not actually true many cultures had actually third had varying calendars many of them 13 months in a year so amongst them even till today the the Coptic kind of calendars 13 months in a year historically many civilizations the Mayan civilization the kind of inca the ancient so the south american ancient kind of civilizations ancient china parts of ancient india other civilizations had actually 13 months in

a year even recently in the beginning of the last century and from the 19th century there was a movement to kind of turn the calendar the common calendar that we have which is 12 months there was a movement to turn that into a 13 month calendar consisting of 28 days one of the key proponents to this was those of you that have heard of Kodak the the camera well one of the the the leave you was the founder of that I think his name was Eastman I think George Eastman he

was actually one of the key proponents of this movement called the International fixed calendar and it would have 13 months and each month would have 28 days and that would be spot on each day would begin with Sunday and it would be the same every year so there would be 13 months they would all have 28 days now there would be one extra day which they proposed to call null day it doesn't actually count in

any week or any day or any month this kind of proposition they had which they called an international fixed calendar they actually running Kodak run this with many many factories and businesses throughout the world and I believe for several decades throughout lost the last century up until maybe the late cent early 80s they actually tried to hit that campaign it eventually kind of died down but what's interesting is is that approach they said it was more effective

for business and things like this because the dates and the days were always set but the question is is that was that against God's law this becomes the interesting question that by doing so do we suddenly become anti god is that's the question that I'm trying to gather and from a dogmatist perspective if you've read the Quran in a dogmatist approach you would say yes that is not only is that antique

Gregorian calendar but that's actually anti God because although the Gregorian calendar is based on the solar cycle but it is still twelve months in a year and to set thirteen months as these people had done would be to go against God if you read that in a relativist approach you would understand well actually no what Allah was saying here is he was addressing the Arabs with an understanding they already had so the Arabs already and most of the world used

to set their calendar through the moon and in another verse of the Quran you find Allah mentions that he says in surah younus in verse 5 who only the generations of the earth unwelcome Remora that Allah made the Sun a source of light and hmmm a kind of light what coderre Manasseh de and he set out for the moon

certain set stations set Manasi is how it lands or how it appears to land leta ala moon so that you may know not a lot so that you may know either the city the number of years well hey sir and keeping account records right now so Allah is saying and then he goes on that these are signs of allah if i said oh i atill upon me alimony explains his signs for people that may

have knowledge now allah set this out because all civilizations all people no matter how primitive they were they all had access to the moon they don't have to be huge astronomers they didn't have to the moon was something that people could set as an easy calendar for them but many civilizations like I said in South America ancient China ancient India different part of the world had 13 moon moons in a year not twelve bobbery highlights that meant certain Arab tribes were trying to have 13 so for for

our people to prosper they need to have certain accounts they need to set out calendars set out records in order to prosper now for them Allah had laid out that look it is 12 that those who are trying to disrupt this at the time or not are doing this to no avail but they're just disrupting the other people who are trying to get ahead now the interesting thing here is that the Arabs from the time of ismail alaih-is-salaam believed in these four sacred months in a in a year they were three which

followed each other so beginning with cauda the ledger so these two and the months of Hajj Muharram which comes after and our job which is on its own later on which comes between before Shelburne so this was from the time of sunset brahim oi smile ELISA and the reason they had this was so they can do hatch so they can get ready little character they sit down stop fighting they head to the hatch and muharram so they can come back from the hatch safely so this was done in a way that they

would allow people to do Hajj and Rajab so people could do that they could do amra on their own in safety and come back and there was some difference of opinion with certain Arabs people like I believe it was Rabia they would call ramadan raja and some tribes like allah I would say there's no holy months and they would just do their own thing and I believe there were some other tribes like they and I want to others that rejected the sanctity but the thing is the situation

of the Arabs required for them to prosper required some kind of if I can say universal agreement or measurement and to require them to have some sanctity so they could prosper so they could put aside bloodshed and fighting now you would think well why what's so important about not fighting in these four months why not just say they shouldn't be any fighting at all because in essence there should be no fighting but the Arabs at the time were in such a

state that if the focus was just Universal it wasn't going to happen it could they would not embrace it the only way they could embrace it was in this partial message they could embrace this so there were many Arabs that would say ok we won't fight in these four months and that much will embrace so for them this is laid out in a way that is digestible in some of the let's kind of I believe you know like I don't agree with their understanding like you man the chef he met that that went on to say that these formants are so holy that if anybody even out of the

Arabs time that if somebody commits a crime in them they have to be extra penalized to me that's a misunderstanding off of the Sharia so this whole point is that it's for the Arabs to be able to to kind of prosper so they would say somebody would hate that person so much you'd want to kill him but because it's a holy month you would let it be so Allah was not trying to say that this is for the whole of mankind since we created the world there were these four holy months because if you lived in South America what let's

say back then what difference would it make to you about these holy months like you wouldn't even be apart from you wouldn't even have 12 months in a year you would have 13 months most likely as the South Americans did until the kind of conquest until the kind of Christopher Columbus and then followed by the whole colonial kind of powers came over so what difference would it make to you if you were in ancient China about the ledger about the month of Hajj it wasn't so if this was for time

immemorial if this was since pre-eternal time that these four months were holy it wouldn't make any sense like if there was no Hajj if there was and we know all the different prophets had a different Sharia to them so let's say now people from in Noi ELISA Lam's time there was no Hajj that people were doing so what would be the purpose of having the ledge as a holy month and they would have had their own months so what does that mean now this verse that we were reading in

surah Tauba is meaningless that the months of the year are twelve - a la Pieta Bella in in the Lok Italia means like the lose as his laid out relative to you the day he created the heavens and the earth he knew that you would arrive at this situation he knew that and from amongst them for you to prosper it was important that for were set aside as holy months in order to

kind of allow you to to kind of shed these feuds these kind of blood feuds that you've got gradually okay so that and this valley cadena billion people like al half it'll bubble we said that that actually meant that that is the measurement the kind of natural measurement not being of Islam so does that mean this verse now doesn't is just circumstantial or does it actually mean much well actually means a lot because it shows that the Quran allies addressing people about nature that is relevant to them he's highlighting that

the system's being put in place resulting progress he's highlighting certain compromises that they have to make amongst themselves and cooperations he's highlighting that Allah in his knowledge knows these things from humanity and allies highlighting that humans working towards this is part of a mass plan and divine decree so I just wanted to share some of these and the diverse approaches so you've got this this particular verse as an example when Ally speaking about twelve months in a

year is that a holy decrees that how God always wants calendars to be and the example I was looking at was let's say you had the International fixed calendar which worked on a 13-month of twenty eight days each with a set the week with set days for all time with one extra day nahi record and no de which didn't fit anyway would that be an T God and that was the example and I was saying well if you came from a dogmatist approach which way now anything that's mentioned in the Quran allies never mentioning it relatively

he's always mentioning it universally everybody has to it saw this when Allah said about these four holy months the four holy months applied even to the the Mayan kind of Danish civilization and the whole Inca and the South American and the ancient Chinese and the ancient Indians and apply to everybody even though they don't know about this or you could take a relativist approach and you'd say well no these months are not necessarily per se that they have to be twelve it's just that this is what most humans would kind of go with and it worked and Allah was addressing the

Arabs of the time because for them some people were causing disruption and a system was needed so I hope that's inshallah of some help I just want to highlight different perspectives really in looking at the Quran how these perspectives sometimes are fueled by certain other background kind of maybe dying dynamics like depending on a group or a sect you belong to your way of thinking and how that results in a different understanding of the Quran all right people that see if there's any few questions I

can maybe take one or two but then we can maybe wrap this up I just want to share some of those insights that that was pretty much it people over I shokran Halil Muhammad nuff are rough okay no fit is sugar and Marano silence are G that loving these Ramadan bite shukran shukran barik alaa week cool any other interesting if there's any one or two questions are I can take them and then wrap this up those who

from you teeth to Allah um that's absurd I'm with leotta he's always full of drama there's a conversation about abortion laws going on your views whoa that's completely different topic right the eye I mean you see my understanding on things like abortion all that people have parents have a choice I do recognize that some people are much more I think actually in the UK I could be

wrong but my understanding is in the UK people are pretty chilled about these kind of things I think this is more an American kind of heated discussion in the UK I think pretty much everybody except I don't know the general feel is this isn't really a big deal people understand it's not that they don't recognize that the fetus isn't alive they've recognized that it's alive but life is like a continuum so it's not the same as a human that is born so many things so life is obviously developing

on this continuum because in that sense even plants are alive animals are alive there's many and obviously this is a fetus on its way to becoming a human being but before it's become abortion is it is it a right that the parents have based on certain whatever their understanding of these circumstances I would go with the understanding that they do have this right that's and whew and I'm sure people would disagree with

that and I accept that there's no you know I don't think everybody has to agree with what with what I say or how I see things any recommendations on what type of could what type of dates to eat God good to see that good to see that people have got the priorities in focus all right so here it's a political cos our baby orange hmm oh because in America it's crazy

America it's crazy I think that's it's a make-or-break deal for I think presidential candidates obviously I mean I well all right any other one too otherwise let's call this a wrap people it's can 10th Muharram when you get a chance sure later on it's not Muharram right now I don't think we need to stress too much about about Muharram right now but as it comes we can definitely take a look at that cool people I think we'll leave it

to that any issues Charlotte give me a shout reach out right no idea about sports somebody asked about sports I don't really watch many sports so no idea I have to actually catch up about this whole mole salar thing because i first i had no idea what was going on two approaches can be fused into one approach even closer to the truth i don't know if the two lenses can simultaneously be one i don't know if you can simultaneously be dogmatic and like looking at things critically and

relatively i don't know if you can but yes of course there can be certain things unquestionably not everything in the quran has to be relatively spoken off because some things are just very clear but i was speaking about certain things we're allies addressing you about you or the world or nature these things do they have to be taken as a like we okay is a lot addressing you with prior knowledge or is he addressing you as though you have no knowledge and this is where

knowledge now begins that's the the kind of question so if Allah mentioned something about creatures does that mean we dismiss all does all I expect us to now build our knowledge of creature starting from that point on or is this supposed to go into your existing knowledge that's the question right did the fire literally cool for my lease Allah that's a once again goes into no way in the for I'm does it actually mentioned that ibrahim alaih-is-salaam was thrown into the fire doesn't mention

that in any of the verses it mentions that he was saved from it just as not was saved from the flood he wasn't actually you know drowned or casted into this into the water and then save it wasn't like that so cool right people and Charlotte some strange questions coming on I've got no idea yeah what on earth is going on about ibraheem alehissalaam and the shia she had no idea what you're on about

obviously the fasts are getting to you all right people let's call it a wrap and shall I take very good care of yourselves stay awesome stay blessed stay in touch they should be up on my YouTube by the way like mine and subscribe to my youtube channel so you can keep in touch with the latest the latest clips people and the latest for tower all right take very good care of yourselves salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato