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Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #204 | Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 2 Mar 2021 › Segment 9 of 45

Can the revelation of the Quran be explained without the supernatural?

muftis al-mahdi imam mahdi mehdi koran quraan al-quran wahy wahi wahee salafis salafism wahhabi wahabi wahhabism ibadah ibada ibaadah ibadat

Can revelation be explained without the supernatural? Words manifesting to the Prophet

QuestionLive chat · questioner not identifiedAnswered 2 Mar 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth Segment 9 of 45 in the recording2021-03-02-S09

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This segment43:32 to 46:41 · 3 min 09 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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The words of revelation manifested in the Prophet's mind rather than being composed by him; whether that counts as supernatural depends on the definition, and trance experiences are only an approximation.

In more detail

A super chat asks how Mufti Abu Layth explains the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet without the supernatural. He refers to his MindTrap conversations with two academics on the ontology of revelation, and says the Prophet describes it as something that appears to him, sometimes with a ringing tone, manifesting in his mind; he is not saying the Prophet was making the words, but that the words were manifesting to him. Whether this is supernatural, he says, depends on what is meant: people who walk the path of psychedelics, and shamans in a trance, experience things that concern consciousness rather than the supernatural. He stresses that he is not saying this is how the Prophet received revelation, which for Muslims is revelation, only offering an approximation for understanding messages from the unconscious, and says he has to spell this out because his critics are watching.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
How do you explain the Quran being revealed to the Prophet as something that isn't supernatural?

Position stated

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Mufti Abu Layth says he is not saying the Prophet was making the words of the Quran, but that the words were manifesting to him.

In his words

“i do say i'm not saying that the prophets was making the words for it but the words were manifesting to him”

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Transcript

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that was to do with the uh you know the middle east and at the time of omar when he comes to the middle east and he takes over what did the jews at the time have to say about him because they would be more neutral and he said he found that they actually seem to praise him and they seem to call him a friend and they seem to call him somebody very uh you know just or reasonably just like they praise his sense of justice which i thought wow that's an amazing way a very a reasonably objective way at looking at things because that's true

that would be a very good way to get a picture and and i think that's a great testimony about say um yeah all right so people let's get this show on the road just as i say that's a super chat muhammad do you explain the quran being revealed to the prophet for something that isn't supernatural can you shed a few words for my body how do you explain the quran being revealed to the prophet i have a whole mind trap on

um more than one one with dr mahdi sajid and one with dr khalil and where we discuss the the kind of ontology of revelation that what is the the the actual essence of revelation and the prophet just describes it as something that appears to him and sometimes it has this ringing tone and and it manifests in the mind of the prophet i do say i'm not saying that the prophets was making the words for it but the words were manifesting to him

now i'm when you say do is that supernatural i don't think it depends what you mean by supernatural but many people who even who walk the path people the path not the path is the path to psychedelics many people who walk that path they you know not i'm not saying revelation but they even experience certain things and so it's not things which are supernatural it's about consciousness and that realm so obviously to us as

muslims the prophet was receiving this as revelation but to say it do people undergo certain experiences that may be remotely similar in the sense that they feel they are so shamans and these people yeah i mean they when they go into their trance like state and they receive things i'm not saying that that's how how the prophet was doing it what i'm saying is here is an approximation to understand something that has a description of unconscious

um you know messages right now all right so i have to say that because you know haters man haters you know haters are watching me man watching me you know so all right but you can watch my uh mind traps and see how that goes people let's take a look at where do i put the yeah you know when i have all these clips

got into quite a bit of a controversy when he uh let me see um issue of no not that one i think this is it when he got into some people who are controversial i feel for some people on the extreme side spectrum and we don't mean it's in a salafist way because salafi sometimes go too far but there is this level of prophet worship personality worship yet the quran god is consistently saying don't focus on the messenger focus on

Paragraphs overlapping 43:32 to 46:41. Full text on the recording page.

Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-03-02-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/9/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7

Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, March 2). Can the revelation of the Quran be explained without the supernatural? [Video, segment 2021-03-02-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/9/

Chicago author-date

Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Can the revelation of the Quran be explained without the supernatural?" Video, segment 2021-03-02-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded March 2, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/9/

BibTeX

@misc{abulayth-2021-03-02-S09,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Can the revelation of the Quran be explained without the supernatural?}},
  year = {2021},
  month = {3},
  date = {2021-03-02},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/9/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/b1ooltqtptw/s/9/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2021-03-02-S09, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}

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