Recordings › The Story Explained: Did Musa & Khidr (a.s.) Kill a Child? -Mufti Abu Layth · 24 Dec 2018 › Segment 2 of 3
Did the journey of Musa and Khidr really happen, or was it a vision?
'urf muftis koran quraan al-quran ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat ulama ulema ulamaaEverything after Musa fell asleep at the rock was a vision
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This segment5:31 to 11:22 · 5 min 51 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth holds that everything after Musa and Joshua slept at the rock happened in a vision, which explains the story's strange shifts.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth says a point he feels earlier scholars overlooked is that Musa and Joshua lay down and slept at the rock, and that everything that follows happens in a vision from which they never wake within the story. Mufti reads the strange details this way: the fish taking its path into the sea with the water standing around it, the servant of Allah making the ground turn green where he sits, and the sudden shifts from boat to land to town. He notes the commentators' question of why the people on the boat let him damage it, and the answer of some early figures that he was invisible to them. He retells the killing of the boy, the repair of the wall for villagers who had refused hospitality, the parting of ways and the servant's explanations, and says that while some have challenged the morality of God allowing a killing, the truth is that it was all a vision.
- Some terms in this segment are uncertain
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says that he feels earlier scholars overlooked that everything after Musa and his companion fell asleep at the rock happened in a vision.
“this is where a lot of I feel the scholars in the past for whatever reasons overlooked this the rest of everything that happens Happ happens whilst they were asleep it was a vision”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine5:31 to 11:22 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
until they reach this big boulder this big rock they Place their heads down they lay their heads uh and they go to sleep now this is a really interesting point why because this is where a lot of I feel the scholars in the past for whatever reasons overlooked this the rest of everything that happens Happ happens whilst they were asleep it was a vision right so this thing of them going to sleep here as it mentions and it
alludes to in the Quran that they go to this place and then this Joshua sees that the fish takes a a unique uh it takes a unique path into the sea as the verse of the Quran mentions that um he says look and then Moses says to him as they set off then they get up and they walk off and then later Moses says to him I'm hungry where's that fish and he says oh but the fish uh it jump it jumped into the sea but it went in such a strange way it kind of emerged and and the
reason it was doing this is all this was a vision they never emerged from that sleep this the rest of everything that happens happens in a dream in a vision right so he goes and and they say oh really is that with let's go back to that place and they can see that this fish the MU say that the water around it is like uh so as it's kind of taking its kind of unique path into the sea the water around it is making a formation the water is kind of standing up around it it's it's keeping itself it's from collapsing and it's really strange so they're like wow what what is
this about and then they they find this person and in certain stories that he was wherever he sits the land turns green and that's because this is all a vision it's happening within a vision hence you see that look all of a sudden you will find that they then as they carry on that all of a sudden they're upon a boat so many of the Sal discuss how was how was on this boat puncturing creating a hole in this boat so it can drown so what he does is he he
he damages this boat so it will it will start to sink and because it's damaged the person that was about to kind of Rob the boat will let it be but the question that the C asked is when he was damaging this boat the people on the boat they weren't blind I mean if you're on a boat and somebody's damaging it why did they let him do this so AB Al from the Sal and other people they said that's because he was invisible to them you see now this is the thing and then all of a sudden they're no longer on this boat and then they're traveling and they see this
boy and he murders this boy and M says to him you know what on Earth have you done that you murdered a an innocent Soul so the prophet Moses is condemning what he's done and he says to him look you I told you you can't be patient and then they go and they find a wall all of a sudden they're at a town where this wall is dilapidating and and fixes rectifies this wall and he fixes it and he asks Moses and then Moses says to him
look why didn't you take these people of this Village were rude to us they didn't even offer us because in that day and age there was like a global custom or especially in that Regional custom that when you went past a village if there were strangers you would offer them um food or water that was a custom but these people ignored Moses and they completely blank them and yet fixes their wall and does work for them and so Moses says to him why didn't you at least charge them for this we should have taken something from them we worked we gave labor to them so and then at
this stage says that's it he says this is this is it we now this it all ends here you go your way I go my way now the question is how were they shifting from all these paradigms and then he tells Moses that okay I'll tell you what I was doing that that child was going to cause great harm and Allah was was going to replace that child with another child and that ship was going to get robbed and these things and so on and so forth the ship uh that there was a
king that there was a king that was snatching every uh ship now the reason for this was that you see the reason for all of this was that there was a moral why did he do these things why did he kill the boy why did God allow him to commit murder and they said well oh this was to save the family later on because the family were going to uh the family were going to later on uh really suffer at the hands of this child so God was going to replace him so you have all of these kind of thing and some people obviously challenged this whole thing the truth is that this was all a vision
it was all in a dream um and the reason mam was shown those that dream um was not that Vision was not really it was to reinforce his own mission you see because the three events that took place in that dream were deeply connected to the life and mission of Moses alisam you see Moses in this particular dream you will see that uh they they
Paragraphs overlapping 5:31 to 11:22. 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 2018-12-24-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/drosectl_tq/s/2/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2018, December 24). Did the journey of Musa and Khidr really happen, or was it a vision? [Video, segment 2018-12-24-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/drosectl_tq/s/2/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2018. "Did the journey of Musa and Khidr really happen, or was it a vision?" Video, segment 2018-12-24-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded December 24, 2018. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/drosectl_tq/s/2/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2018-12-24-S02, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Did the journey of Musa and Khidr really happen, or was it a vision?}}, year = {2018}, month = {12}, date = {2018-12-24}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/drosectl_tq/s/2/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/drosectl_tq/s/2/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2018-12-24-S02, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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