Raven of Cain & Abel - Verses Explained | Mufti Abu Layth

people alright so i'd been asked about this i thought look let me shed some light this is those of you that don't know to do with the verse in surah maidah i believe it's verse 31 uh speaking about the two sons of adam now allah doesn't mention who they are but abel and kane the the classic story that you have right there and it's followed by kane murdering abel and so allah mentions all of the shaytan

regime when they both offered a sacrifice but it was accepted from one now it's interesting that here even allah uses the word in the what is the passive sense that it was accepted not saying that um we accepted it even though that's obviously the understanding here that allah accepts it

but it's interesting that what did acceptance mean they were obviously associating a meaning with it but that acceptance would have been some kind of ritual that they would have come up with you understand so they both do something and then whether one of them this happens to it one of them floats the other sinks or one this happens one that happened you see they would have been meanings that they would be naturally associating obviously ultimately a lies you know the ultimate planner of things in that sense so but it's interesting that allah mentions

he said i will kill you allah he said god accepts from those who have god consciousness now here he he says look one of the brothers he demons like he refuses to take up violence he says look if you extend your your hand to me with harm i will not meet you with harm so i won't fight back [Music]

he said that i fear god you know that should i be responsible for bloodshed he said i would rather that you you know you take the sin or you take the responsibility this crime if that's what you want to do and you bear its responsibility and you will suffer damnation for that but i'm not gonna kill you in return or fight back now

obviously doesn't mention here but the general stories it's kane he his he justified to himself murdering his brother like his his his self got the better of him and he killed his brother for us and he became of those who have lost or who have suffered loss in this world now this part here it mentions

so mentions a crow a raven comes allah says he sends it now obviously here in the sense that allah is ultimately in control of things this raven seems to search about or do something with the earth okay now liuriyahu

so this so kane can learn from this or he comes to learn from this event of what this raven is doing that how to cover up the ugly state of his brother alaya he and he says to himself he has this internal dialogue now what have i done that you know he says that can i not be at least like this raven this crow that you can see here um could i not at least be like like that and cover up the ugly state of

my brother now first of all right just mentioning here one moment so just to kind of sum up what's going on and then i'm going to go into certain insights you see this verse mentions that a raven turns up it's not too clear the verse is not it's not totally ambiguous but it leaves a lot it leaves room for different interpretation different readings of what is happening with an overall

similarity like there's a huge overlap in what's happening but the detail there's so much room for interpretation i i don't just mean interpretation but in how to read it so it could be read as an example that you read that this raven turns up and it says yeah behat which actually means to kind of search in the in the earth so it's doing something to the soil and it says now so he may or it may show him

now we know it may show cain but who may show kane the raven or god may show king like who's trying to teach here in my understanding this is talking about god um but some people have understood from it the raven now then it mentions he the raven is doing this so that he or it may cover the ugly state of his or its brother so once again is it that the raven there was a dead raven there

and this other raven comes and it's doing something it's observing and it's doing this is this in a way so that the raven may cover the other raven or is it that cain learns from this so he may cover his own brother once again because the verb doesn't mention the subject you could be reading it as the raven you could be reading it as um as kane both readings are equally valid they're not like one is invalid these are these are not interpretations these are readings how to read the actual verse who is it going back to and you can see here that as i

uh will show you that look um oh right now right now right so um if not highlights these differences as well that i've that i've mentioned by the way he mentions this um and he highlights that look this is uh you can take either of these meaning he says look either is valid but it most this so this is the

understanding that i'm looking at okay that they've had this this fight he's killed his brother he's he's left him in a very ugly state because it mentions that this ugly state to look at is called sawa in arabic and he's just there now why a raven i think it's incredibly interesting that allah mentions this some people have understood from this that oh gabil kane was the first person to invent a grave prior to this humans didn't have graves

i don't think that's true because human beings have been burying their dead for about 100 000 years now i mean prior to the cognitive revolution and there's some thoughts on whether neanderthals some may have had some kind of funerals as well so i don't think it's this some ulama have a lot of ulama you might read this in tough seeds in the past they said oh maybe he's the first person to invent a burial i don't think that was the case at all and i think the fact that allah has mentioned is very interesting you see corvids

whether it's going to be a crow or a um a raven now ravens are usually slightly larger than crows these are you see these are very fascinating creatures incredibly fascinating now in recent times crows have been associated with negativity been associated with death or bad news or something a disaster or something this is what they've been in recent times associated with but if you go far back in history several millennia

you will see that crows were actually uh associated with with with life and resurrection and spirit and it was actually they were seen in a very positive light previously uh it is only in the last you know two centuries just under uh sorry not centuries to millennia that you have this kind of negative rep that they start to get um and maybe

because people freaked out because of them and stuff like this but generally they were seen really revered in ancient history and they seem to also represent an archetypal feature now why many people overlook the fact that crows are some of the most intelligent creatures on earth i mean obviously not him keeping human beings out of the picture but for as far as animals are concerned

crows are incredibly intelligent okay they can do things like uh they have abilities such as uh as keeping track of numbers recognition they can facial recognition so humans we have a certain region in our brain called the ffa facial fusiform area which recognizes faces human faces but crows are amazing at recognizing human faces they they have unparalleled features um they they have been they are problem solving at empathy at emotions

if i show you uh as an example some facts right here that this is fascinating that look that ravens these and ravens and crows are from the same family which is called corvids a bit like kovid but they can spot a cheetah and this check this for a sense of empathy and justice you know it's it's it's very fascinating so you get that not only can they spot the birds they work together for equal amounts now if they notice another raven taking more than his fish here

they immediately lose trust and won't cooperate with them in the future that's now here's another fun fact you see that they use hand gestures to hold up objects to get each other's attention aside from uh primates they are the only wild animals that can communicate in this way so just think about that check this for uh crows are quite similar to humans and visit their aging parents

wow that that's i mean just just the thought of that right that even after they've left the nest now more fascinating than all of these people crows the concept that crows hold funerals for their dead now what what exactly does i know and that's something which may seem strange but you you'll have so many articles and things on this but what i'm what does that mean by the way when they say crows hold few uh funerals

for the dead now it it doesn't mean necessarily a funeral the way we understand a funeral but what when crows see a dead crow one of them will land and they give off this alarm which calls a bunch of others and then they stand around this corpse this dead crow and they just observe it they just stand in this kind of silence just kind of observing it sometimes for between 15 to 30 minutes they'll just stand there and this is it's called a mob okay even a crowd of crows is called

a murder which is unfair really i mean people have been unfair to to crows they have the intelligence by the way it's been argued of a six or seven year old human child that's how intelligent they are and they've done studies nowadays with computers where they have to uh they have to kind of like tap the screen and they have to recognize things and and they pass all these tests unbelievably um but what coming back to the funeral thing they stand around this you know this mob called mobbing they stand around this dead and just observe

and it's interesting scientists still ain't exactly sure why they do this and one of the reasons is that they learn from this dead crow they see that is there any reason how it got killed and they kind of learn from that and pass it on to other uh other crows as well through certain cries because there's been experiments where people certain researchers have so they will go and feed certain crows so they kind of get them coming to them then they will turn up with a particular mask

and they will present they'll put lay down a dead crow and within minutes the crows will start mobbing they'll one will land send off the alarm others land and they notice that person with the mask now whenever they see that person with the mask they see that mask they will send off that alarm and researchers had made other people wear that mask and walk around and they will send off the alarm but not with other masks or with other people so one theory is that they are learning why this comrade of these has fallen

another reason which i think um is also the is this sense of empathy i mean it's not just me other researchers have said it but we they obviously it's hard to prove these things but what you just saw about how they visit even their parents after having left the nest they come back this sense of empathy that crows have and ravens have i feel that there is this sense of that empathy it kind of has this shocking effect on them and this if this were the case that look

a crow lands by its dead let's say if this was the uh the so ataki was in this case as many mufasirin say that there was a dead crow but you see my first serene said that oh maybe two crows came and fought and one kill the other it doesn't say anything like that and i i doubt that that's what happened but there may have been a dead crow and a crow comes and it lands close by and it observes it uh because it says yeah bahasa and it kind of seeks out what's happened to this and then it stands in this kind of like almost like a sorrowful

remorseful stance like if you see you can go on youtube and watch um crows uh at what they kind of wake or their funeral they it seems really and sometimes yeah they can be wild as well sometimes they do things like uh they may even um you know have have sex or whatever copulate with the dead crow but that's in it's only been reported like four percent of the time the majority of the time they won't they'll just observe when they do and this you see what witnessing that in this raven triggers

this sense of remorse in cain or at least momentary remorse where he feels that damn like look here is a bird and how it stands over it almost seems to honor and dignify it's dead with a bond that is still lasting and here was i that you know not only have i killed and left him you know so ata in an ugly state like he how he killed him it doesn't mention but it mentions that he's in a horrible ugly state bleeding out he must be maybe

torn up or you know whether he stabbed him as they as they would have with those tools and cut him up or whatever he did and he is me just couldn't have a key and this triggers that sense of remorse for us and then he feels that look the least i can do is honor him rather than having scavengers just come and feed off his remains so it's not that he didn't know what a grave was he did know what a grave was but he

wasn't interested until he kind of feels this sense of remorse but it's incredibly interesting that the quran uses this this verse to highlight the role of a crow or a raven and because even in its archetype ravens are incredibly powerful that you know it's been argued that men have because it's only it's only beyond really you get certain um uh insects that things like bees or things that have colonies like ants and

termites who will do things like remove the dead and bury the dead but that's more so for hygiene purposes because of the colony but otherwise to be kind of in a state of shock and almost empathy for their dead is only displayed by crows corvids it's displayed by dolphins and elephants mainly this is not i mean you'll get it in primates but primates because they're so close to humans but generally in the mammal kingdom it's not like that except with crows i mean i mean they're

not mammals but i mean except with obviously elephants dolphins and then crows uh or ravens corvids so it's i thought this was definitely worth sharing those of you that i did have as well for you but i may have uh not i did have a clip actually i don't know if it's here i probably haven't brought it up here but let me see actually if it's here i will [Music]

i will bring it up and show it but it's to do with right now right okay here's the clip uh i have got it here let me show it was just about ravens i thought well that would be interesting just to show you guys um that the ability of to to mimic as well is incredibly fascinating

just here it is okay [Laughter] why is he not playing it oh there it is uh okay right that should work now if i if i bring this clip up now check this out people this will

i'll just bring this up here um can you see them they have the ability to mimic speech i'm all right i did want to share that because it was worth is i know what i'll share it as a

it doesn't let you i think with the media some reason it doesn't let my it doesn't let the audio come through as clearly so i'll share it where's it gone here it is as a browser thing now check this out people this is a raven all right i'm all right you are right and just check how they see how they can mimic speech she just wants a head kiss wow

wow i've been teaching her so long to do that that's uh one of the first times i actually caught that on camera she's giving us a kiss as well and are you all right [Laughter] it's amazing yeah okay and again go and then sing for us

[Music] wow so that people i thought that that's definitely something fascinating let's get rid of that so i thought definitely i'd share that share my thoughts on it um what is going on here right so let me just bring up your chats yeah i mean that the raven not crow yeah i mean these they're both corvids they're both from

the same kind of family i mean they are slightly different in species in terms of size and the way their tails are but they are in essence both eq they are both incredibly intelligent so and they can both mimic speech human speech just like how pirates do they can even mimic sentences and um so right so let's move on people somebody said that's not a raven you camina

[Laughter] it's a parrot in blackface it's not it's not they're not pirates you see you just you just don't know if just go on to youtube type um crow mimics mimicking speech or just cross speaking and you'll see that they're actually crows and ravens right so people let's