Recordings › "God did NOT ask Abraham to sacrifice his son" | Mufti Abu Layth · 28 Oct 2020 › Segment 3 of 9
Does the Quran say the sacrifice of Ibrahim's son was a test from God?
tafseer exegesis tafasir tafaseer commentary udhiyah qurbani qurbaani udhiya udhiyya kurbani muftis koran quraan al-quran ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat fitnah fitna fitan strife taqwa taqwaa muttaqi god-consciousness ajr sawab thawab thawaab sawaabBack to the verses: 'you were truthful to the vision', the testing calamity and the ransom
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This segment7:55 to 11:55 · 4 minGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenThe verses say Ibrahim was truthful to his vision and that this was a clear trial, but never that God sent the dream or the trial. In Mufti Abu Layth's reading the ransom of a ram rescued the son and ended human sacrifice.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth returns to the verses. He notes that the Quran depicts the sacrifice with a knife, whereas biblical versions are confused between fire and knife, and describes Ibrahim laying his son out before Allah calls to him, not with a physical voice. He reads Allah's words that Ibrahim had been truthful to the vision he saw, and stresses that Allah does not say 'we showed you that dream'. He rejects the reading that Ibrahim was being praised for piety, saying instead that Ibrahim was a good man whom Allah rewarded by saving him from the calamity of killing his own son. On the words 'this was indeed the clear trial' in verse 106, he says people assume that a trial must come from God, but Allah does not say it was from him: the 'this' is that Ibrahim saw a dream and felt he had to act on it, which was a testing calamity for people. He explains the ransom as rescuing the son to be sacrificed, with a ram offered instead, and as a declaration that nobody should conduct human sacrifices again. He then brings up Tafsir al-Sam'ani to show what the commentators say.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth holds that the words 'this was indeed the clear trial' in 37:106 do not say the trial came from God, that Allah never says he showed Ibrahim the dream, and that the ransom of the ram rescued the son and declared human sacrifice forbidden thereafter.
“allah is saying that you had a dream and you said you carried it out you were truthful to what you saw yeah allah does not say we showed you that dream”
Category: teaching
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine7:55 to 11:55 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
the firstborn so it's when ibrahim alaihissalam is there he's aware of this in the culture it's like if you're part of a culture you even if it's not your original culture but you see that this is what people do and sometimes it can play on your mind on the subconscious and therefore manifest in your dreams so ibrahim al-islam has this dream now in the dream he sees that he is sacrificing his son so so let's now go back to the verse
so here and it's interesting by the way the quran demonstrates it as with a knife although ancient kind of biblical versions are slightly confused on it some portray them as sacrificing with fire the binding and then you set a light and some do go towards the the knife version as well so let's go with how it is in the quran that uh he lays him out and he's preparing him
and allah shows that from his divine intervention allah calls out to as in he hears obviously it's not a physical voice but he hears that allah has addressed him so allah mentions that look we understand that allah is saying that you had a dream and you said you carried it out you were truthful to what you saw yeah
allah does not say we showed you that dream what does this mean so some people thought here this meant oh you're being pious by doing this no this meant that yes you mussin you are a person that is clearly known in the quran abraham was this is how we save them how we reward them by saving them from such a calamity that you would have ended up sacrificing murdering a your your son so we rewarded you by saving you from doing this
now this being a test you see people said oh this must have been from god that's why god said in the heart that this as you see in verse that 106 in so in verse 106 allah is saying that so people assume that oh well if it's a test or this is a trial this is a a calamity like a testing calamity so obviously it's from god but allah didn't say it was from him he said this but what was the this that allah speaking about
that this was that you saw a dream and felt that you had to act out in accordance with it this was indeed testing it's a testing calamity for people so not that god had sent it as a test but this was a testing calamity what they know you see now it's interesting feather is like where you atone and you rescue someone we rescued the the the the to be sacrificed son be behind and we said you know sacrifice of ram if that's what you're going to sacrifice and let it be known from here forth that
nobody should ever be conducting these kind of sacrifices human sacrifices okay so that's um the actual interpretation and you can see here as well this is tafsir samani where he is mentioning that he's got let me just bring this one i have this right so here he mentions oh sorry um
Paragraphs overlapping 7:55 to 11:55. 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 2020-10-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/yruc09ajkeq/s/3/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, October 28). Does the Quran say the sacrifice of Ibrahim's son was a test from God? [Video, segment 2020-10-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/yruc09ajkeq/s/3/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Does the Quran say the sacrifice of Ibrahim's son was a test from God?" Video, segment 2020-10-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded October 28, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/yruc09ajkeq/s/3/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-10-28-S03, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Does the Quran say the sacrifice of Ibrahim's son was a test from God?}}, year = {2020}, month = {10}, date = {2020-10-28}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/yruc09ajkeq/s/3/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/yruc09ajkeq/s/3/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2020-10-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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