Qur’an 30 for 30 | Season 6
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Juz 8: The Universality of the Qur’an | Sh. Yousef Wahb
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Did you know there are different recitations of the Qur’an, yet it remains perfectly preserved? In this episode, Shaykh Yousef, with his deep expertise in rhetoric, grammar, and recitation, unpacks profound Qur’anic statements about the Qur’an itself. Gain a deeper understanding of the Qur’an and your purpose and why the Prophet ﷺ is the ultimate role model.
Join Sh. Yousef Wahb with hosts Dr. Omar Suleiman and Sh. Abdullah Oduro as they reflect on juz 8 of the Qur'an, revealing four qualities which show the holistic nature of Qur’anic teachings.
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Download our Qur'an 30 for 30 Life Lessons Journal to record your own reflections as you watch this series.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.You can and you should find guidance in the contents of the Qur\'an until the end of time. The source of understanding our purpose is the Qur\'an, the kalimat of Allah ﷻ, it\'s Allah ﷻ\'s word. And when we divert from that, it could be a means of misguidance. Consider every sin as a form of ingratitude. Obedience to Allah ﷻ comes out of gratitude for the blessings that He\'s bestowed upon us. You cannot be grateful for those blessings if you don\'t acknowledge them in the first place. Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh everyone welcome back to Quran 30 for 30 Alhamdulillah Rabb al-\'Alamin, you know, we can\'t do Qur\'an 30 for 30 if we don\'t have the director of our Qur\'anic studies department, Shaykh Yousef Wahb, with us, alhamdulillah. I feel like he\'s always trying to escape from doing anything. I am. Shaykh Yousef, when did you develop a love for the Qur\'an in your life? I think the Qur\'an was the very first thing I learned in my life. My mom was my first teacher. She\'s the one who taught me the Qur\'an and how to read the Qur\'an and I finished my hifdh with her. So alhamdulillah, I was really blessed by her presence in my life. And she comes from a family that, all of the family are Qur\'an. They\'re not Mashayikh as scholars, but they\'re Qur\'an. So she really nurtured the Qur\'an in all of us. And then I developed a love for the Qur\'an and I expanded that with my other Mashayikh, alhamdulillah. We\'re blessed to have you, alhamdulillah, with us, doing incredible work out of your department, mashallah. And I think on top of that, the ayah that you\'re going to talk about, the lesson is actually about the Qur\'an, so bismillah.
So inshallah, the lesson for the ayah is about the holistic nature of the Qur\'anic teachings. It\'s ayah number 115 from Surah Al-An\'am. Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala says, وَتَمَّتْ كَلِمَةُ رَبِّكَ صِدْقًا وَعَدْلًا لَا مُبَدِّلَ لِكَلِمَاتِهِ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْعَلِيمُ The meaning in translation is that the word of your Lord is complete in its sidq, in its truth, and in its justice, and no one can change the words of Allah, and He\'s the one who\'s all-hearing and all-knowing. So there are two primary ways of understanding this ayah. One of them, which is the one I want to highlight more, is that the ayah speaks about the Qur\'an itself. And the very first description of the Qur\'an in the ayah is that it\'s the word of Allah, and actually there is another canonical reading, one of the qira\'at in this ayah, it\'s in the plural form, that وَتَمَّتْ كَلِمَاتُ رَبِّكَ The words of your Lord. And it\'s actually one of the interesting occasions in which half of the qira\'at, exactly half, 50%, like five out of the ten canonical readers, read it in the singular form, كَلِمَةُ رَبِّكَ, and the other five read it كَلِمَاتُ رَبِّكَ The words of your Lord. And it\'s one of the occasions of the beauty of the multi-layered meaning phenomenon of the qira\'at that two meanings are simultaneously applicable at the same time. One, the singular one, refers to the Qur\'an as whole, the unified message of revelation, the كلمة, the word of Allah as the entirety of the Qur\'an altogether. And the other one, the plural form, كَلِمَاتُ رَبِّكَ The words of your Lord, is about the content of the Qur\'an, or the contents of the Qur\'an, the individual units, or surahs, or chapters and parts of the Qur\'an. So the ayah describes the Qur\'an with four qualities. The first one is that it\'s complete. And the second one, it\'s true, صدقا. The third one, it\'s just. And the fourth one, no one can change it. So the meaning of the completeness, and this is the whole lesson of the holistic
nature of the teachings of the Qur\'an, can be understood to mean that the evidence of the veracity of the message of the Prophet, and the proofs of the inimitability or the i\'jaz of the Qur\'an, are evident in the Qur\'an. And that ties to the previous ayah that also touches on that, وَهُوَ الَّذِي أَنزَلَ إِلَيْكُمُ الْكِتَابَ مُفَصَّلًا That Allah is the one who sends the scripture to you clearly explained. That the evidence of the veracity of the message itself is in the Qur\'an. And it\'s enough. You can find the evidence for the trueness of the Qur\'an in the book itself. But another layer of the meaning is that it\'s complete, that it\'s enough and sufficient, not only for the first recipients of the message, but for the subsequent generations until the Day of Judgment. And this is an indication of the universality of the message of the Qur\'an, that you can and you should find guidance in the contents of the Qur\'an until the end of time, until the Day of Judgment, because it\'s complete and it\'s sufficient as well. And then the second and third descriptions or qualities of the Qur\'an, and they are interestingly connected or linked conjunctively with \'atf, صدقا وعدلا. The entirety of the Qur\'an, both form and content, is about two things or two categories. Everything in the Qur\'an falls under one of two categories. Whether it\'s a declarative statement or informative statement, the scholars of legal theory or balagha and rhetoric, they call it khabar, just informing you of something. Or it\'s a performative statement, which is simply the do\'s and don\'ts of the Qur\'an. So the Qur\'an, every single verse, whether it\'s telling you the reports about the unseen, reports about previous generations and ancient peoples, descriptions of the human spirituality, human psychology, all these akhbar, all these reports in the Qur\'an. And the second part is commands and prohibitions, the performative statements. صدقا وعدلا respond respectively to these two categories of the Qur\'an. Every
report, every khabar in the Qur\'an, every declarative statement in the Qur\'an is صدقا, it\'s true, so you believe in it. And every do or don\'t in the Qur\'an, every performative statement is just. Our test is to reflect and identify justice in the commands and prohibitions of Allah. Sometimes it\'s difficult to perceive, but this is really the test, to understand that your taklif is to reflect why I\'m obligated or prohibited from doing something. And then the conclusion in the ayah is لا مبدل لكلماته, no one can change the words of Allah. It\'s a promise from Allah that this book is preserved. And it\'s a divine promise, so we trust that, but we were also entrusted by Allah to put our efforts and he put all of his efforts and the companions and all the subsequent generations of reciters and scholars of the Qur\'an to preserve the content and the form of the Qur\'an in the most meticulous manner. So Allah promised that no one can change it. But no one can change the ahkam of Allah. So the change is about the form in terms of the preservation, and it\'s also about the ahkam that should continue to be relevant, and again back to the universality of the message, should continue to be relevant to every Muslim and every community until the Day of Judgment. It\'s our duty again to make sense of the relevance of the Qur\'an. So it\'s like the kalimat, the words of Allah or the word of Allah in the Qur\'an, contains that which is truthful and just. And there\'s no replacement for that. The truthfulness is what is said, we believe that it\'s true, and the implementation of that word which is the \'adl, the ahkam or the legislation of the shari\'a, is just, and there\'s no replacement for that, subhanAllah. Which alludes to the next verse, which is beautiful, because the lack of implementation of that would be from people that don\'t have these kalimat in their hearts or in their actions. So if you were to follow them, you would be clearly misguided. So the title is really, Do Not Let People Divert You From Your Purpose. The source of understanding our purpose is the Qur\'an. It\'s the kalimat of Allah, it\'s Allah\'s word.
And when we divert from that, it could be a means of misguidance from the Sirat al-Mustaqim. So when Allah says in the chapter of Al-An\'am, he says, وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ If you were to follow those that are on the earth, most of the people that are on the earth, they will divert you. If you were to obey most of those on the earth, they will mislead you from the way of Allah. They follow not except assumption and they are not but falsifying. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta\'ala is mentioning here that SubhanAllah, when he is speaking about his greatness, if you were to follow those that were other than the path of Allah, to follow those individuals, follow their way, follow their practice, primarily even following their \'aqidah, their belief, وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ which is beautiful here, most of the people, يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ So it\'s like a conditional sentence here. And we find when Allah mentions the people that have actions of misguidance, use this term, وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ Most people, which can serve as an indirect motivation for the Muslim and knowledge from Allah that look, there\'s a possibility that most of the people around you will be upon misguidance or a form or practice or practices of misguidance. So when he\'s saying, يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ They will misguide you from the سَبِيلَ of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى And that سَبِيلَ of Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى has another verse in the Qur\'an, وَأَنَّ هَذَا صِرَاطِي مُسْتَقِيمًا فَاتَّبِعُوهُ وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا السُّبُلَ فَتَفَرَّقَ بِكُمْ عَن سَبِيلِهِ And هَذَا صِرَاطِي مُسْتَقِيمًا This is my clear straight path فَاتَّبِعُوهُ So follow it, and don\'t follow the سُبُل, the other pathways or the other practices of people فَتَفَرَّقَ بِكُمْ عَن سَبِيلِهِ So there will be clear dissension from the clear path. So in looking at this سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى When we say غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ Of those that are misguided, it\'s important for the Muslim to look at who they follow
or even dare I say who they have utmost respect for because it will have an influence on how they would regard them in regards to taking their advice or even following them to a certain degree. Particularly I think about the youth particularly, we may look at some role models and some of them may be good, some of them may be Muslim but it\'s important to know that following the Prophet (ﷺ) in everything that he did because every individual will have some form of good and some form of something that they need to work on, that they need to work on in regards to whether it\'s their أخلاق or whether it\'s a decision that they make or whatever the case may be and this can be the trap when having certain role models that are in society and that are famous. They may be good in one thing but when they have an opinion about something that has nothing to do with their profession, we take it wholesale and that can be a problem when finding a role model or following someone or respecting someone and that\'s what\'s beautiful about this verse when Allah ﷻ is saying وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ To follow the individual or even obey them من طاع يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِهِ They will totally divert you from the way of Allah ﷻ meaning the Deen of Islam and how we practice in our faith and our religion which should always remind the Muslim primarily primarily of their \'aqidah and their belief and how the belief is not something that is only in the heart, it is something that is shown in the actions and the actions is the profession of that which is in the heart. So when we look at these كلمات, we understand the صدق و العدل as you mentioned Shaykh When we look at the word is true, everything that comes from the Quran is true and the lack of understanding is from me, it is not from the words of Allah ﷻ which also shows the importance of taking the people of knowledge and understanding these words because that\'s where the أحكام come in. We look at the words, we say that they\'re true but the أحكام and understanding what these words mean is where the عدل is, the just, being just and you can only really understand that by asking أهل الذكر
Ask the people of knowledge if you do not know. So the importance of the integrity of the شريعة within our belief in the Quran and in and of itself and within the application of the Quran. Individuals, human beings, there will always be some aspect of lack in that implementation therefore we need Allah ﷻ and as we as human beings when understanding that reality of human nature, it\'s important to go to those that cling to these كلمات الله ﷻ, to the Quran and not to follow those that follow other than that because that will be a clear misguidance whether it\'s direct or indirect because sometimes people may have misunderstanding of the Quran and can misguide people. So ask Allah ﷻ to make us of those that really are observant upon who we admire and who we follow and allow that to be a means of coming closer to Him ﷻ. So the idea is that the Quran is a complete blueprint for humanity and it actually highlights its own purpose and you\'re saying don\'t let anybody take you away from your own purpose and subhanAllah there\'s something here that the majority of people don\'t follow the majority, don\'t follow the majority because the majority are just following their desires, the majority are just going with the flow and the Quran is a direct interruption of that flow to bring you back to truth. The majority of people are also what? Ungrateful. And so I actually come to Surah Al-A\'raf verse 17 and it is deeply tied to this and the lesson is consider every sin as a form of ingratitude, consider every sin as a form of ingratitude. Allah ﷻ mentions when speaking about the challenge of the shaytan, ثُمَّ لَآتِيَنَّهُم مِّن بَيْنِ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَمِنْ خَلْفِهِمْ وَعَنْ أَيْمَانِهِمْ وَعَن شَمَائِلِهِمْ وَلَا تَجِدُ أَكْثَرَهُمْ شَاكِرِينَ that I will come to them from in front of them, from behind them, from their right and from their left and the end result of that is that you\'re going to find that the majority of them will be ungrateful and Allah ﷻ actually says, you know what? وَقَلِيلٌ مِّنْ عِبَادِيَ الشَّكُورُ
Very few of my servants are actually grateful. And gratitude directly leads into obedience, right? Salah comes out of gratitude to Allah ﷻ. Obedience to Allah ﷻ comes out of gratitude for the blessings that he\'s bestowed upon us. You cannot be grateful for those blessings if you don\'t acknowledge them in the first place. And so those basic faculties that you have using them to find Allah ﷻ, the gratitude of the \'aql, the gratitude of the brain, the intellect, is to use that faculty that Allah ﷻ has given you to try to comprehend truth and to try to find truth and then the gratitude of the other faculties of al-sam\'a, al-basr, the hearing, the seeing and all of the other usages, wasad al-ma\'arif as they\'re called, means of getting to know Allah ﷻ, are to then deploy those blessings in a way that is emblematic of gratitude to Allah ﷻ and shows that you are seeking Allah ﷻ through those blessings. Now this verse is a very interesting one because it\'s very rich in tafsir. Shaytan says I\'m going to come from in front of them, from behind them, from the right, from their left. And you\'ll find many of the mufassirun talking about what it means for the shaytan to come from in front, behind, right and left. So some of them will say that he comes to you from in front by decorating the life of this world for you, making the dunya appealing to you and particularly the sinful elements appealing to you. So it\'s coming in front of you and trying to distract your sight and then he comes to you from behind you, by holding you back, hesitation, doubt, trying to hold you back from pursuing the hereafter. Comes to you from your right by corrupting your good deeds or causing you confusion in regards to your religion. Comes to you from your left by beautifying your sins and your desires. And you\'ll find different like Ibn Abbas (رضي الله عنه), Imam Hassan al-Basri and al-Qatada, may Allah be pleased with them all. They\'ll say some different things here and there about the depth of what it means for shaytan to attack from these different directions. But the point is he\'s coming to you from all directions and his end result is to make you
ungrateful. Because if you\'re ungrateful you won\'t be motivated to worship Allah ﷻ or pursue your purpose because you\'ll be too busy pursuing your desires and your whole purpose becomes your desires. And we see that, subhanAllah, in everything that\'s around us today. There\'s also another take on this verse that I\'m reflecting upon, subhanAllah, is that when Allah ﷻ gives you the hereafter to look forward to, it\'s in gratitude to Allah ﷻ to instead limit your sight to the things that are immediately in front of you. Allah is telling you there\'s a Jannah in front of you that is so much better, so much more. It\'s in gratitude to just look at this little thing in front of you and to make that the object of your pursuit. When you run towards this dunya but you are so slow to Allah ﷻ, that\'s a form of ingratitude to Allah ﷻ that you\'re not running towards him. So if someone\'s holding you back, what\'s holding you back? If Allah ﷻ gave you the purity of the Qur\'an and the sunnah of the Prophet (ﷺ) and the way of the companions, the way of the pious predecessors, and a pure religion that starts with the guidance from the Qur\'an, and the Qur\'an is complete in what it guides us to, it\'s ungrateful to Allah ﷻ to then pursue other modes of guidance, to turn other ways of life, other systems, other ways of thinking into superior ways to Allah\'s word. And when Allah ﷻ promises you a blessing for the blessing that he\'s given you here if you use it right, it\'s ungrateful to Allah ﷻ that you use that same blessing to pursue your lowly desires instead of that higher blessing in the hereafter. So consider every sin a form of ingratitude because essentially every sin is an abuse of a blessing from Allah ﷻ. Allah gave you these faculties for a purpose, so when you use these faculties for other than Allah ﷻ, you\'re being ungrateful, right? Allah ﷻ did not give you these faculties to fulfill your desires or to pursue the way of the devil.
He did so so you could pursue him, subhanahu wa ta\'ala. So I see there\'s a great coordination here and it\'s from the mercy of Allah ﷻ of course that he tells us what we should be pursuing and he gives us these openings. So Shaykh, I\'m not sure if you have any reflections on how this ties into the idea of the Qur\'an and its completeness in our lives. The summary of what you mentioned is the technical definition of shukr in our tradition, because shukr is not just a verbal practice that we just say alhamdulillah, and there\'s a whole discussion on what\'s the difference between hamd and shukr, but when it comes to shukr it\'s something that should be performed by the heart, by the tongue, and by the whole body. And the point, I mean the tongue and the heart are pretty clear, but the point of the body is that using a blessing in what was not meant to be used for is a form of ingratitude. But using it for what Allah has created it for, so when I use my hand for anything that is at least halal, if not something that is obligatory or recommended, that\'s a form of ingratitude to Allah. I\'m dedicating the use of one blessing that Allah has given me to the purpose for which that ni\'mah was actually given to me, or was even created to begin with. If I use my hand or any part of my body to do something that is haram, that\'s a form of ingratitude. And that\'s why even for the term kufr, which is a very negative term, it has multiple classifications, one of which is kufr al-ni\'mah, the ingratitude, which means again the abuse of the blessings of Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala, is a form of kufr. Of course it\'s not kufr that renders the person to be an unbeliever, but it\'s a form of showing that I\'m not grateful for what Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala has blessed me with. Now I\'m thinking about Shaykh I\'mal and Dawud al-Shukr, so Allah commands the family of Dawud (عليه السلام) to work acts of gratitude. In the entire episode of Adam (عليه السلام) and Iblis and that whole initiation of the trajectories of Adam (عليه السلام) and Iblis, Shaytan had a position, Iblis had a position
with Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala, he was ungrateful and so because he was ungrateful, he bred ego and he acted in an evil way and it actually led him to ultimate kufr. But who else did Adam (عليه السلام) admire on that day when he saw his own descendants? He admired Dawud (عليه السلام). He saw the light of Dawud (عليه السلام). Why? Dawud (عليه السلام) precisely is using the blessings that Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala gave to him to be a blessing, he\'s building on this earth, he\'s institutionalizing gratitude through his nubuwwah, through his prophethood and through his kingdom and through everything that Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala has given to him. So it\'s interesting because if you were to compare Iblis to Dawud (عليه السلام), Allah gave you a position, how are you going to act with that position and that\'s one manifestation of a blessing of Allah subhanahu wa ta\'ala. Most people fail the test of leadership, most people fail the test of blessing, most people fail the test of power, they become reckless with it and the Quran is a challenge to say listen, you have a purpose, if you don\'t know the purpose of these blessings, then you\'re most likely to turn them into a curse for yourself because you\'re going to use them in a way that\'s going to come back to haunt you on the Day of Judgment. But if you know the purpose of these blessings, then you\'re going to use them in a way that\'s going to benefit you on the Day of Judgment and be a cause of elevation for you on the Day of Judgment. That\'s why it\'s so important to understand the beautiful names and attributes of Allah because when you understand the beautiful dimensions of these names and attributes of Allah, it reminds you of how minute you are, how small you are in comparison to Al-Aziz or Al-Khaliq. He\'s created you and he\'s given you these faculties and not only these faculties but each of these faculties have a functionality that you should use and this is a great form of da\'wah and telling people about Allah and telling people about Islam because there\'s
a knowledge of who Allah is but then that knowledge has, as they say, it has a request and demands from you something. Due to the fact that you have the knowledge of Allah, it demands from you to work according to that knowledge in a fashion that shows I recognize that Allah is Al-Khaliq, I recognize that Allah is Al-Razzaq and I\'m going to act accordingly and when someone does not, that\'s where it shows a level of ingratitude and it\'s always important to be reminded of that when we talk to people is that I\'m thankful for the breath that God has given me, I\'m thankful for what he\'s given me and how I try my best to use it and what\'s so beautiful about that is among his names are names that acknowledge our deficiency and our failure at times. You know, Al-Ghafoor, Al-\'Afuw, that we will make mistakes in this process. So that\'s what\'s so beautiful about, you know, understanding the beautiful names and attributes of Allah ﷻ and the words of Allah. Saying Imam Hassan al-Basri rahimahullah, when someone said to him, فُلَانٌ يَحْفَظُ الْقُرْآنَ and so and so memorizes the Quran, he says, rather the Quran, يَحْفَظُهُ الْقُرْآنُ preserves him and so the Quran preserves us and may Allah \'Azza wa Jal allow us to manifest it, to memorize it, to manifest it, to act upon it, to understand it, to recite it, for it to completely take over our entire existence and of course the Prophet (ﷺ), what a beautiful description, walking Quran, his khuluq was the Quran, his character was the Quran. So, at the end of the day, we pray that Allah ﷻ allows us to be people who absorb the revelation and who give with the revelation and were given by the revelation on the Day of Judgment. JazakAllah khair Shaykh Yousef, may Allah ﷻ bless you and increase you. BarakAllahu feekum. We\'ll see you all tomorrow. InshaAllah.
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