Al Qur’an- The Living Miracle

By Hamza Yusuf | 2026-01-15T22:48:20.70408+00:00 | Topic: Iman

physics.

Which is what human beings have been attempting to do. To understand reality at the biochemical level, at the atomic level.

This is materialism at its sickest. Brilliantly successful as these two branches of science have been in our century. A third component is needed for any explanation of the world that claims to be complete.

The powerful theories of chemistry and physics must be added a late arrival: a theory of information. Nature must be interpreted as matter, energy and information. Nature must be interpreted as matter, energy and information.

That is the Qur'anic worldview. The Qur'anic worldview tells us that what we see and witness outside of ourselves are signs from Allah. And what we see and witness inside of ourselves are signs from Allah.

The witnessing itself is not simply a witnessing with the eye, which is the physical, but it's a witnessing with the heart itself, which is a superphysical, a metaphysical witnessing articulated by our scholars when they say:

Our witnessing that there is no God but He is an articulation that manifests out of a knowledge gained by witnessing with our eyes and with our hearts.

The Human Being as Decoder

And this is why the human being, according to the founder—I mean the Qur'an itself—but the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon, who's the founder of this theory of information says, the human being is the ideal decoder.

This is the function of the human being, is literally to decode. And the Qur'an itself is the code, it is the translation for the human being. It is the manual by which the human being can break the code of existence.

Not from a scientific aspect, and I don't doubt that there are things in there that deal with that, but from how existence works in terms of sunan of Allah. How existence works. This to me is the greatest miracle of the Qur'an, that if we learn and deeply deliberate the Qur'an:

Do they not deeply deliberate and reflect on the Qur'an, or are their organs of cognition, their hearts covered with locks, unable to access the book of Allah?

If it was from other than Allah, they would have found much differences in it.

Like the 50,000 errors that they found in other religious books. They would have found much differences in it, but there are not differences in the book of Allah, because the book of Allah is from Allah.

Deep Reflection and Discovery

This can only be grasped in a deep and sincere way, with yaqeen and certainty, by deep reflection on the book of

Allah, and this is the job of ulil albaab, the people containing innermost core, that break away the shell of superficial thought, that transcend the shell of superficial thought and enter in to the meanings that Allah has immersed the human being in, both in his experience of the world, and in the greatest and the divine articulation of who the creator of the world is, what the world is, and what our place, and all the various types of people and creation that exist in existence itself.

And this is an act of discovery. To enter in to this is an act of discovery, which in itself is to enter in to the experience of ecstasy. The word in Arabic to find or discover is the same root word that we use for existence itself. Wujud is existence, wajada means to find, but it also means to be ecstatic, because discovery is a state of ecstasy.

When they asked Abu Hanifa رضي الله عنه

How did you gain knowledge?

He said:

By hamd and shukr.

And the meaning of that is that he said, whenever Allah increased in my knowledge and understanding, I thanked Allah and I gave Him hamd, praise, and He increased me in my knowledge and understanding.

The Qur'an as a Book of Happiness

And you thank Allah by blessings, things that make you felicitous, things that give you sa'ada. This is why we thank Allah. The Qur'an is a book of sa'ada. It is for the mu'mineen.

We have revealed from this Qur'an what is a healing and a mercy for the mu'mineen. It will only increase those transgressing in loss.

Because they're gaining by transgression and the Qur'an stops transgression.

Give victory to your brother, the oppressor and the oppressed.

(Sahih Bukhari 2444)

كَيْفَ نَنْصُرُ أَخَانَا الظَّالِمَ How do we give victory to our brother, the oppressor? By stopping him from oppressing.

And this is what the Qur'an does. It will only increase the zalim in loss because it stops him from his oppression. And this is what the Muslims who adhere to the book of Allah have done.

The Methodology: Recognizing the Qur'an as Signs

The way, the methodology in deriving benefit from the Qur'an is in the Qur'an itself. The first thing that the Qur'an when it announces itself, that it is a wahi from Allah. And then it tells us that these are signs.

Now a sign in linguistic theory is something that must be decoded. You have to decode a sign in order to arrive at a knowledge of what that sign is indicating. And the sign is indicating, it's a signifier of something beyond it.

And this is the world is both a sign of the existence and unity of Allah. But the Qur'an itself is a sign of an explanation of the existence of Allah and of the creator. And so the first thing is to recognize that the Qur'an is a book literally of ayat.

Learning the Arabic Language

Now in order to decode those signs, we must learn the language of the Qur'an. The language of the Qur'an is Arabic. Imam al-Shafi'i in his Risalah رضي الله عنه said:

It's obligatory on every Muslim that he learns from the Arabic language what his capacity enables him to do.

And this was the position of the early community. And I'm not an Arab here like giving some kind of—no, this is a language that I learned myself and I'm still learning because it's a vast language. But the point is that Muslim—and really to me the English language is a language, it's a human language, it's a sign of Allah.

Allah says, in your tongues and in your colors are signs. It's a sign of Allah. But for the Muslims to me, it is a sign of our humiliation and our subjugation. That we speak—that English has become the language of our conferences and our intellectual and scholastic pursuits is an indication of our humiliation. Because it's a language of a people that conquered many Muslim lands. And they have given us this language and this is what we're left with.

English: A Language of Commerce

It's a language that—and I say this as a native speaker of the language, it is a poor language. It's a poor language. It's what the Arabs, they call it لُغَةُ التِّجَارَةِ - the language of commerce. Which doesn't mean they don't have philosophy and Shakespeare, Sheikh Zubair, right? They even say he was an Arab.

But the point that as long as we're trapped in the language of English, I believe as an intellectual community, we will not rise to the level anywhere near what those who went before us did. Part of regaining our heritage is regaining the Arabic language.

And also, unlike almost all the other languages in existence, the complexification of languages increases despite the fact that it changes. In other words, Latin moved into Italian, Spanish, French. These are like slangs or dialects of Latin. But by the nature of language, because they left Latin, there was a complexification that took place that enabled them to articulate difficult thought.

Unfortunately, this has not occurred in the Arabic language. And the reason for that, I say unfortunately, I really not unfortunately, but it has unfortunate consequences. The Arabic language by its nature has been preserved

intact, unchangeable with the revelation of Allah.

The Preservation of Arabic

The Arab grammarians and the Arab lexicographers were the first people, the first dictionary in the English language is 16th century. They don't even know really what Chaucer's language meant. They can only guess at a lot of words, the meanings of words.

The Hebrew language, the Hebrews caught on to dictionaries from the Muslims. And this is why in modern biblical studies in Tel Aviv and the universities where they study, they go to Arabic roots to understand the Bible. This is a fact that I'm not making this up. They go to Arabic roots to understand the Bible because they recognize that as a Semitic language, it is the only language that has maintained a lexical purity that other languages have not maintained because of the preservation of our scholars.

And by the tawfiq of Allah, because when Allah said:

Indeed, We have sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its guardian.

That includes the preservation of the Arabic language because it's an essential aspect. The Arabic language has been preserved. And it's there for whoever wants it.

If you want dunya, then learn English. But if you want akhira, learn Arabic. Because it is the language that literally opens up a whole world of meaning that is inaccessible in the English language. And I'm saying that as somebody who is bilingual, who reads the Qur'an in Arabic and reads English.

The Qur'an is not the Qur'an in English. It cannot be called the Qur'an in English. And this is not a kind of, you know, a boasting of the scholars of the past. No, part of the ijaz of the Qur'an is the Arabic language itself. And it is a language of revelation.

The Three Special Gifts of This Ummah

So we must learn the language of the book itself. And this includes Arabs who go through 12 years of high school, and they can't—you know, one of the ulama, I think it was Muhammad ibn al-Hussain said:

This ummah has been given three special things: Knowledge of the ansab (genealogy), the knowledge of the isnad, and al-i'rab (Arabic grammar).

Ibn al-Mubarak said:

If it wasn't for the isnad of this ummah, whoever wanted to say whatever he wanted would have said it.

So we have the isnad which is the unbroken chain of transmission which the Qur'an exists to this day in an unbroken chain of transmission to the messenger of Allah, to Jibril عليه السلامto Allah.

The Miracle of Unbroken Transmission

There are Muslims who memorize the Qur'an with the isnad, unbroken chain to Allah. And this exists to our day, it's a miracle of the Qur'an, that we have an absolute isnad of unbroken chain of transmitters of the Qur'an. Both مُشَافَهَةً وَكِتَابَةً - by articulation and by writing, it's unbroken الرَّسْمُ الْعُثْمَانِيُّ all of this has been preserved.

So learning the Arabic language, now the next aspect is, and this does not mean if you don't know Arabic, you can't read the meanings of the Qur'an, I'm not suggesting that, but I'm saying it's a crutch, and lame people use crutches, but the beauty of it is you can throw away your crutches, because the Arabic language is learnable.

I mean, Maurice Bucaille was 50 years old when he learned the Arabic language, a French scientist who just wanted to read the Qur'an in its original language, 52 years old. We have Muslims that speak English better than the Queen. They speak English better than the Queen. Why? Why is that? People grow up in the Swat Valley, and they speak Queen's English.

Well, we want to speak the King's language, not the Queen's English, we want to speak the King's Arabic, which is the language of Allah مَلِكُ الْمُلُوكِ the King of Kings, Allah سبحانه وتعالى.

Listening to the Qur'an with Attentiveness

So, Allah says in the Qur'an:

If we want rahmah from Allah, this is, Allah has given us the formula. When the Qur'an is recited, listen to it and be silent.

Now the word in Arabic here اِسْتَمِعُوا is from an eighth form verb اِسْتَمَعَ which is called بَابُ الْمُطَاوِعِ, which means it's a reflexive, it goes back into the self. In other words, it's not simply a hearing, it is an internalization of the hearing. It's a hearkening.

If we say in the first form سَمِعَ it means we hear, like سَمِعْتُ . In Mauritania they always say سَمِعْتَ like سَمِعْتَ like سَمِعْتَ . They always ask me, did you hear that, did you hear that? Like here they used to say, I heard that. But that's not what اِسْتَمِعُوا means that is what means.

اِسْتَمِعُوا means to internalize it. So you not only hear the word, you internalize it, you take it into the self. You allow it to go through the ear and into the heart, where it's understood and comprehended.

The Requirement of Silence and Stillness

And then once it enters into the heart, there has to be silence and stillness.

And then once it enters into the heart, there has to be silence and stillness. If you do not still the heart from the chatter of the world, then you cannot understand and penetrate the meanings of the book of Allah.

They only touch at the purified ones.

The purified ones (مُطَهَّرُونَ - mutahharūn), which is a passive form, they are purified by their ikhlas to Allah, Allah purifies them. They only have access, intimate access to it, those who are purified.

And so this Qur'an has to be internalized, there has to be this (فَاسْتَمِعُوا لَهُ وَأَنصِتُوا لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ - fastamiʿū lahu wa ansitū laʿallakum turḥamūn) - in order that you are shown rahmah.

The Lost Adab of Listening

Now, we—one of the things that I think is a sign of the sickness of our ummah, is that we no longer listen to the Qur'an. In other words, in our souks, the Qur'an now is played like background music. You will hear, (أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّحِيمِ - aʿūdhu billāhi mina ash-shayṭāni ar-rajīm) - you will hear Qur'an now in the souks of all the Muslim countries.

You will hear the Qur'an even in the souk, and if you hear it here, then tell the people to stop playing it. Because the souk is not the place for Qur'an, in fact it's makrooh to recite the Qur'an in the souk. Except for (طَالِبُ عِلْمٍ - ṭālib ʿilm) who's doing (مُرَاجَعَةً - murājaʿah). And you can look at the books of fiqh, I'm not making that up.

And I was once trying to do a transaction and somebody had a CD of Qur'an that he was trying to sell, and I asked him, please turn it off, and he said, why? And I said, because Allah says:

وَإِذَا قُرِئَ الْقُرْآنُ فَاسْتَمِعُوا لَهُ If you hear the Qur'an, listen to it and be silent.

And I can't make a business transaction if you've got Qur'an playing. And he said, is it wajib? See, this is, I mean, this is a sickness. This is a sickness. It means there's a deep loss of adab. And this is what's happened in our ummah. We have lost adab to the book of Allah.

I'm gonna, I'll close it up now. We've lost adab to the book of Allah.

The Adab of Silence Before Allah's Words

Now from the adab of the book of Allah, is that you listen to it when it's recited. And you're silent. Now in the Qur'an it says:

Don't raise your voices over the voice of the Prophet.

The ulama, many of them have said, it includes when hadith is being recited. Now there's a principle in tafsir, mafhum al-awla, which is even more stronger. Like when Allah says, don't say to your parents, "oof," that's the least thing you can do. It obviously means not hitting them or going on.

If we're commanded to be silent when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is speaking, then what is the commandment when Allah Himself is speaking, which is the kalam of Allah, which is the book of Allah? If we hear the book of Allah, we should go silent. If you don't understand it, then be silent anyway.

لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ In order that you'll be shown rahmah from Allah.

The Unending Miracle

The Qur'an is the unending miracle of Allah. It is the book that enriches those who have no wealth. It dignifies those who are debased and subjugated. It gives nourishment to those who are spiritually malnourished. It is a book that brings light and life to the dead and the blind.

Allah says about them, they are deaf, blind and dumb and they do not see.

They are deaf, they can't hear. And they can't speak, they can't articulate. And they can't see.

And the Muslim is somebody who is listening attentively to the signs of Allah. Seeing the signs of Allah.

Because the signs are both things that we see with the eyes:

السَّمْعَ وَالْبَصَرَ وَالْفُؤَادَ We hear with the ears, we see with the eyes, and we understand in our hearts.

The Qur'an Demands Deep Thought

The Muslims are people of intellect. They are not people of stupidity and idiocy. Muslims are people of intellect. And the Qur'an is a book that demands deep thought. It is not a book for simplistic—for just a book that—no, it absolutely demands from us that we think.

Allah says:

We thrust this Qur'an against falsehood, and it is overcome.

Now there is a modern translation that says, "And it smashes out their brains." That's a gross mistranslation of Qur'an. Because damagha, although in its—one of the meanings is (إِصَابَةُ الدِّمَاغِ - iṣābat ad-dimāgh) - to hit, strike the brain. That striking does not mean smashing it physically out.

Which is a lot of—a way that a lot of Muslim, modern Muslims would like to finish arguments. By smashing out their opponent's brains. No, we are people of burhan. And the proof is, if you read the ayahs that follow that verse, you will see that they all asking about—do you think there is more than one God in creation? Haven't you looked at the heavens and the earth?

It's using intellectual proofs to show these people. In other words (يَدْمَغُهُ - yadmaghu) means that it overwhelms their intellect until they have to admit that it is the truth from Allah.

Muslims and Open Discourse

Muslims have never been afraid of open debate and open discourse. The Muslims have never been afraid of open debate and open discourse. Abu Hanifa رضي الله عنه he debated the atheists in the masjids. He debated people that didn't believe in the ba'ath.

This is what the Muslims—because they were not afraid of any forms of falsehood, because they have the truth. But because we are so distant from the book of Allah, we actually fear now, all of this falsehood that is out there.

If the truth comes, falsehood vanishes, falsehood is vanishing by nature.

The Book of Allah: Our Salvation

The Prophet, when Sayyidina Ali رضي الله عنه asked him, he said:

فِتْنٌ كَقِطَعِ اللَّيْلِ الْمُظْلِمِ There are afflictions like a dark black night.

And then Ali رضي الله عنه said:

مَا الْخَلَاصُ يَوْمَئِذٍ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ What is the salvation then, O Messenger of Allah?

The book of Allah.

فِيهِ نَبَأُ مَا قَبْلَكُمْ وَخَبَرُ مَا بَعْدَكُمْ وَحُكْمُ مَا بَيْنَكُمْ It has the information of those who went before, news about those who will come after, and it is a judgment between you.

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said:

مَنْ دَعَا إِلَى هُدًى فَلَهُ مِنَ الْأَجْرِ مِثْلُ أُجُورِ مَن تَبِعَهُ إِلَى يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ

Questions and Answers

Q: How Do We Return to the Qur'an?

Brother, if you would stand up, is there a microphone? When you have brother and sister, what is the best way for us to go back again to the main source as of right now, go back to the main source?

The question if I understood it right was from Arabic speaking people, because an Arab by definition is somebody who speaks Arabic and the word in fact comes from a word which means to articulate clearly:

عَرَبَ يَعْرُبُ To articulate clearly.

Some call (عَيْنُ الْعَرَبِ - ʿaynu al-ʿarab) is like (رَبُّ الْعَيْنِ - rabbu al-ʿayn) things like that, and some say it comes from (يَعْرُبُ - yaʿrub) which is one of the fathers of Arabic, but it's those who articulate clearly, which means the vast majority of people now claiming to be Arab are not really Arab.

In fact if the sahaba heard them I think they would just shake their heads and say what kind of language is this. They would just say what was that?

(أَكْتُبُ بِأَلَمٍ - aktubu bi-alam) That means in Arabic "I write with pain."

So they really wouldn't understand, I don't think. I mean they heard Suhaib Rumi once saying:

يَا نَاسُ يَا نَاسُ

And Umar Ibn Al-Khattab said:

مَا بَعْدَ سُهَيْبٍ يُنَادِي النَّاسَ What's wrong with Suhaib, he's calling the people?

And he said no no, he has a boy named Yahnes but Suhaib had the ujma in his tongue so he didn't pronounce the ha very strongly.

Returning to the Manhaj of the Salaf

I would say that the way that we go back to the Qur'an is taking the (مَنْهَجُ - manhaj) of the salaf The (مَنْهَجُ - manhaj) of the salaf was to read the Qur'an in 30 days. This was the (مَنْهَجُ - manhaj) of the salaf. The Qur'an was divided into 30 (جُزْءٍ - juzʾ), 60 (حِزْبٍ - ḥizb). The (حِزْبُ - ḥizb) was to be recited at Fajr and Maghrib. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to read and most people spend more time in the bathroom doing their toiletries than that takes, really. I mean just to put our priorities straight.

Abu Hanifa, who is oftentimes the most generous in terms of his leniency, said that the least amount that we can recite the Qur'an is twice a year, that it must be recited at least twice a year. The Prophet in a hadith that has weakness that Ar-Razi mentions that says:

مَنْ تَعَدَّى أَرْبَعِينَ فَقَدْ جَفَا The one that has gone past 40 days and hasn't completed the Qur'an has been rude to the Qur'an.

The Qur'an must be read but it has to be read with deliberation. We know that the sahaba did not memorize the Qur'an until they were acting according to it and this will increase us in our knowledge:

مَنْ عَمِلَ بِمَا عَلِمَ أَوْرَثَهُ اللَّهُ عِلْمَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ Whoever acts according to what he knows, Allah will increase him in his knowledge.

So knowledge is increased by acting according to what we know.

Learning Qur'anic Arabic

The Arabic language, the Qur'anic Arabic, although there are deep intricacies and subtleties in the Qur'anic Arabic, by and large the Qur'anic Arabic is not a complicated Arabic. It is mubeen. The hadiths are actually more difficult to read than much of the Qur'an.

But the Qur'an must be read with commentary and the commentary is something that this is one of the problems of the modern age is that people are literally reading the Qur'an misunderstanding. There's people reading English translations and misunderstanding because the translator misunderstood it and there's misunderstandings in the translations and also translations only give one aspect. The Qur'an oftentimes has many different aspects.

So the Qur'anic Arabic, there's a beautiful vocabulary that is not extensive that can be learned very quickly. I have a class that has been working with me two hours a week for about three and a half almost four years and all of them were ajam when they came in and now they're reading the Qur'an with a considerable amount of understanding. They can understand it with a dictionary, relying on a dictionary for some words and this shows you just that a small amount of time, a massive amount can be gained.

Now Arabs already have a considerable jump on everybody else because there's a great deal of the Qur'anic Arabic that they still can understand even for a person on the street.

An Amusing Story About Fusha Arabic

My friend Abdullah Omar in Jeddah told me he was in Egypt once and he speaks Fusha Arabic and he got in a taxi and he said:

أُرِيدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبَ إِلَى سُوقٍ مِنْ فَضْلِكَ حَتَّىٰ أَشْتَرِيَ بَعْضَ الْأَغْرَاضِ *I want to go to a market please so that