Context & Meaning in the Quran
By Nouman Ali Khan | 2026-01-08T18:55:56.69339+00:00 | Topic: Quran
Context & Meaning in the Quran - Khutbah by Nouman Ali Khan
Introduction: The Ten Commandments in the Quran
Today's khutbah is about, really at the end of the day, a single ayah of surah al-Isra, the 17th surah of the Quran. This ayah belongs to a passage that's important to understand overall, so I'll give you just a glimpse of it. The Prophet, when he described this passage of the Quran, he said that this is a summary of the entire revelation given to Musa (peace be upon him). Essentially, what's famously known as the Ten Commandments, you may have heard the biblical term, the Ten Commandments.
The Quran's equivalent of that, and really summarizing them in one place, is in the surah called surah bani Israel or surah al-Isra, the 17th surah. And this is roughly from ayah number 23 to ayah number 40 of this surah. But today's khutbah is about one of these ayahs, and really a part of one of these ayahs.
Three Key Terms: Hearing, Seeing, and the Heart
And here Allah is describing in the 26th or the 36th rather ayah, something about learning and knowledge and how we act on knowledge. And so I wanna start with three terms that are used in this ayah, instead of translating the whole thing first, I wanna take three terms that Allah put in order, and talk a little bit about the relationship between them. He says:
"(Quran 17:36)"
He says hearing, and then he says seeing, and then he says this thing called الفؤاد. And we're gonna discuss all three and the relationship between them. سمع in Arabic means hearing, بصر means seeing or perceiving, and فؤاد which is a complicated term, can mean the heart, could also mean excited emotions like anger or passion or fear or love, and all of those can be captured inside the word فؤاد.
Understanding Fuad: The Inflamed Heart
The word فؤاد is a bit of a loaded term. It's a little more emphatic than the term قلب. Some of you are familiar with the term قلب for the heart. But the word فؤاد which comes from فأد اللحم or لحم فئيد means roasted flesh. Meaning when the heart is overwhelmed or when it's on fire. Literally when the heart is on fire.
This is literally exactly how Allah describes the hearts when they're in jahannam too because they're literally in fire:
"Which mounts directed at the hearts. Indeed, it will be closed down upon them"
It's not القلوب. على The hearts are inflamed at that point. But in a figurative sense, what this also means is when people are overwhelmed with an emotion.
The Psychology of Emotional Overwhelm
You know when your heart is on fire with anger, when your heart is on fire with fear, when your heart is on fire with love, any one emotion, then it's very hard for you to think clearly. It takes over your mind and you can't make easy sense of things because at that moment it's almost like you're not yourself.
When you and I go through such emotions, then we say things and do things that aren't our normal self. We end up using words that we can't believe that that was us. Oftentimes there are people that have such extreme episodes of this that they can't even remember what they said. You ask them later on, what did you say? Did I say that? No, I would never have said that.
Yeah, I actually recorded you, here it is. Oh my God, I'm sorry, I had no idea I said that. I didn't realize what I was saying, etc, etc.
Right, so this is the word فؤاد. So Allah put three things together, hearing and seeing and this overwhelmed heart, this you know, impassionate heart. So let's understand the connection between these three things.
The Role of Listening in Faith
The Quran will describe revelation, the process of revelation and what the prophets came to do with all the people across history is they came to make people listen. Before the prophets had anything for people to see, fundamentally they were asking people to listen. Which is why anybody who believed throughout history would say the same phrase:
"We hear and we obey."
The Quran, you know, we hear and we obey.
And the Quran will also constantly make the appeal:
"Listen to it."
It'll criticize people who don't listen to the words of Allah or walk away from the Prophet (peace be upon him) and they don't listen. Or when they listen, they don't listen carefully.
You know, it'll even criticize hypocrites who half listen and when the Prophet is done and walking away, they say:
"What did he just say?"
Like they weren't really listening.
The Quran as Sound and the Experience of Listening
So listening is a huge part of our salvation, what the iman is calling for. At the end of the day, all the Quran is, those 23 years of the Prophet's life (peace be upon him), as a messenger, what was the Quran? It was sounds.
The Quran to anybody who, they didn't have a book in front of them, they didn't have anything in writing, they didn't have tafasir, all they heard was sounds to be heard. That's all it was. Even the jinn, their exposure to the Quran. They say:
"We heard a unique Quran, a unique recital, right?"
We say:
"We heard the call of a caller calling us to believe. So we believe."
How Hearing Affects Perception
Now that's important to understand because when you hear something, and you think about it, it changes the way you view things. Your perception changes based on what you've heard. So if you listen to something over and over again, like for example nowadays, just as a fun example, somebody listening to, you know, Fox News radio every single day for a few hours, is going to change the way they view things.
So maybe when they're driving by and they see a woman in hijab or a guy with a beard or something, their view of what they see is completely different than if they were listening to something else, right? What we hear, you can say, you can call it propaganda, you can also call it wherever you get your knowledge from, whatever you're constantly exposing your ear to, is going to affect your mind, and by affecting your mind, it'll affect your perception.
The Phenomenon of Spiritual Blindness
The Quran describes this phenomenon. The Quran describes people that have eyes:
"They have eyes."
"They have eyes but they don't see with them. Why does the Quran say they have eyes and they don't see with them?"
Believers See What Others Cannot
You see, the Quran makes us listen and makes us think about simple things like the grass. That when the dead earth grows grass and grows plants, that's reminding you and me that one day we are going to be inside the dead earth and we're going to be brought back to life. So the day of judgment, the day of resurrection, the day of being brought back to life is a constant sermon every time you see something green on the earth. Every time you and I see a tree, a flower, a blade of grass, it's actually a reminder for resurrection.
Our view of grass has just changed. Our view of a tree has just changed. Our perception has changed.
But someone who hasn't heard this reminder, they also see grass, they also see a tree, they also see the same things we see. And they may be able to know, maybe they're a botanist or they study plants and they can tell you a lot more scientific information about the plant. They can tell you what species of tree it is, or what area it grows in, or how old it is, and all of it.
But they can't see what a believer sees. So in that sense they're blind. They have eyes but they just don't see.
The Connection Between Hearing and Seeing
What I'm trying to get at then if you go back is what you hear necessarily impacts the way you see things. If you and I are not in a constant state of listening to the Quran, if we're not in a state of listening to the Quran, then we're not going to see the world the way the Quran wants us to see it. You know when you're out of touch with something? When you're out of touch, your opinions get rusty and over time they change.
Just because you and I believe, and we've accepted the iman, and we believe in Quran as the word of Allah, that doesn't mean that those words not constantly hitting our ears and allowing us to think about them. I'm not just saying, listen to a CD of the recitation of the Quran which is great, you should do that, or download it on your phone, or listen to it in the car, all that's awesome. But I'm talking about the message of the Quran going in your ears.
The Three-Step Process: Hearing, Seeing, Emotions
When the message of the Quran is going in your ears regularly, it's actually impacting your view. But Allah didn't just talk about the view, al-basr. He took one more step.
He said, wal-fu'ad. He said actually impassionate hearts. What Allah is saying is not only will your view change, what you are passionate about, what you get angry about, what you fall in love with, what you absolutely hate, what is it that excites you, what is it that makes you afraid, all of those emotions are going to get impacted by your view.
And your view will be impacted by what you hear. So it's a three-step process, hearing, seeing, and then the emotional response, the emotional reactions that we have.
The Main Ayah: Don't Follow Without Knowledge
Now Allah here in this ayah didn't actually only talk about the Quran. And I wanted to establish the relationship, the basic relationship between these three things, and remind myself and remind you why it's important for us to have a regular relationship of listening to the reminder from the Quran. At the very least we get something every Jum'ah, at the very least. But this is something we're supposed to get like multiple times every day.
That's actually the purpose of the salah, to get another dose of the Quran. Then a few hours later, get another dose of the Quran. Few hours later, another dose of the Quran.
So our views and our emotions are kept aligned. And you know, when that's not there, if maybe for example Allah complains about a group of people and says:
"Don't become like the kind of people who say we've heard, but they actually don't hear anything. They don't listen."
The Problem of Superficial Listening
Meaning there's an artificial kind of listening. There's a kind of hearing that you satisfy yourself, yeah, I heard it, yeah. But your hearing didn't change your view, and therefore didn't impact your emotions.
So it was this dead kind of listening, the kind of listening that didn't count for anything. These are the kinds of people unfortunately on Judgment Day that say, you know, they cry out, had we heard, سَمِعْنَا you know, had we only heard:
"If we had just listened, if we had just thought about it, you know, In Surah Al-Mulk. Had only been people of listening, and as a result of our listening, our thinking changed, we wouldn't have ended up here."
Because once thinking changes, perception changes, right?
The Complete Ayah and Its Warning
Now, let's go back to the beginning of this ayah. Here Allah says:
Don't obsessively follow what you don't know anything about. Don't become a follower of things you don't fully know.
Then he says, hearing, seeing, and your exaggerated emotions, your impassioned emotions, are all going to be asked about:
"And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart - about all those will be questioned."
He actually aggrandizes, hearing is a big deal, your perception is a big deal, and how you feel is a big deal to Allah. And he makes it a big deal by calling them (أُولئِكَ). You know, (أُولئِكَ) is not a small word to be used here. So Allah is saying that, this is a very important thing that will change your world view essentially. And how you will end up before Allah.
Religious Knowledge and Context
Now, the beginning part, don't follow what you don't know about. There are some simple things I wanna share with you about that besides our exposure to the Quran. Of course in a religious sense, we don't follow anything in the religion unless we know about it ourselves.
Unless we can say with confidence, this is actually coming from Allah's own words, or it's coming from the Prophet's words (peace be upon him). I'll just take two minutes to just highlight a little bit of that for you, before I get to the real point in the khutbah, the other things that I wanted to share within this ayah.
The Problem of Incomplete Religious Knowledge
The thing is, just because something is in the Quran and you heard it, you heard somebody say, this ayah is in the Quran, this is what it says. Oftentimes what we do nowadays when we have discussions among each other, the sad reality is the vast majority of us, including myself, don't have much knowledge. We don't know a lot. We've heard snippets here and there, we know a little bit of here, a little bit of there, and we sometimes share things with each other in order to advise one another.
And we'll quote an ayah, we'll quote a hadith, and things like that. But oftentimes we don't really know what the ayah and hadith are actually talking about. And we assume just because we've heard a translation of the ayah, we kinda know what the ayah means, it applies in this situation immediately.
Or this is the advice I wanna slap somebody with, I wanna throw an ayah at them, and throw a hadith at them, and set them straight. We may not know the full information. We may not know there's a lot more to that knowledge than what we think we know.
The Importance of Context in Religious Texts
So oftentimes we think we're using knowledge, but we don't know it fully well ourselves. Like for example, somebody quotes a hadith at somebody else. You know, you should do this, because the Prophet (peace
be upon him) said this.
Okay, where did he say? Well, it's in Bukhari, it's sahih, it's a hadith sahih. Excellent, it's an authentic hadith, got it. Who did he say it to? When did he say it? What else did he say about the subject? How was this understood by the person he talked to? What was their reaction after that? Did they understand it exactly the same way you're trying to make me understand it? Or was there something you don't know? There are contexts, there are larger stories, you know, just like for example, two of your friends are talking in the back, and you walk by and you hear one sentence.
A Practical Example of Taking Things Out of Context
One of the friends says to the other, I'm gonna kill you, bro. And you just heard that part, I'm gonna kill you, bro. And you walk away like this, I'm gonna report this to the police, because this brother is gonna kill that brother.
It's a sahih, authentic recording, I'm gonna kill you, bro. You know, when you take that one liner and say, I'm gonna kill you. It's true, he said it.
But he was just saying, I'm gonna destroy you on the basketball court. He was just saying, you better stop making fun of me before I push you, man. He wasn't saying, I'm gonna kill you.
He meant something else entirely, didn't he? Context can change everything. So just because you say, it's absolute... Look, it's there, right there in the book. That's what it says.
That doesn't mean you understand its context. That's also speaking without knowledge. That's also following something without fully knowing.
And that's dangerous. That means you and I don't understand, and now we're imposing it on somebody else and making their life more difficult. So we should be careful, especially careful.
A Case Study: The Story of Nuh and His Son
You know, general advice about being patient or grateful, and those kinds of things, those are fine. But then there are other things. I'll give you one example of taking things out of context that just comes to my mind, that happened with me.
Somebody came to me a long time ago, very upset with... A mother came to me, very upset with her son. And her son stopped praying, and he was doing drugs, and drinking, and you know, left the house, and he was living with some girlfriend, all kinds of sins, right? So, and she's a very pious religious woman, and she's just traumatized constantly advising her son until she gave up. And she said, you know, I told him he's no longer my son.
And you know, I find peace in my heart that I said that, because even Allah told Nuh:
That Nuh (peace be upon him), when he was on the ship, and his son was still drowning, and he said, that's my family. And Allah said to him, no, that's not your family. Allah said to him, that's not your family, he's no good, basically.
So she says, yeah, well my son is no good, so I get to say what? Nuh (peace be upon him) said, and I said, you know, to this lady, I said, you know, you're like my own mother, sit down for a second, have you been preaching to your son for 950 years? And did Allah reveal to you the license to say he's no longer your son? Did he do that? Because how long have you been having this problem? For the last nine months. Oh, okay, so you got about 949 years to go, before you quote Nuh (peace be upon him), chill out, lady, that's still your son. You make dua for him, it's frustrating, but you don't get to do that.
The Crime of Misusing Scripture
You don't get to pull an eye of the Quran and slap him with it and say, I'm done. Nuh, that's a crime. That's:
What you hear of Allah's words, remember these words again:
Don't become like people who say they heard, but they didn't really listen, they didn't really ponder.
Hearts with Locks
This is why Allah says:
This is the part that I really want everybody here to understand. If you remember nothing else from this khutbah, which is easier for the brothers, but if you remember nothing else from the khutbah, just remember this part. Allah describes people who don't think deeply about the Quran.
And then He says, why don't they think deeply about the Quran? He says, because they have locks on their heart, their own locks أَقْفَالُهَا their own locks placed on their hearts. Now what does that mean? That means you have a bias. I have a bias.
The Problem of Bias in Approaching Scripture
There are some things that terrify me. There are some things that make me really angry. There are some things that I really wanna impose on my son, or my daughter, or my spouse, or my parents even.
I wanna argue with them and I wanna prove that I'm right. And my anger and my desire to prove them right, with that desire, I come to Allah's book. My heart is already locked that I'm gonna prove them wrong, or I'm gonna make my point.
Then I'm gonna come to the word of Allah, and find an ayah, find a hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him), so I can quote it in their face, so I can win that argument and get them to do things I want them to do. I've already got a lock on my heart. I didn't come to Allah's book seeking Allah's permission.
I didn't come seeking Allah's pleasure. I wanted to come to it to find a weapon that I can use in my war of words. This is a lock on the heart too.
That's a crime against Allah too. Just because somebody is quoting ayat of Quran, or words of our beloved Messenger (peace be upon him), doesn't mean they're not committing a crime. This is also:
This is why Allah says, your emotions will also be interrogated:
Maybe because of your anger, because of your rage, you started using the religious, the sacred words of Allah for your own purposes.
Bias in Everyday Interactions
And so now beyond the religion, beyond quoting the book of Allah, beyond quoting the hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him), we even commit this crime among ourselves.
You know sometimes, somebody says something, they say salamu alaykum to you, and all you know is they said salam to you.
But you don't like that guy. So when they said salam to you, there's a thousand thoughts in your head. I know why he really said it.
He said salam. Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, wa alaykum salam.
Peace on you too. Like you don't really mean peace. And they don't really, that's not what they really meant.
When they came to me and said, I'm your friend, I mean well for you. What they really meant is I'm gonna rip you to shreds. And you say, why do you say that? How do you know they mean that? I know, okay.
I just know. You read into what other people are saying, your own biases. I've already made up my mind that this person is corrupt, or this person is evil, or this person is out to get me, or whatever else.
Then whatever they have to say, I say, he's taking another dig at me. He's taking another shot at me. But he didn't say your name.
She didn't mention you. She was just saying something else. No, no, but you don't know.
The Corruption of Biased Hearing
This person, it's always about me. You don't have that knowledge. So now you're hearing, but you're hearing with your own lock on it.
And because you're hearing it in a corrupt way, your view is becoming corrupt. And because your view is becoming corrupt, your emotions are all corrupt.
Your anger is in the wrong place. Your love is in the wrong place:
All of it got messed up. Because you have biased hearing. Because you're not really listening.
Misusing Religious Authority
Then we do this even a step further. We hear something someone says, and people do this with me all the time. People take, parents do this with me. Parents will take a lecture of mine, take a clip of something I said, and then slap their children with it. You know what Nouman Ali Khan said? He said, da-da-da-da- da-da-da, and therefore you better do this.
And so lots of kids around the world hate my guts, because parents have been using me as a nuclear option for a long time. And it's funny because when I travel and I meet some of these families, those same parents that have been using me like a baseball bat, say, ah, now there's gonna be a live beatdown.
So they'll bring their 18-year-old son, and say, Salman, I make him listen to you all the time. Could you give him some advice? He's good, but not that good. And the first thing I say to this young man is, I'm so sorry. I really apologize.
That's not my fault. And he'll just, you know, under his breath say, I hate you anyway. But you know, we shouldn't be using other people's words against somebody else.
Speaking on Behalf of Others
Not knowing, not understanding context. Just throwing things at some... You know, and then speaking. And we also do this. We speak on behalf of people that aren't even around. That sometimes aren't even alive or not there. Your father would have wanted you to do this. Your grandfather would... And the worst is when we speak on behalf of the Prophet (peace be upon him). You know, if the Prophet was here, he would have told you this, this, and that. Really? You know that? You're gonna speak on... Okay, you're
Speaking on Behalf of Allah
Even in anger among family, among friends, when you say things about Allah, Allah will punish you for this. Ya Salam, did you get direct revelation of who Allah will punish and who Allah will not punish, and for what? Do you know every case of how people will be judged? How are you speaking on behalf of Allah so easily? Parents sometimes out of anger. I mean, I can't believe they say this to their own children.
You're gonna burn in hell for what you did. To their own kid. First of all, you don't know who's burning and who's gonna be in jannah. Allah didn't give you that license. But to say these kinds of things to your own child, come on:
"And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart - about all those one will be questioned."
The Connection to Justice and Fairness
What I want to leave you with is the ayah after. The ayah before this one, Allah emphasized the importance of being fair:
"And give full measure when you measure, and weigh with an even balance. That is the best [way] and best in result."
Whenever you weigh things and you're fair, basically, is what Allah is saying in that ayah. Be fair in your dealings.
And you know back in the day, people were selling groceries, rice, potatoes, whatever. Make sure that the scales are even. So you give the exact weight that you're supposed to sell to your customer.
Be fair. Be fair in business. And the next ayah was about what? Listening, perception, emotions. They'll be asked about, don't follow things you don't know about. Why? Because there's not just unfairness in business and in money, there's also unfairness in how we think about people, how we perceive people, how we have emotions towards people. We can be unfair in that too.
It's an extension of that.
The Connection to Arrogance
And the last of these three ayahs, which really blows my mind, is what I want to leave you with:
"And do not walk upon the earth exultantly."
What does arrogance have to do with any of this? When you become okay with being unfair and you're not careful about fairness, because you assume you're fair anyway. When you're not careful about what you hear, and how that affects your perception, and how that affects your emotions. It's easy for you to pass judgment on people, or say things to people, or perceive people a certain way.
When that becomes easy for you, then there is no greater sign of arrogance than that. Don't walk on the earth with pride is not an isolated statement here. It's actually a conclusion to what's come before it.
When unfairness becomes common practice, when not sensitive listening, not careful listening, not control over our emotions becomes common practice, then yeah, people are gonna walk around on the earth like they own the place. Like they're in a position to judge everyone. Like they're in a position to pass opinions about everyone.
And what's crazy about it is, when they hear something about someone, or even within your family, oh, this one's always like that. I already know. You already know? You don't even live in the same country. How do you know? But so easy to pass sweeping opinions, and make judgments, and then share them with others.
The Etymology of Following (Qafa)
The last final thing, 30 seconds it'll take, when Allah said:
"And do not follow that of which you have no knowledge."
Qafa in Arabic is the back of the neck.
(عَيْنَاهُ فِي قَفَاهُ)
They say about a soldier who's running from the battlefield, constantly looking back, did anybody come and get me? It's the back of the neck, okay?
The idea of Qafa is to follow something. Like when you're following someone, and all you see is the back of their head, you don't really see who they are, is it? So the word is actually in a sense, describing a kind of blind following. Allah is not just criticizing you and me for what we say, or think, or perceive.
The Problem of Blind Following
He's also criticizing us for following people, when we don't investigate properly. When they say things without verifying, and we just take their word for it and go with it. When we become easy consumers, for
weak information, when we become that, within our families, within our friends, within our circles, right? When we develop that habit, Allah will describe elsewhere:
"Among you are avid listeners to them [i.e., the hypocrites]. And Allah is Knowing of the wrongdoers."
There are people who say the wrong thing, say ignorant things, and there are people who listen to them.
And Allah says, Allah knows all of the wrongdoers, meaning the one talking, and the one listening are both doing wrong. You're both doing wrong.
Identifying This Problem in Ourselves
Identify that in yourself. Sometimes, you know, your parents might say some crazy things. Parents sometimes say crazy things. You know, those people are doing this, this, this. But how do you know? I just have a feeling. That's not the time to give your mother a Nouman Ali Khan video, watch this, because you need this lecture. No, no, no.
That's the time to just end the conversation. Ignore the conversation. Talk about what's being cooked for dinner instead. Change it. When our loved ones say things like that, we don't indulge in that conversation, we just change the subject. Ignore it. Don't let them fall further into sin.
The Example of Aisha (radiallahu anha)
This is a sunnah of our mother Aisha (radiallahu anha). You know, there were rumors made about her. And when she spoke to her mother, her mother said, you know, who must have done it? And she named some people, which was also a rumor. And so what did Aisha (radiallahu anha) do? She just changed the subject. She just changed it all together.
She said, subhanAllah, and she changed the topic. So yes, within our families when that happens, no need to argue. No need to give them a lecture. You have to become crafty and learn to just change the subject so they don't indulge further into that mistake. Nobody does these kinds of mistakes on purpose. We get emotional and we do them.
Conclusion and Du'a
May Allah make us more careful about what we listen to and how we think about it. May Allah correct our perception and the emotions that follow as a result.
"Indeed, Allah orders justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded."
"Recite, [O Prophet], what has been revealed to you of the Book and establish salah. Indeed, salah prohibits immorality and wrongdoing, and the remembrance of Allah is greater. And Allah knows that which you do."
"Indeed, salah is a timed ordinance upon the believers."