Five Lenses for Understanding Quran: Drawing Lessons Carefully

The Fourth Lens: General Lessons

Last time, in this Surah Ar-Rahman series... One of the things you said, Allah didn't mention it. I want you to remember something. When Allah doesn't mention something, it's actually more.

It's actually more. So you know how in Surah Ar-Rahman, we saw that Allah said that you're gonna get Ihsan, the best. The word best is more than the trees and the gardens and all the other stuff that He mentioned, doesn't cover what? The best is something more.

It's also really cool in Surah Qaf is, لَهُمُّ يَشَاءُونَ فِيهَا - They'll have whatever they want there. You know what? That covers it. But He says, وَلَدَيْنَ مَزِيدًا - We have some more.

What is this more? To help you follow along and reflect more deeply, we've created a companion workbook for this series. Download it at bayyinah.com/rahman. But I wanna wrap up at least a discussion on the five lenses with you guys and give you some important pointers. So the first one was, can you remind me? Language, and the second one was? The world of the Quran.

The third was? My own world, right? And now the fourth one is going to be, we can call this one general lessons. General lessons. So what that is is, of course in the Quran there are sometimes statements that are universal.

Right? You know like a figure of speech or a saying? Right? When I moved from New York to Texas I had to acclimate myself to a new culture, new American culture because it's definitely not New York. You know? And some of the elder folks in Texas that I got to meet, like my barber for example. Oh my God, my barber is so entertaining.

He's like, hey Noman, where you been? I was like, I was traveling. Where'd you go? I was like, Kuwait. Kuwait? What do they speak there? Korean? And I was like, yeah, yeah.

He's talking to his friends about the football game and they went hunting and all that stuff and then all of a sudden he'd be like, I'm gonna go to the big city this weekend. I'm like, big city? Where's he going? Yeah, I'm going to Oklahoma. It's a big city.

It's Oklahoma City. It's a different world. But they have certain sayings. I love their sayings. If you just want to entertain yourself look up Texan sayings. You'll be thoroughly entertained.

Anyway, so one of the sayings I heard, they were talking to each other and he goes, that guy is crazier than a nut bucket. And I was like, crazier than a nut bucket? Oh, he's really nuts. But the Quran also has figures of speech, expressions that are universal that apply in many situations.

Like evil scheming doesn't end up choking anyone except the person who crafted the evil scheme. So if somebody intended to harm you in some way they may have gotten away with it temporarily but in the end, the chokehold of that evil scheme is going to come and grab a hold of them. So it's kind of like, as you reap so shall you sow, but it's a lot deeper than that.

And that's mentioned in a certain context but there's a universal truth behind that. So there are statements in the Quran that have universal truths. But you have to be careful because you cannot take general lessons out of things that are very very specific except if you first understand the very specific situation and make sure you're understanding that properly and then you extrapolate from it.

Being Careful with Context

So one example of that could be you have in the Fatiha غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ - And you have a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ supporting the understanding of this statement saying that not the recipients of rage nor the lost that the recipients of rage refers to the Jews and the lost refers to the Christians. That's what it's saying. So now it sounds like we just made a generalization about all Jews are recipients of rage and all Christians are lost, right? But actually what's interesting if Allah wanted to say not like Jews and not like Christians what would Allah have said? غَيْرِ الْيَهُودِ وَلَا النَّصَارَ

صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْيَهُودِ وَلَا النَّصَارَ - Done deal.

The issue is the Quran is actually going to explain itself. So it's making a statement and the Prophet is giving an example certain kinds of Jews made this mistake and we must learn from their mistakes so we don't become like them and what's Surah Al-Baqarah going to do? It's going to talk a lot about Jews and the mistakes that some of them made not all of them, in fact it talks about the good among them also but some of them made mistakes and therefore Allah was angry with them which then becomes an explanation of what phrase? المَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ

Then in Surah Ali Imran Allah will talk about certain mistakes theological mistakes that the Christians made and they became lost in regards to their theology around Jesus and in making and crafting those mistakes they became lost and that's how you understand what words? الضَّالِّينَ and then in the same Surah Allah will talk about among the Jews and the Christians those that are upright, that live by the book that Allah is happy with in the same Surah so if this was about all Jews and all Christians and they're being painted with one sweeping brush what I said is drawing general lessons be careful before you draw a general lesson be careful you have to have some filter before you draw a general lesson from a Surah from what's happening inside of a Surah and I've seen sometimes we do this with stories stories in the Quran it's important to draw lessons from the stories but you can only draw lessons after understanding the context of what's being said

Extreme Examples of Misinterpretation

I'll give you the craziest nobody will do this but I'm going to give you the craziest example what did Musa AS do with her baby? Musa's mother, what did she do with the baby? She put him in a basket and put him in a river. I'm inspired by the Quran I want to teach my children swimming early so I went to buy a wicker basket and took the baby and took him for a spin in the swimming pool in the backyard just to practice the story nobody's psychotic nobody will do that because that's not the lesson to learn from there but there is a lesson to learn from there there is a lesson but it's going to take a little bit more nuance than that ridiculous kind of thinking

So I'll tell you something that people did this is a real story this happened in Malaysia so in the 70's and in the 1980's there was actually a movement because Malaysia has a history of Buddhists, Hindus, Christians majority Muslim country but they have a long standing tradition of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, etc so there's ancient Buddhist temples in Malaysia right and there was some Khatib some Imam guy he got really fired up he said we're the religion of Ibrahim AS and Ibrahim smashed the idols Ibrahim AS smashed the idols and we are the religion of Ibrahim AS so we have to restore the honor of Ibrahim AS legacy so we got to go smashing some idols

So what he did was he, a bunch of young men got really excited about this smashing idols business and they would go wait late at night until all the people at the temple would leave and they would actually like desecrate Buddhist temples and break them apart and they're thinking they're following the legacy of who? Ibrahim AS because clearly in the Quran that's what he did and we'll leave an axe and just leave a sticker that says the big one did it right because that's what Ibrahim AS had done

And you know those communities, they're not stupid eventually they got wind of what's going on so they waited for these young men to show up and attack and there was a bloody massacre lives were lost and it was going to turn into entire riots in the country over this supposed interpretation of the Quran what was this person trying to do? Draw a what? Draw a general lesson without any appreciation of the context without any understanding of how Allah speaks about Ibrahim AS

If you really want to follow Ibrahim AS footsteps then take your family in the middle of some desert and walk away because you want to follow everything Ibrahim AS did then also you should make a giant barbecue fire and jump in it and ask Allah to make it cold right if you really want to go down that road let's go down the Abraham Highway and see how that works out for you

Allah literally says that - these were exclusive ways of making a case that were given to Ibrahim AS we should learn something from them but definitely not universal lessons to be drawn on how to behave and by the way we are much less committed to the legacy of Ibrahim AS than Rasulullah himself SAW so when he was young the work of Islam was still young he should have followed supposedly the footsteps of Ibrahim AS and when the Mushrikun are busy somewhere what should he have done according to this theory? He should have smashed all of these idols and then left an axe is that what the Prophet does SAW? No that's not what he does

So what happens then is this is the disclaimer we need to draw general lessons but we need to draw them carefully we need to draw them very very carefully

The Misinterpretation of Quranic Quotes

I'll give you one last example of this this is my favorite example because it's the craziest example I've actually heard this in a lecture I was live in this lecture and there was a lot of people who dropped a Takbeer and I was like no

So the fellow says Iblis when he makes schemes the devil makes schemes and Allah says about all of his schemes - that the scheming of the devil has always been weak right so the scheming of the devil is being described as weak

And then he says but look at what Allah says about the scheming of women - your scheming women their scheming is great so my brothers Ikhwani the scheming of women is great compared to them the scheming of shaytan is weak so if you seek Allah's protection from the scheming of shaytan you should seek way more protection from the scheming of women and people are like Takbeer

So here's the problem with that amazing Tafseer, Tadabbur what happens in the story of Yusuf is that there's a politician and he's got what you can describe as a desperate housewife she went a little psycho after her servant boy Yusuf and she attempted to have her way with him she failed when she gets to the door you guys know the story the politician is at the door he's not just the man of the house he's a politician

And now the servants and himself are at the door and now it becomes clear that the household has gathered cause she started crying and making a scene so servants, cooks, cleaners, gardeners everybody's gathered and they're all seeing this thing play out and she's accusing him and then everybody realizes that she was the one messing around and Yusuf was innocent

Now the thing is this isn't just a household incident where she should be embarrassed she's the wife of a... I keep saying it she's the wife of a what? A politician cannot afford this kind of a scandal because it's the end of his political career he could be told you can't even control what's happening inside your household how will you control the budget how are we going to take your suggestions on the military or on the budget or on the steering committee you can't even control your own house

So his career is essentially over if this thing gets out so he needs to what politicians used to do thousands of years ago they don't do this anymore they have to suppress what really happened so this doesn't happen anymore but they did think like that back then so he tells her you women you're all like that your scheming is so insanely great are these Allah's words or the politician's words? These are the politician's words and then he says to Yusuf Yusuf just ignore this ok let's pretend this never happened alright alright

So what's he trying to do? First he's trying to defuse that his wife isn't crazy all women are crazy which by the way is called the diffusion of responsibility and he's doing that because that way it's like oh these women you know how women are right Yusuf so he's trying to undermine what really happened and Allah taught us a really profound lesson about people who try to suppress what's really going on for other agendas and how people like that can never be trusted because even though he was good to Yusuf in the beginning when he saw his political career is in danger it's better to keep Yusuf in detention and you know detain him arrest him without trial for many many years that's what he actually realized was a better option

Allah taught us all of that by his quote the scheming of you women is great now the problem with the person who gave this remarkable lecture was he compared what Allah directly says with what a politician says and then he put them as one to one like Allah is endorsing the politician's statements

Allah quotes the devil but he's not endorsing the devil's statements Allah quotes Firaun but he's not endorsing Firaun's ideas so Allah is quoting this politician that doesn't mean he's endorsing the politician's statements you understand so this is what I mean by general lessons we have to draw general lessons but we also have to be careful we have to be careful

The Fifth Lens: Connections

So how are you going to become careful? That's going to be the final key to contemplate in the Quran and that is connections so the final lens that you need is connections we want to draw general lessons but you shouldn't draw general lessons until you've understood connections

One of the ways that Allah describes his book is ayatuhu it's ayat I don't like the word verses I want you to get used to the word ayat the ayat of the Quran Allah says that they were stitched together they were stitched together so the thing with stitching is when cloth is stitched together it becomes interconnected and inseparable so you no longer see a thread, you see a consistent cloth and that's the image Allah gives of the Quran uhkimat ayatuhu ihkam actually means stitching and weaving

Now what that means then is when you're studying a subject in the Quran an ayah in the Quran first of all it was stitched together inside a surah so the first thing I have to really think about is what are the connections being made inside this surah to understand this ayah that's the first most important thing then you might find similar ayat in other places in the Quran and you might make connections to what's being said in these other places now that's step two, we saw some other connections in other places step three, you might find things being said by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and you might make a connection to something Allah says to something that the Prophet said Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam

Understanding Hadith in Context

But here you have to be super duper duper duper careful and let me tell you why this is really important for every Muslim every Muslim because we're living in a unique time in history we're living in a time where you can google or even chat gpt now you can look up anything the Prophet said Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam however it's not so easy to look up when he said it and who he said it to when he said it and who he said it to it's not easy to access that's still scholarly material but you can google is it in Bukhari, Muslim, you can go to sunnah.com or any hadith literature and you can find the Prophet said this and he said this

But let me explain to you why that's not necessarily the most accurate way to understand our Prophet so if some young man comes to me and says I'm depressed, my dad hates me I was like how long have you felt this way? It's been three years, something happened what happened? Well I got in a car accident and I ruined his favorite car he tells me this horror story and then after sitting with him and talking to him I give him some advice on how to deal with his dad and what steps he might take

And what he does next is he goes on YouTube or TikTok and he makes a video on how to deal with your dad everyone he does that and if I have his number what am I going to do? I'm going to call him and say what are you doing this was very specific advice catered to who? You this wasn't about every son and every father, this was specifically about you you're projecting your experience and you think that this applies to everyone and by the way that's most of TikTok isn't it? So you have some experience yourself and you want to just say that everybody has this experience or your world view is actually the world view

Did people come to the Prophet in private? Did that happen? Did they ask him for some advice and the Prophet gave them advice? Do we always have the full story on the person who came and asked advice, what was going on in their life, what situation they were in? Do you notice also that the Prophet people come and ask him advice and he's they're asking the same question but he's giving them different answers what's the best thing I can do? Answer A somebody else comes, what's the best thing I can do? Answer B somebody else comes, what's the best thing I can do? Answer C

Or my favorite one that was even turned into a song who next? Your mother who next? Your mother who next? Your mother and then the dads in the living room were like what about your father? The thing is just use your imagination for a moment you have a chance to talk to the Prophet imagine you live in the time of the Sahaba you have a chance to talk you have one question on your mind who should I be the best to? You go to the Prophet you ask him the question who should I be the best to? And he says, your mother

I mean if you got a chance to talk to the Prophet and he answered your question I think I'm just going to walk away happy but what do I do instead? No, no, no, who else? Your mother now he said the same answer twice I think at this point I should be like I got it, I'm sorry but instead, what do I do? No, no, who else? And he says, your mother and at this point, seriously I should be like I think I've got my answer I should walk away but I do what instead? Who else? He says your father and he walks away

My analysis of something like that I'm not saying I have the answer but is it quite possible that the Prophet ﷺ diagnoses a person and says this person has a very troubled relationship with their mother and they feel bad that they have not that great relationship with their mom and they just want to make sure they're good to somebody else so not to feel so bad about themselves and the Prophet knows that and he says to them, your mother and they don't want to hear that so they ask again does this prove that the mom is three times the dad or does this prove something else could there be something else going on that we don't have information of?

The Keyhole Perspective

I want you to remember this image that I'm giving you there's a keyhole in a door and you look inside that keyhole do you see the entire room? You don't see the entire room you see this little bit that little bit, you see it and then you say I know everything about this room I'm going to tell you what this room is all about

What happens with many ahadith of the Prophet ﷺ is that we get this much view that's how much we get but we talk about it as though we've got the view of the whole thing and that creates a lot of problems this is not a denial of the sunnah this is actually showing proper regard to the sunnah it's not just a problem that you're not taking that hadith and making it universal but it's an equally bad problem that you take a hadith and you say about it something that the Prophet didn't intend that's an abuse of the sacred word too that's an abuse of the sacred teaching too

So this is where not just knowing that there's a hadith but knowing some context background, knowing some history this is where the shuruh of the hadith are there and sometimes they don't have enough information also and if they don't have enough information then maybe we should take a little bit of a humble pill and say, I don't think we have enough information from this statement to be able to generalize you understand?

Developing Deeper Understanding

And this is an important part of understanding our religion so before we start making connections we have to be a lot more humble to the full picture to the complete picture and so with these lenses I think inshallah you'll develop a really beautiful and continue to develop a really deep and rich understanding of your faith and really begin to think about everything in your religion, you'll think about it more deeply

And once you do arrive at a conclusion and ask about it more deeply then you're going to be more settled in your faith you're not just going to hear something and it bothers you hear something about Islam hear something about the Quran and it bothers you and the reason it bothers you is you haven't made the right connections yet you haven't understood the right context yet

So instead of saying, how do I prove this wrong? Well no, how do I understand this properly first? How do I contextualize this first? And then we can think about you know, how to even explain it to somebody else right, so these are the important lenses that I think inshallah can really really help with your own journey through the Quran