In Tyler TX, Hosted by ETIS

The Miracle of the Quran: A Call to Reflection

By Nouman Ali Khan - Tyler, TX

Introduction: Building Community and Faith

If you want to be a flame between the back, then pick it up as a ladder to the high places. The high school, the halaqat, the women's programs, the youth programs, the sports activities, and Allah continue to put barakah in all of those things and save you and shelter you from all kinds of disagreements and arguments and ill feelings towards one another and allow you to really serve, first and foremost, yourselves and your families for the sake of Allah and then the extended community here so the word of Allah can spread.

The Journey Through Quranic Verses

So I wanted to, in this brief conversation with all of you, share a couple of ayahs. Some of them belong to Surah Al-Ankabut when I recited in the beginning of this talk. That's the 29th surah of the Quran.

And then I'll take you further down, historically at least, to Surah Al-Baqarah and something else I'll share with you from Surah Al-Baqarah. And those two things essentially are the centerpiece of what I want to share with you today.

Different Reactions to the Prophet's Message

Alright. So when the Prophet (peace be upon him) was doing his best to deliver the message of Islam, there were different kinds of reactions by people. Of course, the minority reaction was that people believed in him.

That's the minority reaction. The majority reaction was people did not believe. And of the people that didn't believe, they had different kinds of reasons. Not everybody disbelieved for the same reason. And the intensity with which they disbelieved, the fervor with which they disagreed with the Prophet (peace be upon him) also varied. Some people absolutely hated Islam.

They couldn't stand the Quran. Some people just didn't know about it. And when they heard about it, they're like, I don't need to pay more attention. I got other stuff going on in my life. They don't have to pay attention to it. And they only paid attention to it much, much, much, much later in their life.

The Nature of Counter-Argument

Then there were the people who were hearing about the message of Islam consistently. And they didn't necessarily hate it, but they just... There's a kind of personality that always wants to counter-argue. It never wants to accept something.

It just wants to come up with a counter-argument. In Arabic, there's a saying: (لِكُلِّ خِطَابٍ جَوَابٍ - likulli khitaabin jawaab) "Every speech has a counter-argument." Everything has a commentary.

So their idea of... And by the way, there is a certain kind of person, the only time they feel intelligent is when they criticize somebody else. And that's a pretty good indication of a lack of intelligence, by the way. And low self-esteem on top of that.

That the only time you can display the value of your intellect is by putting somebody else down. Or by dismantling their idea or criticizing, critiquing. And interestingly enough, in modern academics, that's essentially, especially in the social sciences, that's how PhDs are done.

You present your thesis before a panel of experts, and they all try to one-up one another in trying to criticize your paper. And they're not really interested in criticizing your paper, they're interested in proving to the next guy sitting next to them, the other PhD, that they know more than them. So they'll try to ask a harder question.

And you're caught in the middle of all of that politics, presenting your paper. Right? But this is a modern mind, but this mentality has always been there.

The Main Criticism Against the Prophet

And one of the ways in which people try to say that they're smarter than the message of Islam, or the Quran, yeah, it sounds like it's some beautiful things, but here are some questions I have for you.

And the question that basically was by the end of the Makkan period. So the Prophet's been delivering the message (peace be upon him) for a little over a decade already. Almost a decade.

And by the end of it, all these different kinds of questions, is he insane? Is he stealing these words from somebody else? These kinds of questions started watering down, withering away. And there was one main criticism that remained, that they would not want to let go of. And this is the criticism you'll find in later Makkan surahs.

It's repeated over and over and over again. This one criticism that they kept coming up with. What we're gonna learn in this surah is Allah not only just quotes that criticism, He cites that criticism, but He responds to that criticism too.

Allah's Response to the Critics

And I'll try to explain to you a couple of the reasons for which Allah responds to that criticism. So let's read this criticism. First and foremost:

"You were not reading any book before this."

Prophet is told, by Allah Himself: You were not someone who were reading any kind of a book whatsoever.

The Arabic word "ma" is used, not just in nafi, they say for refutation. There's one thing to say, I didn't go to work. It's another to say, No, I didn't go to work. When you say, I didn't go to work, you're answering the question, Did you go to work? And your answer is, I didn't go to work. Somebody says, Hey, you went to work, didn't you? And you say, No, no, no, I didn't. Now you're not just negating, you are what? Refuting.

You're refuting. In Arabic when you negate, you say la. Or lam. When you refute, you say ma. Ma is for refutation. So when you read ma in the Quran for negation, what it means is, somebody said something incorrect, and Allah is correcting them.

So whatever Allah is saying here in the negative, they've said something in the positive before. So let's see what Allah says. Allah says, You didn't read anything by yourself of any book whatsoever before this.

You did not at all ever read. Meaning the Prophet is being told, you're incapable, you have been incapable of reading. You're a nabi and ummi. As you are when you come out of your mother. As unlettered as you would be when you come out of your mother.

The Allegations Against the Prophet

In other words, one of the allegations is, this book has too much history. It's got too much wisdom. It's got too much knowledge. It's got too much style. It's got too much eloquence. It's got too much majesty. How did this man, who didn't speak like this at all yesterday, and all of a sudden he's talking like this, we never heard anything like this, he must be getting it from somewhere.

He must be reading some secret books or something. Allah says, No, you know. You weren't reading any book whatsoever.

And then, Maybe he sat home, and hours and hours he spent writing this stuff down. And you know when you write the first draft, then you go back and you edit it, and you fix it, and you say, maybe this draft is better. And then you take some words out, add some words in, and you work on it, etc.

You know, my eldest daughter was recently in a poetry competition. And she's scratching away, and she's taking this word out, adding that word in, taking this word out, adding that word in. It's a process, especially in creative writing.

It's a process. Alhamdulillah she won. But anyway.

But I mean, I know the ugly drafts that she went through to get here. The ones I read, I was like, what is that? Is he out of poetry? He's giving me an allergic reaction. But, you know, there is a process involved.

So the other allegation was, maybe the Prophet, this man, they don't say, (peace be upon him), what we do. Maybe he just went and he went through multiple drafts, and wrote this down, and then he's presenting it to us, the perfect version. That's why it's so good.

Because when somebody just speaks, they're bound to make mistakes. I mean, linguistics will prove this to you. As I am speaking to you now, I can't even count how many grammatical mistakes I probably have already made, as I'm speaking to you.

How many redundancies I've already had. How many times I've repeated myself. Or engaged in run-on sentences.

It's inevitable for human beings. But when you're speaking, and it's just coming out perfect. You know what the first reaction of anybody listening is? If I was speaking to you in absolutely perfect English, you would say, that isn't natural.

Nobody talks like that. He memorized it. He wrote this ahead of time. He rehearsed it. So that's the allegation against the Prophet:

"You didn't write it with your hand."

Why? Because Allah didn't make him capable of writing with his hand.

"If in fact, those who want to make, prove that this is a lie."

Al-mubtil is the one who doesn't just lie, but he tries to prove something to be a lie. The ones who wanna dismantle, invalidate this message, that's all they wanna prove is somehow you plagiarized this message. You took it yourself.

You learned it from some other source. And then you're presenting the drafted version. In case you're falling into doubt, you already know and they already know that you have no such background.

Modern Academic Criticism

By the way, to this day, to this day, when you go to universities to study Islamic studies, which should be really called un-Islamic studies, in many of these universities, and they try to, you know, you do a PhD in Islamic civilization or the Quran or something like that, what's the primary thesis? This has to be from, he must have plagiarized it from Christian sources, Jewish sources, he must have taken it from this place or that place, entire theses are written on this stuff.

When you go to the library at NYU and you put in Quran or you put in Muhammad, to do a search on articles, papers, etc, etc, you're gonna find all these papers written by non-Muslims, you know, or people that have Muslim names but not much more, that are entirely dedicated to showing how, you know, this

is all a myth, this is all just taken excerpts, stolen excerpts from different parts of the Bible or the Torah, etc, etc, etc. That's all this is.

So this allegation that's found in academia now isn't new. It was already there at the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him). But this isn't even the last allegation. The last allegation is coming.

The Demand for Miracles

Listen to this:

"And they said, how come? How come no miracles? Ayat. Miraculous signs."

How come no miracles come down upon Him from His Master? After all, Jesus had His miracles. Moses had His miracles. You talk about Salih and the she-camel.

That was a pretty awesome miracle. Abraham had His miracles. How come this Prophet doesn't have any miracles? How come nothing, nothing for us to see? No special effects? Nothing.

No, no dirt turning into a bird. No stick turning into a snake. No water parting.

No like chopped up, you know, bodies of chicken and then they come back together and become a chicken again or a bird again. Nothing. What you got? All you got is these words.

I mean, if you really are a Prophet, show us something. Show us something. At least show us some kind of a miracle.

لَوْلَا أُنزِلَ عَلَيْهِ آيَاتٌ مِّن رَّبِّهِ

Have you ever heard the phrase "I'll believe it when I see it"? Have you ever heard that before? That was their final attitude. Listen, what you have to say sounds pretty cool. Doesn't even sound like it's yours, actually.

I think it's another source. By the way, when you say it's not the Prophet's words, incidentally, think about this logically. If the disbeliever is saying these words are not yours, you probably got them from somewhere else.

Is that true? It is true. That is true. It's already half a faith.

You've already acknowledged these words are not his own. So, even the allegation of disbelief, half of that's true. Now, where did he get it from? Allah.

And where they're saying he gets it from? The people of the book. The other half is the falsehood. But the first half, they've already understood.

Various Demands for Physical Proof

Despite that, they say it's not enough for us. You gotta show us something. You gotta show us, you know, like, you know, the Arabian Peninsula is kind of dry.

If you could just create some farmland automatically, ask God to create some farmland, that would work. That would be pretty impressive, actually. I mean, I'm ready to become anything you want, if you could do that.

Or how about this? We're kind of poor. You know, the Romans, they're doing pretty well for themselves. And these Persians, they got hooked up.

How about you produce some oil, some, not oil yet, some gold from the ground. How about some gold just pop out of the ground? Or water springs everywhere. How about that? If you could do that, I mean, we're willing to listen.

Or how about this? We used to trust our elders. Our elders were people of a lot of wisdom, and some of them died. So if you can ask your God to bring them back to life, so they can hold a community hall meeting, and then tell us, listen, this guy is truly a messenger.

Look at me, I just came back from the dead just to tell you that. If you could do that, I mean, you've got yourself a deal.

On top of that, later on, the Jewish tribes, when the Prophet came into contact with certain Jewish tribes, they came up with different requests.

You know, even before that, some of the Arabs came up with a request, so who gives you the message? Who delivers the message to you? God himself?

He says, no, the angel Jibreel. The angel comes and delivers the message. Okay, let's see him.

Can we have a chat with him? I mean, he talks to you, why can't he talk to us? We're right here. We're available. Oh, only you can see him? Oh, how convenient.

Only you could see him. You know? You could say that, let's see the angel.

The Jewish Tribes' Specific Request

The Jewish tribes would come and say, you know what? Back in the day, in Bani Israel's tradition, we learned that when Allah would accept a sacrifice, when you would sacrifice an animal, you don't know if the sacrifice you made is maqboon or not.

It's acceptable with Allah or not. Did Allah accept that sacrifice or no? So the old historical tradition is Allah would miraculously send a fire from the sky and it would consume the sacrifice and that's how you would know that Allah has accepted the sacrifice. That's actually what we learned in the details of the story of Habeel and Qabeel.

"For one of them, the sacrifice was accepted by Allah. The other, it wasn't accepted."

How would you know? When you and I go to Hajj, when we come back from Hajj, how do we know? This one got accepted, this one didn't? We don't know.

But back in the day, Allah would send a fire. So members of Bani Israel said, how come? You know what? If you do a sacrifice right now and fire comes and eats it from the sky, we're ready to go with it. We're ready to accept.

All of these demands had one thing in common. We will believe when we what? When we see. These words are not enough.

These words are not enough. That's the common theme among all of these.

The Animal-like Mentality

I talk about this at length when I teach Surah Al-Rahman. And I'll share one piece of that with you. Alhamdulillah, this is a beautiful building. If there was an announcement made, brothers and sisters, please exit the building.

If this is a fire drill or something, please exit the building. Of course you're Muslims, so you take your time. But eventually, you'd exit the building.

And of course, if we said exit the building in a straight line, that must be a message to the kuffar because we don't hear those things. Straight line? Park within the line? It's like almost against the sunnah or something for us. We can't do it.

We're incapable. But imagine this, if there's a cat in the building, if there's a small bird in the building, it also hears the announcement, doesn't it? Does it exit the building when it hears the announcement? No.

When you're driving on the highway and you're listening to the traffic radio, you do that sometimes? I mean, I don't know if you get traffic out here, but I'm just saying.

I used to be in New York. I listened to traffic radio all the time. Yes, the conference hall is traffic radio.

And they would tell me up on the LIE, three miles ahead, there's an accident, take the exit. If you're going eastbound, take an exit. I didn't say, man, these kuffar are trying to trick me.

I'm only going to take, you know:

"When a corrupt source comes to you with news and verify it."

Until my imam tells me to take the exit, I am not. I'm going to take the exit. Okay? Did I see the traffic? No.

No. Since information came to me from a reliable source, and the radio is not a video, it's not TV. I don't see the Doppler radio or whatever.

The Doppler video, the helicopter footage of the accident. I don't see anything. I just see a reporter telling me, look, take the exit.

And I say, no, you kuffar, I'm going to go straight. I never say that. The point I'm trying to make is, human beings, when they listen to a message, and it makes sense, and it's coming from a reliable source, they take it.

They take it. You know what kind of creature is not able to take it? What kind of creature only believes when he or she sees? Animal.

The Divine Response

When the Quraysh are saying, we will only believe when we see. We will only believe when we see. That's the only way you will convince me. Until you show me, I'm not moving from my place.

What have they already claimed about themselves? I behave like what behaves? An animal behaves. And a human being is clearly distinct from animals because human beings can be convinced through words. They don't have to smell the smoke.

They don't have to feel the heat of a fire to move. They can just be told there's a fire. They can move.

It just has to come from a reliable source, and it has to make sense. These are the criteria. So, one thing already.

When they made this criticism, it was actually already an insult against their own selves. Reason itself is not enough. We are convinced the way animals get convinced.

It's no surprise then. It's no surprise how they're treated in judgment day. When you read their examples, especially in Surah Rahman, where Allah talked about the gift of language in the beginning of the surah.

Why? Because you're human beings. You should use your language to get to the truth. Why do you have to believe only when you see?

Allah talks about criminals being grabbed by their head and their feet and being thrown into the fire.

You know, back in the old days, the Arabs used to roast animals, and they didn't chop it up into small pieces and put them in plastic bags and put them in the meat store. How would they roast the animal? They'd skin the animal, and some people would grab the head. Other people would grab the feet, and they'd tie it to a huge log of wood, and then put it on top of a flame and roast it like that.

Can you imagine this scene? Of course you can, because you've never seen a movie. You're too religious. But, you know.

But you can imagine the animal when it's roasted, it's grabbed by the head and the feet. When Allah says:

"The criminal on judgment day is being thrown into hellfire, and how is he being grabbed? By the heads and the feet."

He's being treated like what? An animal.

And basically, Allah is saying in between the lines. In Urdu, they say:

"The smart one can understand from the hint."

That Allah is dropping. What is Allah saying? Allah is saying, look, you wanted to only believe when you see like animals, there's no surprise you should be treated like an animal. That's what you wanted.

That's what you want. Now come back to this ayah, the one I want to share with you:

"They said to the Prophet, how come no miracles come to him? How come no miraculous signs come to him? What's Allah's response? Isn't it enough for them? That we have sent upon you the book. That's to be read upon them."

The fact that the Quran is being read upon them according to Allah should be enough. You don't need anything more. There's enough for you. SubhanAllah.

The Magnitude of the Quranic Miracle

Allah is saying, you should be as convinced, as amazed by revelation as you would be if you saw a water party. If you saw a stick turn into a snake. I mean, I don't want to create chaos here, but if I had a stick, and it just automatically, just out of nowhere, turned into a giant snake out of nowhere. It's not even a small snake.

It's hayya, moving a lot. Su'udan, it's huge. Two different aspects of it are highlighted in the Quran.

So it's one of those discovery channel pythons. The ones that eat baby lamb. Thing shows up here on the mimbar.

What's going to happen next in the masjid? Will there be a reaction? Will there be fear? And some of you really psychotic ones will pull out your webcam and like, iPhone, I got this on YouTube. Last thing you see

on the camera is this. Right?

But there'll be a reaction, right? There'll be amazement, shock, fear.

Allah is saying, if that's the reaction to a stick turning into a snake, can you imagine the people that were following Musa (peace be upon him) and the water party, just looking at that? Man, the feeling you must have had. And Allah is saying to the Quraysh, that feeling is possible for you, by what means? Quran is being read out to you. That is enough.

That is the substitute for all of those things. That is the substitute for all of those things.

The Condition of the Heart

The reason I brought this up is because this is one of the passages in the Quran in which Allah has a very bold thing, a very powerful thing.

If somebody really wants to be convinced, really, really wants to be convinced that Islam is the truth, all they really have to genuinely experience is the Quran. If they experience the Quran, there will be no doubt left in their hearts. But if you have the attitude that you just want to keep on criticizing, you don't genuinely come to the Quran.

You don't genuinely. You came, before you even came, you said, I'm going to find some way of criticizing it. Some counter argument I'll dig up.

You came with an ego problem, a grief problem, a selfishness problem, a laziness problem. You came with a problem intent to the Quran. Then you'll get nothing out of it.

You get nothing out of it. Fir'aun also saw the staff turning into a snake, didn't he? Fir'aun saw it too. The magician saw it too.

The people saw it too. Everybody saw it. Did everybody have the same reaction? No.

You could see a miracle and still not have the same reaction. Are there people who crossed the water with Musa (peace be upon him) that later on gave Musa (peace be upon him) the hardest time? Can you imagine? They just saw the greatest miracle possible in their life. They went through a body of water with water on both sides standing up like a dam without walls.

And they walked right through. And they saw the Fir'aun who claimed to be God get crushed before their own eyes. That same Fir'aun, nobody would make eye contact with him.

That same Fir'aun is crushed in front of their own eyes. And they get on the other end and they become skeptical about Musa (peace be upon him) again. I'm not so sure if he's a prophet.

I don't know about that. My God! When you have a problem in here then this stops working really well. When there's a problem in the heart then the mind kind of gets fuzzy.

It kind of gets fuzzy.

Two Dimensions of Quranic Reflection

Now I want to come to the next part of this conversation. The Quran to us when the words of Allah are heard they attack two things in us.

They attack our minds the words of Allah and they also attack our hearts. Our minds are submitted before Allah. And our hearts are submitted before Allah.

When we deeply reflect on the Quran Allah talks about reflection on the Quran in two dimensions. An intellectual dimension I know there are youth here so I don't want to get too abstract. But an intellectual dimension and a spiritual dimension.

There's tadabbur in the aql and there's tadabbur in the qalb. There's reflection on the Quran in your mind and there's reflection in the heart. Now let me explain in simple language what the difference is.

Two places Allah mentions this. One time Allah mentions reflection in the mind other time He mentions reflection in the heart.

So, what kind of reflection are there? Let me see if you were listening or alive. What are they? Mind and heart. What does it mean reflection in the mind? It means the more you study the Quran genuinely the more you will become intellectually, rationally convinced that this can only be God's word. Your intellectual fortitude in the Quran gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

Allah says:

"Don't they reflect on the Quran? Had it been from anyone other than Allah they would have found much contradiction in it."

In other words, the more you study it you will find there's no contradiction and the only thing left in your mind that will get solidified is this can only be from Allah.

That's intellectual tadabbur. In surah Muhammad he mentions the other tadabbur. He says:

"Don't they reflect on the Quran? Or is it the problem that the locks have been placed on the hearts? The hearts are locked up."

They don't care to reflect on the Quran. Reflecting on the Quran in the heart doesn't mean that you become convinced it's Allah's word. You become convinced that it's talking to you.

That Allah is talking to you personally. You are engaged in a private meeting with Allah in Salat. You have a private meeting with Allah when you're reciting Quran.

That's tadabbur in the heart. Oh, that's an experience. There's no high like that one.

There's none. There's no feeling like that one. It doesn't come all the time, by the way.

It's a gift. It comes half an hour. Sometimes.

You know. If we could have that all the time, we'd be different kinds of people. We'd be a different person.

The Story of Ibrahim and the Revival of the Dead

So now I want to share with you the importance of appreciating the Quran as a miracle for our hearts and a miracle for our minds. What's the importance of it? This is why I want to take you to Surah Al-Baqarah. I want to take you to a story that's very famous.

It's a Sunday school story. So the kids here that go to Sunday school and are awake at least 25% of that time, which is difficult, probably know this story.

Allah tells us about Ibrahim (peace be upon him). When Qala Ibrahim, when Ibrahim (peace be upon him) said, Ibrahim talks to Allah a lot.

Ibrahim (peace be upon him) talks to Allah a lot in the Quran. He talks to Him about his kids. He talks to Him about the future.

He talks to Him about himself. He talks to Him about moving to Makkah. There's a lot of conversation between Allah and Ibrahim.

So if you want to learn beautiful conversation between a slave of Allah and Allah Himself, there's two. There's Musa and Allah. Beautiful conversation.

And there's Ibrahim (peace be upon him) and Allah. Just two beautiful sets of conversations in the Quran.

So in one of these conversations, Ibrahim (peace be upon him) turns to Allah and says:

"Rabbi, my master, show me, how do you bring life to the dead? How do you bring the dead back to life? How do you do it? Can you show me?"

That's kind of amazing, huh? You know how a child might be curious how a car works and says to, hey dad, can you take me to a factory? I want to see how they make cars.

I want to go behind the scenes. That's a beautiful website. Let me see the source code.

Those of you that steal source code, let me see the source code. That's a beautiful building. Let me see the blueprints.

Let me see that. What's behind the scenes? My God. He asks Allah not, do you give life to the dead? Because He knows.

Allah does that. He doesn't say, can you show me what it is? Can you bring life to the dead? Because He already has the answer to that. He wants to see how it happens.

How does it work? How do you do it? I want to see. Allah asks the counter question. It's a beautiful conversation.

"You haven't already believed? You don't already believe that I can do that?"

Huh. Allah is asking, who about Iman? Ibrahim (peace be upon him). Ibrahim (peace be upon him), by the way, is the role model of what Iman should look like.

We want to know if there's like one solid Iman that Allah keeps talking about as a case study in the Quran. It's the Iman of Ibrahim (peace be upon him).

Ibrahim's Remarkable Faith

Who of us would be in a position that a sharp knife is in your hand and you're putting it on your child's neck? That takes Iman.

That's not, you don't question that Iman. That's pretty incredible. Who's going to see a gigantic flame? A gigantic flame.

They say in some historic narrations, the flame was so big that birds from the sky would fall into it. And he's about to be catapulted into that flame and he says, Ya Allah, my God, that's Iman.

And the wildest example of his Iman that comes to my mind, and I've shared this in some talks before, not that he had to leave his family in Mecca.

That's hard enough. Have you ever left your family somewhere? Guys? Left your family at the airport for too long? Too late to pick them up from the mall?

Late to pick your kid up from the school? You know? You're calling them, you're calling the wife, you're calling the child and it's going to voicemail. Does your mind go crazy? I've been calling you for 10 minutes.

Where have you been? What's wrong with you? You know? My phone was off. No it wasn't. It's just my mom.

That's what's going on at the other end. God, she doesn't stop. But when you get caught, you're like, Oh, my phone was dead.

I don't understand why you would do that. Leaving your family in an uncertain place. It would drive you crazy.

Not knowing what's going to happen to them. It could drive you crazy. You know, when we used to live in Maryland, I used to pick up my kids from school.

One time I overslept. And it's already 3 o'clock. I'm supposed to be there at school at 3 o'clock.

I wake up and it's 3 o'clock at the house. And I get a text message from the wife. How are the kids doing? And I look back.

Alhamdulillah. And dashed. And somehow, you know, her spider sense went berserk.

And she said, You overslept, didn't you? The next text. Then she called me. I picked up.

How could you do this to my poor babies? They're going to be so scared and lonely. They're going to be so terrified. You know, you're going to be late.

I can only imagine what they're going through. Yes, so poor these children. They're going to be behind the gate, inside an air-conditioned room with the fan running and the teacher in front of them doing artwork.

I'm so sorry. You know, it's terrifying. What is Ibrahim (peace be upon him) thinking as he's walking away? What's he leaving them? If you guys have ever gone on a road trip, I have.

I just came back from a plane trip with my family. I went to the Eid-al-Fitr convention with 6 kids. Whoo! And Hijra-fi-Sameen and I told you.

Traveling with children. But you're traveling in the car every 5 minutes. I'm too hot.

I'm too cold. Can I move from my chair? Can I sit in the front? Can I sit in the back? How come she gets to the window? I don't get the window? Oh God!

What kind of air-conditioning does Ibrahim (peace be upon him) have as he's walking, walking, not SUV, to the desert? Man! I even wonder about the road trip.

Traveling is hard. Traveling with wife and kid? Oh man! That's tough. And a baby at that.

Babies have so much and they cry. They get hot. You're worried about them.

Dehydration. And he has to leave them there in the middle of nowhere. Or walk away.

That takes Iman. That's Iman. And that same man, that same believer turns to Allah and says, Ya Allah, after all of that, Ya Allah, can you show me how do you do this?

Allah says, don't you have Iman already? His Iman is here and his Iman is here.

But you know, and let me tell you something about these two things. Our intellectual Iman, it only grows. It doesn't go back.

It only grows. Spiritual Iman, like the heart, it has good days and it has bad days. Spiritual Iman can always use help.

None of us ever will reach a state of Iman where we can say, I don't need more Iman. I'm good. It's a fuel tank that you always have to keep refilling.

So when Ibrahim (peace be upon him) wants to experience a miracle, is it the heart or the mind that he wants to keep filling up? The heart. The mind's already filled. He's convinced.

He's absolutely convinced. So what's his answer? He says:

"No, no, of course I believe. But I'm only asking because I want to satisfy and put my heart at ease."

When he says, بَلَىٰ to me والله أعلم he's talking about his intellectual Iman. Intellectually, I have no doubts whatsoever. I have no doubts that you give life to the dead. I have no doubts that you're capable of doing it.

But I'm only asking because I want to satisfy and put my heart at ease. Even Ibrahim (peace be upon him) feels the need to satisfy his heart.

The Distinction Between Types of Doubt

This is different from the kuffar we read about. The kuffar had doubts where? Here. That's why I made this distinction. They had doubts over here.

Allah said, Quran is enough for them. Quran is enough for them for here, up here, and also for here. Now we already believe, الحمد لله .

We already believe. But you know what? Do our hearts still need some reinforcement sometimes? Oh yeah. They do.

All of our hearts do. And Allah is saying, what is enough for that? Quran is enough. I want you to think about what I just said.

Our hearts need reinforcement. And Allah's claim is, not my claim, Allah's claim is Quran is enough for that purpose. Quran is enough.

The Tragedy of Not Understanding the Quran

We have a big problem. Ramadan is around the corner. It's a blessing that the vast majority of the Muslims that walk on this earth are going to stand in Salat and they will have no idea what's being recited.

They will experience the Quran without experiencing the Quran. It's a tragedy. To me, it's a state of emergency.

It really is. That we're going to stand and listen to the word of Allah and we're not going to know what He's saying. And even if we have some idea of what He's saying, we're not going to be standing at the edge of a water, washing water apart.

We're not going to be experiencing a miracle where we're so amazed by that. We're so overwhelmed by that that as we are standing there, it is completely reinforcing in our hearts and in our minds, word of God. This can only be Allah's word.

It can't be anything else. SubhanAllah. Can you imagine how powerless the Bani Israel felt when Allah raised a mountain above them? Imagine a mountain hanging above you.

And then Allah says, take my book seriously. Okay. Sorry.

That's how we're supposed to feel when what's being recited. The same Quran that Allah says, if that Quran came on a mountain:

"If We had sent down this Quran on a mountain, you would have seen it humbled and coming apart from fear of Allah."

It'll become numb. It'll become khushu. Literally, these are muscles to become soft. So it says, though Allah is saying the mountain will first start melting.

Then it'll explode from the fear of Allah. It can't take it. It can't take it.

And how much harder than that does a heart have to be that it listens to the entire Quran and not a tear comes down? How much harder than that rock, that boulder, that mountain, does it have to be? Isn't that a tragedy?

That's a pretty sad tragedy. And so we all make attempts. And I'm not blaming you for not knowing Arabic or not knowing the Quran.

I'm saying there's a problem. Let's first recognize the problem. And let's try to do something to fix the problem.

Let's try to get there. And wallahi, if we make the intention to come to the word of Allah to clean up our hearts, to clean up our minds, Allah will open those roads. That's Allah's guarantee.

That's not up to me or you. Allah guarantees that. You and I just have to make the intention.

I want Allah's book to be a part of my life. I want it to be something that I can do a reflect upon to clean my heart and clean my mind. And Allah will open those doors for you, wallahi, in ways you could never imagine.

Practical Advice for Connecting with the Quran

So in this context, I want to share a few bits of advice with you. A few bits of advice that will help you and me get closer to the word of Allah. First things first.

All of us, there is no exception in this room, all of us should be memorizing the Quran. All of us. Whether it's one ayah a day, two words a day, one word a day, I don't care.

You should be memorizing the Quran. How much should I memorize? Don't ask that question. Let Allah answer that question.

However much Allah opens your heart. You know what Allah told us? Where does the Quran rest? When you memorize something else, when you memorize your medical textbook, when you memorize your physics course, you memorize the answers for the exam, you memorize this or that or the other historical facts for your SAT or whatever.

When you memorize things, where does that memory sit? Allah says in the same surah Al-Ankabut, He tells us where the Quran sits inside a person.

"These are clear miraculous signs in the chests of those who've been given knowledge."

The best possible healing, the healing that was given to the world, we want it to rest inside our chest. Memorize the Quran.

Memorize a surah. Memorize an ayah. But do it every single day.

Whether I don't know Arabic, it doesn't matter. Just memorize. Just memorize.

Have the intention that you want to learn. You want to understand. And I'm telling you, the people who memorize the Quran, Arabic, Tafsir, understanding, becomes a hundred times easier for them than the people who don't memorize.

That's number one. Memorize the Quran.

Learning Through Listening

Second, whatever explanations of the Quran you find easy to understand, I personally, I'll tell you what my personal problem is.

Maybe you don't have this problem. I'm not a good reader at all. I have very low attention span.

When I read something, I only read it because I'm having problems going to sleep. Two pages in, I know, no sleeping pill will do for me what reading will do for me. Mashallah.

Okay? And this is especially true, by the way, for some of you when you recite Quran. An army of shayateen comes to you and says, Ah, you know you want to. You will have the best sleep of your life the moment you open the Mus'haf.

Well, come, put you to sleep. It's pretty awesome. I've tried it.

I've tried it. You know, especially on planes when I need rest, start reciting. Before takeoff, I'm out, I wake up after landing.

So for me personally to learn Tafsir and learn certain things, I just have to learn to become a good listener. And to me personally, the khutbah I've listened to, the tafsir I've listened to, the talks and lectures I've listened to in Arabic or in Urdu or whatever else, they're still in my head.

I was just listening to a talk I heard 12 years ago. And I still remember it. I was like, wow, I still remember that. I remember that he said that.

It's stuck in my head. You know? I didn't know where it came from when I heard that talk and I was like, wow, that's where it was. That's how it entered my memory.

So listening to duroos of Quran, listening to explanation of the Quran is a really easy way to start building a relationship, especially duroos of the lectures of the surahs you've already memorized. Lectures of the surahs you've already memorized.

Invitation to "Amazed by the Quran" Conference

My intention for coming here was two things. I want to... First of all, I wanted to experience meeting this community, alhamdulillah, and maybe inshaAllah ta'ala in the future as time permits and family obligations allow and work obligations allow, I'd like to come visit you again inshaAllah ta'ala and hopefully we'll see each other again.

But this particular trip, I wanted to take the opportunity because I want to extend each and every one of you that are here and the community that's not here through you because you'll be ambassadors of this

message for me. I wanted to invite you to a conference that I've put together with some friends in Dallas and it's on the 30th of June.

It's on the 30th of June. It's called, no surprise, Amazed by the Quran. That's what the conference is called.

And myself, my colleague Sheikh Abdul Nasser, some of you know who that is, and Imam Suhaib Webb from Boston. The three of us are going to be together at that conference. And he's really excited to come.

I was just hanging out with him at the convention in Connecticut two days ago and he's super excited to come. SubhanAllah. So it's just a one day program and the point of it is for us as a community to come back and experience why we are so amazed by the Quran.

I want to be amazed by it by myself. I want to listen to those two. And even as I talk about it, subhanAllah, it's a review for me.

I tell you, when I was studying the Quran, certain surahs, when I was studying them from one particular angle, beauty. True story. I was studying the Quran.

I still remember sitting there in my living room. I'm listening to some tafsir and I'm taking some notes on an ayah and I get to a point and I was so overwhelmed. I had to put the pen down and leave and just go make sajdah because I felt like, man, a mountain has just fallen on me.

How can anyone disbelieve? This is so powerful. It's so heavy. It's so beautiful.

It's so beautiful. You guys think the Avengers was awesome? It wasn't. It was nothing.

It was garbage. You want to know how a story is told? The Quran knows how to tell a story. Allah knows how to tell a story.

You haven't experienced it. You don't know. It's been undersold to you.

It's been given to you in a translation that's archaic. Has thou not seen it? You know? And you don't know. You really don't know.

I didn't know. I studied some of this stuff. I studied the story of Yusuf (peace be upon him) in translation a long time ago.

I was like, what's the big deal? I don't get it. Then I read it in Arabic. Like studied it, studied it.

The language of the surah. And I was blown away at what was going on in the surah. It's incredible.

It really is. It beats anything you'll experience. Especially stories in the Quran.

Especially stories. The way Allah tells them is remarkable. And the way we tell them is frankly, it's depressing.

It's depressing. The way we tell our children stories from the Quran is just sad. We do such an injustice.

Such an injustice. The typical Sunday school story, right? These kids are sitting. These 12-year-olds are like.

No, they don't have watches. Whatever. That one's doing out right now? I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. Feel bad. You know.

They're so hard to entertain. They're looking to be impressed. And the teacher is on top of that.

The teacher is depressed. Yusuf (peace be upon him). And his father put him inside a well and left him there. Please put me in a well and leave me there.

That would be better than this. Right? We don't know how to tell the story. We have to.

Even the elders, the parents here. We have to be inspired by this book so we can instill inspiration.

The Art of Quranic Storytelling

The Prophet (peace be upon him) was describing this. This is the last thing I'll leave you with. It's not just what the Quran has to say. It's how it says it.

Allah chose the best words. He chose the best style. And He chose the most, you know, powerful teacher on earth to teach this lesson.

You all know. You've sat in a class. How much of education depends on the teacher? A lot.

It could be the same curriculum. It could be the same lesson. It could be the same students.

But the teacher makes all the difference. This teacher will make you remember it for life. Because he knows how to teach.

He knows what he's doing. Allah says:

(General reference to Quranic verses about Prophets narrating) "My Prophets, they narrate My ayat onto you. They don't just tell you."

They don't just inform you of My miraculous signs. No, no, no. They narrate them.

They animate themselves. They tell them. They make it alive when they present.

They'll captivate you. That's what My Prophets do. That in and of itself is a sunnah.

To tell the message of Islam in a way that is captivating. In a way that captures. And I don't... I try to do that as much as I can for my own children.

Conference Details and Call to Action

So the intent that day is to do that for the adults and the kids. It's to take a passage of the Quran, and to share with myself, and all of you, and my family, and your family, what makes it awesome. The registration is actually online only.

And I'm expecting an audience from all across the country. And I'm hoping we have the strongest showing from Texas itself. And that's part of the reason I made this road trip here, to let you guys know I wanted to share this with you guys, and also make the announcement for that program.

The website, again, is amazedbythequran.com. So if you could do me the favor of registering as soon as possible, and also, please, please, please, please, the most important kind of advertising is word of mouth. It's not Facebook, it's not flyers, it's not announcements. It's when you guys talk about something with your friends and family.

So do me the favor of talking about it with friends and family. InshaAllah ta'ala. May Allah put barakah in that program, and help us make that a tradition every year, that we come back, and we can rejuvenate our spirits with the Quran, year after year after year.

Conclusion

So thank you so very much for listening. I know it's a weeknight, and all of you are going back to work. I'm going back to conduct an exam for my students at 8 in the morning tomorrow, so I gotta get out of here too.

InshaAllah ta'ala. But it's been an absolute, absolute pleasure coming here. I pray that we get to spend a lot of time with each other in the future, inshaAllah ta'ala, and that we're able to get to know each other better.

But I hope to see all of you and your families in the conference, and if not here, and if not there, inshaAllah we'll meet in a much better place. BarakAllahu li walakum. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

Al Fatiha (Quran 1:1-7)