Monday, July 30, 2012

Ramadhan: the Month of Qur'an

Compare all this with our sad state, when we talk so much about establishing Islam, implementing the Qur'an, etc. and yet have such little contact with it, maybe not completing its recitation ever at all since childhood, or perhaps never! Hence we become unbalanced in our understanding of Islam, because there are ayat which we rarely or never hear or think about; we repeat only certain selected ayat over and over again; we lost the context of the verses, the overall flow, argument and balance of the Qur'an, all of which is beautiful & miraculous. Because of thisignorance we go astray from the Straight Path, split up into sects, lose the blessings of Allah...
"We took a covenant from those who said: we are Christians, but they forgot part of the message with which they had been reminded, so we ingrainedamongst them enmity andhatred until the Day of Judgment..." (Surah al-Ma'idah 5:14)
In Sahih Bukhari (6/521), there is an amazing piece of advice from the Prophet(may Allah bless him and grant him peace): "Recite the Qur'an as long as your hearts agree on it; if you disagree about it, stop reciting it (for the time being)." Studying the Qur'an should bring peopletogether!
In Surah al-Mu'minoon (23:53), there is mention of the people before us (in whose footsteps we wouldfollow), who broke up their Deen into sects (zuburan), each party rejoicing in what it had. One understanding of this, from the word zuburan meaning literally 'books', isthat each sect left the Book of Allah and concentrated solely on the books of its own sect, so"they split their deen up into books"!
The most twisted, ridiculous, shallow ideas, innovations and superstitions are propagated amongst Muslims when they are away from the Qur'an, because any little knowledge of the Qur'an would be enough to dispelthem.
Hence, O servant of Allah, leave aside secondary books and concentrate on studying the blessed Book of Allah in this blessed month (use a good translation/commentary if needed), for it is the sourceof all knowledge in other books, and keep away from wasting time, especially in futile discussions and argumentswhich lead nowhere, for that is a sure sign of being misguided, as the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, "Whenever a people went astray after they had been on guidance, they were given to argumentation (jadl)." (Ahmad, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah - Sahih al-Jami' al-Saghir, no. 5633)
Finally, remember that theMessenger (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) will complain to Allah on the Day of Judgment that his people neglected the Qur'an (Surah al-Furqan 25:30). Neglect of the Qur'an is of different levels, as Ibn al-Qayyim writes:
Not reciting or listening to it;
Not studying and understanding it;
Not conveying its message;
Not judging by it in personal and communal matters, at all levels of society;
Not believing in it.
All Praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds./ - - - :-> Transtors: 1.http://free-translation.imtranslator.net/lowres.asp 2.http://translate.google.com/m?twu=1&hl=en&vi=m&sl=auto&tl=en