Transcription
When the Prophet Salli wasallam is giving spiritual guidance, religious advice, the distinction between right and wrong that is never based on what [Music] ha. Make the most of this series by downloading our free workbook for a guided contemplation of this powerful Surah.
Allah is now going to um speak to us about a claim about the Prophet sallam, a negation. There are three negations so far. Um, there are concepts that mu talk about that sound really technical and difficult. My job is to try to make that stuff easy for you. This is going to be one of those concepts, but it's an important one. It happens in the Quran a lot. So I, I'll run you through it briefly. There are three kinds of speech. There's, there's different ways of describing speech, but in B, one way in you can do it is there's three kinds of speech: speech to a neutral person, speech to a doubtful person, and speech to an opponent. Neutral, doubtful, and opponent. That's, that's the terms. But who cares what did I say? What are the three kinds of speech? Neutral, doubtful, opponent. Okay, so what does this mean? If I say, you're you and I are taking a walk, and I say, the weather's nice today. You're not an opponent. I didn't have to do any extra layers in my speech because you're like, yeah, it's nice because you're neutral. Okay. Hey, so what you doing nowadays? Nothing. Okay. Neutral speech. There was no intensity in the speech. It's normal level.
Then there is doubtful. Hey, is the class starting today? No, the class is starting tomorrow. No, is it starting today or tomorrow? If somebody does that, what are they? Doubtful. And when they're doubtful, you got to add a little something to get rid of their doubt. So you say, no, it's definitely starting today. I added what word? Definitely. So you added one extra stressor, one extra emphasis. So for neutral speech, you need no emphasis. For doubtful speech, you need one emphasis.
Somebody says, the class is not starting today, it's starting three days from now. And you say, listen, stupid, why? I'm telling you the class is starting today. What did you do? You said stupid to stress the point. You said, why? Because you committed a sin and then you remembered Allah. And then you added definitely. And you slammed your. You needed more than, more than one stressor. When do you need more than one stressor? When you are talking to someone who disapproves or rejects your. They're an opponent. Now they don't agree with what you're saying. You understand this? This is the basic, the, the building blocks of balaga studies. When you're reading the Quran, is there zero emphasis? Is there one emphasis? Or is there more than one emphasis? And that might tell you, is Allah talking to a neutral audience, or a doubtful audience, or an opposing audience? But this is the building blocks.
Then it gets more complicated because if you're super good at this, you might be talking to somebody who's opposing you, but you're talking as if they're neutral. Like somebody says, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to destroy you. And you're like, you're not. And you're totally calm. You know what that is? You are so confident that they have nothing that you don't even have to like respond to the opponent as an opponent. You're responding to them as if they are as much a non-threat as a neutral one. You understand? So you could mix and match sometimes for special reasons. But this basic dichotomy of neutral, doubtful, and opponent is very helpful. And it's a big part of the study of the, the Quran because through it, we get a lot of meaning of how is Allah communicating. Remember the Bu, the same strands are there, right? The same concepts are being presented, but how are they being presented? Who are they being presented to? This is important.
The reason I brought that up is the word Ma and the oath in the beginning are double stress. Allah is talking to opponents. From the style of the speech, it's clear that Allah is talking to who? Opponents. Opponents who are saying he is lost, he has an agenda, he's, he's, he's got, or he's got that's who he, who they're claiming him to be. And he's responding with an oath, which is already a stress. There are two, two there, right? And it's not, you know, so because L is not extra stress, but Ma is. And then now, and he, the, the common translation of this is he does not speak from desire. The common translation is what? He does not speak from desire. We're going to tear that apart. We're going to go a lot deeper than that. In order to understand this, first of all, is used for, uh, eloquent speech, well-put-together speech. It comes from the, the secondary meaning, it is, is tightening something or gathering something together. Gathering your thoughts together, gathering words together. Every word is gathering letters together, but when you coherently gather your thoughts and words and ideas together, then it becomes n, coherent speech. So that's the word n. This is just a side note about it. And he, and he doesn't speak, and he never says anything on based on what we said, desire so far. But we'll, we'll dig into desire later.
One more beautiful. This is IMI. We love in our team. Uh, so I'm just going to read this to you and I'll translate it because he just deserves it. So this, what he's saying is, is past tense. Is also past tense. But he didn't say, he says, for those of you who know even a little bit of Arabic, that's isn't it? So he switched from the past tense to the present. Why did he do it? He says, and using the future tense and the present future tense, all of a sudden is extremely beautiful here. And because he's saying, he wasn't even lost when he was a kid. He wasn't even lost when he was small, and you were worshiping all those idols. He's never been lost. His, his entire life has never been, not even after becoming a prophet, he's never actually been misguided, and he's never been on the wrong path. And so at this time, and, and the time that he saw the Angel and the, the revelation came, even then he wasn't lost. And, and even now, when he's speaking and he's been sent as a prophet to you as a witness over you, even now he is not lost. And he, so this is from then to now, as if Allah is saying, his past is proof of the truthfulness of his present, right? The character of the Prophet sallai wasallam speaks for itself. His track record speaks for itself. And that's his, that's the evidence that's being presented. He was never lost anyway. And now, more than not being lost, he's a guide and protected from misguidance and guiding others towards the right way. So that's just from the present tense usage of the word.
Then there's an interesting discussion among the scholars about this Ayah. Does this refer to the Quran, or is this talking about the Quran and the Sunnah? Because it says he doesn't speak from desire, right? He doesn't. And the next Ayah is going to say, it's nothing but revelation, that's all it is. It's revelation. So does that mean it's only revelation when the Prophet sallai wasallam is reciting the Quran, or everything the Prophet says is revelation? Or is the answer even something else? The first thing we're going to look at, the early commentary. So this is from, he's saying, and the Ayah is saying, Muhammad does not speak this Quran from his own feelings. The Quran is nothing but revelation from Allah that he's giving to him. So's opinion is, what's this Ayah talking about? The Quran. This Ayah is talking about the Quran specifically. There's missing Muhammad, that's a separate issue. He's saying, he's saying here, he doesn't speak from his own feelings. Allah gives to Jibril, Jibril gives to Muhammad wasallam, and Muhammad wasallam says what Allah tells him to say. So it's not coming from him. That's the point. So again, the indication seems to be, they're thinking this is talking about what? The Quran.
Okay, then we get to more contemporary scholar, the author of. What does he have to say? Say this is Allah denying any involvement of, how we haven't defined Hawa yet, any involvement of what they translate as desire. There's no involvement of it in the Quran or anything else in which the Prophet Salli wasallam is guiding people. But he adds a clause: guiding people. So I want you to understand this properly. We have to distinguish between the role of the Quran and the role of the Sunnah of the Prophet S wasallam. I know we use the phrase Quran and Sunnah, Quran and Sunnah all the time, but this is a, this is an intricate issue that I want you to understand some things about it at least.
There are instances in the life of the Prophet where he took a decision when no revelation came. He just made a decision. He decided to free captives in. We freed them. Then revelation came. Why did you free them? They should have been executed. The question is, Allah could have revealed before to execute them. Allah chose not to reveal it, and then he let them go, and then he revealed it, right? What's the point of doing that? The point of doing that is to show that the Prophet wasallam makes his own decisions sometimes. And the only one that has the right to correct him is who? Who is Allah? Because even though he's the prophet, he's still at the end of the day, Allah. So Allah will do that. At, at theuk, you know, when, when Makkah was conquered, and we were about to engage with the Roman Empire, some, some hypocrites came to the Prophet and said, we can't go to battle. Uh, it's too much fitna for me, you know, I'm just going to end up getting married on the way, so I can't, I can't do it. Can I not go to battle? Because, you know, too many women are interested in marrying me, and I'm just not going to make for a good warrior. I'm a lover, a fighter, basically, is what he, what he said. And the Prophet wasallam said, stay home. And if I was the commander of an army, I would ask the guy to stay home too, because that's clearly a liability on the battlefield. You know, why can't we all just love each other? Like, you know, that's so it's a good, it's a good military decision to keep that guy at home. He's going to disrupt, he's going to cost lives at, on the battlefield. Allah afterwards revealed, may Allah forgive you. Why did you give him permission? Right now, in those moments, did the Prophet sallai wasallam give him permission based on revelation? On based on his own decision? It's clear he made his own decision, right? He made his own decision.
Now, there's other instances. You have, um, the Prophet sallai wasallam asking the Sahabah to set up their camp, the military camp at. He picked a place. And the Sahabah said, is this from revelation or is this your opinion? The Sahabah asked this question, which means the Sahabah are very clear that they also know that sometimes the Prophet sallam is expressing his own opinion. Other times it is revelation. And then he said, no, this is my opinion. And they said, you know, if this is your opinion, then we dare disagree. We think this is a better position. That happened. The Prophet Salli wasallam came from Makkah, described famously as a valley that has no vet. He comes to Medina. People are growing dates, right? So he sees some, you know, date growing practice that's a little strange to him. He asks the planters, why do you do that? They say, so we get a good crop. He says, I don't see the point in doing that. They thought this is revelation from Allah. They changed their farming practice. There was no crop that year. And they said, y Allah, you told us this. He said, you know your worlds better. I, I was just saying that like he wasn't giving them revelation. So the, the distinction of here is really valuable.
Why is it valuable? He's saying, when the Prophet Sallallahu wasallam is giving spiritual guidance, religious advice, the distinction between right and wrong that is never based on what Hawa. That is not based on Hawa. That's not based on empty feeling. But then Hawa is also, you know, interesting, deeper, uh, meaning of the word Hawa that I want you to know. Al Hawa is actually emptiness. Between any, any empty space is called Hawa. A coward is also called Al. It's as if the guy has no heart. It's empty inside the heart. There's no courage inside his heart. So he's called a coward. A Hawa, a bottomless void. Like one of the names of hell is Hawa, right? Because it keeps going and going and going. It's bottomless. That's, and falling to a lower place is also Hawa. And from it, we get the meaning of love. Actually, I don't like the translation desire for Hawa. I actually, the closer meaning is actually love. It's actually love, but it's different from Hawa. So what's the difference between Hawa and Hawa? Hawa is used in the Quran in good ways, positive ways, positive and negative. But you have, if you love Allah, if you love me, follow, follow me, and Allah will love you. If you love Allah, right? So love is used in, in great ways in the Quran, the word Hawa. But the word Hawa is actually used for lower loves, animal loves, empty loves, whims, things you love that don't really have substance and meaning. Like, for example, I love this TikToker. That's how I love that song. Oh my God, that's Hawa. I love Messi. That's Hawa. Okay, there's loves we have that don't have substance. They're empty within. Those are called Hawa. They're whimsical. They're, they're not substantive. There's, there's no depth to them. The Prophet is being, what is, what is being said about the Prophet Sallallahu wasallam is he doesn't let temporary feelings, moods, appetites. He doesn't ever make a decision based on them. He, he doesn't do this at all. And he's not doing this right now. Could also mean, as we speak right now, this is not his feelings talking. Because the previous Ayah was, what? Your, your Sah is not lost. He's not corrupted. No, this is not him defending himself. This is not him, oh, he feels bad that you call him these things, so he's defending himself. This is not coming from him. This is coming from who? It's coming from from Allah. Because if somebody insults you and you decide to defend yourself, that doesn't come from someone else, that comes from you. But now Allah is saying, no, even that is not coming from him. He's not defending himself. I'm defending him. It's very beautiful.
Inside the meanings of, by the way, Hawa is a kind of love that overtakes a person and empties them of all other feelings afterwards. I, I'll tell you, I'll take from you, inshallah. Now, this is Imam Fi again, talking about Hawa. He says, he's saying, yes, Hawa means love, but it's secondary meanings have to do with falling and being low. So it's loving lower things, lesser things. And when someone loves things that are, that the kind of love they have is Hawa, it makes them a lowly person. And the Prophet sallam is not a lowly person. And so that's not what is associated with him. S on the same word, this is really important. He says, Hawa means you love something and it's irrational. Like you don't, you can't explain a good reason and you're actually denying common sense to love it. Stupid love is Hawa. But I love it. Why? I don't know. I just do. That's Hawa. I can't explain it. That's because it's Hawa. Oh, that's these, these voices. I work on them. This is part of my preparation for the lecture. So the idea of Hawa is the Prophet s wasallam is not, he never desires something without it having meaning. Of course, he desired to marry, but it was never based on something empty. It was all, there was always a purpose behind things that he loves. This is a really interesting statement about our Prophet sallai wasallam. And we, we talk so much about being like the Prophet Alam and taking inspiration from him. Maybe we should take inspiration on on curbing Hawa and checking in. I need to check in myself. How many Hawa departments have I opened inside my heart? Like things that I'm loving and I'm obsessed with that have really no substance and I have no logical explanation except I like it. That's it. And in fact, it's even harmful. It's, it's even harmful. And that, that's the question we you and I have to ask ourselves.
Hey guys, you just watched a small clip of me explaining the Quran in depth as part of the deeper look series. Studying the Quran in depth can seem like a really intimidating thing that's only meant for scholars. Our job at B is to make deeper study of the Quran accessible and easy for all of you. So take us up on that challenge. Join us for this study, the deeper look of the Quran for this Surah and many other suras on bv.com under the deeper look section.