The Majestic Quran Abdal Hakim Murad Pdf Merge

This passage really inspired me to truly dive deeper into the Qur’an. I pray that in this month of Ramadan, the month in which the Qur’an was revealed – that you can find more meaning and depth in your readings than ever before.At once dazzling and disturbing, beautiful and surprising, the Quran challenges our human expectations of what a Book should look like and forces us to abandon our notions and question our frames of thinking. Titus Burckhardt once wrote: “The Quran does not satisfy, it gives and at the same time takes away; it expands the soul by lending it wings, then lays it low and leaves it naked; for the believer, it is both comforting and purifying, like a rainstorm.” Yet, until we are able to let go of our hubris and embrace the “w ay” of the Quran, we will never truly understand the Book and, by extension, Islam. What follows is one of the best descriptions of the Quran I’ve come across.The Quran: literally, “that which is often recited.” A web of rhythm and meaning, the words of which throb through Muslim worship and which, at every point in the believer’s life, break surface, sanctifying existence with the scent of eternity.

A paradoxical flash of the divine light, penetrating the veil of solid existence into our world. Redolent with symbol, half-hidden meaning and rapier-sharp insight, it transforms the reader by suggestion rather than by formal structures of argument and proof. It demands to be accepted on its own terms: only when the reader is prepared to discard all that he believes a book should be, will he begin to discern its symmetries and its heart-rending power.Goethe sensed this.

In his West-Oestlicher Divan he declares how, after inspiring initial astonishment and fear, the Quran “soon attracts, astounds, and, in the end, enforces our reverence. Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim, is stern, grand, terrible—ever and anon truly sublime. Thus, this book will go on exercising, through the ages, a most potent influence.”And so it does. More so for the Muslim than for the most committed Protestant, holy writ is studied, memorized, and quoted. More than four million men and women in the world today have memorized the entire Quran: over six thousand verses. A far greater number have memorized shorter sections for use in their five daily Prayers. Throughout the Muslim world, from Senegal to Indonesia, to ride any bus or train is to see one’s fellow passengers quietly reading from a miniature copy of God’s Book or reciting it to themselves, enjoying a breath of the transcendent to relieve the tedium of their journey.

The same Book, in intricate calligraphy, adorns the rear window of passing cars. Short, aphoristic verses are painted on the walls and doors of houses.

The conversation of city businessman and rustic peasant alike is peppered with allusions and direct quotations from the Book. Everywhere human life is anchored to the hidden world by the Quran.For the Muslim, God’s Book is much more than a source of liturgical and social rules; indeed, such topics occupy less than one tenth of the Quranic text; and it is more even than a revelatory declaration of man’s origin and his fate, an exposition of the truths of man’s spiritual nature and of judgement. The Quran is oft-recited, at the most profound possible level, because it is of God. Its text reveals God’s will for His creation, but is also a revelation of HImself. It is uncreated, timeless, a dimension of God’s pre-existent attribute of speech, communication: it is the Logos, which is the interface between the Absolute and the contingent realms. It is the pre-existent light which becomes manifest in history as prophethood. One of the most surprising features of the Quran to the Western reader coming to it for the first time is the way in which subjects of many kinds may be found together in a single chapter, or even in the course of a few verses. This is an essential aspect of the Book’s message.

It is human nature to endeavor to categorize and label our experience of the world, and we feel disconcerted when our familiar expectations of such an ordering are not fulfilled. The Quran, both in its literary style and in its internal arrangement, conforms to no human norms.

It is a message which has broken through the veil of the unseen and causes us to look upwards, bringing us suddenly into a new dimension, a new mode of perception. The Quran is from the One, and it belongs to a higher order of creation than our own, where unity and differentiation begin to coalesce, and where our perception of a world dispersed into multiple states and forms loses its validity. But despite this unique feature, the formal message, the outward meaning of the Book, is in no way compromised; indeed, it gains in cogency, for each of its teachings and guiding principles is meaningful only in the context of the transcendent unity of God.The question of the sequence of topics found in the Quran blends into another issue: the miraculous quality of the Book’s semantics and diction. For Muslims, it is an article of faith that the prose style with which its meaning patterns are articulated is inimitable in its beauty, precision, and moving grandeur, and that this constitutes the greatest of the miracles with which God confirmed the message of His last Prophet. This quality, known in Arabic as the I’jaz, comes over only very imperfectly even in the best translations; nevertheless it is still possible for the European or American reader to sense something of the breathless, insistent rhythms of the original.

To the Arab, whether Muslim or Christian, the Quran has always remained the summit of eloquence which every stylist should aspire to emulate. Perhaps the greatest of all the arts evolved by Islamic civilization is that of the formal, virtuoso recitation of the Book before an audience, which is frequently moved to tears by the majestic cadences of a favourite passage, faithfully rendered by some master craftsman of the human voice.— Abdul Wadod Shalabi and Abdal Hakim Murad. I found myself musing this week over the state of my heart when it wanders off.Sometimes I’m on something I can only liken to a spiritual high. Not the highest, surely but it is close to what I imagine bliss to feel like.

There’s simply nothing that is able to shake me away from this tranquility, happiness and love.But sometimes it’s not that magical. You wake up and all you can think about is the one topic, the one subject, that you know you shouldn’t even be stressing about because it’s not in your control. You’ve done all you can do, and what’s left on your part is tawakkul. (Oh, that powerful one word: tawakkul you’d think it would be as easy to carry out as it is to write.)The heart is a wondrous thing, it can be pulled in such extremely opposite directions that I often wish I had some sort of mystical leash that I can wrap around it.(Here, little hearty come back here! You’ll hurt yourself.)But sadly, these useful leashes do not exist.Or do they?I love metaphors because it gives me an opportunity to reflect deeply on them as my imagination runs wild. Since what popped out instantly to me in this verse is the idea of rope of God, I allowed my thoughts to leap across mountains & fly through the clouds, until something settled and made a little sense in my consciousness.–(Please be aware I am representing no opinions here but my own. And I am not a scholar of any sort.)What if we were all people stuck at the bottom of a pitt, needing to be rescued?

The presence of the rope alone will not benefit you – you must take action, grab the rope and climb it.Good grip? Still not enough; you have to hold firmly with conviction. You must hold on to it with certainty, without ignorance or blind faith. You may not see what is at the other end of the rope, but you are confident it’s a way out. To do it half-heartedly and without passion is very dangerous; slipping off the rope is always there as a risk, if you don’t believe with all your might that holding on is worth it.–“ The rope of God”.Could the rope be the combination of the Qur’an & the Sunnah?

Islam is inward and outward. If you don’t act while knowing something is the truth, you simply won’t benefit and will continue to wallow in your own self-pity. You’ll be stuck at the bottom of the pitt with the rope dangling down to you, but if you don’t have faith that what you have leads you to the Light, to tranquility & bliss, why would you bother holding onto the rope and climbing it to possible disappointment, gaining nothing more than blisters along the way?Islam is not something you can have blind faith in. Sure, there are certain metaphysical matters you may need to take a leap of faith – with the understanding that humans are souls that are trapped in physical bodies, and thus, we do not and cannot perceive all. Yet we are given enough to see, to observe, and to contemplate whether Islam’s final Prophet (peace & blessings be upon him) is truly a sign from God, and is truly a mercy to mankind.

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It turns out, for me at least, he is. Grabbing onto that rope is suddenly a means to an end, and not the end goal itself.Now suppose you are at the bottom of a pitt of hopelessness, but your dilemma is not faith-related. Rather, it is something worldly your career is going downhill. You are overwhelmed with a million things you have committed to with very little time on your hands.

Relationship problems. Health declining. And much moreThe heart may wander off far away from you seeking reassurance to these things, and the biggest problem is, without control over your heart, you know it’s getting even more lost and in despair. All you can think is how useful it would be to have a rope around it and drag it back where it should be Where heart agrees with mindThat rope. The rope of tawakkul.

Are you finding it? Look for it, but remember that it may not only be dangling before your eyes, but it might even be inside of you.Inward and outward. Hope also comes from within yourself.And Allah knows Best.– A.S. “ Verily, the believers have succeeded.”Beyond merely “living” (as in, existing), man ultimately wants to succeed in life – however the term ‘success’ is defined.

The tricky part is, although we all have a good sense of what success looks like on the outside, we often find ourselves spending our entire lives reaching out for it; and sometimes, sadly, we do not feel we ever reach it.I am not referring to worldly success such as fame and riches. I’m talking contentment, joy, satisfaction, and meaning success that lasts in the long term.But there is a way to reach it all. God does not only tell us we can in the Quran, he says we already have – emphasizing the certainty that, if particular measures are taken with sincerity, He will not deny us this sweetest victory over ourselves.The truth is, there is no way to achieve real outwardly success- the permanent, lasting one – without gaining inner success.You’ll have to purify within to succeed without. There’s no shortcut around it, no matter what all those false-promising ‘ 10 quick things you can do to be a happy and successful person‘ articles claim. Genuine success is not about quick fixes – it’s about real, honest work.Let’s explore. Once upon a time in Mecca, the Prophet Muhammed (صلى الله عليه و سلم) informed his people,“Ten ayat have just been revealed upon me; whoever establishes them will enter Paradise.” Then he recited the first ten verses of Surat Al-Mu’minoon.

A small while later, people came to the Prophet’s wife, Aisha, رضي الله عنها, and inquired as to the character of the Prophet.She responded that his manners were those of the Quran. Then she recited the first ten verses of Surat Al-Mu’minoon.Time and time again, when I ask a knowledgeable person for which verses of the Quran to immediately focus on, memorize, or “start off” firmly establishing in my life, I am referred to the first ten verses of surat al-Mu’minoon. I figure writing a blog post about it will instill it in my heart, so here I am writing this and there you are reading it!This chapter begins and ends with the promise of success:Some things to quickly note:-When the word “قد ” appears before a verb, it implies something that has occurred and is continuing to occur.

(For example, قد قامت الصلاة) So, think of it like this you, a believer, will succeed because God has seen you already do so. Hooray!But it’s not quite as simple as that. It’s not just saying the shahada it’s more along the lines of living it.Another interesting Arabic linguistic observation: the word for ‘succeeded’ that is used is ” أفلح ” – which derives from the root word ” فلاح ” (farmer). Allow me to go into some more depth in this for a moment, and although it’ll appear to be tangent to this topic, it actually is extremely relevant:Unlike our regular 9-hour daily paid jobs, in which we get paid every month or so, farmers don’t see the fruits of their efforts for almost an entire year. Day after day after day they work hard, whatever their moods may be; and they know if they slack off for just one week, there may be consequences for the entire year’s resulting crop. Painting by Rae ChichilnitskyTo bring it back to the topic of success, which can be likened to the farmer’s crop – success is not a quick to-do action off a checklist.

In this world where everything has become fast-paced and relentless, we’ve become impatient and want to speed even meaningfulness up. You cannot do that.

Further, you cannot slack off and expect success to come your way anyways (you must refuse to be what I call a!)The following verses give us sort of a checklist of qualities, all connected to one another, of a mature believer – where do you stand? Judge yourself honestly, you will not get anywhere if you continue deceiving yourself.In a nutshell, these are the main qualities a believer should strive to have – take out your checklists! 🙂Khushoo‘ (خشوع) in prayer.Are you humble in prayer and feel an awe and fear of God so deep it almost feels like it’s physically in your bones? Are you submissive with concentration & devotion without distracting yourself with petty thoughts? That’s khushoo’. It’s a lot tougher to work on internal issues than the external appearance of praying correctly.

You must purify within to succeed without.It’s comforting for so many of us (myself never excluded) to know we pray 5 times a day. We’re making time for our Lord and standing before Him. But are we really whole-heartedly, mind and soulfully, there? I do believe that’s a question that needs a lifetime of devotion to properly answer.We spoke a little about farmers and the intense amount of work they must have. They cannot get all this work done efficiently if they don’t have a strict schedule to abide.

Why,“Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm – to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is not shortcut.” 1Farmers have strict schedules to follow – and our ‘strict’ schedule (though it is a pleasant sort of strictness) is the five daily prayers, minimum.There is much more than can be said about prayer, but I’m not the one that should keep talking about it.

I need to be doing it with more soul & heart before preaching to the choir so let’s move on and look at the next characteristics of the successful believer:Turn away from ill speech (لغو).” لغو ” has many possible interpretations, but many scholars agree it is idleness; whether this is in the form of actually lying, backbiting, cursing and insulting, falsehoods, vanity basically, useless conversation that consumes one’s time.God doesn’t just tell us to avoid “laghw”, but He instructs us to walk past it in a dignified fashion should we encounter it. Don’t allow the peer pressure of others to make you feel like you have to suck it up with them and waste your time listening to useless talk.

Your time is worth more than that.Which brings us back to the importance of respecting time respecting schedules ultimately respecting prayer.Those who do zakaat.This is a Meccan surah. When this verse was revealed, it was before financial zakat became an obligation. Further, if the verse was referring explicitly to monetary charity, it might have instructed us to give zakat, as opposed to do it. So what is zakat?First, let’s give a metaphor.

Imagine your dishes at home. You wash them every day.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Try eating the usual amount of food for one day, just one day – and ignore the dishes. What horribleness will you awaken to! And how much harder is it to get rid of the filth! Well, your heart needs a polish not just now and then; the Ramadan once a year is not sufficient. Boy, girl, you’ve got a LOT of stains on that heart, and until you realize your own flaws, no one else can get rid of them!Zakaah means purification.

To be a successful believer, you must constantly, and consistently, purify yourself. Check your ego, ask forgiveness of sins you know and don’t know of, beg God to let you see through your own delusions for we ARE delusional in terms of who we think ourselves to be, particularly in front of Allah.For example, I think there’s something seriously wrong with feeling satisfied after a prayer – rather than feeling anxious if it had been accepted. We delude ourselves that we’re already all righteous and of course God is going to accept it. But where is our feeling of khushoo’?Purify yourself. It sounds so simple and it requires no outside sources except, of course, your willingness to admit you badly need it.Guarding one’s chastity.Shamelessness between men and women is an already very obvious problem within many societies. I am not going to go to great depths on this issue, but needless to say, I quite agree with Nouman Ali Khan when he said (and I paraphrase):It goes to show just how much harder we have to work to make our marriages beautiful, and romanticthat’s part of our duty as believers!

Make your marriages beautiful!Guarding trusts and promises.Do you make promises you intend to fulfill? Do you make promises you guard with all your might to see fulfilled?Hmm. What’s up with the typical “ yes inshaAllah, I’ll try be there” that somehow is now sadly assumed between Muslims as “oh, she’s not coming”?I believe promises should be guarded in the most excellent manner possible which goes to say that even a promise on something so trivial, such as attending an event on Facebook, should be guarded! If one is not sure whether he/she will make it or not, it’s OK; put yourself as maybe attending; but by putting an “Attending”, you are making a false promise to the organizers of the event.Am I making a big fuss of this?.All references from Nouman Ali Khan.You may be familiar with this mesmerizing verse of the Quran:Let’s break it down, shall we?First off, I am a visual person so I needed to draw out what I was hearing from this RIS2013 talk. Sadly, my notes look like a bunch of scribbled words all over the place, so I’ll reveal it at the end of the post when you can easily look at it and know exactly what all the scribbles mean.Nouman Ali Khan starts off by explaining in detail what the basic translation of the ayah is; then he proceeds to make a fascinating connection that will leave you breathless with amazement! (Stay tuned.).

“The example of His light is like a niche within which is a lamp”Never forget that God cannot be explained or understood fully through a human’s mind He is much too Great, Glory to He, for our limited minds to comprehend Him. Nonetheless, in His mercy, He knows that those who love Him strive to know Him, and gives us examples to help us relate to the reality of things.“ Like a niche“: A niche is an arch-like spacing in a wall to allow for a lamp to be placed within it. The shape of the niche is constructed such to allow for light placed within it to spread outwards. Here is a visually appealing example of a niche with a lamp inside it:.

“the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearly white star”It’s nothing new that the lamp should be made of glass but for the glass to be shimmering and luminous like a pearly white star, even before a flame is lit up inside of it? So the lamp itself, flameless, is almost lighting up on its own. It’s pearly white, clean, pure.Note: the word used for lamp in the Quran is ‘misbaah’, which comes from the root word ‘subh’. ‘Subh’ means dawn, but it can also mean to be alert and awakened (“asbe7!”). “star lit from the oil of a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west”Now note: the lamp is inside a niche, which is inside a building. Yet Allah tells us in this example that the lamp is lit from the oil of a blessed tree; trees are outside. Blessed things are from outside this world.

This lamp is indoors, yet its source comes from outdoors interesting point to keep in mind.Note:the word used in the Quran for oil is ‘zayt’,which comes from the word of olive oil,‘zayt zaytoon’.“whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire”Not only is the glass itself seemingly glowing without a flame, but so is the oil without the spark! Two sources of luminous matter interacting what results in“Light upon light.”and we know that“Allah guides to His light whom He wills. And Allah presents examples for the people, and Allah is Knowing of all things.”And now to blow your minds away. (Metaphorically speaking, that is.)Take a moment to look at my scribbles below: they should make some sense now.Prepare for a paradigm shift.Look within yourself.You have a rib cage. Inside the rib cage is the heart.

Surat al-Baqara is a beautiful chapter of the Quran. I don’t read this often enough! The long length of it discouraged me in the past, I suppose.

Well, careful reading and contemplation of the verses the starting days of Ramadan has me thinking that it’s worth reading again and again and again I was hoping to condense all my thoughts on this surah in one blog post, but that’s laughably ridiculous because I might as well publish a book (OK, huge exaggeration). I shall inshaAllah share some of my insights in separate parts.

The Majestic Quran Abdal Hakim Murad Pdf Merge Pdf

I am in no means a scholar, yet I am writing these thoughts to remind myself to keep on reflecting, not simply skim and read.Bismilleh.Verse 2:74Hearts & RocksA rock is deemed to be the hardest thing, and the strongest things are made from rock, such as mountains and the Earth’s crust. But when a rock is used as a simile for a person’s organ, such as “he has a rock for a brain” or “a rock for a heart”, this is most certainly not commendable; it means this person’s mind is in the wrong place, and it means one’s heart may be acting as a bystander to cruelty because his actions seem to indicate he is a heartless man.So what degree of extreme transgression can we make when God Himself tells us that there are hearts that can be even harder than rocks?The imagery brought on by this ayah is both heartwrenchingly beautiful yet frightening at the same time.

The beauty comes from the description of stones gushing out water: truly, when stones get fissures and eventually erode, tree roots and water alike can infiltrate through them. What would be the metaphor for water gushing out a human heart love, compassion, mercy, hope, trust, faith?This remains to be one of my favorite verses.