 أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم تبارك الذي بيدي الملك وهو على كل شيء قدير الذي خلق الموت والحياة ليبلوكم أيكم أحسن عمله وهو العزيز الغفور الذي خلق سبع سماوات طباقة ما ترا في خلق الرحمن من تفاوت فرجع البصر هل ترى من فطور ثم رجع البصر كررتين ينقلب إليك البصر خاسئا و هو حسير ولقد زينا السماء الدنيا بما صابح وجعلنا رجوما للشياطين وأعتدنا لهم عذاب السعير وللذين كفروا بربهم عذاب جهنم و بئس المصير إذا ألقوا فيها سمعوا لها شيقا وهي تفور تكاد تميز من الهيو كلما ألقى فيها فوجنسا لهم خزنة و ألم يأتيكم نذير قالوا بلا قد جاير فكذبنا و قلنا نزل الله من شيء إن أنتم إلا في ظلال كبير و قالوا لو كنا نسمع أو نعقل ما كنا في أصحاب السعير فاعترفوا بذنبهم فسحقا لأصحاب السعير إن الذين يخشون ربهم بالغيب لهم مغفرة وأجر كبير وأسر قولكم أو جاروا به إنه عليم بذات الصدور ألا يعلم من خلقه واللطيف الخبير والذي جعل لكم العرض ذلولا فمشوا في ملاكب يا وكلوا من رزقه وكلوا من رزقه وإليه نشور أمنتم في السماء أي يخصف بكم الأرض فإذا يتمور أم أمنتم أي يرسل عليكم حاصبا فستعلمون كيف نذير ولقد كذب الذين من قبلهم فكيف كان نكير ولم يروا إلى الطير فوقهم صاكفات ويقضل ما يمسكون إلا الرحمن إنه بكل شيء بصير أما ناذا الذي أصركم من دون الرحمن إن الكافرون إلا في غور أما ناذا الذي يرزقكم إن أمسك رزقه بل الجوا في عطو والفور أما يمشي مكبا على وجئ أهدا يمشي سويا أما يمشي سويا على صراط مستقيم قل هو الذي عاشعكم وجعل لكم السمع والأبسار والأفئدة قليلا ما تشكرون قل هو الذي ذرأكم في الأرض وإلي تحشرون ويقولون متى هذا الواد إن كنتم صادقين قل إنما العلم عند الله وإن نذير مبين فلما رأوز فتنسيعة وجوه الذين كفروا وقيل هذا الذي كنت تم به تدعون قل أرأيتم إن أهلك لي الله ومن معي أو رحمنا فمن يجير الكافرين من عذاب ألي قل هو الرحمن وآمننا به وعلي توكلنا فستعلمون من هو في ظلال مبين قل أرأيتم إن أصبح ما أكم غورا فمن يأتيكم بمال ونقى الله العظيم وستشعر وستدر أنوان ملونق لما دا كنتم في أنا قول آده كان بين الطرق بين ما انفس فرق من غفلة حندا وخني أخذانا وعبر إلى أصراء ربت لم يزل يقولوني بين القيار مصالا رق من شعبتين إلانا في خيرها حتى بروضي أنا فالا يارن قد قرشت من الكاهل إلهي صالا تهره الله هماه الطره وما براك مثله إنسانا وبيحبه وبيلكله والنسر والتوقير ونفل عرسي قد قوصانا يا ربنا سلي وسلم دا إيمان على حبيبك بيجوة 158 الله مستعبير إلا الله إحسانا صلى الله عليه وسلم ناسم فاقركا بادي ولا أولا نأتي أنا جلالا بيبك من إليك دعانا الله ما صلي وسلم وبارك عليه ولا أولا بيجوة 22 لما المصوني يارن شرن يا أبي منافن ابن فضاينك عينك كان للابي آمنة لم تشتو شيئ فصلا دا والهنما سبحان الله أخل الابنى إلا الله والله إلا بالله عين أضيل بيبك الليلة من أبدح حدوة خطي ونصولين الدعانتي وميناتك لمادي وتجلت للجهات فوضطوا بنات المشافتة إحالا صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم ومصانا صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم صلى الله عليه وسلم يا نبي سلام من تبا تسجل مرحابا وتشافتا مرحابا أسأل يا الله يسمى مرحابا مرحابا يا نبي الله علي وسلم أحمد إتُرى وألي وسهب مصناج فله علا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم وباركا لي وعلى أول وريفونس بسمنا الرحمن الرحيم صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلى آله وصح به جمعين سبحانكا لا علم لنا إلا ما علمتنا إنك أنت أنت موالحكيم ولا حول ولا فوات إلا بالله العلي العظيم السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته إن شاء الله تعالى I'm going to speak tonight about the Qur'an the greatness of the Qur'an the uniqueness of the Qur'an الله سبحانه وتعالى says in the Qur'an that in the month of Ramadan شاهر رمضان الذي انزل فيه القرآن that it was in the month of Ramadan in which the Qur'an was revealed to humanity so this is a blessed month it was blessed for a number of reasons first and foremost because it marks the commencement of the Qur'anic revelation to the world the biography of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم the beginning of the revelation that came to him so I'm going to talk about the Qur'an and I'm going to talk a little bit maybe a little bit more academically than what usually probably happens on a night like this where it's more sort of a preaching style or خطب style and the reason I'm doing this is because there are a lot of questions about the Qur'an lately of course there are a lot of anti-Muslim people on the internet whether they're atheists or Christians who are making a lot of claims about the Qur'an who are criticizing the Qur'an in a polemical sort of sense so I thought I'd addressed some of these issues or at least talk about the Qur'an from the standpoint of the classical scholarship so I've chosen to talk about the uniqueness of the Qur'an right so the Qur'an itself issues a challenge okay this is called a تحدي okay and the most recent challenge is an البقرة verse 23 وإن كنتم في ريب منما نزلنا على عبدنا فأت بصورة من مثله وذعوشها دائكم من دون الله إن كنتم صادقين okay if you are or if you happen to be in doubt about what we have revealed to our servant then bring a surah like unto it a chapter like unto it and call to your aid any whom you want as helpers other than Allah if you speak the truth truth إن لم تفعلوا ولم تفعلوا right and if you can't do it and you won't do it فتقوا النار التي وقودها الناس والحجارة then fear the fire whose fuel is man and stones وردت للكافرين prepared for those who reject faith so إمام الزركة شي he said that initially the challenge was to produce 10 was was to produce a recital an account like this quran right فاليأتوا بحديث من مثله produce something like the whole of the quran then it was reduced the 10 سور فأتوا بعشر سور من مثله finally it was reduced to one surah فأتوا بسورة من مثله that's the last challenge being issued in in Medina so the challenge of the quran تستفع is to its إعجاز what's known as إعجاز القرآن which is sometimes translated as the the insuperability of the quran the inimitability of the quran so the proposition that the quran cannot be imitated of course the word إعجاز is a form for infinitive and grammar meaning to debilitate to disable or to incapacitate so this is this is the concept the word معجزة is the active partisable in theology it's a technical term for a prophetic miracle and معجزة is a prophetic miracle as opposed to a karama which is a saintly miracle non prophetic miracle linguistically معجزة is that which incapacitates so the quran is a معجزة in the sense that it incapacitates others from producing its likeness now the first theologians to broach the subject of the nature of the quran's إعجاز were probably مؤتزيلي theologians مؤتزي ليت we call them مؤتزيلي theologians إبراهيم النظام for example from Basra in Iraq so his position and this is the standard مؤتزيلي position is that he says if all the Arabs were left alone they would have been able to compose pieces like those of the quran the أقل in other words would have been able to do it so the مؤتزيلي they give the intellect a status that it doesn't it doesn't deserve and their position really is that the quran this is the مؤتزيلي position is that the quran is really more like إبسسمة is more like the very voice of God in other words more like more like an inspired text rather than a revealed text so it's kind of like what Christians believe about the Bible as opposed to like what Jews believe about the Torah right it's not the revealed words of God in other words God is not choosing the exact words but rather inspiring a prophet to choose his own words but the meanings are are given to that profit so that's it's more akin to the مؤتزيلي position so he says if all the Arabs were left alone they would have been able to compose pieces so left alone are the operative words here so the مؤتزيلي position is that the quran it's jazz is external to its text right rather than internal it's extrinsic rather than intrinsic in other words it is possible for the Arab poets to produce the likes of the quran to match its unique style to rival its eloquence but Allah سبحانه وتعالى simply will not allow them to do that right he will deflect them from that يصرفه معنه right so they call it a صرفة the صرفة is the deflection or the aversion okay so Allah سبحانه وتعالى will continue to incapacitate anyone who tries to imitate the quran from from producing its likeness by deflecting them so the analogy is like imagine there's an expert marksman right an expert an archer and there's a target that's five feet away from him just five feet away and so he aims at the target he aims at the the target and he misses completely and he tries it again over and over and over again and he can't seem to hit the target he's an expert marksman it's five feet away and he's he does it a hundred times and he's zero for a hundred so then his only conclusion must be that something is something is causing me not to do this something is preventing me from hitting the target right prevention must be external now the sunni position is that the jazz is internal okay that it's that it's intrinsic to the text in other words it is impossible for the Arab poets to produce the likes of the quran so going back to this archery analogy imagine now this this expert marksman he's trying to hit a target that's five hundred yards away so he tries over and over and over again and he can't even get close to it because it's just impossible he doesn't have the capacity to do something like that so in this case prevention is internal another analogy is like imagine there's like a room and there's something there's a book in this room let's say it's called the book of secrets or something it's on a table and you want to get to this book and read it so you go inside the room and you notice that there are guards there right that are preventing you from even touching the book so you are being externally incapacitated that's akin to the mark تزيلي position but now let's say another scenario you go into the room and the book is there so you pick it up and you open it and you notice that it's written in a strange code that you don't understand so you don't understand so you can't understand it right so now you're being internally incapacitated and that's akin to the the Sunni position the nature of the book itself incapacitates you so the problem with the mark تزيلي position is that it does not locate the miracle of the Quran within the Quran but rather outside of the Quran or to put it another way the mark تزيلي position is like it is as if the Prophet can move his foot like normal but everyone else is somehow paralyzed which is abnormal and that is the very definition of a miracle like خرق العادات which is a break or breach of what is customary a breach of what is normal the Sunni position is as if the Prophet can walk on water which is abnormal while everyone else can't which is normal so at the end of the day both are saying the same thing imitation of the Quran will not be done okay so let's unpack this concept of إعجاز a bit further according to some Sunni أرلماء the إعجاز of the Quran is detected through intuition okay in other words it's impact upon the listener the way that the Quran causes joy and tears and fear and hope for example others say no because this is subjective right it's like whose poetry is more beautiful whose poetry is more impactful Shakespeare or Wordsworth some people will say Shakespeare some people might say Wordsworth or how do you know who's right right some would say beauty is in the eye of the beholder if you you know most people find that their own children are the most beautiful children that's probably because emotion gets involved or they see themselves in their children so we need objective standards of beauty okay others would argue that in poetry there is an objective standard that Shakespeare is objectively more beautiful more eloquent than all of the other poets that this is why he became the most beloved of all the English poets and why most experts say that his poetry is superior therefore we also have objective standards when it comes to physical human beauty and this might not be PC but that's okay it's it's true this is you know this is what this is what for example the the the nursery rhyme Goldilocks and the three bears that's what it's trying to teach children that that there's a there's a standard for beauty so if you if you look at the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam for example who is the epitome of physical beauty right he was of medium height right not too not too tall not too short right so that you know what's known as sort of the Goldilocks arrange his skin was not too dark not too pale his hair was not you know it wasn't curly it wasn't straight but more wavy right his build wasn't you know he wasn't overweight he wasn't too thin but something in the middle but he also had other qualities that are viewed probably cross-culturally as being beautiful qualities in men for example long eyelashes he had very broad shoulders large forearms large calves right he had an aquiline nose which is highly desirable across different different cultures okay so so there's there's there's this objective standard of physical beauty so with respect to the Quran then this intuitive sort of I feel it approach did not work for many Sunni scholars right so people were definitely intuiting the Quran's beauty there's no doubt about that people were definitely intuiting the beauty but scholars wanted to know why exactly that was happening right just as if you if you saw the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam right you would be overcome overwhelmed by his beauty and you can tell me why you were overcome you specifically tell me why he was so so beautiful okay now now before we get to that popular among Sunni متكلمون right so like this scholastic or discursive theologians was what could be called circumstantial evidence so circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference or deduction to connect it to a factor conclusion in other words indirect evidence like fingerprints out of crime scene as opposed to like direct evidence as opposed to like an eyewitness who saw an actual crime right so the متكلمون mentioned two pieces of circumstantial evidence so number one they say the Arabs had reached the peak of their language in 7th century Arabia right the Hejaz and the late Antiquity was the height of Arabic poetry was their pride and joy right they had the seven hanging oats right المعلقات السبع at the annual festival at a town called Rukav just outside of Mecca the Arab poets would have taken the challenge of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم very very very seriously they had ample motives for taking up the challenge with overwhelming enthusiasm I mean the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he was denouncing their gods he was condemning aspects of their culture he was claiming prophecy right however they broke their their custom of normal behavior they broke their custom of normal behavior and persecuted and fought against the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم so this fact supports the notion that they immediately recognize the superiority of the Quran and simply knew that they couldn't answer the challenge so this piece of circumstantial evidence supports the Sunni position of the Quran's internal incapacitating mechanism okay or maybe they tried to imitate the Quran right you hear the Quran you think this is beautiful and they thought to themselves we can rival this it's kind of like when when you watch an expert calligrapher and he makes it look so easy and you think well I can do that this looks easy right then you try to do it and you it's not even close so maybe they tried to imitate the Quran but yet they failed consistently and collectively so this kind of supports the مرتزلي position of an external incapacitating a mechanism in a verse that supports this position it's Allah سبحانه وتعالى says وإذا تطلع عليهم آياتنا قالوا قد سميعنا لو نشاءوا لقلنا مثل هذا when when our signs are rehearsed to them they say indeed we have heard it and if we wanted we could say the like of that we could say the likes of it as well right so قادي عيات he mentions he has a section in in in his book on the and the اعجاز and he says that there was a poet in يحيا ابن حكم الغزال who was the foremost of the poets in Andalusia and he wanted to create something like سورة الإخلاص so we began to work on it and then he says suddenly an incredible sense of terror came over me it moved me to regret and repentance okay so that's the first piece of circumstantial evidence is that is that the Arabs it appears that the Arabs just they immediately immediately began to persecute the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم rather than what would have been expected of them to take the challenge of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم very very seriously and attempt to answer the challenge and then eventually of course the greatest living Arab poets all of them became Muslim all of them eventually confessed to the quran superiority whether it's حسان ابن الثابت or عبد الله ابن الرواحة كاب ابن الزوهير even the great لبيد ابن ربيع all of them at some point through their hands into the air and said that we cannot even come close to anything like this and then the second piece of indirect evidence is that the quran has since not been successfully imitated okay and and several modern Arab Christians have attempted to do this and their attempts are their attempts have been laughingly pathetic and so nothing even comes close so then the two points the two pieces then of indirect evidence just to recap or that the Arabs at the time could not produce its likeness right the greatest poets became Muslim and the Arabs since that time have not produced its likeness now many so many medieval so many theologians were not satisfied with this type of indirect evidence primarily because the more tazili could also argue these points to support the surfa that the quran has and an external incapacitating a mechanism so they sought direct evidence of the quran's اعجاز and they believe that this could be done from a literary standpoint okay so the three major classical Sunni authorities who undertook this task were called the Abu Bakr الباقي لاني right his book is called اعجاز القرآن you have عبد القاهر الجورجاني دلائل العجاز او اسرار البراغة and then you have ابن جزي الكلبي and his book اتسهيل الانومي التنزيل okay الباقي لاني الجورجاني الكلبي now according to these classical Sunni علماء it is unique stylistics what are called اصالب unique stylistics and unmatched eloquence بلاغة which is at the seat of the quran's اعجاز so by unmatched eloquence they mean that the quran is objectively more eloquent than the poets okay so like Musa عليه السلام he confounded the sorcerers with his white magic it was objectively superior objectively more powerful عيسة عليه السلام confounded the physicians and healers of his day with his ability to heal people his quote unquote medicine the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم then confounded the poets اشعر of his day with his style and eloquence so with respect to eloquence what makes a speaker more eloquent than others so his superior choice of words and his clear and concise communication okay this is what makes his words more powerful more interesting more motivating more persuasive and more memorable i.e. more impactful so eloquent speakers make an impact على قراء and mind okay so let's start with الباقيلاني so الباقيلاني he said that the style the أسلوب of the Qur'an defies classification right it has unclassifiability as he puts it in other words it broke the custom of the existing literary norms that were known to the Arabs at that time so the خرق of the عادات right the breach of of what is customary was not only external to the texts with this initial sort of Arab reaction to the text to fight the Prophet but it was preeminently internal to the text right the Qur'an's unique you know abnormal uncustomary style and the Qur'an is an amazingly eloquent and and masterful fusion fusion of of of poetry in prose right with with incredible rhetoric as well okay and there's there's actually no record of any poet at the time of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم actually answering the challenge the Qur'an is in an ocean of rhetoric I mean sometimes the college student will feel good if he uses one or two sort of rhetorical devices in a in a research paper the Qur'an is just it's full of hundreds and hundreds of rhetorical devices an ocean of rhetoric so it's miracle was the creation of a new unidentifiable an inadmissible genre of expression okay the Qur'an style is sui generous right which means it's in a class of its own totally outside human forms of literature okay so it may include familiar rhetorical elements like استعارة and مبالغة like metaphor and hyperbole and like simile but only to assimilate them into this unclassifiable otherness البقلاني compares the آيات of the Qur'an he compares them to the أبياد of the عشعار the verses of the greatest of the Arab poets and he points out that the Qur'an has no weak verses no verse in the Qur'an can be improved rhetorically whereas all poems have a weak verse here and there right for example like to be or not to be that is the question that's from Shakespeare's Hamlet no improvement is possible there right but there are some verses that can be improved so البقلاني says that all جهلي all جهلي poets some of their lines can be improved whereas nothing of the Qur'an can be improved so so the Arabs could not find a literary form to which the Qur'an corresponded they were just sort of scratching their heads right and this is evident in the Qur'an itself right is this is this is this is this poetry right is this is this is this magic is this is this is this a type of like fortune telling or or sooth saying because the Diviners right the fortune tellers the the Qur'an they would they would speak their sort of predictions in something called which is rhymed rhymed prose in the Qur'an is not exactly it's transcended it's it's different it's unique they would are these sort of fictional tales of the ancients أساتير الأولين right they couldn't identify the Qur'an's literary form okay um so that's الباقي لاني now out of جر جاني he seeks to map out a definitive paradigm for understanding the Qur'an in the middle of eloquence so he down plays intuition and subjective responses he also downplay a circumstantial evidence uh as a testimony to the Qur'an's in admitability and he sets out to establish the case on purely literary grounds okay um so he argues that the Arabs they were initially dazzled and struck into wonderment by the Qur'an which your جاني uses the Arabs initial reaction as a proof against the صرفة right their their reaction wasn't that's nice but we can do that no of other bewildermint right even his sham relates the story of ألواليد even مورا arguably the greatest living poet at the time that he was absolutely awestruck by the Qur'an of the Prophet صلى الله عليه عليه وقم and he went back to his people and he said this conquers and destroys everything that came before of poetry and then he said to the people as well to the Qur'an she said this is not his regular speech this is something else and then you know peer pressure got to him and eventually كaved in and his story is told in the Qur'an for در جاني the Qur'an's style composition arrangement of words and eloquence is beyond human capacity and like باقلاني he he demonstrates this by comparing various poems written by the greatest of the Arab poets with the with the ayat of the Qur'an and concludes that the latter are objectively superior okay and then finally ابن جزي الكلبي he said that the Qur'an إعجاز has 10 elements number one it's eloquence is above any human speech you can say here that it's impact right it's impact for better or worse right like the Qur'an says وإذ ذكرت ربكة في القراني وحدة واللو على أدباره نفورة that when you when you mention your Lord in the Qur'an the oneness of your Lord in the Qur'an they turn they turn back in a version and this is a question it's an interesting question that sometimes we get is if the Qur'an is if the Qur'an is so eloquent then why didn't all of the Arabs believe in it as a divine revelation why didn't Abu Jahl for example believe it was a divine revelation well first and foremost the Qur'an is calling to a moral life it's calling towards a certain type of life right a certain type of ethic okay so if if people don't want to want to change their lives it doesn't matter how beautiful or how eloquent the message is they're not going to believe in it they're not going to to follow it okay the very sound of the Qur'an raptures non-Arab and non-Muslims as well قدي عياد relates in his book that it's reported that Christians heard the Qur'an that began to weep so you said that several people several people died when they heard the Qur'an of the Qur'an I'll tell you this from experience my college roommate who was a Catholic I played the Qur'an for him in the car recitation by Sa'ad Al-Ramidi of Surat Yusuf and he just kind of sat there and he was he had a strange look on it and he was literally awestruck by it and he told me later that he just he was thinking about it and he eventually ended up making his Shahada a few days later and he said one of the one of the the key moments pivotal moments that led him to that decision was was just hearing the Qur'an there are actually dozens and dozens of Qur'an reaction videos on YouTube by the way some of these have millions of views okay Christians atheists agnostics listening to the Qur'an you see people's jaws drop they start weeping profusely you know this guy he let his little baby listen to the Qur'an his baby stopped crying you know I asked one of my teachers about this and he said this is because their tongues are Ajami but their hearts are Arabic right the heart the soul understands what the mind can't right it's and it speaks to the fitra this is the word of God it speaks to the human being so so definitely you know these people are intuitive something about the Qur'an and that's and that's very very apparent so that's number one it's eloquence is above human speech and then he says the unique arrangement of the ayat in the Suwar right like the structure of the Qur'an at the micro and macro levels so if you look at something for example one ayat ayat to the Qur'an if you look at this ayat and break it down it's a Kayasmus it has sort of a concentric composition but this is also true if you look at for example a larger Suwar look at Al-Baqara there's a book written by I believe Raymond Farron on Surah to Al-Baqara he says the entire Surah is has a symmetry to the entire Surah 286 verses Michelle Kaipur is another these are non-Muslim scholars of the Qur'an you can call them Oriental if you want but phenomenal work they're doing he did a book on Surah to Al-Ma'ida Michelle Kaipur's where he he looks at the incredible composition and in symmetry of Surah to Al-Ma'ida and of course in our tradition as well you have people like Islahi and Al-Farahi coherence in the Qur'an looking at the coherence looking at the composition I mean this is just sort of something that is getting off the ground and nowadays I mean there's going to be a lot of literature coming out of the academy at least there should be on this topic so the unique arrangement of the Ayat and the Surah of course Fakhredin al-Razi writes about this as well number three he says Al-Kalbi says Juza Ibn Jaze Al-Kalbi the incapacitation of the Arabs to produce something similar at that time as well as thereafter number four the stories of the Qur'an which could not have been known to the Prophet say As-Salaam where you say maybe he knew about the Exodus and like the flood of the deluge but there are things in the Qur'an that could not have been known it's specialized knowledge like from Talmudic tradition right that these are things that are known through initiatic chains of transmission passed down from like rabbi to student rabbi to student how does he know those things number five the predictions of the Qur'an that came true like the defeat of the Persians within a few years number six the perfect theological orthodoxy espoused by the Qur'an the towed of Allah restored and refined right Imam al-Razi says as-Sirat al-Mustafim which is between تشبيه of the Christians and the تعتي of the Jews right the confirmation of the وحدانية and أحدية of Allah سبحانه وتعالى rejection of تثبيث rejection of the trinity right the perfect theological orthodoxy number seven the superior أحكام and أخلاق the laws and morals espoused by the Qur'an it's prescribed orthopraxis as well as it's what's known as trajectory hermeneutics with respect to its laws that the Qur'an is clearly is moving toward the abolition of slavery I mean that's it's very very clear I think if you if you engage with the Qur'an and you gauge with the sunnah I mean Islam initially abolished all forms of slavery except through war I mean people in a jahali time if someone owed you money you can make them there you can make them your slave you can just go and raid a town unprovoked not as not not as a a defense sort of maneuver not as a as a what's known as a a preeminent strike but but just just going and raiding a town and taking people with slaves so all of these were abolished in Islam except except through war it's called the it's not called it's not called it's not called right it's more of a type of indentured servitude and the purpose was to re to reintegrate really people into the society at large but one can make a strong argument that the Qur'an is moving towards the total abolition of slavery that's called trajectory hermeneutics preemptive strike that's what I was trying to say earlier number eight the divinely or providentially preserved text of the Qur'an right that that there are ten قراءات of the Qur'an all of them are multiply attested you know you find these you know videos made by Christians and this version of the the Duri Qur'an is different than the Haftan you know it's so they conclude that the Qur'an has not been preserved they don't know the basis they don't know the foundations of the Qur'an that there are ten قراءات of the Qur'an all of them are multiply attested all of them have chains of transmission that go back to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and these are the same all around the world for fourteen centuries number nine the ease by which the Qur'an is memorized this is incredible we have ten year old her father of the Qur'an وَلَقَد يَسَرْنَا الْقُرْانَ نِذِكَد the Qur'an says we have made this Qur'an easy to memorize and of course number ten and finally the incredible polyvalence of the text of the Qur'an that it is multi-layered in its meaning as well as the fact that the reader never tires of reading the text year after year decade after decade so these are just some of the things that I wanted to mention about the incredible uniqueness of our scripture of the Qur'an and you know we should be engaged with the Qur'an on a daily basis this is something that is commanded in the Qur'an فلا يتدبرون القرآن تدبر of the Qur'an means to really penetrate the meanings of the Qur'an but not just the meanings not just memorizing but engaging in a deep level studying the Qur'an its relevance in the world today understanding that there's two types of discourse in the Qur'an there's two types of خيطاب there's a khitab of تكليف and a khitab of ودع there's a situational discourse of the Qur'an that may affect some of its أحكم depending on circumstances so this is a very deep study that we need to engage in that is now becoming necessary for more and more people because the Qur'an is constantly under attack so I pray that الله سبحانه وتعالى accepts our fasting in our prayers I accept that الله سبحانه وتعالى I pray that الله سبحانه وتعالى accepts everything we do for his sake and to purify our intentions may Allah سبحانه وتعالى bless all of you have a good Eid and we'll see you soon إن شاء الله وصد الله صلى محمد ولا آله وسهل وصندما الحمد لله وبالعالمين السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته