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- Welcome to "Let the Quran Speak."
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We are looking at
misunderstood Quranic verses.
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With me is Dr. Shabir Ally.
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Dr. Shabir, welcome to
"Let the Quran Speak."
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- Pleasure to be on.
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- Dr. Shabir, the verse we are looking at
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is chapter eight verse 60.
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And it goes like this in English.
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And prepare for them what
you can of strength of arms
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and horses tethered for battle,
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frightening thereby the
enemy of God and your enemy,
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and others besides them whom you know not.
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God knows them.
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Whatsoever you spend in the way of God
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shall be paid unto you in full.
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And you shall not be wronged.
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So what's so misunderstood,
Dr. Shabir, about this verse?
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- Well, a couple of things.
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First, the idea of preparing power.
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The verse is, (speaks Arabic),
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so prepare whatever power you can muster,
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and then it adds, (speaks
Arabic), and war horses,
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and then it says, (speaks Arabic),
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by which to frighten the
enemy of God and your enemy.
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So a couple of things
are misunderstood here.
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One is that the first phrase says,
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prepare whatever power you can muster.
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Now in the classical
commentaries of the Quran,
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naturally they talked about
whatever seemed to them
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like to be the tools
and equipment for war.
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So they talked about having
good arrows, for example.
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Now, in our modern times,
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we wouldn't just talk
about the weapons of war,
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but we would talk about
the whole infrastructure.
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We talk about economic power,
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technological advancement
as a source of power
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in vis-a-vis, your enemies.
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So the power should not be limited
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to only military equipment
and definitely shouldn't be
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just the kinds of military equipment
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that were envisioned by
the scholars of the past.
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So we need, in looking at these verses,
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to get over the common cliche
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that we just have to understand the Quran
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as it was understood by
the people a long time ago.
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You know, they say, "as
the salaf understood it"-
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- 'Cause that's a common
thing that people say. Right?
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- Yes. It's (indistinct) about so much.
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You would think that's
the Quran statement-
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- Like they know what
the Quran actually means
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and we should follow them
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and their interpretation.
- Yes.
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So what I was going to
say, Safiyyah, is that,
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yeah, we start there.
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I mean, we have to start there.
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We have to see how they understood it,
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but we cannot stop there.
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That's where we begin our education,
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but we have to advance beyond that.
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And so yeah, they understood
it and they explained it
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the way it appeared to them at the time.
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But we have to advance in our learning
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and our expectation of the first-
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- And then don't take the
first literally too, right?
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Because, like it says horses,
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but it could mean a lot more than that.
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- Yes. When it said, (speaks Arabic),
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so this was the means,
by which you're going
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to move about swiftly
within, you know, the battle.
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But nowadays you might move with tanks
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and (indistinct), tanks,
which others are using.
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So we have to be advanced
in this sort of technology.
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Now, the last thing that
needs to be mentioned here is
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where it says to frighten the
enemy of God and your enemy.
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Now, some who are, you know,
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as furthering a terrorist agenda will say,
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"Oh, you see, the verse says
we should frighten them."
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And of course, one of the key aspects
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of a definition of terrorism
is that it is a way
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of sowing fear among the-
- Terrorizes.
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- By targeting civilians, you sow fear
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in order to advance a political agenda.
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So they say, "See, we are sowing the fear,
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because that's the what the Quran said."
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But what they're missing is
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that when the Quran spoke about this,
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the Quran was not encouraging Muslims
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to go and attack civilians
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or to attack anyone to begin with.
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What the Quran is saying here is simply is
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that if you amass the kinds of power
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that the Quran is
encouraging you to amass,
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well then the enemy will
not dare to attack you.
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They will be afraid to attack you.
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It's not that you should steer-
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- Proactively go out and attack-
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- Attacking them.
- Yes.
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- And it's unfortunate as
Dr. Elsayed Amin points out
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in his book, "Reclaiming Jihad:
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A Qur'anic Critique of Terrorism,"
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in modern times a word
had to be coined in Arabic
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to reflect the English war terrorism.
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And the word that was coined is irhab.
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Now, irhab is related to
this word, (speaks Arabic),
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the verb that is used
in this verse, right,
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eight verse number 60.
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But he remarks that this is unfortunate,
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because this word in the
Quran, like the root,
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when it's used widely in the Quran,
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it often has a positive
connotation as in the fear of God.
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And from this root, we get
ruhban, which means a monk.
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And the idea seems to be
that a monk is, you know,
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one who fears God, and
Rahbaniyah is monasticism
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as mentioned in the 57th
chapter of the Quran.
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And again, we have the idea of
monasticism being, you know,
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referring to that attitude
of being close to God
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and fearing God
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and of course being in
love with God as well.
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But the aspect of fear is there.
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So that word generally has
a positive connotation.
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Now, there's another word
in Arabic, (speaks Arabic)
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which means terror.
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And one could have coined
the term (speaks Arabic),
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which would've mean terrorism,
but that's not what they did.
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But even that word in
the Quran usually means
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that when the Muslims
confront the others in battle,
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God will sow fear into the
hearts of the opponents,
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and at the same time fortify
the hearts of the Muslims,
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so that the Muslims would have
the winning edge in battle.
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Now again, that is not
saying that Muslims should go
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and attack civilians or
go and attack others.
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It's just talking about what happens
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within the moments of battle.
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In short, this verse
has been misunderstood
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and we need to reclaim it
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as a first of the Quran
with a positive meaning.
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- Alright, we'll leave it at
that. Thank you, Dr. Shabir.
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- You're welcome.
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