Tafseer Masterclass.....

  I launched my tafseer website, [ http://tafseerkoran.blogspot.com/ ], in September 2011, incorporating some useful tafseer work on the utube and the internet by scholars and enthusiastic daei, young and old , across the globe under one website. I was inspired by Muhammad Asad and while I have been surfing on tafseer work for years, I notice that there exist a niche to bring them all to my avid readers under one collective website. I must reiterate I am just a compiler, not having the necessary scholarship nor the academic background and zuhudness to contribute to the content. Just a humble compiler. May Allah, the All Knowing, the Merciful, in His ultimate wisdom, judges me correctly, insyaallah.

   Starting a few months back I started sending my 'dirty' emails to friends, and friends of friends, to enhance more global  and local knowledge in the Qur'an. I started with surah muqaddam and have now graduated to Surah An Nisa. Al Hamdullillah, the class has not been entirely quiet. Oftentimes it can get boisterous as you can see here in this present class studying surah An Nisa, thanks to a few brilliant 'students' who make class very lively indeed! :







..................................

Friends,

http://tafseerkoran.blogspot.com/2012/10/surah-nisa-4-15-28.html

    Worldly duties weighed heavily upon him. Some simple people from  Yemen came to Medina, and when they listened to the reader in the mosque chanting the Qur'an, tears fell from their eyes. " We were like that once," he said, " but our hearts have grown harder since." But not his heart. At night he would go into the city to seek the destitute and the oppressed, listening with untiring patience to their troubles. On one occasion, in the hut of a poor blind widow, he met 'Umar, who had come independently on the same errand. The two great men, moulders of a new world of openness to the Divine and of the human order, one of them soon to be engaged in world conquest, squatted side by side in the widow's hut. They thought that this was what rulership meant in Islam. What else could it possibly mean?

  Like the palm tree. Abu Bakr was soon cut down. After bathing incautiously on a cold morning, he developed a fever and became gravely ill. The people wanted to send for a physician, but he knew his time had come: " He has already visited me," he said, meaning the divine Physician. On his deathbed he received a message from Khalid Ibnu Walid, commander on the Persian frontier, asking for reinforcements. " Do not delay," he told 'Umar, " If I die- as I think- this day, do not wait till evening; If I linger till night, do not wait till morning. Do not let sorrow for me divert you from the service of Islam and the business of your Lord."

   He died soon after, in August AD 634, aged sixty three, and 'Umar was chosen to succeed him.

Charles Le Gai Eaton

excerpt from " Islam And The Destiny Of Man "

....a bloody good read ! a difficult one too !

Innalillah hiwainna ilaihirojiun, to both the MAS jet disappearance, and earlier to DSAI's failed appeal.

Both are 'acts' of God. The former, inevitable but the later, also inevitable, a circus we have let ourselves fall into  as our collective " hearts have grown harder since."

People, men and women, unashamedly falling on their knees and palms fighting for bits and pieces of that thing called 'power', disregarding all sense of shamelessless, accountability and integrity. Congratulations! We have come a long  way from the days of 'Umar and Abu Bakr

Enjoy your tafseer masterclass

nik howk

........................................

From: hamzah@cempaka.edu.my
To: drnikisahak@hotmail.com

Back to basics, Doc Nik, why does God allow such such awful tragedies to innocent passengers as on MH 730 to happen? Why do bad things happen to good, innocent people?

...............................................................

On 9 Mar 2014 07:32, "Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah" <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dato,

wow Dato i do not expect this simple elementary question from an educated chap like you  and at your age! It is like the classic, " If God is exist , why does He take my Grand Ma? " type of question......

But i will try to be simple since you i assume are just pulling my leg....you already know the answer unless you have been taking too much cheese in your UK days!!

Put your goodself in the position of the  CEO and undisputed owner of the universe which span trillions of galaxies, and ever expanding..

You know every cell that mutate at any point in time, any leave that fall in the forest in the dark of the night, any sperm that meet an ovum in the darkness of all fallopian tubes

You even own time , not just space..[.and I dont mean Time.com ]

You own 6 billion souls, living in this world and billion other that have been 'frozen still' waiting for 'yaumiddin'.

             To you, in your Arash, in a dimension beyond dimensions, in a space beyond space, nothing 
              encapsulate you. Time is your invention and 'makluk.'Yesterday, today and tomorrow
              already happened and unfold like a tapestry to you in your Loth Mahfuz.

             Man, beginning with the primodial Adam, is and was your last of your 'makluk'.

               How would you rate these billions of souls, if you do not  test them?

You give some of them cancer scares, death by air plane crashes and bankcruptcies and heartbreaks....mostly heartbreaks.

                For most you give them abject poverty and to your surprise you find them handling it with                    
                dignity and sabr
                For some you give them high scholarship and knowledge in your SOP's and most 'sell' them
                for pittance                      

For the lucky very few , you give them istanas and power and see how they behave, and in most instances, they invariably failed very miserably.

And yet for some you give them mutilated bodies from birth and see how they take them.

                To make the picture complete you also throw some Tsunamis or two. Of course the  
                engineers and scientists amongst them attributed these to those craps called geographical                
                'faults' that you also throw in, as a red-herring, to show that you are a 'scientific' god.

You give them SOP's to follow and also for guidance,

and you also have mechanism to rate them as well.

Nothing very complicated

The Malays and Arabs call it 'taqwa'

Then when Yaumiddin did arrive, true to you being merciful and just, you let them see their books. Those whom you deemed passed with flying colours you give them through their right hands, the ones who failed, from their left or the back.

nik howk

..............................................................





 Subject: RE: Let Us Get back To Basic....Surah An Nisa
From: hamzah@cempaka.edu.my
To: drnikisahak@hotmail.com


Dr Nik,

Another simple and elementary set of questions to elicit some wisdom from Dr. Nik Howk's intellect:

1. Since God is Prescient and All - Knowing He would,  by definition, already know how we will respond to, and how many marks we will score, in the challenges of His tests and sop. So why go through it?

2. If if is a test of Free Will, does it not demolish the concept of Predestination?

3. How do you respond to the question of Regression?
This is linked to the principle of First Cause so beloved of Catholic theologians.

4. If Moses was a prophet, Nabi Musa, how is that the Torah made no mention of Heaven or Hell? (Jahweh the Jewish God spent a lot of time teaching about the conduct of life, but also commanded the Hebrews to massacre rival tribes (e.g. the Malakites) in ways modern morality would consider cruel and inhuman.) Indeed, nor did Jesus (Nabi Isa). It was Saint Paul (his original Jewish name was Saul) and, later, Saint Augustine who developed that concept.

No doubt these are elementary questions for you to hit for six runs. 


Hamzah

..........................................................

 To: hamzah@cempaka.edu.my
CC: jublintan65@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: Let Us Get back To Basic....Surah An Nisa
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2014 23:03:43 +0800

Dato,

I would not do  justice to such a challenge if I answer you right on. We can be at it for days!

I, myself, have been searching for  years for a definitive answer to the philosophical riddles that you have thus raised. It took me thirty years until I stumble on Dr Shaykh Muktar al Magrhoui, a double Phd in electrical engineering and physics. He is Moroccan by birth, a graduate from Syracuse university and now an imam of a mosque in USA.

He will take a good 4 hours of your life if you have the patience but it is all worth it. What you raised is not small matter. It impinges on our aqidah and our ability to aceive future stillness of hearts. 
I suggest you listen hard , and if possible 3 to 4 times over.
You will like his ' flat 2 dimensional universe ' analogy, and the three dimensional heart surgeon operating on a 'flat 2 dimensional patient in a flat 2 dimensional universe hospital' !

http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/01/divine-decree-qada-wal-qadar.html

As for me now, I will end on a philosophical note and paraphrase what the late British philosopher, Bertrand Russel,  said when asked about life: " Life is a stage...We are the actors".
Or was it Shakespeare?

Of course there is an Islamic bent to it

What type of actor?

An actor that aims to follow HIS SOP's, get HIS blessing  and rahmat and end up in His paradise, if possible in Jannatul Firdaus, the highest of the highest, insyaallah.

Failing which, at worse, get my taubat accepted, and  I  would not mind sitting at the paradisal door knocking for another million years!

nik howk

.......................................................

from Nadzru Azhari, prospecting for oil somewhere in the Sulu Sea.

This 'student ' is soo good with his Arabic, he has been known to be able to sell sand to the Libyans!

During Muammar Ghaddafy's time of course

Nik Hock,

I have a simpler first principles response to share with you. God is not in the business of changing the laws of physics with his creation and in his revelation. As Prof Quraish Shihab said, God is so down to earth that he manifests his acts in simple physics and his message in simple language. He created the law of seismology and got 250,000 pious muslims of Aceh dead, not on comfortable hospital beds with soliloquy and prayer recitals on nightly vigil , but in very 'cruel' salt water inundation. In so doing he created enough geophysical faults and plate movements that make oil and gas available and minerals pushed to the surface to serve the remainder that did not get killed, for generations,creating great economics and civilisation for his Quran to be useful and relevant. God in his character of 'rahman' and 'raheem' discapables himself from perpetuating cruelty and his has no other hidden cruel character undeclared agenda and unbeknowest to mankind. Fortunately God also has a law of ' mitigation and prevention' of murderous laws of physics. It is the laws of physics itself. A phenomenon of physics has it own inhibitor and mitigator. God does not make mankind incapable of learning how. In the case of the Aceh tsunami, perhaps a thick barricade of the simple mangrove would have been sufficient. Hence do not blame him in the Courts since he already forewarned us, planteth not the mangrove brush and the mighty waves will reach you. God also does not keep a battalion of Jins to fly on Alibaba's carpets to hold the MH aircraft in the air, if its mechanical system failed. He tells us top get good maintenance and good aviation practice. God did not even sent an army of Jins to save the Ottoman Empire! The Empire collapsed by the summum bonum of socio-political science failure. I like this simplicty and in HIM I do believe and unto HIM I shall return, full satisfied with his physics primers.


Wassalaam

Nadzru

..............................................

Dato Hamzah and Nadzru,

I know you guys are just pulling my legs.

You guys are just acting devil advocates , on behalf of two already untenable positions in life.

Firstly, the Richard Dawkin- Christopher Hithens rather agnostic position, proposed by Dato is no longer defensible vis a vis modern science. Evolution is no longer discussed in polite scientific circles, fullstop.

[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/03/secular-and-sublime-perspective-from.html ]

AS for Nadzru, I do agree with you that we have a scientific God, lording over the universe. And you assessment is fair We have here a very scientific God indeed. He set up the parameters for everything under the Arash, the physical laws governing the  atoms and molecules, the wind, the seas, in fact all elements of nature as well as the moral laws and their sequalae; get the 'Pen' to write up everything that need to be written in Loth Mahfuz,  then say, 'Kun Fayakun'..[ Be ], and Lo and behold there was the Big Bang! And things goes on forever on autopilot, following all the parameters already set up.

Your God, Nadzru, sounds like a Chief Engineer of sort  who having set up all the parameters, took a first class plane ticket to Maldive for a long holiday!!

I am sure you both know better but were just being dramatic here, to just test my mantle.

Our  God definitely is a very scientific god , Islam being sent to down to debunk superstitions and falsehoods, in the 1st place.

Allah, The Most High, The Most Merciful, Al Fattah, Al Razak, Al Ghanniyu, Al Khabir, Al Alim, Al Khaliq,

Al Mutakkabbir, Ya Zaljala liwal ikram. 

He administers the universe from divine milisecond to divine milisecond.[ Whatever it mean]....be..be ..be ..be..be be and be...and the universe goes on. He is always there for us.

From our perspective, in our 'world view', there are cause and effect.

Newton drops and apple, it will fall down.

It just don't fall down simply, as Nadzru will certainly ascertained, it falls down with a known G force.

I put a scarpel on my patient's chest, and do the incision, he bleeds.

Nadzru digs deep enough on the surface of the sea, oil gushes out, with the proviso he did his geophysical due diligence carefully. 

Cause and effect, 99.9 per cent of the time, to the point we take things for granted.

We, modern men, take these for granted, we forget our prayers and doa.

As a result, we sees Tsunamis and earthquakes only as geographical faults and the accident of time.

Our hearts and souls are hardened.

From His perspective, who owns TIME and Space, who is beyond dimensions, it is just be..be ..be .. be and be.....

He is not just a Chief Engineer on a long leave.
He is a personal god 

He answers your prayer and doa.
But He expects you to "tie the camel and only then pray, and doa to Him"
The problem with modern man now is we are too arrogant.
We invariably tied our 'camels', but
omitted the prayer, supplications and the doa.....

This way, our qalbs and hearts remained disconnected with Him,

but yet in a well known tradition, we are told that,He is nearer to us than our very own jugular.
Allah and His Rasul always want us to be in a state of supplication and doa.
It will guarantee you sweetness of iman.

Allahualam.

Nik Howk

ps : please do listen to Mukhtar al Magrhoui

[  http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/01/divine-decree-qada-wal-qadar.html  .. read about al jabariah and al kadariah ]

Surah al Baqarah : The Opening Gambit....

Surah Al-Baqara
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Alif. Lam. Mim. (1) This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil). (2)

Who believe in the Unseen, and establish worship, and spend of that We have bestowed upon them; (3)

And who believe in that which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter. (4)

These depend on guidance from their Lord. These are the successful. (5) As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn

them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. (6) Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts,

and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom. (7) And of mankind are some who say: We believe in Allah

and the Last Day, when they believe not. (8) They think to beguile Allah and those who believe, and they beguile none save themselves; but they perceive not. (9)

In their hearts is a disease, and Allah increaseth their disease. A painful doom is theirs because they lie. (10)

And when it is said unto them: Make not mischief in the earth, they say: We are peacemakers only. (11)

Are not they indeed the mischief-makers ? But they perceive not. (12)

And when it is said unto them: believe as the people believe, they say: Shall we believe as the foolish believe?

Beware! They indeed are the foolish? But they know not. (13)

And when they fall in with those who believe, they say: We believe; but when they go apart to their devils

they declare: Lo! we are with you; verily we did but mock. (14)

Allah (Himself) doth mock them, leaving them to wander blindly on in their contumacy. (15)

These are they who purchase error at the price of guidance, so their commerce doth not prosper, neither are they guided. (16)

Their likeness is as the likeness of one who kindleth fire, and when it sheddeth its light around

him Allah taketh away their light and leaveth them in darkness, where they cannot see, (17)

Deaf, dumb and blind; and they return not. (18)

Pickthal's tranlation of Surah al Baqarah, 2 : 1- 18

I love Surah al Baqarah

One of the many reasons is that :

 its opening gambit in its 1st 18 ayat always frightened the hell out of me,

the ayatul kursi [ 254] come very useful when I am alone in the forest , before I sleep, or when I feel I need the 'al Ghaiba' protection.

The last three ayat of the surah , [ 284-286 ] ,I read it most times in my solat, my favourite in fact,  because it always reminded me  and sums up  my unequal relationship

with HIM, a fairly balanced combination of fear, awe and everlasting hope...

It is however the 1st 18 ayat that make me lose a lot of sleep.

2 ayat on believers, 2 on the outright kuffar and omg !, something like 12 on people like most of us... Many will take exception of the word 'most of us' that I used here.

'The neither here nor there' people, of what George W Bush [ he is probably drunk most time on his Texas farm now ] put famously as, 'ARE YOU WITH ME OR ARE YOU AGAINST ME.

Yes, are you with HIM, or are you not with HIM ?....God may ask

The top guns amongst us wheel and deal 100 % of the time on riba.

The rest of us mere mortals have our car, housing and whatever loans on interest.

we think  full time material and secular thought.

Our visions and aspirations are mostly secular.

When we have disputes we have them settled by man-made laws.

We cannot think beyond Reid, at least in Malaysia.

It has even become ' pariah 'and uncivilised to even wonder about hudud or the sharia.

This political correctness has even crept in the local Muslim minds.

In some places in the world, one may even get 'droned', nuked or a UN resolution passed for outright  invasion, if one think sharia !

Just yesterday someone brought up a case in our courts that cross dressing is indeed a human right

Homosexuality and lesbianism are ok !

To not want to accept now is no longer tenable in the public sphere

Zikr, fikr, solat, alms and doa are now dinausaurs in our day to day lives

And if we do, there are obvious lack of presence

Our children, blinded by 24 hours of astro and video games, we do not know what go on in their tiny weeny brains.

Right now seem to be inordinately wrong, and wrong become obviously right.

Deaf, dumb and blind; and they return not.........

remember that in a time before time, this conversation took place :

'alastu biRabbikum?'..am I not your lord ?

'balaa shahidna'....yes! of course You are....!

and now sadly, Deaf, dumb and blind; and we return not.........

Nik Howk

.........................................................................................

 Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:23:01 +0800
From: kdin63@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: al baqarah...opening gambit.
To: drnikisahak@hotmail.com

a friend made a comment why the word gambit was used for  surah al-baqarah..he associated the word to a chess game...

 ..........................................

But why not ?

I was  a chess player in my younger Malay College days and I liked to start most games defensively by adopting moves known in the business as 'Sicilian Defence'.

Not an aggressive way to start a game certainly, defence moves made all  around the 'King' in place right from the beginning.

Allah chose to start al baqarah right away touching the jugular: the al munafikuns !!!!  

Allah could open up His Divine Letters to us in any way He likes...He could discuss apples and orange, night and day,seasons of the year etc and etc

But He chose to address the issue of believers, unbelievers and al munafukuns rightaway at the opening surah 2 !

foretelling us that at the end of time almunafikuns will form the great majority of us, Muslims......

of course  the great majority of us are believers !........but 'separuh, separuh'.

One prof even sees it fit to want to reinterpret the quran so that it can brought in line with the  current western philosophical thots and practice.
[ Tariq Ramadan, http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2012/08/muddle-and-puddle-within-islam.html ]

Nik Howk

..............................................................


Subject: Re: al baqarah...opening gambit.
From: aisyalam@hotmail.com
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:41:18 +0800
To: drnikisahak@hotmail.com

Who believe in the Unseen---Muhammad Asad's tafsir has it as---Who believe in the realm of that which is beyond human comprehension---so much wider in meaning and necessarilly refers to the limitations of the human intellect---something that Prof. and others like him should take heed of in wanting to re-interprete the Holy Qur'an---according to their desires. Has not Allah swt told us that of knowledge He has given us just a little bit?

Adam

......................................................



Adam,

What kept me awake and frighten the hell out of me all day whenever i approach surah al baqarah is the fact that in nabi's time the issue of al munafikun only arose at the time of the occasional ' roll-call ' to the war-front, defending against the invading kuffar army of Makkah. Then the likes of Abdullah bin Ubays et al came to the  fore,with their excuse, their misgivings, and  notably,their MC's !!

Otherwise things are pretty cool in downtown Medina : the Jews keeping to themselves on the fringe, the Ansars and the Muhajirins going about their daily 'cari makan' business peacefully, and the souks, I would imagine , as busy as could  be, like Chow Kit Road  in  KL in 2012. Al Munafikun remained inside the 'hearts' not something that could be seen. All joined nabi in prayers......

Now, in our time  jihad is no longer fashionable. In fact I would not be surprised that in a few years time UN would even  literally ban the word from our daily active vocab.

Rohinghas can die by thousands in Burma,

Chechens could still continue to be slaughtered by Putin for decades,

Palestinians can continue to be treated worse than dogs,

and NATO and America can go in and out of any 'Muslim' country at every opportunity for a variety of rhyme and reasons,

and we the ummah unwittingly enjoy the show on Aljazera, CNN, CNBC and BBC and continue to think it is OK. ' We are the problem that need to be solved' !

From another perspective, I just wonder in my heart of heart whether our flip flopping and dragging the legs on hudud and sharia in our muslim majority country;

our inability to rid from our lives the complete stranglehold of riba, capitalism and secularism;

our utter lack of presence in our daily prayers, solat, fikr and zikr;

our scholars and ulama's insipid and inconsequencial presence on the scene;

whether all of the above constitute 'treasonable' acts big enough to constitute the title of 'al munafikun'.....or worse ?

All these kept me awake all night, thinking......

I am scared.
I am scared that  I will not be counted as one of those who will  be allowed to go back to our original paradisal state.

Even the late dr israr, the great Pakistani thinker of our time, after Iqbal,[ utube below] was avoiding this rather sensitive issues I brought up above in his short  3-hour discourse on the opening gambit on al Baqarah.

nik howk

part 1  :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drTC6BV0vrc

part 2  :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpWhfYEVfUQ&feature=relmfu

part 3  :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21EXoE7FLMA&feature=relmfu

PS : 
Guest Editorial : Letter to Tony Blair
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/09/an-al-quds-day-letter-to-tony-blair-from-lauren-booth-in-iran/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+intifada-palestine%2FyTiY+%28Intifada+Palestine%29

Mishary Rashid al Afashy : [ surah 41 : 19- 36 ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcqFWr6h4qc&feature=player_embedded