Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director
Summary:
In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza lists 19 preconditions from the Quran that a person must fulfill to be allowed to understand it correctly, starting with the Contact Prayers, Zakat, belief and righteousness, and including sincerity, fearing God, listening and reading it regularly.
Video Transcript:
Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.
In the last Friday sermon, titled “What Does the Quran Really Say About Hadith,” I proved to you from the Quran that following Hadith is not a precondition to understanding, following or applying the Quran correctly. However, I also said that just because Hadith is not a precondition for understanding the Quran correctly, it does not mean that there are no other preconditions. In fact, the Quran does mention a number of preconditions which people need to fulfill so that they can be allowed by God to understand the Quran correctly, and in this video we will go over that list. Here it is.
The first precondition is doing the Contact Prayers, Salat. Verses 27:2 and 27:3 tell us that the Quran is guidance only for believers who do the Contact Prayers. So doing the Contact Prayers is a precondition to understanding the Quran correctly. The so-called Quranists look at this the wrong way around. They try to understand the Quran first, and then self-design a version of the Contact Prayer according to their limited understanding of the Quran. But you cannot understand from the Quran how to do the Contact Prayer correctly unless you are already doing the Contact Prayer correctly, because doing the Contact Prayer correctly is a precondition to understanding the Quran correctly, according to verses 2 and 3 of Sura 27 and verses 2 and 3 of Sura 2.
So doing the Contact Prayer is a precondition to understanding the Quran correctly, while the Quran is not a precondition to doing the Contact Prayer correctly. As we know, according to the Quran itself, the Contact Prayers existed before the Quran. They came to us all the way from Abraham. Now, it is possible to find all the details of the Contact Prayer directly from the Quran, and I will present them to you, God willing, in another video. But I was only able to find those details because I already understood the Quran correctly, which was only possible because I had already accepted to do the Contact Prayers in their full form, accepting them from the Abrahamic tradition, even before I found their details in the Quran.
So the correct process goes like this. First, you accept the Contact Prayers in their full, unchanged form from the Abrahamic tradition, which you can learn how to do in the video titled “Principles of Muslim Prayer” by Rashad Khalifa. Then, after you do that, according to verses 27:2-3 and 2:2-3, you are enabled to understand the Quran correctly. This fulfills the first precondition to understanding the Quran correctly.
The second precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is giving the obligatory charity, Zakat. The same logic applies here as with the Contact Prayers, and you can learn how to give the obligatory charity correctly in my video clarification titled “The Obligatory Charity (Zakat).”
The third precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is believing. Verses 27:2, 27:76-77, 17:82 and 41:44 tell us that the Quran is guidance only for those who believe, while at the same time it only increases the wickedness of the transgressors. Verse 41:44 also tells us that, whether the Quran is in Arabic or not, for those who believe it is a guide and healing, but those who disbelieve will be deaf and blind to it, as if they are being addressed from far away.
The fourth precondition is being righteous. Verse 2:2 says that the Quran is guidance for the righteous. By the way, the first four preconditions which I have mentioned so far are all given together, right towards the beginning of the Quran, at the start of Sura 2. Sura 2 starts by saying that the Quran is a scripture without mistakes, which is guidance for the righteous, those who believe in the unseen, observe the Contact Prayers, and give charity.
The fifth precondition is accepting the Quran in its entirety. Unfortunately, some people find it hard to accept some verses of the Quran, like the verses about war, or slavery, or miracles, or resurrection, or gender roles, and so on, and this actually limits their understanding of the other verses as well, the verses which they are willing to accept. The Quran is an interconnected book. You can only understand it correctly if you accept all of it.
The sixth precondition is seeking refuge in God from Satan the rejected before we read the Quran. Verse 16:98 says, “When you read the Quran, you shall seek refuge in God from Satan the rejected.”
The seventh precondition is believing in the Hereafter, in the next life. You cannot understand the Quran correctly if you do not believe in the Hereafter. Verse 17:45 says, “When you read the Quran, we place between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter an invisible barrier.”
The eighth precondition is not disregarding verses when they are brought to you. Verse 18:57 says, “Who are more evil than those who are reminded of their Lord’s proofs, then disregard them, without realizing what they are doing? Consequently, we place shields on their hearts to prevent them from understanding (the Quran), and deafness in their ears. Thus, no matter what you do to guide them, they can never be guided.”
The ninth precondition is not presupposing what the Quran will say. Verse 18:55 says that nothing prevented the people from believing when the guidance came to them, and from seeking the forgiveness of their Lord, except that they demanded to see the same as the previous generations. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not fulfill this precondition. Let me give you just one example. Some people today presuppose that the Quran says that the punishment for adultery is to stone the adulterer to death, which is actually a statement in Hadith, taken from the law in the Bible. Before the Quran was completely revealed to Muhammad, the biblical rules still applied. But the Quran is complete now, and we shouldn’t presuppose that it will tell us the same thing today. The Quran never tells us to kill an adulteress. Instead, the punishment for adultery in the Quran is 100 lashes. We shouldn’t presuppose what it will say about a certain issue unless it actually says it.
The tenth precondition is not engaging in arguments about what the Quran is saying. Unfortunately, today most of the online religious groups are organized in such a way that basically all they do is argue with one another, trying to convince each other to understand the Quran their own way. That’s not the way to understand the Quran. That method of organization actually prevents you from understanding something new from the Quran. You can solidify what you already knew, but it prevents you from correctly understanding anything new from the Quran. Group thinking prevents new thinking.
The eleventh precondition is fearing God. Verse 20:3 says that the Quran is a reminder for those who fear God. The same is said at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible: the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. That’s because, for any new information to be ingrained in your brain, the brain first has to decide that it’s important information to be remembered, and if the heart is fearing God, it automatically tells the brain that the information is important, and then the brain puts that information in its right place, to be remembered later. This is why you might have had hundreds of traffic accidents in a video game, and you probably don’t remember any of them, but if you had an accident in real life, where the fear of dying and meeting God was involved, you can’t forget that accident for the rest of your life. So when a perfect believer reads the Quran while fearing God, his brain, because of the fear of God, registers the information similarly to how the brain registers information before an accident.
The twelfth precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is not rushing with the Quran. If you try to absorb more information than you can handle at any given time, it gets jumbled and mixed up in your head, and it increases the chances of false memories. You might end up thinking that you remember something from the Quran which is not there at all, and then misunderstand other portions of the Quran because of that false memory.
The thirteenth precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is accepting translations of the Quran in your language, but expecting the complete details only in the Arabic Quran. Unfortunately, many people today go to the extremes on this issue. They either consider the translations the final authority in religious decisions, or they do not show enough trust in the translations. Translations of the Quran should be treated as witnesses of events. Two witnesses of an event make the event trustworthy for you, and in the same way, you can use two independent translations to figure out what the Arabic Quran very likely says, or you can use one translation in combination with proof, which is similar to using two translations. You can definitely know the truth from translations, but by the very fact that they are translations, they cannot have all the details. Verse 41:3 says that the complete details are only in the Arabic Quran, but the general truth, guidance and belief can also be found in translations of the Quran.
The fourteenth precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is listening when the Quran is recited. You cannot speak over the Quran, as they do in some so-called Quranic studies. You should not interrupt while the Quran is being recited and then expect to understand the Quran correctly. You are supposed to simply listen, according to verse 7:204.
The fifteenth precondition is taking heed when the Quran is recited. It’s important that when you learn something from the Quran, you absorb it into your life and apply it, and then that enables you to learn something new correctly. If you don’t take heed in the first case, it prevents you from understanding something new in another case.
The sixteenth precondition, obviously, is wanting to learn more. Verse 54:17 tells us that the Quran was made easy for those who want to learn. Unfortunately, a large number of so-called Muslims put their children in schools where they force them to learn the Quran in their childhood years, even when they do not want to. They end up memorizing it in their minds, but it’s not in their hearts.
The seventeenth precondition is being sincere. Verse 56:79 says that none can grasp the Quran except the sincere.
The eighteenth precondition is being knowledgeable. Verse 3:7 says that when it comes to the verses with deeper, multiple meanings, none knows their true meaning except God and those well founded in knowledge. Unfortunately, often people who have no proof in their lives that they are intelligent, who were never among the best at anything, not among the best at school, not among the best at finishing college, not among the best at their work, still think that they can be the best at understanding the Quran correctly. You don’t have to be the best, but you cannot be the best at understanding the Quran if you were not intelligent enough to be the best at other things earlier in your life, when you were tested on them.
And finally, the nineteenth precondition to understanding the Quran correctly is reading it regularly. Verse 17:106 says that the Quran was revealed slowly, to be read over a long period of time.
So these are the 19 preconditions to understanding the Quran correctly. If you do not fulfill them, your understanding of the Quran is distorted, in the best-case scenario, or you might be completely blocked from understanding it, in the worst-case scenario.