Comments on: Saul, Goliath, David

By: Abul Bashar

Abul Bashar — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:30:13 +0000

We should explore the quranic verses and present them to the world. And spend more time in gaining strong faith.

By: tarek

tarek — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:49:08 +0000

Refering to the taloot story could it imply that the coming king(savior) or (mahdy) would have the same signs to be known from ,inorder to be chosen by his nation?

By: Back to the story of Taloot at Yaser M. Haddara

Back to the story of Taloot at Yaser M. Haddara — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:55:05 +0000

[…] I wanted to go back to the story of Taloot. I waded through my old files last week trying to find my notes from that interfaith session I mentioned in my very first blog entry. I found so many of my old notes of so many things that were happening at and around Stanford in the early 90’s. (Good source for future blog material :> ). But unfortunately, I couldn’t find notes from that discussion. This actually bothered me a little b/c I am not sure I can remember what I actually said about each mufassir. Nonetheless, with one notable exception these tafaseer are all available. So inshaa Allah what I am going to do is to revisit these tafaseer, and as much as I can remember I will inshaa Allah do it in the same order that I used that first time. […]

By: yaser

yaser — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:05:49 +0000

Jazaakallahu kulla khayr akhy-l-habeeb. Indeed I find the discussion with people of other faiths very useful if both of us are open to the discussion. One person who teaches at McMaster is Professor Gary Warner. He cited someone (I’ll get the exact citation and post it inshaa Allah) talking about interfaith dialog and noting that in engaging in dialog with other people about their faiths one gets a deeper understanding or appreciation of one’s own faith. This is not about moral relativism. Rather, it is about being open to new ideas and new insights. Wallahu a’lam.

By: Ayman Khafagi

Ayman Khafagi — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 04:16:51 +0000

I am blown away, I have to say. I didn’t know that you are as good of a writer as you are a speaker :)
You must miss those days at Stanford, eh?
What actually hits me the most is that non-muslims’ perspective adds a lot to the table. I personally benefited a lot from reading about Islam from non-muslims and talking to non-muslims and listening to their takes about Islam. They sometimes throw in questions that I have never thought of which help me think and some other times they give me answers to questions I was never able to answer. It is very liberating to feel that you can discuss Islam without being protective of it because the further the discussion goes and the more critical you get, the closer you move toward the truth.

By: Usama

Usama — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:26:52 +0000

The fact that most Muslims dont devote time for the Quran daily might be evidence that we do not find the entire Quran relevent to us today. Ignoring such a powerful and useful message should be inexcusable. What initiatives do you think are necessary on a grass roots level to re-establish the connection with the Quran?

P.S. Great blog!

By: yaser

yaser — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 22:50:22 +0000

So the way this worked is that on any given day there would only be one piece of text presented. It would come from a particular faith tradition, people would discuss it, then the person that had contributed that piece of text would make a short presentation followed by more discussion. In the case of the Goliath story there was some discussion on what the Jewish and Christian texts have to say about it but not as extensive as one might think. I think (although I can’t be sure) that the reason for that is that the Quran takes such a dramatically different tone to the story — there is not much to argue with because the aspects of the story that occupy the most space in the Quran are very different from the aspects of the story that occupy space in the Bible. I seem to remember someone saying something along those lines . . .

In terms of pieces of text presented on other days, the one I remember now (you have to realize this was more than 15 years ago!) was the story of Jonah (prophet Yunus piece be upon him) as presented in the Bible. I also remember the setting of the dicussion that was led by the Rabbi in our group but not the topic. I might talk about the story of Jonah eventually - I have to collect my thoughts.

By: Omair

Omair — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 20:45:21 +0000

How did you find the presentations of your colleagues?

What insights were you able to derive from the alternate text’s presented to you? And how did the narratives of similar stories compare? (i.e., the catholic representation of David and Goliath versus Qu’ran)

By: yaser

yaser — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 08:08:26 +0000

Jazaakallahu khayran Suleiman. You raise a point I hadn’t thought about consiously: is there a significant difference in the perception of coherence between Makkan and Madeenan verses?

I don’t have an immediate answer for that. However, Makkan sura’s tend to include more storytelling, shorter verses, and somewhat shorter chapters. They tend to focus on the fundamentals: both of belief and character. (These are generalizations not hard-and-fast rules). I suppose this could justify an argument that Makkan chapters would be “easire” to follow in an almost linear fashion. I am not sure. The story that I mentioned above is in al-Baqarah, which is a Madeenan sura. Also, most of the stories of the Children of Israel are to be found in Madeenan sura’s because they were frequently occasioned by dialogue with the Jewish tribes there.

As for me and my further studies, al-hamdulillah I keep trying. I don’t think scholarly tafseer is a prerequisite to understanding. Quite the contrary, I believe that it is crucial for us to reflect on the Quran at the level that is accessible to us. Understanding that the Quran does speak to us, we can get much out of it. We do have to reflect, and we do have to enquire as to the purpose or implications of the words we are reading. We do have to take them personally, so that we care how they apply to us more than we care how they apply to others. Finally, I have to compel myself to recognize the limits of my knowledge (or lack thereof). While personal reflections are both required and possible, individual tafseer, or definition of law and doctrine based on the Quran, are simply not within the domain of someone that has not studied.

All these are keys (in my view) to individual reflection on the Quran. My experience is that anyone that tries to do this invariably gets something out of it. I hope to be able to share more of my thoughts as time goes inshaa Allah.

By: Suleiman

Suleiman — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:44:51 +0000

A very insightful read Yaser. As as a one-time student of Qur’anic Sciences I find especially interesting your observations about certain passages within the Qur’an not appearing in chronological order.

I am aware of the separation of the Qur’an into the Meccan and Medinian verses, and vaguely recall how the Meccan verses contained more stories of the Prophets, while the Medinian verses contained more rules and regulations.

Have your subsequent readings of the Qur’an lead you to find increased clarity and order in the Medinian verses as opposed to the Meccan verses? Or do you find tafseer essential to a reading of even of the Medinian verses?