Educational Objectives in Qur’anic Stories: Speech Worth Having

Occasion: a lecture delivered at Woodbridge on September 24, 2026.Source: transcription of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

The lecturer began by promising to be brief, since the people were waiting to pray, and then took up the verse that had been recited at the start of the session. When we try to translate it, he said, Allah is telling us that there is no benefit in any kind of speech unless it is one of three things.^[1]

Three kinds of speech worth having

The first is to ask people to donate for something, or to take part in anything that benefits the rest of the people. It is encouraging people to do something good. To understand what the Qur'an means by this word, the lecturer said, we find its interpretation in the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, who explained that it is not only giving money. It can be advice, helping somebody, putting your hand with someone's hand, and so on.^[2]

The second is to ask people to stay within the normal order of things and not drift away from what Allah has asked of us in our religion. When we look at this word in the Qur'an, he said, it comes in different dimensions. Sometimes we hear it when the Qur'an speaks of the relationship between spouses at home, yet it is something common that everybody agrees on. When I ask you to come to the masjid, when I ask you to help somebody, when I ask you to deal with your brother nicely, this is the kind of speech meant. It reaches even ordinary matters. We have a trade together, we have a business, and we sit down to discuss the profit and the loss. Usually people talk about this kind of thing in normal situations.

The third is to fix the problem between people. When you see two or three of your brothers or sisters with an issue between them, and you try to put it right, this is what the verse is describing.

A great reward for little effort

When the lecturer looked at the verse, he found the reward coming right after it: whoever does this for the sake of Allah, Allah promises limitless reward. And why? What did I do? I only asked my brother to help another. I did not do anything. Or I asked myself to speak nicely to the children at home. Is that a big matter? Yet Allah gives me multiplied reward for it. If I see two brothers whose faces are not normal, who perhaps have an issue, and I simply invite them to dinner together, saying a few kind words, and everything passes and they become good with each other, Allah gives me that reward.

The incident behind the verse

The lecturer then recalled the incident connected with the verse. Imagine that someone stole something from the home of one of the people. After the investigation, they found the person who had done it. The tribe of that man came to the Prophet ﷺ and asked him: O Messenger of Allah, please do not punish him. They came to ask him to forgive the man and let him go free.^[3]

That is exactly what the verse addresses. In the previous verse Allah speaks about this very matter, and He asks the Prophet ﷺ to carry out the investigation to a fully conclusive result. Then He gives direction to the community, and the lecturer put it in three commands. Do not talk about anything wrong. Do not put yourself in a wrong position. Do not try to come between two people who are already doing something that is not normal. In this verse, he said, Allah is telling me that there is no benefit in such talk.

What najwā is, and why Allah guards it

He then spoke about the word najwā, private counsel, and said we may remember how Allah addressed the community about it elsewhere.^[4] In itself, najwā is not whispering. It is something I tell you without drawing the attention of other people. We are talking about some issue, and it does not matter whether it is wrong or right; what matters is that we are isolating ourselves from the rest of the community. Why does Allah care about this? Because someone who sees me talking to my brother over there will wonder what we are saying about him. Allah is trying to keep Satan away from any gathering of the community. He gives another direction in order to keep hearts clean, clear and protected from the attacks of Satan.

Do what you ask others to do

The lecturer added a point about integrity. When you ask somebody to do something, you are supposed to believe in it yourself, otherwise we get a kind of hypocrisy. If I am asking you to put something in the box for that brother, it means I believe in it, and I will never ask you to help without putting my own hand in first. Would it make sense to ask you to give while I have ten dollars in my pocket that I did not give him? Especially when I have more than that, and I am asking people to do something good while holding myself back from it. It makes no sense.^[5] When Allah asks the Muslim community, all of the people, to take part in good things, big or small or wide, the question is whether all of the hands are coming together to put a benefit in the community.

Judging our relationship with Allah by our pockets

One strange thing, the lecturer said, caught his attention when he read a certain surah (the transcript does not make clear which). Allah is teaching the community, especially those who judge their relationship with Allah by the benefit that reaches them. When Allah gives a person something, the person is so happy that he says, in effect, "Allah is pleased with me." And when Allah stops that giving for a while, or for some reason, he says, "Allah is not satisfied with me, Allah hates me." So he evaluates his relationship with Allah by the numbers coming into his pocket. If Allah gives, I am happy with Allah and Allah is happy with me. If He does not, and my pocket is empty, then I do not like Allah, and Allah does not like me.

Allah's answer is "No, indeed." Then what is the right thing? The right thing, He says, is that you are not generous to the orphan, and you do not urge one another to feed the needy.^[6]

The steep path and the freeing of a neck

If you pass on to the next surah, he said, you find Allah speaking of an obstacle that will stand on the Day of Judgment, which we must pass in order to be among the people of Paradise. Some are left behind this step. What prevents me from going with them? Allah says what it takes to pass it: the freeing of a neck, which means releasing someone from slavery.^[7]

He gave a present-day example. Suppose a man is in prison because of a debt he could not pay: a hundred dollars here, a thousand there, two thousand somewhere else, and someone has accused him and sent him to jail. SubḥānAllāh. If I go and release his neck from that place, when we give a modest amount, or even gather together and post a bond for him, that is a kind of freeing. Sometimes we do pay a bond to release one of our brothers from jail. Allah's words are not only about slaves, which was the case in that time. Today we have other kinds of captivity.

The same passage speaks of feeding people in a time of hardship: the needy person who has nothing, with nothing between his hand and the dust. The transcript then adds, unclearly, that if a person does have something in his hand, it may be like sharing advice with one another.

The one who denies the religion

If you go through the Qur'an to its last part, he continued, you find Allah speaking of the people who deny the religion. How can this be said of people who are Muslims, who come to the mosque? Allah says that this is the person who pushes the orphan away. He drives the orphan off: do not come here, do not sit with my children, do not be near them. And the other crime he commits is that he does not urge the people around him to share what they have and to take part with each other.^[8]

Speak well to people

Then the lecturer turned to what Allah asks us to say. He asked the audience whether they remembered the verse, and had them repeat it with him. What does it mean? Say what is good to the people, whether they are Muslim or not. This, he said, is one of the big mistakes we make.^[9]

He gave a method for understanding commands. Usually, if we want a rule of action in our lives, we need to compare that command with the other command next to it, because grammatically it is an order that comes to us. Allah gives me an order. What is the next word in the same verse? Is it an order too, an obligation or not? Imagine Allah puts two things together in one verse; they should be at the same level. Imagine He asks me to speak nicely to the people, and asks me in the same verse for something else. You know what I mean?

Once we have this, we find one of the characters of the Muslim: they speak nicely, and talk gently to people. Sometimes we become angry and lose our composure, and Allah knows that, and He gave us the solution. How can we do it? We say: "I apologize, I did something wrong, forgive me." He also noted that when Allah described one of the traits of such people, it was that they follow what is said, apparently "according to the best of it."^[10]

Three actions a community needs

So the verse is telling us the benefit of three main actions that we need to have in a community. The lecturer returned to the first. We usually talk, but what kind of talk do we need to give? When you see somebody who needs something, you need to share the information with the people.

He ended there. He had promised he would not take long, because he had kept the people sitting after the prayer, and they were going to pray as soon as he finished. The transcript breaks off in the middle of his closing prayer: "May Allah give…"

--- ^[1]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript does not record the verse; the recitation at the start of the session was not captured, so the text is kept out of the body. The verse is identified by the editor from the lecturer's description of the three exceptions to "no good in private counsel" and from the surrounding discussion: ﴿لَّا خَيْرَ فِي كَثِيرٍ مِّن نَّجْوَاهُمْ إِلَّا مَنْ أَمَرَ بِصَدَقَةٍ أَوْ مَعْرُوفٍ أَوْ إِصْلَاحٍ بَيْنَ النَّاسِ ۚ وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَٰلِكَ ابْتِغَاءَ مَرْضَاتِ اللَّهِ فَسَوْفَ نُؤْتِيهِ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا﴾ [al-Nisāʾ: 114]. Translation: "There is no good in much of their private counsel, except for one who enjoins charity, or what is right, or reconciliation between people. And whoever does that, seeking the pleasure of Allah, We shall give him a great reward." Please verify against the recording. ^[2]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the lecturer did not quote the hadith. The idea that every act of kindness is charity is narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim: «كُلُّ مَعْرُوفٍ صَدَقَةٌ». ^[3]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the lecturer told the incident in his own words and without naming anyone. It is the commonly cited occasion for the verses of Sūrat al-Nisāʾ around this one; the details should be checked in a book on the occasions of revelation. ^[4]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript is cut off where the verse is named. He may have been recalling ﴿إِنَّمَا النَّجْوَىٰ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ لِيَحْزُنَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا﴾ [al-Mujādilah: 10], which fits his remarks on Satan and on hearts, but this is the editor's identification. ^[5]: Editor’s documentation: The transcript has "the tin box"; the lecturer apparently means a charity box. The sums mentioned (ten dollars) are as he gave them. ^[6]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the lecturer appears to paraphrase ﴿فَأَمَّا الْإِنسَانُ إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ رَبُّهُ فَأَكْرَمَهُ وَنَعَّمَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَكْرَمَنِ ۝ وَأَمَّا إِذَا مَا ابْتَلَاهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقَهُ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّي أَهَانَنِ ۝ كَلَّا بَل لَّا تُكْرِمُونَ الْيَتِيمَ ۝ وَلَا تَحَاضُّونَ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ الْمِسْكِينِ﴾ [al-Fajr: 15–18] without naming the sūrah; the identification is the editor's. ^[7]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): this appears to be Sūrat al-Balad, ﴿فَلَا اقْتَحَمَ الْعَقَبَةَ﴾ and what follows [al-Balad: 11–16], including ﴿فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ﴾ and ﴿مِسْكِينًا ذَا مَتْرَبَةٍ﴾. The sūrah is not named in the transcript. ^[8]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): this corresponds to Sūrat al-Māʿūn [al-Māʿūn: 1–3]. ^[9]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): probably ﴿وَقُولُوا لِلنَّاسِ حُسْنًا﴾ [al-Baqarah: 83], which is joined in the same verse to the command to establish prayer. The words of the verse are missing from the transcript, so the identification is the editor's. ^[10]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript is garbled at this point ("they are following the say by the…"), and the editor has kept only what is clear. It may refer to ﴿الَّذِينَ يَسْتَمِعُونَ الْقَوْلَ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ أَحْسَنَهُ﴾ [al-Zumar: 18], but this is not certain.