Qur’an Surahs, Foundation and Development: Lecture 1, Sūrat al-Insān

Occasion: Transcript of a class delivered at AIA on March 31, 2026Source: transcription of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

Why are we here? We announced that we would talk about the Book of Allah, and that means we are talking about the most important thing in our lives. So let me begin with a question for you. What is the importance of the Qur’an? Answer from what you know, or from what you think.

Why the Qur’an matters

The first answer was: it is a guide. I asked another student, and he said it too: guidance. So which kind of guidance do we need from the Qur’an, and what exactly does it offer us? Explain it to me. Another answer: it contains many rules and regulations. A third: it teaches us how the prophets lived their lives and how they preached to the rest of the people. Another: it teaches us how we should live and how we should act. And one more: it teaches us how to be thankful to Allah.

First of all, this is the word of Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. When we hold a word like that, it means we hold a treasure, something valuable in our lives, and having it is a blessing in itself. Look at the difference between the Qur’an and the books that came before it. Those books were changed by people. But, alḥamdu lillāh, fortunately for us, Allah promised to protect the Qur’an Himself. He said, in effect: We are the ones who revealed it, and We are the ones who will protect it.^[1] Nobody can change it, in any way. So we have the accurate word, exactly as it came to us from Allah.

What is the importance of that? You hold a solid word. When you invite people to your religion, you have a solid vision and a serious way of convincing them.

As the students mentioned, the Qur’an deals with the mind, with the heart and its emotions, and with the way we live our lives. All of these came in the Qur’an. And as one of you said, we have in it the best way to convince people that Allah exists, subḥānahu wa taʿālā; to show how Allah controls our lives; to show what the result will be if people follow the Qur’an’s direction; and to show what Allah’s destination is for each one of us. We will be among those who believed in Allah, and their reward will be in Paradise; and the reward, or the punishment, of the other side of the people will be in the Hellfire. Is that understandable?

Now, when we study the Qur’an we begin to get an idea of the reality of our own position. Why are we here? What is my position? What is the last destination I am going to reach one day? What does Allah ask of me? What are my duties toward my religion? All of these come together to show me the importance of the Qur’an. It is like a mirror of myself. I can see myself in the Qur’an; it reflects my actions back to me. I can know whether I am going in the straight way or in a different direction.

How we will study a surah

Let us begin to understand one of the surahs of the Qur’an. Here is our methodology. We will read the surah itself. Then we will classify it: we will divide it into parts, and put each part, each group of verses, under one subject. Through those subjects, inshā’ Allāh, we will try to understand what the main subject of the whole surah is. Along the way we will pick up words of the Arabic language, so that we build our vocabulary, our own dictionary in our minds. Did you get this point? Does everyone agree?

Now, which surah? Give me your recommendations. Someone recommended al-Baqarah. That is the first recommendation. Can we have a short surah instead? Is there something in the middle? Several suggestions came. In the end I said: let us open our mushafs randomly. I found myself with (the name is lost in the transcript) there, and said it meant we would go with the recommendation. The page number is 578. Everybody can read the Qur’an, as I asked you at the beginning, right? So let us read together.

We can stop here, if you don't mind, to see what we can understand from this first part. The surah opens with a question from Allah. I asked whether anyone had a translation of the surah on a phone. Nobody did, which is no problem. A translation was found, and it says: “Has there ever come upon the human being a time when he was not even something worth mentioning?”^[2]

The question that opens the surah

Did you understand anything? Let us hear it again: has there ever come upon the human being a time when he was not even something worth mentioning? If you try to explain this sentence, what are you going to say? Let him go first. Does there ever come upon you... has there been a time when a human was not even something mentionable or worth anything? Can anybody give me another opinion, another definition, another explanation, another interpretation?

One student answered: has there ever been a time when humans weren't even worth mentioning? I pressed the point. This is the question Allah asked us: did any time come before the human being existed, when human beings were nothing? If someone asked you this, because you were inviting him to Islam and he wanted to know what it meant, what would you answer? Someone said: it means that before I was born, before I had been born, I was nothing. Yes. And even before Adam, what was the human being? Nothing. Then Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, created us.

What is the importance of this question coming at the beginning of the surah? Allah named the surah al-Insān. What does insān mean? The human being. We could say man, woman, he, she, whatever; but here we are talking about the human being. And Allah asked that question at the beginning of the surah to get the answer from the people: not to tell Him the truth, but to tell us the truth. We were nothing, at one time.

If I stand up and speak to you, if I breathe, if I feel, understand, talk, listen, see, all of these actions came to me once I came to be here. And who brought me here? Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. It means that I am nothing without His permission and without His power. Without Allah, I am nothing.

A phone with no charger

Let me give you an example. Somebody is driving his car a long way from home, and he is using the GPS on his phone. Unfortunately he has no charger in the car, and he realizes it only after a while on the road. He is going to spend something like twenty-four hours on this journey. What do you think he will do?

One of you said: there are gas stations, there are signs. Habibi, you are smart, but if the answer were simply that he could go and buy a charger, I would not ask the question. He needs to save the charge in that phone. Another said: use it wisely. Yes. He knows that without that phone he cannot get back. So he is going to be careful about its power. Do you think he will watch a video? No, it is impossible; that would be killing himself. Do you think he will start browsing Facebook and WhatsApp? Do you think he will even call somebody? No. He will put it in low power mode and use it wisely. Even when the GPS tells him to drive a hundred miles, he will turn it off and think: I will be on this road for an hour and a half, so I can turn the phone off for an hour and open it again once in a while, just to double-check.

Why did I give you that example? Because without the phone, on that road, he would lose himself. And I can ask myself: what is the value of me without Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā? Is everybody with me on this point?

I hope somebody is taking notes, because one of you will be asked at the end to say a few words about what you understood from the class. It is a requirement. Use your notes, whatever you like. We are talking about Surat al-Insān. Why did Allah name the surah this? What was the first question in the surah, and why did Allah ask it? And what feeling should we have after being asked it?

Created to be tested

The answer comes in the next verse. Allah said:

We created the human being from a mixed drop of fluid, to test him; so We gave him hearing and sight.^[3] Then comes a question to the class about the maʿṣiya and the body (“a sin or a major sin”) which is too garbled in the transcript to restore, and which has no answer there; he said it should be written down. I hope that next time, inshā’ Allāh, you will bring your notebooks and build your vocabulary, your own dictionary. Each of you will have different words in his dictionary, because right now most of you, alḥamdu lillāh, already have perhaps twenty or thirty percent of the words of the Qur’an in your minds. And whenever we meet a new word, we need to write it down.

Back to the question: what is the importance of the question at the beginning of the surah? Somebody answered: we are nothing without Allah. Yes. We are nothing without Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. Now, how can we convince ourselves of that? This is really important. Imagine someone who feels that he is nothing without Allah. He will never stay away from Allah. He will try, all the time, to be in the sight of Allah.

And now I can understand why Allah asks me to come back five times a day to pray. Allāhu akbar: I am here, I am here to stay close to You. I am here to hand over my time, myself, my mind, my emotion, everything I have. I am leaving everything behind me just to come and present myself in this place. Do you think it is a kind of sacrifice? I am giving up everything behind me, not paying attention to it, and concentrating only on Allah. Even in the time of the prayer itself, I am supposed to concentrate a hundred percent, not thinking about anything else, just giving my attention to Allah. That's it. Do you know what I mean?

Let us count the vocabulary we have so far. Insān: what does it mean? The person, the human being. Good job. And hal: “does” or “has”, it depends on how you ask the question. Then came a partly garbled remark on the Arabic words for “time”: one word used when we describe the year, and another when we describe time in general. Is that clear?

Let us move to the verse that says we were created from a mixed drop of fluid. Why did Allah create me? The question is: why did Allah create me as a human being? To worship Him. But look at the verse itself to find the answer. The translation in front of us says “to test him”. What is the meaning of “to test him”? Someone offered “in order to try him”, since the translation ended with “try”. In order to try him; what is the meaning of that here? Test. Test him. Good.

So it means we are here in a test. This is the first lesson we have already taken tonight. We are here by Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. Without Allah we are nothing. Who created us? Allah. Why did He create us? To test us. Worship is going to be a part of that test. Allah commands me with a few things, and whether I perform them or not is a part of the test: will I pass it, will I do it or not?

On the other hand, He gives me tasks in this dunyā. I have a responsibility toward my parents; if I fulfill my duties toward them, that is part of the test. After that I have my responsibility toward my wife, and toward my children, and in time toward my grandchildren, and so on. And at the same time, what is my position here? I am an engineer, a doctor, a teacher, whatever it is. I have a responsibility that comes with the position I hold in my life. And on the other hand, what is the responsibility toward the rest of the people around you? Each one of us has a responsibility toward the others. All of us are in a test, a big test, with everything.

If you open your eyes, what do you look at, what do you see? If you see something wrong, will you close your eyes, or keep them open and enjoy it? If you hear somebody giving you bad information, or backbiting, will you keep your ears open and listen to that person, or will you stop it and say: man, what are you doing? This is ḥarām; this is ḥalāl; this is lawful; this is unlawful.

The way has been shown

And so Allah said, in the next verse, that He showed him the way, whether he would be grateful or ungrateful.^[4] What does that mean? I asked a student to read the translation of verse three again, slowly, because I wanted everybody to understand it: “We showed him the way, whether he chooses to be grateful or ungrateful.” We showed him the way. Who is “him”, and who is the “We”? (The sentence is garbled in the transcript, and he then turned to a student who wanted to participate.)

Again: what is the main test? What is the main reason for our being here? We are here to be tested by Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. To start the journey from the beginning, we need to understand the system of this life, and to understand the system of this life you need to read this verse. What is the meaning of “We showed him”? A student said: we guided him. It is guidance, I agree with you. And I love this translation, by the way, because showing somebody the right direction is a kind of guidance, but it is not the full guidance. The full guidance is when you take somebody from this point to that one, until he reaches the destination he is aiming for. Got it? But in this translation, you find that Allah showed him both ways, the way of righteousness and the way of ignorance.

Allah swears by the soul, “who created it, or prepared it”, to be in a right way or in a wrong way.^[5] Based on that, we need to ask ourselves which side we are going to be with, which side we are going to take, the right side or the wrong side. Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, gives us that kind of inspiration; He inspires us toward the good people or toward the bad people. Am I clear? Is that understandable?

Now, “whether he chooses to be grateful or ungrateful.” This is the word in the translation, grateful or ungrateful, and I agree with it. But in the real meaning, what Allah is saying is that He showed us the way to be among the righteous people or among their opposite, the ignorant ones. The disbelievers ignore the blessings that come to them from Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, and the believers respect the blessings that come to them from Allah. And the best of the best blessings you can receive is the guidance from Allah.

Guidance shortens the road

Think of it this way. When somebody gives you direction, or shows you the direction, he is shortening the time for you; he is giving you his experience. I know that at your age, and this is the normal nature of it, subḥān Allāh, you are not accepting direction from other people, from anybody. You are independent right now. You feel you can think better than anybody, and you feel that the knowledge you have is more than your parents' knowledge. Not you in particular, but your age. And that age looks at us as the ignorant people. You are the people of AI and we do not have any idea about it. I have no idea about Gemini, or “deep sea” (apparently DeepSeek); I have no clue about Manus; I have no idea about “clo…” (apparently Claude, cut off); we are ignorant, we do not know anything about these things. But you deal with them every single day. Do you know what I mean?

Now consider: Allah gave us the best we can have in our entire lives. What is it? The guidance. And the Qur’an is a part of this guidance, by the way, only a part of it. Even before the Qur’an, Allah gave us something (the word is garbled in the transcript; it may be al-furqān or al-fiṭra) by which to recognize, to differentiate, between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, facts and the rest.

Let me ask again, so that someone can give me the meaning of these verses. The first verse of the surah, you can read it if you don't mind: has there ever been a time when the human being was nothing? Yes. The next verse: we created human beings here, for a test. Yes. The next: we showed them the guidance, whether grateful or ungrateful. Grateful or righteous? Righteous or ignorant? Great.

The warning comes first

Now we can move on to the next translation. A student read: “We have prepared for the disbelievers chains, shackles.” What is that word? Shackles. Okay. “Shackles and a blazing fire.” Am I right with that? Thank you for helping me. The word translated “blazing” means a big fire, a very big fire.^[6]

Let us look at this together. In the previous verse Allah mentioned two kinds of people. How many kinds of people have we so far? Two. Who is the first one? Then the second? The one who is shākir, who, as you said, is righteous or grateful, and the one who is kafūr, the unbeliever, the ignorant. Thank you so much.

Now, what is the consequence for each of them? What is the discipline, the recompense, for each one? Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, said first shākir and second kafūr. The consequence should therefore come in the same order: this one first and that one second. But Allah started with the other one. He said, “We have prepared for the disbelievers chains and shackles and a blazing fire.” Why did He begin with these people, instead of starting with the grateful? In the previous verse, at the beginning, the order was: either he will be grateful or ungrateful. But when He spoke about the consequences, He began with the disbelievers. Can you tell me why? Can you figure it out? The answer given: because these are the consequences of the disbelievers. Okay. This is one of the warning verses. (The sentence that follows is unintelligible in the transcript.)

The righteous and the cup

Then Allah turns to the other group, and we begin to see their consequence, their recompense.^[7]

We have two kinds of people: the disbelievers here and the believers here. Abrār is a different description of the righteous; it means the believers. But why does Allah name them abrār? It is a word we need to have in our vocabulary. Abrār comes from birr. What is the meaning of birr? What do you think? Try to find out; you have your phone, look it up. One student said: the righteousness. The righteousness in itself, yes. It is like righteousness, goodness.

Then I explained. Al-birr, with a kasra, is a source of goodness: the righteousness, the source of goodness. This is one of its descriptions, by the way. With a fatḥa, al-barr is like the shore, the side of the sea. One student corrected me: the shore, I'm sorry, yes, the shore. It is where the water meets the sand. Imagine somebody swimming in the sea, trying to reach the shore. Here is the water, and here is the shelter, the place. When somebody swimming reaches it, he is in a safe area. He will never be in sickness or trouble again. That is barr; it is a kind of safety. So when somebody reaches that level, we are saying that he is on the safe side with Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā.

So the righteous people are those who do the goodness, who touch the source of goodness. They believe in it, until their heart, their mind, their emotion, and all the talent they have are already in the good things.

Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, then describes to us the drink of the people of Paradise. But I need to ask myself: why does Allah give us the description of the reward of the people who will come to Paradise with a precise word like this one? Why does He give me the result here? They are drinking, drinking from a kaʾs. What is the meaning of kaʾs? A cup. Okay, let us spell it: C-U-P. That's your language; I'm just learning here. They are drinking, in the sense of feeding themselves, and the cup is the source of that feeding. As you said, it is a vessel with something inside it.

Now compare the position of the abrār in the hereafter with their position here, in this life. We find that they already have, here, their source to feed their souls with righteousness. They have their own source of feeding themselves with righteousness in this life. Got it?

What we have learned so far

What is the time? We have very little time left, so let us try to conclude what we said.

The first: what is the reason for naming the surah with this name? Why did Allah give the surah this title? The mankind. Why? One student said: to remind us. To remind us of our identity, our position. We are human beings. We are not angels, and we are not devils. We are in between. We have the capacity to act like the one, and we have the capacity to act like the other, and that is why we can choose the guidance and the righteousness, or the side of ignorance. Allah named the surah al-Insān to remind us of our position in this world. That is the first point.

The second: what is the first verse of the surah? It is a question. Why do we have this question? To answer it ourselves, to find the answer in ourselves. And Allah gave us the answer in the next verse. Has any time come before the human being when he was nothing? We say: yes, for sure we were nothing. It means we came here by the permission of Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, and by His ability and His power. Without that power we could not be here. Once we have that feeling, even if you are alone in your room with your device watching a nice video, you will say: I need to keep my connection with Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā. Actually, I need to keep my connection with my GPS. Do you remember the example we gave? Oh, the phone was Allah. I do not want to lose my charger, and the charger is going to be in my heart. Whenever I see something wrong, or when I am trying to be funny with people, when I am doing any kind of maʿṣiya, what do you mean by maʿṣiya? Sin, major sin or sin, it is a maʿṣiya anyway, I will remember that I need to keep my guidance, my route, my GPS.

Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, says, by the way, that He has given us the chance to pass the test. He already gave it. What kind of test do we have? We have a test by our very existence. Our existence here is a test in itself.

As an example of that test, take your coming to the masjid. What are you doing there? You enter the masjid with your right foot, saying the duʿā’ for entering, and then you enter the place of prayer and see what the people are doing. They have already started the prayer; they are preparing themselves; and you act like them. Now suppose somebody comes just to play, or to make noise, or to distract the people. We have a different story here. Which one will be rewarded at the end, and which one will be punished? The first one is rewarded, and the second one is punished.

Allah, subḥānahu wa taʿālā, said... and now our time is up and we have to go to pray.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: ﴿إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ﴾ [الحجر: 9]. The Doctor said only that Allah promised to protect the Qur’an and that “We revealed it, and We will protect it”; the verse is identified by the editor. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: ﴿هَلْ أَتَىٰ عَلَى الْإِنسَانِ حِينٌ مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ لَمْ يَكُن شَيْئًا مَّذْكُورًا﴾ [al-Insān: 1] The class read this together but the transcript does not preserve the Arabic; the surah and verse number are identified by the editor from the translation read in class and the page number (578). ^[3]: Editor's documentation: ﴿إِنَّا خَلَقْنَا الْإِنسَانَ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ أَمْشَاجٍ نَّبْتَلِيهِ فَجَعَلْنَاهُ سَمِيعًا بَصِيرًا﴾ [al-Insān: 2] Arabic and number supplied by the editor to match the translation read in class. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: ﴿إِنَّا هَدَيْنَاهُ السَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا﴾ [al-Insān: 3] Arabic and number supplied by the editor to match the translation the student read. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: ﴿وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا ۝ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا﴾ [الشمس: 7–8]. The Doctor paraphrased the oath without naming the surah; the identification is the editor's. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: ﴿إِنَّا أَعْتَدْنَا لِلْكَافِرِينَ سَلَاسِلَ وَأَغْلَالًا وَسَعِيرًا﴾ [al-Insān: 4] Arabic and number supplied by the editor to match the translation read in class. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: ﴿إِنَّ الْأَبْرَارَ يَشْرَبُونَ مِن كَأْسٍ كَانَ مِزَاجُهَا كَافُورًا﴾ [al-Insān: 5] The transcript has no translation of this verse, only the lecturer's remarks on abrār and kaʾs; the Arabic and number are the editor's.