The Qur’an, Reflection and Application: A Guide for Where You Stand

Occasion: transcript of an ʿIshāʾ lecture delivered at Bayt Al-Karim on March 23, 2026.Source: transcription of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

Alhamdulillah. We have two sides. The first is the side of Allah, glory be to Him, giving guidance to people. The other is in our hands: whether we are able to receive what Allah gives or not. When we feel "alhamdulillah, we did something," it means we received it. What comes from Allah's side comes directly to two parts of our bodies: first the mind, and second the heart. When we say alhamdulillah, it means we have understood the blessing Allah gave us, and we feel the tranquility and the happiness that came to us because of what He gave. Can we say alhamdulillah with the two things together, mind and heart? Alhamdulillah. We have it. And the best achievement you can have in your life is to find yourself in the position of a servant of Allah. Nothing else, nothing beyond that.

Tonight's topic is the importance of understanding the Qur’an.

Why are we in this dunya?

I had a discussion with some of the youth about leaving America for other countries. Most of the people who come here, I have seen, say: just a few years, I make some money and go back home to stay there and relax; alhamdulillah, we did our part. And they are already afraid because of the children here, that they will grow up with all of the fitnah, and so on, so they want to take them over there to stay in safety. But when we read the Qur’an, maybe we will be surprised to find something else.

Imagine, by the way, why we are in this dunya. Are we here to be in a comfort zone, or to keep struggling until we achieve the achievement that Allah assigned to me? What is your position? Are you an engineer, a doctor? Do you deal with land, with buildings, with people? Based on your position you will show me your struggle in dealing with something different. Am I right? Is that clear?

If you are a semi-truck driver, what is your position at the steering wheel? Is that a comfort zone for you? Can you leave it? Even so, you are still struggling with the road, with the flat tire, with the cops stopping you. You are watching the road all the time. That is your position. If you are an engineer sitting in the office, mashallah, the air conditioning is always working, you have your coffee and everything around you; but you are still struggling, thinking about the future of the people, and the idea will never come out of that place. If you are a doctor, mashallah, you have a good income and everything is easy; wow. But you are still struggling with the patients you go to see. If somebody dies, it is your responsibility.

So what is the main idea? What is my position in this dunya? I am a servant of Allah, glory be to Him. Do we agree, everybody? I am not hearing you. Yes? Yes. Okay. For sure, we are here as servants of Allah. The servant asks Allah: where is my position right now, where do You want me to go? And once Allah tells you "you are going to America," it means you do not have the choice to go back to another place as long as this is my position. I am in Bayt Al-Karim right now; this is my place to do my best. It does not matter how much struggle I face. The matter is whether I am doing my part or not.

Ibrāhīm, Hājar and Ismāʿīl

Let us read the issue in the Qur’an. Ibrāhīm ʿalayhi al-salām took his son and his wife too. He took them too. Do you think it was Makkah at that time? It was Makkah as a place, as a land, but not Makkah as a place of pilgrimage, not Makkah as the house of Allah. It was just a desert, just a land. He took his son and his wife to a place he did not know. There was no water, no food, nothing. But this was the position of him, his son and his wife at that time. Allah assigned the place to him. There you go. No other choices, no doubt, no complaint, not even a question.

And as he was leaving, leaving behind him a wife, a woman, and a little son, she asked, "Where are you going?" He did not even have an answer to give her, and she tried to help him answer: "Has Allah asked you to do this?" He said, "Yes." She said, "Okay, it means He will never leave us alone."^[1] That is what happened. She stayed there with nothing, but she believed: this is the spot, this is the position Allah put me in. No other choices, guys. No doubt. She started to look for where the solution would come from, and she went back and forth between Ṣafā and Marwa; you know the story. And Allah gave her a solution.

Ibrāhīm used to come back and forth to see his son, to see what the problems were over there. When the people came to Ismāʿīl, a little boy, and to this woman, do you think those people were worshiping Allah, or were they a kind of disbeliever? He grew up among people like that; but the father was watching the child. He was giving him advice.

Yūsuf in Egypt

Let us go to the other story in the Qur’an: Yūsuf ʿalayhi al-salām. Do you remember what happened with him? A few people took him from the land of his father, the land of prophethood, to Egypt. Egypt at that time was at the level of America, but when we talk about America we are talking about the real America. He grew up in a place like the White House. Imagine somebody growing up in the White House: what kind of religion will he have, what kind of manners, what kind of ethics? Maybe he will grow up with the etiquette, learn how to eat and drink with the official manners. Allah protected Yūsuf, up to the level of being the leader of the whole land at that time.

Do you think Yūsuf thought of going back home? Instead, he brought the rest of the family to the new country. Up to that moment the country of Egypt was not Muslim. He was still struggling with the people, up to that moment. Do you know what I mean?

What about us?

What about the position, the corruption around us? What do we need to do: leave and leave our children behind us struggling with all the corruption, or stay and keep watching over them? The Prophet ﷺ, when he went to Madinah, did not come back to Makkah to stay there. I do not want to say "do not go there." That is optional for everybody, alhamdulillah. What I am trying to say is that this land needs more work from us: to make Islam deep in the land, to build Islam in our children, and to lead the community.

Once we heard together a person from among the important people in this country say that Islam itself is our enemy, whether Shiʿi or Sunni. Did you hear that? Everybody heard that? What is the position of the Muslim here? If we leave the land and leave our children without even learning Islam... I am just giving you an example: during Ramadan we held the youth classes. Alhamdulillah, the smallest number we had at that time was maybe thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Today, alhamdulillah, there was one person, because Ramadan is done. Done. He does not care to bring the children because Ramadan is done. We worshiped Allah during Ramadan and after Ramadan, alhamdulillah, we finished our deen, and we are going somewhere else. Come on.

When we look at the Qur’an, we find that from the very beginning of the revelation it insists on building the mindset of the person: understanding and analyzing everything in the land, understanding the mentality of the people around him. The Prophet ﷺ was working on Islam alone, and then he started bringing somebody else, then a third, then a fourth. Each prophet established his message among the believers, or rather among the disbelievers. Hello, are you still here? Yes. Among the disbelievers he started his message. He called them and tried to convince them.

Two faces

We are trying to stay in the comfort zone all the time. Even when we feel ourselves in some danger, we change even our clothes. We go with the people according to their eyes, how they want to see us, and not showing them what we want to show. Our deen is only in our masjid and our homes. Because of that, we find our children growing up with two faces: the American face and the masjid face. "Baba, I am praying, alhamdulillah." And once he gets out of the masjid, you find a completely different person. That is what we have. Look at your children in the gym, in the school, and then look at them in the masjid. So cute in the masjid. Wow. Perfect. Outside the masjid, you can see it even before leaving the parking lot. Why? Because we do not participate with the community around us. We do not have that kind of relationship with the rest of the people. We cannot encourage our children to be part of the community with the reality.

SubhanAllah. I usually ask people why we are afraid. We are afraid because of our children, that maybe they will change, that they will become Christian or something. Why are we not afraid, rather, that our children will change the rest of the people around them? Why do we not think that the other children may become Muslim? Why are we not building strong people to face any kind of misunderstanding? I hope my English is helping me to spread my idea. We do not have that position in this country, subhanAllah. Guys, we need to be something.

The legacy we leave

When we meet Allah, He will not ask us about our ṣalāh before He asks us about the legacy we left behind us. What did he do? If you feel you are okay because you came to the masjid, you have nothing. You are just coming to maintain yourself, to keep yourself strong enough. It is a kind of medicine we take to keep our health, to keep our īmān going. But what we are doing for the deen is a completely different story.

When Allah assigned the job description to the Prophet ﷺ, what did He tell him? That during the night he would keep standing, praying, reciting the Qur’an, reading, during the night.^[2] What about the days? It means He gave him the job description to work during the night, and so he was working twenty-four seven, and this is the real position of the Muslim: we work twenty-four seven. What the Prophet used to do during the night was maintaining himself, recharging his soul, strengthening his power so that he could work during the days.

If we consider ourselves to be worshiping Allah just because we come to the masjid, "I am okay with my beard, I am okay with my clothes, alhamdulillah, I am okay," this is not actual performance of the deed. We need to do something for the sake of Allah, not for ourselves. Our ṣalāh is for ourselves. Our zakāh, even, is for ourselves, for our bodies. But what we do for the sake of the deen, to establish its roots in this land, that is the next step. We need to move on, otherwise we stay in the same place, and everyone will come from everywhere to attack us.

When an official in this state says that Islam will never be allowed in Texas, come on, guys: it is not your mother's land here. Talk about your position. If we were strong enough to say that, to show our faces to the people, we would do something for the sake of Allah. We are not coming against anybody. We are not dealing with people physically; but we have a law, we have rules. We need to understand the position of our existence in this land. Otherwise the position of our deen will stay weak. Nobody gives us attention. They need us when elections are coming; they come to the masjid to ask for our help, our votes, and after that they disappear. And what are we doing for our deen?

Reading the Qur’an again

So I say again: open your muṣḥaf and try to read it in a different way. Read the Qur’an as guidance for life, not just as a way of relieving my soul. I am not reading the Qur’an only to feel tranquility. I need to read it to encourage me to be stronger, to be more understanding, to be aware of the circumstances around me.

I do not want to take a longer time. We ask Allah, glory be to Him, to guide us to the straight path. May Allah guide all of us.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: the story is in the long ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī about Hājar and Ismāʿīl, ʿalayhimā al-salām, where she says, "Has Allah commanded you with this?" He said, "Yes," and she said, "Then He will not let us be lost." The lecturer did not quote the ḥadīth or attribute it. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: the lecturer does not name the sūrah or recite the verses; his description (night standing, prayer and recitation, then the days) corresponds to the opening of Sūrat al-Muzzammil, [المزمل: 1–7]. The identification is the editor's and should be checked against the audio.