Educational Objectives in Qur’anic Stories: Uḥud and Staying at Your Post

المناسبة: تفريغ محاضرة أُلقيت في Woodbridge بتاريخ 27 أغسطس 2026م ضمن سلسلة «الأهداف التربوية في القصص القرآني» Source: transcription of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

Alhamdulillah. We ask Allah to give us the blessing of tranquility and to guide our hearts to the straight path.

Tonight, in shā’ Allāh, as we said last week, we are talking about the surah (the name is lost in the transcript; Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, as the series goes^[16]) and about the importance of understanding the Qur’an itself.

The Qur’an as our manual

The Qur’an is our manual in this dunya, the system of our life. If we do not have that direction in our hands, we cannot get through this life; we start acting randomly, according to our own understanding, our background, our cultures, the feedback we carry from back home, whatever it may be. If the Qur’an is not in our life, we lose our direction in this dunya. And when we come to Allah, glorified and exalted, we come with our shortcomings, in a bad position.

Allah said, as we mentioned and as we heard, that this Qur’an guides people to the best of the best, and gives glad tidings to the Muslim community that they will have a big reward in the hands of Allah:^[1]

So we have two promises from Allah. One of them came with kabīr, “great,” and the other with ḥasan, “good.” At the beginning of each we find what differs between them. As far as the garbled transcript can be followed, one of them came to build the civilization of the community, and when we look at a civilization we want to see everything beautiful around us. Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, for its part, comes to speak about the movement of the community, and the more you take from that movement, the happier you will be.^[2] I am only giving a hint here about the importance of understanding the Qur’an.

I want to come back to the example I gave you the first time I came here. Two men stand behind the imam, listening to the recitation. One is an Arab and the other is a non-Arab Muslim. The non-Arab listens carefully, and he is crying. The Arab man, don’t tell anyone, is asking himself, “Why is that man crying? Is he crazy? What is he doing?” After the prayer our friend asks him, “As-salāmu ʿalaykum, brother. Do you understand what he was reciting?” “No.” “Then why were you crying?” “Because I do not understand. I do not understand the purity of the recitation of the Qur’an, and because of that I am crying. I feel something, but I cannot grasp the meaning of the Book of Allah.”

A bird with two wings

Last time we began Sūrat Āl ʿImrān. We said that Sūrat al-Baqarah gives the structure of the Muslim community; it gives the frame, the building. How do we build our community in al-Baqarah? We can recover that in a while, in shā’ Allāh, when we review our curriculum. For now, imagine al-Baqarah as a bird. A bird in front of us right now. What does a bird need in order to fly? Two wings. Sūrat Āl ʿImrān came with the two wings of the community.

What is the first wing? The reference. What is our reference? That is why you find the surah starting with Allah.^[3]

Then, in a while, you find Allah telling us the story of the daughter of ʿImrān, a story we share with Christianity. It is told to give us steadfastness. And the second wing, which you will find in a while, is unity.

Why Uḥud, in the surah of steadfastness?

Now we have a big, famous, important story in the surah: the battle of Uḥud.^[17] It is one of the famous things Allah mentions in it. But the question is this: if Āl ʿImrān comes to give me steadfastness, what is Uḥud doing here? What is its importance for steadfastness?

Think of it this way. I am standing on top of a mountain, strong enough, firm in my place, with my thabāt (the Arabic word, as the transcript has it only in part). What do I need to remember? Even on the top of a mountain, if the wind comes strongly it may push me to a bad position. Now what if a wind like that can move the Muslim community in general?

Imagine Allah summing up the benefits of it in a few words, in four words:^[13] “Some of you like to have [the dunya] …” And now the other question: if one group needs [the one] and the other group needs [the other], which of them will catch the result in the hands of Allah? Which one?

Remember, we are still talking about the companions around the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ. Some of them still needed [the dunya]. How do we understand this? From one decision, taken by one person.

The Prophet ﷺ had told a group to stay in their position. Whatever happens, if you see us being killed in front of your eyes, do not leave this position. If you see us beating the other side, do not leave your position. It was a strict, direct, and clear order. Do not leave your place regardless of what happens. Stay there. It could not have been clearer.

But one of them started to use his own intelligence. He said, “If the Prophet ﷺ asked us to stay here until the battle is finished, well, it is already done over there. Let us go.” And a few people around him said yes, because they saw others collecting the spoils behind the disbelievers, taking everything. “What about us? Are we going to stay here until everything is finished? Come on, we need to get our share. Let us go.”^[4]

One person made a decision, and it caused harm (the transcript is garbled here). The Prophet ﷺ came back to Madinah bleeding. Imagine that you are the one, or I am the one, who caused the blood to come out from the skin of the Prophet ﷺ. What a crime. What a problem I would have caused. Imagine standing in that position.

This is the conclusion: “some of you still need the …, some of you still need …”

The morning that began a new stage

It started when Allah said to the Prophet ﷺ what He said,^[14] and it runs up to the end of the story. Let us stop for a few seconds with the words here, where Allah is telling the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ ghadawta:^[15] it means coming or going early, at the beginning of the day. What I understand from it is that it is not only about the early hours. The beginning of the day is the beginning of a new stage for the Muslim community.

Think about where the community stood. They had just been victors. They beat the disbelievers and came back with everything in their hands: three hundred against a thousand, with nothing on their side and everything on the other.^[5] The three hundred came back happy with the victory. And even then Allah revealed to them a serious message, a blaming.^[6]

Imagine that kind of blame coming from Allah to me or to you. It is not your business. Imagine Allah himself speaking to you, man. Imagine the word coming from the side of Allah. What a strong message. Instead of saying, “Thank you, guys, you did your work, mashallah, you are doing better, well done,” when they were already coming back with everything in their hands, Allah asks them to…

How do we understand that? We are not here to stay as lazy boys. We are here to take our responsibility about the dīn (the transcript is garbled here: “nobody else community. We have two dean and community”). We have our responsibility. Maybe you forgot what we said about “You are the one…”^[7] You know what that means for the whole world? It means we have a responsibility as Muslims toward the universe. Allah is telling them that beating the other people in one event is not the achievement. The achievement comes when you deliver the message of Allah, glorified and exalted, to the whole world. Otherwise you are doing nothing. What did you do here? You got a masjid, a few walls. Mashallah, you have good air conditioning. Mashallah, and then, boom, boom, boom, the microphone is good. Wow, a good masjid. This is not an achievement. The achievement comes after building the place. The place is the core of the actions; otherwise we are wasting our time here. We could pray in front of the door, by the way.

What the masjid is for

Allah did not ask me, as a Muslim, to build a beautiful and fancy place to pray. I can pray anywhere. So what is the reason for the masjid? As Allah has said…^[8] What is the meaning of that? This is the masjid: a place for creating a new generation that holds the daʿwah, that puts something very heavy on its shoulder and goes strongly to deliver that message toward Allah, glorified and exalted.

The people of [īmān] are the ones who think days and nights about the position of the Muslim community. They are not the people who come to look and say everything is good, “Allāh yubārik fīkum,” and leave. That is not the work. That is not the responsibility. We do come to the masjid to enjoy our time, to have tranquility, to feed our souls and to convince our minds that we are all right. But what about the rest of the people? You have a responsibility for the people outside the masjid more than for the people inside it. I hope my message is clear.

Now we can understand ghadawta. When you go out in the early morning, it is a sign that you are starting a new stage of the Muslim community, a new period in the future of Islam. You are building a different design for the future of Islam. (The transcript is unclear here: “because of the people they were they already attended before that.”) Do you follow what I am saying? Allah could have chosen any word, but He chose the early morning, and this is a sign for us: every single day we need to start a new stage of the Muslim community.

“From your family”

Then He says min ahlika: you left your people, your family, behind you. Can we say it again? You left your family behind you. Why do I need to leave my family behind me? Why do I need to leave them? The verse is talking about the relationship, or a spiritual relationship, with the family. You need to leave them behind you. Is that right? Maybe I am wrong. I hope my wife is not hearing this, but unfortunately I am streaming.

Why do I need that? In a hadith the Prophet ﷺ spoke about families, about the ladies, and so on; I mean my wife, my sister, my mother, my daughter. That community thinks emotionally more than we do. Allah gave them something that we cannot have. I am talking about myself as a man: we cannot carry that amount of emotion. Alhamdulillah, this is a good advantage for them, and because of it they have the patience to raise the children. We have strong muscles to go and fight with the dunya and come back with money in our hands. Maybe some of them can do that too, but we are not claiming anything, and we are not saying anything wrong. This is their strength.

My wife, every day when I go to the [work], tells me, “You can stay five more minutes. You can go five minutes late.” Habibi, let me go to my work, I want to be early. They want to keep you next to them. That is their comfort zone. And, as I understand it, that is exactly what the Prophet ﷺ said (the transcript is garbled here, beginning “once we are coming to spend the money”).^[9] Imagine someone going out to the fighting or the battle: what do you imagine his wife does? She stays crying until he comes back. If I am going somewhere and I see my wife crying behind me, what kind of feeling do I have at that moment?

So Allah is telling Muḥammad ﷺ that once you submit yourself to Allah, you need to cut your relationship, spiritually, from your family. Does that make sense? No? But how can I do it? By making them part of your responsibility. You move them out of the relationship, which has two parts, me and them, and bring them into your responsibility. I hope I am clear. I am sorry for my English, guys; I am trying my best. Got it? What is my responsibility toward my family? They are a part of it.

“Settling the believers in their seats”

Now take the word tubawwiʾu. In the Arabic language it means to settle everything in the best place for it. I think an engineer would shorten all of those words with “set up, man.” Just set up the things, put everything in the best position for it. Then it means sitting.

When I go to the war, to the fighting, am I standing over there, running, sitting, fighting, walking, going here and there? How do I understand the verse? Once you put somebody in a good position, that is his seat. Even if he is standing, you cannot move him from the place you have seated him in, and the place will not let him go to another place. When you settle somebody in a place, that is his sitting there. You know what I mean?

Are we messengers of the Messenger?

I am going to ask again. Does everyone here consider himself a messenger of the Messenger ﷺ? Before saying yes, think for even one second. Do you consider yourself a messenger of the messenger of Allah ﷺ?

The question that follows is this. If you do, you need to have the same amount of … he had (a word is lost). How many times did he take time off to stay home, or to go on a field trip, climbing somewhere, hunting here and there? How many weekends did he take? How many days off? You are still there? How many days? Nobody answered me. Zero. A big zero, nothing. He was working during the days and the nights. Twenty-four seven. Best answer. Are we doing that? Anybody here, including myself? Anybody who considers himself a messenger of the Messenger ﷺ?

Once in a while Allah asks the Prophet ﷺ a very clear question. Listen to that question.^[10] Are you killing yourself because they are not Muslims yet? Imagine somebody who is burning because he wants every single person around him to come to Islam, and who cannot see anyone going toward the hellfire. One time he ﷺ was crying because a funeral passed by him, and the people asked, “O Messenger of Allah, why are you crying? He is not a Muslim.” He said, “I am crying because he is not a Muslim. I missed one of the people, and he is going to the fire because of my shortcoming.”^[11] Do you think the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ had any kind of shortcoming? Even so, he blamed himself for any minute in which he missed giving the message to the other people around him. This is the feeling of responsibility.

The two groups that almost failed

I am sorry for the length tonight. When we come to the verse where Allah tells the Muslim community…^[18] I cannot imagine. Can I have one over here and one at home? Just one is more than enough, man. Okay, I am only joking with you. What is the meaning of [tafshalā]? Can anybody help me? “Fail.” Allah is talking about the Muslim community: the two groups of you, the two groups of you, were almost done with failing. How did that come about?

The Prophet ﷺ asked the people to come together. “Guys, what do you think is the best position we can take?” One opinion was to stay in Madinah, go upstairs, climb up among the palm trees, and when they come in, strike them from above. The other group said, “We are strong enough. We can go out and fight them outside Madinah. Let us go.” The Prophet ﷺ had asked them to think about the first option first: we can stay here, and once they enter Madinah it will be over quickly. But the others said, “We are strong, we already beat them, so let us go.” The Prophet ﷺ left that gathering and entered his room, and prepared himself.

When they saw him, he did not seem happy. They said to each other, “Maybe we bothered the Prophet ﷺ.” When he came back they said, “O Messenger of Allah, we are so sorry. Do whatever you want.” And he ﷺ said something I do not know how to translate: “No way. If the prophets have their [armor] closed on, you know, whatever you call it, and take it off before coming back… the decision is done.”^[12]

Shūrā, and where it stops

Allah gave those people a chance at [shūrā]. What is the meaning of it? Each one of us gives his opinion. Where is the opinion coming from? From who you are and what you do. I am an engineer, I am a doctor, I am an imam, I am a teacher, I am so-and-so. Each one of us has a different personality, a different education, a different mentality, a different background, different skills, and each of us gives his opinion based on all of that. This is the free time to give your opinion.

But when the opinions reach the level of fighting, hey, man, stop. Do not go on. Stay back. When the people insisted (the transcript reads “yeah, why we okay?”), he took himself out of the gathering, put on his clothes, and came back: “I am ready for you.” Imagine that even the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, when he found the people insisting on something, went back to their opinion. Which one knows better? The one who receives his … from Allah, glorified and exalted, or the people who are only trying to understand the case and are giving their experience and an opinion? And still he came back to them and said, “Okay, I will do it. Do not worry.”

Why am I thinking about this point? Before the prayer a brother came to me and asked whether we could give the people a chance to pray the sunnah before starting our lecture. Usually people leave right after the salah, and we miss a big number of them. If we give them the chance, then how many opinions do we have? Two. As long as we are sharing opinions and each of us tries to convince the other, we are fine. When somebody gets to the point of anger, that is when I should step back.

This is the point. How many organizations in the community… I said it before: we have discussion, shūrā, or disagreement. When we reach disagreement, that is when we need to step back. And even when we disagree, we are still under the shadow of Allah.

Re-educating a community after a victory

Let us have a conclusion about it. It came after what was a kind of victory for the Muslim community. And even then Allah educated them through a whole surah; the whole surah speaks to re-educate the Muslim community, and giving them the … when they deal with Allah, glorified and exalted. Money is not the first issue in your life. We also need this when we come to the discussion with the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ. We have to have that kind of … when we deal with the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. When the Prophet ﷺ assigns somebody to stay over there and says, “Do not leave your position, your spot, without permission,” we need to stay there.

Allah, glorified and exalted, asked me to be an imam of the community. Okay, I am there. Maybe I could get money in other ways. I am a good businessman; my father, by Allah, taught me a lot of skills in that field. But Allah chose me for this place, and I am going to stay in it and not move to another place.

What is your position? You need to decide where your position is. Otherwise the dunya will keep distracting us and take us away from our goal. The destination of all of us is Jannah. Do not let [Shayṭān] cause you any distraction.

--- ^[1]: توثيق المحرر: the recording gives no Arabic here. The lecturer said that the Qur’an guides to “the best of the best,” gives glad tidings, and that the reward is big; he named Sūrat al-Isrāʾ shortly after. The verse is identified by the editor as al-Isrāʾ 17:9, ﴿إِنَّ هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنَ يَهْدِي لِلَّتِي هِيَ أَقْوَمُ وَيُبَشِّرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ الَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ الصَّالِحَاتِ أَنَّ لَهُمْ أَجْرًا كَبِيرًا﴾; this is a guess from the meaning, so check it against the recording. ^[2]: توثيق المحرر: this sentence is badly garbled in the transcript (“it’s coming from the py… they going to find the pury of the results of their action”). The “other” surah with ḥasan is not named; it is possibly al-Kahf (18:2, ajran ḥasanan), but the lecturer did not say so. See the uncertain list. ^[3]: توثيق المحرر: the lecturer said the surah “starts with Allah.” The editor’s identification of the verse is Āl ʿImrān 3:2, ﴿اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ﴾; the lecturer did not recite it in the transcript. The transcript also has “the burning of all of that story” for the account of the daughter of ʿImrān, which is not clear. ^[4]: توثيق المحرر: the lecturer gave no names and no numbers. Al-Bukhārī’s account of the archers (in the report of al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib) says their commander ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jubayr refused and stayed with a few men while most of the archers left. The article keeps the lecturer’s wording. ^[5]: توثيق المحرر: the transcript does not name the battle; “three hundred against a thousand” points to Badr, and the lecturer later says in the shūrā passage “we already beat them,” which fits. ^[6]: توثيق المحرر: the lecturer did not say which verse carries this blame; it is not named here. ^[7]: توثيق المحرر: the transcript reads “You are the one. You… what they mean of… in the whole world.” The editor’s guess is ﴿كُنتُمْ خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ﴾ (Āl ʿImrān 3:110); it is uncertain and the lecturer did not say it. ^[8]: توثيق المحرر: the transcript has a single word before “What is the meaning of that?”, and the verse cannot be identified. Left unquoted. ^[9]: توثيق المحرر: the transcript says “that’s exactly what… the Prophet Muhammad said, imagine if somebody going to the fighting.” What follows reads as the lecturer’s own illustration, not a quoted saying, and is rendered that way. The hadith he mentions earlier about families and women is not identified in the transcript. ^[10]: توثيق المحرر: the question the lecturer refers to is probably ﴿لَعَلَّكَ بَاخِعٌ نَّفْسَكَ أَلَّا يَكُونُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ﴾ (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:3); a similar address is in al-Kahf 18:6. The lecturer did not name it. ^[11]: توثيق المحرر: the editor does not recall this report in this wording, and the lecturer gave no source. It is given as he told it. Verify before relying on it. ^[12]: توثيق المحرر: the lecturer said he did not know how to translate the saying; the Arabic is lost in the transcript. The sīrah reports of the armor carry varying wordings (see Musnad Aḥmad and the sīrah sources). The transcript reads: “if the prophets having their arm closed you know whatever you can call it and getting off from that before coming back done the decision is done.” “Armor” is the editor’s reading of “arm closed”, and the line “he was looks happy he wasn’t” just before it is garbled.