Educational Objectives in Qur’anic Stories: Ulū l-Albāb, Prayer and Leadership

Occasion: a transcript of a lecture delivered at Woodbridge on September 10, 2026Source: transcript of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

If we went through the details of each surah, we would end up with thousands of pictures; there would be no end to speaking about every single word. So in this series we are only trying to look at the main topics of each surah and to take a brief view of them. Tonight we finish our talk about Sūrat Āl ʿImrān. As we said, Allah singled out these themes in it in order to give us the full story of Christianity from its early beginning: what is real, and what is the false information people try to give. He showed us how He created a man through a miracle that has happened only once in the whole of the dunya, from its beginning until now. And what is the purpose behind all of that?

Today, at the end of the surah, we find a special prayer from an elite group of people whom Allah calls by a name I could not translate to my satisfaction.^[1] The word is ulū l-albāb. The lubb is the source of the source of the source of things, the core of a thing, the middle of it, like a seed (as it seems from the recording) that has everything coming up through it. These are people who understand what they are doing. They understand the purpose of their existence and the destination: they want to go somewhere, at some time. They even understand the environment around them.

Who they are

Allah speaks of the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of night and day, and of the people who read these as signs.

So what is their character? What did they have that made them this? This is a high position that Allah gives to someone who is really intelligent, an intellectual. And look at what He says about them next. Remembering Allah is not a big deal. It does not need that genius position to say subḥān Allāh and al-ḥamdu lillāh; anybody can do that. But when we come to reality we find the opposite. Someone dumb like me is looking for the dunya, collecting money from here and there, going through the stores, and he forgets. And Shaytan comes, masterfully and intentionally, to cause that forgetting of the name of Allah.

The real remembrance of Allah is not just repeating the words. It comes through my life. When I deal with my wife and I am about to use hard words or to be angry, the remembrance of Allah works like an antenna, a sensor. It says, “Hey, Ahmed, what are you doing? Be careful, you are about to pass the limit.” And I control my tongue with the closest person to me. When I deal with my children, I am not raising them to get a benefit from them in the future, so that they come back to me with money. I am not doing good to my neighbor because I need something from him one day. I do not go through the dunya with that mentality. I deal with all of these people because of the Creator of all of us, and I treat them as one of the children, one of the family, under the shadow of the One who created us all. Without any comparison, imagine a father looking at his children. They are supposed to be nice to each other, and if anybody does anything against his brother or sister, it harms the father before anybody else. Am I clear? This is our mentality when we deal with the dunya.

Standing, sitting, lying on their sides

Normal people remember Allah temporarily. I say subḥān Allāh and al-ḥamdu lillāh after the prayer, or I say something when I have done something wrong, according to the occasion. But Allah says of these people that they are standing, sitting, lying on their sides. Do we have another position? Standing, sitting, lying: whatever I am doing, I am in one of the three. It means they remember Allah in every position they have, and so they never forget the word of Allah. That is the difference between somebody who says it just because he happened to remember, and somebody for whom it has become a habit, who never stops repeating the name of Allah.

But it is not even a habit of the tongue alone, with the tongue running ahead on its own. It comes with a connection between the tongue and the mind, and that is why Allah adds that they think deeply.

The bottle in my hand

What does deep thinking look like? They look around themselves, up and down, right and left, front and behind, and they try to understand the purpose of the creation of this water. What is the reason this bottle came here, to me, right now, and not a different one from the same box? By the way, when you went to pick it, you just picked one. But Allah called this one for me, not the one next to it. Do you know what I am trying to say? I could have taken that one instead, but this is mine. Maybe Allah made it for me. I will finish this one, and maybe somebody will say to me, “Can you take this one too, since you are traveling?”

Or I go to the store to buy bread, and I flip a loaf over in my hands. I could take this one, no, I will take that one, and I put the box back and look for another thing. Somebody comes behind me and takes the one I left, and goes. If I had not grabbed the first one from the bottom of the box and put it to one side, he would have taken a different one, and the other one would not have been his. Allah caused me to come at that moment, to pick this one from the middle of the box and put it aside, so that somebody would come behind me and take it, and it was his. This is the kind of thing we need to think about.

Then Allah mentions the night coming through the day, the day coming with the dawn, the moon appearing through the sun. What is that? Who created all of these things? Imagine the person who created AI. He is not smarter than the person who remembers Allah. And from the very beginning we were commanded to read. As we explained before, reading is not just following the steps of the letters and saying, “This is al-ḥamdu lillāh. This is the microphone.” That is a kind of reading, but how can I explore something? How can I create something? That is also a kind of reading. These are intelligent people. They add value, and they never pass through the world without leaving something behind them. That is our legacy: when we look at the reason of our existence in some place at some time, they never miss the reason for the things they have in their hands.

What is the reason for this thinking deeply? You did not create these things randomly, without a reason. So what is the reason? This is our turn to think about the reason for the things we already have in our hands: to create something more, to develop it, to upgrade it, to add our value as a Muslim community.

Why would they fear the Fire?

Then they ask to be spared the punishment of the Fire; they are really worried about it. And here is my humble question. You may be able to help me with the answer. If we have people who think about Allah all the time, with everything they hold in their hands, who remember Allah around the clock and never miss His words at any time, what is it that puts the Fire in front of them? They are already there. Why are they so worried about the Fire? They are not the bad-doers, and they are not talking about mistakes. They are worried about any kind of shortcoming: that they did not finish the thing a hundred percent perfectly.

There are two levels of thinking about a task. I am giving the lecture. I can come here and say, “Assalamu alaykum, guys, are you okay today? Alhamdulillah. Let us talk about such-and-such. You know what the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said? One, two, three, four,” and the hadith, one, two, three, four. It is easy for me to do that and to collect the whole of the information, and somebody or something (the word is unclear in the recording) will answer me with anything I need right now. But then I am not giving myself the chance to think deeply about the meaning and about the relationship between things. I make my research instead. Why? Because I am worried about my shortcoming. If I come here and waste your time, Allah is going to ask me about your time. He is going to ask me about the chance He gave me to sit in this place when the people did not benefit. “Come on, Ahmed, what did you do, man? Shame on you. We gave you that position and you wasted its value (the word is cut off in the recording).”

The same is true of those who are engineers, doctors, teachers, pilots, whatever position they hold. They worry about their shortcoming, because they know they will stand before Allah one time, and Allah will ask them, “Guys, what did you do?” And they will say, “O Allah, I did one, two, three. I did my part; my result is a hundred percent.” Ninety-nine percent may be fine. Ninety-five is still a loss. But otherwise I will come with my hands held like this, feeling shy, feeling regret: “I did not do anything. What is the value of my life?” This is what makes them ask to be spared the Fire on the Day of Judgment.

Oppression and responsibility

If You put somebody in the Fire, it is a shameful position that anybody could have, and they do not want to be there. They do not want to be among the ẓālimūn. What is the meaning of oppression, ẓulm? It is what people cause for themselves, or for anybody around them. And one of the main kinds of ẓulm in our life is to miss your position. A girl goes around doing something wrong. Come over here, why are you doing that? “My dad did not teach me,” just for example. “My mom ignored me, and I found myself in this position, going around playing with the boys.” Come on: who had the fault there, and who made the mistake? Can we punish the girl before punishing the dad or the mom? Who caused the problem? That is the point. If I am a teacher in a class and I am not doing my part, and the student goes out into the community and does everything wrong, who is going to be questioned about the mistakes, they or me? Which of us comes first? Allah says that nobody will come to help me when I stand before Him on the day of the Resurrection and He asks me about my responsibility.

Do you remember what we said about the khalīfah and the imām? The khalīfah is a mission for everybody. The imām is the elite: you are imitating Adam, or you are imitating Ibrāhīm. Which level of responsibility is higher than the other? We said we value all of that according to the task Allah gave to each one of them. “What Allah gave Adam, actually nothing; but what Allah gave Ibrāhīm, actually everything.”^[2] And imagine coming to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ: you find that the responsibility is wider still, because he is the last messenger.

At this point in the lecture he lingered over a word he called a beautiful word, “intercession,” shafāʿa. When we hear it, we remember the one who will stand before Allah on the Day of Resurrection and say that he will not leave his place until Allah forgives (the object of the forgiveness is lost in the recording). He added that intercession comes from people who will stand on that day and speak for a person. The sentences that follow are too garbled in the recording to be rendered, but they seem to say that Allah will not accept from people who have a shortcoming, and he stressed that he was not speaking about the bad-doers: “We are talking about somebody like me.”^[3]

The imam's burden

We have a responsibility about the community, and you, and you. We did not fulfill it the way Allah asked me to. I was lying back, taking my break, taking my vacation, going around enjoying my time, and at the end of the day I come to say Allāhu akbar and make people cry behind me. Is that the responsibility of the imam? The imam must lead the community. He looks at what the girls need, what the women are missing, what the men are asking, what the children want, and then even the old person.

The first lesson we learned is this. When you stand on the minbar and talk to the people, you need to think about every single person who came to the masjid. If somebody is looking for a chair, you need to think about that, but you do not stop; you continue your speech in the perfect way. At the same time you are thinking about those two men: I know you have a problem between you, you were fighting last week, you are neighbors, I know the whole story between all of you, and I know what will happen if that one comes. Sometimes somebody comes to the masjid and you will never see him again, and you know he has a problem and you need to treat his position. You need to move from the topic you are speaking on to this point, finish it, and then come back after the task. Imagine what kind of responsibility this is, even during the speech. That is one example. You are the imams of the community, and you need to lead, first of all, yourself; second, your family; third, your neighbor; and fourth, all the people with whom you have any kind of relationship.

“We heard a caller, and we said yes”

If we have nothing except that: we heard somebody calling for the īmān, and we said yes. When I hear somebody calling me to faith, I am already there. I submitted myself to You. I have nothing except that, and what he asks is forgiveness for anything bad.

One of the people at the beginning, in the early time, used to make a special prayer. What is that prayer? Did anybody here understand what I said? Can you repeat it? I cannot repeat it myself. Why not? He said, roughly: “O Allah, we obeyed You in the thing most beloved to You, and we did not disobey You in the thing You dislike most, which is shirk. So forgive us for everything in between.” He was a smart person. Think of it: this is the first word I said in my life, lā ilāha illā Allāh, and I never said that I have another partner with Allah. But in between we have a lot of things. You know what I mean? And he asks Allah to forgive him for everything coming in between.

I have a question. What is the difference between the two? What is the opposite of a good deed, in the Arabic language, or the opposite of the word he used (the Arabic word is lost in the recording)? That word means doing something wrong, or missing something. And what is the thing that is wrong but whose impact is still there? When I say it is like an eraser, I take it away: you said something wrong, and you are done. But you have already hurt me, and I have a mark there that must be raised out. That is something different. It needs more time. I cannot erase it by myself; I need your help to do all of that.^[4] Subḥān Allāh. I have taken a long time tonight.

Dignity, and what we offer

When you hear this, you can see people who feel their own dignity. I am an imam; you cannot see me in a shameful position, because I am conscious of my dignity. I cannot go there. I cannot be in the wrong position, in the wrong place. You will never find me over there, because I am worried about my position and my dignity. And once you feel that, you will never be in a wrong spot.

Then Allah accepts from them. He says that He will never waste any action, whether it comes from a male or a female, it does not matter, and that they are from one another.

What is the meaning of hijra? They left things and places, not just a place; they left everything behind them. Sometimes we speak of a hijra from bad actions. We need a hijra from bad mentality as well, from bad attitude, bad action, bad habits. It becomes a kind of metaphor, an emotional hijra, not only a physical one from one place to another.

And it means they were hurt because of Me. Did we ever hold that position? Did anybody say something wrong against you or attack you at any time? Maybe some of us had something back home, but here what kind of hurt have we had? We have nothing. What will we tell Allah on the Day of Judgment? What kind of sacrifice have we made for Allah? Actually we have nothing. We are happy because we come to prayer. Is that what we are going to bring to Allah, “Hey, I did my prayer”? Come on, man, you carry yourself. Are we able to compare ourselves, and our positions, with the people who came around the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ?

He then recalled a saying of the Prophet ﷺ in which the Companions said, “We are your beloved people,” and he answered that they were his companions, while his beloved were those who would come after, who have no helper or supporter to bring them to the rank the Companions already hold because of him, for he is an imām to them. The wording in the recording is badly broken here. The sentences before it seem to speak of the Companions and of entering Jannah, and of being with them “at the door of Jannah,” but they are too garbled to render.^[5] He then told the audience that what they need is simply to finish reading the verses.

The building and its inspection

So what is the comparison, and what is the prayer at the end of the surah? It matches the construction. They have built the frame of the ummah, as we mentioned before in Sūrat al-Baqarah, which helps the community build its frame. And once we finish a construction, we go around to look at the walls and the connections between the pieces; and if there is a hole somewhere, or something missing, this is the time. It is a kind of inspection, and by that inspection we try to figure out the mistakes, whether we forgot something or made an error. And we say, “I gave you the building, I need the rest of my money, and please forgive me for any shortcoming. Okay, here you go, brother.”

In Āl ʿImrān the work does not come with muscle. It comes with intellectual work. As we mentioned at the beginning of our talk on Āl ʿImrān, Allah is speaking about two main things: the reference of the ummah, and the unity between the parts of the ummah. Both need intellectual work more than muscle work. That is why we find this prayer here, and the other prayer in the other surah.

We ask Allah to help us understand this book and follow the direction of its words, and may Allah accept from all of you.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: the lecturer recited no verse in this recording, and the automatic transcript contains no Arabic at all. The editor identified the end of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān from his description (albāb; remembering Allah standing, sitting and lying on the side; "You did not create this in vain"; the Fire; the wrongdoers without helpers; the caller to faith; forgiveness; "grant us what You promised"; "do not disgrace us"; no deed wasted, male or female; hijra). The verses, for the reader's reference, are: ﴿إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ لَآيَاتٍ لِّأُولِي الْأَلْبَابِ﴾ [آل عمران: 190]; ﴿الَّذِينَ يَذْكُرُونَ اللَّهَ قِيَامًا وَقُعُودًا وَعَلَىٰ جُنُوبِهِمْ وَيَتَفَكَّرُونَ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَٰذَا بَاطِلًا سُبْحَانَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ﴾ [آل عمران: 191]; ﴿رَبَّنَا إِنَّكَ مَن تُدْخِلِ النَّارَ فَقَدْ أَخْزَيْتَهُ ۖ وَمَا لِلظَّالِمِينَ مِنْ أَنصَارٍ﴾ [آل عمران: 192]; ﴿رَّبَّنَا إِنَّنَا سَمِعْنَا مُنَادِيًا يُنَادِي لِلْإِيمَانِ أَنْ آمِنُوا بِرَبِّكُمْ فَآمَنَّا ۚ رَبَّنَا فَاغْفِرْ لَنَا ذُنُوبَنَا وَكَفِّرْ عَنَّا سَيِّئَاتِنَا﴾ [آل عمران: 193]; ﴿رَبَّنَا وَآتِنَا مَا وَعَدتَّنَا عَلَىٰ رُسُلِكَ وَلَا تُخْزِنَا يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ﴾ [آل عمران: 194]; ﴿فَاسْتَجَابَ لَهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ أَنِّي لَا أُضِيعُ عَمَلَ عَامِلٍ مِّنكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ أَوْ أُنثَىٰ ۖ بَعْضُكُم مِّن بَعْضٍ ۖ فَالَّذِينَ هَاجَرُوا وَأُخْرِجُوا مِن دِيَارِهِمْ وَأُوذُوا فِي سَبِيلِي﴾ [آل عمران: 195]. The Qur'anic terms ulū l-albāb and hijra and the surah name are likewise the editor's identification; "Iran" in the transcript is read as Āl ʿImrān. Please check against a mushaf. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: the sentence is printed as the transcript has it, in the speaker's words. It is loosely worded, and its sense is probably that Adam was entrusted with a lighter task while Ibrāhīm was entrusted with a very heavy one. It has not been corrected here, and the author should confirm his intention. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: the speaker says, as far as the recording allows, that someone will stand on the Day of Resurrection and say that he will not leave his place until Allah forgives; he does not name who (the transcript does not say it is the Prophet ﷺ). The passage has been kept short because the transcript does not allow more. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: the transcript is confused over which of the two terms (dhanb and sayyiʾa) carries the lingering effect that cannot simply be erased, so the passage keeps only what is clear: a wrong done to another may leave a mark that the doer cannot remove alone. The author should confirm. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: this may allude to the hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ speaks of those who come after him as his "brothers" (reported in Muslim), but the transcript does not allow certainty, and the passage is garbled enough that the author should confirm both the narration and the point intended.