Yesterday I posted my first vidcast “Tips for New Muslims: Approaching the Qur’an,” but I thought I’d do a written post on the topic as well. This is for those who can’t/don’t want to view vidcasts and also to make the content searchable in the future.

Introduction

The Qur’an, the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language to the Prophet Muhammad , peace be upon him, over fourteen hundred years ago. Muslims believe the Qur’an in its Arabic original is literally the word of God (not the word of Muhammad). As such, the English texts we read are really translations of the meanings of the Qur’an.

This post assumes that readers have little to no knowledge of Arabic, and is designed for those who have never read an English translation of the Qur’an.

Purifying intentions

Traditionally, Muslims perform ritual ablutions (a ritual ablution), purifying the bodies and souls, before touching a copy of the Qur’an. This isn’t a concern if you are simply reading an English translation, but it is good to make an intention that you want to read the translation of the Qur’an for the sake of Allah . This is because the intention behind any action is extremely important according to Islamic belief.

The holy Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “Actions are only by intention, and every person shall only have what he intended.”

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My very first vidcast. This week I talk about approaching the holy Qur’an for new Muslims or people generally interested in gaining a better understanding of Islam through reading a translation of the Islamic scripture.

Abu Yasmin (who knows all about coding and stuff) and I are thinking of doing something like this, but for the Qur’an. The thing I like the best is that you can keep your own annotations, and cross-reference verses. I haven’t come across anything like that for the Qur’an - but has anyone else? (Before I make Abu Yasmin start coding stuff).

Br. Abdullah Hasan, masha’Allah has composed a concordance of Qur’anic ayat and hadiths on various topics. This is really useful if you know there is a hadith or ayah that talks about a particular topic but you can’t remember the exact wording to search. For example, I spent twenty minutes trying to find a particular hadith where the Prophet Muhammad said something like if a person died in jihad but their intentions were not for the sake of Allah (i.e. they were for glory or for political purposes etc.) then they are not martyrs. But I couldn’t think of the exact wording and ‘jihad’ ‘martyr’ and ‘funeral prayer’ are very common words to search.

So under J in hadith I found: “One who died and had no intention for jihad, died as a
hypocrite M3-1057-4696, AD2-693-2496″ which means there are hadiths along those lines in Muslim and Abu Dawud.

Irving translation of the Qur’an