Ali Dawah - June 02, 2019


＂EX MUSLIM＂ ATTEMPTS QURAN CHALLENGE...USING THE QURAN LOL

Hosted by
Ali Dawah
Mentioned
Labid
FINDING HANAN - MINI DOCUMENTARY SALAF VS THE SALAFI - FOLLOW SALAF NOT THE SALAFI

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

110.36

Word count

1,295

Sentence count

106

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I explain why imitations of the Qur'an are not eloquent, and why those who copy it are ruining the meaning of the text. I also provide examples of poems that are ripped off from the Quran without realizing they ve been ripped off.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.400 As-salamu alaykum wa-tala wa barakatuh.
00:00:02.780 As many of you know, the Qur'an put forth a challenge to bring something like it.
00:00:08.660 However, instead of the disbelievers taking part in that challenge, they waged war against the Muslims.
00:00:15.360 Now keep in mind, this was a society that thrived on these challenges and always never backed down from such challenges,
00:00:24.240 and they took part in these poetry battles, if you may.
00:00:27.160 However, instead of taking part in the challenge, you had a lot of these major poets like Hassan bin Thabit, Ka'ab bin Malik, Abdullah bin Rawaha,
00:00:39.440 and even Labid himself accepting Islam instead.
00:00:44.380 Now flash forward a thousand and four hundred years later, and you have some Misakeen who are taking up the Qur'an challenge and thinking that they've actually succeeded. 1.00
00:00:54.220 Now one of these Misakeen attempted to take up the Qur'an challenge, and he produced a surah which he called Fa'qaf.
00:01:03.680 And I'm going to make an example out of this surah and demonstrate to you how bad these imitations, Qur'an imitations really are. 1.00
00:01:14.760 Not only that, but I'm going to be using this surah to demonstrate how eloquent the Qur'an actually is.
00:01:22.980 Alright, so first, a quick background.
00:01:25.260 This video was re-uploaded a few times on YouTube and has over 80,000 views.
00:01:30.600 The person that produced these verses has a degree in Classical Arabic and Islamic history.
00:01:36.640 The surah was called Fa'qaf, which is a wordplay on F*** Off.
00:01:41.780 Now, just a quick disclaimer, I don't believe that this piece deserves to even be critiqued.
00:01:48.500 But I'm just doing this to show you how those who attempt the Qur'an challenge can't really escape the eloquence of the Qur'an,
00:02:00.920 which they admit without even realizing you're going to see what I mean in a bit.
00:02:06.540 Okay, so I'm splitting my criticism into two parts.
00:02:09.540 The first part is going to be about the ridiculous meanings.
00:02:13.520 And the second part I'm going to be focusing on the examples of eloquence that are ripped off from the Qur'an.
00:02:19.420 Notice here, the author speaks.
00:02:49.400 These signs include God's creation of chickens, God boiling eggs, God sending thunder and lightning, and God making air fresh.
00:03:01.320 Now, first of all, boiling an egg is not a sign of God.
00:03:04.020 Anyone can boil an egg.
00:03:05.760 Secondly, he says that thunder is sent.
00:03:08.720 Now, thunder isn't sent.
00:03:10.120 Thunder is the cause of lightning.
00:03:12.040 Lightning can be sent.
00:03:13.480 And thunder is not sent.
00:03:15.160 In other words, this is just poor word choice.
00:03:18.140 Now, let's carry on. 0.93
00:03:19.000 Okay, so this is ridiculous, as it makes no sense. 0.98
00:03:32.800 You don't hang someone, then choke them. 0.98
00:03:36.480 You do one or the other.
00:03:38.040 What's the point of choking someone who has already been hanged? 1.00
00:03:41.800 It's stupid! 1.00
00:03:42.520 Notice the emphasis here. 1.00
00:03:50.480 He knocks the door a knocking.
00:03:53.540 Why?
00:03:54.520 What is so special about knocking this door?
00:03:58.420 Why is there an emphasis here?
00:04:01.160 Now, the only reason I can think of this person used this word, a knocking, at the end, is because this person was thinking to themselves,
00:04:09.400 hmm, I need to let through the ends with the laqaf. 0.99
00:04:12.480 Um, qaraqa yatarukhu, okay, so knock, uh, he knocked, a knocking, yes.
00:04:20.900 And when you do that, you sacrifice the meaning of the text.
00:04:24.320 That's not eloquent. 0.99
00:04:25.160 And again, here, I swear by the braying of the ass. 0.99
00:04:46.780 How is this eloquent? 0.99
00:04:49.960 Just because it rhymes.
00:04:52.300 I mean, look, look at how it lines up to the next verse.
00:04:58.300 So, the creator of the bray of the donkey, how is this supposed to be eloquent? 1.00
00:05:05.080 So, rule number one, if it's stupid, it's not eloquent. 0.99
00:05:08.920 It doesn't matter if you rhyme it, sing it, or beatbox it. 1.00
00:05:11.920 It's garbage. 0.99
00:05:12.780 So, there is an issue here. 1.00
00:05:40.300 Why does it say, dancing girls with no veil?
00:05:43.560 Because dancing girls with no veil is a given. 0.99
00:05:47.520 Of course, they aren't wearing veils.
00:05:49.760 What is the point of enticing someone with a dancer with no veil?
00:05:54.940 So, I'll tell you why this was said.
00:05:58.240 It was said because they wanted to force a rhyme at the end of the verse.
00:06:02.060 So, they ended the verse with the word veil, khimar, to fit in with rivers and har.
00:06:10.320 Now, by doing this, you sabotaged the meaning of the verse for the sake of the rhyme.
00:06:15.120 Okay, so, let's just move on to the good stuff.
00:06:21.800 Alright, so here I'm going to provide examples of how the author of these verses submits to the Quranic challenge without realizing.
00:06:31.360 Here's an example.
00:06:32.080 So, verse 21 here is a direct rip-off from the Quran.
00:06:51.980 Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala uses these exact words in 2.25, 5.119, 9.89, and 85.11.
00:07:03.580 Now, why would someone who's trying to meet the challenge of the Quran directly rip off a verse that's been repeated so many times in the Quran?
00:07:12.420 Is it perhaps because they didn't know how to express it better?
00:07:16.760 Maybe.
00:07:17.080 Also, notice verse 20.
00:07:19.300 The English says, they are the best.
00:07:21.760 This isn't a precise translation.
00:07:24.060 The word فَإِنَّهُمْ translates to, they are.
00:07:27.900 The word هُمْ translates to, they are as well.
00:07:32.300 A better translation of this is, they themselves are the best.
00:07:36.500 This usage is a rip-off from verses like 2.12, where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks of the hypocrites.
00:07:43.300 They, the hypocrites say, we are peacemakers.
00:07:47.840 Now, surely they themselves are the mischief-makers, but they do not perceive. 0.87
00:07:52.840 As you can see, the author is trying to imitate the Quran's style, but fails badly.
00:07:57.520 This structure, which focuses on emphasis, is used to affirm a claim or a view that contradicts the original claim.
00:08:07.120 In this case, it's only when the hypocrites say we are peacemakers that Allah uses the structure of they themselves are mischief-makers.
00:08:16.880 So, the author of these verses is just using these words because they sound cool.
00:08:24.240 But in reality, this person has no idea about the way they're supposed to be used.
00:08:29.580 Anyhow, here's another example.
00:08:31.220 Notice the term la, which suggests negation, is not used in English.
00:08:47.220 This is because the term la, here, is used as an affirmation.
00:08:51.860 In other words, it does say, I swear.
00:08:54.700 So, this is linguistically correct, even though it seems to say, I do not swear.
00:09:01.400 So, where did the author get this idea from?
00:09:04.680 That's right.
00:09:05.940 He learned this form of emphasis from the Quran in 56-75, 69-38, 70-40, 81-15, and 84-16.
00:09:16.940 Let me explain one more time.
00:09:18.080 So, the author of these verses is so influenced by the Quran, they're submitting to the eloquence of the Quran without even realizing they cannot escape plagiarizing it,
00:09:29.140 and they cannot escape using the Quranic sentence structures.
00:09:33.600 Now, producing something like it doesn't mean rip it off.
00:09:37.540 It doesn't mean copy the verses and just change one word here and one word there, and then you produce something like it.
00:09:43.420 No, the challenge is to produce something on the same level of eloquence.
00:09:46.900 Now, keep in mind that these examples that I've mentioned, examples like فَإِنَّهُمْ هُمْ and فَلَا أُقْسِمْ
00:09:53.680 These are introduced by the Quran.
00:09:57.160 Arabs don't speak like this.
00:09:59.100 The person who has used these words never spoke like this in their lives.
00:10:05.260 However, when they're trying to be eloquent, they cannot escape using Quranic structure.
00:10:10.540 When the author of these verses attempts to meet the Quranic challenge while failing to express themselves without using exclusive Quranic structure,
00:10:23.200 this shows that they have failed the challenge and testifies to the eloquence of Quran.
00:10:28.720 In other words, they're submitting to the Quran without even realizing. 0.89
00:10:32.040 If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to this channel.
00:10:37.420 And of course, as always, if you've got any questions, you can contact me via my Twitter.
00:10:41.840 Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
00:10:44.100 Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
00:11:14.100 Wassalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.