Wednesday 18 April 2007

Hifz of the Qur'an

Im sorry I've not updated for a long time, what with exams and things, here goes though...

Hifz of the Qur'an (learning the Qur'an by heart) has gone down as whole over the years. before you would find many huffaz (memorisers) across the community, but now we look and see literally only about 1 in about 150-200 people who know the entire Qur'an by heart. and i think we can look at this alarming trend of increasing alienation from the word of Allah and link it to the downward spiral Muslims are in currently.
on an historical note we can look at the Abbasid Caliphate, and can arguably trace the rise of the Iranians and Turks (nothing against them :D ), which led to the lessening in importance of the Arabic language and naturally this has an indirect effect on the importance attached to the Hifz of the Qur'an.
the answer is to start learning the Qur'an, not putting it off until we finish X or Y, but starting now and making time for ourselves to read what God as lain down for us in his own words. only then can we really understand what Islam is about. We can harp on about lectures and books, but what is more effective...a commentary on something, or reading the "something" and then listening to the commentary on it.
there are many practical benefits of learning the Qur'an, namely, you learn how to manage your time much better, you exercise your mind regularly (how many people actually know something word-for-word off by heart in a different language, indeed this is a miracle of the Qur'an that we are able to learn it as the comparison for a vast number of non-Arab Muslims is like learning a shakespeare play in chinese) and also it has been proved that singing is very beneficial to the body as it gives a workout to the entire upper body, similarly, reciting the Qur'an also helps you burn off those calories in an effective manner.
the exercising of the mind thing...I'm serious man, this is absolutely true, you will or may have noticed that huffaz (memorisers) generally punch above their weight in terms of their natural abilities and in terms of what results they achieve. This could also be linked to the barakah(blessing) that comes with reading the Qur'an, so if you want to do better at anything...do hifz ..who would say no to that really? I know people who ain't that clever and they have achieved some pretty amazing things after learning the Qur'an.
When i say "memorise the Qur'an" this may seem daunting, and rightly is, but we have to remember that we don't HAVE to memorise ALL of it, we could memorise bits we like, but keep memorising all of our lives, because, until we have finished, (and when we do inshAllah finish, we can always learn the authentic sayings of Muhammad (saw)) we should never stop.
when a person really starts to do something with a strong belief or intention it slowly becomes part of their life and affects them so deeply that sometimes their life becomes that thing, like one of my coaches once rather shockingly said "cricket is my life", now compare that to the Prophets description by his wife Aisha (rah) who said his character was the Qur'an. what would we like our "main" thing to be?
there are also many hadith that relate about the virute of memorising the Quran such as your parents being crowned with a crown more brighter than the moon. but there are certain things we should be careful about, namely to learn or try to learn it with tajweed, and this is easier than you think...just listen to a recording of a reciter and copy him syllable for syllable, the upside is you'll read with tajweed and develop a good voice, the downside...you wont have a distinctive style. second...learn with meaning, this should probably be first, without meaning this doesn't do anything to us in terms of changing ourselves. also we should try and learn Arabic too.
also when we read, we should ALWAYS read in a beautiful voice as this is a hadith. this makes us feel good and inshAllah encourage us to learn and read the Qur'an further. also we should learn about 10 ayahs (or more) and then implement it into our life after understanding it. This will make it much easier to remember as we will be doing as well as reading, this as modern teaching methods even show is much more effective and this is what the sahaba did too.
when doing Hifz, a certain amount of repetitions of words is involved and linking to previous ayahs, which makes it possible for a Hafiz to spend more than the normal time actually reflecting and pondering on the deep meanings found in the Qur'an. this means that even years after i learnt an ayah, i could read it again and glean something new from it that i never saw in it before.
finally i would like to say that a person who does hifz, makes the Qur'an his life and character
and acts upon it, this person will become a beloved person of Allah, and think about it...when reading the rulebook for life so much...is this person more or less likely to commit the sins the Qur'an forbids, or more or less likely to do the good the Qur'an advocates?
anything good i said is from Allah (swt) and anything wrong is my own error.