Why the Qurʾān is a recital before it is a book, and why that matters for a people who had no book at all. The cave on the mountain of light and the first word, iqraʾ; the themes of the Meccan years; memorisation as the primary means of preservation; and the collection under Abū Bakr and the standardisation under ʿUthmān.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-1-how-the-quran-was-revealed-and-compiled/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 In the Name of Allah
2:59 A People With No Book
5:36 A Boy Born in Mecca
7:15 The Cave on the Mountain of Light
10:41 Read in the Name of Your Lord
12:12 Khadījah and Waraqah
14:35 The First to Believe
15:37 He Makes Us Look Stupid
17:08 Thrownness
19:49 The First Thirteen Years
21:39 If God Is Unknowable, How Is God Known?
23:24 The World That Comes After
25:26 Surrendering the Desire for Linearity
27:42 The Last Moment
29:26 A People Who Memorised
31:35 The One Who Preserves It
33:21 The Flight to Medina
36:14 The Battle of Yamāmah and the First Collection
37:56 Two Witnesses for Every Piece
39:42 The Standardisation Under ʿUthmān
41:54 Protected by Recitation, Not by the Page
44:05 What Exists Today
45:47 The Plural of the One Who Exalts Himself
47:33 The Leaves That Went Missing
48:14 Whether the Descriptions of Paradise Are Literal
49:49 The Deliberate Mistake
51:31 How Many Know the Entire Qurʾān
53:55 The Seven Variants

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Why a tradition should be allowed to speak for itself before its practitioners are judged, and what the Qurʾān means by Islam: all creation in submission, the religion of Abraham and Isaac, the religion perfected in the Prophet Muhammad, and the surrender that is death. The hadith of Gabriel and the five pillars; the shahādah as witnessing; prayer as burning, connection and submission; and the five daily prayers read from sunset, dawn, and the shadow of a stick at the meridian.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-2-pillars-of-practice-part-1/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 Letting the Tradition Speak for Itself
3:28 The Debt of Submission
5:49 All of Creation Is in Submission
8:04 The Religion of Isaac and Abraham
12:47 He Gave Up the Ghost
15:17 An Unbroken Chain
18:52 Tell Me About Islam
22:39 What Prayer Means
26:28 The Muslim in the Normative Sense
29:14 Human Beings Are Asleep
33:13 Five Prayers in a Day
35:58 The Night and the Dawn
38:54 Watching the Gods Play Chess
41:31 The Stick and the Shadow
43:28 How Your Lord Moves the Shadow
46:51 The Seasons of a Life

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The hadith of Jibrīl gives four dimensions within Islam, and īmān is the vertical one: the word itself means to make oneself safe and secure. What lā ilāha illallāh negates before it affirms; the books as reminders and the messengers as wakeful beings; kufr as truth-concealing; mercy and wrath as God's immanence and transcendence; and the three selves, the angels, and qadar as a measuring out.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-4-articles-of-faith-part-1/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 Four Dimensions Within Islam
3:26 The Vertical Dimension
7:03 To Make Oneself Safe and Secure
10:21 Each Breath Is an Exposure to Death
12:03 There Is No God but God
14:58 Negation Precedes Affirmation
18:32 What Do You Mean by God?
21:25 The Books Are Reminders
24:23 Four Books
26:44 Truth Concealing
29:08 The Light Is Better Over Here
31:12 A Forty-Sixth Part of Prophecy
33:52 The Messengers Are Wakeful Beings
36:07 Transcendence and Immanence
39:10 The Womb, Nearness and Distance
42:36 Until You Are Like This
44:50 The Semantic Field of the Nafs
47:18 The Three Selves
51:42 The Fire Is Surrounded by Desirable Things
55:42 Angels of Pure Light
57:59 Prophets and Messengers
1:00:18 Qadar, a Measuring Out

All courses: islam.academy/courses · YouTube: @IslamdotAcademy

Why qadr is the most misunderstood concept in the tradition, and why khayr and sharr are abundance and want before they are good and evil. Then a long digression into the Sharīʿah — the five things it preserves, what a fatwā actually is, lineage, honour and inheritance — and the stages of the afterlife, from the grave to the scales and the bridge.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-5-articles-of-faith-part-2/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 What an Intention Is
1:02 Abundance and Want
3:49 One Person's Evil Is Another Person's Good
6:32 A Fatwā Is a Legal Opinion
11:07 Four Witnesses
12:16 The Five Things the Sharīʿah Preserves
14:53 No Adoption, and the Name
16:11 The Woman Who Asked to Be Purified
18:23 Not Being Alone, and the Preservation of Honour
20:55 Inheritance Is Fixed
23:58 A Good Action Is a Harmonic Action
25:32 The Scorpion and the Frog
27:05 Boundaries and the One Who Splits Them
28:19 Impulse and Transgression
31:30 No One Gets There Without Their Actions
32:35 The Day the Debts Fall Due
34:40 The Lowest Level
36:03 The Need for More Stimulation
39:05 The Seven Stages of a Life
41:39 What Happens at Death
43:59 Returned to the Earth
46:43 The Grave and the Questioning
47:34 The Two Blowings
48:53 When the Excuses Are Lame
50:52 The Scales and the Bridge
52:51 The Carrot and the Cat
55:34 Silence as Contentment
56:43 Doing It Over and Over
58:30 Who Forgives
59:52 Slandering a Prophet
1:02:25 Muslims and Islam Are Not the Same Thing

All courses: islam.academy/courses · YouTube: @IslamdotAcademy

Islam, īmān and iḥsān as three dimensions of one hadith, with time as the fourth. Why the post-colonial Muslim world fixed on the outward dimension alone, from Napoleon in Egypt to the Marxists of the 1970s who became the Islamists of the 1980s. Then iḥsān itself: worship as if one sees God, shame before God rather than before society, the human drive to make beautiful, and the traditional West African text on repentance, guarding the limbs, the diseases of the heart and their fountainhead, and the stations that end in love.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-6-the-concept-of-ihsan/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 Four Dimensions in One Hadith
3:20 Napoleon Reaches Egypt
6:53 The Reformers
10:44 The Failure of Political Islam
13:34 When Socialism Fails
16:06 The Great Danger of Religion Is Religiosity
19:46 To Wear Wool
21:58 Shame Cultures and Guilt Cultures
24:05 To Make Beautiful
27:11 Allah Loves the Beauty Makers
31:11 The Coke Can in the Creek
33:05 Repentance
36:42 The Heart Is Like a City
40:17 You Are What You Eat
43:52 Showing Off and Envy
47:13 Vanity and the Worship of Youth
49:10 Diseases the Heart Does Not Feel
50:53 Love of Leadership and Procrastination
53:39 Love of This World
55:35 A Mentor Who Knows the Path
57:55 The Stations of Certainty
1:00:35 Freedom From and Freedom To

All courses: islam.academy/courses · YouTube: @IslamdotAcademy

Why the Qurʾān uses history without being a history book, and what the hour means against the other Arabic words for time. The prophets as a challenge to the mega machine, the signs already fulfilled and those still intensifying, the meanings of Dajjāl drawn from the classical dictionaries, and the choice to remain people of hope.

📖 Read this lesson in full and take the course free: https://islam.academy/learn/foundations-part-7-signs-of-the-last-day/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=foundations-of-islam

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:17 The Qurʾān Is Not a History Book
2:15 The Hour, and the Words for Time
4:16 Shutting Down the Mega Machine
6:02 Only Twelve People in China
8:03 The First Sign of the End
11:14 The Slave Girl Will Give Birth to Her Mistress
12:44 Paradise at the Feet of the Mothers
14:27 The Rebellion That Was Not There
16:16 The Reign of Quantity
17:54 Three Kinds of Sign
19:02 The Signs That Keep Intensifying
20:43 Where the Signs Are Found
21:35 The Meaning of Dajjāl
22:54 The Imposter Christ
26:33 The All-Seeing Eye
28:55 The Second Coming
30:08 Barefooted Herdsmen Building Towers
32:24 Each Generation a Watered-Down Version
36:00 Reading the Sun for the Prayer Times
37:04 Words With Stereotypes Attached
39:26 Opportunity and Crisis
41:22 Go Back Where You Came From
43:43 Majesty and Beauty

All courses: islam.academy/courses · YouTube: @IslamdotAcademy