This is a short speech my sister gave at this past weekend's Richmond Hill Muslim Association (RHMA) seminar ...
RHMA Seminar: Mining for Gold in the Qur’an
(May 5, 2012)
Salaam Alaikum,
My journey with the Qur’an began in University, but RHMA’s Sunday classes and seminars have encouraged me to become a student of the Qur’an. I had often asked God to bless me with the proper understanding of His Deen, and with the knowledge I’ve gained through the classes I realize I had very shallow, doubtful understandings of very immense life lessons and that Divine Guidance never leaves room for doubt. Contrary to popular belief, a new analysis of the Qur’an has taught me that God is not arbitrarily good or mean, because every action we take, every event, has a good as well as an evil aspect to it, and every result happens according to established universal laws. Namely the Law of Compensation: we get what we give.
The Qur’an tells us that it already contains everything we ever have to know or ask about anything, and that’s because it’s a book of self-actualization and action. In other words, if we proactively cultivate the enhancing characteristics outlined in it, we’ll achieve success, as this is God’s way of giving us everything we could ever ask for within our selves so long as we allow these innate but sometimes dormant capabilities to surface. As Galileo once said, you cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself. As I skimmed the fifteen lessons in a book called The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, I realized that they were essentially everything the Qur’an comprises: having a definite purpose and clear definite plans to achieve the purpose, cultivating self-confidence and a spirit of fearlessness, taking initiative and leadership, avoiding words and deeds that antagonize others and oneself, practicing sound judgment based on all facts connected to any problem at hand, developing self-discipline and freeing oneself of greed, selfishness, avarice and egotism, analyzing people accurately instead of what we wish to see in them, ridding ourselves of pessimism, doubt, fear, cynicism, and procrastination, being firm in our decisions, deductive and inductive reasoning, willingness to work and take action, being enthusiastic, cooperating with others without friction, turning our desires into reality regardless of the time or effort required, performing more unselfish service for the benefit of others based on generosity, having attractive personalities which includes good health, neatness of appearance, fluent speech, tactfulness, having an open mind and never being closed to logic or Truth, seeking general and specialized knowledge, freeing ourselves from bias and prejudice, meditation and seeking God’s assistance and Divine Guidance, being tolerant and forbearing with those who hold different views, having a sense of justice and sympathy, having a thirst for truth regardless of its source or the subsequent changes one will have to make to one’s life or views, having an ability to analyze things in retrospect, studying cause and effect, understanding the law of growth, understanding economics, and of course the Golden Rule which entails honesty, love for humanity, willingness to forgive, and a recognition of the interdependency of men.
In RHMA’s Sunday Qur’an classes we’ve truly mined for this gold; with our shallow pans of understanding we’ve delved into our stagnant, murky waters of culture and tradition, which typically encourage wishful thinking and not enough personal accomplishment, and through our class discussions we’ve been able to shake away the dirt and rubble of centuries’ worth of superstition, nonsense, and unsound beliefs to separate them from better, authentic meanings that radiate with rationale, motivation, scientific facts, and logic. Because this gold is denser than all the other things we’ve been brought up with, it quickly settles into our hearts and minds when we swap our numerous untruths for One Truth.
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