Joseph

And I'm going to be using Sula Yusuf as my base inshallah.

Sula Yusuf is one of the When we read Surah Yusuf, we're looking at the story from the perspective and the life of Yusuf A.S.

However, you can also look at Yusuf A.S. from the perspective of Yaqub A.S. How he was as a father.

And how the family system is supposed to be.

So if you want to understand the family system, one of the best Surahs to study is Surah Yusuf.

Would you pause for a second? What just happened? If your son, your child, your son, your daughter comes to you and says, Dad, let me tell you about this dream.

It's complete nonsense.

What is your reaction? Yusuf A.S.

In fact, you cannot expect them, not even not all of them, not most of them.

Yusuf a.s. stood out in the fact that he is being righteous.

How is he righteous? How do you think? His character, his behavior.

So first there is his ibadah, his worship of Allah a.s.

This is what Allah Azzawajal taught me.

Then he says, إِنِّي تَرَكْتُ مِنْ لَتَقَوْمٍ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَهُمْ بِالْآخِرَةِ هُمْ كَافِرُونَ I've shunned the path and the religion of people who disbelieve in Allah and they disbelieve in the hereafter.

And here, Yusuf A.S. is going to take advantage of the fact that they came to him and they want something from him.

So more important in fact than the dream which he's going to tell them their interpretation is for him to present Islam to them.

Because Allah says, We plotted on Yusuf's behalf.

For Yusuf a.s.

So Allah a.s. is saying that this happened because Allah a.s. wanted it to happen.

Allah was guiding Yusuf throughout.

Something wrong happening to me.

لَوْ لَأَنْ تُفَنِّدُونَ You know, you're too old.

But I can smell Yusuf a.s. Now some of the ulama have said that this is a miracle from Allah a.s. That he was able to sense Yusuf.

from such a long distance that he can find that smell.

So he is a big advocate that the sound of the Quran should influence how we understand it.

And a lot of or many or the majority of quranic translators do not take into account the sound but rather just the meaning the meaning and the sound are connected and you can't divorce one or the other so in his quranic translation paradigm he actually makes the english sound like the arabic and this is very unique and special and something that he's really pioneered So one of the articles he wrote was called The Quranic Story of Joseph in Five Acts, a play script translation of Surah Yusuf.

And this is a fascinating article because he's trying to make the story of Joseph, which is the only continuous story we find in the Quran, into a play.

Now this is fascinating because when I done research on the Qur'an and Bible, there is this big focus on making biblical and chronic figures more accessible.

Of course, many young people go to college classrooms or go to churches or mosques.

And in this chapter, as I mentioned, he does different scenes, has different characters.

And this is something that you could definitely do within your classes or within your various places of worship and have different people read them out.

One of the things he doesn't necessarily talk about is that could this actually be a play, that you would go into a mosque or a church or a university and different people are acting the chapter out? And most importantly, how would you act out Joseph or Jacob? Would someone actually be Joseph, right? So it's normal or accepted if someone would literally read out the different plays and different characters, but actually to embody that character, would that be acceptable? And I think for majority of Muslims, especially Sunni Muslims, they would hesitate and shy away from that for the purpose of not depicting the Quran and prophetic figures, for the concern of tawhid, of only worshiping one God and idolatry.