How to Approach the Qur’an – Shaykh Jamaal Zarabozo

[Uthman]

Written by Amatullah from MuslimMatters:

Bismillah

Shaykh Jamaal Zarabozo is a rare breed – a self-taught scholar of Islam who has achieved a profound command of the original sciences of our religion.

In the West, we do not have many options to learn directly from scholars and students of knowledge for long periods of time but alhamdulillah Shaykh Jamaal has been teaching classes online (live video + audio) and onsite in California for more than a year. He teaches various classes on the Qur’an, hadith, fiqh and Arabic.

Winter semester for his courses will start January 10th until March 17th 2010 inshaAllah and registration at the website www.jamaalzarabozo.com is available now.

Two new courses are being offered this session. One is Beginning Sciences of Hadith. This will be similar to Beginning Usool al-Fiqh in that the topic will be covered at a general level with more intensive courses to follow in the future, Allah willing. A second new course is Contemporary Fiqh Topics: Abortion, Birth Control and Organ Transplants. Perhaps the title is self-explanatory. Organ transplants, though, will only be covered if “time permits.”

To see a full listing of courses, please visit: www.jamaalzarabozo.com.

Below is an edited transcription of his first class on “Principles of Tafsir”, before teaching students these principles, shaykh Jamaal discussed how we should approach the Book of Allah. A book of this same title is also available by him.

Principles of Tafseer

First Principle: How to Approach the Qur’an

The principles that we will be talking about are not the kind of things that are commonly mentioned in the classical books of Tafsir. The main goal here is to understand the meaning of the Quraan—and in doing so one will find that these principles will be of extreme importance.

Read the rest of the article here.

[Uthman]