Title: The Qur'an, Ramadan and the Night of Power

Speaker: Mahbub Gani

 

Date: 3rd September 2010 at 18:30

Venue: Abrar House, 45 Crawford Place, W1H 4LP

 

Please note that this talk will start slightly earlier than our usual time, so that we may finish in time for Iftar at 7.50pm.  Dates will be provided to open the fast, and thereafter people can find many restaurants on Edgware Road to eat in (although it may be worth booking in advance).

 

Event details:
We get a sense of the lengths that the Prophet and some of his companions went to in order to capture the full benefit of Ramadhan from this remarkable Hadeeth narrated by Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle forbade Al-Wisal (fasting continuously).  So, one of the Muslims said to him, "But you practice Al-Wisal. O Allah's Apostle!" The Prophet replied, "Who amongst you is similar to me?  I am given food and drink during my sleep by my Lord."  So, when the people refused to stop Al-Wisal), the Prophet fasted day and night continuously along with them for a day and then another day and then they saw the crescent moon (of the month of Shawwal).  The Prophet said to them: "If It (the crescent) had not appeared, I would have made you fast for a longer period."  That was as a punishment for them when they refused to stop (practising Al-Wisal). (Bukhari Volume 3, Book 31, Number 186)

This talk will explore the meaning of Ramadhan, in particular the significance of the Night of Power.  The main contents of the talk will be constructed from connections between the Hadeeth reported above and certain sections of the Qur’an (Al-Baqarah 2:183–187, Al-Qadr 97:1 – 5 and Maryam 19:16 – 26).  It will be proposed that the role of fasting and its connection with the Night of Power is suggested by the very rhythmic and narrational structure of these Qur’anic passages.  Finally, the speaker will reflect on the embodied nature of fasting and related activities during Ramadhan.  

 

The Speaker:

Mahbub Gani is a lecturer in the Department of Electronic Engineering at King's College London.  His primary research interests include the control and coordination of multi-agent systems and distributed signal processing.  He is an active member of IMASE (International Muslim Association of Scientists and Engineers) and is a contributor to MuslimHeritage.com and the 1001 Inventions project run by FSTC (Foundation of Science, Technology and Civilisation).  More recently he has been involved in running the Critical Reading Group, a constellation of Muslims from diverse backgrounds who meet on a weekly basis to engage critically and playfully with the works of important thinkers and scholars.