(18:26) - Hidden Gems - Quran: Al-Kahf (Shadee Elmasry) #FridayReminders #QuranReflections

(18:26) Hidden Gems #QuranReflections by Dr. Shadee Elmasry Video: https://youtu.be/WUHSdFIESFA Podcast: https://anchor.fm/quranclub App: www.quranclub.org Website: www.otpok.com   قُلِ ٱللَّهُ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَا لَبِثُواْۖ لَهُۥ غَيۡبُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضِۖ أَبۡصِرۡ بِهِۦ وَأَسۡمِعۡۚ مَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَلِيّٖ وَلَا يُشۡرِكُ فِي حُكۡمِهِۦٓ أَحَدٗا Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “Allah knows best how long they stayed. With Him ˹alone˺ is ˹the knowledge of˺ the unseen of the heavens and the earth. How perfectly He hears and sees! They have no guardian besides Him, and He shares His command with none.” (18:26)   Earlier this week, I shared an amazing story from Syrian intellectual and scholar Abd al-Da'im al-Kaheel. An atheist asked him: Surat al-Kahf tells about youth who fled an oppressive pagan king so that they could worship Allah freely, and when they took shelter in a cave, they fell asleep for 309 years. How could you possibly believe people slept for 309 years??   The first obvious answer is that based on Islam's premise that the Creator is not bound by any laws of physics and is in fact the one who made them, believing that He could make people sleep for any amount of time is totally within the internal logic of this theology. But Al-Kaheel sought another kind of answer...   He knew that there would be a proof within this story that the Quran was God's word. He examined the story of these youth and noticed that one word was repeated half a dozen times. That word was لَبِثُوا (LABITHU), or "they remained." This was very unique in that no other word was repeated in the passage in such a noticeable way except this word... He then honed in on the first and last mention of لَبِثُوا (LABITHU) and counted the words in between. Lo and behold, they were exactly 309 words. One word for every year that they slept in the cave.   He immediately contacted his atheist associate, and asked him: Do you really think Muhammad ﷺ, who was known to be unlettered, would have done this?   I also asked myself, if an author put really neat hidden messages in his book, wouldn't he have told someone before his death, to ensure people see it?   This ultimately was the reason the atheist returned to iman. Any time a skeptic or doubter points to something in the Quran with disbelief or mockery, they are in reality, directing us to yet another proof that this Book is not the word of a human being, but the word of the Creator. It just requires a lot of effort and examination until we uncover it.