In Febuary of this year Shaykh Mohammed al-Hilli began his weekly tafsīr programme, analysing the 20th chapter of the Holy Qur’an, Sūrat Ṭā Hā. The programme is currently on pause for the Hajj and Muharram seasons and due to return in the new year, and has come up to twenty sessions so far, across which we have examined the first fifty-nine verses of Sūrat Ṭā Hā. During the course of the tafsīr Shaykh Mohammed has explored a variety of issues, ranging from ideas around theology, jurisprudence, spirituality, history and contemporary life, often demonstrating how the particular verses under investigation are relevant to our lives in the modern world. Shaykh Mohammed shaped each session around a particular theme, often beginning by putting general questions about contemporary life to us before bringing in the verses that would be the focus of that week’s session. His tafsīr was distinctly dynamic, often looking at other verses of the Qur’an, as well as various hadiths, in order to elucidate as fully as possible the significance of the particular verse we were examining.
The programme was very well attended, with the attendees numbering on average between thirty and forty people. Summaries of some of the sessions were also written up and published on Facebook, as well as being sent out by e-mail to our tafsīr mailing list. The summaries are now also available to read on the Noor Trust website here. We’re happy to say that the tafsīr programme will return in January 2016, when Shaykh Mohammed will continue his analysis of Sūrat Ṭā Hā.