Monthly Archives: January 2025

Qur’anic Verses for Stuffy Noses

No, I’m not talking about verses of the Qur’ān that can be used to treat nasal congestion. I’m interested in finding out which verses can be pronounced correctly even when the reciter has a stuffy nose.

There is a property called ghunna that applies to some of the letters in the Qur’ān. Basically, in order to recite a letter with ghunna, the nose has to play a role in the pronunciation; the mouth and throat are not enough to generate the correct sound. There are some verses in the Qur’ān that contain no instances of ghunna. For example, the first verse of Sūrah 113: al-Falaq (if recited correctly) will sound the same whether you pinch your nose or not – try it!

قُلْ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلْفَلَقِ

My question is: how many verses are there in the Qur’ān that have this property?

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The Cosmological Argument Using Math

The cosmological argument to prove the existence of God has been my favourite proof of its kind since the first time it was presented to me. It was simple enough to understand, it felt rigorous enough to be convincing, and it left a lot of room open to extract implications and corollaries that were interesting and useful.

Still, the fact that the argument was presented in natural language, rather than the language of symbolic logic, always left me with an unsettled feeling: shouldn’t this proof, like all others that are watertight and irrefutable, be possible to express in mathematical terms? I made some shallow attempts to codify it myself, but I never managed to do it in a way that left me satisfied.

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The Voice of Prayer

I was looking up a ruling regarding the volume of voice involved during the recitation of surahs during prayer and ended up reading all of the relevant rulings from Sayyid Sistani on the topic in both the English and Persian versions of Islamic Laws (Tawḍīh al-Masā’il). I found them quite fascinating and decided to summarize a few of the main rulings in the following fictional story.

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a definitive discussion on Islamic rulings. Although an attempt has been made to reference every ruling mentioned in the story, every duty-bearing Muslim should consult with the rulings of their own marja’ directly.

Ali finished his Maghrib prayer and turned to face his friend, Kumayl, who was sitting next to him. Kumayl was just finishing his prayer as well.

“Well, Kumayl!” said Ali. “I don’t know whether you just finished your Maghrib prayer or a nāfilah prayer.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Kumayl.

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