Salamun Alaikum:
At first it was very refreshing to see that Dr. Hany uses the Quran to understand Quran. I spent a lot of time on his content - and he does drag things a lot. I had some initial minor concerns that later became big issues.
1. The use of catchy / click-baity / marketing titles
2. The constant begging for likes / subscribes / comments
3. The channel had a subscription model from the get go; but now its paid/mandatory - which goes against a very important Sunnah of the Messengers. Q26:109 (repeated 17 times across Quran)
4. The constant "MY Disclosures", "You only heard it from ME"
5. The name-calling to "Farid responds" - instead of a gentle response and "Salamun Alaikum" as per Q28:55
6. The constant fear-mongering (They are after us) and cultish followers he inculcates around himself on his forum
7. The fact that he and his followers cannot tolerate simple/genuine questions or gaps in his analysis or quick-judgement; people were constantly rebuked and kicked out for questions or different conclusions.
8. He wrote a long, derogatory and pride-full comment on another Quran-only youtube channel (Al-Moses). Then he posted on his own forum calling Al-Moses a scheming-devious-Ummayyad who stole HIS (Dr. Hany's) disclosures and is attributing it to himself.
9. One of his conclusions is that Isa-Ibn-Maryam actually committed shirk and told people that the Way to Allah is ONLY through him. I will reserve my comments on this. However, the irony is that he and his followers are blind to the fact that Dr Hany himself is falling into that ego-trap. It is all about "His disclosures", "His channel", "His work", "His copyrights". His followers call him their "Tayr" (common meaning Bird) which he translates as the angels/teachers that would descend to educate the Messenger.
Please note that I am not critiquing his actual content here. That is a longer discussion. I don't see anything wrong with his proposed methodology. May Allah reward him for the good that he has done. I was just awakened to the fact that he is a human being after all and he has his weaknesses which his followers do not see.
DISCLAIMER:
Dr. Hany uses repeating phrases across Quran in his analysis for correlation and insights.
I am honored to have worked on a Quran Study tool
quranmorphology.com (free/no-ads). Among other things, this tool shows all repeated phrases/markers (similarity index) from Quran per ayah.
I reached out to Dr. Hany initially (early 2023) and he did 2 zoom sessions with me. He was very impressed with the tool and offered to take me as a 1-on-1 student with the
condition that I shut down the free website. It was a very strange request. I politely told him that I am not looking for fame, followers or monetary gains - the website will stay up and will always be free and anonymous - so he rescinded his offer. On his forum, I asked several questions and gaps I saw in his analysis based on the findings from the tool. He wouldn't answer. I posted some results form the tool on the forum in response to a question at which point
I was kicked out from the forum and Dr. Hany sent me a nasty email afterwards. It seems that he does not want anyone to have access to free tools that will help students of Quran.
