Abdal Hakim Murad – Are We Heading Towards Extinction
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
We have the right now on the terms of the dominant civilization to
express our desire to be dissidents. Awkward, cross grained
critics not compliant. They will continuously blow the whistle and
ask us to run faster to catch up with them. But we really have to
if where they're going is biocidal Planetary Annihilation? We want
the right to difference it
later when Rahim Salam Allahu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa
sahbihi edge mine
picking up on our discussions of yesterday.
Let's see if we can drill down a little bit further into what we
mean by the idea of Dino fitrah.
We had a kind of initial sketching of the ground yesterday, but let's
see if we can get any further into it.
Not least because in our contemporary context, we find that
humanity's Promethean rebellion against nature,
the Enlightenment in a certain sense, man's mastery of nature
rather than harmonious conviviality with it, it was a
rebellion against matter against stuff against beauty as much as it
was against the church
has now pitched us into a peculiar situation unprecedented. We are in
the Anthropocene era where the principal geological and
geomorphological influence on the surface of the planet is actually
a species, namely ourselves, we are having the kind of impact that
glaciers used to have, we are fundamentally transforming things,
but in an infinitesimally smaller, biological, historical,
paleontological timeframe, this is what we are doing.
Essentially, from the perspective of the planet, what we do is we
dig up minerals, in great big holes in some places in the world,
and we complex ly turn them into things that we briefly use, and
then we bury the junk into other great big holes in the world. So
principle, activity, it's a kind of geological model of what Danny
Adam is up to at this point. And it's clear that this is
unsustainable, and you don't have to belong to the Zealots of
extinction rebellion to see that infinite human desires, finite
Planetary Resources equals at some point, either extinction, or a
paradigm shift, as yet unimagined
puts us in an interesting situation because for so long,
first of all Christian Europe and then enlightenment Europe,
and then communist Europe and fascistic Europe was bellowing at
us telling us to change to comply to conform. The dominant paradigm
was that of the West and we had to jump on this bandwagon.
Now, however, we have a materialistic, not a spiritual or
even a moral reason not to want to do that. And it's very hard for
our reason to be refuted. Why should we trade up to the
structures, the worldview, the paradigms, the economics of a
system that is going to suffocate us all, within a couple of
generations? Doesn't really sound very appealing. The paradigm
itself.
triumphalist Stickley proclaimed as the final point of the
evolution of human society and thought, turns out to be so clever
that we are running the risk of extinguishing ourselves. So why is
his homosapiens that he can even bring about his own termination,
which no other species can quite do? That's pretty smart. So we
have the right now on the terms of the dominant civilization, to
express our desire to be dissidents.
Awkward, cross grained critics not compliant.
They will continuously blow the whistle and ask us to run faster
to catch up with them. But we really have to if where they're
going is biocidal Planetary Annihilation? We want the right to
difference. This is an interesting point that even the scientific
paradigm turns out
to be a kind of termination.
So in this context, what do we mean when we say our Islam Dino
fitrah?
Is this the framing of our tradition that
We need to be preferring in order to make this case for dissident
noncompliance. The religion of nature is this what we mean by
fitrah? Almost sort of not quite. Fatah means to burst out it's what
seeds do but it means something emerging from something else. One
of Allah's names is Al Fatah fall to the summer where he is the one
who brings everything into being from the primal not even avoid.
And
nature therefore refers not just to an Arabic is called hiatal
fattoria, which is kind of biological things growing and
tweeting, but rather, stuff itself. In its inherently
improbable and miraculous and magical quality, as much depth
originated. The strangest thing about it, why is there stuff
matched only by the paradox of our ability to ask that question?
The mysteries are hardwired into the whole system. And no nine to
philosophizing has really come up with a decisive argument,
existence. The fact of manifestation is a puzzle.
Looking for that God Particle for that universal theory, but each
time there's a particle, there's another one. And of course, they
can't get to that because that's the paradigm itself. Conscience is
also not even a scientific term. So
this idea of fitrah, the Farter, which has to do with creation, and
also to do with nature,
but also to do with the right reasonable in the proper sense
human relationship to creation. Because when we say kolomela, Lord
in EULA, do Alfetta, every child is born, according to the fitrah,
we don't mean that is part of the world of cats and dogs and that
sort of fitrah. Nor yet that is part of the creative world,
because that's kind of too obvious a thing to say. But the fitrah is
within us as well, it's in some odd way. And clearly, if today's
discourse is about the danger of extinction, and Islam is saying
something very
indicative about our relationship to nature and consciousness, its
relationship to nature, we need to try and get our heads around this.
One way of triangulating is to see what Enlightenment thinkers
themselves thought they were looking at when they looked at
Islam, that this is the generation that was pushing back, not so much
against belief in God, even though there's often quite deistic and
numinous but a kind of volterra and a causal and found the
anti clericalism.
The Catholic Church is the source of all the evils of the world. And
when we saw that Notre DOM fire, we forgot that for 20 years, it
was a temple of nature. After the French Revolution, the priests
were chased out and killed and they dressed up a young woman in a
red dress and called her the spirit of nature and reason and
people were supposed to go there in order to contemplate this and
still in parts of France and I've encountered is hiking myself you
come across a place that's called Tobler Alana tool is supposed to
go in and somehow
transcend transcendently experienced the wonders of the
natural environment around you. It was a big thing, as Europe emerged
with a crash from centuries of Christian piety and became very
modern, actually, very quickly.
So
this idea of the Enlightenment as being kind of not particularly
against even kind of romantic ideas of nature is indicating the
sublime major theme of 19th century music and poetry, but
really not in a Christian mode. gurtner For instance, really not
very Christian, but really interested in nature, interest in
human beings and interested in Islam as well, is one of the
interesting moments in the evolution of our continent where
it's at points, you start to get the sense amongst European
intellectuals that here is a theistic alternative.
That is not weighed down by what Nietzsche would define as the, the
anti Dionysian
traits of Christianity and Charles Taylor in his new book, a secular
age, where he's musing about the reasons why Christianity doesn't
really hold the attention of young people in the West says, Well,
that's because it doesn't affirm the Dionysian. This is the
Nietzschean idea of the Apollonian, which is sort of the
the aesthetical transcendence
and illumination of the mind to leaving the flesh behind and the
Dionysian, which is more like the mystery religions of ancient
Greece where people are wearing garden garlands and dancing with
nymphs in
forest clearings and engaging with imminence rather than
transcendence. And nature's view is that
Christianity cannot deal with that. And that's Charles Taylor's
explanation for the draining away of faith amongst young Christians
because nowadays, it's all about the body and sexuality and
Christianity doesn't go there.
So, from that enlightenment perspective, we find some very
interesting hints and somebody called Eric Ormsby has a new book
coming out later this year, which is about gutter and his
relationship to Islam.
Gutter famous for writing his West Eastern divan, this Toshiko divan
after had been inspired by reading some slightly dodgy German
translations of Persian mystics. But he produces this great long
book length. Classic of German literature, which is written in
emulation of half is basically and has a poem about Fatima. And the
famous Muhammad Hassan, which is his poem, which is not basically
is not in praise of the Holy Prophet.
And in this, we find something that is quite characteristic. And
Ormsby is teasing this out of a certain enlightenment romantic
understanding of Islam as first of all partaking in an oriental
wisdom.
From the Morgan land, the land where the sun arises, and not
where the sunsets, which is the end of things, but wisdom, light
truth, it's quite platonic.
And the kind of mystique of the Orient is a land of initiatic
miracles and wonders. And at the same time in Gertler, you get the
idea of the Holy Prophet Holly slept as a kind of personification
of the Dionysian enlightenment spirit. And this short poem that
he has that Muhammad Hassan, which Schubert set to music, and has
been set to music, by others,
over the years, is a very interesting image in which the
Holy Prophet alayhi salat wa salam is compared to a mountain stream.
Vigorous there, I'll sort of running through the rocks, and
they're high mountains. And of course, the streams origin is
precipitation and hence heaven. But it's definitely in the earth
and of the earth. And then as it reaches the valley, it spreads out
and becomes the basis for great cities and civilizations. And
that's his understanding of the fecund eating hand of the
prophetic intervention. Very interesting moment in European
literature, and it's become some quarters, a kind of anthem for
European Islam.
But what he seems to be indicating is that here you have, clearly a
sacred prophetic figure, because
Alton vata, his sort of
Father, is the one from whom he comes into whom he returns, that's
not an Islamic term. We don't speak in terms of filiation or
fatherhood, in ideas of the human divine relation, but that's not
really important. Gertler is not trying to be writing an Aqeedah
he's just singing as a as a poet.
And
here you have the idea of the human as being of divine origin.
The human also as engaging with
and being in some sense part of the natural world, and enhancing
the natural world. So it's a second dating principle. And the
Yuengling the young prophet is one who is really the spirit of
youthful masculinity to kind of fatawa idea very much could almost
refer to one of the backache or the Eleusinian Mysteries of
ancient, ancient Greece.
And this is probably why the philosopher herder who's more or
less the same period a little bit later, sort of romantic a Galeon
says that Islam is a form of shamanism.
Normally, we would regard that as peculiar because after all, the
Qure shamans and as long as the monotheistic thing that is daggers
drawn with shamanism and the fetishism of alrea show, what does
he mean by shaman ism
Well what they're looking at, particularly in that they have
access to the Quran and access to
not really much Islamic theology or law, but they certainly have
Rumi and Hafiz and Saudi at their disposal is the idea of a kind of
religion of celebration.
A religion of Carnival, a religion of the affirmation of life.
So it's kind of like Bergson, it's the life spirit. It's the
quintessential Galeon Geist, it's represented in this Dionysian
tradition that seemed almost providentially to be the
alternative, the aggregator of the Christian impulse with this
Apollonian aesthetical anti flesh, celibate tendencies, which was one
of the things that the Enlightenment was most appalled
by.
So it's an interesting moment.
And the idea of Islam as not just something that's interesting and
exotic and mystical, because it comes from the east. And the idea
that you get a little bit in this country, maybe with the Arabian
Nights and Fitzgerald's translation of Omaha, but it was a
lot bigger in Germany,
but also something that's connected to nature.
That combination becomes
very significant. And that seems to be why herder is saying Islam
is full of shamanism, shamanism,
that the worship of Islam is a form of incantation through
nature,
reflecting not the presence of transcendence to a Eucharist.
matter that isn't that a piece of God.
God Himself has to come into the world in order to make anything
good of the world, but rather the sense that God is already present,
present to be and therefore there doesn't need to be a cosmic
sacrifice, which was another of the bits and whilst of the
Enlightenment, the dying god, the world is so evil and human nature
so corrupted that only an infinite sacrifice by God himself can sort
us out this, this ontological penance of pessimism about human
nature,
which was another of the things that the Enlightenment detested
about suddenly sort of Jensen, Mystic, Augustinian type of
Catholic Christianity, they wanted to be optimistic about human
nature and that reaches nowadays a certain sort of crazy apotheosis
with the idea that whatever you desire is something that the world
should be recognizing and affirming. That wasn't the
original plan.
So you have this as it were independent, nondenominational but
then really anti Christian perception of Islam, and it comes
in Nietzsche as well.
Nietzsche says,
If Islam despises Christianity, it is 1000 times right to do so.
Because Islam presupposes men. In other words, he likes the virility
of the prophetic Islamic model. He doesn't like the anemic idea of
Christianity, which denies Eros and Thanatos. Desire and warrior
hood, which for Nietzsche other the Life Principle itself what
makes us truly human within the natural world, but capable of
transformation. So another
thinker, phobic about Christianity, but interested in
Islam of Islam as generating a kind of Superman has genuinely
inhabiting the flesh and political responsibilities in albums written
about this, he has a book about
Islam and in 19th century German philosophical thought, three inch
interesting evolution. So without trying to make too much of that we
might make it a starting point for our reflection on what the fitrah
is all about. If outsiders look at us, and they say,
not the religion of
flagellation, not the religion of ontological pessimism,
but a religion essentially that is life affirming.
But still very much a religion is not not hedonistic in the kind of
alternative not quest Assad enlightenment sense, but something
that has a discipline to it.
We find that Islam
seems to play a rather interesting role, potentially. Not really
actually because most Muslims don't really
think in these terms were too moralistic nowadays too focused on
halal and haram and who don't think about the deep nature of the
religion and what it's doing in history in what, what it's for,
which is unfortunate, but it's, as we know, how we are with not
really, intellectuals, we Muslims, nowadays we
deal with crisis issues all the time.
So, this idea of the religion of the fitrah
the not just creation, but the natural world, which is a part of
creation, and also created ingrained, innate human
disposition to understanding the world, in a natural and correct
way, is part of what we mean really by Islam as Abrahamic
religion, and also as primordial.
And honey fear to somehow with which he was sent Ali's letters
land the kind of generous, tolerant Abrahamic monotheism
that's what he's describing his religion as to us. But I still
feel honey fear to somehow I've been sent with a tolerant,
generous, noble, Abrahamic monotheistic way to words in
Arabic becomes rather a lot in English, but that's the kind of
kind of concept
so there's something Abrahamic about it, but also something
primordial and pre Abrahamic.
And this is related to Islam as understanding as the culmination
of two great cycles in the history of the divine human engagement.
The smaller cycle, which is not so small, is the cycle initiated by
Ismail alayhis salaam, and whose basic themes we reenact as part of
the hunch, part of whose significance is the return to the
center in an Abrahamic mode.
So
Abraham becomes the patriarch, through Isaac but also through
Ishmael into Isaac, you have
most of the prophets, Abraham, Jacob, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Say,
Nisa, that's the line of
his heart on the line of Ismail kind of, it's a stream like zooms,
and that gets buried. And then symbolically, it's on earth again,
and the Israelite Hadrian well
is once again reestablished. The significance of that being of
course, you should males have Gentile blood because his mother
is Egyptian and therefore this has to be the cycle within Abrahamic
monotheism that isn't just for the chosen people, but for everybody.
But actually Nursey Katha I'm sent to all mankind as one of his class
art is one of his unique features the universal Prophet, who is sent
providentially precisely at that point where the ancient world
comes to an end in the medieval world, and the beginnings of the
global world. Begin. So that's the closure of the lesser cycle, the
Ishmaelites cycle.
And there is, if you read shells on the GDC spoke about the
symbolism of the Hajj, which is largely drawn from Ibn Arabi,
a lot of geometrical and natural symbolism in the basic forms of
the Hajj and the proportions of the Kaaba. And that's a whole,
whole world the existence of the basic geometrical forms. The point
the circle, the square, the cube, the straight line, it's all
primordially, that and inhabited and reenacted by those who are
chemically transformed by going through those, those archaic
motions. But the larger cycle is the one the biggest cycle of all
the one that begins with Adam and Ellis to be Rob become.
And the Holy Prophet Ali slips, again through his connection to
the makin sanctuary. The Jerusalem sanctuary doesn't have Adamic
resonance but the Mecca and Sanctuary does when the Kaaba was
just rub 100 as the historian say, just a little red mound, the
cabinet itself built of course by Abraham, it is done much later,
but still the axis mundi, the center of the world, and who's
starting point for the rituals, the circles, the straight lines,
all of those enactments which have such a profound effect on the soul
is the Blackstone
The Blackstone is the symbol of the day of Alaska Bureau become
that
Cigna ally in a famous harbor
says to say no Omar, who is weeping, said Omar kisses the
stone for Kabbalah who Omar toma Baca Hatha Alana Cujo, and then he
wept until his sobbing was audible
and then he says in almost says to the Blackstone in the Alamo
indica, Hydra Ron la lert adult Rotella tonfa while I will earn
the right to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Are you below? Ma
a bug took
I know you're a stone you can't help me you can't hurt me and but
for the fact that I've seen the Holy Prophet kiss you I wouldn't
kiss you
for catheter for either Biale Yin Ameerul Momineen and he turned
around there's Ali Karim Allah Who watchable and he says Ballia don't
rely on it does help and it does harm.
Call Kaif called in Hola Hola, ma hudl Mitaka Allah RIA truly Allah
when he took the covenant to Allah still be robbed become Bella Shia
Hytner from all of the descendants those who were to be the
descendants the future generations.
He took this this covenant
from alcohol Hotjar. And then he fed it. Everybody's Bellagio hit
No Yes, we bear witness to the stone.
For who is huddled in what many build with that? Well either
carefully build your hold, bears witness to the faithfulness of the
believer and the rebellion of the unbeliever.
Now, there's kind of mystery there. What could it mean for all
of these Bilasa knows to be fed to the Blackstone. This is
metaphysical, not physical. But that's the love bake. And that's
the meaning of the Kaaba, which is a symbol of the mysterious center
of the world. And a beaten that more and the origin of things we
go around it. Our experience there of worship is in circles,
everywhere else that straight lines, but there were in a
different modality there is, as it were prisons, more than there is
absence.
And so the caliber represents and that dimension of the Hajj because
the Hotjar is not part of the Abrahamic story particularly that
represents the Adamic origin, the primal Kaaba, the original, the
elbaite allottee, of the ancient house.
So that's the really big cycle and say the Muhammad sallallahu alayhi
wasallam. One of the aspects of his being hardened and they've
been Seal of the Prophets is that He seals this Abrahamic story
which includes the Jewish Christian thing
beautifully, by including Jerusalem, and by including Isaac,
it's a way of inclusion and he leads all the prophets in prayer,
learned of article by a hottie merasa but also there's bigger
cycle is the cycle that is everything. And of course, finally
there is the his
the final prayer offered by anybody on earth,
which is his Shiva, for his Alma, so a cosmic function indeed.
But
if we look at these ancient rituals, and we see Islam's
deliberate understanding of itself as something very old and
primordial, from a time before time,
before the Bronze Age, who knows when these things originate. And
then we look at the basic patterns of the Muslim life. We do find
that they are, you might say fit Aria, that is to say, they require
no paraphernalia. They require no mediation.
And they are intensely embodied.
And they embed us in the physical world insofar as when you are in
the mosque, you face the table and that immediately gave gives you a
grounding in terms of the points of the compass and where you are
and you have a sense of direction. That's the spiritual GPS, like
those, Mauritanian shakes, who they say, have a kind of ability
to know the pebble even if they close close their eyes. I've never
seen that. But people say that some people can do that. But that
determines the Muslim life in so many ways, and we wish to be
buried facing the Qibla and that's the way we wish to face that is
again, a very ancient kind of thing that doesn't
really have a, say a Christian equivalent. Christian churches
used to be built towards the east because the rising sounds the
symbol of the risen Christ, but it's not really indispensable.
So, there is that. But there is also, as we mentioned yesterday,
that very striking fact of the solar and the lunar
determination of the Muslim life through our sacred acts that we
believe in lunar months and knock on and speaks strongly against
those introduce, in intercalating, three months to try and make
things seem easier to deal with. In the madness, it was he added on
Phil Cofer, that kind of declination the intercollege every
month, that will give you 365 days rather than 10 days less is an
excess of unbelief.
And the reason for that is that if you do that, then you are
abolishing sacred time, cyclical time, and taking you into the
artificiality, the convenient calendar of linear time. And Islam
is exactly not about doing that. And the basic
as it were ontological question behind all of these endless moons
citing controversies, and I got yet another email this morning
about some new conference that was going to solve that finally,
the ontology of that is that
it is ultimately indeterminate.
As the moon is a mysterious thing, the sun is pretty reliable, you
can always tell what the sun will do. The moon,
astronomers will tell you it depends on all kinds of variations
about altitude, and
it's predicting where the moon will be seen depends not just on
where you are, and whether there's clouds, but a lot of other
variables, as well. It's unpredictable, which is then
quickly, perhaps one reason why most languages Sun is masculine
and Moon is feminine.
I'll leave that one hanging.
Sol, Luna. In most languages, this is the case. But the subtlety of
it is that it determines our lives. And there's a deep wisdom
in those traditional Muslim communities where they pay no
attention to the Mufti on the radio, but they got the newest
hillside and drink tea and sing songs until they've actually seen
the moon. And that is something that could have happened 100,000
years ago, when Paleolithic man used lunar calendars we know
because we've dug up the tally sticks that have exactly that
number of days on them. It's something very, very, very old.
And although it's insufficiently understood, a lot of biologists
are upset by it.
Human biorhythms are not just female biorhythms seem to be
geared quite closely to the the phases of the moon.
And the secretion of certain enzymes and hormones is said by
many researchers to have something to do with that. And it's some
ancient biological thing and insomnia. In the middle of the
month, people tend to sleep less well when the moon is full, even
if the curtains are drawn. And they've done experiments with
people sleeping underground in mind. And they find even if they
don't know what the face of the moon is still, when the moon is
full, they find it harder to sleep, these deep mystery has to
do with a very basic level of human consciousness and the brain
and our metabolism. But the Shetty connects us to all of that these
are laying in bed, the white knights and those fast those days,
particular kinds of devotion ways in which in your conscious life,
you can reflect something that's actually very subconscious and
primordial. So yeah, Islam is very ancient in that it insists on
taking us back into sacred time, the time of remote Paleolithic
ancestors, and is the religion of fitrah in that sense.
And the prayer of course,
the prayer has more to do with the sun than with the moon.
But again, reconnects us to a time when the human body metabolism
activities, sacred life was determined by the unavoidable fact
of the rising and the setting of the sun, the circadian rhythms
again,
fundamental to whom we are.
I once talked late at night to an ambulance driver who was
complaining that he was always working at night and he said, I
know that my life expectancy is about five years less than
everybody else because I'm working at night and the human body really
is not designed for that.
So the awareness of the rising and setting of the sun, again,
something fundamental to what we are
the use of water, very, very ancient, a symbolism of it, that
comes from heaven. So it's pure. And we want to keep it pure,
particularly for ritual purposes. And it outwardly touches those
parts of us that are most associated with sinfulness. And we
feel somehow, in a very primal way, that that helps us to be
cleansed of the things that those limbs have been doing. And this is
what psychologists sometimes refer to as the Macbeth effect.
Remember, out vowel spot, she tries to get rid of it after the
murder, but it doesn't come up very often people who've suffered
personal injury,
find that it's therapeutically helpful to take a shower or to
take a bath afterwards, deep into human psyche, this need for
cleansing assisted by water, we have that.
And so many other things could be could be reduced. So the point of
historical origin of these practices is basically the Meccan
sanctuary. In other words, the Abrahamic but also the Adamic
sanctuary. And so they carry within themselves these qualities
of the fitrah the primordial disposition, and there is
something ancient about them.
The simplicity of our worship, we don't use organs ever. We don't
adorn our worship, through historically evolved forms, we
don't change the liturgy. It is that ancient, primeval thing that
was shown by the angel on the night of the Mirage, it remains
that angelic representation of the cyclical nature of human life and
the evolution of the Spirit.
And it's climaxes pressing the forehead to the earth. Does that
mean the ground
mean how HELOC Nicole Murphy handle Adel come from it, we
created you to it we shall return you from it we will raise you up
one more times. earthiness of Islam is
fundamental idea.
Adam They say his name Adam. Because he was created from the
earth that Idema our Arabic demons kind of Earth clay surface of
ground. He was he was clay. So we are connected again to the Adamic
origins of the great cycle through these forms of iboga. And other
cases could be reduced. The Hajj we've already referred to as our
representation of something that is present in all sacred cultures
have a journey, that outwardly sacramentally enact the inward
journey back to the center, we spiral in Back to the presence of
the one who has no place. But whose house this is. And as we
turn, the points of the compass become less clear and the outside
world we remember even which way the hotel is or where we left our
slippers, because you can go round and round. We've all had that
experience. And that's precisely to take you out of linearity and
geography and into the into the focus the moths around the flame
of the Divine Presence. Nowadays, of course you've got Novotel and a
giant clock and all of those things sort of saying, Look at me
Look at me, but we shouldn't look at them because they've precisely
misunderstood the nature of tawaf take you into circularity, which
is the which is about love.
The kind of wandering in love the intoxication of proximity with
with the divine in that extraordinary place.
So the Hudson GDC book talks about this a lot, even Araby has this
amazing chapter on the hunch, which is kind of so full of
insights and speculations and calculations. It's
worth getting some sense of that tradition. Just to increase your
sense of awe and trepidation and respect when you go to the Holy
City. That's really important because the gift there are
inconceivable, Allah is that's his house. Those who are there are his
guests. Are you for ramen? So don't mess around with looking at
the clock. All you got to watch. She didn't even look at the clock.
Didn't know the Saudis realize everybody nowadays has a watch and
there's a Nigerian lady outside the bed or Sophos sells them for
just five reels, so you don't need
to spend a billion producing the world's biggest clock anyway, it's
easy to get distracted by
by all of that, but you're approaching the house with due
reverence and remember kosali is very good at this in the Kitab al
Hajj in the ultimate Deen.
It's a place of majesty. July naka de Jamal Medina more. So, watch
out and have a sense that all of these practices are ancient and
unchanged and have a very deep effect. How we can understand that
as well as we understand how the sub basement of our prehistoric
inherited mind might work. You don't really understand what's
this artifacts and throwing of stones, deep psychology and all of
those things, but to try and rationalize it out, you get this
is what herder is talking about. And he says shaman ism is not
saying Muslims have lots of interesting statues and go into
trances. It's to do with almost a
very ancient, primeval, prehistoric type of religion that
is nonetheless, uncompromisingly monotheistic, so Adamic and
Abrahamic at the same time, and Hajj is the representation of
that, and then the prayer we refer to and, of course, Ramadan.
Sacred communities always have forms of fast,
chemical cootie battle of Edom in public fasting, as few as it was
for those who came before you as
an important way of reminding you of your inter related connection
to the natural world.
Because generally, the more absently you eat and drink,
the less you are aware of your dependence on those things, and
the miraculous nature of those things. And therefore, in
primordial societies, there was always just that there were sacred
places. There were also sacred times and fasting was one of the
ways in which that could be marked off. So the fast also reconnects
us to a very distant time without being shamanistic, obviously, and
one could continue with the other basic practices of Islam and some
of its most characteristic features.
Like its understanding of gender, for instance, is very, very primal
and a centralizing. Lee said that Karl Karl on the male is not like
the female, the female has her form of incomparable perfection,
the angels bow down to her as well. The male has his form of
incomparable perfection, we have maybe in ourselves and unreality
is 1% of either of those things, but that which we are invited into
is the dignity of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi salam or Fatima
or Aisha immense people giants with certain qualities that are
very difficult to express in the near net of words, but are
particularly emphasized in the in the Islamic context. So, one could
go through the entirety of the religion, I think and reflect on
the fact that it comes from that very ancient unchanged Arabian
place and is specifically in its recapitulation of revelatory
history.
That which takes us back in certain of its key respects to an
ancient time, of sacred places, sacred times of incantations of an
extraordinary reverence for the, for the sanctity of the word.
Plato thought that human civilization started to go
downhill as soon as writing was invented. But the orality of the
prayer and the orality of HEFCE specifically respected in this
ummah are from that, that original fact that is Nabil omy, Ali
selecto Salam. So he's pre platonic. He doesn't contaminate
the word and it's not contaminated by scratching it on parchment, but
it is a breath within him. It is the word rather than just words on
paper. And that's another really important part of how we engage
with the divine, that this speech, this ancient
phenomenon. The origin of human culture is speech. It's not visual
arts or architecture or anything. It's speech on the Mobile Bay and
that's when we recognizably in our Adamic sense, our human that is
the modality through which we are
In which we face the Creator, through speech, the miracle of
speech from the aircraft. That is our that is our form. But speech
that is
not just calumnious Any old talk,
but God's speech and very quickly we have the doctrines against the
Morteza lights that affirm the real logical implication of the
Quran self understanding as Kalam Allah, that it is
God's
uncreated speech and therefore as we resonate with the word,
we breathe something of the sanctity of the Divine.
Because this is not like any other set of sounds, this is God's own
breath, that is within us. That when we hear the Quran recited, or
when the Quran is, as it were recited through us, that's holy
prophets speech, and that's the speech of our Quran teachers and
the speech of Gibreel. But in this very mysterious, as it were, also
unlettered way, the divine speech. And that's our principle contact
with the, with the divine. So there's something of the
soothsayer here, something of the one who is simply the passive
recipient of a message of transcendence. It's been heard
before the Quran is the Quran, but there's something very ancient
about what the Imam is doing for his congregation is not dishing
out little wafers or holding things up. He is breathing with
with the divine spirit. It's a very pared down, nomadic Semitic
primal idea of how the sacred is made, present the breath because
raw, is related to react, which is wind, it's insufflation.
So, through all of these things, it seems to me, we can start to
understand this characterization that we have of Islam as the
religion of the fitrah. The primordial natural disposition, is
perhaps so unChristian, and on Western concept that we don't have
a single word that begins to do it, justice, but sometimes we say
primordial, natural dispositions to many syllables, but it's the
best that our language can do.
And if that is what we are,
now, despite the copying of the movi sobs and crazy stuff that's
happening, that's essentially what the gift of Islam is, in the midst
of our high tech, crazy, demented, biocidal, modernity, a package
from a really ancient time, a normative human response to
transcendence, not
pagan, at all, emphatically monotheistic, but not from the
complexities of civilization, but something very simple.
This makes Islam really relevant and significant, like the key to
open the lock
has closed modern man off from the sacred.
Because the church is complex and Judaism this seems to be for a
particular people and Buddhism, the West will only have if they
cherry pick, as we saw earlier, today, the bits that they like,
yesterday, I was talking to one of my colleagues in the divinity
faculty, who was telling me as according to traditional Buddhism,
a woman cannot achieve enlightenment.
But when she reaches a particularly high degree, she is
compassionately turned into a man. And then she can become Arahat
achieve enlightenment. And then I said, How many Western Buddhists
actually have taken on that aspect of Buddhism and kind of smiled.
Westerners just sort of created this book Buddhism.
With Islam Liberty allows you to do that. We all know Islam is the
Muhammad and way
with all of the HD had in the are sold and all of that because it's
an intelligent way.
But it is, in essence, this
ship of salvation from the distant past that gives us a normatively
human way of being when everything else seems to be inhuman.
As we move into an age of genetic manipulation, and artificial
intelligence and climate breakdown, and God knows what
other wonderful things the scientists have in store for us,
we have these practices that nobody seriously is trying to
fiddle with.
You're going into a place of worship of other religions and you
don't really know what to expect, except for one thing what you
won't see there is how the founder of that religion used to worship
anything else? Anything goes in Islam, the miracle of the Divine
hex of this almost going to any mosque just about in the ummah.
There'd be 20 million mosques.
And you're going to see people following Salo Kamara at Monday or
Sunday prayers. You've seen me parade this power of the idea of
the Sunnah.
And this disgust at the idea that anybody might want to do something
else thinking that it's better the true understanding of bitter and
bitter is genuinely appalling thing because it means you're
putting your own sense of what's right above the prophetic
perfection, that's not a little thing has kept these forms intact
and Ramadan is still there, and
the cat rules are still there. And it's something for which we need
to give thanks. And something which we need to hold on to a lot
of what was bought the firmest handhold specifically designed to
give us a form of victory way the Sunnah, in an age where nobody
seems to have any anchorage any longer. And humanity is moving in
the direction of different genders and different sexualities and
having race changes and redefining their age and it's all come, come
adrift. A lot of people are suffering because human beings
need need landmarks, we're creatures of habit.
So we need to be giving thanks for this Alhamdulillah Allah Now I'm
not in Islam, or Kapha. Behind the pan says Praise be to Allah, with
the blessing of Islam, it is a sufficient blessing. Whatever else
might be going on, we have this we have a way of dealing with, with
nature with spouses, with With God, everything that's fundamental
is still there and reconnects us, quintessentially through nature.
So that's my, my thoughts about what this claim that we have that
our religion is the religion of nature Dino fitrah, might possibly
mean. Allah subhanaw taala or an article or fecal will offer my
income Westerdam or aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers