Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Atheism and How to Deal Questions about Islam
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Rahim,
my dear brothers and sisters.
This topic is a
unusual topic, in the sense that if we're talking about atheism,
agnosticism, possibily, ism, apathy, etc, everything related to
the non recognition of God of Allah, maybe denial of Allah
subhanaw taala then why am I speaking to those people who
already believe in Allah subhanaw taala?
So let me ask you a question. Are there? Is there anybody who's got
doubts about their religion? So I know which way to go with this.
Otherwise, I don't want to bore you. There's no point in telling
you something that mashallah you're convinced about? So is
there anybody with doubts or questions about their religion? I
will give you in fact, most of this is going to be based on
questions and answers. Um, if you don't have any questions, I'm
going to provide several different questions which relate to which
come from people who
don't believe in a God. We're not sure maybe, or some people who
actually deny God. So I thought it would be more useful to do it that
way. Because if there's none of you who have any doubts about God,
then I may as well make this an exercise of how you can benefit
others who may deny God at your workplace, at your study place, in
your universities, in your workplaces, or in with your
neighbors because this is a big discussion right now.
So any hands?
Anybody got problem with atheism here?
I'm saying this because the last time I did a program well, one
time we did a program like this, it was up up north in another
city, and there was actually one of the low
called youth to actually did not believe in God had major problems
but he would come and listen to the lectures. You were searching
which is fine, it's good hamdulillah
Allah subhanahu wa Tada says about himself in the Quran mashallah the
verses our quarry recited they were very pertinent as well. And
there's numerous other verses the whole AYATUL kursi Allahu La ilaha
illa who al Haj Europa Yun, the whole idea of this verse is to
tell us who Allah subhanaw taala is, give us some of his
characteristics. Give us some understanding of who he is and how
his interaction with this world is by pondering over it. Allah says
La ilaha illa who
Allah Aziz will Hakeem, there is no god except Him. He is the
mighty, and he is the wise one mighty one, he has power over all
things. So that explains his Quran his power. Then he says, His
Hakeem, he is the wise one. So whatever he's done in this world
is based on wisdom. It's not foolishness. It's not randomness,
it's not something that he just did. And then he decided, oh, this
was wrong, what I did, everything was premeditated, fully
volitional. And everything was pre planned. God, never Allah subhanaw
taala never does anything. And then he thinks, oh, I shouldn't
have done it that way. Because his omniscient knowledge, his
knowledge, knows about how things will be even before he's created
them. So for us, about us, for example, now that we are already
here, it hasn't changed the knowledge of Allah in any way
whatsoever. He knew about us the way we are, even before He created
us, he knew how we were going to be, these changes only take place
for us for Allah. He knows about all of these things from before.
I know that's for us impossible to even comprehend sometimes. Because
for us, we don't know about things before they've been brought up to
us. So how can we think even of someone who may know that, but
that's the whole idea that God is beyond what anything we can think
of and conceive of. So just because we can't understand how
God could know these things, doesn't mean he doesn't know them.
Right? Just because we can't understand something doesn't mean
it doesn't exist. Just because we haven't seen places in the world
doesn't mean that they don't exist. I give you a simple
example. When was the last time you had a really realistic dream?
Everybody can think of a realistic dream when you are in your dream,
especially if it was a nightmare. May Allah protect from Shaytaan,
right? And you think, oh, no, I'm dead. Right? You get into some big
trouble. Maybe you had an accident or something Allah prevent Allah
forbid. But when you're in that dream, doesn't it feel as real as
anything in this world? When you're in that dream? Right? You
could be losing your job in your dream, you could be divorcing your
spouse in your dream, and you're like, oh, no, what have I done to
myself? Right? It feels so real. But as soon as you wake up,
sometimes you wake up after the dream. Sometimes you wake up in
the midst of that dream. Sometimes you wake up, as soon as you're
about to have an accident or something. You wake up your dream
and Alhamdulillah that was just a dream.
Can you guys relate to that? I mean, I'm not getting any
reaction. So I'm just wondering if I'm like,
do you guys, do you understand what we're speaking about the
reality the way the dream feels so realistic? And you wake up? And
like, oh, that's just the dream? Does anybody have doubts about
that? It being a dream. Now what Imam has already mentioned, he
uses this example that when a person is in their dream, they
feel they're in a real world in a real paradigm. They don't
understand that this is just a dream that feels real soon as you
come out of your dream, immediately. It's a dream. So the
real the reality we're living in right now, when we're not in our
dream in our wakeful state,
everything we're experiencing, how do we know he says that we're also
still not in another level of a dream? And that we can wake up
from this and look back and think, did I really do all of that? That
was just a dream. Do you understand what I'm saying? That
how do you know that this is also not a dream? Why does he do this?
This is to give us an understanding that if you want to
question things,
if you're a person who likes to question things, and don't want to
take things unless you
see it in front of you. There's people who will even question that
this bottle of water exists here. They will say how does it exist?
Is that real water? Is that just an optical illusion of my mind? I
know I can feel it. But again, isn't that just an optical because
if you get into the scientifics of that, you could even deny that but
Is it real or not?
You might say that people don't deny their parents. There are
people who deny their parents
How'd you prove that you're a child of your parents?
How would you prove to somebody that we are children about
parents?
Okay. Let's start with a birth certificate. That's easier, right?
We don't have to go to a DNA. Let's start off with a birth
certificate. Somebody produces a birth certificate. Right? The
birth certificate is from England, or maybe it's from India,
Bangladesh somewhere? How difficult is it? Do you think it's
impossible to forge a birth certificate?
No. I mean, you can, you can forge things that you've got the right
amount of money, the right amount of contacts, you can forge a birth
certificate. So somebody is going to say that this is my proof of my
relationship to my mother or father, right? My mother or
father? Can I prove it using a bursary of birth certificates open
to speculation, okay, let's do a DNA test. DNA tests are not 100%
either. They're about 99%. Recently, I know a person who
works in a fertility lab, in what a very prominent fertility lab,
they had somebody come in for fertility treatment treatment,
they took the egg and the sperm from the couple. They, they did
everything the wife became pregnant that the woman became
pregnant. And then they come back, and they saying this is not my
child. Even though everything happened there, they had to then
send for DNA test to some of the greatest experts in DNA to
America, etc. And they were shocked that this was an unusual
case.
This was an unusual case that there were so many things that
were different, but yet there were so many things that matched and it
created confusion in that. So if you want to be a skeptic, a
questioner not believing in anything, unless you see whatever
is absolute proof to you, then you can deny anything and everything.
Everything is possible to deny if you want to be that skeptic. So
where is your skepticism? Going to stop? Where is your question?
Where are your questions going to stop? When are you going to start
accepting things? Have you how many of you have seen your great,
great grandfather?
I've seen my great grandfather haven't seen my great, great
grandfather. I'd love to see I've seen a picture of his but I
haven't seen him a passport picture. But that could have been
made up in India, you can make up anything?
How would you prove that your grandfather, your great great
grandfather existed?
You can't But don't we believe it? How do we prove that we were in an
embryonic stage in the stomach's of our mothers? Does anybody
remember that?
But I don't think anybody's going to deny that one.
Does anybody remember when Allah subhanaw taala took out all of the
children of Adam Alayhis Salam in the form of small, small ends or
as they resembled. And then he said to them, I am your Lord. And
I your Lord, allow us to be an obstacle? And instead of course
you are Does anybody remember that? No. There are some people
who say we can we can recall that experience. There are some people
maybe it to the unknown, I think it was from him or somebody. That
doesn't mean it didn't happen. So all of this takes us to the
understanding that it's not only through seeing something or
hearing something that you can receive knowledge about something.
There are many ways of receiving knowledge, receiving beliefs about
some things. You have not seen your great grand, great, great
grandfather, you've never heard him. You've never held him. You've
never hugged him. Right. So none of your senses can bear witness to
our great great grandparents. But we believe now that nevertheless,
how do we believe it? We do induction we do inference, right?
We use various different ways of reaching a conclusion.
So just because you can't see Allah subhanaw taala doesn't mean
he does not exist. There are so many things that we can't see but
we believe in them.
That's why Allah subhana wa Tada
says, Virdi como la hora, bukem.
That is Allah He is Allah, that is He is Allah your Lord
La ilaha illa who constantly there is no God except he hardly Coco
Lishi the creator of everything. For Abu do so now worship Him,
because He is responsible for everything that you are. So
worship him, show him your devotion. Well who are the
conditions in working? Allah says Rama only rule in law, the Buddha
Allah has really seen it, in fact, that none of us were my only rule
in law, the Buddha ILAHA Heda they've only been told to worship
one Lord, one deity, one of they've only been told to take one
object of worship.
La ilaha illa who there is no God
Except he
Subhanallah, who I'm usually called glorified and transcendent
He is above what they
bring us partners to him. Are they important to him?
So now, the first thing that you do whenever you come into any of
these questions with anybody is never jumped in to try to answer.
There are so many questions about I'll give you another example. I
was in a, in a college just some time ago. And I was, I was, it was
myself and this other Muslim sister who was representing the
Muslim opinion. It was essentially in a Sixth Form College. And they
had invited people from different faiths to talk about their faith.
So the Christian
clergy person, he spoke first. And then after that, they told the
sister to speak. And as she had finished these, these are all
teenagers, you know, your 716 16 1718 that year, that age?
As soon as she finished the talk, hands went up? Why do you have to
cover your head?
Why do you have to wear a hijab?
What is the normal answer? What what do you see? I say, when
somebody asks you that question. That's, that is the right answer.
To be honest, you have to come back to that eventually. But if
you say that, like Man, this guy's, you know, somewhere else?
The typical answer that people give, and they think it's a really
good answer is, oh, because it's my choice.
That's not a very good answer. To be honest. It is your choice in
sha Allah, it is your choice. But that's not the answer you're
looking for. Why is it your choice?
Right, if you prod, it's because the religion has told you this is
good. So they're gonna say, oh, it's because you've been made to
believe
you been made to believe that this is the thing you must do. So then
you've chosen it, because that's where you've been led to choose.
So you get stuck with that answer.
So I couldn't say anything, because it wasn't my turn to
speak, I let her deal with it. And then after that, eventually, when
it was my turn, and I finished, in fact, in my talk I dealt with I
said, Look,
I want to ask you guys a question. Because remember, a lot of these
questions, don't ever jump into answering them. Because as soon as
you jump into answering them, you have already accepted their
premise, you've accepted the way they have formulated. So it's like
you've accepted half of the way they think, and you're trying to
answer it according to the way they think. But it's totally wrong
from the basis of it. So my question to them was, to these
young guys who are asking the question, why is it a problem? If
she if she covers her?
Why is it an issue? What is the point on the body after which it's
not good to cover? Their their their? Where is it? Who made that
decision?
The only reason you've got a problem with her covering her head
is because you're not used to it. You're used to women not covering
their hair, but who makes that value judgment as to which is
better? If she feels that is better for her than let her do
that. And if you feel that it's better for you not to do it,
that's up to you. But who makes the judgment? And why is your
judgment that the hair should not be covered and women should leave
their hair out? Why is that a better judgment than this? Where's
the science behind it? Where are your statistics? Or studies or
research that shows that is better than that? One? Where is that? Can
you see don't ever get caught up? In the question. Always take the
question and see why they're asking the question. Is this
somebody who genuinely has a query? Who wants to understand,
always prompt them? Like, why are you asking that question for why
is that so important for you?
Always do that, then have a discussion. Go for coffee, if you
want somewhere? Go for a tea somewhere? Let's discuss this
right? You can't just answer this just like that.
Don't jump into a question try to answer because you'll generally
get stuck. Always try to understand why somebody's asking
the assumptions behind why they're asking that question. And then you
can find some common ground where they accept certain things do
other traditional people, what do they accept as truth? What can you
use, then you can try to understand how best to convince
them. A lot of people ask, what is the best book to give to somebody
who's interested in Islam?
And that's, that was that's always been a very difficult answer. The
reason is that the person who's asking you that question, he may
be interested in science. He doesn't care about spirituality.
So you need to give him a book that is related from a scientific
perspective about Islam. There are some people who are more
spiritual, they don't care about science. So you need to get a book
on Introduction to islam about from a spiritual perspective,
right? Somebody might be interested in a more philosophical
dimension, they might philosophize a lot of things. They're very deep
thinkers. So now if you give them a
book that is related to not related to deep thoughts about
Islam, then that's not going to be useful to them. But now I can say
there is actually one book, which mashallah deals with everything. I
think, when I read it, I benefited hugely for it from it's called,
give me a copy. A Thinking Person's Guide to Islam is written
by a person with two PhDs, and he happens to be a prince. Right? But
don't don't let that don't let that discount the book, a thinking
Person's Guide to Islam.
Written by Prince Ghazi, he explains what Islam is the various
different aspects of Islam, it's only came out I think about two
years ago, and it's already been translated into several languages,
because it's done in such a beautiful way. It's such a
convincing way, because the author has two PhDs, he's a philosopher,
and he's a very good mashallah a practicing Muslim.
Right. So it's always nice for all of us, especially in this current
day and age, where we're working with non Muslims, we're working
with people who are going to be constantly and then Islam has
become so criticized because of some of our own doing some of our
own inaction, some of our some of our unfortunate brothers out, then
you know, who do weird things in the name of Islam. And then we
just sit back and not do enough to counter that sometimes, or we
don't give them a positive idea. We have brothers and sisters who
are cheating the system, and creating blameworthiness because
of that, right? So all of that is there. That's why we really need
to understand what's necessary so that we can answer this. So now
let me look at a few different different questions. One of the
best ways that you can explain to somebody who Allah subhana wa,
tada is, is will by what they call is the beautiful design of the
universe. How can something be so beautifully designed, and not have
any designer behind it? I mean, this book is beautifully designed,
right? So there must be a beautiful designer behind it. It
just couldn't come up randomly. Once Imam Abu Hanifa, right, was
sitting there. And there was a group of atheist or agnostics they
were they were mohideen. They were people who denied Allah and they
had confusions about that they came to him and says, We want to
ask you some questions. Right. So imagine you're sitting there big
scholars sitting there. And these atheist, they're Arabs, you know,
and they come in to ask the question, we're gonna ask you some
questions about, about God. So he So Imam, Abu Hanifa. He said, You
know what?
I can't take your questions right now.
I can't take your questions right now. Because right now, I've got a
question that I'm already dealing with. It's a very complex
question. And I don't know, I'm thinking about it right now. So
they got curious and say, what is that question? He says, I've been
told about a ship, right about a freight liner, a ship, right, that
travels on the ocean. And it's traveling without
a captain. There's nobody
governing its course. It's traveling on its own. And it's
going through the waves, and it knows exactly how to navigate. And
it goes from
its place of origin to its destination, and it doesn't go
wrong. And they asking me about this, and I can't understand this.
Now, that question, if it came today, we could all understand
that it's just a smart ship. It's got automated functions. I mean,
you could you could,
planes can be basically flown right now, with a remote control,
they just have a person sitting there, just to make sure that if
the computer doesn't malfunction, otherwise, most pilots, they just
sit there, they put an autopilot. They do certain things manually. I
mean, if you've driven a Tesla, you may have had that experience,
I mean, you you're you're you're writing it, and you can put it on
automatic, and it will avoid the cars in front. But then sometimes
it does cause a problem because it just the computer at the end of
the day, for us this thing has become a reality now. But in those
days, that was impossible to imagine.
It'd be impossible to imagine a keyless entry of a kind those
days. So I mean, ship driving itself is impossible. So now when
he said that to them,
they said, Man, this is a crazy idea. How can a ship drive by
itself? Right? Can you not understand that? How can you ship?
They're like trying to answer the question for him like why are you
even entertaining this question? It's such an absurd question.
And that's when you want when he does it. That's exactly my point
to you. This is your answer. You guys cannot accept one small ship
that can drive on its own. Without a driver without. And you think
this entire universe with all of its beauty and everything you
think that can drive on its own, that can be done that can be
designed and it can run on its own. And that's when they realized
their fault. So you could tell that they were not arch skeptics.
They had genuine they were genuine seekers. hamdulillah they all they
all
They all came back into the faith.
So what I'm trying to say is that with a lot of these questions, you
can't Don't be so naive and just kind of jump into it and try to
explain in our, you know, naive way we can't do it. Sometimes you
have to just stop, take a step back and say, Why are we asking
this question? Why is that so important to you? What is life to
you first? Where do you think you're going? Ask him where he's
going? First? What do you believe him?
See, because out there, you've got people who absolutely deny Allah,
like, actively. They have they they hate God, they hate the whole
concept of God, they hate anybody that believes in God, they have a
government approach to this. And they're there to they're seeking
to actually destroy anything related to God, like Arch atheist.
And that's the difference between this generation, the last 40
years, and maybe hundreds of years before that, because the militant
atheism has been around as you know, there's always somebody or
the other who deny a god. I mean, that's just generically a human
trait for some people, right? But from around, you can do a trace of
the of atheism for about from about 16 1700. But in those days,
Christianity was very strong in Europe. Now remember, Europe,
where we live, never had a profit. Right? Europe has never had a
profit, the Middle East has had a profit, right? Many other places
have a profit, but Europe has not had a profit. That's why their
profits are the major philosophers like Kant, and others. That's
where they take a lot of this from today. The other thing that Europe
has dealt with, right is persecution by the Christian
church, because the church dominated Europe.
If you look at if you go to the University of sorry, non
University, if you go to the Museum of London isn't anywhere,
whether it's the Museum of London, where is it? Right, it's in that
area, Barbican and beyond that, it's very interesting, you should
go there to understand this way how this great city started,
right? A Roman garrison city, on the Thames, right? If you look
there, as it develops, there's a huge amount of churches.
It's just chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp church, like, you
know, when you go to Blackburn, you see mustard on every corner,
it was like that. Well, it's still like that. But just in one year
alone, I saw the economist a few years ago, just in one year alone,
50 churches in London were sold. And this was a few years ago,
they've been church, they're being sold 50 churches were sold to
either become community centers,
luxury homes, or something like that. There are a huge number of
churches in London alone, because Christianity was quite widespread
throughout Europe, the worst place that where there's a lot of
persecution and oppression committed by the church was in
France.
So today, you actually see that the French are probably the most
antagonistic towards any religion. And because Islam is so strong and
powerful, and manifests, and people like to practice it, Islam
becomes their main enemy. That's why the whole Constitution is
based on what they call a lie set a, an extreme form of liberal of
secularism, that doesn't even allow religion. That's why they
have such a problem
with religion, less problem than the British have done the UK have.
That's why even in Canada, which is mostly English, part French
influence that Quebec, Canada, they're part friends, it's from
Quebec, that they're trying to ban the hijab right now, not the rest
of the country.
And the French have some problem, right? They have a really weird
relationship with and yet Francis, the probably the most Muslims in,
in Europe, but they've had a one of the reasons for that is they've
just had a bad experience with religion. A lot of the time,
people who deny God is because they've had a bad experience.
And if I stop talking about Christians, and I start talking
about Muslims, it's a very similar picture here. One of the reasons
why some Muslims have left the faith or are leaving the faith is
because Islam has been presented to them. In culture only.
You know, the green and gold and red glitter of marriage of
weddings.
There's nothing else beyond that.
What true religion is they have no idea. It's a cultural religion
that has been presented to them. And then sometimes, they've been
forced to marry somebody they don't want to marry like their
cousins and saying this is Muslim and Islamic. The only way Islam
crept up in the whole discussion.
I spoke to a woman who lives in London somewhere. She is older.
She's a Pakistani woman, older, meaning probably about 14 now.
She's married to a non Muslim. She knows she's doing wrong. She knows
I'm this is a bad marriage. I shouldn't be in this marriage. How
do you get there? I said, she said I was forced to marry my cousin.
From Pakistan is brought over, I couldn't get along with him. And I
lost my faith. Now she's coming back to her faith, she is
realizing this is not faith that was forced into it. So there could
be many real, this isn't the only reason there could be many reasons
of why person leaves the faith. Right? It could be many, many
reasons we have to own up to this. So one of the one of one group of
people who don't believe in God, or those who absolutely deny it.
The other thing we've had is in the last 4050 years, we've had
what they call the five horses or the four horses, right? These are
these very confident atheists that some of them were very articulate,
you know, your Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and Hitchens.
They have, they have basically taken the discourse with their
very articulate way of argument by having debates with people who are
maybe not as good and then they, they break them down. So people,
there are people I know who've there are about three Muslim youth
that I've dealt with who had questions about their faith, and
all the arguments that they articulated were primarily from
Dawkins.
Now, the thing is that the same arguments same criticism he is
putting on to Islam of why, for example, it's a simple question.
Why do women get half of what a man gets for inheritance? Why does
a woman Why is a woman not allowed to issue a divorce in Islam? Why
is it only the man who can? These are some of the questions? Why
does a woman have to cover up?
When a man doesn't?
Okay, these are questions. If you focus on them, you can you can see
why these questions are being a problem, because it seems like
there's no equity. There's no equality.
When are men going to stand up? I'm not saying that they should.
But let's say men started getting really angry about this. And they
started taking their manhood back, because right now masculinity is
in crisis, right? And they started saying, Why can't men have babies?
We want * as well. We want to be able to feed.
We want to be as emotional, we want to cry more as well. We can't
cry. You guys just cry over everything.
Why can't we cry so easy. We want to do it as well. This is
inequality. How could God created this, we're not going to believe
in this religion anymore. We're not going to believe in God, we're
going to deny God because of that.
similar arguments, I mean, this is just a few arguments, there's so
many more things that men can say if they want to, I'm not saying
they should do because it's absolute lunacy to do so. Right?
What I'm saying is that where you don't cause a problem, there
shouldn't be a problem for hundreds of years, 1000s of years,
this has been the case. Right? Women did what they did best men
did what they they are complementary roles. There is
gender equity.
Gender equality is a is a false idea is gender equity, where you
help one another. Women are very good at certain things. Men are
very good at other things. They help together. That's how they
produce children, and the race continues. But what's happened
right now is that the discourse through the media and through some
ideologues, and through these arch atheists, they've just put the
focus on women in equality, nobody is forced, forced on so called
male equality. And that's why that's not a problem. This is a
problem.
It's all about who creates the big discourse. Who, who, who manages
the narrative.
We have to be able to see through this, I'll give you an example.
In France,
in America, and in the UK, a man is allowed to run bare chested
if he wants to go and do a jog outside in the park, I don't think
there's any law about not wearing a t shirt is there for men, right?
But if a woman wants to do the same thing, do you think she would
survive? That's illegal. But in France, it's okay to do that at
the beach.
Right in front Italy. In fact, even in Spain, it's okay to do
that the beach
right. But in England, it has to be specially designated. Why is
the inequality
what justifies this what justifies that?
In Egypt, about 85 to 90% of women wear hijab? So if the country
decided that he job must become necessary for every woman,
why should that be a problem?
The reason it's going to be a problem is because anti West is
not the dominant ideology right now. People will make a big fuss
for that 10% People will make the biggest fuss. But there's so many
other things happening. Nobody makes a fuss about those things,
just depends on what the discourse is. That's why don't get caught up
in the question and then trying to be box and then be boxed in and
find you're trying to find your way out.
challenge their assumptions. So I said to these young guys, what is
it that makes that part of the body not to be covered? Why is
somebody in a T shirt and jeans superior to somebody in an abaya?
And in a hijab? Why is that one person superior to this person?
Can anybody give a reason?
It's only superior because we're used to it. It's a deep seated
ideology that has been fed to us. And we've taken in, we don't even
know why we think that,
scientifically, why is that better than this?
Why should your judgment be superior to my judgment? If you
want true freedom of expression, and if you want true freedom of
whatever you want to do, then let her be like, then let her be like
that? If that's what you're saying.
So why do we believe in something we can't see? That's a famous
question, right?
So actually, let me go back to the first person who denies the second
type of people are those who don't deny God. But they say that we
don't have enough evidence to prove it yet.
We don't have enough evidence. These are agnostics. agnostics,
which is the topic of the title. So I better cover agnostics,
right? So, agnostics are those who say we don't know yet. We're still
looking.
I was like, how long you're gonna look for? Right? We're still
looking, we're still exploring.
I mean, there's enough evidence, Therefore Allah if you want, Allah
is such an essential reality that your own self will call out to
Him.
When you're when, when you're in the greatest state of desperation,
I remember listening to a TED talk. And she was explained, she
said, you're going to call out
to the heavens, they just don't want to use God.
When you're in trouble, you're going to call out to something
because it's a human nature, that is God has implanted to call on
something greater than you. What is that greater thing? You're
going to just intellectually convinced yourself that, oh, it's
heaven, whatever that means. It is nature. Whatever that means,
right? Just these different ideas.
You know, people say, oh, gosh, that's essentially just, instead
of saying, Oh, God, that's just the way of saying, oh, gosh,
instead of people need an expression, why do you say, Oh,
God, uh, me.
Whatever you say, like, you know, for your mother, you just calling
on to somebody who you think you're going to get something
from? So you say, Oh, God, so you call out to Gosh, who the heck is
that? Gosh.
Like, why would you call out to that, it's a human need to call on
to something. So that's the second that agnostics. The third set of
people.
Apathy, apathy means they don't care.
They have no interest in finding out whether it is a God or not.
They don't even want to discuss it Oh, that doesn't, when they're
just indulgent in the dunya. We're happy, we just have lots of money,
we can enjoy ourselves, we can eat and entertain ourselves to death.
That doesn't bother us. We're not worried about tomorrow, we're not
worried about the hereafter.
Apathy is a massive problem. That's why you have a lot of
Muslims who do believe in God at the back of their mind, but they
have a lot of apathy. They don't want to learn, they don't really
care, they don't really know it's not a reality for them, what's
going to happen afterwards.
So apathy is a massive problem, it needs to be cured.
Then there's a fourth possibility, there's a author that I was
reading, and he studied the brain in depth. So he is neither an
atheist, neither an agnostic neither and neither apathy. He
says that I'm a possible list,
essentially saying that, what it is, is that he is basically saying
there's probably enough evidence for there to be something, but I'm
not willing to accept to you, but I'm saying possibly is better than
the others at least you're getting closer. Right? These are just
various ideas of the denial of God because as our order might have
explained to us that people have different types of gopher one is
called Khufu, javelin, the disbelief of ignorance where you
don't know about God. Nobody's told you about it. So you're
ignorant about it. Why do you don't know there could be many
reasons why you don't know you haven't bothered trying? Or you
did try but you couldn't find I believe that anybody who searches
God will find him that's a promise from a lie think that anybody who
searches for God will find him. So that's cool through Joel. Just
ignorance, then there's Khufu. Renard and Khufu
Who would basically go through enter this? I know, but I'm not
going to believe that.
I know but I'm not going to believe inside, you know, it's
right. But you cover it up.
And you stubbornly refuse to believe. You stubbornly refuse to
believe you're obstinate. If I really want to be fair with
myself, I should believe but I've got too much to lose. I need to
do. Why do a lot of people not believe because if you start
believing in God, he puts you into
laws.
God puts laws down, following the laws of God are not easy.
Right? That's why a lot of will say what do you know if you're a
Muslim? Would you have to do Oh, you have to stop eating yourself.
Stop drinking, stop womanizing, man, amazing, whatever, you know,
whichever way it is, right? Now, I can't do that. That's difficult.
Right? Maybe later, whatever. You know, it takes a while. It's just
human beings. But Allah subhanho wa Taala says FM and sha Allah who
saw their holy Islamic for who Allah God Mirabai.
reason I say that is because
there was a group of atheists in America, that was a young Asian
Pakistani background. And they
had become atheist. Now they were going around the different
universities giving a lecture and telling them about their
experience.
And subhanAllah. One of the names is Muhammad, the atheist? It just
sounds such an oxymoron. Like, how can you have a Muhammad was a
atheist. It's just doesn't make sense. But
something went wrong somewhere. And, you know, there's Muhammad,
the atheist.
And one of the questions that really struck me was that they
were talking about their difficulty with their family and
their parents.
How they were trying to deal with their parents and difficulty of
not being accepted now being alienated, and so on and so forth.
So
the person asked him, wouldn't it have been easier for you to just
believe?
And he said, of course, but we can't.
Now think about that. That's a very deep answer. It's a very
telling answer.
We would love to believe I'm interpreting, we wish that would
have been easy for us, but we can't believe what's going on
here.
What's going on here?
What's going on? Is that if Allah says in the Quran, by taba Allahu
Allah, Quran, Bell,
gullible Rana, Allah kuruva him this taba, Allah Febi, Monique
Nemeth. When Allah puts a seal for whatever reason, then it doesn't
matter what you try. You get the best people to explain to you who
God is, try to answer your, your all your questions, you just won't
get it.
At the end of the day, you must call on to align yourself. Now
this is not to say we don't have answers. This is not like you must
understand the Trinity even if you don't get it. Like you must just
believe that's not the point.
We have many many answers for all the questions but if answers were
convincing other people but it did not convince you that maybe
there's a deeper problem, which is that it's just there's a seal on
the heart. And the only way to remove the seal is FM and sha
Allah Saleh al Islam. It is the one for whom Allah subhanaw taala
has opened his heart up for Islam. For who Allah God Mirabai that
person is on the light of his Lord.
That person is under light of his Lord.
That's why at the end of the day, it's it's really that which which
matters.
When you have a wet ground
Don't you know that it's rained,
but somebody could have just sprayed it.
But we generally believe in rain we make certain calculations think
if it's just a small area, okay, maybe there was a garden hose. But
if it's a very large area and you keep seeing it then okay, it was
probably rain. You can even smell the rain in there sometimes. So we
didn't see the rain. But we saw the ground wet. We inferred we it
was a it was a calculation that we did with our mind is a syllogism.
We put two and two together. And that's what we said it is. That's
why we have many things of the unseen to believe in like the
hereafter that we can't see with our senses. But we have to
understand how can this world have been created without a person
without a being rather, right who has the following capabilities
because there's no way this world would have been so beautiful.
Forget the entire well let's just look at some fruits right now.
There are some people who have recognized Allah just by fruits
look at the orange for example.
Right, it's a simple fruit that we don't pay too much attention to.
It's got a thick skin that's orange on the outside, white on
the inside. When you remove that skin, there's still another layer
that protects the different segments. The segments then have a
skin. It's segmented into however many are perfectly placed together
in that round shape. You you remove the segments, you separate
the segments, then you take each individual segment, and you can
remove the skin. And then inside it's not like a mango. But it's
actually the flesh inside is made up of different
however you describe that, alright, you look at a mango is
completely different. It's solid inside, it's soft. You look at a
watermelon, it's this many percent water, but look at the way it is.
If you make that same thing into juice, it won't last for long. But
if you leave the watermelon, it will last longer. You look at the
jackfruits
right.
I don't really do much jackfruit but durian if anybody's had
durian. It's an amazing fruit. It's got a very thick skin. Right?
Very thick, prickly skin, you open it up, and it's got these concaves
in which there is this, the flesh of the fruit inside, which is like
cream. So amazing. But it's got a very bad smell. Right? How Allah
just there was somebody who became Muslim just by observing fruit
that there's no way this could have just been done in random
without a god, somebody must have created this. Let me give you a
few examples. Like if somebody says, if God loves us, then why
should he not help us to understand him? Now think of this
question somebody actually. Okay. So if God is supposed to be loving
and everything merciful, and He loves us, then why shouldn't he
help us to understand him? How would you answer that?
How do you know? Exactly? You have to challenge the question.
Basically, they're trying to tell you that God hasn't helped you.
Now if you start answering no, but you know, why doesn't help us? Oh,
you already get caught in the net. You already accept God hasn't
helped us say, Well, how do you know God hasn't helped us cause
he's helped us. He sent all of these prophets. He sent books he
sent, he sends you evidences of proof signs from the cosmos, all
of these things tell us that there's a God. So why are you
saying that? There's no, that he hasn't helped us? That's just an
assumption that you have. Don't ever get caught in assumptions,
because not everything. That is an assumption is correct.
Just because an atheist puts a question out there and criticizes
God or religion doesn't mean it's true. Just because it sounds
official.
That's the problem that we just think that if somebody said it,
hey, that must be a bigger, nobody must have answered it. There are
even with regards to evolution, so many things have been answered.
But the textbooks mentioned the same thing over and over again,
they've been disproved various different graphs and various
different things. They've been disproved, they still use them
over and over again, if you don't know the answers, then you'll just
be confused.
A lot of these things have been answered, but we're just sitting
back not doing anything. We need to take this and understand these
things.
Why should God punish you with eternal hellfire? If you have
disbelieved in this world?
Very common question.
Well, that one you're going to have to answer, right, because
very straightforward question. Well, one of the reasons is that
God has given you enough time in this world to believe or
disbelieve. And at the end of the day, if you have not believed, in
30 years, 50 years, 40 years, because any child who dies, they
don't that they're not considered to be in punishment anyway. So
children out of this is only after you become discerning and become
an adult, and that's when you're going to be that's where you're
going to be liable. Right? So you're going to be accountable.
The reason why you're punished forever, is because gopher has
become your state. It's not an action anymore. It's not like I
only did it for five years, it was only caffeine for 10 years or 20
years. It's your state that's your *. That's who you are. Now,
that's who you are. So that's a state is very powerful. It's
that's very revealing about somebody.
So
some say if you have a merciful God, why is there suffering in the
world?
How would you answer that one? First thing is what is suffering?
Let's decide what suffering is first. And why is suffering bad?
Why are you making the big deal for why suffering bad isn't some
suffering good actually makes you a better person if you suffer? It
takes you down from your arrogant state like you because you got a
lot of money or you got very you know, and you have to then suffer
you like really think about yourself, there's a purpose behind
suffering. Why should it be bad? Okay, some suffering may be
considered bad, but why all suffering? What is that decision?
So there's lots of answers like this, lots of questions like this.
So I stop here. And my final thing is that what we need to do is we
need to constantly to protect ourselves and our children we need
to constantly remember Allah subhanho wa Taala the more we
remember him inshallah the stronger he will be in our hearts.
So the small small things will not faze us. Number two, we need to
gain knowledge and we need to understand more about Allah deep
reading of the Quran, especially the verses about Allah, they are
very helpful. And other really good books on Islam and about
Allah. They're very useful like, like, as I mentioned, this really
gives a good modern understanding.
And then number number three, don't get caught up with these
questions. Right? You can't answer these things in a simple,
simplistic way you have to challenge the assumptions and
ideas and you will feel that if you have the confidence and the
trust in Allah insha Allah you will be able to prevail. So you
must have a lot of trust in Allah subhanho wa Taala We ask Allah
subhana wa Taala to keep us straight, steadfast, along with a
Bittner along with a Bitna a dean that's very important, robbing
Allah to collude and bad data data no habla Nabila Adam Carolla in
the country, Wahab, these are very important to us to make. So
inshallah I stopped here. If you have any basic questions I can I
can take it as long as hazard here allows. So the question is, the
question is that if God is all powerful, then Why can he not
build a can he build a stone or manufacture a stone that He cannot
lift? Right? The same? To be honest, to be honest, it's the
same question, Why can't he develop another God? Just like
him? If he's so powerful? Why can't he do that? So this is a
quite a simple question, to be honest. And there's a very simple
answer to that.
God is defined as being all powerful, that he can do whatever.
Right. Now, there are two answers here. Number one, there can't be
anything in existence. It's an absurdity. It's a logical fallacy,
and absurdity for there to be anything that God can't do in
existence. It's like asking the question that can you build? Can
you design a square that is triangle?
Can you have a triangle, which is square or a square, which is
triangle? You can't, because by the very definition of what a
triangle is, it's a three sided
is a three sided shape. And a square is a four sided shape. So
you can't say why you can't do that. Now, if you get the best
mathematician and you are tricked, what is it trigonometry? Is that
what you call it? And you tell them that you're not good enough?
If you can't do that, it's just absurdity. It's a silly question
to start with. Because God is all powerful by his very intrinsic
nature. So if I say, Why can't God create another god is the same
thing? Why?
God, another intrinsic characteristic of Allah is that
he's one. If he created another one, it'd be absurdity. Because it
means he's no longer one anymore. You can't have the same as God.
It's impossible because God is one, you can't have two, once you
understand that unique ones, right? Because it's something
else. These are absurd questions that are being asked like, if this
is white, can you make that duck, but it's still white? It's just a
silly question. And I'm not saying your question is silly. I'm saying
the idea is a silly one. To say that because it's self defined.
The other answer, which is like a simplistic answer is that why
should God do something so stupid that is self defying? Why should
he create a stony count lifts? But that's not really the strongest?
That's not really a very good answer. Anyway, the main thing is
that God has ability over all things that are possible.
This is an image in conceivability. This is not even
you can't even rationally think this thing. So the question is
that the,
the first part of your question was this we have science and
science.
That is the that is the way we know things. Right? Generally,
science is the modern way by which we know things, and right now
sciences and told us there's a God. Right? There's a number of
problems with this question to start with, right? There's a
number of assertions being made here, which are not entirely
accurate. First of all, science, God is outside the realm of
science. Science is based on right now on empiricism, which means,
what things you can observe and test and repeat. Right? Can
science, answer the question of beauty, aesthetics, what is
beautiful and what is not built? That's a judgment that is a value
judgment. Science can't answer that science can tell you how this
thing is made. Right? And that this thing is so hard, and this
thing is so tall or whatever. Science is not even there to
answer this. This is not like a criticism of science to say that
science doesn't deal with God. It's beyond the scope for science
to deal with God. Because science doesn't tell you where things
the purpose of things
It tells you how things are, it doesn't tell you about the purpose
of things. So
science cannot, science cannot.
Science cannot explain ethics, for example, because ethics is outside
the realm of science. Right? How you should eat
the ethics of eating the ethics of not cheating? How does science
even deal with that? It's a different paradigm. That's a
different idea whatsoever. So people have started saying, or
study believing that science must be able to answer everything. But
it can't answer everything. It has a limited scope. So these things
are outside the science, limits of science. Muslims have never had a
problem with science, Christians have had a problem with science.
So when Christians have had a problem with science, people have
thought if Christians have had a problem with science, Muslims, as
another religion must have a problem with science as well. We
don't, because we understand that science can only answer certain
things, while
it can answer other things. Number two, for Christian scientists,
when they go into a laboratory, they have to leave their faith at
the door. Right? Because it's not reconcilable for us, it's not a
problem. Because for us, science doesn't deal with anything to do
with God anyway. And then to say that
they try to say that scientists are you saying that scientists
aren't religious people,
as many religious people as you have in the community in the
society, the same proportion, there were two studies done on
this, the same proportion of people, the same proportion of
believers you find in people, as opposed to non believers, you will
find the same proportion of believers among scientists over
non believers in science. It just represents so if you believe and
you do science, you can do it. And if you don't believe in science,
and you you do, you will just come up with a different conclusion.
But science has got nothing to do with God. Science can explain the
universe but it can't explain why the universe
like why is the universe that they can't explain that