Abdurraheem Green – Do We Need Organised Religion
AI: Summary ©
The speakers explore the need for organized religion and state of mind to achieve success in Western society. They stress the importance of protecting one's face and avoiding criticizing others, as well as the need for a substance-based system and avoiding disrespecting the French flag and the use of the Chinese flag in media. They also emphasize the importance of trust in relationships and building a foundation for successful life. The War on the Planet movie provides examples of how trust is crucial to building relationships and building a foundation.
AI: Summary ©
Assalamualaikum Welcome to this live stream we are going to be discussing, do we need organized religion? And I would shake up the Rahim green. So she this topic. You know, this came out of our topic about two weeks ago in which we spoke about New Age spirituality. And then, you know, this sort of segues nicely into this idea that
okay, do we really need rules? Are rules always problematic? And, you know, it seems like a bit of an obvious question. For some people, at least in the Western world, do we need organized religion? Of course not. Maybe they're like this organized religion? I'm not sure what they mean by that. But yeah, introduce us to this topic and why it's important to cover it. Right. I mean, look, I'm going to give a really quick beginning, you know, I'm going to start with a really quick answer, right? And then in sha Allah, what I thought we'd do is go into it deeper, right? So I guess the quick answer is, the whole point of religion is that it's supposed to be organized, right? If it's not
organized, it's really not religion almost by definition, right. And that's where you'd come to this whole topic of spirituality when people talk about I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. I guess at least those people understand what religion means. Religion means an organized systemized,
like process through which a person worships any particular deity, right. And the moment you remove the aspect of it being organized, and having some sort of regular pattern to it, it stops being religion, and it becomes something else entirely. Right? So I guess, you know, to be, but obviously, people say, Oh, I don't like organized religions, right?
So it doesn't make sense. That's not really fully understanding the function of religion. So I guess, really, the whole topic is going to be a justification of why we actually really do need religion, or I mean, just to answer the question, yeah, we do need organized religion. And I'd come at that there's, I guess, there's two different angles, two different angles, we can come at it from, from, you know, from well, actually maybe three angles, from the point of view of human society, why human beings as social beings need religion. Number two, on an individual, psycho psychological angle, we need religion. Like, psychologically, there's lots of evidence as to why
people who have religion who lead live religious lives are happier, the lives are more fulfilling. Similarly, by the way, even on the level of, you know, the social level, there is quite a lot of evidence, I'm talking about empirical evidence here, not just you know, like, so there's also a lot of evidence that on a societal level societies that have strong religious traditions, in other words, organized religious traditions, not just some sort of spiritual New Age, you know, I'm just spiritual, right? So using the term religion here in the sense that it's supposed to be that both societies, you know, people just tend to be more happy.
And those societies just in, you know, according to numerous benchmarks just tend to be more successful.
And I think the third part, which is obviously the obvious part that the one would normally that any religion would probably try and argue from, is that spiritually, from the point of view of our spirit, from the point of view of our soul, yeah, we need religion, but then we would argue not just any religion will do. Right. It has to be the true religion, it has to be the right religion, which is a whole nother topic, right? Is there a true religion? Right. So, which is something very interesting, because I've been spending a bit of time on clubhouse recently. And I spent, I don't know until 130. Last night, on a on a room that was talking about exactly that topic. You know, you
know, do you have to have a reload? Do you have to believe in a religious truth? It was very, very interesting.
You know, so these are sort of it's very interesting that as you answer one question, you sort of branch off into other discussions and questions that need to be talked about.
Yeah. And I think one thing which we can definitely take away from what's going on currently, in terms of this discourse is even people who are quite secular minded and quite scientific, they still can't get away with being dismissive of this phenomenon. It just seems to be
a perennial issue, just reread
here's different packages. So you know, like you rightly said, they would say, Look, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. Well, that's just, you know, that's just a placeholder is the same thing. You just don't want to sound like you're old fashioned, but it's the same thing. I want to bring in something here, which seems unrelated, but I don't think it is. You spoke earlier about religion being organized and religion having rules, and you know, these types of things. And how people don't like that. And they, they say, look, human beings are happier when we don't have rules when we don't have these types of things. So I just want to give you a little
something to, to sort of glue the glue these ideas together. Recently, I've been looking into what some evolutionary psychologists have been saying about sexual jealousy, and how in the 60s and 70s, there was this idea that, you know, everybody would have * with each other, the jealousy would go away, you know, human beings wouldn't be so possessive of each other's partners. And in fact, the opposite happened. Not only did the psychologists start to say that, actually, no, jealousy will never go away. People became more conservative after the 60s and the 70s. Yeah. So you know, again, it goes to show that this wasn't because there was some Sharia law being applied in the Western
world, that the 60s and the 70s, and the experiments with the drugs and the fluid lifestyle, was was controlled through some government, it was sort of done at a population level by people themselves, realizing that actually, no, they are jealous if their partner actually is, you know, sleeping around and stuff. Now.
What I want you to do connect that to the rules, that even though people don't want rules, they sort of start governing themselves. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think let's go back to the lit, I think the useful thing for everybody is to sort of go back to basics, right? And let's ask the question, when we are saying, Do you know, do we need organized religion? Right? Let's define our terms. Right. So I've given the short answer, right.
And there's actually quite a lot to unpackage here. Right? So I'm going to start by going back to the terms, what is religion? What do we mean by religion? Right?
Okay, that's very interesting. This itself is a very interesting topic. So I'm going to I'm going to talk about this very briefly. And I think this is really important stuff, you know, for Muslims, where, you know, for Muslims, that anybody who's listening, but I think, particularly for Muslims, it will also help us to understand a lot about, you know, our own practice and our own belief system and how we live our lives, whether it's really up to the mark or not, because it applies to everybody right. Now, in the religion is traditionally defined, as, you know, a system of you know, a system of beliefs and practices that are centered around a deity. So this is usually what is
considered to be defined as a religion, right? i To be honest, I didn't look up the dictionary definition, but I'm pretty sure that is pretty much that's exactly what it is. Right? So that sort of begs another question, what is a deity? Right? Why do people feel compelled to worship a God? Because if we can understand these things, then we'll really begin to understand what religion actually is. Right? And my here's my gonna be my interesting point. At the end of it, I will pre I will pre I will put it in advance, right? Everybody is religious? There is nobody who is not religious, right? Because if you take out the word religion, right, so let's go back and let's
understand what is the God right, what is the daisy? Obviously, traditionally, a deity may be a supreme being, like the Creator of the heavens on the earth, Allah or Jehovah or Yahweh, you know, or Tang grill or Vishnu, right? Or whatever, right? It might be some supreme sort of transcendent being maybe Tangra, wasn't a supreme turns, turns and leaves the sky god. But anyway, that some supreme transcendent being right. So this is obviously you know, the creator being the prime, you know, the prime organizer. Yeah. So obviously, that's one definition of God. But obviously, in you know, pagan and
polytheistic religions, there are multitudes of gods. Now, in some of these religions, they may believe that Gods these actual gods have actual powers, right. They may believe that the God of lightning controls the lightning and the God of Wind controls the wind and the god of fertility.
controls whether you're going to, you know, there's going to be crops growing or not. So they have different gods that are controlling different aspects of the elements within the universe, right? And that by appeasing these gods appealing to them, worshipping them,
that hopefully these gods will turn things in your favor. But it all comes down to, from a psychological perspective, from a psycho spiritual perspective. There's something that human beings want and some things that human beings need. And in order to fulfill those wants and needs, one of the routes that they will take is by appealing to these gods because they believe that these gods are going to give them what they want, and what they need. Right. Of course, the other format could be that, and this also exists in pagan religions. Contrary to claims of even some Muslims, I've heard saying some extraordinary stuff these days, that in also many pagan and polytheistic
religions, these gods themselves do not, they don't attribute to these gods that they worship actual powers. Right, they believe they are intercessors, and intermediate trees to God. Or sometimes they believe they are manifestations or forms of the Supreme Being right of an aspect or a dimension of the Supreme Being. Right.
So, but they believe that by focusing on this particular manifestation, which may be portrayed in the form of an idol, again, this is the path through which they believe they are going to get what they want, and what they need. So it may be either from, you know, a multitude of deities, or it may be some part of access to the supreme deity. But let's take that logic. Right, let's take the basic definition, right, of your God is what you think is going to give you what you want, and what you need, right? Let's take it as that. And then we can understand that this can actually be extended to almost anything, you don't need to even believe in a supreme being, you don't even need to believe
that the elements are controlled by you know, some intelligent, or emotional physical entities, you can believe in purely material things, such as money, for example, or fame, or power, and authority, or beauty. If you think about it, in the modern world, especially, these are actually the things that people think they are their gods, because they are the things that people believe are going to give them what they want and what they need. There are many people probably most of us, right, even the ones who claim to be Muslim. So many of us, actually, in reality, believe that what is really the source of happiness and success in life is having money.
Having a secure income,
being a doctor or being an engineer, having education. These are the things that we really believe actually, in reality, are the sources of our happiness and success. And we shouldn't imagine that this is any less a type of polytheism than worshipping Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Ganesh, you know,
whoever, right there just as much polytheism because if you think about the emotional, psychological, spiritual investment that you are making in those things, but ultimately you believe that they have some sort of power, some sort of ability to give you something, that in fact, only the supreme being the creator of the heavens and the earth has. Yeah, right. Okay. And this is why the Prophet Muhammad's may God's peace and blessings be upon him said won't be to the worship of the dinar and that there has been no one. No intelligent person, even if you've been to Stanford, right? And study with all sorts of professors, right? No one puts $1 BILL Right or a dinner at Durham,
thinking that this thing has some actual real powers. Right now. It's very clear. The shook here is that people believe that money itself having money possessing money, and therefore being able to
to buy things, it is in their mind that they're purchasing power that somehow they could buy things to make them happy. And the point is, that's not really any less shook as the scholars, you know, the scholars who understood this matter, the spiritual masters, right? They understood that the people who are drunk, intoxicated with the dunya with the world with worldliness, their condition is much worse than those people who are intoxicated with alcohol, because a person who is intoxicated with wine wakes up the next morning with a headache, whereas the person who is intoxicated with the world,
they never wake up. Yeah, right. And, you know, of course, this is this has levels, right? There are levels where it isn't sure, is just the type of misguidance. But there are levels where it actually becomes shoot, where you literally psychologically, spiritually believe, and have an attachment to it, that you should only have to Allah. And this is mentioned in the Quran. Right? There are some people who love others, as they should only love Allah. So if you're giving love to others that you should only give to Allah. This, of course, is a type of shirt. Yeah.
Okay, so the point being here is that if you really understand this, then you will realize that everybody has a God, because everybody believes that there is something that is going to give them what they want and what they need. Right? Everyone has some belief like that, and along with it comes a worldview, right? That worldview will inevitably begin to formulate itself into a set of ritualistic practices, through which, and by which those people believe they will be able to approach that. God, I put it in inverted commas, right. So I always I was given the example of, you know, like myself, I was brought up in a, you know, middle class, English family. Right. And I would
say that one of the things right, that is, it's still, you know, despite many attempts to make, you know, Britain, a classless society has failed miserably. Obviously, Britain is still a strongly class, you know, class divided society. So part of the, you know, part of the part of what the middle classes believe, is that by being in the middle class, the upper middle class, the aristocracy, as similarly, they believe it's a source of success in life, they believe it's a path to success. They believe that through that, and by that they will get what they want and what they need, right. They call it the, you know, the old, the old boys network, and you see it working. And
it's been all over the news, right. And you've had Piers Morgan, right grilling, Hank out about it, because basically, they're handing out contracts to their old Etonian public school buddies, right. And, you know, even though they have absolutely no knowledge and experience, right to, you know, actually provide these services, but that's how the system works, because that's their religion. You have to understand, this is the dean, this is their religion, and they will say we're not religious, right? But they are, right. And it is a religion. Right? It all comes with the package. Right?
Okay. So we'll say, you know, in the month of May, knowing that
the believers are brothers, they have their equivalent, right? They do they have their equivalent of it, right. And they can talk about not dividing people, but they are extremely divisive themselves. In fact, the whole system of protocols, right, about how you talk, what you say what words you use, how you eat, the type of car, you drive, the clothes that you dress in, they are all benchmarks in order to cause separation. That's what they're all about in order to know who is really from their class and who is not. Right, because the pretender unless they are really, really skilled and they've been very, very well tutored, right, will always get caught out. And the problem is, right,
even if you're well tutored, like my mom's a classical example, right, because she comes from a Polish background. She had to learn all of this stuff. And the irony is because she had to learn it. She's almost in it. She's like it you know, like converse is supposed to be like extra enthusiastic and extreme.
Right, you spot that, because someone who's really from the middle class will realize that these rules, although they are there, right, they're never taken completely seriously by those people in the know. Right. And in order to fake that balance of playing the game and acting out the act, right, yet at the same time knowing when, you know, just to throw your, you know, throw your bun across the room at each other, and like, break all the rules, right? Which is totally against the rules. But actually, people realize that those rules don't really mean anything, when you're in the company of those people who are of the same class as you, right? So like, you know, it's hard to
fake it. And it's, it's there on purpose. It's a system of division, right? It's a system of divide and rule. Okay, so it's a religion, right? It's a religion in the sense that I have described it previously, no one would think of it and even as I'm sure as I'm saying it, people say what you're talking about, if someone just came in right now to say what you're talking about, it's not a religion, yes, of course, in the sense of how religion is traditionally defined, but that even that's the point, right? Even here, the definition of words, is corrupted by the paradigm of the society, because we live in a highly secularized society, right, that has become imbued with secular
thought. Even these terms like religion, have
taken on a meaning, that is only contextualized within the culture, you know, it's only understood within the context of that secular society. So for most people, Religion means what, like you go to church and get married, or you go to church on Friday, and you go to the you go to the church on Sunday, or you go to the synagogue on Saturday, or you go to the masjid on Friday, you know, you pray five times a day you perform, you know, you put you go through these life rituals, and that is it. That's religion, right. That's how, and this is a secularized idea of religion. Even the idea that, you know, Muslims still, in some way, cling on to the idea that Islam is a deen, it's a way of
life. Right? Cool. Inner solidarity. Well, no. So clearly, we're mature women, woman, woman, Bertie, lillahi, Rabbil Alameen, say that my, you know, say that my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death is all for Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. So the idea that Islam is all comprehensive and in cover encompasses politics, and it encompasses economics, and it encompasses law, and everything is there, right? The Muslims are just sort of hanging on to this, right. It didn't used to be only Islam that had this belief, right. There's still a few Christians who believe this, by the way, about their religion, right? And you see emerging in America, right? So even in America, right, they
believe that Christian beliefs should impact on politics. So they have this whole thing about you know, abortion, because and homosexuality, right. And there's because that's from their belief system, right, that these things are not allowed.
So the understand that you can't just relegate religious belief to some personal, you know, prayers and practices that you just keep to yourself, right. And of course, you know, 567 100 years ago, Christianity was hugely influential. Right? I mean, it's interesting that Oliver Cromwell, right. These guys were religious nutcases. Right? I mean, the whole idea was a religious idea. Right? Yeah. So this idea of this religion, that's almost divorced from life, right? Is is actually a very, very new idea, right? Even in Buddhism, even in Buddhism, right? The original idea of Buddhism is that yes, people do retreat to these monasteries, you know, to get enlightenment, but the ultimate idea
is to spread these concepts throughout society. So even the the, the idea and the objective is to enlighten the whole of society, not to confine it to some, you know, some monasteries, right or even some moments of some people's lives, right. So this is a very, very modern idea of religion, right? In Islam, we have this Deen, this idea of deen the way of life. Everybody has a way of life. Right? Everybody worships someone or something. So the real question therefore is, is is the God that you worship really worthy of it? You
Yeah, is it really gonna give you what you want? And what you need? Right? Or are you just deluding yourself?
Right? Yeah. Because you, you you've organized your life one way or another, you know, you may not think that you've organized it. But even the most like dis, even listen, even a drug addict.
You think the most sort of disorganized drop out person, believe me, I've been there, right? I've been there before I was Muslim, I have been there. Right? Your life is your life is very organized, is organized around getting your next piece of drug, your next drug, your next, you know, your next blow your next snort your next injection, whatever, whatever it is, whatever drug you're taking, your life is very organized, when you run out, you see how organized your life is.
Right? So even for these people, their life is organized around that, you know, that thing that they have deified to some way, shape or form? Right? So the ultimate thing is, it's just a lie, to say I don't believe in organized religion. No, you have an organized religion, you just don't recognize you don't call it religion. You just don't give it that term. Right? And the reality is, the bottom line is you have a God. Right? But unless you're God is Allah, who is the creator of the heavens and the earth, who has control and mastery over everything, that God is false, that caught that God can never ultimately deliver what you really want and what you really need, right, it is always going to
fail ultimately, actually, we as Muslims would contend that that is the very purpose of life is to realize that fact, the very structure of the universe, and everything in it is built around exposing
that fact. Right. That is something rose support as you sit as a Muslim. Right. And you watch the world go by, you watch current events. Look at look at what's happening now.
Right. We look at what's happening right now with the Coronavirus in these countries, the irony is in the very countries, France, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, the very places who were putting forth all these specious arguments about why women should not be able to cover their face, right, have now mandated and made it by law that you have to cover your face. And we'll find you France. Yeah, the French who you know, if you want to see a country who's just like this is almost as if Allah has created them to show the world how stupid secularism is. Yeah.
Do you understand?
It's like often say about the Bible. If If God wanted to produce a book that would show everybody a book that's not from him, although it may sort of look like it, the Bible is a pretty good contender for it, right?
You look at the French, right? I mean, if you want an example of why secularism makes no sense, why is self defeating, stupid, contradictory, irrational, despite all of their claims to enlightenment, in an rationality, it's exactly the opposite. The world looks at them and goes, What is wrong with you people? Right?
And in this country, you have a law, right? That if a Muslim woman covers her face within a club, she gets fined. Right? And if you were, if you don't wear a face mask, you get fined. Yeah. And all of these things they were talking about, oh, you know, we can't communicate with each other. Right? Part of our culture is to show our face, what is your society stop functioning now because now you have to cover your face. This is I'm telling you literally, Allah has exposed them. This is what is going on. Every Muslim who has a brain and actually most human beings who have a break can see it.
Right. But the blind can't see it. And then the Deaf can't hear it. Right. And the dumb can't vocalize it because they are blinded. Right? By their misguidance. Yeah, they are deafened by their arrogance and their pride, right. It's not the blindness of the eyes and the ears, right. It's the heart. Their hearts are blind. Right? And that's just one example. I could go on and on and on freedom of speech. Look at for the whole freedom of speech. You see what's happening now we're
right with a whole, you know, shutting down a freedom of speech, when it maybe comes to, you know, Zionism and Israel, for example, right.
Connecting it to anti semitism, right. The whole LGBT issue, right? And we can go on and on and on. Right? These are the people talking on about freedom of speech, where's the freedom of speech? They talk about human rights, right?
All of these things about human rights, the freedom of the the individual, right? All of these things are just going out of the window.
Right? Yeah. And this is because that is really literally Allah subhanaw taala says in the Quran, that he he tells the truth, against the falsehood. And see, the falsehood is brains are smashed out. And that is literally the order of the universe. That is why God has created the world that the way he has created it, to expose these things to make these truths known. And this is what Allah says in the Quran, we will show them the signs within themselves and on the furthest horizons until they know that this is the truth. Right? So this is one dimension, right? The other dimension about why we need organized religion, bro is this is like, I'm coming from a completely different angle now.
Right? Now, we've talked about this before, we've talked about flow, right? We've talked about optimal flow and optimal experience. Yeah. Right. Okay. And so this is really interesting as well. So I'm coming guys from a whole different angle now. Right? You're gonna have to think in a different parent. There's a lot coming out in this this one little session? Yeah. Because honestly, I've got so much to unpackage in this, right.
So look,
as we know, we've talked about previously, and people can check the previous episode where we talked about flow, we talked about optimal experience, and we talked about the conditions in order to reach these states of optimal experience, which we have talked about is true happiness, right? True happiness comes from pushing yourself to the limits of your capabilities. And we've had a lot of discussion about that right. Now, one of the interesting things that I've studied relatively recently, is how do elite sportsmen and sportswomen. Right?
And I'm particularly because I had a, I had two of my kids who were involved in racing, right. And it's a particular it's very interesting, because it's a particular type of racing. It's, it's racing mountain bikes downhill, right? It's literally downhill.
And the time margins like downhill skiing, for example, right? I'm sure there's other similar sports, right? The most of the time, not always, occasionally, you get, you know, things that break these rules, but most of the time, you will find the difference in time
between the top elite men and the top, you know, in their category, the top elite men, right, the difference in the times between, say the top 10 elite men, is not even one second.
You're talking about a when is measured in hundredths of a second, and you are talking about people who are riding down a hill, through rocks and roots and jumps and sometimes mud. And you know, it's you have to see it.
And you will think, how is it that these guys are so close, they are so fast, every single one of them is literally on the very a yet, here's the strange thing. That often happens that there are some people and often you find the top 10, those top 10 Guys, more or less, stay consistent bar some injuries, they more or less stay consistent, you will find many times the top to the top podiums is just consistently the same people. How?
How is that? i This is why I'm fascinated what makes it special about these people. And sometimes the crazy thing is you'll get someone that's so good. Is that for literally they will dominate the sport for 10 years. 10 years, right? They will barely be off a podium, but it's incredible, honestly, the physicality of it, it's mind blowing. So I was you know, I'm very curious what sort these people what makes these people different. I do not believe in talent. Right. I don't believe there is a natural born ability. Yes. Now here's the interesting thing. By the way, I want to mention something. Here's the interesting thing.
Some of these guys are short. Some of these guys are tall.
So it's not like basketball, right? Like, I know, I've written with brothers, right? Just my normal riding buddies, right? And generally, the guys who are better have the shorter guys. And the reason is because their center of gravity is lower. Right. And they're more stable on the bike when it comes to downhill mountain biking. Nope, doesn't make the, you know, one of the greatest riders, Greg Minnaar, probably the most successful downhill mountain bike rider, he's a tall guy, right?
You know, so, but some of the great guys are small, right? It doesn't seem to make much difference, obviously, from everyone being fit, you know, very, very fit. Size doesn't seem to make a difference. Like what? So what's the real deciding factor? Right? Geography that from all over the world, right. So it's not like in marathons, where, you know, people are brought out with a certain diet or Kenyans, you know, are known to be good, probably because a lot of them run to school for miles and miles. It's not like that, right? It's like, obviously, there's an advantage for Westerners, people who are rich, because mountain bikes aren't cheap, right? But it's one of them,
because this is why it's fascinating, this particular sport, right? Because it's so wide open to so many people, and it's so easy for anyone to do it.
So what is the deciding factor? Right, I've been fascinated by this. Right.
And I think it goes across many sports, I think boxing, you know, and other sports as well, right? And I think that what happens when you come so now we're moving away from not just flow right now we're moving to, you know, what you could call Superman territory, not Superman is in Clark Kent, right? You're talking about a whole different level. Right?
And on this level, on this level of sport, there has to be, I would argue, and I haven't proven this, right. But I would argue that you have to have a state of mind. Right? It's, it's to do with what's in the head. And in order for you to be successful, right? You can't have any crap, you know, excuse if that's not appropriate language, right? You can't have rubbish going around in your head. If I put it bluntly, you can't have existential angst, right? You can't be wondering, what's the purpose of life? Why am I here? Right? You know, is God one or is God three? Right? I mean, actually, maybe I thought about it. Maybe these questions could drive some people to perform better.
But I don't think it would be long lasting. Right? I think it would ultimately get in the way. Right? It would ultimately stop them. Right? So what I'm what I'm proposing is that people have to have clarity. And I would suggest that it's quite interesting. Maybe not so much, even in downhill mountain biking, right? But you'd find isn't it interesting that many of the top people in some of the sports are actually religious? Right? They're either practicing Christians, they may not be obvious, or they like, fight famously, in martial arts, for example, they're Muslims. Right? You have a lot of famous Muslims right? Now, I would say that look, in order to reach that peak
performance, right? You can't have stuff going off in your head. That's confusing, you know, if this is true for athletes, right?
So they have to come to some worldview, right? They have to come they figured out some answers. That's what I recommend it. And all that all it needs is that those answers make sense to them in their head. I mean, there could be atheists. But as long as they're convinced, right, that's it. Right? They can't have dissonance going on, right? I mean, as long as it makes sense to them, that's fine. Like, from a performance perspective, it's fine. Right? When it's not fine, is, you know, like, when there's these problems, right? Okay, so what's the all of this got to do with why do we need organized religion? Right? Because obviously, sport, as I brought this up before, right, when
you're an athlete, you your life is very organized, by the way, your life is very, very organized, what you eat, right? How you dress, your training routine, right? Your morals, even your morals, yes. Even your morals, they are dictated, I mean, that's a whole different thing, isn't it now with, you know, with with the media and all that type of stuff, and you're representing your team, and like, you know, how about, you know, like this because there's finance involved, right? It begins to matter, right? From the perspective of, you know, being a public figure and so on and so forth. Right. So, yeah, all of these things come into it, right.
So that their life is highly organized, highly systemized. Right. But why does that just need to be for
All right sport. And so what what is interesting, that's sort of where I want to conclude, right? Is that I had this really interesting conversation with somebody who
was being given down to,
right. And this guy, you know, he, I was having this conversation with him. And he's basically saying, Look, I believe in God,
you know, I sort of pray to God in my own way, right? I try to live a sort of good life and not do bad things, I help people out and whatever, right? I just don't believe in, you know, organized religion. Right? So same thing, the whole topic today. So, you know, I'm thinking, this has always been a challenge for me, how do you talk to someone like that? Who, from so many perspectives, right, has got the right idea. But they don't want to organize this life around a religion, right? So what I said to him is this look, I said, Look, if you want to achieve anything,
you need to organize your life. Right? There is no company, this is going to be successful. Without degrees of organization, right? Even you in order to accomplish where you are today, in terms of your qualifications, right? It's all to do with some organized form of behavior. Right? It's very rare to find that someone achieved something significant in life, without discipline and organization. Right? And that's the key. The key is discipline.
Why is it different when it comes to religion?
Why would you say that when it comes to your religious life, when everything else you understand the need, you're going to get up a certain time is not unlike all those type of things, right? You need to you know, you need to go to bed on time, in order to get up the next morning, morning in order to function at work like all of these things. Why when it comes to religion, is it different? And why do we set the benchmark so low? Right, that's the other thing. Why is the benchmark so low? Right? Do you really think that that's just good enough? Do you really think that God, who created these amazing intricate mechanisms through which and by which the universe works, they are truly
astounding? When you look at them? Don't you think, therefore, that in your religious life in your relationship with God, that you also need rules and guidance and laws through which and by which you should live? Why would it therefore be different? If God has created the universe according to these intricate processes? Why would it be different when it comes to your religious life, that there should not also be intricate processes, they should also not be laws of success and laws of failure? Right? Things that optimize our human life, right? And then add to that the fact that at the end of it, most of us and this is the obviously the thing, you know, I was talking to him about the
afterlife. Do you think there's a life after death? And of course, most people would like to believe that there's some paradise right or something, right. But I said, Why would you think that you would get to Paradise just moseying along and doing whatever you feel like, is that way it works in your company, for example, right?
Like, if you want to retire comfortably, you have to invest in the pension scheme, right?
That's just simple, right? Similarly, if you want some, if you want to find something waiting for you in the in the afterlife, don't you need to make a concerted effort to invest in what is going to get you there? I said, Look, at the end of the day, Hitler was nice to his dog.
was nice. I'm sure. Yeah, it was nice to the people around him. Right. Yeah. You know, just saying, I'm a nice guy. I get on with the people around me. Yeah. Well, I'm sure Hitler was like that, you know, with his Alsatian and Eva Braun. Right. Well, so it's not really remarkable, is it? Right? That's not really remarkable.
Right? So I think these are the points is that, yeah, in order to achieve something, you know, and I don't even say remarkable, you know, but in order to achieve something of any real significance, you need to have some sort of organization and systemization behind it. This is what life tells us, right? It's not any different when it comes to your relationship with God, and building that relationship with your Creator. God doesn't deserve less, actually, God deserves more. And the final point is, that's what's going to be good for you. That's where you're going to really find ultimate, true happiness as well.
Because Happiness doesn't come from just sitting around and moseying around, and, you know, just doing what you like when you feel like it. Right, as we've studied, and we've looked at it into previously, you know, the talk about flow, we understand that flow comes from pushing yourself to the limits of your capabilities. And I guess hopefully that answers the question. Right? Do we need religion? Do we need organized religion? Yes, definitely. We do. Yeah.
It's interesting that you link it to.
If you want success in in this life, in terms of anything, your company or whatever, there's rules, there's regulations, when it comes to spirituality, which we all agree is there? I mean, even the most hardcore, I mean, really hardcore atheists who say, Yeah, I still believe in spirituality. And I want to link this, get your thoughts on the perspective on the idea of decision paralysis, right? So there's been studies to show that when human beings are given, say, 24 jars and the jam jars, and they hate it, when they're given six, and they just choose between one of the six, they're much, much happier. So when you have an opposing religion, which is externally applied to you, right?
It's actually good for you, because you don't really make that choice yourself. It's kind of like, okay, I'm a Muslim. So I know, I can't just pray at the end of 10 years, all the prayers, one goal, I have to pray in between these time periods. Yeah. I mean, this is the beauty of look, one of the things that many people who have, you know, converted reverted, or whatever the term that people want to use to Islam, one of the things that they find about once they've become Muslim, one of the very positive things is that you don't, you're not confused anymore, right? About what's right and what's wrong. You're not confused anymore about what you need to do with your life. Right?
Obviously, you still have choices, it's not that the choices go away. Right? It's not that the struggle has completely evaporated. But you're not struggling over futile things that have literally honestly no answer. Right? Yeah. Literally, like you talk about decision paralysis. I think, like, one of the things that, you know, a moral person can be constantly paralyzed by is what is the right way to behave? Right? How do I What do I do? Like, if I do this, I'm going to offend that person, if I do this, I'm going to offend this person, right? I myself, don't feel that any of these things are really the right things to do. But I do know that making other people you know, not offending others
and making them happy, right. And, you know, trying to make the world more peaceful. There are a lot of people like that they genuinely want good, they want good for others, right. But often, wanting good for others contradicts their deep instincts about how they think things should be. Right. It's a conflict, right? And so people are in this perpetual state of confusion. So this is why you can have programs like moral maze, and you know, stuff like that what people are arguing endlessly about the pros and cons of this, and that, you know, people shouldn't have choice. And, yeah, but if they have the choice, then there's this possible consequence in that. And, of course, these things never
go away completely, even in organized religion. But the reality is that, at least with organized religion, you have very, very clear boundaries, as the, you know, as the Prophet Muhammad said, What is lawful is clear, and what is unlawful is clear, the halal is clear, the Haram is clear, right? In between that, you know, there are some things, right, that, you know, people don't know, except like those who are well versed in knowledge, but the vast majority of stuff, right? It's really clear. It's not confusing, right? And that's the beautiful thing. It frees up so much of your life, to be able to get on with much more important stuff, right? Like developing your character. And then
knowing what it really means to help people because you know, you have a grid, you have a guideline, you have a matrix of what helping people really means like, how about that? What is even helping people you understand? Like, so. So, you know, I think that's the other beautiful thing about organized religion Exactly. As you said, it cuts down in this choice paralysis. The problem with choice paralysis is ultimately of course that the term paralysis, you end up doing nothing and feeling bad.
And feeling even worse, because you're not doing anything because you don't really know what you're supposed to be doing. Right
You know, so when atheists talk about oh, you know, I want to be at, you know, I want to be able to, you know, whatever nonsense there really is some of the stuff they come up with is such nonsense, right? About, you know, I should you know, the freedom to make our own decisions. We're liberated to Yeah, right, whatever. Right. Yeah, you know,
it's kind of interesting. You know, there's been some discussion amongst academics about the need for there to be a religious revival within the Western world. And these are atheists, by the way.
Just keep going. I'm gonna get back to you in a minute. Yeah, well, that's
the need for a religious revival within the Western world, as long as somebody else does the religiousness, right, so they don't want to be religious themselves. They rather somebody else actually be religious.
And that just goes to show you that ultimately,
society has to be governed by
some link, some link to something transcendent, something transcendent, always has to anchor society. So Jake, while you're gone, I've heard I heard, yeah. And I just want to link this to contemporary China, I've been looking a lot into the history of the Communist Party, and how posit themselves was very interesting is, there is a lot of religious concepts that they actually teaching, but they're just not calling it religion. So for example, in 2021, is going to be on the first of July 100 year anniversary for the Communist Party, right and 1921 to 2021. And they actually been preparing this for the last 10 years. So why is it so important? Like just 100 years?
I mean, they're planning on going on for a lot longer. Why do they have these rituals? And they have certain things about? Yeah, you know, in Islam, we have the idea of a reader for the deen. Right. And we have idea of, you know, MACOM, that you don't disrespect the symbols of Islam. So for example, some some, some Muslim academics and scholars would even say even the moon and the president, although it's not from Islam directly, but it's linked to Islam. So even disrespecting the that could be problematic because it's linked to. So likewise, they have these religious
type of behaviors around the Chinese flag around Xi Jinping around Mao Zedong. And likewise, the Soviet Union France broke the same thing France.
The French thing in France, so we're talking about France, you don't need to go to China. We just need to go across the channel. As this Macron Yeah, macaroni Mr. Macaroni? Yeah. Okay. Maths, not whatever his name is. Yeah. My call? Yeah, whatever man. worth saying his name. Right. Okay, this waist man. Yeah. As he's talking about, you know, freedom of speech. And, you know, the, you know, what they say, and all these type of things that go on, right about right. But in their laws, you're not allowed to desecrate the French flag? Yeah. What happened to freedom of speech and expression? You can draw a cartoon mocking the Prophet Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon him,
right. But there was an artist, an artist, yeah. Who had done this image of someone wiping their backside. Right.
Right. And they pass laws to ban it. Yeah. Right. And when macro, right, had someone write in the final, an academic wrote an article against him in the Financial Times, right? What did he do? Did he say, Oh, you can say whatever you like, no problem. Nobody complained and had it removed.
Like, what? Seriously? Like, people don't get this people don't see this. People don't understand this, like, this contradiction. So like, they literally, it's become so blatant that literally within a day, they contradict them. It doesn't, you know, Allah doesn't even let them wait a week to show them. Right.
Allah knows that people's attention this The Tick Tock generation, right, they want attention as a span of 10 seconds. Right? You're right, the same in China. Right. I mean, the Chinese are very, you know, that's why they're brutalizing the Uyghurs Right.
And, you know,
obviously, I'm gonna say from a and the same thing that Ferdinand and Isabella understood right in the Reconquista. That's why they wiped out the Muslims. They were either the the Muslims and the Jews either had to convert and some, you know, some pretend conversion was not enough. That's why they had the Inquisition they had to be like, forever.
It's Catholics, and it basically just wiped them out. Because they understood that they couldn't, because they looked at because they'd seen from the Muslims, right, that multicultural Islamic society that was wasn't Islamic, but that they looked at it as a sign of weakness. Right. And that's part of the reason why it split and divided and couldn't stand. Right. They just they realize the importance of a unified ideology. And the Chinese have understood the same thing. Right? Yeah, it's that simple. Right? You can't have these people living a whole different cultural existence were their own ideas. Yeah, right. Those ideas have to be subservient to Well, that's it because that's
their religion. Yeah, that's their religion. That's it. Their religion, that's their God, as it was the same with our own similarly, the same thing, right?
I'm trying to I think it's Sigmund Freud, who spoke about every worldview has to have
unquestionable
fundamentals, which it doesn't allow any other worldview to question. So even like you rightly pointed out liberalism, and this idea of, you know, everything is equal, and we everyone is entitled to an opinion. But then there's certain red lines, which they're like, no, not these, you're not allowed to challenge these, right? Because if you have liquid, it has to be in a container. You can't just have liquid just just without anything. So every worldview has to have these unquestionable, I think he used the word fascist or something like this, you have to have something just completely unquestionable, in order for any worldview to be preserved.
I mean, look, from the point of view, from the point of view of structuring society. Right, I understand. Right, I can understand where the Chinese are coming from I can understand where the French are coming from. Yeah, I It's not that I don't understand, you know, lace at and macro. And you know, what these guys are going on about, right. The point is the contradiction. Their point is the hypocrisy. Right? The point is the fact that they can't see that this is the real issue, right? At least in Islam, we are very clear. These are our rules. These are our guidelines, these are our borderlines, you are free to do this, you are not free to do that. That's the thing, right? I think
this is the thing that I as the Muslims write is that it's the hypocrisy is you claim one thing, right? And then you do something else, right? And then people say, Oh, well, in your Muslim countries, you're not free to do this. But we never said that you are free to do that. We never claim that we have that freedom. We submit to Allah, that's our religion. Why don't you just say that, right? That we don't believe in freedom either, right? No, we don't believe in freedom. We believe in this. And in order to live in our country, you need to do this and this and this. And you know, everything has to be substance. This is not what you said, right? You may be singing that tune
now. But you didn't. That's not what you were saying 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, because at the end of the day, you realize that when you say those things, you reduce yourself to the same level as everybody else that you're criticizing. And then the question comes in, okay, fine. That's not a problem. We can understand that from the point of view of running society. You need that attitude. But what makes your system better? Yeah. Oh, what some Rousseau, right, who couldn't even live his life according to his own principles. What he's your guy, right? Who's the guy who's, you know, where's Oh, you mean, it's just some man made up thing that you just make it up as you go along.
That's, that's what your way of life. See, that's the problem, right? Because the moment they admit that, they start having to admit the fact that there's no basis for anything else. There's no like you. And that goes back to the point you said, bro, there's no transcendental. And that's what they're always trying to do. They're trying to connect it to something transcendental when they caught it when they talk about fundamental human rights, which they don't believe in. But it's still because they contradict themselves all the time. If they're fundamental, it's like Muslims saying, We believe in Tawheed only God should be worshipped. Right? But you know what, right now?
In this particular situation, let's get out the idols guys, right. Let's pray to them. Right.
Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like no, wait a minute, like, come on. Yeah, yeah. And it's the same thing like so these functions, but they still because they say their fundamental right, even the American Constitution has tried to root itself in something transcendental because these are
Have you considered these things? self evident? Right? Yes. self evident are given a priori. Right, exactly. Right. It's still trying to root it in something transcendental. Right? Yeah, that's the attempt. But then obviously, that's going to fall against the roadblock of reason, and logic. And that's the irony, you know, as great as much as the French Revolution, right? has tried to paint itself as you know, this force of reason and logic, when it actually comes up against it. It's found itself wanting. Yep. And that's going to be the same in China is going to be the same. Like I said, That's literally what the history of the world is about Allah throwing the truth against the
falsehood. Yeah,
I think And so that goes back to Robbia. You know, when you're standing in front of rostrum and rostrum says to him, right, why are you fighting us? You know, there's Persian general, there's great Persian general roster. And then there's Robbie, who this just, you know, wife, and he's just an ordinary soldier. Right? He gives us amazing speech, she says, Why are you fighting us? You know, do you want women you want camels, your money will give it to you go back to the desert. He said, We have come to take the people away from the worship of men to the worship of the one God, Lord, have you come to take people away from the injustice of man made ways of life, man made religion, to the
justice of Islam, we have come to take people away from the narrowness of this life and the next to the vast expanse to that to the narrowness of this life, to the vast expanse of this life and the next. And when he gives this like short speech of three sentences. rostrum says, Are you the leader, these people sees the feed off he thinks is the middle of money writing is now your general now, how will you what what are you? I'm just an ordinary soldier. Hello, all right.
Yeah.
That's about all the time we have for this week, I'm actually thinking, the segues into maybe doing a live stream next week Inshallah, on what makes us civilization, because I remember many years ago,
I don't remember what the talk was. But there was a talk you gave in which you spoke about how do we judge a civilization either by its buildings, or by how it treats its lowest denominator? And I think that's pretty much linked to, you know, what is the future of the Western civilization? What is the future of religion within the West? I mean, that's very interesting. I could get lost on that. But I actually think is one of the reasons why. And there's a prophetic, you know, there's a prophetic foundation for this. Why our room, if you look at the Western interview, if you can,
and analogize that our room, a row is the West, it's like the continuation of that legacy.
Is they have some qualities, right. And interestingly enough, those qualities, which the Prophet Muhammad mentioned, right, is there will, like, they will not come a time until a room the most amongst Jewish is pretty much what it is now, maybe, except for the Chinese. But you know, yeah, that could also be their system in a way it is that because that's what the Prophet said, because they, and the reason is he mentioned the system. He said, Because they look after the orphans, and the widows. Right. And what as you mentioned, they look, and they recover from a they were they recover from a setback very quickly. Yeah. So they don't, and they don't allow their rulers to be
tyrants over them. And the Prophet said, and this is an excellent quality, this is a really good quality that they have, right? Yeah. Besides, they don't let the rulers like they don't let the you know, rulers mess around with them for too long. Yeah, obviously, they'll do that. Whatever. But they don't allow it to happen too long. Right. Yeah.
So those politics Correct. Just to correct me slightly on that, because this confused me as well.
I will bring you up in the next live stream to
this is actually not, not the
not the sayings of the Prophet. This is actually the sayings of Amara been us. Right? So what he's saying is, this is what the Prophet said that the Romans are going to be the most numerous. And then he gave his explanation, which is they recover from war the way they treat people. And then I have to check that because I've gone back to that so many times. So yeah. I thought it was a different one. But I think that's a good one to start with next week. Definitely. We can talk about that. Yeah. I mean, it's not all negative. And I think, you know, having said all these bad things about France, you know, France has lots of, you know, it's a really beautiful country and it's got some
really good things.
You know, the French are not all bad. Absolutely, you know? Yeah.
Even Even I mean, if we look at what's the name of that Doctors Without Borders I think differentiates all this amazing medicine some frontier. Yeah, you know you got you got you get a lot of great people so yeah let's let's wrap up there just Calaca yeah thanks for watching and we will be live again next week in sha Allah
salam ala