Adnan Rajeh – Reduced Concepts #01 Moral Collapse and State Failure
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The decline of Islamic culture and society is due to internal and external factors, and protecting people's privacy and values is crucial for building successful society. The importance of changing one's values and using their values to bring their own values back to reality is emphasized, along with the need for a stronger balance sheet to ensure a smooth transition for the future. The speakers emphasize the importance of maintaining a strong balance sheet to ensure a smooth transition for the future, as it is crucial for building successful society.
AI: Summary ©
Audio recordings and then the ones after were
properly recorded, but they never have much of
an attendance. So for showing up, I I
guarantee you won't
more than half of you will not be
here at the end of the interview, which
is fine. The point of this for me
is is to put out a content that
if later on you want to,
contemplate a specific idea
and listen to it, articulated or talked about,
then then it's available for you to do
so.
And I've done, the empty space was one
of the series Towards A Modern Awakening, another
series, and I did facing disbelief last year
with the with the last year that I
did. This year, we're gonna do something called
reduced concepts, and I'm gonna start by quoting
a Iraqi dentist and author, Ahmed al Khayd
al Amer. He has he put a post
out in 2014,
and I held on to this post for
10 years straight. Just I have it, and
I just kept on reading it, and I
discussed it. I I need to
converse with him over the, the concept, and
it led me down
a long trail of of of reading.
For the last 10 years, this this what
he what he said just made me really
think, and it made me kinda go after,
the topic and and and kinda educating myself.
And what he said was every
every civilizational
demise,
is preceded or paralleled by a reduce
or reduction by a reduction of the concept
and the values that help build that society
or civilization to begin with.
And right now as Muslims,
the assessment is that where that's where we
are. We're at the point where
we a lot of our concepts, a lot
of our golden values that
the Sahaba learned
and that transformed their lives have been reduced
to skeletons of what they once were.
And it's through
acknowledging that. It's it's through understanding that that
we have a way back. Like, if you
want to figure our way back from this
mess as Muslims, honestly, it's it's a mess.
If you wanna figure our way back, then,
in my opinion, this is the way back.
We have to start
figuring out our steps backwards. What what is
it that how did we end up here?
How did we end up in this situation
where
Islam is being reduced to rituals only and
ethics are
are reduced to an empty smile and some
fake humbleness and
and knowledge is reduced to a certificate that
that you you hang on the wall.
A lot of these these extremely important values
are just reduced to something that doesn't
really have have substance to it anymore. It's
there. You can see it. You can say
that you're doing it and that maybe others
are as well, but it doesn't have it
doesn't seem to have the impact or the
effects that it had on on people back
then. When you read the Quran and you
find Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is saying things
like
indeed prayer,
it discourages and holds people and prevents people
from falling into and into munkar. And then
you stand there and you ask yourself, oh,
I've been doing this for 50 years or
40 or 30 or 10 years straight. I
I haven't missed a prayer in years, and
it I don't I don't understand how is
it When is it gonna start? When is
it when is it going to kick in?
When is that gonna start to where, you
know, this a is going to be something
that I can understand? And and many people
go throughout their entirety of their lives and
they don't
don't reach that because there's something missing. Yeah.
The concept of salah itself has been has
been emptied from the substance that it once
carried, and now what's left of it is
just the mechanics of it. And this is
something that if we if you take and
you look at every
Islamic concept now now this topic, reduced constant,
reduced values, is something that I can go
on. It's not a 7 episode series. This
could be
easily easily a a 50 or 60 episode
series. Easily, Walaheb. I'm going to just focus
on the Islamic aspect of it. I'm gonna
focus on the Islamic part. I'm not gonna
talk about the I'm not gonna go into
a deep societal
dive to see how a lot of our
societal values and personal values have also been
reduced because they have.
I'm gonna point I'm gonna poke out 1
or 2 of them that are relevant to
us as Muslims today, but, really, the focus
the the bulk of of of this series
is gonna focus on how our Islamic concepts
have been reduced. And that the goal of
this is not to, you know, make you
feel bad about yourself or to be pessimistic.
That's not that's not the goal. The goal
is to help you
think about things differently.
I want to help you learn how to
think about stuff, so that you start recognizing
concepts that have been reduced in your own
life. So you can start correcting them and
rectifying them. So you can trace your steps
backwards and figure out exactly how did I
arrive at this at this point. So this
first episode today is more of an introduction,
and
the title is moral collapse and state failure.
And this is a, the
the title of a of a paper
by Richard e Blanton. It was it was
published in 2020,
and,
again, the the the this this topic
has taken me down over the years.
I've looked into it. In fact, there'll be
a lot on this. I'm not a sociologist
or or a psychiatrist or a psychologist,
but this issue to me is very interesting,
because I felt it growing up as a
kid. I felt that, you know, I I
can I can I can feel that the
teachings of Islam are extremely profound, but I
don't I don't find it to be the
case in my own life? Like, I can
I can list I can I hear what
they what what the Sahaba say, hear what
the scholars say? I'm listening to them talk
about these things. It sounds to me that
this is very profound. Then I look at
the actual practice that I have and most
people have around me. I don't see that
profoundness. And I how where how did we
go from this to this? What happened?
And then you find that, oh, this is
actually not the first time this has happened.
This happens all the time.
This happens all the time. Moral collapse leads
to societal
failure, societal demise. It's been happening over
over the centuries all across the world. This
paper is worth Jani, if you if you
if you if you care for academics, it's
worth taking some time and and reading, and
I'm I'm coding it here, because I did
learn a lot from from it, and it
sent me the in the directions of the
different things that I ended up reading later
on.
I want you to think about this quote
for a moment.
Now the collapse of civilizations or nations
is preceded by a reduction of the profound
values that built them. These values get reduced
to either superficial rituals,
meaningless practices, or corrupt ideas empty up substance.
This is what ends up happening to those
values. They slowly lose the the filling.
They lose the filling. They have nothing. They
turn into a corrupt idea. They turn into
a a a meaningless practice, a ritual that
is just superficial,
where you just do it because because everyone
else does it, but it doesn't really have
that effect. These values built those societies.
And what we're gonna do over the course
of the next week or 6 today and
then over the next 6 days afterwards
is I'm gonna take Islamic ideas,
some of them extremely core with within Islam,
and some of them maybe not as much.
I just analyze them and talk about what
they really represent
and how they should be practiced and how
they should be understood and how we are
understanding them and how a little bit of
a change of mentality and perspective, you know,
can allow us to figure our way back
to that.
There are a lot of theories of societal
collapse.
If you look this topic up, there's a
lot of theories surrounding us. Amongst those theory
those theories is is climate change.
Society's over history. Some of them fall. They
fell because of either medieval the medieval warm
period occurred or the the little ice age
that happened after them, the 16 and the
1700.
Sometimes a change of of of, of climate,
of of temperature can affect the society. So
there's a lot of theories. Amongst them is
climate, which is I bring up here today
because that's something that I think we have
more interest in discussing than probably any other,
any generation that ever existed on this planet
before us.
We there are some there is a certain
degree of uniqueness to the experience that we
are having as Muslims for sure and as
human beings, as a human race on this
planet right now.
And even
though climate change and and, has been has
been a reason for societal collapse historically I
mean, this is stuff that you'll find in
writings and the works of people
that wrote books in the 17, 18 100.
They talked about climate change, not as something
that the human being was causing, but rather
it occurring spontaneously
and causing
civilized agents to fall due to the fact
that they were not prepared to deal with
the high temperatures or extremely low temperatures that
they were not used to. So imagine now
as people today, you know, we are inflicting
this upon ourselves that we are being we
are actually influencing the the the temperatures on
this planet to go up to the point
where a lot of the living creatures cannot
tolerate life anymore,
including our own selves. And the other side
of the
the silos that we live here in the
west, the bubble that we are nice and
comfortable here in the west, a lot of
people are finding it more and more difficult
they're finding it more and more difficult to
actually survive in the world.
Societal collapse, there are 2 two aspects of
the studies. I mean, when you when you
take you you look at some of the
works that have been done,
regarding this issue over the years, they talk
about causes and they talk about underlying causes.
They talk about 2 things. Causes are things
that are direct, like natural disasters and climate
change and war or foreign invasion or economic
depression to some the economic system was was
flawed to begin with, and it was just
a matter of time before it fell. I
don't know if that rings a bell to
you or not or if it's if it
was any relevance to that today, or disease
outbreak. Everyone knows about the the the famous
famine that happened in Europe, Yanni, in the
middle ages. And it took millions of lives,
Yanni, until until we figured out that, Yanni,
the the concept of vaccinations and and and
took care of smallpox and, the people people
you know, the the number of people that
died in in in in really young ages
was very high. And the median life expectancy
on earth was very low within the thirties
and forties until we came up with some
of these solutions. So these were direct causes
for societies to completely collapse.
Now underlying causes are a little bit different.
I mean, what led to it? What really
happened? These things were the were the tip
over the the tipping point. Now when we
talk about a natural disaster or war, that
was a tipping point. That's what exposed the
weakness that existed in the society that we're
dealing with. The society had already fallen. It
just needed something to expose it till a
famine comes along or a war or a
climate change or a disaster of some sort.
Something that happened, and it tipped over and
showed and exposes the weakness of that civilization
or that nation. But the underlying thought is
what I'm interested to talk about because that's,
I think, what where we where we have
influence as human beings today, we can actually
change that. We have something we have a
say in in these underlying causes. Maybe not
all of them, but enough of them, but
I think this is worth talking about and
discussing with you. So cognitive
decline and lack of creativity, this is by
by far across the board. Everyone agrees upon
with with that. All of these sociologists historically,
they differed on certain aspects of why society
would fall. They agreed on this one. The
cognitive decline. And that's why I'm and I'm
quoting I'm giving you the idea to show
that the the the the concept that I'm
explaining to you is relevant. Today, I'm trying
to prove is is a proof of concept.
I'm trying to prove to you that reducing
values causes societies to fail.
Because if you believe that, if you maybe
you already believe it, so you don't need
to listen to all of this. But if
you don't, then you this is new to
you as as a as a concept, but
I want to prove it to you. That
once you have values and you reduce these
concepts into something that is no longer meaningful,
that causes
indirectly over time the fall in the demise
of civilization.
And that's why we failed. That's why Muslims
are where they are today and why they're
not where they used to be, why we
don't have unity, we don't have strength, and
we don't have power or authority or autonomy
or independence or we don't we don't have
proper education or a good any of the
economic system or good educational system in our
countries. And we don't have justice and we
don't have fairness and we don't
have a proper judicial system. The reason that
this exists, my my opinion, is for for
reduced value. Right?
And I wanna prove that to you through
the thoughts and ideas and quote and conclusions
that were made by people who studied nothing
else in their lives but history, sociology,
and human psychology.
The social environmental dynamics and energy return on
investment.
So EROI, I had to learn what this
meant, over the last the course of the
last couple of years. No one I I
don't not all of peep if you're not
a sociologist, people don't talk about this very
very much. Sometimes economists talk about it. EROI
is a big problem,
in the world today.
When you have
so energy is what we require energy to
run. Right now, if you look around you,
the reason that we were able to do
this is that a lot of energy is
being used to to to, fuel this laptop
and this camera and to make the to
the projector's working and make sure those fans
and the, and the air conditioners. And all
of this is a lot of energy was
was put in. If the human race does
not produce an equal amount of energy, that
we're in an energy deficit,
meaning we're using more than we're actually producing,
which means if you have a finite
source of energy, it's just a matter of
time before you run into a collapse that
is that is horrific
because that will lead because people don't have
skill sets anymore. So we survive until we
get hungry, then we run into a a
real problem. So EROI is actually a a
a big issue today in the world because
we're talking about we're talking about, natural
sources of or clean sources of energy. What
they're finding when they're looking at the clean
sources of energy that they don't actually meet
the proper EROI. They don't do very well,
meaning they don't provide us the amount of
energy that we need. We need fossil fuels
to get there. We have not achieved,
an academic or a scientific level where we're
able to actually use clean source
energy sources and give us the energy that
we need.
There's an underlying causes for why society collapse.
I can't fix that problem. Maybe some of
you are interested in studying this and will
find a solution for our for for for
our energy sources before we come to a
point where we run out of, fossil fuels
or we burn this planet to our crisp,
and then we and and then we and
and then we turn into complete chaos. But
what I think that we can talk about
here today, over the next week is the
cognitive decline, the last loss of creativity,
the ability to think, and how to under
the perspective, the world view, the attitude.
These aspects here are extremely, extremely important and
worthy of contemplation.
Let's start by talking about,
by Arnold Toynbee. So Toynbee is a very
is a a very famous sociologist, and he
wrote
a book called The Study of History. It's
11 to 12 volumes. I did not read
the whole thing, so don't, yeah, I didn't
read the whole thing. So I read enough
of of of the, of what he wrote
to learn
about his opinion regarding these these issues. So
what he what he thought or what he
said, the alternate agents passed through several several
distinct stages. He talked about Genesis and then
Grover. In a time of trouble, then in
reversal, it was a plateau, and then disintegration.
And most collapses, in his opinion, come from
internal factors. So when he talks about this
this and he's the first person. He's the
first sociologist who's, well, not the first. Ibn
Khaldun talked about this before him, but I
can't quote him in the Khaldun for you
properly because I don't have time to translate
all of this Arabic stuff. So I'll just
quote the people who wrote it in English,
but Ibn Khaldun talked about this way before
way before.
So what here's the thing was that this
this graph of kind of gradually going up,
hitting a plateau, and then disintegrating afterwards happened
by internal factors. It wasn't something external. You
didn't say you didn't see that the collapse
of a civilization was supposed to come from
from a
foreign invasion or war or natural disasters or
whatever. It came from things that were happening
internally. And he talked about during the the
the disintegration,
the society divided into 2 in into 2,
he calls them polytheria. He talks about an
external one and an internal one. Then you
have the society, it breaks down into 2
groups. A group that is in the know,
the group that actually has the money and
has the power, that 1% that keeps the
status quo as is because it's serving their
interest, and then the external. The group that
has no idea what's going on, the group
that is living on almost nothing. The the
amount if you think about it, the yeah.
I mean, we
that internal one. We're not. We're in the
external one. We're not a part of the
of the discussion of power. We're not a
part of the discussion of authority. We don't
move the economy with the world economy. We
don't actually have a say in how countries
behave. We don't have. We're we're outside of
it, and that's a big problem. Right? And
the fact that Muslims aren't in the middle
or practicing Muslims who have
have have right or righteousness,
in their heart or something that they care
for is a big problem because of his
personal interest as moving all of this stuff,
and when when we'll, you know, we'll we'll
trouble.
He talked about what people resort to, and
I found it interesting. I'm gonna quote it
for you for a moment. He he he
talked about what people resort to when they're
in the state of disintegration, when the society
is falling, the civilization is is declining. He
talked about archaism, which is where people idealize
the past
and the dead.
Sound familiar at all?
Where we idolize the dead and we idolize
the past. The past was better. Everything about
it was better. The zetun, it tasted better.
The Lebanon was whiter back then. The milk,
it it was it was fresher. People were
kinder. The homes were sturdier. Everything was better.
If you speak to someone
more back in the everything was better back
in the past. This is all this is
this is the art agent. It's a very
known, you know, societal phenomenon. When when societies
are falling and declining, we we we idolize
the past. Everything in the past looks better,
and it's always better.
You get what I mean? I mean, because
you can say, well, it's always been the
case. Not not really.
No. Not really. It wasn't always the case.
There were times where the present was better
than the past. In the future, they looked
forward to something that was better than their
past, and they when they when they arrived
and they celebrated it. It's normal for you
to feel that I was better in the
past. That's normal.
That's normal.
It's actually healthy. So you look back and
say, I used to be pure. I used
to be closer to Allah, and and then
you hold yourself accountable and you work hard.
That's okay. That's fine. But for a society
to see its past to be better than
its present
for its future, that's that's very concerning, and
that's that's a sign of black. Futurism or
idealization
of the future, which happens on the other
side or other groups do that. I'm
we may not feel that as much here,
but the West sometimes feels that. The west
today, they look they sometimes look like that,
and you find the the the pictures of
how the human being is going to be.
And you're basically, half robots and
flying to to different planets. And
even though even though the number of slums
that exist within North America is equal to
the number of slums that exist in Asia.
Yeah. There's no difference. There's the same number
of plums, same amount of people who are
living under the under the line of poverty,
substance abuse, and these problems are are as
prevalent here as they are in other parts.
But then you you wanna you run away
from that by just idealizing what's supposed to
happen in the future. It's actually where people
remove themselves altogether.
There's a problem that we have in our
community where Muslims just see this is not
this Muslim society is not that functional, so
I'll take a step back. I don't want
to be a part of it. And it's
hard to convince them to come back in.
They'll come back. This is your ummah. This
is your nation. There's it's worth working on.
It's worth improving it. It can get better.
For sure, it can get better, but it's
hard because people, they they they resort to
detachment. And then the final piece, which I
think is the most interesting, is is, stress
sensing,
where they they look for new insight or
for profit.
They look for something that is new. And
that's what the prophet and I find that
to be my parallel
parallel to what the prophet, alayhis salatu, wasalam,
said in the where
he said,
like, we'll send someone on on along the
way, a alim, a scholar or a a
relief or somebody who will renew
the deen for the nation, like, will will
renew their understanding of it. Kinda like revamp
just maybe, you know, get all get all
the dust off again and just kind of
get it all ready and put it up
and make it make it make it visible
to people again.
There's actually, you know, the studios, he goes
back and he counts each year, each 100
years do these things. And he was the
person who did that for, you know, for
that generation. It was it was it was
the Abu Ghalani being one of them. And
and it's very interesting that that this is
an Islamic concept that every once in a
while, we need it's like we get rusty,
and we need a little bit of a
kind of a renewal. We need to revamp
and kinda reassess things again. Not changing the
deen. It's going back in actually, going back
to what the deen was teaching because sometimes
you go a little bit astray. The culture,
your culture, your biases, or your traditions, or
your norms will point you a little bit
in a direction. You end up finding yourself
in a in a territory where it's not
really Islam anymore.
It's something that has some remnants of Islam.
It's not really what it you have to
find a way back again. So this concept
that he that he pointed out, I find
to be extremely irrelevant to us. Quigley, on
the other hand, Carroll Quigley, who who wrote
the the evolution of civilization. This is an
amazing book. This is a really, really good
one. Not that long is worth and it's
worth reading. When you looked at and this
is something that I I put up here
just to give you a a I'm not
gonna talk about it, but I wanna I
have to quote it at least once. Listen
to what he says here. And this is
social disintegration involves the metamorphosis of social instruments,
which were set up to meet cultural needs
into institutions, which serve their own interest at
the at the expense of social needs.
When you end up having institutions
that don't
serve the needs of the community anymore, they
serve their own needs,
institutions that become focused on their own survival.
The goal stops becoming taking care of the
community. The goal becomes taking care of the
institution.
That's one of the that's one of the
hallmarks of of decline of a of a
civilization and society. This is what this is
what he's saying. So I I I didn't
make this up, but he said this. He
he he he looked at the world around
him and said societies that were designed
to meet the needs of a culture or
of a group of people
when the society or civilization is on is
nose diving.
They become
institutions that
the Muslim Wellness Network.
Its only purpose is to serve the community.
The moment it doesn't, it does not need
to exist anymore. This is just this whole
space and this place and this concept, this
institution, this charity
is just a means of transportation
to help take my the community from a
to b. The moment it stops doing that,
it can be gotten good off. There is
no value in itself.
The only value it carries is the value
of what it offers the society.
It does not offer to the community actual
value. It has no innate value in itself.
It has no innate value in itself as
an institution. I'm not talking about space fair
spaces
that are that are I'm not talking about
that. We need you always need fair spaces
where people can come in, and they can.
That's different. I'm talking about institutions
that are set up as charities and then
ask people for money and then claim that
this money is going to be used for
the well-being of the community.
We have to be careful of this because
sociologists have looked at how society is declining,
and they point out that that's what happened.
And that's what I believe where we are.
I I truly believe that's our problem.
I truly believe that institutions,
local institutions,
see that they have it's called institutional ego.
Now it's something called institutional ego, where the
institution itself has an ego, where its survival
matters. See, my survival as a person, it
matters. If you try to take my life,
I'm gonna fight back. I want to live
just like you. All of us do. Institutions
shouldn't have that.
Institutions shouldn't have that if they're not serving
a purpose. If they're serving a purpose, it's
fine. If If not, they don't have an
innate value in and of themselves. They don't.
The only value they carry is whatever services
they are offering the community they're a part
of. But if that stops being the case
and people start
channeling their own egos into the institution, then
you end up having institutional egos where the
survival of the institution becomes the purpose
instead of the mean.
It's the mean to take care of the
community. It's not a purpose in in of
itself.
It's not.
It's I don't know how to I don't
know how to explain this here.
This is a big problem. Institutions have to
go back and look at themselves.
Is the goal that the institution survives, or
or is the goal that this institution offers
services?
And if it's not, then maybe it needs
to change or maybe it needs to go.
Change is better than going, but it's some
something has to change. Some something has to
give.
If this is not yeah. I serving its
purpose. But that's what he says. Institutions which
stir their own interests at the expense of
social need. This is what pointed
out.
Sorokin was a Russian American,
sociologist.
He's probably the most interesting of the group.
He died in 1968.
He wrote social and cultural dynamics. Again, an
extremely interesting read for those of you who
care about this. I'm I'm not saying you
don't have to care about any of this
stuff. I'm just quoting. I'm trying to prove
a point for you, and then you don't
have to ever look at this ever again
if you if you don't want to. But
if there's something that you care about and
you're interested in, then these are good books
to read. So for him, he he pointed
out something different. He he looked at civilizations
as as cultural super systems,
and his theory was the following, that all
these cultures and civilizations, they they organize around
specific principles
and that they would pass through these principles
in a cyclical
rhythm. There's a cyclical fashion where they're passing
through these principles,
experiencing regular downfalls. But one set of principles
replace
this is the former set of principles. So
he would look at this is how he
sees civilizations,
strong culture systems that have in them principles.
But the problem is is that this culture
or this civilization
goes through these principles in a cyclical manner.
Like, it goes up where the principles are
held onto properly, and then it dips and
the principles aren't cared for anymore. No one
cares about them. And then someone comes back
and it brings the culture, those values or
those principles back to the to the public
eye and back to be practiced appropriately, and
then cyclically it falls it down again.
And unless that happens, then unless we're able
to take a set of principles that don't
work and replace them with ones that do,
then the whole thing falls. As Muslims, we
don't need to actually replace our principles. We
just have to go back to the authentic
version of them. It's just going back to
the authentic version of them. That's all. And
that's I need
easier said than done for sure. It's easier
said than done. I mean, I I I
realize that. But but I believe that this
is where as Muslims today, that are not,
govern
we're not in governance. We don't rule countries.
We don't have influence on on the policies
of countries. I'm not saying that we don't
have influence on the policy of our own
country. That's something that we should. But I'm
talking about where there are Muslim majorities. We
don't have influence on those countries. So what
is that what is it that we can
do that can start bringing back our ummah,
our nation to a state of of
of of success and prosperity. Well, this is
how you do it. Start recognizing the symptoms
of the downfall and start going working backwards.
Start fixing. Let's go back. Let's just see.
Let's see what what what salah meant back
then. If it's not serving its purpose today
and people are like, I I've been praying
for years. I feel nothing. And they stop
doing it. Well, let's see what it was
what it was before versus what it is
now. And how do we how do we
get back to what it was? And once
you do, then,
you've solved the problem. You've you actually solved
the problem.
So
Oswald Spengler or Spengler
wrote the most controversial book within sociology
or or or this concept of societal collapse
historically.
His book is is a the target of
of ongoing criticism and controversy, and and they
don't he wrote the decline of the west.
He wrote this a long time ago. I
read this in Arabic because it was it
was translated to to Arabic.
It was a
what is it called? A non hard
copy book that I picked off a busbar
for 15 lira
in in Al Halbuuni Bishab. The guy almost
gave it to me for free because no
one ever bought this book. So I picked
it up. I read this book, and it
wasn't really to, to rub it into the
West and the fact that they're declining. It
was more listening to what he had his
theory
of the winter
of a, of a civilization.
It's winter.
And I loved that. I thought that was
very valuable. He doesn't see it as as
ending. He sees that there's there's molesting.
The civilizations go through seasons.
There's this there's summer, there's spring, and there's
their winter.
And then if they figure a way, they
can go back to their spring again. So
he sees it as a as a motion,
a cyclical motion more than more than a
beginning and an end, And his his conclusion
in the book was that what you see
when when civilizations are in their winter is
a disinclination
of of abstract thinking.
That people stop having the ability
to
to think abstractly. Abstractly what he meant by
abstract thinking. He's a, he's a German,
author. So allahu Adam, this book was written
in German, I think.
The English version
is a very good read. It's a very
good read. Arabic is reasonable. The Alayhi hamudu.
Mutazim was a very good, Mutazim, but but
I don't think I think abstract means figurative.
I think what he means by abstract is
more figurative. Figurative thinking.
Yeah. When you lose figurative thinking, when everything
is literal, when you don't have the capacity
to draw a parallel, when you're not interested
in doing that at all, then your your
your values start to fall.
Because a lot of the values that exist
within that build a civilization existed within a
context of time and space. They had a
context.
Now we're in a different context to to
make sure that these values are going to
yes. Yes.
Sure. What do I do? Be quiet. I
understand. You know, I can't do that.
You
can keep it. Yeah. That's fine.
Alright. What was I thinking? Yeah. So when
when society has lacked the ability to engage
in figurative thought, an abstract thought, then they
don't have the capacity to draw analogies or
parallels
from their original values and what they meant
to what they're going to mean in the
new context that they're living in. So what
they end up doing is because they are
going to think only literally, they take and
they copy paste and the copy paste ends
up losing a lot of the a lot
of the substance on the way. Like, it
it just drops out on
within this copy pasting,
or copying and and and pasting,
method. So you need that abstract thing. You
need people who are willing that's why tashdeed.
That's why the prophet used that phrase.
Will renew it. So they allows people to
see what honesty and what haqq and what
salah and what siyam and what Islam, what
jihad, what these terms are going to mean
in the context that you're living in. So
you can practice them. So you don't end
up looking at them as something that is
this it hurts me when I find people,
young people, who look at Islamic concepts and
think, yeah, well, whatever.
Yeah. A couple of. Sure. So if, like,
they don't it's it's to them it means
nothing. Like, it's a phrase that they've been
bombarded by, you know, with by their parents
for a long time or they listen to.
They don't see any utility for it. They
don't understand what it means. They had never
saw anyone do it and actually benefit from
it. And for them, it's just something that
they're stuck with and they don't see they
don't really respect it and it and it
hurts and it's hurtful because they're so profound.
These concepts, these values are so profound. These
principles, like, they they transform the nation.
They transformed people. When you look when you
look at how the Arab were before Islam
and how they were 30 years after the
Qadhi Ali saw Islam.
So altogether, we're saying maybe around 40 to
50 years. So it isn't a in in
a in a half a century. In a
half a century, what they were, what they
became.
You when you look at it, I'm not
talking about the political political part. I'm talking
about the people, the the, the values and
principles and the lifestyle
and the life the way of life that
people are living. It is almost
it's it's unrecognizable.
If you can't it's impossible to look at
these two groups and say that this is
a descendant
of this person with only one this is
just the grandson of of, of this person
over here. Now this that this is the
grandson of Abu Bakr and Omar Ahmed, and
this is what they're how they're living
how did he make such a leap? I
have no other word to describe it. It's
such a leap, civilization, a leap that he
that he was able to, to bring
of the Islamic,
3 three continents at the time.
There was there was universities and schools and
people were writing the majority of people who
had to write, and they were and they
were translating the works of the Greeks and
the Indians and the Africans and the and
the Chinese, and they were and they were
learning from it and building upon it. And
the scholars
the scholars of Hadith and and
were botanists and biologists and astronomers.
How did we go from this to that?
Well, exactly. We it was built on it
was built on values that were that were
very powerful,
he pointed out in his
he wrote something called How Societies Choose to
Fail to First Defeat. This is more of
a, a, it's a modern it's a modern
book.
It's very it's very well written and honestly,
it has a lot of insights in it.
I just wanna quote this piece for you
for he he proposes 5 interconnected cause of
collapse
that may or may not reinforce one another.
He talks about non yeah. I mean, the
the, the ROI that I talked about before,
that energy return where you're using way more
than you're actually producing, that can cause problems.
The climate changes, emission support from friendly societies,
hostile neighbors, and inappropriate
attitude towards change.
Again, some of this stuff we can influence,
some of it we can't, but inappropriate attitudes
towards change. He talks about that in some
degree of depth. That as Muslims or as
people in general, if we don't
tolerate
the need to change our ways or change
the way we look at things, then it's
just a matter of time before we before
we fall into us. As Muslims, this is
very important to us because we've been struggling
this for a long time. We've been struggling
with the lack of ability dying to change.
I remember when I first came I'm giving
a really silly example. So this is not
like an example that it has any weight
to it at all because my life has
been pretty
silly in general. I I'm not a part
of anything that has any weight to it.
When I came yeah. And and I started
the the Quran program in the in LMM.
You remember that for me, for the 1st
3 years, and, yeah, no no offense to
any of the brothers who were there at
the time. They're all close to me today,
and we're all, you know, No problem. But
back then back then, it was a very
different experience.
Every time a kid would read Quran slightly
loudly, there would always be someone who came
in and said this is too they would
be upset that this is loud and it's
chaotic and they're they're
they're they're not putting their their their shoes
in the right place. Some people will get
upset and fill their shoes in a bag
and throw it in the garbage, and I
I've been in the dumpster twice in the
behind l m. Twice. So I had to
go into the dumpster and pick up and
take out the shoes and put them back
and ask the guy, please don't throw away
their shoes. I understand.
Because it's an issue of change. The Masjid
was always quiet and nice, and now it's
loud. And now there are children. They're running
around, and they don't really have the the
etiquette of the Masjid still. And they're and
the and the the Masjid sounds and looks
and and smells and feels a little bit
different. And if you don't have that openness
of attitude towards change, then you you repel
you repel the you repel those who are
trying to bring it forward. And it took
a long time. It took 6 you know,
5 4 or 5 years of constant just
ignoring that and just dealing with it and
advising that maybe instead of coming in and
yelling at them because they're loud, you're a
you're a in your seventies. Put some in
your in your pocket and and come and
offer the kid who's coming to the Masjid
and not going doing something else. Just give
it because he a few years from now,
you'll be you'll want someone to to come
and and and fix things in the Masjid
when he's 18 and 20. But because he'd
kicked him out when he was 6, he's
not gonna come back anymore. So it's a
simple and silly example. But if you take
it and you just look at there's so
many other venues of the same problem, of
the lack of ability to change and to
to maybe consider that maybe the way my
parents were doing it or maybe the way
I was taught it was needed to be
done is not necessarily the right way to
do it.
I run a masjid, so people come up
to me all the time, upset that I'm
not doing things in this masjid the way
they grew up and the way they're used
to being. Now,
the respectful amongst them will just advise me.
The other group will come and point out
how wrong all of this is and how
I need I need to go and seek
proper knowledge and get references to people to
fix all of this. Right?
And for the sisters, so just so you
know, weekly
weekly, I get asked why I don't have
a curtain here. Weekly. Every single week just
so you know how much I sacrificed for
you. Just so you understand that on a
weekly basis, I have to sit with brothers
and explain to them. Yeah, it's fine. It's
not a problem.
Are they is it bothering you? Yes. Well,
then look at me. I'm pretty here. Look
here. Don't look there. I I solved the
problem for you. Just don't look back, and
you don't have an issue altogether.
But I understand. I understand where this comes
from. I understand. When I came here, also
the change of culture, the change society was
difficult. Right? The messages function a little bit
differently. You have an urge to want things
to go back to the way they are,
but that's not necessarily the right thing to
do. It's a healthy, normal human function. It
doesn't mean necessarily correct. Sometimes it's not correct.
Sometimes the correct thing is that you change.
Imagine if you feel that you are this
golden standard of what Islam needs to be.
The audacity of that. Like, the level of
arrogance that I require to say that I
am the golden standard, all of Islam has
to meet my standard. You have to do
exactly what I think is correct instead of
me seeing myself that, no, I continuously try
to aspire to be a better Muslim and
to meet the standard of the prophet
and hold myself accountable for not doing that,
But that requires
an an appropriate attitude towards change.
Ibn Khadun, the master,
why did it do it? Why this?
And end them up I don't know what
to do with this, Yani.
I try I I okay.
The father of sociology. He is and this
is Toimbi, the guy that I talked about
with. Toimbi wrote in his book. He
wrote about,
you know, which is what they call the,
the the the the the what he what
he wrote. He said, it's absolutely the best
book that has ever been written in the
history of sociology. That and these and these
opinions, you know, about what he what he
what he did all all his work is
is translated to at least, you know, 15
different languages. All sociologists look at his work
and say that was the that was the
work. That was the guy who broke the
ice, not the guy who started speaking about
human behavior collectively, talked about state, talked about,
I need a
a democratic
form of existence, talked about values, talked about
the way to hold on to power, talked
about governance of people, talked about people's involvement.
And and in your lifetime, if at some
point you find the time, you should definitely
read his.
This is something that the the west take
care of his book way more than we
do. Like, they have commentary upon commentary upon
his.
I have not I have yet to see
maybe 2. 2 Muslim scholars who have who
have written anything.
He put forward
an effort that is worthy.
This whole thing is, it was I it's
proper. It's just this thing doesn't wanna do
it properly. He says that people who are
oppressed or people who don't have their freedom
or people who are living at a time
where society is declining, what happens is that
their ethics get bad. They lose their ethics.
Their ethics start to get away from them,
and what you start to see a lot
of,
superstition, you start to see a lot of
people who,
share misinformation and and say things that are
are untrue, and you'll find a lot of
opportunistic people who will come in and will
use that ignorance and use that weakness and
use that that desperate desperation
to
for their own agenda and to to steer
people in in directions that serve serve themselves,
and then you have a lot of of
of rumors. And there's a lot
of people are always arguing.
Right? If this is the time for the
next 5 days, Facebook before Facebook will have
to put up with us arguing whether he
gives
the wealth or not. Right? This is going
to go on for the next 3 or
4 days. Maybe,
yeah. Last year, someone did a after over
500,000,000
posts were made about this issue.
There.
Every year, around this time, we start fighting.
Nope. You have to give it
and whatever. Nope. We can give it, as
a and then we fight.
We've been doing this for 700 years.
It's almost now at this point we should
make an aid out of it, and we
should celebrate because it's a it's a it's
a cultural thing now. We love doing this.
And there's no insights anymore, which and
the ability to think becomes confound. It's not
it's not it's not you can't do it
anymore.
This is what I want to discuss with
you over the next,
number of days.
I want to discuss with you the effect
that our values have on the state of
our nation
as a Muslim,
And that if we can get our values
in line, if we can figure out a
way to correct
and fix
our principles and our concept and under and
reclaim the narrative of what Islam actually is,
how to understand it, and then how to
practice it, then I believe we have a
way back. We can figure out a way
to bring back what once was or bring
it back even better. Maybe even saying that
is wrong. I don't think we want to
bring back something that's gone. I think we
want to bring back the concept that was
gone, the concept of unity. You see, the
existed
back then in a certain way. The people
who fight to try and bring back that
exact same
model,
in my opinion, is art is a form
of archivism where we just want to replicate
we don't need what we need is an
abstract thought or a figure of thought a
figurative thought where we recognize what the was
for us. It was a unified represent
political representation for us. It was leadership. It
was actual leadership. It was protection.
These are the these are the concepts that
exist within what the Khalifa was. That's what
we need back. We need to bring those
concepts to to clarity. And we have to
say, how do we bring these back? In
a context that works today within the geopolitical,
landscape that we're living in. Because to try
and bring back what was
in a time where things have changed in
so many different ways, like, the world is
so different than it was then, I think
it's again, we're you're it's like you're banging
your head against the wall. You're not gonna
get anywhere. But maybe figure out what did
you like, what do you love about the
concept of the.
What do you love? You have to love
something about that. There's there's something beautiful in
the fact that we had what was it?
We were represented.
Yeah. There was political there was some degree
of unity. Yeah. We had protection.
You think the what happens in Gaza over
the last 6 months would have happened if
there was even a small
shred of that left. If there were peep
someone who was willing to defend them, you
think that would happen to them?
34,000 people
murdered the majority of them being
women and children
with images that are coming that are being
that are emerging in real time from people
who are on the go, not even from,
you know, media outlets to say that, well,
this media outlet is is biased
and this one is corrupted. It's just from
people who are standing there with their phones
recording the the the tragedy tragedies that are
occurring to the to the to this population
of human beings. It wouldn't happen to them
if we had some degree of protection. So,
yes, the concept of Islam is beautiful. It's
not it's not it's not a, a history
political issue. It's beautiful. The prophet
started it. Who built the the the nation?
Who made sure that it was going to
it's going to be a succession? Someone's gonna
pick it up after him. You see, the
person who was going to rule after the
prophet, alayhis salatu wasalam, was called Khalifa to,
the successor of the prophet. And then when
Omar came around, they said, okay. He is
Khalifa to Khalifa t Rasulillah, the successor of
the successor of the prophet. And then they
sat back and said, no. This is this
is gonna end up ridiculous.
They they they start to think in the
future, well, you know, after the 15th guy,
this is going to be maybe we come
up with something different. So they said, we'll
call him Emil al Muqmini,
the prince of the believers.
He's a he's a
as in the successor of the successor, someone
the caregiver, the caretaker, the steward, the person
responsible
for the well-being of people.
What's What's beautiful about it? That
representation, that unity,
that that that protection,
that identity.
Okay. Let's see. How can we bring that
back today? I'm not gonna talk about that
in this series because I have no pull
on that at all,
nor do I believe any of you
yet
yet.
This is directed towards my younger brothers and
sisters specifically, this series. If you understand it
and it makes sense to you and you
start correcting
and fixing the concepts that are corrupt in
your own life, you start reclaiming the narrative
of what Islam is. As you make your
way up the ladder of life and you
come to the the point, specifically speaking, one
of the people here in this room will
be will will hold office,
statistically speaking. So what? Maybe a 100 people
in this room? Something like that? Yeah. This
is 1% will 1% of people
one of you will hold office somewhere. So
you understand this stuff, then you can start
talking about the bigger picture. You can talk
about how we can also bring back something
that we have lost as an.
We are
thirsty
for some degree of unity, some degree
of, you remember when the Moroccans, got make
it made it to the, semi finals? I've
never seen a happier population in my life.
Well, I come to the message. Everyone's happy,
and the the people are taking pictures, and
they're waving a flag they never knew existed
to begin with. Everyone's, you know, celebrating, and
people sitting in front of the TV screaming
and jumping up and down. It's a big
deal.
It's just a game. It's just a it's
just a ball to get
that's it. I love it. I love the
game. I yeah. I
don't act like I don't like it.
Thanks to but I said everyone knows that
now. Where is it?
But the idea is that is that something
worthy of celebration? Well, not really, but that's
how thirsty this
is. Any form of unity, togetherness, anything. So
if we're not thirsty, then that means we
can we we should start talking about, well,
how do we bring some of this? Let's
start let's start by the simple thing. Let's
start by understanding Islam appropriately,
understanding what Jihad means appropriately, understanding what and
and zakah and Hajj, what they actually know,
what their concepts are, what chastity means, what
these words actually
indicate within our lives, what implications they have
upon us. So they're not reduced to something
that is meaningless, that doesn't serve a purpose.
So that because when the youth when you
give them a concept that doesn't mean anything,
and they they don't understand why it's important,
they don't follow it. Youth are actually much
more passionate,
much more compassionate, and much more truthful than
people my age are. If they see the
light in something, they will commit to it
way more than any of us can, but
they had to see the light in it.
And it hurts me when they are presented
with an a beautiful Islamic concept in a
way that is so corrupt and so empty
that they don't want it. How however, how
had it been presented to them appropriately, they
would have loved it. They would have held
on to it better than I would, and
they would have led the way they would
have led the way. Wouldn't be I wouldn't
have to. You would have to keep on
pulling them to fall out. They would do
it. They would pull push you because they
saw the value of that concept.
Imagine that. Imagine if we could make that
make that transition.
I believe that we can.
My favorite, Yani, the Islamic writer in the
last maybe 150 years,
A true a true forward thinker. He he
died in the seventies. I obviously was not
around when he yes. I was not around
when he was here. I'm not that old.
He he I was not around when he
passed away. And he wrote a book called,
the
conditions of of an uprising or the conditions
of
of of the, the
success of a state. It's a very short
book. It's not big at all. I think
it's translated to French. I don't know if
it's translated to English. You must read this
book at some point in your life. It's
a very well written book. He says he
doesn't say this in his book, but that
book is is it talks about these concepts.
But he says in something called Mirazhi Mujhama,
the, the birth of a society, which is
another book that he wrote. It's very beautiful.
The
the the wealth, the richness
of a society is not measured by how
many things they put how many possessions they
have. How much capital, how much wealth, how
many buildings, how many things. It's measured by
how rich they are in ideas
how rich they are in ideas. I had
this conversation a a number of times, and
recently with brother Clark, I was talking to
him about this. I always ask the question
about, like, you know, when you when
are you guys aware of how how much
debt is the United States in?
What?
1,000,000,000,000?
It's 3.
Right? 30? There you go. Is it is
it 30? I don't know. It's 30.30,000,000,000. Is
it that much?
Or I think it's worse than I thought.
I was happy with 3. So when you
look at the the debt that they're in,
you wonder how is it how is it
that they still, you know, basically run the
world?
Well, let me tell you from I'm I'm
a physicist.
The only time
a guideline
within medicine changes,
it it it it it it is if
it happens within the state.
All of the big researchers,
all of the people who write the medical
guidelines and do the big trials are living
in the states, and that's where they go.
If they if you want to be a
great physician, that's where you go. That's where
you wanna run trials that are meaningful, that's
where you go. They still that's what they
have. They have all the minds.
They have all the minds. People who are
creative and wanna make a difference. I lived
in Syria.
I would have probably stayed there if there
was no war, honestly.
But a part of me was like, I
this there's only a a so far that
I can go only go go so far
here. Like, the you're limited not just by
the resources. You're limited also by the society.
Like, community itself will limit your ability to
think and to speak because it just it
just lacks so many tools. So you leave
for a to a place where they that's
not the case. So even though they may
be in debt, but they continue to have
the power all across the globe because every
discipline, not just medicine. That's where you go.
If a paper is published in Japan about
some,
Japan, about some chemotherapy that works, I don't
care. I'm gonna wait for it to come
out of MD Anderson in Texas
or if the yeah. I mean, Sloan Catering
in in memorial. They have to put out
something. I have to see they have to
revise. They have to look at the the
the trial
expert tool that I know where the ex
who the experts are. I know the 10
experts in my field in in in genitourinary
cancers, the people who treat with chemotherapy and
targeted therapy, immunotherapies, all 10 of them all
in the field. If I want to go
meet them and get to know them and
have a mentor, I have to get on
a plane and go to, say, San Diego
or Austin or somewhere to to meet these
people so I can learn from them.
The wealth of a society is not money
even though we think it is.
I'm not gonna say something offensive to the,
to the gulf.
Right?
Because I love that place. I grew up
there. But it's not about money. You're gonna
have a lot of money.
There's a lot of ideas. You're not rich
in ideas. Don't forget anything.
You're not rich in values, and that's the
richness of our deen. Think about the.
Think think about this. In a place where
there are no rivers,
it's ludicrous.
If you study history, it makes no sense.
The evolution of Islam makes no sense.
There's no river in the Middle East. There's
no river. Every civilization existed around the river,
the Euphrates, the Nile, the Amazon. There has
to be a river because people didn't still
didn't have the tools to any extract fresh
water. You're talking about a place where there's
no fresh the fresh water is very scarce.
There's actually no political governance at all. Arabia
was the only part of that whole region
that had no political governance. There was no
king that ruled the whole place. There were
small kings that were governing cities, just a
city.
They just had cities, small areas, but Arabia
in its in the openness of its desert
was free land. You could do whatever you
want. There was no law.
If you murdered someone
that that fits, if their family did not
figure it out and come after you, there
was no one going to pursue this. There
was no law. There's no hand up. There's
no law.
People who had were illiterate. They could not
write and read.
They were masters of their tongues, but they
didn't write write and read. He started
alone. He had no army. He had no
wealth. He did not have wealthy followers
How he prevailed was through the strength of
the idea,
was the strength of the Quran. The Quran
brought an idea that was powerful. That's the
people of faith could not they couldn't push
back with their thoughts. They couldn't push back
against the idea. They they pop brought in
propaganda. They brought in rumors.
They took him to war.
They tried to, you know, to to flex
their wealth and their muscle with him, but
they couldn't beat his idea.
And he just persevered long enough
for the better idea to to win.
Stronger ideas always prevail. They always do. They
always win. A strong idea will always succeed,
always. Hands down. If the people carrying it
will show show show enough grit and perseverance
to make sure that it survives. If you
just hold on to it and survive, better
ideas will we're not scared of of having
debates with non Muslims or people outside of
our faith. No problem. Bring. Say what you
want. Whatever you want. Do me what you
want.
My idea is stronger than yours. Not because
it's my idea. It's Allah
word. So it's stronger than your idea. We
I'll beat you with the idea, not because
it's mine. It has nothing to do with
me or you. It has to do with
that came from Allah So
we're we're we're we welcome it. Bring it
on. If you have a better idea, we'll
leave ours, and we'll go to yours. That's
what the plan tells us to
do. Bring your Quran, we'll follow you.
But that requires us to go back and
study the concepts that built this nation,
understand the profoundness of them, and then take
them upon ourselves.
I'll end with that. Sorry for taking a
little bit longer than I than I,
planned, inshallah, tomorrow. I'm going to try and
make this,
the the episode in 45 minutes and 50,
and I'll leave, 10 minutes at the end
of each
session for for for a q and a.
This is the QR code. It's a one
time thing. Once you use it, you'll have
access to the, to the Google Sheet. You
can put in whatever questions you would like
to put in. I'm happy to take, maybe
2 or 3 questions before before we, wrap
up. But tomorrow, I'll give maybe a bit
more time for that at the end.