Ali Ataie – Islam 101 What Do Muslims Believe
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AI: Transcript ©
So before we continue, I want to explain
very quickly about a hadith. What is a
hadith?
Basically, there's 2 types of hadith. There are
hadith that are acceptable, Maqbool,
and then hadith that are Mardud that are
rejected.
Basically, a hadith describes
the,
the actions
or
gives the speech
or the
taccid approvals of the prophet Muhammad
the Atha'al,
the aqwal, and the taqareer.
So so there's a difference now between
hadith and sunnah.
Right?
Obviously, there's overlap. We
we we draw or extract
the sunnah from the hadith,
but they're not necessarily the same things. There's
a lot of hadith.
There's thousands upon thousands of hadith
at different grades. We'll talk briefly about that.
Anything that is attributed to the prophet Muhammad
peace and blessings of God be upon him
is considered to be a hadith.
But the sunnah of the prophet,
right?
This is what has the sort of
providential
protection,
the protection of Allah
This is the authoritative
or normative
ethos,
the authenticated
practice
of the prophet Muhammad
And the function of the sunnah,
as the scholars of Islam say, al ulama,
as sunnatutu
fasirulquran,
that the sunnah really what it does is
that it exegetes if you will, or it
explains the Quran,
right? So the Quran itself says in Surah
Nahl,
Surah number 16 verse 44,
Allah
says that indeed We sent down this dhikr
upon you, this reminder upon you,
speaking directly to the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him,
In order for you to make Bayan, in
order for you to make clear,
right, to explicate,
to elucidate,
to commentate upon what was revealed to them
to,
to
interpret the Quran, the revelation
of God. This is,
one of
the,
one of the functions of prophecy.
So just because you read something in a
hadith doesn't necessarily mean it's true, even if
it's considered to be in a sound book
of hadith.
There are a lot of problems with
with hadith that are graded as sound. There's
difference of opinion about them.
You might read something that is sound,
and try to implement it, but implement it
incorrectly.
For example, one of my teachers years ago,
he quoted a hadith that the prophet used
to eat dates,
but what's the proper way of eating a
date? What's the proper etiquette? You pop it
in your mouth and you spit out the
seed? How did the Prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, how did he eat a
date?
He would put it into his mouth with
his right hand,
and then he would extract the seed by
turning his left hand over with these two
fingers and push the seed out with his
tongue, but no one actually
saw his tongue and then he'd discard or
he would get rid of
the seed.
So he did it in a way where
there's
a lot of honor
and there wasn't there's no question about having
bad adab or having bad comportment while while
while eating.
How does a Muslim pray? I mean, the
Quran tells us to pray, but how do
we pray? Can you pray any way you
want to? Can you just kind of follow
what your neighbor is doing or
what Christians and Jews are doing? Is that
how we pray?
So the sunnah becomes
absolutely indispensable
in understanding
the Quran. How do we send benedictions upon
the Prophet?
The Quran says,
Oh you who believe.
Right? Send benedictions of peace upon the Prophet
Muhammad peace be upon him. How do we
do that? We have to look at the
sunnah
or the authenticated hadith of the Prophet Muhammad,
Sallallahu Alaihi
Wa
Salam.
And it's a meticulous science. We don't have
to go into it now. It's a separate
class, but basically for a hadith to be
sound,
right, there's there's a sanad, which is the
chain of transmission. It has to be mutasil.
It has to be linked. There has to
be a link. No missing,
no gaps in the link of transmission.
The famous hadith of
mercy has 23 or 24
links in its chain of transmission.
This is the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, is reported to have
said, and you'll find it in Musnad Ahmad
al Rahimuni, your hamukum
manfis sama, or your, your hamukum manfis sama
That the most compassionate shows compassion to those
who show compassion.
Show compassion to those on earth and the
one in heaven in no anthropomorphic
sense will show you compassion. This hadith is
called hadithur Rahma.
There's like I said about 2 dozen or
so links in his chain of transmission.
It is
indisputable, the words of the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, and this is actually the
first hadith that Muslim children in the traditional
Muslim world were taught. This would sort of
set the foundation for their education about the
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
stressing the importance of compassion, the importance
of mercy.
So the chain of transmission
is mutasil,
there's no gaps, everyone in the chain has
aadaala, There's there's they have probity.
They're known as being righteous people.
They have tamatbapt,
they have intelligence, they have good memories. There's
no hidden
problems, no hidden illah.
Right?
Which could be anything from like bad grammar
because the prophet, peace be upon him, did
not use bad or incorrect grammar. He was
the most eloquent
of speakers.
So this is a very meticulous science,
the science of hadith authentication
and this is different than Sira, right? With
Sira, you have to be careful.
A lot of things get into sera that
have no chain of transmission.
So it's up to the ulama to go
through and sort of sift through
the Sira and extract what is authentic to
what is not.
Writers of Sira tend to exaggerate
certain things. And it's interesting because the Sira
is something that is constantly under attack
by, for example, Christian apologists, Christian missionaries.
They tend to attack stories in Sira, and
many of these stories
are exaggerations,
even according to Muslim scholars. Some of these
stories have, like I said, no chain of
transmission
and no Muslim really takes them seriously.
But these are the things that are brought
up by missionaries, for example, so basically tearing
down a straw man.
The example that I give,
the equivalent of that is for example, if
I said something like if I went to
a Christian and I said, you know, why
did Jesus murder one of his teachers? Now,
of course, I don't believe this at all.
Jesus, peace be upon him,
is a great prophet of God in the
Islamic tradition, but just to make a point
here.
And he says, well, what are you talking
about? I said, no, it's
what it says
in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Well, he would say well the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas is
is an apocryphal gospel. We don't believe in
that. That's what he would say.
Right? We believe in Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John.
Right? So exactly, we don't believe in that.
So many of these stories in Sira
are just, they're falsified stories. No Muslim takes
them seriously. There's no chain of transmission
and they have nothing to do with our
faith.
But this hadith, Hadith Gabriel,
this is considered to be a sound hadith
recorded by Imam Muslim.
It is a very famous hadith,
as I said.
So the hadith begins Anur Mara radiAllahu ta'ala
anhu
that the hadith is on the authority of
one of the greatest companions of the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, whose name was
Umar, and Umar
was the 2nd caliph
in Islam
following the first caliph Abu Bakr,
one of the most beloved human beings,
to the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
And generally,
well, the Sunni
tradition of Islam
prays and love
all of the companions of the Prophet, peace
be upon him.
They weren't all perfect, but there's
a respect there,
and that's in contrast to the shia
that don't respect a great number or a
majority of the companions
of the Prophet. So these are the 2
sort
of major divisions in our tradition,
Sunni Islam and Shia Islam. And really the,
I would say the differences
as far as theology goes are minor, they're
negligible.
Some would disagree with that,
but the vast majority of scholars on both
sides
do not anathematize
either side. They don't make tuck theory. Right?
But the major difference is really in probably
political theory, political theology.
But nonetheless,
the hadith begins by saying
bayna manahnhu jiruun and Rasulillahi sallallahu alaihi wasalam.
So Sayidna Umar is saying
that one day we were sitting with the
Messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And the title of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam here in Arabic, Rasool Allah, a
construct phrase, the Messenger of God.
Rasool is equivalent probably to the Greek apostle,
which literally means one who is sent forth.
And of course the word for God in
Arabic is Allah,
and this is
the name of God in Arabic, but there
but in all Semitic languages,
the the word for God begins with the
alif and the lam or alif and lamid.
So in
Hebrew, you have Eloh
as the singular
and Elohim, which is the plural of majesty,
which we find many many times in the
Hebrew Bible.
In Aramaic or Syriac you have Allah. Right?
So Jesus, peace be upon him, Isa alaihis
salam, he would have used
Allah because he spoke
Aramaic or Syriac.
So for example in Mark 115,
behold the Kingdom of God, the malkuthada
allaha is at hand.
So Jesus would have used this name for
God, Allah.
So the Quran, so in Arabic, uses that
name as well.
So he's saying we're sitting with the Messenger
of a God, peace be upon him, that
a yomin one day
and behold
a man rose among us.
Right? So the Arabic here suggests that he
sort of just
seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
Shadidu Bayad I Theab,
he was wearing exceedingly white clothes.
Shadidu Sawad I Shar,
he had exceedingly black hair.
The traces of travel
was not seen on him, so,
you know, he didn't have, he wasn't dusty,
he wasn't disheveled, anything like that. He didn't
look like a traveler, didn't have a bag
or something with him. Walah youari fuhu mina
ahadun.
And none of us knew who he was,
none of us recognized him.
Right?
So
this is obviously
the archangel Gabriel.
Right?
Jibril alayhis salam, Jibril in Arabic, Gavriel
in Hebrew,
which means the power of God.
And Gabriel
would often
incarnate, that is to say assume
human flesh in order to teach
human beings. Right?
So this is one of the ways in
which the prophets
would
would interact
with angels, that the angels would take human
form.
It's called incarnation.
Muslims do not believe
that God incarnates.
Right? So this is a major difference of
opinion
between
a major difference in theology
let's say between Hinduism and Islam or Christianity
in Islam.
In Hinduism there are countless incarnations of God.
Is Hinduism essentially a monotheistic religion? That's an
interesting question
that we can talk about later.
In Christianity,
God did not incarnate except for once and
that was in the person of Christ
according to Christians, and we'll talk about
that as well.
So oftentimes
Gabriel would incarnate
and he would teach the prophet. He's the
teacher of the prophet, although Muslims believe
that the prophet Muhammad's rank is higher than
Gabriel.
His rank is actually higher than his teacher
because the prophet is the best of creation.
He is the beloved of God.
Right? So it's not all about knowledge.
You can have teachers
that are arrogant. You have students that surpass
their teachers over time
in piety and even in knowledge. It's very
very common.
So
Gabriel would come to the prophet. He would
teach him
the religion or he would bring the prophet
Quran. He would bring the prophet Revelation.
Oftentimes Gabriel in human form would simply tell
the prophet to repeat after him.
The prophet would repeat, and that's called an
exterior locution.
Other times the angel would come to the
prophet but was not seen by him,
and
the angel would
dictate to the prophet
internally.
The prophet
would perceive
words
internally,
sounds forming words or vibrations forming words,
and he would perceive that and then he
would just repeat that and that's called an
interior
locution. So the Quran would come to the
prophet
in both ways and on rare occasion the
Quran would come to the prophet without any
angelic,
mediation.
Right? So interior locution without angelic
mediation. And our scholars like Imam al Suyuti
and others,
scholars of Ulum al Quran or the sciences,
or using the word science, it's sort of
the pre 1800
disciplines of the Quran.
They would say that, for example, the last
2
Ayahs of Al Baqarah
were revealed
to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him
by Allah
by God glorified and exalted as he
through interior locution without angelic mediation.
And they mention others too. Wadduha walayliida saja,
Surah 93, and the Surah that follows it,
alam nasurahlaka
sodalaq
So here we have Gabriel, peace be upon
him, the great Archangel.
He's taken on human form. He's wearing white
clothes, very white clothes. He has exceedingly black
hair
and no one recognizes him. So he comes
and Saydah Armani continues. He says
so that he sits right in front of
the prophet, peace be upon him,
to the point where he sort of touches
or links his knees against his. So he's
sitting right in front of the prophet, peace
be upon him.
And then Gabriel puts his hands on his
thighs, on his own thighs, and he's listening
intently
to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
So here Gabriel appears to be teaching
us proper adab, sort of proper
etiquette or comportment
with the prophet.
And this is very important,
for Muslims
that we show proper
respect
towards all the prophets of God. Right?
And of course the Quran mentions about 25
of them, but the hadith
indicates that there are thousands of prophets.
25 mentioned in the Quran and all of
them are respected and loved by Muslims.
Right? So these include,
even Adam alayhis salaam.
Adam is considered a prophet
in Islam.
Noah is considered a prophet in Islam.
Moses,
peace be upon him,
and
before that Ibrahim alayhis salam
and or Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac, both
of them considered prophets
in the Islamic tradition. Both of them beloved
by Muslims.
Both of them respected.
Both of them considered legitimate prophets
and righteous.
Even Jacob is considered a prophet in Islam.
So these stories that are mentioned about, for
example,
Jacob in the book of Genesis,
where he's really depicted
in a very negative way,
right, basically as this kind of trickster,
and that's a kind of common sort of
literary device or,
literary character in ancient literature that there's this
trickster
figure
who is considered to be
very clever and gets his way by obviously
tricking people.
This is sort of praised
in the book of Genesis that God has
this type of
unconditional love
for Jacob despite all of his faults.
So things like that, Muslims will not
confirm. So the dominant opinion, and we'll talk
more about this as well,
is that
when the Quran speaks of the Torah that
was revealed
to Moses, peace be upon him, it's not
talking about what is today considered the Torah.
Right? Because clearly there are stories in the
so called Torah of today
that are unacceptable
from a theological standpoint, from an Islamic theological
standpoint.
There are many things in the Torah that
we would consider to be
accurate
and even true.
But at the end of the day,
Muslims don't rely on any other scriptures. All
of these scriptures from
the perspective of the Quran
and Islam have been abrogated.
Islam has its own scripture. It is the
Quran.
Islam has its own sacred law which is
derived from the Quran and the Sunnah of
the Prophet,
peace be upon him.
So anyway,
we were talking about proper comportment with the
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
The Imam of Medina
in the second century,
second half of the second century,
or right in the middle of the 2nd
century after Hijra was Imam Malik ibn Anas,
who died I believe 179
Hijri.
Students would come to him
and they would study
fiqh, they would study jurisprudence, and they would
study hadith.
And when they would study fiqh, he would
immediately begin teaching that. But if they wanted
to study hadith, he would prepare himself.
Oftentimes he would go, he would take a
shower, he would wear white clothes, he would
tie his turban, he would burn some incense,
put on some musk.
Why would he do that? It's because he's
going to teach the words of the master
Muhammad
So out of respect for the words of
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Ibn Mubarak mentioned something interesting.
He mentions that one time
Imam Malik ibn Anas, as we said the
Imam of Madinatul Munawwara, he was teaching his
famous hadith book, Al Muwata,
and
as he was as he was relating a
hadith of the Messenger of God,
peace be upon him, they noticed
that he would cringe and his face would
turn pale,
and this would happen over and over again,
but he wouldn't stop
the hadith of the prophet.
So,
after he was done with the hadith, he
told his students, look between
my shirt and my back, and they saw
that a scorpion
had lashed him something like 14, 15 or
16 times.
But he didn't want to cut off the
speech of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, so he continued
with the hadith.
So Gabriel, he sits in front of the
prophet peace be upon him, sort of locking
his knees and listening intently.
And then he says, however,
You Muhammad. So he calls to the Prophet
peace be upon him by using his his
first name.
Right? And this was something that is prohibited
to do. The companions,
did not do that.
Right? They used the title of the prophet.
Even God in the Quran
does not address the Prophet
directly,
by using his first name. He speaks about
the Prophet by using his name
in the 3rd person. Right? Muhammadu Rasoolullah, for
example.
But when Allah
is speaking directly to the prophet Allah
uses a title.
You ayuhar Rasool, You ayuha nabi'u. Why does
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala do that? It's because
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is teaching the ummah
of the prophet
how to address the prophet.
So here, however, Gabriel is saying, You Muhammad,
so the ulama say here that Gabriel is
posing as a Bedouin to conceal his identity
because the Bedouins were a bit
gruff. They were a bit rough around the
edges or the Irma must say that this
prohibition
is not for the angels, but only for
the human believers
in the prophet, peace be upon him. So
in that sense then Gabriel is actually sort
of subtly revealing
his identity.
Nonetheless, he says, You Muhammad Akbirni Anil Islam.
Tell me about Al Islam.
Of course this is the name of the
religion, but in this hadith, according to the
scholars of hadith,
this seems to be
a reference to the sort of
esoteric
or exterior
aspects of the religion, what sometimes
philosophers of religion call the sort of a
lateral or horizontal
aspect of the religion.
Of course, it means submission, submission unto God.
Fakar Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and then the
prophet responded to Gabriel
by saying al Islamu
and teshhada adlaillaha
illallah.
Right? So Islam is
to witness or to testify
that there is no Ilah.
There is no deity,
there is no god
except Allah,
except Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So there's no ilah. Nothing deserves
worship
other than Allah.
Nothing deserves worship.
Nothing other than God
has divine attributes.
Nothing other than God has the intrinsic ability
to help and or
harm you. So this is what is
testified on the tongue. Right? So this is
the first pillar of Islam,
Islam.
And tashhadah
shahhadah,
to testify, and it's done upon the tongue.
This is when this is this
is
when a convert
wants to become Muslim,
a proselyte becomes Muslim,
they will utter the shahada.
They will say, ashhadu,
I witness,
I testify.
There's no Ilah, there's no deity, there's no
divinity,
there's no other person
that has divine attributes that deserves or merits
worship other than Allah
And I bear witness that there's
and I bear witness that the the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the messenger
of God. So the prophet himself, this is
what he says here, Al Islam,
number 1, and tesh Adha Adla ilaha illallah
wa ana Muhammadar Rasulullah
is to testify
that there is no deity other than Allah
and that Muhammad is
the Messenger of God.
So one of my teachers, he said here,
this is something
interesting,
La ilaha,
right? That's atheism.
There is no God.
Illallah
except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala or except God,
capital g.
So moving from atheism into deism now, that
there is a God,
and that this God
is the sort of great architect of the
universe, the creator of all things.
And
now we move into theism,
So from atheism to deism
to theism. So deism, God is just
impersonal,
right?
But when we say Muhammad Ur Rasulullah
and Muhammad is a messenger of God, this
reveals
the personal aspect of God.
How does it do that?
Well,
it's it shows or it
is it is evidence of God's loving nature
that he sends human messengers
for the guidance of humanity.
So
through his prophets,
divine imminence
is
revealed. This kind of closeness
that God has to his creation. It is
through the prophets.
This is how God reveals
his loving nature.
So the Quran says, wama'arsannake
ilarhmatillilalanim.
Right? I always refer to this as
sort of the equivalent of John 316 in
the Quran. This is 21107
of the Quran
which the Prophet in which Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is speaking directly
to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
and he says we did not send you
except as a mercy
to all the worlds.
Right?
That the prophet, peace be upon him, is
the greatest manifestation of God's mercy because the
prophet is the greatest messenger of God. He
brings us total guidance,
guidance for all the world
until the end of time.
And of course all the prophets
are manifestations
of God's mercy.
I want to use that term incarnations of
God's mercy.
Not incarnations of God's person. That's a Christian
belief
that is intimated at least in the New
Testament Gospels, especially the gospel of John,
but that's a Christian belief. So,
the prophets
are examples of God's mercy in the Islamic
tradition. Even Jesus, peace be upon him, in
the Quran is also called a mercy.
That we will make Jesus
a sign of God, a great sign
and a mercy
from us.
Right? So we're moving from atheism, and of
course atheism
is
is, a position of belief. So the difference
between
a position of knowledge
and a position of belief. Right?
There are 2 positions of knowledge.
There's Gnosticism and Agnosticism.
Alright?
So most atheists, for example, the late Christopher
Hitchens,
famous atheist and author of this book God
is Not Great,
which has been definitively refuted by the way
by Berlinski's book,
David Berlinski, which you should get.
And John Lennox also has an extraordinary book
as well.
Nonetheless,
Hitchens always used to refer to himself as
an agnostic atheist,
meaning that
he is going to live his life under
the assumption that there is no God, but
he doesn't know for sure,
cannot prove that there is no God, so
he's an agnostic
atheist.
Right? It's very rare to get a Gnostic
atheist. In other words, an atheist who
who knows
with certitude that there is no God. And
then of course you have agnostic believers
and agnostic believers as well.
So then that's the first pillar then. Right?
There's no god but Allah,
and the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
is a messenger of God. Watukimu salah, he
says, and to, and to
establish the prayer. So this is a second
pillar.
Right? And the prayer salah
comes from a root word which means to
connect.
So,
the prayer is our connection
to God.
Watutia zakah, and to give zakah, to give
charity, and the word zakah comes from
a word meaning purification.
This is a type of
spiritual purification.
And
to fast the month of Ramadan.
Right?
1, 2, 3. This is the 4th pillar.
Muslims that are able to will fast the
month of Ramadan, 9th
month of the Muslim calendar,
as really a commemoration of the Quran, which
was,
which
whose revelation commenced
during the month of Ramadan.
And
to make pilgrimage in istata'at I lahi sabilla
if you're able to do so. That's the
final pillar
of Islam to make pilgrimage
to Mecca.
So this is the Prophet's answer for what
is Al Islam.
Right? And again, in this context
seems to be referring to sort of the
exterior aspect
of the religion. It is to say upon
the tongue there is no god but Allah,
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, Messenger of God,
to establish the prayer, to give the charity,
fast Ramadan,
and to make Hajj
if one is able to do so.
And then Qala Sadukta,
Gabriel said, you've answered
correctly,
or he confirms his answer.
And Sayna Umar he said
If that was surprising to us that this
person is asking the prophet a question
and then he confirms
his answer.
Right? And this was, you know, you can
call this sort of the Socratic
method, right, where the the teacher already
knows the answer,
but the teacher wants to
honor the student and have the student
give the correct answer.
Qalaf akhbirni al iman.
Now the second question,
tell me about al iman
and which is oftentimes translated as faith.
Right?
Eman
literally means to cause safety.
Right?
Safeguard your soul. It's it's related to the
Hebrew Emunah.
Right? So for example, the famous treatise of
Maimonides
is called the
Sherushah Asar Ikarei
Emunah,
right, the 13 principles of Jewish faith.
Right? And of course the word Amin is
related
to this as well. So to safeguard your
soul.
Right? So this isn't
you know, a blind. Imaan doesn't mean that
you just believe in something blindly,
believe without evidence,
you know,
belief without evidence. That's not what it is.
It means to accept something,
because the evidence points in that direction and
by doing so,
you safeguard your soul in the afterlife.
So here in this context,
so we have Islam, it's being contrasted with
Islam.
It seems to be referring to sort of
the inward
aspect or vertical
aspect of the religion.
Right? So the prophet, peace be upon him,
he said in hadith, which is sound hadith,
that the quintessential
Muslim,
right, submitter is the one that,
is is is he from whose hands and
feet sorry, hands and tongue and the feet
hands and tongue, other Muslims remain safe. In
other words,
the true Muslim is not harming, he's not
violent
with other Muslims, and he's not slandering and
backbiting and being calumnus
towards other Muslims. That's the quintessential Muslim, And
then the prophet also said, Al Mu'minu.
Right? The quintessential
believer.
Right?
The quintessential believer.
That the quintessential
mu'min,
believer,
right, the one who internalizes
the faith
is
the one
that humanity
humanity trusts
with their literally blood and possessions,
lives and property, lives and possessions.
Right?
So the sort of field of compassion
and love is expanded.
It begins with oneself. That's what it means
to be selfish. That's what the word idiot
means. Idios means self.
Right? The idiot only cares about himself, and
then it expands obviously to the family and
the community and,
and then to the Muslims and then to
the whole the whole of humanity.
Right? The whole of humanity.
In fact, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him,
he said in a famous hadith, which is
in Bukhari and Muslim,
rigorously authenticated,
that
that none of you truly believe until he
loves for his brother
what he loves for himself.
Right?
So he loves for his brother what he
loves for himself.
And
this that hadith I just mentioned, the source
of the hadith, as I said, is Bukhari
and Muslim.
But Imam An Nawawi also included it as
hadith number 13, I believe,
in his arba'een, in his famous collection of
40 hadith.
And in his commentaries,
he defines,
what does it mean? Who is your brother?
Right? None of you truly believe until you
love, until he loves for his brother, hatayuhbah,
liakhihi.
What does that mean?
He goes on to say in his commentary,
that means your brother,
Muslim or Jew or Christian,
really your brother in Bani Adam,
right, in humanity.
Right? But he makes that point. And one
of my teachers said that there are some
manuscripts
of
Imam Nawawi's
commentary
where that sentence
where where the Imam says Jews and Christians
is taken out
of of his
of
his out of his commentary
is apparently
there are some Muslims who don't want other
Muslims to think of Jews and Christians as
being their brothers,
which is unfortunate. So you have this
this tampering with these with these commentaries.
But that's an authentic saying from the imam,
and that's a sound hadith from the prophet.
So he continues. So what is al iman?
What is
faith? Right? What does it mean to safeguard
your soul?
Qala, the prophet said,
It is to believe
in God, right,
literally to safeguard
yourself by means of God.
Right,
or we can just say to believe in
God, and it's not simply
to accept the rational proposition that there is
a God.
Right? That's what that's what Satan did. Satan
accepts
that there is a God.
Right? He accepts that wholeheartedly.
But what is missing from Satan?
Why does the Quran call him a kathir,
which means an infidel if you want, that's
a Catholic word,
unbeliever,
a rejecter of faith,
is because Satan does not have a kabul
and idaan.
Right? He doesn't have acceptance.
He doesn't accept the guidance that comes from
the prophets.
He doesn't have submissiveness
or humility towards God.
Right?
One of the books in the New Testament,
which is very close
to Islamic teaching
is the epistle of James.
James obviously
is successor
of Jesus according to
Christian history.
He probably didn't write this epistle, but
it certainly sounds like something that he would
have written.
Seems like someone in his sort of school
of thought
wrote this epistle, but he says in there
that
that even demons believe in God.
Right?
Right? So it's it's not just about
what one accepts
rationally
or just sort
of accepts in oneself, but has no
has no
motivation
to manifest that faith in action.
Right? So faith and action, very very important.
So to believe in God then
means not simply to accept things on reason,
but to but to show one's faith as
it were.
Right? To perform righteous actions.
Believe in God, and in his angels, and
in his books, his scriptures,
and in his messengers,
and in the last day,
the day of judgment.
Al Yom Al Acher,
this day of judgment has different names in
the Quran, Yom al Qiyamah, like the Day
of Standing, Yom Ad Din, the Day of
Judgment,
Yom al Aker, the final day, the last
day,
etc.
So the Prophet here then gives us these
sort of 6 articles of faith.
Right? Believe in God, believe in angels,
and
there are
4 major archangels,
Gabriel and Michael,
Jibril, and then
Michal or Mikael,
Israfil,
which I believe is seraphial
in the Bible or
in Israelite tradition,
and then Israel.
Israel is not Israel.
That's Israel. Israel
is
also the angel of death,
and there are other angels
mentioned
in the tradition as well.
As far as the scriptures go, Muslims believe
in 4 major scriptures
and many minor scriptures that are sort
of indicated
as well.
The 4 major scriptures are the Torah of
Moses
and the Psalms of David, the Zabur,
the Injeel,
the Gospel
given to Jesus, peace be upon him,
is that the same as the
Christian Gospel? Is it the same as the
New Testament, the 4 Gospels?
It's not an easy question to answer.
The dominant opinion from Muslim scholars
is that those books,
what the Christians are calling the gospel,
is not the pristine gospel,
is not the actual revelation given that Jesus,
peace be upon him, although some of the
sayings of Jesus could certainly have been preserved
in these 4 books,
but that these books,
they contradict each other,
and they're written in Greek, which is a
foreign language to Jesus. This is sort
of the dominant opinion of Muslim scholars
and
they're written too late, decades later.
Of course there are different ways of looking
at these things or counter arguments to those
to those points as well, but this is
the dominant opinion.
Alright.
So for example,
well, there are indications in the Quran that
fabrications,
textual fabrications
were committed by Christian scribes
and Jewish scribes.
It seems like there's evidence of this
if you talk to textual critics of the
New Testament.
For example, there
are manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark that
end at chapter 16 verse 8.
And according to
imminent
textual critics of the New Testament, that's actually
the true ending
of Mark.
The oldest and best Greek manuscripts end at
Mark 16:8.
What does it say in Mark 16:8? Well,
it says that on Easter Sunday,
a group of women, 3 women, they go
to the tomb of the sepulcher,
and they find that the stone has been
moved away.
And there's an angel sitting inside the tomb
and the angel says to the women, you
seek Jesus
who has risen. He's gone ahead of you
to Nazareth or to Galilee.
Right? And then Mark says whoever wrote this
gospel,
he doesn't identify himself,
but tradition calls him Mark.
Mark says that the women ran away and
they were afraid and they said nothing to
no one, and that's the end of the
gospel.
So what happened? It seems like a cliffhanger.
Was Jesus actually resurrected?
Did he survive the crucifixion
and flee the city because he's afraid of
authorities?
What happened?
And then
a century or so later,
a few decades later, lo and behold, you
have
subsequent manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark where
there's now
a longer ending, as it's called,
verses 9 through 20 where Jesus actually appears
to the disciples, to male disciples and he
commissions them to go into all the world.
He tells them that they can handle poisonous
snakes and
drink poison
and no harm would come to them.
That's just one example.
So Muslims believe
in God, and we'll talk next week we'll
talk about
we'll give a little bit of
a little lesson on theology.
What do Muslims actually believe about God? Theology,
theos and logos, right,
means speech about God. What do Muslims say
about God? Who is God?
Do Muslims believe that God is 1?
A sort of
rigid type of Unitarian
monotheism.
Do gods believe that there's a plurality, if
you will, in the quote unquote Godhead as
Christians do?
Do Muslims believe that God has attributes? What
are the attributes? We'll go into a little
bit of that. Again, we want to keep
it very basic.
Belief in God,
angels,
the revelations given to the prophets
in their original form,
and messengers of God.
Right?
Orusulihi,
according to Muslim tradition, there have been about
a 124,000
or so prophets,
although that number is disputed.
As I mentioned, 25 of them mentioned explicitly
25 or so mentioned in the Quran
and belief in the final day.
Alright. So belief in God,
angels, revelations,
messengers,
day of judgment,
and that's the 6th article of faith.
Yeah. And that you believe in qadr,
and qadr
is difficult to translate,
Divine decree.
Right? Some people
sometimes they translate it as destiny.
I like divine decree or divine apportionment,
and notice here the prophet, he repeats, and
tukmina, that you believe. He repeats that verb
because
qadr is very hard to grasp.
Right? It's a difficult thing to grasp,
that you believe in the the divine decree,
the good and evil of it.
Right? That everything is from
everything is from God.
Right? So there's 2 terms in theology.
There's qadr and there's qada,
and some of the scholars say that these
terms are synonymous.
Others say that qadr is sort of the
measuring out divine apportionment, as we said.
God determines all things,
and then the qada is
the playing out, if you will, of
that divine decree in space time
in the world.
So you had groups in the past
that were known as the Jabariya,
absolute determinists
who said things like
human beings have no free will,
and so God cannot possibly
punish human beings because we have zero volition.
Then you have the other extreme,
the Qadaria
or the absolute
libertarians. We're not talking about political
libertarianism,
which believes that government should not have a
lot of intervention,
if any,
in our lives. No, we're talking about philosophical
or theological
libertarianism,
which espoused
that that human beings have absolute free will.
They create their own actions. In fact, God
doesn't even know
the juziyat or the
particulars
of of of of things. He only knows
sort of
the essences
of
things.
So
the truth is somewhere
in the middle, as they say. Now as
Muslims, we believe that everything is decreed by
God, God has perfect knowledge.
Right?
But at the same time human beings are
held accountable
for their choices.
Sometimes this is called soft determinism
or compatibilism,
right?
That even though everything is determined by God,
even though God knows
everything
and has the power to do whatever he
wants,
If an action
originated within a person
themself
from that person's wants and desires,
and there are moral implications to that action,
then that person is
is taking into account for that action.
Ultimately, it's difficult to understand. Ultimately, it's impossible
to understand.
Right?
So that's why the scholars say here that
that the Prophet repeats the verb and tukmina
that you believed because this is a difficult
thing to believe,
and it's difficult to think in terms of
God's power and knowledge,
yet he allows us to do certain things
and then takes account
for our actions. It's a very difficult
thing to grasp.
But
it's it's sort of like explaining,
you know, calculus to
a toddler
or to like a 5th grader. Right? They'll
get something
they'll get something from it.
There's a very, very limited understanding, but at
the end of the day,
the intellect really has to make sajdah
because it has to make
a prostration to God,
because
God's qadr,
his divine decree is beyond
our ability to comprehend.
If God didn't know what we're going to
do, then he wouldn't be God. That's not
a solution to anything.
Right?
But this is,
this is something that we can
discuss later as well. So it's it's
it's akin to what philosophers would call like
this this type of soft determinism.
Right? That you're still taking into account
for your choices, but your choices are indeed
limited.
Okay. So I think it that's a good
place to stop for tonight inshallah. We'll finish
the hadith next time,
and then I'll give you a little bit
of theology as well,
basic theology in the Islamic tradition,
And that'll complete next week.
That'll complete our section on
Basic Beliefs of Islam and then we'll move
in week 3 into Judaism, InshaAllah. Last week
we began reading the
famous
Hadith Jibril
the tradition
of Gabriel, peace be upon him. And we
covered most of the Hadith just to give
you a quick recap.
We said that Gabriel the
Archangel
incarnated
basically,
became a man and
came to the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wa
Salam in the presence of the companions or
some of the companions
and, sat in front of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam
and asked him a series of questions,
asked him about Al Islam, which of course
is the name of the religion itself, but
we said that in the context of this
hadith.
It seems to be a reference to the
exterior,
element
of the religion,
that which has to do with the body.
And then the prophet
answered the question by,
by,
explaining or listing the 5 pillars,
of Islam.
And then Jibril alayhi wasalam asked
the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam a second question
about al iman, what is faith.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam, he,
described the 6 articles of faith.
And that's where we left off.
Then Jibril
he says to the prophet
you have spoken
the
truth. So now we continue the hadith,
the famous hadith,
and there's a third question that Jibril alaihis
salam
asks the prophet
what is Al Ihsan?
Right?
And the the root word,
here is beauty.
Ihsaan is translated in a number of ways.
Spiritual excellence is one way of translating
it. So we said that Al Islam is,
a reference to sort of the horizontal aspect
of the religion, while
is a reference to the vertical aspect of
religion
or that which has to do with the,
body and the mind. And finally, we have
the transcendental
aspect of the religion or the relational aspect
or you can say, the soul of the
religion itself.
Al Ihsaan,
a technical term for Al Ihsaan is,
tasawuf,
According to many of the Ulema,
they are,
it's the same,
it's the same thing. They're synonymous.
Sometimes called Sufism.
But when we talk about Sufism, we're talking
about Sufism in the context
of both Islam and Iman.
Right?
We're talking about spirituality,
with a cognizance
that the true
that a true spirituality
from the context of our religion
is grounded in Islam,
as well as iman.
So tasawaf is just a technical term for
al Ihsaan.
Right?
The aim, if you will, or the the
the sort of if we use Aristotelian nomenclature,
the final cause
of the human being,
in the Islamic tradition
is,
to actualize
wilaia.
Right? Or friendship
with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. In other words,
to make oneself
beloved to Allah
And this is the aim of Al Ihsaan,
of Islamic Spirituality.
And different
Muslim metaphysicians and scholars,
they describe the process. Imam al Ghazali, for
example,
who writes about Tasawwuf Amali,
practical Sufism, if you will.
He recommends that Muslims must sit with
scholars. They must sit with the spiritual masters
and take from their prescriptions, take from their,
avkar,
take from their different
litanies and eulogies
and remembrances of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
One of those one of the great scholars,
Ahmed Zaruq, he said that you don't have
a spiritual master
then take a salaalalal Nabi as your spiritual
master.
Take the benedictions upon the Prophet Muhammad
as your spiritual master and Allah
will guide you spiritually by means of the
sala'al and nabi
because the prophet was
the greatest of spiritual masters.
So,
Imam Al Ghazali, he talks about, you know,
this sort of 3 step process
of,
of purging,
if you will,
the the lower self, the nafs of vice.
Right.
This is called a kenosis in Greek or
catharsis,
in the Catholic tradition,
to purge oneself, to get rid of these
vices. Right? What are what are some of
these vices? What are the vices? These are
diseases of the heart, the.
The major ones are,
like, arrogance,
and hasad, envy,
riya, right, ostentation.
So disciplining the lower self, emptying the self
of these of these vices, but also then
ornamenting
the self,
with virtue. This is, so the first one
he calls
This one he calls
right to ornament the self to to take
on virtue.
And of course, we know the cardinal virtues
of, you know, Adala and Shuja'a and Hikma'ifah.
But you also have these theological virtues. And
Imam al Ghazali,
he enumerates
19 or 21 theological virtues like Tawba,
like Sabr, like Repentance, like like Patience,
raja, hope, so on and so forth.
And then finally you have something called tajilia.
Right? This is to sort of manifest
the divine ethos
at a human level.
Right?
This is when
the abd becomes a wali, if you will,
a friend of god
because he mirrors
the divine attributes, the divine names and attributes
at a level
at the level of a human being.
Right?
So the perfect mirror, if you will, at
a at a human level of God's names
and attributes was the prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi
wasallam.
And Allah
in the Quran intimates this
when he calls the prophet by 2 of
his own names.
Right? That the prophet
there has come unto you a messenger from
among yourselves.
It grieves him that you should perish.
Deeply concerned is he about you. To the
believers, he is kind and merciful.
Right? So Allah
is
and
with a definite article.
Right? In this sort of absolute sense, in
a sense that is beyond
human capability, beyond human comprehension.
But something of that attribute,
right, is reflected in the character,
the beautiful character of Prophet Muhammad
And he said in a hadith and there's
weakness in the hadith but it's true in
its meaning
to
That to
adorn yourself with the character, if you will,
of god.
Right?
And the prophet is
mentioned in the Quran. Allah
speaks to him directly in the Quran.
Verily, verily, you dominate.
Is usually used in grammar
to denote something physical,
like upon the desk or upon the floor,
something like that, upon the roof. But if
there's,
an abstract noun that follows
then this denotes a type of mastery, or
tamakun.
So indeed you have mastered,
Churuk
Avim,
a great character, magnificent character, because he is
a reflection
of the divine names and attributes
at the human level. Right? So, like, Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says speaking to the prophet
in
the
Quran
You did not throw when you threw.
Allah threw. Right? Before the battle of Badr,
you know the famous story. The prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, he picks up some pebbles and
he throws them into the direction of the
mushrikeen.
Allah
says to him you did not throw when
you threw.
Right? Very interesting. But Allah threw. What does
this mean? Does this mean that Allah
incarnated
into the prophet and undertook
this action? That's not what it means.
It means that all of the actions of
the prophet
however mundane they might seem,
all of them are guided
by Allah
Right? He's a sanctified
agent
of the divine.
And this is the goal for all of
us. Obviously, we cannot attain
the
of of the prophets,
but we can attain we cannot be prophets.
We cannot attain but
we can attain.
Right? We can become from the of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he intimates
this in another hadith,
which is in Bukhari, which is hadith number
41 of the Arba'een.
Means 40, but Imam and Nawawi included 2
more hadith.
Right?
Where hadith number 41, where he reports from
the prophet where the prophet
is reported to have said
None of you truly believe
until his
his his
desires,
his caprice,
His
is in perfect
accordance
with what I have bought. And what did
the prophet
bring?
He brought the Quran
and his
ethos, the sunnah. In other words, he brought
he brought the guidance
from Allah
Right? And that is perfect. That's perfect iman.
That's that's an actualized type of of of
faith
is that your desires and wants
are perfectly aligned
with what Allah and his messenger
wants. This is a definition, if you will,
of
reminds me of something Confucius says in the
Analects, the Lun Yu, where he says,
at at 50 years old, I understood
the mandate of heaven.
And at 70 years old,
he says,
at 7 years old, I followed my heart's
desire without overstepping
the line.
Right?
So he's describing this type of wilayah.
Confucius
did believe in god
and,
there
the jury is out whether I mean, he
certainly could have been a prophet. There's a
good case to make, I think,
being Confucius
just as there's a good case to be
made for Sadar Sadaratha Gautama or the Buddha,
being a Khidr mentioned in the Quran.
So this is this is in other words,
this is mystical union. Right?
When your desires align with the guidance of
Allah
the term for that is mystical
union.
And,
there's other hadith that intimate this this phenomenon.
Hadith number 38, for example, in the also
from Bukhari
where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is reported
to have said let me, look at that
really quickly here. So this hadith Qudsi, this
is a sacred hadith
where Allah
will speak in the first person.
So an Abi Horeira
it's reported from Abu Huraira may Allah be
pleased with him
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said
that,
Allah says whoever antagonizes
or shows enmity towards my
towards my friend.
Right? Again, is
the final cause of the human being
according to,
the,
philosophy of Islam, if you will, or the
psychology of Islam.
The one who antagonizes
this friend of God
and I have announced to him war from
me. Allah
declares war on the person,
who,
antagonizes
the friends of God.
It's interesting you have a, you know, a
plethora of
of Christian and Christians and atheists who are
basically working full time
on the Internet,
trying to discredit and denounce the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam.
Basically, it's a it's a it's an everyday
verbal assault. You have YouTube channels with 1,000
upon 1,000 of
of prescribers.
This is something that Allah
or subscribers. This is something that Allah,
tells us about in the Quran. This is
what he says is going to happen. This
is just natural.
That indeed indeed
in Arabic is is a lot of emphasis.
Indeed indeed, you will hear a lot
from those who received the revelation before you,
the
and the mushrikeen,
which is interesting. The Quran doesn't necessarily affirm
atheism.
There were very, very, very few atheists in
the ancient world.
There were a few but the Quran does
not entertain atheism.
Everyone worship something. You're either from Ahlul Kitab
or you're a believer
or you're a mushrik.
Right? So if you say, for example, the
universe created itself,
you're assigning to the universe
a quality of Allah
You're saying that the universe
created itself. It's the of it or it's
the first of all. But then he said,
no. The universe didn't create itself. The universe
always existed. It has a sort of,
internal,
pre eternality that's called
an essential pre eternality
that's an attribute of
Allah So these are mushrikeen,
basically. That's that's called shirk.
Right?
So you're going to hear a lot
from people of different faiths, from people that
are mushrikeen,
that is going to grieve you. Right?
A lot of sort of white noise.
But if you show patience,
great theological virtue,
and you guard against evil, right, you guard
yourself from this type of thing,
then that will be
the determining factor of all affairs. Now this
doesn't mean that you can't ask
questions to seek, you know, clarifications.
Asking questions does not does not necessarily come
from a place of doubt.
Right? We have to remember that as well.
Someone asking questions, even if they're difficult questions,
does not necessarily mean that this person is
having issues with their iman or something like
that,
that we should
constantly seek to fortify
our iman. But anyway, continuing
the hadith, this hadith
That my servant does not draw close unto
me. Now again, the speaker here is Allah
on the tongue of our master Muhammad
My servant does not draw close unto me
with anything more beloved by me than
his right? His obligatory
acts
of worship.
And he continued.
And he continues to draw close unto me
with his
with his, superogatory
acts of worship.
Right?
So you have the 5 pillars of Islam.
These are
the
and then you have.
You have extra.
You have the, for example, the 5 day.
Right? The Mustahab day is the sunnah day
And you have sadaqa,
extra.
You have the Hajj, which is fart. You
have umrah, which is extra. That leaves one
pillar, the shahada.
Shahada is essentially a form of dhikr. You
say it on the tongue, as we said.
You testify on the tongue. What is the
nafila
of the shahada? It is adkar. It is
dhikr,
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and
additional
It is eulogies and benedictions upon the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Right? So the beloved of actions
are
but then the the
hadith Qudsi says
draw
near unto Allah
with the extra credit as you will. The
until
I love him or her. The masculine is
used here. Right?
The the female gender is encapsulated,
in the masculine gender. It's understood to be
there.
Until I love him.
Until this is god speaking. Until I love
him.
And then he says, and when I love
him,
and when I him. Right?
When I love him, I become his hearing
by which he sees and his and
by by which he's, sorry, his hearing by
which he hears and his sight by which
he sees.
And his hand,
by which,
he strikes,
and his foot, his rijal, by
which he walks.
And if you were to ask anything from
me, I shall surely give it to him.
Right? If he were to ask anything from
me,
I shall surely give it to him.
And, he continues,
if he were to ask me for refuge,
I should surely grant him it.
Right? So this, that hadith is in Bukhari.
It's a sound hadith, hadith, Qudsi.
So going back to the hadith of Jibril
alayhis salam
Okay.
And the
this is the
gives here a beautiful
says
spiritual
vacation,
of the soul, the relational aspect of the
religion, the soul of the religion.
It is to worship Allah
as though you see him, as if you
see
him. If you, and if you don't see
him,
indeed, he sees you.
Right? So
as if one is raptured
in the beatific vision of Allah
Just to give you a basic worldly example,
if your boss comes into your office and
says, make a sale right now.
And he sits down in your office
and he watches you, how excellent of a
sales call will you make?
Right? That's just your boss at work,
right, who you might not even like very
much as a person.
But when you worship,
worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as if you
can see Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And we
cannot see Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala but then
know
know in your very being
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
sees you.
And then he says
Right? So there's a 4th question. Sometimes we
can push the pause button on this Hadith,
Islam,
but there's one more question,
one more major question. There's actually
5 questions, but one more major question.
What,
so tell me about asa'ah, the hour, I
e, the day of judgment.
The hour. Right?
The word hour in English comes from the
Greek hora. This is the same word that's
used,
for the day of judgment in the New
Testament, for example, which is written in Greek.
So it begins with a omega, but there's
rough breathing. So hora, that's why there's an
h,
when we say hour.
So tell me about the hour and he
understood this question to mean, when is the
hour?
Right. Now the hour is close, the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasalam
and he put up these two fingers
The hour and my
very close like this. So he is the
eschatological
prophet. He is the first
of the major
signs of the his coming is the first
major sign
of Asa.
Right? When you look at the entire history
of humanity,
it's very, very close.
So
the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam's answer is
The
the one who being asked the question,
right, the one who's being questioned knows no
more than the questioner, the the
meaning Jibril alayhi salaam. Nobody knows the exact
time of
the. This is a secret
that Allah
has kept for himself.
Right?
In the Quran, it says they ask you
concerning the Sa'a.
When will it be established?
Allah
commands the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, to
say the knowledge of the
is only with my lord.
The knowledge of the is only with my
lord. So nobody knows.
Nobody knows when it is. In fact, in
the New Testament,
you have the saying that is attributed to
Isa alaihi salaam
in the gospel of Matthew chapter 24 verse
36,
when he says, of that day.
Right? Of that day knoweth no man, not
the angels, not even the Son, but only
the Father. Now before we continue
we have to understand here
that these terms,
Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
these are Hebraisms.
You actually find these terms, these sort of
ingredients
of the Trinity,
the ingredients of the Trinity,
right, not the doctrine of the Trinity. The
ingredients in terms,
the momenclature of Trinitarian Christianity
is found in the Old Testament, but they
have different meanings.
So what the early Christians did is they
took terms, they appropriated them, and redefined
them
through a Trinitarian
lens.
So in the Old Testament,
in Jewish texts,
even at the time of Isa alaihi salam,
this is this is a a Jewish prophet
in a Jewish environment.
Right? When Jews called,
Allah
the father,
what that meant was
sorry. What that meant was rub. So ab
father means rub. Right? Isaiah chapter 6416.
You are the Lord our father.
This is totally majaz.
It's figurative language.
Right? It's figurative. No one means this. No
Jewish prophet. Isaiah did not mean that in
a literal sense that God is a literal
father or God is my literal father or
that God is the literal father of anyone.
And when I say literal father, I not
only mean in the literal physical sense, but
I mean any that anyone shares a nature
with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Anyone
find quality with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Nobody
does.
We'll get into some of this, theology.
And then the
word son. Right? You find this in the
Old Testament.
Israel is my son, even my firstborn. In
the Psalms, god says to David,
you are my son, this day I have
begotten you. What does that mean? What does
it mean to to be a,
Ben Adonai, Ben Elohim.
Right? Ibn Ola. What does what does that
mean in a Jewish context? It simply means
Abd. It means slave or servant.
Right? And it's a great to be a
servant of Allah.
It's a great station to be the servant
of Allah. It's not like when we you
know, we use these terms slave. People think
of, you know, slave in the American context,
like chattel slavery. That's what it is.
Right? Because in that type of relationship, the
slave is
dehumanized,
humiliated,
and the only one that benefits is a
slave master.
But in the relationship with Allah
the slave is honored,
and he benefits. The slave benefits. We cannot
benefit
Allah
one iota. There's nothing that we can do
that can possibly benefit him. We take all
the benefit.
So it's a great to be the Abdapar
excellence, and the prophet
took great pride in the sense that
Allah frequently refers to him in the Quran
as his
Right? So
son in a Jewish context son
means means servant.
Right?
And father
in a Jewish context
means.
Right? So we have to keep that, in
mind. So what does it mean for Jesus
to be the son? Right? Because in the
New Testament, he refers to himself,
more often than not as the son of
man,
and there's different ways of interpreting that. It
seems to be
a a way of stressing his humanity or
just a way of saying prophet or just
human being,
but sometimes the Son. Now this could be
obviously,
there could be,
alterations that the text has suffered.
But again, keeping things in a Jewish context,
if he's the son
Right? So first of all, he says we're
all children of God.
Right? Sermon on the Mount
in in in Matthew chapter 5 also in
the the book of Luke. In Aramaic, he
says,
our father who art in heaven. They ask
him, how do we pray? He's pray like
this.
Our father who art in heaven,
hallowed be hallowed be thy name.
Right? Our father, not just his father, all
of us. And, again,
means rub. So I would actually translate that.
The meaning of that is.
Oh, our lord. That's what it means.
Right? So what does it mean then for
Jesus to be the son or, you know,
You know, the one of a kind son.
What does that mean?
Well, Christians take that to mean
that he's the second person of a triune
godhead.
But it simply means that he's the Messiah.
Right? Isa, alayhis salam, has this unique title.
He's a unique Abd, and the prophet
is also a unique Abd, and Musa alayhi
salam is a unique abd.
Right? Unique Abd. Unique slave of God. So,
anyway,
going back to this idea of the I
have to explain this sort of before we
get into this. So Matthew 2436,
he says,
of that day knoweth no man.
Right? Not the angels
in the Greek. Not even the sun, not
even the Messiah, not even this unique servant
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, meaning himself, but
only the father, only the Rub
only the Rub knows this the this the
the day he calls it.
So here,
according to a Christian text, which is a
canonical text,
authoritative text, the gospel of Matthew, the most,
the most popular gospel in all of antiquity,
admits he doesn't know. Now what's really interesting
is later scribes,
they removed
that that statement
from manuscripts of Matthew's gospel.
Later Greek manuscripts, they omit that. So Jesus
says, of that day knoweth no man, not
the angels in heaven, but only the father,
which still doesn't help really because the Son
is not the father. You can't say that
the father is the same person as the
Son. That's a violation of Trinitarian theology.
But these scribes, whenever they were, probably 2nd,
3rd century, they found it very troubling that
Jesus, who's supposed to be God,
doesn't know something because.
Right? Very important concept. God has these sort
of omni attributes.
Right? He's omniscient.
He knows everything. He's all knowing.
Right? This is called a qualitative
attribute of God. God has certain
attributes,
that qualify him as being deity.
One of them is omniscience. We
call them in Arabic.
Right?
Perfect knowledge. Does it increase? Does it decrease?
It's perfect.
So the fact that Isa alaihi salaam, according
to this Christian text, whether it's authentic or
not,
it doesn't really make a difference to us,
right,
whether it's authentic or not. But according to
this text, he admits that he doesn't know
something.
And if he's God, he's supposed to know
everything.
Of course in Numbers 23/19,
this is in the Torah or the modern
day Torah,
Numbers 23/19.
It says, Lo Ish El, God is not
a man.
Alright? That he should lie. Numbers 23/19.
God is not a man is just three
words. I always have my students memorize it.
Go God is not a man.
Not a man is
That he should lie is the rest of
that statement. So Christians, how do Christians deal
with this statement? God is not a man
that he should lie. They say, yeah. God
is not a man that he should lie.
In other words, God can become a man
and he did become a man.
He became Jesus, peace be upon him,
and Jesus never lied about that. Right? But
that's not the actual meaning of that verse
in Hebrew.
And this is something that rabbinical authorities point
out in their debates with Christians. This goes
all the way back to, like, the 3rd
century.
Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea,
who used to debate Christian apologists,
He said that's not the meaning of it.
The meaning is
whoever
claims
any man who claims to be God, he's
a liar.
Right? So that's the meaning of it. God
is not a man that he should lie.
Any man, any human being who claims to
be God is a liar. And that's not
the only place. We have Hosea chapter 11
verse 9.
Indeed, I am God and not a man.
They are 2 mutually
exclusive entities.
Right? So the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam, he's
The one who is being questioned knows no
more than the questioner,
and he continues.
So now we have,
yet another question.
So Islam, Iman. Right? Ihsan, Asa'ah.
Now a 5th question, a clarifying question, number
5. Maybe just, you know, 44 a question
4 a.
So tell me about you don't know when
is the
but tell me its sign's importance.
Right?
So why is this important? Because we need
to recognize
the signs of our times,
right, and be able to guard or protect
ourselves
against evil.
That's why there's a very fairly large corpus
of what's known as eschatological
literature in our tradition. The prophet sallallahu alaihi
sallam, he spoke a lot about
the importance of the and
the,
the trials and tribulations
that are going to manifest towards the end
of time. Because the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, he's not just a bashir.
He's he's not just a a bearer of
glad tidings.
Yeah. It gives the bushra.
One naveera
and a warner.
He's here to warn us about things.
So the prophet
he gives us warning. This is part of
his vocation
as a prophet.
So what does the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam,
what does he say? He says,
statement.
He says that
the,
slave girl or the lowborn baseborn girl
will give birth to her mistress. Mistress means
female master.
Right?
That a girl will give birth to her
mistress
or master.
So the urnama, they have difference of opinion
about this, but generally they say that the
meaning of this
is that towards the
there's going to be sort of a flood
of what's known as filial recalcitrance,
The opposite the opposite of
the opposite of filial piety, which is so
important, and everything starts at home.
All of
Confucius's
philosophy
begins
with.
Right?
You know? So this bolsters or buttresses
our case for Luqman al Hakim as being
look as being Confucius
because he's giving advice
to
Right? He's teaching his chil his son, his
children.
So filial
recalcitrance. So you have this idea now,
this kind of postmodern philosophy that's floating around
in colleges and universities,
society in general,
this idea of radical
absolute egalitarianism
in the society,
which has never worked.
History has shown it's never worked.
Hierarchical
structures are
very important to society.
Those work,
and they're they're tried and they're tested that
there's always going to be well, you can't
equalize people. It's just not going to happen.
People have different abilities. People are born into
different types of,
class and status and wealth. There's always going
to be a and.
There's always going to be, you know, a
a noble class or the the nobility, the
nobles, if you will,
influential, wealthy, and there and there's going to
be the the the laity or the commoners.
That's how it works. Hierarchies work. They work
in the workplace. They work in in educational
institutions,
and they work in the family. This the
the the study that I cite
oftentimes,
Charles University in Prague where the researchers discovered
that that,
households
where one spouse is dominant over the other,
those households tend to be happier and have
more children. What do I mean by dominant?
I don't mean that one spouse is oppressing
the other one. I mean there's a clear
sort of social hierarchy within the family, a
chain of command
where the person at the top they are,
they're magnanimous in the way that they treat
their family, but the buck as it were
stops at that person.
They have the sort of final say within
the household,
And this this study found that 72%
of those happy families were male dominated.
So there's a reason why Allah
says
You know, the Quran is not trying to
be misogynistic
and,
and, you know,
because that's, you know, this this whole a
whole idea of patriarchy, and we need to
smash it and and build up a I
mean, good luck with that. These things are
not going to work. Right?
So this idea
of of, you know, children now ruling their
parents.
Right?
I just saw a thing on the news
the other day. There's a show on Netflix.
I think it's called the babysitter's club or
something like that where you have this, you
know, 8 year old
boy who's in the hospital,
biological boy, and you have these doctors that
are treating this patient as as a boy.
And then one of one of his friends
or someone, a girl comes in and says,
can I talk to you? Two doctors outside.
And this girl who's like 10 years old
or something, the friend of this boy who's
sick, begins to just lecture these these grown
adult physicians.
I don't care what your chart says.
Look at her.
It's a girl.
You know, treat her like a girl.
You're being violent or something. You're you're creating
an unsafe space for this girl. It's actually
a girl.
So now we just kind of live in
make believe land. And the doctors are sitting
there, doctors, physicians
in their fifties listening to this 10 year
old girl lecture them. Okay.
You're right. You're right.
Very, very strange.
Okay. So And then he says,
So that's the first one he says. The
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he says, the the
slave girl will will give birth to her
master. And then he says something interesting. You
will see the bare footed, naked,
destitute
herdsmen
competing,
in the construction of lofty buildings.
Right?
So
why these two signs? Why these two portents?
So does the scholars say that, well, one
will come very quickly
and one will come later, or one will
come within the family
and one will manifest,
in the society.
The the barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds, herdsmen,
competing in the construction of lofty buildings. Right?
So in other words,
love of the world, the New Testaments,
love,
love of mammon. Right? That's how Isa alaihi
salam, at least according to the New Testament
puts it,
you know,
the the Hadith says,
love
of the world,
is the head of every type of sin,
love of the world.
Right? So this idea of, you know, shepherds,
naked, barefoot,
now competing in lofty buildings,
it means that
can take root even in the most unlikely
of places.
In the most unlikely of places,
simple shepherds, Bedouins living in the desert in
tents
are now fully engrossed
in love of mammon as it were, love
of the world.
Right?
There's a Surah of the Quran,
that,
that we, we know very well, but we
seldom contemplate.
Surah 102.
What does
mean? It comes from Kathir.
It's form 6 verb,
which denotes this kind of reciprocal action.
So you have this sort of mutual
competition
or rivalry.
Right, for stuff, for kethra, for a lot
of stuff.
The Quran says,
That this this mutual
competition
or consumerism
amongst yourselves
deludes you or distracts you.
Right? It distracts you.
Until you visit the graves.
Right? The meaning is either until you go
into your grave, and that's really when you
wake up.
Because said,
human beings are asleep, and when they die,
they wake up.
That's when
the
Or it means that you should go to
the graveyard. When you actually go visit a
graveyard, that's when people start putting things
in perspective.
Right? That's why we should go to funerals.
Somebody dies in your community, and there's a
janazah prayer. Go to the graveyard.
Go look at the burial.
Right?
And this, you know, takathor,
this idea of of of competition. You know?
You
have a perfectly
good phone.
You know? You you gotta buy another phone
because your your cousin has a a the
latest iPhone. Your phone is perfectly good. But,
no, you have to compete with this person.
And that's just in, you know, in one
little gadget.
There are people like this. They spend their
entire lives
just.
Very interesting. So the prophet,
his two portents that he gives us.
Right? He tells us basically, number 1, there's
going to be a major breakdown of social
structures.
Right?
We're going to enter into a type of
social chaos,
and then we're going to,
there's going to be a sort of dominance
of materialism.
People will fall into total
materialism.
Right?
And another thing he said it's not mentioned
in the Hadith here, in the Hadith of
Jibril, but the prophet
he said that there are other signs, other
portents of the Sa'a, the coming of the
Antichrist is one of them.
If you look at Isa alaihi wasallam, if
you look at our Christology,
Isa Alaihi Salam,
according to the Hadith of the prophet,
his message is is,
It's it's otherworldly.
Right? He's talking about mote, about death. He's
talking about akhira.
He's talking about
purifying the self.
You know, he says the dunya is like
a bridge. Hurry up and cross over it.
He says the world is like a man
who's at sea,
trapped on a on a on a
boat, completely lost sea. He starts taking handful
after handful of seawater into his mouth,
which is representative symbolical for the dunya. The
more he drinks,
the more thirstier he gets, and then it
kills him.
Right?
He says the world is like a haggard
old prostitute
who sticks her hand out from behind a
wall, which is all, you know, bejeweled with
rings and and,
and nail polish and and bangles
and wave over to her. So the men
go they they go and they look around
the corner, and then she grabs them and
slaughters them. That's the nature of the dunya.
Right? So the antichrist then, the,
Masih Ad Dajjal, his message is the is
the polar opposite of Isa alaihi salam,
is that salvation is through materialism.
This is all there is,
so just enjoy your life.
Right?
And this is, you know,
you know, the the bare footed naked destitute
herdsmen competing,
in the
construction of lofty buildings. That's how the prophet
described,
this,
this phenomenon,
very dramatic sort of way of putting it.
And then he says,
Said no Umar, he says, then this man
left, and I stayed for a while. And
the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasalam, he came to
me and
said,
yeah,
Umar
Do you realize who the questioner was?
In Saydul Omar, he says Allah
Allah and his Messenger know best.
Jibril.
Indeed,
he was Jibril Alaihi Salam.
Yes.
The age of Horus.
Indeed.
This is what,
Crowley says
in the Lieber Legues.
Aleister Crowley, one of these sort of
hidden figures that have so much that has,
influenced American Western society, now world the world
in such an incredible way.
The founder of the modern religion of Thelema,
which is a type of satanism.
Right? He wrote this book called the Liber
Legues, which he claimed was dictated to him
by a shaytan,
by a a demon named Ewas, which is
interesting. Sounds
like And in that book he says,
you know, Crowley says that we're gonna enter
into the age of Horus, the age of
the child.
Right?
The dominance of the child.
In other words, an an an age of
of
of a lack of discipline, an age of
of just
just following the.
Right? Follow an
age that there where it's unreasonable
because the the the purpose of the
means to bind something.
Means to like the to the hobble a
camel.
The prophet
said about the camel running around outside the
Masjid. So whose camel is that? The Bedouin
said, that's my camel.
I've trusted Allah. He said tie her down.
Right? The intellect is supposed to tie down
and control
the nafs, the Hawa, the Caprice.
This goes all the way back to PLATO.
We've mentioned this before. The rational soul has
to has to be in the driver's seat
to to to keep the appetitive soul and
the striving soul in check,
but it's the age of Horus.
I'm sorry if there's problems with the audio.
I'm the only one here today.
We can work that out.
God
incarnate is an Arian and Greco Roman concept.
Well,
Arianism is is,
it's hard to it's hard to, pin down
Arian Christology.
It's god incarnate is certainly a trinitarian
belief.
That's orthodox Christianity.
Right?
In Carnatus Est, it's in the Nicene Creed.
It says in the Niceneo Constantinopolitan
Creed that god came down and assumed flesh.
That's what that
means, incarnation.
What did Arius
actually believe?
Most of his
writings are lost with the exception of
Most of our information about Arius comes from
his opponents,
which you can't really trust. Can you really
trust your opponents to reproduce?
Even according to,
Christian theologian who wrote the book,
It's a very good book. If I can
think of the title,
classic
classical Trinitarian Theology.
Right? He says in that book, Toom, t
o o m, he says that it's
it's known that many of the early church
fathers, they would,
they would,
belie Arius, they would misquote him, they would
quote him out of context,
but something seems to be nefarious because it's
in the Nicene Creed
is the belief
that that Jesus Christ peace be upon him
that, the the son of God
and he used that term but not in
a Trinitarian sense.
Son of God there was a time when
the sun did not exist.
Right? That was sort of the the credo
of the air of the Arabians. It's according
to the Nicene Creed. In Greek,
There was a time when he was not.
There was a time when he, the son
of God, was not. And Arius referred to
Christ as kittisma,
creation.
The sun is created. He used the term.
Right?
So
that's sort of one way of looking at
Arianism.
The other way of looking at it is,
well, okay. That might have been true, but,
did Arius somehow
still
give the sun some sort of semi
divine or demigod
status
to the I mean, that's certainly how some
of the early church fathers
portray him.
That the early church fathers ironically
are defending monotheism
in the face of what they believe is
a type of bithism
which is being espoused by the Aryans.
So Trinitarian monotheism
for the early church fathers is a real
type of monotheism,
whereas what Arius was saying is that Arius
is trying to propose that there are actually
2 gods, the Father and the Son.
I think that's probably a misrepresentation
of Arianism. I think Arius believed,
based
on what,
cursed me as far as
my research, that Aries believed that the sun
was was created at some point, that
he
calls him, the best of creation.
Right? That was that was Aries.
Okay.
So anyway,
he says
that was Gabriel.
He came to you to teach you your
religion.
And that's the end of the Hadith.
Right?
Now I only have a few minutes left.
I want to just,
read a few statements from the beautiful creed,
very ecumenical
popular creed of Imam Abu Jafar at Tawawi,
the the world famous creed which is derived
from
the Quran, the mutawatir
of the multiply attested
hadith of our master Muhammad
and
the Ijma,
the the consensus of the first three generations,
the salaf
of the Muslim ummah.
Just read very quickly here. He says so
number 1 and, of course,
creed. The word creed comes from the Latin
credo, which means I believe.
Right?
So, creed in Arabic is,
which is related to the Hebrew word,
like, the binding of Isaac, Genesis 22.
Right? To bind something. That's what
the the root
is. Right? Release the sort of knot from
my tongue, which is the prayer of Musa
Alaihi Salam. So these are these are beliefs
that are binding upon us. It's just a
a list of our beliefs.
This is the aim of the creedal theologian.
Right? The aim of the creedal theologian is
simply to articulate
our basic beliefs, just a list of our
beliefs, and it's different than.
Right? Al Mu'Kalam
or dialectical theology
or possibly a better translation. I don't like
speculative theology, but
discursive theology.
The aim of the discursive theologian,
the
is to reconcile
our belief,
our sacred texts,
with reason.
Right? So it's not just,
you know, we believe in God and this
is who God is.
It's, you know,
is belief in God reasonable? Is belief in
revelation reasonable? Is belief in angels reasonable?
Right? So
here he's assumed the role
of a of a accretal theologian.
Right? So he's not gonna get into a
lot of
discussion, a lot of,
dialectics, if you will.
So he begins by saying
God is 1, and he has no partner.
And some of the urlamas say here that
here denotes a sort of internal oneness of
God, that he's one quote unquote person
using the person
as an entity which has a personality.
One entity.
Right? Persona
or hypostasis
in Greek.
In other words, a sort of godhead
in Islam is a simple unity,
rigidly one, Unitarian
monotheism.
In Christianity,
when it comes to the essence, attributes, and
actions of god so in our tradition,
no one shares
in the essence and attributes
and actions of god.
No one has the essence, attributes, or actions
of Allah
except Allah
who is rigidly 1 in internal oneness
is In Christianity,
3 hypotheses,
3 persons
share in the essence, the attributes,
and actions of God, the father, son, and
holy spirit.
It's why Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he says,
Don't say 3. Doesn't mean trinity. It could
mean trinity,
but it means 3. Don't say 3, whether
it's 3 gods.
Right? In other words, like a sort of,
Neo Platonic or Middle Platonic,
hierarchy of being
where there's it's really more henotheistic, where there's
one major god, but then there's 2 sort
of minor gods
that are that are effects of the major
god or the one.
Right? So the godhead is sort of 3
distinct gods
that have similar essence.
Don't say that.
Don't say one essence in three persons.
So this verse,
the way that it's worded is is is
incredible
because not only is it denouncing
Trinitarian monotheism,
but also these types of middle Platonic,
henotheistic
tritheism,
all of these types of things because that
was also very popular. This predates Christianity.
Middle platonic philosophers.
They talked about the one. They talked about
the,
you know, who who who caused from his
being the logos, they use that term, or
the noos, the word,
and through self intellection,
this kind of emanation, and then you have
another emanation
from the from the logos, from the noose
that created this the the what they call
the,
psuche,
the psyche, the spirit,
Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Right? Christianity
is heavily influenced
by middle and and and neoplatonism
to the point where in the gospel of
John you see that word.
In the beginning was the logos,
and the word was with God, and the
word was God.
Again, we so what we have with Christianity,
you have an appropriation
of Jewish terminology
redefined through a trinitarian lens. You also have
an appropriation of Hellenistic philosophy
and theology,
redefined
through a Trinitarian lens.
Right? So with the New Testament books, especially
John, you have sort of one hand on
Plato and Aristotle and the other hand on
the Tanakh, the Old Testament. And it's really
sort of marrying the 2 together.
This is why Imam al Ghazali warns us
in the Tahafut al Falasifa that it's very
very dangerous to get into these to get
into Hellenistic metaphysics.
He's not an anti scholastic. Imam Al Ghazali
says in that text,
he says, I'm not against,
you know,
you know you know, the the the hard
sciences, the natural science. That has nothing to
do with your religion.
Right? He says if if a if a
scientist comes up to you and says you
can predict,
the the eclipse of the moon or something,
that's fine. Don't argue with
them. But steer clear of Hellenistic metaphysics
because look what it did to Christianity.
And look what it did to Judaism as
well. Philo of Alexandria, highly influenced, middle platonic
philosopher
who talks about a deuterostheos,
a second god that he calls the
logos. Right? He lived in Egypt and Alexandria.
That's probably where the gospel of John was
written as well. Anyways, I'm out of time.
It's the essence of the theology.
So next week InshaAllah Ta'ala we'll continue and
we'll go into Judaism.