Ali Ataie – Islam in a Nutshell The Basics of World Religions (Part 2)
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AI: Transcript ©
This is the 2nd session
of our class
entitled
The Basics of the World Religions.
Today we're going to,
talk about the religion of Islam.
We're going to finish
our discussion on the religion of Islam, inshallah,
and then we're going to, move, next week
into Judaism,
Inshallah. So last week
we began reading the
famous
Hadith Jibril alaihis salam,
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, peace be upon him,
the archangel
incarnated,
basically,
became a man and,
came to the Prophet Muhammad
in the presence of the companions, or some
of the companions,
and sat in front of the prophet
and asked him a series of questions,
asked him about al Islam, which of course
is the name of 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
asked
the prophet
a second question about al iman, what is
faith?
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he,
described these 6 articles of faith.
And that's where we left off.
Then Jibril alaihi salam, 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
asks the prophet
what is al Ihsan?
Right.
And the the root word,
here is beauty.
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 iman
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 Ihsan,
a technical term for Ihsaan is,
tasawaf,
according to many of the ulama.
They are,
it's it's the same,
it's the same thing. They're, 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
is just a technical term for
al ihsan.
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
right or friendship
with Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. In other words to make oneself
beloved to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And this is the aim of al Ihsan,
of Islamic spirituality.
And different
Muslim metaphysicians and scholars.
They describe the process. Imam al Ghazali, for
example,
who writes about,
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.
One of the great scholars, Ahmed Zarook, he
said that if you don't have a spiritual
master
then take a salaalalal nabi as your spiritual
master.
Take the benedictions upon the prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alaihi wasallam
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
via
in the Catholic tradition,
to purge oneself, to get rid of these
vices. Right. What are some of these vices?
What are the vices? These are diseases of
the heart. The the
major ones are kibber, 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 tahliya.
This one he
calls right, to ornament the self, to take
on virtue.
And, of course, we know the cardinal virtues,
of, you know,
and
and Hikma'ifah,
but you also have these theological virtues. And
Imam al Ghazali,
he enumerates
19 or 21 theological virtues like toba, like
sabr, like repentance, like like patience,
raja, hope, so on and so forth.
And then finally you have something called tajaleya.
Right. This is to sort of manifest
the divine ethos
at a human level.
Right.
This is when
the becomes a 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
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.
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,
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. Right.
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,
a great character, magnificent character, because he is
a reflection
of the divine names and attributes
at the human level. Right? So, like, Allah
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
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 maqamat
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 auliya of
Allah. And the prophet
he intimates this in another hadith,
which is in Bukhari, which is hadith number
41 of the
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,
And if 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
alhuda, 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 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.
And 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 Siddhartha Gautama or the Buddha,
being a 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 subhanahu wa ta'ala, the term for that
is mystical
union.
And,
there's other hadith that intimate this this phenomenon.
Hadith number 38, for example, in the Arbaeen,
also from Bukhari
where the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he's reported
to have said, let me look at that
really quickly here. So this hadith Qudsi, this
is a sacred hadith
where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will speak in
the first person.
So
it's reported from Abu Huraira. May Allah be
pleased with him.
That Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala said,
that, Allah says whoever antagonizes
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 wa sallam.
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 subhanahu wa ta'ala
or subscribers. This is something that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala,
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 Ahlul Kitab
and the mushrikeen,
which is interesting. The Quran doesn't necessarily affirm
atheism.
There were very, very, very few atheists in
the in the ancient world.
There were a few, but the Quran does
not entertain atheism.
Everyone worships something. You're either from Adil 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 subhanahu wa ta'ala.
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. And 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 fara'id,
and then you have nawafid. You have extra.
You have the,
for example, the 5 day.
Right. The mustahab day is a sunnah day
Good. 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,
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
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 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 love him, right,
when I love him I become his hearing
by which he sees and his
and by which he's, sorry, his hearing by
which he hears in his sight by which
he
sees,
and his hand,
by which,
he strikes,
and his foot his
by which he walks.
And if he 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 you were to ask me for refuge,
I should surely grant him it.
Right. So this, that hadith is in Bukhary,
it's a sound hadith hadith Qudsi.
So going back to the hadith of Jibril
alayhi salam.
Okay.
And the prophet
this is the
gives here a beautiful
perfection 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 Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
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
as if you can see Allah
and we cannot see Allah
but then know,
know in your very being
that Allah
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. One more major question.
What,
so tell me about,
the hour, I e, the day of judgment.
The hour. Right?
The word hour in English comes from the
Greek
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 the 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 wasallam
kahatein and he put up these two fingers
sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
The hour and my all for very close
like this. So he is the eschatological
prophet. He is the first
of the major
signs of the hour. 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
answer is
The
the one who being asked the question,
right, the one who is being questioned knows
no more than the questioner, the the
meaning Jibril alaihi sallam. 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
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 this saying that is attributed to
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
momenclature
of tr
nomenclature of trinitarian Christianity
is found in the old testament, but they
have different meanings. So what the early Christians
did is they took terms, he appropriated them
and redefined them
through a trinitarian
lens.
So in the old testament,
in Jewish texts,
even at the time of 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
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
the god is a 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
Anyone's find quality with Allah
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?
What does what does that mean in a
Jewish context? It simply means.
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 Abdupar
excellence, and the prophet
took great pride
in the sense that Allah
frequently refers to him in the Quran as
his
Right?
So
sun in a Jewish context,
son means, Abd means servant,
right, and,
and father
in the Jewish context
means
rub, 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
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 Matthew chapter 5 also in the
book of Luke. In the 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,
ab 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 alaihis salam has this unique title.
He's a unique Abd and the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam is also a unique Abd and
Musa alaihi 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 24:36,
he says,
of that day knoweth no man.
Right? Not the angels
in the Greek. Not even the son. Not
even the messiah. Not even this unique
servant of Allah meaning himself, but only the
father, only the rub
only the rub knows this the the 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
salam,
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,
god is not a man,
right, that he should lie, numbers 2319.
God is not a man is just three
words. I always have my students memorize it,
God is not a man.
Not a man is God. 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 wasallam is
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, assa'a,
now a 5th question, a clarifying question, number
5, maybe just, you know, 44
a question 4 a.
So tell me about okay. 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
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
he's not just a bashir.
He's he's not just a a bearer of
glad tidings.
He gives the
and a warner.
He's here to warn us about things.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
gives us warning. This is part of his
vocation
as a prophet.
So what does the prophet
what does he say? He says,
Ajib's 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 ilema, they have a 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
of,
the opposite of filial piety, which is so
important and everything starts at home.
All of,
Confucius'
philosophy begins
with.
Right? You know, so
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 chill his son, his
children.
So 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 an. There's always going
to be, you know, a a noble class
or 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 subhanahu wa
ta'ala 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 bit.
I mean, good luck with that. These things
are not going to work. Right?
So this idea
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 his friends or someone,
a girl, comes in and says, can I
talk to you, 2 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
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 wa sallam. He says, the
the slave girl 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 2 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 Testament,
love,
love of mammon. Right? That's how
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
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 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? And the meaning is either until you
go into your grave, and that's really when
you wake up.
Because Saida Ali 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
janaza prayer. Go to the graveyard.
Go look at the burial.
Right.
And this, you know,
this idea
of of of competition.
You know? You have a perfectly
good phone.
You know? You gotta buy another phone
because your your cousin has, 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.
For people like this, they spend their entire
lives just takafur.
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 the coming of the antichrist
is one of them.
If you look at Isa alaihi wasallam, if
you look at our Christology,
Isa alaihis salam,
according to the hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi salam, 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 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, his
message is the is the polar opposite of
Isaid,
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
sallallahu alaihi wasallam
described,
this, this phenomenon,
very dramatic sort of way of putting it.
And then he says,
He says, then this man left and I
stayed for a while, and the prophet,
he came to me and said,
Do you realize who the questioner was?
And Sayyidina Umar he says,
Allah and his messenger know best.
Indeed,
he was Jibril alaihis salam.
Yes.
The age of Horus.
Indeed.
This is what,
Crowley says
in the Libert Liguez.
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 Lages,
which he claimed was dictated to him
by a shaitan,
by a a demon named,
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 hua,
Right? Follow the nafs,
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? A 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 nuffs, the, 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.
Inshallah, 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 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 Toom O'Thoum, a 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 they would misquote him.
They would quote him out of context,
but something seems to be from Arius because
it's in the Nicene Creed
is the belief
that
that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, that,
the the son of god,
he and he used that term but not
in a trinitarian sense,
the son of god, there was a time
when the son did not exist.
Right? That sort of the the credo of
the air of the Aryans.
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 creation.
The son is created. He 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 Arians.
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 missed representation
of Arianism. I think Aries 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 mutawater
of the multiply attested
hadith of our master Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam,
and the Ijma,
the the consensus of the first three generations,
the salaf
of the Muslim.
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, alayhis salaam. 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?
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 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, the sort of godhead
in Islam is a simple unity,
rigidly 1,
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.
He's
In
Christianity,
3 hypotheses,
3 persons
share in the essence,
the attributes
and actions of god, the father, son, and
holy spirit.
That's why Allah
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 1 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 3 persons.
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 nous, 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,
sukhe,
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 Tahafatul
Filasifa 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.
That's the essence of the theology.
So next week, inshallah, we'll continue and we'll
go into Judaism.