Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection Moral Inconsistency of Disbelief

In our last session,

we said that the higher meaning of the

shahada

is to experience

and understand that there is only one God

to see Allah,

as it were,

in all things.

The atheist

or the material reductionist

only sees the horizontal aspect of things, never

the vertical.

This is called explanatory

monism.

For example,

when they see a flood, all they see

is water. They don't acknowledge the vertical aspect.

They only see the

asbaab,

right, the material means.

Imam al Ghazali, he said,

that's like seeing the pen writing, but not

acknowledging the hand moving the pen.

According to Rumi,

they don't see that the objects of their

love, their wealth, their families, etcetera, they don't

see that these things are

gold plated

by Allah's attributes.

They notice the gold but not the attributes.

When Iblis

looked at Adam alaihis salam, all he saw

was clay.

Right? And so he concluded,

I am better than him.

Right? Isn't it obvious? I mean, look, look

at me. I'm created from fire. This is

created from clay.

He's just looking at the material.

The followers of shaytan,

they don't see

the test of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in

this world. They don't see the mercy of

Allah

in this world.

These stories of the past that are meant

to be

admonitions and warnings.

They don't see the meanings in these things.

All they see is randomly colliding atoms

and fizzing stardust.

And there is no moral component to their

worldview.

On atheism,

the act of a man murdering another man

has as much to do with morality

than a stone rolling down a mountain side.

It's just atoms striking atoms.

Atoms and stardust

do not have conscience.

They have nothing to do with morality.

You cannot be objectively

immoral on atheism.

Morality for atheists is simply a convention.

There cannot be any moral absolutes for them

because there is no absolute

for them.

You see, the principles of the disbelievers

are not grounded in reason and revelation,

but rather in their own Hawa,

in their own caprice and desires.

They will insist, for instance,

that an amoeba,

right, a single cell organism found on the

planet Mars

constitutes

life.

That's life,

right? And that should be celebrated

or that people who eat chicken eggs are

committing some sort of

murder.

Yet

many of these people fully support the act

of an unborn human child

being ripped limb from limb,

from his mother's womb

because moral inconsistency

does not faze them.

They are guided by their feelings,

by their hawa,

right? For them, there is no higher authority

than the self, the nafs.

If the self is gratified by murder, then

murder becomes

justified

morally.

For atheists and moral and, for atheists and

material reductionists,

the mind is simply reducible to the physical

brain.

Right?

Therefore, they'll argue

if a person suffers,

some sort of

physical trauma to the brain, like a concussion,

then that person's memory or mind

is affected.

Now that's true, but to say that the

mind can be simply reduced,

to some physical process,

to firing neurons is ridiculous.

How do you go from a 10 pound

lump of matter in your head

to thought and memory and consciousness,

as Oxford professor John Lennox said, and I'm

paraphrasing,

that is like saying that the meanings of

the that is like saying that the meanings

of the words in a book are the

same as the ink and paper

upon which they are written.

See the physical thing carries the meanings, but

the meanings are not the same thing as

the physical thing.

In the Quran Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says

to the prophet

It's an amazing statement

that when you call them to guidance,

they don't hear you.

You see them looking at you, but they

didn't see.

They're looking at you, but they didn't see.

So in the language of scripture,

in the language of the Quran, you even

find this in the the Tanakh, the Hebrew

Bible. You find it in the New Testament.

To hear something means to obey,

and to see means to understand the reality

of something.

And we use that even today. Like we

say, oh, I see.

To see with your mind's eye.

Right?

We mushrikeen,

those who do not see Allah Subhanahu Wa

Ta'ala in all things.

They don't know who the prophet

really is.

Exigits point to,

point out that this verse

should be read in conjunction with the preceding

ayah,

They have hearts with which they don't perceive.

They have eyes by which they don't see.

They have ears with which they don't hear.

They are like cattle

or even worse than cattle.

They are the heedless.

You see when Abu Lahab, the uncle of

the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, when he looked

at the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,

he said this is my orphaned nephew.

That's all he is. He's just judging the

superficial.

That's it. But when Al Abbas

or Sayid Nhamza,

when they looked at their nephew, when they

looked at the prophet

they would see Sayidu Waladi Adam. They would

see the master of the children of Adam.

They would see Rasulullah,

the Messenger of Allah.

They recognized his essence. They recognized his reality.

So that's the first pillar or support

of our religion.

It is to witness

that there's no God but Allah

and that the prophet

is the messenger of God.

We will continue with our reflections

in the next session.

Until then, Assalamu alaykum.