Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection Our Crisis of Knowledge
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AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
In our previous two sessions, we were examining
the hadith of the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him,
And we said that these are the 5
pillars or supports
of the religion. You know, I once asked
a Christian apologist who was trying to to
basically argue,
against the Quran
if he knew the 5 pillars of Islam.
Right? So, surely, if you presume to have
enough knowledge
to argue against the Quran, then you
then surely, you know, the 5 pillars. I
mean, it's so basic.
Now remember, he said oneness of God
and prayer,
and that's when he sort of just got
stuck. And that was it.
So he got stuck after number 2.
I read an article once in a Christian
magazine called,
The Greatest Book Never Read. It was by
a Christian author. That was the title of
the article, The Greatest Book Never Read, and
it was about the Bible.
And so this Christian author, he was or
journalist, he was criticizing his fellow Christians.
And he concluded in this article that 50%,
50%,
of Christians that attend church cannot even name
the 4 gospels in the New Testament. They
don't even know the names of the gospels.
These are Christians who actually go to church.
And when I mentioned this to one of
my teachers, he said, well, probably
50% of Muslims coming out of Jum'ah
cannot even quote 1 Hadith of the prophet
in Arabic.
Just one hadith.
So that's a problem. This is a crisis
of knowledge among Muslims.
There are Muslims in our communities who have,
you know, Bollywood movies
memorized from start to finish,
but they can't quote a hadith to save
their lives.
They don't prioritize
and they don't even try.
But that's the thing, though, that the tongue
is the revelator
of the heart.
In other words, you can determine who or
what a person loves,
by what he's always talking about
unless he's a hypocrite, but that's a whole
different animal.
What are people talking about all the time?
There are people who
are constantly talking about food
or, you know, cryptocurrency,
you know, Bitcoin. People talking about women or
men all the time. People talking about social
media,
something they saw on TikTok.
If if one claims to love Allah and
his messenger but can barely read the Quran
and cannot quote one statement
of the messenger whom one claims to love,
then that's a problem. We need to recognize,
that problem.
Now interestingly,
even though fasting is one of the essential
supports of the religion,
The Quran,
contains only one passage
consisting of 5 verses, so 5 ayaat that
deal explicitly with fasting. So Al Baqarah
183 to 187.
However, the Quran is a book, as I
say, is teeming with meaning.
That is to say, it is an extremely
polyvalent
text. It has multiple layers of meaning
and has an incredible wisdom density.
Why is that?
Because it's the ultimate,
I. E,
the last revelation of God. It has to
stay relevant until the Sa'a, until the eskaton,
until the end of time.
It was either Said Na Umar or ibn
Umar who said,
if I lost the halter of my camel,
I would know where to find it in
the Quran.
So that's true dedication.
True dedication to the Quran
is when the Quran becomes your ultimate source
of guidance in all of your affairs from
the mundane to the spiritual, from the lowest
to the highest.
Over the centuries, our exegetes have written thousands
of pages explaining these 5 ayaat
because the Quran is an ocean according to
Imam Al Ghazali. He calls it Al Bahar
and it's an ocean that keeps on giving
as long as we keep fishing.
Right? So that's the caveat.
We have to stay engaged.
Imam Al Ghazari, he said that a lot
of Muslims are stuck on the shore, on
the beach, satisfied with the outward, the basic
outward meanings of the Quran.
He said dive into the ocean of its
meanings and collect its precious jewels,
its rubies and pearls.
And by rubies, he means the theological verses
of the Quran, the verses that describe Allah
and give us the Marifa to Allah,
intimate knowledge of God.
And by pearls, he means the verses that
describe
the way to Allah, the silaat al mustaqim.
So you have orthodoxy and you have orthopraxis.
So let's take a closer look at one
of these ayat Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says
in verse 183 of
Oh, you who believe fasting has been prescribed
upon you just as it was prescribed upon
those before you, la'alakuntattapoon,
which can be taken as a purpose clause,
meaning in order for you to have taqwa.
Now allow me to preface my comments about
taqwa
by saying the following.
A severe difficulty. And I've mentioned this before
in talks in recent times, but I think
it's very, very important. Must be reiterated
that a severe difficulty that many Muslims face
today is a loss of faith, a loss
of iman,
among themselves, among their family members and friends
and relatives.
And I think this is due to several
factors. Well, number 1, ignorance.
Right? Jahal,
you know, a simple lack of knowledge, not
knowing.
But number 2, which is just as bad
and maybe even worse, is the proliferation
of misapprehension.
In other words, think thinking, you know,
thinking you know something when you don't know
it. This is called jahalmuraktab,
compounded ignorance.
For example, somebody came up to me,
once and said the Koran advocates violence,
right, and was trying to convince me into
believing that the Koran advocates violence. And this
is someone who
probably,
read some article
last weekend or something about the Koran.
And I said, well, you know, I've been
studying this text for many, many years. He
said, no. No. No. You don't know. This
is what he's trying to tell me. The
Quran actually advocates
violence. So this is someone who this is
somebody who who doesn't know the truth, but
thinks he knows.
Right? This type of,
jahlmurakkab.
It's it's a very, very bad state. And
then, of course, the third reason, the popularity
of trendy modern philosophies and social movements.
Of course, there is atheism and atheism goes
back 1000 of years in the West, probably
as far back as Democritus.
But since 911, there has been a renewed
fervor of atheistic discourse.
Some call it new atheism.
In my in my opinion, it's really
anti theism.
In other words, they're not simply arguing that
there probably is no God.
They argue that even if there is a
God, that we shouldn't obey him. This is
their attitude.
It's not this idea that all religions are
meaningless, but if it floats your boat, then
go ahead. No. They're saying that religion is
actually evil,
that religion needs to be eradicated.
This sentiment was captured accurately by the late
Christopher Hitchens, who said there is no God
and I hate him.
That is anti theism.
Now there is one thing that all of
these antitheists have in common.
They never study traditional
or normative theology.
They always focus on the social end the
social impact of religion.
So Islam is bad because of suicide bombers
or because of these fools called ISIS.
Christianity is bad because of * priests,
and the KKK.
I mean, that's the only card that they
have to play. Right? The social impact of
religion.
And then when theists do the same thing
to them and say atheism is bad because
of Mao and Lenin and Marx and Stalin,
they say no. No. No. No. No. You're
misrepresenting
us.
You're misrepresenting
us. Right?
It was very, very interesting.
And, of course, there's something
called,
existential
nihilism.
Right? This idea that life has no meaning.
It doesn't matter. We're all Sisyphus.
Right? We're all rolling up these boulders,
up these mountains.
Life doesn't have any meaning.
There's no higher telos. There's no purpose. Just
maximize your pleasure
because YOLO,
right?
You only live once. It's all about hedonism,
whatever feels good, as long as you don't
harm anyone else. That's the caveat they usually
give, this kind of John Stuart Mill, the
harm principle.
So it's the age of feeling, like Robert
George. This is what he calls the time
that we're living in. Right. There was the
age of faith. There was the age of
reason, but now it's all about feeling.
Nowadays, things are no longer defined
by, you know, a sacred text or by
the intellect, but by your feelings.
We will continue with our reflections in the
next session inshallahta'ala.
Until then, assalamu alaykum.