Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflection Our Crisis of Knowledge

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.