Ali Ataie – Ramadan Reflections Sincerity
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AI: Transcript ©
Ramadan Kareem.
This is the blessed month. This is
a month,
the month of the Quran. This is the
month in which Allah,
favored humanity
by revealing,
the final revelation,
the Quran.
As Muslims, we believe
in the totality of the revelation.
We believe in the wahi, the revelation
that came to the prophets of old.
We believe in the revelation received by Ibrahim,
alayhis salam, and Ismael, alayhis salam,
to Musa, alayhis salam,
Ta'is salaam.
And finally, culminating
with the Quran, the revelation received by our
master, Muhammad
the Quran
is
a truly unique book.
It is the source
of our,
social theory, of our political theory,
of our ethics,
and of our theology.
Theology is an interesting word from theos, and
Greek, and logos,
to speak about God.
So what does the Quran say about Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala? In other words, what does
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
say about himself?
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gives us
a beautiful surah in the Quran, which is
the essence according to the ulama,
it is the essence of our theology.
It is the kernel, the core of our
theology.
Qas Suratul Ikhlas,
this Surah has many names.
Al Ikhlas is one of them.
Al Asas,
the foundation.
At Tawhid,
the Surah of Divine Unity.
Allah
commands the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
Say he is Allah.
He is Ahad, he is 1.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is absolutely 1.
He has no partners.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala does not share his,
his divine attributes,
with anything or anyone from the creation.
Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is absolutely independent.
He did not beget nor was he begotten.
And there's nothing comparable unto Allah
So the Quran
presents itself
is not only a,
a confirmation
for, a confirmation of what went before
with respect to the previous revelations and dispensations.
For example,
Allah
as we said,
describes himself as Ahad. This is also how,
Musa alaihis salam,
describes
God in the Torah.
That he is
in the Hebrew. And are are exact cognates.
That he's absolutely one.
But the Quran also is a corrective.
It corrects
the false theologies
that had crept in,
to the previous Ummah.
And the dominant opinion as well is that
the Quran
is a text that also,
is the
way by which we can judge the previous
scriptures.
Because when we look at the previous scriptures,
for example, the Hebrew Bible or the New
Testament gospels,
there are things in those books that are
very questionable.
From our perspective, things that are simply impossible.
There are things that are attributed to prophets
that could not be possible.
So this is called
that there's been a corruption of the actual
text.
And this is something that's
admitted by historical scholars
of the old and new testament.
Quran,
made this claim
14 centuries ago.
So the Quran is
correcting
these previous,
the beliefs of the previous peoples.
Now one of the ways in which Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala corrects
the theology
of the previous peoples is with respect to
something called Christology.
So as Muslims, and this is something that
is interesting for a lot of non Muslims
to hear, is that Muslims actually believe
in the Isa alaihis salam as a prophet
in Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. And
Jesus is from the Greek, Iesus. We say
Isa.
His actual name in Aramaic is Yeshua.
And then Christ, Christ doesn't mean anything like
like he was crucified or something like that.
Christ is from the Greek Christos,
which is a translation of the Hebrew Moshiach,
which means the anointed one, Al Masih.
So, Risa Al Masih.
So in the Quran,
we have a corrected or renewed Christology.
Right? Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in other words,
tells us the truth about Isa Alaihi Salam.
So we have what's known as
a positive Christology.
What is Isa alaihis salam? And the what,
you know, the the essence. Who is he
essentially?
Is he human being or is he God?
Of course, Christians believe that he's both, that
he's a,
he is a divine incarnation.
He's a 100% man and a 100% God.
That's called Trinitarian
Christianity or Chalcedonian
Christianity.
So what is a sallaihi salam? And what
is what is he not?
And then we have something called
negative Christology.
So so who is a Isai alaihi Salam,
and who is he not? So positive and
negative,
with respect to what and who, the essence
in the particular.
So our position as Muslims of our position,
which is based in the Quran,
is that, Isa alaihis salam. What is he
essentially? He's a human being. He's a messenger.
Had Khaled bin Qabihi Rusl. Many messengers went
away before him.
Now who is he?
According to the Jewish position,
Ysalalai Salam was simply a rabbi.
And the way that he's presented in sacred
Jewish texts
is,
not very well.
Very unflattering terms.
In the Talmud, for example, the Babylonian Gemara,
he's insulted. He's denigrated. His mother is denigrated.
The Christians,
with respect to what is Jesus Christ, peace
be upon him, what is his essence? They
say he's divine.
Who is he? They say he's a prophet.
He's the Messiah.
So we confirm the latter, that Isa alayhi
salam is a prophet.
And the Quran says,
Oh, people of Al Kitab. And perhaps Al
Kitab here is the Bible because the word
Bible, Biblion, literally means,
the book. Oh, people of the book.
Don't go to extremes in your religion. Both
of these positions are
are viewed as extremes with respect to Isa
alaihis salam.
That you have one side
that believes that he was a false prophet,
a false messianic
claimant, and that's all he was. And then
he was executed, tortured, and executed by the
Roman authorities
at the be at the,
request of the Jewish authorities,
religious authorities.
And then the other side was saying that
he was a divine incarnation, that he is
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So the so Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala reveals
to the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam
these verses that are correctives with respect to
Christian theology.
It's interesting if you talk to Christians on
the ground, people who go to church,
many of them, maybe the majority of them,
don't read the New Testament.
I read an article,
in a Christian magazine called The Greatest Book
Never Read, and it was about the Bible.
And the the the author of the article
was a Christian and he said that he
went to churches at random
and he would ask parishioners coming out of
the church to name the 4 gospels in
the New Testament. And he said 50% of
people that he asked could not name the
4 gospels,
in the New Testament.
So a lot of these people, they're going
to church for cultural reasons, for social reasons.
And it's interesting also
that you'll get a myriad of opinions
when it comes to things like,
trinity or divine incarnation.
Ask the Christian. Explain the trinity. What is
the trinity? You'll get a myriad of explanations,
the vast majority of which are not,
in accordance with the findings of these ecumenical
church councils that were held
in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and
8th centuries.
The first seven of the ecumenical councils. Of
course, the most,
famous of these is the 1st ecumenical church
council held
at Nicaea in 325
of the Common Era, presided over by Constantine,
the first Christian
emperor. And it was here at Nicaea
that they decided the bishops decided by vote,
the proto orthodox bishops,
by vote that
Isa alaihi salam
is
essentially
the same,
as
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. The term for that
is
hamausios,
which means same essence or co substantial.
This term, hamausios, is not even found in
any New Testament
book.
What we find, however, in the New Testament,
especially in the first three gospels,
is the humanity of Isa Alaihi Salam.
Right? A rabbi, comes to Isa alaihis salam
in Mark chapter 10 verse 18. He says,
good master,
what must I do to gain eternal life?
And Isa, alayhis salam's response to him is,
why are you calling me good? No one
is good but 1, and that is God.
So Isa, alayhis salam, according to the gospel
of Mark, which is the earliest of these
4 gospels, and there's problems with all 4
of these gospels.
There's no doubt about that.
There are some,
ulama who take the position that the text
might be sound, but that the tahrif is
in the in in the Mana or in
the exegetical
Christian tradition, that's a minority opinion.
But in this earliest gospel,
we have Isa alaihis salaam denying even being
good from his Tawadur,
denying
even being good, let alone
being God.
And then you get to the gospel of
John, and this is really the gospel that
Christians will use to to
prove that Isa, alaihis salam, claimed to be
God. But nowhere in these
in in the gospel of John, nowhere in
any gospel does Jesus say in a clear
unambiguous statement that he's God or worship me.
Now there are certain things that Christians will
point to
that amount to divine claims,
But the gospel of John interestingly was written
probably 90 or a 100 of the common
era.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are before John. So
in John, you have all of these divine
claims that are missing in Matthew, Mark, and
Luke. So if those divine claims are historical,
why didn't it why didn't John's predecessors actually
record them? It doesn't make any sense. You
would think that if Jesus is going around
claiming to be God like He does in
John apparently,
I am the way, the truth, and the
life. Before Abraham was, I am.
In the beginning was the word. The word
was with God. The word was God. Although,
that's the prologue says, whoever wrote this gospel.
If if Jesus is making those those previous
statements, why isn't Matthew, Mark, and Luke
recording these? You would think that they're quite
important.
So logic tells us that he never made
these statements. He never claimed to be God.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the
at the end of Surah Al Maida in
the Quran.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us
that Allah
will ask
Isa on the Yomul Qiyama according to the
commentators.
Did you ever say to the people,
take me as a god or my mother
as a god or a divinity?
Right? An ila, someone who has
divine characteristics
or divine attributes,
in in in derogation
or in addition to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And, of course,
for Christians at least in the Orthodox truth,
quote, unquote, Orthodox tradition or Trinitarian
understanding,
Isal Islam, as we said, is a divine
incarnation.
He is the, the incarnated son of God
who has pre eternality,
who who shares an essence with the father.
Right?
So did you ever say to humanity, take
me or my mother?
Right? In the Catholic tradition, Maryam alaihi salam,
it's called Theatakas,
which some have translated as the mother of
God or the carrier of God.
And her status keeps rising.
In the Catholic church, the Pope made ex
cathedra pronouncements. In other words, infallible pronouncements
that Mary was born from an immaculate conception
and that she was assumed into heaven
and that Catholics, they they pray to her
image, they kneel before her statues.
So they're assigning to her what seems like
to be divine characteristics. They don't outright worship
her.
They don't do that.
But they're giving her,
they're they're treating her as if she has
divine qualities.
And Allahu Alam, maybe sometime in the future,
there's going to be outright worship of Maryam
alaihis salam. Of course, the protestants have been
charging the Catholics with Mary olive tree, which
means the worship of Mary
for 100 and 100 of years.
So Allah
is asking, Isa, alayhi, salam. And according to
our exigence, he's asking, Isa, alayhi, salam, in
front of the whole of humanity, did you
ever say you are a god or your
mother is a god or a divinity or
have or have divine qualities of some sort?
In addition or in derogation to Allah
The response of Isa, alayhis salam is interesting.
Allah,
glory be to you.
Subhanaka, glory be to you, he says,
It is never for me to say
what is not my right.
If I had said that,
you would have known that.
You know what is in myself, but I
don't know what is in yourself.
You are the knower of all things. You
are the knower of the unseen, things that
are hidden.
I never said to them anything except what
you commanded me to say. And what was
that?
To worship Allah,
my
lord and your lord. This is the central
message of Isa, alayhis salaam.
And, in fact, this is basically what he
says in the gospel of John.
John 17:3,
the high priestly prayer. He's talking to the
father. And when you read the father, you
should put that in context, in his Jewish
context.
You see, in the old testament, the book
of Isaiah,
Isaiah prays,
you are the Lord our father. What does
that mean? That means rub. Ab means rub.
This is a term of endearment. It's totally
majaz. It's figurative.
Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, our father
who art in heaven, Avun Dovash mayo in
Aramaic. Our father, all of us. He's the
Reb of all of us. That's the meaning
in its context.
You see? So he's speaking to the father,
the Reb. And he says, this is eternal
life. John 17:3,
to know you
to know you, the only true God. Who
is the only true God? The Rabb,
the father.
And to know Jesus Christ, the one you
have sent. This is eternal life.
To know
to know Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as the
only true God and to know Isa alaihsalam
as one who is sent from Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
La ilaha illallah,
Isa Rasulallah.
This is the kalimatayn
of the Christian Ummah.
Right?
So
this obviously requires a lot of scholarship. It
requires a lot of
sophisticated
delving into text, into languages.
Inshallah,
we'll continue,
looking at these things,
looking at the ocean, the Bahar. Imam Ghazali
calls the Quran
a just a Bahar of wisdom.
And there are different verses in the Quran
that he classifies
as jewels and rubies
and and and pearls.
In InshaAllah Ta'ala,
we'll continue to look at these ayaat
and look at the theological and Christological
significance of these ayaat and explain them in
a way
in which Muslims, even the youth, can explain
these things
to their Christian friends or Jewish friends or
their friends in humanity
to accurately,
explain the message of the Quran.