Ali Ataie – Similarities in the Abrahamic Tradition Ustadh (Interfaith Dialogue)
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AI: Transcript ©
In the name of God, the compassionate, the
merciful. It's an honor to be here. I
spoke at this function, like, 4 years ago
or something.
Does anyone remember that?
Oh, you're gonna get the same jokes. So
you probably already did get the same joke.
All right.
Well,
I've been tasked to talk about some of
the similarities between the Abrahamic tradition.
So I wanna begin by saying
what I believe to be the heart of
the Abrahamic tradition.
What is the heart? What is the essence
of it?
So
interestingly,
there was a rabbi in the 2nd century
named Hillel, and some ascribed this to Akiva,
where he was asked by his students, what
is the essence of the Torah?
Right?
And he responded with 3 verses or
from the Torah. The first verse was Deuteronomy
64,
Devarim 64
which sounds like this in Hebrew,
Right? Here are Israel, the lord our god,
the lord is 1.
And he continued, Deuteronomy 65.
And you shall love the lord thy god
with all thy,
heart, soul, and strength.
And then Leviticus 1918, and love your neighbor
as yourself.
And he said, the rest is commentary,
which is not to say it's not important.
They're at all important, but he's giving you
the essence. What's very interesting about this is
that in Mark 1229,
Right? A scribe comes to Jesus, peace be
upon him, and when we say the names
of prophets, Muslims usually say well, they should
say, sometimes we forget,
peace be upon him. And
Jesus in Arabic is,
a very common name amongst, Muslim boys.
That a scribe comes to Jesus, peace be
upon him and says,
what is the greatest commandment?
Right? The greatest commandment. And interestingly,
Jesus, he quotes these three verses.
That God is ahad,
Alright.
Or in Arabic
The word is in the Quran.
Right?
There's a chapter in the Quran
which is 3 verses long. It's an entire
chapter and it's only 3 verses.
And it's called it has many names. One
of the names is a Tawhid,
which means the chapter of
oneness
or unity.
It's also called
which means like the foundation of theology.
The first verse says,
Say,
he is God
who is who is one and only.
So Jesus repeats these verses.
Right? Exactly
what Akiva
or Hillel, whoever it's described to,
repeats a century or so later. Now, one
of the greatest scholars of Islam,
was a man named Fakhruddin al Razi. Everyone
say, no, I'm just joking.
We can call him Imam
al Razi.
Imam al Razi.
And he was a Persian scholar, and I
heard Persian scholars are, like, the best, by
the way. They're number 1 in in my
book anyway.
I'm Persian.
And we prefer Persian over Iranian, by the
way. Anyway,
so he said, I'm just kidding. He said
They asked him, what is Islam?
And he said, to quote him, he said,
he said,
which means Islam is
worship
and adoration of the creator
and showing mercy
towards his,
creation.
Adoration of their creator, mercy towards his creation.
And the word in Arabic for mercy is
rahma.
Rahma.
And the word for the womb of a
mother
in Arabic is raham,
also in Hebrew, raham.
Right?
So there's a very interesting
analogy or
connection here that Muslim
exegetes like to point out. That the
purest type of love on earth is probably
the love of a mother for her child.
But one of the names of God in
the Quran is Ar Rahman which means like
the
indiscriminately
compassionate.
The indiscriminately
compassionate,
Ar Rahman.
And then Ar Raheem, another name of God
in the Quran
which means like more focused love, intimately loving,
indiscriminately
compassionate
and intimately loving.
Right? So these are the 2 most common
names or attributes of God in the Quran.
Right?
So, there's this whole issue, do Muslims and
Christians and Jews worship the same God?
Right? This is a big question,
going around,
you know,
churches, synagogues, universities in America. Do they worship
the same God?
Now interestingly, there was a group of, there
was an early Christian movement in the end
of the 1st century, early 2nd century called
that claimed that the Jewish god was a
different god.
The Jewish god was an inferior god and
that Christ is the real god. And they
were vehemently anti Jewish.
Right? And they were popular in Rome for
some time. It was a little trendy at
the time, like the trend, you know, when
when I was in middle school, kids used
to wear their clothes backwards.
It was trendy. I never did it,
only once.
But then, you know, proto orthodox
scholars,
amongst the Christians,
opposed them and said, no, it's not a
different god. It's the same god. It's the
god of Abraham.
It's the God of Abraham, but we theologize
a little differently.
We have a different concept of God.
Right?
So that's what it is. So Muslims and
Christians and Jews, I believe, worship the same
God. If you read the Quran, it's very
clear, even a cursory glance at the Quran.
Very clear that the Quran,
the author of the Quran is claiming to
be the same God who revealed the Torah
to Moses
and the gospel to Jesus and the Psalms
to David.
At least that's the claim of the Quran.
So in principle,
we worship the same God,
in principle. Now we theologize differently,
and that's okay.
We don't all have to agree.
Right? If you look at the nitty gritty
of the theology so there was a professor
at woah.
That was that was strange.
It just threw me off. No. There was
a professor at Wheaton College,
doctor Hawkins, who was terminated from her position
because she dared to say that Muslims and
Christians worship the same God.
Right?
So again, in principle, it is the same
God. So we have that in common.
Now Muslims also believe
in various prophets, and you'll have to let
me know because I tend to to zone
out and talk forever.
At least that's what my wife says.
So you have to let me know when
I'm going over the time. How much time
do I have, by the way? Ballpark
figure.
610. Oh, great. Okay.
So
it's actually quite
surprising for a lot of non Muslims to
learn that Muslims actually believe in biblical prophets.
Now, the final prophet according to Muslims was
a man named Mohammed
and the name Muhammad means the most praised.
And he was born in Mecca
which is today called Saudi Arabia.
And he was a descendant
Uh-oh.
Everyone point and laugh.
Just kidding. He was a descendant
of Abraham
through Ishmael.
Right?
So he's in that tradition.
A lot of times people think
of Islam, they think, oh, that's just a
very
foreign exotic.
You know, that's the religion on Mars. Right?
Or that's the religion of Arabs.
The most populous Muslim country is Indonesia.
People don't
realize that. Malaysia, Indonesia, there's Muslims everywhere.
1 out of 5 human beings
identifies as a Muslim. Whether they're a good
Muslim or not, that's a different issue. But
1 out of 5 human beings identifies as
a Muslim. Right? Sunni orthodoxy is probably the
largest denomination in the world. So there's a
lot of Muslims around.
Right? So the prophet Muhammad is,
believed to have been the final
true prophet of Abraham. It doesn't mean that
prophetic figures won't come after him,
prophetic type figures, but Muslims have a very
precise
definition of a prophet, of a nabi. And
so does, you know, someone like Maimonides, a
nabi emet. What is a true prophet? It's
very precise. But there are prophetic figures that
come after. There are,
saintly figures that come after, like Martin Luther
King and so on and so on,
many of these types of people.
Mother Teresa.
So but as far as prophets sent with
scripture,
the the door is closed with Muhammad.
Now other prophets that the Quran mentions
are,
Noah.
Noah is considered to be a prophet according
to the Quran.
And Abraham, obviously, we mentioned that.
And Ishmael and Isaac are considered prophets. Jacob
is considered a prophet.
And,
Joseph
and Moses,
and Aaron.
And there's some opinions about,
the mother of
the biological mother of Moses,
Yehobed, who's called Umu Musa, the mother of
Moses
in the Quran.
There is some difference of opinion also about
Sarah and Hagar and even Eve as being
prophets.
Some of the Muslims, a minority opinion, but
as a strong minority opinion amongst some traditionalist
that these are also prophets, they're female prophets.
And then Jesus
is a prophet,
according to the Quran. So Muslims believe in
Jesus.
Right? The Quran says about Jesus
that he was born from a virgin birth.
So the Quran confirms this miracle of of
Jesus. And the Quran calls him Al Masih,
which means which
means the Christ.
So Muslims believe that Jesus is the true
messiah.
Right? So this is something that obviously Christians
and Muslims have in common, a great commonality.
Right? What is the role of the messiah?
Well, there's a difference of opinion here.
Right?
So Muslims will say based on the Quran
and the Hadith,
Hadith are statements attributed to the prophet Muhammad.
There's different grades of hadith,
but this sort of sound hadith corpus, what
we gather from that is that Jesus was
a prophet. He's not the literal son of
God.
Right? Muslims don't believe that God has literal
children
in the sense that
he,
physically cohabits with women, produces offspring, or in
the sense that anyone shares in his essence
in preternality.
Right? So God is according to,
Islamic conception, an absolute unity,
one person
who's totally unique.
Right? And Muslims actually believe that this is
the teaching of Christ.
Muslims actually go a little further.
Some people tell me this is a controversial
statement.
So I'll preface it by saying some people
say it's a controversial statement.
That Muslims believe that Jesus was a Muslim.
What does Muslim mean?
So Muslim is the active participle
from which Islam is derived from.
Right?
So for example,
a Muslim is a practitioner of Islam So
they're not synonymous. So the question, are you
Islam?
That doesn't make any sense. That's kinda deep
when you think about it though.
Am I Islam? Maybe I don't know. I
gotta think
of a deep existential question.
So is
Muslim is to Islam as Christian is to
Christianity.
Right? So a Muslim literally means someone who
submits to God,
submits to God
and is hoping to achieve peace with his
submission.
The word Muslim is related to Islam which
is related to salaam
which is the of shalom.
Right?
So when Jesus in, you know,
Luke 24 when he goes to the upper
room, he greets his disciples by saying,
which is Greek.
But he probably said,
peace be with you.
Peace be upon you.
Right? So this is how Muslims greet each
other. Now Muslims pray 5 times a day
as well.
Not all Muslims, at least they should.
They should pray 5 times a day.
It's mandated.
And Muslims pray by prostrating,
putting their heads on the ground.
Right? Raising the heart above the intellect.
Right? No matter what we're doing, what we're
engaged in, unless it's just impossible. If you're
at work, you're in a cubicle, the balance
sheet has to wait.
Gotta go and pray.
If you're in the middle of a surgery,
the surgery's gone. I'm just joking.
Somebody once said, what if you're in like
the Super Bowl and, you know, you're the
you're the receiver and it's the 4th quarter
and there's 2 minutes left and you're gonna
miss your prayer.
That's a good question.
I don't know about that one.
So Muslims they bow. So if you look
at like Genesis 17, it's that when Abraham
prayed,
he put his head on the ground.
In Numbers chapter 20, Moses and Aaron, they
washed themselves outside the tabernacle of meeting. They
went inside the tent and they bowed themselves
onto the ground, put their heads on the
ground. In Matthew 26, he fell upon his
face and did worship.
Right? So this is how Muslims pray. So
the Muslim claim
is that Muhammad,
peace be upon him, is not the founder
of Islam.
That's how it sort of presented in
history books if you will. That the prophet
Muhammad is the final prophet of Islam.
He's the final prophet, the seal of the
prophets.
But all of the prophets
in that sense were Muslim
and they worshiped God. And the word for
God in Arabic
is Allah.
And Allah is
not, again, is not a foreign God.
So where does the word Allah come from?
So the dominant opinion and I would refer
you to Edward Lane,
the gold standard of Arabic English Lexicons,
Compendium of all these traditional sources.
He says the word Allah begins with the
Arabic
and these two letters, the cognate of these
two letters in Hebrew
is Alif Lamed, El.
Right? So El in Hebrew means
God.
So you have these names in Hebrew called
theophoric
names.
Names that have the name of God within
them like Gavri El.
El means God.
The power of God. Gabriel,
Micael,
who is like God? The name Michael is
a rhetorical question.
The name Michael is a rhetorical question. Who
is like God?
Hey Michael, who is like God?
Elijah.
Right?
So usually, the,
the word El appears in the Hebrew bible
in the plural or quite often
as Elohim,
right? Elohim.
In the beginning,
God plural
created the heavens and the earth,
Right? So,
most rabbis
or
Judaic authorities and all Muslim authorities, maybe even
all Judaic authorities will say that this is
not a plural of numbers.
This is rather
a what's known as the pluralis magistatis.
Right? A royal plural. This is a royal
plural
because god is speaking from a position of
magnificence,
an exalted position.
So he uses a plural.
Right?
So Elohim.
So the word in Arabic is Allah. Now
in Syria, Syriac is a language of Jesus.
Right? Syriac is late Aramaic,
sometimes called Christian Aramaic. I told the story
last time about the first,
female governor of Texas. I'll tell it again.
Sorry.
I tend to repeat.
So there's this anecdotal story attributed to her.
Right?
But,
apparently in Texas,
in the early 20th century,
there was a big debate about, should we
teach Texas school children Spanish
or not?
And the governor of Texas, Miriam Ferguson was
there.
And at some point during the proceedings, she
picked up the King James version
of the bible
and she said, if English was good enough
for Jesus,
it's good enough for our children.
And it's a problem
because I would say that most people are
becoming more here here goes my I'm on
my soapbox now.
People are becoming more and more illiterate
because,
people don't know how to read.
It's a culture of tweets.
They can't hold the thought.
To really get the meaning out of a
book, you need to spend days with it.
But people don't have patience because, you know,
when they read things on the Internet,
4 or 5 line paragraphs.
Just give you the gist of
it. Right? So someone open up the bible,
Matthew. Who's that?
Let's try this again.
1st Corinthians?
Okay. Let's go watch a movie.
Let's watch some movie about the Bible.
Right? Well, let's go watch Exodus gods and
kings. That's accurate. Right? Right. Noah, let's watch
that. The gospel according to Mel Gibson, should
be okay.
Maybe, maybe not.
So there's a problem,
is that,
people need to engage with religious scholarship.
Right?
It's very, very important.
So, anyway,
Jesus spoke Syriac, which is a Semitic language
that actually sounds a lot like Arabic.
Aramaic. Yeah.
Aramaic is Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic.
So Daniel is in Aramaic.
There's some books in the old testament in
the Tanakh that are written in Aramaic. So
that was a spoken language, Syriac is a
spoken language of the populace in Palestine at
the time, Palestine Israel at the time of
Christ. The language of the synagogue liturgy was
Hebrew,
but Jesus was also Galilean. So he had
this sort of
there was a an an accent. You can
tell he was Galilean.
Right? That's when Peter was in Jerusalem and
he opened his mouth.
It's like someone going to California and saying,
I parked my car outside.
Like, woah.
Boston Urban. There's 23 dialects of English, American
English apparently.
That's called Boston Urban. I can't do it
very well. Sorry. I'm not I'm not good
at that.
Thank you.
Yes.
So
if you heard for example the Lord's prayer
in Syria,
right, there's something called in Arabic where the
end
of the line is rhyming
and you totally miss it in English.
Right? Like in Arabic,
There's a rhyme to it.
I tell my high school students
that study comparative theology,
I say, these prophets,
they're
they're rapping,
but the lyrics are clean,
and they're wholesome.
But it's it's like spoken word.
That's what it is.
You know? So Jesus,
you know, the New Testament, the originals are
in Greek.
Right?
So scholars in the 4th century, Christian scholars,
they
translated,
the Greek originals into Syriac, back into the
language of Christ,
and they came up with something called the
Peshta.
Right?
Which replaced,
Tatian's,
Diatessaron,
his gospel harmony, which was still very, very,
popular in Middle Eastern churches, by the way,
in the Arabian Peninsula.
Anyway,
so,
in Mark,
Jesus says in Syria,
he says,
He says, the hour is at hand or
the hour has been fulfilled.
The hour has been fulfilled.
The kingdom of Allah
is at hand.
So the word that Christ himself used for
God was Allah.
Right? So it's important that we make these
linguistic
connections
because we're not all that different,
You know?
We're children of Abraham.
And Abraham's the patriarch
of Judeo Christian Islamic tradition.
Now, so
Islam has,
5 pillars
that govern practice.
You've heard probably the 5 pillars of Islam.
The first pillar is called witnessing.
Here we go.
Alright.
I will.
Let me check. Okay.
The first pillar is called
a Shahada or witnessing.
So the Muslim bears witness, there is no
God but Allah, the God of Abraham,
and that Mohammed is the messenger of God.
And when the Muslim says that Muhammad is
a messenger of God,
that includes,
everyone that the prophet Mohammed said is also
a messenger of God.
So all the prophets I mentioned, Noah and
Abraham and Moses and,
Joshua
is considered a prophet,
and,
Isaiah and Jeremiah, all of these prophets.
Right?
So a Muslim is not considered to be
a Muslim at least creedily if he says,
you know, I believe in all the prophets,
but I don't know about Elijah.
Then he's not considered.
I don't know why he picked Elijah.
He was a great prophet. Anyway, he's called
in the Quran.
And then the second pillar is the prayer.
So Muslims pray 5 times a day at
different times,
right?
And, you know, there are people who are
traveling, you can combine prayers, you can shorten
prayers, people who are sick, there's
obviously leeway. For children, don't have to pray.
The elderly, the sick. Okay. And then we
have,
we have a mandatory
payment of charity
to the less fortunate. People that are living
in at poverty line.
And the way that Muslims interpret that is
this is not a gift I'm giving to
the poor.
This is literally theirs.
Right? I have a I'm holding on to
a right of theirs. I need to discharge
of it. It doesn't belong to me. If
you have excess wealth, you give 2 a
half percent of the excess wealth to the
poor and charity.
And then Muslims will fast during the month
of Ramadan, which is a 30 day fast
or 29 days. There's big moon fighting moon
sighting fights. Moon fighting. That's a better term
for it.
29 or 30 days from dawn till dusk.
And it's in the summer because Ramadan, you
know, because the Muslims follow lunar calendar,
right, at least for religious
rights.
So Ramadan always falls back
11 days.
So when I was an undergraduate,
Ramadan was in December.
And being the college student I was,
I would wake up at, oh, 1
PM,
fast for about
3 hours,
wasn't even hungry,
and then force myself to eat some Top
Ramen noodles,
and that was my Ramadan. But now
it's like in July.
And I have kids,
and I have to go to work.
So I don't sleep after the morning prayer
usually.
So but, you know, the first few days
are difficult, but you get used to it.
So the point of fasting
is to sort of take the focus off,
the sort of
the physicality of things. The food.
Right? One must be more,
observant about what one looks at,
what one does,
with their speech,
even controlling their thoughts. It's a it's a
training regimen.
So its purpose is to focus on the
inward, the spiritual.
Right? Not thinking about food, you're gonna think
about something else.
Right? You'll be amazed how many times people
a day think about food.
There's a whole lot of free time that's
gonna be freed up in your mind.
Not not eating. What shall I think about?
Yes.
And then the 5th pillar is the pilgrimage
to Mecca.
And this again is only for Muslims who
can afford to do so.
Going to Mecca is kind of expensive now,
but so if people that cannot afford it
are excused
and the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
he said that, you know, on the day
of judgement, people will have mountains of good
deeds that they never did.
And they will oh, my lord. I never
did these things. And then god will respond,
but you intended them. And here's something else
that a lot of people don't know about
Islam. In Islam,
people are saved by grace.
It's not from deeds.
Right? There was a,
a deviant group of Muslims,
a deviant from the perspective of of Sunni
Muslims called the Muertazila
or the rationalist,
who did believe in sort of a tit
for tat sort of
computational
weighing of deeds, so God becomes this huge
cosmic calculator in the sky.
Right? So they,
constrain God's agency and mercy.
But this is not the sort of normative
and, again, these are these are sort of
bad words in the academy, but I'm gonna
use them here. That's not the normative
or the orthodox.
Yes. I can get away with it. Orthodox
position.
Right? In other words, the vast majority of
Muslims don't believe that. The vast majority of
Muslims believe that salvation is through grace.
Salvation is through grace.
Right? But Muslims don't believe they have personal
assurance of paradise.
There's no personal assurance.
Not even for the martyr. There's no personal
assurance.
Right? No one has it.
So
the prophet Muhammad, he said, wear the 2
sandals of hope and fear.
Hope and fear.
In other words, be balanced between the 2.
Don't have so much hope in God that
you start becoming lax on your good deeds.
You know, I'm just gonna kick back.
I'm beloved of God. I'm going to paradise.
Hey. Why don't you, you know, do something
about, you know, these people being oppressed or,
you know, what's going on over here and
No. I'm cool.
What's the point? I'm going to paradise.
I'm gonna be chilling on couches.
And then
being filled with so much fear
that you start what? You start despairing of
God's mercy.
Both positions are incorrect.
You start despairing of God's mercy. The imam
here, God bless him, he recited a verse
that says,
this
la or lo in Hebrew is prohibitive.
You shall not
despair of God's mercy ever.
Never despair of God's mercy. And there's a
lot
of stories that the prophet Muhammad
related,
demonstrating God's mercy and his grace. One of
them, for example, he said, God,
he called 2 men out of *.
2 men were in *, he called them
out. So they come walking towards God. Now,
God isn't
located in space.
Right? God is transcendent of space time and
materiality.
This is just sort of a teaching moment.
So he calls 2 men out of *
and then God says to them, okay. Go
back to *.
One man turns around reluctantly,
starts walking back towards *,
but is kind of looking over his shoulder.
He's walking away like,
like that.
The other man turns around immediately and sprints
towards *.
So the prophet said that god asked the
man, and god knows best. Again, god knows
everything. It's a teaching moment. God asked the
man, why do you keep looking back at
me?
And the man said, you know, when you
called me out of *, I was hoping
I'd never have to go back. And God
said, you're right. Go to paradise.
And then he told the man who's sprinting
towards *. Why are you sprinting towards *?
And the man said, you know, I disobeyed
you my whole life but this time I
really wanted to obey you.
He said,
good. Go to paradise.
So, salvation is by grace
according to Islam.
Right? The good deeds that we do are
for the good of the society and these
are commandments of God.
And,
theologians will also say, there are degrees in
paradise.
Right? So, you know, recalcitrant
monotheists,
according to Sunni and Shi'i theology,
could actually spend some time in * for
purification
if they were lax on their good deeds.
Right? So we have the 5 pillars.
We have 6 articles of faith.
The 6 articles of faith. So again, the
pillars deal with
practice. The articles of faith are dealing with
the internal, with belief.
It's called,
belief.
Right?
So the first one is
belief in God. So the first pillar was
witnessing that there's one God. Well, Satan
witnesses there's one God.
But to have correct belief about God.
Right? It's like if you look in the
new testament, it's interesting,
in the gospel of John, means
to believe, but if there's a dative this
is my contention by the way. If a
dative comes after that, it just means sort
of to believe at that moment, contingent belief.
But if there's ace,
means into, and then an accusative,
it means to totally surrender.
Totally
surrender and have,
submissiveness
and acceptance
110%.
Right? So the first article of faith is
to believe about to believe
in God correctly with total submission,
total submissiveness,
not to make bargains with God. Okay, God.
I'll believe in you
if
the
falcons win,
and they didn't, and it was a total
disaster.
What happened? What happened? Anyway,
I'm I'm still trying to figure it out.
Don't have a theory.
Anyway,
and then that's the first article of faith.
Belief in God. Correct belief in God.
Right?
And total surrender in submission to him in
the heart, not just on the limbs. You're
not just worshiping God physically. You actually believe
and love God.
Right?
And then
oh. Oh. The second article of faith
is,
belief in God's prophets
or messengers. We talked about some of those
messengers.
The major prophets are Noah
and Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed.
Then belief in God's scriptures,
and there are 4 main scriptures that the
Quran mentions. There's many scriptures. By the way,
there's many other prophets.
The Quran said, we sent a messenger
to every nation.
So Muslims have to sort of stop or
God stopped. They can't confirm or deny
someone who's not named in the Quran.
Right? But it's possible that Buddha could have
been a prophet. He falls within that time
frame.
You know, Confucius,
Plato. No. Probably not Plato. No.
Probably not. I don't know.
But there's many, many, many prophets.
Right? And then the books that the scriptures
that the Quran mentions
are the Torah
revealed to Moses
40 nights on Sinai,
We gave Moses, appointed for him 40 nights,
revealed the Torah to him.
In it is guidance and light.
Then you have the Psalms Zabur. So the
Quran says
Zabur
to Dawud to David.
So Muslims don't really know what that is.
It seems like the dominant opinion is that's
referring to the Psalms
in the Tanakh,
where the Christians was called the quote unquote,
old testament.
And then the Quran says
that God revealed the Injil.
Injil
is a Arabized
Greek word.
The Greek word is
Injil means gospel.
The gospel to Jesus.
And what is the gospel
that Jesus brought?
So the Muslim conception is that the gospel
of Jesus is to teach the world
the love of God basically,
the path to God's love. In Arabic, it's
called a tariqa. A tariqa,
a direct,
right? A path to God. How to make
oneself beloved to God or actualize or to
realize God's love for that person.
Right? How to make oneself beloved to God.
Jesus gives us
the way.
Right? One of my favorite verses in the
gospel of John is the last verse
of the prologue,
that no one has at any time seen
God.
And then it says,
a uniquely sanctified
divine being with a lowercase d, again I
would argue,
who is in the bosom of the father
and father again, this is, metaphorical as Muslims
see it, not literal.
Father, ab is rub, your lord, the one
who takes care of you. Isaiah prays,
you are the lord our father.
Right? This is a way of speaking to
show God's imminence.
So the uniquely divinized or sanctified
agent of God who is in the bosom
of the father. What is bosom? The chest,
the heart of the father is beloved to
the father. That one
that one
God, makes him known to the people,
gives you marifa,
intimate knowledge of God.
Jesus says. Quoting
the book of Hosea.
Indeed,
I require mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge
of god
more than burnt offerings.
Mercy,
knowledge of God. This is what Jesus offers.
Oh,
tomfoolery.
Shenanigans.
Yes. What? There's there's
here. Valley who?
I have 3 minutes.
And then the final scripture is the Quran.
Now the dominant opinion,
to be fair, the dominant opinion amongst Muslim
scholars
is that the Torah and the gospel that
exist today are not in their pristine form,
that there was some sort of falling away
when it comes to these texts.
With respect to the Torah, the
majority opinion is that scribes went in and
changed things.
With the new testament, that's also the dominant
opinion. Although there is an opinion,
it's a minority opinion, that both scriptures in
their text are sound and accurate.
But then how do we deal with differences,
for example, trinitarianism
against,
not against, but
compared to Islamic Unitarianism.
Well, according to the latter opinion, the text
of the New Testament is sound but the
quote unquote corruption
came with
post apostolic,
proto orthodox Christian exigits
interpreting a text without using Judaism as their
basis.
So in other words, when Jesus says the
father and I are 1,
the standard
trinitarian
exegesis to that is Jesus is speaking about
hamausios,
oneness of essence.
He's claiming to be God here.
The Muslim will read something like that, the
father and I are 1. It's like he'll
say father here really means lord, means God's
imminence.
And oneness cannot be
an ontological oneness because Jesus would never say
that because he's a prophet.
He's the messiah
of the children of Israel sent by Abraham.
So he means sort of a oneness
of intention
or a oneness of purpose. And we find
verses like this in the Quran.
The Quran says, Mayuti Ar Rasul
Saqaddata
Allah.
Whoever obeys the messenger
is obeying God.
Not because the messenger is ontologically God
or the same as God essentially,
But because the messenger speaks with the authority
of God.
The authority of God.
And
maybe there's time for I
I wanted to stir up some stuff
for the q and a session.
That was the purpose of the final 3
minutes. Thank you very much. I have to
stop talking, or else they're gonna throw fruit.
That's what they do in a mosque. I'm
just kidding. What is Sharia law?
Oh, okay.
Not exactly a softballer.
Please clear our mind about what we hear
in the media about Sharia law. Please discuss
Sharia law. Okay. The word Sharia,
linguistically means a path to cold water.
This is what it literally means.
Jonathan Brown, professor at Georgetown,
he defines Sharia as a a,
process of problem solving.
So, Sharia is
most of the time, translated as Islamic law,
and I guess you can't translate it like
that.
So a lot of people have sort of
this warped idea about what is sharia. It's
kind of one of those words that scare
people.
A lot of people think it's like some
draconian penal system or something that Muslims, you
know, the Muslims don't wanna, you know, reinstitute
corporal punishment in the streets of America or
something like that.
There there was American senator,
by the name of *,
who gave a 1 hour lecture on the
dangers of Sharia.
Right? And,
it was an interesting lecture. I disagreed with
almost everything he said. But there was a
20 year old, 21 year old Muslim who
was there, who approached him after the lecture,
and he said to him, mister *, thank
you for the lecture. Can you tell me
what are the 5 Ma'asid of Sharia? So
what, like, what are the 5
aims of the Sharia? So this is, like,
basic, like, 1st grade level.
And he just said, you know, I don't
know. That's like the equivalent of
me,
doing this, like, massive
deconstructionist
critique of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.
And then somebody's a Christian stands up in
the audience and says, excuse me, sir. What
are the 4 gospels?
And then I go,
John, George, Paul, and Ringo?
So Sharia is an indispensable part of a
Muslim's identity. When a Muslim wakes up and
makes his water ablutions or lustrations,
that's the old Catholic word, lustrations,
and prays, he's following sharia. When a Muslim
gives charity, he follows sharia. When a Muslim
is fasting, he's following sharia.
So it's an indispensable part of a Muslim's
identity. So this idea of pushing out sharia
is really sort of a veiled way of
saying, let's not have any more Muslims because
a Muslim without following Sharia is not a
Muslim.
And I think it again, I think it
really comes down to fundamental understand misunderstanding
of what Sharia is. Sharia is also extremely
vast.
There are some immutables,
right, that don't change. These are called tawabit
in Arabic. But the vast majority of sharia
is
mutakayarat.
They're variables. They change.
So people say, do you believe in the
Sharia? Whose interpretation?
Right? You put 5 imams in one room,
you get 10 different opinions.
If you if you go to the country
of my birth, Iran,
most most of and obviously these countries are
not perfect, but most of the,
students at the university are female.
The majority of physicians are female.
And if in Iran and if you ask
them, why is this so?
They'll say, this is because of the Sharia.
Now, if you go across the border
into places in Afghanistan,
women do not leave their homes ever.
And if you ask them, why are you
doing this? They'll say, well, this is a
Sharia.
So you have massive,
massive
divergent opinions of what this actually is.
Right?
You know, you have Jewish communities in America
that follow halakalah.
That's the equivalent of sharia. They actually almost
have the same meaning. Halak means a way
of going. Sharia, a way to cold water.
Right? But here's something interesting about the Sharia.
If there's something in the Sharia, you
know, if a Muslim is living in a
non Muslim majority land, and there's something in
Muslim Sharia that contradicts the law of that
land, he must abandon the Sharia
and adopt and adhere to the law of
that land. And by doing so, he's actually
adhering to the Sharia.
So that's a very important point to make.
Right?
That
there can be no conflict between the Constitution
of United States and the Sharia.
So trying to push out the Sharia,
right, which is a concerted effort I think,
again, most of the people that are sort
of proposing this legislation, they don't really know
what it is. They think
it's, again, you know, like corporal punishment in
the streets.
Right? That's sort of the warped perception of
it. But this idea of let's get rid
of Sharia, that in and of itself is
unconstitutional
because
to get rid of Sharia means to get
rid of Muslims, and that's not America.
So the short answer again is that oh,
thank you.
There isn't one version of Sharia. It's not
some law code that was codified 1400 years
ago and here it is, take it or
leave it. It's a living dynamic law, just
like American law. Things change over time. Many
things change over time. That's the point of
having a congress
to make laws, propose laws, things change. Right?
It used to be in America that, you
know, the mentally
* were sterilized,
And now that's not done anymore.
Used to be that, people owned slaves. That's
so
this is very important to understand the nature
of societal law
is that it's dynamic and changing, and people
forget that sometimes.
Okay.
What would you say here's another softball, I
guess.
Not really. What would you say to a
radical Muslim
as to how their interpretation of the Quran
can be so different? You know, what's interesting
is if you look into the hadith literature
of the prophet,
you know, he he prophesized
that within this ummah, this nation, there's always
going to be this fringe
element. And he always described them as, like,
foolish little boys.
Right? And he said that when they recite
the Quran, it doesn't pass their throat, meaning
it doesn't penetrate their heart, which some scholars,
interpret as they don't really know what it
means.
Right? So,
one of my scholars, an imminent, sheikh,
he said
about
radical Muslims or these ISIS type people.
He said, they know what God said, but
they don't know why he said it.
And that's all context. I tell my students
the first three rules of real estate are
location, location, location.
The first three rules
of dinner is kebab, kebab, kebab. And the
first three rules of scriptural hermeneutics
in interpretation
is context, context, context.
So someone doesn't have requisite knowledge. I mean,
that's the whole point of the oral law
in Judaism,
is to check check someone's interpret if somebody
can memorize the Torah, you might think, well,
this person's a rabbi.
Then you ask him something from the Mishnah,
he doesn't know. He doesn't have transmissional knowledge.
Knowledge has to be transmissional. You have to
study with someone who study with someone who
study with someone who study with someone who
study with someone who study with someone who
study with some who study with a companion
of the who study with the prophet, who
learned from Gabriel, who learned from God. So
transmissional knowledge is very, very important.
So,
and this, you know, is important because it
weeds out these
sort of charlatans or freelance sort of scholars
who
like to give, you know, legal rulings and,
you know, he's an accountant.
It's like, what are you what are you
doing? Why why are you interpreting the Quran
in such ways when you don't have requisite
knowledge, don't even understand Arabic?
So
context is very important. And I'll tell you
a story. It's a quick story. I always
tell the story. I have to tell it
again.
I was at a church one time, and
we were having a beautiful interfaith dialogue
and oh, there's so many questions.
Okay. And then I walked out of the
church
and there was another church there who, did
not like the idea that I was inside
of a church.
So they said, what are you doing in
a church? You're a Muslim. I said, we're
having a dialogue. You're they said, you're not
allowed in a
church. And then,
one of them, it was an older lady.
She had a Bible, and,
she came up to me and she said,
why did your prophet go into Europe
and slaughter the Europeans?
I said, what? What?
I don't know what you're She said, no.
It's very well documented. I said, no. I
don't, I don't know what you're talking about.
He never went to Europe. Who's my prophet,
Napoleon?
And then she said and then she quoted
a verse from the Quran,
right, out of context.
Right? It's like,
attack the unbelievers wherever you find them. There's
a verse that says that.
You know? So in order for me to
sort of I said, you know, this verse
has a context.
Right? And she said, no. No. No. No.
That's what you have to do. You have
to kill all unbelievers.
So I said to her, do you think
that I think that?
She said, yeah. I said, should I kill
you now or later?
And she it kind of confused her a
little bit.
And she said, not well, I oh, I
don't know. I mean, think about that. And
so in order to sort of demonstrate her
faulty methodology,
I quoted a verse from the bible out
of context.
New Testament.
Because you quote Old Testament sometimes, oh, you
know, that's been abrogated, so on and so
forth. So New Testament,
Luke 1927,
and I quote it from the King James
version and it went something like this, those
enemies of mine that do not wish me
to reign over them, bring them hither and
slay them before me.
And then she went, what? Hither? Slay? What
does that mean? I said, oh, okay. I
gotta I gotta bring it down a notch
here. So I had memorized this verse because
my dad wanted to read the bible.
So I gave him like a King James
or like an Oxford study bible. And he's
like, I don't know what this is. What's
what's going on here. I don't is this
English? So I gave him the Berenstain Baire
translation.
There's a bible for children.
It's called the Berenstain Baer Translation. Very simple
English. I didn't tell them it was for
children. So I gave a try and kinda
covered, you know, the the bears on the
cover.
But there's pictures on the inside. Anyway, so
it said something to the effect of,
whoever does not want me to be a
king over them, cut their throats in my
very presence.
Luke 1927.
And then I expected her to say, oh,
you're taking it out of context.
And then I would say,
Very
good.
Lesson learned. But she said,
it's not in the bible.
So I said, can I see the Bible?
She had a Bible. So I showed her
the verse, and then she looked at the
cover like I switched it.
And then
she closed it, and she looked at me
and she smiled and she said,
I know who you are, Satan.
Yeah.
A former prime minister of Israel said that
the only way ISIS will be defeated is
if Muslims defeat it. Do you agree? Yes.
I agree. If so, how can Muslims defeat
it? So here's the thing. A lot of
a lot of non Muslims ask me, why
aren't people like you out
shouting from the hilltops
and, you know, condemning ISIS?
How many people here have Googled Muslims who
condemn ISIS?
Muslims who condemn ISIS. How many times have
you guys googled that?
You'll find a whole so here's the thing.
Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist.
I am a little bit.
But,
the media has an agenda.
Of course, they do. They need ratings.
Right?
So,
there's a book out called Refuting ISIS. It's
a beautiful book done by a Syrian scholar.
It's been translated.
There's something called an open letter to Baghdadi.
The leader of ISIS is this man who
calls himself Baghdadi.
Right? And it has a 120 signatories
of some of the most imminent scholars in
the world who have sway over millions of
Muslims,
tens of millions of Muslims. You have 700,000
Muslim scholars and students in India who sign
a petition, who, denounced,
ISIS. So, you know, we go into the
mosque and there are actually Muslims telling me,
stop talking and condemning ISIS so much. Let's
talk about something else already. So, we're actually
tired of hearing it, but non Muslims haven't
heard anything.
So, what's happening?
So, you know, the the prophet again, he
said that this group, you know, they they
were in the caliphate of Adi, the 4th
caliph. They were amongst
the Bani the Umayyad dynasty.
They were in the Abbasid.
You know, they were in the Ottoman Empire.
There's always going to be you know, when
you have a religion that's one out of
5 human beings,
it's inevitable that you're going to have,
this element. Right?
It's somebody asked a question. I don't know
if it's in here, but, you know, what
percentage of Muslims are radical?
It depends on your definition of radical.
Because I'm radical, dude. No. Because,
gnarly.
Because
some Muslims believe that if you pray 5
times a day, you're a radical.
But if you mean like ISIS type radical,
it's it's less than 1% of 1%.
I've never met in my life a a
radical Muslim.
I've lived in the Middle East. I've traveled
all throughout North Africa,
Arabian Peninsula. I've never met a of course,
they're out there.
Of course.
But and I've met 1,000 upon 1,000 of
Muslims. I teach all the time. I travel
the world.
But obviously,
they're out there. But I think what's happening
with again, the media is that this element
is aggrandized
oftentimes and make it seem like this is
a real threat and and that your next
door neighbor
might be some secret cell who's really trying
to kill you.
Oh, interesting.
So, I don't necessarily blame people for having
this perception. If all I knew about Islam
was what I learned from mainstream media, I
don't wanna, you know, name any names.
CNN,
Fox.
I would probably revile this religion, to be
perfectly honest with you. I have a PhD
in Islam, and when I hear people on
these channels talk about Islam, I have no
idea what they're talking about.
So how do you discern?
God be with you.
20,000 people in America become Muslim every year.
And people say, well, that's because
it's spread by the sword.
Okay. I don't really?
Do I have a sword?
You know, I fired a gun once.
I went to a shooting range. It was
a Glock 9 millimeter.
It's, like, 20 feet away. I was, like,
o for 6, and I just went, okay.
That's enough of that.
Yeah.
What else do I wanna say about that?
So, again, the the guiding lesson here is
actually speak to Muslims.
Right? Speak to Muslims. I know a lot
of Muslims who have never spoken to a
Christian,
but they have a whole lot to say
about Christianity.
A whole lot to say about Christians.
I have a a Muslim friend who lives
in Iraq,
who is the husband of my wife's
Arabic teacher. I speak to him through Skype
and he says, there's American soldiers right around
the corner over here. They're gonna slaughter all
of us.
This is his perception of America. And then
he tells me, are you safe in America?
How many times have they tried to kill
you?
How many times have I've
never. How many times have you been struck
by a Christian?
Never.
How many times has he insulted you?
Once or twice.
But
so has my cousin.
More than that.
This is their skewed perception.
Right?
Okay. Why are men and women separated at
prayer?
So according to our,
I don't know what to call it, anthropology,
God made men and women differently.
So Muslims would not affirm
gender fluidity.
Men and women are different.
They
think differently. They act differently.
They're physically different.
There is such a thing called biological gender.
And so
god made men very visual.
So,
I don't know if I should use this
example, but every man remembers very vividly the
first piece of * he ever saw.
It's right there. Not me, of course.
It's right there. You could have been in
5th grade. It's right there. So men are
very, very visual. So in the mosque, at
least in the mosque, it doesn't mean women
are worse than men or something. What do
you mean? Women might be actually better than
men because women are distracted in prayer like
men are. Men tend to be more distracted
in prayer.
So during the prayer, men just need to
focus completely on the prayer.
Right? And not think about anything else.
Because the rationale is a woman and genuflection
is a distraction, and I agree. I tend
to agree with that.
So that's the reason for that.
And if you go to like a, you
know, an Orthodox synagogue, women are behind the
men or they're up upstairs. So it's the
same rationale there as well.
Yeah.
How does Islam deal with atheism?
And is atheism considered shirk? Shirk means idolatry.
Well,
my understanding of the Quran
is that the Quran does not affirm atheism.
My understanding of the Quran is that the
Quran is saying everybody actually worships something.
Whatever takes most priority in your life
is what you worship, and it is your
God. There's a verse in the Quran Quran
that says,
Have you seen that certain one who takes
his own caprice and desires
as his god?
Right? So even if somebody says, well, I
don't believe in I'm an atheist. I don't
believe in a personal god. The definition
of
of theism, according to the Quran,
is whatever takes precedence in your life, that
is your god. So people worship wealth. People
worship their egos. People they
they compare followers on Facebook. I have more
followers than you.
You know, there's this guy who says, you
know, how many believers do I have?
You know what I'm talking about. Right?
The believers.
What?
Strange.
So everyone worships. So
with atheism, you know, this idea
and nobody really believes this anymore, but, you
know, the steady state model that the universe
is pre eternal in the past.
Right? That's the definition of shirk or idolatry.
So you're ascribing to nature or the universe
a divine quality
of essential pre eternality that only belongs to
God. So that's in partnering with God. That's
not really no belief in God. You're giving
the divine quality to nature. So you're worshiping
nature nature. Or that the universe just sort
of
caused itself to come out of nothing.
The universe came out of nothing, causing itself.
So creating something from nothing is what God
does, creation.
So again, this is not really atheism, this
is ascribing a divine quality to the to
the universe itself.
And another way of looking
at atheism. I mean, atheism technically means
belief in a non personal god.
Right? Theism means belief in a personal god.
Atheism, non personal god.
And then deism,
oftentimes people characterize Islam
as being a deistic tradition. Deistic
in the sense,
like the platonic god or Aristotelian
god, that god created
everything.
But god doesn't really care about us. He
doesn't reach out to us. He's kind of
a
absentee landlord.
You know, he just you know, we we
can do whatever he want. Never collects the
rent.
You know? So that's not correct. So in
Islam, God is imminent.
He's transcendent
in the sense of physicality.
So so Muslims don't don't confirm, for example,
divine incarnation.
God doesn't incarnate
and that's something that Muslims and Jews have
in common.
Right? In Hosea 119, it says
indeed I am God and not a
man. 23/19 Numbers. God is not a man.
God does not dwell in his creation. The
first few commandments
of Exodus chapter 20,
it says,
they're theological
that you shall not make unto thyself the
image or the likeness of anything in the
heavens above
or in the oceans below or on the
earth. I'm a jealous god visiting the iniquity
of the so on and so forth.
Right? However, god is also imminent in the
sense that his love and mercy are close
to us.
So there's a verse in the Quran that
says,
We, royal plural, are closer to the human
being than his jugular vein, an internal organ.
God is very close.
God is,
God is someone who is personal in Islam.
So when we pray, you saw our prayers,
those are our canonical prayers. Those are done
in Arabic.
Right?
But the prophet said,
He said, supplication
is the bone marrow or the essence of
worship.
Is when you isolate yourself,
you put your hands up, and you speak
to God in a language you understand, because
most Muslims, I would say,
don't understand classical Arabic. Even maybe most Arabs
don't understand classical Arabic. But this is what
we have to do. This is this is
our canonical prayer. Right?
But the essence of prayer is pouring your
heart out to God.
And this is very important,
to mention.
How much time do I have?
It's,
10 to 8.
8. 10. 8, 10. Woah. So these are
kind of duplicates here.
What is the difference between Sunni and Shia?
Okay. I'm gonna go a little bit quicker
here because there's so many questions, and then
we're we're gonna have an open mic.
So
difference between Sunni and Shia. The main difference
is political theology, as we heard.
Political theology. This is the origin of the
difference. The origin is who succeeds the prophet?
The Shia opposition is a descendant of the
prophet. Someone from the family of the prophet
will be the rightful caliph.
Right?
The Sunni position is, there has to be
some sort of mutual
consultation,
some sort of governing body or oligarchy
or democracy. You know, the Quran doesn't mandate
any form of government.
The Quran does not say, thou shalt have
a theocracy
or plutocracy
or democracy.
No. The only thing the Quran says from
a political standpoint was
Let their let their political affairs be conducted
with some sort of mutual consultation.
So it's not just one man saying, this
is what we're gonna do and shut your
mouths.
There's some sort of mutual consultation.
So that's the main difference, it's political theology.
Now over time, you do have theological differences
that have crystallized.
Right? However, the vast, vast majority of Sunnis
will not
the Shia.
They won't say, oh, they're not Muslim Because
the theological differences are negligible.
For example, the Shia at least the twelve
are Shia. And there's different types of Shia.
You have the 5 imam shia, the 7
imam shia.
They're called Isma'ilis.
The 5 imams are called the zedis. The
12
are the most prominent, Ifna Asharia. The 12
are Imams. They believe that there's 12 descendants
of the prophets, of the prophet
Muhammad, that are all infallible.
Sunnis don't believe that. Although Sunnis believe that
those
Imams are great men, They would only ascribe
infallibility to prophets
not to Imams. So there's a difference there.
There's also jurisprudential
differences.
Right? So for example,
shia, they tend to combine prayers even when
they're not travelling.
Right? And Shia also will tend to wipe
over their bare feet during the water ablutions,
which is not permissible in all four schools
of the Sunnis. So it's Jewish prudential differences.
But even amongst the Sunnis,
there are Jewish prudential differences. Even within one
school of Sunni orthodoxy,
like the Hanafi school, there are various opinions,
but those opinions are deemed to be negligible.
They don't anathematize
anyone. There are fringe elements of the Shia
that do say, oh, these Sunnis are not
really Muslims.
You have fringe elements from the Sunnis that
say, these Shia are not really Muslims.
The, ISIS
does not discriminate. Everyone is an unbeliever except
for us. That's their position.
Why does why do some women wear a
hijab and some don't?
You would have to you know, these questions,
I hesitate to ask these answer these questions
because a sister should really answer this question.
But
I will say something.
And I'm not considering myself gender gender fluid
right now.
I would say that,
all 4 schools of Islamic law
in the Sunni orthodoxy, as well as the
Jafari school, which is the Shia school, they
mandate a dress code.
Right?
And the dress code is that men and
women have to dress modestly.
Right?
But again, since God made women
so beautiful,
they have to do a little bit extra.
So they have to wear a hijab. They
have to cover her their hair and their
neck. There's difference opinion about the face. There's
difference opinion about the top of the foot.
And there's difference there's allowance for the forearm.
Right?
So
some women choose to do it and some
don't and we're not to be judgmental.
Islam teaches us that everyone is in a
state of sin.
Everybody is in a state of sin. The
prophet said
All of this all of the children of
Adam are in a state of sin, but
the best of those who are in a
state of sin are those who make Tawba
Teshuvah, repentance.
So we we should not judge people by
outward appearance.
This is a there was a there's a
hadith of a man who came into the
prophet's mosque
and he walked in and he had a
turban on. He had a long beard. He
had a mark on his forehead
from the
excessive prostrations.
And the companions of the prophet saw this
man and started singing his praises.
And the prophet looked at him and said,
I see something from Satan in his face.
There's something satanic in his face.
And the companion said, woah. What what do
you mean? And the prophet asked him, he
said, I'm gonna ask you a question. Answer
it in truth.
When you walked into this gathering, did you
think you were the best man in this
gathering?
And he said,
He said, yes. I thought I was the
best man.
Right? So it's extremely important
that I didn't get to this in my
talk earlier, but I was talking about 3
dimensions of our religion. 1 is Islam,
the,
the
practice aspect.
1 is iman,
the faith aspect. And the third one is
called ihsan,
which is the character
or relational
transcendental
aspect. And that this is extremely important, and
oftentimes this element is lacking amongst Muslims,
That good character.
Right? You know, there's a hadith that says,
Like, adorn yourself with the qualities or characteristics
of God.
Be Lordly. Be divine.
Just as God is merciful and forbearing, you
should mirror that. This is called mystical union
and this is found in Catholic tradition.
This is found in Eastern Orthodoxy. This is
found in Islam.
This is found in Judaism. Islam, Catholic,
Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, they actually have the
same three steps.
The first step to mystical union or having,
you know, quote unquote divine character,
aligning yourself with God's will,
is
what Catholics call, via purgativea,
to purge oneself of vice.
This is extremely important.
You know? That people have vices,
and it's very easy just to be complacent,
to be satisfied with oneself, because I pray
5 times a day. I'm good enough. Well,
Imam Al Ghazali says, those people are formalists.
You know, there's too much stock on the
outward.
Think about Matthew 23,
the 7 woes. Woe unto you scribes and
Pharisees. We have to be fair, not all
Pharisees.
Right? Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Joseph Arimathea was
a Pharisee. There's other Pharisees
that apparently defended Jesus.
Generally speaking to this group that's hostile to
him,
you know, he said, you've overlooked the weightier
demands of the law. Justice, mercy, and good
faith.
You strain at the gnat and you swallow
the camel. Ye whited sepulchres,
on the outside you are clean. On the
inside you reek of death.
Too much
emphasis on the outer, the esoteric, nothing on
the esoteric. The prophet Muhammad said, the weightiest
thing on the scales on the day of
judgment is good character.
Good character.
Right? So via purgative.
The the Eastern Orthodox call that,
catharsis
from,
from the Greek to cleanse something. In Islam,
it's called
and emptying out, and kenosis
to get rid of vice. How do you
get rid of vice?
So Imam Al Ghazali, who's the Aquinas of
Islam, the Maimonides of Islam, Imam Al Ghazali,
he says you have to sit with the
spiritual masters,
and you have to
habituate
your tongue and your heart with God's remembrance.
Then you get to the second step,
which is called
via,
contemplativa
or,
theoria
in Greek
or
is when you ornament the lower self with
a virtue. And Islam's virtue theory is very
Aristotelian.
It espouses habitus that if you want a
good,
virtue, you have to fake it until you
make it. If you wanna be patient, you
have to pretend when something happens, you have
to force yourself to be patient until it's
woven into your very nature. Usually happens after
40 days, according to Muslim ethicists, if you're
doing it right.
Right? There was a story of,
there was a woman at the graveyard in
Medina, and she was wailing, and she was
screaming. She was hitting herself, ripping her clothes.
So the prophet approached her, and he said,
O maid servant of God, be patient
and fear God. And without even turning around,
she said,
Get away from me. You've never been afflicted
like this. This was my son. My son
died.
And then the prophet Mohammed buried 6 of
his 7 children,
but there's no rejoinder from him. He's not
debating her. So he just goes home. And
then the companions of the prophet said to
her, that you know who that was? And
she said, who? One of you?
And then they said, no. That was the
prophet. So she goes and waits by his
door.
The prophet comes out and then she says,
okay. Now I'll be patient. And the prophet
said, He said, true patience is when the
affliction first hits.
That's true patience. That's what you have to
strive for. So, you know, you don't lose
your mind, start kicking and punching people, Throw
things across the room, and then you sit
down because you're so tired to go,
whew. Okay. I'll be patient.
That's not patience.
So this is a training regimen. Right? And
then the 3rd step,
mystical union, is called via
illuminativa
or theosis
or tajiliya?
Alright. That's a good question. I'm glad I'm
glad this gentleman brought this question. Do the
oldest existing copies of the Quran support the
idea that all the text are the same
or are there actual textual differences? There are
textual differences.
Okay.
So if you look for example at
early,
manuscripts attributed to companions of the prophet, there
are minor differences
in
those manuscripts.
Now,
Islamic Theologians have theological
responses or explanations
for those differences.
For example,
there's a Hadith in Bukhari which is a
strong book of Hadith
and some consider it multiply attested that the
Quran was actually revealed in 7 dialects of
Arabic.
That the Quran was actually revealed in 7
dialects. So the prophet is Qureshi, that's his
tribe.
But there are numerous other tribes around him
who speak a slightly different dialect of Arabic.
So in order to facilitate the understanding of
many of the Arabs in that region, the
prophet was given a dispensation
to recite the Quran in their dialect. And
sometimes this means changing a word or two.
Right? So those manuscripts bear witness,
to that fact.
But I would say generally there's no there's
no major
no major difference. I mean, you're not gonna
come across, you know, a new chapter of
the Quran that wasn't there. And, no. The
differences primarily are of orthography,
spelling conventions, and a few synonyms here and
there.
Right? And some voweling differences.
For example, one recitation and both of them
are valid
in prayer. One recitation of the opening Fatiha
which was recited is
which means owner of the day of judgment
and others recite that
with no alif,
so king of the day of judgement.
Both are considered to be valid recitations. They're
slightly different.
But overall I would say, the textual integrity,
of the Quran and I would even say
the the bible itself
is
better than most people think.
At prayer time, do you say the same
prayer, or can you make up your own?
Well, if you're praying in a congregation,
basically, you are
well, again, there's a difference
in
basically, you stay quiet, and the imam will
lead the prayer for you.
Right? If you're praying by yourself,
you recite Al Fatiha, the first chapter of
the Quran, and then you'll recite
some 3 or 5 other verses from the
Quran, whatever you want to recite from the
Quran. So you have to know a little
bit of Quran to recite. If you go
back a 100 years, almost every,
Catholic knew some Latin.
Right?
So Muslims are like that. If you go
to, like, Pakistan or Iran, non Arab countries,
everyone knows a little bit of Arabic because
they have to know how to pray.
Right?
But, again, supplication
can be done in your own language at
any time. You don't need to be in
a state of ritual purity.
You could be driving your car. You could
be laying in bed. You supplication is something
that you can do at any time.
What can you say to those who are
terrified of Islam? Or how do we educate
them that Muslims are not all extremists?
By putting this program on CNN.
But will it happen? I always encourage Muslims
to
you know, and I think right now, there's
a trend of,
dare I say, distrust of MSM, of mainstream
media.
That's why there's, a lot of interest in
alternative
media outlet on the Internet.
You know? Because people wanna know what's really
happening in the world, and they're just not
trusting
what
people like CNN are saying. Because apparently, they
got the entire election wrong, and people are
just stupefied by that.
And people were saying on these channels, MSNBC
and CNN and Fox News, that there's no
way possible Trump could win. It's just not
possible. Right? So
I think people are that's why if you
go to, like, YouTube, you'll see people who
are political commentators,
whether they're conservative or liberal,
who have thousands and thousands of followers, because
that's that's where the the news is coming
from now. And I think there's also a
concerted effort from mainstream media to paint those
news outlets as fake news now.
We're not fake. You're fake.
So I just say, you know, let let
the best let the best people win.
As for the corruption
taught or thought concerning the New Testament,
where does this congregation stand with the majority
or minor a minority position?
I I don't think there's an official
position of this
congregation. I think you'd have to ask individual
Muslims.
But I would say, because my dissertation was
on this, the vast majority of Muslims will
say the Bible we're talking about the New
Testament. The New Testament is corrupt in its
text.
The text has changed
and it's corrupt beyond repair.
That's the dominant opinion. That's not the opinion
I follow, by the way. The opinion I
follow is I think the Quran is saying
because there's multiple intertextual allusions to the New
Testament in the Quran. The Quran calls Jesus
the word of God.
No other Christian text that's canonical mentions that.
No other gospel that's canonical except the gospel
of John. If you read the gospel of
John on its surface, as a Muslim, you'll
be like, woah. This can't be true. In
the beginning was the word. The word was
with God. The word was God. Come on.
That can't be true. Right?
I think there's a different way of reading
these things.
So Imam al Ghazali, Imam al Biqai, Fakhruddin
al Razi, I mean, these are major big
time
scholars. They held the opinion that the New
Testament text
is,
sound. The text is sound, but the so
called corruption that creeps into Christianity is from
post apostolic
exegesis
of these texts that viewed these texts through
a very Greek lens and introduced these terms
that are not biblical, like, right,
that cosubstantial,
the father and the son are cosubstantial,
they would say that that's where
that's where that that
So very early on, it's very clear that
there were 2 distinct
sort of interpretations of the message of Christ.
You have Hellenistic Christianity
and you have Judaic Christianity.
And the book of James and Jude represent
Judaic Christianity. And the other books that represent
Judaic Christianity,
are not in the New Testament because that
form of Christianity did not win the day
as it were.
And the
definitive canon
of the New Testament,
was,
well the first the first bishop to name
the present 27 books with Athanasius,
and that was in 367 of the common
era, so long after Constantine had converted.
So there are I think there's truth in
other books
that are not in the canon,
that represent more a Judaic Christianity.
Alright.
Forgiveness is granted and looks different
for religions.
If it is by grace for Islam,
when does that happen and how does one
know?
So Muslims believe,
I think I left this thing up in
the air too. One of the 6 articles
of faith is belief in the day of
judgment.
Right? So Muslims believe in the day of
judgment.
God will judge all, and God will send
human beings to 1 of 2 places,
according to their heart and deeds.
So we're taught but so nobody really again,
nobody has personal assurance. I mean, there is
a hadith of the prophet where he says,
whoever says there's no God but Allah and
that I am his messenger, with sincerity will
enter paradise.
But it's not a personal guarantee. I mean,
the prophet didn't say, you know,
Ali from
California,
he will enter paradise.
So,
we're taught to have hope in God, to
have a good opinion of God. And when
I mentioned earlier about hope and fear,
it seems like
from
a sort of understanding of the text that
there should be a little more leaning on
hope. So you're wearing the 2 sandals, but
you're sort of leaning more on More hope
in God than fear. Because everyone's a short
comer.
So the prophet said have a good opinion
of god and have a good opinion of
god.
So what is shirk? And is it the
unforgivable sin? Yes. Shirk is
association with God, worshiping other than God or
associating partners with God.
It is considered the unforgivable sin if repentance
is not made. However,
Muslims are not allowed. It's actually,
impermissible. It's haram for a Muslim to consign
anyone to *. I cannot tell anyone I
cannot say to anyone, you're gonna go to
*. It's impermissible
according to Islam.
I've been cosigned to the flames of
* many many times by different people.
But I cannot, I cannot
return the favor.
Alright. As it were.
So, and that's because God is the changer
of hearts. And then people, you know,
people have have
traumatic lives. We don't know what people have
gone through. There are people who are abused
as children.
You don't know what they've gone through. Right?
So, you know, to to judge someone
you know? I mean, according to Imam Al
Ghazali, in order for someone to it's very
difficult, very difficult for someone to go to
*.
And they don't go to * on a
technicality.
It's like, oh, I was born in India
in, you know, in the year 5/22,
and I worship Ganesha
and Krishna, so I guess I'm going to
*. Right? No one goes to * on
a technicality.
Right? It's interesting the prophet said that
the flesh of martyrs does not decompose.
That God, he preserves them. They're incorruptible.
You go to places in the world that
that,
you know like saints are buried or they're
not actually buried. They're in open air tombs.
They're not decomposing.
And that's something for the Muslim to think
about.
You know? When they exhumed Medgar Evers' body
in 1993,
30 years after he was shot by a
Klansman on his driveway,
His body was in pristine shape, pristine condition.
There's something for a Muslim to think about.
God will be merciful even if we don't
want him to be. We are not God.
God is the most merciful of those who
show mercy. God knows everything about us. How
can we possibly
judge someone and consign them to the flames?
We don't know what that person's been through.
How do Muslims consider what is the kingdom
of God,
and what's their belief regarding this?
So there again, there's no the the expression,
as I said in Syria, is is a
biblical expression.
It's not necessarily mentioned in the Quran. There's
something similar that seems to be talking about
paradise.
But if you look at
if you look at, for example, Genesis 4910,
you
know, Jacob says to his sons,
He says the the scepter shall not pass
from Judah.
The scepter, the king's shall not pass from
Judah.
Or the the law from between his feet
until the coming of Shiloh and unto him
shall the obedience of the nations be. So
it seems like here, the king's scepter represents
prophecy.
Right? Prophecy that the Shiloh, whoever that is,
Christian exegents believe it to be Jesus Christ,
will come from Judah,
with the scepter.
Some say this means king kingship or messiahship.
Jesus says in Matthew, the kingdom of God
shall be taken away from you and given
to the nation, a nation that bears the
proper fruit. So again, it seems like here
he's talking about prophecy.
But there's no official Islamic I mean that's
that's a biblical term.
So
I think it means prophecy, but that's with
my own opinion.
Where do imam yes.
5 minutes.
Oh, yeah. Where do imams receive their training?
Hopefully from another imam,
who has teaching certificates.
Right? One of the things about one of
the things about, the apostle Paul
that is problematic from a Muslim perspective
is
that Paul tends to take a weakness and
turn it into a strength.
So in one of his letters, Paul, he
says, you know, I don't have letters of
recommendation.
I had my vision. I had an apocalypses
of Christ.
So the subtext there, according to New Testament
scholars, is that you have Jerusalem apostles
coming into lands like Galatia, where Paul was
evangelizing
and correcting Paul's deviant teachings, Paul calls that
teaching,
another
gospel.
Right?
So
what does he mean letters of recommendation? It
seems like these apostles from Jerusalem, they have
some sort of
letter, some sort of teaching license
from James.
James is the brother of Christ,
whatever that means. Probably first cousin of Jesus,
who is the leader of the Jerusalem episcopate.
Right? In gospel of Thomas,
logon number 12, Jesus says, when I'm gone,
you must go to James the just, Yaakov
Hasadik,
for whose who for whose sake
heaven and earth came into being.
Very interesting statement.
So Paul is saying, well I don't need
a teaching license. I had my apocalypses.
So
an an imam who comes to us and
says,
well, who did you study with? And he
says, nobody. I had an apocalypses.
He doesn't have permission to teach the Quran
or nothing.
He needs to even if he did have
an apocalypses, he needs to produce
his credentials.
Right? You know, somebody wants to operate on
me, open heart surgery,
and he says, I said, what? Do you
have an MD? I had a dream last
night,
and I was taught the finer points
of vascular surgery. That might be true.
Maybe it was, but I'm not gonna accept
that.
You know, when Jesus comes into
and Jesus is an exception, because Jesus, you
know, he's a prophet and he demonstrated his
prophecy, at least according to the Muslim position.
When Jesus comes into Jerusalem, the Pharisees ask
him, under whose authority are you doing these
things? Right? They wanna know who's your rabbi?
And then Jesus, he he doesn't he doesn't
give answers
very readily.
Right? He wants you to think. So he
says, you know, John the Baptist,
is he from God or not? And they
said, we don't know. Then he said, then
I'm not gonna tell you on whose authority
I'm doing these things.
A way of sort of getting out of
the trap. You know, should we pay these
taxes to Caesar? Whose image is this? Caesar.
Render unto Caesar. And render unto God what
is God's.
It's a brilliant answer.
How will the current admin I think it's
the last one, and then I'll show.
How will the current administration
affect
US or us?
Us and Muslim relations? I guess it means
us
or US. I don't know.
Affect us and Muslim relation.
You know, a lot of young people,
they're they're almost it's almost like, they're panicking
right now.
And it's because all they've known is
Obama,
basically.
Right? So they don't I I always calm
them down. I say, no. I remember the
Bush years.
I remember
911.
I remember the Patriot Act.
I remember, you know, Guantanamo Bay.
You know, these things, you know, they come
in cycles. The world is ebb and flow.
You know? Muslims don't Muslims aren't, you know,
sort of Neo Marxist. We don't believe that
perfect justice will ever be established in the
world.
I mean, we should always strive for justice.
You know, the word Muslim is an active
participle, not passive. The passive is Muslim.
Muslim means I'm gonna sit back and say,
help me Lord, and I do nothing. But
a Muslim is someone who's actively doing something.
And the prophet said, he The prophet said
in a hadith, if the end of time
should come upon you, and you're planting a
seed, finish planting the seed.
You'll never gonna see the tree.
The point is, just keep doing what you
have to do. But perfect justice will never
be manifested in the world. Perfect justice, that's
why there's a day of judgement.
Right?
So we have to do our best. We
shouldn't be alarmist.
Right? I think, the American
civic infrastructure is set up so that one
man cannot have absolute power.
You know, he's gonna try to do things.
And you know, his his,
ban was repealed and he's trying to, you
know, he's trying to, rewrite it and think.
So those those, you know, those nets are
there.
So we shouldn't be alarmist. It's a good
system.
It's a very good system.
And what's also great about the system is,
you know, in 4 years or 8 years,
there's gonna be somebody else. And,
you know, so
unless something crazy happens. I always tell,
as a joke, I always say, you know,
in the Quran, one of the major signs
at the end of time is the blowing
of the Trump.
You know? So
it's a good day. The prophet said the
affair of the believer is always good. When
he's in a state of hardship, he couples
his hardship with patience.
When he's in a state of prosperity, he
couples his prosperity with gratitude.
It's all good.
Alright, guys. Let's have another round of applause,
Alejandra, for a great speaker tonight.
I
added that last line for another round of
applause.