Ali Ataie – Where the Crisis of Knowledge Has Led People of Faith
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AI: Transcript ©
I think part of the problem is a
crisis of knowledge.
People don't value religious knowledge anymore. In the
Islamic tradition, knowledge is of central importance. The
prophet said,
there's some weakness in that. Seek knowledge even
to China
or
that the acquisition of knowledge is an obligation
upon every Muslim, male and female.
So Muslims place,
teaching licenses,
pedigree,
on on a pedestal.
You know, it's interesting. There's a story in
the synoptic gospels where
some Pharisees come to Jesus and they say
to him, under whose authority do you do
these things?
Right? So they wanna know who's your rabbi.
Right? So who did you study under? Who
do you think you are?
So, of course, Jesus didn't study with anyone
because God reveals to him the truth and
that's what Muslims and Christians believe.
But Jesus' answer is a bit evasive and
he says, well, John the Baptist, was he
a prophet or not?
They say, well,
I don't know. We don't know. And so
he said, I'm not gonna tell you under
whose authority we do this. So what they
want to know is who is his rabbi.
And one of the interesting things about Judaism
is that the the oral law was meant
to be oral.
So Orthodox Jews believe that 2 Torahs were
revealed to Moses on Sinai,
the Pentateuch or the Chumash, the 5 books
of Moses, but then also
the oral law that was given to Moses
that was not meant to be written down.
So a way that you can check the
pedigree of a so called rabbi is not
him simply spouting out verses from the written
Torah. Anyone can memorize anything.
Right? You can get anyone to memorize anything.
Is do you know the commentary of so
and so rabbi on that verse? Do you
know what this rabbi says about that or
that rabbi? What does the oral law say
that you can only get
through teaching license,
through sitting with masters
as a way of sort of,
checking one's
true scholarship.
So that's really important.
You know,
extremists, they they know what one of my
teachers said, extremists, they know what a text
says,
but they don't know why it says it
or how to apply the text.
Right? And that's,
extremely important,
in order to have
a a a well grounded understanding
of the tradition itself.
So knowledge is of is of central importance,
I would say that.