Ali Ataie – Where the Crisis of Knowledge Has Led People of Faith

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.