Fahad Tasleem – Inception The Story of Adam in Surah alBaqarah #01
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of compassion and empathy in addressing difficult situations, including newborn transportation issues and gas shortages. They share personal stories about a newborn's poor transportation and the lack of gas, leading to a gas station visit. They also discuss the importance of understanding the wisdom of questions and the "monster" group's political and cultural impacts. They emphasize the need to prioritize compassion and empathy when dealing with difficult situations, including a newborn's poor transportation and the lack of gas. They share a personal story about a newborn's poor transportation and the lack of gas, leading to a gas station visit. They also discuss the importance of guessing the wisdom of the questions and the philosophy behind suffering.
AI: Summary ©
Alameen wa Salatu was Salam
ala should have an MBA will go to Celine Nabina Muhammad while early
he was having a dream Oh my god. So welcome to tonight's session.
It's actually one of two that I'll be doing and
inshallah tonight we're going to be covering some of the story of
Adam Alice annum, as is found a suitable Bukhara now you may have
heard this story before you may have gone through it you may have
gone through some of the series. But tonight I wanted to highlight
certain elements of this story that are typically left out. And a
lot of these elements that are left out, have to do with things
like how we understand evolution, how do we reconcile what we know
in terms of evolution, and you know, the text of Scripture, the
the the Quran, specifically in the narrations we found in the Hadith.
So, and other aspects. For instance, one area that I think is
not covered very often, is the philosophy of language. And once
you start diving into that, as we're going to see in sha Allah,
maybe not tonight, but in next week, that it actually is very
phenomenal, when you start looking at how language operates, how we
think about language just as a, as a just from the onset, when you
think about how words are put together, the fact that you that I
am speaking, I am making certain sounds that are projecting
projected out of my mouth. And you are able to hear those sounds and
differentiate those sounds in such a way that you understand meaning.
And so what we find is how language operates has a number of
different levels and a number of different phenomena that go along
with that. And the fact that language is one of the main
sticking points when it comes to the evolutionary narrative, right,
the narrative of evolution. We're going to talk about that inshallah
next week, but so that being said, we'll start off in Surah Al
Baqarah, Allah subhanho wa Taala says Father, Villa he Mina che
upon a regime with all our Abu Khalil Mala Ekati in Niger, and
often out of the Khalifa, and mentioned O Muhammad when your
Lord said to the angels indeed I will make upon the earth a
Khalifa. All water there are Luffy has made UFC to FIFA. We'll speak
with Dima Are you going to create are you going to place upon the
earth? A this one who's going to cause corruption? And who's going
to shed blood?
And then they continue and they say well, Natalie was somebody who
be Hamdi Kawaoka de Sulak. While we are here, and we are doing your
spear, we are praising you. And we are doing your hand and we are you
know, and we are we're sanctifying you and Allah then response, that
indeed I know that what you do don't know. Right or left in
limbo. Mala Talamo. Okay. Now, before we continue on to the rest
of the if there's three areas that I wanted to look at specifically,
starting with this ayah, and then moving forward. All right, so
three questions rather. Question number one.
Why did the angels ask the question in the first place? In
other words, how did the angels know? What was the inference they
were making? Right? So they're saying, Are you going to create
upon the earth, a being that is going to corrupt it and is going
to shed blood? The question is, why would they ask that question?
What is the background information? What is the, you
know, the the the the information that they need in order to even
ask the question? So that's the first thing we want to discuss.
Why did they ask or what, you know, why did they ask the
question in the first place? The second thing, and this is really
important, especially when we talk about things like doubts sugarwod
people doubting their Islam or doubting certain areas within the
Islamic paradigm. The second thing we want to ask is, in what manner
did they ask the question? In other words, how do they ask the
question? Did they have a certain predisposition? Because if you
look at the question, in a sense, it's like they're asking Allah or
insinuating that Allah as if they're saying Allah, why would
you do such a thing?
Now, someone could ask that very same question in a number of
different ways, depending on their predisposition, where they're
coming from what, let's say emotional and intellectual baggage
they bring to the table, right? So the way in which they ask the
question is also going to we're going to ask why, or rather, how
did they ask the question? In what manner did they ask it? Is there
some sort of prerequisite you need before you ask questions related
to Islam? That's number two.
Number three, the question itself.
What are they trying to find out? And why is that important? And in
fact, what we're going to see is that this gets to a question that
spans all of human history.
Everyone's been everyone from the beginning of time has been asking,
Why does evil exist? Why would you have Why would a God that is good,
allow bloodshed and evil to exist in the world? Okay, so this is
kind of the the framework of the discussion between Allah and so
we'll start with our first question. And that was why did the
angels ask the question? How do they know how did they know? Or
how did they predict how did they make an inference to say you know
what this will happen? What was the background information? Well,
it comes from understanding the term Khalifa. Because remember,
Allah subhanho wa Taala makes an announcement with color Abu Khalil
Mala you can in the GRE you know, fill out the Khalifa indeed, I'm
going to place upon the upon the earth a Khalifa. Now, just pause
here for a second. The fact that Allah subhanho wa Taala says
journey alone, right? Is as if it's already done. You get the
sense that it's not something that's going to be done, but
rather than is being done, and it is done, okay, that's number one.
But the key point here, Khalifa, what does that mean? If you open a
translation of the Quran, you will probably find the word vice
Jarrett. Okay, so we're gonna put that on the side for a second. The
term Khalifa when you look at it, it comes from the trial literal
route, colorful.
Now, Khalifa indicates something that comes after something else,
it's to replace something, it's telling it to come behind
something, right. So that's why linguistically if you want to say
something in front of someone or something, you say, a man, right?
This that's why the Imam is called the Imam because he's in front of
Pete of the people that the people will follow him in terms of the
back that's known as HUD. So that which comes behind that which
replaces there's a succession that's going on here. And that's
why I've been confused says that this what this relates to, is a
community or a group of people coming after another group of
people or a century after a century or, as he says, a
generation after generation, that's what he says, As a Coleman
Young blue FOB, I'll go home garden. In other words, this is a
group of people coming after another people
and then he continues with G learn by the G and it is a generation
coming after another generation. So one group of people coming
after another people, one group of people replacing another people.
Now, this replacement and this and this we get the sense of this from
other ions in the Quran. So for instance, Allah subhanaw taala
says well, who will lady Jhala come holla if out and it is he was
made you holla if your successors one after the other after the
other, all right, one of our about dokkan folk about Linda jobs and
we have made given as Ray some of you and others in in others and
rank and degrees above others. So again, what we're getting here is
the idea of one succeeding another one coming after another one
replacing another, okay. Similarly, when we talk about the
idea of something coming after something else, Allah subhanho wa
Taala says, We're gonna let the jar Allah Laila won the heart, and
Allah has made the night and the day held fatten, he has made it
one coming after the other. So the night comes, then the day then the
night and one starts replaced the other. So you find the sense of a
Khalifa, the point of a Khalifa is one thing replacing another. Okay.
So if if that's the case, we understand that this replacement
is not only spatial, but it's temporal as well. Now, what do I
mean? It's spatial in the sense that you have a certain spatial
reality, I'm sitting here, if I get up and leave and someone takes
my place, the term Khalifa can be indicative of that it can give you
a sign of that. So it's spatial, and its temporal meaning it's also
time bound. In other words, it is not only the font, someone comes
after me chronologically as well. Okay. So it's spatial and its
temporal. Okay. That being the case, now, there's a certain
question, if Adam al Islam is going to be put on the earth, and
there's going to be generations succeeding generations, is there a
generation or a group of people that Adam Ali Salam, and his
progeny are going to be replacing?
And this is where even Kadir mentioned something really
interesting. First, he says any rights and you can find this in
not in it because you see, but you'll find this in albida
When the higher Is it because he is written a compendium or a
voluminous set on the history of everything, right? So it starts
with Adam Alayhis Salam goes all the way through history up to his
time, and then includes in that the signs of the last day and the
last day. So it's a very voluminous set. So in albida, when
the higher he writes, he says that Paula cathedra, mineralium,
additive seed, the most of the are many among the scholars of
exegesis, the scholars of tafsir have opined the following, right?
That, that the jinn were created before Adam, now this is something
that you may have already heard if you've taken the seat of class,
you know, okay, so, you know, the most popular opinion is that that
which had occupied the earth, before humanity, was the jinn. But
then he continues, he says, Many scholars of exegesis have opined
that the general credit for Adam and that before them before the
gin, they were hidden and been,
okay, so and hidden and been used to roam the earth. So Allah
empower the jinn over them, and they kill them meaning the the
jinn kill the hen and the bin, they kill them distance and
destroyed from them, and what is and resided after them on Earth.
So what had been computed is saying, and what he's what he's
narrating here is that it wasn't just the jinn that was here, but
rather, there was in another community that were called Hin and
Ben. And basically, the jinn when they had come down, they had
basically finished off this community, right, and then
occupied the earth. Now, does this have any basis in our tradition?
In other words, is there a hadith that mentioned this is their Apolo
Sahaba Is there something so, most of the authors you find talking
about him and Ben, talk about this in a way that says we have heard
it is so you will find it in books of history, like I mentioned, I
found this or this is narrated, not in the Tafseer women Kathy,
but in lb die when the higher so from a historical point of view,
there is some evidence that the people of the past had recognized
that there was a community of people that were that are
community of beings, rather, hen and been as recalled, that
preceded the gin.
Okay, however, you have scholars like Ibn are shoot in his dfcu, he
writes that it seems like that these narrations are a bit
spurious. In other words, not really sure about it, because you
find these types of this type of mythology, this type of legend in
the people coming from, for coming from the Greeks and coming from
the Persians. So he's a bit skeptical about it. Nevertheless,
these you have many other authors that have spoken about it, again,
from the context of history. So you have narrations, again, not
going back to the process of them. But this opens up a certain
possibility.
And that possibility that it opens up, is that when you look at
modern fossil records, and you find that there are fossils and
remains of humanoid like skulls and things, bones and things like
that, there is a possibility of an alternate explanation. Okay,
alternate explanation. And what I mean by that, and we'll get into
more of this next week, is that when you have a certain
understanding, and a certain assumption, or let's say, pre
supposition of how the world works, and how you're supposed to
analyze it, you're going to interpret the data accordingly. So
if you're what we call epistemic tool, your tool to understand and
know, you know, how you know, what, you know, is only science,
then you have a certain pre assumption, the pre assumption is,
any explanation I'm going to give has to be an explanation that is
part of the natural world, anything that's outside of the
natural world, we will not entertain that as an explanation.
So what that does is that gives you a certain epistemic boundary.
Okay? Now, Muslims, when they're doing science, they're not limited
to this boundary, because we say we don't only have the natural
world, but we have revelation as well. And so therefore, when we
see data, we're going to interpret that not only based on the natural
world, right, and by the way, within science is known as
methodological naturalism. Okay, that you have to give a
naturalistic explanation as such, so when they're not when you have
found fossils and things like that, the interpretation that's
given if you have let go of Revelation, you're not going to
entertain that is one of what we get from modern day
evolution, evolution theory, biological evolution, so on and so
forth. Does that mean that there's no part of that that is acceptable
within the Islamic framework?
Yes and no. Okay. The idea that fossils are found, and they were
observed, there's no denying that if they were found, and they were
observed, and there's good reason to believe that they were, then
you have to take the data as is there weren't, let's say, you
know, skulls and bones that were found that had a humanoid like
appearance, they weren't like humans, but not not exactly like
the human skulls, structure and so on, the anatomy was a bit
different, and so on. So with those facts, this particular idea
of there being hints and been, right, that comes again, not from
works at fc it, but works of history, allows us to actually
have a possibility to say perhaps, that Hin and been the remnants,
the bones that we're looking at the fossil record is reflective of
that. Now, Allah subhanaw taala knows best, we're not going to say
that definitively. But what it allows us to do is open the door
and say, Hold on a second, maybe there is some evidence for this.
Now, in terms of reconciling the story of Adam alayhis. Salam, the
fact that Adam will Islam he was created, as we know, from the
Quran, Allah mentioned, I treat him with my own two hands. And so
there's something special about Adam Alayhis Salam, we're going to
say that for next week. Why? Because I need to take a detour in
something known as Islamic Pneumatology. Okay, not neurology.
Pneumatology, the study of the soul, and how the body and the
soul and the rule are connected, right? And the things like for
instance, we have a consciousness, how does that relate to the to the
rule, and things like that, but I'm gonna save that for next week
with Nila. So now let's come back to where we were. Okay, so we're
put that on pause. So we said, one of the meanings of Halifa is to
come after or to replace, we said that that replacement is spatial
and temporal, okay. But it's not only spatial and temporal. We said
that there's also when we talk about replacing something or
coming after something, there is also the idea of replacing someone
in their role in their authority in their responsibility. So we get
from this idea of a Khalifa, the idea of stewardship. You become
stewards then, okay. Now, what's interesting is that when you look
at the word Khalifa, and you go to the Quran, the word Khalifa and
its derivative, right, so we mentioned a few helvetian, etc.
It's dribs mentioned about seven or eight times, only two times
isn't mentioned in the form of Khalifa with the Tamar booth at
yet. Okay, one time is here, where we just mentioned Allah subhanho
wa Taala says, I'm going to place upon the earth Khalifa. The other
place that is mentioned, is sort of sod or Allah subhanho wa Taala
is speaking to Tao le Salaam. And he says, yeah, that will do inna
JAL Naka, Khalifa tan fill out. Oh, the old indeed, we are going
to make you a Khalifa. Okay upon the earth. All right, let's stop
here for a second. What does this mean? Well, the rest of the IEA
gives some elucidation of this point, Allah then continues and
says five golden bein a nasty bit help. So judge, Judge amongst the
people in truth, but it still doesn't stop there. Because Allah
then continues Walla wa al Hawa and do not follow your desires.
Now, another interesting side point here. And that is that when,
and I'll come back to this point about stewardship. But when you
look at some of the Hadith literature, there's a hadith
where, and I'm sure many of you know about this hadith, where
Allah subhanho wa taala, or the process of them is telling us that
Allah subhanho wa Taala shows Adam, all of his children.
And Adam Ali salaam sees all of his children, their like bright
lights, right? And yet, amongst his children, there is one that is
specifically luminous. So he says, You're Allah, Who is that?
Who is it?
The odorless Allah.
Okay, now he didn't mention Musa he didn't mention reciting Tao Del
Sol. Okay. So then Adam Alayhis Salam says, How long will he live
or rather, Allah tells tells him that he's going to live for 40
years. So Adam Alayhis Salam says give him 60 years from my life.
The narration actually continues and says that when Adam and his
son was about to die, the Angel of Death comes and Adam Melissa
basically tells him, Yo, man, you're here early, right? I was
supposed to get 1000 years. And he says, Well, you forgot that
You had given a portion of your lifespan to the old, right? And
then the prophecy hasn't concluded this, at least by saying that Adam
forgot. And indeed in son forget. So insulin comes from the word
NESEA, which means to forget, okay, now that's the Hadith. The
reason I'm putting in this particular place, is to show you
that clearly there is some sort of connection between Adam and doubt.
The fact that in the Quran, you've got Khalifa in that particular
forum with the town where Buddha mentioned for Adam alayhis. Salam,
right, and this intuited Baqarah and then to for that within Islam
and sort of salt, all right, so coming back to stewardship, we
said that
that when we look at what Dell Dell is, is commanded, he's been
told he's going to be a Khalifa. And he's told that he has to judge
appropriately between people. Now, let's stop here for a second. When
we think about the concept of responsibility,
we understand that in the world that we live in,
you find
that there's a lot of corruption. In fact, you may say that the
angels from a certain perspective, were actually right. However,
there's an understanding that that doesn't negate the responsibility
of someone who's going to follow Allah subhanaw taala. Okay, and
that's later on, we're going to see at the end of the story, we're
going to see that Allah subhanho, wa taala, has basically told Adam
alayhis, salam, you're going to come down, you're gonna come down
to the earth and if you follow those that I am sending follow my
guidance, you will not have sadness, and you will not have
fear. Okay. So if you if you if you know, the story in brief, you
know, that they were in Jannah. And we'll talk about that next
week as well. What does that mean? Was that Jana, actually, Jana that
we're gonna go go to? Was that a Jana on earth? Because Jana means
garden? Or was that somewhere in between? We'll talk about that
again next week. But if we, when, when we when we understand that
and we look at, okay, so, you know, Adam, and it's not going
down and you won't have any fear and you won't have any sadness.
Understand, Adam le Salam is coming from a journal where he
doesn't have any fear and doesn't have any sadness. And so what is
he being told he's being told when you go down to earth and if you
follow my guidance, that feeling that you hadn't Jana, you will
have some what something close something in the realm of that.
Okay, because what is one of the qualities of Jana, there's no
fear, there's no sadness, it's pure bliss. Yeah. Okay. Now, this
particular interpretation, so we said, the first interpretation of
Khalifa has to do with one thing coming after another one, one
group of people succeeding another group of people, this particular
understanding of stewardship, you find that the iron before this is
indicative of that, in other words, the iron that comes right
before with Karla rabuka Little Mala in the giant or the Khalifa,
Allah says one lady, hola, hola, co marking rd, Jimmy and it is He
Who has created all of that which is on earth. And the word there is
Jimmy and that is two ways of understanding this.
If in other words, we have created everything on earth for you, Jimmy
and all of it, or one way of understanding is we have created
everything on earth. Jimmy and for all of you.
There's, um, there's an author, and an author is not a hadith, but
it's just like a saying.
So, but sometimes, you know, you find in the books of Deaf seed,
and you know, sometimes in the books of history, certain I
thought certain things, and they're very powerful and they
kind of they're able to help us like elucidate and understand
certain points in this particular other. And I believe this comes
from some of the Israeli art right, some of the, from, you
know, narrations from the from the, you know, the Jews and the
Christians have old in this particular author, Allah is coded
and he says, Oh, son of Adam, I have created everything for you.
And I have created you, for me. So do not let that which I created
for you distract you what I created you for.
Right. In other words, we've been given like the ISS one lady Hala,
Bala chromaffin of the Jamia and we have made everything on earth
for you. So it's made for you, but for what purpose?
The purpose is to worship Allah, there's the again, the concept of
stewardship. And this, you know, there's a certain question that
sometimes comes up that I get, and that is sometimes you'll be in a,
in a masjid gathering, and you have kind of an older gentleman
who will come to you and they'll still tell you like, you know
what, look at how the West is so scientifically advanced and the
Muslim world is just backwards. Right? Anyone ever heard this
complaint
I hear it all the time.
But I wanted to kind of,
let's say disassemble that complaint for a second, have us
look at it. When you when we understand the progress, and let's
I'm gonna put this in quotations, the progress of the modern world,
we have to understand that there's a certain operational logic that's
behind it. There's a certain motivation that's behind that
particular progress. Okay? What is that motivation? That motivation
is linked with what we call liberty. It's part of liberalism,
liberalism being a worldview, the one that all of us find ourselves
in. Now, what does Liberty mean? So I have a dictionary definition
here. So liberty, the state of being free within society, from
oppressive restrictions, imposed by authority on one's way of life,
behavior, or political views, and nature. I've added that at the
end. Alright, myself, I'm going to tell you why.
When you and this is we're not going to get into a full
intellectual history of Europe. But what we can see is that the
idea of liberty comes about right before the enlightenment. In fact,
it is connected to what we know the wars, what we know is the wars
of religion in Europe, right around 1530 to about 1620. All
right, of the of the current era, in these wars of religion, they're
extremely brutal. And what was the complaint? Why Why were people
going to war, they were going to war because the church at the time
was made was in charge of giving what they call totalizing truth
claims, they will tell you what to believe and what not to believe.
Okay. Now, of course, if you're wondering what the Galileo affair
that actually comes a little bit later, okay. But nevertheless, we
find that as a reaction to that, you have this concept of
liberalism, that comes about, okay, and again, there's, I'm not
gonna get into the full intellectual history of that, but
understand where we are today is rooted in the concept of liberty,
expanding liberty, what expanding it from what well, you have that
which is outside of yourself, that is oppressive. So if you're going
back to the wars of religion, religion itself is oppressive. It
doesn't allow you to become your authentic self, right? And I use
that term on purpose, okay? It doesn't allow you to expand your
liberty and your freedom as much as you want. And so therefore,
the, the operational logic, when it comes to liberalism, is to
expand that liberty as much as possible. Okay. And so what is the
ethic going forward? The ethic that's going forward is as long as
we can expand freedom, we're good. Okay, what are we expanding
freedom towards? What do we want to be free from? Well, once again,
you want to be free from culture, if culture is telling you to do
something, and it's oppressive, and you don't want to do it? Well,
as they say, I do what I won't. Right? Is basically, I'm not I
don't have to do it. Okay. Number two, if there's some sort of
oppressive religion, it's telling you how to live how to eat how to
do this? Well, we're going to free ourselves from all of that. So
freedom, as a concept becomes central. When freedom as a concept
becomes central, and you look at kind of the, let's say, the
progress of where we are, I don't, you know, I shouldn't say progress
of where we are in the world, especially, let's say politically
within the United States, we know you have conservatives and you
have progressives, right?
The idea that you can liberate yourself is shared by both of
them. In other words, we want to expand our liberty. The
conservatives, however, speak more about things like free market
economics, okay? Why? Because the idea is that we can expand our
freedom, such we can do what we want when we have overcome nature.
So the operational logic behind the modern world, when we look at
let's say, economically is profit maximization, profit maximization.
So we can facilitate our doing what we want to do, fulfilling
our, you know, base desires, right, fulfilling that kind of
that, that, that base desire of eating and sleeping and doing
whatever we want. That is the operational logic behind the
modern world. So when you have technological progress, that is
what's fueling the technological progress. Okay. So, if that's the
case, let's look at the pre modern Islamic world for a second. Was
that the same operational logic?
In fact, it wasn't. It wasn't to fulfill one's desires to the max.
Right. In fact, it was the exact opposite. Let me go back. And
when
Odelay Salam. Now I'm going to go back to the the I was speaking
about Falco and being a nurse you will help so judge between the
people in truth. And then what does Allah subhanho wa Taala say
right after that, well that that our do not follow your desires,
the operational logic but behind the Islamic paradigm is not to
maximize freedom to maximize whatever you want to do whenever
you want to do liberalism if you want a an example of that is like
when Allah subhanho wa Taala says about our eight Amanita Allahu
Allah, Who have you seen the one that takes his Hawa, as his ILA.
In other words, their operational logic is pure howa expansion of
freedom. And therefore, when you look at whether there's an ethic
involved here, the only ethic that is involved, is what you might
call the harm principle. As long as you don't harm anyone else, you
can do whatever you want, you can have a you can have a same *
interaction. And you can do it as long as you're not harming anyone
else. Again, expansion of liberty. And that what why there's that
fuel of technology. That's the operational logic behind it. The
operational logic behind the pre modern Islamic world was
completely different.
It was to facilitate the worship of Allah subhanaw taala. Okay, let
me give you an example. So many of you know about algebra, right. And
Muslims love talking about algebra, because it's an Arabic
derivative comes from the Arabic word Java. Okay. But there's an
interesting background to that. Like when you look at Musa hudl
how worries me? Why did he come up with algebra in the first place?
In fact, the ruler at the time, Matt Moon had commissioned him
and told him that look, you we have certain issues within our
society, issues related to financial transactions, legal
transactions, and issues related to Ferrara ID,
inheritance law. And because it's so complex, compose something that
will make it easy. Now stop here for a second.
When you think about inheritance law, this is one of the most
complex areas in film. So if you ever study Sharia, you know, it is
extremely complex, because what are you doing? You're talking
about a number of variables that come into play, okay, so you have
a husband, you have a wife, maybe he has a father, but not a mother.
Okay, scenario one, maybe is Two girls, one boy scenario to husband
and wife, second wife, all right, and then her father and then his
father, and then okay. Now, you have so many unknowns and so many
variables, how are you going? How do you facilitate following that,
and calculating all that? And so the backdrop to attach algebra,
right algebra is understanding for right? Because what do you do in
algebra? Right? You have the x, the y, the unknown, x square all
those things, right? So when harare's Me comes up with this
concept of algebra, it is to facilitate for right is to
facilitate inheritance law. Why?
First of all, where does inheritance law come from? What
where's it derived from? is derived from the Quran and the
Sunnah. But why would you follow inheritance law? In order to
worship Allah? Right? Because in this society, you can leave your
house to your dog, right? Legally, I think, I don't know. I'm not an
expert in this area. Okay. If you follow your desire to say, why
should I care what Allah wants, like, you know, who's my best
friend, the person that was closest to me was my sister, why
should I leave? Why should I leave some money to my brother? He was a
jerk to me. All right, I'm not going to follow that. I'm going to
follow my how up, okay. In choosing to follow the inheritance
law, you are choosing to worship Allah. So the operational logic,
when it comes to the explosion of let's say, Muslim science, it had
to do with facilitating the worship of Allah coming closer to
Allah taking the concept of being a Khalifa, seriously. Okay, so.
All right. So that kind of covered. So remember, I'm gonna go
back to the beginning. So we said that we had three questions. All
right. The first question, why did the angels ask the question? How
did they know? Okay, so we said, one understanding of that, is that
because there were hidden and been beforehand, because they were the
jinn beforehand, they had that experience. They saw the type of
brutality that was happening, and based on that, they make an
assumption. They make an inference, okay. And that's why
that's the background to the question, right? That's what made
them ask.
The question because that had that information. The second question
was, how were what matters? The angels asked the question. How,
like, what, when they asked the question, was it a question that
was coming from a place of malice?
Or was it a question that was coming from something else? And
this is, I'm gonna mention this, that this is extremely important
in the modern age.
You know, we, the organization, I work for Sapiens Institute, we
deal with a lot of people that come with doubts. Okay, in fact,
we have a service online called Lighthouse mentoring, where a
person can get a free, one hour mentoring session, and this
session is targeting Russians, they targeted but is limited to x
Muslims, Muslims having doubts, and Muslims that have X Muslims
having doubt and non Muslims, okay. And the fourth category,
someone interested in dealing with EX Muslims, Muslims having doubts
or non Muslims, okay, they're free. So believe me when I tell
you, we have a lot of experience in this area. You know, we spoken
to x Muslims, we've spoken to people that have left Islam, we've
spoken to people that are doubting Islam and so on, I was dealing
with a case, you know, just this week at the beginning of this
week, subhanAllah, this young man, he said, You know, I started to
become religious. And you know, my father, who was in my household,
he was he was quite a narcissist. And as a reaction to that my
sister left, my sisters left the house, I think it is he said, they
moved to Vegas, and they started prostitution.
And subhanAllah he said that, you know, when I tried to speak to
them, they keep telling me about how, you know, I have no right, to
tell them to be religious. They have the right to make as much
money as they want. And it's a very lucrative field. And so I
have no right to tell them that. So he was asking, right, so how do
I deal with that situation? And, you know, subhanAllah, I
mentioned, I said, you know, it's not about winning the particular
argument, because they were saying, okay, so women's rights,
and this and that, and we got into feminism. And then I stopped for a
second, I said, Look, man, it might not be an issue of, you
know, winning the particular argument about how do you deal
with feminism? Or how do you deal with this concept of, you know,
women's rights, or whatever it is, the issue might have something
more to do with the fact that you they live in a household with your
father? And he said, Well, yeah, that makes sense. I said, so
you're gonna have to approach this in a way that's a bit different.
Because you don't want to win the argument. You want to win the
heart. You want to bring them back to Allah subhanaw taala. I said,
Have you considered giving them gifts?
He said, Yeah, I sent them a gift. They sent me a video of taking the
gift and throwing it off the terrace mocking me.
You know, what I mean? That's, it's kind of like the real world
unfortunately. Right? That stuff it happens. So what does that have
to do with what I was talking about? About how we ask a
question? As soon as someone comes on to these mentoring sessions, I
can tell within the first five minutes, what is their
predisposition? Where are they coming from when they're asking a
question? So the point isn't that, Oh, you shouldn't ask questions.
But what are you bringing to the table? What What are your pre
suppositions? Do you have any sort of emotional or intellectual
baggage and presuppositions that you're bringing before asking the
question? In this case, the angels don't. Because they say, they when
they act when they when they when they say to Allah azza wa jal
Luffy ha may use it to free her. We just speak with demand and so
you know, will you replace upon one who causes corruption sheds
blood, and they follow that up with one national news sub b Who
will be handicapped one look at the Sulak and while we are the
ones that do your tests be or stop here for a second does be
you know, it's not just you know, things fall last fall last fall
and that's okay, that's its way of doing vicar but what it means when
you talk about the term Tess's via it comes from, you know, something
that's floating something that's higher, you are raising something
above everything else. In other words, when you are doing this be
of Allah when you say Subhana Allah, you are saying any sort of
negative thing about Allah, we're going to put that on the side.
There is no deficiency when it comes to Allah subhanho wa Taala
None whatsoever. That is indicative that is part and parcel
of the test be okay. As an example.
When you had a unicellular, who's in the belly of the fish, pitch
dark, you can imagine the smells you can imagine the digestive
sounds and all of that pitch dark, no hope, nothing. He makes a dog.
Anybody know the dog?
La ilaha illa Anta Subhana wa in decontaminant volume. The Prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says that any person who is going
through any sort of calamity
If he used to use the dua of units, or what he says don't know,
if he uses the DUA to know Allah will relieve him of his problems
of his issue.
Now, even Tamia has an entire track on just this particular
narration. And one thing that he mentioned that's very interesting.
He says that when you look at the door of Eunice Ali salaam, he
starts off by affirming Tauheed La ilaha illa Anta there's nothing
worthy of worship except you. And then he says so bahagia
In other words, when a lot of people when they go through
trouble when they go through hardships, immediately they start
saying, Why me? Why would you do this to me? Oh, Allah, I don't
deserve this. Or you know what? My mother's in the hospital she
didn't deserve this. She was a good so all of a sudden, where's
the blame game? Where's the blame going?
To Allah. But when the fact that unicel is Salam says Suba,
Chanukah, any fault any negative attribute injustice, completely
negating that from you? Oh, Allah. You have no there's no injustice
here. And then he says, I am from amongst the wrongdoers. If there's
anything here that's wrong, it was from my from me. Okay, so the
angels coming back here. What are they saying? They're saying that
we're not going to do somebody who behind the gun look at this, what
were the ones doing the spear? So yes, we're asking the question.
But we understand at the end, oh Allah that you are free from any
sort of deficiency. Okay? So that predisposition and again, this
gets into another theological aspect, another theological topic
of do angels have freewill. Okay, which again, we'll have to touch
upon next week. But putting that issue aside for a second, we
understand that the disposition where the angels are coming from
is not a position of malice. It's not a position of one to say How
dare you're doing that or blaming Allah subhanaw taala not only
Billa okay. So this state that the angels are asking the question
isn't such a state? When Allah subhanho wa taala, even when we
talk about guidance, Allah references or gives an indication
to the state of a person's heart the predisposition, how you're
coming to something? Okay, so for instance, at the beginning of
Surah Al Baqarah. I left la meme dally Kalki tabula rasa Buffy
hotellin ewaterpay.
All right. This is the book where there's no doubt a guidance. Boom.
Does it stop there? No, it says for the company. For people that
have taqwa, right? Taqwa gives you the idea of protecting yourself
against something. So when you say you know, the Hola, right? And so
fear Allah. That's how it's translated. But protect yourself
from the punishment of Allah. But the cannot right, protect yourself
from the hellfire. So the idea that you don't want negative
consequences, you're coming to this book with a completely open
mind with the idea of trying to protect yourself from anything
negative, whether that's the moral consequences, that you've done
something wrong, or whatever it might be, or whatever that is, the
idea is, you're not coming with some sort of emotes emotional or
intellectual baggage. Okay, because a lot of times what
happens is, and even when I'm on these calls, someone will come and
say, and the way they're asking the question, I can tell
immediately that their disposition isn't because they're actually
asking the question is because they've already formulated an
answer in their mind. And they're now saying, Okay, are you gonna
give me the answer that I want? Right? That's a different pre
disposition than someone that's coming open. You know,
the, there was a story about the teacher, Bruce Lee. And so Bruce
Lee comes to his teacher and he tells him he says, you know, what,
I've learned this type of, you know, this type of martial art and
this type of martial art know, Kung Fu No, this, I know this, I
know this, I know this. And I want you to be my master, I want you to
be my, what's the term? The right.
Okay, I want you to be my whatever, I want to learn how to
you. Okay, so he starts pouring tea is, you know, to be teacher, I
guess he's pouring tea. He's pouring and pouring and pouring
until the Cup starts getting full. And then it starts to overflow. So
Bruce Lee said, Well, wait a minute, why are you doing this? He
says, Well, just like, you know, all of these different martial
arts form, you seem to be full. So there's nothing I can add to that.
When someone comes and says, I know it all, if they've already
got an answer in their mind, are they really coming in some sort of
sincere, you know, exposition of what they, you know, of getting an
answer. Okay. So your disposition, how you're going to now approach
something is going to have an effect how you ask the question,
okay. Now, real quick here.
How you approached
Quran how you approach the Hadith, how you approach certain topics
within the Islamic paradigm, what you'll find is that if your
predisposition if your background, your emotional baggage or your
intellectual baggage that you come with it, you read into something
the way you want it to read. Okay? And I'll tell you this much who is
most guilty of this is probably the Christians. Okay, why? Because
when it comes to the Bible, what you find is that they don't do it.
exegesis they do an ECG says, Alright, what's the difference?
And exegesis is when you let the text speak for itself, you're
trying to derive what does the text Tell me? In other words, like
if you go into the Quran, What is Allah saying here? Right, without
any sort of, you know, presuppositions? What is Allah
subhanaw taala? What is the conversation I'm trying to have
with Allah? What is Allah telling me? An Easter Jesus is taking your
own understanding and superimposing it on the text. And
by the way, Muslims are guilty of this as well, when it comes to the
Bible. Okay? Why? Because you have a Christian that has a a worldview
that's rooted in Trinitarianism, right in the Trinity. And they're
now reading certain verses and telling you this is what this
means. You know, Mr. Muslim now is coming or Mrs. Muslim is now
coming in saying with his or her headache worldview and saying, no,
no, this is what the word means.
So here, what's going on is not what does the verse actually mean?
But ECG says that's going on with both parties, right? You're
reading into it, what you want to read into it, right? That's why
just as a separate point, in terms of Dawa I rarely use the Bible in
my doubt, right? When I'm talking to Christians, right? I go
straight to theology, you know, purpose of life and things like
that. That's a separate conversation, okay.
And what happens is that this phenomenon can happen with the
Quran as well. So earlier on in the suta, in silicon Bacara, Allah
subhanho wa Taala says in Allah Allah Yes daddy and yet the river
Mata Lama Barudan from Africa. Indeed, Allah is not shy, is not
timid to present an example like like the example of a mosquito or
something more than that. Alright, so Allah is not you know, shy to
present even something as minut as a mosquito or something more than
that, then Allah subhanho wa Taala says, For a mala dena. So I'm
Melina Am I know for ya allah Moon unknown will help vulnerable Him.
Those who believe they have a predisposition of belief they're
coming with this idea of belief they know it is the truth from
their Lord. What am Molina COPPA rule for your whole loan Amanda or
other law or other law will be had that McCullough and those who as
for those who are who have disbelieved? They start
questioning What did Allah why would Allah give an example like
this? Now that's not the main part, the main part Allah subhanho
wa Taala or what I'm trying to highlight here, that Allah
subhanho wa Taala says that so mad Radovan will be harder masala you
didn't do because you know what, yeah, TV he cathedra that Allah
same example. Right? Right. He sets many astray. And he guides
many. Okay, but then what does Allah subhanho wa Taala say? He
says what my you didn't do be in welfare simply. But those that are
sort of straight, or those that are coming with a predisposition
of fists, of evil of ill intent. Okay, so how you approach
something is going to be very important. And in fact, next week,
when we get into the, the Adamic archetype versus the shaytaan, ik
or the satanic archetype, we're going to see that this is one of
the main issues. One issue, one archetype is one of humility and
coming, as if you're casting yourself before Allah subhanho wa
taala, empty and ready to learn, and the other is coming full of
assumptions. This being honest, I don't mean, right, I'm better than
him. You made him and you made me at a fire and you made him out of
a theme out of you know, out of water. And so all these, all these
things, I'm better than him, all of these pre assumptions. Okay. So
I'm going to end with one last point. And that is probably the
most important one for this night, and I'll go very fast inshallah.
And I'll try to continue it next week. And that was our third
question for the evening. And that question is, what is the question?
The question that the angels are asking, Is that not a question
that is trans historic? In other words, people have been asking it
from the very getgo
and not necessarily in terms of a philosophical deductive argument,
right? That's more of a as more of a modern flavor when people say,
Okay, well, you know, you know, why would God that evil happen?
He's all good, if he's all knowing, and if he is all capable
than why does evil having happen? Because if God is all good, he
wouldn't want
evil to happen. If he's all capable, he could stop it. And
he's all knowing he knows about it. Why does evil happen? Now
that's what's known as the logical form of the problem of evil. I'm
going to put that aside, that's a very easy solution. And that has
to do with actually the solutions, what we're going to speak about,
but that has to do with the idea
that when a person is going to make a judgment, in order to make
an appropriate judgment of something, you have to have all of
the facts.
So when it comes to saying, Okay, this particular thing is, is evil,
you have to now make a knowledge claim, you have to say, you know,
what I know for a fact that this particular thing that I'm dealing
with, is in fact, evil.
Let me just kind of conclude with some of the names of Allah that
are mentioned in the story. So later on in the story, when we get
there inshallah next week,
the angels after Allah answers your question, like, why would you
create such a thing? Allah subhanho wa Taala basically
teaches Adam the names of things. This is where next week we'll get
into the philosophy of language and so on and so forth. So I'm
going to park that for them. But then they say all who so behind
Allah and Milena in llama and Lampton oh exalted Are you we have
no laws except what You have taught us in the candle, our legal
hacking, indeed you are knowing and wise, I leave these are both
on the fine forum for those who are studying Arabic. So there is a
type of extension. In other words, I leave the knowledge just keeps
on going. How can you Why is in every single situation, okay? The
point is, is that if we understand that Allah is, Hakeem, he is wise.
And that is our pre assumption, then we don't necessarily need to
know the wisdom.
Okay, Now hear me out here.
Just because we don't know the wisdom doesn't mean that Allah is
not wise.
And so when we think about the concept of wisdom itself, or hikma
right, the concept of hikma is to place things in the appropriate
place and the appropriate time in the appropriate manner. Okay, in
order to do that, you need knowledge. But not only that, what
is another defect of the human being when it comes to hikma? The
fact that we are limited beings, and we have emotive states.
We can act jarhead.
So, you know, we talked about a Jamba Juice idea, right? The days
and translated as ignorance. So the term Gen. Does anyone know
what the antonym of this word is?
And right, so knowledge, ignorance, but that's not the only
antonym. The other antonym is hidden,
hidden forbearance, not letting someone push your buttons. That's
why the Prophet SAW Selim was described can acronym a nurse, he
was the one that had the most him, you couldn't push his buttons, and
that he would just react. Why was it called a Yama Janelia. Not only
because they were ignorant of the truth, but also because they
lacked him. They lacked forbearance, they would go to war
over the smallest littlest items, you would say something about my
brother and then boom generations of warfare, one after the other
after the other. So it wasn't just a lack of enemy, it was a lack of
hidden. Now Allah subhanho wa taala, whatever his name is Al
Halim.
In other words, he's maximally perfect in his Hidden. He doesn't
have emotive states like human beings do. So when it comes to
Allah's hikma, it is to a level of perfection like no human being
has, when it comes to his own, it's to a level of perfection that
no human being has. So when you make a claim, you understand that
the one you're making a claim against is a being of maximum
perfection in his knowledge, in his hidden and in his hikma. So
just because you don't know the wisdom of something, doesn't mean
there isn't one. However,
that doesn't necessarily help people. If someone's mother's
dying of cancer, and you tell them, Well, you know, there's some
wisdom in it.
I mean, okay, maybe you've solved the logical problem, right? You
figured it out logically. But that still doesn't take away from the
pain and the internal strife a person could be going through.
And when you look at the Islamic paradigm, you find that those
ideas of hikma there are many hikma that are given, right? I'm
not gonna say all of them, but many, so much so that you have
people that have written books and books and books just on the the
hikma of Allah in certain scenarios. Okay, but it goes back
to predisposition. And what is that predisposition that we
understand certain existential questions? Where do we come from?
on what we're talking about right now. Okay, what is our purpose?
And what happens when we die? If these questions are clear
questions about our existence, then those elements and those ID,
those wisdoms that Allah has given will make sense. And I'll leave
you with just one example and then we'll conclude for the evening.
Okay. So one of the wisdoms when a person is going through some sort
of hardship
is that Allah wants you to increase in your compassion. So
compassion comes from the this, you know, the etymology of the
word comes from being at one with someone's pain, calm, Passio. So
Passio comes from Passion, passion has to do with suffering, like the
Passion of Christ, for those who know about that movie anyway. So
it's about suffering, compassion to be at one with someone
suffering.
Sometimes Allah will put you in a certain situation, so that you can
experience that such that when you see the other person going through
that, and you have that experiential knowledge, you're
able to increase your compassion with that person. All right, let
me give you
a quick story. And I've mentioned this a few times, but I'll just
retell it here real quick. So about
18 years ago, Manimal. Anyway, 18 years ago, I had my firstborn, my
son, okay. And I remember that, and we still live in Virginia. And
we, you know, I remember that he was just a newborn, and I was on
my way to take him to the doctor for a checkup.
And, on that day that I was taking him there was like this big snow
blizzard. Like it was bad. I mean, the weather was just terrible.
Okay. Now, I said, this was how long ago 18 years ago right now,
18 years ago, we did not have Google Maps. We also did not have
one of these things. They're non existent. I think I may have had a
pager for those who knows know what that is? Okay. So Google Maps
not existed. Okay. Cell phone not existed.
So anyways, I'm driving. And then I realized at a certain point that
I run out of gas, like in the middle of the road, so I'm able to
pull up on the side, but there's like a blizzard. I mean, and on
top of that, there's a blizzard. And now the cars there. And my, my
son who's just a newborn is right there. Okay, he's in the car seat.
And I'm thinking,
how am I gonna solve this problem? I've got to get gas. Okay, now,
it's a gamble at this point. Now, either I go this way, and walk
with this newborn in my hand through this snowstorm, get to a
gas station. Right? So it could be this way. Or it could be that way.
Like, I just I've got to take a, I've gotta make a choice. Now, as
I'm thinking about this, I something else occurs to me.
I left my wallet at home.
So now I'm like, Oh, my gosh, man, this is like, this is so bad,
right? I'm like, how am I gonna get out of this situation? After a
few minutes, I get a knock on the window. And some guy like he's
there. And he's like, Hey, is everything okay? And I'm like,
Yeah, I just ran out of gas. So I'm trying to figure out what to
do. He said, Just wait here. So he goes to a gas station comes back
with a tank of gas and fills my car. And so I'm telling him, I
said, Yo, listen, man, I really appreciate it. Give me your
address. I'll send you a check. I don't I don't have my wallet on
me. Right. And so just let me know. He said, No, man, don't
worry about it. Just play it forward. Okay. Now, for me, that
was me directly experiencing something. There's a direct
experiential component of what I went through. You know, here in
Houston, if you go to sometimes you go to gas stations,
inevitably, you will come across someone who's going to come up to
you and say, What? Hey, man, could you just put some gas in my car?
Right? I don't know if it's happened to you. It happens to me
all the time. To this day. I cannot say no. Right? Not because
because look, you can think of all sorts of excuses. Well, who knows?
I'm gonna feel gases, gar, he's gonna go off and do drugs, right?
Think of all sorts of things where you can just say, I don't want to
help this guy. But because of that experience, it increased within me
compassion. So I can't help but okay, you can or you know what,
whatever it is, you need gas, no problem, I'll put it in for you.
You know, so sometimes Allah will put you in a situation and the
wisdom of that is to increase human compassion. So coming back
to what we were saying. And I'll summarize the three questions
again. Why did the angels ask the question? We spoke about that? How
did they know how do they predict that we talked about Califa? The
term itself the fact that there were beings beforehand, whether we
consider the the jinn or beings in addition to the jinn, we said how
in what manner did the angels ask the question, there was no malice,
they came with a clean predisposition. And finally, what
was the question? The question had to do with the age old question of
the theodicy right? The wisdom behind suffering, okay. So I'll go
ahead and stop there. Inshallah. Next week, what we're going to
cover just to give you a little taste of what we're what we're
going to be
Speaking about Insha Allah, he's speaking about that wisdom that
Allah speaks about. In other words, when the angels ask the
question, Allah teaches the names to Adam Malleus Allah or what does
that mean? And how does that answer the question? Okay? We're
going to go through that when we speaking about things like the
philosophy of language. If we have time, we'll speak a little bit
about evolution and kind of expound upon that and talk about a
little bit about the philosophy of science, not too much, but just a
little bit. And finally, when we explore this question, we're also
going to look at the fact that the wisdom that Allah is expounding
upon is linked to the idea that your wife when she enters Paradise
will be more beautiful than the correlate. Okay, well, how's that
work? You got to come back next week. All right, Zach,