Hamza Tzortzis – Christianity Vs Islam Divine Love on Empowered #22
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Perfection of His names and attributes all together via his
oneness. Because we're going to talk about the concept of maximal
perfection and maximum perfection. Does it mean utmost perfection?
What's the difference between Maximo and because I was in the
debate, and he was saying something like, I don't believe is
ultimately or ultimately, yeah, ultimate perfection. Yeah. So what
that really means in the in the context of theology, is that when
you say Allah is loving, for example, his name is Al Wadud,
which means the most loving, coming from the Arabic word would
which means the loving that is giving, which is quite
interesting, because love is described as an active thing, not
a passive thing. Eric, from his book The Art of loving, it's quite
interesting book. He says love is not a passive effect, it's an
active thing. Anyway. Point is, that's a whole other that's
another discussion. Maybe I've been actually reading up and love
quite a bit recently. Many people, you know, they might struggle to
define what is love, yeah, just don't hurt me with that song. So
basically,
maximal, perfection.
Yanni, what I'm saying is utmost perfection is isolating one
attribute and saying cranking up to 100%
essentially, yeah, okay. I mean, I'm, I'm quite uneasy giving
numbers to these things, but you get the point. Yeah, I like the
way you framed it. But maximum perfection in theology, especially
in Islamic theology, is you say that Allah's names and attributes
understood together by his oneness, they're all to the
highest degree possible
in understanding them together, for example, yeah? Because if you
said, for example, God is just his. He has, he has ultimate
justice in this sense, well, then none of us would be forgiven,
right? Because we all sin. So in other words, crank, so called
cracking one thing up to well beyond a certain level when it
begins to detract from other attributes and other Yeah, that
would mean, yeah, it would cease to be perfect
as a whole. Yes, that's understood as a whole, perfect Absolutely.
Now this doesn't know when we're saying cranking up one attribute
100% that doesn't mean now that's, that's perfection. Yeah, there's a
debate about that, right? Because being totally just it is not
actually perfect, because that means you don't have forgiveness,
so you don't have mercy, so that's not perfection. So you understand
them together. So we're not saying Allah is ultimately loving, and
nor do the Christians. Yeah, and anyone says, Anyone who says that,
is actually defining a being that is not perfect, because they're
going to be deficient in other things. Is that clear? Good? So
these are the two kind of preliminary points that I wanted
to maximally just mean, or maximally loving means within
context of all other attributes. This is the perfect Yes, you know
they're the two highest is to the highest degree possible without
any deficiency and flow. Okay, okay, so, and maybe a final
preliminary he woke up. So a final preliminary point, I think, is
important, is to actually discuss what love is. Now, obviously, love
is very hard to define. I think the Hanafi jurist and poet Rumi,
he said something along the lines of when love, when the pen tries
to write about love, it breaks in two. Yeah, imagine you should say
that to your
wife. She doesn't watch this then,
I mean, I read,
see, I love you so much. When I tried to write about my love, it
breaks, it breaks my keyboard,
another big crack in your screen.
Okay, so it's one of those things.
I think. I don't know, there's probably a philosophical term for
this, but some words can't be defined in the essence, because
when you try to define it, you'll end up defining describing an
example of it, yes, like sleep, or sleeping or something, you can't
really define sleep without just ending up falling into describing
someone sleeping.
And I think the early, you know, Islamic scholars, when they would
have dictionaries and stuff on some next to some words will just
run my roof. This is just we can't if you define, if you try to
attempt to define it, you're going to end up putting, well, it's
almost like you could only understand some of these things
with your sixth sense. I don't mean that in a spooky way. I mean,
like, you know that kind of intuition. It's a fit three thing.
So we all know what love is when we feel it, but we don't really
know how to describe it. But there are some essential elements that
we should just break down, right? So love is that the beloved has to
relate. The lover has to relate to the Beloved in a way that is good
for them. So wants to optimize them. What's the best version of
them?
And the lover has to act in a.
Accordance to that also love is that
you you're giving to your beloved without any seeking any benefit or
intending any benefit. So it's intentional, it's relational. You
want to optimize them. You see that they have an optimal version.
You want them to achieve that you act in accordance to that. And you
give you give yourself. And this is very important to understand
when we talk about love. So the arguments that I present in the
debate, and by the way, the debate, I think, went quite well.
I know you watched it as well.
And I think because he already studied some of our stuff on our
learning platform platforms at Sapiens Institute, and he read DRS
manatee's book. He probably felt the arguments were very strong.
And in the beginning of the debate, actually, before the
debate started, he said, Oh, I've gone through the stuff kind of
thing. And he probably felt I don't really have any strong
arguments for this. And that's how good doctors manatee's book is May
Allah bless him and reward him immensely. And,
yeah, I mean, it's so I was, as a result, I didn't go blank. I was
actually thinking about something concerning Dr manitieff that maybe
it was good to share. You know, when he writes these books, he
writes them quite fast. He doesn't really well. And
you know, Dr malateeth has is has an illness, yeah, I'm not going to
mention what it is, but it deliberates him to the point where
sometimes he's in bed for two weeks. He can't even feed himself.
Yeah? He doesn't, it's
very emotional, but he doesn't even tell me, and he gets the work
done. And that's why he's such an inspiration, such a hero. Yeah,
and he gets, I mean, the books that he's written for us is
phenomenal. Some people would take five years to write those books.
He's taken much less, actually, they would probably take 10 years.
They're well researched, and he's got a lot of skills. So I wanted
to mention that about him, because, you know, he would never
say it. You know, a lot of people use social media to display their
life and even ask for money because they're sick. Dr manitif
wouldn't even tell me, and I'm supposed to be, you know, the CEO
of Sapir Institute, and he would just get things done. And then
when I heard stories like this, I didn't hear it from him. I think I
heard it from his parents when I went to meet them, he was in
Ramadan. And, yeah, this is a man who loves Allah is very brave,
proper he's has proper July, proper masculinity. I like some of
the other man boys who talk about all things, and you know,
honestly, this user, he has that characteristic. It's being my
performance. Yeah,
it's a being, not a performance, absolutely. So when I reward him,
and you know the views for listening to this, please make
lots of dua for him and his family that Allah grants him Shiva, that
Allah grants him and his family the best and both. I mean, okay,
so
let's so I presented three arguments, but I think just for
the sake of it, we're gonna you're saying because he Oh, yeah, sorry,
yeah, through, he went through, yeah, listen, he had to rely on
kind of he actually used only one argument. He basically said, In
Islam, God is not a person. You need to be a person to be
maximally loving. I thought it was a nonsense argument, to be honest.
So I start questioning him and probing him. You know, because of
my philosophical training, I was like, Okay, well, is there a
necessary link between someone having to be a person or some an
entity having to be a person? NTV makes me love him. What do you
mean by person? Yeah. And then he was like,
he didn't know. He couldn't prove that there was a necessary link.
Okay, well, if it's not necessary, then it's not an argument.
Yeah. And
then I said to him, What is a person? He said, Oh, that's a
philosophical question. I said, Well, you're presenting an
argument. You should know what it is. And I said, you know, this
reminds me of someone who came up to me when I was giving a lecture,
I think at some university in the UK. He was actually a Pakistani
quantum physicist, guy, or whatever, atheist. And he was like
Hamza, you know, your your argument for God's existence
doesn't make sense, because causality doesn't make sense
outside of the universe. Anyway. To call a story short, I didn't
debate with him on the notions of of his argument because, you know,
I could have given him a Cantonese Kantian example. I could have said
that you're assuming that causality is a posteriori, that
you derive from experience, but it's actually a priori. You need
it before you have experience. That was pointless, because I
probably, I kind of sense that he didn't have that training. So I
just said to him, you know, in western metaphysics, there's no
consensus on the nature of the causal link. And this is
philosophy. It's not an empirical question. The notion of causality
is metaphysics. Anyway, I said to him, What do you mean by
causality? You know? He said, I don't know.
Hold on a second. You're forming an argument against God and
against Allah, and you're using a key what?
Word, and you don't know what the meaning of that word, so that, for
me, was an indication that something else was going on. So
you have to use emotional intelligence. So I basically
walked with him a bit. I said, Look, what's stuff like that? And
he said, Look, Hamza, I came from a secular family. My secular
parents, I did not know how to connect with Allah, yeah. So that
whole philosophical mumbo jumbo was evading something else was
happening inside. Anyway. So I said, that's a similar to this.
You You don't know that. You don't know what person means. And then
after you start to describe it, oh, for me, a person is a mind,
okay? And I said, Okay, logically speaking, what does that mean?
Then
well? And I said, Well, God is all knowing, all wise. Is that
sufficient for you? And I think he kind of was like, Yes. And I was
like, Well, you don't have an argument, then you don't have an
argument. Allah doesn't have to be invoked a person in the way that
they discuss it, which is like a person, a human being, right? Like
the God man, Jesus hypothesis, right? That was his argument.
Well, the other argument was that God, that God in Islam, is not
personal, because love is or loving mercy or Rahma is not part
of his essence. He adopted a different perspective
of the of creed. I said, this is a straw man. I don't follow this
position. And even the position, yeah, and even the position that
he articulated,
it's not even the position of mainstream scholars, even amongst
the schools of creed, because if you take, for example, the famous
ASHRAE scholar, Al Ghazali, the proof of Islam. He wrote in his
ihir, the 36th volume, which concern, which concerns love.
Yeah, love of Allah, intimacy and contentment. And he actually talks
about Allah loves, and we can love him, right? And it's such a
beautiful and in that book, he talks about five reasons why Allah
is deserving of our utmost love. And he talks about that Allah
loves the believers too, and so on and so forth. And he has rahmah
and love. And in his other book on Allah's names and attributes, so
it wasn't the way he framed it, because he was saying, like, he
sounded like secular academics, or people who are in the academy and
generally speaking, you know, and when they talk about what they
were talking about is a very specific kind of philosophical
point as well essence, like, yeah, so Allah's essence cannot be Truly
known, and so on and so forth. And then I said to him, Look, but in
the Christian tradition, you believe in transcendent God too.
And I said, Look, do you not know that Allah's rahmah, his loving
mercy is his, is one of his essential attributes, right? It's
part of his Rahman refers to Allah. Yes, absolutely. The reason
why you don't call someone else a human being, Rahman, yes, but
Rahim, but the theologians actually say that this is
an attribute of his essence, right? Super, 13, absolutely. So
that was his main case, really. And I remember then I start
challenging him, on him, not addressing my key arguments, which
I'll talk about, two of them, not, not three of them right in terms
of the arguments against the biblical conception of divine
love. So the first one is the biblical God is not maximally
loving due to his flawed and deficient forgiveness, as
presented in the Biblical story of Adam's fall for grace. And the
other one, I'll summarize, is that the sacrifice, the apparent
crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, it has no
intrinsic value. So and it's anything, it's an incomplete and
imperfect sacrifice, and it is not an act of perfect love. I think
these were two of the strongest arguments. The third one, which
was my second one, was good, but needed more unpacking, but he
didn't really engage with it, so we didn't unpack it. So what is
the first argument? The biblical God is not maximally loving due to
his flawed and deficient forgiveness, as presented in the
Biblical story of Adam. So there's a first thing.
It's inconceivable role. I can ask you a question. If I said you are
perfectly loving from a human perspective, and then I said, But
you have flawed and deficient forgiveness. Can Does that make
sense?
Yeah, I mean no, because you wouldn't. It wouldn't be perfect.
It would be that what we've talked about ultima hoifu That cranking
up to 100
No, I think it'll be different. I would say that forgiveness,
because forgiveness and mercy is part of love. Yes, So forgiveness
is the language of love. Like, it's inconceivable that you say
someone is perfectly loving, but they're not perfectly forgiving.
It's just inconceivable because, remember, love is giving, right?
So forgiveness is a sense of giving, isn't it? Right? You're
giving your forgiveness in some way, and you're giving without
benefiting. Remember, that was a key aspect of love. So from this
point of view, it's inconceivable. From a fitra perspective, from a
fitly innate perspective, and from an Ital.
Perspective that
Allah could be loving or good could be loving, but not
forgiving. Yeah, not maximally forgiving. So they entail each
other, and this is very important. So the argument here, which we're
going to present, which doctor Spanish calls the Adamic
conundrum, is basically, we'll look at the Adam the Adamic story.
You find Adamic story in Genesis And in Romans, right? Paul's
letters, Paul's letters to the Romans, yeah. And this is the
summary. Adam falls from grace. He falls from Mercy, yeah, because of
disobedience.
And God's holiness is such. God's holiness, in the biblical
tradition, is such that he cannot, you know, forgive sin directly and
intentionally, and you know, personally, he can't relate to his
creation in that way,
and
he needs a blood sacrifice, an external, unjust blood sacrifice,
in order to
atone the sins of agaman, by extension, the whole of humanity.
And one biblical reference concerning God's holiness, with
regards to not being able to forgive, is that the wages of sin
is death. And you can find this in Romans, 623, so what happened as a
result of the fall, fall from grace, is that there is a chasm, a
rift, between God and His creation, and God cannot directly
forgive Adam and a blood sacrifice external to the relationship
between God and man is required. Now this is not maximum
forgiveness, therefore the biblical God is not maximally
loving. And let me give you a thought experiment.
Consider a king. Okay, a king is a servant of his kingdom, and the
servant breaks a rule, and the king, knowing that the servant had
the predisposition to make errors, like all human beings, cannot
forgive the servant, and it affects him so much that the only
way he can allow the servant to stay in his kingdom is that if he
kills his son,
how Is that maximum forgiving, like you would expect more from
any human being, right,
right? It seems like this is kind of,
kind of Romanized Christianity. Yes, when they have this, they
have to maintain this belief in the divinity of Risa and Jesus
Christ. We sit upon him. They kind of work backwards to try and, you
know, change and try and rewrite so many different stories. The
point that diagrammic kind of conundrum seems to be just trying
to, you know, make sense, trying to justify making Jesus into a god
beautiful. But
whilst doing that unintended consequences, it's growing all of
these other issue spanners into the well, you're right to the
gears. You're right because if you look at the Christian academic
works on Christian soteriology and hematology, they don't really
focus on, why was there a fall in the first place, and why did God
react in the first place? They just say, well, they focus on
Jesus as solving that problem. Yeah, but why is there a problem?
That's the that's the issue, that's the issue, and that's why
the Wallahi, the Quran, is so powerful. I remember hearing the
this Reverend or something, he became Muslim, and he gave a talk,
and he said, you know, original sin, and the so called Adamic
Anand, the fall from grace, it's a huge thing. And so he's like,
reading the Quran, and he's expecting to see, okay, how, how
does it, you know, refer to this massive thing, which is like, you
know, and he's like, there is no fall from grace. He made a
mistake. He made a slip for Shayna, yes, yeah, Satan, you
know, caused them to slip. Yes, it's just a slip. It's not some
huge chasm between man and creation. And then, okay, he's
like, okay, slip. That's a bit odd. How do I
how does what happens then few pages later,
Adam, I can imagine. Yes.
Fatima, Ali, yeah, Allah relented to Adam and toying words of
forgiveness. Well, you've summarized the arguments for
divine perfection concerning a lot of love for the Islamic point of
view. He was like, where's the rest of it? Yeah, absolutely.
Because if you don't have to maintain a kind of an artificial
belief that Jesus some kind of deity, then you don't have to read
into these things and make a big thing about that. Summarize what
we're going to discuss in a few moments. But this it gets even
worse. From a maximal perfection point of view, not just love, but
because, you know, in maximal perfect theology, you have to
believe that God is maximally knowing, right, and he's maximally
powerful, right? And he's maximally good. This is very
important, but this whole Adamic story actually undermines God's
maximal knowledge, and from a biblical point of view, and God's
maximal
ability, ability power. Now, why? So there's a few things here. It
assumes, first and foremost, that Adam is like a demigod. Because,
if it's true.
Yeah, that God created Adam,
and
God created Adam knowing that God that Adam had a predisposition to
sin, why is God kind of reacting this way? In the biblical
tradition, it kind of assumes, in a way, that God anticipated
perfection from Adam, which undermines, number one, God's
omniscience, although he's surprised, yeah, God's
omniscience,
which undermines the whole idea of God in the biblical tradition. And
it also assumes that Adam is like a demigod, right? Which
undermines, basically, God's transcendence in a way, or God's
oneness. Yeah,
not only that, it under, why does it assume he's a demigod? Because
God anticipated perfection. Okay, yeah, so, like a co equal, in a
way, that you're both perfect, right? And that's the point. It's
like, it's as if kind of reminiscent of these, maybe like a
ancient Greek and Roman kind of mythology, which is probably where
these beliefs came from to try and divine, yeah for sure. Kind of
turn
prophets into Gods and stuff of like Zeus and Hercules and this
kind of stuff. And, you know, Hercules upset Zeus, and he has to
be banished, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, for sure. So another
thing which undermines God's perfection in terms of maybe his
power, Omid potent, or, let's say, His Majesty His Holiness, is the
fact that it presents God as an imperfect King. Because, as Ibn
Taymiyyah says, Allah is, you know, the king is the King of all
kings, but he's not a weak King, like a human king, because a weak
king, he needs the obedience of His servants and his subjects, if
you like, in order to maintain his dominion right his domain. But
Allah. Allah's dominion is complete. He controls everything.
The obedience of His servants doesn't affect him, and the
disobedience of His servants don't affect him. Do you see, this is a
maximally perfect holiness, but they're describing a holiness a
very contingent and weak, like a weak human king. So it undermines
Christian theology concerning God's omnipotence, God's
omniscience, God's holiness.
And it's a terrifying story to me. So people analyze it more like,
How can I believe in such a God? It's not a perfect God. It's not a
transcendent God, right? He's not perfectly knowing,
right? So that's the first argument, which I think is a very
strong argument. And obviously, for you to unpack this further, we
have the course from the from Dr zanatif on our learning platform.
Go to learn dot Sapir Institute, org, and we also have the book in
the book, and he does a course with it. Yeah, that's all we
usually do. So exactly, even, even more, even just to show my show,
the talents of our brother may not bless him. The second argument
which I want to talk about, I won't talk about the second one I
presented. I'll talk about the third one, which is now the second
one for today, is that the sacrifice, meaning the so called
crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, has no
intrinsic value. It is an incomplete and imperfect
sacrifice, and it is not an act of perfect love. So let's summarize
it with what Christians usually say, John 316
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that
whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Now
that's kind of PR, right. So let's unpack it logically and
spiritually. I think you could unpack it in the following way,
for God could not directly and lovingly forgive man that he
tortured and sacrificed his son, and this tortured sacrifice has to
be accepted for man to be saved, rendering it an incomplete and
imperfect sacrifice by roll off the tongue. Yeah, it doesn't, but,
yeah, but it's bad PR, but it's more accurate, right? Especially
when you look at more accurate from the tradition, yes, if you
look at the tradition, that's how you would describe it, right? But
they're basically to support, you know, perfume on a casket or
something, you know, or was it a lipstick on a bulldog or whatever
they say. So now there's been many attempts to reconcile the whole
kind of God's holiness in the biblical tradition and his
forgiveness and love, and these are called atonement theories, and
our different atonement theories, and all of them have conception
for the so called difficulties. We don't have to get into them, but
it's important to note that, yeah, but so why is the sacrifice so
called crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus in the
biblical tradition, not an expression of maximal love. Well,
listen to this.
Jesus's sacrifice on the cross is supposed to lead to the payment of
my sin. Okay,
my sins are only atone, though, if I accept the sacrifice, therefore
the sacrifice, in of itself, does not completely atone my sins.
Therefore the sacrifice is not a complete or perfect sacrifice.
Therefore it cannot be an expression of perfect love. Let me
give an example. Say, you know, we have children, Alhamdulillah, and
say we had to save our.
Children from drowning in the lake. You know, may Allah protect
everyone's children,
and we saved our children. We put them safely, but we ended up
drowning.
Do our children have to now recognize that we did that in
order for them to stay alive?
The Sacrifice is complete in of itself, because they're alive now,
it's a complete and perfect sacrifice.
Imagine you had to not only sacrifice your life
and end up dying and saving your children, but your free children
to remain alive. They have to accept it too, right? That doesn't
make sense Exactly. There's no intrinsic value to the sacrifices.
It's a flawed and imperfect sacrifice. Therefore it cannot be
a manifestation of a perfect God. Therefore it cannot be a
manifestation of perfect love. Simple as that, simple as that.
Now that is basically the arguments, two of the three
arguments that presented, and he didn't really have any arguments
against them, right? It's kind of the point of a sacrifice. Now,
that's the whole point, exactly, like absolutely, absolutely,
absolutely, and it's just the way they frame it. So the other say,
gift, right? Yes, so that's what's going to talk about. So the other
thing is, well, the kind of counter argument is, well, it's a
gift. You have to accept a gift for the gift to actually be in
your hands, if you like, for that act of giving to be complete, but
yeah, fine, if you're going to frame it as a gift, and there's a
problem, though, the problem is that it shifts it away from a
sacrifice. Not only that, it creates more problems. If it's a
gift you're making, very hard for me to accept it. How's that loving
and merciful? Because it's irrational and against the fitrah,
against the innate nature. And it's not intuitive. It has little
or weak historical evidence. It's based on a sociology and
hematiology That doesn't make sense.
I mean, that's already a barrier for me to accept the gift. You're
saying I have to be irrational to accept the gift, or I have to go
against my nature, or I have to go against, you know, common norms of
divine perfection in order for me to accept this gifts in the first
place. Are you serious? I mean, it kind of speaks to the clash
Christianity has always had with and, you know, yes, empirical
inquiry and rationalism. And yes, absolutely, absolutely. So the two
main arguments for the Islamic conception of Divine Love,
basically, number one, Allah is the most loving, the lovingly
Merciful, the specially merciful and described by qualities of
love. Number two, Allah is maximally forgiving. Human sin
does not limit Allah's mercy. And we go into the Adamic story in the
Quran. So the first argument, let's summarize this. Allah is the
most loving, the lovingly merciful, and especially merciful
and described by qualities of love. Now the first thing we have
to understand is, when we're talking about theology in the
English language, we have to know the English language. So when we
talk about love, what does it really mean? You have various
connotations like kindness and compassion, affection, because
concerning for the Beloved's well being, wanting good for someone,
mercy and grace. You find this in the dictionaries. You don't have
to have connotations, because, like we said, Yeah, it's hard to
find a deal, absolutely, but that's why it's important, because
you can't you have to therefore that, because when you're going to
communicate Allah's names and attributes in the English
language, then you have to be able to understand the English
language, and when you were talking about God's mercy, we have
to do justice to it. So from the perspective of divine love, in
terms of love in the English language, then we have a taxonomy,
taxonomy of divine love. So for example, we have a Rahman.
What does a Rahman mean? Achman is linguistically in the intense
form. That's why, if you want to call someone intensely lazy, you
call them qaslan, right? So our Rahman is the intense form. So
boiling over. Type of mercies, an immediate mercy. It's a powerful
mercy that if Allah showers mercy on something or someone, no one
can stop it. Now it doesn't just mean mercy. I like to say it's
Allah is lovingly merciful, and this makes sense in the English
language. I'm not saying it's hob, yeah, I'm not saying it's mawat.
These are different realities, but this is a form of love from an
English framing perspective. And I've spoken to scholar and mercy
could be you show mercy for other reasons, not for love in English,
yeah, but you could also show, you could show mercy to someone you
hate. So it's not loving mercy necessarily. Well, that what you
saying. You added the word loving No, no at all because, because
Allah has mercy for people who that he has no hope for, right?
But why? Why am I calling it loving mercy? Because it's in line
with how we describe love in the English language. That's the
point. Remember a sense of giving good for the object of mercy, of
love and so on and so forth. And it includes kindness, mercy,
grace, so And why am I saying this is because remember
the root word for our Rahman. The root letters for a Rahman is a.
Are hamim, right? Which you have the word womb. And if you look at
this, it's quite beautiful that the baby in the mother's womb is
loved by the mother before the baby is born, is cared for, is
nurtured. She wants good for the baby. She wants a sacrifice of the
baby. She wants the baby to be optimized in every single way,
right? So, and this relates to the Hadith, I think it's in Bukhari
and Muslim, where the Prophet salallahu Hadith said that a
mother has that Allah has more affection for his
slaves, for his slaves, than a mother has for young ones. And
this was in the context of the fire, because he asked the Sahaba
the question, you know this mother, which he throw the her her
child into the fire. And the Sahaba said, No, you know. You
know, as long as she had power to stop it, of course, she wouldn't.
And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Allah has more
affection, more Rahma for His servants than for his than a
mother has for her loved ones. And we believe Allah's mercy and love
is greater than a mother's. Anyway, it's more pure. Why?
Because a mother needs to love. It completes her. Yes, her mother's
love is unconditional, but it completes her. Allah does not
require completion. He is ah, Samad. He is the absolute,
independent. He is Al Ani. He is the free, the free of any need. So
Allah's so that's why it's better to describe it as the lovingly
merciful, right? Because Allah wants good for even the wicked
people. Because in the Quran and Allah subhanahu wa says he does
not prefer disability for His servants. And mufasarien say that
this was Allah wants good for people. He wants people to go to
Jannah and so on and so forth. So I think it's a more accurate
portrayal. So that's the taxonomy of divine love. And a Rahman, his
Rahma encompasses all things Allah says, and his Rahma overcomes his
wrath. And
Allah's Rahma is not conditional. It's actually unconditional. What
does this mean? This means not conditional someone's belief or
someone's good deeds. And Ibn Josie, he narrates katada, and I
think Hassan Ibn Ali to say that Allah, Allah's rahma, Allah's
mercy, loving mercy, in the dunya in the world, is for the righteous
and the wicked. So that's the tax on the first kind of taxonomy, the
first aspect of our taxonomy, then you haven't even a criminal or a
disbeliever or whatever they he still shows the Mercy like he
gives them respite. He gives them, you know, water to drink. He gives
them time to repent. But notice that he actually has sent
guidance, and he wants them, yeah, he wants them to be guided and
forgiven. We make the choices right. As Allah says, Don't blame
Allah. Blame your own hands. Allah is not unjust to his servants, and
so on and so forth, so. And that's when you look at the kind of Islam
and the tradition holistically, and the different realities that
we've talked or spoken about, I think lovingly merciful is more
accurate then you have a Rahim, which is very similar to a Rahman,
but it's a special type of loving mercy, and that's for the
believers in on the Day of Judgment in akra.
So then you have al Wadud coming from the Arabic word, which means
the loving that is giving. And this means the most loving.
And so therefore you have this kind of taxonomy of divine love.
And they all play kind of different roles, and
it relates to different ways of being, for example.
So if you want Allah's kind of love from the point of view of him
being the most loving that he is, Abu dud, then you need to follow
the Prophet sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam, because Allah says in
surah Al Imran that say, if you love Allah, then follow me,
meaning Muhammad, sallam, and Allah will love you and forgive
your sins, right? So this is very interesting, yeah. So
when you see this taxonomy, it makes hub, and that's herb, yeah,
it makes sense. And not only that, what you see here is that also,
but Allah says, Lay you. Hib, bu, Allah doesn't have hub. He doesn't
have a love for the wasters or for the disbelievers or the unjust
transgressors. So what we see is Allah doesn't have this type of
love hub for people to have a way of being, and they've identified
with that way of being like they're criminals and oppressors.
The first thing to say is this doesn't undermine divine love,
because I've been Timi I mentioned this, and this is one of who found
reason that love necessitates hate, not blame with you hate
praiseworthy hate. So it is loving to hate barriers to love is loving
to hate oppression. It's loving to hate someone's way of being, and
they've identified it to the degree that they have become an
oppressor. Yes, I hate that. If you love everything the same, you
love nothing before, bro. Yeah, it's not. It's a ridiculous
argument. So there's praise where they hate the part. In fact,
it's quite rare in public discourse, because people tend to
kind of go towards kind of you.
Dividing the world into angels and devils. You know, you're either an
enemy or your best friend and but the creator of ah sunnah is that
you can combine love and hate in the same person. Yes, indeed,
Allah loves and hates the same person in accordance to the good,
good qualities in that person and the bad cause. Absolutely,
absolutely and that, that's why what's so powerful is, you know,
Islam also makes a distinction between loving for and loving of
right? Say you're you're a criminal, or you're an oppressor.
I don't have love of you, meaning, I don't, I don't love you. I don't
have love of you, from the point of view that I don't love your way
of being that you've identified, identified with now, which is an
oppressor
for me to love that will be, won't be loving at all. It'll be
actually an infection. It'll be an act of hate, in a way.
The other thing is,
I have love for you, though, so I want to have love of you, but I
have love for you. So does love for meaning this context, it means
I'm on good, goodness and guidance for you. Do you see the point? And
this echoes various traditions, the Hadith traditions, Sahih
Hadith, authentic hadith, narrated by bucharedi, by sin Tariq al
Kabir and is authenticated by shakhadani, the Prophet salallahu
alayhi wa sallam said, Love for Lin Ness, what you love for
yourself, love for humanity, what you love for yourself, yeah,
meaning goodness and guidance for them. In actual fact, that hadith
in arabaya, nawawi, the 13th Hadith that talks about, you want
truly believe in this, you love for your brother. We love for
yourself. And now in his explanation, he mentions, this is
believers, but it's it's general humanity as well. In Sania,
meaning you want goodness and guidance for them. So when Allah
says, Lay you Hibu, it doesn't negate his love in general, like
he's the most loving, and he doesn't negate his Rahma. So Allah
may not have hub for someone, but he'll have loving mercy for
someone. That's why we said the loving mercy is not conditional
someone's beliefs or actions. This is clear mercy so like, important
point to make is, although, yes, Allah's Mercy can be intensified
and maybe withdrawn in certain different contexts, but that's a
bigger discussion. But in general, Allah's Mercy is not conditional
on someone's belief or just like what I've been the citation from
Ibn Jose Ibn Al Josi, yeah. So that's why, like a pyramid, the
everyone is included in Allah's loving mercy. Yes, there's a
smaller kind of category of just the believers or that have a team,
yes, meaning a Rahima. Then there's a smaller subset of that,
because some believers might be criminals or unjust whatever.
There's a subset of that. Those who kind of you know, obey Him to
try to excel and come to me, beautiful so and
this is beautiful. This is beautiful the argument. This is
beautiful taxonomy. So the other argument now that we should talk
about is that Allah is maximally forgiving humans. Oh, by the way,
to complete this that Allah the taxonomy of divine love. Allah
describes himself by qualities of love. That's so beautiful. So
Allah is Al Halim, for example, The Most Forbearing. Allah is Al
Latif, the Satan is kindness. Allah is Abu, the source of all
goodness, the greatest benefactor, Allah, Subhanahu wa is, you know,
all his beautiful names, and many of them actually qualities of
love. You don't find this in the biblical tradition. You don't find
it in our theology. So we have an amazing, perfect taxonomy of
divine love that makes sense to the sound akan, and obviously is
based on Revelation. And we have now Allah describing himself by
qualities of love as well. I think, you know, the actual
arguments, although they were kind of watertight and completely valid
logically, I don't think 99% of people, they won't really affect
them. I think
what affects people is that kind of stuff, just describing Wallahi,
I say this alone as names. If you Hadith ayat about me, if you if
people a fundamental understanding that Allah is your Creator is
someone who's actually looking for any excuse to forgive you.
Perfect, for sure, perfect Zachariah. So, you know, I really
believe that if people just focus on Allah's names and attributes
and the stories in the Quran that hadith, it should be enough.
That's why, sometimes, when I get invited to give lectures on Does
God exist, and say to them, No, I don't want to give that talk
anymore. I'm going to give the talk. Why Allah is worthy of our
humble adoration? Why is Allah worthy of worship? Why is Allah
worthy of love? And that you focus on Allah's names and attributes
now to relate to him, and it just opened, opens people's hearts,
even atheists, right? Because everyone has a fita. They already
kind of have this kind of primordial belief in Allah,
Subhanahu wa. So finally, the second argument for the Islamic
position is Allah is maximally forgiving human sin does not limit
Allah's mercy. And this is basically Adamic story in the
Quran.
Man. And we don't have to go into detail, but you can find it sort
of Al Baqarah, verse 36 and 37 chapter seven. Verse 22 and 27
chapter 20, verse 117,
and what is the narrative? Number one, Allah's positioning on the
fall of Adam, or the sin of Adam, is a slip Tabari, one of the
earliest exegetes. He basically says shaytaan calls them to slip
from obedience to Allah. So it's a slip. That's the framing. It's not
a full from grace. Number two, he's always in Allah's grace,
absolutely. Number two, that's actually deep, beautiful. Thank
you.
Number two, Allah's immediate reaching out to Adam Ali, his
salaam, to assist him to find repentance, as Allah says in Surah
Al Baqarah, verse 37
then Adam was inspired by words of prayer, his by his Lord. So he
accepted his repentance. Surely he has accepted repentance, Most
Merciful. So Allah relented to Adam alaihi salam, right? Remember
what the beautiful thing here is Adam and elihi Salam, his word did
not, did not ask for forgiveness. First, Allah relented to them.
Allah taught them how to, taught them how to ask for forgiveness.
Yeah, which is very beautiful here. Yeah. So
the third point is Adam and his wife were beseeching their Lord
through the words of of repentance for mercy and forgiveness number
four, Allah, forgive them. Yeah, this is, this is maximal
forgiveness. Now, no original sin, no, no, that's why. And so it's
personal. It's intimate, it's relational, it's direct. You don't
require something external to the relation between human beings and
their Creator. Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on this.
I'm telling you,
they say, Oh, we have a pet. Do you have a personal relation with
the divine? Do you love God is personal and intimate? No, sorry
to say, your whole theology undermines all of that come to
Islam. Yeah. So now what some may argue, oh, this is just for Adam
Ali Islam and his wife. That's not true if you go to surah. Surah,
chapter nine, uh, verse 118,
you see how Allah spoke about the three Sahaba who remained behind
because saying the Battle of Tabuk, same language, Allah
relented to them, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's clear you can't
even argue. You can't even begin to argue. That absolutely
specific. I mean, Allah says in so many Hadith property and
describes, and Allah says, you know how vast His mercy is, and
don't disband His mercy. Yeah, if you came to Allah with, with the
sky, and yes, in Tirmidhi, and you've described it well that
Allah says the Prophet said that Allah says that you know, O son of
Adam, oh human being, if you were to come to me with like you know,
many sins,
you would, and you don't ascribe partners to Allah, you would find
him with as much forgiveness. That's the kind of meaning of the
Hadith so beautiful. So let's summarize now the kind of Adamic
conundrum with two stories. So we mentioned the first story. Would
mention it again to juxtapose it with another story of a king that
represents the Islamic tradition. So consider a king that has a
servant. This is King one, yeah, consider King one and he has a
servant. He's in his kingdom. The servant breaks a rule. The King,
knowing that the servant was human and made mistakes, cannot forgive
the servant. It affects him so much that the only way he can take
the servant back into his kingdom is to torture and kill his son who
did not commit the sin. King number two has a large kingdom,
and one of his servants disobeys one of his commands to clean the
guests from in his palace. The King knew that the servant would
do this and had the capacity to make such an error. King two looks
for the servant, finds him and instructs him to see and
wholeheartedly read some lines of forgiveness. Say it's a
forgiveness poem to the king. Yeah, the servant does this. He is
forgiven by the king and remains in the palace. King number one is
basically the biblical god. King number two is a kind of
representation of the Lord of the heavens and the earth, Allah
subhanahu, WA Allah Abu Asmaa, man of Rahim, the most loving, the
lovingly merciful, especially lovingly merciful. It's a
representation of his forgiveness and love, not as an analogy,
because you can't make analogy by but it's a useful kind of thought
experiment that you could say by greater reason, yeah, and stuff
like that. So this is, this is something that
that's it really, that was the kind of main arguments, and I
think it was quite successful. I want to have this with, you know,
other, maybe more senior academic and popular theologians or
philosophers, maybe even Dr William and Craig himself, or
anyone else. Dr sanitif has reached out to him as well, I
believe, but I don't think he's replied, Because they find these
I'm telling you. You know this book that Dr semanotif wrote. I
don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I said to him that
even if no one read this book, I'm happy to come to Allah on the date
of judgment of this book, because.
Is actually defending the Tawhid and the perfection of Allah,
and he's done such a great job, and it was an honor to have him to
do that in the team as well, and an undeserved gift from Allah. So
yeah, I mean even so to, by the way, to know more Allah's love.
And absolutely,
absolutely, absolutely. And you know, what's important to
understand here is, if you want more, then, you know, go to a
learning platform, download the book. It's free. You could get a
physical copy on Amazon. It's it's just print price and Amazon price.
We don't have any profit. And yeah, so you know, if you like
this, it touch, moved and inspired. You.
Go to the learning platform, go to different courses, look at other
books, and, most importantly, share this with Christians and
share this with people, because you remember people like to they
remember how they're made to feel, not what you necessarily said. So
sometimes abstract theological discussions, you know, won't
impact people, but if you focus on Allah's love his name, those that
taxonomy of divine love His names and attributes, the qualities of
of with respect to his other names, the Adamic story itself,
something will happen, right? And, you know, obviously, if it gets
more complicated and technical, you confer to the other arguments.
But the point is, use it. Go share it. Because people need this.
People they're unhappy with Christianity. We know this because
of secularization and liberalization and the secular
secularization and liberalization of Islam, of Christianity, it's
not going to happen to Islam, which is very shows the power of
Islam. Now what's interesting, Dr Shapira mentioned him. He wrote in
the book, be careful with Muhammad, which is a great book
responding to the Salman Rushdie affair. In the book, he basically
talks about that, you know, under liberalism or secularism, you
don't really have, you know, full tolerance. You're only practically
accepted as liberalized and secularized versions of yourself,
because ideologies, ideologies want to dominate. You know, they
want to propagate themselves. And he said, Well, Muslims not having
that, because this song is cannot be subjugated that way. It's not
going to be a subjugated sub subculture. It's very dominant.
Yeah, and Christianity is failing because this basically has become
liberalism and secularism. That's what I mean. Of the Christian
apologists, Christian academics, their attacks against Islam are
just liberal and secular attacks. So there's not coming from the
Christian tradition. And that's why, when you engage with this,
people saying, well, why are you, how are you arguing as a liberal
or as a Christian? They'll be like, Oh, as a Christian, okay,
well, let's see what Christianity actually says. There's a lot of
alignment on some of these issues, right? So anyway, so
Alhamdulillah, it was a great blessing to do. So I want to do it
again, Inshallah, definitely. And I really want to create a
narrative, not just me, but doctors, man, and the whole team
is a team effort of PR that has to be, you know, yeah, it's like a
2000 year PR campaign that's like, wrong, incoherently, kind of
absolutely dismantle anyway, sun's coming up to present this as well
for having that Convo, and let's go get some breakfast. Now. Let's
do that for the Convo and to you watching at home if you like this
podcast, if a like and a share, remember to hit subscribe wherever
you get your podcast, if you're listening or watching and getting
in the comments below, if there is a comment section until next time.
Assalamu alaikum, warahmatullahi, wabarakatuh.