Hamza Yusuf – Hadith Of Jibril – Part 2
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province allies who said this was gibreel, who has come to teach you your religion? How did you begin attacking your aluminum Dino calm? The meaning of that is that this hadith teaches us the religion. That's the whole religion right there. He man, Islam xand and signs of the last day. And I think it's a really interesting way of looking at it. The way that Dr. chittick and Dr. Marotta are looking at it, as these are dimensions, you have in four dimensional reality, which is what we're in, you have the three dimensions of width with breadth, and depth. And that's what we experienced here, if your binocular vision will not people don't have that depth perception, but we have depth
perception. And if you add time, which is the fourth dimension, then what this headache deals with is these four dimensions. The dimension, that is the horizontal dimension is Islam. That is the most basic, that's the foundation, the vertical dimension is a man or faith, because that's the focus towards the heavens. So your behavior is Islam. The reason you do the behavior is a man. And then sand is what gives it depth. It's what gives it depth. It adds that dimension to it, and then it plays out in time. So we're in time creatures, and one of the things we experience about time is signs the world is signs. Satan, Addy on the line who said zemon, Yeoman, Yeoman laka will Yeoman
Alec all of time is two days a day for you a day against you. And he says fish coup de la Lima cadelec was better and I cannot Lake have thankfulness or gratitude towards Allah for what was for you and be patient about what is against you. And so the basic experience of the movement of time is a recognition that there are signs that come into the world that indicate the type or the nature of the age that we're in. And certainly our age, is in many ways, a very dark age, because people are so distant from sacred truths and, and also have an arrogance that obviously, this is the best time ever. The next idea here is Dean, because he said, you know, come Dino come he came to teach you
your dean. What does Dean mean? The Arabic word comes from a root word, Danna, you Dino means to discipline it has the meaning of to discipline, it has the meaning of to consider guilty. The Donna is when somebody is guilty of something. It has also the idea of a debt indebtedness. Dane is debt. Medina is somebody who's in debt debt and is the one you owe the debt to. It also has the meaning of a rain, a gentle rain that keeps coming back. And the religion at the essence of religion is an idea that this is it is a rain, it's a life giving rain to the spirit that keeps coming back. It's something that keeps coming back and reintroduced into humanity again and again. So at the essence
of the human experience has been these rains that have come revelations that have come heavenly rains, that nurture hearts that bring people back to life that bring their lives to a spiritual fruition. The idea also of debt, which is also interesting, because there's an idea that if somebody loans you money, you feel indebted to them. And the idea here is that God has loaned you, your life, it's a loan. And the beauty of a loan is it's not yours. But while you have it, you can do with it what you want.
Now, obviously, if somebody loans you money with a stipulation, if you go to the bank, and you tell them, I want $100,000 to buy a house, and then you go and score a kilo of cocaine, with the money, obviously, you've broken the contract. They wouldn't just give it to you like that. They don't do it like that anymore. But generally the idea of taking a loan as a trust, there's a reason why that person is giving you a loan and generally people want to know what the loan is for they ask you, what do you need it for? Well, I need it for this or that. The more honorable The reason, the more likely further down so the idea of God giving you a loan a goodly loan.
It's the loan of your life. And then the beauty of it is, on the one hand, it is alone. On the other hand, she offers the chance to sell this thing that he's given you back to him. And that is an honoring. According to the Koran, it's in the lush determine and meaning a love bought from the believers. So the idea of God buying from you something is meaning that he's putting you, there's parity in the relationship. It's not that you're an equal to God, but in this relationship, he's making you an equal. He's making you somebody who's actually gone into a transaction with him. And the sale is your soul. And that is a high thing. So the idea of giving the soul back to God, and he
pays you for it. And that's why when that verse was revealed, everybody was happy except aboubaker, he began to weep.
And the prophets eyes looked at it and he said, Why are you weeping? And he said,
How can we sell back to God? What already belongs to God? So he understood it at a deeper level than everybody else, which is why he's so lucky. But he understood that this is an honor from God. That's all it is. And so this idea of this debt, that you are morally obliged to pay this debt back and that's what the dean is, it's the payback. It's what you do as a way of paying back this immense loan of consciousness of a heart that he gave you human consciousness, and this is how you pay it back. Now in the Koran, the word Deen is used a lot. Allah subhanho wa Taala and it uses it to mean religion. Nadine and allied Islam the religion with God is submission. He uses it also when he
describes the Dean of the king of Egypt when use of and Islam and sort of use of he says he Dean and medic in the religion of the medic which means the law so it has the idea of law as well. And then also when Moosa around says to Moosa, you know that only up to Moosa Let me kill Moosa A half he says, I'm afraid that he's going to a new bed that a dino company is going to change your dean so that I own says he's worried that moose is going to attempt to change your deen and then he says or that he'll so corruption in the earth. Oh, and use it for so this is how the dean convener come Walia Do you have your dean we have our dean. So there's an idea of different Dean's and that has to
do with transaction or how you live your life. Now there's an idea that the dean with God is the same. It's always been the same and that's why Dean is different from Shetty.
Sharia is law, the law changes so the law of Moses is not the law of Jesus the law of Jesus is not the law of the Prophet Mohammed Salah is and and peace be upon all of them. Each one of the prophets has a different law, but their Deen is the same. And that's why the Prophet sallallaahu Selim said profits are of one Father, but their mothers differ. Now there's two meanings to that. One is that they come from Abraham, Abraham is the father of the Prophet, but there's also the meaning that their Deen is one, but their laws differ. So the dean is tawheed that is really the father of assault, that we're all united in this idea of the unity of God. And then the shut eye, which are
the laws differ. And Allah says, We never sent a messenger before the save that we revealed to him saying, there is no God, but I so worship me. So that that is at the essence of all of these religious traditions. And even according to Dr. Cleary, he says that the Buddha was actually teaching to hate as well. One of the things that he says is that the Buddha did not give a word for it, because what he said was that his society was so inundated with idolatry, the only way that he could describe reality was without any attributes at all, because these people were so immersed in so he described it in a nondescript way of speaking about ultimate reality, the source of all
things, and that's the same, you'll find that in Taoism, and I mean, you'll find these teachings even if they don't have the theistic concept that you find in the western traditions in the eastern churches, and you do find this idea of an ultimate underlying reality. That is the source of all things. And that's why even in the Dow, it says in the beginning, there was one
There was eternal dow. And then there came two, which is the US wedge, the creation of pairs, which are losses, we create everything in pairs, and then from the pairs become myriad forms. Because from two comes three, all of these religions are teaching this unity. So he goes then into the three dimensions. And what he says is, if you can look at the three dimensions or domains of selfhood, the most external dimension is connected to what appears. So, the outward form the VA him, people do things in the world, and actions can be analyzed and discussed without reference to the people. So you can look at an action, and you can actually talk about an action without any reference to the
person. And that's the most outward form. So if somebody hits somebody else we can talk about I saw a person hit another person today, we don't have to talk about why they hit them, we don't have to talk about who they were, we can talk about a physical act that occurred in the world, between two people, one, the subject and the other, the object. So then you move to the next dimension, which is knowledge. So it has to do with looking at the thing that's happening, and understanding something about the thing. So what does it mean when somebody hits another person, you begin to look at understanding the action itself? And then you move into what is the intention behind the action?
What is the reason why somebody is doing something? All of these relate to these dimensions of Eman, Islam? And yes, and so you have a dimension of human experience, it has to do with knowledge understanding worldview. So that is about faith is how you view the world. And then given that you view the world in a certain way, what are the motives, you can have a person who believes in Allah, and they're doing the outward forms of Islam, but they still have a rear, which is hidden shift, it's doing something for the sake of somebody else. And there's two types of Ria, one is called Ria and mandalas, which is where you do something only for other people, and the other is called Maria
and mushrik. And the first one is worse than the second. The second one is where you do it for God, but you also are thinking about what other people are thinking. So you can have faith in God, but your motives are still problematic. And we all know in ourselves, and we know other people do actions in the world, and then you find out there was an ulterior motive behind it. So what you're looking at here, then is these three dimensions, you can have an understanding of how we should behave, which has to do with a man and his snam. How we should, outwardly is the actual thing what I should do, I should pray five times a day, we should understand why we should do that, because God
commanded me to there comes the element of faith, but then the actual movement of my own inner heart to doing that action solely for the sake of God is the realm of incense. So these are the dimensions that he's talking about. And she is talking about right action, right understanding and right reason, is very interesting, because that's part of the Eightfold noble path in Buddhism, as well, of understanding, right understanding, having a correct understanding of the world. And then right action, and then right reason, I mean, those are all part. Now, he talks about Islamic learning here. And one of the things that I really like what he says, and she is that the Quran says
Woolfolk, a coolie the Edmund alene. over everyone who has knowledge, there's somebody who ultimately has more knowledge. So you mentioned and she mentioned the idea of a person in a village from Egypt that goes down to Cairo memorizes the Quran and learns a little bit of Phillip, little bit of headache, when he goes back to his village. He's like a big iron, you know, and all that damn mowlana but it's relative. When his chef comes to the village, suddenly, he's back to being an insignificant student, he might not have even been that good at the madrasa but in the eyes of the other people, because knowledge has that relative aspect to it, that some people have immense
amounts of knowledge. Some people have less amounts and some people have a little bit and at each degree, one is moving up. And that's why Allah raises elevates people in degrees according to their knowledge and according to their right actions, you know, Latina, Latina Atilla in Daraa Jad, a lot raises people who believe and were given knowledge in degrees, so
That is very important, which is why Muslims traditionally have always respected teachers. And he mentioned there were no degrees offered. I like what he said. And she said about ijazah, the permission to teach. And they really felt that degrees and things like that would corrupt the intentions. And that's one of the things that chef Mohammed amin, who is one of my teachers, and phip said, Don't give degrees because it corrupts the intention of students when they come to study. And that's why if you look at universities today, if suddenly all the universities said, by the way, we're not giving any degrees anymore, how many people would show up for class. So learning becomes a
means to achieve something else. And in Islam, learning is in first and foremost, it's a command from God, to learn, and learning is based not on earning a livelihood. And one of the signs of the end of time is the prophets. The Lyceum said that people would study to earn money, it's a sign of the end of time, because he said, a tandem yakun, the radio watch hinda. And it's very interesting, because what happens, learning in Islam is to learn how to understand correctly, how to act correctly, and how to have the right reason. So it's about these three dimensions. It's about being an ethical and a spiritual human being, which doesn't obviate the necessity of learning trade and
things like that. Certainly not. But at the essence of real knowledge is an understanding that it's for moral and spiritual reasons, not for livelihood. And so he says there and she says on page 36, no degrees were offered. So the motivation was learning itself, the one of the things in Alaska in 1882, when they first introduced tests, the great Maliki scholar, Sheikh Mohammed leash was completely opposed to the idea of testing students was anathema to him. And I find that really interesting, because again, it creates another reason why people study to pass the test, not to know the thing.
And that's why people can't ever remember anything after tests.
Now, one of the things also that's mentioned is that memorization, the importance of memorization, the reason memorization was so important is because the idea of young people understanding anything, was really, it was seen as a waste of the other quality that children have, which is the massive ability to absorb information. And so the idea was to put as much of knowledge in them in those early years, because it's a divine gift that shouldn't be wasted by teaching them trivia. And so much of what is put into the heads of children's complete waste of time. And that's why sh t tests are ultimately testing vocabulary, acquisition, comprehension, and illogical reasoning skills and
mathematical skills, arithmetic geometry and basic algebra. I mean, they want to see if you learned how to basically think they're not interested in asking you how high is Mount Everest or what happened in 1066. Because you can always look that up in a book.
And Einstein said anything I can look up in a book I wouldn't waste my time memorizing,
which is interesting. But you need skills to reason.
I mean, he certainly had all those formulas in his head.