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Vision Of Islam CD1 #05
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Channel: Hamza Yusuf
Series: Hamza Yusuf – Vision Of Islam
Episode Notes
Episode Transcript
© No part of this transcript may be copied or referenced or transmitted in any way whatsoever. Transcripts are auto-generated and thus will be be inaccurate. We are working on a system to allow volunteers to edit transcripts in a controlled system.
In terms of tradition, we have three types of tradition. The first is Koran, which is we believe is what a revelation from God spoken through the prophets of it, Sam from Gabriel or gibreel. And then the second type is also revelation, but it is spoken through the prophet Mohammed so lies to them. And it is called Hadith. And this means that the prophets Allah Islam is speaking inspired, he is inspired by God, my entrepreneur, Annette, how're they enterpreneur how, in who in the why you you have that the Prophet does not speak from his own passion, this is revelation coming to him. So even his Hadith is revelation. We believe that and that is why you won't find any Table Talk. You won't
find any tribe conversation. You won't find any vulgarities. In the Hadith. All of the studies have meaning and implication for the lives of Muslims. Now, the Hadith are divided into three basic essential types are had, which are narrated by solitary transmitters 1234, those have less strength. And then there is mutawatir, which is multiple narrated transmissions. If it is mutawatir, and there are only a few 100 of them, then those have the same status as the haoran in terms of absolute belief that they are from the prophets, Allah said and you should not reject them. An example of that is the house would realize a lottery system and apartheid in the south it was to be an for
profit prohibited the killing of children and women in war that is multiplied transmitted. There are so many narrations that it is impossible for that to be a mistake. And that is why that is agreed upon by the scholars that is prohibited to kill women and children in any type of martial conflict. And then the final is called a Heidi footsy, which is revelation from God, but the province lies and transmits it as a hadith. And this is Hadith kotze, it does not have the same status of Quran in that we cannot recite it in the prayer. But we believe that it's also directly from God. And an example of that is LCM o Li, Zb, kulula aminated, even the Adam industry and God says, according to
the prophets, Elijah, every action is for the son of Adam except for fasting, it is mine alone, because I was the only one that does not eat and drink in reality. So when you fast you're doing an action. That is really, it's a way of, in a sense, it's the closest thing that we do that has a divine quality, because only God does not eat and drink we all need to eat and drink.
That's one interpretation. There are many others. We also believe that the Quran is eternal and uncreated. And that means the meanings of the Quran. In other words, it's not the literal words on in the book. But we only say that when we teach, we still say the Quran is uncreated. And that includes this book, we believe that the Koran, what's between these two covers, is the uncreated Word of God. So we can say that, but we have an understanding that when we say that, it doesn't literally mean the letters and the ink. It's the meanings that those words convey. On page 24. They mentioned about, say, Nadia or Delano not giving up his claim, they're giving a Shia perspective,
that is not a Sunni perspective. We believe that the mom Addy or the lion, in fact, today, I would advocate what she says there, and she admit that but we believe that he took it believing that aboubaker was the right guided Khalifa, and that our Barker was better than Addy. And there's a hadith in Sahih Bahati in which say, now it says clearly that I will walk it it was better than him and so was Omar. Another important thing which I mentioned here is that generally the Muslims lived with many different religions. They did not persecute religions. There are a few instances that does occur, but they were always rejected by the scholars and they were also clearly done by rulers that
were manipulating situations for their own political advantage, short sightedness that led to a lot of problems. But Muslims generally treated other religions very well kept their churches, synagogues and temples intact, including the Zoroastrians, and the Hindus, and the Buddhists, Afghanistan, which was a very, very profoundly Buddhist country before the Muslims got there. The Afghan is converted from Buddhism, and some of the greatest Muslims came out of that Buddhist tradition. In fact, Bell was a center for Buddhist logic, and those logicians became Muslim an introduced interestingly enough into Islamic theology, some Buddhist logical form.
ones that don't exist in Greek logic. The Greek logic doesn't have a neither a nor B type scenario. Whereas Nagarjuna in logic, which is Buddhist logic does in traditional Islamic theology, you have situations where they do have that neither a nor B. and that definitely, I would say, I can't say definitely, but I really believe that it does come out of the influence that the Buddhists logicians had on Islam. He wrote a paper called how the Buddhists saved Islam, which was about that, but I never I sent it into post it. Somebody said, No, you'll get too much flack.
Another thing which is important is generally the Muslim rulers did not want people to become Muslim. And the reason they didn't want them to become Muslim is because they lost tax revenue. And they also had to deal with the egalitarian nature of Islam. So that's a fact. If you don't believe that, if you have some kind of romantic utopian version of Islam, it's a fantasy. All you have to do is read history. The Muslims were very honest in their history, you actually had to join an Arab tribe to become a Muslim.
And the person that ended that was all about open up that Aziz during Benny omega, before that you literally had to join an Arab tribe, you have to be calm. And you were Imola, which was an inferior position. And there is a movement in Iraq called the short obeah, which means the people's movement or the popular movement, and these were all non Arabs that finally got fed up, and actually went into this revolt against it. So there was problems early on, there was ethnic problems, tribal problems, human condition. The beauty of Islam is that it was always redressing and the onomah. Were always redressing these problems. That's what I love about Islam. You have in this country 100 years
ago, rabbis and priests writing treatises, that black slavery was biblically sanctioned. And you can find that I guarantee you, you can look it up in books on slavery in this country. Muslims have never had that we don't we don't have a history ever of our own Ummah, justifying oppression. textually just doesn't exist. On the contrary, I mean, they really wrote vehemently against those things. And a Jahan wrote a book about the preference of blacks over whites, because he was a black man. And it wasn't the premise of it. It was more that if you really look historically, there's a lot more great black people than there are white people. And he's got a whole book to prove it. And
there's a beautiful book by even Josie called 10 wheeled rubbish unfolded in Sudan would have been removing any darkness concerning the virtues of black people and Ethiopians. And this was an Iraqi mom that wrote an entire book, showing all the virtues of black people. And one of the things that he says in that book, is it anybody that narrates the Israeli view that blacks were the occurs descendants of ham, there is no textual basis for that. And the Quran rejects that. And then he says, The reason blacks are dark skinned, is because they've been living so long in the southern hemisphere that they have developed protective skin from the rays of the sun. He actually says that
excuse the scientific analysis, which is generally what people believe now, is there any questions or comments?
We are not supposed to interpret the Quran, but we are supposed to reflect upon its meanings please clarify.
A great deal of the Quran is about reflection. fra on Luna EDID edk for hoodia caught will either send that ek photo via LNG battery cables what they had for either the optic were diabetic even asked about what are the cables what they had for the care?
Haven't they looked at the camel how it was created? Have they looked at the heavens, how they've been raised up? Haven't they looked at the mountains, how they've been placed? standing firm, haven't they looked at the earth and how we have stretched it out? So remind them those those are things to think about? Anybody, you don't need to interpret those verses they're very clear, much of the Quran is very clear. However, when the Quran says something like, if you fear disobedience, or in Calcutta sins from your spouse, then warn her abandon the bed and then strike her. You're not allowed to interpret that it is hot. I'm for you to interpret that nor can you apply that ruling in
your house. Because it's in the Koran it is hard for you to do that Muslims have always believed that you need to ask
Scholars interpretation of that verse and then you're surprised to find out it actually doesn't mean what you probably thought it meant. And that's what I mean by not interpreting the Quran. Those are the verses that deal with actual behavior. In those verses, you must go to scholars, because you might completely misunderstand it for instance, Heba the Quran says the day after Babu come Baba, don't let some of you backbite about others, you have to understand there's a ruling, there's seven situations in which that law does not apply, then you have to know the definition of backbiting you might think it means speaking about things that aren't true. On the contrary, it means things that
are true. So you have to understand and that comes from scholars it comes from people that understand the Quran. So that's what I mean. But verses in the Quran that Allah subhana wa tada says, In the fie smls you would have stayed up late or not, I think we will embed that in the creation of a heavens and the earth. Alternating of the night and the day are Signs for people who have deep reflection. People innermost core can reflect on that. Protons filled with things so you can read it for that. Don't try to derive rulings from it. That's all. That's all it means. Don't derive rulings is very important. Anything normative is what the religion says about itself. It's
not telling you how Muslims behave. It's it's telling you how they're supposed to behave. And that is a much fairer way of looking at a religion is to look at the ideal and not the reality. So said Jose Nussle wrote a book called Islam ideals and realities. In every tradition, you have ideals, and you have realities. America has an ideal freedom, liberty and justice for all. That's a beautiful idea. We can all agree with that. Unfortunately, that has not been the reality of America. Intelligent Americans are the first to admit that. But there does seem to be an attempt. And certainly the Civil War is an example of that the freeing of the slaves in this country, the civil
rights, it's taken a long time to get to things that Islam arrived at 1400 years ago. But there's an effort so ideals and realities are very different. The Geneva Convention is beautiful ideals about how to treat prisoners of war. The reality is, prisoners of war are treated like animals and worse than animals all the time. And sensory deprivation is torture. It's called passive torture and it actually drives people insane. In some Christian text, it says descends of Isaac were great people in the sense of Ishmael caused great havoc on the earth. Not true. There's good in both the sons and there's there's some bad offspring that came out of there, but you can't blame the parents for what
you can sometimes blame him for what their children do. They were neglectful, but you can't blame them for what their grandchildren do. It's not their fault.