Hamza Yusuf – Vision Of Islam CD2 #03
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AI: Transcript ©
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,
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 subhana wa tada uses it to mean religion, Medina 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 ideas and 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 hafele He says, I'm afraid that he's going to and you bet that a dino company is going to change your deen so for Allen 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 and use it for so this is how the dean the 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.
shediac 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 who lives in 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 prophets Allah said him said, prophets are of one Father, but their mothers differ. Now there's two meanings to that. One is that they come from Ibrahim Abraham is the father of the Prophet, but there's also the meaning that their Deen is one, but their laws differ. So the deen is tawheed that is really the father of us all that we're all united in this idea of the unity of God. And then the shuteye, 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 traditions, 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 the 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 it.
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, so you have a dimension of human experience that 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 real fear, which is hidden shift, it's doing something for the sake of somebody else. And there's two types of Korea. One is called Ria and mausolus, which is where you do something only for other people. And the other is
called Ria and mushrik. And the first one is worse than the second, the 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 Islam, 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 a sense. 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 akula, 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 phip 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 share 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 a lot raises elevates people in
degrees according to their knowledge. And according to their right actions, you know, Latina, Latina, uitterlinden, Dara 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 in fifth 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 at time
I know mucuna, the lady what he learned. 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 in Alaska in 1882, when they first
introduced tests, the great Maliki scholar, Sheikh Mohammed leash was completely opposed to it. 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. So now we move to Islam, and this is the first chapter. Now Islam in Arabic s lemma is a very interesting word. It comes from a root word selima, which means to be whole, which is the same meaning of the root word in the Hebrew of Shalom, which is peace is a wholeness, and the idea that peace occurs when things are whole. If you look at sickness in the body, what ultimately sickness is, is a loss of holism in the body, some part of the body is no longer working with the other parts of the body. And so there's a disruption of peace because of a lack of wholeness.