Hamza Yusuf – Vision Of Islam CD8 #04

			Any questions or comments?
		

			Well, I think the best thing to do is try to create your own venues. And don't allow venues out
there to dictate your agendas and things like that. I mean, things like alcohol, and you know, you
can't talk to people when they're drinking anyway. I mean, that's the problem with alcohol. And it's
not good to be around it. It's just not a good, we believe it's the devil. You know, it's gin,
alcohol. It's what they call it, gin.
		

			I'll have a gin on the rocks. I mean, man, if they really knew what they were saying, right? I'll
have beliefs on the rocks, and the rocks or brimstone. So you just want to stay away from that kind
of energy. Cheese tastes fine without wine.
		

			And have grape juice if you have to grape juice tastes a lot better than wine.
		

			I know. And you'd be surprised how much you can. I mean, if you really want to keep up on that type
popular culture. So you can talk to me, you'd be surprised at how much just from reading. You know,
I've read articles about films that I can talk about without ever having seen the film. You don't
have to go watch a film and waste two hours of your life for something. I saw a film once by Hassani
who won Cannes Film Festival is Iranian. I think it was Horizonte. I can't remember. I was
interested in as well how why this film won the Cannes Film Festival is being made in Iran where
apparently they have all this artistic censorship. But at the end of the film, they have an
		

			interview with him, you know, and the thing about the film is it almost put me to sleep. At the end
of the film, he says they asked him what kind of film Do you like he said, I like films that put
people to sleep.
		

			But then they can't stop thinking about them. After that. He's the thing about American films, you
go watch it for two hours, and you're at the edge of your seat and you walk out the theater and you
can't remember anything. Like what was it about? Because it's all spectacle. There's no thought. And
then they also about censorship. And he said every artist is censored. It's just where do you draw
the lines of censorship? There's no artists that's free of censorship. He said Americans have
censorship. I mean, there's things they can't go beyond. Simple as that. He said, in Iran, we're
basically not allowed to deal with two things, * and violence. And it forces us to create films
		

			that actually are intelligent. And he said when Hollywood was not allowed to use * and violence,
they actually made intelligent films. He said, Now the films are all stupid. And the reason is,
because all gratuitous spectacle is just stimulating people's lower energies. So it is because
people respond to violence. You know, it's very intense to watch violence. And so there's adrenaline
and adrenaline is a drug. It's really powerful drug that people get addicted to it adrenaline
junkies, Roma's used to go watch Christians eaten by the lions. We do the same thing. When we go
watch these Arnold Schwarzenegger films of people getting their heads blown off. It's sanitized.
		

			But it's the same Gore. I mean, it's a human thing and that we see the Romans as decadent and Well,
why don't we see it about ourselves. That's all decadence. That's what it is. It's vulgarity. It's
decadence. And the thing about it is thresholds get higher and higher. So you need more stimulation,
you need more violence, you need more, the sexuality becomes more perverse. That's what happens in
something intelligent, I'm in film that has immense potential, because it's very powerful medium,
but it's a medium of spectacle. You never want to be in a theater when there's an earthquake or
something you just have, how do you justify that with God? I was watching a movie when you died or
		

			something. The reason Plato outlawed the poets in the Republic is because of the whole danger of
entertainment, what entertainment does in a society, images and the prophets highlights and he had
some entertainment. And that's something about Islam that a lot of modern Muslims aren't aware of
that there is room for art, there is room for poetry, there is room for certain types of music and
things like that.
		

			And traditionally, it always existed in the Muslim world, but it should be done in a certain way.
And it shouldn't become something that takes people away from God. Yeah, I think you may need to
rethink a lot of things and just be more creative, about how to speak to people out there. And I
mean, ultimately, everybody's dealing with their mortality. They're dealing with some really
essential issues, while Christianity Judaism or true religions, and we believe in them as an
obligation, we're obliged to believe in them. We view them now as as models of like a car that's no
longer taking you there. It doesn't work anymore. And so you can sit in it and feel like you're in a
		

			car and you know, it's certainly it's a vehicle
		

			But is it taking you where you want to go? And on the other hand for Muslims, for most Muslims Islam
is is stuck in the mud, their Islam is stuck in the mud, not to the car doesn't work. It's like
you've driven it into the mud by your own stupidity. And I'll never forget I was in Mauritania. And
there was this man was driving, he was in a jeep. And there was this big mud puddle. And then there
was a dry thing on the side. And he was like bragging about what a great driver he was. And when we
were coming up to it, we said, like, it'll go over there. And he said, No, no, I know what I'm
doing. And we got, we got stuck in this mud. And we'd paid this guy to drive us. And we ended up we
		

			couldn't get the car out, we had to walk the middle of the desert for about five hours.
		

			But the point is, he drove it into the mud. So perfectly good car, the road was there. And he just
took it into the mud to kind of I did it my way or something like that.
		

			But that's the thing about people's Islam is they drive it into their mud, and then they're like,
why isn't this get me anywhere? Well, you left the road, you've gone off road, he doesn't have four
wheel drive. It's got five wheel drive, and she had prayers, fasting Hajj, but you have to be on the
Shetty. On the road.
		

			There are absolutes. Yeah, that's where it becomes absolute, and you will know them because you
remember this world. If you were put in Jenna,
		

			and you never had any knowledge of this place. But in general, you have memory of this place. You
don't have painful memories. So you won't have sadness or grief. But you will remember, well, you're
aware of *. And the people of * are aware of paradise. So the opposites are known still,
Paradise is pure good and * is pure evil. Whereas in here, it's all mixed.
		

			Well, that's the point. They're blind, deaf and dumb. This is like this, they won't open their eyes,
and they won't take their hands off their ears and they won't speak. And in the next world, they
admit that that's what the Quran says in sort of robotic total tariffs will be them being they'll
finally admit that it's it was their fault they took themselves that's why prophets Allah I sent him
said, Every soul wakes up ransomed, and either it sells its soul or destroys it, in other words,
sells it to God, or destroys it. So that's a human choice. And there's a verse You know, it says
that people do the acts of good until they're one hand spent away from Paradise or arm's length.
		

			Yes, Mohamed keytab. And then the decree precedes them, and they do some action of the fire and they
go to the fire, that Hadid there's another rewire where it says female duty NASS to what it appears
to people. And that point is that those people's hearts, they were hypocrites. So and the thing
about hypocrites is that they will do things that expose themselves before they die. That's why see
diamonds or rock says, all the things that people do in this world that are bad, in order to obtain
things that they deem good, those things will be the cause of the thing that they were trying to
free themselves from. So if somebody learns astrology to protect themselves from a harmful death,
		

			he'll have a harmful death. If somebody learns alchemy to like, enrich himself, he'll be
impoverished. It has the opposite. So the thing that you go to literally has the opposite effect on
you
		

			know, here in this world.
		

			Yeah, that's one opinion. It's mentioned in some of the tough Sears, I mean, I wrote model or
problem ish, kotlin, because they're angels, but they're teaching something that's harmful. And
that, in a sense, is almost like a negative revelation. Which is interesting. I mean, the idea that,
you know, that you could have a negative revelation, which brings in the whole idea of opposites and
things like that again, but although the thing about the prophets Allah SM, he was affected by
magic, but he was given the while we the 10, which are the last two sources in the Quran, put out a
bit a bit further up and Colorado, but I've been ness, and he never left them after that. And what
		

			happened to him was he wasn't affected in his understanding, but he was physically affected.
Yesterday, man I sent him was not given magic, because there's a difference between magic. Magic is
using means that are in the creation. There's two types of magic one is called toliet, or shabda,
which is like the magic of David Copperfield. People like that. It's the ability to create
illusions, optical illusions. And then the other type of magic is manipulation of things in creation
through magic. Both of them are prohibited in Islam. What the prophets do in other words, when
musante
		

			Sent them through down to staff and it became a snake. It wasn't magic. I mean, one of the things
you know if you read 1001 nights, which is certainly not a anything to get a pizza from, or anything
like that, but there's all these kind of interesting, where the genie does all this magic and then
the magic when the genie no longer is working for the person, all this stuff disappears, so like the
genie will make them a palace. But then when the genie now has a new master, the palace just
disappears. So all the treasure goes back to rocks. That is a good analogy for what magic is that it
is insubstantial in reality, even though it appears to be real, whereas what happens with the
		

			prophets is that it's real. It's something that actually comes into existence. So when Moosa on a
pseudonym, pulled his hand out, and it was white, that was real, without any mighty suit, there was
no harm wasn't vitiligo or leprosy. It was light that came out. That was real, it wasn't magic. So
the difference is, that one is a manipulation. And the other is that Allah subhana wa, tada is
directly, not through means there's no means the magic is using means in creation, whereas the
miracle there's no means it's direct from God. And that's why the people that witness it, see it for
that, you know, if you've ever seen a film of somebody shot in reality, you know, I saw some films
		

			from Afghanistan during the jihad. And I saw this Russian soldier, I can't I'll never forget it,
because it was so different from what Hollywood does. I mean, it was very real. And that's the
nature of the miracle, in relation to the magic is that it's real. And that difference between art
and life, we can see that a film is not real, you come out of it, you can fall into the willful
suspension of disbelief while you're watching the film. But when you come out, you're back. In
reality, it's not the same. It's real. And magic is like, in many ways, it's interesting cuz Soumya,
who is a magic where you create images in the air, it's called Sim. Yeah. I don't think cinema is
		

			related to it. It's interesting that in many ways that film is very magical like that. It's
powerful. Magic is definitely sleight of hand, because these frames that are done to create an
optical illusion, because there's still frames creating the the optical illusion of motion. So
technically, by shadia I think the traditional Obama would have seen it as magic as a type of magic.
All right.