Jeffrey Lang – The Quran and the Purpose of Life 201
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AI: Transcript ©
I would like to welcome our brother, doctor
Jeffrey
Lang. He's a professor of math in Kansas
University
at Lawrence.
He is a Muslim now 14 years.
He wrote
a book about Islam
called Islam from an American Muslim Perspective.
He also wrote many articles in math,
and he was here in Columbia in 1986
and deliver and give us a,
very
outstanding, lectures.
And tonight, Inshallah, he's gonna talk to us
about Islam and the purpose of life. It's
an honor to have him here.
So
doctor Jeffrey, please.
Thanks.
Can you hear me okay?
I
I didn't know I'd be using one of
these.
For the recording.
Oh, it's for the recording.
In any case, in the name of God,
the merciful, the compassionate,
I have my notes here.
Judaism let me just leave these here for
a second.
Judaism,
I'm sure you all know,
Judaism,
Christianity,
and
Islam
all have their trace their origins back to
their ancient Middle East.
And great Middle Eastern personalities,
ancient personality
personality
personalities like Moses,
Jesus,
Abraham,
Ishmael,
Isaac,
peace be upon them all,
were are, of we would expect them to
be significant and important
to the few and scattered Jewish and Christian
communities
living in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th
century, the century that saw the birth and
rise of Islam.
But these same persons
and something of their stories
seem to also have been important
to the vast majority of pagan Arabs
living in the Arabian Peninsula at the same
time,
before the birth of Islam.
And the best evidence for that of course
is the Quran.
Because when the Quran speaks
about Abraham
or Moses
or Jesus,
peace be
upon them,
it assumes that the audience
is somewhat familiar with them.
That they're they're not speaking to them about
them for the first time. They're not hearing
these names for the first time.
There have been many theories
about how the pagan Arabs
in the Arabian Peninsula
before the birth of Islam
came to know
about,
Abraham, Moses,
Jesus, some of the biblical characters,
something of their stories.
And the orientalists,
western scholars of Islam have produced many theories
and many ideas to try to explain it.
The most natural theory and perhaps the
most natural theory,
and perhaps the most obvious and easiest explanation,
is the one that is most often overlooked.
And from our study of the way cultures
work,
and what we know about the way cultures
work these days, oftentimes, cultures that are closely
related
have a lot of sharing of traditions,
a lot of sharing of ideas,
and stories, and legends.
And since the Jews
and the and the Arabs of the Middle
East at that time
could trace their origins more or less back
to a common source,
should not surprise us at all, and many
of the stories and traditions that they would
have would also go back to a common
source.
In any case, however it came to be,
it's no surprise then that the Quran would
use these famous
personalities
and tell details about their lives
to teach its listeners about the Oneness of
God,
ethics, and morality.
Essentially, its initial listeners were the pagan,
pagan Arabs.
Now, Orientalists
by Orientalists I mean basically,
scholar Western scholars of Islam.
In the latter part of,
the last century and the early part of
this century,
made 2 accusations about the Quran, 2 criticisms.
In particular about
Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
Now the Muslims believe that the Quran is
a revelation from God.
They believe that Muhammad was inspired
by the Word of God and that he
proclaimed this
to his to whoever would listen as a
matter of fact, over a 23 year career.
But orientalists,
came to a different conclusion. When they studied
the Quran and saw these parallels, they made
2,
main accusations.
One of the accusations was that Mohammed was
a plagiarist, that he was borrowing traditions from
the Jewish and Christian community
wherever he can possibly find them and incorporating
them in what he claimed to be his
his revelations.
The second concept developed, and it was slightly
more sophisticated than that, is that
Muhammad not only was borrowing these, but he
didn't seem to understand the religious significance behind
them.
The significance
that the Jews and the Christians had come
to understand were behind them over their many
centuries of thought,
over their many,
centuries of possessing these stories. So for example
and the reason why they believe this is
the way the Quran tells the story, say
for example of Moses, or it tells the
story of Adam, or tells the story of
Jesus. It tells it in such a way
that excludes
Jewish and Christian interpretations.
For example, the way the story of Adam
is told doesn't seem to allow for the
concept of original sin,
and it doesn't seem to allow for the
concept of salvation
by some,
vicarious atonement,
Christian central concepts. And so they felt that
when Mohammed, peace be upon him, came upon
these stories, he didn't really quite understand the
religious depth of them. And so when he
used them in his proclamations, he somehow didn't
realize that and told them in such a
way that didn't allow for the usual understandings.
Well,
Orientalism matured,
and
as it matured, we start to see Orientalist
thought moving away from that idea.
And in the middle of the century, you'll
find a great Orientalist scholar by the name
of h a r Gibb, considered one of
the very best of his,
group. In the middle of this century in
his book, Mohammedanism,
which is something of an insult, the title
to Muslims, but that's beside the point. In
his book, he mentioned that these two criticisms
you have to be very cautious about.
And the reason why he said this is
because if if any time you find
a parallel
between a story in the Quran
and a story in the Bible for example,
or the Jewish tradition.
He said almost anytime you find that, you'll
find many key differences.
Many key differences.
Now the fact that there are many differences
excludes the possibility that
the author of the Quran, by the way,
whom Muslims believe is God ultimately,
it excludes the possibility that the author simply
lifted them from the other tradition, or there
wouldn't be so many differences.
Differences
differences in detail. They were key differences in
that the way these stories were told, these
differences forced an entirely different meaning.
So they brought out an original meaning.
Muslims might even say the original meaning,
but we're not gonna discuss that. But the
way they were told brought out an original
meaning, a new perspective,
a new interpretation.
So from HR Gibb's point of view, the
point wasn't whether the Quran
was dealing with the Jewish Christian interpretation or
not.
He said that that should even that's not
even a point. The point is that the
Quran, when it uses these stories, it uses
them in a new way
to bring out an entirely new point of
view.
In any case,
today I'm going to be talking about one
of the famous
allegories in, three traditions, and that's the story
of the creation of man.
Man. They say one example is better than
30 so so examples. I hope this will
be a pretty good example. I never gave
this lecture before.
In order to set a little background, I'm
going to mention a couple things about the
way
the story develops in the
Jewish
professor of Harvard, said in his very nice
book, The Religions of Man,
that of all the people of antiquity,
the Jewish people, the ancient Jews have to
be distinguished
in
their persistent,
passionate,
continuous
search for meaning, religious meaning in their lives.
They were constantly,
consistently trying to understand
how the hand of God was working in
their trials and tribulations,
their victories, their defeats, and their joys and
their sorrows.
Page after page after page of the Old
Testament, if you've ever read through it, the
Jewish scripture,
is exactly that, a working out, a attempt
to try to come to understand
how God was working through through and in
the Jewish community.
Such questions and such a search for religious
meaning in your life
naturally goes back to questions about the origins
of the human personality.
And so after the Bible
talks about the creation of the cosmos,
it then talks about the creation of Adam.
And the
the perception given
or the or the,
the minimum we could say that we could
get from this story and by the way,
I don't wanna minimize it because it's open
to many and vastly different interpretations.
But the basic perception we get is that
somehow in man
purity to a state of impurity,
from a state of goodness
to a state of sinfulness,
from a state of,
in some sense, perfection,
human perfection maybe, to a state of corruption,
from essentially a higher state
to a lower state.
And that's why it's often referred to as
the fall of man.
Christianity,
of course,
took over
the same story.
It has its the Bible, the Old Testament
is part of its scriptures.
Christianity took over the same story and developed
the idea even further
and from its own special perspective.
In Christianity, it saw that somehow the story
of the fall of man tells us that
somehow, in man becoming man as we now
know ourselves, our nature became so utterly corrupted,
so utterly sinful that almost net anything a
human being does is tainted with sin.
Even to go to an extreme man's worship
is often
commingled
with corruption and sin. And it's not so
hard to believe because the idea was that
even in a person's worship that's so tied
up into his ego and his sense of
self righteousness,
and his own sense of his own goodness,
that and many other things as well. That
it's easy to see that there's a thin
line between serving God and serving
yourself. And the Christians felt Christian thought felt
that even a man's worship
was somehow contaminated.
And so
from the Christian point of view, God entered
the human sphere, human history in a unique
and miraculous way.
The word of God or the wisdom of
God, to use ancient terminology, early church terminology.
The wisdom of God or the word of
God was revealed not in a scripture,
but in a
person, in the flesh,
in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
And that through his living and dying
and resurrection,
mankind would be ultimately saved. And a very
deep and profound philosophy in theology developed around
that. And it's sort of from that background,
more or less,
that many Western scholars of Islam
come to study the Quran and Muslim sources.
And what background we come from,
oftentimes
very much affects how we read another people's
scripture, another pea or understand another person's religion.
We sort of relate their terms to our
categories,
sort of siphon them through our own understanding,
and come to certain conclusions.
In any case,
let me begin by talking a little bit
about,
the Quran
and the story of Adam.
Now the Quran, as most of you know,
begins with because I can see see the
majority in this audience are Muslim.
Begins has a 114
Suras or chapters, it's usually roughly translated into
English.
The first one is somewhat different than all
the rest.
The first one is 7 short verses, and
it's unique in that it begins by just
presenting a prayer that the reader of the
Quran reads. And and of course as he
does it, he's
making the same prayer.
And in this prayer, he asks for guidance.
He asks he asks for God's help and
guidance in life. To keep him to the
right way. To give him the strength and
not to let him go away from the
right way. The straight path, so to speak.
And essentially the first seven verses are exactly
that, a prayer for guidance.
The rest of the Quran, the the
the perspective shifts somewhat. From that point on,
from the 2nd Sura on, it is it
is basically God proclaiming to mankind.
It's not a a history of a people.
It's not a story of a people. It's
not a biography of the people. It's essentially
God proclaiming to mankind.
In throughout here and there, there are stories
of people, and examples, and parables.
But
from start to finish, the second story to
the end, it's basically God proclaiming a revelation
to mankind.
And the second surah begins by telling the
reader that this Quran is an answer to
his prayer that he just recited in the
first surah. It begins in the 3 Arabic
letters, alef, lam, meem, and then it says,
this is the book or this is the
scripture wherein no doubt is guidance to mankind.
So the reader quickly realizes that as he
approaches this book, he is coming he's this
is an answer to his prayer, more or
less.
And then, the next 29,
verses or so, 28 verses or so, describe
the audience. And what are the prerequisites to
get guidance from this book?
Much like a modern author would write a
book. You write a book, you describe your
audience, you describe what they need what prerequisites
do they need to gain from from what
is written.
About 30 when you reach the 30th verse,
you come to the story of Adam,
And it begins like this.
It begins
verse 30 of the of the second Surah.
It begins, behold,
your lord said to the angels,
I will create a vice strength on earth
or a representative on earth.
And they said, will you place therein 1
who will make mischief, who will spread corruption
and shed blood?
Will we celebrate your praises and glorify your
holy name?
And he said, God said, I know what
you do not know.
So many Western writers, especially in the early
part of the century, would say the angels
ask a very crucial question.
And then they said, God,
in his answer, at least according to the
Quran, basically dismisses
it. I know what you do not know.
But as we'll see as we read on,
that's not the case at all. The Quran
does continue to start to answer that very
difficult question and it is a very difficult
question. If we look at that verse again,
it says, Behold, your Lord said to the
angels, I will create a representative on earth.
Now notice at this stage that Adam hasn't
appeared on the scene yet. He's not even
been created.
But the revelation the Quran says, behold, God
said to the angels, I will create a
representative on earth.
Some conclusions we could immediately draw from
them. At least from the standpoint of the
Quran,
man is not being
when God
even before God creates man,
he intends to put him on the earth.
In other words, this earthly
journey of mankind
is not considered a punishment.
Somehow it fits into God's overall plan.
And the Quran will constantly do this as
we read through it, although we won't read
through it all today, but it'll constantly
approach you with a verse that just suddenly
strikes you right where you stand,
shocks you, and forces you to think deeply
about what it has to say. The first
time I picked up the Quran, by the
way, I was an atheist.
I've been an atheist all my adult life,
most of my life, period.
And I love to study religions, and I
love to study ultimate questions about man and
what religions had to hold out for the
meaning of his life.
And when I came upon this verse, I
was exactly that shocked
because
it approaches you with a very difficult question.
Some would say the atheist question.
And what is the atheist question? Exactly what
the angels ask.
Will you create one who will go who
do mischief therein, spread corruption, and shed blood?
The question is,
why are you creating this creature to put
on earth?
It shows that God creates man for the
attention of putting him part of his intention,
part of his overall plan
is to put man on earth.
And the atheist asked the difficult question,
why are you gonna create this creature who's
gonna spread
corruption and shed much blood,
who's gonna suffer such agony and destroy each
other, and there's gonna be pain and agony
and suffering.
22
objections are contained, if you allow the word
contained in the question.
Number 1,
why are you going to create a creature
that number 1, is gonna suffer so much
apparently on earth?
And 2,
why are you gonna create a create
make a creation
that could do such a thing in the
first place?
That could be rebel against your will. That
could be out of harmony with your will,
that could do such disasters in the first
place.
The atheist would say, why didn't you? His
objection to the
why doesn't he pop me into heaven in
the 1st place and save me in the
suffering here on earth?
Why didn't he make me an angel
so that I would never have to go
through this torment?
And notice it's extremely important who the question
is coming from.
It is coming from the angels.
What do we think of when we think
of angels? Every culture has almost very similar
points of view.
When we think of an angel,
we think of the very best that human
beings could be.
I mean, when you hear when you read,
newspaper writings that talk about Mother Teresa,
how was she described? She's described as an
angel of mercy, an angel of hope.
When somebody does a very kind deed for
us, we say, oh, that person is such
an angel.
When my little children, 3 daughters, sleep at
night, and I look at them, 2 hours
ago they were tearing up the house, but
now they're sleeping silently and beautifully in complete
harmony with nature, I look at my wife
and say, well, aren't they just such beautiful
little angels?
Even in the New Testament
not even in the New Testament, and I'm
not,
gonna comment on or try to develop Christian
or Jewish,
perspectives here. But even in the New Testament,
along the same lines, it it talks about
how Jesus and his becoming man or in
his humanity
was made a little lower than the angels
in the gospel in the letter to the
Hebrews.
Somehow, we've all come to realize that somehow
the human state
is something lower than the angelic state.
And so
when the angels ask this question, it has
much more force
than if you or I ask the question.
If if, hypothetically, God informed us that he
was gonna create a creature that had the
potential to shed blood, and spread corruption, and
do all sorts of damage disasters.
Well, we could certainly
question the move.
But on the other hand, we know he
created us already and we do that,
so our objection or our question would not
have as much force.
But it's much more powerful
when
what we consider to be perfect beings,
the perfection of humanity or higher than humanity,
when they ask the question.
That's a lot more force.
The question just simply says, why are you
creating these
when you could create beings like us?
As the next line clearly says,
it says, while we
while we, the angels,
celebrate your praises and glorify your holy name.
Why are you creating this
when we glorice celebrate your praises and glorify
your holy name?
And the response
of the Quran is,
God says, I know but you do not.
But the Quran doesn't dismiss the matter there.
In the next verse,
the story continues.
And God and he taught Adam the names
of all things.
Notice that this will differ just slightly from
the biblical count in places largely in other
places. Sometimes just the sequence of event changes,
but it brings out a different meaning.
And then God taught Adam the names of
all things.
And then he placed them before the angels
and said, tell me their names, if what
you say is true, if you are right.
Notice in this verse,
we could we could immediately notice a few
things. Number 1, it says, And God taught
Adam the names of all things.
And so we find that Adam is a
learning creature. He has the ability to be
taught,
and this is gonna be throughout the Quran,
this is gonna get tremendous emphasis, the gift
that man has of intelligence.
And what is he taught?
Well, not simply language,
not like a parrot.
He's taught the names of all things. He's
given the ability to name things,
to give verbal symbols
for his concept,
his ideas, his thoughts.
Man is able to conceptually,
he's able to verbalize
all that he thinks,
give verbal symbols to it, and communicate these
ideas, these perceptions to others.
This is one of the great intellectual tools
we have. Not just our ability to speak,
but our ability to communicate
what we feel and what we think and
what we realize.
And then he placed the things before and
placed them, these things before the angels and
said,
tell me their names if you are right.
So the verse right here shows that God
is addressing the question of the angels.
And they said,
glory to you.
We have no knowledge except what you taught
us. In truth, it is you who are
perfect in knowledge and wisdom.
So the angels admit this is beyond their
ability.
Not only do they admit that this is
beyond their ability, that they don't have the
intellectual tools
to name things
as man or
as we'll see in a second, as man
can.
They also admit that this takes certain qualities.
They say we cannot do it. We are
limited. We only know what you taught us.
And you, of course, can. You are perfect
in knowledge and wisdom.
So they not implicitly we understand to do
such a
thing takes a certain amount of wisdom,
and takes a certain amount of knowledge,
takes a certain intellectual gift.
God, of course, is perfect.
He's a perfect source of wisdom and knowledge.
The angels, obviously here admit their inferiority. They
can't do it. Man, we find in the
next verse,
comes in between.
And we said, oh, Adam.
Oh, I missed the verse.
There it is, 80.
And then God said, he said actually, oh
Adam, tell them their names.
And when He had told them their names,
God said, now just in case we don't,
we make a mistake that this question, this
answer is not,
going back to the original question. And god
said, did I not tell you that I
know the secrets of the heaven and earth,
and I know what you reveal and what
you conceal.
In other words, is this not a partial
answer to your question?
So here we see the angel's question receiving
a partial answer. And throughout the Quran, the
Quran is gonna force us to dwell on
the question and the answers, possible answers as
they develop, as we go through it.
And for the person approaching the Quran for
the first time, we're gonna And for the
person approaching the Quran for the first time
who hasn't grown up with it, and then
these questions are extremely significant and important to
you. He's gonna be haunted by these questions
as he proceeds through the Quran.
So not only in that verse, verse 33,
does God inform the angels that he has
partly answered his question,
but also in the 34th verse, we were
know were made to know that this ability
of man
gives him the potential to be superior superior
to the angels, to to angelic
hosts. A partial answer to their question, obviously,
for it says, and behold, we said to
the angels, bow down to Adam,
and they bowed down.
Once seeing this evident superiority in man, at
least in his intellectual ability,
they're asked to bow down to Adam. This
makes him potentially
superior
and they bowed down.
Not so Iblis.
He refused and he was proud. And he
was of those he was of the rejecters,
the rejecters of God, the rejecters of faith,
the rejecters of guidance.
Who is Iblis?
Later in the Quran, we found out he's
a creature of fire.
1 of the jinn, to use the Arabic
term. The creature of fire, and that's appropriate
term because much like his fiery self, he
has a very fiery nature. A destructive
consuming pride.
A destructive consuming envy.
And he is a creature dominated by his
pride and his envy.
Later on in the 7th Sura, which actually
develops ideas in this even though it was
revealed much earlier than this sura,
in this account. It actually comments on some
of the things I'm talking about now. And
in that 7th sura, we see that
Iblis,
Satan,
comes at Adam through the same door, gets
him to slip through the same way, the
door of pride and envy.
He comes to him and he says,
If you just disobey this little command,
this little thing,
you could become like an angel,
or you could obtain great knowledge.
Notice both of these things are admirable from
the standpoint of the Quran.
Knowledge
is an admirable thing. The Quran
mentions knowledge 854
times the word and its derivatives appear.
Knowledge from the standpoint of the Quran is
a very valued gift of God.
Purity, like the purity of the angels, is
a
very
expense of rebellion against the will of God,
and not especially if it's born out of
pride and envy and arrogance.
And so for the Muslim, where where you
often hear the expression in the West, because
now you're always living most of you are
living here and you've heard this, that the
root of all evil is money, that money
is the root of all evil.
The Muslim would say based on his understanding
of the Quran,
he would say that all evil
essentially goes back to the sin of pride
and arrogance and envy, that envy, arrogance, and
pride are perhaps the root of all evil.
And we said, it says in the 35th
verse, O Adam,
dwell you and your spouse in the garden,
and eat freely thereof what you wish. But
come not near this tree,
for you will be among the wrongdoers.
Now Muslim commentators like al Tabari and Ibn
Kathir and others,
relying on essentially what are known as traditions
that sort of came through Jewish and Christian
converts to Islam and information that they brought
with them, tried to identify exactly what this
tree was.
And God knows best what it was. But
the way the Koran puts it, it seems
like more or less just an arbitrary command.
God gives Adam a moral choice. Come not
near this tree. Everything else is fine. Just
avoid this tree.
He gives man a choice.
But Satan caused them to slip
and expelled them from the state in which
they were. Satan caused Adam and his spouse,
we later learned, to slip
and expelled them from the state in which
they were. And we said, get all of
you down.
Most Muslim experts on the Quran scholars assume
that this is a reference to all of
humanity
and all
satanic,
influences.
And we said, get you all down. With
enmity between you, on earth will be your
dwelling place and provision for a time. All
of you, get down now.
But that's but this seems to create a
problem because we learned in the first verse
that man was intended for a life on
earth from the start.
So is this verse a punishment?
Or is it the realization
of part of God's plan?
The Muslim would say it's a realization of
part of God's plan and not essentially a
punishment.
That God intended to have man serve an
earthly life from the start.
This was part of it. If we look
to the Quran,
God is preparing man. He's teaching him. He's
developing his intellectual skills. Man is a learning
creature.
If we hear the angel's question carefully
back in verse 30, we find that man
is a choosing creature. He has a certain
free will. He could rebel against the will
of God like no other creature
in existence.
So God gives man two things and prepares
him and develops him. He develops his intellect,
his intelligence.
He gives him a certain intellectual potential
potential and nurtures them along in that direction.
And he also gives man choice.
And then finally presents man with a moral
choice.
And he makes the error, the error that
he ultimately had to make. For we knew
it in the first verse that he would
ultimately make errors. And when he commits that
first error, that signals the beginning of his
earthly life.
So we see man
proceeding along as God planned,
had in his
divine plan.
The next verse shows that
the earthly life certainly is not a punishment.
Because in the next verse, the tone of
the Quran is not punishing at all.
It's very sympathetic.
It's very conciliatory.
It's God reaching out to Adam,
consoling him, assuring him, promising him. It says,
then Adam received from his Lord certain words.
And Muslim scholars understand as consolation,
promises,
promises of guidance as the next sequence the
next verse shows. And his Lord turned towards
him in mercy,
for he is oft returning,
ever merciful.
So this is not a punishing tone. He's
coming at Adam with mercy and forgiveness.
He knows that Adam has this is his
nature. He knows that mankind kind
will Later we'll see that error is one
of the main elements of the human process
in life. This
one of the,
I'll get to that in a minute.
The next verse says,
we said, go down all of you. It
repeats it again. But notice this time, just
so we understand it's not a punishment, it
repeats the same expression, but this time in
a very gentle,
very merciful,
very kind way. He said, we said, go
down all of you from here,
but truly there will come to you guidance
from me.
And now it reassures, and whoever follows my
guidance,
God's reaching out towards Adam, He's consoling him,
on them will be no fear
nor shall they grieve.
It's not really punishing at all.
But so the reader understands that this life
has purpose,
and so that the reader understands that it
has definite consequences which will be realized in
the next
life, not to be taken lightly,
there has to come a warning. And so
the next verse says, but for those who
are the rejecters,
the rejecters of guidance, the rejecters of God,
the rejecters of conscience,
the rejecters
of of,
the moral imperative.
For those who are the rejectors and give
the lie to our signs,
they are the people of the fire. They
shall abide therein.
And we'll get more to that in just
a minute.
So in any case, just to summarize very
quickly
We know he's a creature of choice. We
We know he's a creature of choice.
We know he's even an erring creature. This
is very nature, as the angels point out
in their question.
He eventually makes the error
signals
the beginning of his earthly life.
Adam sins
and is immediately forgiven.
So this life is not simply a punishment.
When the many Western writers
saw that Adam sinned and was immediately forgiven,
many of them wrote, the Koran seems to
be missing the point.
The point is that this life is drudgery
and pain and sin because he sinned,
and Legrand just forgives
it. But that's their own religious bias. Even
if they were atheist, they come from a
particular religious environment, particular perception.
But that's not the point of the Quran.
The point is this life is not a
punishment. It serves a much more important purpose.
Three elements are emphasized in this story. If
you'll let me write them on the board.
3 essential components of the human drama.
1,
is that man is a creature of intellect.
2nd,
he's a creature of choice.
The Muslims would say he has a free
will, but not an independent will.
He has a free will that comes from
God. God allows him to make choices, He
allows him to carry out his choices. He
allows them to him to
he allows those his actions to realize their
intention,
what he intended them to do.
Made this universe according to certain,
laws,
follow certain patterns, and so he allows men
to choose, carry out his choice, lets that
choice lead to its inevitable consequence,
but all of that comes from God.
God maintains
and and his pervasive influence sees over all
of that. So man, according to the Muslim
point of view, is given free choice, but
of course all things are dependent on God,
even that much. So free choice but not
independent choice.
And third thing this story
stresses is that man in his life will
face adversity.
He's going to face suffering.
He's going to face agony. There will be
pain. There will be corruption. There will definitely
be hardship.
Said in
the angel's very first question,
what I call like to call the atheist
question, why are you gonna create a creature
that's gonna cause and suffer this?
Pain, suffering, adversity.
As we saw in the in the beginnings
of the verses, we saw the stress on
man's intellectual abilities.
And of course he was presented the ultimate
choice.
Let me just say a little bit more
about each of these because they get repeated
so often throughout the Koran, these are brought
up to mind, that you can't miss them,
they force you to reflect on them.
What about intellect?
Well, when Western scholars studied Islam at the
end of last century and throughout most of
this century, every single one remarked on one
thing, even though they had many different points
of view, that the Quran puts tremendous
stress on reason,
the role that reason plays in faith.
Western authors coming from their own background
actually thought this was too much stress on
reason.
They said the Quran puts too much stress
on reason.
But actually I think that judgment was a
cultural bias. In the West, we've long had
this feeling that there's this tremendous gulf, this
chasm
between faith and reason. We felt that the
2 were virtually incompatible.
Many many people will tell you today, well,
it's just faith.
You know, well, yeah, but I mean,
why do you believe this? Or why does
this happen? Or what well, you just have
to take it on faith.
So in the West, we've come to accept
more or less
that there is no
mingling,
no compatibility,
or very little compatibility
faith and reason. But if you talk to
people of other cultures, other religious perspectives, not
just Muslim, but Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etcetera,
You'll see in those cultures, although they realize
there's difficulties
in using reason, and that, say, foolish people
or people that are weak minded are easily
led astray by their thinking.
They don't see this tremendous
gulf, this tremendous dichotomy between faith and reason.
And so
but nonetheless, the Western scholars,
if they prove nothing else in that remark,
they prove that the Quran puts tremendous stress
on reason.
Henri Lemenz,
the famous French scholar in the beginning of
the century, wrote that the Quran puts so
much stress on reason,
in attaining to faith,
that you would think that disbelief is an
infirmity of the human mind.
That disbelief is the inability to think straight.
That was his comment.
Maxime Robinson,
who wrote the famous book Islam and Capitalism,
Marxist economist scholar of Islam,
the French also,
He wrote that the Quran continually stresses reason
again and again and again. He said 13
times
it says to the disbelievers,
to those who reject the Koran and God
and the message of the Koran. He said
13 times it addresses them and says, have
you then no sense?
Can't you think straight?
Time and time again, the Quran insists that
this is a revelation for people that are
wise, for people who think, for people who
use a reason. It says, will they not
consider the cosmos above them? Will they not
consider the ground below them? Will they not
consider how plants are made? Will they not
consider this sign of God, this manifestation of
God, this this manifestation of harmony and perfection
in the universe, will they not look to
the stars? Will they not look to themselves?
And then again and again it says, will
they not use their reason?
Will they not think? Will they not reflect?
As I said before, the word knowledge,
the Arabic word for knowledge and its derivatives,
it's one of the most frequently occurring words
in the Quran.
Few could occur more often. 854
times it occurs.
Even the very first revelation
from the very start, the first proclamation
which with which,
Muhammad, peace be upon him, was inspired.
Tremendous stress right from the start on reason.
It began with an Arabic word, ekra.
It means read. It's an Arabic command, literally.
Read
in the name of your Lord who created,
created man out of a tiny creature that
clings.
Read, it commands you again. Read, and your
Lord is most bountiful.
What great bounty did He give us? Why
should we read?
What great bounty is he referring to? For
he taught man the use of a pen.
Taught man that which he knew
not. Through reading and writing,
man could learn things he would never
be able to know. He could reach worlds
and peoples and perceptions that are far, far
outside of his domain.
And through this method, we we learn as
a group.
Our knowledge is cumulative.
It grows
through the process of reading and writing through
this great gift. And the Quran then goes
on to tell you that most people
most people are ungrateful when it comes to
this gift
or any gift or the other gifts of
God as well, but in particular this gift.
They think they're set they see themselves as
self sufficient
with all the great gifts that God has
given us, but in particular, the gift of
knowledge and reading and writing.
Choice, you don't have to say too much
about that. Apparently, we are creatures of creatures
of choice. Unfortunately, I just have to make
a couple of statements about it.
One is because there's one verse that's often
mistranslated
in the Quran, and it leads to a
lot of confusion when people in the west
read it. So I'll address that in just
a second. But like I said, the Quran
stresses that the human being is a choosing
creature. He has a certain free will.
In one verse, a very nice verse,
it says that God could have made mankind
into a single religious community,
but he chose to let us differ.
Could have made us all believers,
but that's not the point.
That was not the purpose behind life.
So he allows us to differ and to
different to different communities.
And these people be atheists and these people
believers and these people be different types of
believers.
In another verse it says, we have revealed
to you the book with the truth for
mankind.
He who lets himself be guided
does so to his own good.
If you wish to be guided, if you
choose to be guided, you do so to
your own gain.
He who goes astray
does so to his own hurt.
If you wanted to ignore the guidance, it's
your choice.
You're hurting yourself is the standpoint of the
Quran. I'm not trying to preach to you,
by the way. I'm just trying to
present
the subject from the standpoint of the Quran.
The verse I talked about that's often mistranslated
and leads to confusion
is the verse that's often translated into English
as, god guides
whom he chooses
and leads into error
or leads astray
whom he chooses.
So many people will say, see, I mean,
the Quran talked about free choice, and now
it's saying that all you know, God
forces people to go astray,
makes them
That's hardly
That's too much determinism. It goes against the
grain.
For one very brilliant scholar and a linguist
as well, at the beginning of this century,
Western scholar by the name of Ignaz Goldaheir,
in a in one of his great books
about Islam, wrote that this is one of
the most
falsely translated or misunderstood
translate,
verses in the entire Quran.
And he went back to ancient Arabic lexicons
and studied the verb that people were translating
as, God guides whom he wills and leads
astray whom he wills.
And he said that verb, the Arabic verb,
has two principal meanings, both equally acceptable,
and one perhaps even the second perhaps more
natural
than the first.
And when they say, God guides whom he
chooses and leads astray whom he chooses, said
the verb they translate as lead astray could
actually
and equally and more appropriately be translated as
allows to stray. It's a subtle difference.
But he gave the example of, like, when
you untie a camel and let it stray.
The verb actually means to allow to wander
or to wander. It could have either meaning.
Allow to
or or just simply not to guide.
So he insisted,
and he proved his point by taking the
verses out of the Quran where it appears,
and looking at the verses above and below
it to see them in their context.
He proved his point, and by the way,
the editor that
that that,
edited his book in English said that he
used to hold the other point of view,
but now he became
convinced.
That the correct interpretation of this verse is
God guides whom he wills and he allows
to stray whom he wills. He doesn't impose
guidance on anybody.
About 30 or 40 years after that, he
pointed out that again if you look at
the context, not only does that the correct
interpretation,
but the Quran also shows that that guidance
or that allowing us to
comes according to our predisposition,
our choices, our sincerity.
For example, the Quran says that if you're
sincere, God will guide you. If you seek
Him, God will guide guide you.
For those who seek Him, he will guide
them. But for those who reject guidance,
he'll leave them astray.
For those whose hearts are hardened against guidance,
he allows them to wander.
He doesn't force it upon
them. In one nice verse, it says, for
those who allowed their hearts to swerve,
he let their hearts swerve further, more.
But again,
the point that if we choose, the choices
that we make determine the result.
So for example, one of the very beautiful
sayings of the prophet, peace be upon him,
he says that
God said that if a servant comes to
him by a hand's breath, he comes to
him by an arm's length. If a servant
comes to God walking,
he comes to him running.
He responds to our
choices.
Suffering
gets tremendous emphasis throughout the Quran. When I
was an atheist and I first read the
Quran,
this was the most disturbing
subject for me. Just when I was reading
for it, just when I was starting to
relax, just when I was starting to love
the language and the beauty and the melody
and its rhythms,
A verse like would touch on this subject
and just gnaw at me,
and here's just a few of them.
Kant puts tremendous emphasis
When I read that, I read it about
several times. I just stood there and read
it. What is it possibly trying to say?
Do you think you could enter paradise
without having the next life, a paradisal state,
without having suffered like those who came before
you?
And I thought, what is paradise?
Is it simply a place or is it
a state?
What is it trying to say?
And then another verse in the 3rd Surah
it says, You will certainly be tried in
your possessions
and yourselves.
Make no mistake about it. You will certainly
be tried in your possessions and yourselves. Good
or bad,
you will suffer.
In another verse it says in the second
surah, the 100 and 55th verse,
most surely we will try you you with
something of danger and
hunger
and the loss of worldly goods and of
your lives and of the fruits of your
labor.
You will definitely experience these threats and these
pains
of the loss of your goods and danger
and hunger and the loss of lives and
the fruits of your labor. Now it just
doesn't say this to bad people because in
the next verse it says the next line
it says, but give glad tidings
to those who are patient in adversity.
Who, when calamity befalls them, say, truly unto
God do we belong, and truly to unto
him do we return. So it shows that
this suffering is not just meted out to
sinners,
but to good and bad alike. We will
experience suffering. It has major
role to play in this. In one verse,
the Quran reaches out to us very sympathetically.
I forget the 84th Surah. I think it
says, oh, mankind,
truly you are toiling towards your Lord in
painful toil,
but you shall meet him. It's assuring us
we're struggling. Yes. You're struggling. You're suffering, but
don't lose sight of the fact you shall
meet me that God is telling the reader.
Alright, you say.
Intellect choice, adversity, suffering.
God put us here for a purpose.
What purpose is it?
Maybe I'm just reading something into the Quran
that's not there, I thought.
Maybe,
maybe I'm just assuming that I'm there's a
purpose.
Maybe I'm reading more than it is. Maybe
it doesn't really even address the question,
but it does.
Just when I was ready or just when
you're ready to say, well, it can't be
any purpose. I'm just I'm looking into this
more than I should. I'm giving this more
credit than I should. A verse like this
will strike you. In the 3rd Sura,
we did not create the heavens and earth
and all that is between them in vain.
We didn't create all this with no purpose.
Just when you're ready to relax on the
point. And then in the 21st surah it
says, we have not created the heaven and
the earth as ever between them in sport,
as an entertainment.
If we wish to take a sport, we
could have done it by ourselves,
if we were to do that at all.
The point is, is that God doesn't need
to entertain himself
as the last line clearly shows, and he
didn't create this as an entertainment or a
sport, as a definite purpose.
In the 23rd Sura, it says,
do you think we created you purposely
and that you will not be returned to
us?
The true sovereign Lord is too exalted above
that.
He doesn't do silly things. He doesn't do
strange things like that.
Everything he does has a purpose.
May not be
clearly visible to us, but it has a
purpose.
So what purpose is there?
So the reader is forced to seek a
purpose. What is the purpose in life? Well,
the first place to begin that answer is
to be what does the Quran ask him
to do?
But the natural place, I think the logical
place to begin to answer the question.
And several times you'll see a phrase like
this appear in the Quran. One very beautiful
Sura in particular.
It says, in time,
all mankind is lost.
And this Sura is extremely important. Many sayings
of the prophet, peace be upon him, point
about the importance, the significance of this Sura
because it summarizes
the key to understanding our duty in life.
Our what what we should do with our
lives. In time, all men are in a
state of loss except except for who?
Except for those
in the Arabic word they usually translate as
believe, it's Amenu,
which means more than that. It's more than
simply believe.
The root is comes comes from the root
meaning to find security and to find trust
in.
Except for those
who find security and trust in God, belief
in God, faith in God, security and trust
in God. And
who do what? Who do right?
Who do good,
and who teach
truth
and who teach fortitude, patience and adversity.
Okay. So that says in time all mankind
is lost except for those who, who except
for those who find faith and trust in
God and do good.
And then how does one go about doing
good? And you'll see this phrase appeared many
times, many, many times in the Quran.
Yeah. All these people are allowed except for
these. Who?
Those who find faith and trust in God
and do good.
These people are going to end up like
this, except
for those who
find faith and trust in God, do good.
It's a repeated theme throughout the Quran. How
does one do good?
Well the Quran says, you give to the
poor.
You take care of the orphan, you take
care the widow. You forgive others,
even though you may have a right to
to revenge. Sometimes you have to fight, of
course.
Grange tells us we should fight
against tyranny. We should fight against oppression.
We should stand up for justice.
We should show kindness to the weak.
Okay. We should forgive.
We should be merciful.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is
for the Muslim the exemplar.
The Quran says that much. It says he
is the best of examples. And what does
it tell us about him? That he is
a mercy unto man
kind. So the Muslim understands that he should
try to be merciful as well.
He should show compassion.
He should grow in justice.
He should be giving. The Muslim believes he
should be truthful, kind. He should teach others
as that verse I just quoted
said. He should love his fellow man.
This is being good. And as deGron points
out in a number of places, this is
the very essence of faith and of
religion, together with
finding faith and trust and security in God.
And notice also in the verse that I
just quoted, I began by quoting, it says
that we should not only do these things,
we should teach them.
And so by teaching them we learn them.
And so
the process is
great. We're not just there to do good,
but we're to grow in goodness, and we're
to teach goodness, and we're to learn goodness,
and to learn and teach faith and trust
in God. So why? Another verse along those
lines, one of my favorite is,
truly those who find faith and trust in
God and do good, will the most merciful
endow with love.
And to this and to this end have
we made this easy to understand
in your own tongue,
so that you may give glad tidings to
those who are God conscious,
and warn those given to contention,
to fighting, to bickering.
Most the most merciful will certainly endow with
love. And to this end, we have made
this easy to understand
in your own tongue. So the Muslim understands
that he must grow and and learn love
of his fellow man.
So what would that achieve? Well, for one
thing the Quran promises that we and Islam
promises as well the many sayings of the
Prophet,
that we will get peace and joy
and serenity in this life and infinitely greater
in the next.
And that's really not that surprising
because we all do know that it's better
to forgive than to avenge,
to give
than to take. We all do know that
it's better to reach out to others than
just satisfy our own physical needs. We all
do know that it's better to love than
to be indifferent.
These are things that all people all over
the globe
admire,
cherish,
and and praise.
Alright. And they do give us real peace
and joy in this life. Those are the
things worth living. Those are the things that
we're gonna look back 20 years from now.
And though those moments are the moments we're
gonna cherish. Not gonna be the 4 pairs
of shoes, or the size of your house,
or the car you drive that you drove
back in 1993.
28 years from now, you'll remember those intangible
moments when you shared an act of great
kindness with someone, you showed an act that
you loved someone like your children, for example,
so tenderly,
those are the moments that'll stay with you
and you'll cherish the rest of your life,
not the physical gains.
But is that it? Is that the purpose
in life, just to grow in goodness,
just sort of a type of humanism,
to become better human beings, to become wiser
human beings, to become,
have a better nature, to grow in virtue
and love of our fellow man and kindness.
Is that it?
No.
Right? If we thought that was it, we'd
be ignoring some of the essential points of
the Quran.
Because while the Quran does stress that we
should grow in goodness, that we should grow
in mercy towards others, that we should teach
these things, that we should learn these things.
You see, for example, Luqman, the prophet Luqman,
peace be upon,
teaching his
children, his son this lesson very tenderly.
While we should grow in these things and
teach them, we always should not forget the
very way these phrases begin. Those phrases that
stress
that a person should do good. And they
begin by saying we should grow
in all men are in a state of
loss except for those who what? Except for
those who find faith and trust in God.
That's where it begins.
And grow in goodness
and teach these things to others and learn
them themselves.
So the question ultimately goes back to God.
So
very quickly you start wondering how is God
portrayed
in the Quran.
And if you look through the Quran very
carefully, you come upon some beautiful verses that
describe God God. 1 in particular,
which says call upon God
or call upon the all merciful.
Whatever you call upon,
to him belongs
the most beautiful names. To him belongs
the attributes of perfection,
the most beautiful names.
When I came upon that verse, I naturally
read what are some of the beautiful names.
And you'll find he is the most merciful,
the most compassionate,
the loving,
the kind, the commend, the giving, the bountiful,
the generous.
He is the just. He is the truth.
He is the truthful.
As you go throughout the Quran,
page by page, almost any page you come
on, you'll see several of these attributes
punctuating certain statements,
several of these on almost any page. Sometimes
you'll see many, many on on a page.
But after a long line, it'll say, and
God does this. Why? Because he's the merciful,
the compassionate, because he's the wise and the
kind, because he's the clement, because he's the
forgiving, because he's the one who turns towards
others, because he is the just, because he
is the truthful.
He
acts the way he does because of
these beautiful
names that he possesses.
Now it doesn't take a genius as you
read through the Quran that the very attributes
that God wants us to grow in, that
he wants us to learn,
mercy, compassion,
forgiveness, etcetera,
have their origin, their perfection, their ultimate beauty
in God.
We are to grow in compassion, God is
the compassionate.
We are to grow in mercy, God is
the merciful. We're to grow in forgiveness,
God is the forgiving. We're to grow in
justice, God is the just.
So by growing in these,
we not only find certain peace and serenity
within ourselves
and wonderful moments
that make our life worth living,
but as we grow in these, we grow,
to use a Koranic term, nearer and nearer
to God. Not in distance,
but in some very special way.
So the Muslim believes as he grows in
these,
he grows in his ability to receive and
experience
the infinite love, the infinite mercy, the infinite
compassion,
the infinite perfection,
the infinite goodness
that is
God, that it comes from God,
that has its perfection and its origin in
God.
Here's an analogy I use once in a
while, and it somehow gets the point.
I What do you need to learn these
to experience
God's mercy, love, compassion?
Well, one reason is, take just a simple
analogy. Let's say I have a fish, a
cat,
and 3 daughters. Actually, I only have the
latter 3. I don't have the first two.
But let's just pretend I have a fish,
a cat, and 3 daughters.
A fish I could shower my love on.
I could change its water. I could keep
a heater by its bowl. I could feed
it daily, and it could certainly experience my
love and my mercy on some level.
Certainly, my cat being more intelligent,
and knowing something of being at a higher
level of intelligence
and probably motion to allow for the word,
could certainly experience my love and my compassion
and my giving at a much higher level.
And so too my daughters,
one of them is now 7 years old,
as she grows and learns and experiences love
and compassion and mercy and truth and forgiveness
herself,
she too now can experience my love, my
mercy, my compassion on a much higher level,
much higher than a cat, certainly.
And now that I'm full grown and I
have have children of my own and I
am learning through that process of being a
father, love, compassion,
and mercy on a much higher level than
anything else. Because when you give to children,
it's not out of any want in return.
It is just
pure
love,
or it's very close to
it anyway. And now that I am experienced
this,
I'm experiencing this, the relationship with my parents
has grown to a much higher degree. As
the Quran says, somehow when somebody becomes 40
years
old, it's a key moment in his life.
I'm almost there
because that and it points to the relationship
of a child to his parents as he
becomes 40 in age. Because as you bring
up your own children, you come to appreciate,
you come to experience,
you come to recall
your own parents' love, compassion, and mercy
like you never did before. And suddenly all
that you're doing
you've projected back and understand what they did
to you. And that relationship with them becomes
that much more powerful and intimate and close.
So suddenly you're able to share in things
that you really couldn't when you're a child.
And so it is as the Muslim sees
with God. As you grow in love, and
mercy, and compassion, and forgiveness, and in goodness,
you could better receive and experience
the infinite mercy, the infinite goodness that is
God.
That is God's.
The prophet, peace be upon him, used to
say that the human heart, not the physical
organ, but the receptive organ, the organ that
we're which we feel conscious, you know, con
what would I say? Good feelings, kindness, mercy,
etcetera. The human heart is like any other
mechanism.
If you work it and use it and
work on it and stick to your prayers
and could be, remain conscious of God and
continue doing good deeds and more good deeds
and trying to perfect yourself. It becomes polished.
It becomes more receptive to God's love, mercy,
and compassion.
And if you do to to God's beauty,
and if you don't, it becomes rusty.
It becomes rusty
and black, and it falls into disuse and
becomes in
operative.
And this point about the way Muslims perceive
life and growing in these,
attributes
is often missed by people when they write
about the Muslim rituals, especially from the outside.
Many writers point out that and they're very
sympathetic, and we appreciate it. They point out
that when a Muslim prays and he goes
through this exercise, it's very good for his
legs, for example.
Stretches his muscle muscles, makes him very,
nimble. They could sit on the ground for
hours without complaining.
They point out that it's a great community
exercise. It creates community discipline and cohesion.
It's a great spiritual discipline.
Many writers will write about Islam from the
outside, and especially nowadays with a great deal
of objectivity and sympathy.
But they miss many Muslims complain that they
miss the entire point of the rituals, especially
the prayer.
Because for the Muslim, the prayer is so
much more than that.
Because as he grows or tries to grow
and hopefully does in goodness, and as he
sticks to the prayers day in day out,
5 times a day for the rest of
his life,
focusing for those 5 moments at 5 different
times a day on God and his relationship
to him, every Muslim that I've talked to
sort of,
reports the same general trend,
depending on how far far along they got.
They'll tell you as they first began this
at some age in their life,
the fears were very much
day out, not missing, they'll say that suddenly
they noticed that the prayers became more a
peaceful exercise.
And they grand
began to feel this tremendous peace and serenity,
and they would go rushing to the prayer
to feel this peace and serenity and a
hectic life.
But then you'll notice many a Muslim will
tell you as they continued
and worked on themselves and tried to be
conscious of their spiritual and moral progress, and
as they continue to pray day in, day
out, not leading the prayers,
they'll tell you that the prayers became so
much more than that. That suddenly,
slowly but surely, they became more and more
cognizant of the prayers that they were in
power. And that the more they progressed and
the forgiveness
and power.
And that the more they progressed and the
more they stayed with it, the more acutely
aware they became of it. So then in
fact, for many a Muslim, the prayer has
become just this tremendous
divine
embrace
where he feels that he is in this
tremendous presence of this all merciful, powerful, loving
God. And it's that love that he feels,
that mercy, that forgiveness that he shared, that
he is given the
power, the faculty to share that mercy, love,
compassion becomes the guiding principle in his life.
The strongest motivation,
he longs and yearns for the day when
he could be in the presence of that
mercy and compassion, where all the material things
are stripped away
and he could bask in it without any
earthly deflection.
That is becomes for many a Muslim their
ultimate yearning and their very motive for living
and life.
And so every other love,
every other relationship in their life translates
to that one.
Even as they love their children, in loving
their children, they see themselves,
in essence, it's just another way of loving
God. Not that they don't love their children
sincerely, they love them all the more beautifully.
But in that relationship
they somehow see the love of God.
Well,
in any case,
we come back to the angel's question because
the natural question it's easy to get swept
away in all this, but the natural question
is, well why didn't God just program us
with these feelings in the first place? I
mean why didn't He just pop us into
heaven
and make us loving,
compassionate, caring, merciful creatures
to begin with? I mean, that's a very
important question.
And the Koran continues to dog you with
some such questions. You're forced to think about
them. It doesn't let you rest,
especially if you're
an atheist.
But in any case,
if all you have to do is look
to yourself and you begin to see the
answer.
Okay. We're creatures. We
don't
have within ourselves the perfection, the infinite perfection
of love, mercy, and compassion.
But nonetheless, we have it or we could
have it to a degree where we know
at least this much.
From our experience of love, mercy, and compassion,
we know it this much that you can't
take a creature
and program him with love.
You can't take a creature and program compassion
or truth in it. You can make a
compassion or truth in
it. You can make a CAT scan that
takes care of the sick, but it doesn't
become compassion.
We could program a computer never to make
a false statement and nobody calls it truthful.
To grow in all these attributes, virtue,
to grow in mercy, compassion, love, forgiveness, wisdom,
knowledge, caring,
all these great attributes requires 3 things and
perhaps more, but at least these 3,
which are emphasized throughout the Koran from the
very start. It requires intellect,
choice,
and adversity
and pain.
As they say in the west,
well, especially with exercise, physical exercise, no pain,
no gain.
This applies to everything.
No pain, no gain.
Take for example,
which one was the first one I mentioned?
Truth.
In order to grow in truth,
you have to have the option to not
tell the truth.
And you need the intelligence
to weigh
and figure out what are the consequences
of that telling of truth.
What are the material losses?
What are the material benefits? And that brings
us to adversity.
We have to choose between being truthful or
not. We have to weigh
the consequences of our choice.
We will rise to a higher level of
truth, which is a great material loss at
stake.
All these three things are figured
compassion
unless you choose have the choice to be
compassionate, or to ignore.
You have to be able to weigh and
and and figure out what are the consequences
of that commitment, that commitment to reach out
to others.
These three elements
play a repeated role in our moral and
spiritual growth throughout life. Same thing with forgiveness.
Nobody wrongs you,
it's not adversity.
No one wrongs you or commits a wrong
against you, then there's nothing to forgive.
But if they do, then you have a
choice,
and you weigh and balance
the consequences of that choice.
And so it is with all of them.
I was talking with my wife.
We were talking to my oldest daughter. She's
7 years old. Her name is Jamila.
When she sees this tape, she'll appreciate this.
We were talking to her not too long
ago. We're telling her how when she was
11 months old, I carried her on my
shoulder all night long. She was very sick
at a very high temperature. She was my
first child, but I love all my children.
But she was my first child. I was
very worried about it. I called the doctor.
We took her to the doctor. They said
she was very sick, but she would eventually
get over it, give her a little medication,
and just be patient with her.
Every time when we tried to put her
down, she cried. So for 7 hours straight
from 11 PM till 6 AM, I carried
this 11 month old child back and forth
through the halls of our 3 bedroom apartment,
singing lullabies to her. I couldn't even stop
singing. She wanted to hear it all night
long. And she slept on my shoulder and
then I put her in the bed in
the morning and she was all right. I
was hoarse, I was tired. My back was
killing me. I had to teach in 2
hours. It was a miserable night. And my
and I told her that it was. And
she said, well, daddy, I mean were you
mad at me after that?
I looked at her and I said, Mad
at you honey.
I mean I couldn't have loved you more.
I mean, at this stage of my life,
that's one of the greatest memories I'll ever
have. I carry it with me always.
Because that is what love is. It is
giving. It is suffering. It is compassion. And
somehow by some strange
mechanism, it produces the most beautiful experiences in
our life.
Error plays a fundamental role in all this.
We we learn by our errors.
We make mistakes and we learn.
Adam makes an error, God forgives him.
We make errors, God forgives us. He promises
us. He'll forgive us as long as we
continue to try,
and as long as we learn by our
errors and truly try and never to give
them again, but error is a fundamental role
in learning. Just like it's in learning mathematics,
the lessons of life are learned the same
way. Error plays a fundamental role.
The prophet, peace be upon him, said that
if mankind
keeps stops sinning,
stop stop committing errors,
God would efface him from the earth, put
another creature there that would continue to commit
errors, God would he'd continue to repent, God
would continue to forgive him, and that process
would continue on.
Negron promises us that God will
forgive our errors. As a matter of fact,
it promises promises promises us that we learn
and grow from our errors.
It tells us that God takes our errors,
our bad deeds, and he changes them into
good deeds.
Many must have understood
it many ways. The one possible way I
think you could understand that is that when
you do a bad deed and you realize
it, and truly realize it, and feel the
pain of it, and have experienced these debilitating
effects,
then when you realize it, and truly repent,
and work never to do it again, that's
not just an admonition you're following anymore. That's
an internalized
lesson. That bad deed
that you know so well and its consequences
and its pain now becomes a good deed
in the sense that
you truly know the consequences of it, the
wisdom behind
why you shouldn't do it, and you learn
from it.
I'm running a little bit short, so I'm
gonna try to tie this up right away.
I just have to say, we can't really
close this lecture without saying a few words
about the next life because it plays a
big part in the
Quran. So let me just tie it up
very quickly, I'll get right to the point.
I'll just talk about 3
important signs
that the Quran mentions that I think is
very revealing.
Least I happen to discover, and I'm not
insisting that this is right,
but I just found it remarkable.
And the three signs that the Quran talks
about is, what is the sign of our
lives in the womb?
And it sort of draws a parallel between
our life in the womb and this earthly
life.
Another one that just relates very close to
this one, so maybe it's a sub category
of this one, is birth
and resurrection.
So so I'll call this 1. And 2,
another very important sign, and I haven't seen
many Muslim authors write about it frankly, but
for me, it always catches my attention,
It's sleep
and death.
So I'll just very quickly say a few
words about these,
and then I'll I'll close this lecture.
The Quran frequently mentions our development in the
womb as one of the great signs of
God, one of the great manifestations
of His ways
and God's power.
And interesting enough, there's one verse that talks
about the 2 deaths that every individual experiences.
Muslim authors differed on what that meant, but
many auth authors, and I believe most, thought
that the 2 deaths referred to are the
deaths after our life in the womb, when
that life ends, and now we come into
this life,
in which we know is an entirely different
life. Even our bloodstream reverses itself entirely.
Our whole stream of blood just suddenly shifts
in that 10 seconds we're pulled out of
the womb, turns direction and goes in the
opposite direction.
But we experience 2 deaths. One is when
our life in the womb is over, and
we experience a sort of death where that
life ends, and then this life begins.
And so, we're born.
Alright. And if you look at the various
statements in the Quran about life in the
womb, and life in this life, we see
many interesting parallels, or I think they can't
be missed.
I'll try to get to the point quickly
because I'm running out of time, but
if you think about it,
just as the individual
grows
physically in the womb,
An individual grows morally and spiritually in this
life.
And this physical growth in the womb
is fully manifested,
fully visible,
fully seen
in its entrance into this earthly life.
What happens in the womb
determines
our state when we enter this earthly life.
Similarly, as we grow in this earthly life,
in goodness, in virtue, in kindness, or don't,
That's fully manifested
in the day of judgment, when we enter
the next life.
The Quran uses very powerful language
that drives home this point,
that somehow
our very person
will manifest
our moral spiritual growth in this life. I'm
sure you all have your favorite references, but
there's ones that say, he who does an
atom's weight of good, a speck of good,
will see it.
It'll be it'll be manifest. It'll be seen.
He who does
the atom's weight of evil will see it.
It says that a person's hands, and feet
and skins and nose and not nose, and
eyes and ears will testify
to what he has become.
Of course, this language is difficult because it's
talking about another environment altogether.
And the Quran points out that many a
times that these things are similitudes,
likenesses.
Nonetheless,
no matter how we interpret it, and there's
many interpretations of it, one thing becomes clear,
that somehow our very
being will manifest
our spiritual progress in this life. Just as
our very being,
when we're born into this world,
manifests what we did in this life in
life in the womb, what how we grew
in this life.
There are,
other references that talk about how a person's
life will be an open book, which the
good will hold in the right hand and
the evil will hold behind their back. So
the Quran makes it all perfectly clear that
there's an intimate connection
between our growth in this life and our
entrance into the next life.
And it'll be seen in our very person
what kind of person we are. In this
life, we have many masks, many ways to
cover what we are. We could hide
our essential person, what we truly are. But
in the next life, on the day of
judgment,
in a very objective real way,
our very being will say what kind of
people we are
or were in this life. There's one verse
that says we could know them by their
marks.
You will know them by their marks on
that day. The people above will call on
to the people below, and they will have
they will be marked
by what type of life they live. So
in some
miraculous way,
just as our growth in the womb is
manifested in our person when we're born, our
growth in this life is manifested in our
being
on the day of judgment.
We'll fully show forth what type of person
we were.
And so while many people will say that
you are what you eat in the physical
realm,
the Muslim might say you will be
on that day what you did in this
life. You will be what you do now.
A very powerful,
close connection.
Let me see. I wanted to get through
the rest of these but let's see what
else what do I want to talk about.
Similarly, let's come to resurrection
and birth.
If we think about what is it what
goes on through life as we grow, what
does go on through life as we grow?
We do suffer pain.
Pain is a fundamental,
aspect of life. It plays a major part
in our growth.
Similarly,
when we go the Quran tells us that
our life in the womb, especially our birth,
was a painful one. Not just for the
mom. Any husband that has watched their children
be born knows that the child goes through
a tremendous amount of torment too. Somehow through
pain, a child is brought from one life
into another.
And similarly, through pain
and through work and struggle,
we are brought from this life and it's
manifested in our being in the next.
For those people who are good,
they will experience an infinite joy beyond their
wildest
possible imagination.
And for those people that are bankrupt and
evil,
they will experience tremendous torment like like they
could never have believed because there, this reality
is much greater than this reality,
and they will suffer terribly. It would be
something like this if you somehow came through
this process and you came through it with
nothing of what you need for comfort,
for satisfaction into this life.
Nothing to protect you from the cold or
the intense heat or nothing. You just suffered
terribly.
Somehow,
in the next life,
the goodness that we achieve will be reflected
in our very being, and our joy, and
our happiness, and the evil that we achieve
if we're in the if we're basically evil
people, we're reflected in our suffering, and our
misery, and our condition
in the next life. And it's so intimately
connected with the type of lives we live.
It's so naturally connected to how that will
lead into our next life that God could
say very frankly in the Quran, and it's
not we
who hurt you, you hurt yourselves.
And that's basically the concept of one of
the most powerful expressions of the concept of
sin in the Quran is that when a
person sins, yes, he harms others. Yes, he
rebels against the will of God. But who
does he commit tyranny against the most? Who
does he do the most injustice to? Who
does he hurt the most?
Himself.
Legrand says, it's not against us you sin,
it's against your own self that you commit.
And the word is tyranny,
oppression.
When you commit wrongs, you oppress,
corrupt,
and destroy
yourself.
Finally,
I'm a just wanna talk about the sleep
death sort of parallel. It takes 2 minutes.
This one, I haven't seen much about, but
it just fascinated me when I first studied
the Quran, and it's fascinated me ever since.
The Quran talks about how God takes the
souls of individuals when they're asleep when they're
asleep
and how he takes them when they're dead.
And he returns them to the individuals
with these on the day of resurrection, with
these when they wake in the morning.
And when I came across that verse, I
was
just fascinated. And so I started reading all
the verses about the resurrection, back to here,
I guess.
And how do are the individuals how do
they seem when they rise on the day
of resurrection?
You can't miss the parallel.
They appear as people that have just awoken
from
sleep.
They wake up and they say not wake
up, but they arise on the day of
resurrection. It describes them as sort of groggy,
first of all. The second thing is is
that when they try to recall what their
earthly life was like, what do they say?
How long were we there?
An hour?
A day?
Or less?
Suddenly, this great reality that we're in right
now, and it is reality,
will seem like an illusion.
All the pain, the agony, the suffering, the
joys, the great things were grand you know,
the material gains
suddenly seemed like it was like a dream.
It wasn't a dream,
but it'll seem like a dream.
But for those who lived a good life,
it'll be manifested in their very being.
But the beauty of it is, it's just
like a dream. All the suffering, all the
agony, all the hardship,
all the struggle, all the pressure
will suddenly seem like it's
not very important at all.
Not very important at all. There's a saying
of the prophet, peace be upon him, that
when a person puts one foot in paradise,
it'll he'll and then he's asked what sort
of suffering he had in life,
he won't even be able to recall it.
It seemed like it never happened.
So people say time heals all wounds,
resurrection
heals all wounds a 1000000 times, an infinite
time
infinite times more. But
unless
you lived a terrible life,
Then all your gains, all your material gains,
all the things you lusted after and got,
we see the parallel side of this, will
seem extremely unimportant. They too will seem like
an illusion. They too will seem like they're
worthless. They too will seem like they were
pointless.
And now you're faced with the reality of
what you have become,
and now you're faced with your own bankruptcy,
and now you're faced with the suffering that
you've really brought down upon yourself. As God
says,
you you know, he doesn't hurt anybody. You
hurt yourselves.
Let me see. Anything else? Well, there's more
I could say, but I have run out
of time. But let me end as I
began.
I began by saying how we view another
religion,
unfortunately,
have
all been very patient. We're going on an
hour and 25 minutes now. But this will
take you have all been very patient. We're
going on an hour and 25 minutes now.
This will take 2 minutes. One very nice
example of this misunderstanding is the concept of
worship.
I know what you're saying. You're saying worship.
I mean, Jeff, you talked about the rituals.
You talked about prayers at least. You mentioned
fasting just briefly. Didn't you already speak about
worship? And I'll say, no, not entirely, not
even close.
Because the Muslim concept of worship is much
larger
than rituals. Ritual is just a subset of
worship.
A subset?
Yeah. You all know what a subset is.
Right?
Okay. But it's just a subset of worship.
Worship the Muslim concept of worship is much
more pervasive.
The prophet, peace be upon him, said that
when a person shakes a person hand or
smiles in another's face or lifts a stone
from his way so the next traveler doesn't
trip on it,
when a when a when a father gives
a child a piece of food for his
children to eat,
or
when a human being shows another, even the
simplest act of kindness.
Those are all
religious acts. The actual word used was sadaqa,
which means
not just charity, but it actually comes from
a root meaning truth, which means it's an
act of fidelity. An act of an act
of fidelity towards God. It has a religious
content. It's a religious act.
Even the companions of the prophet asked him,
or he mentioned at one time, making love
to your spouse
is a religious act, is an act of
piety.
And the companions were astounded. They said, but
this is very pleasurable. I mean, why should
this be considered an act that deserves divine
reward?
And he said, well, when you commit adultery,
isn't that an act of rebellion against God?
Why does it surprise you that this is
the opposite?
The companions were naturally
interested in what are the highest acts of
worship, the highest acts acts of self surrender.
He said that fighting in a just cause,
risking your life, and dying in that just
cause is even greater.
Taking care of your parents in their old
age
is one of the great religious acts.
A mother giving birth to a child and
rearing a child.
And if she happens to die while she's
giving birth to that child, it's equivalent to
if she died on the battlefield fighting in
a just cause.
That's how great that moment is. I'm a
man. I don't understand it, but I've witnessed
it. It seems like a very religious act.
But in any case, the long and the
short of it is that a Muslim sees
all life
as filled with worship,
from the smallest act to the biggest act.
When a taxi driver in Saudi Arabia takes
you from the airport, he'll turn on the
key and say, Bismillahir Rahmanirrahim.
Whisper to himself. And he's saying, in the
name of God, the merciful, the compassion.
And when a mother picks up up her
crying child inside
in,
one of the Middle Eastern countries, she'll pick
the child up, and as she's grabbing him,
they'll often hear her say, in the name
of God, the merciful, the compassion.
This is not just mere formalism,
but it's become so ingrained in the Muslim
personality that he understands that even the tiniest
thing,
positive
deed, is still an act of worship and
self surrender to God.
And so when Muslim understanding well, let me
put it this way. When a non Muslim
comes across a certain verse in the Quran,
they're often perplexed.
And the verse I have in mind is,
and I'll end with this verse, is the
one where God tells mankind, I have not
created man nor jinn except
that they worship me,
not created mankind or jinn, other sentient beings
beyond our perception,
5 senses,
accept that they should worship me. Many a
Western author said, what does God expect us
to do, worship 24 hours a day?
Does He expect us to pray
24 hours a day and fast? We'll be
dead in 3 weeks. But that's not the
point. The point is that the Muslim concept
of worship, which is so utterly pervasive
from his point of view and understanding life
as he or she does,
when he, she, or he, he, or she
comes across the very same verse,
the reaction is completely the opposite. It is,
well, of course.
What other possible purpose could he have created
us for?
And with that, I'll just simply say to
you, peace be upon you in the mercy
of God. I'm exhausted. Thank you.
K. I
would like to thank doctor, Jeffrey Lang for
this wonderful lecture
and this also wonderful approach to,
talk about
the purpose of life.
I would like to open the floor for
questions for another 5 hours. Is this okay,
doctor?
And I would like to start myself.
You mentioned at the beginning of your lecture
that,
the other religions probably you mentioned Christian and
Jewish.
That,
the purpose of life is a punishment thing.
And I have two philosophy here that, another
philosophy say this life is for our enjoyment
and Jesus will save us. So let us
use our time and enjoyment as long as
our sins being already taken care by Jesus.
How can we,
have these two
contradictions at this to myself
point of views or philosophy. That it is
management and in the same time,
it's a time for enjoyment. And my humble
knowledge that
other religions
see this world as an enjoyment time
because Jesus already,
saved us.
But you mentioned in your lecture that
those people saw this life as a punishment.
So how can we? Thanks, sir.
Well, I'll I'll just mention this much in
answer to the question.
More it's more general question, really.
How can people see this life as being
simultaneously a atone for their punishment, and then
they could just go on and enjoy it.
Right? And that another person could die to
to sort of atone for their punishment, and
then they could just go on and enjoy
it.
To be completely honest with you, I I
know that some
people, especially in the United States, represent that
point of view.
For frankly, I don't think it's very well
thought out. I think if you think about
it deeply,
it does have problems. And I and I
and I think many Western scholars of Christianity,
for example, recognize that, and they realize that
that those issues must be tackled much more
deeply. Those that sort of perception
is is superficial and actually could be damaging.
So,
I know a lot of people hold that
point of view, and even some religious leaders
present that point of view, which is unfortunate.
And many other religious leaders will tell you
that's a very damaging point of view to
represent, and That's not within the same community.
We'll tell you people shouldn't be saying that.
For myself, when I heard people say that,
frankly, it didn't make sense to me. But
I'm not saying that's the perception of all
people outside of the Muslim religion,
but it is the perception of some. And,
you know, some people have very strange ideas.
Even within the Muslim community, some people have
strange ideas, you know. I mean, not even,
of course, you
know. You know, to be honest with you,
I the first time I
I became interested in Islam, I went around
to Muslims asking them what they believed
and discussed what's the meaning of life, what's
the purpose of life, why why are we
here? And you'll be surprised at the strange
answers I got. You know, I I talked
to many and I people I just thought
nobody could make sense of this for me.
And I was very that actually put me
off to even thinking deeply about Islam for
another 3 or 4 years because the answers
I got were so
so self contradictory.
But then suddenly, you know, just one day
I just happened to stumble upon the Quran.
A friend gave it to me, I was
very curious. I didn't even know Muslims had
a scripture.
I began to read it, and suddenly I
found that this was
light years more
simple and ingenious than anything that people were
telling me, and and that's, sort of caught
me. So when I became a Muslim, I
really didn't become a Muslim because of some
defect in some other religion.
I really wasn't interested in religion at the
time.
I didn't want to have a religion.
And, you know, there's many times after I
became a Muslim I would have liked to
figure out some way I could somehow
believe in this and and not
be a Muslim.
You know, somehow try to find some compromise
because I'm basically a mathematician type, you know,
skeptical. I'm quite I just
very, very skeptical and doubting, and I'm really
not never been one to want to be
in a religious community.
But I just found the message of the
Quran
so compelling,
so powerful, so it it appealed to my
reason so much
that I that I couldn't,
I just couldn't reject it. I thought about
it for a long time before I made
that decision, but I just felt I had
no other choice.
But a really good question, by the way.
Sorry. I stumbled bit with that. I was
unprepared for it. Great question though.
This is just a very brief question. You
said in the beginning that you wrote a
book from the American Muslim perspective. Where can
we get that? I would love my mother
to read it. Well, well, right now it's
being considered by Oxford University Press. I sent
it to him just a couple of months
ago. I they've had it a long time.
I know they're reading it. It's in the
hand of a reader.
And I I don't know. They might accept
it. If not, I'll try New York University
Press. But, the title of it is, called
Struggling to Surrender, you know, because for every
convert, he goes through this period of struggle.
There is a struggle really to surrender
to God. It's very
it's really a dramatic experience. So I entitled
it,
struggle to surrender. If you translate it in
Arabic, it has a nice meaning. Struggle to
surrender, but I don't do that. Struggle to
surrender, and then subtitled impressions of an American
convert to Islam. If you leave me your
name and address, I'll send you a copy.
Okay.
Oh, okay. Just give me your names, it
might take time. I sort of go down
the list.
So what do you think is the best
mechanism of teaching children
about Islam? Especially 4 years old, 5 years,
7 years. At bedtime or through a formal
lessons?
Or, what kind the medical is best thinking?
I don't know if you're explaining that. Oh,
do you have children? Obviously. 7 years old.
7 years old. Yeah. I am 17, and
a daughter 5, and a daughter 3, soon
to be 4.
I don't know. But but the method I
like is I try to keep it natural.
So that, first of all, children will come
to you with many, many questions.
Actually, they'll insist on you teaching them
more than you probably really want to, and
their questions are difficult.
So what I try to do is I
try to,
keep it very natural. You know, when they
ask me a question, I try to answer
them in a natural way, not a dogmatic
way, not in a way that scares them
or says you have to believe this. I
try to,
in a very as rational as I can
I like the rational approach really, because the
Quran puts so much stress on it? I
even use a lot of examples from the
Quran.
You know, the sort of natural examples, the
examples from nature to teach my children.
If my if my children ask me why
are there different peoples on this earth? Why?
They do ask me, Why are is not
everybody Muslim dead? Especially in America, why are
there so many Christians? I explained to her
that God allowed us to make choices,
and he has given us guidance.
And we have to use our minds
and our whatever sources we could get on
our get our hands on, to find out
what is life all about, and to and
to follow that
to the best of our ability. And she'll
ask me, well, what is life all about?
And I'll answer her in a way that
she could understand. It's about being good, hon.
You know, I'll tell her. It's about being
good and believing in God because as the
better we get, I'll tell her just what
I told you guys, except in a very
simplistic
way. Not using a lot of highfalutin words,
which I didn't use that much tonight anyway.
And and they appreciate it.
And the interesting thing is, is that my
daughter, when she discusses in school with her
friends, or when she's given an
remark, my God, she makes a lot of
sense.
You know, she's very rational, very intelligent, very
natural in her approach.
And she is, and I think that's what
parents have to do. Try to avoid,
put especially in the United States. If you're
gonna go back in other cultures, this probably
works beautifully, and I I don't I grew
up in the Catholic church where I had
things rammed down my throat. That does work
if you're in a certain environment.
But in the United States, where there is
so much,
skepticism, where there's so much doubting, where there's
so much challenging of your ideas,
I think it's much more important to try
to think of sensible answers to your children's
questions. Do a lot of homework.
Do a lot of research. Do a lot
of reading of the Quran.
Read a lot of Western what Western writers
have to say about religion.
Just read, you know, as the Quran says,
read, read, read. You'll find that you come
to know other people's perspectives. You'll come to
know what sort of questions your children will
have to face. You'll come to know what
they have to what sort of questions they'll
have to encounter, and you'll be able to
start formulating them answers for yourself little by
little by little. I think there's no better
parent than a well educated parent.
And the, and the worst type of parent
is the parent that just
doesn't
make any effort, just hands the child what
they had, and and good luck. You know?
Because what they had probably won't work here.
It probably won't work in the next generation
either or the next.
Parenting
What made
Assalamu alaikum. Yes. What made you to,
think about this topic Islam
and the purpose of life? I'm thinking about
if you had some experience with your friends
and,
in in the course of your discussion, you
came about,
this type
of topic.
Well, that is very,
insightful. As a matter of fact, that's exactly
how
I, began lecturing on this. I was
you know, I work at a university. Most
of my friends are atheists or agnostics, you
know. I mean, they're university professors. What do
you expect?
You know, I mean, almost all university professor
I mean, you know, everybody tells us we're
the best trained, we're the best educated, we're
the most intelligent, you know, all this pride,
you know, like I talked about in the
beginning, and and we start to believe it.
You know, even though our area of research
is some little tiny insignificant area of research,
which that research in a nickel might get
you a cup of coffee, probably won't. You
know, we we start to think that what
we know and and what we've learned is
so
great, you know. And and our minds are
so great that we could just pick up
out all these old wives tales and it's
all garbage. I mean, that was my mindset,
and that's the mindset of most of my
friends. But and we shared it together. And
most of my friends in the university are
atheists. And so when I became
a Muslim, the reaction
was, Jeff, are you going bananas? I mean,
what what is going on?
You know,
did you have some great psychological
trauma? No. I feel fine. You know, I
didn't go through any great psychological trauma. Did
your mom die? You know, everybody was asking.
But no, nothing like that happened, but I
just found this message very compelling. And as
much as I wanted to walk away from
it, I finally just couldn't.
But now they wanted to know why, so
I would try I would find myself explaining
to them why. They would raise
certain objections. I would just think for a
moment and then try to answer their objections
and usually do a pretty good job.
And finally, many of them would admit, well,
I mean, I gotta admit this much, Jeff.
It's pretty coherent and and very consistent.
I gotta hand it back for you. It
makes a lot of sense, more sense than
a lot of things I've ever heard. And
that's no credit to me. It's really credit
to the Quran. You know, that was exactly
my reaction with the Quran. But so many
of them reacted this way that I thought
that I should share this
perception. Even though I'm limited in my abilities,
within that limited range, I should share what
I, at least, have come to,
feel. And so I do very, very little.
As brother Hamid will tell you, I very
seldom do this, maybe once or twice a
semester. But I think it I felt compelled
to at least
say it so that other people may listen
to it and go much further with it
and benefit from it, you know, if they
if they do. If they don't, they could
at least learn what Muslims believe.
Yeah. Thank the nice question.
You look like you have a question.
Do you have a question?
I
want to ask you this. Yeah. Okay. When
you're using the the verse from the Quran
where you're talking about God's hot Adam, the
names of all things Yes. And then,
then
he asked the angels Yes. To name them?
Yes. And so Adam in turn taught the
angels the names? Is that right? He just
he just went ahead and named them. He
named them? So he didn't teach the angels?
No. So then the angels do not have
the capacity of learning?
Well, let's put it this way. They certainly
must have some capacity of learning because they
said we only know what you taught us.
Okay. You know, so they do have some
capacity to learn. At least the angelic beings
certainly have some capacity or that at least
from the evidence of the Quran. But the
point of the story the point of the
the passage is is that while they have
some, they don't have enough to perform this
feat.
Then God then the Quran shows that Adam
does. So he's superior in this category,
and just in this capacity. And just to
make the point absolutely clear, God has the
angels where he direct he shows that this
is an answer to this question. And then
to put the
exclamation mark
point on
the point, he goes ahead and makes them
bow down to that. And of course, he
bleeds with his great pride,
cannot. You know? So it's a very all
those verses connect very nicely.
Really good question. Boy, a lot of good
questions here today. Usually, I don't get many
good ones. Yeah.
Anything else? You don't have to. Yeah.
Yes.
I didn't
accept
religion
by learning and
by studying,
but I learned just, it was inherited
from my parents and society and culture.
And
I didn't need before coming here I didn't
need
to
learn the reasons
why these things are prohibited in Islam and
why Quran said we shouldn't
do like that. But I have one question
for just about food.
When I came here
I
came across
questions about prohibition of
pig
and pork and pork products and alcohol,
and most of
Christian community asked me this question, that why
did Islam
or why did Quran prohibit
pork or alcohol,
what was the reason?
And I am confident that you have studied
much more Quran in detail
and you may have a good answer for
that. Not really.
Aspects about
rules and regulations of behavior,
I just accept it. No. I'm not I
I'm more interested in other types of questions,
not those type.
So I never really study them. But, I
mean, you could I mean, as far as
alcohol, for example, goes,
I mean,
all Americans know it's it's dangerous.
I mean, I'm not gonna talk from
I could just give you personal testimony
from my own
relatives, just how dangerous alcohol is, how it
could destroy a person's life. It's a powerfully
addictive
drug,
more powerful than most. And while most Americans
will agree that marijuana,
cocaine,
heroin,
that these are dangerous drugs, and we should
fight them.
Alcohol is every bit as dangerous, and every
bit as destructive.
So most Americans really know it in their
hearts. It's just accepted now. It's, they even
tried to ban alcohol back in the thirties
or twenties,
roaring twenties. They tried to ban alcohol, and
they did. They did prohibit it for a
while.
But there's it created so much crime
and so much,
death and destruction
that they said we better lift it. You
know, it's costing too much to fight this
prohibition of alcohol. Today you hear the same
thing about drugs. It's costing us too much
money to fight it,
so let's make it legal,
you know. But we all but they recognize
that it's it's harmful. As far as pork
goes, I mean like these things in the
Quran, I just assume that they're probably not
very good for you. If the Quran
says that, you should avoid pork, you should
probably not the best for you. Probably other
meats are much better. And if you look
at cases in the United States, I mean,
if you look at the United States, anywhere
in the world, of all the meats doctors
tell you that, you should probably avoid pork
the most.
You know, it's high in fat. Its fat
doesn't digest well. There's always, you know, lots
of Americans have picked up trichinosis
from not cooking it enough, or even sometimes
when they go to fast food places or
stuff, this is always a danger.
You know, you could get very sick from
eating pork. Now if you cook it properly
and correctly and,
and try to cut out as much fat
as as you possibly can,
fact of the matter is is that there
are many meats I hope the pork producers
don't get at me, but there are many
meats in in America, and the doctors will
tell you, lean meats,
chicken,
beef, if it's not fatty, they're much more
healthier for you than pork.
So, you know, I assume that's the general
idea. That's why the Quran says you shouldn't
eat it unless you can't find something else.
If it comes down to your starvation, eat
it. You know, but if you but it's
healthier for you, it's better for you not
to. And I and I believe that. You
know, it doesn't it's not a surprise to
me. Did you ever eat pork? Oh, no.
You never did. I mean, I've eaten pork.
You know what? Not not. But I mean,
I I used to eat pork. And you
you get up from the dinner table and
you feel like I've eaten a mountain. You
know? I mean, it just makes you lethargic
and lazy and makes you fat. You know?
I mean, really.
Well, I'm gonna get sued by the pork
producers. But but really, you know, I I
never had any problems with these things. I
would just tell them that from my own
point of view, I think pork pork is
probably the least healthy meat.
And, it's probably the if it's the least
healthy, it's probably not very good for your
health. Probably it's much better to to avoid
it. And that's what Muslims do.
And that's why Muslims are very healthy people.
No.
But really, you cut out drinking and you
cut out, you know, consuming a lot of
pork,
well, especially drinking. If you cut out drinking
and drugs, you're gonna be a lot more
alert, have a lot healthier life. You know?
Yes. I'm sorry that I'm not an expert
on those sort of things.
How about if I take one last question?
Do you want to ask a question? Okay.
Let me take that question
back there. The young lady the the lady's
sister back there, and then, then I'll take
your question. No? Then okay. This is the
last question then, and thanks.
It wasn't very long. So I haven't been
able to recite the Holy Quran and learn
these things from
myself. But I have heard
from people that,
the people that eat pork
that, pork is a shameless animal.
And that when you eat pork and get
it into your system, it makes you shameless.
Is that true or not? I never heard
that before.
The shameless saying it makes you shameless. That's
right. I don't know if there's any chemical
connection there. I'm not seeing how that would
naturally go. I don't think so. I'm I
know some pretty some pretty,
some some pretty shy people that that eat
pork, you know. I mean, I have just
heard this. I mean, I don't know for
myself. That's why I can't. Actually, I know
quite a few people that are very shy
and very reserved, very nice people that eat
pork.
You know. Maybe they'll die of a heart
disease, but
no. I'm just kidding. I hope not. I
hope I hope not.
But but no, I don't think so. I
think it's probably just not good. From the
Muslim standpoint, it's of the various meats that
exist, it's the worst for you. And really,
I mean, in in many cultures, it's a
real problem.
You know, lots of people get terrible worms
and diseases.
And so and, you know, it could be
surprising how many Americans have worms that don't
know it.
And that doctors tell them they pick up
through things they eat.
So, you know, I'm not. I'm thinking that
it's probably just I've never researched the issue,
but I always just assume that it's it's
the worst meat for you if you're going
to eat meat.
Yeah.
According to that type of food you eat.
I see. So accordingly, some scholar says the
the, big
discrimination.
Not a shyness as a matter of fact,
but
towards
the, like, the
people the wives and so on. Accordingly, the
people who eat that type of food
will will exhibit part of that relation.
And accordingly,
what that's what we believe is is the
what you eat also You are what you
eat then. Exhibit exhibit exactly. So they said
the people who live around the, like the,
eating fish most of the time, they are
more of light
soul than the people who eat camels and
add other
tough tough meats and so on.
And that's one theory of food, anyways.
That's interesting. You know? I I mean, I
wouldn't knock it automatically. I mean, certainly people
that drink a lot, they they
they, you know, they could lead reckless lives,
but, of course, that's the effect of the
drug.
But, no, I I don't know. I just
I just happen to know a lot of
really nice good people, I mean, who live
very very chaste lives,
who,
who love pork. I know they go out
and eat it once or twice a week.
I just but, you know, as it is
with all,
sort of chronic injunctions and things like that
and, rules and reg and rules, regulations, I
just I just follow them. I just, you
know, I find that my life is, better.
I'm happier. I I don't need to rationalize
those. You know, when I first studied religion,
when I first studied Islam, I was impressed
by
the bigger message,
you know, the message of why we are
here, why we are living, what do we
have to do. I thought the system was
so brilliant, so consistent that I just surrendered.
You know, the rest of it
seemed seemed to not that much of big
a deal, you know. Okay. Give up drinking,
so what? You know, I mean, you know,
probably it's not good for you, honestly. And,
you know, give a pork, good. I like
chicken better, and it's much healthier for you.
You know, at least I feel it is
personally.
Never had a problem with the injunctions. Never
felt the need to rationalize it. No. I
always say to people, what? Okay. If we
start eating pork, you're gonna believe in our
religion?
You know, no. You know,
it doesn't it has nothing.
It's not an issue really when it comes
to ultimate questions.
Yes?
Then I'll get you.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Sure.
Alcohol.
And most
of Christian community asked me this question, that
why did Islam
or why did Quran prohibit
pork or alcohol,
what was the reason?
And,
you may have I'm confident that you have
studied much more Quran in detail,
and you may have a good answer for
that. Not really.
I,
aspects about,
you know, rules and regulations of behavior,
I just accept it. No. I'm not I
I'm more interested in other types of questions,
not those type.
So I never really studied them, but I
mean, you could I mean, as far as
alcohol, for example, goes,
I mean,
all Americans know it's it's dangerous.
I mean, I'm not gonna talk from
I could just give you personal testimony
from my own
relatives just how dangerous
alcohol is, how it could destroy a person's
life. It's a powerfully addictive
drug,
more powerful than most. And while most Americans
will agree that marijuana,
cocaine,
heroin,
that these are dangerous drugs and we should
fight them,
Alcohol is every bit as dangerous and every
bit as destructive.
So most Americans really know it in their
hearts. It's just accepted now. It's they even
tried to ban alcohol back in the thirties
or twenties,
roaring twenties. They tried to ban alcohol, and
they did. They did prohibit it for a
while.
But there's it created so much crime
and so much,
death and destruction
that they said we better lift it. You
know, it's costing too much to fight this
prohibition of alcohol. Today you hear the same
thing about drugs. It's costing us too much
money to fight it,
so let's make it legal.
You know? But we all but they recognize
that it's it's harmful. As far as pork
goes, I mean, like these things in the
Quran, I just assume that they're probably not
very good for you. If the Quran
says that, you should avoid pork,
probably not the best for you. Probably other
meats are much better. And if you look
at cases in the United States, I mean,
if you look at the United States, anywhere
in the world, of all the meats doctors
tell you that, you should probably avoid pork
the most.
You know, it's high in fat, its fat
doesn't digest well. There's always, you know, lots
of Americans have picked up trichinosis
from not cooking it enough, or even sometimes
when they go to fast food places or
stuff. This is always a danger.
You know, you could get very sick from
eating pork. Now if you cook it properly
and correctly and,
and try to cut out as much fat
as as you possibly can. You may not
suffer from it as much if you don't
take care.
But the full fact of the matter is
is that there are many meats I hope
the pork producers don't get at me. But
there are many meats in in America, and
the doctors will tell you, lean meats, chicken,
beef, if it's not fatty, they're much more
healthier for you than pork.
So, you know, I assume that's the general
idea. That's why the Quran says you shouldn't
eat it unless you can't find something else.
If it comes down to your starvation, eat
it.
You know? But if you want but it's
healthier for you, it's better for you not
to. And I and I believe that, you
know. It doesn't it's not a surprise to
me. Did you ever eat pork? Oh, no.
You never did.
I mean, I've eaten pork. You know, whatnotnot.
But I mean, I I used to eat
pork. And you you get up from the
dinner table and you feel like you've eaten
a mountain. Mountain. You know? I mean, it
just makes you lethargic and lazy
and makes you fat. You know? I mean,
really. Well, I'm gonna get sued by the
pork producers. Least healthy meat. And,
it's probably the
and if it's the least healthy meat, the
least healthy meat.
And, it's probably the and if it's the
least healthy, it's probably not very good for
your health. Probably it's much better to to
avoid it. And that's what Muslims do.
And that's why Muslims are very healthy people.
No, it doesn't.
But really, you cut out drinking and you
cut out, you know, consuming a lot of
pork,
well, especially drinking. If you cut out drinking
and drugs, you're gonna be a lot more
alert, have a lot healthier life. You know?
Yes. I'm sorry that I'm not an expert
on those sort of things.
How about if I take one last question?
Then,
then
And then, then I'll take your question. No?
Then okay. This is the last question then.
And thanks.
Awesome very long. So I haven't been able
to recite the Holy Quran and learn these
things from myself,
but I have
heard from people that,
the people that eat pork
that, pork is a shameless animal.
And that when you eat pork and get
it into your system, it makes you shameless.
Is that true or not? I never heard
that before.
The shameless animal makes you shameless. That's right.
I don't know if there's any chemical connection
there. I'm not seeing how that would naturally
go. I don't think so. I'm I know
some pretty
some pretty,
some some pretty shy people that that eat
pork, you know. I mean, I have just
heard this. I mean, I don't know for
myself. That's why I'm here. Actually, I know
quite a few people that are very shy
and very reserved, very nice people that eat
pork,
you know. Maybe they'll die of a heart
disease, but
no. I'm just kidding. I hope not. I
hope I hope not.
But but no, I don't think so. I
think it's probably just not good. From the
Muslim standpoint, it's of the various meats that
exist, it's the worst for you. And really,
I mean, in in many cultures, it's a
real problem.
You know, lots of people get terrible worms
and diseases.
And so and, you know, you'd be surprised
at how many Americans have worms that don't
know it,
and that doctors tell them they pick up
through things they eat.
So, you know, I'm not, I'm thinking that
it's probably just I've never researched the issue,
but I always just assume that it's, it's
the worst meat for you if you're going
to eat meat.
Yeah.
According to that, type of food you eat.
I see. So accordingly, some scholar says the
the, pig themselves,
pork,
meat,
the pigs does not have this,
what we call, discrimination.
Not a shyness as a matter of fact,
but
jealous towards the, like, the,
people the wives and so on. Accordingly, the
people who eat that type of
food will will exhibit part of that relation.
And accordingly,
what that's what we believe is is what
you eat also
You are what you eat then.
Exhibit exhibit exactly. So they say the people
who live around the, like the, eating fish
most of the time, they are more of
light,
soul than the people who eat camels and
add other top top meat and so
on. And that's, one theory of food anyways.
That's interesting. You know, I'm I'm