Jeffrey Lang – The Way to Islam in America Pt 02 The Response
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Can you hear me alright?
In the name of god, the merciful, the
compassionate,
miss Malaya Armani Rahim.
I
guess
this might be a phenomenon in every culture,
but I I know for sure it's an
American one.
Most of us who grew up here, when
we think back about our childhood, almost all
of us have
a song that we remember,
one that is sort of like our theme
song, which we characterized our life back then.
When I remember
back in my childhood,
the song that I remember most, the one
that I thought would be my sort of
theme song,
was the one by and this is most
other when I tell people this, they always
are very surprised.
It's the one by, Bert Bacharach
that he had,
Dionne Warwick sing.
It was the theme song to the movie
Alfie.
And it went,
what's it all about,
Alfie?
Is it just for the moment that we
live?
What's it all about when we sort it
out?
Why do we take more than we give?
Because that was the question primarily on my
mind, what is this life all about?
Well, today I wanna pick it up from
where we were yesterday.
I wanna pick it up from where we
were yesterday. And what I was doing was
I was trying to
take us all on a journey, a journey
to Islam and America.
And we looked into the Quran,
and we saw that the very questions and
I asked us all to be sort of
hypothetical atheists,
I want you to sort of resume that
stance today.
And as we approached the Quran, we saw
that the very questions
that drove us from religion
were put into the mouth
of the angels. And we saw that the
Quran
started to
deal with that question.
Interesting thing was it confronted us with our
own question,
showed us that our expected answers, the answers
that we were assuming that the Quran would
give us,
were not there.
As a matter of fact, it refuted those
answers we were anticipating.
And so
and so the Quran has challenged us us
with our own questions, showed us that we
cannot anticipate the answer,
and also it has provided us with a
few key elements
pertinent to that question, which I want to
review and elaborate on now. Okay. Alright.
In those
9 or 10 verses,
we saw several things stressed,
3 in particular.
1 is that man is a learning creature,
A creature with quite a high level of
intellect, at least compared to the other creatures
around him.
He's also a creature with
quite a high level of communication.
And through that communication skill, all human knowledge,
all human learning takes on a cumulative character.
And the Quran singles this out first,
in the in its response to the angels'
question.
2nd,
we saw from the very beginning that this
earthly life, and this is part of
God's purpose, this earthly life involves suffering.
That also fits into the equation.
And the third thing we saw
was this life begins
with a choice.
A moral choice.
We saw how God
had nurtured
Adam, had brought him along, had taught him,
had brought him to a certain level.
And then, after reaching that level, presented him
with a moral choice,
and Adam slipped
and made an error.
And so that signaled his earthly beginnings.
So let me talk about those 3 essential
features that are emphasized by the Quran
in a little bit of detail.
First of all, the Quran stress on intellect
and reason.
You know, almost every Muslim author has spoken
about this, but you'll be interested to know
that almost every Western author who has studied
the Quran,
as virtually all of them have remarked on
this same point, that the Quran puts tremendous
stress
on the use of reason.
Western critics of Islam saw this as a
defect in the religion. Because they assumed that
every religion at some stage has to leave
reason behind,
and you have to take the leap of
faith.
That faith is ultimately irrational.
Reason could only take you so far, but
eventually, you have to leave it behind and
take the leap of faith.
And so they saw that the Quran's terrific
stress on reason was a weakness.
They thought it would eventually backfire on the
Qur'an, and they assume it does,
without proving their point.
In any case, let's see what they have
to say about
reason.
And here are some of their remarks.
Maxime Rodinson,
when he studied the Quran,
remarked in his book, Islam and Capitalism,
he said, The Quran puts terrific
stress on reason.
The use of man's rational faculty in attaining
to faith.
He remarks with an exclamation point, 13 times
the Quran co complains of the disbeliever.
Have they not will they not use their
reason?
He remarks that the very first revelation
that Prophet Muhammad received, peace be upon him,
Was
what? Taught man, it you all know how
it goes, ekra ismaraabikaladdikhalah.
Read.
The very first command revealed to mankind.
Read
in the name of your lord who created
created man out of a tiny creature that
clings.
Read. Why? Because your lord is the most
bountiful. Why? What did he give us? He
gave us the pen. He taught us the
use of the pen. And what did he
teach us with it?
He teaches
us that which we knew not, that which
we could not know.
Because through the use of a pen,
not only are we able to communicate verbally,
but we're able to communicate through literature.
And once again, in the very first revelation,
the Quran puts a tremendous stress on man's
use of reason and his communicative faculty.
Because through the written word, we're able to
experience and share the ideas, the perceptions, the
trials, tribulations, the anxieties, the insights
of people from all different parts of the
world, different times, different places,
different eras, and to learn from them.
And the Quran, in the very first revelation,
singles out this as one of the great
bounties that Allah
that God has given unto mankind. And in
the next verse it says, and mankind is
truly ungrateful to his Lord. Why? Because he
thinks he comes through this knowledge to think
that he is self sufficient.
He forgets that this great power he has
comes from God.
But in any case, indeed the Quran puts
tremendous stress on reason. In many many places
you'll hear the Quran say again and again,
Have you then know sense when you approach
religious matters? Will you not use your reason?
Will you not reflect?
Will you not consider this? Will you not
consider that? Will you not look at the
stars around you? Will you not consider
the the cultures around you? Will you not
consider
the history that I that you know? Will
you not consider this? Will you not reflect?
Will you not think?
When I was thinking about
learning about Islam and questioning Muslims about it,
I was shocked when I picked up the
Quran.
And And I don't mean this in a
disparaging way, but when I would come to
Muslims they would say, You shouldn't think about
that. Or You shouldn't, you know, ask that
sort of question. Or, you know, you're getting
in too deep here or, you know, we
just shouldn't think about those sort of things.
And remarkably enough when I picked up the
Quran it told me just the opposite. It
complained, will I not use my reason? Will
I not reflect? Will I not think?
The Arabic word for knowledge, Alum,
and its derivatives
appear how many times in the Quran?
Over 850
to my count.
850. It's one of the most oft repeated
words
in the text of the Quran.
H. Lemmens, Henri Lemmens,
a French orientalist remarked,
he was shocked. He said, The Quran puts
so much stress on the use of reason
that you would think that disbelief is an
infirmity of the human mind,
an inability to think straight, to connect ideas
together.
The second point I wanted to emphasize is
choice.
The Quran definitely shows that god,
at different times and at different places, brings
us to the stage where we have to
make critical choices.
Moral choices, and all sorts of choices.
And choice plays a key role in man's
earthly life.
Some of the questions we come across as
we read through the Quran are perplexing.
We read
1, for example, it says God says in
the Quran, or the Quran says, we could
have made mankind into a single community of
faith.
A community of believers.
Then we ask ourselves,
okay, well, I mean, why didn't you? Why
didn't you make us all believers?
You want us all to believe? Why didn't
you just make us all believe?
Because it's a choice. It has to come
through choice.
But we're under we can't figure out why.
What does it have to do with it?
In another verse, it says, we could've made
you all believers.
It's challenging us, it's confronting us
with our type of questions.
We wonder, okay, okay, why not?
And notice what's happening to us. As we
read it along, you and my myself and
my fellow atheists, as we read along, we
start to compare verses. We're weighing against each
other. They're We're collating them and collecting them
in our head and comparing them and weighing
them.
Little by little, the Quran is slipping into
our way of thinking.
In a most mysterious
and compelling way, it's starting to
really influence our thoughts.
As we walk along or look up at
the ceiling at night, we find verses floating
into our head as we try to grapple
with the various questions that the Quran is
confronting us with.
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.
He who goes astray,
does so to his own hurt.
It's your choice.
One verse that's often mistranslated, or at least
I feel it is, by many Western
interpreters of the Quran causes a lot of
confusion.
It's the verse in the Quran that says,
god guides whom he chooses
and leads astray
whom he chooses.
Because that verse really is very damaging,
especially to a Western mind.
But
fortunately, and the Orientalists and the Western scholars
of Islam today,
very many of them still repeat that translation.
Fortunately, the there are men among the orientalist
community, many that have realized that that was
a mistranslation.
The first one to realize that was at
the beginning of this century. His name is
Ignaz Goldzahir.
He was a Jewish German scholar, an expert
in Semitic languages
and in history, and was one of the
major Orientalist scholars this century, perhaps the best
known.
When he studied that verse in the Quran,
he said, this is indeed not the right
translation of the verse.
He said that
if the the Arabic word daulah,
which most translated as misguide,
he said that is a possible meaning.
But he said, Equally,
it has the equal meaning, primary meaning of
to allow to stray.
He went back to ancient Arabic lexicons and
studied the verb.
He said, for example, he gave these following
examples. For example, when you have a camel
and you release its reins and let it
wander,
you're allowing it to stray, and you use
the same verb.
He says it equally means to allow to
wander,
to refuse to give guidance or directions to
someone.
He said if you study the context of
the Quran, those words that come before the
use of that verse and the words that
come after, He says, you very clearly see
that the second meaning, equal meaning, is much
more appropriate.
When the Quran says that God guides whom
he chooses
and allows to stray
whom he chooses,
that's the obvious intent of the verse.
The editor of the journal, who used to
translate the verse the other way, the editor
of the English translation,
just in a footnote remarked that indeed Gold
Zahir was right,
and that he was wrong.
And then from now on, he would translate
the verse this way.
Fazlur Rahman, the famous
Muslim professor from the University of Chicago,
also of course agreed with this point and
elaborated on further. If If you look at
the verse where this occurs in the Quran,
you'll find that the vast majority of times
shows that God guides and allows astray according
to the choices and the predisposition
of the bluh of the person being considered.
For example,
the verse says, They went crooked, so God
bent their heart crooked.
They chose to go crooked, so God bent
their heart crooked. They chose to turn their
back on this message so god made it
easy
their way
that they have chosen.
But it shows that God is responding
to our choices. He's leading us to critical
choices and responding to them. Like the famous
hadith
of the Prophet, peace be upon him,
where it says, if you approach God by
hang hand's length, he'll approach you by 2.
By an arm's length, he'll approach you by
2. If you come to him walking,
he'll come to you running.
Even I was reading,
a work by
what's his name now? Albert Harany.
I think he recently died.
A Western scholar.
He too did a long study on this,
it's in his collective works,
of the case for reason in the Quran.
And he too came into exactly the same
conclusion.
But I just thought I'd mention that because
that's a very mistranslated verse and I think
it happens to confuse a lot of people.
So if anything, that verse points to the
fact that exactly what we're saying. God guides
whom he chooses according to their disposition, their
willingness to be guided, the type of choices
in life they make, and he allows to
stray
if we turn our back on guidance, if
we choose to reject.
Let me see.
Adversity and suffering.
Which was the most shocking verse we came
across with the angel's question that centered on
the suffering that human beings will experience in
this earthly sojourn.
And the Quran pounds this idea into the
reader, haunts us with it, chases it with
it,
never lets it leave our attention.
Again, and again, and again, as we try
to go through the Quran, and forget these
significant questions, and just sort of enjoy
the beauty of it,
the flow of it.
As we try to just relax
and just enjoy the reading of it,
the Quran doesn't let us relax. A friend
of mine by the name of Gary Miller
says it sort of agitates you. It keeps
pinching you. It keeps keeps attacking you.
For example,
here's a verse that used to strike me.
It says, Most assuredly we will try you
with something of danger,
and hunger, and the loss of worldly goods,
and of your lives, and the fruits of
your labor.
But give glad tidings to those who are
patient in adversity,
who when calamity befalls them say, Remember the
per that life has a purpose. Truly unto
God do we belong,
and truly unto him we shall return.
Starts talking about suffering,
that even the believers are gonna suffer. It
says, Most assuredly you will experience this. And
this suffering has a purpose. Why? Because those,
when the calamity befalls them, when suffering befalls
them, they might not understand it perfectly but
they know it plays a role in all
of this.
Truly, unto god do we belong, and to
him we return.
We start to relax, we read a little
further. We want don't want to really think
about these questions, but the Quran won't let
up.
In the second Sura, the 214th
verse, do you think you could have entered
paradise without having suffered like those who passed
away before you?
Do you think it's possible?
Why not?
We start to think, why not?
And we start remembering other verses.
The Quran is agitating us. It's becoming a
part of our thinking.
Do you think you could have entered paradise
without having suffered?
Misfortune and hardship befell them. Who is it
talking about? The sinners?
No.
Misfortune and hardship befell them and so shaken
were they that the apostle,
these are the best, and the believers with
him would exclaim,
when will God's help come?
And then the Quran says, don't forget this
all has a purpose.
Oh, truly god's help is always near.
In the 3rd Sura, 186th,
verse, You will certainly be tried in your
possessions and yourselves. Make no mistake about it.
In the 84th Sura,
oh man,
truly you've been toiling towards your lord in
painful toil,
but you shall meet
him. How is this toil, how is this
suffering
linked to our meeting
with God?
We could only read on.
What possible purpose is served by all this?
It would be one thing if the Quran
just brought up the issue once or twice
and let it go.
But it's haunting us with this question.
It's not letting up.
Maybe we're all wrong, maybe we're just letting
our mind go berserk, maybe we're allowing our
own
personality to overtake our interpretation of the Quran.
Maybe we're reading something into it that really
isn't there. Maybe it doesn't really say there's
a purpose to life.
Maybe we're just allowing our mind to wander.
But then we come across the 3rd Sura,
the 100 and 91st verse. We did not
create the heavens and the earth and all
that is in between them
in vain, without a purpose.
We come on the 21st Surah, 16th 17th
verse. We've not created the heaven and the
earth and whatever is between them in sport
for fun.
If we wished to take a sport,
we could have done it ourselves,
if we weren't to do that at all.
Point is, god doesn't do things purposely,
and he doesn't need to amuse himself,
and he doesn't do things arbitrarily.
It says
in the 20th
Sura, Do you think that we created you
without a purpose,
and that you will not be returned to
us?
Who is the who should be asking the
questions here?
Should it be us? I mean, these are
things that we always ask,
and it's attacking us with it.
The true sovereign lord is too exhausted above
that.
So what is the purpose?
Well, where should we begin to answer that
question?
Well, let's ask let's begin in the obvious
way. What does the Quran ask of us?
Tell us about us?
And what does the Quran tell us about
God?
And our relationships
between us,
between God and us.
You know when verses appear again and again
and again in a Quran, we start to
realize as we read through it that certain
verses are being repeated again and again and
again because they are key clues.
And one verse that repair you we keep
reading again and again and again is the
verse that says,
5th over 50 times to my count, we
come across that verse.
So we look into it.
Except for those
in a sort of a poor translation, except
for those who believe
and do what is right,
This occurs very frequently.
One of the most important Suras in the
Quran according to the prophet, or at least
one of the ones that has a tremendous
content in and a few words,
is the Surah that says, in time,
all man is lost.
Except except for who? Except for those who
believe, I'll leave it at that for a
second,
and do good,
and teach
truth
and fortitude and perseverance
called the purity of faith. Some call this
Surah. Let's take the second part of that
statement
And do good. What does the Quran say
is doing good?
Well,
when I was first reading Quran, I just
made a little list to try to keep
track of it.
And I sort of characterized
what a good act is under several categories,
and this is the categories I came up
with, and I think you would, would more
or less agree with me. What is the
doing of good?
We should have compassion
for our fellow man,
and grow in mercy.
We should grow in forgiveness,
and injustice,
and in generosity.
We should grow in truth and in truthfulness.
We should grow in kindness.
And we should grow in love for our
fellow man. As it says in the verse
in the Quran,
truly those oh, here it is again. Truly
those who believe and do good,
will the most merciful
certainly endow with love.
And it's to this end that we have
made this easy to understand in your own
tongue,
so that you might give a glad tiding
to the god god conscious, and warn those
giving to contention.
As we start to categorize the different acts
that the Quran tells us are good, we
see that somehow we should develop compassion, mercy,
forgiveness,
justice, generosity,
truthfulness,
kindness, love. In short, what in the English
language we would call virtues.
And not only to grow in them, but
we should teach them, and teach them as
the Quran tells us. And teach them, and
hence learn them.
And through teaching and learning, grow in them.
Alright.
And the Quran tells us that that is
at the heart of the true practice of
religion.
Now we think about it.
Does it make sense to us at all
so far? I mean, that's certainly not the
whole picture.
But pieces are coming together.
We all do really know that it's better
to give than to receive.
We all really do know
that it's better to forgive than to avenge.
It's better to love than to hate, to
show compassion
than to be indifferent.
These are maxims
in almost every culture. We all sort of
accept them as axiomatic
because we know them in our nature.
We know that when we look back 20
years from now, we're not gonna remember the
type of shoes we wore, or maybe the
car we had. We're not gonna remember exactly
what sort of material things we had. These
are not gonna be the things that we
wish to recollect, that we recall fine fondly
20 years down the line, what type of
things do we remember? We remember the love
shared.
We remember the acts of kindness
that we gave and were given to us.
We remember those moments of compassion.
We are proud, or we are moved by
those moments of truth.
These are the things that make life living
rather than just existence.
And we all know it. We know it
in our hearts.
But is that it?
I mean, that's the point?
Is that what the Quran is telling us?
Is that the Quran promises us that if
we grow in these,
together with belief in God,
we'll have experienced
peace and happiness in this life,
and infinite peace and happiness in the next,
when all the material stuff is stripped away.
But the question is, is that it?
I mean, that's it. That's why we do
good deeds and practice this religion just to
make the world a better place for you
and me.
To become better people?
No, that can't be the whole picture.
First of all, if it was, it would
just be another form of humanism.
And certainly, Islam is not just another form
of humanism.
The problem is is that we're concentrating on
the second half of that key verse, the
doing of good.
Let's go back to the first half.
Except for those who believe,
Arabic word is amanu.
Very often mistranslated
because believe in English means to just assent
to, give your assent to, to agree upon,
to accept.
At least that's its modern
understanding, meaning, connotation.
The word Amenu is much deeper than that.
Amenu comes from the root that means to
trust.
It means to find security and protection
in.
So a much better translation would be, for
those who find faith, security,
and peace
in God.
For those who find faith, security, protection, and
peace in God, and do what is good,
This is what the Quran asks us what
to do. But now we are forced to
ask,
what does the Quran tell us about God?
What is this relationship between us
and this creator
that the Quran is pointing to?
A very famous verse in the Quran, tremendous
in power and might, is the one that
goes,
call upon Allah, call upon God, or call
upon the most merciful.
Whichever you call upon,
to him belongs the most beautiful names.
Now we have questions about what is god
like, so to speak,
and this verse is pointing to something. What
are these most beautiful names? It starts to
list some. He is the most merciful, the
most compassionate,
the loving, the giving, the kind, the great,
the powerful, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The just.
When we come upon this verse, we start
to think,
haven't we seen these somewhere else before?
And then we think, yes. And almost every
single page of the Quran
listed again and again and again
are these attributes, these most beautiful attributes of
God.
Every Sura begins, In the name of God,
the merciful and compassionate. Almost on every page,
you'll have statements like God is the merciful,
the compassionate. God is the loving. God is
the giving. God is the generous. God is
the truth. God is the just.
As we walk along, as we lay in
bed at night, as we toss and turn,
we start to remember that these verses
are are on almost every page, and as
we read them more and more they become
etched into our consciousness.
We look at those words. God is the
compassionate, the merciful, the forgiving, the just, the
giving, the generous, the truth, the truthful, the
kind, the loving.
Suddenly a connection dawns at us.
What connection dawns at us?
The very things that we are to grow
in.
The very attributes
that through doing of good, and belief in
God, and following this program, we are supposed
to grow in.
Compassion, mercy, forgiveness, justice, generosity,
truthfulness, kindness, love, protection of the weak,
teaching,
wisdom.
They have their infinite perfection, and power, and
source
and God.
It just suddenly dawns on us.
So that by
growing in these, growing in these,
and keeping our focus on God,
what happens?
As the Quran tells us, we grow in
nearness, to use a Quranic term. We grow
in nearness to God.
Better to receive and experience
the infinite love, the infinite mercy, the infinite
compassion,
the infinite goodness, the infinite beauty
that is
God. Let me just give you an analogy.
Help my wife,
Maybe it'll help help us too.
I have, children, I have a cat, and
I have a goldfish.
Each of these three creatures has a different
level of intelligence, a different level of knowledge
and wisdom,
different level of experience.
No matter how much I love that gold
fish,
no much how much affection and love I
shower on that gold fish, it'll never be
able to understand and appreciate and experience and
know my love
like my darling little cat.
Because my cat is a much more intelligent
being,
has a much higher level of intelligence, in
its own catly way,
much more wise.
The gap is
great. And certainly,
my child
will experience and come to know
and feel and understand
my love
on a much, much greater level
than my cat.
Because that child, as it grows, comes to
know and grow and experience and understand love
because of its higher level,
on a much higher plane than a cat
can. And so it experiences my love, my
giving, my generosity, my wisdom, my compassion
at a much higher level.
And now that I have children of my
own, I'd have to say that my relationship
with my parents
is on a level that it had never
been when I was just a child.
Because through the experience of giving, and struggling,
and worrying, and taking care of, and suffering
with my children,
now,
I know my parents' love, compassion, giving,
suffering,
mercy,
on a level I never could appreciate
until I had my own children.
And so it is
with us and our relationship to God.
The more we grow in these, with God
as our focus,
the more and greater, even in this life,
we can come to experience that infinite beauty
that is God's.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, once said,
that the human heart not the human heart,
the heart, the spiritual center of mankind,
is like anything else in life.
Anything else that you use.
If you leave it alone, if
you let it atrophy,
it'll become rusty,
unable to receive
the divine light.
But if you follow this program, and you
work it, and you struggle, and you strive,
and you grow,
and you focus on your relationship to God,
what happens to your heart? He said. It
becomes clear,
More,
able to receive and experience the infinite light
of God.
I got I lost my place. I got
so involved.
Oh, sorry. This is going
And this is what's most often misunderstood
about the Muslim rituals.
Even sympathetic Western scholars, and I don't blame
them, they're not Muslims, I don't expect this
from them. But when they study our religion
and they look at, for example, the prayers,
they say they're good spiritual they're good discipline.
They increase a person's willpower.
Also, they're good at binding together a community.
Many have said they're good exercise too. They
loosen up their joints. Muslims could sit on
the floor for hours.
They're very military too. Gives the commune community
a good sense of discipline.
Muslims get very frustrated when they read those
sort of things. Why? Because they're missing the
whole point.
When you talk to a convert, for example,
or or a Muslim that has strayed from
their religion for a long time and has
returned,
it's very interesting when you ask them, And
what do you what have you experienced in
your prayers over the years?
And the answers are almost always invariably the
same.
At first, it was a lot of work,
but I stuck with it, and I started
to feel a great sense of strength of
will.
And then as I stuck to the program,
and I pursued it more and more, and
tried to grow and nurture my relationship with
God, and worked on it more and more,
I began to get a tremendous sense of
peace.
I myself remember when I worked at the
university. I would go into the office, shut
the door on a busy day. I couldn't
wait
to get to the floor and get my
prayer.
And then they say, Well, it's
graduated even further. 1st it was a burden,
but a strength of will, and then it
became a tremendous source of peace. And then
what happened?
Then it became
a more and more powerful
experience
of god of a presence, of god's love,
of god's compassion, of god's mercy. And it
would happen more frequently,
and and
automatically, without my even wanting it.
So that ultimately, the more I pursued this
program,
the more those rituals became,
a divine embrace.
Where they felt the love of God in
a very real, powerful way that was more
objective for them than the feeling of the
ground they walk on.
And that's what this all does, this system.
It brings us along like this.
Once my daughter asked me,
I reminded her not too long ago, how
I carried her through the night when she
was ill, when she was, oh, 2 or
3 years old, my daughter Jamila.
She was my first child. You know how
fathers go with their first daughters. Although, all
the daughters are equally loved.
They're gonna hear this tape.
But I carried her through the night because
she was very ill, and the doctor said
just you're just gonna have to carry her
for all the night long.
If you put her down, she's gonna scream,
but I guarantee you by morning, she'll be
fine.
And he was right. By morning, she was
fine. But by morning I wasn't.
I spent 10 hours that night till 6
in the morning, carrying that little girl up
and down my apartment, back and forth, humming
songs to her, singing lullabies.
By morning I couldn't speak, my throat was
hoarse,
she was sleeping like a baby, my back
was killing me, I had a
headache. I remind her of that story and
she said, Daddy, were you mad at me?
And I told her, No.
I couldn't have loved you anymore.
It's because through that giving, through that suffering,
through that
nurturing, through that
struggle,
we grow.
Well, why not heaven in the first place?
Okay, Jeff.
I had a friend of mine, he's
a mathematical physicist.
He said to me, Jeff, it all sounds
great. It's consistent. I can't grant you that,
and it's very beautiful. But you have one
problem with your religion.
And I said, What? He said, Why didn't
God just
put you in paradise, make you these type
of people,
and
program you with love, compassion, mercy, etcetera from
the start.
He said to me, See, you're back to
the angel's question.
Why all this
suffering, anxiety, intelligence
just programmed all these things into you?
I said to him, Stanley. Alright.
His name was Stanley. I said to him,
Stanley,
I mean,
you know love, you know compassion, you know
virtue.
And if you know anything about it, you
know those as creatures such as ourselves, we
know that they can't be programmed into creatures.
He thought about it for a second.
He said, I see what you mean.
It just dawned on him immediately.
I started to give examples.
Oh, yeah. You're right. I mean, you could
make a computer that never makes an incorrect
statement, but
but it doesn't become a truthful computer.
You don't say, My God, you know, that's
an awfully truthful computer you have there.
Because what does truth involve?
It doesn't involve just being right. It involves
a choice.
It involves
intelligence weighing and balancing
the consequences of your telling the truth.
And 3rd,
we reach higher and higher levels of truth
when there's something to lose,
when we have something to suffer.
Take compassion.
How could you have compassion if there is
no suffering?
How could you have compassion if it's not
a choice
not to ignore?
How could you have compassion if we don't
consider what we have to invest of ourselves
when we make that compassionate act?
How many times have you heard people say,
we hear it on soap operas, we hear
it everywhere, we see it in novels, You
never really loved me.
Because when the chips were down, when I
hit rock bottom, you got up and left.
Right? What are we talking about? We're talking
about commitment, we're talking about choice, we're talking
about suffering, we're talking about selfishness, we're talking
about
reason.
We're thinking about the consequences of our commitment,
and we walk out.
Just about any virtue you could consider, you
could see many ingredients to them, but 3
are essential:
choice,
reason,
and suffering.
This is what makes life living. This is
what makes us grow. This is what makes
us what we are. This is what brings
us human if we become it.
Let me see.
Many Western scholars
talk about the problem of evil,
the origins of evil. Or they were worded
differently, the origins of human error. Why human
beings succumb to temptation? Why would God create
beings who could for example?
Who could make wrong choices? Who could do
wrong?
And they talk about it as if it
is a problem of tremendous magnitude that we
could never come to terms with.
For the Muslim this is not a problem.
Error is not a problem.
Humans learn by mistakes,
they grow through error. When they realize it,
and repent, and make a sincere effort to
reform,
they grow
for the Muslim.
And the Quran,
error plays a fundamental
role
in his earthly growth.
He doesn't see it a problem.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, once underlined
the essentiality of error. He said, If mankind
stopped committing errors, stopped sinning,
God would take him off the earth
and replace him with another creature
that would continue to and repent, and be
forgiven, and grow, and etcetera.
Yeah. It plays a It's not
a big problem for the Muslim.
Many times we've been on had dialogues
where the western
where the Christian speaker would say, but the
problem of error.
We'd say, there's no problem of error.
Problem of sinning, that's not a problem.
It's not a problem if you repent and
you grow from it.
The Quran talks about
it. It talks about how when mankind
sins
and repents and realizes his error
and then reforms himself and does good,
what does God do to that bad deed?
He makes it a good deed,
become something good.
Muslim commentators have given many different explanations for
it, but anybody
who has experienced it knows it on another
level as well.
For example, if you were an alcoholic,
and you felt the ravages and the destruction
of that, what for Muslims is a sin,
and then you recover,
and you repent, and you try to reform
your life, and grow nearer to God,
that prohibition
becomes more than just an act of obedience,
becomes an inculcated lesson.
That prohibition becomes part of your personality.
You realize the mercy behind it, the kindness
behind it, the love behind it, because you
lived it.
That
error
that exists, that has marked your life, has
now been transformed into something very positive,
which is why ex alcoholics
are probably more benefit to alcoholics
than anybody else,
because they lived the error,
and they repented.
I don't have much more time, so I'll
try to finish the second lecture in short
order.
This helps to explain one of the major
concepts in the Quran, a word or another
one of those key phrases that recurs again
and again and again.
Macron says that those who commit sins, who
reject faith, who go against this guidance,
who live profligate,
reprogate reprobate lives,
what do they do? They commit sin
against who? Do they hurt God?
Do they diminish God's kingdom?
Quran says not in the least.
Do they hurt the victim?
To some degree.
But who is the primary
primary victim
of our sins?
Yourself.
That's what the Quran says. You sin against
yourself.
You've destroyed yourself, the Quran says.
The word used there in that most famous
verse is the Arabic word, dum.
Except when I say that to people from
Jeddah, they laugh because they say it's zom.
I say, no, I think it's dum. But
in any case,
dum is the Arabic word
often translated as sin, but has a much
deeper meaning.
It means
to oppress,
to rob something of what is rightfully theirs,
to cheat, to corrupt.
When a person commits boom against themselves,
they are oppressing
themselves.
They're destroying
themselves.
They're robbing themselves
of their spiritual ascent, of their future relationship
with God,
of the only things in life that really
matter.
Let me just,
I promise to end this in at 12:30,
if you don't mind. What time did I
start? Are you exhausted?
I am.
There are some And these are just some
speculations on my part.
I don't offer these, I didn't read them
anywhere, I just been thinking about
them. So I'll share them with you, my
fellow
atheists, if you still are.
I'll share them with you. There are 3
sort of important signs or parallels I couldn't
help but notice as I read through the
Quran.
The 3 are that I that have particularly
struck me is the womb, life,
sort of parallel, the sleep, death, parallel,
the birth, resurrection,
parallel. And they all seem to come together
to me.
Let me take the womb life parallel.
Just as our development Legrand says that in
the creation of the individual in the womb,
there is a message for you, a sign.
What sign?
As we start to think about it, it
becomes clear to us.
As we grow
in this earthly life
now let me start with the womb. As
the creature grows
in the womb, and it develops in the
womb, how is that manifested?
It's manifested
when he enters
his earthly life, the day he's born.
His development, his growth
in the womb
is manifested fully in that day he comes
into this earth.
That growth is not only physical, but it's
primarily physical, at least the way we think
about it.
Now take the creature's existence in life. The
Quran also talks about the 2 deaths that
people experience.
Muslim commentators have disagreed on this, but many
have seen the 2 deaths as the death
from life in the womb to coming into
this life, and the death at the end
of this life and coming into the next.
And when we think about it, our earthly
growth,
our earthly development,
our earthly progress is manifested when?
Fully, and completely,
and obviously.
On the day of judgment when we enter
our next life.
That progress we made, that spiritual growth, that
human growth is manifested fully and completely
in that being
that is recreated
on the day of judgement.
Very much the same way a child's growth
in the womb, it's man it's physical growth,
it's manifested fully when he comes into this
life.
And the Quran uses
much powerful language to convey that point.
It talks about how he who does an
atom's weight of good will see it,
see it as in his very self. He
who does an atom's
weight of evil will see it.
It'll affect him.
When the earthly things are stripped away, it'll
be manifested in his being.
Where are a person's deeds on the Day
of Judgment?
They're tied to his neck if they're evil.
Right?
What what is his life like? It's like
an open book, which he proudly
holds out in his right hand if he
led a successful life. It's behind his back,
shamefully,
if he led his
bad life. The images are very powerful.
It's a whole another order of creation, which
we don't completely can't completely understand. But we
do understand this, that it's an inseparable link
between the deeds we do in this life
and how we are manifested, how they are
manifested in our very being
on the day of judgement.
It says our skins,
our hands,
our eyes, our feet will testify, will witness,
will manifest
what type of per life we live.
It's impossible for us to conceive,
but yet, it's a perfect parallel
to our life in the womb manifested in
our birth, and our life in this earth
manifested into what we are on the day
of judgement. And as the Quran
says, we won't blame anyone but ourselves.
2 minutes.
The
the
I have 5 minutes, and I promise to
finish it in 5.
The sleep death parallel.
Have you ever noticed when you read the
Quran and the people awake on the day
of judgement, notice even the word I used,
how do they look?
Look like they're just getting up out of
a very deep sleep.
The Quran talks about how god takes the
souls of the sleeper at night and returns
it in the morning,
and how God takes the souls of the
dead and returns it to them on the
day of judgment.
Couldn't help but excite some, thinking about that.
So we start to study all the verses
that talk about
arising on the day of judgement, and we
can't help but miss a connection.
Because when we study these verses, we see
as the people rise on the day of
judgement, they're like people awaking from a dream.
How long have you tarried
on earth?
I don't know, an hour?
A day?
Seems like an illusion.
It was very real,
but it seems like an illusion. It's revealed
in what they are now. It was real.
But it doesn't somehow in this greater reality,
it seems like a dream.
Unlike a dream, we suffer, we suffer anxiety,
we go through tremendous torment.
What happens when we awake from a dream?
Oh, my God.
What relief.
Suddenly, all that suffering when we were in
that dream that seemed so
real,
that we would have done anything to get
out of, that seemed like there was no
end,
that seemed unbearable.
When we wake up
Oh, my God.
What a relief.
Waking from a dream is the cure.
Similarly, on the day of judgement,
when that person arises,
his recollection of life, all the pain, all
the struggle, everything
is cured
if he led a good life.
On the day of judgement
Oh, what a relief.
It looked seemed unbearable while we were going
through it.
It seemed like it was to no end.
Now, on the day of judgement, it seems
Was it an hour?
A minute?
How long before you were there?
Can't remember. It was like an illusion, but
it wasn't. And its consequences are revealed on
the Day of Judgment. But God, in His
infinite mercy, just on that day, makes it
much like in His infinite mercy, He eradicates
a dream.
The Prophet, peace be upon him,
he said
that when a person, a good person, who's
led unbalanced a good life and has believed
in God, when he puts one foot into
paradise, and then he's asked about all his
suffering on earth,
he'll react that
it seemed to him like it never really
happened.
And just the opposite, of course, happens to
a person who's led an evil life.
He's asked about all the joys he experienced
on earth,
he won't be able to recollect them.
And nonetheless,
in their very being
is the makings of those deeds, the revelation
of those deeds.
And so this and we'll end with
This all culminates, I guess, in the Islamic
concept of worship.
It brings it all together.
The other day, one of my neighbors asked
me, Jeff, how do you Muslims worship?
I told him, well, it's a big question.
We drive our kids to school in the
morning.
I smile at a neighbor when I'm walking
past them on the street.
I go to work every day. No, no,
I mean your your worship. How do you
worship god?
Well,
we make love to our spouses,
shake people's hands,
I'll open the door for somebody on the
way to work No, you're worship, you're worship.
I was purposely being a pain in the
neck.
I eventually got to the 5 pillars of
Islam and etcetera, but the point I was
trying to make is this is a very
big concept.
The Prophet, peace be upon him said, that
when you smile in somebody's face, when you
move a stone, so the next passerby does
a stumble over it, when you help somebody
onto his mount,
that's an act of worship.
It's a sadaqa,
an act of charity. Tzedakah comes from the
same root as truth. It's been more like
an act of fidelity.
His companions were amazed once. He told them
that making love to your spouse is an
act of worship.
They said, what?
And then he explained it to them. It's
not committing adultery,
an act of sin?
And they said, Yes.
In the same way, in a parallel way,
and when we start to realize what sin
does to us by how we just described
it, in a parallel way,
an act of making love to your spouse
is an act of worship.
Of course the companions were always alert to
what were the real acts of worship. They
would ask them, What are the acts of
worship? What are the great acts of
worship? He would tell them, Fighting is a
just cause for the weak and the oppressed.
It's a tremendous act of worship,
tremendous witness to faith.
He told them
that when you take care of your pal
parents when they're elderly and sick,
this is a great active worship.
When a mother gives birth to a child,
this is a tremendous act of worship.
If she dies in it, she dies among
the highest ranks
of faith.
And believe me, I carried that child for
1 night.
My back was killing me, and I thought
how Oh my God, how much closer this
brought me to this child.
Could you imagine carrying a child for 9
months?
It is a tremendous act of fidelity to
God.
And so, when you go to the Middle
East and a taxi driver picks you up
at the airport, how does he start his
car?
Bismillahir Rahmani errahim.
Right? In the name of God, the merciful,
the compassionate.
When a mother picks up her child from
the floor, what does she say? In the
name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.
Right? When a father on his way to
work, in the name of God, the merciful,
the compassionate.
Why?
Even if he can't articulate it, the Muslim
has inculcated in his very existence this concept
that all of life is a potential act
of worship,
and that is his ideal.
That is his ideal.
Orientalists said, this is much too formalistic, all
this Bismillahir Rahmanirrahim, Bismillahir Rahmanirrahim thing.
But for the Muslim, it's very natural, because
he sees all life as potentially worshipful.
And so,
this explains
a verse in the Quran which many, many
Westerners have stumbled over and has caused them
great anxiety.
We have not created man nor jinn,
man nor other sentient beings beyond our perception.
We have not created man nor jinn except
that they should worship me.
The Westerners come across that and say, Oh
my God, that's strictly Old Testament.
That tyrannical view of God.
When a Muslim comes across the very same
verse,
understanding life as he does and its purpose,
understanding
worship as he or she does, in this
very broad and general way, they come across
that very same verse
and simply say,
of course.
What other purpose could there possibly be?
And,
that's sort of the end of the lecture.
I'll just stop by saying this,
that the Quran has confronted us with our
own questions.
It has presented
a view of life
that not only agrees with us, I would
I would say to most of us atheists
in the audience, we have to face the
fact. We're feeling pretty stupid right now.
We're starting to think, why didn't we think
of this ourselves?
Okay. Other questions are popping in,
but we're able to handle them in short
order, more or less, because we now see
the core of things.
But
nonetheless,
we've been now our our
problems have been shattered. A view of life
has been presented to us, but much more
has taken place.
We have not just been reading the Quran
on this level, we've been reading it on
many levels other,
also. And they have had an effect,
and we are now feeling the weight of
a question and the weight of a decision,
a decision
that now confronts us and that I'll talk
about the next time in my next lecture,
and may the peace and mercy of God
be upon you all. Assalamu Alaikum.