Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #01
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AI: Transcript ©
So
we're starting this new class tonight at the
Islamic Center.
It's essentially
focused on looking at foundations
and kinda fundamental
essentials of the religion on a whole.
Over the course of however many of the
next weeks, we'll go through
just kinda the basis
of theology,
spirituality,
ritual and practice
in our tradition.
Today, we're gonna go through a lot of
technical terms,
to give you kind of a overarching understanding.
We're gonna discuss this from the standpoint
of,
Sunni tradition.
I studied,
Hanafi texts,
and we'll get into what all these words
mean,
over the course of the time we spend
together.
And
when we're looking at it from the standpoint
of theology,
we're gonna also be looking at it through
the standpoint of what's understood to be semi
normative theology
as well.
But because it's a foundations class, you'll see
kind of a lot of it has overlap,
within various theological
spectrums.
A part of the class will also just
be about
how do we kinda engage with things on
a day to day basis.
There's some of you in this room who
have been Muslim your whole life. There's some
of you
who
converted to Islam
years ago, months ago, weeks ago. There's some
of you who are of other walks of
life and you're just exploring Islam as a
religion,
either for a personal
journey, your own spiritual
kind of exploration
academically,
whatever the case might be. It's a very
diverse group of people, as well as those
who are joining us virtually.
And so, where and how we kinda go
is gonna be at a very slow pace.
We're gonna define terms,
so that we have a relationship to terms.
We're gonna spend some time really trying to
extrapolate meaning from things so that it's not
just kind of rote, regurgitated
understandings.
Right? Where I throw words at you and
you memorize them, but you don't have a
relationship to them. Right? The idea is to
also not confine ourselves
to text
in
the context
of being written for distinct audiences centuries ago,
where a lot of manuals
on Islamic law and a lot of texts
on Islamic theology
were also written with primary audiences in mind.
And the kind of things that they're discussing
and dealing with, in large part, are answering
questions
of theology,
of practice,
of spiritual dilemma
rooted in what's immediately in front of them
in that moment.
And it's not that you can't pull from
that necessarily, but we have to be able
to pull from it in a way that
also renders an understanding
of where we are contemporarily
at this time. Does that make sense? Right?
And to give a context also that we're
trying to create an opportunity that is distinct
because learning modes traditionally
in our religion had people literally
walk all over the Earth to find knowledge
and
it was sometimes very hard for people to
gain access to information.
We have the opposite challenge
where
these days, information is so easily accessible
and the ability to kind of understand, well,
how does that
really apply to me or how do I
make sense of this? We had a young
woman in our community who is a recent
convert to Islam
who converted right around the time of one
of our major holidays,
that's called Eid al Adha. Right? It's within
the days of Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca,
and it follows within the rites and traditions
of the Abrahamic narrative, the prophet Abraham, peace
be upon him, his wife Hajar, peace be
upon her, their son Ishmael, peace be upon
him.
And
she was really excited. I'm Muslim now. I'm
gonna celebrate with my sisters and brothers.
And then a week later, I saw her
and she's in my office and she's in
tears. And I said, what's going on? And
she said, I looked up how we celebrate
this holiday and it said, I have to
go and sacrifice a goat. She said, I
don't even know where to buy a goat.
And she said, do I kill this thing
in my apartment? I was like, don't kill
any animals.
Right? Don't try to buy a goat on
Amazon.
Like, it's not, you know, anything that you're
thinking.
But why wouldn't she think that
based off of what she read?
And what she read was not written for
someone like her in mind,
and she's just trying to do what
she thinks God wants her to do. You
see?
And she's getting lost in terminologies
as she's kind of trying
to listen to things through sound bites on
TikTok and Instagram reels.
She is getting lost in articles that were
translated
from other languages
into an English
that is very archaic.
She doesn't know
what to do when she looks up a
video or a podcast and anything that you
search yields you millions of things and most
often are things that are rooted in why
you shouldn't listen to that person or why
this person's a problem and it's very reactive
in a negative way. It's just like, I'm
just trying to learn how to pray.
There's not real kinda
nuance translations
to things.
Right? And it just creates a lot of
conundrums. What we wanna do, just so everyone's
on the same page. Right? We have a
community
that's very large and very diverse. We
are in a place where in a given
week, anywhere from 1 to 5 people reach
out to us who want to learn more
about Islam. They want to convert, take their
Shahadah. If you were here on Monday night
for the other halakha that I do,
it, you know,
was started with a woman who came, and
she sat, and she converted to Islam, Right?
May Allah, you know, make things easy for
her. But it's a common kind of occurrence
here.
And now kind of as we're settling in
more post COVID
and we're in a place where we're structuring
things more,
For that specific demographic, we want to provide
a resource.
And thereafter, we want to also be in
a place where
we understand that many in our community who
are even born into Islam
are in a place where it's not an
inherited practice. Right? Just because you have the
label of Islam, doesn't mean that there's like
a structured approach to your learning.
And the ability to access information
in and of itself
becomes something that's very critical,
in every dimension of Islam.
Right? Not just the legalistic, which we're gonna
do an intro to today.
But
seeing how all of it kinda synergizes together.
There's gonna be books that we're gonna look
at, and I'm gonna give you some names
right now. You don't have to get all
of them, and we'll have notes put up.
There's,
as we talk about
what is like legal development. Right? The kind
of prayer and fasting and, you know, how
you wash up for prayer and pilgrimage and
these things.
There's methodologies
that we'll look at within the Sunni tradition.
There's a great book in English. It's called
The Four Imams.
It was written, like, probably when some of
you were maybe 5 years old. Right?
It's got like a goldish yellow color,
written by a person by the name of
Abu Zechra. And it just goes through the
biographies,
kind of the methodologies,
the techniques implemented
by the 4
founders of the canonical schools of Sunni,
legal thought and we'll talk about those over
the course of our time together.
There's a text called Being Muslim,
It was written by a person named Asad
Tarson
that was written in particular for those who
are converts new to Islam.
It's gonna go through just foundational theology,
spirituality,
ritual practice.
There's some Hanafi fic texts that we'll look
at just to introduce you to them. They're
like primer legal texts and a little intermediate
and advanced,
but to be able to draw from them.
Right? Because a typical manual, we'll talk about
this a little bit more detail in a
little bit, is written just to teach somebody
how to pray but not why they pray
in the ways that they pray. Right? There's
2,000,000,000 Muslims in the world. You don't have
to know the basis of it in order
to do it. Right? So somebody says, when
you wash up, you wash these parts
and you wash those parts and then that's
it. But what I'd like for us to
do is to also say, well, here's like
the verse of the Quran
that says
this is the basis for
these parts of that ritual washing. Right? So
that you can kinda engage the text,
kinda understand it, you know, within the context
of where you are, and it allows for,
like, a little bit deeper of a of
an interaction. Do you know what I mean?
Right? Does that make sense?
I know we're, like, all kinda coming in
different places, and so we're gonna just cater
to the lowest common denominator.
The assumption is that we want to kind
of offer,
you know, everything with as much detail as
possible from the onset,
and then just go from there. Right? Any
questions? Any thoughts? Anything that comes up for
people as we're discussing that?
Yes? No?
Would you put up the books, like, in
the, like, newsletter or something? Yeah. I'm gonna
bring them with me, like, books as we
look at them. And we'll put notes up
and share with you all. You just take
notes. Right? It's not like a class that's
about inspiration or kinda just sharing stories. There'll
be stories to illustrate points,
but there's gonna be, like, a lot of
words
that we're gonna define because you're just gonna
come across them. You know. And there's certain
words that just they don't necessarily translate well,
but there's also words that you find that
we use in our religious tradition
that just appear in numerous languages also because
they retain
their original form. Do you know what I
mean? Right? Like in a lot of languages,
people
use the
name of God in our tradition as Allah.
Right? They're not translating it in any way.
Right?
The giving of, like, a greeting of peace,
Assalamu Alaikum,
you know, stays the same. Right? There's certain
things that you just also can't translate so
well, but we don't wanna do that. We
wanna get to it at a deeper level.
So words like taqwa, which people will translate
as piety,
consciousness,
you know, mindfulness,
these kinds of things. You just wanna be
in a place where somebody says the word
taqwa and you're like, yeah, I know what
that is. Right? Iman is a word for
faith, theology.
But we wanna just say, well, what does
this word mean
so I don't have to kinda
be in a place where
it is something that I see as kind
of a distinct language, but it can exist
in that form even when we're speaking in
English. You see what I'm saying? Like, it
doesn't have to be kinda Englishized, so to
speak, but it can just become part of
our regular lexicon
as English speaking Muslims. Do does that make
sense, what I'm saying? Right?
Okay.
Any other thoughts, questions, things that are coming
up for people before we get started?
Are there any movies that can help us?
Yeah. As we go through it, there's gonna
be a bunch of things that we'll share,
that will show some of the what we're
gonna do. So we'll break it into, like,
chunks.
Right? We'll be together for, like, an hour,
an hour and 15 minutes. We'll have kind
of a third that's just kinda dedicated,
to
things that are gonna be like how to's.
Right? So next week when we talk about
washing up for prayer, what's called wudu in
Arabic,
We're just gonna show you how to do
it. Right? We'll bring some water in here.
We'll go step by step. You know, we'll
have people that are helping to demonstrate it.
And go into the ablution rooms. Right? Try.
And as we go through this and we're
situating the program more, we'll have people that
can help us too, like buddies, mentors, these
kinds of things. We go through prayer. Right?
We're gonna, like, walk through the prayer, its
motions, its mechanics. Right? It's not just kinda
front facing lecture, but interactive
so you can go through it. And when
we get through this at a foundational level
of framing, so we can talk about the
specifics. Right? We can talk about, like, what
does this have to do, the form, with,
like, spirituality?
What does any of this have to do
with God fundamentally?
Right? All of you are not converts or
looking to convert,
but a common convert experience,
which is probably very common for many of
us who were born into Islam too, is
that at some point, it just stops being
about God. Right? The conversations
are just devoid of discussions about the divine
and it's just the mechanics and just the
do's and don'ts. And that becomes something that's,
you know, quite often
very hollow. Not that it's, like, hollow in
the sense that it's pointless, but doesn't then
have that inner aspect to it. Do you
know what I mean? And I could put
you in front of like a 100 converts
that I know, and they'll say after I
became Muslim,
everything just stopped being about God.
Everybody was just telling me now you gotta
do this, now you gotta do that, and
this is what's right, and this is what's
wrong.
Everything in this religion goes back to God.
Like, that's just the basis of it. We're
gonna talk about some of these things and
frame it in some different ways. And it's
just gonna be ongoing. You know, we'll keep
going with it through
the summer,
through, you know,
in Ramadan, we might kind of take a
hiatus or change the day, because, like, iftar,
our breaking of our fast will come in
the middle.
So a couple of other principles. Right?
We're all coming from very different places. I
like to have people talk to each other.
Just be mindful that the Pearsons you're sitting
next to,
and you're speaking with, it's not about kinda
right or wrong always. Right?
And we're here as sisters and brothers,
and not as kinda, you know,
individuals who are gonna say to the person
next to me, no. No. No. It's, like,
has to be this way. Right? If there's
a question,
just let those of us who are facilitating
answer the question. So it creates ease in
terms of this kind of the balance in
the space. Right?
And be in a place where as people
are talking, you're like listening to them. Right?
Because everything is not the same for everybody.
You know? We all don't have the same
family support or family challenges. We all don't
have the same community experience or upbringing. We
all don't come from the same socioeconomic
backgrounds, the same racial backgrounds, the same cultural
backgrounds.
We don't all have
this broader we
that exists,
and we want to be mindful of that
as what we talk about that's on an
abstract or theoretical
still has elements of somebody saying, but how
do I do this in my day? Right?
I still am trying to figure out how
to be Muslim in this world. Do you
see?
In the context of a family that doesn't
know I practice Islam. Whether that family is
Muslim themselves or not. Because you'd be surprised
how many Muslim families
don't really want their family members to be
so Muslim or too Muslim,
you know.
Does that make sense? Right?
And where and how you can kinda stick
through with us because classes will build upon
themselves. Can't be here in person,
log on online, like, watch the videos.
But there's concepts that we'll talk about that
are going to kinda grow into each other.
Right? And this is what we're gonna be
looking at fundamentally. Do you know what I
mean?
Anything else? Thoughts, framing questions, conversations
that come to mind?
Yes? No? Yeah?
Are we gonna go in-depth for, like, the
different schools of thought?
Probably not in this class,
just because what we're hoping to get out
of this is that people
build, like, a fundamental relationship with what's obligatory
upon them. They have a basic knowledge of,
like, theology,
and just a basic knowledge also of, like,
how to navigate daily interactions with Muslims,
as well as kind of people of other
backgrounds. Right? So, like, it's really hard if
you
are hearing people say all kinds of words
like Insha'Allah,
Mashallah,
Tabarak Allah, and you don't know what it
means. So we're gonna use a chunk of
our day to say, this is what all
these people are saying when they're saying these
words to you. Right? This is how, like,
we kinda help each other. You know?
And so it's not like a class on
what's called the sulefic or Islamic legal theory
that's gonna get into the nuances of legal
theory. But those are things, like, we can
get into as we kinda move forward.
I'll talk about it briefly in light of,
like, some of the things just so people
can understand, well, what's the distinctions
in kind of the methodologies?
Because you're going to run into people who
do it differently.
You know? And you're gonna want to know,
well, like, why is it like that? And
what's the basis of that? Do does that
make sense? Right?
Okay.
Anything else?
Yes? No?
Great. What's also great is, like, at any
point you have a question, just ask
so that we're able to, like, take a
pause and try to, like, distill it.
And if you could share our names, if
you're comfortable when you're speaking so we can
learn each other's names. Or If you come
on Monday, like the holo we do on
Monday,
you know, this past Monday, I think, had,
like, a 100, a 150 people in it.
Right? It's very different than when you have,
like, 20 people in a room,
and we can create more of a learning
experience,
but also, like, learning together
and not learning as individuals just in a
room, like, simultaneously.
You see what I mean? Yeah? Does that
does that make sense?
Okay. Great. So where I wanna start is
just kind of in a foundation,
and to give an understanding first of, like,
well, what
makes somebody Muslim,
you know?
What
Islam is rooted in
as a religion, like any other religions,
is a theological basis.
And there's certain things that
Muslims believe
theologically
in order to be Muslim
across the board.
What are some of those things? Does anybody
know?
Like, what's 1? Yeah, go ahead.
Great. So, right at the top,
there's
a belief in
1
God.
So somebody says,
I'm Muslim,
but I don't believe in God.
Or I'm Muslim, but I believe that there's
more than one God.
That's outside of the categorical
definition
of what a Muslim is.
I'm not saying go tomorrow
and start talking to people
and saying, do you really believe in God?
Then you're not Muslim. Right?
That's not what I'm talking about. But so
we can have an understanding of what makes
somebody Muslim
at a fundamental
level,
and then seeing how that informs
things like practice,
spirituality,
other things that we just engage in day
to day. So, one God,
what else?
The reason the prophet on his husband. As
the last prophet. Yeah. So you have a
finality
of prophethood
in the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him,
which if somebody says, I'm Muslim, but I
don't believe
that Muhammad was a prophet,
or if somebody says, I'm Muslim, but I
believe there's a prophet after the prophet Muhammad,
This also
then becomes a challenge
to the foundational
theology
of Islam.
Right?
What's the last one? There's 3.
Yeah.
The Quran can be connected to
messengerhood and prophecy.
Yeah. Could could it be resurrection?
Yeah, kind of. So what's the broader category
that resurrection would fall under?
That's a Day of judgement? Yeah. Yep. The
day of judgement? Right? The idea that, like,
this world isn't it. It's not a nihilistic
religion.
You know, it's not a religion that also
is rooted just in, like, a finite world
and then there's nothing that comes after. But
there's a belief in afterlife.
And these things are gonna be important to
understand
when we talk about things
like
ritual and practice.
They're going to formulate for us
kind of the grounds of, like,
why certain things are done the ways that
they're done. Do you know what I mean?
And more or less, other major parts of
theology can attach to these things.
And we'll talk about that over the course
of the coming weeks.
But foundationally,
this is what makes somebody Muslim.
Just the word Muslim.
Right?
You follow Islam
and you believe in Islamic doctrine if you
follow this.
You see?
You then branch off from here
and have distinct theological
perspectives
that now make somebody
Sunni or Shia.
But it falls under the fold
of being Muslim
because
these groupings
as 2 broader categories
theologically
still believe in these things.
So this is what
Muslims believe
and now you get to a place that's
a little bit more nuanced.
Right?
The Shia doctrine, you have a belief in
the Imamate.
There is an understanding that
tradition
assumes
and teaches
that
authority was to be passed on through the
descendants of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him,
male relatives,
that will
inform authority,
right? It'll influence, like, text
and books and, you know, whose teachings do
we follow for prayer.
The Sunni Theology,
you know, understands
kinda the
greatness of all of the companions, for example,
distinctly. Right?
And that informs also practice
and ritual and teachings in different
have
that then also has sub branches.
You're gonna have within the Sunni,
as well as within the Shia tradition,
distinct theological
schools
that also engage in debates across,
as well as
within
as they grow and develop.
We're not gonna talk about a lot of
those things. Right? Because it's just like
gonna be something that could be its own
kind of course material and syllabus
that people spend years years. What we want
to walk away with from this class
is understanding
what are the foundational
theologies,
and how do we know and relate to
who our God is in Islam?
What do we understand of a theology around,
like, prophethood
and an understanding of a theology
around afterlife.
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Okay. Any questions so far?
I had one question. Yeah. Hi. I'm Kevin.
One question on the the first belief.
I said that many different religion or people,
you know, quite distinct conception of God and
what the meaning of God is.
At this foundational level, what is,
is there a specific conception of God that
Yeah. Believes We're gonna talk about this a
little bit today. We're gonna look at a
chapter that's a short chapter in the Quran
that is called,
the chapter is called Ikhlas, Sincerity.
And it speaks about a knowledge of God
and how we can start to fundamentally understand
who God is. Right? So I wanna start
there
with just
understanding
God
and how we relate to God in Islam.
It's a very pure monotheism.
Right? There's nothing between an individual
and God
in
Islam.
The name for God in
Islam,
the name we're taught
that God has given to himself is Allah.
Right? There's some different
opinions on, you know, what
this
name actually invokes.
In Arabic,
the word for just God in general, something
that is worshiped is ilah,
and some people would say that this is
the type of word
that is got a root like base to
it. Right? So it's doing a definitive
of
a word that is denoting it's the God.
Right? Al Ilah,
lidded together is Allah.
And some would say, no. This is not,
like, a word that can be broken down,
and it's just Allah. There's no kinda root
to it. You don't have to, like, get
into the nitty gritty.
Allah is the name of God in Islam.
The
relationship now between God and His creation
is rooted in just a fundamental concept
that has the basis
of 2 different words,
Rab
and Abd
in Arabic.
The word rub gets translated quite often as
lord,
and the word abd gets quite
often translated as a servant.
Right?
So the word ab, to give you an
idea,
it essentially
can translate as a servant. Like, if you've
heard the name
Abdul Abdullah,
right? Or like Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
right? Abdul Jabbar means the servant of Al
Jabbar, one of the names we are taught
of God.
But something isn't abd
because at a base level,
it requires or relies on something else to
exist.
That's the definition
of an abd,
that it's not self sufficient.
So
this word
states
essentially
and categorizes that everything that exists in creation
is an obd
Because everything
needs something.
Everything is reliant on something
in order to be, in order to exist.
Does that make sense?
Right? This is where you start to get
into a place, as Kevin is saying, like
the essence of God in Islam,
that the fundamental
essence of God in Islam
is
distinct
from creation,
that God uniquely
does not rely on anything to exist.
Does it make sense?
So when we're talking about 1 God, you
wanna think for yourself.
We have a narration in our tradition
that
says that
Allah says, I am as my servant thinks
I am.
So the God that you believe God to
be is the God that you're going to
worship. When you live in a society that's
deeply impacted
by other religious traditions,
right, When you come into interactions with them,
it creates now a distinction
from Islam,
not in the idea that there's one God,
but the
essential understanding of that God is different.
Right?
We don't have a religion that believes
and it anthropomorphized
God in any capacity.
We don't have an understanding
that
God is like his creation in any which
way, shape, or form.
Before we break that down a little bit,
the word
rub, it gets translated quite often as lord,
but it means so much more than that.
So if you look in an Arabic dictionary,
when it defines this word lord or rub,
it says the word rub
means
al malik.
Al malik
is like the owner of something, the master
of something, the one who's in control of
something.
Right?
If I'm the one that owns something, get
what I'm saying?
How it's used
fully. Do you get what I'm saying? Right?
So
you can be in a place where you
come to my house
and,
like, I bought my TV,
but my kids are constantly the ones that
decide what's being watched on the television.
Do you see?
They're the ones that are determining, like, how
they're gonna lay down on the couch,
how they're gonna, like, eat the food. You
know, they're gonna say, that's mine, that's mine.
I'm like, no, no.
You didn't buy it with any money that
you have. That's not yours.
The fundamental understanding here
is that
everything
that exists
is under the ownership of the divine.
That's one part of being rub.
Another part of being rub
is that Allah says that he is sayyid.
That's the definition.
He's the one that decides how things are
used.
The one that is kind of a decision
maker,
you know,
so to speak.
You have then
the idea that Allah is Murabbi.
And this word denotes like a caretaker,
a nurturer.
Right? There's a verse in the Quran
where
we're taught to
make a prayer for our parents
who took care of us when we were
little.
And it says in Arabic,
Right? That be merciful to them as they
did care for me when I was a
child. It's the same word. Right? Rabayani,
murabi.
So God is the one that cares for
you,
is your nurturer,
your caretaker,
the way that good parents take care of
their children.
That's the way we understand
God
to be in a place where
He loves you even more than a mother
loves his child.
Right? The definition continues
and says that
God
is Qayyam
Mudabbir,
right? He's the one that keeps things in
place.
He's the arranger of affairs
and it continues and it says that he's
the healer, the mender of all things.
So
when we're calling upon God as rub,
it's not like lord in the way that
the English language would translate it, but it's
within the sense of,
like,
God
is the one that's really giving me everything.
And I am not
on my own able to be self sufficient,
but I am reliant
upon
things around me to exist.
So why not then choose to be reliant
on the one that is not reliant on
anything
is what, like, Islam posits.
Right? Because everything else is going to have
limitations.
Do you see what I mean? Does that
make sense? Is everybody with me so far?
Yes.
Any thoughts? Any questions before we move on?
So I want you to if you have
a smartphone,
right, or a computer, you can pull up.
We're gonna look at a chapter
that is called Surah Ikhlas.
You can just
type into Google.
Right?
You can write
Quran
Ikhlas
and it'll pull up like Quran.com.
You can get a translation
up.
And this is going to be a really
great chapter
that talks about
just the essence of God
in Islam.
Like, who
is God according to Islamic theology?
And as you all pull that up on
your phones and we can look at it,
I wanna give you some, like, background on
this chapter. It's It's a very short chapter.
But what's essentially happening in real time
is that the people of Mecca,
their theology is different than the theology of
Islam.
So they have a polytheistic
religion.
Right? This is not about knocking or judging
anybody,
but just to understand this as fact,
like, the Meccans practice polytheism.
Islam was monotheistic.
In their polytheistic
religion,
they had
now also
a divine entity
that they refer to as Allah.
And they
were in a place now where as this
is happening in real time,
they're saying to the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him,
that
like
we have
Allah also.
Like who is
Allah to you?
Right? Is Allah made of gold? Is Allah
made of silver?
Right? Who are Allah's children?
Is Allah the child of another god?
These are questions that are being asked.
And you wanna not think about this when
you come across text
or articles
in a way that like pits
groups against each other. You see what I
mean? There are people who are fundamentally going
to ask questions.
You are going to be in a place
where as you explore Islam as a religion,
whether you were born into it or not,
that you're exposed to other thoughts and ideas
and they're going to bring up questions.
Right? People are asking questions,
the prophet is responding to the questions.
God is responding to the questions through Revelation.
Does everybody have it open
in front of them?
And you can open it with translation.
Right? The first verse will be translated to
something like,
say, He is the 1, right? You know,
Qul hu allahu ahad,
say He is Allah the one, ahad.
Does everybody have it? Mhmm. Okay. So this
chapter
is being revealed
and
to give you context,
it's a very short chapter.
It's a chapter
that talks about
the fundamental
kind of essence of the divine.
In Islam,
the knowledge that we have of God
is qualified as a negative knowledge.
Meaning
that anything we understand
God to be,
we know that God is other than that.
There's a verse in the Quran that says
that there's not anything that's like a likeness
to God.
So anything that you would understand God to
be,
then you know that he is other than
that.
And just keep that in mind.
Right? So it's not a negative in the
sense that it's pessimistic. It's not a negative
knowledge in the sense that it's something
that is rooted
in sadness or grief. We're not talking about
negativity in that way. Does that make sense?
This first verse now
has
a kind of it has like the most
arguably primary
essential
kind of understanding of the divine that we
can be offered.
The word
in Arabic that gets translated as say,
right, is used in the Quran as a
way to illustrate something
that is quite important
and it's a direct
kind of imperative to the Prophet Muhammad peace
be upon him like say this, right? Khul.
You have the word Huwa after
that within the Arabic language
gets translated
as like he
and we'll talk about this at the end
of this first verse like how that relates
grammatically.
Not like through a gender standpoint
because Laysa Gamiflih Ishe, there's not anything that's
like a likeness to him. So we don't
have
a male God in Islam.
Grammatically, the Arabic language
utilizes
masculine,
feminine,
kinda
you know, presence grammatically, but that doesn't mean
that it's a male
god. Right?
If you translated this into English,
it's just also more emphatic.
The hua means he. Right?
It would be like me saying,
like, say he is Khaled,
you know, running the live stream. Right? And
you're like, why don't you just say, like,
Khaled is running the live stream. Right? Why
does the additional he have to be in
it. Right?
It's just to point out that much more,
you know, kind
of the presence of the divine.
Allah
is the name of God.
We talked about that briefly.
And now it says, Ahad.
Right? In Arabic, the word ahad
here is telling you
that,
like,
he's the only one that is like him.
If anybody knows Arabic as a language,
the word for 1 in Arabic is Wahid.
And one of the divine names that we're
taught of God is alwahid,
but this is one in relation to like
his oneness
as
divine
being.
But ahad
is very unique in the Arabic language.
Ahad
denotes
that
there's no divisible parts,
right? The way this chair
is made up of nuts and bolts and
cloth and other stuff,
I had denotes you can't break
down this entity.
Do you see what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Right? Uhad
is saying, because people were asking the prophet,
like, tell us about your God. We already
have a God named Allah,
right? Isn't he just like our God? And
the prophet is saying, there's nothing like my
God.
There is
nothing that exists
that is like
this God.
Do you understand?
It has a fundamental root now in what
is
kind
of understood in theological text you'll come across
that is a word that's called dohid,
the oneness of God,
the unique
oneness,
like the only
understanding.
If you convert to Islam or you are
born Muslim,
you say quite often on a daily basis
what we call the shahada.
The shahada
is
the testimony of faith.
Right? This means, like, the oneness of God,
thoughhid.
The shahada is the testimony of faith. It
says,
that
there is no God. There is nothing worthy
of worship.
A complete negation
and then it says, illa
except
Allah
like
one entity.
Allah. That's it.
So complete negation
then informs
absolute affirmation.
You want to ponder upon what this means
because
this
is giving you
in this chapter. Right? We're not going to
so much detail,
but the way that the Quran quite often
gives us an insight into God
in verses like this,
say God is ahad.
You sit and you start to just think
God is ahed.
How is he distinct?
How is he not like his creation?
Well, you die.
God does not die.
You eat.
God does not eat.
You sleep.
God does not sleep.
That aspect
that is rooted there
that has to be pondered upon.
Right? And this is, in our theology,
something that is an aspect of theology.
There's principles
of logic
to it.
That if somebody said to you, like, where
did all this come from?
And you can trace back every single act
to a cause
that is the result
of the act taking place.
At some point, there has to be a
point
of origin
that has no causation
to it.
Because how can something come from nothing?
Do you understand?
And these are like essential
aspects
of the divine
when we're talking about this. We can have
this conversation in a very different way. Where
I could talk to you about it in
terms of, like, God's mercy, God's compassion, which
we'll we'll get to,
but at a foundational
level, when Islam talks about a theology of
1 God,
it is not the same
as other monotheistic
traditions
in the essential understanding
of God.
God is ahad
in Islam.
There is nothing that is like God.
Do you do you get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Any questions? Any thoughts on that?
So, you start to then extrapolate
what is
necessary
and necessarily
conceivable
in relation to this point,
but also then gives you an other aspect
of logic based reasoning
that is rooted in what is necessarily
inconceivable
when we're talking about
God being ahad.
How can you have a God
that eats and sleeps?
How could you fundamentally
have
2 gods, 3 gods? It's not to knock
people's beliefs, but just to think about it,
right?
Which god has more power than other gods?
Which is able to then be able to
engage in overpowering?
Do you see what I'm saying?
Ahed says
that
there's not anything
that is like this God.
You can't think about God in that way.
The way that you go into a physical
prostration in your daily prayers, you exert a
mental prostration
in the recognition of who the divine is.
Why is this important?
Because you don't wanna take a pathway to
learning this religion
that teaches you how to pray and what
is impermissible
and obligatory
before you were taught how to celebrate the
divine in your life.
And you have to understand
this fundamental,
essential
aspect of God in Islam,
that other aspects are going to be there
that
you can believe 1 and not necessarily believe
the other.
Allah is Khaliq. He's the creator in
our understanding.
You can believe God created everything
without believing that God is, like, the most
merciful of those who show mercy. One doesn't
assume the other necessarily.
Right?
But all of it is just understood differently.
If you can understand it through the prism
of this essential
value, this essential characteristic
attribute of the divine,
that his uniqueness is absolute.
Right? He is uniquely
omniscient.
He is uniquely
all knowing.
He is uniquely all powerful.
He's uniquely
able to, like,
hear, see all things.
Before there was anything,
there was
God. After there is nothing, there will be
God. He is the first. He is the
last.
All of this is rooted in ahad,
this term.
The next verse that comes up,
right, that says,
Allahu Samad.
It again
is interjecting
now
just
emphasis
because it doesn't have to say Allah again.
It can just say.
Right?
Somebody has a translation
in front of them. How do they translate
Samad to you?
Eternal and absolute. Eternal, absolute. What else does
it say?
Eternal. Eternal.
Anything else? It's a sustainer.
Sustainer.
Sustainer?
Okay. Great.
Samad
is also an answer to questions.
Right? So they ask the prophet,
is your god made of gold? Is your
god made of copper? Is your god made
of silver? It's a polytheistic
tradition.
They have idols that they worship. Right?
This is just the way that theology is
understood by the people at that time. The
word Samad has a few different meanings to
it. One of the meanings is that
the entity
that is ahad
is essentially
with an internal vacuum, right? There's nothing that
makes
this God,
like the way you conceptualize God, the prophet
is telling them. Like your God is made
of copper.
The idea doesn't parallel itself in Islam.
Right? We don't say that our God is
made of something. Do you understand?
Does that make sense?
Samad also denotes,
like, eternality,
like you're saying.
But
what you hear what you have here now
is a stylistic
point in the Quran
where 2 divine names of God are given
and they categorically
are showing you
different things. The first is the essence
of the divine. Right? It's telling you something
about who God is,
ahad.
Samad
is telling you then
how does that relate to creation.
So samad
is essentially
like the source of refuge.
The one that you turn to.
Right?
The one when you're in a place of
need because you are up.
So you think about people that you know
who they just hit difficulty.
Right? May Allah make things easy for all
of us. Right? But a lot of us.
Right? Generalization is comfortable being made. Is that
when you're going through difficulty,
trial, tribulation,
is a time when people remember God.
You know, God, I'm sorry
that I don't pray to you. I don't
show up on Sundays the way I'm supposed
to. I don't do this. I don't do
that. Right? Like, help me in this moment.
My loved one is sick.
The doctors don't know what to do. Like,
everything is just not working.
I'm turning to you.
That is a summit.
The source of refuge.
How do the 2 relate to each other?
Ahed and Samad.
If you just turn to the person next
to you for a minute and just talk
about this. Right?
Ahed Samad.
Ahed, unique.
Oneness.
Nothing that's like a likeness to God.
Not able to be, it's not divisible, made
up of parts, none of these things, right?
Samad,
the source of refuge, the eternal
refuge, the one that you turn to. What's
the link there?
Do you get the question?
Just talk to the person next to you,
share your names, we'll talk for 2 minutes
then we'll come back. What's like a, what's
things that come up for you and the
link between these 2?
Okay.
So what are some of the things that
are coming up for people?
How is there,
like, a connection? How do these 2,
like,
names
of
Allah relates to one another?
Al ahad al Samad.
The one, the source of refuge.
Everybody's talking, so I know you said that.
Wait. What did you talk about?
Well
well, actually, I was gonna mention his point.
Yeah.
So, Tristan, nice to meet everybody.
From interpretation,
I've thought of refuge
as wholeness.
And then,
with god or Allah being indivisible,
you can't you those will be the correlation
that and then Anwar was saying that, because
God or Allah
has the capacity for everything,
That's
why it would be the refuge because he's
there to to comfort you,
you know, shelter you with everything that may
happen.
Great. Other thoughts?
People say different things. Yeah. Go
ahead. You can say the same thing too.
Do you have your address?
Yeah. What's your question?
I don't know.
You don't know what to question? I grew
up,
just have a friend.
Okay. Well, think about what it is, and
then we can maybe talk about yeah.
So yeah. I'm so sorry. That's okay.
I think that,
like,
is
to resist, so I was wondering what the
connection between the root of song mean.
Samad,
like, is is a is a refuge.
You know? A refuge. Yeah.
More or less. Right?
And when we talk about
in the way of Allah,
we're talking
about, a Samad
as,
a place where essentially, like, you don't have
to go anywhere else. You know what I
mean?
This is kinda like the end point here.
Right? I don't need to be with anyone
else. Right? Uhad,
like,
Uhad is the one that I just have
to turn to in in in the end
of all of this. Right? And that's hard,
especially if you're like a convert. Do you
know what I mean? And if you're not
a convert and you're in this room, like,
my wife converted 24 years ago, 25 years
ago, much so, you know?
It's not easy decisions when you're actively
choosing to embrace something that quite often,
like, denying that you believe in it would
make your life a whole lot easier. Do
you know what I mean?
And once it just resonates and it clicks,
you know, like, well, what else what can
I do now? Like, I know this is
true. Right?
But going through that place now where you
nuance the understanding that you could be like,
yeah, I get
that God is the one, that God created
everything
and
all of these things. But if you make
it devoid now of the aspect of alsamad,
of rub,
of, like, mercy, of compassion, of nurturing. Right?
The idea isn't that you turn to God
out of god's need for turning to you
because god is free of need,
but
it's for your benefit to be turning to
god
at times when there's limitations on turning to
God's creation.
Right? Like, there's going to be people who
are going to disappoint you. There's going to
be people who are not going to support
you or celebrate you or understand you.
But in this tradition,
like,
God is always with you.
You know? God is
closer to you, not in the sense of,
like, the way you have animist
religions,
right, that says God exists in this tree,
God exists here.
It's not in that sense. Right? But the
presence of the divine
is something that
necessitates first a recognition of through just contemplation.
Like, what is god telling me of himself
in these ways? What does this mean to
me? Right?
Like, how does that kind of function
for me? Because there are a lot of
people who feel like, well, I get it.
I even buy into it. But, like, why
why would you want to, like, stop doing
certain things?
Why you, like, even even, like, I buy
into all of
this, but, like, why? Why, like, pray 5
times a day? Why do you, like, eat
this way? Why don't you just go do
whatever you feel like? Right?
The basis of this knowing
is not so that you engage in just
weaponizing
religion,
do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs, But what
Islam
posits, right, another word for
this chapter that's called Ikhlas, Sincerity,
it was known as Ma'arifah. The chapter was
called that, which means, like, the loving knowing
of God.
Right? Like, you have an awareness of God.
Because
what
Islamic theology posits is knowing and recognizing one
God in this way is going to be
the ultimate source of inward contentment,
is going to be the ultimate source of
balance. You talk to somebody who converts to
Islam.
Right? And
they are dealt with, like, negligence from Muslims.
People mistreat them. They, like,
suspect them. They doubt like not people don't
treat converts well. May Allah make this a
community where converts are treated well and find
themselves in a space where they find a
home and a connection to the divine. Right?
They still believe in God after all of
that. Do you know what I mean? And
if you were to go and say to
somebody, like, hey,
if we were to give you all this
other comfort,
but all you had to do, Right? This
is what Bilal, who is the companion of
the prophet,
he is a slave.
He's African. He's not treated well in Mecca.
And they put a boulder on his chest
telling him that recount your belief in this
god that you claim god is.
And when he responds to them, as the
boulder is on his chest, he says to
them,
ahadunahad,
the one the one. It's all he
needs. Right? That's that's all
because he he believes
in
this God.
He believes in a God that no matter
what anybody would give to him, he's like,
I can't shake that belief. Right? That's like
my source,
my lifeline, my kind of place of contentment.
Do you get what I'm saying? And then
these last two verses, they give affirmation more
on the essence of God. It says, lam
yaled, walaam yulad, that God, you know,
does not
beget nor is begotten.
Right?
But this was like a meccan
source of pride.
They didn't wanna have daughters.
They would bury their daughters alive. Female infanticide
was a heavy practice in this
socially inequitous
society.
And their con their understanding of God also
was rooted in a theology that was absent
of a belief in an afterlife. There's no
sense of accountability.
When we talk about afterlife, we'll talk about
that.
But
here,
their pride is in this idea, like, look
at how many kids I have. Look at
how many children I have. Like, our gods
even have kids.
Right? Le Sekh Myth Lihishe,
there's not anything that's like a likeness
to him.
And so the idea
that
a all powerful God
would be able,
would be in a place where
there was children involved. Right? Just creates this,
like, challenge now
to
what is inconceivable.
How can you be omniscient
if there is another God that is also
omniscient?
Right?
How can you
be in this place where
you are omnipresent
when you are situated
to, like, specific locale?
Right? You exist
in what we understand dimensionally
to be like time and space in the
way that we're experiencing each other in this
way. Right? There's literal theologies
that said that the way you and I
are in this moment,
like, that is how a child of God
also came into existence.
Do you see what I mean? Right? And
that's where, like, the reflection
on it, just the contemplation on it, that
you have to fundamentally
understand that, like, belief is rooted in faith,
but, like, faith also can be kinda discerned
through principles of, like, logic at the end
of the day. Right? Walam yakulahu kufu an
ahad, the last verse says, and there's nothing
that's an equivalent to God. Right? Kufu
means equivalent.
You know? So there's there's not like an
equal in that sense. Right? Like, when you're
getting married,
to give you an idea in Arabic, and
they're trying to tell you, like, how do
you have, like, a suitable spouse?
They tell you to look for someone that
you have, like, commonality with, equivalence with. Right?
And this word kufu is used in that
sense also
in books of fiqh. Right? The verse is
saying, like, there's nothing like God and it's
affirming,
like, the
first verse that talks about God as ahad.
What I would like for us to do,
we'll pick up on this part next week
also and talk more about who God is,
you know, other divine names that we're taught.
Go through your Quran
and just see where there's, like, divine names
mentioned of God.
And do it as an exercise. You can't,
like, open a page of the Quran without
Allah being mentioned.
As well as, like, things like afterlife and
other stuff. So just as an exercise, go
through it, the translation,
like the Arabic, if you can read the
Arabic, you know, any of it's fine. Right?
The ways that
Allah helps us to understand him, he gives
us, like, divine names
mentioned in the Quran. That he is Rahman,
like the merciful,
like Rahim, like the kind of continuity to
his compassion. We'll talk about what these words
mean grammatically.
You know, he describes himself as Latif, gentle,
kind, wudud, the source of love.
Just find them, reflect on them,
not in
isolation of each other,
but in a way that Islam as a
religion doesn't anthropomorphize
God in any capacity.
So when you can understand
mercy and love that is divine,
through this prism of God being ahad,
it's the love and mercy that you can't
even imagine what that is. It's like what
what we understand it to be. You see
what I mean? But also just reflect on
this. Like, just
think. Contemplate.
Right?
Be in a place where you use your
intellect and to say, like,
where
is all this coming from?
What is, like, a logical starting point to
all of this?
Our ability to have logic yields also
that empirical
evidence
is not the pure basis of information for
us. Right?
And you can look at science and how
it develops, and it's not like centuries ago,
but more contemporarily
in however many decades that they're willing to
acknowledge
the existence of, like, quantum realms
and things that previously were not necessarily understood.
I see here. I'll I'll give me one
second. Yeah. You know, things that they have
to, like, recognize that there's still unfamiliarity.
Right? And there's not a way to engage
tangibly, necessarily.
Islamic theology
does not rely upon
empirical
evidence
to reach conclusions
alone. You see what I mean? But you
can go and engage
by, like, just gazing at God's creation,
reflecting on, like, how he defines
himself through his book,
and using, like, your your intellect to kinda
discern some of this. So I want you
to just, like, think about this. There's companions
of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
who they would recite this chapter,
like,
every prayer.
One would recite
it in the beginning,
he would read this and then read a
portion of the Quran, another would recite a
portion of the Quran and then read this,
and people would get annoyed. Why do you
keep doing this? And then they didn't want
to tell them.
And so when the prophet asks and inquires,
the companion says that
because this
chapter, it speaks about
the essence, the attributes of Ar Rahman, the
most merciful,
and I love it for this reason.
Right?
And out of my love for it, I
just keep reciting it.
And the prophet says, then tell that man
that because of his love for this chapter,
God loves him also. Right? There's other narrations
that say it's the equivalent of a third
of the Quran.
Doesn't mean if you read it, it's like
you read a third of the book. But
if you remember, we had, like, 3 foundational
theologies.
This is like 1 out of 3. Right?
If you look at how theology is structured
and the Quran is structured, there's so many
different ways you can extrapolate meaning,
but it's giving us, like, the fundamental
of who we understand
God to be in His essence
within an Islamic framework.
I wanna move on to one thing before
we wrap up. What were you gonna say?
I was gonna ask, so what's the first
five words? The purpose of using,
in the instead of, like,
Because
would denote something in the present,
meaning that it could have been possible,
and he simply is not doing it now,
right, but lam grammatically
denotes that this is something
that is more definitive. Do you see what
I mean? Right? So if someone said, like,
you know,
don't sit. Right? It doesn't mean that you
can't sit ever. Right?
But this is like giving a categorical
understanding
that is, like, eternal
understanding
of who God is. Do you see what
I mean? Put it in.
And I I'm this is just a actual
judgment question. Like Sure. Can't
because I feel like that same thing could
be
communicated in the presence is.
So,
like,
I
don't know.
Is a mecca tsuras or, like,
I don't know. It's more emphatic
with the grammar this way, and we could
talk about it more. Mhmm. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
But you have, like, different recitations
of Quran.
This is like a nuance point. Right? But
some would say there's 5 verses to this
chapter and not 4. The presentation that we
hear the most says, like, there's 4 verses
to it, right, but it's like just giving
definitive points, right, in response in real time.
Do you know? And they're hearing it,
like, in real time also. Do you know
what I mean?
So the utilization of even the last verse,
right, that's not grammatically structured the way, like,
a verse would be structured
in Arabic, like, if you were speaking in
Arabic, right, but it changes it because if
you were to read it in Arabic the
way
that it would typically be read,
Allah would not be in the front of
the verse, he'd be at the end of
the verse, you see, But they're bringing Allah
to, like, the, you know, the verse brings
Allah to the front,
and, like, stylistically and grammatically, it also just
has, like, this powerful meaning. Right? That he's
ahad. Like he's in the beginning. You don't
put him like, you know, towards the end
of it. Do you see what I'm saying?
No. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry? No. It's okay. I
wanna go through something, like, super quick, and
then we'll we'll stop. Because it's gonna inform
some of our, like, other discussions.
And this is now going into, like, practice.
Right? Because we're gonna talk about how to
wash up for prayer and prayer and fasting
and charity.
So there's a concept,
in so there's there's
a few words that we wanna know that
you'll come across. There's something called Usul
al Thiqh.
This is Islamic legal theory.
And the way Islamic law builds itself, right,
like, you have at the center
Mecca, Medina, and the Prophet Muhammad,
and then people like go,
you know, in the immediate,
all over the world,
they come into interaction with different, like, individuals,
people from different walks of life.
They're developing now legislatively.
Right? There's sources of Islamic law that we'll
talk about next time, the Quran, the prophetic
example, etcetera.
Usul al Fik is Islamic legal theory, and
fiqh
is basically
what refers to, some people would call it
Islamic law, it's more like the legal rulings,
Right?
So
legal theory, like, sets the rules and boundaries
to derive, like, the actual legal ruling. Right?
The word fiqh in Arabic means to understand,
but it's like deep understanding, what we call
fam. So if I said to you, like,
2 +2 equals 4,
and and say, do you get it? Right?
Like, conceptually,
you'd say something like fam in that sentence.
Is like knowledge.
Right? So if my son memorized,
like, 2 plus 2 is 4. Right? 2
times 2 is 4. 2 times 3 is
6. Like, he has it, but if I
say, like, hey. Like, show me how that
is. He might not have fem of it.
He just has it remotely memorized. Right?
And fic is different from certain things.
So you can have people who are scholars
of a lot of different things in Islam.
Somebody can know hadith,
which a narration
that goes back to an action, a saying,
or a teaching of the prophet Muhammad.
Right? There's a
well known Muslim scholar from centuries ago
whose name is Yahya bin Muin, and he
is known as being somebody
who was very prolific
in this science of
transmitting, like, prophetic tradition.
And somebody came and asked a question of
him
and he's like the the, like,
kinda
godfather of this science, you know? He's like
a a scholar in every which way possible.
And a woman came to ask him,
like,
my husband passed away
and I am in my head. I am
menstruating right now,
and there's nobody else to wash his body.
Can I wash his body? This is a
question of Islamic law.
And in her head,
she's, like, thinking that I'm not in a,
like, when we'll talk about this in a
few weeks, but if you are, like, bleeding
incessantly, a woman is on her menstrual cycle,
then she's not able to be in a
state of, like, ritual purity. Right? When you
wash the body, you're like essentially
kinda going through a what would be a
purification
shower in her head. She's like, well, what's
the connection here? Right? So,
Yahya Mohin, he says, like, I don't know.
But next to him is
a well known, like, scholar of law, by
the name of Muthur. They say, go and
ask him. Right?
And so
she asks him and he thinks about it
and then he says, like, you know, this
is fine. And he gives an example that
the prophet Muhammad,
his mosque was, like, right next door to
his house. And sometimes when he was secluding
himself to the mosque in Ramadan in the
nights,
he would, like, literally lean into his house,
and he would put his head in his
wife's lap and she would wash his hair
while she was menstruating.
And so he says that, well, you know,
if a menstruating woman could wash the hair
of her husband
when he's alive,
then
definitely,
like, a menstruating woman could also, like, wash
a husband who has passed away. Right?
The other scholar knew the hadith,
but he didn't know how to extrapolate the
meaning from it. Right? That's what fiqh is.
It's about taking the meaning from it. So
it's not just enough to say, I know
this verse in the Quran.
I know this narration in the prophetic tradition.
I have, like,
a kinda literalist approach to it. Right? There
was a man who was a professor
from I don't know what college, but,
I'm gonna be in a documentary on PBS
on the Sabbath, and they put a trailer
out. And I told them, like, we don't
have Sabbath in our religion. Right? So this
professor saw the trailer
and it's just like
a 5 second sound bite of me. So
he wrote to me, he's like, my research
is in this. I've been waiting to, like,
see if there's Muslims who can tell me,
like, if it's the same as in Judaism
Christianity. I was like, I'm sorry, man. We
don't have Sabbath in Harribilism. Right? And then
he sent me a verse from the Quran
that says, doesn't this verse say that on
Jum'ah, on the day of Friday,
you go to Jomah and you leave, like,
your work behind? Right?
And I was like, yeah, but the next
verse says then go back to work and
it's done. You know what I mean?
Right? But he looked at one verse and
he was like, well, that's like the basis
of it. What the jurists would do is
they would look at the entirety
of a text. Right? They would look at
how all of it related to one another.
Why is this important to you?
Every Muslim does not know what they're talking
about when they talk about Islam.
And as you explore Islam, you're a convert
to Islam, you're trying to relate back to
Islam at a different part in your life,
Just because somebody's Muslim doesn't mean that what
they're saying makes sense. And that's not a
knock on anybody,
right? But that's just fundamentally how it is,
You know? And this is a big challenge
that people have when they convert. A Muslim
said this to me, so it must be
true. It doesn't work that way. This takes
a lot of responsibility,
and it has a lot of, like, base
to it. Right?
We're gonna be going through texts
that are essentially manuals
that tell you, like, how to pray. That
is a ruling that stems from this.
The basis of this is basic
that these people are trying to understand,
have that deep fem that we're talking about
because they're trying to do what god
wants them to do. They're trying to teach
us, like, this is how we understand
what these texts mean
in building our relationship
with God. Right? It's not so that you
can have, like, the best posture
of, like, all the people praying
and you could say, I'm the greatest at
this. Right?
But so that we can
extrapolate meaning and say, this is how God
said to worship him. This is how God
told us to, like, treat our families.
This is how God taught us to, like,
take care of our kids. The orphans, the
widows, right, refugees,
the incarcerated,
all of these different things.
So we'll talk about where they draw that
from next week, but what I want you
to familiarize yourself with is a concept in
fic
that's gonna come
up undoubtedly,
regardless of whether you're Sunni, you're Shia,
school of thought, no school of thought, this
or that, these words are gonna be flung
in your face like crazy. Right? The first
one that you're gonna hear
all the time
is on this spectrum
is gonna be the word haram.
It's like everybody's favorite word to be able
to tell you, like, you suck at everything.
Do you know? This is bad. That's bad.
You're wrong. Right? It's crazy. Right?
Yeah. Oh, I'm a teacher at the in
the Bronx. The amount of times, one of
my students will be like, mister, homework is
wrong. Oh, yeah?
You teach it Your students tell you? Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Totally.
Literally the word for homework in Arabic is
wajib,
which means, like, obligatory.
Right?
Like, it's it does not mean anything like
that.
So haram,
like, means
roughly translated
as strictly
prohibited.
It's not allowed.
And at the other end of this, you
have a word in Arabic that's called farad,
which means
obligation.
For something to exist in either of these
categories,
and in Islam,
everything
fits into one of these boxes.
And some of them are super broad, and
the majority of them are gonna fit in
the middle one that we're gonna talk about.
And there's very few that are in these
cases, but they exist.
For something to exist in these cases,
the text that is the evidence for it
has to be decisive,
when in Arabic is called qat'i,
in both, like, text and meaning.
Right?
Don't eat pork means don't eat pork because
that's all it means. It means don't eat
pork. Right? Clear cut. You know what I'm
saying?
It's established here
in this grouping
through text
that God is 1.
That there's 5 prayers that we pray that
are mandatory.
You're gonna hear these words
like a lot, right?
Quite often, they will be misused.
And I'm sorry about that,
but
like, it's okay, right?
Just understand that the words are there.
You have in the middle
what is called Bubba,
or this is neutral,
and you can even call this permissible.
Most acts fall into this category.
Right?
The color of your toothbrush,
whatever.
You know what I mean? Right?
A lot of things just are in this
because the default
is that everything is this
unless there's a basis for it to be
this or this.
You see? Does that make sense?
So somebody comes to you and they say,
hey man, something is haram.
You don't have to get into the business
of like
telling people constantly, tell me your proof, tell
me your proof, tell me your proof. Where
there's Muslims who do this, right? But you
also have to understand
that, like, people have to have a base
to it. You know? I was teaching,
something at, like, a gathering my dad hosted
with his friends years ago, and I was
visiting home, and he said, can you speak
at this thing? And I said, sure. And
they get together once a week and, like,
look at Quran and reflect on it. And
so I had talked about, like, a verse
that talked about,
you know, the importance of, like, self purification,
you know, of your heart and these kinds
of things, spirituality.
And a a woman came up to me
afterward and she was like, that's so great,
you know, but it would be amazing if
instead of that verse, she talked about the
verse that kinda was around it that talked
about things that were futile and pointless.
And her son was standing next to her.
This kid is like 13,
is also like 6 foot 4. This is
a weird, awkward phase of life. Right? You
know? And he's like totally miserable
standing there. He's hunched over. And she said,
you know, he plays video games all the
time.
You know, tell him video games are harang.
Right?
And I was like, I'm really sorry, but
I can't do that. You know? And he,
like, stood up a little straighter, and he
didn't got happy.
And I said the word haram means something.
Right? When we say somebody commits a haram
act,
we're saying that they're liable for sin.
The abstention from the act renders reward.
Right? That's like a mercy from God in
our tradition
that inaction
in this regard also renders,
like, increase in that sense. Right? It's not
a word to just throw around aimlessly.
You then have
here in between
a word that's called makru,
this means disliked,
and you have a word here that's called
mustahab,
which means
recommended.
These are the 5
categories
that every action can fit into
across,
like, the board.
In Arabic, this is called
the akham
sharia.
A hokam
is essentially like a pronouncement
from God
on how humans should act.
That's like what the word hookah means in
a literal sense. Right? It's technical definition.
What happens
in these groupings, there's also subcategories
that'll come up in,
like,
individual schools as well as, like, across the
board.
So most of the hab is recommended
to do. Right? These are things,
if you
do your fard,
you get reward for it. If you leave
it behind, there's sin in that.
If you do the mustahab,
there's reward in it. If you leave it
behind, there's no sin.
In muba, there's no reward or it's just
just doing whatever. Right?
Disliked
is,
leaving it behind is praiseworthy.
The engagement of it, some would say, does
not render sin unless there's continuity
to the act. And then haram,
doing it as sinful and leaving it behind,
renders you reward. Right? And we'll talk about
what these things mean. Yeah.
You might talk about it next, but I
just wanna ask,
what makes something disliked and who decides it?
Yeah. So here,
we have, like, distinctions
also,
but
essentially
what this does,
it breaks down into another category
that is now a prophetic recommendation,
which we call
a sunnah
muarkada.
This is like something that was recommended that
the prophet would do consistently, regularly. Right?
And in Makru,
and what can get added in here, and
tell me if this gets like too much.
Right? As we engage this regularly, it'll become
more familiar,
okay?
This categorically
is said to be more beneficial than just
a regular recommended act
because this is rooted in like what the
prophet would do regularly.
You have,
in some opinions, an interjection here
of the word wajib,
right, which we just said meant homework.
But it's got a lesser relationship of obligation,
and Magru,
people would break down into 2 categories.
Makru
Danzihi
and Makru Tahrimi.
And the basis of what your question is
in relation to this
is now how the evidence is changed
from being,
what we say are decisive
versus probabilistic.
And this relates to the theology we were
talking about before.
Right? So if something is defined
through decisive text
and the meaning and the text is decisive,
if one would deny that,
then that becomes
like a state of disbelief.
Right? These are not like emotional terms,
but there's a difference between somebody saying,
I struggle praying Fajr,
versus saying Fajr is not a part of
Islam.
Right?
Because
it is clearly established
that Fajr is a part of Islam.
You move in this direction, and this is
one of the reasons why in the Hanafi
school, they say Imam Abu Hanifa,
very purposely sought to add distinct layers of
categorization
where he made now
a differentiation between Fard and Wajib and separated
the Makru from the Haram and Alaire
so as to also ensure that as more
people came into Islam, non Muslim lands,
that the act of this
or the denial of it doesn't render one
to be outside of the fold of Islam.
Do you get what I mean?
Versus if somebody says something is haram is
permissible categorically,
it's not that you're in a state of
kufar, like, but you're just creating your own
religion at that point.
Right?
You know?
And that's essentially what you're saying. I don't,
like, fall into what this religion says. Right?
So I think Islam says we pray twice
a day. Right? Well, no. Like it says
you pray 5 times a day. But I
think Islam says, like, drinking alcohol is fine.
And like clearly it says, like, it's not.
Do you know what I mean? If you
struggle with it, that's very different than saying
it is a part
or it is not a part, things that
are decisively a part of it. And so
here, what you have are then distinct texts.
Right? So what is something that is makru,
for example, Not like getting into this part,
but up here. Probably like wasting water when
you make wudu, for example.
Right? You're washing up for prayer, and you're
just like,
unnecessary you know, water's running,
I'm like talking to Khaled, you know, we're
not even washing anything, and the water's just
flowing. Right? Can you say it's Haram?
Yeah. If you keep doing it again and
again, they'll say, like, the continuity of that
behavior, that's a problem. Right?
But in and of itself, like a one
off, it's not an issue in that sense.
Do you see what I mean? And then
here, the distinctions would come in,
you know, like, based off of,
the
kind of the,
you know, the different ways that things could
also pair up. Right? Because you could have
something that is decisive as a text, but
it's kinda probabilistic
in meaning. Right? You could have something as
probabilistic as a text, but decisive in meaning.
Right? Or something that is probabilistic in both
instances. You see what I'm saying? Does that
make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So all actions will
fit into these
buckets.
Right? Why is it important? Because when we
talk about wudu, we're gonna talk about this.
Right? There's a verse in the Quran that
tells you, like,
that you wash
in these waves. Right?
But you're gonna see that there's obligations to
them, and then you're gonna see there's recommendations.
The order in which you do your wudu,
the number of times that you wash your
body part,
the inclusion of your nose, your mouth,
these are not from the obligations.
They are recommendations.
And we want you to become equipped with
your understanding of fic that allows for you
to understand it now circumstantially
also. Right? I had students that went sledding
in Central Park,
and
the 4th prayer of the day, Maghrib, is
coming upon them, small window, the sun is
setting. Right? They have to pray. And they
don't have wudu.
And they're in a place and they're like,
what do we do? Right? We're in the
middle of the park, it's like getting darker,
and there's snow all around them. Right? We're
gonna talk next week about the types of
water you can make wudu with. You can
make wudu with snow.
Right? But it's snow. Do you know what
I mean? So in the washing of our
park body, we're washing, like, our hands, our
face, mouth, nose. This is your typical wudu.
Right?
Are these guys gonna shove snow in their
nostrils 3 times?
Right? Are they gonna gargle with snow in
their mouth 3 times? No. Right?
But this is why you have to know
it so then you can apply it in
certain situations. Right? We're gonna talk about what
does it mean when you're in the workplace,
you're in a classroom,
you know? And it's not so easy. I
was in the bathroom in Kimmel, and,
like, I was in the men's room, I
was making wudu, and I had my foot
in the sink, you know, and I like
there's a lot of my job is to
be Muslim. Right? So, you know, whatever. Right?
So my foot's in the sink, I'm washing
it. This lady walked into the bathroom
and she looked at me and her eyes
got really big because my foot's in the
sink. And I don't know if she freaked
out because she, like, saw, like, me washing
my foot in the sink. She realized she
was, like, in the wrong bathroom.
She just stared at me for a while
and then just kinda, like, walked away and
I didn't know what to do. Right? But
you don't have to do that
when you're going to your workplace. We're gonna
talk about, like, what this means in terms
of different ways
that our fic can allow for you to
like be comfortable in your places of work.
Right? I wear boots for example,
you can make wudu
and you can, in a state of wudu,
put on
like something that is recognized
as like, footwear,
right?
And as long as it fits certain criteria.
You can walk a certain distance in it
without it ripping. You know, it's not perforated
so water seeps through it. It goes above
your ankle,
like these kinds of things,
then you can just simply wipe over that.
Does that make sense?
We wanna talk about this, like, with specifics.
I don't want you to just memorize something,
and then when you're out in the real
world, you're like, man, like, I'm in school,
my kids are telling me, like, homework is
haram. Right? All my teachers in the teacher
lounge, like, why does the dude get his
foot in the sink? Right?
It's it's something that you can, like, ease
your way in certain ways. Do you you
get what I mean? And there's ways, like,
the more we know it, we can understand
it. But we're gonna use these words when
we're talking about things. So you wanna familiarize
yourself with them, that things will fit into
this category. The last word I wanna share
in relation to this
is the word halal.
Right? Because you don't see it up here,
but you quite often, like, for New York
City, halal carts, halal food, halal chicken and
rice. It's like everywhere, right?
Where does it fit in here, halal?
Anything that's not wrong.
Potentially,
right?
Just permissible?
Halal, like is allowed.
Right? Quite often paired against haram.
So definitely,
like, this
and this
and this
all fits into it.
Even to a certain extent, like this can
fit into it. Do you know what I
mean?
And when we distill it into these categories,
like this, you know, quite often is just
referencing, like, things that are haram, pretty much.
But there's so much more that is permissible
than what is impermissible.
You see?
So
that's where, like, the kind of relationship exists
between that word halal and the word haram.
When you're saying something is halal, you're saying
it fits into, like, these boxes.
When you're saying something is not, like, halal,
you're saying it's haram, then it's just like
in this one kinda section over here. Right?
You you see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Okay.
We're gonna take a pause here. I'm sorry
we went over time. How did this go
for people? It's the first time we did
this. This is kind of what people are
looking for,
yeah,
any thoughts? You can tell me, like, you
know.
Like, asking myself these questions as well. And
I recently learned about the key question because
I feel like by a great help and
really, like, hearing that, feel like sometimes people
use it to say, oh, this is why
he should be in this position. This is
why we should. So I always, like, struggle
with that. So
me not being, like, an Arabic
form person,
I didn't really understand the context of that.
So just recently, I'm, like, understanding, oh, this
is, like,
love,
like, determined that,
Amazing.
Great.
Any other thoughts or questions as we wrap
up?
Okay. Salaikum. Thank you.