Muhammad West – Back to Basics – Episode 04

			James
		

			Comey
		

			said he was my beloved brothers and sisters in Islam. salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.
Allah. Hi, thank you so much for joining us this episode for our series, back to basics,
understanding the essentials of Islam when hamdulillah. And we begin, of course, sending out our
condolences sending out our doors for those who have passed away. And the families that have left
behind in the tragedy. It was the massacre at the two monasteries, in Christchurch in New Zealand,
it's coming up to be just about a week ago with these audible events occurred and I was in Australia
at the time, you know, spine a lot, we felt along with the entire oma that pain. And throughout the
		

			oma, so many Muslims, you know, were truly gutted, they felt this immense sadness for a people that
they've never seen for a place that they've never visited. Many of us might not even have known
where Christchurch was. Some might not even know where New Zealand is on the map. But we felt such a
sense of sadness. And this is again Alhamdulillah something which goes beyond what can be fully
explained. Just the fact that we are one oma that we share this body as the prophet of Islam says
the Muslim Ummah is like one body, one brotherhood, that when one part of the oma is hurt one person
in this room, it gets hurt, and the entire body feels suffers from the pain from the fever. And if
		

			you like me felt that sadness, and you felt deeply hurt by this event, then I humbly let the one
positive that we take from it is that viola, that your heart is still alive, there is still a man in
the heart and that feeling bad is actually a sign a symptom that the heart is alive, what humbler
and of course, we say, which will now we relate to our topic. We're talking in the last episode
about the existence of a lump talk about some refutations of atheist arguments. Our last panelist is
either as Robert Tomasi, but in Colorado in La la, he was in LA he raggio. And then whenever you are
afflicted with a calamity, the thing that you say is in La ilaha illa hirogen readily, from Allah we
		

			have come, and unto Him we return, that ultimately everything in life is temporary. Ultimately, the
origin of life is with Allah. And this life is the journey, our lives, the destination, some of us
we reach the journey, the destination, very quickly, our journey is very short. Others will have a
longer life and then ultimately we return to Allah, our property, our money, everything is unknown
from Allah and Allah and it goes back to Allah subhanaw taala. And this is not just going to do our
most of the nice words of comfort, it mean to comfort you, you actually say these things so that you
can feel, feel happy that your, your loved ones they haven't disappeared, your loved ones are still
		

			there, they are alive, and they will Allah and when you have any relationship of love with Allah,
when you have a relationship of hope with Allah, when Allah is the most beloved to you, then to send
your child to send your mother back to Allah subhanho wa Taala in his key, you feel comfortable, you
feel at peace in your heart that they Okay, they're actually better off than us. And this is behind
Allah is something we say to our children. And you know, when our kids are still too young to fully
understand life. And if they ask, you know what happened to the pet rabbit, we say to them, you
know, bunny has died and bunny has gone back to Alice looking off the bunny. And so the child feels
		

			a sense of happiness, because they know, in the innocent understanding of all the pure taqwa the
pure relationship with a lot, is it always good. And when the one I love goes back to Allah, Allah
will look after those people, when we get older, and our relationships maybe get strained. And
because of our sins, we become distant to Allah. It's harder for us to accept except for those of
us, of course, who have a deeper love and connection with Allah subhanaw taala. Now, one may look at
this. And atheists may say to you, these people came to worship your God, they came to submit
themselves as required. And Allah allowed this to happen. Now Allah is all powerful. And on top of
		

			that, you see, he's All Merciful. Why did he allow this to happen? He could have so easily made one
of these angels stop this man from coming in, you could have got, you know, causes men to have a
flat tire. He could have been so many things, but he allowed this to happen. And it's a famous
statement amongst philosophers, they would say, when we see evil in the world, then either God is
unable to stop it. And if he's unable to stop it, then he's not all powerful. Or secondly, he's
unwilling to stop it. And if he's not willing to stop it, he's powerful enough to stop. If it
doesn't, then he's malevolent. And he's actually quite evil, indifferent to his creation. He doesn't
		

			care about his creation. So how do we answer this? Now, as I said before, yes, we do see evil in the
world. We see horrible things happening we see accidents and tragedies and calamities, or how do we
explain a lobbying Lee and a law allowing this to happen? Well, one of the things is
		

			That number one, one first thing is Allah has given mankind free will, free will to choose to choose
good or to choose bad. And the fact that Allah has given us the Free Will as the angels. The angels
had the same question. Yeah, Allah, why are you putting people on earth, we could demand that they
will ultimately shed blood, they will kill one another. You've given them free will to do this. So
less panatela says that there is a reason in the Allah tala Mona Lisa, divine wisdom that you don't
know. And of course, our wisdom, our rationality, our thinking is limited, we are bound by the
constructs of this universe, there are limitations to what our wisdom can be. And so panela this is
		

			not something strange, it is something that we understand in terms of, you know, as a parent, a
parent will tell you as a child, don't do this, don't do that. The wisdom of understanding why you
might only realize as you mature as you get older, so the full Divine Wisdom of Allah, why He
created us why he put us here, why he gave us free will, those big kind of questions. Even the Quran
itself does not give all of us divine wisdoms. That is a question which belongs to Allah. But for
our purposes, we are, we are given free will. And yes, one of the implications of free will is that
people can choose to do evil. Now, as I said, before, the evil exists, whether you like it or not.
		

			And in a world where we see evil, if you are an atheist, now, there's two realities. Here. The
atheists believe that this was just a random acts of hatred, that those people who died, they
disappeared. And that's the end of the story. Those parents are those family members that will
suffer for many, many years to come and make it easy for them, the suffering will come to nothing,
the suffering will mean nothing. Whereas we say that the must be a day of ultimate judgment, there
has to be a day with the one who was not punished in this world, his day will come where he needs to
be punished, and the one who suffered in this world, there must be a day of compensation, that if
		

			there's something inside of us something innate in our human being our fitrah, really, that there
must be an ultimate justice. Now, for the one who doesn't believe in a line isn't believe in a day
of ultimate justice. So what makes more sense, naturally, there has to be a day of reckoning a day
of justice. Also, you know, a point to note if you are an atheist, and then you believe that there
is no intrinsic value to life, you don't believe in a soul, you believe simply flesh and bone, that
matter is something which transfers we are just made up of atoms. And you know, once we die, those
atoms become part of the earth and something else is formed out of it, we shouldn't really feel too
		

			bad about it, that life is just simply passing from one point or another, it has no greater meaning
it has no greater value. And that's what it is. Now, intuitively, even, even if an atheist says that
logically, in reality, who believes that we know that life has meaning, and life has a purpose. And
it's hard to accept that when someone dies, they just fully disappear and come to an end to analog.
So that natural fitrah necessitates that there must be something that there's more to life than just
the flesh and bones, and there's a soul. And that soul continues after life. And some atheists may
say, Well, you just you making up these few details to make life easier for you. And that's the
		

			truth. In reality, the purpose and the strength of the belief in Allah helps you get through these
difficult days. It helps you give meaning to these hardships, it helps you make sense of the life
that you live, if you didn't have Allah subhanaw taala. If you didn't have Allah and the one that
you love just died, it's hard to accept that he died for no reason. It's hard to accept that a day
of justice won't happen. The person that went through the Holocaust, they went through a genocide in
Rwanda, to think he just was off without meaning was indifferent. Wrong time, wrong place. It's
impossible for us to live like that. Also, we believe in things like hope, we get to see now that
		

			people hope for something better. We see now people actually looking for forgiveness, we see people
forgiving others, we see people coming together. So all these positive, we don't agree with what
happened. And of course we hate the event. But they are things that have come from the sadness that
have brought so many people together. This shows you that even in calamity, that there's wisdom in
that there is wisdom and a divine reason behind that. And ultimately Allah subhanaw taala will judge
and ensure that those who should be held accountable, they will be held accountable, and those who
have suffered, they will be compensated but Allah subhanho wa Taala we believe this will hamdulillah
		

			and you ask the victims which reality Would you rather live in? Obviously we know which one in a lie
or in a raggio that we believe that these ones we love the in disappear. They're going back to Allah
subhana wa Tada. We also make the point some people say that God created evil and before you know
you can't hold us accountable for our sins. Allah did not create evil, a lucky dated choice. Even he
believes from our understanding, even Satan
		

			He chooses whether to mislead others, he chooses to disobey Allah, the person that you know, commits
crimes, he has the choice. Allah does not create evil, lucky, AIDS good. And I'll get on to you the
choice to live a good life, what a bad life. And men will hold us accountable for the actions that
you do. So it's very important for us to say there's no such thing as pure evil, or created evil at
all the the choices, and the choices that we make can be evil. And therefore there are consequences
to that. Another point to be made here in an argument that someone may say, you see people going in
bombing churches, killing people in mosques. This is a symptom of religion, that if we stopped
		

			believing in God, we stopped having religions, we'll all live a much more peaceful life, we'll all
be one community, and we wouldn't fight and kill one another. We said this in the last episode, that
most of the killings that happening in this world, it's got nothing to do with religion, it's got to
do with power, politics, money, whatever it might be an even in this case, the ultimate motive
motivation wasn't Christianity against Islam. This was in fact, this person doesn't even identify
fully as a Christian and definitely not a practicing Christian. Rather, this is about race. And if
you want to ban religion, because of the evil that some religious people do in the name of the
		

			religion, so you want to ban religion, because some crazy people misuse or misunderstand the
religion, then you should ban all races apart, it was done in the name of race, this killing was
done in the name of race, you should ban you know, all white males, you should ban In fact, this
person drove a call. So we should ban cause, we can see the silliness in this kind of thinking that
if religion, like your vehicle, like weapons, like the internet, it can be used for good or for
evil. And, you know, the majority of the people of this world have faith, whether you walk into a
church on a Sunday, or into a synagogue on a Saturday, or into a mosque on a Friday, or into any
		

			other place of worship, you'd find the message of that religion 99.9 times being a message of peace
and love a message of helping and being good to your neighbor, you know, respecting life caring for
life, that there is an ultimate God that you are created here for a purpose. And that is a message
of goodness, you know, if we didn't have religion, without a doubt, we'd find so much more killing
so much more violence, we live in a time where human life has become cheap, it's meaningless, people
kill you for five grand in your pocket, and Subhanallah if you really believed in a divine power,
that this is a creation of the Creator, that this person was put here for a reason. And there's a
		

			day of judgment and reckoning, you would stop, you would think twice in what you were doing. In
fact, I firmly believe that if people were more religious, we would have less fighting and less
killing. We live in a time where Allah has become more and more irrelevant. And we see people
committing all sorts of heinous and evil crimes, Allah spawn, tada assist us. So this is a very
clear fallacy, that if religion wasn't needed with at least fighting, we see people don't need an
excuse to kill one another. And religion is just a tool to preach hatred, and those who preach
hatred in the name of any religion, whether it's in the name of Islam, or any other religion, or
		

			even atheists. What you have been in communist countries, these are atheists in China, for example,
it's not in the name of any kind of religion, but rather in terms of an identity, that they are
harming millions and millions of Muslims Muslim make it easy for our brothers and sisters. It's got
nothing to do with religion. So we've spoken about a few, you know, questions and a number of
questions and arguments that atheists may arise. And some people have come and said, you know, the
very famous argument, if you believe in Allah, we say what evidence you have we say, well, the
universe is the evidence that if it wasn't for an Allah, who created the universe, I mean, the next
		

			argument is a hadith about this, the person will say, well, in who created Allah, and the promises
of the new year, this is from shaytaan. But let's discuss that question. Someone will say, Well,
okay, you saying that, because that is a universe. And we know that the universe had a beginning, we
there was a big bang, you know, at some point, the universe didn't exist, and then all of a sudden,
it came into existence, we know that it cannot create itself. We know that, throughout the universe,
we haven't seen creation coming out of nothingness. So we believe that there was an external for
someone outside of the universe made the universe, you know, like the someone outside of the cake,
		

			bake the cake. So there's a baker and there's a cake. So now the next question is, well, if the cake
was made, the universe was made, then who made the maker? Who made the maker? Now, if we said that
Allah subhana wa, Donna was, you know, the creator was created, then we'll ask, well, who created
that creator? and so on and so forth? For infinity? We'll keep asking this question. So we say that
the one who created all of creation ultimately goes back to the one who is not created. I repeat
that again, that we know that if there wasn't very philosophically that everything in existence,
there had to be an original cause one that caused this integration, one that brought it into being
		

			and behind that they
		

			has to be someone who did not have an origin, someone that was not created. Because if that one had
a creator, then who created him and who created him, and so on and so forth. So we say no really we
understand we're beginning to understand of the attributes of Allah is that we know for a fact that
this creation has a finite beginning. And the one who created this creation was someone external
outside of it, who did not have a beginning, independent of his creation was independent of
creation, this is actually the only logical thing to assert. Because everything else is illogical.
We know that the creation could not have made itself we know that the creation could not have come
		

			from nothing. And we know that if the Creator, the one who made it had a beginning, then he would
have a creator. So therefore, the creator of all things should be without a beginning without a
start. And that's what makes him God. That's what makes him divine. Another logical fallacy. People
will say, Well, if God can do everything, can he create a rock so big, that he can't lift it? If
Allah can only make a rock so massive and so heavy, that he himself cannot lift it? Obviously,
there's no answer to this? Because if you say, yes, he can, because powerful, then you say, Ah, he's
failed, because he created something bigger than himself. How do we answer a question like this? In
		

			reality, the question is nonsense. It's nonsensical. So you can't get an answer. It's like me
asking, Can you create a circle with the sides? Or can you create a sway that is around you'll say
such a thing is impossible or doesn't exist? The question is nonsense. Can you create an app that
goes down? The ease? No answer. It's not even a question. We shouldn't ask irrational questions,
because Allah subhanho wa Taala, the answer that you provide is not irrational. So Allah subhanaw
taala, we said he can do everything. And there is nothing beyond his power or his control. He on on
this universe, we are bound by space and time and direction, although it's not bound by these things
		

			a lot. As we said, This is what makes him divine. And this is we need to talk about the concept of
God, it's about his ability transcends our ability that we cannot apply our rationality and our
universe upon Allah subhanaw taala, because he's outside of it, as we, you know, in line with Allah,
we don't give examples. There's a difference between the cake and the baker. And what you see inside
the cake is not the rules and the the recipe and the restrictions, what's inside of the universe is
not applied to Allah subhanaw taala. So these are some, you know, logical fallacies or logical
questions that are just really confusions, and not really answers to anything, but just done to
		

			create doubts, and are very easily dispelled. But in reality, the majority of the atheist we find it
isn't the case that they disbelieve in the creator purely on logical sense. Rather, it's an
emotional rejection of a law. It's like the person that says, I don't have a father. Now, obviously,
he doesn't deny the existence of his father, they say, I don't have a relationship with my father, I
don't want to know my father, I don't want to acknowledge Him. And this is the reality with most
atheists today. It's more a rejection on a spiritual level, even they don't believe in spirituality,
but rather, it's an emotional rejection of Allah subhanaw taala. And that is something which is very
		

			dangerous because we find in the world we live in, we live in a world where Allah has become more
and more irrelevant. Many people they live their life, even if they don't tick a box and salmon
atheists, if you ask them, How much relevance does God have in your life, they'll say very, very
little, I go to my work, when I'm sick, I go to the doctor, my salary comes in, when I'm hungry, I
go to the shop. So I live a life which is almost completely absent of Allah subhanho data, and even
those of us that are practicing in our religion, we can make Salah five times a day, go to the
mosque, and almost be on autopilot, that we never even had a relationship a lot and the true essence
		

			of this religion, what is Islam all about? As we said, Islam is about your relationship. The
relationship like Nabil Brahim said that whenever I'm in difficulty that when I tend to I don't need
to go through an Imam O'Shea or Maulana Azad or kurama, to an idol or statue, or star or anything
else, I don't need to go through any other creation, I go straight to the Creator. This is what the
beauty of our religion is, the religion of Islam is about you having a personal relationship with
Allah, about you speaking to Allah, about you, being connected to Allah, throughout your life, and
everything you do is about being connected to Allah. That is really what our religion is all about.
		

			And if you can accept that, if you can accept that he is a creator, that there isn't Allah, and that
the most purest form of monotheism is that human IE we have a direct link, whenever I need anything
I can turn to him. He's constantly watching over me. I don't need to go through an intermediary, if
that is what brings contentment to your heart, and that is law in the law. That is really what our
religion is all about. And that is really the secret and the essence of, of Islam. And to conclude,
you might find someone that says you know what, I believe in God, but I don't believe in a religion.
It's usually called as agnosticism and that's not the
		

			Through word agnostics are those who say, I don't know if there's a God, I don't really I don't say
yes, I don't say no, I'm still undecided. That's through agnosticism. But people have used this to
describe themselves as I'm spiritual. Meaning I believe in God, I haven't gone to the I believe in a
soul. I believe that is life after death, I believe in all these things, because as we said, the
natural filter of man prohibits you from not believing in these things. So I don't accept through
atheism, I believe there's more to life than what I see. But I don't believe in religion, many I've
looked at all the religions, and none of them have impressed me. None of them resonate with me. Now,
		

			there's a number of issues to mention on this is not okay. Does Islam not? What does Islam say about
this? So we say that it's illogical to believe that if you believe in God, then naturally the next
step is, well, God would have been giving us instructions in what to do. God wouldn't have just left
us God wouldn't have just deserted us. God created us. And there's a reason and he must tell us what
that reason is. And he must show us the way that is the responsibility of a god. And therefore, if
you just believed whatever you want to believe, it's rather you just making up as you go along. So
you feel like you know, people will tell me, I believe in God, and I worship him. How do you worship
		

			Him? Well, I meditate, I think I just, I do whatever comes naturally to me. Well, in reality, you
just believing and following yourself, as Allah says, you have made your heart, your God you have
made whatever you feel is good, whatever is good for you, you've made that correct. And then what's
good for me might be something different, and it might be good for someone else or something else.
This cannot be the way we live. Rather, God has to if he exists, he has to give us guidance is his
responsibility and show us the way because as we say, the tools that we have science, technology,
our minds are history, they are not ultimately definitive, they cannot ultimately show us the way
		

			God is we depend on revelation. So while we have rational thought, and we have logic and intellect,
and these are important tools, there are only tools, but we need a roadmap, we need a guidance, and
that is a revelation. And therefore you have to believe in religion, and you have to be able to find
a way to get to God. So agnosticism we I, as I said, I'm a spiritual person, but I don't believe in,
in a formal religion, rather, the problem is not it's not that God didn't give a religion, maybe you
haven't fully understood the religions of the earth. Or you see the people that practice that
religion, they have not, you know, they have left you feeling uninspired, it is your responsibility,
		

			my responsibility to actually explore the religions, and look at what makes them true or false. What
are their messages and see, using this intellect that Allah has given us all is now giving you a
mind is giving you the ability, the tools to look for evidences, and then you find the truth. And
that's why from an Islamic perspective, Allah began this could earn with eco read, use your mind,
and Islam, don't accept Islam, blindly test it, and see if this really came from a divine being.
Because Allah subhanaw taala, if you accept is there, the next step for you is you have to believe
in Revelation, because it will be meaningless thing for if He created us, and he disappeared. And he
		

			just left us to our own devices. And what is the purpose of all of this? So the next logical step
is, well, if God exists, well, what does he want from me? And how do I know when I see hundreds of
different religions? How do I know which one is true and which one is false? How do I determine the
truth? And so we will look at in Shaolin next episode. What makes Islam true? How can I believe it?
What evidence is there for the truth of Islam? And how do I know that this comes from God? And how
should I follow it in sha Allah, Allah? Hi, thank you so much for any comments, concerns, questions,
which will come, I said, I want to come on