Shadee Elmasry – Lessons from Zukos Journey in Avatar the Last Airbender
AI: Summary ©
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AI: Summary ©
In the classic Nickelodeon show, Avatar, The Last
Airbender, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation is
introduced as a disturbed teenager struggling to figure
out the right path to take in this
fragmented life.
So there are four nations in this world,
each representing the four elements, air, earth, water,
and fire.
People heard about this?
You know about Zuko's?
This is your generation?
Why don't you put a picture up for
everybody?
Okay, I never even heard of it until
now.
So what happens is that Prince Zuko was
born to the Fire Lord, the tyrant of
the Fire Nation.
Abused and neglected as a child, he grows
up with rage.
One event from his childhood continues to scar
him, when his father burned his face and
then exiled him because of a minor mistake.
And you can only regain your honor if
you capture the Avatar.
So Zuko then wanders the world as an
outcast, relentlessly looking for the Avatar.
When the Avatar reappears in the form of
a 12-year-old boy, the last survival
of an ancient nation, Zuko pursues him with
the intent of capturing him and possibly killing
him, because that's what would win over his
dad again and regain his standing amongst his
people.
But Zuko, fundamentally he's good.
He has a good heart.
And that makes him pause.
And it confuses him, because he's asked to
do these two opposite things here.
Throughout the entire series, his buried conscience screams
to be heard.
And he wonders what it means to do
the right thing.
So his personal status would end up, if
he saves his personal status, he destroys the
world.
Or if he saves the world, he loses
his dad for good.
Well, if he had a faqih, it's a
no-brainer, right?
This situation is obligatory to go against your
dad.
You know that going against the parents is
forbidden, right?
But there are circumstances where it's permitted, and
circumstances where it's obligatory.
Sometimes it is obligatory to go against your
parents.
Such as, in a case like this, they
want you to kill someone, they want you
to hurt someone.
By the way, his dad is some evil
guy, right?
So why would he believe him?
He shouldn't even believe him.
Again, if he took an epistemology class, if
someone lied in the past, and if someone
is an openly corrupt person, you don't believe
their promises.
Their promises and their testimony are null and
void.
This dilemma torments Zuko.
He almost goes insane.
In one instance, he climbs to the peak
of a mountain in the middle of a
storm, and he screams in anger at God.
Astaghfirullah.
I never understood people who do this.
I just never understood that.
Pouring out his heart into the wind and
the rain.
Much like Dostoevsky's Ivan, by the way, Dostoevsky
was considered the greatest writer of all time
in Western literature.
Ivan, in Dostoevsky's book, is completely fed up
with the world.
Lightning flashes.
Hit me, he says, says Zuko.
He screams at heaven in a suicidal challenge.
It's not like you're ever held back before.
These shows are teaching kids to do this,
you know that?
Even if a character later on condemns it,
or even if the kid later on changes
his mind, psychologically it's still embedded in your
head.
That's why exposure is all that's needed.
You know when a guy makes a movie
and he pushes a really touchy agenda or
controversial agenda, but then he pulls it back
within the movie?
And then the rational viewers are like, oh,
well, at least they pulled it back.
It's in your head.
You put the seed in everyone's head.
They don't know how persuasion works.
Persuasion is not rational.
Just the fact that it's in your head
is enough because they're going to put it
in your head again and pull it back
and put it again and pull it back
until you become totally accepting of it.
Nothing happens despite him wanting God to just
destroy him.
The wind and rain keep howling as the
lightning flickers away for the first time Zuko
breaks into tears.
Unlike his father, Zuko has a moral conscience.
And this conscience causes his internal conflict.
What is the right thing to do?
You see this?
It is as bad as physical pain, right?
In the same way God created disease in
the world, he creates a cure.
This is far worse in many cases than
physical pain.
Physical pain, no one's really at fault for
it usually, just sickness in general.
So what people need to realize is the
rational need for revelation.
A world without revelation, it would almost be
like a world without one of its elements.
So he wants to know what is the
right thing to do?
What's my destiny?
Am I on the right path?
How do I negotiate my loyalty to my
family?
And how do I do what's right at
the same time?
Navigating such questions puts immense strain on a
person.
Certain parts of life cannot be gray.
You need an answer, black or white.
Certain parts, it's too dangerous for it to
be gray.
All of this inner conflict takes hold of
Zuko because of his free will.
We're reading from Pearls in the Deep, which
is a book that we recently published at
Safina Society.
You'll see a little Safina Society logo right
here, where you can purchase it at mechabooks
.com slash pearls.
He desperately wants to be good, to make
his life amount to something, but he is
tormented with all the trauma of his past,
especially his public humiliation and exile.
He constantly blames himself.
My father told me I was lucky to
be born, he says.
It's all my fault.
Having consciousness means remembering our past moments.
We're painfully aware of who we are and
what we have gone through.
Animals don't have this.
Zebras don't get ulcers, which is caused by
stress.
If a zebra narrowly escapes the clutches of
a lion, it just goes back to grazing
nonchalantly.
Like from the mercy of Allah on these
animals is they have very short memories.
Otherwise, you'd be traumatized your whole life.
You wouldn't feel like you want to be
in the savannah ever again.
You wouldn't go out and graze.
So Allah gave these creatures a short memory.
The dark picture of human life I've painted
at the beginning seems to suggest that our
free will is a curse.
Yeah, it is a curse without revelation.
Not a curse, but we could say it
causes pain, which is why revelation is a
necessity.
When people talk about revelation, they ask and
they say, why wouldn't God just send a
prophet to everybody to speak in their language?
All right, let's say he did.
What happens when a hundred years pass and
you can't relate to that prophet?
Like for example, if there was somebody from
1920, someone in 2020 doesn't relate, right?
So okay, send a prophet to every nation
in their language and renew the prophethood every
hundred years.
Oh, you know that already happens.
Those people are called Bani Isra'id.
That was tried.
And what ends up happening?
You have no value for prophets.
Supply goes up, respect goes down.
And what did you end up doing?
Killing, trying to kill Prophet Isa.
Attempting, rejecting, at least enough rejecting Prophet Isa
was sufficient, but they tried to get him
killed too.
So point being is that what you're suggesting
you think is a brilliant idea, Allah Ta
'ala has brought it in the world already.
The sons of Israel used to receive a
prophet constantly, nonstop.
They had so many prophets.
So much so you have in one town,
you can have two prophets.
In one lifetime, you may meet 20 prophets
in your lifetime.
But what did that do?
It actually caused them to not value such
a prophet.
Prophethood was lost its value.
He says here now, having to make sense
of our lives and figure out how to
act properly in the world seems like a
burden that none of us asked for.
In fact, God compares the journey of living
a moral life to a steep, arduous climb
along a highland slope.
In verses from Surat al-Balad, had we
not guided him to the two towering highland
slopes representing good and evil, yet he does
not spring into action with determination and effort
to climb the steep ascent.
So why would God give us free will?
What is the good in it?
We seem to be missing something from this
picture.
The great heroes of history including prophets, awliya,
sages, scholars, transformed souls all embrace moral responsibility
despite the suffering that comes their way.