Shadee Elmasry – Why KALAM is Still Relevant in 2024

Shadee Elmasry
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AI: Summary ©

The speakers discuss the meaning of Insurance in modern times, emphasizing the importance of protecting one's house and family due to the presence of a strong heart. They also touch on the use of firearms in modern times, including the importance of protecting one's house and family, and the difference between online and real life. The speakers emphasize the need for direct access to answers and the potential for attacks on one's own ideas.

AI: Summary ©

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			Here's a claim.
		
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			Young people today, Muslims in general, do not
		
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			need dialectical theology.
		
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			What is dialectical theology means?
		
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			It's the ping pong of ideas.
		
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			You serve me, I gotta respond to you,
		
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			right?
		
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			My response and the you're jamming me into
		
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			this question will produce for me an answer
		
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			I would never have come up with by
		
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			myself.
		
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			That's the meaning of dialectical theology.
		
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			The claim that people, youth, do not need
		
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			dialectical theology.
		
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			They need Iman, Ibadah, and Sohbah.
		
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			Well, I would view it as like this.
		
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			You cannot say a home doesn't need security,
		
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			doesn't need protection, doesn't need locks.
		
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			That's not what makes a home.
		
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			What makes a home is love, sharing, company,
		
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			eating together, hanging out together, forgiving one another.
		
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			That's totally a true statement.
		
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			But that will all be destroyed if a
		
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			thief can enter the house.
		
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			Now, here's where I find that to be
		
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			fallacious.
		
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			Because when you compare two things in that
		
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			manner and say, this is what we need,
		
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			this is what we don't need, the assumption
		
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			is you can only choose one.
		
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			And we're not obligated to do that.
		
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			There's no reason, nothing jamming us from obligating.
		
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			Do we engage in dialectical theology and answer
		
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			the questions that atheists, Christians, or misguided sects
		
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			inside of Islam are throwing at us?
		
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			Of course, we've got to answer these questions.
		
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			But the part of the claim that's correct
		
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			is that Iman is located in the heart.
		
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			And if the heart is clean and healthy,
		
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			Iman grows.
		
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			With worship, with the study of what Allah
		
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			Ta'ala brought us directly.
		
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			Forget the dialectical theology.
		
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			With study of the law and practice of
		
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			it, and the stories of prophets, and all
		
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			of the meat and the real protein of
		
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			religion.
		
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			That's what will grow Iman.
		
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			Such a person still can be fooled and
		
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			duped.
		
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			That's the problem.
		
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			Such a person can be misguided, no matter
		
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			how beautiful and pious his heart is.
		
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			Just like a wonderful home, mom cooks dinner,
		
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			dad goes to work, comes back, takes a
		
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			shower, sits down with the family, eats a
		
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			beautiful dinner.
		
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			Then they have dessert.
		
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			Then dad goes with one of the kids
		
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			to pray Isha in the mosque.
		
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			Yeah, that family could be destroyed if you
		
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			don't have locks on your doors.
		
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			So Kalam is viewed to us as the
		
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			locks on the doors.
		
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			If someone fires at us in some capacity,
		
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			we better change the siding of the house.
		
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			Well, that's not the original siding that it
		
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			came with.
		
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			Yes, we're going to add now, we have
		
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			to respond to guys firing back in the
		
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			old days.
		
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			You may come with a bat.
		
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			Today he's coming with a gun.
		
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			I got to be ready for that, right?
		
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			Not going to say, you know what?
		
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			Dad never dealt with guns.
		
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			He only dealt with his fist.
		
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			Well, grandpa only dealt with his fists.
		
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			Dad dealt with a bat.
		
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			Well, we're in a new generation now, right?
		
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			Next generation, shotgun.
		
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			What is the new generation?
		
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			Well, the Wi-Fi could get hacked in
		
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			this house.
		
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			Everything is by Wi-Fi now, right?
		
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			The lock, ring.
		
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			So now you're going to need a new
		
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			generation.
		
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			Now they're going to say a gun.
		
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			I don't, well, yeah, you can probably get
		
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			that a lock.
		
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			Yeah, you can probably get that, but less,
		
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			we need to make sure that actually some
		
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			person can't hack into our, our ring.
		
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			I'm talking ring is, you know, the Amazon
		
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			ring where you could literally open garage doors,
		
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			right?
		
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			You could do a lot of things.
		
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			If your house gets hacked, that's where we're
		
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			headed, right?
		
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			So great grandpa.
		
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			Yeah, he dealt with fists.
		
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			Next one dealt with a stick.
		
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			Next one dealt with a gun.
		
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			Next one is going to deal with cybersecurity.
		
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			All right.
		
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			So that you got to be updated.
		
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			Now what's good back in the old day,
		
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			grandpa and grandma used to sit around and
		
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			have dinner together and that's why the relationships
		
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			were good and they would sleep early.
		
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			Those aspects are good.
		
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			So in some aspects you want to go
		
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			backwards and that's what's good.
		
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			In another aspect you want to move forward.
		
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			So that's where dialectical theology and worship are
		
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			both necessary.
		
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			I want to note the difference between real
		
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			life and the internet.
		
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			Online to me, it's a place of debating.
		
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			It's a place of ideas.
		
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			It's a place where people research answers and
		
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			it's a place where people put out their
		
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			ideas and attack other ideas.
		
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			Funny thing is that the people that in
		
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			the masjid, it's just like two different worlds.
		
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			There are people that I know in the
		
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			masjid every day.
		
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			They are not on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
		
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			And there are people that are on those
		
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			things.
		
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			They're not in a local masjid.
		
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			It's like two different worlds.
		
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			The one world is all the latest masjid,
		
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			the latest questions, the latest debates, the theological
		
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			debates, names of groups.
		
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			It's just like mudslinging to a degree, but
		
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			it's also a lot of meaningful debates.
		
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			If you take the question and answer it
		
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			properly, people can learn something.
		
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			Inside the masjid, it's none of that, right?
		
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			It's literally in homes.
		
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			When we have gatherings, it's akhlaq, it's adab,
		
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			it's muhabba, it's support, it's love, it's sharia,
		
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			ibadah, dua, dhikr.
		
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			And once in a while, mas'al ilmiya.
		
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			Once in a while, a mas'ala of
		
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			a debate or something like that.
		
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			That's a big difference.
		
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			So that's the other thing.
		
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			There's probably I would say, one to 2
		
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			% of youth, as they come up, and
		
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			their mind starts to work, that ask and
		
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			demand, need answers to certain questions.
		
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			Otherwise, it's not going to work with them.
		
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			Those people need direct access to answers.
		
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			And that's why you have to literally flood
		
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			the internet with it.
		
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			Internet's like a huge pool, right?
		
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			Every day, there are more and more hoses
		
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			being put into the pool, right?
		
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			And you see the immediate release of the
		
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			hose, and then it gets diluted.
		
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			So what do you need?
		
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			You need to have a hose constantly running
		
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			with the same water.
		
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			You can't, it's not like the old days,
		
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			where a shaykh would have his books, and
		
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			you would buy the shaykh's books, and you're
		
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			going to read them.
		
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			So he doesn't need to repeat himself.
		
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			The internet's the opposite, you must repeat yourself.
		
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			You can't say something in a blog post
		
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			or a YouTube or Twitter one time, it's
		
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			going to be so diluted.
		
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			You need to constantly repackage it, repurpose it,
		
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			repost it.
		
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			So that boom, as soon as someone looks
		
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			it up, it's right there.
		
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			And that's what they do.
		
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			They take old clips, redo it into a
		
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			new clip, or just re-answer the same
		
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			question.
		
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			Just got to be constant.
		
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			So it looks like you're doing a lot
		
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			of that.
		
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			That's all you do.
		
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			It's not all you do.
		
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			It's just one sliver of life.
		
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			And lastly, I would say that dialectical theology
		
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			or kalam, it only exists because someone else
		
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			threw rocks.
		
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			Security on houses only exists after someone stole.
		
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			Same thing with dialectical theology, where you're asking
		
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			a question that has never been asked before.
		
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			Now it does have an answer.
		
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			We haven't left anything out of this book.
		
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			It does have an answer.
		
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			It may not come from the explicit text,
		
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			it may come from the lawazim of text.
		
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			Again, the lawazim is the necessary implication of
		
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			a text.
		
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			So that's where these new answers will have
		
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			a right and a wrong.
		
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			There will be right and wrong to these
		
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			questions.
		
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			Why are these questions coming up?
		
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			Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, Shaitaan, what
		
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			did you say about Shaitaan?
		
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			Allah warned us, Shaitaan is constantly, non-stop,
		
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			whispering to his followers, those people who are
		
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			far from the mercy of God, are misguided,
		
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			and following the path of Shaitaan.
		
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			Shaitaan now has access to them.
		
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			He whispers to them, argue with this, say
		
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			that.
		
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			Did Shaitaan stop arguing with us?
		
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			Did he stop inspiring and whispering to his
		
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			followers to argue with you?
		
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			Did he stop after the third generation?
		
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			Such that we could say, okay, all theology
		
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			is done, three generations and that's it.
		
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			You're not going to answer half the questions
		
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			then.
		
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			And if something is harming the Muslims, it
		
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			becomes a fard kifaya to find a solution.