No Doubt Course #04 – 10 strategies on how to deal with your and other people’s doubts

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa Salatu was Salam ala rasulillah crema bad. So welcome to this. What are we the fourth week of the no doubt,

session course whatever you want to call it 10 strategies on how to deal with your and other people's doubts. Now, typically what happens is that when we start the sessions, we'd like to go over what we had covered in the previous sessions. And I'm going to follow that same,

that same activity that same, so now you can call it and review some of those some of the the the strategies that we've already covered, and we've covered, I believe we've covered about four, and today will be our fifth strategy. But before I get into the specific strategies that were covered, I think it's important to kind of recalibrate ourselves and kind of look at where we are in this journey through these strategies. Because remember, there were some prerequisites that Hamza had covered in the very first class. And I wanted to just reiterate and touch upon some of those prerequisites, some of those some of those ideas that we need to have before we enter into, before

we enter into these strategies. And before we we ponder upon these strategies, so one of the things that he mentioned, which I took a lot of benefit from, and that was the idea that we want to

stand in the possibility. And the idea is that to stand in the possibility that these strategies are going to they're going to work. Now, one of the things is, is that that predisposition that a person has, whenever you start any endeavor, is going to determine how much benefit you take out of this particular endeavor that you are engaged in.

And so this course is no different. If you're coming in to this course thinking, Well, you know, what, I'm going to go through this, all of these strategies, and my intention is to disprove all of these strategies. And to be honest, I think you could very well do that. And I don't have any tells you that, frankly. And the thing is, is because it has to do with your, you know, where you are, in the sense that if you're not open, if you don't have this epistemic humility, this humility, that says, okay, that perhaps these strategies will indeed, take me out of being inflicted with shubo hot with destructive doubts. If you're not even considering the possibility, then, frankly, your

intellect your ockel can justify the exact opposite. You know, they have a saying in order to where it said that,

that the that the uncle, the uncle Korea, Kava keela, right, that that the intellect is like a higher lawyer, it will make whatever case you want it to make, right. So you can imagine now that you have the the defense attorney, and the defense attorney when he or she is defending their client, it's not necessarily about whether the client is guilty or innocent. Whether they know that or not, meaning the lawyer could very well known that their client had robbed the bank.

And yet, the job of the of the lawyer isn't to, you know, Matt, have the truth be manifest, but rather, the job is to defend their client, and to give that, that that position, a, to prove the position basically. And so that's true with with any endeavor you pretty much engage with, especially when it comes to

this idea of dealing with shubo. Hot, right, and specifically, the 10 strategies we're talking about. So right from the onset, we want to stand in the possibility that these strategies are going to work have a type of humility. And you know, this is a this is a strategy that even when we look at the Koran, the Quran employs this strategy, and not really a strategy, but the idea of this predisposition, the fact that you have to be in a certain mindset before you traverse any sort of path of knowledge or whatever it might be, whatever sort of endeavor that you're going upon. So for instance, right after Sunil factor in the second chapter of the Quran in Surah Al Baqarah

I'm sure many of you know the first opening Ayat of Surah Al Baqarah, Alif Lam Meem Valley callkit, Abu Lowery Buffy hotel booked up in that this is the book wherein there is no doubt, right? There's no rape. There's nothing to doubt there's no doubt. But and this is a guidance, but a guidance for who exactly lil moved up in the concept of taqwa is, in fact, very profound. You know, it comes to this idea of a person understanding that they want to protect themselves, that if there is some negative consequence to the path that they're taking, they want to be very careful on that path. I'm going to have Bob, early on, he gave the example of a person walking through a thorny patch, in the

sense that they're going to be lifting up their their lower garment and carefully walking through it because they don't they want to avoid harm. And just like that, if that is the predisposition that you're starting from, if that is your starting point, to say that, look, I'm open, I don't want in the end, I want to save myself from anything negative. If that is the the mentality that we're starting with, if that is the the, the base state that we're starting with, then these 10 strategies, you know, are going to be in shot law, very, very effective. And it becomes very important, because, look, when we think about where we're starting, no one can say that we start

from a point zero, meaning that you start in a belief in nothing, or a belief where we're going to start with a clean slate, and we have absolutely nothing to hang our hats on. Okay. In other words, someone could very well say, look, this whole, this whole series is about doubts. But the position that I'm going to start with is that I doubt everything.

Okay, now, someone may say, Okay, well, that's an interesting position to start with, you're going to basically doubt everything. So in other words, what they're saying is, you can't be sure of anything. That's where they're starting from. Okay. Now, that person you want to ask them, so you can't be sure of anything? Are you sure about that? Because there has to be at least one thing that is absolute, at least one thing that you're sure about before you start on any endeavor. And that particular starting point, again, it can't be in a vacuum, it has to be something that you that is absolute. Okay. And in fact, the very term absolut comes from this idea of absolute, that which is

not soluble. So it's like the person that comes and says, I have the perfect solvent, and it can dissolve anything. So I can use my, my, my, my mind, and my rationality can solve every single problem, there's nothing you can't solve. So it's like the person that says, I have this solvent it is it is it can dissolve anything. So you want to ask that person, what bottle will you keep that solvent in? That bottle is absolute that which is not soluble, that which is not solvable, but by necessity, you need it to hold that solvent in. So when we think about, you know, our rationality, we know that by necessity, there must be something outside of our rationality, that we start from a

starting point, and it can't be a zero starting point or a vacuum starting point, it has to be something. So from that perspective, the starting point of this course, was that our first principle, our starting point, is the fitrah.

And so we spoke at length about what we mean by the fitrah, we said that you know that there was a few opinions related to that. One opinion was that it basically holds the knowledge of God. But I would argue that the fitrah is our starting point that which lies outside of, you can say pure rationality, and yet without it, you can't move forward. So it is our starting point. So when when I was talking about standing in the possibility that you have to stand in the possibility of these strategies, working with the starting point that indeed, a lot exists. Now, you may doubt that you may be coming from a position saying, Well, I'm not sure about that. You may have left Islam, you

may be thinking about Islam, but I'm saying for the purpose of this series, just stand in the possibility because you have to start somewhere. So our starting point, is the fitrah. And of course, as Hamza had mentioned, that there are certain things that cloud the fitrah, meaning the fitrah is your tool by which you're able to see truth.

And that tool can be clouded, it can be blocked. And there are many things that would actually block this tool. So one of the things that Hamza had mentioned is the spiritual disease of our Sarge is like witnessing yourself in the sense that you stand outside of yourself. And you look, and you're amazed about how great you are. Right? So just that, that same position of saying, Well, look, you know, I already know what I need to know, I already, I'm already at the point I need to be. And so I am just so amazing. And by the way, this happens to people who are practicing religious people as well, right, you can stand outside of yourself, witness yourself, and be inflicted with the disease

of urge, considering yourself great, because you prayed the 100 last night. And so in a, in a type of metaphorical sense, you're standing outside of your own self and witnessing yourself and admiring yourself. This becomes something that blocks a person from the truth. It's that that ego that one has, okay, so it could be you know, it could be this very disease that blocks the Fitbit or Brock's, you can say the heart from accepting what is reality what is true. Now, so we, you know, we, you know, we spoke about this, we said, Our starting point is the fifth row, our first principle is the fifth row. And the means by which this fifth row is unclouded by which you're able to see, and I'm

gonna get into this concept of seeing in a little bit

is done by a number of it can be there are a number of things that you can employ to uncover the federal right one of those that's, that's on the slide, there is revelation. We'll talk about that a little bit. Today, rational arguments will talk about experiences to some extent, right? There are some spiritual experiences that you can have, that would unclog the fifth row. And of course, reflection and introspection, okay, introspection, meaning, reflecting upon those deep existential questions. Why are you here? You know, how did you get here, and what happens when you die? You know, that going back to the concept of standing in the possibility, every person, you know, they,

they have certain knowledge that you kind of know about, all right. And the idea is, is that you would know about this, you have knowledge that that is almost abstract in a certain way, this abstract knowledge, it actually in order for it to be of any benefit, because remember, our starting point is I'm going I need to traverse this path in order to benefit myself, in order to protect myself from harm. And abstract knowledge can be beneficial. And it could just be just that abstract, what moves abstract knowledge from being beneficial or just being or being nothing is implementing that. And so when we talk about reflection introspection, part of what we're thinking about, is

having the initial question of your existence, why are you here? You know, where did you come from? And what happens when you die? Right? Those are essential questions that, you know, everyone, at some point in time would think about you or at least hope they would think about. So the question of death, for instance. I mean, that's in a sense, that's a type of abstract knowledge. Everybody knows that they're going to die. Right? Whether you're Muslim, whether you're not Muslim, whether you're whatever the idea is, you are, you have this knowledge, you're going to die.

How many people act upon that knowledge to say, Okay, well, if that's the case, I know for a fact I'm going to die. What am I going to do about it? How will I prepare for it? And having that predisposition, puts a person with an ability to think clearly or rather the fitrah to be unclouded for them to see the truth? I'm get again, I'm going to get to this concept, but what we mean by seeing here, but it goes back to reflection, introspection, about how exactly to see the truth as the truth. Okay, so we spoke about the fifth, the thing, some of the elements that make cloud the fifth row.

And then we, you know, we we spoke about a few other things then launched into some of the strategies. So what we've covered so far, we've covered the strategy to be aware, no attention, to make the distinction and your environment and today inshallah, we're going to be covering the strategy of studying Islam. Before I do that, let's briefly very briefly inshallah, look at some of the strategies that we have already covered. So let me look at the first one. The idea of being

Where,

when we understand that there are, there are things that will take us away from our base state or that base.

assumption, the belief in God that Islam is true that the prophet SAW Selim was truly a messenger, etc.

If there are, if we know that there are certain things that will take us away from those core foundational fundamental beliefs, then those are things that we need to be aware of. And this was a practice of the companions as well. So you have a hadith related by Jose fable of the man who says, and this is actually very profound, by the way, he says that the people used to ask Allah's Messenger about the good. He says, you know, canon NASS, yes, aluna rasulillah. He, Anil hired, that the people used to ask Allah messenger about the good,

what can do, but mice As for myself, as Allah who are in the shop, and the shop, I used, but as for myself, I used to ask him about the evil. Why, for the fear that it might overtake me. And this is, as we've already covered this in some depth, that this is a very, this is a strategy that it's not, it's not some sort of

you shouldn't be going through some sort of eureka moment right now saying, oh, wow, that's, that's a brilliant strategy. How come I didn't think about that? This is when you, you know, when you think about anything, this is something that you would want to implement, okay. The example that Hamza had given was about, you know, jumping into shark infested waters, okay? Now, if you're aware that there are dangerous sharks in the water, you know, a rational human being is not going to jump in, at least they're not going to jump in without some sort of strategy to be able to navigate those waters. Right. And so, therefore, if that is the case, when it comes to, you know, your physical

body, how much more so when it comes to the most important thing that you have, which is that core foundational, fundamental beliefs, okay? That imagine that you have, and that's why the prophets of Salaam, himself used to supplicate to Allah subhanho wa Taala. He would say things like yamaoka libelle, aloo sublett Lb Allah denecke Oh, Turner of hearts, keep my heart firm upon your religion. And this is this is not myself, this is not, you know, all of you, any of you. This is the person that was getting direct revelation, direct Ye, right, he's getting you know, this is not you know, he's not reading the Quran generations later sallallahu sallam, but rather, he's getting direct way.

And he is making this supplication, obviously, one of the elements of that is to so that we can learn it, and we can implement it. But the first so the first strategy we learned and that we were trying to implement is to be aware that to understand that there are negative forces out there, that those shewhart that are going to have an effect upon us. So if one of the things we need to do then is to avoid those shubo hot, right. And that can be you know, if you know that, that that that those sugar hot exists online, for instance, you know, a lot of times what happens is, is that you get online, and you start to read certain websites. And you know, those websites are basically, you

know, speaking about shoe hut, right how to critique Islam, for instance, you may have certain Christian missionary sites. And the

purpose of those sites is a critique of, let's say, the idea, or a critique of certain

theological principles in Islam, and so on. Now, if you know that's the case, then what should you do? Well, first thing if you're trying to avoid those shubho heart is to avoid the sugarwod. Right, if you know that's there, avoid the websites, you know. Now, that's not to say that you'll never be able to engage in those things, but the idea is at kind of this initial stage, you want to avoid those places. So, we said to understand, okay, so the second strategy that we had, second strategy was to not pay attention, no attention given all right, you will get your heart you will get these destructive doubts that come to you. And as the Hadeeth abou Herrera mentioned that the Prophet

sallallahu Sallam said that Satan will come to one of you and He will say, you know who, who created this and that until he says to him who created your Lord, when it comes to this, let him seek refuge in God and stop such thoughts and another narration. Let him say

Have faith in God, man to the law. Right? Remember, it goes back to this core idea that you have to have a stopping point, you cannot start in a vacuum. Now the issue is if you are, you know, if this is the thought process, you're going down who created, you know, who created this? Who created this? Who created and who created a law? I mean, a it's a nonsensical question. But besides that, it can lead to a doubt. And so the point is, is to reaffirm those foundations, right? meant to be law, I believe in a law, okay, a law a summer, the absolute, we spoke about the absolute, the idea that every human in any sort of rational endeavor has to have some absolute, from the Islamic standpoint,

that absolute is a law, that is the Islamic tradition. And so and so therefore, when you this, this type of questioning starts, even within oneself, is the place to go to is to seek refuge with ALLAH and stop the questioning, right and affirm and want to be loved. So that was the second strategy that we had looked at.

The third strategy, I can get my slides to work here is to make the distinction. Now, there are things that need to be recognized. There are valid questions, where you will ask from the position that you believe in a law, you believe in the profit side salon, you believe in the in those in the core fundamentals of Islam. And then you're asking an honest question, this particular ayah. Okay, I'm not really understanding how it relates to X, Y, and Z. They're valid questions, and the Sahaba asked questions all the time. In fact, the Koran quotes some of those questions, yes. Our Luna candle rule. They asked you concerning the rule, right? Call, say that the rule is from the honor of

Allah, etc, right? Yes, I Luca, mother, Unicode, they ask you concerning what to spend, and so on. And so, you know, valid questions, there's no problem with valid questions. But from that position of stability. Okay, so I've been speaking about the concept of the absolute a starting point, you can't start from a vacuum. What's really interesting is the term Eman because I use this term, you know, in just a few minutes ago, or a few seconds ago, the term email interesting enough, when you look at the etymology of the word, ie man comes from Amina, which means security, safety, a person that has a man has a type of religious security, not religious, excuse me, rational or cognitive

security, that's there. And that's coupled with a spiritual tranquility. And when you couple both of these, this is what we call a man, because you are in the state of stability. Okay, from that state of EMA, that state of stability, when you ask questions, these are valid questions. Once that state of stability seems to, you know, starts to become unstable, well, then you've got a problem, because then those questions are, in fact, too hot. Okay. Now, sometimes those questions are not too hot, but they they're called with swass or whisperings. And it's imperative that you're able to distinguish between valid questions. Those questions that are shareable had destructive doubts that

are going to shake the foundations right to do do away with that, that security and tranquility that's built into the very concept of IE, man,

or that they are whisperings that can just basically be ignored, right many times or a couple of other strategies we might get into today about how to deal with that. But, but so understanding that we need to make the distinction now, I think Hamza had used a diagram related to plants or something, I'm gonna look at these berries. Alright, if someone doesn't know, the difference between these berries, and they all, you know, they look good, like, you know, in fact, I'd probably go ahead and go for the middle one there, that looks pretty good to me. But the reality is, is that these berries, you need to understand that some of them are poisonous. And so the picture that

that's there on the left

is, in fact, grapes, you could eat them and you'd be fine. You might enjoy them, they might be sweet. Whereas the other two, were as visually, they may be more appealing. But in fact, they're poisonous. And being able to make the distinction becomes imperative when navigating through these destructive doubts, right. Okay, the fourth point that we spoke about, and that was last week, Dr. Rothman Latif just did the whole ahead. He spoke about the environment. And he mentioned a couple of studies, the line study, which I thought was really fascinating.

There's another interesting study where they did on people who would order dessert. And so if you ever been to a company dinner, or you've ever been to, you know, out with, I don't know if this is as true as you know, being out with friends and things like that,

you know, you might have like a large group of people. And let's say that you are interested in ordering dessert, right? So for myself, I like the chocolate lava cake, right, the picture that's there, you know, the, the the middle, when you when you chop into it, put your spoon into it hot, you know, hot molten lava chocolate kind of oozes out from the middle, you've got the, the ice cream, the cold ice cream, it's just, it's, it's delicious, right? So let's say you're there, and you want to order this dessert or whatever dessert that you like. And you notice that when they ask the first person, let's say you're sitting at the end of the table, that person says, I don't want

dessert Secretary says I don't want dessert, it goes all the way down to you, you've passed, let's say, eight, nine people, you're unlikely to order the dessert. Okay, and these were studies that were done. I mean, you have to be really kind of obstinate, to say I'm gonna have the dessert anyways. And it's not impossible. But the point is that your environment has an effect upon you. And the people around you have an effect upon you. And what's really fascinating is that many times, we're not able to, you know, see the environment around us or to be able to sense how the environment is affecting us. And this is very much the case in the day and age that we live in

today. Right where you've got, you know, you've got online interactions. And the people that are running social media sites like Facebook, like Twitter, Instagram, I mean, they have so much data, and they know so much about your habits, that they can basically engineer behaviors. And that would that would be done without you even knowing it, right? Kind of you're being pushed in a certain direction. And that's the thing that's very dangerous about the environment, right. And so, so understanding and recognizing the environment you're in, and our tradition speaks about this, in many instances, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says, Allahu Allah, Dini Holly, that the

the, the person is upon the religion of their friend.

And you know, and to be honest, this is something that even with children, you will do this, right? Like, and this, and again, this is not about being a Muslim or non Muslim. But this is something that, in your own experience, you would experience this. So if you have children, let's say, you know, you have your your eight year old son, and he wants to go out and play. Now he can play with, with Jimmy, who's coming from a household that's, let's say, broken, you know, his dad is on crack. And you know, and he know, and there's some physical abuse there. And you know, and when you see Jimmy, he's he doesn't have a shirt on just kind of running around in shorts, no shoes, and he's

always cursing at people using profanity. And then your son comes and says, I want to go play with Jimmy. Now, let's say there's another kid that lives down the street. And I don't know, let's call him.

You know, Jonathan, right? And Jonathan, you know, he loves to read. And he's very respectful when it comes over. He addresses you, he's humble. And he's always asking about your well being. Now you've got to ask yourself, which person do I want my son to hang out with? Right. And again, this is not a Muslim, non Muslim issue. Anyone would say, look, because I recognize environment is going to have an impact, I would want my son to hang out with Jonathan, because clearly, you understand the ramifications of the environment that your child is in. And that is also true for adults as well. Your environment plays and has a deep impact on your psyche, right on your personality on your

Southsea, etc. And so understanding your environment and recognizing when you're in a certain environment that's pushing you to a to a certain to a certain place. Okay, so we spoke about, so we spoke about your environment. Dr. Latif spoke, but spoke about that. And now we're coming to today's topic, and that is studying Islam. All right, so that introduction wasn't too bad. I probably took longer than probably the doctors man or Hamza have, but I think it was important to fortify those concepts and especially as we're, as we're traversing further and further away from our first and second strategy and so on and so forth. And the background. Hopefully, it was it was beneficial.

Now, let us start today's

strategy in earnest and that is studying Islam. And the point that I want to start from was the concept of destructive doubts. And specifically the etymology of the word that we use, right? Was this shoba or shubho? Hot in the plural, right? So

that's molecule. Let's start with this. And so the for those of you who may be studying Arabic understand that the word shobhaa or super hot in the plural comes from the trilateral, trilateral Arabic route. szene baja shabiha. Okay. And, you know, there was some talk, there was in the first, in our first week hums, I did mention the idea that you know, that a shabiha is called that because it resembles the truth. But I wanted to dig down deeper into into the etymology to clarify that because when we speak about studying Islam, it becomes important to understand why studying Islam is an effective inshallah and effective strategy to remove shewhart Okay, so we'll start off with the

first example that I wanted to give. And this comes from the Quran in Surah Al Baqarah, where Allah mentions, the

musella salam going to Bani Israel. And he goes to Bani Israel. And

it goes to he goes to Bani Israel and says to his, you know, the people, he says, in the law, yeah, Morocco and de bajo Baccarat Indeed, Allah has ordered you to slaughter a cow. Now, if you know anything about bunnies, right, and you know, they weren't the type of people to say something on marijuana, we hear and we obey and they take the cow and they slaughter it. Rather, they started a line of questioning, okay, what kind of cow? What color should the cow be? So on and so on and so on. Okay. And by the way, I mean, just, you know, the idea of bunnies, right and not being, you know, being a bit obstinate, and, you know, not just immediately submitting. It's not just something

that comes from the Islamic tradition. The other day, I was on a an interfaith kind of call, and the the person who was representing the Jewish faith, Judaism, he was a rabbi. And he kind of joked about this as well. He goes, you know, us, you know, we're not exactly No, we were kind of stubborn in certain things and so on.

But anyhow, so they basically started to ask musella Salah, they start to ask Moses, what kind of cow what color call upon your Lord? And so they come to a certain point where they say to moose la Salaam, all arola Rebecca ubay Ilana Maria here, right? So call upon your Lord to make clear to us all right, what so wide? What is the clarification? There's a cow, take it slaughter it? What do they say? in Al Baqarah? Tasha, Alena, all of these cows, that shabba Elena notice the trilateral route, that's their Sheen, bah, ha, all of these cows, they look similar to us. They're con similar. They're so close, in that we just can't tell one from the other. Okay, so it's not clear. There's

some sort of problem here. And so we need some sort of clarity. Right? And so and of course, they ended up and they continue to say, what in, in sha Allah who love what they're doing, right? Indeed, if Allah wills will be guided, okay. point being is that the what they're using is the term shabiha. Right? The Chava. In other words, they're so similar. We can't tell one from the other. We can't tell which cow is which. All right. Now, that just starts with the idea of what we mean by shabiha. Right, or shubho heart, they're very similar. And they're similar in the sense that you can tell they're a better way of kind of expressing that is things that are con similar, so there's no

clarity there. Okay. The next example, is that coming from the Quran itself, because as Allah says, In surah, Allah and Ron, he says, One lady owns Allah, Allah, Al Kitab, amin, who is to commit and so it is he who sent down to you, oh, Mohammed, the book in it, or versus men who is to mock him at that these are mahkamah these are verses that are in the word. The translation says, These are verses that are precise. But mokum refers to those things that are locked in place, in the sense that it's like a machine that you can kind of put in a certain, a certain piece and it gets locked in place. And it's it's clear in the sense that you know, the machine operates because of the

precision of that particular piece. It's locked in place and it causes

The machine to move forward. And it's clear. And so Allah says, Hello mulki tab that those is cannot write, those I add that are locked in place that are, you know, from, you know another perspective say, explicit, they are the literally the mother of the book or the foundation of the book. And then Allah says, what, oh huduma, Tasha behat. And there are others, which are mu Tasha behat. Now, there's a lot of translations, you'll see that they say that what the shabby had refers to, you know, kind of

esoteric verses or verses that are metaphoric. But literally, again, it goes back to the idea of Shiva, right shabiha to mean that, there is something that is not clear because they are so similar, meaning the verse could mean this, or it could mean that, how'd you decide between which meaning is true? Well, it, you know, the I mentioned that before, it mentioned them with the shabbiha, meaning the mahkumat. Those I add that are explicit. Okay, now, just to give a kind of a simple example, like, what do we mean explicit implicit? Like, what is this referring to? Well, you know, you and let's say, you and your friend pull up to a certain

711. Actually, this is probably going out all over the world. So I don't know if they have seven elevens all over, but pull up to a gas station, right, or a petrol station, whatever you guys call it, and the sign says, closed. Now you don't look over at your friend and say, Hey, man, I wonder what that means? closed? That sounds really deep. I wonder what it means? No, the sign is explicit. It is welcome. It is locked in place in terms of its meaning there's no kind of it doesn't. If it says closed yonni you understand what closed means? Now you have other statements that are not going to be explicit, they have implicit meanings. And how do you navigate that you navigate those Muta?

shabbiha, those that are so similar could mean this or it could mean that by way of those explicit verses, okay, so now we're seeing that there are there are means by which you can navigate those things that are so similar, that you can't tell one from the other. So one of the ways to do that is to go with that which is explicit, and this is specifically when we're talking about the, or on. The last example that I'll give is what in a certain sub science within the Islamic sciences, which is known as the shumba. It is the fifth of imitation.

And this relates to the, you know, within the Islamic tradition, remember we were talking about Dr. Usman the thief's section. And we said that, you know, understanding your environment. Well, I had mentioned that your environment, you know, the the samick tradition

pays a lot of intention to your environment, in the sense that Remember I said that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said Allahu Allah Dini Khalili that you are upon the religion of your friend, when it goes when we go back to the the Hadith that we mentioned about the fitrah, right, who Lumo luden yulu Allah cetera, every child is born upon the fitrah and then it is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or an agent, right? Meaning that there is an influence the environment, okay. Now in speaking about the environment and influence, one of the idea is that is expounded upon is how do you navigate a, you know, being influenced by your environment? And one of

the ways to understand that is, who are you following?

Who is your idol? Who is your who is the person that you take, as you know, or what society or what are the norms and the customs that you take to be central? Okay, and so there's a hadith where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says, Manta shahabi fomin for who Amina Now, what's interesting is that the verb form that's used to Shabaab is comin, there's a shutdown, the chabahar be comin, right that there's a shutdown there. And the word is to shut behind and it's not the shaba

Now, what's the difference without getting too deep into

the sleeve for Arabic morphology, if the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would have said month a shabby Omen with the with the other stare, that extending that would mean that whoever happens to look like another person or happens to you know, wear the same clothes or eat the same food than that person is from them. So if they are an evil people, and you happen to wear the same clothes that they wear, then you're amongst them. Okay? How

However, the profit center didn't say Mata Shah, Mohammed Ahmed, he said Manta shahabi Omen, whoever imitates the people. And here the significance is someone that has a psychological motivation to be like another people to adapt to adopt those elements of another people, because they feel themselves inferior. Okay, and this is extremely important when we're coming with this idea of the environment that we're in, because the environment that we're in can have deep ramifications. And if this dichotomy is not set up, that you have, that you, you are you you psychologically, now understand that we don't want to imitate people. And this is very different than just having to wear clothes of

the Society of the people around you. different dynamic here, again, that doesn't have to do with a psychological motivation. But here the idea is, is because you think of yourself or Islam or being Muslim, or being you know, upon, you know, Islam as something that's lower than the society around you. This is where the problem occurs. And it has to do totally, and wholly with one psychological and spiritual state. And that's signified by the fact that the prophecy sort of didn't say, month, a shabby Coleman, but he said, month a shabby omen. Okay, so, some examples of the etymology of the word, you know, shabiha, super hot. But the core idea that I wanted us to take away is that it

refers to things that look alike, okay, there is things that are con similar. And hence, remember, in the first session, Hamza had mentioned that it is, you know, something that looks like the truth, something that imitates the truth, they may even have elements of the truth within it. Okay, how does the and so what do we do with that? And what's very profound, is that the example or the means that the Quran uses in order to navigate through

those shewhart All right, and it uses men in many places in the Quran, throughout the Quran, it uses light as a parable. And I want us to reflect upon this just for for a few minutes here, right? I want you to imagine that you enter into a dark room. And there's something that's, you know, lying in the corner of the room, and you're not really sure, let's say it's nighttime, the lights are off, you know, it's just you can't really tell what it is. And, you know, you're you're having some trouble, you're like, did it did I see it move? What was it? What is it? And it's not until and and and maybe that that that would that would cause some sort of fear within you, as well, in the sense

that well, if you don't know what it is, and if it's moving Well, I'm it's clearly something there, right. Could be a you know, I don't know, like a large rat cat who knows what.

It's only you only get clarification about what that particular item is when

when you turn on the light. So now, the idea is is that once you have light, you're able to tell what exactly it is whereas before there was some Shobha, there was some there was it was a Shobha, there was some doubt, right what is it could be this could be that it could be this. It's only when you turn on the light that now you're able to see clearly. Okay. And so the Quran in a way that's very profound uses this idea of light when it comes to understanding things and the idea of knowledge being light. Okay, so for instance, Allah says in the Quran

in allaahu noodles somehow it went out mother Lulu de commish cat fee Hi, Miss BA in the last three, right? A lot is the light of the heavens in the earth. The example of his light is like a niche within it, which is within a lamp, the lamp is within a glass and so on and so forth. The point here is that the example or the the idea that's used is the idea of light, right? The idea of illumination, when you think of your physical sense of seeing, right, what they call ocular vision. Without light. That sense becomes defunct, like it, you can't use it. Okay? by necessity, you need light to see and you need light for clarification when it comes to that, you know, physical objects

around you. Okay? And that is true. When it comes to recognizing those things that are true. And those things that are false. You need a type of you can say spiritual light, okay? And that spiritual light comes from Revelation. Okay.

From the Quran, it comes from Sunnah, etc. So, from from so light is a profound parable that's using the Quran to signify the idea of being able to tell what is what. Okay, similarly the Quran identifies itself as in terms of light yeah yohannes but the acoem bohannan arabicarum oh man kinda has come to a conclusive proof from your Lord. What xana la komuro Medina all right and they sent down to you a clear light sending down to you meaning the Quran and is described as what a clear light you know, in fact, when you look at the the Sunnah of the Prophet Salaam, many times that's used, you know that we find this very idea of an illuminated bright

path. Okay, so for instance, the prophet SAW Selim said, turn off to come albedo, I've left you on albedo, a clear white path laolu. Hakuna haria it's night is like its day meaning it's so clear that even at night, you've got the tool that you need, right, that path, that revelation that that knowledge that's coming down, right? So therefore, so the Quran is used as light the Sunnah is used as light from find the anything I think, the next ayah kind of

also kind of mentioned the idea of the prophets I send them the the fact that he is the messenger and what he's brought being light, right so there's come to all people the scripture this come to you, our messenger, making clear to you much of what used to conceal of the Scripture and overlooking much there is come to you from a lot a light in a clear book, right? But the jochum in a law he no room wakita will move in there, there's come to you from a law, a light node, and a book a clear book. So here, the nude is referring to the Prophet salon by some of them have a setting. And the book is referring to obviously the Koran the book. So the point is, is that when we look at the

Islamic tradition, we find that light is the parable that's used to signify a clarification and signify what you're what we're trying to do. And from the context of what we're speaking about. Today, we're talking about studying Islam. And when a person traverses the path to study Islam, it is from this viewpoint, that we are studying Islam, okay, because Islam, and the sciences within the Islamic framework are not like other subjects, not like other topics, we would study, something you would study in, let's say in in school. So if you're studying biology, or organic chemistry, or English or history, these are all you know, things that you may be studying, studying in the

abstract in some sort of abstract way. You're gaining this information, and perhaps you're using it to get a job or whatever it might be. But studying Islam has a different dynamic. And it goes back to what I started with that when it comes to what, you know, when it comes to our starting point that we have a heart, we have a fitrah. And the goal when it comes to studying Islam is to unclouded the fitrah. Okay, the goal when it comes to studying other things is not that it's different. And so when it comes to studying Islam, there are the with this objective in mind, it means that it isn't just a rational exercise. It's not just about cognition, but it is also about one's state. Because,

you know, abstract knowledge doesn't necessitate, you're being your state. Just knowing about something doesn't mean that you will act upon that thing, or doesn't necessitate it, that acting upon that particular whatever it might be, requires an intention requires volition, and requires you to actually come into that state of being. Okay. And we'll give an example here. And this is a, you know, in the in in second Muslim zaidan autocom. In this hadith he reports that the Messenger of Allah sallallahu sallam, he said oh, I seek refuge in You from knowledge that does not benefit Allahumma inni Ooh, Vika Min elmen Lion fire woman Calvin law yaksha woman knifes in law Tasha woman

Tao what in law use the job EU law or law I seek refuge in You from a knowledge that has no benefit. Remember when we started this and we said okay, so the person they have a certain predisposition that they're want to benefit themselves. Okay, so here, excuse me. The Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam is saying I'm seeking

He's making a draw. So first of all,

remember we said that studying Islam is not like studying other subjects, because there's the, the, the the rational or cognitive aspect of studying Islam, meaning you're going to be studying the subject. But then there's the spiritual aspect. Notice that this very Hadith is in the form of a DA, and the DA is linked to spirituality. Okay, so that's the first thing to notice. But coming back to it, you see, Oh Allah I seek refuge in You from a knowledge does not benefit from a heart that is not reverence or from a heart that is doesn't have horseshoe law. And we'll talk about that in a second. From a soul from enough that is not content and from a supplication from into law. That is

not answered. What's very fascinating about this tradition about this narration is that there is a deep connection between all four of these things that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is seeking Allah has protection from Okay, are seeking Allah's help to to stay away from. Alright, so let's start backwards, a supplication that is not answered. Okay, well actually, let me start from the first one, I see Griffin from NAS does not benefit. The scholars mentioned that what kind of knowledge is non beneficial knowledge? Okay, non beneficial knowledge they say generally, they say it's it can be categorized into two. One is the knowledge that has no benefit in this ephemeral

world, or in the afterlife, meaning in the dunya. And in the arcanum, it has no benefit. Okay? Now, this this type of knowledge in the book, and you know, classical books mentioned things like memorizing genealogies, right, which had somewhat of a benefit at a certain point, but sometimes it just, you know, it just led to like nothing, there's not any sort of real benefit, it was just kind of an exercise, right? Or memorizing certain types of poetry. And you know, and things like that really don't didn't really have much benefit in this world, and had no benefit in the ACA, because there's just no benefit. Now, I was thinking what would be a, a contemporary example of this

category. And,

you know, one of the things that came to mind was memorizing sports statistics. So you find people, you know, especially at least here in the States, you've got March Madness, you've got, you know, football statistics and this player with, you know, this quarterback who does this, and that, and these stats, and, you know, this many touchdowns, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all of this information, that, you know, unless you're a newscaster getting paid to do that, I mean, it's not necessarily going to benefit you in any way. It may be entertaining, and nothing wrong with that. But in reality, it doesn't have any benefit in the dunya. And it doesn't have any benefit in the

opera. So this is the first category. The second category of knowledge that is not beneficial, is knowledge of Islam.

Now, you might be thinking Hold on a second, this whole section is about studying Islam is about studying Islam, so that we can do away with shewhart. So we can do away with destructive doubts. So how is it that the knowledge that does not benefit would be knowledge of Islam?

Well, it's the knowledge of Islam that is not acted upon, because then it just becomes information. And so know is that is not beneficial. It's knowledge that is not acted upon. Okay, so the two categories, once again, knowledge is not beneficial knowledge that has no benefit in this ephemeral world or in the Hereafter, and knowledge that of Islam, that one does not act upon that there's no sir it doesn't affect one's being. It's just abstract knowledge. Okay. So that's the first thing. Now what is beneficial knowledge? Well, it is knowledge of a law, who Allah is a laws, names and attributes. You know, when you when we start to navigate the Quran, and start to really ponder upon

who Allah is who Allah describes himself to be, and start to reflect upon how that impacts us and our life. It is things like this that lead us to beneficial knowledge, right knowledge of Allah. Now, here's what's interesting when we said that there's a connection between all four of these. So knowledge of Allah is beneficial knowledge, right? and by extension, that means they'll put on the sadhana excetera. So the knowledge of a lot when a person has beneficial knowledge, right, so the second thing is that we seek refuge from a heart that is not Reverend In other words, a heart that has know who you are.

Who you are is a term that you can kind of translate to mean like to be in awe or

To be in the state of reverential fear, as is sometimes translated, okay, that state of awe is like when you go, and you see something that's just, you know, in the natural world, that's just gorgeous. Okay, like you go.

You know, for those of us who live in North America, let's say you go to Niagara Falls, and you stand and you see the falls most probably to be the Canadian side. But anyhow, you're looking at the falls, and you're just in a state of awe, because you understand the grandiose nature, the grandeur of the, the object you're looking at, and your heart comes into a state of all right, that feeling when it comes to being expressed related to a law. That's what's being spoken about here. So a heart so the province is going to be speaking seeking refuge from the heart that is not Reverend from a heart that has no horseshoe, okay? So connecting both of these, a person that has beneficial

knowledge, meaning knowledge of a law, will then because they know a lot B and all of a law. Now, the and I'm going to now go from the back now from a supplication that is not answered, right. So I'm skipping the the third element here, what kind of a supplication is not answered, so we know that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned that there was a person who was out in the on a journey and this journey many many scholars say that it was a journey for either seeking knowledge or going for Hajj or something good. And, you know, you know, this person has some sort of issue in the midst of their journey, and they start calling out to a lot rugby rugby. Oh my Lord, help me

help me. And the prophet SAW Selim says, How will Allah answer his door? When his food is haram? His drinking is haraam is earning his haraam and is spending his heart on meaning that you know that he's he's just doing a whole bunch of harm, right whole bunch of things that are forbidden. So a dog that has not answered is one in which a person is doing all sorts of sins, and specifically related to spending money and earning money and not being careful when it comes to your spending and earning. Okay, now let's go to the third element that the Profit System is asking Allah for protection from that is a soul that has not complained and not content from neph sin Latisha. A soul

that is not content is one that wants more and more and more and more, right, you're never satisfied. So you've got the latest xbox, you need the next version of the Xbox you have, you know, a Tesla, you want the newer version of the Tesla, there's always something more and more and more and more that you want. So that contentment, the prophesy. centum is asking Allah to protect him from a soul that is not content. It just wants more and more and more, right? Okay, let's come back. Now. A knowledge that has no benefit is one that's absent from knowing a lot studying about Allah's names and attributes, knowing who Allah subhanho wa Taala is, when a person doesn't know Allah

doesn't study who Allah is what sort of impact that has upon the person. This person has no horseshoe or they're not in this reverential fear or reverential state of awe. When they're not in a state of reverential awe. They are totally focused on this temporary world. And so they constantly want more and more and more when the soul is in such a state when the nuts is in such a state that it's just once more and more and more, it will not really care. The person will not really care whether whatever they're getting is from means that are halal, or means that are Haram. And so therefore, when they do now supplicate to Allah, that supplication is not answered.

Okay, so we find this deep connection. And this is just one narration from the prophet SAW Selim, related to the idea of stunning, the point I was trying to make with this, and kind of getting into some details related to this is that studying Islam is not like studying other fields. Because studying Islam is not something you do in some sort of abstract way. It must have an impact on your being. Otherwise, it's not really you're not really benefiting from that study. Okay.

All right. And that's why when you look through look at the Koran, you'll notice that there is always a connection between knowledge and some aspect of spirituality. Okay. And you know, when when people if you ever read a book on, you know, fallible, the seeking of knowledge, there are certain key items that are that are stated by authors. So if you go to, for instance, in Manila, Zoe's here Luma Diem, and you look at the chapter on knowledge, certain eye out that are there

You look at, you know, other books on knowledge, you know, whatever it might be, you'll find that there's certain items that are almost you know by necessity always quoted, okay? One of those I add is this one here in the my yaksha laha minivan de allameh right that the barely The only ones and innama is a particle of exclusivity, right so when you see in, in Noma, it means only exclusively so in the my yaksha Allah Verily, the only people that have kashua this Harsha this we talked about this right the the that reverential awe and fear and, and being careful when it comes to a lot from, from his slaves from his a bad are the erla. Now, the earlimart here is not referring, not what we

think of when we think of allameh right meaning like the llamas, right, it means earlimart comes from Ali Morin, which means knowledge. So, the people who truly fear Allah who truly have this reverential fear, this or this state, where, you know, this Russia, like, let me give you a different context to understand Russia,

sometimes what happens is, especially if you're married, you do certain things to not upset your, your spouse, okay? So that on a lower level is a type of Russia, you don't want to anger your spouse. So therefore, you know, you know, that, let's say, you know, she's very particular about the trash being taken out on time. So you take it out, right, because you have a type on a lower kind of micro level, you have a type of kushtia of your spouse, okay, and vice versa, whatever it might be. So this idea that a person would have hashish of a law, because again, it's about affecting the being of the person that you develop, and you're careful with the halal and haram and then it

affects you deeply, it affects your heart. And so therefore, this hashish of a lot comes from the people of knowledge. Okay, so notice, the spiritual idea of Russia, of the state of the spiritual state is connected with the idea of knowledge. Okay, so studying Islam is not like studying other subjects, not like studying other topics, because there has to be a connection between your spiritual state, your state of being, and the knowledge that that that you're taking in. And by the way, that's why they said that, when you look at how the Sahaba were, they said that they were people who would be pious, and they would have their piety and it would be built upon knowledge. So

it was knowledge upon piety and piety upon knowledge. So, they would use their knowledge to become more pious, because they were more pious, they were able to gain knowledge and you had this cyclical relationship between piety and knowledge that they exemplified right. So anyhow, so we find that in the Quran, Allah subhanho wa Taala connects the idea of spirituality and being a knowledge with or the idea of of you know, the the idea of knowledge and the idea of spirituality and being Okay, let me just mention one other I relate to that. So in some of the books that that that you may read on knowledge or they have chapters of knowledge, usually

what's mentioned

with this particular ayah is one portion of this ayah Okay, and that portion is the whole holiest the will lead in Ayala Muna, one lady the lady Allah will say, is the one who sorry, say are those who are who know equal to those who do not know. But here's something very important to notice. So here's just saying are those who know equal to those who don't know? Okay, now Someone may say, Okay, well, so it's just speaking about knowledge. And usually this section of the ayah is what's quoted in books that's that that are encouraging people to study and so on that the Islamic sciences, but what's kind of missing is quoting the entire the entirety of the ayah okay, because

here we find that just like in other places, there's a connection between knowledge, spirituality, knowledge and being your state, right? How do we know this? Look at the beginning of the Iron Man who are on it on an layli, Sajid and we're all even yeah little acida when you're a Jew, while you're a Jew, Rama therapy, right? is the one who is devoutly obedient right on it to him. All right, throughout during the periods of the night, right and I laid in prostration and standing sadly then we're quite human. Yeah, little acida that this person is standing prostrating. He is fearful of the hereafter. Okay, now look, all of this is spirituality. It's the state while you're

Judah, Matera Robbins.

Excuse me, and hoping for the mercy all of these have to do with one spirituality one state. So it's after all of this, this these ideas of spirituality and state and being and connecting. Then when Allah asks like is the one who does these things equal to the one who does not and then Allah says, polyester will larina Yala Muna Valentina la Yana Moon is the one who knows equal to the one who does not know, meaning there's a link between knowledge that is beneficial knowledge that will have an impact on you and knowledge, you know, and other knowledge other kind of intellectual endeavors that you might be engaged in. Okay.

All right. So now just kind of covering,

you know, the the idea of seeking knowledge in general, right, obviously, we know that within the Quran. And within the within the Hadith literature, there's a lot of a lot of verses a lot of Hadith that encourage the Muslim to seek knowledge. But what I'd like us to really focus upon, and I've listed some of those here, what I'd like us to focus upon, is to understand that, how does knowledge

help with shewhart. So if you haven't understood, if you haven't kind of grasped the idea, at this point, we understand that shoe hot, those things that are con similar, that are unclear, that cause one to have these destructive doubts. That, obviously, it's a two fold approach. So one of those has to do with your being. And one of those has to do with the very exercise of seeking knowledge. Because as we mentioned, the parable that's given in the Quran and in many Hadith is the idea of light, just like ocular vision clarifies is it you're able to see, by way of your ocular vision because of light, so too, you're able to see the difference between those things that resemble the

truth, right. And those things that are actually true, and that happens by way of a type of spirituality and a type of seeking knowledge putting in the effort to actually seek the knowledge to go out and study. So, you have

you have these these elements, you know, one thing that I wanted to mention,

just real quick, I was talking about ocular vision, and I said in the beginning that i would i would expound upon this a bit. So in Arabic ocular vision, or the physical sensation of being able to see something with the eye, the physical eye that you have, generally, that in Arabic is called bustle.

And the the the the the concept of being able to recognize the truth, right?

By way of the faculty of the heart, okay, so it's almost like a direct recognition is called that idea or that ability is called bus hita. All right, in English, we have that dichotomy as well. So you have sight, and then you have insight. So even in English, we say all that that guy he has, he has deep insight on X, Y, and Z, meaning it's something that's deeper than just

than just, you know, just kind of looking at something or just kind of by way of your senses, understanding something. It's much deeper than that. Okay, so that dichotomy interestingly enough, emammal ghazali Rahim Allah touches upon that when he speaks when he speaks about character, right, so in Islam, the word for character is a HELOC, or HELOC in the plural, okay? And the word for your body or your creation or your your kind of external material self is called Hulk.

And so, you know, there's a tradition that's attributed to the Prophet Muhammad so seldom, although it doesn't, it's unlikely that the process of them said it or it's not, there's no sort of strong chain that goes back there. Nevertheless, phenomenal does daddy mentions it, and it's a DA, again, I love wylam whether it is truly from the process of them or not, I mean, there's no the chain doesn't go back there and it's not strong but so it's a draw where the proxy system says, Oh Allah just as you have made my Hulk beautiful. So to make my hair look beautiful, right, you notice the play on words there Hulk and hollow. So just like you made my external, beautiful, so to make my internal

whoa look beautiful, because your whole look, your your, your your character comes from inside and that juxtaposition of your external stuff.

In your body, versus your internal character, and how you your other and how you how you are with people, that's an internal reality, that's an internal working. And so just like that email because Andy mentioned, he says, you can compare this to busser and mosquito, someone who's just worried about this temporary temporary world and just kind of they're gonna look at the world via Bossa ocular vision. But someone that's going to be thinking deeper and using the other kind of kind of other epistemic tool of the heart by which they can see truth by combining knowledge and spirituality is is sorry about that

is by Sita and you'll find this, you find this in in various, sorry about that.

Okay, and you'll find this in in, in in various, I added the Quran for instance. Okay. The this juxtaposition, right talking about Basilan mosquito anyhow. So let's go ahead and move on.

I just wanted to confirm, can you guys still see my screen, I just wanted to make sure.

If you can, please just go ahead and type this because I got a call in between it kind of affected. So can you guys see my screen? If you can, please?

Yes, you can. Wonderful. Okay. Sorry about that. Okay. So seeking knowledge, then therefore, one of the starting points of seeking knowledge is having the correct intention. All right. And there's lots that can be said. And I don't want to get too deeply involved in this something that I'll encourage you to study. But for instance, have you been varied? He Rahim Allah He said, learn knowledge, understand it and benefit from it, live by it. Remember that whole dichotomy of being and the learning part, and do not study it in order to decorate yourself with it for if you live long, you will likely see a time when knowledge will be used for beautification, like a man beautifies

himself in his garments. So the idea again, that knowledge, you know, one kind of corrupt way of using knowledge is just for the intention so that people will say that you're all that and a bag of chips. Okay, that's the expression we have here in the, in the States, at least, I guess you're in Texas, I don't know if it's all over the states, but meaning, so people will look at you and say like, Wow, that's amazing. In fact, that's a spiritual disease called ugly yet, right, which comes from Russia, which means to see. So when you show off, it's called Aurora. Yeah, this is spiritual disease. Related to that is a summer, which is so that people will hear about us come from summer,

which means to hear right semia, which means to hear. And so one of the things that's vital when it comes to seeking Islamic knowledge is to have a pure intention, that it be knowledge that you are seeking for the sake of a law to improve your state, right, your position with a law, your internal being, and all of those things. So intention becomes very important, because remember, we were talking about the fifth law and the clouds, those things that cloud the fifth or the cinder block the fitrah. Well, that can happen in the process of studying Islam as well. Right? Why? Because the intention was off. And when the intention becomes corrupt, that becomes a type of spiritual disease,

which, as we mentioned earlier, and by the way, everyone, it's not that as I'm speaking about this, it's not that, you know, once you start studying Islam, you in once you have a correct intention, you know, it's settled, you will always have a correct intention, you always have a pure intention, you always do things for the sake of Allah. No, this is a dynamic. This is something that's, you know, you're constantly visually on guard, when it comes to the state of your heart. Right. That's why, you know, if you remember when Hamza was talking about that the word for heart is called, and tal lobe, which means that it's always in the state of, you know, being overturned in the state of

motion. It's always it's interesting that even the physical heart never stops moving, in a sense, always beating. And so the heart is always kind of, you know, turning from this perspective. And so therefore, you have to be on guard when it comes to seeking knowledge or anything else within the Islamic framework, that you have a pure intention that is for Allah and you have to renew those intentions. And there's no there's another topic in and of itself, but how do you deal with the disease, the spiritual disease of God? Yeah. Okay.

Just very quickly, some of the scholars mentioned that, you know, that if you have acts of worship that you do, and there are some acts of worship that you do in public, like praying and Gemma, obviously, we're talking pre COVID. Right. But if you're praying in general, and one of the things is you might be like, Oh, I'm in the first line, and look at everyone's looking at me or whatever it might be.

Be so couple that with private acts of worship where it's just you and a law, right. So again, the point is having a correct intention when one chooses the path to seek knowledge to seek Islamic knowledge. Okay. Just a couple more quotes.

You must sell that stuff Danny reports in Abu Dhabi lava Rahim Allah, he said, Oh are you when Allah brings about knowledge for you bring about worship of him. And do not let your sole concern be too narrated. Meaning that is not just about forwarding the knowledge, but it's also about it having an effect on you by way of your spirituality and your being. Okay.

And the final quote, oh, man,

this is not my day.

Sorry about that.

Okay, the final quote,

a very famous scholar ebrahimian adhan, he says that Rahim Allah, He says, Whoever seeks knowledge sincerely for the servants of Allah to benefit by and to benefit himself, then being hidden from fame is more beloved to him than seeking loftiness. He is the one who becomes more lowly to himself, strives more in worship fears, a lot more, yearns for a lot more and becomes a more humble amongst people. He cares, not what he has of this dunya night or day. Again, the point and the thing that we're trying to stress is the idea of knowledge not being in a vacuum not being abstract, but having an effect on your being and part of that is related to having the correct intention. Okay, now, so

what does knowledge do? We talked about the parable of light, we talked about how it illuminates and therefore you're able to tell when you have things that are con similar, that you're able to now see them clearly and see which one is true and which one is false. Okay?

What it does, and what we see that what knowledge does what true knowledge what you know, Islamic knowledge does, is that it dismantles? shewhart. Right? So remember, if we understand shewhart, from those things that are similar, how does it do that? Well, one of the ways is, it clarifies things. And in fact it and when we talk about Islamic knowledge, specifically, Islamic knowledge, because the source is a hub, right? Allah, one of the names of Allah, Allah hub, the truth, the source is the truth, and therefore knowledge that's related to the truth is going to be extremely potent, and extremely powerful. Right? And that's why the the, the, the terminology or the or the, or the words

that are used when Allah subhanho wa Taala, juxtaposes truth with falsehood, you know, for instance, in this ayah Allah subhanho wa Taala says, But yes, the fu bill Huck Alan Barton. In fact we hurl the truth and yucky food is a very strong word. It's a word. It's like throwing the the Huck throwing the truth at balton for yet the muzzle and it will basically

it will it will you know, it will crush it it will destroy it for those of you who speak or do you know that the word for brain in order to our mind and or do is demand and hear for yet the middle? Right? It's it's basically saying that when the truth is hurled against falsehood, the bothan it causes the brains to be demolished, right. So it's like it's like cracked open the head of falsehood, right, this you know, and

and so anyhow, so so that's the the sense that you get that it's something very powerful, not only that, but Bell yuck. They will be happy lol Barfly for your the mother who, for either who has a hip and it it quickly vanishes. Meaning when you have you know, when when you're using this the the knowledge of Islam that comes from the sources of Islam that comes from Al Huck, once it is hurled against false hood, it basically smashes the brains out and it's quickly gone. It just it vanishes. Right. And that's the sense you get from the AI itself. All right. Similarly, you have a statement from implementaion Josie rahima Houma la rahima Hola. He says regarding the fitna of shubho hot.

This is due to having a weak vision and a lack of knowledge. This fitna this trial this tribulation is sometimes a result of incorrect understanding and misinformation. All right now.

That being the case,

let's take a look at some of what someone may consider. She will hot right now.

The first example I'll take is the example of women's inheritance. Now, one of the one of the things that sometimes we hear, or people say is that, you know, women in Islam only inherit half of what men inherit.

Therefore, Islam is a chauvinistic religion, and therefore it is false. Okay. Now, there's a lot of assumptions built into that. That idea, the first thing before we tackle this, and how, and see how knowledge helps in dismantling this idea, or at least understanding the idea, so we understand what is true, and what is false. Let's understand a few things about the human, the human condition itself, were human beings, right? The first thing we need to understand is that human beings use heuristics to understand the world. Now a heuristic is like a shortcut, a shorter version of all of the information, okay? Because no human can take in all there is to know, okay, you just have that

that epistemic limitation, right. I mean, Hamza spoke about the idea from the, from the, from the viewpoint of testimony, like you can't know everything, therefore, you're dependent upon the research of somebody else, let's say in the scientific realm, okay. But even if even having all the research, all the papers on, you, as a human being are limited. I mean, how much are you really going to read even about one subject? How much can you really read, you can't even you can't think to know everything there is to know about everything. And so as human beings, we make heuristics, we make kind of principles, shortcuts, in order for us to, to understand the world and give us a clear

worldview. And so these heuristics, we use them to understand things around us, okay. Now, one of the simplifications that we have to understand is that when we are looking at Islam,

especially people that,

you know, that are trying to, let's say, disprove Islam, those heuristics that they are that, that that that they try to proliferate our heuristics that are concepts that are overly simplified, okay? Women's inheritance being one of them. And so what I'd like us to do is reflect upon the Islamic civilization, okay, now you have this civilization, that almost spans a millennia and a half. Okay? Now, this, you know, civilization isn't possible that it's legal system, and we're talking about inheritance law here. Is it possible that its legal system just had kind of simple principles, by which they kind of move forward? And that was it and it lacked any sort of sophistication? It's

something we should think about. And I'll come back to that in a minute here. When we talk about heuristics, when we talk about shortcuts, we need to understand that heuristics,

heuristics, we use them all the time. Okay, I'll give you two examples. One, you we use heuristics in our day to day usage of language, okay. So for instance, in the in the function of what we call ellipses,

what is ellipses? So, ellipses is something like if you said,

I put the tea on the stove.

Alright. Now, what you've done there is you've given a shortened version as part of your language of what you actually mean, what you actually mean, is that I've put tea leaves in the tea pot, and put the tea pot on the stove and turned on the stove. That's a lot of words, the shortcut, I put the tea on the stove, okay. Or I spoke to New York yesterday, and they said that everything's great. Now, you're not going to say I spoke to someone at the company, you know, whose name was Jill, and she said that the company itself, everyone on the board of directors has said that everything is okay, or whatever it might be. So you're using these shortcuts, okay. Which in which in, in, in the

philosophy of language or in linguistic, excuse me, is called ellipsis. So we use shortcuts even in our day to day language when we're speaking. Okay. And one of the things that scholars do speaking about heuristics and it's in connection with, you know, studying Islam is scholarship tried to look at statements that come from, you know, our sources and see what was the meaning based upon

On the ellipses that was used, okay, so one of the examples, very famous Hadeeth in the mallamma lube in the yard action in NEMA. Remember we said that in NEMA is a particle of exclusivity. So actions are only by intention. Okay. But the thing is there is a there is ellipsis here, because are we saying the actions are Jani in the bulama? Lu? He hadn't been the sahelian been yet are the only

correct by by intentions or actions only correct my intentions? Oh,

no mallamma lu Kabbalah, Toad vinyasa, or are they complete by actions? And what's really interesting is that scholars took different interpretations of this very Hadith to give different rulings. So what they would, you know, kind of, you know, expound upon this, this linguistic, you know, linguistic heuristic that we use a, it came to different rulings, right. So, if we said actions are correct by intention, it means that the intention has to precede the action, right? If you say that they are completed by actions, that's the word you put in, it means that after the action is done, you can then say, Oh, I intended to do this, two very different places to reach. But

all of that is a type of heuristic that's expounded upon or expanded, in order to have an understanding of what's being said, Now, that's just in the realm of language. This occurs in general cognition as well. Okay, so there was an experiment. And I spoke about this in another webinar that we did for sapiens, which is, which was called a beauty of the recognition of God, that there was an experiment where they would take people to, you know, like, a beautiful mountain top. And, and they would ask them questions. Now, what they were trying to study was what was the effect of law upon cognition? Like, do you think better when you are in the state of law? Okay, and for

more information on that, you can check out that webinar

on sapiens, or it will be on Sapiens soon inshallah. But the point is, is that the the, the, the question that they asked, or how the experiment was put together, was that they had people in that place, listen to a story, which lasted about, say, five minutes, if I'm not mistaken. So a five minute story about a romantic dinner.

And then, you know, it's like the man came is wearing a suit. And, you know, they sat down that the waiter gave them a menu, the woman was wearing this, and so on and so forth. So the story goes on. And then at the end of the story, they asked, Did the table were there candles on the table?

Okay, most people answered, or a big significant amount of people answered that there were candles on the table. Oh, excuse me, people who are not in this Scenic Area who are not experiencing all answered that there were candles on the table. Okay, when in fact, the story did not mention any candles on the table. And the people that were experiencing all by way of being on this mountaintop, whatever it is actually accurately pointed out that there were no candles, right? Now, my point in mentioning this is why do we assume candles are on the table? Because our minds make heuristics that we are, you're not listening to the entire five minutes. You're in fact, filling in the blanks,

right? By where the shortcuts because immediate when you think of romantic dinner, you're already picturing candles. And yet those candles are not factually being mentioned in the story. So the idea that general cognition, we use heuristics all the time, right, when we're thinking about things, and you can think about even when you're reading a book or reading, like, you know, a magazine, or whatever it is, you're not necessarily reading every single word, you're, in fact, skimming through the, you know, you're kind of reading in a way that you're kind of going from beginning to end and so on and so forth. Okay, so heuristics are used all the time, that that's kind of the point here,

right? these shortcuts that we use, in order to simplify the world around us simplify our worldview.

How do we understand gender roles when it comes to the Islamic framework? Well, one heuristic when you're looking at Islam from the outside, and again, you have your environmental factors that are saying, Hey, you know what, Islam is oppressive towards women. Well, women inherit half of what men inherent.

Okay? Now, we're not saying that heuristics by like, you know, by necessity are wrong. But what we're saying is, is this a valid heuristic, and the only way that you can know that is to dig deeper to study the topic in itself. All right. So I started with this question about did the Islamic civilization lacks sophistication. And the reality is, is that when you have this type of heuristic, this type of shorthand to say like okay,

This is what Islam, you know, when it comes to inheritance law, women get half of what we're assuming is that the Islamic civilization lacked sophistication, meaning that that, you know, close to a millennia and a half or whatever, 1300 years, whatever it might be

that entire Empire, that entire civilization did not have any sort of sophistication, okay? And in something as complex as inheritance law, it's quite a

it's quite an unfortunate and myopic way of looking at inheritance law. Okay, and I'll tell you why. First of all, in Islam, in Islamic Studies, inheritance law, what they call fluoride, is one of the most difficult topics to study. It is very complex. And let me give you an example of kind of why I say it's complex, right? And I think you may appreciate this inshallah. All right. You know, everyone knows about, you know, or at least most people, these Muslims love saying this that, hey, you know, algebra comes from algebra, right? And it was the Muslim mathematician Mohammed Abu Musab hora was me, who came up with algebra. All right, what was the basis? Like why? Like, how did he

come up with algebra? What was what was the context in which he came up with algebra? Now, for those of us who it's been some time since we studied algebra, remember, algebra is, you know, you've got your unknowns, your x, your y, and you've got two sides of an equation, and you're trying to now figure out by equating both sides, you know, what is what are the unknowns, okay. So, in the book, where he introduces and talks about and expounds upon this new science of algebra, algebra,

the book itself, which is called keytab, and wakasa, v sub algebra will know qabalah, which can be translated as the book or the compendious book, I guess, that's how it is here on calculation, a sub by completion and balancing, right? So jabber is referring to completing and balancing is referring to having both sides of the equation be the same. Okay. So what does he say in the introduction of this, his introduction, he says, imagine, moon, the Commander of the Faithful, immutable mean, so, he was, you know, he was working during the the rulership of moon and at this time, if you know anything about Islamic history, you know, that there was an intellectual vigor at this time, meaning

that people you know, that that when it comes to studying the the, the various sciences, whether we're talking about medicine or geography or astronomy, whatever it might be, that this was kind of the the apex Okay, this this this time period. So, he says that, that the ameerul momineen, right, the moon has encouraged me to compose a short work on calculating by the rules of completion and balancing, in other words, algebra, while makalah confined, confining it to what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic, such as men constantly require, in what in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition lawsuits, and trade. So what was the reason he comes up with the entire this entire

science that we use till today called algebra? What is the reason he wanted to simplify the rules of inheritance, to simplify fluoride, right? And in fact, half of the book half of this book is related is about inheritance is about fluoride half of this book, right? Now, if you think about it makes sense. If you studied algebra, you understand that, okay, you have two sides of the equation, you have unknowns. And when you think about familiar relations, right, who gets what when someone passes away, you know it, there's a lot of unknowns, you could have, you know, a person who, let's say their, their wife has already died, and now they have died. Now they have four children, and their

children have children. And yet, you know, let's say one grandparent is alive. Okay? That's one type of equation. Let's say both grandparents are alive. Let's say there's only three children. Let's say there's two girls one boy, let's say there's an uncle, so many unknowns. So what Mohammed Massaro is me, what he's doing is he's trying to now make that or simplify that in a way that one can calculate that easily. And that comes to be known as

algebra, right? Coming from algebra. All right. Okay, so this entire idea, okay, women get half of men. It is such an oversimplification. It's almost mind boggling as if you just wrote off the whole civilization. All right. Let's take a look at it, though.

in some detail, first of all, we understand that there are nuances related to inheritance law. And by the way, you know, I had asked a couple of students from samick universities, they said, when you are studying in an Islamic University, you have four semesters of fluoride, it is not an easy subject to study whatsoever. And just like any other subject that has levels, you have levels in order to understand right in order to study the topic of right, anyhow. So, in by going through this question, there's a couple of things we need to understand when we're going to allocate the shares of inheritance, first of all, proximity. All right, so how, in other words, how close is the person

to the deceased, right? So, for example, the daughter of the deceased inherits half the estates, then her grandmother would, whereas the deceased father is entitled to only a fourth. All right, then you take into consideration the generational position of the heirs, okay, for example, a daughter will inherit more than a grandmother. All right, then, there's the other thing to now look at. When you when we look at the entire framework of Islamic Society, we understand that there's a social hierarchy, and some of the wisdoms of the inheritance law are found in that social hierarchy. Okay. So one of those elements of the social hierarchy is that it is the financial responsibility of

the Father, to provide for his wife and the wider family, the wife is entitled to her husband's wealth and her own personal wealth is her own, and she has complete autonomy. When I got married, I remember my wife says, you know, it's so wonderful. Your Money is my money, and my money is my money. Okay. So, I mean, because at the end of the day, the husband is required, right, according to Sharia, according to Islamic law to spend on his family,

the woman, the wife, the daughter is not required whatever money she has his her money. Okay. And

instead, so sorry, one second.

Right. Sorry about that.

And so what we said is, we have to understand the social hierarchy within Islam as well, what is the what is the inherent wisdom? You know, I was, I was talking to my son the other day, and we were listening.

We listened to a short talk on the history of coffee. I know, it's very strange, but it has an Islamic kind of history, right? And it kind of, you know, it goes from one place to another and ends up in Yemen and goes from I think it was from somewhere in Africa than to Yemen, and then the Arabs would would have it, and then they would use it to, you know, because it would keep them awake at night, and eventually ends up in the Ottoman Empire. Now, the Ottoman legal code is very fascinating.

Because that's where you can really analyze the the sophistication of Islamic law, because it's not only source material between Quran and Sunnah. But now you're adding direct case law, much like you have, you know, within jurisprudence in the United States or any other country, you've got case law. And so one of the interesting rulings within the Ottoman Empire was that if a husband did not provide Well, first of all, if a husband doesn't provide for his wife adequately, that is grounds for divorce, like the wife can basically say, Well, he's not providing for me, peace out. See you later. Yeah.

But one of the things that the Ottomans established was that if the husband doesn't give his wife, a certain amount of coffee per year, that can also be grounds for divorce. Okay?

So just an interesting tidbit. But again, coming back to the social hierarchy, we understand all of these nuances when it comes to women's inheritance. Now, let's look at scenarios itself. So when you break it down, there are only four scenarios in which a female inherits half of male. So that heuristic that shorthand that kind of how we view Islam and a quick way to view it so we can vilify it. Well, here's the here's the reality, there are four scenarios in which a female inherits half of a male, okay, for example, the presence of a daughter and a son, or indeed a granddaughter and a grandson, in which the son or grandson will inherit twice as much as the daughter, again, you get

but even in this case, remember the social hierarchy within the assignment framework. Okay, so there are four scenarios in this case for these are the four scenarios here, female inherits half of the of the of the male 11 scenarios where the female inherits the same amount as the male.

So for example, the inheritance of a mother and father with the presence of the deceased son in this case, both the mother and the father, were inherit one

Sixth, while the sun will receive the remainder, and there are 16 scenarios where a female inherits more than a man.

So that entire idea that we were initially talking about that women, you know, Islam is oppressive to women. And one of the one of the justifications is this shorthand to say, women inherit half of men. It's much more nuanced than that. Right? So when we are now going to be considering studying Islam, let us oops, let us understand

that people work with heuristics, they work with the shorthands. And in order to get clarification, you need to actually study the topic. And this is remember we said a shabiha? Is that which resembles the truth in order to, from an external point of view, how do you understand, you know, the role of women within Islam, especially in a worldview, that that views is women itself to be oppressed? Well, this is a quick, easy way of just saying, Well, here's evidence to show that women are oppressed within the Islamic framework, okay. And yet, when you start to study the details, the nuances, the background, the social hierarchy, the actual shares that go into inheritance law, and

the complexity of inheritance law itself, to understand, it's not that simple. It's not just simply saying, women inherit half of men, and therefore it's oppressive. There has to be a lot more study led to that, and therefore studying Islamic knowledge. You know, this is an example of how once you start to, you know, study in detail, those things start to now transpire, right, you start to see clarity, and the shubo heart, you're able to recognize Huck over bottle, the truth over falsehood. So let's move on to our second example. And this example is related to the age of consent.

You know, one thing that Islam is accused of is that facilitates child abuse. And this idea comes from the marriage age of Ayesha Lila, or the law on her right, the wife of the Prophet Salah. And so the idea is, is that because the prophets of Salaam married Ayesha at such a young age, that therefore, child abuse pedophilia is completely acceptable in your religion. And it's such an abhorrent thing. That Clearly, this is a problem for Islam. And this, and this can be a very, very profound shobhaa for many people. But in this section, we want to now break down this entire idea of the age of consent, and take a macro view of it, okay, in the sense that, remember this entire

section, right within our strategies, this particular strategy of studying Islam, what we're trying to show, again, is that by studying Islam, you're able to do away with those super hot or super hot that arise. Remember, our whole analogy or parable of light is to shed light onto a particular topic, and therefore the Shobha is removed because of that. Now, if you remember, I was speaking about a little while ago, speaking about heuristics. And the idea that human beings need heuristics in order to understand the world around them, they need shortcuts. So just like that, when we look at issues of Islamic jurisprudence is like Islamic law, you could say,

we understand, or rather scholars of the past, understood that just like human beings need heuristics in order to understand the world. This is true, even when it comes to understanding certain moral realities or casting judgment upon certain, a certain idea that's considered moral or immoral. Okay. And that's basically from the viewpoint of the shadia. Now, when you're going to make that determination, we scholars understood that there is a vast corpus of Islamic legal literature. In other words, obviously, you have the sources of Islamic law being the Koran and the Hadith literature, but even if we put the quote on the side for a second because you know, people do

memorize the Quran, in fact, they memorize numerous cutouts of the Quran, etc. But even if we look at just the the vast Hadith literature that is out there, it would be very difficult for a, let's say, a budding, a budding scholar, someone that's looking for to become a scholar, let's say a legal scholar,

to be able to understand or encompass all of the Hadith literature that is extent

Right. And that's just the literature. That's not including case law. And by the way, there's, you know, in the western legal tradition, case law forms a integral part of how rulings are made. And it's no different within the Shetty as well. I mean, when you have certain cases, or you're presented with a certain situation, or a judge is presented with certain situation, the judge can make use of case law as well. And so if you were to consider, okay, all of the Hadeeth literature that's out there that needs to be taken into consideration, all of now you add to that case law, which some of that might form legal precedents, some of it might not. That is a vast body of

literature, a vast ocean of information. And so scholars of the past understood that, when a person is now on the path to studying during Islamic jurisprudence, they would need some way to simplify all of that, they will need some sort of heuristics just like as human beings, we need to be realistic, they will need some sort of heuristics to be able to take all of that vast body of literature and still be able to derive a ruling without let's say, having studied everything from end to end, and frankly, there is no end. Right? He just would just keep on going on. Like I said, just, you know, if you were to take just the the the case law that's, that's within the Ottoman

archives, I mean, that would take a lifetime to go through it. All of the various nuances, the cases that have been brought forth, how do you know, how does that apply to x y&z situation, it would want you in many lifetimes. So scholars are looking at the at this eye, at the vast body of literature that's out there said, we still need to make legal rulings, and we're not going to be able to encompass all of that. So let us now come to some let us formulate valid heuristics. So remember, I said that not all heuristics are bad. There are shortcuts that we make, we said some can lead you to errors. But then there's also going to be some valid heuristics from a jurisprudential so from from

a legal point of view. What are those valid heuristics that the scholars put forth? And I've listed five of them here. And this is for if you're interested in studying this further, this is known as Hawaii. Right? legal Maxim's is sometimes how that's translated right or, or farther. 50 years is a legal Maxim for talking about the singular. So what are these? What are these heuristics that that a student of knowledge a budding scholar, a budding legal scholar is supposed to use? So the first one is, and by the way, these are derived from Islamic sources, in the sense that they're derived from either the Koran or this one. So the first one that lists up there No, there is no harm and no

causing of harm. Sorry, there's actually it should say, there's no causing harm nor separate getting harm. This first principle is taken from a Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, a law or law, that there is no causing of harm and the no reciprocating of harm. And so that is taken as a heuristic that when you're going to judge a case, we understand that that is an overarching principle that you need to use and move forward with when judging a case. Okay, the second one I have up there is certainty is not removed by doubt. Aliyah, pain, Leia Zulu be shocked, right? Again, these are because we don't this is outside the

scope of this particular session. And this particular course, that you know how these are derived. And like I said, if you want to read more about it, you can read that on the topic of quiet fit PA, so certainly is not ruined by doubt. And what's very interesting is if you remember when we were talking about

with was was with us, right? This actually, this principle, helped a lot of people when they were having with was related to their will do. Now you might be thinking, Wait a minute, how does this apply? So when you if you understand this principle, that certainty is not removed by doubt. In other words, if you're absolutely certain about something, and you have a doubt that creeps in that doubt does not Trump the certainty the thing that you're certain about, right now, how does this apply to will do

so so basically, and I'm sure many of us have been in this situation where you would you're just about to start the prayer or you know, you're on your way to pray, let's say awesome. And you're like, do I have will do or don't have will do, and you're not really sure. So in a sense, you're in a state of doubt.

Now, what the scholars say is what should you do in this case? Should you rush and then go make will do is that what's incumbent upon you?

Or do you do the opposite? Do you basically say, and this is how it should be approached? Is that I know for sure, I prayed a lot. Right? So we're talking about awesome prayer. Now you say, I know for sure I prayed a lot, and I made will do for the Hon. But I'm uncertain. I'm doubtful whether I broke my will do between God and Asa. So which, which position do you take you take the position of certainty in other words, you're certain you prayed the heart and you're certain your head will do further. So that doubt of Do I have will do or not, you don't go with that you go with the certainty. So you assume you have will do and you pray. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't

make a fresh will do or you know, if you're doubtful, there's something wrong with renewing your will do or just making it just in case. But a lot of times when, especially when people were confronted with whisperings, you know, was was was resolved right there was wizards. scholars said this is the principle by which you move forward. And this has ramifications in many areas I just gave one in terms of will do and this also has ramifications when you're in the middle of your Salah, it you know, are you are you you forget Am I did I just pray the third Raka or the fourth Raka? Well, what are you certain of what you know, if you're between three and four, you're certain

of three, you're doubtful of whether you prayed the fourth one or not, you go with what you're certain with, that you prayed three records, and then you do the surgery to sell etc. Okay, so, so the second heuristic, or the second legal Maxim is that certainty is not removed by doubt. The third one is hardship begets facility, in the sense that when you are presented with two options, and they're both equal in terms of their rulings, you go with the one that is easier for you, right, as Allah says,

will love

that Allah subhanho wa Taala says that Allah does not want

to, to to make things hard for you, but rather, he wants for you ease, right? You read the law who become one, use yourself while you read overcome Allah, Allah does not allow wishes for you ease and does not wish for you hardship. And so based on that I have the Koran when you're presented with two choices, two choices that are legal weight, meaning one option does not have a greater

have greater evidence than the other, you go with that one, which is easier, okay. And by the way, doesn't mean that you just go with whatever is easiest, right? Because you feel like it, again, we're talking about two options where you understand that there's evidence for both of them, there's no preponderance of evidence in one case or the other. And so therefore, if you have these two options, go with the one that's easier. Okay. The fourth one, and by the way, I think two or three of these are going to have have an impact on our discussion related to the age of consent. So I'm not just mentioning it for the sake of information, but it's good to know that you know, how do you

come to conclusions is based on a study of Islam and again, part of that study is understanding legal Maxim's from from for this for this purpose, okay. So, the fourth one is culture slash custom has legal weight or out of mahakam or other mahakam right. So, that we that this idea that scholars legal scholars had that we have to understand when we look at a people's culture and people's customs, and by the way, I mentioned two words here, a lot of other and most people consider these two terms synonymous, right. So, both are custom culture, but some scholars make a difference they say a lot of is related to the society right out of comes from the Arabic term RFI which means to

know and so, is that which is known among the people, right, and another related term is maruf. That goodness, that is known among people. So when Allah speaks about enjoying the good, the word that's used there is maruf. So, enjoying that goodness that the people you know, kind of have an idea already of, because again, we believe every human was born upon the fitrah. So, everyone has an idea of goodness and part of that goodness is manifest in people's culture. Anyhow. So, you know, that mahakam and other So, the other word either is more related to a habit or or something you do, you know, something you do over and over again. Okay. Anyhow, so that culture and custom have legal

Wait, why do why did scholars you know, put this as a as as a heuristic The reason is, is

Because they understood that culture, social practices, social habits are not locked in place. And this becomes very important when we're going to understand the, the the connection that one's morals have with the culture and climate and society they live in. Okay? Because some morals are linked to the to, to the society in the culture we live in, some morals are not some morals you can say are indeed universal, or as we say, objective. So, you know, the killing of a, an innocent child, okay, that's obviously rape, obviously those things are, those things are wrong no matter what time society or culture you're in. But certain other morals, certain other practices are going to change

based on the society or in based on the time period you're in. So scholars looked at this, and they said, there are that the fact that you have the fact that there's no such thing as a culture, that is trends, historic means that you can take it and you can apply it throughout any time period, or trans national meaning you can take it and implanted anywhere else. And you say that this is just how the correct culture is because culture is determined by the people it is what is known by the society. Okay. And that has legal precedent that has legal weight that needs to be taken into consideration. So I'll give you a quick example of this.

Let's, let's say you have a judge who's trying to decide on how to distribute the the household assets in a divorce case. So now you have a couple that's divorce, the judge has to, you know, basically say, Okay, well, who gets what, that judgment is going to be dependent on where this case is taking place. If this case is taking place in let's say,

you know, let's say five years ago, in Saudi Arabia, well, if there's a vehicle, and at the time, Saudi Arabia, you know, out, did not allow women to drive the vehicles gonna go to the men, if there are certain kitchen supplies, and things related to the kitchen, according to that culture, the the kitchen supplies would go to the, to the woman, right? Again, it's based on on the culture of that area, if there's guns or weapons, who gets the guns and the weapons? Well, based on that culture, you know, that that would go to the the men, and so on to go to the man Excuse me. And so, but if you took that very case, and let's say, transplanted it to Midland, Texas, you're actually going to

get a different distribution, the judge would be would be unfair, or it would not be an appropriate judgment, to take that very ruling and apply it to the same case, if that case was taking place in Texas, like, right, I, I put Midland because it's a small town in Texas. I chose that one. But why? Well, because in Texas, the dynamic and the culture of the city is very different. I'll give you the example of the guns in the household. In that case, five years ago from Saudi Arabia, the guns and the weapons would go to the man.

In Texas, it's not that clear cut. Because in Texas, we love our guns, man. We got we got the right to bear arms. Yeah. So what you find is that it's not only men that own guns and use guns and use guns for hunting, but women do it as well. You know, my wife, she, many of her colleagues, she's a teacher, and many of her female colleagues, they, you know, they, they, they very often go hunting, and they have gun collections and things like that. So you couldn't so in this case, the judge would have to use a use the culture and custom of the people to say, Okay, well, who does the who do the guns go to now? Right, especially if there's some, you know, there's disagreement there, it wouldn't

be as easy or as as black and white, as if the case was being taken. What was happening in Saudi Arabia, okay. So, the heuristic that scholars put that that scholars formulated, that culture has legal Wait a lot of mahakam the fifth one is manners are based upon the intention behind them, okay. And I think this to understand this, we could we could, we could, we could, we could look at the the the western legal tradition or common law and the idea that there is a dichotomy or an understanding rather, of the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Okay. And scholars, when they

Look at you know that you have the text, the actual text of the law, and then you have the reality of the human being. All right, so let's, let's take an example to elucidate this point as well. Imagine that someone now steals in, in an in an Islamic, you know, in a place where the where the where the *tier is present, right, let's say, store in the Islamic empire, at some point, you may be a dynasty, whatever it might be, okay? Now, the punishment that Islam requires is the cutting off of the hand. And people in our day and age love to take this and run with it, in the sense that we'll look how barbaric Islam is, someone steal something you cut off their hand, again, remember

what I was talking about, we assume that there's no nuance and no sophistication, even though you know, these ruins are coming from a civilization that spanned you know, almost 13 114 100 years. Anyhow. So if in this case, like if something gets stolen, it's not just an automatic judgment, this is what people don't, sometimes they don't understand that there is nuance, and one a judge and a Adi, must look at the surrounding circumstances as to why the person stole.

Okay, so that's one. By the way, there's also there's also the concept of what did they steal? Right? So if someone stole like a pen from work, well, they're not gonna, you're not gonna cut the guy's head off, right? Obviously, that's very different, that the idea of the value of the item that's stolen is also taken into consideration. But for our purposes, and understanding this heuristic matters are based on the intention behind them, the scholar, the or the, the judge has to now ask the question, Well, did this person steal, because they were desperate and needed to feed their family? In which case the punishment is not met it out? Because there's, you have to look at

what was the intention behind it. So these heuristics, again, when we're looking at at the corpus of Islamic literature, these heuristics serve as a means to simplify them, and there and we consider them valid heuristics. Now, that being the case, let's move on. So let's come back to the issue, we were talking about the false accusation that Islam facilitates child abuse. Okay. Remember, I said one of the heuristics? Well, first of all, before I get there,

what is the issue?

Why is it that this is problematic for someone living in the modern world?

Right, so before I get into the technical, you know, the definition and all these things? Why is this an issue? It's not, it's not, it's not something that we should say that okay, well, this person who considers this an issue, has no reason to consider an issue. In fact, there is reason, the culture and society that we live in today

has a number of

has a number of, let's say, collective iniquities, that cause us to take a step back and say, nine seems kind of young. Right? Now, when you talk about this collective iniquities of the modern world. Some of those things are like

what's it called The, the, you know, children being sold into prostitution. And so you have, you know, across the world, you know, people are being cracked down upon selling children into prostitution. So, and that's something that that's wrong, right? You have cases where there is, there is true child abuse, right, where someone takes a child, you have cases where children are individually kidnapped, and then raped, etc. So the the idea that this could feel wrong.

The purpose of this is not to say what you're feeling is necessarily wrong. But understand that there are a number of factors. Remember going back to Dr. Horace Mann, the thief's presentation on influence, there are a number of factors, you know, you have a proliferation of pornography in the world today, which also leads into you know, the idea of, you know, children on film, etc, where that's going to lead to more abuse of children, right. But all of those things, all of those, you know, the proliferation of pornography, you know, child sex trafficking, all of these things, all play into your kind of moral intuition, in a sense, okay, which gives us a certain socio socio

ethnic bias, because we assume that because we have this feeling again, there's a number of factors Why? Because we have this feeling that this feeling must be

True trends historically, trends nationally. Alright. And remember one of the principles we spoke about earlier is scholars understood that certain practices, you cannot apply trends historically and transnationally. Okay, and we're gonna dig into that a little bit more. Okay. So this accusation that Islam facilitates child abuse. Let's come back to our the first, the first heuristic that I mentioned, and that was harm, the principle of harm or that that that law that there are, that there's no causing of harm, and in no reciprocation of harm, how did this rule is how the scholars define this right. And by the way, the term was truly there is referred to, you know, the idea of

scholars who study principles of jurisprudence, as opposed to the actual not opposed to because they probably study both, but as opposed to the actual rulings themselves. Okay. So the assembly definition of harm, it's categorized into two categories. Number one is the a type of harm, which is psychological or mental. Okay, so a harm of the mind. Number two, a physical harm the harm of the body, okay? When scholars looked at the idea of, of harming the mind a psychological harm, they understood that psychological harm is attached to factors, or excuse me, attached to sociological factors. In other words, it's attached to the social mores, the social customs, of where someone is,

right, because in one place, something could be considered a, you know, a psychological harm, whereas in another case, it might not. And like I said, we'll dig into that, but understood under skewed me understand that when it comes to the definition of harm, you have bodily harm, and then you have harm of the mind or psychological harm, and psychological harm is going to be contingent upon sociological factors, it's going to be contingent upon social customs, it's going to be contingent upon the earth. Okay? And all of again, is not trans, historic and trans national. Okay? The idea is of our first heuristic is that we are there to promote physical well being, and mental

and psychological well being, that's kind of the objective, to preserve physical well being mental and psychological well being, if we assume that it is universal across all cultures, and across all places at all times, this would, in fact, may end up causing harm and going against the principle. Right. And so therefore, we have to understand psychological harms have an attachment are contingent upon sociological factors. And so that's why it's important to understand the particular

culture, climate, you know, society that we're living in and understand that they're not transnational and they're not trans historic.

Okay, let's come now to eyeshadow, the Ilana.

Now, of course, as I'm sure you are aware, that from our tradition, we know that I shuttle the Aloha was married at six years old to the Prophet says hello. And at the age of nine, the marriage was consummated. Now that on its face, if you just looked at that in a vacuum productions in a vacuum in, in our present day and age, you'd say nine years old, nine, and you maybe look around, you know, people around you or girls around you, and you're nine years old, like man, how could anyone marry a nine year old? Right, especially someone who's 53? So maybe there's this intuitive or rather, you know, internal kind of like, you're there's this moral in congruence for lack of a better term.

Okay. But again, let's go back to what we spoke about in terms of the harm principle, or not the harm principle, that's actually not

you. That's not the term I should use. But let's go back to our idea of harm, right, that there's no causing of harm, and there's no reciprocation of harm, and apply it to Ayesha. So one of the first things we we look at when we're looking at mental and psychological well being, which again, remember it's attached to one's culture, climate and custom. We see that I shadowed Lila on her that she was one of the most knowledgeable of the companions of the Prophet Mohammed. So someone that's going to be going through some sort of psychological and mental trauma and issues and you know, where they're where they're going to be going through kind of a mental abuse.

Or a psychological abuse,

it becomes difficult to then see this person as being one of the most knowledgeable of the companions of the Prophet Mohammed, meaning she was a scholar in her own right. And keep in mind when we talk about scholarship, remember, we said that Islamic scholarship is not like studying other things. Okay. So there's a spiritual element and then there's the informational element. Okay, we spoke about that as well. So, that being said, She's one she was one of the most knowledgeable companions of the Prophet SAW Selim. Okay, she, you know, in terms of narrating Hadith, I think she she comes in at number four, in terms of the the number of Hadith. So Abu huraira comes in at number

one, in terms of the number of Hadith, the body of the the number of narrations that are that come from a narrator of whatever comes number one, she comes number four, she has 22,020 sorry, 2200, around 2200 Hadith that she narrates. Now, I want you to think about that from the perspective that there were certain companions who narrated very few or none. Like I think,

and I could be wrong about this, but I think Holliday newly narrated no Hadeeth, right. Like what we know about Hollywood lead is, you know, from other sources, but he himself a Hadith of the Prophet Salaam. As far as I know, again, you might need to check me on this, that he didn't narrate even one. I shall becomes one of the foremost scholars of this oma. At her time, you have people companions, who are extremely knowledgeable, going to Ayesha for understanding rulings in certain areas. And that's why a lyonie he's who who's a who's a, who's a commentator of say, Hello, Buhari. He says that a quarter of legalistic juridical rulings present in the *tier are by way of Ayesha

a quarter. So remember that entire body of corpus of Islamic law you're speaking about, when you think about the rulings, the responsibility for that a quarter of that comes by way of OSHA. Now, that's not something minor, you have this, you know, a tradition that is that, that that, you know, maybe about 2 billion people across the world follow, and a quarter of the rulings come from OSHA.

So you really have to think about, well, if this was someone that had a, you know, psychological trauma, deep psychological trauma, and you know, that she was not, well, mentally, they don't really connect. Right. And I show even from, you know, you look at not only the fact that she is, you know, the the the the one of the greatest scholars of this oma besides all of them, the fact that she narrowed so much, but even that, like when it came to her, what we know about her in terms of how she was as a person, you know, she was very outspoken when she voiced her opinions, not someone who's timid, oppressed, etc. But she would voice her opinions and be very, you know, very brazen, in

that she was very outspoken from that perspective. And, of course,

you know, one, like, you'd have to ask someone themselves, like, how is your psychological state? Like, how are you as a person from her own description when it comes to her marriage? Right? This marriage that is critiqued, she says that it was it was one of love of dignity, respect and affection. In fact, you know, coming back to the term of physical harm, the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, Alayhi Salaam never physically harmed any family member, no child, no wife, nothing. Right? You don't find that you find the exact opposite. You find patience, you find love, you find affection. And Ayesha is testifying that for her own marriage. Okay, so, so remember, we talked

about physical well being we said that there was no, I there is no, there's no evidence whatsoever, that the process of self harm physically, his wives in specific in this case, Ayesha, or any children, for that matter. Okay. Now, what's really interesting is you may say, okay, fine, like we get it, but still man, nine years old. And the thing is, is remember, we were talking about our culture of, can we apply our standard, our idea that nine years old is too young? Can we project that backwards? Like, can we we should ask the question, was it part of the social custom and norm of the time to marry young

and weed? And we would say, yes, it was, and not only in the Arabian Peninsula, as well, we'll present a few examples in a little bit. But that was across the world. It wasn't that Oh, just these, you know, crazy backward Arabs who are coming out in the desert, like, they're just here, you know, they're just backward and crazy and, you know, and then they just, you know, marry little girl.

It's not the case. In fact, it was all over the world from the Roman Empire to all over the world. Okay. So we asked the question then, for the time, the place and the setting, that that this marriage happened. Was it part of the social mores at the time to married young? And we have, we would say, yes. And what's the evidence for that in the sense that, you know, how do we know this? Well, we know this, because we understand that the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was one where he had many, many enemies, and they would stop short at nothing, meaning they wouldn't they would go to the end of the earth, to try to try to discredit the prophesies of them. They could

use whatever was in their arsenal. Right? So you know, aside from physically going to war with the with the the Prophet Solomon, the Muslims, because that happened to right, Brother 100 100. I mean, these were, you know, these were physical ways to stop the message of the process of them. And it wasn't limited to that it was trying to discredit him, his message and his personality and his character. Because if you could discredit his character, which is, of course, what people try to do today by insinuating that he was a pedophile. Now, the villa still happening today. But my point is that at the time of the Prophet Salaam, that there was this, this,

this motivation to discredit him

did and what would have been, what would have been, what we should have seen, to discredit the prophesies alum, if this was something that was not normal at the time would be that the enemies of the process of the people trying to describe the process, the seller would have pointed this out. Ah, look at this man, he married a nine year old.

But here's the interesting thing. Nobody mentioned it was soufiane doesn't bring it up. Nobody brings it up. In fact, let's now so nobody brings it up at the during the life of the Prophet says hello, like during his lifetime, nobody brings it up. But let's keep going. Now, when does this first become an issue? Even when we look at, from the from the from from from the western standard Western academic study of Islam? When does this become an issue? When like when we look at polemics like Christians, for instance, we were no we know that that they started to, they start to critique Islam very early on. Right, so we have one of the first critiques or one of the first polemics of

Islam comes by way of john of Damascus, who was a, I think he served as as, as a minister, a Christian minister, in the domain of

obey the rule, you may have dynasty. And so he wrote a lot on trying to discredit Islam. Right. And, and many of that had to do with like, the Prophet says, that of being a false prophet, that he sold material from Christian and Jewish scriptures, and so on and so forth. And in that early writing of john of Damascus, you don't find this issue. It's not even mentioned. Right? When does it first get mentioned in the the western, you know, Western academic tradition, especially when it comes to Islamic? So when does it first get mentioned? It gets mentioned first, as late as the 20th century. The first mention that we you could, you can find is in 1905, David Margolis, in his rise of Islam,

mentions something about Ayesha and the process of being a a, what would you say like an ill advised union? Right? And what that points to is that, even within the rest of the world, it was not considered against the social mores or wasn't considered as something immoral to marry young.

Right. So remember, we said that social customs are going to change. And when we try to take our current present social norms and social Moore's, and we project them backwards? This can be very problematic. Okay.

You know, and then I think, one, one, this phenomena of taking our current worldview, our current society, and our current morals and then projecting them backwards throughout history, I think the term for that is presentism. Right. And historians have to deal with this as well, that we're in a certain place and time when we're studying history. How do we, you know, decrease our own socio ethnic biases to the minimum to not cast judgment upon people of the past?

Because we understand that those biases are there. All right. So for instance, we have a couple of

examples here. So Professor of History Margaret Wade lebarge. She, she says that it needs to be remembered. And we're talking now about kind of the world in general at that time. It needs to be remembered that many medieval widows were not old, important.

heresies were often married between the ages of five and 10, five and 10 and might find themselves widowed while still in their teens. Right. And by the way, you know what's interesting? I think Dr. Jonathan brown mentioned that he read something about Imam Shafi and that Imam Shafi he was a judge over served as a as a as a judge, or a governor of Yemen. I think it was a judge of Yemen. And he says that there was a case that was brought before him the case of a 21 year old grandmother.

And what that means is, in other words, that, you know, a woman got married and then conceived a child at 10 years old. And then her child conceived a child at 10 years old. That's what a 21 year old grandmother implies. It just, you know, to kind of highlight the idea of what the world was like at that time. So, you know, Professor Margaret here says that it needs to be remembered that many medieval widows were not old. Okay. Professor, Richard wardley, and Professor Stephens, small bone. They mentioned in medieval early modern European societies, the age of marriage remained low, with documented cases of brides as young as seven years, although marriages were typically not

consummated until the girl reached puberty. At the start of the 19th century. In England, it was legal to have sex with a 10 year old girl.

Now this last point that's up there. We're here today because of such social practices. Is this perhaps a self defeating? objection? Meaning if we're going to critique that?

Is there a problem to say like, Okay, well, what they did in marrying so young was wrong? Well, I don't know if we could do that, then I'll give you a kind of a personal example.

So

I went to my my father once told me, he said that I'm not the birthday that he had. He's told me that my birthday that's listed on my on my on my passport, I'm not really sure if that's my birthday. And I said, What do you mean, you're not sure if that's your birthday? Like how what he says, because we didn't know at the time, because he was coming from the Indian subcontinent. So he says, at the time, they didn't, they didn't issue birth certificates when children were born. And so I really don't know when so we just assumed it was April 6 of just random date. I don't know if that's what he chose, but some date, April 6, and just chose a year and that was that.

So this, I was, I thought about this. I said, Wow, that's so strange. And so I went to my grandmother. And I asked her, I said, when was dad born? Right? When it was born, she said, um, you know, I think he was born in the spring.

And so even like any sort of specific year, specific month, it was just, she couldn't really, you know, she all she could say is that he was born in the spring. Now, the thing is,

when I inquired about her being married, she said that I, from what I remember, she said, she was very, very young, right, maybe 10 1112, maybe nine, like, it's just very young. And

so as I started thinking about my grandmother, who, by the way, my father's mother is still alive. Now to put this into perspective. And this is why I'm saying that if she said she was married, very young, 910 11, whatever it was, that, that I believe her because I have a 16 year old son.

And that's in my six year old son can go and interact with his great grandmother. And I don't mean someone who's just kind of not there, or just kind of, you know, almost know, someone who's very lively, can interact, has full fledged conversation, everything. And so he can interact with his great grandmother.

And I started thinking, imagine if I went to my grandmother, right, my son's great grandmother, and this woman who had seven children, and, and these seven children, and you know, one of them was an engineer, and one of them's a doctor, one of them is obviously my uncle, my aunt, etc. My dad, you know, actually, two of them are doctors, one of them was an engineer, one of them, I mean, just different professions. And then they in turn, had children meaning my generation, and they have various people in various areas, you know, myself, wherever it might be. And then now I have children who are in high school and going on to college, and so on and so forth. All of this. Now,

imagine if I went I started thinking, imagine if I went to my grandmother, and told her, you know, your husband, he was, you know, what he did was morally incorrect. He was a pedophile.

for marrying me at such a young age, you know what she'd probably tell me. That tomato tomato family. Oh, yeah. Have you thought your mind? Right, a relationship that was one a full full of love and mercy and companionship that had beautiful children and full life. And I'm going to come now and and say that about her husband, even if her husband is older, and he passed away many, many years ago.

It would be how wrong would that be for me to say something like that to her? And yet, you know, and why would that be wrong? Because at the time in the situation that she was in, in the culture, the climate at that time, it was not considered bad to be married at such a young age. In fact, I think even Dr. Jonathan Brown was mentioning from you know, if you don't like the the the fact that it's an example from the subcontinent, right, the Indian subcontinent, because obviously, that's the developing world. And so that's there, obviously backward, whatever it might be. Well, Dr. Jonathan brown mentions, you know, a very something very similar in his own family, he says, in my own

family, he had someone in his family, maybe, you know, granddad, great granddad, whatever it might be someone by the name of Captain f. f. m. Smith, and he's in he was in he was, he participated in the Civil War, he was from Texas. And he says that, when he, you know, he went to a certain place went and saw a little girl of six, like, he went to his friend's house saw his little girl of six, the six year old, she was playing, he says, and he said, I want to marry her. Now, this is here in the States, Texas, you know, he's from Texas, participated in the Civil War is and he says, I want to marry her when, you know, she's six years old, he made the decision to marry her and married her

very young.

And, and, and, and from that, you talk to Jonathan Brown, right from that relationship. And in fact, he says that my,

you know, this woman who married, you know, maybe his grandmother, great grandmother, whatever it was, was able to get a pension in the 1920s, meaning because her husband had died. And there was a pension due to her based on the fact that he participant in Civil War, and the government owes that to her, she got it at a very young age, right. And so this, this idea that we're going to take a current practice based on a number to say, okay, nine years old, eight years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, superimpose it and assume that it's trans historic and trans national, in fact, could be very problematic. Right? Okay.

So let's move on.

Now, here's where here's where one of the issues comes up, by the way, that when we do this, when we try to take a current, you know, social norm, and project that backwards, that leads to an acronym stick conclusion. Now, what do I mean by anachronistic conclusion? anachronism, basically, is something that's misplaced in time. Okay, so if I came to you, and I said, you know, when, you know, so and so Roman general was about, you know, was trying to figure out when to attack the enemy. And he looked at his watch and decided it would be at four o'clock. Now, Romans didn't have watches. So that would be an that would be incorrect. That would be an anachronism to say that, right? So when

we so what we're trying what the idea is, is to project our present culture and society back on the past, and assume that it's universal, it's it's trans historic, it is a mistake, it's an anachronism. Okay. Why does it arise? What happens? Well, I think this, this statement from seeing how Crow and Nancy tile tails, if I pronounced that right, from a study that was done called the bioarchaeological, investigation of childhood and social age, problems and prospects, here's what they mentioned. They say much of the tension in the investigation of age in the past arises from the assumption that we can link biological to social age. distinctions between the categories,

particularly child,

adult are the are the product of the current limitations of osteological methods for age estimation in adults, and they using biological developmental standards for aging results in the construction of artificial divisions of social and mental development between those categories. Also, in contrast to modern Western society, where social age is closely linked to chronological age, in many traditional societies, stages of maturation are acknowledged in defining age. These stages take into account not only the chronological age, but also the skills, personality and capacities of the individual. So let's let's let's let's analyze this for a second. She you know, they mentioned a few

things one, bye

biological age that we understand that a person is going to be mature based on their, their, the, their biology.

And then you have the concept of a social age society determines determines when they are when they are mature. Now in, in pre modern societies, these two concepts were linked, that someone would say, if someone is biologically mature, then therefore they are considered mature, okay?

Now, does that present a problem, it may, because someone may be biologically mature, but they're not, let's say mentally mature or mature based on the society that they're in. Okay. And then then a clear example of that is our modern age. You know, you can say people mature, become biologically mature, but mentally, they may not be that mature. And this is going to be different in different places, even today. And there's a number of factors led to that. So someone, let's say, who was born and brought up in the US, you know, who had a relatively comfortable lifestyle, you know, they had parents who were well off. And for them, you know, they're going to have things like, okay, we're

gonna go to high school, we didn't go to college, graduate school, whatever it might be, the idea that they are going to mature at a slower rate, because things are easier for them, as compared to someone living in another part of the world, where life is more precarious. We can't discount that, right, someone living in in a place where life is more precarious, where in order to get water, you have to walk for miles and miles and miles. And then you can basically go to a well take out water, then take it back, purify it, that type of difficult lifestyle, when someone's exposed to that early on, they're going to naturally mature faster than someone that has water that they just open the

tap, they wash your face, and they turn off the tap. And that's not again, that's that's not we can't just discount that. And that's, we're talking about one time period, right, and we're just talking about two separate societies. So you have a traditional society, and you have a kind of a more modern, contemporary Western society, even between that you would find that there'd be a difference in what we would call mature, right, someone that has a more precarious life has gone through more hardships is going to mature more, right, as opposed to someone that has things that are easy, they're not going to have the same level of maturity from just a kind of a psychological

mental or even cognitive

viewpoint, there are going to be different maturity levels. Now. So so so there is there is still a problem by assigning biology to considering the assigning age or assigning maturity to biology versus assigning maturity to society. Right. So the distinction between biological age and looking at the social age, this is generally how things worked in the Islamic framework and in much of the world. Okay, so for instance, within the Islamic framework, how someone will be considered or what in terms of legality, someone's considered mature, it would not be based on chronology it would have based on a certain number per se, I mean, sometimes it would no doubt, but many times when judgment

was supposed to be made, and it would be based on how mature the person is. And one of the standards that was used was biology, okay. So, if the so for instance, when it comes to the the, the the spiritual angle,

we see that when is absorbed, the scholar is asked when is a person held accountable for their deeds before a law, right when is a person by live so scholars made this distinction that when a when a person hits puberty, this is when they're mature enough, they're by live right that there they reached the state where now there'll be held accountable for their deeds whereas before this point, they would not be held accountable. Okay. So there is tech leaf like that they're more Calif, they're responsible for their deeds now before Allah, as opposed to before this, there may be a time period where they are may is, in other words, they can distinguish between right and wrong. So there

is a stage where a child can distinguish between right and wrong. And that's considerable mania. That to me is that there's there's this distinguishing between right and wrong. Right. And so you have you know, someone who's in Romania is someone who's more Calif. What's the difference between that like, how do you determine who is mumias and who's McAuliffe? Well, puberty was taken as a standard. Okay. Now, again, this has to do with the idea of how your deeds what you'll be held accountable for. And this has ramifications on rulings like you know, if a child makes Hajj, have they fulfill the requirement and you know, obviously, this this has

this gets into

discussion. My point in mentioning this is that, you know, pre modern societies did use biology as a means to understand maturity, right to understand, you know, this, this, what they're talking about linking biological age, a social age, okay? However, in the modern world, what's being linked to social age, his chronological age, but this becomes a bit of a problem, because if we're going to link chronological age, to social age, it means that we're not taking into consideration different levels of maturity at different ages, we just assume 18 is mature, you know, you know, you know, 16 is mature. But I know a lot of 40 year olds that are still playing video games. And I would say,

Well, I don't know if that if he's really mature. Right? So, I mean, how do we determine that, you know, interesting exercise, I always tell people, I say, you know, when you go to these, at least in some of the the pharmacies here, they have these machines where you can stick your finger in, and they tell you your biological age, right. And you get really happy when your biological age is low compared to how much you how old you really are, right? So if you're 15, your biological comes out, your biological age comes out to be like 4042, you're like, wow, and so I was like, Oh, you're in really great shape your biological age is, is much less than your actual age, right? chronology or a

chronological age can be very problematic, right.

And that's why we see that when we look at secular law,

using chronological age is problematic, because it's very arbitrary, right. And this can lead to a number of number of issues. So for example, in New York, the age of consent is 18. Right? Now, the exception there is that, you know, to the exception to being to to, to consent at 18, is that children of 1617, are allowed to marry with parental approval, and 1415. They can marry if they have the permission from a judge in addition to their parents. So it's not like 18 is a cut off. But you can even get married as as young as 14, North Carolina, 14 years old, Scotland, 16 years old. Columbia, marriage is legal at the age of 18 boys over 14 girls over 12 may marry with consent,

excuse me of their parents. Here's the thing. In one country, you're considered legally married. in another country, you're considered a potential pedophile. So the reality is, is that there is no such idea of a universal age of consent, and you don't have it in across the world. I know, we like to think like, Oh, 18 across the world, it's not really true, right? There is no universal age of consent. So in one place, you would be considered perfect perfectly, it'd be perfectly legal, you'd be in your right to get married at 16. In another place, you would be considered you'd be looked down upon, right?

So it's very arbitrary, especially when you're going to, you know, Link social age with chronological age. All right. And so here we go. You know, Hamza specifically told me, man, you got to stay away from using comic book references. And then in my brain, I said, Oh, so he wants me to use comic book references. I got it. Okay. So I I wouldn't be putting in my own flavor. If I didn't add a certain comic reference. All right, talking about the linking of biological age, to social age versus chronological age to social age. There was this episode of Young Justice, okay, so Young Justice is a show produced by DC Comics. And, you know, included in, you know, the Justice League,

as you can see there as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc. And they have and then so these are all considered the senior leaders like the Justice League, this is the this is the league that every superhero wants to join or something. Now, you have a subset of that, which is called the Young Justice League or something like that. It's basically like young teenagers or young, you know, you know, people not mature enough to join the Justice League. Now, what you see there in the picture is that they're having a roundtable meeting. And they're asking, you know, should is is super boy, the picture on on the on the left there, in the black t shirt? Is should he be inaugurated within the

Justice League? Because, you know, he's, he's fought many battles and so on and so forth. And, you know, help the cause of justice or whatever it might be. Now, one of the complaints that one of the the issues that came up, they say, Yeah, but according to league rules, you have to be 18 at a minimum, to join the league. And, you know, he is three years old. Now, you might wait, wait, how is it three years old? Well, because he's a clone of Superman. And so he was basically he was constructing the lab three years ago. So

Now the issue arises, well then do we break that rule? Or how do we get around this? That someone brings up What about McGann? Right? The The, the The Martian that you see on the right there? I mean, if we're gonna go by age, if we're gonna go by only by maturity, meaning like, we're just gonna judge on maturity. You know, by the way, McGann has a character she's a bit immature. Right. So she's like a, like an earl, someone like an early teen like 12 1314, maybe 15 at best, right? How she talks and things like that. So someone said, Well, if we're going to go by age, and we're going to reject

super boy, right that the clone, and then we should allow McGann to enter the Justice League because she's 55 years old, the Martians mature a lot slower, apparently, in this world. And so she should, she's definitely a shoo in to be illegal. So this becomes a problem like, who do we let in who do not let in? If our standard is chronological age, I'm not going to get into the conclusion. There's just a whole bunch of confusion, whatever it might be, but we understand the the issue now, right? That our modern world, when we attach a chronological age, to maturity, or social maturity, this can become very problematic. Okay. So at the end, here's where we want to understand this discussion,

and conclude this discussion, that we cannot superimpose a number

across various cultures and various time periods, right, we cannot say that culture and custom is transnational and trans historic, right, scald. Our scholars understood this. And even from our perspective, we understand this, yes, it becomes a bit, you know, it makes us uncomfortable, but we have to ask the question, why does it make it makes us uncomfortable? Doesn't make us uncomfortable? Because of the number? Does it make us uncomfortable? Because of our, our, our, the place and time and setting that we live in? Or is it something else? And what it comes down to? We would what we would say is the idea of harm. Remember, one of the issues why we're uncomfortable is because we

see, you know, children being used in pornography, right? For the viewing pleasure of people, we see sex, child sex trafficking, and all of that. So it comes down, you know, at the core as an issue of harm, because remember me going to my grandmother and saying, Oh, you know, your husband was a pedophile. I mean, that's also a type in a sense, a type of, you know, quote, unquote, harm, because I'm, you know, it's almost offensive to her, right? So what so let's come down and understand that the issue isn't about a number, but it's about harm, harm and benefits. All right. So we'll conclude this. This example by saying by by the statement from Mohammed Abu Zahara, he writes in a triple

Islami, he says, the defining principle within the Sharia is that any harm is to be warded off, as long as it can be avoided as the safeguarding of man and preventing harm from falling upon him in any way whatsoever is a firm, established principle in Islam, where we talked about heuristics, etc. It's one of the one of the heuristics that we use, all of the legalistic juristic rulings are built upon achieving the benefit of the slaves of Allah, and every right is stipulated with avoiding any harm. And I think this is, you know, when you look at, to kind of take this from a different angle, when you look at the Sharia, and you start understanding the principles, legal principles, and

things like that, and you compare it to other legal systems in a way that's unbiased, that's, that's difficult. Obviously, we live in the modern world, some of us live in the West. But

you really, you really are impressed with it. Right. And the other day, I was I was listening to a podcast, where they were talking about the US Constitution. And there was a play that a woman had put on, and I, by the way, the podcast called through line, a play that a woman had put on, where she had been brought up, and it's very interesting that she would, as a child do plays related to the Constitution, meaning the play, she would act out how great the constitution United States is, how wonderful it is. And she said that when she matured, she realized that, you know, it still had flaws as as a document that's there as a legal document as a constitution. It was there to serve. It

was there to protect and yet in her in her in her experience, when it was put to the test, many times it didn't protect. So one of the examples she gave was a case where you know, a woman comes in to a police station says you know, my husband who was beating me, you know, he just came and took my children and you need to do something about it. He has a restraining order that I had we had issued and you signed off on she told the police officers this, the police officers don't wait till 10 wait till two and round two o'clock in the morning. The husband shows up at the police station with a gun in his hand and he walks in and shoots himself

And when they go out to the car, they find all four of her children. He had killed them. So the lady then sued the police department. And the case went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court went back and forth and discuss the term shall, what did it mean when it says that the that the the police department or whatever, that whatever the Constitution says about shall protect. So the conclusion that came is that the word shall does not mean must, it's not necessary. And so from from her own personal experience, this became a failing of the, of the Constitution, you know.

And of course, there were other areas that said the Constitution is really great, you know, that it did actually serve its purposes, you have positive rights and negative rights. And again, that's a whole nother discussion. But the point what I'm what we want to conclude from from from this section, is that understand again, what, when you are now navigating a certain something that you may consider a Shobha a doubt, one of the ways to know more than main ways to navigate that is studying the topic in detail. Okay, understanding the Islamic tradition, and understanding how deep our own scholarship has gone into, you know, expounding upon these issues way before you and I came

onto the seat. Okay. All right. So let's go ahead and conclude this, the second example of Ayesha, but let me not leave you in a vacuum. And let's, let's stop on this question of what should you study? Well, first of all, I think we need to understand when we're looking at our strategies, when we started, started this webinar, we said you have a strategy of being be aware, though attention, make distinction, your environment, and today we talked about studying Islam or to study Islam, some of the strategies will happen before the shabiha hits, or before you're exposed to it. Right. So be aware, though attention, some of them some of the strategies before and after, make the distinction

that can happen before that can happen after your environment again, before you want to be cautious of that. And after you remove yourself from a certain environment. What about studying Islam?

Well, I think that you need both before and after, when a certain shubha when you're when you when you said okay, well, I've got this question. And it's kind of nagging me, whatever it might be, then it, it's required, you should go and study it in detail, don't take a don't rely on just a heuristic that we that that that we use as human beings and say, well, it must be that I go and deeply researched and studied. Now that's afterwards. But in addition to that, I would say that have a program for yourself of studying Islam on a consistent basis. Because, again, remember, we said that the study of Islam is very different than the study of any other subject. It's not just abstract

knowledge, but it needs to have an impact on your being. And therefore, consistently studying Islam builds the knowledge, but also has an effect on your being has an effect on your worldview. So have some sort of a program where you're connecting with the Koran, right. And again, this program, I mean, there's so much that's available out there, now, you can pick, right, whatever, you know, as they say, whatever floats your boat, whatever you like, pick a particular program, you know, start the program, even if it's 1020 minutes a day, but make it consistent, and start in earnest with sincerity, the study of Islam over the long term. So this is why we say this would be before, you

know, the Shu heart hit. And by the way, when you've now equipped yourself with the study with some from, you know, preceding the hitting of the shoba, it doesn't, it doesn't become a shoba shuba anymore, okay. And one of the examples, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, kind of, you know, bear myself now, I'm going to kind of open myself up now, you know, the issue of Ayesha that we just discussed

Hamdulillah, it was never really an issue for me, like I kind of early on as to like, Look, this is the Prophet sallallahu sallam, right? And all of the evidence and everything that I read about this man sallallahu sallam, and here's this issue. And when someone told and when you and I think I just kind of briefly looked at the idea of like, Well, it wasn't the culture of the customer, the people, and that was it. And that was it. You know, and I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that to to downplay the issue. I'm just saying as a personal

kind of, from my viewpoint, there were other things that were issued, don't get me wrong, but for this particular issue,

that was it. And I attribute that obviously, first and foremost, to Allah subhanho wa Taala, who is the one who guides all of us, but also because there was some sort of some sort of a study that preceded my exposure to the issue, right, and Allah subhanho wa Taala knows best. So we'll go ahead and conclude there. So Monica lahoma will be happy to

A Chateau a la ilaha illa and a stock Furukawa to a lake was Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah.