al-Raghib al-Isfahani #01 – Introduction To The Path To Virtue

So the following series will be not a strict translation, not a teaching of the book in an official way. But it will be more like meditations and reflections upon the major points fairly sequentially that are audible as for Hani is going to make because his book is very sequential. And it's about the macadam of the video, which we'll explain in a later video.

But it has to do with improving the self right, reforming the self kind of tying, or bridging the gap between our action and our theology, or the things that we do and the things that we feel, right. infusing our practice of Islam with the spirit of submission and gratitude and appreciation and awe and reverence and all the things that we're really going for. So the book we're talking about is that era, you know, macadam is shut er, by Reuters for honey, and Rogal. As for honey, as somebody who

not a lot of people know about, he's not a very famous scholar, he's gotten a lot more attention recently.

He's, he's famous for some other books, he's got a book about the MUFON data, Qur'an about Quranic vocabulary, he has a tough sear.

And he has a few other things, but many of his works are lost. And he was somebody who avoided the spotlight. So a lot of a lot isn't known about his personal life, if you go into some of the books of biographies, you're not going to find a lot. What we do know is that he was the, the sheikh, or he had a major influence on Allah Zadie. And that this particular book, it's reported that ethical Saudi would actually carry this, this, this book around with him wherever he went. So a lot of us ohana, he, he's a major figure when it comes to his knowledge of the Koran. And you can tell that in the book, he's always backing up everything that he says with the Koran.

But he's also a major advocate for the role of the intellect, in our religious practice. And that's not in a way, a lot of people today, they're rightfully concerned about sort of what takes priority. And I would kind of avoid that kind of dichotomous thinking, I don't think it's that simple. But you hear people say, it's like, oh, they prioritize their intellect over revelation.

Things aren't that clean, right? The intellect has a role to play. And obviously revelation is the guiding light. But there's there's no separate separating the two in the sense that we we have to rely on our intellect to interact with understanding the revelation, applying the revelation.

And we measure and assess our understanding against the understanding of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, and against the understanding of the companions, and in the scholarly tradition, right. But the intellect is all in there. And it's not. It's not something that can be completely severed, or separated from our interaction with the revelation. So all of us Rouhani was an advocate for the intellect and its role in our lives as Muslims back then. And at their time, they were dealing with similar issues that we deal with today, they were there were some kind of heretical sects that were kind of championing the use of that, what they called the use of the intellect, but was really kind

of abandoning the revelation or conventional, traditional, established understandings of the revelation for a different sort of interpretation or interpretive kind of schema that was less rooted in our tradition, and more rooted in other traditions outside of Islam. And so because of all of us, for Hani was an advocate of the intellect. He was accused in his time of kind of being heretical or having leanings towards this group or that group. But there's nothing to indicate that he actually that there was anything problematic about his sort of his stances or how he tried to straddle these kinds of to not always competing, but maybe sometimes competing tools that we have

the revelation and the intellect, and so grappling with that what's the role of intellect in our religious life, bringing us to submitting to Allah signs and then helping us understand the revelation and helping us interpret the revelation. It's an ongoing sort of thing that needs a lot of discussion, and it's, it's part of why his book and his work is so relevant for us today.