Tom Facchine – al-Raghib al-Isfahani #33 – THESE Beliefs and Actions Lead To Corruption

			then a lot of as for HANA, he talks about the four stages to corrupt your nobility or to lose or
take away your ability to act ethically, okay? So they're complete mirror images of the four stages
to develop your nobility. So the first two are related to belief. And the second two are related to
your actions and your habits. So the first stage is delusion. Okay. And this is the opposite of
believing in good things, right to be deluded is to have your beliefs shaped by your own corrupting
kind of self interest, right? You have a, you know, you have a conflict of interest and what beliefs
you're taking on. And we brought up the example previously of Prophethood in the Christian
		

			tradition, and how it's a very, very loose concept. Okay. Is there a conflict of interest for
somebody identifying themselves as a prophet? Yeah, there is because if someone says that they're a
prophet, then guess what, they're going to be treated differently, they're going to be given more
respect from the community and etc, etc. Which is why then we find, okay, 1015 years later, down the
road, there's a huge scandal this person was you know, having extramarital affairs, and this person
was doing all this shady stuff, taking money from people. Oh, why? Why? Because he was deluded, he
was deluded in the first place. His beliefs were rooted in his own personal, narrow, narrow material
		

			interests, not only were they not based in proof, but they were, they were self serving, right. And
so delusion is the first stage to corrupt someone's nobility and deny or invalidate their ability or
capacity to act ethically. The second is conformity, okay, doing things just because everybody else
is doing it. And this is something that we struggle with, as a Muslim community with lots of
Muslims, for better or for worse, their beliefs. And their practices are based off of conformity,
right? You take certain Muslim populations, nobody prays, somebody starts praying, wait a second,
what are you doing? Right? It's seen as suspicious, because the assumption is that you better be
		

			doing something that everybody else is doing, you got to get with the program, you're in a Muslim
community, or a community of you know, culturally Muslim, so let's say, and nobody wears hijab,
someone starts wearing hijab. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Why are you getting so extreme?
Right? We have this in certain sectors of the Muslim community, or at least you know, of the Muslim
world, right? So this is just conformity. We're not talking about nobody cares. What does a lot
there's a lot of proof of this action or doesn't approve of this action. What did he say about this
action? Or what did he say about this other action? Right? That's not the register that we're
		

			operating on. We're only looking around us and saying, Well, what's he doing? Or what are they
doing? Right? We have this other, you know, similar problem when it comes to our relationship to the
material world, everybody else's children are becoming doctors and lawyers and engineers, nobody's
becoming social workers. No one's becoming any man. No one is, you know, doing nonprofit management,
right? Something that would be really, really important for the operation. MSG is across the
country. Everybody's just looking around, what's everybody else doing? Oh, they're doing it and
that's okay. And that's not to completely demonize that way of thinking there might be situations
		

			where it actually will save us from falling into error, but to base our beliefs on those sorts of
things as an error. We don't we have to have higher standards for the things that we believe than
simply while everybody else believes the final two stages relating to action for depleting our
nobility or whittling away our ability or capacity to act ethically has to do with heedlessness and
idleness Okay, so this is somebody who they're lazy, right? They have the ability, but they just sit
around, they don't apply themselves. They're healthy and this is where the Hadith take advantage of
five before five comes in. Right? You have the wealth you have you're comfortable you have the time
		

			you have the ability but you're just not doing anything. Okay, this is something that it's just a
matter of time and so this is going to be a an erosive and corrosive effect on your soul. And then
finally, after the stage of heedlessness is actual advice, so you're not just not doing good. Now
you're actually actively doing evil, you've developed bad habits, you're going to the bar, you're
watching things that you shouldn't be watching right and once vise has taken hold, then you've
pretty much severely compromised and handicaps your nobility and your capacity to act ethically.