al-Raghib al-Isfahani #69 – What Good Is Intellect Without The Deen

So as we've said, time and time again, a lot about us for HANA, his whole thing is that listen, there is no contradiction between the intellect and the dean, you can't imagine that there's opposing forces, right? And that you just have to believe, don't ask questions, don't think, you know, whatever he is trying to get us to realize that they both complete each other. And one of the ways is that if he makes this argument is that look at how Allah subhanaw taala guides people, it's push pull, okay, you could say the push is that a lot of people have this in ternal push to want to seek and to want to strive. And actually, that's one of the hopeful things about America is that you

find this and people, you know, average people, just the cafe this morning, you know, and there are some guys, young guys early 20s, you know, late teens, or whatever. And they're talking about metaphysics and talking about the books that they they're reading, oh, I'm reading this book, and this book and that book, or whatever. Now, the problem is, and we'll get to that in a second, once they start listening to books, you realize that they have no idea what they're talking about, because they don't have a structure, they don't have a system, but but we can't necessarily just, you know, shut them down like that they have this thing in them that they they want to know, they

have a thirst for knowledge, they're not satisfied with just, you know, Netflix and making money and whatever, you know, like they actually want something higher, they are searching for transcendence. And that's half the equation, right? That's the the thing that Allah subhanaw taala, put in every single one of us. And if it's still alive, hamdulillah thank Allah that is so alive in you, because for a lot of people, it dies, it gets blunted by the attachment to the dunya, and the things that you want, and your pleasures and your appetites and your attachments and these sorts of things. But that can't be it, you can't simply stay at that level, where you're just going off of and this is

the problem with the guys in the cafe, because when they start listing their book list, you realize that they're just reading the same New York Times bestseller trash that everybody else is reading, right? They have no idea how to systematically go about studying metaphysics or philosophy or AP, either or anything, right, you need help, you can't do it on your own. And that's where profits come in. That's where revelation comes in something that's outside of yourself something to show you the way. And nobody, I should say that if you can't benefit from the ladder, you'll never benefit from the former. If you can't find an external guide, the profits are an something outside of yourself,

you won't benefit from the first you won't benefit from your intellect, that sort of internal sort of thing, right? Like the first is completed by the second and SubhanAllah. If somebody corrupts that first part, then the second is going to condemn him. So what does that mean? So it's like imagine that we have sort of that intellect burning intellect, the burning wants to know, and then we have the De Soto. So he says, Okay, the second completes the first. But you can also have the second without the first either, if you have just the trappings of religiosity, I wear the white soap and the pen in the pocket and I you know, have the sea wax sticking out and I do all these

sorts of things. It's just the trappings. But I don't have that internal urge to want to improve myself or to want to know or to want to understand then Aren't I the most susceptible person to hypocrisy? Aren't I a person that's going to get caught up in my ego and then I'll turn this into looking at what you're doing and you're not doing this and you're not doing that. And I don't need to be told anything. It's like I have all the access and information I already need to panela you know, one of my colleagues, this is a brief tangent one of my colleagues who's an email I recorded a conversation with him in one of his congregants the other day and this congregant used to be on the

board of the masjid Hamdulillah. They're not anymore. And they were starting to have an argument of some sort of minor 50 issue. And the person said, I don't need to be taught anything. I don't need to learn anything. Can you imagine the level of arrogance of such a person so that's what a lot of so honey is trying to talk about. You can come to the masjid and pray you can have all the trappings of the religion but what's going on on the inside if you don't have that ability to humble yourself in that drive to want to improve and to want to learn and to want to know which is honey says is the intellect then the second is going to be spoiled. The second is going to be wasted. You might find

yourself one of the hypocrites in the Day of Judgment, you might find yourself in the lowest pit of the hellfire and may Allah protect us from that. So both of them depend on the other. That's what our Augustus Fanny wants us to learn is that the intellect depends on the Dean the Dean depends on the intellect, okay, without the intellect, Dean will not remain you'll just have a bunch of phonies. You'll just have people who have the hollow shell without the letter without the Spirit. And without Dean, of course, intellect is going to go astray how many smart people do we see how many PhDs they have all this information? They know facts and figures, they can quote this book and

that book, but without Dean, what's it worth it actually ends up compounding their ignorance of the loss found to other compounding their ignorance of Islam and will actually be a liability for them on a day of judgment?