Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #044 – Misuse & Abuse of The Intellect – al-Raghib al-Isfahani

			but also Hani, he says, you know that knowledge and the intellect is one as one of our most sacred
gifts. And that this is pretty much as close to a universally recognized fact as we can get. If you
go culture to culture, civilization and civilization, people disagree about a lot of things. But
there's pretty much no civilization and group of people that you can find that disagrees, that
knowledge is a good thing. That knowledge in our own tradition has such a weight, he points out that
it can transform the haram to the holla sounds like a provocative statement when he talks about
that, like, an animal that's killed by a dog. If it's a wild dog, it's not a trained dog, and it
		

			kills some sort of animal you allowed to eat it? No, It's haram for you. Right? It's Mater it's
something that's considered, you know, like roadkill carrying, but if you train that dog, you
educate that dog, and now it's your hunting dog, it can go and kill something. And that's halau for
you. So what I was for hunting is saying, look at how intelligence intellect knowledge can actually
transform, right? That's how serious this is. And that's true among humans as well. Nobody in their
right mind mocks, or he says it's not natural that you find people mocking intelligence or
intelligent people. That only happens in very, very specific situations like somebody who's sinful
		

			and guilty of something, right? They might mock intelligent people, because deep down misery loves
company, and they don't want to, you know, they want to take down somebody who's more intelligent
than them who might be telling them that they need to clean their ACT UP, or another situation, an
artificial situation where intelligence is mocked, is in politics, right? We see this in the United
States, you have one party who you know, or one sort of political orientation, the left, which is
kind of set itself up as the experts set itself up as the intelligencia. Right, and then you have a
lot of resentment, because people's lives aren't any better, right? They have a hard time paying the
		

			bills, their health care is atrocious. You know, they've got all the they're getting laid off their
companies that they work for getting shipped overseas, all these sorts of things. And so they rebel
and react against this sort of entire posture by taking pride in their ignorance, right? We've see
this a lot in the United States. And then there's other sorts of situations, maybe somebody has an
ulterior motive. These are the only sorts of situations where we find somebody who's mocking
intellects, or knowledge or intelligence, but it's all there. And it's there for a specific reason.
Why is it so universally accepted? Is it something that's an inherent good by itself? Meaning we're
		

			just, you know, okay, great, we just become intelligent and knowledgeable to become intelligent and
knowledgeable, we just keep on collecting facts and collecting facts and collecting facts? Or is it
really supposed to be revealed or given to us for a purpose? As Muslims, we believe that the
intellect that we've been given us for a purpose, now what is that purpose, that purpose is to train
us to virtue because without using our intellect, human beings would not lean towards anything
difficult, anything that's going to cultivate that virtue inside of you. Like, if you take an
example of cattle, right, cattle can actually eat too much to produce some sort of, you know,
		

			sickness that they call bloat, and they can actually die, you know, or if you take some sort of
animals like sheep, you know, their natural sort of thing is to eat grass. However, if you give them
grain, or if you give them corn, they will eat it, and then they will actually get spoiled on it and
prefer it over the grass, even though it's less healthy for them. And the same thing happens with
people, right? And we see this probably most specifically with kids, you know, if you let your child
decide what to eat at night for dinner, what are they going to choose, they're gonna choose candy,
or they're gonna choose their broccoli, or they're gonna choose candy every single day of the week,
		

			even if it gives them diabetes, even if it rots their teeth, they're going to choose the instant
gratification. That's the neffs. That's the body, right? The body wants to be instantly gratified.
It's only the intellect that can pull us back that can teach us no, this is actually harmful. No,
you actually have to stop this and delay your gratification towards a later date. Yes, it's hard
right now, if you take medicine, it's going to be bitter. But in the long run, it's actually going
to help you and cure your disease. It might not be fun to go to the gym every day or to work out
every day. But if you do it consistently, it's going to produce the results you want in your health
		

			and those sorts of things. So this is all comes from the intellect and we need to use this gift for
its proper reason. And the ultimate reason of the intellect and for developing it is to recognize a
loss science, a loss, Matata says in the Quran over and over and over again, about his signs, his
signs, his signs, those who believe in the signs, those who deny His signs. Where are the signs? Are
they hidden? Are they esoteric? Are they mystical? Are they obscure? Does it take a rocket scientist
to figure out what the signs are and know they're equal access that the most democratic thing that
exists there ie egalitarian everybody can experience the signs, the sun, the moon, the day, the
		

			night, the grass, the seasons, the weather, the wind, the seas, the mountains that are
		

			Earth everything as a sign. And so the intellect is given to us to recognize these as signs, signs,
meaning that they point to something else beyond their material reality. They point to the Creator,
they point to the need to submit to this creator. And so that's the purpose that our, that our
intellect and our intelligence was given to us and any use of it other than that is misuse and
abuse.