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.