Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #123 – Knowledge & Virtue
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The speaker discusses the difficulty of living in a changing world with limited knowledge and comes across as a burden on individuals. They stress the importance of constantly learning and embodyment to live by what one knows, even if it is just something that one knows about.
AI: Summary ©
We need to really get back to a virtuous knowing and Islam encourage us to know virtuously not just to know, just to know, because information or knowledge alone doesn't do anything, you know, the devil knows that Allah subhanaw. Taala is the only true God. And yet that knowledge doesn't benefit him whatsoever. He chose to reject obedience, despite his knowledge, which is what makes him so bad, right? So we live in a very, very difficult time, because we have this separation between knowledge and virtue, right? People go to school, they get their MBA, or they get their, you know, they would go on to become a doctor. And, you know, if you take a course on ethics, it's optional. It's not a
mandatory part of your curriculum, you know, nobody's really very concerned with is the knowledge that I know virtuous knowledge is a knowledge that I should have, and what am I doing with it? And that carries over to the religious sphere, as well, as some people have commented, because we can get in the habit where we're just studying, just to know, but what does it mean, just to know, really, it's to appear a certain way in front of people to answer questions. If it's not about embodying that knowledge and living that knowledge, then it's actually a burden and you're actually doing it wrong. And we know this, the Companions, they took this very, very seriously every single
thing that you know, the more that you know, the more responsibility you have, right, you're going to be accountable for it. And that's a salute Neoma in any name, Allah subhanaw taala says and sorrows at the cattle that you're going to be asked that day about every blessing is acknowledged blessing every single thing that you know, right? We saying ignorance is bliss, and it's not really true, but this is what people mean by that, you know, I had a friend a long time ago, you know, he was your ordinary Muslim kind of practicing, he prayed Hamdulillah. But he used to joke, you know, he said, you know, if somebody hit the lottery, like, give them the money, but don't tell him it was
from the lottery. Right? So it was a joke, and he was just kidding. But you know, his idea was that the, the point was that the more that you know about something that the greater responsibility you have, and that is true, the more that you know about Islam, the greater responsibility you have to live by it, to do good by it, to spread it to others to teach and especially to embody it and if your knowledge and it's true, most of us, I think these days our knowledge outpaces our practice, and that's a very scary thing, and we hope that Allah forgives us