Minute with a Muslim #225 – The REASON Why You Should Read – Paul Williams

I think it's really important to read great books. One of the reasons why is actually given by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, in the canon lecture series. It's a tuna college, I just want to read you what he said. And I think it's an amazingly insightful statement. And he has written, one of the greatest benefits to reading the great works of the past, is an acquired immunity against the follies of the present. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village. The person who knows the past has lived in many times, and therefore to some degree, is immune from the great cataract of cataract of nonsense, that pause from the press, and microphone

of his own age. And quite the cataract, of course, are these things that older people get on their eyes, so they can't necessarily see clearly kind of blurring and blows the vision. So he says, the person who has lived in many times and therefore has read many great books, is therefore to some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours out from the media. And I think that's so true, because you're aware of multiple ways of seeing reality. And you're aware that the particular way that we see reality maybe if we're in the West, for example, is a very local, historically conditioned, recent kind of worldview, that has clear antecedents ideologically, you

can go right back to even the ancient Greeks and Romans actually, and you learn that there are other ways of seeing the world. And some of them are better ways of seeing the world. And some of them are worse ways of seeing the world. But at least one can be more discriminating, and more richly informed about what's going on and not simply be brainwashed or be a passive receiver of change, the ever changing values that we see in the secular way. So I think is a very, is a very practical reason why we should be well read whatever that means, but to read great works of literature, like whether it be Plato, or we're reading Kant, or reading some of the great writers of the Renaissance,

or the enlightenment and great novels even and, I mean, the list is extremely long, neither one has to agree with them. Of course, that's not the point. But to be aware that they exist, and that people saw things differently in the past. And as someone else's says, the past is a foreign country, they did things differently then, and you know, we can access that as one of the great things about reading great works of literature, I read some is that one's entering into like the TARDIS we've got this TV series in the UK with Doctor Who I don't know if you've heard of it, though, a doctor who has the time machine called the TARDIS actually an old police telephone box.

And he gets into this and he travels all over the universe, back in time for forward into the future. And a little bit by analogy, reading great works is like that you enter into a time machine and use it in a way to some extent can inhabit the thought world, the mind of a genius to some extent. So if you're reading Aristotle, for example, an amazing human being, you can have a different answer already in the Psalms in the Old Testament, again, another completely different expression of spirituality.

I can give numerous examples. So I think it's really important that we free ourselves from our prison of the present, by making ourselves acquainted with the past. And of course, the Supreme, the supreme paradigm shift of the greatest work of all it from my opinion, anyway, is the Quran. Because this really does give you a reality check that we live in a multi dimensional existence is not just the dunya what is near we can see and touch is also the unseen, the unseen realm actually exists. There's the realm of angels and jinn, we can't actually see them perceive them directly. They're part of the unseen and of course, things like the day of judgment and what will happen eschatology

the future all this becomes known to us or disclosed to us through Revelation supremely in the Quran and other revelations of course, as well. So that will be my response.