Tom Facchine – Problematic Assumptions About Allah

			Once we've established the importance of revelation as a category, and a phenomenon and the central
phenomenon of human existence and of our beliefs in who Allah is, who's the Creator, right? Someone
who be a Divine Being who cares enough about us to guide us.
		

			Once we've accepted that, then we have to accept the straightforward simplicity of the guidance that
he gives us.
		

			Right? If Allah is going to send us or the creator is going to send us guidance, and the guidance is
communicated in speech and in words, then we have to take seriously the idea that Allah means what
he says.
		

			Right? Somebody could come and say, well, that's not what Allah means. A law means this other thing,
or the creator, he might have given you these words, but they're really just empty shells and their
secret meanings that only a few people know. And all these sorts of things. That's a particular
metaphysics. And it's problematic. It's problematic because it assumes a type of creator that would
leave the majority of humanity, open to misguidance and misdirection. Right, it's quite pretentious,
to be honest. Where as a much more
		

			clear and humble and simple conception and accurate understanding of who the creator is and logical
understanding of who the creator is, if he's giving us revelation to guide us. Why would it be smoke
and mirrors? Why would it be only really hidden secret meanings that nobody knows? And the apparent
meanings are all just misdirection and play and
		

			that that flies in the face of logic and in fact, Allah in the Quran, he appeals to us through our
reasoning and through our logic, and we have to trust that he means what he says. Now, that doesn't
mean that you are going to be able to interpret absolutely everything correctly the first time,
maybe there's some context that you're missing. Maybe things aren't as literal as you assume that
they are. But if that's one extreme, taking every single word extremely literally in a way that is
divorced from all contexts and all commentary, such as the Hadith. Then there's another extreme,
which is to imagine that these things are just sounds and empty words and empty signifiers. And this
		

			is the most dangerous one of my opinion, because why?
		

			Somebody who says that these words that Allah sent that the creator sent are simply empty
signifiers. They don't mean what you think, who's going to tell you what they really mean?
		

			Right? It's the the phony, the fake shake, right? The charlatan the deceiver. Who's going to try to
say, Well, I'm the only one or me and my crew or me and my Sheikh are the only ones who can tell you
what it really means. And you just have to trust us and listen to us and obey.
		

			This is a problem. It assumes something bad about the Creator, that the Creator would try to deceive
us, or that the Creator would gatekeeping that way, not allow people to access the guidance that
that he gave us in the first place.