Walead Mosaad – Session 1 Beautiful Islam
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AI: Transcript ©
So, I wanna thank,
doctor A. U. Palmer and the rest of
the Beacon team,
for arranging,
these,
set of sessions inshallah that will,
operate weekly
within the at least through,
the beginning of Ramadan inshallah, and we'll see
how things progress after that.
And
the idea,
as we have seen and I know people
may be zoomed out,
that's the term that people use now,
since the pandemic began and all of the
things that we've been seeing and our inability,
unfortunately, to to meet in person for the
most part.
And so it has also opened up an
opportunity,
for these type of,
online,
meetings and sessions. And while they certainly can't
replace,
being together in person and and, sohba and
companionship,
we do,
you know, what is possible and make do
what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has
facilitated for us. And, inshallah, this is what
kind of, we're thinking about.
So the topic
that we have chosen,
we entitled it Beautiful Islam,
Bridging the Divide Between Spirituality
and Religious
Practice.
And
I thought about this title for a while
and and I think perhaps we were inspired
to choose it
because
we certainly do see a lot of
ugliness
or lack of beauty
in many things.
And, human beings by nature is kind of
something inherent within us.
We tend
to strive and and be attracted towards,
beautiful things. And and
those things can
be visual in nature. They can be auditory
in nature.
You know, like beautiful sounds, music, so forth.
Beautiful images.
We also
tend to be attracted to beautiful people
and not just in terms of
the physical beauty but also there's kind of
an inner beauty
that sometimes actually
manifests itself outside of that physical beauty,
outside of the inner beauty into a physical
beauty.
And,
you know,
the Arabs have a saying that says,
People tend to love or to do good
to those who do good to them.
And,
we find that our religion,
Islam,
though we may not see it, I would
say
at first glance,
certainly does put
a emphasis
on doing things
beautifully.
Right? Not just doing them,
but doing them in the most beautiful way.
So we find examples in the Quran. Whenever
prayer is mentioned for example,
the Quran doesn't just say pray. It doesn't
say Sunday.
But it talks about something called ikhamaat salah.
So, this ikhama
you could say
is like saying
do the prayer beautifully. Do it in the
best possible way.
And this ikhama, it's an interesting word that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Obviously, there's no better word to be used
in this this context, but then it becomes
our,
our path, our duty to think about, well,
why this particular word and not another word?
You know, it didn't say,
instead of akhimu salah, it could have said
zayinu salah or something like that. But, it
says akhimu salah.
And in it, there's an indication
even if it's subtle
that it's something that should be done,
consistently.
Something that should be established. Something that should
be done
uprightly,
right? From
which means
to stand or to
or or the same verb that comes from
that that word.
Right? Taqim.
So to straighten it or to put it
in its proper balance or proper position after
it was not.
So it's as if this is
so much more than just the physical
aspects of of the prayer itself. Right? The
4 integrals of the prayer which are the
standing part and the ruku,
the bowing, and then, the sujood,
jood, the the prostrating and then the sitting
position.
And and those four particular positions actually reflect
kind of the the human condition.
You know, we can be up we can
be down. We could be somewhere in between.
And then, you know, the unit, we we
rise up once again. And so there's a
lot of,
symbolism in that. And and also I would
say it's a it's a beautiful type of
symbolism
that we see reflected even in just those
two words.
So imagine if we were to
think about
the inherent beauty in all of the
divine commandments and all of the divine prohibitions
and in all of the,
the indications mentioned within the Quran and also
within the sunnah of
things that we should consider. Right? Where the
Quran mentions
this
Right? To look at things
introspectively or I would even say look at
things,
beautifully or perfectly or with
and not just look at
things at face value.
So,
this kind of,
the second part of the title,
bridging the divide between spirituality and religious practice,
indicates that there is a common notion that
there is a divide between the 2.
And we sometimes tend to see people
look at religious practice
and find that there are things there that
are not so beautiful.
And I will speak about the difference between
religion and religiosity
in more detail in a little bit
or between a din watadayun.
So
the religion itself or the set of principles
and ethics and morals and teachings and so
forth that comprise
our understanding of Islam
versus our adoption
and our putting into practice of those particular
principles, ethics, morals and so forth. So certainly,
there's a difference between the 2. And when
we conflate the 2,
this is then when people will say things
about Islam or say things about the prophet,
sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and so forth that then
will be
regrettable.
Not for our prophet, not for us but
for them. It will be regrettable later. But
nonetheless,
when they do so, it's often based upon
what they,
perceive in the religious practice or the religiosity
of some people who are affiliated with Islam.
And what I mean by affiliate, I don't
mean they're not Muslim, but
they are doing something and somehow in the
practice of their Islam that may not be,
in the best manner or that may not
bring forth or engender
the best meanings
of the Deen.
So,
I also
wanted to kind of touch upon the idea
of beauty to begin with.
Arabic language is kind of interesting in that
the word for beauty,
generally, we say is jamal.
And, we don't really find too many instances
of that word
in the Quran per se.
But, What I can think of is,
Alaihi Sanseid Ya'qub Asabrun Jamil.
The Prophet Jacob or Ya'qub
when he was told that,
the 11
sons
of Jacob came back and they said we've
lost Yusuf and he was the wolf ate
him and here's the * shirt.
He was
despondent and a little obviously doubting their story
but he said Sabol Jamil.
Right? I will have a beautiful
patience.
A beautiful patience.
So, the word jemel or jameel which is
the attribute beautiful
doesn't necessarily
capture all of the meanings when we talk
about this idea of beautiful Islam. There are
other words that reflect it as well. So
like also definitely, most certainly would reflect much
of that.
And I mentioned that just a few minutes
ago.
Jubilat
Right. The souls they love,
those who practice
towards them. So, alhusunu al ihsan actually means
beauty. It means excellence.
And then, it means the reciprocating of that
which is the ihsan. To do beauty
or to do good or to bring excellence
to others.
And indeed, many of us know the Hadith
of Jibril alaihis salam,
Gabriel
as it's often referred to and the third
thing that he asked the prophet sallaihi salam,
Tell me about this thing called Ihsan
which is the,
you know the verb that comes from from
Hasunah
which means to be good or to be
beautiful. So, Ihsan then means to reciprocate or
to do good or bring beauty
to others.
And what did the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam
reply back to that particular
request or that question?
So he expressed it in something that's a
modality which means
how to do something. So, it wasn't he
didn't say what to do but rather he
responded by how to go about doing it.
So, the first two questions
that were
about Iman and Islam,
Khminya al Iman and then he talked about
the 6 pillars of faith and then Ikhbir
nya al Islam
which
he answers in a different way. He
he answers in a different way. He doesn't
have a list of things or things that
are to be believed or to be taken
as true such as in terms of iman.
Because when iman he talks
about, you know, and so forth. To believe
in antutmin or to declare as true and
real
these things. Or when he said,
So, he listed this Iqamatul Sala that we
just talked about to establish or to beautify
the prayer and Ita is Zakah and to
pay the Zakah Hajj and Ramadan and so
forth. So, there are things that
are performed.
But, when it comes to
this thing Ihsan,
the prophet taught me how
to go about doing it. Tabud Allah. So
it's to worship God.
And even that word worship doesn't really capture
the whole meaning of Ubudiyya.
Right? Ta'ud,
really it means to
be in servitude to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So to be in servitude to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
So be in servitude to God
as if you
see him.
And what's striking here, I think,
is you have to use a bit of
imagination to actually put that into practice.
Right? Because we have what's called here in
Arabic language,
which means,
the language is telling you to do something
like something. Right? It's it's it's striking an
example, a simile, as it were in rhetoric.
So the simile here is
to worship God as if you see him.
If we go back to
an emanate,
right, and talking about things about eman, one
of the things that we
we know or that we will talk about
further is
that we do we can't see Allah in
that sense.
In other words, we can't see him with
our physical eyes as it were right now
in the dunya as things are.
When Moses asked the same of God,
banani amthur ilaik. He asked him, let me
look at you. How did Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala respond?
Qala lentarani.
He said, lan tarani. You will not see
me.
Then he redirected his vision to something else
or redirected his attention to something else. And
this is actually crucial
and pivotal for if we are to understand,
our relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So what did he redirect him to?
Rather look to the mountain. What's the mountain?
Well, the mountain is a creation of Allah.
It seems immutable, immovable.
Nothing can shake it. You know, when we
think of mountain,
we think of something that anchors the earth,
something that's foreboding and prohibitive and you can't,
you know, climb a mountain seems like a
big deal.
But then he told them, well, I can
look to the mountain.
If it stays in its place
then you will see me.
But it didn't stay in its place. What
happened?
So, Allah did something to the mountain. What
is the word that was used here? Falamma
tajalarabuhuliljabal.
This word tejali
and it's often found in in books about
spirituality and tasalwuf and so forth
often. But here it's it's used very much
in that same way in in the Quran
context.
So,
when his lord
tajallah,
and we could say manifested.
Right? What did he manifest?
He manifested something of the divine power which
is a divine attribute
upon the mountain.
It became as flat as the earth.
And Musa fell down in prostration and said
I have repented.
So, here early on, you know, 100 if
not 1000 of years before the prophet
Muhammad, Allah Subha Nahuwa Ta'ala is showing us
in this recounting of the story here in
the Quran
where should our direction be.
And I would say there's a relationship between
that
particular
redirection of of Musa, Moses Alaihi Salam.
And then here in,
Jibril telling asking the prophet what is Ihsan?
And then the prophet Ihsan responding.
So, to worship him
as if you see him.
And also what should not be lost upon
us
is,
right? The
false counter arguments that you will find also
mentioned in the Quran
for people who don't want to believe in
God and they ask for proof.
What did the people of Moses say to
him?
They asked the same thing.
Let us see.
Give us some physical evidence.
And even now in our culture, we see
often this idea of you have to prove
the existence of God. Is there
some particle, the God particle that can prove
that? And,
is it something
physically that we can measure and that
we can
have an appreciation for
and so forth
as it goes.
But when Allah says to Moses,
there also is an indication that you will
not see me because I am unable to
be seen
by
your physical eyes. So, let alone any sort
of empirical instrument.
So Allah cannot be measured.
He cannot be seen. He cannot be perceived
in that way
by the physical senses
because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is beyond physicalities.
Hence, when the prophet said,
Worship him as if you see him
because you cannot see him with these eyes
in this dunya,
but you'll see him with another set of
eyes
not in this dunya.
And,
it's interesting
that when it's described in the Quran what
is the word that is used?
Those who practice Ihsan,
same word that's used in the Hadith, what
do they get? Al Husna.
So, the Mufassiru and the exegetes of the
Quran they said, Al Husna hina Al Jannah
that that is paradise.
And then
comes this phrase,
Wasiada.
Right. Wasiada and something
extra something more than that. They said,
is to gaze upon the countenance of God
in the afterlife
or the beatific vision.
This is the ziyada
that is added to al Husna
which
seems almost counterintuitive because you would think, well,
that should be the husnah,
that's the real thing. And then the jannah
is kind of the ziyada. And for some,
that will be the case. For some, all
they will do is rest their eyes upon,
the countenance of God in a manner that's
commensurate with his majesty
in the next
life. But
that then, that moment
will be the epitome of all beauty. Nothing
could be more beautiful
than Allah
because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is the source
of beauty
which brings us into the other word that's
sometimes used for beauty and the parable that's
used,
nur
light. So, we also see this parable of
light and darkness
within the Quran. Right. Allahu
nurus samawati
wal art.
Allahu nurus samawati wal art. Allah is the
light
of the samawat
and of the Arth. Allah is the light
of
the heavens and the earth. In other words,
the light of everything. He is the source
of light
And, not just obviously physical light of the
sun
but the inner light,
the light of beauty, the light of the
primordial
act of beauty which is the act of
existence or creating or putting things into existence.
Because without that there is no beauty beyond
that.
The most
primal
and significant
act
of beauty, the most beautiful thing that Allah
has done
at least from our perspective is that He
created us and He put us into existence.
And that was an act of beauty and
that was an act of love love and
that was,
an act of divine grace.
Because as we've said in many classes and
over and over, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala could
have chosen
an infinite number of other possibilities besides creating
the individual that you are, an individual that
I am or that your parents are, that
your friends are or whoever.
Infinite number of possibilities that could have been
something besides that.
But it was a divine,
choice that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
creates
us, creates me, creates you and that he
made Muhammad Sallallahu Wa Salam our Prophet.
The hadith that's often mentioned in this regard
Allahu
Jameelu yhibu jamer
Allah is beauty and he loves beauty.
Maybe the sun of the hadith is what
they say, Mutakallam Fi Yani. Not the strongest
of chains of transmission but the meaning is
true.
And when we say the meaning is true,
that's an accepted
way
of reconciling
whatever problems are in the chain of transmission
with what we take from the hadith. So
the meaning being true and then the possibility
that the hadith is true.
So we can accept it upon that basis.
Allah is is beautiful and he loves things
that are beautiful. He loves things
that exhibit
beauty.
So,
going back to
well, how do we manifest this beauty?
Right? We understand that beauty can be hosun.
It could be goodness. It could be excellence.
It could be light
as opposed to darkness.
It can be
auditory in nature. Things that we listen to
that we'll talk about a little bit further
on. They could be visual in nature.
But
throughout
Muslim history, we have seen that Muslims tend
to produce
very beautiful things and tend to do
very beautiful things. That
overarching
kind of theme that we see.
The things that they created, the things that
they built, even architecturally,
that were
within
the paradigm
of Muslim excellence and Muslim
understanding, not the modern things that we see
today, but kind of the things that were
traditionally built with those traditional modes
of creativity and thinking, they tend to be
quite beautiful.
They tend to be quite pleasing.
They tend
to give a sense of what we say
raha
or of ease.
And, we see in the way that Muslims
built these things, the way that they built
the Masajid,
the mosque for example,
often with very high ceilings.
Lots of open spaces,
often adorned on the walls with with beautiful
things.
The Umayyad Mosque, for example, in Damascus,
the whole facade
of the courtyard is just
one big
sort of picture of paradise
or our or I should say a conception
of paradise,
You know, the motif of,
of the garden,
as it were.
And then you find, you know, also the
motif
of beautifying the Arabic script,
something also that developed within,
Muslim culture
and Muslim tradition.
Then the beauty of the use of geometric
shapes,
Also something that developed within,
the Muslim tradition.
And, you don't have a
sense of
Muslims trying to
bring forth or reflect whatever was ugly in
the world.
You know, and and I don't mean to,
you know, disparage,
you know, and and draw the kind of,
cliche
example between Western art and Islamic art. But,
you know, if you go to the Louvre
or if you go to
the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art
and you look at what Europe produced
from the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries,
you see violence. You see ugliness.
You see depictions of
people getting killed
and people being trampled upon and armies invading.
And not all of Western art is like
that but certainly
a good part of it is. And
you don't find that in in in Muslim
produced art. You don't find
depictions of this.
You don't find that Muslims built grand monuments
to their conquests and their victories.
Muslims
never built a Rome.
We didn't build monuments,
as homage
to our victories over other peoples.
Mecca and Medina, for the most part, throughout
its history,
even after
the period of Muslim expansion all the way,
east to China and all the way west
to the Pyrenees,
you didn't find this sort of homage being
paid back in Mecca
or in Medina. They didn't bring back,
you know, certain,
monuments
and plant them there as a tribute to
their victories,
you know, compared to, let's say, the French,
or
many European
countries who basically
pillaged and robbed
countries like Egypt and like Syria and like
Morocco
and brought these monuments and these artifacts back
to their countries, literally stole them and then
cleaned them as their own.
We didn't we had no such thing
in in Muslim culture and Muslim tradition because
it wasn't a beautiful thing
to do.
They were trying to bring meaning and trying
to bring beauty to people. And even the
way that they dealt with other cultures was
not one of
trampling upon that culture and trying to remove
every fabric of it. Rather, it was more
a centuries long,
program of synthesis
with that culture.
So,
you find that Muslims in Indonesia have
a particular style. The way they dress, the
way they eat,
the way that they
conduct
their marriages,
their familial relations and so forth. That is
maybe vary from the style the way that
people do it in Morocco
or the way that people do it in
Yemen or the way that people do it
in,
West Africa.
And so, all of that is an indication
that Muslims also
recognize there is beauty in other cultures as
well.
And, the prophetic example shows us that. The
prophet he wore many different sort of styles.
He didn't just wear what
was indigenous to his own particular culture.
The Shama'at mentions that he had, you know,
Azerbaijani
or a garment that was made in Azerbaijan
where whose,
the sleeves were so tight,
he couldn't actually roll them up.
And he wore other garments from Yemen and
so forth. And some of them were striped.
Some of them were solid
and so forth. So, even within the prophetic
practice during the early prophetic period,
we find this
recognition
that
things there are things to be learned and
things to be,
the objects of beauty in other cultures. And
the prophet himself said,
you know, seek knowledge even in China that
there are things.
And wisdom is the lost property of the
believer. Wherever he may find it, then he
has the most right to it.
And so, there's an indication that,
other peoples and even they may differ with
you in creed and belief system, but nevertheless
they can still benefit you with something and
bring something
that you will find not just beneficial but
also
beautiful.
And, Muslim architecture
certainly was a synthesis of other
architecture. The domes that we think are indigenous
to Islam,
and the arches, and even the minarets that
they've been built now were not indigenous to
So,
then, you know, the question becomes,
again,
where's the disconnect?
If Muslims were able to do this in
the past
and were able to do it quite well
and quite proficiently and and I I again,
quite beautifully, then how come
we're not really seeing that? And
we tend to see
on occasion some ugliness,
emanating from us.
How does one contend with that? And and
what is it that we should be thinking
about?
What is that is the is that we
should be doing? So
generally, we tell people
that in order for us to
kind of
reimagine or reacquaint ourselves with who we are,
we have to study.
We have to study.
Despite all of the trauma that the
ummah has undergone in the past 200 or
300 years,
our tradition
at least in its written form and I
would say to a great extent in its
oral form
has been preserved.
It has not been lost.
It is still there. It still can be
tapped into.
It's just that the white noise
surrounding it is a lot, is great. And
so, it's sometimes difficult to kind
of separate
the wheat from the chaff, from, you know,
the or as they say in Arabic, right?
To separate that which is real and that
which is not, that which is beneficial from
that which is not.
And some of the Arabs that have a
saying that wisdom is is the ability to
be able to separate good from bad and
bad from good, to recognize that. Or to
see within a single entity the good of
it and leave the bad.
So
good and bad or beauty and ugliness are
not absolutes.
You know, every entity, human being,
creature has something
that we may find that is
beautiful, that is good and may we'll find
something else.
And certainly, the believers as a body are
like that too. They're gonna have the good
amongst us and those are gonna be also
those who are not so good. But to
be able to,
discern
between that which is good and that which
is bad is something that is very important
for Muslims should have.
And, that's not really an intellectual skill as
much as it's a spiritual skill.
The Quran instructs us
If you have taqqu of Allah which is
a spiritual
thing,
He will give you a fukaan and the
fukaan means
that which is
the ability
or the adet, the tool, whatever it might
be, a spiritual tool to help you separate
the good from the bad until that which
is from beautiful and that which is not.
So again, in our course of study, if
we are to embark on a course of
study, how does one go about doing this?
And I want to talk a little bit
about,
how we approach study and specifically
some of the Islamic sciences.
So, I have some notes here in front
of me that I will share eventually with
everybody.
And, what I have here I say that
the ulema had different objectives
in the books that they wrote,
you know, in the manner by which that
they
put out,
the manner which they disseminated knowledge,
certainly they had objectives.
And,
these objectives were never divorced from the context
of their time.
And, that's a very important thing to remember
because sometimes we read these texts and
we fail to see
who the text is addressing originally, the context
of the time of the particular text. And
then, we tend to take whatever we're reading
from it and we universalize it.
And in doing so, we can make quite
a number of errors
in practice and in judgment when we do
that. So, it's important
to dig a little deeper and delve a
little bit deeper.
Imam Malik, for example, was renowned for
his caution,
his scrupulousness,
his wah
in terms
of addressing context he was not familiar with.
The very famous example of the group from
Al Andalus or Muslim Spain who came to
him and asked him something like 48 questions.
It was recorded by Claudia Ayad,
Fyat Hartib Al Madaric.
And,
to 36 of them he said I don't
know.
So, 36 of the 40 questions said, I
don't know.
And, they were a little surprised. They said,
We came all the way from El Andalus
to ask you these questions and then you
are who we think to be from
amongst the most knowledgeable of imams on the
face of the planet and you tell us,
I don't know. They said, What should we
tell the people when we go back?
He said, Tell them medic doesn't know.
So,
the addendum to that story that's not always
related is the companions of Madik
who have been with him for decades,
sitting with him, studying with him. They said,
We've heard you answer these questions before.
You've addressed these questions before, but yet
you told them I don't know. He said,
I don't know the context.
They are going to leave what if I
see something other than what I told them
right now. How am I ever going to
find them?
So, they were aware of
their particular context and there was always this
sort of act of
revising
and
never settling for
your latest conclusion per se.
And that you always have to
preface what you say
or at least at the end of what
you say to say, Allahu Adam.
So the fuqaha were very careful and they
said, Wallahu Alam.
And they were also very careful in how
they
spoke about what they think the
Islamic opinion is about something.
You know, one of the striking things is,
just look at people's social media or even
some
modern books that have been written,
titles of lectures and it will say something
like Islam and this or what does Islam
say about that and what does Islam say
about this thing and what's the Islamic opinion
on this thing?
Our predecessors didn't speak like this.
They didn't say Islam says this or Islam
says that.
Malik would say, Malik says this. Sha'afai would
say, Sha'afai says this.
Abu Hanifa would say Abu Hanifa says this.
Ahmed al Muhammed would say,
Abu Hanbul Abu Abdullah
says
this. And in that, they're not actually pumping
their ego. They're doing quite the opposite.
They're saying,
this thing that I believe to be the
deen, that I believe to be the teachings
of Muhammad as has been transmitted to us,
this is my
conclusion.
So, I'm attributing it to me, but it
doesn't mean that it's infallible. And, it doesn't
mean necessarily that it's the only opinion or
the only way to go about
doing something.
And,
again, bringing back the example of Medic. He
wasn't the only one, but a lot of
the things that happened with Medica were recorded
by his companions.
1 of the
Abbasid
Khalifa either
Abu Jafar Mansur or Harun Rashid
said to him,
I want to take your book Al Muwatta.
And, Muwatta means the well trodden
thing, which is the most famous work of
Malek, which was a book
of jurisprudence and hadith.
And, he said, I want to take your
book, and I wanted to make it the
state book.
In other words, this then will be
practice at the exclusion of all others.
And you would think what an honour
it might be for an imam to have
his work kind of be the one that
the empire
uses and puts into practice at the exclusion
of others. But Imam Malik forbade him. He
said, No, I don't want that.
He said, The Sahaba, the companions who had
their
way of interpreting and looking at the deen,
they spread out and they went different places.
Yes, many of them were made in Medina.
And, that's primarily the school of Melek looking
at the school of Medina.
But, he said many of them traveled
and went to other places.
And, it would be unfair and incorrect for
us to take this book and to make
it the book of the state and apply
it to everybody because they had different ways
of doing things. And that's
okay. I wrote in my
dissertation that I think another thing that Medik
was thinking about is he didn't want the
state getting involved in such affairs either,
to get involved in, you know, involved in
the affairs of,
the Ulema.
They had
their way of doing things,
their traditional knowledge circles
and the way that they conducted them and
to have the state kind of get involved
in this he thought certainly that would have
been a corrupting thing.
So anyway,
we have to look at the context of
how these things have been taught.
One of the things that is often
we start with when we teach people is
this subject called
Aqidah
or matters of faith or creed sometimes
also sometimes referred to also
as. Right?
Dialectic discourse
which
then gives you an indication
what they were writing about and why they
were writing when they wrote it.
So,
which is a book about Aqidah and also
about spirituality.
He says
the books of Akidah and El Mirkolem were
not written primarily
to
lead to the knowledge of God for the
person who's writing it.
Right? It's not so that they can,
you know, raise in degrees in their understanding
of the divine.
But rather, it was there was written to
dispel polemical misconceptions.
And
So due to the plurality
of thought
that was tolerated and allowed from the early
days of Islam,
then there were people who came up with
things
that were very polemical
and
claiming things about their understanding of the teachings
of Muhammad
that the majority of the learned rejected.
And so, they had to
clearly make this
plain
and make this understandable for everybody.
And so, there were books to dispel these
things.
And then the manner by which they
dispelled these things had to be a way
that would be accepted by
both themselves, obviously,
and also the people that they were trying
to who were putting out these misconceptions that
they wanted to dispel.
So, everybody is making istushhad with the Quran
and the Hadith.
Right? Everybody's claim in the Quran says this
or it means that and the Hadith means
this or it means that but not
that couldn't be just a common
denominator between them. So, they spoke in a
language that was a polemical language that relied
upon rational discourse that was also
heavily
borrowed from the Greek tradition,
the tradition of Socrates and the tradition of
Aristotle and the tradition of Plato.
Taking that
rhetoric and dialectical discourse and applying those principles
in order to
dispel
what they deemed to be
misconceptions. And so, they came up with terms
that you won't find in the Quran and
Sunnah.
Sha'al Ali mentions like a Juhar wal Arud.
Right? Juhar which is substance and Arud which
is attribute or accident.
To learn
about all of these different mostalahat,
these different terms.
That's fine in the specific terminology of how
some books of Aqidah, not all of them
but
a certain number of them speak about these
issues.
And he says rather you will find all
of the Aqidah that you need
and that will suffice you for your life
in the Qur'an.
The Qur'an has everything.
It makes clear everything.
So, what could be more important than what
we believe about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and
what we know about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
What some of the later books of Aqidah
did that didn't get too much into the
polemics
books of like Jawhud Tawhid, Mamin Laqqani and
Achhiyal Bahiyyah, Mam Al Dardir
that came in the latter period beginning with
15th 16th century and onwards,
of the Gregorian calendar
is just kind of list
things of creed
and not really get too much into the
polemical things. But some of the earlier works
and even some of those later works like
Teftazani
and others actually
very much,
talked about
these polemical issues. So
I I I'm bringing this up because I
think some people might be under the impression
that once we get our atida down very
well, then we'll be able to practice Islam
and know up from down and left from
right and so so forth? And I would
say yes and no.
Yes, definitely we need to have
a basic understanding
and a basic,
you know,
affirmation
of all the things that are real and
all the things that the Quran mentions as
being real because they are not limited to
that which you can perceive with our senses
obviously
but they go beyond that. And certain things
we can only know
by the Quran informing us like a trusted
authority like the Quran
and Hadith was referred to as a
in the science of or
eschatology
which is talking about things of the of
the unseen realm and things of the afterlife
like the paradise and heaven and the siroth,
the bridge that will cross over and then
how the Nabi SAW IS ALLEN the
the pond of the prophet SAW IS ALLEN.
So, these are things that are mentioned sometimes
in the hadith, sometimes in the Quran
that are important to affirm and things that
we should teach our children and so forth.
But
going back to the ihsan part,
right? How do we how do we actually
practice? How do we go about doing
it? That's that's kind of I think the
crucial aspect here. Ta'abudullah
To worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as
if you see him.
So as I said before, it requires imagination.
You have to imagine
that you can see Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So if you can't really see Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala with
with your eyes, then how do you actually
try to see him? Well, the second part
of that gives you the the baby steps
or the first steps to do that where
it says
but if you can't see him like you
don't have that imagination
or that what's called the
to behold God and everything.
Then know that he sees you.
So, it takes us from this sort of
very spiritual, somewhat imaginative
way of going about
being a servant of God,
if you're not there yet, start with
something that is more palpable and something that
I would say is
more easily intellectually
digestible
in the sense,
know that god sees you.
Right? So, knowing that God sees you is
actually an affirmation.
Right? It's a basic tenant of creed that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is mojood.
Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala exists. And if Allah exists and
I believe all of the,
requisite attributes that come with his existence, his
omniscience, his omnipotence,
he knows everything, he sees everything, nothing escapes
him. As the Quran says,
then,
that means he sees everything I do.
Again, Quran, Allah is with you wherever you
are. What is this witness?
Certainly, this witness is knowledge.
So, Allah's knowledge is with you. You. There's
no way you can escape. He can't see
you, and then he doesn't know what you're
doing.
So, if I affirm that as a as
a matter or a tenant of creed,
then it follows from that. That's my first
steps
towards
elevating insha'Allah to this sort of higher spiritual
plane
of where I can behold the divine in
everything.
Right? Because it's not just about you now
when it says,
so he sees you.
But the first one
as if you see him. So, you are
the beholder in the first one. So, you
are beholding
of to share it, right, to bear witness
that there is the divine in everything.
And this is the part that
requires
a little bit of work,
what we call rialdah.
Right? Rialdah means to,
mujaheda,
to strive and to struggle
because
the thing that we fall back on most
of the time is what our sensory perception
tells us,
Right? This person did this to me and
this person did that and
I think
these things in front of me have a
power of their own when it's certainly
from a matter of creed, we know that
they do not.
So this will be the struggle,
that we will attempt to do that.
And when we can do that, when we
start putting that into practice
then
things will not only kind of fall into
place better for us but things will become
more beautiful to
us. We will see
even the beauty in the darkness of night.
We'll see
the beauty in solitude
the multitude.
We will see,
the beauty in the sun just as we
see the beauty in the rain.
Because why? All of those things then have
to be manifestations
of beholding the divine. So, let's take a
few steps back and go back to what
we said about Moses
So this
So really the doctrine of tajalliat,
let's call it
that, or seeing the divine manifestation, everything is
the
key to
ihsan.
And I would say it's the key to
this thing we call beautiful
Islam,
To see the divine in everything. Because if
you see the divine in everything, what could
possibly be ugly
after that?
Yes, there's going to be suffering. There's going
to be evil but that will never be
divorced
from seeing that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is
the ultimate manifestor
and author of all.
And if he brings things out and manifest
things that we find to be ugly, it's
only so that we can raise our hands
towards him and ask him to lift those
things from us.
And then our reaction
in the manner that which we deal with
that ugliness
will render that which was ugly beautiful by
manner of the way we deal with it.
So we have the ability to take any
situation, any adverse situation,
however ugly,
however
insufferable it may seem
and we can make it beautiful.
What did say?
There's dura. There's harm.
I've been very
sick but then what does he say after
that?
Beauty.
So, very difficult
What did he say? La ilaha illa an
Subhanaka
Inikuntum minazhali min.
La ilaha illa ant. There is no God
but you. Subhanak.
Glory to me. Glory to you.
I certainly was among from those who made
a mistake here or transgressed. Here, transgressed in
the sense
not of of a sin that is
something
that he did wrong that he is considered
an ithim
but transgressed in terms of what was not
commensurate with his muqam, commensurate with his lofty
status as a prophet.
Then he said,
So, it was like a plea, but it
was a plea that was beautiful. Or, what
we earlier,
Yaqub
Jacob Alaihi
Salam,
Patience, forbearance, but a beautiful patience,
a beautiful
forbearance.
And Nabi
SAWHAWA SAWHAWA think about all of the beautiful
things that our own prophet sahu wa sallam
the way he dealt with adversity,
his mercy,
his kindness, his gentleness.
Whole books have been written just about
all of these
beautiful attributes,
about the prophet SAW. What's called the Shemael.
Right? And the is the attribute. So
the talks about all of the beautiful things
that the manifested
both outwardly
and inwardly.
And that beauty was predicated
upon balance and upon temperance and upon grace
and upon
and all of the beautiful virtues that we
would think
we would find in the greatest of all
human beings. We do find them obviously and
in abundance and perhaps beyond measure, perhaps beyond
what we
fathom.
So,
I think now we've actually reached
the end of our time. One hour has
passed
and, I just wanted to kind of do,
an
introduction here for this. And in the following
weeks, as mentioned in the,
the blurb about the class, we will be
following,
the hikm of Ibn 'Ata' and
the next class I'll talk a little bit
more about that but
this book, we will see,
is
kind of a primer
to teach us how to go about
worshiping God as if we see him him
and putting into practice, in other words,
embodying within our hearts
all of the meanings that we study in
creed namely, Tawhid.
Right?
Is the intrinsic oneness
of everything because the divine is 1. Allah
is 1. So, Allah is 1 in his
essence. He's 1 in his his names and
attributes,
and he's 1 in all of the divine
acts.
And so to to see that, right, to
imbibe that and to live your life,
never,
being unaware of that is the key to
what we mentioned earlier
as beautiful Islam.
So,