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Transcript - This is an automated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation

Introduction

0:00

what is it about faith that makes those people  so resilient a person who believes in an unseen  

0:06

realm they believe in an afterlife they believe  in a Creator their life has purpose the Christian   imagination of the history of the prophets makes  very little sense I think it takes more faith to  

0:15

be an atheist than it does to be a believer a  blind faith in the history of the West atheism  

0:20

seems like a rational proposition because of  its reaction to an anti-rational Christianity  

0:25

if God is all loving why is there so much pain  pain in the world the majority of the converts  

0:31

are women how do we explain that if Islam is  so oppressive to women even the sloppiness of   Marxism to say that there can be no virtuous rich  people Islam proves that to be incorrect Islam  

0:42

has a positive relationship towards local  cultures beans and toast right completely

0:49

fine Islam is about Justice and Gaza has mobilized  the community to confront the settler Colonial  

0:58

Enterprise on this Journey we have met many  non-muslims who share our sense of mission  

1:03

and have embraced for collaboration to carve out  a better world inshallah I have experienced as a  

1:10

result of these past 15 months that we have had  a huge following among such principled people  

1:16

trying to understand what motivates those in Gaza  and Beyond who stand up for justice today I would  

1:22

like to put some of the common questions I have  received from intelligent non-muslims uh to Imam  

1:28

Tom fakini Imam Tom is research director at the Y  Institute imamah and welcome back to the thinking  

1:36

Muslim pleasure to be here as always well it's  wonderful to have you with us and uhak for for  

1:42

joining us today and I really want to talk  about some of these common questions that uh  

1:48

we get countless times on our show questions  about Islam questions about the perseverance  

1:54

of of those in Gaza uh the impact of faith upon  the individual and upon society and community  

2:00

and I suppose what a lot of people are discovering  which is that Islam has Justice at its core at its  

2:06

Center and and how do we as Muslims appreciate  that you know and and and questions related to  

2:13

it we've witnessed uh uh 15 months of genocide in  Gaza and it's it's you know we come across so many  

Faith of Gazans

2:21

non-muslims who observe the resilience and the  strength and the faith of those in gazer and and  

2:28

Marvel at just how how that comes into existence  like what is it about these people that allows  

2:35

them enables them to to remain so strong until  today I mean if you if you speak to if you listen  

2:41

to an ordinary gin of course they they will be  traumatized by what's happened to them they remain  

2:48

uh very positive and remain very strong now what  is going on there like what is it about faith uh  

2:56

that makes those people uh so resilient it's about  purp it comes back to suffering and purpose yeah  

3:02

that if you are a materialist there is no purpose  to suffering suffering in fact your You could  

3:09

argue and many have that your greatest mission is  to minimize suffering and minimize pain as much as  

3:15

possible avoid it at all costs yeah and maximize  or maximize pleasure as much as possible at all  

3:21

costs that's what materialism calls us to or at  least that's I think the logical conclusion of  

3:26

it yeah a person who believes in an unseen realm  they believe in an afterlife they believe in a  

3:32

Creator their life has purpose inherently it has  purpose and therefore everything that they undergo  

3:38

has purpose their suffering has purpose and so you  can accommodate and tolerate No you can actually  

3:44

even expect suffer you know the Creator tells us  in the Quran to expect suffering this is history  

3:51

right unfortunately we are allowed to sleep in our  neoliberal Western societies where we just consume  

3:58

and we have our treats and our addictions and  our Netflix and this and that we we don't really  

4:03

expect to suffer ever that's entitlement you have  no right to expect that as a human being on God's  

4:11

Earth that so there's a a betrayal almost that  a materialists might feel when they undergo and  

4:18

that's why there's the pity party why me why is  this happening whatever you don't see have you   ever seen a clip from anyone in Gaza saying why me  Where's God no they might Express disappointment  

4:30

at the solidarity of other people to not intervene  they have yeah but the words on their lips are  

4:38

oriented towards the afterlife and understanding  that this has an essential purpose in their  

4:44

ultimate Journey to the afterlife and what's  going to happen in that afterlife I suppose um  

4:50

the first thing to start with in any conversation  about Islam is truth because we as Muslims believe  

4:56

that Islam is is true it's a truth right um  just explain that idea of of Islam's claim to  

5:04

righteousness to truth very good um I think that  Islam proceeds from it's not just an assumption  

5:12

it's a reality a perception of reality that I  think is true that everyone worships something  

5:19

that worship is ubiquitous and for someone who  maybe is uninitiated or an atheist or doesn't  

5:24

believe in in God or the afterlife that might seem  counterintuitive yeah but that also suffers from  

5:31

our lack of understanding the breath of what it  means to worship the core of worship is obedience  

5:37

and so everybody obeys something so the claim of  Islam or at least the assumption that it proceeds  

5:45

from is that everybody obeys something and  everybody has a moral duty to introspect and look  

5:54

at what is it that you obey at the end of the day  what's the thing that wins out is it a a code of  

6:00

ethics is it um your your body like what what the  the urges of your body whatever you desire is it  

6:07

your ego is it pleasing other people it could be a  multitude of things is it nationalism is it there  

6:13

are several several things that could fill this  and the call of Islam and the mission of Islam is  

6:19

to take people from obeying anything else and to  bring them to The Obedience of the Creator that's  

6:28

the simplest way that could put it um maybe we  can get into it more from there and and what makes  

6:34

it true like what's how do how do we claim as  Muslims or why do we claim as Muslims that there  

6:40

is a a inherent truth to Islam and as a result  the other religions are untrue that's a great  

6:48

question I think that to take a step back you  have to start with epistemology you have to say  

6:54

how would we know the truth if it came to us and  this is very key because a lot of people they they   jump headlong into these discussions but then what  happens is that they have unperceived biases where  

7:05

they have a high degree of skepticism towards  some claims and then they have a very low degree   of skepticism towards other claims so they end up  being inconsistent yeah so back up the question I  

7:15

think it's very fruitful to develop open-ended  questions how would we know that a religion is   true yeah because there are multiple claimants  to truth as you said everybody every religion  

7:25

claims that it is true and most of them claim to  be exclusively true atheism also also claims to   be exclusively true it does not recognize uh  the valid the validity of the truth claims of  

7:34

religious systems yeah and now the fact that there  are multiple claims to truth does not mean that  

7:40

they're all wrong it does not automatically mean  that one has to be right they could be they could  

7:45

be all wrong um or one of them might be right  so we have to back up and look at open-ended  

7:51

questions how would we know how would we know that  one system or one claimant to the to to truth is  

7:59

actually true or not and if we can articulate  those questions then at least you can be fair  

8:05

right and so there are several ways that we can  look at the veracity of these different claims  

8:11

yeah one is its correspondence to reality and this  is where I know you've got some questions that  

8:16

we'll get into later where for people in the west  such as the UK and the United States and Europe  

8:24

there's a lot of interference and background noise  because our primary experience of religion is  

8:30

through Christianity and Christianity at least the  received Doctrine and even historical imagination  

8:38

of Christianity does not conform to reality at  least what we have discovered as the human body  

8:45

of knowledge has accumulated over centuries was  that the the world of Christianity and the world  

8:53

as we experienced it and perceived it continued  to diverge and so the Christian system became  

9:00

less credible as those two worlds or bodies of  knowledge diverged however we have to remind our  

9:07

European and American brothers and sisters that  that's only one experience it would be a mistake  

9:13

to overgeneralize that and say that all religion  thus is the same as Christianity Christianity is  

9:19

one experience of religion and there are other  systems yeah however it's true what they're on   to is that yes religion does have to conform to  reality that you can't have a revelation that's  

9:31

telling you that um pharaoh ruled at the time  of Joseph and accept that as true because the  

9:39

rulers at the time of Joseph were not called  Pharaoh that is a historical anachronism or to  

9:45

say that the Earth is only um a couple thousand  years old that this is untrue and there are other  

9:52

things that we could go through so one aspect  is that it has to conform to reality uh as we  

9:58

at least as far as We Know with a nice healthy  dose of humility about human knowledge and what  

10:03

it can know and what it can't know we don't even  know what's in the oceans right the oceans remain   unexplored so I'm not a positivist I don't think  that human beings can know everything I think  

10:13

there's a large body of of information and reality  that humans will never know however even within  

10:19

the small circle of what we can know and what we  have known that there has to be a correspondence   it can't flagrantly contradict uh what we know of  reality another thing is a scription okay we have  

10:31

to be able to verify that this source which claims  certain things about itself can actually be traced  

10:39

to what it claims to be sourced from so in our  case we have a Quran and our story of the Quran  

10:47

is that it was divine revelation that was given  to the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and   that it was eventually actually very soon after  his death it was written down in entirety and  

10:57

it was actually preserved and so that becomes our  responsibility to now demonstrate the veracity of  

11:03

that claim and the same with Christians and the  same with Jews and the same with Hindus and the  

11:08

same with Buddhists and the same with anybody  else what you will find at the end of the day  

11:13

and I didn't actually get into this until I was  challenged by some Evangelical Christians uh on   the idea of manuscript dating and all of all of  these things Islam is the only claimant among the  

11:24

religions among the religions that can actually  on firm footing set that we know for a fact that  

11:31

this is what was preached by the prophet we claim  it was preached by the person who believes in the  

11:37

gospels cannot say that about Jesus right they  cannot say that about Buddha they cannot say that  

11:42

about Krishna they cannot say that about any other  religious figure or founder of a religion if you   want to use the world religious lingo so being  able to actually verify did is it plausible is  

11:54

it possible did it actually come where are the  carbon dating for the manuscripts where do the   manuscripts live within the manuscript history of  the New Testament alone you don't see manuscript  

12:03

evidence complete manuscript evidence until  the Roman Empire becomes Christian in fact the   earliest manuscripts that exist are more around  100 to 150 years after the time of Jesus and it's  

12:15

the size of a business card size of it has one  verse from John from the gospel supposedly the   Gospel of John by the way the gospels were found  with no names written on them they were ascribed  

12:24

later so you can see why in the European mind and  in the American mind for those who have gone down  

12:32

the rabbit hole of trying to verify Christianity  it seems like it's all a bunch of hoie at the end  

12:38

of the day because of Christianity like just  believe and that even the intuitiveness there   has to be a certain level of intuitiveness when  it comes to its theology or a rationality and I  

12:47

know he wanted to ask questions about rationality  to its theology that doesn't mean that rationality   is the sole Arbiter of everything that is true  because human beings underestimate their ability  

12:57

toe them to delude themselves however there are  things that have to have logical consistency  

13:03

and rational coherence how can one God be three  how can a God come on Earth and live as a human  

13:12

being and then be killed and pray to himself on  the cross this is irrational it is in fact it's  

13:18

anti-rational and it's it's incredible in the  literal sense of the word it's impossible to  

13:24

believe and in fact when you push the priests and  you push the as I did as a Young Man you know they  

13:29

will tell you well you just have to believe it's a  mystery and that's where the Catholic doctrine of  

13:34

mystery comes in how do we understand these things  it's just a mystery this is impal to a thinking  

13:43

human being to a thinking Muslim or a thinking  human and Islam has a very different attitude  

13:49

towards the role of rationality and reason when  it comes to um being able to verify certain truth  

13:56

claims or even theological claims say for example  the sense of History the Christian imagination of  

14:05

the history of the prophets makes very little  sense you're telling me that we had a prophet  

14:11

let's go back to Abraham who preached in one God  to believe in one God then we had later Moses who  

14:19

preached one God then we have other prophets down  the line saying believe in one God worship one God   worship one God not mentioning anything about the  Son of God not mentioning anything about a trinity  

14:30

and then all of a sudden we have the Son of God  incarnate who dies for our sins what's the point  

14:36

of the other prophets were the other prophets  required to preach Trinity are they going to  

14:43

Hellfire for not having preached Trinity is there  a progressive I've heard the evangelicals coin  

14:50

this idea of progressive theology where well  the time wasn't right to you know to expound   upon these these Divine Mysteries it's like  okay well did Divine reality change and this  

15:00

is where in Islam we reality can't change the  nature of reality even the nature of who is God  

15:08

right is something that is a a constant that is a  contradiction right to have a change in an action  

15:14

point or what you should do about something  what we call Sharia what you should do that's   not necessarily a contradiction if it's winter  time right now it's Janu is it February now it's  

15:23

February I tell you to turn on the heat it's cold  in here J okay and then I come back in July say  

15:29

it's it's blazing hot turn on the air conditioner  right that's not a contradiction because the  

15:34

situation has changed and thus the action has  changed however if I came and I told you that  

15:40

J there are angels there are these things called  angels that exist in February and then I came back  

15:46

to you in July and I said Jal there are no Angels  that's a contradiction this is not something that  

15:51

any human being that respects their mind and  respects rationality can accept and so we can't  

15:58

believe in the Christian account of prophethood  that ends with the Son of God we can't accept the  

16:04

Christian relation to um to rationality in general  which asks us to suspend our mental faculties in  

16:11

an unreasonable way an extreme way in order to  um supposedly gain access to this exclusive Club  

16:18

Club of Salvation so i' I've moved far a field  sorry about that no that's that's fantastic

Donate to Baitulmaal

16:29

oh

16:58

[Music]

17:06

[Music]

17:13

[Music]  

17:22

so um that's a critique of Christianity and of  course many Europeans and North Americans will be  

Islam Uniqueness and Truth

17:29

uh will will have that background um but of  course you you have a lot of people who are  

17:34

atheists who don't who come to that conclusion  but there are too many internal contradictions  

17:39

within Christianity right uh to to uh to place  it as a as a religion that one needs to follow in  

17:47

and abide by uh but what is it inherent within  within the Quran within Islam that uh proves  

17:55

itself Beyond uh adherence of of other religions  very good I'll even back that up one step further  

18:02

and say why should we even suspect that there is  anything Divine this is actually a very important  

18:11

illustration of why intellectual history is very  important to understand words like Faith used to  

18:18

demonstrate they used to be used in a different  register than they are today they used to carry a   different connotation Faith used to be understood  as a virtue of the heart not as a cognitive uh set  

18:32

of propositions that you ascribe to or think are  true as a world of difference between the two yeah  

18:37

now where the rubber meets the road with that is  when you look at the creative Universe I used to  

18:42

work in restaurants as a waiter for many years  really and I had a a colleague who was um who  

18:48

was a composer okay because you know when you're  a waiter you have some sort of thing that you're   hoping to do later yes and he was an atheist  and I was a new Muslim you know and he he asked  

18:58

me one day he said he said what do you see when  you see the the universe and I said I see order  

19:07

I see complexity I see a level of complexity and  Harmony that doesn't make sense that shouldn't  

19:14

really ex that has no right to exist yeah  right it's a miracle that anything exists  

19:20

at all because logically speaking it would be much  more probable even that nothing should exist so we  

19:30

actually the burden of proof is how do we justify  that this all exists in the first place yeah and  

19:36

to a person who is a hardened atheist they look  and they say where's the proof where's the proof  

19:41

to a person who has cultivated the virtue of a  faithful heart they say where isn't the proof  

19:47

the proof is ubiquitous which is why Allah says in  the Quran it's not the heart the the eyes that are  

19:53

blind it's the hearts that literally wherever you  look there is a sign that reality is a sign of a  

20:00

greater reality behind it that there is order that  there is complexity there is regularity that I can  

20:06

drop this cup and every single time it's going  to fall down and never will it fall up that these  

20:13

These are signs now you could say they're random  you can say these chance but even within the world   of the scientists and the mathematicians like  people are starting to come around to say that  

20:22

by the Numbers things shouldn't be this fine-tuned  things shouldn't be this orderly things should  

20:28

be there's no it's an anomaly okay an anomalies  must be explained so you could call this the god  

20:35

of the gaps uh conception or or what have you  but I think that understanding where the burden  

20:41

of proof lies is very very important yeah that  I think the burden of proof I think it takes   more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a  believer a blind faith because when you look at  

20:54

why is there love why is there I'll give you even  a naturalistic example if we were to believe the  

21:00

atheist conception that the only things that exist  even of beauty okay are functionalist in nature  

21:10

it's only to attract mates it's only to optimize  resources complete rubbish the way that birds sing  

21:19

the way that birds make their look up pendulus  Nest anybody go Google pendulus Nest is a type  

21:24

of Nest that some birds extremely intricate Beyond  function Beyond far beyond function a materialist  

21:32

would look at say this is a waste of energy this  is a waste of resources the way that birds sing  

21:38

it goes beyond far beyond function the beauty with  which they sing is far beyond function the colors  

21:46

and the you know and of the animal kingdom the  plants and all this there are functions to them  

21:52

but the beauty exceeds the function multiple  times over so where do we explain this beauty  

21:59

we could have gotten function we like you know my  wife teases me she says you know if you um if I  

22:07

let you alone your aesthetic sensibility  is one of a warehouse right yes that's  

22:13

the materialist world if if we were strictly  going by efficiencies and uh Fitness in that  

22:22

in the darwinian sense then the world would be a  warehouse cuz the most efficient thing is a square  

22:30

but that's not what we see we see spirals we see  the golden mean we see the Fibonacci sequ we see  

22:37

all these things and beauty beauty of all the  senses that we can't we can't sufficiently explain  

22:44

so for the the atheist or the materialist it takes  a lot of blind faith in my opinion to think that  

22:52

there's nothing rational behind and people have  come up with these analogies of you know you don't   question the the Rolex you don't question that  it's made by a maker our universe is way more  

23:02

complex and fine tune than a Rolex and we somehow  it's become this is why intellectual history is  

23:08

important because you can't separate the emotional  component to the reaction against Christianity and  

23:15

its anti-rationalism from these postures of your  sensibility of what is more rational to believe  

23:21

in okay it's in the history of the West atheism  seems like a rational proposition because of its  

23:28

reaction to an anti-rational Christianity which is  why I I take time to go through that that's that's  

23:34

my belief now specifically to the Quran yes okay  why Islam what's in the Quran that would speak to  

23:42

these realities well as we said it has to comport  to reality and you haven't no one has yet found  

23:47

something that was 1400 years ago it was revealed  and brought to Earth probabilistically we would  

23:52

expect that if it were the work of a human  being there would be some sort of inaccuracy  

23:59

error some something that's quaint that was  later found out to be untrue something that  

24:04

was maybe it it shouldn't have been you go to the  works of Shakespeare or the finest minds of the  

24:10

English language or the finest poets the finest  authors there are mistakes there are errors there  

24:16

are anachronisms there are misrememberings or  misplaced things and people have had a long  

24:22

time to try to pick apart the Quran and  they haven't been able to actually do it  

Quran is a miracle

24:29

we Muslims we ascribe uh uh the word miracle to  the Quran and we argue that there is this there  

24:37

is this of quality of the Quran maybe a linguistic  quality I remember reading on on the yakim website  

24:44

a really a very detailed article on that on the  um miraculous nature of the Quran can you just  

24:50

you know briefly outline that argument that the  Quran inherently internally commits itself to  

24:58

to this truth claim two things there's many things  that could be said here yeah I'll only give two   and I encourage people to look up the article as  well yeah one is that the Quran is a new genre  

25:13

and actually no that's not even fair to say it  is beyond genre there is nothing like the Quran  

25:19

there was nothing like the Quran before in Arabic  and there is nothing like it after and if you're a  

25:26

person who knows music or knows literature you  know that the way that human beings interact  

25:31

it's like this is human history there are genres  they they rise they fall they're changed they're   shifted it's not really precedented that someone  could come and create a work whether it's of art  

25:45

or music or literature that defies all the genre  categories and continues to defy them 1500 years  

25:56

later so that's init it cannot be and has not  been imitated and there are elements of other  

26:03

genres there are elements of verse there are  elements of Pros there are elements that are  

26:08

both historical sociological um you know there are  many many elements going on but the way in which  

26:15

they are communicated is completely unique and has  never been replicated and yet is something that is  

26:23

extremely intuitive it's on everyone's tongues  that's the other thing you might find someone  

26:28

who you know produces something very weird  very eccentric and out there but you'll find  

26:33

that there's an elitism to it it won't be taken up  by the masses It Won't Be Sung in the streets or  

26:39

recited from memory so then try to now do this  with any anything with try to create something  

26:46

completely unique outside of genre yet drawing on  them all that cannot be imitated after that is on  

26:53

the tongues of everyone in the marketplace it it  can't be done it hasn't ever been done except for  

26:59

the Quran that's number one number two and the  expert on this is Dr Ali from uh from zetuna the  

27:07

Quran demonstrates that the author knows multiple  languages across time because there are puns that  

27:17

span languages that no one could have known  at that time there are puns between Arabic and  

27:25

Hebrew in the Quran such as the names of some of  the prophets like is and is and the way in which  

27:32

which which are names that predate Arabic okay so  they're anteed in Hebrew and then the verbs that  

27:40

Allah chooses to mention when he's mentioning  those names he makes puns where he you know the  

27:47

the meaning of is and the meaning of is and other  names he puts verbs that correspond to the meaning  

27:53

of the name in Hebrew and this is not my area of  expertise but if you want to see further go to Dr  

27:58

so there are there is an active demonstration  of knowledge of other languages and puns being  

28:05

made across those languages uh in the Quran itself  which is hard to Fathom to be honest like we all  

28:12

struggle communicating just in the Queens English  like what about trying to make puns between   English and French yeah right in such a document  and those are just two things there's a lot really  

28:20

that could be said here um and we talk a lot about  human nature and the fact that Islam is in line  

28:28

with human nature um and the term we give it is  f the the idea that every human being is born  

28:37

with these sort of I don't know primordial um uh  ways of of um uh of living uh that Islam conforms  

28:47

to uh maybe you can explain that a little better  why do we make that claim that Islam is in line  

28:52

with human nature absolutely well everyone has to  understand that and I'll I'll use an illustration  

28:59

people talk about human rights a lot but they'll  find that they will never agree to one regime  

29:06

of human rights that everyone on the face of the  Earth agrees to why because the problem was never  

29:11

about the rights the problem was about human how  do we Define what is a human what's our sense of  

29:18

anthropology what all goes into making up a human  being yeah there's vastly different understandings  

29:24

of that and some of them are strictly serialist  we're just dust star dust that came into you  

29:31

know was arranged in this fashion and now we're  Consciousness we haven't figured out exactly how   but Consciousness somehow arose from the firing of  neurons and we can find a mechanism a materialist  

29:41

mechanism for everything that we experience  that's hard materialism and then there are  

29:47

other there are other ways to think about it now  science has come a long way and seems to be coming  

29:55

to a point where they talk about The God Spot  they talk about you know chsky and the the the  

30:00

predilection for language acquisition and these  things that again defy explanation and show that  

30:06

we have we're we have a hard wiring for Morality  and this is truly what differentiates us that the  

30:14

materialist world if you go through materialism  there is nothing that separates from the animals  

30:20

there's nothing maybe culture but culture is weak  and it's very you know malleable yes is that true  

30:28

does that conform to what we experience there are  tremendous acts of sacrifice and selflessness and  

30:40

goodness that we find among human beings that  are inexplicable if we are only material that  

30:49

there is a hard wirring for Morality that defies  self-interest in a narrow materialist sense there  

30:58

is a universality of certain beliefs in a Divine  in an Afterlife with a lot of diversity yes about  

31:12

the fine details but if you go back within human  anthropology the law of the day and the law of  

31:22

the Human Being Human Being some people have  have coined this term instead of homo sapiens   it should be homo religio it should be really the  religious uh human because of our our insistence  

31:35

on recognizing that there is something Beyond  there is something beyond the material universe  

31:43

and we we come up against it to the point where  you can almost experience its Shadows you can't  

31:49

perceive it directly but we experience things like  Grace we make bad decisions we make bad mistakes  

31:56

and we find that there's a lot more forgiveness  in the universe then there should be if it were  

32:02

simply a materialist uh outfit we find that  people are capable of tremendous sacrifice  

32:11

and moral Triumph in ways that Define excuse  me that defy their material interests and their  

32:18

self-interests all of this is inexplicable unless  there was something that was in the nature that  

32:23

was again like a hard wiring or a predilection  now it's not complete and this is where Islam  

Islam and Pain

32:29

steps in because in the Islamic anthropology in  the Islamic notion of anthropology we're given the  

32:36

hard wiring but we're responsible for perfecting  it or developing it that it can be corrupted and  

32:43

lost right that you can um which is why if you  talk to Children about God or the Divine like  

32:50

they they're very intuitive with this it's the  older people that if they've been indoctrinated  

32:56

within a certain way of thinking or they've  had a traumatic experience with Christianity   or a different form of of religiosity or Islam  and some of the ways that Islam is is is lived  

33:06

uh in different places that they then can squash  this it can it can tamper with his hard wiring it  

33:13

can diffuse and disable this hard wirring to the  point where now we develop another ideological  

33:20

platform that denies that any of this is is true  we find that in in um in general Society there are  

33:27

debates and conversations about God and about  Islam and about um um some of the the traits  

33:35

and characteristics of a Creator and there's one  argument that's constantly put forward if God is   all loving why is is there so much pain in the  world I mean how would Islam respond to that  

33:47

this is um Gaza has shown us this because there  has to be heroes God wants there to be heroes  

33:54

shouldn't there be heroes that that fight the  bad guy yeah and save the day and you know you  

34:01

have the the poems and the eulogies and the the  holidays and you you commemorate the memorials to  

34:07

build without evil there is no Triumph of good  in fact the whole concept of good becomes mute  

34:15

and indistinguishable there's just monochrome we  don't have a monochronic existence that there has  

34:22

to be an opportunity for greatness and it's in in  the times of Challenge and hardship and and evil  

34:31

the temporary Triumph of evil and that's the key  I think that people don't realize and maybe people  

34:36

within their own personal lives they they Despair  and they fear that evil will Triumph indefinitely  

34:43

yeah and that is a scary proposal but we don't  find that even in history if the materialist  

34:49

account of the world was correct then the worst  tyrants should never have fallen then they should  

34:55

have ruled in perpetuity for ever eternally yeah  how do they fall by what mechanism do they fall  

35:04

this is Divine Providence there's some sort of  intervention that is divine it's also historical  

35:12

that plants the seeds of the downfall of tyrants  in their arrogant actions and in their oppression  

35:21

and the opportunity that it gives is for the  heroes to come forth so that people will have  

35:27

good examp examp to follow and understand clearly  the difference between right and wrong and how to   model themselves when we talk about evil in the  world um can we say if this evil comes from God  

35:40

comes from the Creator or do we argue this evil  comes from the human beings who conduct this evil  

35:48

it's somewhat semantic in the sense that God Wills  or we could say permits evil to occur however  

35:58

it has a purpose and I think that's another major  difference between the materialist mindset and  

36:04

the believer's mindset yeah evil has no purpose  within a materialist conception of the universe  

36:11

within the believer's conception everything has a  purpose and so even if God permits evil to exist  

36:17

it is purposeful yeah it serves the purpose of  distinguishing between those who have put in the  

36:24

work now here's the other aspect to it when evil  temporarily triumphs it shows the preparation what  

36:31

the people have put forth how have you invested  in yourself have you invested in your own moral  

36:37

Clarity who we we say this all the time we've said  this who would you have been in World War II in  

36:43

Nazi Germany would you have been a collaborator  would you have been part of the regime would you   have resisted against it who would you have been  and unfortunately we reduce this to an infimal  

36:55

moment of action it's not it's a body of work and  preparation it's a moral portfolio that you would  

37:02

have been depositing into for years that's only  made manifest with your action your preparedness  

37:09

will show on the day when you actually have  to make the tough decision and that is why  

37:14

the temporary Triumph of evil is essential to  demonstrate who has made that preparation and  

37:20

who has not right and the only people who will  actually make those Investments and make those  

37:27

deposits are the people believe who believe in  an afterlife and that is something fascinating   in the Quran very very interesting when you  see so many times when uh when the Creator  

37:36

talks speaks in the Quran you would imagine  almost and and sometimes in the west we have  

37:43

this conception because of the Old Testament  of a selfish God of a jealous God of a very   anthropomorphic God you would almost expect God  to speak in such a way as to hide the belief in  

37:58

him as opposed to the other aspects of faith in  the Quran you find even more of an emphasis on  

38:07

the belief in the afterlife than on the belief in  God himself not that that's not important that is  

38:12

very important it's essential actually however  the belief in an afterlife specifically and in  

38:20

an unseen realm generally which is actually  the first characteristic of a believer in the  

38:27

Quran that's mentioned in the beginning ofah  Bak the second chapter of the Quran when Allah   describes the PI what's the first characteristic  of piety that he mentions believing in the Unseen  

38:38

he could have said believing in me all right  he could have said believing in the prophets he   could have said believing in this no in the Unseen  because if you believe in the Unseen generally and  

38:50

you believe in the afterlife specifically that  creates the type of person with the motivation  

38:57

and the compass and the purpose that understands  that they are to make those deposits and those  

39:04

Investments so that when the time comes when  evil temporarily triumphs they demonstrate that  

39:09

and Allah already knows the Creator already  knows who has made the deposits and who has   made the Investments and who hasn't but he wants  to manifest it and demonstrate it to everybody  

39:17

else so that who gets Remembered in the movies who  gets remembered a to Rule now you know we have the  

39:22

the Turkish series and we have all these who gets  remembered and who will fade away liberalism tends  

Islam resists Liberalism

39:28

to place Islam and religion in this irrational  bucket and you can't really um rationally have a  

39:36

conversation about religion as you can about say  capitalism or about Marxism whatever it may be  

39:43

um um we tend to resist that explain explain that  like why do we resist this idea that this notion  

39:49

that Islam is should fall into that irrational  bucket like other religions yeah I mean well  

39:55

that's a trauma response to Christianity and  sophistry you know I mean the Christianity  

40:00

hid behind an anti-rationalism to paper over the  contradictions of its theological program which  

40:07

is a huge conversation that maybe another time we  can we can we can have as to those influences and  

40:12

where they came from because they don't come  from James they don't come from the brother   of Jesus or the original disciples there there's  several vectors that play into this anti-rational  

40:23

Christianity that became the dominant Christianity  and eventually perverted the the message that  

40:28

Jesus was charged with but when it comes to Islam  actually your rationality is one of the key tools  

40:39

that you have been gifted in order to obtain your  salvation Allah says inul he gives us a situation  

40:48

where we see the regrets of the people who end  up in the Hell Fire and they have two regrets

40:57

said if only we had done one of two things if only  we had listened and that symbolizes almost like  

41:05

the blind obedience which is not wrong or if only  we had used our reason so there's a recognition  

41:14

and how many times in the Quran does the Creator  say if only they use their reason but they don't  

41:19

use their reason that we have a fundamental a  fundamental understanding that rationality is  

41:24

a faculty and a tool that the Creator put within  us as a potentiality to be used for a specific  

41:32

purpose or we could say multiple purposes but the  chief purpose the most important purpose of that   rationality is to bring us to know our creator  and our own purpose within this creation and  

41:42

our own TS where we're going why are we here and  what do we have to do to get to the place that we  

41:47

want to bring us to the Door of Faith yes but also  because when I think a Christian you know should  

41:54

just read the Quran especially because the the  tone and the approach of the Quran is completely   different from the Bible the Bible reads like dry  history and like this happened and this happened  

42:03

and so and so beg got so and so we got so and so  it's hard to believe that this is the word of your  

42:09

lord in fact the official Catholic Doctrine is  that this is not the literal word of God that   this is the inspired word of God sent down to  men the Quran is completely different the tone  

42:19

and the and the voice and the address it is your  creator speaking to you directly and the thing  

42:27

that the Creator asks you to do are to look at  the natural world look at history look at the  

42:34

people who have gone before and use your reason  these are signs that God has put in the creation  

42:40

for you to reflect that when you Ponder upon them  you are brought to the door of faith if you are  

42:50

internally calibrated correctly if you haven't  squashed that potentiality inside of you or you   haven't had a traumatic experience from some some  from somewhere else it should bring you to the  

42:59

door of Islam which means submission to the point  where you recognize oh there's this whole body of  

43:05

reality that I can't access without Revelation  no matter how much we discover positivism is not  

43:12

true we can't learn everything there's an an an  unseen reality beyond what we can sense beyond  

43:19

what we can measure Beyond empiricism and the  only link the only chain to access that knowledge  

43:27

is revelation is the communication sent from  the Divine and then there's the process of   verifying that Revelation obviously we need to  make sure that it's authentic However the fact  

43:35

that that exists that's the first purp purpose  of rationality and reason is to bring you to   that submission yes I know what I don't know I  can't know everything I know what I don't know  

43:46

and I recognize my dependence upon Revelation  in order to understand some of those things the  

43:52

most important of those things that I can't  know by myself in order to obtain salvation  

43:57

the second purpose is within the application of  the religion itself understanding the desire or  

44:06

the will or the wish let's say I think better  the wish of your creator what does your creator   want from you what does he want you to do how  does he want you to act how does he want you to  

44:15

treat your parents how does he want you to treat  your relatives and your neighbors how does he want   you to uh make a living what are the boundaries  now if we were literalists and there is no such  

44:27

is a literalist you know many times in  Translation people will try to say oh this   group and this group are literalists very very  few Muslims throughout history have been actual  

44:37

literalists what we find is a body of principles  some of which are explicit and some of which are  

44:44

implicit some of which are limited and some  of which are typological that are meant to be  

44:51

extended that this is what keeps the religion  relevant that it has the internal mechanisms  

44:59

and the tools within it that can be applied to  Future circumstances as they continue to develop  

45:04

and it takes your rationality and your reason  to be able to in to do that to be able to take  

45:10

something and to extend it or to apply it into a  novel situation or to understand how the various  

45:17

aspects of the Quran or then if you bring in  the Sunnah the Hadith the sayings of the Prophet   sallallahu alaihi wasallam how they interact some  specify General statements made elsewhere others  

45:30

further inflect statements made elsewhere and so  this is this is an operation of the mind this is  

45:36

an operation of R rationality and reason and so  we have I mean there's it's not an accident that  

45:44

uh within Christian Europe they were burning  scientists at the stake whereas in the Muslim  

45:51

lands the scientists were also religious Scholars  right that's a a civilizational difference  

45:57

and it shows I think the you will know a tree by  its fruit and you will see the different attitude  

46:02

towards human knowledge and rationality by what  these two civilizations produced you you've very  

Rationality core of Islam?

46:09

clearly placed rationality at the core of of Islam  in core of its faith in in ascertaining its truth  

46:15

but also uh in understanding the the word of  creat the Creator but how far do we extend This  

46:21

rationality and like imagine if a if a a person  Embraces Islam and says you know I love I love   Islam I like all of these aspects but there are  some things about Islam in the Shar that I find  

46:32

problematic right and so I'm going to negate  that or I'm not going to pay my zaka I'm not  

46:37

going to you know accept uh the Islamic structure  of uh inheritance for example the ways it's it's  

46:45

it's distributed uh how much can we apply our  rationality when it comes to the practice of Faith  

46:51

excellent well this is where we have to recognize  that human beings are primarily emotional and not  

46:57

rational and that we are emotionally reacting to  things and then we come up with justifications  

47:02

that are rational afterwards and so we can't  underestimate the propensity for prejudice and  

47:09

delusion that human beings have an enormous  potential for prejudice and delusion and so  

47:16

I'll just give a very practical example from my  experience of accepting Islam there were things   when I accepted Islam that I didn't agree with  okay that actually presents a moral choice are you  

47:27

committed to trying to understand it or are you  committed to your Prejudice yeah you can you can  

47:33

take the attitude of well I will never agree to  this or you can take the attitude of this is very  

47:42

counterintuitive to me I want to understand this  better and so even the many things that westerners  

47:50

find counterintuitive such as the asymmetry of of  gender rules in the Shia that women are not the  

47:56

same same as men ontologically nor teleologically  in the sense that when it comes to what's expected  

48:01

of us there's a symmetry there um this is  something that some people uh they they find  

48:07

it problematic but we would invite that person to  try to understand more like what's behind that is  

48:15

it simply uh anti-rational or irrationality is it  outmoded are we going to put it on an evolutionary  

48:22

scale and say this is backwards and Barbarian or  and we I think people more open to this now than  

48:27

maybe even 10 or 15 years ago where we see kind  of the other side of the Equal Rights argument  

48:34

um you know it's funny I saw something on YouTube  just the other day it popped in my feet it was uh   it was based in the UK was on the tube and there  was a woman and she was filming all the men that  

48:45

were sitting down that didn't offer her a seat  and she was very upset by this and she actually  

48:52

confronted one young man and said like like  are you going to get up and offer me your seat  

48:57

and he asked her are you pregnant she said no he  said Do You Believe In equality and she said yes  

49:05

so you know that's a bit controversial but you see  that we've come to another side of this where the  

49:13

Assumption of complete equality ontological  equality and also the equality of rules and  

49:19

equality meaning being defined as sameness that's  also now being questioned it seemed to be Dogma  

49:27

10 15 20 years ago no one would question that  now that we're on the other side we're like oh  

49:33

actually there might be something to chivalry  there might be something to an asymmetrical  

49:38

treatment of genders not in a patronizing  way certainly not in an impressive way but   at least it opens the conversation again people  are welcome to explore but we have to be UND uh  

49:52

committed to understanding okay plummet go all  the way dig deep and that was my just to be frank  

49:58

that was my attitude towards Islam when I first  came to Islam I wanted to understand and there   were things that were very foreign to me I mean  new you know New Jersey United States born and  

50:09

raised like completely I had no experience of any  uh foreign cultures or foreign religions I no idea  

50:15

what Islam was so some things were very foreign to  me but I told myself there might be questions even  

50:21

when I went abroad to to study the de formally  to study Islam formally there might be questions  

50:26

that I have that I might carry for years that I  might not understand until 5 10 15 years but am  

50:35

I committed to understanding I alhamdulillah by  the grace of God I was committed to understanding  

50:42

to the point where I see the difference in  my prejudices then and my Prejudice now my my   prejudices now I'm sure I have prejudices now but  there is there's change and when you understand  

50:54

the internal rationality of something how it makes  sense how some things that appear to be something  

50:59

you're really being triggered by something else  well this looks like this that I'm familiar with   from Western history or from European history or  from British history or from US history but then  

51:09

when you dig deeper and you understand how all of  these parts relate in an integral whole then it's  

51:14

a different scenario what I find interesting  and I wonder whether there is an explanation  

51:19

to this from a quranic perspective is  when a a non-muslim Embraces Islam um  

51:26

even those questions fall into place quite quickly  and sort of they they begin to submit submission  

51:33

I suppose is you know one of the key principles  of of belief in Islam they tend to submit to to  

51:39

those uh problematic or you know ideas that they  originally found problema you know for example a  

51:47

woman in hijab or whatever it may be or Salah  and prayer and or going on Hajj or fasting in   Ramadan that seems to become second nature to  that person you meet them a few months later  

51:57

and it just makes perfect sense to them not  only that Jal the majority of the converts   are women right the vast majority yeah how do we  explain that if if Islam is so oppressive to women  

52:09

there's something that women find fundamentally  dissatisfactory about the Western system it might  

52:18

be multiple things maybe it's its conception  of equality as sameness maybe it's the hyper  

52:24

individualism and the the the disruption of the  family and the undermining it could be many many   things right but it's indisputable fact that the  vast majority of Western People accepting Islam  

52:35

and becoming Muslims are women is it better for  some people to remain non-muslim uh even though  

Islam – Political vs Intellectual gain

52:41

they Marvel at this experience that they've  witnessed in gazer and and they they have an  

52:46

affinity to to Muslims and Islam and they uh they  love the justice that comes out of Islam but um I  

52:56

I suppose in their mind I think um if you become  a Muslim you become less of an asset in in Western  

53:03

Society like how do we weigh up the political  gains versus the individual gains there's two  

53:08

Dimensions to this so everyone will be improved  by Islam we know that because the prophet Muhammad  

53:14

sallallahu alaihi wasallam he said that the best  of you in Islam are the best of you before Islam   yeah that Islam will only refine you further  whatever good qualities you have and this is  

53:24

also one of the most reasonable and I think um  common sense assertions of Islam that it doesn't  

53:35

have a monopoly on good in the sense that there is  good in other people of other faiths and actually  

53:42

you will never find a religious text that is more  charitable towards people of other religions than  

53:48

the Quran you see the Creator giving reminders  even when he's criticizing sometimes harshly the  

53:56

Innovations and the accretions and the uh the  heresies of previous Faith communities there  

54:04

will be reminders explicit and implicit not all  of them that many of that some of them are true  

54:12

truly righteous some of them are people that pray  at night and people who are uh they they return  

54:18

their trusts and they fulfill their promises and  things of this nature you won't find that in any   other religious text to explicitly enumerating  the Praises of other people that belong to other  

54:29

religions right so Islam will improve everybody  who accepts Islam yeah you have good there there  

54:35

is good outside of of the Muslims there are people  who are honest and trustworthy and moral and  

54:40

righteous and and and have a sense of sacrifice  that's wonderful and we would say that those are  

54:46

things that Islam calls to and that Islam will  help you develop even further so that if we mean  

54:52

that some people should remain non-muslim no  yeah should accept Islam however when ites when  

54:59

it comes to publicizing your Islam then that's  something different that there are situations  

55:05

where people have hid their Islam or kept it  secret and that plays a strategic Advantage  

55:12

um this even happened at the time of the Prophet  sallallahu alaihi wasallam the ruler of ABIA who  

55:18

the title was Nashi um he that was a Christian  kingdom and he accepted Islam but he kept it  

55:25

secret he was the head of a a Christian Nation and  he only revealed it on his deathbed that that was  

55:30

a strategic decision that that is warranted and  that's okay yeah um so that's justifiable and you  

55:37

could argue that there are situations where that  that is advantageous however when it comes to your   own what we call suuk your own wayfaring your own  program your own Journey to the afterlife Islam  

55:49

will only only help you whatever good that you  have right now whatever a virtue you already have   right now Islam will accelerate it and further  refine is there a wrong way to embrace Islam I  

55:58

mean you know for example someone may Embrace  Islam and like it's some aspects of Islam but  

56:05

still remain wedded to I don't know racist ideas  or nationalistic ideas or chauvinistic ideas I  

56:13

mean you know what's the is there a is there  a is that a problem everybody's on a journey  

56:19

I wouldn't say that there's a wrong way to embrace  Islam yeah I would say that Islam is a process and  

56:26

yes there is a moment of conversion in the sense  that you now become part of and accountable to  

56:33

a community of Believers that that is a moment  however the actual process of reconciling yourself  

56:40

with Divine teachings is a long process and with  every person who has converted and with people who  

56:46

were born into Muslim families there are people  who they don't you know women who don't wear the   the head scarf or or people who don't pray or you  know men who don't do uh what they should be doing  

56:56

lots of things yeah so they themselves are on  a process of trying to reconcile themselves  

57:03

with what God wants from them and the same is  true for anybody else who uh who accepts Islam  

57:09

now you could argue and this is important that  everyone has a moral duty to attempt to engage in  

57:18

that journey and to progress on that Journey uh it  would not be correct to accept Islam and just say  

57:26

but I'm still going to just have this forever  these other ideas that maybe contradict Islam  

57:32

there has to be an openness to challenging oneself  whether you're coming from the left or the right  

57:38

whether you're coming from uh various problematic  ideologies or even less problematic ideologies but  

57:44

there there is a duty there however we can't be  Hasty and and throw people out uh because at the  

57:52

end of the day Islam is about truth more than it's  about a tribe that there are if you go back to the  

58:01

original generation of Muslims there was someone  who he made it to to Paradise without having ever  

58:08

prayed a single prayer he was someone who woke  up one day and he accepted Islam and then there   was a battle and he died on the battlefield there  were people who they had the prophet sallallahu  

58:18

alaihi wasallam would even say so and so has some  Jil in him and he has these aspects of pre-islam  

58:26

thought that there's some things there that are  not 100% aligned with Islamic teachings and even  

58:32

in aith the prophet s wasallam said that my nation  there are four things that my nation will not give  

58:38

up from the time of jilah that there are aspects  whether it is uh excessive pride in one's lineage  

58:45

which he enumerated or insulting other people's  lineage um was another thing or you could say  

58:52

tribalism I think is more literal you could extend  it to nationalism these are things that the even   the prophet himself sallallahu alaihi wasallam  forewarned us that people are going to have a  

59:03

really hard time kicking these and in fact they're  never going to be entirely gone so if we get into  

59:10

the situation where you know we're Purity checking  people and it's like well wait a second you're not  

59:15

a real convert right that's dangerous business  that's dangerous business because we're told  

59:21

that the Creator will judge you based off of your  intentions and someone might really be struggling  

59:28

with themselves and trying their best even if it's  ugly even if it's messy even if it's not as fully  

59:35

formed even if it's cringeworthy but the amount  of difficulty that that person experiences in  

59:43

trying to reconcile themselves to God's guidance  might be worth a lot more than someone who they're  

59:50

just culturally a Muslim you talked about the  ideologies that one needs to contend with today um  

Reconciling ideologies

59:56

uh when when thinking about or when embracing  Islam or when when you become a Muslim um what  

1:00:01

are these ideology a typical non-muslim is going  to have to reconcile with Islam what are what are  

1:00:08

these ideas that one needs to think about uh about  challenging I suppose when when one Embraces Islam  

1:00:15

I mean people have to realize first thing firstly  that ideology is ubiquitous that there is no space  

1:00:22

that's free of ideology I know a lot of people  think that oh well I don't really believe in   it's like worship it's like our conversation  about worship and obedience everybody worships  

1:00:30

something everybody obeys something everybody is  sculpted by ideology yeah right so understanding  

1:00:38

you either know it or you don't that's the thing  so it's either in your scope of awareness or it's   you're completely oblivious to it and so the first  step is a an introspection and uh taking stock of  

1:00:52

the different intellectual forces that shape you  and make you up and that in informs your biases  

1:00:58

and your prejudices and your principles and you  know your your your things and there's usually   a cocktail usually multiple ones that are in play  so um I just want to put that as a caveat because  

1:01:09

sometimes people speak of ideology as if you know  there's some people who are affected and other   people who aren't no there's no space everyone is  everyone is right right so this is something that  

1:01:18

is universal that everybody has to Grapple with at  least to U develop a diagnosis of themselves now  

1:01:25

where do you you start I mean we just mentioned  nationalism nationalism I think within the Islamic  

1:01:31

idiom is an extension of tribalism and it's  different and it's a key distinction it's not   about um not having pride in your country or not  having love of your country and it's not about  

1:01:42

not having love of your people or affinity for  your people it's not that when nationalism and  

1:01:49

tribe tribalism becomes blameworthy is when you  choose your tribe or your nation over the truth  

1:01:57

and this is extremely important those who say my  nation right or wrong that's blameworthy you're  

1:02:03

you have to sometimes you have to make a choice  between truth or your tribe and if your answer is  

1:02:08

my tribe or my nation no matter what in the sense  that I refuse to even speak out I refuse to even  

1:02:14

criticize right and this is an important thing  for people in the UK and the us to understand  

1:02:19

that just because a Muslim is critiquing the  foreign policy of the United States of America   or the foreign policy of the UK it doesn't mean  that we we hate England or that we hate America or  

1:02:29

that we hate uh these sorts of things I'm from the  United States you know you'll see in the comments   I'm sure in the comments of this video go back to  deport them where where am I going to deport me to  

1:02:38

New Jersey like you can't Deport me anywhere  my family's been in the US since 1905 right  

1:02:44

like there's nowhere I am fully from that place  right um and so we can't conflate this idea that  

1:02:54

any criticism is is treacherous or is betrayal or  is treason that would be lunacy and this is what  

1:03:01

it comes down to is that we have to be open to  healthy critique and this is actually in the Quran  

1:03:08

where where Moses has a a key moral lesson that  he learns along these lines where he's even in a  

1:03:16

situation where his tribe his nation is oppressed  and it's a very apt um example for today's uh  

1:03:26

today's Jews because they experienced oppression  however experiencing oppression at a communal  

1:03:34

level does not give you a license to commit harm  on an individual level or at a national level  

1:03:40

so Moses has given this dilemma where he sees  someone from his tribe from Ben is fighting in  

1:03:48

a fight with someone from farrow's tribe and he's  called over to get involved and he comes and his  

1:03:55

tribesman is basically saying come back me up  and he jumps into the fight and he supports his  

1:04:01

tribesmen and he actually delivers a fatal blow to  the other guy it's mans not his intention you know  

1:04:09

but it's what happened and then it comes out later  that who was the aggressor who was the instigator  

1:04:15

it was the person from his own tribe that is  a fundamental moral conundrum and Moses has a  

1:04:22

choice to make and the choice that Moses made he  re recognizes immediately this is from The Acts  

1:04:28

of the devil and that choosing the way of truth  always has to come first over supporting your  

1:04:36

tribe blindly or supporting your nation blindly if  your nation or your tribe is engaged in wrongdoing  

1:04:41

you have to oppose it you have to speak out  against it and you have to do what you can to   not support it and that's what Moses embodied and  that's what everybody should embody can you be a  

1:04:51

a Muslim and I don't mean you know you're out of  Islam but can you fully Embrace Islam and be a  

1:05:00

Marxist or fully Embrace Islam and be a neoliberal  proponent of neoliberalism there's misalignment  

1:05:09

so the short answer is no you know Marxism in  particular is a materialist ideology and largely  

1:05:14

a reaction to Christian capitalism yeah so we  have to understand the levels of critique here  

1:05:21

Marxism is not a very fundamental critique of of  of Western capitalism it is critique within one  

1:05:28

vector only yeah but the anthropology right the  sense of who the human being is the metaphysics of  

1:05:36

Marxism is not very different from the metaphysics  of classic liberalism or of capitalism you still  

1:05:43

assume a mechanistic world uh and a certain human  nature you just differ as to how to approach it  

1:05:51

so the idea of historical materialism which  by the way is still the dominant methodology   within history as you know you know historical  critical method is Marxism with lipstick you  

1:06:02

know they they took away the class struggle you  know aspect of it but it's the idea that only  

1:06:07

materialist causes and naturalistic causes are  considered valid we're not going to talk about   Divine it's not possible we exclude that from the  realm of possibility and we also assume a certain  

1:06:19

selfishness to human nature that if someone is  saying something good about themselves they're   probably lying and if someone is saying something  embarrassing or bad about themselves they're  

1:06:27

probably telling the truth and that latter Point  has some validity to it but the former doesn't you  

1:06:33

know it's not necessarily um that those are  value propositions that should be contested  

1:06:39

and are contested right right also there's a  sameness to the historical critical method that  

1:06:44

every society and civilization is ultimately the  same as every other Society with slight slight   differences and this is this is still rooted in  Marxism so the idea that you know Marx had that  

1:06:56

um different stages just naturally unfold in  a mechanistic type of way that capitalism is  

1:07:01

going to bring the proletariat into the like the  lumpen proletariat into the cities and then the  

1:07:07

urban proletariat are going to get organized and  then the material conditions will get so bad that   they will they will develop class Consciousness  and they will eventually Rebel and that will be  

1:07:15

the Socialist Revolution then communism after  this is all atheistic which is there's no God  

1:07:22

in it which is reflective of both ath IST sorry  Marxist regimes and Marxist theory in general  

1:07:30

is that it doesn't have room for God it doesn't  consider God in a serious way in a structural way   as an actor in the universe which is fundamentally  flawed okay now what attracts people to Marxism  

1:07:45

is their reaction to capitalism and capitalism's  excesses now if we want to talk about consumption  

1:07:51

and we want to talk about uh commodification or  commodity f ISM or alienation many things that  

1:07:57

Marx correctly diagnosed then we would say that he  was on to something and those things actually are  

1:08:04

accounted for in Islam as well and that whatever  you think is true of Marxism is stated or I  

1:08:12

should say that I should say not subjectively  objectively what was true about Marxism in his   diagnosis Islam accounts for without any of  the baggage the idea of only consuming what  

1:08:26

you need the idea of balancing between uh private  property and Collective rights the idea of public  

1:08:34

goods the idea of the commons the IDE these  sorts of things you know there is we have to   be careful because when you're in the realm of  human-made ideologies usually what you find is  

1:08:43

a wildly swinging pendulum between one side or  the other so you have the the hyper capitalism  

1:08:50

that the individual can own in an absolute sense  anything destroy it if he wants you know Monopoly  

1:08:59

if he wants the worst type of slavery if he wants  whatever he can get away with essentially and then  

1:09:05

the reaction to that property is theft yeah right  that's an overreaction it's an overcorrection  

1:09:12

even if you're able to diagnose certain things  about capitalism and capitalist society that   were correct about the constant commodification we  see that now we see Uber and lft and all of these  

1:09:22

uh companies that have come up the gig economy um  we see new types of contracts we see now you can  

1:09:27

pay someone to stand in line for you right soon  people are going to be selling off parts of their   body for advertisements who knows this is the  Unchained um commodification Islam has limits  

1:09:38

to what can be commodified right without going to  the excesses that Marx went to or later marxists  

1:09:44

went to when it comes to trying to abolish private  property or ensure absolute equality in the sense  

1:09:50

of um equal outcomes for for everyone so that's  all in play that people need to realize that you  

1:09:58

can decouple these things you know capitalism and  Marxism they are two ideologies and they are made  

1:10:05

up of multiple components and that some of those  components might have more or less truth to them  

1:10:11

but you don't have to accept the entire package  yeah and that if you're a full-blown Marxist you   have to realize that the conception of how history  moves is an atheistic one it's a materialistic one  

1:10:20

even the idea a lot of people don't realize how  indebted feminism is to Marxism that the idea of  

1:10:27

women as a class right just like the poor people  as a class even the sloppiness of Marxism to say  

1:10:34

that there can be no virtuous rich people Islam  proves that to be incorrect that that virtue is  

1:10:44

a function that is that resides in the individual  and that moral choice happens at the individual  

1:10:50

level and that everyone has a moral duty and a  responsibility and you can transcend your class  

1:10:58

baggage or your you know race baggage or whatever  you know you have an individual mandate there and  

1:11:04

that you don't we don't broadly paint entire  swaths of people as this is the oppressor class  

1:11:10

and this is the oppressed class it's simplistic  and it's not accurate and it invalidates human   agency right so all of these things have to  be seriously you know a lot of people get  

1:11:19

into Marxism just because they see the Injustice  of capitalism they have to realize all of what   you're signing yourself up for that these things  are are are they they overreactions and they're  

1:11:28

sloppy and they're very they're very categorical  and that they don't map onto experience and they  

1:11:33

certainly Islam offers an important corrective  to both of them when it comes to ideology yeah   liberalism and feminism and and there's there's  all the ideologies we could run through I we could  

1:11:43

have a very long discussion about all of them and  culture um uh those who Embrace Islam are they  

1:11:49

expected to embrace uh Muslim culture in inverted  Comm or Arab culture or Pakistan an culture uh  

1:11:57

whether that's dress or food or you know um other  aspects of of cultural life because of of course  

1:12:03

we do see a lot of converts who become Muslim yeah  and culturally also they shift yes more than just  

1:12:09

uh their ideas and their their um habits and and  and you know their religious uh commitments this  

1:12:16

is one of the most important questions especially  for Islam in Europe and the UK yeah because  

1:12:22

there's two mistakes going on okay and one is one  that's committed by the Muslims and we have to own  

1:12:28

that that Islam has a positive relationship  towards local cultures right that everywhere  

1:12:39

Islam because Islam is a a barebones set of uh  instructions and guidelines when it comes to your  

1:12:47

individual worship it's quite detailed yeah but  when it comes to your culture it's actually quite   barebones if you look at marriage if you look at  transactions if you look atug Dr if you look at  

1:12:56

Food it's very Bare Bones is that by accident or  by Design it's by Design why so that it can be a  

1:13:06

universal religion so that it can travel to lands  and be accepted by people and actually have a  

1:13:13

productive relationship with the local culture so  there's almost like a three-fold filtration that  

1:13:19

happens when Islam interacts productively with  these cultures is that there are certain cultural  

1:13:26

elements that are completely illegitimate and harm  human beings alcohol Zena right uh promiscuity  

1:13:32

these sorts of things are inherently harmful  and culture cannot justify them there's another  

1:13:40

category of things that's a mixed bag there's good  elements to it and there's bad elements to it and   so if you remove the bad harmful elements to it  then it's actually fine let's take um you know  

1:13:51

poetry maybe even rap right drill sorry maybe you  could have you could have something where there's  

1:13:58

positive messages and there's there's nothing  inherent about it it's an art form there's nothing  

1:14:04

inherent about that which is wrong it's dependent  upon the content and the messagers the messages  

1:14:11

that are being conveyed yes and then there's a  third category of things that are fine the way  

1:14:16

they are you know beans and toast you know right  like it's completely fine like the way that you  

1:14:25

the way that you dress Islam it has guidelines  for what you need to cover but not for how you  

1:14:31

need to cover it so you're covered appropriately  with a with a a suit with a Blazer and a and and  

1:14:37

a shirt and someone else who wears flowing robes  and someone else who does this they're all equally  

1:14:42

valid okay so historically wherever Islam has gone  it has produced a local version of that culture  

1:14:51

that was very vibrant and productive so when it  was in Arabia it produced an Islamic Arab culture  

1:14:57

and then when it went to North Africa It produced  an Islamic Berber culture or an Islamic North  

1:15:03

African culture and then when it went to West  Africa or subsaharan Africa an Islamic sub Sahar  

1:15:08

Sahel culture and then into Anatolia and into the  Balkans and into Iran and into South Asia and the  

1:15:15

subcontinent into southeast Asia everywhere  Islam went It produced a new local culture

1:15:25

okay what about when it comes to the UK we have  to allow it to produce a local culture here if  

1:15:33

we think that Islam in the UK is only going to  be reproducing cultural forms from Arabia and  

1:15:41

the subcontinent then that is not allowing Islam  to do the work that it needs to do and it will  

1:15:47

always be perceived as a foreign religion and  it will never be considered an option for the  

1:15:53

average the average Englishman or English woman  to take on themselves can can I on the other side  

1:15:59

of that on the other side of that and this is  the so we've we've owned our mistake here okay  

1:16:05

now let's get to the other side that Allah says  in the Quran that he divided people into Nations  

1:16:13

and tribes so that they would get to know one  another and so the diversity they say variety  

1:16:20

is the spice of life diversity is an enriching  Factor and in the age of ethnonationalism which  

1:16:28

is another ideology and one very problematic  we have experienced an intense homogenization  

1:16:37

of everything yes homogenization of language  homogenization of culture my family as I mentioned  

1:16:42

Came From Italy in 1905 there's a saying with  the Italians it said there are no such thing as  

1:16:48

Italians except outside of Italy right and galdi  I believe one of the the nationalists he said okay  

1:16:55

we succeeded in making Italy now we have to  make Italians it's a construct there is no such  

1:17:01

thing as Italy really I mean if you go like the  venetians and the Sicilians are very different my  

1:17:06

family comes from Veno right they don't have  they don't see themselves as having a lot in   common with the Sicilians right they can't even  barely understand each other before standardized  

1:17:16

Italian and standardized Italian didn't really  even pick up until the 60s and 70s so these things   are constructs if you go to what is what does it  mean to be British how far are we going to go back  

1:17:27

are we talking about after the Norman Invasion  so we've got Anglo Saxon Norman culture or the  

1:17:35

Normans problematic let's just roll it back to  the Anglo-Saxon culture and before the Anglo-Saxon   culture we have the Anglo Ro we have the uh the  the British Roman culture and before the Roman  

1:17:45

Invasion it was just the Britains and the PS and  all these these groups where you have to realize   that these things are influx and that these things  are sociohistorical Construction and that they're  

1:17:55

fluid they're fluid it's meant to enrich life and  the nation state and specifically the ethn nation  

1:18:05

state has taken a snapshot it's as if there's a  whole movie and you took a screenshot of one frame  

1:18:11

that said this is the only part of the movie we're  allowed to play they're having arguments in Italy  

1:18:18

about talini if talini can have uh you know halal  meat inside of it it's ridiculous talini you know  

1:18:25

it can have anything inside of how old is toini  there were things before toini you know Tomatoes  

1:18:31

didn't even come to Italy until after the the  discovery or exploration so quote unquote of  

1:18:36

the new world what were they eating in Italy  before the Tomato these things are much more  

1:18:41

influx than we give credit for they're much  more fluid than we give credit to and the   ethn nation state asks us to homogenize in an  unreasonable way that we have to be willing to

1:18:56

Embrace a certain amount of variety as an  enriching variety now where the rub comes  

1:19:03

in and where people in the UK feel it and people  in Europe feel it is that their ways of life and  

1:19:08

that diversity and their own locally uh informed  culture is being erased it is being erased but  

1:19:16

who's erasing it exactly who's erasing it is it  the Muslim from the subcontinent first of all you  

1:19:22

shouldn't have colonized them if you didn't want  them to come here right you tired of the somalis   and Nigerians and the and the pakistanis you  shouldn't have colonized them chickens coming  

1:19:31

home to Rooster but leave that for a second the  the workingclass British person what's the real  

1:19:38

threat to eliminating their culture it's not the  Pakistani and the Nigerian and the Bangladeshi  

1:19:46

it's McDonald's it's Coca-Cola globalization it's  globalization yeah and there's a sense that some  

1:19:52

people are starting to see that but they don't  realize how under threat they are why can't you  

1:19:57

have big F why don't you have high birth rates why  don't you have bigger families because neoliberal  

1:20:03

capitalism has squeezed you so tightly you have  to work so hard just to survive rents are out of  

1:20:09

control prices are out of control they have set  up the entire system to squeeze you so that you  

1:20:16

can barely even support yourself let alone a  family let alone five children that's why it's  

1:20:22

low they've under REM mind your sense of what  relationships and love should be through their  

1:20:28

Disney movies and this and and media and culture  they've normalized indecency and promiscuity  

1:20:33

they've normalized all these things that's what is  threatening your culture that's what's threatening   your viability not the not the people who have  come from abroad now and our okay I'll put take  

1:20:45

it one more step our duty is to make sure we  don't get conscripted and Muslims have to be  

1:20:51

careful because the left wants to conscript us  and bring us Us in and make us fodder for that  

1:20:57

criticism you see that's the game and there  are people that there will be on the right  

1:21:03

and they look at that and they'll say see look  the Muslims are just part of this Dei initiative   they're going to force us down our throats we're  all going to be you know uh doing these sorts  

1:21:12

of things imposed Upon Us minority rights all  of this regime it's like they they sense it's  

1:21:19

like someone put a blindfold on them and they  sense that something is wrong but they they're   diagnosing what's exactly wrong us we have to make  sure that we're not conscripted into that we have  

1:21:29

to resist the um the enforcement or imposition of  these different cultures that are coming in it has  

1:21:40

to be mutually agreed to it has to be mutually  beneficial it has to be a convers it has to be a  

1:21:46

dialogue it has to be an exchange whenever that  there is Goodwill and exchange when people feel   like anything is imposed upon them and and forced  down their throats there's always going to be a  

1:21:55

blowback there's always going to be resentment  and so Muslims have to tread carefully as well   I mean I I've Tau young young adults non-muslims  and i' I've U come across uh so many of them who  

Globalisation destroying us

1:22:06

don't actually have a culture anymore and it's  not because of Islam or Muslim it's because of   globalization and uh the other day there was a  a good brother who from America who sent out a  

1:22:15

tweet and it was of an Englishman in a free piece  suit and you know U he was very well manicured and  

1:22:23

said you know why don't musim converts look  like this rather than you know wearing rowes  

1:22:28

well the reality is no one in Britain looks like  that anymore you know most people look like the   average American in Britain right call that the  Walmart outfit right they got their PJs in there  

1:22:37

in tracksuits so in a sense there isn't a culture  and I I suppose when when uh someone Embraces  

1:22:44

Islam they interact with with real cultures yeah  right and so it it then just becomes clear to them  

1:22:51

that uh in in a sense they're embrac in a culture  because they didn't have cultes previously they  

1:22:59

feel a deficit absolutely and they feel a lack  especially when you get into the families when   you see the way that the F like that's like when  we grew up okay in the 90s we spent much more time  

1:23:10

with our cousins than we spent with friends or  peers it was only like we used to go and knock  

1:23:16

on each other's houses and you know unannounced  no phone calls obviously no cell phones like that  

1:23:22

was that was the norm and I don't know maybe  I'm just you know getting old and and but it  

1:23:28

seems like that doesn't happen a lot anymore it  seems like the family is fractured the extended  

1:23:35

family is fractured and the the Norms that they've  sold us about life that you know whether if you're  

1:23:40

from the village or you're from the small town  in the north you know you you do well in school  

1:23:46

and you get to go to London and you get to go to  UNI in London good for you and then you're going   to settle in London get married in London and  you're going to go visit your parents once or  

1:23:52

twice a year that's what what that we were sold  yeah and it's the same that's true in the US and   we wonder then why our families are so afraid and  barely hang on you don't get together with the  

1:24:02

the aunts and the uncles and the and the and the  cousins this is what is destroying us and this is   what's taking us apart I have one final question  for you so okay alhamdulilla you've explained what  

How to embrace Islam?

1:24:11

Islam is today and there'll be many non-muslims on  this journey to to to think about Islam um what if  

1:24:19

someone comes to the conclusion okay Islam is  right for me like what are the practicalities   what's the mechanisms here how does one Embrace  Islam what's what's what's the next step for them  

1:24:28

Islam is a long ladder and the bottom wrong is  the Shah is the testimony of Faith you believe  

1:24:38

in one God you're only going to worship one God  the Creator not going to worship anything else   or obey anything else and you believe that you  believe in all the prophets and the last of them  

1:24:47

being Muhammad and what he brought that brings you  into the door and then there are a lot of rungs to  

1:24:57

climb and some of those rungs you should climb if  you're conscientious though it might take you time  

1:25:03

and other of those rungs you might never climb  and that's okay obviously the prayer is the most  

1:25:11

important next rung because just like you wouldn't  accept a relationship with a spouse that only  

1:25:22

called you when they needed you or once a year or  twice a year there's a certain minimum requirement  

1:25:30

that that relationship requires to maintain the  same with your creator your relationship with  

1:25:37

your creator has a minimum requirement of what  it takes to maintain that relationship and the  

1:25:42

Creator told us how much it is and it's five  times a day you need to connect with your lord   five times a day that in itself is a process for  people and I know when I was a convert it was  

1:25:50

a process for me too so it doesn't mean that  you have to you know day one day two but you  

1:25:56

should have that as a goal to progress to yeah and  then the rest of the I call them the Five Pillars  

1:26:03

for a reason then if you happen to have Surplus  stagnant wealth of a certain amount for an entire  

1:26:09

year continuously then there's a 2.5% uh mandatory  alms that you would pay you might qualify for that  

1:26:18

or you might not you might qualify to receive it  right depending on your financial situation fast  

1:26:24

in Ramadan if you're physically able to and  healthy enough and uh meet the requirements  

1:26:29

for 30 days the purification and a a humbling  and also an empowerment to show you things you  

1:26:37

know when I you know growing up you hear not  even water right I mean 30 days it seems like  

1:26:42

suicide and then you see you see the weakness  of human beings because you see how dependent  

1:26:48

you are on God's provision but you also see the  strength 30 days you can do it and you realize  

1:26:56

that you know skipping a meal is not the end of  the world that you actually can can survive on   that um and a pilgrimage if you're able to once  in your lifetime it's a pretty sweet deal you  

1:27:08

know I always grew up with the sensibility that a  religious practice should be hit that sweet spot  

1:27:16

between being just demanding enough that getting  together to sing songs once a week was not cutting  

1:27:22

it that there should be something required of me  every day and at different intervals there's a  

1:27:27

daily interval there's a weekly interval there's  a monthly interval there's a yearly interval and   even a LIF span interval and Islam checks all  that so those are the basics and those are the  

1:27:37

things that you should focus on and there are  other things but you know you the important   thing is to attempt to progress even if progress  is slow it doesn't even matter really how slow  

1:27:48

the progress is as long as you don't fall back  tomini thank you so much for your time today am  

1:27:56

mean thank you so much please remember to  subscribe to our social media and YouTube  

1:28:03

channels and head over to our website thinking  muslim.com to sign up to my Weekly Newsletter jaak

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