Ep.70 - Is Modernity Destroying the Human Mind - with Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
Is modernity destroying the human mind? This is the question I ask my guest this week, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad. Many of us are fortunate to live in a world where every desire we have are met yet curiously our ability to process these blessings leads many to a dark place, a state of mental anguish. It seems the more we have the less happy we are. The more we live in concrete jungles the more anxious we become. This begs a larger question, is there a fundamental problem with the way we live, is there a problem with modernity? I explore these ideas with Dr Winters and ask him how do we escape the ideological, spiritual and physical maladies of modern living.
Dr Timothy Winter is Founder and Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, Aziz Foundation Professor of Islamic Studies at both Cambridge Muslim College and Ebrahim College, Director of Studies at Wolfson College and Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at University of Cambridge. He has translated classical works including a translation of two volumes of the Islamic scholar al-Ghazali's Ihya Ulum al-Din.
Thanks to the team: Riaz Hasan, Musab Muhammad, Reem Walid, Adeel Alam, Ahaz Atif and Umar Abdul Salam.
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[Music]
and of course as we move beyond this artificial engineered environment
into the metaverse which seems to be the next step it's going to be even stranger and
we're going to see even more bizarre forms of human behavior dysfunctional relationships mental
health crises relationship collapse is modernity destroying the human mind
this is the question i ask my guest this week sheikh abdul hakeem
many of us are fortunate to live in a world where our every desires have been met yet curiously our ability to process
these blessings leads many to a dark place a state of mental anguish
it seems the more we have the less happy we are the more we live in concrete
jungles the more anxious we become this begs a larger question is there a
fundamental problem with the way we live is there a problem with modernity
i explore these ideas with dr winters and ask him how do we escape the ideological
spiritual and physical maladies of modern living ada hakimura dr tim winters is a founder
and dean of the cambridge muslim college aziz foundation professor of islamic studies at both cambridge muslim college
and ibrahim college director of studies at wolfson college and lecturer of islamic studies in the faculty of
divinity at the university of cambridge he has translated classical works including the translation of the two
volumes of al ghazali's deen
it's a pleasure to have you on the thinking muslim podcast for joining us
well today i want to ask the question whether modernity is affecting or even
destroying our minds have we lost a sense of perspective that previous generations probably had and how much of
this is down to the maladies of modern urban living and the associated ideologies
that underpin our lifestyles so i want to ask uh how does islam address
these maladies as the final message that allah has bestowed upon humankind
how does islam help us to navigate modern living without dismissing i suppose the necessities
that uh are the requirements of of life so there's a lot to get through today and i feel check you're probably the
best person to to help me and my listeners so to start with dr abdul hakim
many theorists claim that we have become increasingly brittle and unprepared for
the travails of life i mean do you agree with this and can you explain what's behind
this condition well uh there are different ways of looking at this of course one can track the traditional
muslim timetable of history which generally recognizes the reality of spiritual entropy that there is a golden
age and then human beings being subject as we are to gravity uh fall away from
that the hadith says the best of generations is my generation and then that which follows and then that which
follows so as far as i can see consensually the umber has assumed that human beings are outwardly that is to
say socially and also inwardly that is to say spiritually uh unraveling
never does a time come but that which comes after it will be worse than it uh
and it fits in with the larger prophetic idea of history that god sends a prophet uh things are fine for a while and then
there is a degeneration and another prophet has to come so we have this cyclic view
which is shared generally by most other religious traditions i think uh
but in that's the kind of theological way of looking at it but uh
it interestingly complements although it certainly doesn't overlap very much at all with
a certain dissenting voice within western enlightenment modernity which is quite
pessimistic uh more recently you see the kind of decline of
marxism which used to try and reverse the traditional pessimism of europe about history and propose that the
golden age is in the future rather than the past a secularized view of a millennium
and that there was something implicit in the nature of matter itself that would lead to an improvement better structures
better equality better happiness and so forth uh dialectical materialism
as that collapsed following the evident failure of uh marxism leninism really from the
s onwards the disillusionment of people like um
well arthur kirsler for instance uh vaulted benjamin and a number of others
uh it morphed into two things i think which is very dominant in in our culture
firstly it morphed into the so-called work culture which has a kind of
marxist substrate to it but which focuses not really on
large-scale projects of egalitarian enlightenment and challenges to global inequality but rather on rather narrow
questions of the body itself understanding its aspirations its desires its gender and so forth which
has become perhaps disproportionately a preoccupation of the left-wing chattering classes in the west and which
is based still on a kind of optimism they do think that we can resolve these questions and march hand in hand into a
world in which we're simply equal individuals without these traditional labors labels of sexuality gender and so
forth but it's also collapsed in another direction which is the no less marxist
frankfurt school uh adorno orkheimer
and a few other you know still some surviving representatives of it which is still marxist but has
jettisoned the optimism following i guess walter benjamin with his idea of the angel of history which
is an essay inspired by paul clay's famous painting of this strange
dystopian creature walking backwards that humanity as it moves through
history is always looking backwards we can only see the past we've got no idea what the future is and as a result
we just endlessly blunder so the peasantism of adorno in particular who actually in many ways is
islamically quite interesting i think his idea of alienation is not so far from some of the things that obviously
in a more ontological vein muslims have liked to say about human sadness um hawkheimer as well uh maybe a few of
the parisians and this is mirrored by the uh the bodying forth of this pessimism
in the whole tradition of modern art which until years ago western art was
essentially about progress optimism the discernibility of beauty the nobility of the human form
landscapes even the post-impressionists were like that and then suddenly in the interwar period you had cubism
george gross a decline into the sense that what is most fundamental
about ourselves is what is darkest the dream world the freudian id
uh so that the finalists for the turner prize each year in this country look like various
evocations of hell really their presentation of what is true about us is the opposite of traditional art which
was about there's an angelic nature to which we aspire and which we in some way represent nowadays it's all about
bringing to the surface the dark brokenness of our condition damien hurst is the kind of hero for
that um tracy emin who apparently recently married a rock in her garden as an
example of the dysfunctionality of modern relationships and modern everything so uh yeah the the the
pessimism of modernity is actually running in interesting tandem with the
pessimism that i think is a natural and healthy part of prophetic religion you work at university and you come across
many young people and it just seems to me that um and maybe
this is a broad generalization but many young people today lack uh
some very basic skills of resilience and fortitude that may our fathers generations uh would have had in you
know in plentiful supply i mean why is that why do young people today feel
uh have less of these uh character building qualities but that you know as i said that i would
imagine our forefathers would have had well uh one has to avoid generalization
because i come across a lot of very resilient and smart and outward looking young people but it's
certainly the case that there is an uptick in mental health diagnoses that the
prescription for antidepressants in in england and wales doubled in the last years and clearly there is a malaise a
foot and coronavirus i think only brought to the surface certain things that were already present as a sense of animal me
alienation discomfort one perhaps
rather obvious diagnosis is the collapse of a traditional metaphysical or eschatological framework for people's
lives humanity since the upper paleolithic has believed in an unseen reality behind the
forms of things it really absolutely innate to a correctly traditionally functioning human neurology
uh to have a sense that there is meaning uh to celebrate that meaning to evoke it
collectively through forms of ritual forms of pilgrimage fasting seasons and so forth this is part of normative
ancient humanity and whether or not you buy into all the presuppositions of evolutionary biology
from their perspective the brain is designed for an upper paleolithic
hunter-gatherer lifestyle in which people don't have many distractions in which genders are
clearly differentiated where play rather than work is the normality for people's
lives and where religion or religions is the master signifier for everything
and the brain functions properly and generates various secretions and endorphins and
serotonins and so forth on the basis of the extent to which we are living
something that somehow reflects that normal human environment which islam might want to
identify with fitra somehow uh modernity really on purpose kicks
that away and says that that's all backwardness and we can be liberated by exploring our
own subjectivity in a world which is increasingly artificial and in which there is lethal discomforts of
primordial life are abolished uh it doesn't seem to have worked that way
uh freud for instance in many of his uh very pessimistic writings really
uh indicates that the human psyche and human functionality uh relates to a form
of existence uh the modernity is crushing and therefore we're all going to get more
and more sick mentally he was very uh black in his diagnosis he says it's inevitable
there's no way we can get back to that magical world of deities and spirits and glades and stonehenge and whatever it
was that we were up to in primordial times uh but uh yeah mental health is going to
be an increasing issue as physical health improves he sees them almost as
uh complementary evolutions so yeah you see this in a lot of young people the
absence of a master signifier the absence of hope that things are ultimately significant the
absence of the sense that beauty is meaningful the absence of hope for life after death
all of these are very significant blows to our traditional humanity and although we're resilient and very
versatile species that can exist in such a wide variety of habitats there are there are limits
uh so one of the big questions maybe the big question facing us nowadays is uh
the extent of neuroplasticity can we indefinitely adapt to
a life which is increasingly weird and far from what was for of the history
of our species normal uh or will there be a point at which we see diminishing returns and the brain
and consequently everything else about what's important to our life starts to become dysfunctional
uh answer don't know but we're certainly not in a very happy place at the moment yeah that's very interesting and how how
much does i mean i i often listen to uh your your lectures and you speak about
the modern consumer society and how the pursuit of material goods uh is harming us um
how much of that is also a contributing factor in in sort of a development of these
maladies that impact the human mind well greed and excess are
not a new possibility a hundred thousand years ago you were in
a berry bush or something and you could always eat too many berries so consumerism and
excess are not necessarily something that is
new uh however the problem seems to be what i would describe as nature deficit
disorder uh for instance this morning i was with a student
and a fox ran past the window of my study and i pointed this fox out to the student
and she was so delighted and said that's the best thing i've seen all day and really was brightened up just by the
cycle of this fox there is something and again the biologists paleobiologists might
explain this which we immediately respond to when we are surrounded by
virgin nature in particular not so much they're walking through hyde park but
seeing that the majesty and the beauty and seasonality of traditional nature
uh to the extent that we're taken away from that we're taken away from our habitat where mice in amaze and we will
be more or less dysfunctional and unhappy so yeah i i i didn't see it so much as
being in a consumer society but in a world of meaningless excessive indulgence
of the endless messages that are fired at us about the status that will accrue
when we consume certain goods and services uh the monetizing of human envy human status
anxiety which makes us constantly uncomfortable because our desires when manipulated by
these corporate mega structures are hugely powerful contributing to our sense of self-esteem
or the lack of it and people are making inconceivable amounts of money just out of stupid things like
brands and new holiday destinations and the latest iphone and things that are
intrinsically really trivial mostly not necessary but there's so much money to be made that and so little
public wisdom to encourage young people in particular to recognize the relativism and triviality of these
things the people just get lost in it and as a result they suffer because
these are not things that are natural to our flourishing what is natural to our flourishing is
very basic things looking at the sunset praying being in love
attending to old people um those things which have always been part of the way in which human beings
find real fulfillment those are increasingly being pushed aside and replaced by the things that people can
make a lot of money out of and that of course results in all kinds of inner traumas panic attacks dieting
disorders cutting suicidal thoughts new kinds of allergy
uh there's so many things going on which are epiphenomena of this inward sickness which is really part and parcel of the
human shift away from the sacred and towards the profane that's really interesting um you've described now on a
few occasions human nature and fitra and how human beings should live and and how
possibly modernity has moved us away from our natural living i want to explore the
concept of fitra a little further i mean i've i've always understood fitra as a and a state you achieve by by giving the
shahada when you become a muslim or when you when you uh when you are born you and you
acknowledge you have the mental capacities to acknowledge allah subhanahu wa ta'ala uh you are at one
with your fit right you have conceptualized uh allah's place in your life and and now you know you you follow
uh the allah but what i get from from what you're describing here is
it it's a little bit more than that you have to live a spiritual and physical life that conforms to your
fitter in order for you to to benefit i suppose from the life that allah wants
you to lead is that a fair summary of of how you understand fitra
well is a complex concept for which one struggles to find a adequate english
translation it's defined to some extent in the famous hadiths of the mirage the famous
moment where the angel hands the holy prophet to goblets one of wine one of
milk and he chooses the milk and is told in fitra or in another narrative
you are upon the fitra or you've been guided to the fitra and that is interpreted
in many ways one way is that obviously it's a kind of anti-christian idea that
the goblet represents communion the eucharist original sin redemption
the whole christian structure of how human beings get close to god um
but it's also the case that when you consider the difference between the two liquids wine is ultimately from nature it's the
juice of the grape but it's been processed and made into something that's not true to itself it's been denatured
through fermentation it results in a process of inebriation
that diminishes the imago de the image of god within us whereas the milk
which represents in this hadith the fitra if you inclined to the milk rather than the wine is unmediated it's uncorrupted
it's a symbol of virgin nature sustaining us directly so to say well that just means
the shahada is not quite adequate i think that's not what the hadith is reaching for
uh fitra in the arabic language is related very much to nature of nature
so in arabic now they say referring to natural life
um when allah says he is the one who brings heaven and
earth into being through this instantiation of nature uh that it has the sense of being
brought forth of growth it's in that register of rich quranic celebration of the principle of life
itself and how it comes out of the dead earth which we're constantly urged to to contemplate so
uh i think that one of the senses of fitra really has to be the conventional translation is often
the primordial natural disposition which is related to the abrahamic honey
fear and the original religion uh and therefore it's
similar it's synonymous in a certain way with the idea of authenticity
it is living in a way that is commensurate with what's normal for human beings a natural style of life
and i think that's generally the way in which the umber has understood the term it's not really doctrinal it's to do
with lifestyle and inhabiting the fullness of our humanity so i i mean i you know one can infer from this that
modern urban living is anti-fitra it's against uh our human nature i mean how
would you how would you respond to that yeah of course and that's the whole point of the
enlightenment and the industrial revolution was to push nature away from us so that we'd be
safe from its depredations from the epidemics from toothache from whatever
and the modern high-tech urban landscape is
the latest and most absolute form of that you can walk for miles to a shopping center or an airport and not
see any living thing and that's how it's meant to be but that's not really how we're meant to
be because we all know that we feel better when we're walking through a forest on the beach or something it's a very primitive but authentic thing that
gets the endorphins going in a way that walking past all of the
retail outlets at stansted airport just can't really supply for there's an unnatural habitat that we've created for
ourselves because you know we like goods and services and people make money out of that so uh yeah we are fish out of
water we are not in a natural habitat and as a result of course we feel unease
sometimes in order to deal with that unease we enlist anesthetize ourselves
by going into those shops and engaging in some retail therapy and stocking up on
more whatever it might be to kind of take the soul away from its sense of
spiritual thirst and its craving for beauty and for nature but it's a very poor substitute for the
real thing so yeah and of course as we move beyond this artificial engineered
environment into the metaverse which seems to be the next step it's going to be even stranger and
we're going to see even more bizarre forms of human behavior dysfunctional relationships mental
health crises relationship collapse there seems to be a collapse in
testosterone and sexuality at the moment uh birth rates are going down very fundamental aspects of human
functionality are collapsing now and i think that's just where modernity is
taking us because it wants to hypnotize us to make us comatose
so that it can you know keep those cash registers ringing
and i don't see it in the culture a sufficiently strong countervailing force that can
know when that has to stop well and that's interesting when you talk about the countervailing force i mean it it seems to me that when we
uh look at the muslim world and muslim countries um most of these uh pursue this a similar
path of modernization that western capitalist economies have pursued for the last two and a half
centuries and we have even even those governments or states that ostensibly at least claim to
be islamic uh they they do pursue uh this pathway are you
are you arguing for a a different pathway to you know to to realize uh islamic
modernization well i modernization in its conventional sense
is anti-religion and pro-dunya if you like uh and we're seeing the consequences of
this not just in the crisis in the human mind but also the biosphere it's
collapsing we're not just destroying our brains and our relationships but we're also frying the planet which is
quite an achievement really when you consider the scale of the sustainability and the brilliance of its um sustainable
systems we've managed to to damage it perhaps irreparably but the elites in the muslim worlds they
are sometimes like the proverbial amazon indians who emerge from the rainforest
and are completely dazzled by something modern they see a car and they worship it or something
in many cases particularly in desert countries where you know grandparents might have
been living effectively in the paleolithic they suddenly come into modernity and they become like children
they want the world's biggest clock they want the world's biggest skyscraper they want the world's coolest whatever it's
kind of guinness book of records adolescent excitement with whatever's biggest newest and shiniest
and the shopping malls and it's all emptiness and the mental health crisis there is absolutely catastrophic i was
talking to some kuwaitis recently you said a lot of the young people can't get out of bed in the morning they're just
so destroyed by this cognitive dissonance on one hand they're still arabs but on the other hand their
whole lives focus on going to see the christmas decorations at harrods
and they find it very difficult to reconcile those things and that cognitive dissonance is generating
most of the dysfunctions of the modern muslim world including these reactive and deeply destructive fundamentalisms that
seem just want to destroy everything so uh yeah i'm not
you know we're a religion we're not a tribe we're talking about a global crisis that
affects the umma as well as others it's not just non-muslim kids who are
addicted to pornography and scrolling on their phones and other dysfunctional
forms of technologically enabled behavior it's kind of you know it's young people generally
and we really need to snap out of this them versus us my ummah is always right mentality
because we're talking about problems whether it be the causes like technology
or the effects such as global warming which are universal which affect everybody don't really pay much attention to uh religious designations
of course when we turn to islam we say that we often say sometimes as as
mayor rhetoric that islam provides solutions for for human beings and and
for our state of mind what are the building blocks that develop these characters that you describe should
ideally exist as a as a byproduct of embracing islam how do we i mean often you know uh in
our community we can't get beyond suburb you know you should have suburb for every situation
and and uh i wonder about whether that's sufficient that certainly it isn't but whether that's sufficient in in
describing you know the the way in which our creator uh wants us to uh to to develop these life
skills of resilience and our ability to uh to to navigate uh modern life
appropriately well sauber is a fundamental necessary virtue
but we need to cultivate some of the active virtues as well and religion is very much something about doing things
rather than passively hoping for the best um and what we do is
you know another aspect of the raj which i've been thinking about as well as the guidance to nature
or if you like the guidance to authenticity there is also the gift of the prayer
and the prayer has been studied by a lot of western muslim thinkers like rob blackhurst and lex hicks and a lot of
others who've really looked into the the geograph the geometry of it the
astral symbolism of it the traditional understanding of the prayer as a cosmic act which is also the gift
of the mirage which is not kind of coincidental it was in that context of the prayer was gifted so there's a way
in which the prayer is a key way of maintaining a fitri sort of milk diet
in the midst of the craziness of processed modernity uh because the prayer is a primordial
act which like all the primordial acts is of worship is linked to the movement
of the solar system in our case lunar calendar but also the rising of the sun setting
of the sun it's like stonehenge but it's much more ancient than that uh gobekli tepe which is much older than
stonehenge which they're still digging up in turkey also indicates that primordial human beings regulated their
lives through ritual and regulated that ritual through the
movements of the sun and the moon and that's exactly what we do with the solid which i don't think any other
religious community that immediately comes to mind does with the partial exception of aspects of the jewish
calendar yom kippur fasting during the day there's some resonances there so
uh my understanding of the sunnah is that it is the underestimated but essential
suit of armor life support system hazmat suit if you like that keeps us
healthy when everything else is toxic that
it reconnects us to practices which are part of our normative and healing humanity
we've always fasted we've always prayed we've always had holy places we've always done these things that
persona is emphasizing in this very primordial and universal way so
i think that's why you see people still flocking to the mosques and still
fasting in ramadan they may not articulate it or they may articulate it in terms of the kind of pietism i want
to go to heaven which is of course entirely legitimate but the deeper aspect of the sunnah which is
that it gives us a primordial lifestyle that's connected to the very primordial prophetic city of
medina in the th century it's kind of understood that intuitively rather than
explicitly so when you walk through
the retail heaven the outlet heaven on your way to the ryanair flight at
stansted what keeps you sane and what makes you different and what stops you worshiping
at all those shrines is the fact that you're also wondering where the prayer room is
and the moon or the sun is moving you can't do anything about that that you're also thinking about what is
halal and what is haram ancient human communities are very big about
certain things which are taboo and not taboo and that's also part of the ancient ancestral healthy working of the
brain and so on so uh even though you know we can't go back to the upper
paleon ethic and it's really not possible still the sunnah provides us with a form of life that
maximizes our chances of not being poisoned by the toxins of a completely
out of control and and and uh poisonous modern world sometimes listening to um
to you and of course what you've described there is is is really profound in terms of how we should
uh re-navigate or reconfigure our lives to uh to really bring meaning in in our
rituals in the way in which we uh interact with the world around us but but
is there a danger in in thinking that the only way to be a good muslim is to be an austere muslim to be abstinent in
life and to shun the material and is that a is that a problem necessarily and
and you know some muslims would describe that as the only way by which they can
uh they can pursue a life closer to uh what allah would like us or the life
that he would like us to live well i don't think so you do find some muslims
reacting against the sort of mardi gras indulgence of modernity by retreating
into a particularly austere puritanism but i don't think that is actually the
prophetic way uh because holy prophet ali islam islam after drinking the milk and after
receiving the gift of the prayer comes back to life a life in which she is involved in the
social life of his community very much so a life in which he is an important point of the economic and mercantile
life of his community a life in which he's married and has children which is unlike the other choice if you
like the choice of the wine which is the sacramental idea which is that you avoid this world the monastic
possibility which is gigantic in christianity uh which is that you take vows of chastity poverty obedience and
you leave it so uh our scholars have always emphasized that
you reach heaven by going through the world rather than trying to go around it because you can't really go around it
because it's it's in you it's part of your instincts it's what you are you can't jump out of your skin so
easily and the current clerical sex scandals and the churches indicate that
it really doesn't isn't working too well so yeah we are a world affirming tradition
though something celebratory about islam which you experience in
ramadan for instance it's austere but it's also really kind of warm social
amazing not just after iftar but generally it's it's a
a celebratory almost dynasiac time i think which is why people like nietzsche
various other th century post-romantic philosophers preferred islam over christianity massively
because they saw christianity as apollonian in other words you flee the body you flee desires you flee pleasure
and try and exist in some kind of uh discarnate world uh whereas islam is world affirming
nietzsche liked muslim spain the sensuality of it the poetry the romance the beauty of the alhambra he saw islam
as being an infinitely more world affirming and therefore in his case virile manly type of
religion than christianity which he thought was this kind of milk sop pacifist affair that couldn't really
appeal to people who really want to to live their lives uh and i think there's there's an element of truth in that
uh that there is a ludic and uh joyful aspect to traditional muslim life it has
been lost in some modern muslim puritan circles because people are so anxious about everything that they think it's
really bad to kind of relax and enjoy your islam and enjoy your marriage and
enjoy eating with friends that's a kind of a creeping christianization i would say
but uh the the the sunderland is still there you know we always say islam is about practice practice means the sunnah
you may understand why it's good for you but just look at the alternatives and see where that's leading humanity and
how do you place uh imam ghazali within this discussion i mean this may be an oversimplification but the common
narrative goes that uh he imam ghazali faced a a crisis in his s and he
deserted uh his living he's his family uh and he
lived a life uh vince forth in in seclusion and and away from others um i mean is this an oversimplification
of imam ghazali and and what lessons can we take from his his crisis and the
years uh the fact he pursued after that crisis well as people especially sincere people
intelligent people sometimes do he passed through you know a crisis in his case a crisis
he passed through two crises but the one that's perhaps relevant here is that he became profoundly anxious about his own
intention and about the effectiveness of a certain very athletic
uh logic chopping theologizing approach to the nature of god
and he wanted something that would appeal to him in his wholeness as
a human being rather than just a kind of hypertrophic development of
the brain uh so yes he went off as he had to in order to resolve himself you know he was
sick we might say it was a mental illness nowadays kind of certainly a breakdown
uh but that was not the permanent resolution he didn't go to a monastery because
that's not the sun no it's not the muslim way but he did associate with sort of sages in the deserts people were
in a retreat situation engaged in the traditional ascetical practice of sierra
holy wandering from place to place which is a quranic mandate anyway the
quran tells us to walk in the earth and to contemplate the majesty of heavens and the earth and
nature and so forth it's a healing but he came back again and started to teach again he re-entered
the mother assa he thought he continued to compile books so that's the difference really between the
wine and the milk sometimes we go through a tunnel but we don't kind of sit down and
despair and say well let's wait for the afterlife we continue in the hope that allah will restore us
to health and we'll go back to our families back to the madrasa back to
muammar religion is more on its transaction with others it's not a solitary form of navel gazing and jack
this show will go out uh during the month of ramadan and i've often wondered about
you you've touched on it there about the wisdom behind some of the acts and
rituals within ramadan and how one needs to maximize uh one's
interaction with this month um can you inform us about some of the some of the character building impacts we
hope to achieve from our fast and the wider broader obligations and and pursuance of the
sunnah that we undertake during ramadan well as i was saying earlier fasting is
something that every human spiritual tradition has found to be useful and increasingly we're aware even if
it's biomedical benefits intermittent fasting is something that the nhs will often suggest that people do
because again to take us back to this sort of stone age image uh primordial humanity
didn't graze or snack or drink coffee several times a day or go to the fridge or the coke machine
but would occasionally feast and then might be hungry and thirsty for the rest of the day
metabolism is actually designed for that so as we return to that more
normal form of being certain things within us start to settle down particularly towards the end of the
month as we're not constantly sugared up for other metabolic interferences which
aren't normal to us are still and in that context
the context of detachment teja reed as islam says stripping away from these uh worldly
delights we find it easier to be centered and to focus
and to be contemplative we are not designed to be distracted by thousands of sms messages every day
that's bad for the brain that's bad for our lifestyle it's really bad for us we're designed for times of stillness
and that stillness represents an opportunity for the soul to settle
and to open up for the basic function of the heart to
be operationalized for the possibility of vision for the possibility of seeing beyond the surface
of things for the possibility of openness to those things that humanity's always been open to
we may not have religious experiences doing ramadan usually we don't usually i don't but still
it is an opportunity to allow the chattering thoughts in the
brain to settle down the chattering thoughts are often about
immediate gratification i need a snack or i need this or i need
that and in ramadan a lot of that is locked down the brain gets used to the
fact that it's just not going to happen and is therefore liberated and can start to think about other things
but we need to start knocking down other things as well and i think we can fast from a lot of those unnecessary
scrolling activities um which interfere with sleep patterns also
which can be an issue in ramadan really we should switch everything off i think after motherhood and particularly
after asia just so that the brain can be calm we can benefit in the taraweeh we
can have a good night's sleep um because the more you've been staring at screams
late at night the more the natural cycle of sleep is going to be disrupted
so yeah it's a time for return to the fithra time to reorient ourselves towards the qibla the time to reconnect
with the quran with the incantation of the eternal divine speech to drink
that into our souls it's uh yeah an opportunity to reflect more
fully on our brokenness on our weakness on our vulnerability
and therefore on the fragility of our sense of self modern project tries to make man a woman
the yardstick or the measure of all things following the enlightenment religion was out and
humanity was in humanism but when we really reflect on what we
are the human subject consciousness and we're honest about it
it turns out that there isn't really much there and certainly not much that's really
commendable there's a bunch of dusty old cobwebby memories there's certain reflexes
certain preferences for treats of various kinds certain habits of
self-justification to ourselves and to others but it's not really this magnificent almost
divine uh subject that the enlightenment thought was going to be the measure of all things that could work out values and
solve the problems of the universe it's it's there's not as much there as we
would like to think and that's really helpful because that really crushes the ego and makes us
realize our neediness that we are up needy we depend on god and that our
wanted independence and our sense of coolness and the very symbols that we adopt in order to
emphasize our sense of self the smart car the latest phone all of that stuff which is just
a kind of suit of armor that disguises our vulnerability
none of that really makes much sense when you realize that we're completely dependent on the creator
that after a few hours of not nibbling we become kind of grouchy weak helpless
these are all fundamental lessons uh it's the in kisar of which our tradition speaks of brokenness which is
absolutely essential pride is the worst of the deadly sins because it can't coexist with the fear
of god and pride is that human weakness which is
most thoroughly smashed by fasting so it's a time of great opportunity
and we need to think about it carefully rather than just assume that it's
an awkward blip in our calendar that somehow we're going to get through and a chance to visit relatives no it's
everything in religion is a divine gift and this is a particularly formidable
uh requirement that is formidable because the uh benefits that can accrue to it if
it's done intelligently with a good intention are enormous uh the beauty of experiencing the quran
again the beauty of more connection with friends and family the beauty of the little kada the beauty
of the aid it offers so much but that should have a vertical as well as a
purely horizontal dimension ramadan ultimately is you know uh
fasting is for me uh the hadith says
i myself directly reward it it's that most vertical of devotions and
the one that nobody really knows that you're doing because nobody really knows if you're fasting or not they can see
you praying but you can't see somebody fasting so yeah tremendous opportunity and the
olimar the awliya of the umma for forever have emphasized that so many
openings and uh transformations and tulbas um
tears shed happen you know during this month and it's an opportunity that we should be open to i
often feel that what you've described it the profound nature of religion how
human beings should interact with allah's message it's often lost on us and for all the
reasons that you've described of modernity and how we live and choose to live our lives
but i suppose also uh it is fair to say that in our formative lives when we were
growing up we were developing knowledge about islam and knowledge about the broader society
there isn't really a place why i i didn't at least experience this a place where or a an
institution or a an avenue by which these character building skills are explained to to the young man and to the
young woman and i often i'm sure you do as well we often interact with uh with muslims and myself included and and you
know we're sort of working things out as we go along in every ramadan where we're acquiring
new understandings about this month and how this month should interact with us and and improve us
um what is the ideal situation what does islam say about or what can we take from
our predecessors about how these character building how this development takes place and who
needs to be responsible for the development of these characters well this is in a
sense the most important aspect of religion a deen religion is good character
in the sense that if you don't have good character you haven't really got the reality of islam there's something sick
within you some some false uh in the traditional islamic world as
well as the madras says where you learnt your tafsir and those essential things there were also the sufi lodges
even more numerous the teke the zawiyah the khan which is where you went if you wanted
your internal uh violations to be sorted out if you wanted the intention to be rectified
madrasa can't do that for you it's not on the curriculum it's not what another story is for and that's part of the vaseline insight
that there has to be a structured education that is about the turbulences
of your inward life as well as a structured education about what you do outwardly with your limbs
and in terms of the love of god and with with creation but in the modern west
the institutions that have been created such as in the uk the infrastructure which is huge now maybe
too huge it's like of them teaching all of the nice hanafi fit from the tafsir and the fetus and so forth
that's fine but what hasn't been imported is the infrastructure of the inward life so
traditionally in the subcontinent where many british muslims have their roots you would have the
chis that whole world with its you know aberrations that
attended some manifestations of that world but that hasn't really been imported in
the same way so you can walk around dewsbury and see the
the mag tabs and the kids memorizing but where is the place where you can rectify your intention
where is the place you can go if you're struggling to wake up for fajr where is the teacher who can help you with that
that's the problem that we have that we only have half of the necessary pedagogic infrastructure in the western
world for which there are many explanations one of which is the fact that there's
been a kind of practical alliance between secularists and fundamentalists to close these
places down in turkey it's still illegal to run the sufi lodge despite erdogan and
everything the ataturk legacy is too strong they had of them in istanbul ataturk closed them all
nasser did the same in egypt etc so the fact that islam has been externalized
and shrunk so that it's teaching only these outward things rather than the inward heart the life
that enlivens them has resulted in all kinds of misery so
we have to go to the muslim chaplain or the interfaith counsellor or go online and talk about
our addictions or whatever it is and it's all happening on a huge scale
because we're all messed up one way or another uh but we we simply don't have
the traditional stages the traditional infrastructure the traditional rituals the traditional dream interpretation all
of that muslim psychological wisdom that is so enormous that is now just sitting in the libraries or it may be the memory
of a few old people um it's been a massacre really and
an unbalancing of the religion which really should be based on inward and outward mutually supporting
each other there has to be a kernel and a husk um but we don't really have that and
that externalizing of religion turns it into a kind of meritorious pietism point
scoring often very competitive um often status driven sectarian
rivalry based which is rubbish all of the things fazally hated most in religion that tends to motivate most of
the rubbish that you see on internet chat rooms and fatwa wars it's all just
the turbulence of people who are purely externalized and haven't really made much progress in terms of refining
themselves and realizing the the beauty that lies within because that's a sweet part of
religion really inward liberation so yeah it's that
profound imbalance in the institutional life the discursive life of our communities
which is one reason for violent extremism i suppose is that they don't have the
inner resources to deal with catastrophe oppression invasion sectarian
differences so they they malfunction they lash out and everybody loses from that
what is the solution well i don't know maybe these are the end times maybe this is exactly what you'd
expect when a community goes into terminal decline it becomes externalized
um don't know but one does not an increasing number of young people who are showing
increased interest in these things had a recent visit from a group of young saudis who are really interested in
rolling back their traditional fundamentalism and looking at a traditional full understanding of the
sunnah with the internal tarabiya as well as the external tao lim and i find that throughout the umber
people want complete religion rather than just the external software so we shall not as time passes
that will become more of a mass movement and we'll see a restoration of the traditional balance
and maybe just one follow-on question from that if i may um um i mean one can leave with a somewhat
pessimistic uh you know understanding of the umber um
are we in terminal decline or do you feel that um there is there every
possibility of of a revival within this within this um i mean that the hadith of the prophet
uh suggests that you know the ummah is like rain we don't know whether the first or the latter period is going to
be better are we in terminal decline or is there a is there a way to improve
uh in your mind our our umber in our situation well the quran's eschatology
tells us that the world is in terminal decline that's just how things are um
religion i think muslims tend to panic too much uh because in my position i see people
from other religious traditions just yesterday i did an interview with a
local christian radio station about what we do in ramadan
and they couldn't get their head around the fact that so many of us pack the
mosques for really long ceremonies they've been fasting all day
and thousands of people are doing this thing where they're in length and that might mean giving up milk chocolate or
something or it's really on that level nowadays it blows their minds that there are
still places of worship that are overflowing with people including a lot of young people and the people are doing
objectively difficult things even more important than that is the
fact that the basic forms are intact if you look at what this uh paca papa
francis in rome as they call him is doing destroying the last relics of the
traditional latin mass which is about the most beautiful thing they have and genuinely you know it's not our theology
at all but it's a magnificent thing punishing anybody who is trying to celebrate it without a complex
bureaucratic process of authorization from a bishop and replacing it with various vernacular things that are just
made up and the tremendous pain that traditional catholics who like their history and
their historic ways are experiencing as a result of this interference nobody is doing that to the muslim worship nobody
is coming along and saying i am the archwardy of canterbury and you will now do everything in
english and you will have men and women mixing together during the prayer and you'll do
xyz said uh nobody's doing that really in any mosque anywhere in the ummah and that's
a kind of miracle so we are protected in terms of what really matters which is the sunnah the former
um and i think that's one reason for the ongoing strength of islam that people know that what they're going to see is
is real it's from a great age of faith rather than just dropped out by some trendy council in the s
that's endlessly divisive and controversial we're more or less united in our forms of worship which is really
what the religion is about we still know what gender is about more or less which the outside world is increasingly
baffled by we have ideas of normativity and various forms of human life and practice
reproduction so from the point of view of conservative
believers in christianity who are shattered by the wreckage of christianity in europe
islam looks like a very strange success story we don't see it in those terms because
we like to groan all the time but in terms of the catastrophe that's overtaken them
yeah i mean the church where my ancestors used to worship where my father was baptized my
grandparents were married etc that's now a mosque this is a big transformation in british
society and there's no reason to suppose that it won't continue
we had at the moment we're having between eight to ten registered conversions at the cambridge mosque
every month now despite the islamophobia and isis and all of the stuff
people are still coming in very amazing people sometimes so you know i'm not really pessimistic i'm kind of amazed by
the ongoing success of what really matters in the religion i just wish that people would
stop arguing with each other over things that are not of the essence um but that requires some kind of
heart surgery i'm afraid and there are structural problems in their psyches that make them endlessly insecure and
argumentative so may allah help them and help us all i mean okay check out the hakimura it's really been a pleasure to
uh discuss these issues with you today and uh allow us to meet this ramadan and
embrace it with all of its uh all of its greatness