 In our last session, we said that the higher meaning of the shahada is to experience and understand that there is only one God to see a law as it were in all things. The atheist or the material reductionist only sees the horizontal aspect of things, never the vertical. This is called explanatory monism. For example, when they see a flood, all they see is water. They don't acknowledge the vertical aspect. They only see the asbab, the material means. Imam al-Razali, he said, that's like seeing the pen writing, but not acknowledging the hand moving the pen. According to Rumi, they don't see that the objects of their love, their wealth, their families, etc., they don't see that these things are, quote, gold plated by Allah's attributes. They notice the gold, but not the attributes. When Iblis looked at Adam, all he saw was clay. And so he concluded, I am better than him. Isn't it obvious? I mean, look at me. I'm created from fire. This is created from clay. He's just looking at the material. The followers of shaitan, they don't see the test of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala in this world. They don't see the mercy of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala in this world. These stories of the past that are meant to be admonitions and warnings, they don't see the meanings in these things. All they see is randomly colliding atoms and fizzing stardust. And there is no moral component to their worldview. On atheism, the act of a man murdering another man has as much to do with morality than a stone rolling down a mountainside. It's just atoms striking atoms. Atoms and stardust do not have conscience. They have nothing to do with morality. You cannot be objectively immoral on atheism. Morality for atheists is simply a convention. There cannot be any moral absolutes for them because there is no absolute for them. You see, the principles of the disbelievers are not grounded in reason and revelation, but rather in their own hawa, in their own caprice and desires. They will insist, for instance, that an amoeba, a single cell organism found on the planet Mars, constitutes life. That's life. That should be celebrated. Or that people who eat chicken eggs are committing some sort of murder. Yet many of these people fully support the act of an unborn human child being ripped limb from limb from his mother's womb because moral inconsistency does not faze them. They are guided by their feelings, by their hawa. For them, there is no higher authority than the self, the nuffs. If the self is gratified by murder, then murder becomes justified morally. For atheists and material reductionists, the mind is simply reducible to the physical brain. Therefore, they'll argue, if a person suffers some sort of physical trauma to the brain, like a concussion, then that person's memory or mind is affected. Now that's true, but to say that the mind can be simply reduced to some physical process to firing neurons is ridiculous. How do you go from a 10 pound lump of matter in your head to thought and memory and consciousness? As Oxford professor John Lenick said, and I'm paraphrasing, that is like saying that the meanings of the words in a book are the same as the ink and paper upon which they are written. See, the physical thing carries the meanings, but the meanings are not the same thing as the physical thing. In the Quran, Allah SWT says to the Prophet, this amazing statement that when you call them to guidance, they don't hear you. You see them looking at you, but they didn't see. They're looking at you, but they didn't see. So in the language of scripture, in the language of the Quran, you even find this in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, you find it in the New Testament, to hear something means to obey, and to see means to understand the reality of something. And we use that even today, like we say, oh, I see, to see with your mind's eye. Right? Be mushrikeen, those who do not see Allah SWT in all things. They don't know who the Prophet SAW really is. Exigits point out that this verse should be read in conjunction with the preceding ayah. They have hearts with which they don't perceive. They have eyes by which they don't see. They have ears with which they don't hear. They're like cattle, or even worse than cattle. They are the heedless. You see when Abu Lahab, the uncle of the Prophet SAW, when he looked at the Prophet SAW, he said, this is my orphaned nephew. That's all he is. He's just judging the superficial. That's it. But when Al-Abbas or Sayyidina Hamza, when they looked at their nephew, when they looked at the Prophet SAW, they would see Sayyidu Waladi Adam. They would see the master and the children of Adam. They would see Rasulullah, the messenger of Allah. They recognized his essence. They recognized his reality. So that's the first pillar or support of our religion. It is to witness that there's no God but Allah SWT, and that the Prophet SAW is the messenger of God. We will continue with our reflections in the next session.