 In our previous two sessions, we were examining the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We said that these are the five pillars or supports of the religion. I once asked a Christian apologist who was trying to basically argue against the Qur'an if he knew the five pillars of Islam, so surely if you presume to have enough knowledge to argue against the Qur'an, then surely you know the five pillars, I mean it's so basic. Now remember he said, oneness of God and prayer and that's when he sort of just got stuck and that was it. So he got stuck after number two. I read an article once in a Christian magazine called The Greatest Book Never Read. It was by Christian author, that was the title of the article, The Greatest Book Never Read and it was about the Bible. And so this Christian author, he was or journalist, he was criticizing his fellow Christians. And he concluded in this article that 50%, 50% of Christians that attend church cannot even name the four Gospels in the New Testament. They don't even know the names of the Gospels and these are Christians who actually go to church. And when I mentioned this to one of my teachers, he said, well probably 50% of Muslims coming out of Salat al Juma'a cannot even quote one hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in Arabic, just one hadith. So that's a problem. This is a crisis of knowledge among Muslims. There are Muslims in our communities who have Bollywood movies memorized from start to finish, but they can't quote a hadith to save their lives. They don't prioritize and they don't even try, but that's the thing though that the tongue is the revelator of the heart. In other words, you can determine who or what a person loves by what he's always talking about unless he's a hypocrite, but that's a whole different animal. What are people talking about all the time? There are people who are constantly talking about food or cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, people talking about women or men all the time, people talking about social media, something they saw on TikTok. If one claims to love Allah and His Messenger but can barely read the Qur'an and cannot quote one statement of the Messenger whom one claims to love, then that's a problem. We need to recognize that problem. Now interestingly, even though fasting is one of the essential supports of the religion, the Qur'an contains only one passage consisting of five verses, so five ayat that deal explicitly with fasting, so Al-Baqarah 183-187. However, the Qur'an is a book, as I say, is teaming with meaning. That is to say it is an extremely polyvalent text. It has multiple layers of meaning and has an incredible wisdom density. Why is that? Because it's the ultimate, i.e. the last revelation of God. It has to stay relevant until the Sa'a, until the Eskatan, until the end of time. It was either Sidna Ammar or Ibn Ammar who said, if I lost the halter of my camel, I would know where to find it in the Qur'an. So that's true dedication. True dedication to the Qur'an is when the Qur'an becomes your ultimate source of guidance in all of your affairs, from the mundane to the spiritual, from the lowest to the highest. Over the centuries, our exegetes have written thousands of pages explaining these five ayat, because the Qur'an is an ocean according to Imam al-Ghazali. He calls it al-Bahar, and it's an ocean that keeps on giving as long as we keep fishing. That's the caveat. We have to stay engaged. Imam al-Ghazali, he said that a lot of Muslims are stuck on the shore, on the beach, satisfied with the basic outward meanings of the Qur'an. He said dive into the ocean of its meanings and collect its precious jewels, its rubies and pearls. And by rubies, he means the theological verses of the Qur'an, the verses that describe Allah SWT and give us the ma'rifatullah, intimate knowledge of God. And by pearls, he means the verses that describe the way to Allah, the silat al-mustaqeen. So you have orthodoxy and you have orthopraxis. So let's take a closer look at one of these ayat, Allah SWT says in verse 183 of al-Baqara, Ya ayyuhal ladina amanu kutiba aalakum us-siamu, kama kutiba aalal ladina min qabalikum la aalakum tattaqun. O you who believe, fasting has been prescribed upon you. Just as it was prescribed upon those before you, la aalakum tattaqun, which can be taken as a purpose clause, meaning an order for you to have taqwa. Now allow me to preface my comments about taqwa by saying the following, a severe difficulty. And I've mentioned this before in talks in recent times, but I think it's very, very important, must be reiterated that a severe difficulty that many Muslims face today is a loss of faith, a loss of iman among themselves, among their family members and friends and relatives. And I think this is due to several factors. Number one, ignorance, right, jahl, you know, a simple lack of knowledge, not knowing, but number two, which is just as bad and maybe even worse is the proliferation of misapprehension. In other words, thinking you know, thinking you know something when you don't know it. This is called jahl muraqab, compounded ignorance. For example, somebody came up to me once and said the Quran advocates violence, right, and was trying to convince me into believing that the Quran advocates violence. And this is someone who probably read some article last weekend or something about the Quran. And, and I said, well, you know, I've been studying this text for many, many years. I said, no, no, no, you don't know, this is what he's trying to tell me, the Quran actually advocates violence. So this is someone who, this is somebody who doesn't know the truth, but thinks he knows, right, this type of jahl muraqab, it's a very, very bad state. And then of course, the third reason, the popularity of trendy modern philosophies and social movements. Of course, there is atheism and atheism goes back thousands of years in the West, probably as far back as democratists. But since 9 11, there has been a renewed fervor of atheistic discourse. Some call it new atheism. In my opinion, it's really anti-theism. In other words, they're not simply arguing that there probably is no God. They argue that even if there is a God, that we shouldn't obey him, this is their attitude. It's not this idea that all, you know, religions are meaningless, but if it floats your boat then go ahead. No, they're saying that religion is actually evil, that religion needs to be eradicated. This sentiment was captured accurately by the late Christopher Hitchens who said, there is no God and I hate him. That is anti-theism. Now there is one thing that all of these anti-theists have in common. They never study traditional or normative theology. They always focus on the social impact of religion. So Islam is bad because of suicide bombers or because of these fools called Isis, Christianity is bad because of pedophile priests and the KKK. I mean, that's the only card that they have to play, right? The social impact of religion. And then when theists do the same thing to them and say atheism is bad because of Mao and Lenin and Marx and Stalin, they say, no, no, no, no, you're misrepresenting us. You're misrepresenting us, right? It was very, very interesting. And of course there's something called existential nihilism, right? This idea that life has no meaning. It doesn't matter. We're all Sisyphus, right? We're all rolling up these boulders of these mountains. Life doesn't have any meaning. There's no higher telos. There's no purpose. Just maximize your pleasure because YOLO, right? You only live once. It's all about hedonism, whatever feels good, as long as you don't harm anyone else. That's the caveat they usually give, this kind of John Stuart Mill, the harm principle. So it's the age of feeling, right, Robert George? This is what he calls the time that we're living in, right? There was the age of faith, there was the age of reason, but now it's all about feeling. Nowadays, things are no longer defined by, you know, a sacred text or by the intellect but by your feelings. We will continue with our reflections in the next session, inshallah ta'ala. Until then, As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.