 In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, the Most Merciful. So first I'd like to thank the staff here at MCC for allowing us to use the beautiful room and facility to do this one day seminar. And also, I'd like to thank the staff here at MCC for arranging this weekend's program here in Jovah in SBIA and here today at MCC and tomorrow in SR. You guys love acronyms. Sad remote. Sad remote. In a violent, Islamic sense. Tomorrow, incidentally, if you're interested, the program will be about social justice and Islam. It will touch on a number of themes that we might over today, but in general it's going to be something distinct and separate from what's going on today for those of you in connection to them and for yourself the whole weekend listening to me. So if you're that brave, then that's available. So as I mentioned last night in the introduction, I had said that we developed this kind of, it wasn't really a seminar, it was something that I thought over a couple of years and I've kind of condensed it. I don't think we, it's about 90 slides as it stands right now. But the idea behind it was to give people an understanding of the sort of universal singular underpinning of Islam in the sense that people who have studied a little bit understand that there are different disciplines in Islam in terms of how we go about studying it. So there are things that are associated with studying the etiquettes of behavior, the etiquettes of worship, the foundations of belief, the spiritual programs for spiritual rectification, the methodology of interpreting the Qur'an and Sunnah or Sunnah. The methodology of Tafsir, so forth, of interpreting the Qur'an. All of these things have a unique and singular foundation that they go back to. What I mean by that is if you were to walk into, say, a fifth class somewhere or a hadith class or the sif class, the way that these particular disciplines look at the world are going to be unified. If you were not going to feel like, oh, these muhadithi, and they really see things much differently than the Fouqahat or al-Muslidi, there will be some differences in what they put emphasis upon. No question about that. But the way that they kind of understand the reality of the universe and the reality of Allah SWT and our personal reality is all one. Contrast this if you walk into a class at any Western university, and I should say any Eastern university at this point, whether it's in sociology or anthropology or ecology or economics or finance. And you'll be left with the impression that these disciplines don't really talk to each other. And the sociologist has a particular view of the world that seems to be at odds with the psychologist and the ecologist and the economics and so forth. So there is no universality in those disciplines. So a university that, the name originally was meant to mean that it is an universality that's inherent within it. But now we have very compartmentalized ways of looking at knowledge. Specifically talking about the Western tradition. And that was a particular historical trajectory that happened, especially post enlightenment, where the foundation underpinnings of Western civilization were more or less challenged, reviewed, provided, and ultimately discarded. In favor of a new way of looking at the world, where now the physicalism, if such a word exists, of how we understand the world. In other words, via data and instrumentation and mere physical aspects. What's commonly referred to as empiricism. And so anything that is knowledge then is going to be confined to what we can measure, what we can see, what our instruments can perceive. Whether it's the naked eye, whether it's a microscope, whether it's a telescope. And what you see is what you get under the microscope. So if you can see atoms and electrons and atoms under your electron microscope, then that's a quantum reality. But beyond that, without the electron microscope and you see an apple, then according to some it's an apple. But according to those who have electron microscopes, no it's actually a bunch of atoms that are just in our perception it looks like an apple. But there's a lot of empty space there and it's kind of a quantum reality and so forth. So the extent by which empiricism has dominated the way that people perceive reality and then perceive knowledge has also extended into not just the physical sciences, but also the social sciences. And so now, when we want to talk about human behavior, for example, and why people do things the way that they do them, and how to treat certain things the way that they do them, it's all become empiricized. So there has to be a particular study, right? How many are the studies that come out that drinking three or four cups of coffee a day is good for you? And then we hear another study that three or four cups of coffee a day actually is not that good for you, right? And the science behind that actually, and that tells you its knowledge, it's actually a very limited way to look at it. There's this thing called the sample size and how big the number of people that they coordinate about this and to see the effects. And then there's an implicit assumption that correlation equals causation, right? Because it's very difficult to isolate a particular cause. Maybe the hundred people that did well with coffee have other things about them they did well with, like exercise, like genetics, like home myriad of things that are so difficult to isolate. But these studies then give you the impression just because there's a correlation. In other words, B is associated with A where B comes after A, then it must mean causation. In other words, A caused B. And this is how the modern world works. And for Muslims, I think, we said this the other day at the Qashar-e-Jewan, we are kind of the last, for lack of a better word, we're kind of the last stronghold for maintenance of the traditional way of looking at life. Other religions had it, other systems had it, but they have more or less dispensed with that in favor of reconciling whatever traditional system they have with modernity. We're resistant to do that, right? There are people who are trying to do that, right? We're trying to say, well, that is actually, is consistent with modernity, right? Not with being modern, those are two different things, but with modernity. In other words, the presuppositions that tell us what it is about the modern world, like just what I explained about the physicality and the over-reach of empiricism, sometimes referred to as scientism, right? That the world can be explained, and everything in it eventually only by means of scientific data, right? Stephen Hawking's is looking for the theory of everything, or what they call the metanarrative, that's going to explain how the whole world works, and it's going to be found in a singular equation, right? There's going to be some kind of equation right on the board like that. There may be 10 boards next to each other that will explain, okay, it's how everything works. And so reducing, right? It's also called reductionism. It's got to have reducing our understanding of the world to that which can only be measured, perceived, or perceived, either via sense perception or instrumentation or whatever it may be. But the Qur'an clearly tells us that there are different awadim, right? There are different worlds, or perhaps not different realities, but depending upon your vantage point, right? You're going to have a different perception of what that reality is. So there's A'alim al-Layh, A'alim al-Shahad, A'alim al-Mulk, A'alim al-Malakud, right? There's the world that can be perceived, right? That we can witness it, and there's A'alim al-Layh, right? That which cannot normally be perceived, but it's still real. This is where the problem happens. It's still real. In fact, we might even say it's more real than this illusory world that we observe, because our senses, our perceptions, can deceive us. But A'alim al-Layh, right, is haqq, right? It's one of the sea of the formulas in the Tashafud, as we say, and the earth will have haqq, and we own it, the earth will have haqq, right? They're real, right? They're not just some type of myth, you know? Modernity will tell you all these things are mythical, right? The Muslims have this mythical narrative of Adam falling from paradise with Eve and coming to the earth, and they call that. They don't believe that to be knowledge. They believe that to be some type of myth that somehow is comforting to people who choose to believe in it. And then the Western liberal tradition will allow you to kind of take that on faith and to have a sort of private practice of your faith. But the minute that you introduce this into the public sphere and start saying, well, no, it's not just faith, it's knowledge. Something that I know is not just something I believe in. This is where, you know, the system that's all around us will reject such a notion. You know, you're allowed to kind of do it in as much as there's a recognition of human rights and so forth, individual rights with practice or faith, right? But once you bring it to the public sphere, then it's no longer acceptable. So many Muslims, I think, nowadays are struggling with a lot of these things, especially people in university and people who are contending with these different philosophical systems. You know, a lot of our young people, our children and our brothers and sisters, they go into something like biochemistry or biology or even mathematics, and they think these are valuable, neutral ways of looking at the light. You know, like, well, you know, there's no philosophy in math, right? We're not talking about you or Kant or Rousseau or Voltaire or any of those people that are not going to mess around with our heads. But there is nothing that's value-neutral. Every discipline of knowledge has a particular presupposition about it about the way that works at the world, right? Even math, definitely biology, right? Definitely chemistry, definitely physics. So they're not value-neutral in that sense. So one of the things that, for example, sometimes we have an illusion about is somehow there's this problem between science and religion. That, you know, it's either science or it's religion. It's either hard data and facts, or then there's a paradigm of faith and spirituality. And those are like two irreconcilable worlds. And the reason that we have this particular notion, or what we call an illusion, is because that was the historical trajectory in Europe and in the West, in general, that there was this clash. There was this lack of conciliation between faith, spirituality, and empirical knowledge. However, in the Muslim historical narrative, that wasn't really the case. The people who were faith practitioners and people of spirituality were also the scientists and the astronomers and the chemists and the biologists and those who studied anatomy. They didn't see this contradiction between the two. And in fact, it was their faith that propelled them to kind of look at the universe, look at the creation, look at the world, and then see the wisdom behind all of the beauty in God's creation. This is what propelled them to do so. Whereas now, most scientists today are atheists, at least in the West. And most of them see that there is a direct confrontation between those people who espouse faith and religion, and then those people take a scientific view of the world, or view of reality. And then we get caught up in that, and we think we have to choose as well, but we didn't really develop this particular way. The only issue with science is there are certain things science tries to answer the question to, because as I said before, it's an overreach. The origin of the universe is a question science cannot answer, even though they try to answer it. Because we're talking about something that cannot be physically measured or perceived by empirical data. It's always going to be a conclusion drawn, or an inference drawn upon something that may be physical and may not be physical. But they can't recreate the creation of the world. They cannot do it in a lab and then say, okay, we did all of these, bombarded these gases one with another, and life came out of it. And even the Qur'an challenges people with such a notion. It's sort of a hajj. It says if you can create life, can you create even a fly? Can you give life that way? And no one has been able to do that. Which is a sign that only a lost planet can give life. You know, cloning itself in a petri dish is like giving life. You took life and you're life from life. But life from the raw material, from nothing whatsoever, can you make life? No. So this we called it understanding the Islamic paradigm. How do we look at life and how do we understand things? And not just Islam, as I said, some of the ritual devotional acts. Yes, indeed. We're going to stand on a fence. Islam has been built upon five things. In other words, pillars of Islam. But there is also a very strong, what we call metaphysical grounding of Islam. In other words, the way that we look at the world, the way we perceive the universe. You know, Allah exhorts us in the Qur'an to study the creation around us. And He calls all of the Maryat things of creation. He calls it ayat. Right? If you have seen it in the Qur'an by the way, it's called the ayat. The difference in the languages that you speak and in the ethnicities that you come from, there are signs. That's why some of the other ones refer to the two books that Allah has revealed. The book of Allah, namely, Dr. Ayat. And then there's the book of creation. And qawm. Kitabullah al-Nastur and Kitabullah al-Laghun. The book within the lines of the Qur'an and the books. That is seen and perceived. That is to be studied. Not so that can be manipulated. Not so that it's at the mere wind and wind and physical disposal of the human being, but rather to be studied to see the signs in it. Right? And in fact, this is the way that we know God. Because we can't know Allah SWT by His essence. It's incomprehensible to us. But we can know Him by His athah, by His ayat, by the jaliyyat, the asmat, the sathat. Right? The manifestations of the divine names in acting and executing the divine will in the qawm, in the creation. You know, of buriz, of imata, of ihyat. Right? Giving sustenance to things, of bringing life to things, of taking life away from things. All of these are referred to as the jaliyyat. As manifestations of Allah's will as understood via the divine names and attributes. So it's a much, much different way of looking at the world. And while many Muslims today in the world are devoted from a ritual aspect that they pray in the Qasim. Many are not, unfortunately, many are not committed. But I would say that we have, for the most part, not really imbibe this idea that looking at the world in an Islamic way, or in a way that Allah SWT has revealed for us to be looking at it. You know, and there have been some attempts at reconciling these things. But in my estimation, these attempts lack the metaphysical underpinning that we have just been talking about. So for example, people are talking about the miracle of science in the Quran. Clearly, this was meant as to be a way to show the miraculous nature of the Quran by reconciling it with particular scientific data or discoveries and so forth. And while that may work in some instances, that's not why the Quran is miraculous. It's inevitable. It's marges. People can't imitate it, not necessarily because it talks about how the Vulam et al-Adha or the three periods within the womb correspond to the three periods in the stages of the fetus, from embryo to fetus, and then to truly develop a child. Yes, there may be some correspondence, but it's kind of a, let's say, a lazy attempt. Not to take word from those people who have contributed to this, but we have such a rich tradition of how the Quran is miraculous way beyond these kind of scientific things. And then what if one day science has something different? Right? And well, we were already kind of committed to the previous position. What do we do then? And this is the problem, or this is the scenario that the Christian tradition ran into trouble with before. When they postulated things about the universe, the Catholic Church really suffered trauma because it believed in a geocentric universe. Their interpretation of the Bible or the Old Testament was its geocentric. And maybe it wasn't even based upon something they read in the Old Testament or New Testament, but they said, well, man is the center of the universe, hence, earth is the center and all of the planets and the sun revolve around the earth. And they made a theological commitment to that position. So in the early 1500s, 1600s in Europe, people like Galileo or even before Galileo, Copernicus were questioning the idea of this geocentric universe because they tried to figure out looking at the sky every night and they see the position of the planets and the stars and they said, it doesn't make sense. It's the geocentric, right? And Thomas, who was the Greek who postulated the geocentric universe, they had to add so many contingencies and variants for the whole solar system to work. In other words, to predict where Mars and Venus were going to be at a given night or where the moon would be and so forth. Until we get to Copernicus and probably even before Copernicus, so the Muslim astronomers also postulated the idea that maybe the whole thing is wrong. Maybe it's not the Earth is the center of the universe, maybe it's the Sun that is the center of the universe and we go around the Sun, right? And initially they thought it was spherical orbits. Spherical orbits didn't work either, right? And then they said, well, maybe it's an elliptical orbit. But then why is it an elliptical orbit? How come it's not spherical? And what governs the movement? Maybe gravity, right? Gravitational forces and so forth. So all of these developments were a direct challenge to positions that the church committed. And so when the church commits to something like that and then you say it's wrong, slap just the church is wrong now. Maybe the whole thing is wrong. Maybe the whole idea of religious dogma is wrong to begin with, right? And they got into trouble with other things. Some of them said that the universe and that was a position as well. For us, we don't have in our traditional Prophet's Isolation did not speak of these matters as matters of essential creed or atlitha. I don't recall the atlitha, I don't come across anything where he said that the earth is the center or the sun is the center of the universe so that's even something that we should be concerned with. And even in the Quran, you know, because the Quran there's reasons for certain verses are revealed even though it's the pre-eternal speech of the Mosque of Al-Qaeda the Sahaba asked as the Quran mentions, they asked you about the Hila and the Ahila you know the crescent moon in other words they observed the moon in the lunar month and they noticed that in the beginning of the month what they considered to be the beginning of the month it's a small sliver which is the new moon and then it gradually gets bigger and it's a quarter of a moon that becomes full moon in the middle of the month and then it goes gradually back to the sliver again and then it dissipates. So they're wondering, how's that work? Because they're just seeing they're not seeing that well as the shade of the sun and the earth getting in between and the moon is still there and it's not really getting smaller but they were asking how is that how does it get smaller and bigger and so forth. So how did the Quran respond and how did the Prophet SAW was requested by Allah to respond Say it is it's a way for you to measure your Moaqid to measure time because we operate on a lunar month and so 12 lunar months and each lunar month is 29 or 30 days and hence this is a way for you to measure the different cycles and time and you don't know where Ramadan is and you don't know what Hijjah is and you don't know what Oul is and the rest of the lunar month and so forth. So it didn't actually answer the question the Sahaba were seeking an answer to in other words the scientific reasoning behind how this gets smaller rather redirected them to what you should be concerned about in terms of your Ibadah abilities in terms of your Tekli what Allah has actually made requisite upon you this is the thing that you should be concerned about so while it doesn't deny that one can study and look at those things they were never theological issues they weren't issues for us to debate about from a theological sense you know are you still a Muslim if you think the earth is flat or the earth is spherical and I disagree that our Muslims have campaigns about how the earth is flat still today does that take them out of Islam no but you know they're funny that's it but or even if they think that the earth is stationary and all the planets are circling around it is that an issue of Aqidah right? no not really even if you can infer from the Quran verses and they're all in their orbits and so forth and maybe the earth also is included in that that is an interpretive inference right? it's not something that's like a direct like this is the Aqidah of the stories but do I have to believe in the existence of the angels yes how we're burning with that that's part of Tekli do I believe in the existence of all the prophets even though we've never seen them indeed we don't see them yet to come do I believe in Jannah or not yes so these are things that the way that we know about them is that they came from the Sa'adah the truthful one and the one who has always believed and if we believe in the absolute honesty and that's a cornerstone of our Aqidah the absolute honesty trustworthiness of the Prophet Muhammad SAW everything that came with his truth and so those things he did not speak about or remain silent about especially what we can call science or origins how is it that from two people we get 7 billion people X number of years later and different languages and different ethnicities and living in all different parts of the world we say okay interesting Ph.D. we'll study that but is it a matter of Aqidah is it a matter of theological grounding that believe or not believe no it's not so we can have different opinions about it even the origins of language some of the ornament discussed there's different methodic the different ideas Mamo Suti talks about some of them in the museum he says some people thought that language was the two major kind of schools of thought Tauqeefi or Taufil Tauqeefi means what from Allah SWT Allah SWT He taught Adam all of the names so they said all of the names means all of the primordial languages right so there's sort of an ancient Semitic primordial language that is very much like Arabic and then all of the Semitic languages came from that which include Hebrew and Aramaic right and then there's a primordial language that was a Germanic language and another one that was Chinese or Asian language and so forth that's one opinion and then languages developed from that then there's Taufil means no language is a convention to begin with it's a human convention so the first human beings they have different opinions someone heard a rock fall and they weren't plunk and then they called the rock that's the sound of what it calls that right as they call it another opinion so there's no like universal theological opinion about okay what's the origin of the language we don't even have a consensus on who the Zabih was who is the one that Ibrahim A.S. was going to sacrifice was it Ismail or was it Isha yes the majority of the people say it's Ismail right but there are some very prominent parts of that among some he meant medic no it's not Isha and then somehow Muslims get into sort of to see fit and get all upset and we don't know it can't be Isha why is it wrong Isha somehow he's a Jewish prophet and somehow Ismail is the Muslim prophet but that's even an incorrect interpretation because they're both prophets of Islam and they're both sons of Ibrahim Ismail or whether it was Isha that's not the point of the story anyway but the point of the story is the sacrifice Ibrahim A.S. was willing to make with one of his sons and then there's a third school that says we don't know which one it was what's called the meaning I don't have enough information it has not been revealed to us definitively or is it Ismail or Isha so in this case I don't have to have an opinion I can choose not to have an opinion in other words until we get something that's concrete and something that is unequivocal then we don't have to have an opinion about it and in the age that we live in now it's for you to say well I don't have an opinion about the issue nobody does that anything that can be happening on a complete opposite end of the world you know there's some type of issue going on in Jakarta Indonesia today if you go and ask somebody about it what do you think about this and they don't have someone paying about it based upon what we don't have to interject our opinion into everything and in fact it was from the Adam the etiquette of Muslims and it is an essential etiquette based upon an essential hadith we have one of the first hadiths we learned that we teach our kids from the 40 hadiths that from the good Islam of a person is to leave that which is that concern and our parents as young children that's like mind your own business don't get involved in things that don't concern you why because if you truly were only involved in things that do concern you you wouldn't have time for the things that don't concern you we're so busy with all of the things that in fact do concern us we have many responsibilities others have rights upon us we need to fulfill these responsibilities so they can realize their rights and if we don't do that and we're busy with all other sorts of things that we have no impact upon that do not concern us to begin with then how is it then we're going to conduct we're going to fulfill people's rights so this is kind of a general paradigm understanding of the need and I think in the difficult times that we've faced now intellectually, emotionally, spiritually it's important we get back to the basics and the basics yes indeed is the Quran and Sona but the Quran and Sona speaks to us in a way whereas it's imploring us to have a grounding of how we see reality and how we view the universe and how we see ourselves some of the Supreme Masters they would say whoever knows themselves then you'll know Allah SWT so we're kind of a microcosm of the universe they refer to the universe as the Al-Alam al-Kabiyyah in some of that and the human being as Al-Alam al-Saleem the macrocosm which is everything around us and then the microcosm which is when we look into our own selves so in a sense we can contain the universe our hearts can contain the universe you know the Hadith al-Qudsi which is kind of ambiguous and mysterious at the same time that the heavens and the earth cannot encompass Allah SWT but the heart of the believer can what does that mean? right? because we're not talking here quantitatively we're talking qualitatively in other words we've been endowed with this faculty of knowing we can know things we can learn things we can appreciate things we can read signs into things we can take action based upon principle right? and ethics and morals other creatures they do so based upon instinct which is also about giving we call it instinct but it's really the fitbah the fitbah Allah this is the fitbah that people and the creatures have been given in the way that they behave instinctually the sparrow knows how to go and find the worms as it leaves its nest in the morning that it comes back and feeds its young sparrow chicks by regurgitating the food putting it in its mouth did its mother teach it to do that? no it's something that it knows instinctually right? or the salmon that swim upstream every year instinctually they do that or the leatherback turtles that come to the the sea crows that can plant lay their eggs and bury them and come back later and find the eggs of hatched and little turtles all those things are done instinctually much in the same way that the moon and the stars and the sun they do what they do instinctually so it's a burden upon us that we have to just as there's an ordered world around us that Allah has given to us but He has also given us this element of choice and desire and of wants and unless we regulate those things to fit into the order of Allah's universe then we will not cause order we will cause disorder we will cause chaos we're the only creatures that really can bring evil into the world we have the ability to do that so we don't say that animals are evil we don't say that this particular place is evil it's by virtue of the people who are in it who make it that way but here the land of Pleasanton and the Lappatis and the town of Fremont and the Salambury's Fault and the mountains and all these things are on it there's nothing inherently that's somehow more sacred here so to speak than say in Morocco but it's by virtue of the people in Morocco the practice of the Salam in Morocco the vicar of the people of Morocco over centuries that give this sort of added sacredness to those places or when Allah designates places being sacred but inherently everything is sacred the whole universe is sacred sacred means that there's an inviability to it there's like a higher meaning to it because of the one who put it there namely Allah the Almighty that was kind of the second introduction completion of what yesterday so now we'll get into the second of the Salam so I called it theology long ethics I'm not sure if you guys can see it over there understanding the Islamic paradigm so as I said we're looking at foundational issues so the first thing that I think one needs to familiarize oneself with is as we said we're the sole creatures that can know things and the way that we articulate the things that we know the Greeks refer to human being as the rational animal the Muslim philosophers after that refer to us as a Taiwan and not the articulating or pronouncing animal words that creature that can articulate and share its thoughts with its own kind and language then is essential because we have language we can talk about what's in our head and the conceptions that we can have and if we are not square on the language if we don't understand what is actually meant by a particular word then it's very easy to find oneself committed to a concept, a philosophy, a thought and if they would take a deeper look at it and see what the words are actually saying they would say no I don't agree with that and this is kind of the catch 22 the Trapp Muslims also find themselves in people will be like we would say something like for us marriage is between a man and a woman and we don't really have this man-man or woman-woman thing then someone would say to us well don't you believe in freedom are you guys against freedom and you're like no but then we don't want to say after that freedom is a loaded word don't you believe in progress like if you say well this is something we inherited so our tradition it's from the prophets of Arsena from you know 1400 years ago well don't you believe in progress what is this tradition you're talking about things progress, things change you gotta progress, things are progressive things develop, don't you believe in development don't you believe in progress and so all of these words are loaded terms and they have what we call a particular interframe in other words when we evoke these words we're not just evoking a single word we're talking about a historical narrative we're talking about a civilization we're talking about history and it's not just something I go look up in Webster's dictionary and I look up freedom and it means to it's way bigger than that and so many of these ways that we're being attacked and confronted let's say not attacked but confronted with these things we have to be aware well let's be aware of the cognitive frame that we're talking about before we make a commitment to something before I say I'm committed to sustainable development for example where did that word come from to begin with where did that concept come from many Muslims say yeah that sustainable development definitely will slow down what's development to begin with what's growth what is that where did that come from there's an idea that states, nation states should be economically in a state of perpetual growth right your GDP has to increase 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 percent every year otherwise you know you consider to be a state that is not as developed as it should be but then if you think about it well how am I supposed to sustain consistent perpetual growth when resources are finite doesn't it mean that if I'm consistently growing that someone else is supplying that growth and then they're not growing isn't there kind of a push and pull aspect here or no so we have to sort of you know deconstruct you know it's very popular today to deconstruct everything we need to deconstruct deconstructionism the idea that we're deconstructing everything that idea itself where did that come from the idea that we feel the need to pull everything apart and remove any intent of the authors behind it you know deconstructionism in language means well the authors intent is not important here it's whatever it means to me and that is a method Foucault and Derrida and the rest of them that's how they see the world you deconstruct everything and the authors intent means nothing so they'll look at the Qur'an for example say it doesn't matter what Allah meant here it's what it means to me and you can obviously see the issue we would have in something like that so you know language, meanings, principles these cognitive frames inform the way that people speak about the world today and we need to be careful with the terms we need to be careful of terms like progress development and freedom even sexuality what's sexuality that's a new term people think it's like been around for centuries people that used to talk like that even the word heterosexual it's a new thing heterosexual less than 100 years ago 78 years ago meant someone that was hypersexual in other words they had a they were an informaniac there had a heightened above normal need for sexual intercourse that was heterosexual there was no word called homosexual that's a word that has been introduced just in the past few years I think this word heteronormativity is another word that's been introduced what's heteronormative people heard that word before anybody have a normative have heard that this is a word that's in the university heteronormative means you believe that the normal sexual relationship is between people of the opposite sex that makes you heteronormative what about cisgender have you heard that one have you heard cisgender cisgender you guys don't read it you've heard of transgender right cisgender would be someone who's not transgender in other words what we would call normal there's a word for them why because when you establish the dichotomy you're establishing a new normal so when I say heterosexual versus homosexual then I make both of them acceptable and instead of one just being the normal or what's normative so when I say something it's heteronormative that means we don't have a way of looking at the world that is not universal we can look at the world differently and so forth see how the language then is manipulated the languages the terms are being redefined in order to advance a particular philosophy behind those words that's why languages Muslims should be the best at language the strongest in both our Arabic language because this is how we understand the being and also the words that others use to describe certain things that are going to be problematic for us so these language meanings and principles the cognitive frame we have to be aware of it so for example as I said earlier today if you say I do 1, 2, 3 because this is our tradition in the popular discourse that's an unacceptable argument why because it contra-means the overriding concept in our discourse which is the idea of progress so progress means just because people did something 50 years ago that way doesn't mean it's right today in fact most likely the way they were doing it 50 years ago means it's wrong and then we've progressed and then the way we're going to do it today is better so the notion of progress assumes that there's a linear sort of incline so we are progressing as we are progressing technologically we are also going to progress morally and ethically this was the promise of enlightenment this is what they postulated as we begin to learn new things about the universe and discover things and we remove what was referred to the church by mysteries right the church had a doctrine of mystery like how is it that people are born and the child looks something like the mother looks something like the father church would say well god works in mysterious ways scientists said no it's not mystery we figured it out there's a human genome the child inherits DNA from both the mother and the father and the combination of that DNA will have certain features of the mother there's no mystery and so when we remove the mystery then we don't need god anymore this is what Stephen Hawking's refers to as the god of the gaps there's a gap in our understanding in our knowledge because we don't know how something works we haven't figured out yet then we just put god there to explain it I don't know how that thing works god works for us and so he said well eventually we'll get to a point where we don't have any pure knowledge and we have no reason for god anymore because we figured out how everything works the problem with that from a philosophical standpoint is just because you know how something works doesn't mean that you can create it just because you've been given insight into what's behind that thing doesn't mean that you know it and doesn't mean that you know it from all its aspects you know it from a particular vantage point but you know it from all of its vantage point so the physicists like Hawking's or the scientist they want to remove any metaphysical foundation and aspect to this because metaphysical means outside of the physical in other words there's spirit behind it there are meanings behind it there are inward aspects to it that cannot be pre-perceived only outwardly and so they said no no no that has to go away we don't want any of that hence the idea, the theory of everything the metanarrative that we will have an outward explanation for all of these things and this is where it's going here in this place, Silicon Valley where is the Google place not far from here right do you know what they're doing over there spending billions of dollars on they're thinking about how to implant a chip in your brain so that information can be downloaded directly and it'll expand your memory capacity and even the next logical progression after that is the idea of what's human consciousness if I can download your whole brain into a microchip why can't I put that in somebody else and then they assume your consciousness because all that is based upon the outward right, that all we have all we are are these physical entities and that means physical entities can be manipulated and we can move somebody's brain into this place over here but there's no intonation or understanding that there's an inward aspect to that that we're not just bodies right, in the academic discourse today and even the popular discourse people are being increasingly referred to as bodies right, black bodies, brown bodies white bodies, they want to hurt these bodies are we just bodies or are we something more than that we're being it more than just the body that's what you see on the outside but there's a soul there there's a basic intrinsic humanity a living breathing life force that informs this body but it's not just the body and so that particular philosophy then if it's only the outward this is what's driving and fueling what's going to happen today the idea of people talking about AI artificial intelligence you know, you find in the popular culture Star Trek and series like that well is the artificial intelligence being a being or not a being right is it sentient, does it have rights right, or does it not have rights or is it a machine is it more like a human or more like a machine you know, and you'll find the episode with Star Trek Next Generation, John Woodbrookard and that android anyone watch that? No? this is what you guys like anyway, the android thing argues for it's right to be treated as a human being not as a machine, not as someone's property right, because it has aspects of it that are human life and so humanity then is reduced to the idea of certain experiences right, so someone has a sexual experience well and it's a machine and maybe then it can be treated as a human being or should be treated like a human being and actually this is an issue coming up with Harvest Asia right, where there's a I won't put their hands over the ears of them kids there's a sex doll industry there, right, and it's growing and now there's some controversy because people want to actually do dolls of children and what is the ethical primary that you find in that, because well still a doll, it's a piece of property but it's depraved right so how do you handle that because again I think it's all part of the general theme that our humanity has been reduced to this mere physical type of presence and it's no more than that and that brings a whole other set of issues the idea of what governments behave and medicate and there's a whole other thing that I can get to here but in the social justice class we're talking a little bit about that so I'm being told that we're at the break time and we're still on the first slide so that's a good progress but just I'll leave you with just two points before we break all of these words that I just mentioned keep in mind that what we have it's called an intellectual genealogy right, it came from somewhere the word progress, development and sexuality all these words came from somewhere and were introduced into the discourse they haven't always been there so don't make the assumption that they've always been there also we have our own terms too right, we have our own intellectual genealogies for our terms and they're not always reconcilable with these other terms, that's why translation is a tricky business so when we talk about the word Baraka for example, and it's used in the Qur'an right when we talk about Baraka there's the Baraka around the bait and muck this I can't really translate that we sometimes use blessing we sometimes use these other words but as a foundational concept the idea that there's Baraka that Allah will put an extra meaning in something not based upon its quantity but rather based upon its quality because that's the origin of the word that the caravan travelers they used to have this little patch a little satchel that they take with them that was called Birka Birka also means small body of water and it said that it didn't have that much water in it but when they go out into the desert and they're on the caravan going far distances they're hoping there's a lot of Baraka in it because if you run out of water in the middle of the desert so you want the water to last so you're hoping that even in this small amount Allah will extend its capacity to sustain to sustain your life as you make your caravan throughout and there we see kind of some of the secrets of the word of the word Baraka in the modern discourse people who are the word Baraka are blessing and they may conjure up the superstition oh you think that place is what because there's some spiritual vibe there or something that's better to be dismissed because from their particular their intellectual vantage point that goes along with superstition not with this sacred idea of Baraka and blessing that comes from the soul creator who makes it that way who extends life and meanings into things even though they may appear outwardly as something that may not be carried as such so we'll continue after the break so we've got our Baraka in Zoom for a moment left off just to reiterate the first slide the idea of what's sometimes referred to as cognitive frames or think of it as a popular concept in the movies now superhero movies they have the Marvel Universe where there's Thor and Iron Man and the Hulk and they have the DC Universe which is Superman Batman, Wonder Woman and Flash so within each of those particular universes there are kind of an enclosed system right and so they don't overlap Marvel with this other one and so when you try to translate between them you have to understand what's going on here and what's going on here and the two systems are necessarily correspond so you know when we talk about a word in Arabic that's sometimes used for freedom for Horeya versus freedom in this particular civilizational context we don't use Horeya like that usually when we use the word Horeya we're talking about someone who's Horm or someone who is not in a state of bondage that would be a problem this is what you find in the Musafiat someone who is in a state of bondage when we talk about the idea of however freedom to choose which is what is being talked about in the western civilizational context the word that we generally use will be Iqtiyar Iqtiyar that's significant why because Iqtiyar comes from the word khayb which means good so Iqtiyar that means would be to take the good which means that when you choose you're choosing the good we all know about salat and istikhara what's salat and istikhara this particular form use of notes from Saf form 10 it means it means to request so when you do istikhara you're requesting the good so when I do istikhara when I pray to Allah SWT you know I'm seeking for you to lead me to the good so that means our freedom then our choice in other words to make choices we are seeking the good and it's not just freedom to choose whatever we want this is how it's defined here I'm allowed to do whatever I desire we don't have that really our cognitive frame we don't really say that because if I'm allowed to do a specific desire then that may be something that is not good that may be something that is harmful that may be something that is even wrong so there is moral judgment attached to the choices that we make and it's not just a mere choice whereas in this context the western solution context no just being allowed to choose is the important thing and being able to choose out two different ways of even the word choice or freedom when we're using the same words so just to further illustrate this point I have a very very basic point Islam is referred to like other religions as a religion that wording of itself is not different than progress development sexuality in other words we talked about in other words there is a historical narrative behind it and deen doesn't really mean religion when you say deen it's that or when you talk about it it's different religion in the post-preservation and post-enlightenment meant that it was something specific reduced to the practice of the individual what religion are you what do you religiously do what do you do consistently in terms of devotional acts and that's people's concept of religion today oh you muslim so you go to mosque on friday oh you're jewish to go to singlet law on saturday you observe the sabbath and the shabbat oh you're christian you go to mass or church on sunday so there's this association with religion being the sum of its ritual devotions and what we call imadat but for us it's not just imadat we can make an argument imadat is one fourth of religion if you study any of the books of phil if you study the first quarter of the book is referred to as the roger imadat the quarter of imadat referred to ritual devotional acts well what is the rest of it we're going to talk about other things in the books of phil there's mu'amalat there's those things that are dealing with mu'amalat family relationships marriage divorce also commercial transactions buying and selling and trading and loaning and investing most muslim are probably not aware that there's something called the chapter dealing with investment in the books of phil and it was dealt with 1,000 years ago and there are certain conditions that are applicable to it so it's encompassing not just what we consider to be the ritual devotions then there's bab al-aqdeah and shahadat then there's a chapter dealing with the functions of judgeship or a court or shahadat and testimony we're really not talking about just ritual devotions we're talking about something that extends even to adjudicating between disputing parties we're talking about something that has a communal societal aspect to it it's no longer just merely the sphere of the individual and what they choose to personally practice so the reason that we see a lot of clash oftentimes when people try to describe what Islam is because you can't really fit it into the box of religion there was a time when people wouldn't think I'm in this religion they would just say this is what's normal there's a God and we worship Him and we try to live our life according to the moral commands that we understand from Him and that's basically how the whole globe more or less lived up until quite recently we didn't really have this idea of atheism previously where people would deny God not even the mushrikin of Quraish denied God and the Qur'an says what it says Allah if you ask them who created the heavens and the earth they would say Allah so they didn't deny that Allah was the creator of the universe and they believed in Allah as the supreme creator of the universe but they also associated other gods with Allah's power so they weren't technically atheists in that they denied God but they didn't have a proper understanding of Allah's power even Satan is not an atheist really he just doesn't have a proper understanding once again of Allah's power because when he was asked to prostrate before Adam and he refused, well he knows that's Allah he'd been worshipping him for thousands of years but he wasn't worshipping Allah as he should be worshipping because once he was tested once he was put before the litmus test he said the word I and purportedly he was the first creature to ever say I say he to look back at himself so his worship was always about the I to begin with was always about him and it wasn't about Allah's power and so when he refused to prostrate then his disanded hand the articulation of his heart was saying that Allah has wronged me Allah you are wronging me by asking me to prostrate you did something wrong and the kufr that is incompatible completely with the idea of the notion that we have of Allah's power this is where his kufr came in not that he denied the existence of God but rather he denied the taqdis that Allah's power is beyond any reproach and beyond any sense of that to ever do anything that would be reproachable this is what the problem he read so this idea in had or atheism people just completely denying the existence of God especially in our time was kind of a little bit unprecedented to a certain degree even ancient Greeks believed in God or a god some of them so religion then was a word that needed to be used to kind of well how do we define this very antiquated inherited notion of life that people are still clinging on to and at the same time we use a word to describe it and not completely dismiss it because people are still following this idea and so they said well let's call it religion in other words something that you do as a worship practice and that's something that informs all aspects not just of your life but civilization or communal aspects like we said politics economics, ethics all these things really came under the idea of deen so for us deen is not the same as religion deen encompasses all of these things right there's a popular cover to deen in muamala kama te deen in tu dan how you are treated, you should treat others so forth so all of these kind of come in that it's much bigger than the idea of religion then trying to reconcile Islam with this new notion of what religion is number one that it's kind of reduced to just ritual worship and at the same time well how do we relate Islam to all these other aspects that we're talking about we talked about economics and ethics and politics and it seems to have a hand in it and then the discourse assigns new words to people and this notion that somehow it's beyond just personal worship so they would call it fundamentalism they would call it other words that were pejorative that were negative because they felt your religion is supposed to be in your mosque or in your synagogue or your church you have really no business talking about economics and morality and ethics and social structures and things based upon your religion this is problematic this is not how we negotiate how societies are formed and how they are maintained so does that mean Islam is incompatible with the times that we're living in no it's not definitely not incompatible but the notion of modernity not living in modern times are two different things or living in contemporary times the overarching philosophy of the time we're living in is called modernity which is all the things that I mentioned that's relevant and everything is empirical and everything is reduced to only its physical entity that is all part of modernity so if we wanted to say well is Islam okay with that I would be like no we're not okay with that it's definitely not okay with that the human being is not just some physical entity so Heidegger said that in modernity man shapes his own reality in other words be yourself and that's the theme that we see where he's like you be you and I be me and we'll get along you just be who you are the idea of self love be who you are whatever that means that's a very modern notion before it was man discovers the reality know yourself you are something to be discovered in other words it's not something that your being your being is a gift from Allah and if that is a gift from Allah then I have to know more about this gift right I have to think about this gift I have to know myself I have to discover the reality rather than shaping the reality and so the idea of you shaping your own reality or being yourself you know from an Islamic spiritual perspective we would say that's very nefsani that's very narcissistic very narcissistic and egoistic the idea that we think that is all everything around you and your reality is something that can be shaped single-handedly by yourself so it's whatever that you make of it that's based upon the ego whereas when we say know yourself discover yourself know the reality around you know Allah is upon you so the idea of ma'rifah because ma'rifah knowing is the essential active aspect of humanity to know things the Quranic verse Allah recreated the jinn and the human beings except that they may worship me he said the meaning of it except that they may know me so that they may know Allah but which worship then the door to knowledge right where you are living upon Allah where you are living upon Allah talking to Allah have God consciousness of Allah and Allah will give you knowledge Allah will teach you where you are living upon Allah so it's a very different way of looking at everything around us you know I'm almost going to be myself and I'm just going to fulfill my wants and my desires and so the Muslim spiritual masters they would say that true liberation right is not to exercise and do everything that you want they said it's to want not to want in other words you're liberating when your ego when your desires are no longer controlling you and then you move beyond them right and then your will becomes that one with the will of Allah SWT in that very well known putsi right when Allah SWT says that there's nothing more beloved to me for my slave to perform except that which I have made obligatory upon him and so then he would do where she would do the obligatory things and then after the bigger things then they would do then awaafil then I would love him or her if I love him and then and then if I love them then I would be their hearing their sight, their speech and if they were to ask me I would grant it to them and if they seek refuge from you then I would give them refuge so there is a manhach right it's a program for actually how to become liberated to become one with the divine will because the divine command and the divine will what Allah commands you to is exactly what you are doing that's the true liberation that is to become free because when people say well I'm free free from what what are you seeking to be liberated from because when you talk about freedom it means you're free from something so what are you being free from to me from my understanding of Islam tradition it really freedom is to be free from yourself it's to be free from the confines of the lowest and most basic aspects of yourself so we need to eat we need to drink to survive we need to procreate for the species to survive and those are basic aspects of the human soul of the human condition but if they are allowed to be exercised unchecked in a sense that's all you're about right because human beings naturally have a strong inclination for those three things right it's very basic to us because it's about survival really because if you don't eat you don't drink you don't procreate either you don't survive as an individual the species doesn't survive so they are strong inclinations but at the same time Allah while He has made that inherent within us He has also given us another aspect of our humanity right when Allah spoke to the angels and He told them I am creating right and Basha is different than insad it's a different vantage point insad min al-uns it's kind of referring to the spiritual aspect of human being right that He needs to be amongst others right insad those are all the meanings min al-basha from the actual physical aspect this is called basha skin right so with skin flesh and bones so when He says to the angels I am creating this basha in other words the physical aspect is just physical now min tzim from clay but that's not why He is significant right the verse doesn't stop there right but if I fashion Him and I form Him taswayah and what else right and then I give Him something of the spirit doesn't mean Allah's spirit but the spirit that is divine in origin and that it came from Allah He created it then you are to prostrate for Him not because He is clay this is what satan didn't get right satan didn't mention the fakhdufin in the Ruhi part what did he say I am a good man and He created me from fire and He created him from clay He stopped that He didn't hear the rest of it you are claying from clay well in our analogy clay is less than fire so how is it then that He is better than me that's not why He is better than me at least I know that Allah read the rest of it come to the rest of the verse if I form Him right and in Allah Allah created Adam not man that man was created in God's image does that mean something anthropomorphic no it means that something of the meanings the high divinity the idea of knowledge and the power of will and of hearing and seeing which are divine attributes we share in the sense that we use the same words to define those attributes within us but that's where the similarity ends but that's enough of a significance right that makes us significant that makes us important this is what it means that there is something of the reflection of the divine within an human being or a manifestation of the divine will and the divine word Allah says when He wants something to be He says be and it is we are the recipients of that as is the rest of the universe this is what at least He didn't see all He saw was the clay He saw the outside but the angels understood because they're angels He wasn't an angel He has the ability to choose like us but the angels perceive the tajalliyah like that they don't have another way yet they are commanded to do they do what they are commanded to do because they are purely spiritual creatures so when they were told that they were told that there is only an angel all of them frustrated except an angel but He was amongst them because He was like them in terms of His outward worship He worshipped like an angel but He wasn't an angel so this is why the human being then is significant that we have this Ruh and this is the this is why the angels were frustrated before us not a prostration of worship but what's called a prostration of taalim you're making taalim declaring that which Allah declares is great by fulfilling that divine command so the reality of human being then is yes there is this bestial aspect to it but that's not what makes you human because you share that with the rest of the animals that's why the Quran compares those who use those new faculties and those who don't use those faculties right I don't have hearts do they not have hearts by which they can understand with they don't have eyes which they see with they don't have ears by which they hear with these people are like these people are like they're like the beasts of burden like the animals because they don't use that which is unique for them benhum Allah rather they are worse they are more misguided than the animals because we don't describe animals as misguided we don't describe them as they do exactly what Allah wants them to do unless human being interferes so that makes them worse than the beasts of burden than the animals because they're not using the faculties that Allah has endowed them with and so when you ignore your angelic spiritual aspect of your humanity, of your condition you become that animal and you become reduced to an animal human beings do things to themselves and to others when they ignore that aspect they are unimaginable we rape, we pillage, we kill, we spill blood some people eat other people all sorts of things you can't even imagine beyond so depraved and you wonder how can someone do that well when they reduce to their physical aspect they're worse than an animal it's an insult to an animal an animal's doing what it's supposed to do this is worse that is an insult they're like the animals they're even worse than they are so if we define then freedom of liberation as freedom to do whatever you want that is not in line with our understanding of humanity no, we want to be free from doing whatever we want if it's based upon our bestiality we want to do what Allah wants that's the true liberation that's the true liberation but in this particular paradigm of the West well that sounds like subjugation that sounds like you don't have your own autonomy that sounds like you're just following tradition based upon their historical narrative but based upon ours and the Hadith Al-Qudsid I just mentioned that means everything that you do will be conveyed via the Divine and the best human being the one who is the epitome of all this Allah, the Prophet SAW said that he he lives that being he displays it what other human being does Allah speak about in the Quran when he says and your Lord will give you and give you fatawqa who is the one who is going to be pleased the Prophet the Prophet SAW said that so your Lord will give you and you will be pleased usually we think of the opposite I will give and then Allah will be pleased no when he reaches the epitome he will give you and you will be pleased that's why some of them say this is the most hopeful person in the Quran to give the believers the most hope some of them said what type of not leave carefully and fear the fire the one that has been prepared for the disbelievers in other words not for the believers so that gives us hope fire is not meant for us not supposed to go there so for your Lord that Allah will give you and you will be pleased why because the Prophet SAW said that especially he would not be pleased with any single member of his Ummah entering into Hellfire he doesn't want that for anyone of his Ummah and the Ummah of the Prophet SAW is all the people who lived after him not just those who accepted Islam and those who didn't everybody so he would not want for anyone to enter into Hellfire and so if Allah is going to please him and Allah will give him then he will not be pleased with anyone entering into Hellfire that's the Prophet SAW said Khairul Qalq the best of creation is the Prophet SAW but he would be but not like other even beings we remember what happened to him in the time of Mashallah he was getting out full to be in Hajj as Muhammad Bussidi says and that which we really acknowledge is that he is an even being but not like other even beings like the ruby amongst the regular stones Salah al-Assad so essentially Islam cannot be reduced freedom of liberation is about liberating from yourself rather than liberating from what you think to be societal strictures or patriarchy or what kind of to be to you and obstacles around you to achieve particular worldly goals we're not saying that those things don't exist they did exist but you want through liberation to really be free you can never free yourself from all of the societal obstacles around you always going to be something that's why even a person in bondage a slave can be free inside because they liberate themselves in another way even though from a physical aspect they're not liberating they're in bondage and then that person who thinks they are free all of these high rollers in the silicon valley that you have here and Jeff Bezos worth a hundred billion now I don't think he's free I don't think that makes him free I think that makes him very unfree I think it's a type of prison of itself but through freedom is to be content with a certain sense of what I was giving you and that desire is more I don't think Jeff Bezos is happy with a hundred billion he wants more than a hundred billion he wants Amazon to be bigger than it is he wants Amazon to have all of these businesses grow out of business and Amazon everybody buys everything from Amazon if he had his way there would be no more walls there would be no more brick and mortar stores and everyone buys from Amazon wouldn't you want that wouldn't that be okay with him and if Google had its way then there would be no other search engines than Google and if Facebook had its way I think internet traffic is already like 75% Facebook they'd be very happy with 90% or 100% people want to know other internet sites except Facebook and the sites that they advertise for they're fine with them too because that's what they see they don't see the aspects of the community and society around them compare that to the traditional Muslim perspective for example on commercialism and commercial transactions look at the way that Muslim markets were set up the way that Muslim markets were set up in traditional Muslim cities is that people who are selling the same thing they would be co-located in the same place and not just co-located they would actually form a type of commercial brotherhood called the guild so all of the silversmiths are in one place all of the blacksmiths are in one place all of the butchers are somewhere else together all of the linen and cotton sellers are in one place to the degree that I've seen this personally I've witnessed it I lived in Damascus in the late 90s and I had this very intricate tablecloths dining table cloths that you can buy Souf al Hamidiyah which is right next to that Umumi mask and so I went to the section of the Souf where it was like maybe I don't know 15, 20 stores like that so I went to one person I asked him do you have this particular one I'm looking for I said I don't have it now today but once you go I'll walk you down to the person next to me and I'll tell the person who has it I don't know what? you're going to take me I said yeah because I'm taking well if I went to a store here in the states and they said oh we don't have it they'll say come back tomorrow or come back the next day and he would go get it and mark up the price on that thing and then sell it to me he could have done that that would have been it and there's stories of friends of mine who've actually went and they say well I've made enough money for today why don't you go to my neighbor he didn't sell a lot today why don't you buy from him so there's these particular frames distinct called market share and if you've studied business and economics there's only so much market share and you want to have as much of it as you can and so it becomes sort of a zero sum game so if I'm not getting that 20% of the market share that means someone else is getting it and it's confined to looking at the world that the places are so finite and the barakah is so limited that we all have to compete for it that's not how we see risk right? that risks mean a lot and the treasuries of Allah is never run out so it's not limited by any stretch of imagination this market share concept you know you tear in eyes people with we don't subscribe to that because Allah swt had to get the side that this is your risk this is what you will get but when you have an overarching philosophy that is not based upon the divine it's not based upon Allah and it's based upon just getting everything that you can possibly get without any sort of consideration for anyone else of course you're going to see facet of corruption of course you're going to see misery of all those things that will get very cheap on Amazon and I have to admit that I'm in a bookstore and then I see the title and then I scan the barakah and I see on Amazon it's usually much less expensive it's just easier just to click and you get it from Amazon two days later rather than buying from the store it's by design it's done that way the convenience aspect of it is by design that store why do you think they have the camera and you can take the image of the barakah and why you're in the store so that you can see what Amazon sells it for it's by design to take away any aspect of looking for something other than Amazon even the Facebook Zuckerberg has a team of cycle analysts on his team and so when they design certain things on Facebook it appeals to the lowest cognitive factor so I think maybe seven or eight years ago they introduced the Facebook like before that there wasn't a like you'd have to write a comment and they said well we want a higher level of engagement with Facebook and we want people to feel that when they put a post that someone is noticing and so if people are burdened with having to write a comment every time there must be another way so they said we can do the like button so someone just says click like that means they noticed your post and you know you've engaged with them and then your cycle analysts tell them you had it in blue color why don't you make it in red color because when you make it in red there's going to be an associated dopamine level rise when you do it with red instead of blue so when they open their Facebook page and they see oh 27 messages it's like an addict going back and getting a high oh I have to re-engage and reload the page every 10 minutes or 15 minutes or maybe less to see how many more lights did I get you think all that's coincidence that's by design they are studying the worst aspect of who we are the aspects that can fall into addiction that will have certain chemical release in our brains so that we can further engage and for what purpose to what end for our betterment for our good, no for what to land their pockets that's the reason for them to make more money for them to make the maximum amount of profit that's all the only reason and so if that's how that system works then no wonder we're seeing that now that people are getting their news from Facebook and they're not even getting it from traditional news sources and now you have this proliferation of what's called fake news and the idea of echo chamber and that people will only see other news feed people that agree with them they don't really engage Facebook is not a community community doesn't mean that you're only with like-minded people who see the world exactly the same way that you see the world as a community you can have people from different perspectives different ways of looking at life and that interaction with one another is what enriches the community but nowadays people have increasingly lower level of tolerance for opposing viewpoints they can't because they've been conditioned to live in this particular what they call echo chamber so it's just people echoing what you want to hear the same thing that you're saying they're saying it our traditional news sources have followed suit just open one they open Fox News one day at MSNBC news another day and compare how they treat the same story right? Fox News, Trump is the same MSNBC, Trump is the antichrist no exaggeration that's how it develops that's how they portray things because they're dealing with people who are their constituencies they're not informing anymore they are appealing to their customers and then people start speaking in terms of well this is Haq this is truth and this is not and even in the Muslim world same thing open a jazeera on one channel and open an arabia on another channel or Saudi news on another channel and you'll see the difference the same exact thing, talk about the same incident but from completely different perspectives and then people believe all that's my team or among the arabia UAE Saudi team so I'm going to listen to this one but at the end of the day everyone is a customer and everybody's being manipulated and the reality that they're trying to selling you is an orchestrated one it's not necessarily reflection of how things actually are because how things actually are sometimes you can't actually know how things actually are maybe nobody knows yet but there isn't a clear cut answer to the things that you're looking for but that's not newsworthy no one wants to say that so it just must be easier to sell you this is the orchestrated reality this is what it is this is what's happening in this country this country, this was happening in the neighborhood and so forth so I think part of being Muslim is to be why in the popular culture we say being woke just to social maladies but being woke to the idea that there are people vying for our attention and vying for our engagement and they do not have our best interest at heart and even those who say that they're heads of these type of social causes and so forth, they also want a type of engagement from you even though it may seem noble so we need to reclaim our minds reclaim the heart, yes or reclaim your intellect as well and don't just buy everything because it's being presented to you as this is the way it is, this is the reality the Muslim should be more discerned and should wait and see and have what's called to be deliberate to get if there's something action needs to be taken make sure before you step that you know what's going on and don't just jump into the fray if you see two people fighting out on the sidewalk and one is beating the other fighting one another, how can I step into the fight I don't know who's doing what the most I can think about maybe is stop the fight if they're fighting but to jump on one side versus the other on what basis I don't know the history behind I don't know what's going on so we'll move on to the next slide so this we've touched on a little bit so we'll move quickly so for us the nature of the human condition in the world is that the real is not limited to the physical so in short, that which we can perceive yes is indeed the world and we believe that that thing exists regardless of our perception of it or not that things can exist regardless if I can perceive it or not so if I say for example how many of these people have been to Vietnam how many people have the doubt that it exists no one has a doubt about it it's not a big conspiracy why do you believe that you didn't see it, you weren't there but yet in your heart you have no doubt that it exists why? because you've heard about it from so many different sources in so many different ways that we don't need to actually perceive it to know that it's there so we can perceive things being there right and know it in our heart like we know something right in front of us seeing is believing through but not seeing doesn't mean not believing either and that's part of our metaphysical as I said earlier underpinning, I don't necessarily have to perceive it to know that it's there there's other ways then of knowing something exists and the reason we emphasize this point is because modernity tells us that no actually you have to be able to perceive it to know that it exists otherwise call it something else don't call it knowledge call it faith, that's nice believe in angels and God but that's your faith that's not knowledge versus the Islamic paradigm that tells us to know Allah to know that there's nobody except the most Quranic so that was addressed to the prophet SAW but it's applicable to all of us we need to know it so real then is not limited to the physical but it's also on other planes other awanik right the fact that it says Alhamdulillahi Rabb Al-Alamini which is the plural of Alam but it's it's a unique plural we use it for what's called Al-Atin in other words something that is sentient that has sense so we can say Al-Mu'taqal ni'mun Al-Halifun Al-Halifun these are all Jammah Al-Mu'taqal Salim which means a group of people who know a group of people who study Al-Dali Sur a group of people who make this Al-Mu'taqal ni'mun and when it's non-human sort of plural we don't usually use that form we use another form we might use Jammah Al-Mu'taqal ni'mun or we could use what's called like the word awan awan is similar to Al-Alamin but it's more standard so this is a non-standard plural so it gives an indication that Al-Alamin the Lord of all of the different worlds that there are sentient worlds little worlds that are affid that you may not be able to perceive like the world of what the angels they're affid they are sentient and some have said that even the animals themselves have a type of that's imperceptible to man we can't understand it right? there's nothing in the world except but there's nothing in creation that hymns the praises of Allah except you cannot understand those praises you don't understand the language in which they praise you don't understand when the whales are praising Allah they really think they're just making sounds but maybe they're actually praising making this fear of Allah SWT so perception is not the whole game it's part and only so maybe people need to get ready for the hush or we'll do stuff like that so we'll stop here we'll resume after the hush peace be upon you peace be upon you peace be upon you so resume just to reiterate previous slide we said that the nature of our reality in the world is that there are things that are imperceptible by the senses but nevertheless are real and then there are things that are different by the senses obviously and are as weird as well so what follows from this is that there must be a matter by which for us to appreciate that which is real but at the same time outside of the perception of the senses otherwise how could we be not responsible for affirming its reality or its realness if we didn't have a means to do so so when we affirm things of the unseen to be real then we have to use another method another way another epistemological means by which to know that it's real and this is what's called non-Altateklif this is why we are held ethically and morally accountable by Allah because if He gives us the means by which to appreciate and understand these truths and then we have this means but we fail to use them or we choose to ignore them then at that point we can be held accountable but if we don't have the means to begin with then we're not accountable so the prepubescent child the person who's sleeping the unconscious person the clinically insane person all of these people are not held accountable because either temporarily or in that particular state that they're in they're not aware of their senses that are not using what has been given to them by which to discern truth and reality and falsehood from truth, namely al-Aq or the intellect and in some of the akhbah it's mentioned that the first thing that Allah created was al-Aq the ability to perceive and know beyond just sensory perception so when we're talking about things beyond sensory perception and those kind of four concepts that really we have to work with in order to get out a kind of I would say understanding of how all that works so before that you see before you intellect, knowledge, truth and reason so the Muslim scholars they define knowledge or in idraq and sheyh al-Mabwa, al-Ali knowing something as it exists in reality and that sounds pretty simple, pretty basic pretty intuitive but if you compare it with some of these post-modernist philosophies that will say that there is no reality outside of your perception in other words if you can perceive it it's real, if you can't perceive it then it can't possibly be real so we say knowledge though is to be able to realize it to perceive it either by your senses or another means as it exists in reality in other words there's an extra mentality to reality so extra mentality to reality means that it's not just in my head or your head or anybody else's head it's actually a true entity that exists regardless of whether I can perceive it or I can realize it or not or anyone else and that's, again it sounds like very basic, very intuitive but some of these post-modernist philosophies will posit the opposite that reality is only perception and if you can't perceive it then how can you prove to me that it's real, hence it's not real and we'll talk about that in a little bit about countering that particular argument so this is called im in the Islamic paradigm sometimes this is contrasted with marifa sometimes they're used interchangeably sometimes they're not if there's a difference between them what is the difference? marifa sometimes we refer to knowing something in as much as you have the ability to know it by the signs of it so when you talk for example sort of a spiritual knowledge of Allah's Paral Ta'ala the knowledge of Allah right, because if the knowledge is it's understanding something realizing it as it actually is well, we don't have the ability to do that with Allah's Paral Ta'ala la ilaha illallah so what does Allah ask us to know? la ilaha illallah that's different knowing la ilaha illallah the same thing as knowing Allah so la ilaha illallah means there is no god, deity worthy of worship except Allah so precisely you are affirming his existence and that there is none like him saying that there's none like him that's called an attribute so we're going to affirm particular attributes of Allah's Paral Ta'ala but as far as knowing Allah we don't say la ilaha illallah because the knowledge is the one who can tell from the signs that it's there it exists even though he may not fully realize or comprehend what it is exactly hence the dichotomy between ma'rifah and even beyond that in Islamic Christmology usually if we say in an absolute sense it means absolute knowledge like 100% iron, cloud, unequivocal no two ways about it but sometimes it can be used to express what's called la ilaha illallah or to have a near certain knowledge but not an absolute certain knowledge and within our Islamic system we work with near certain knowledge and we work with absolutely and we do not work with most of the time what's called sheikh which is doubt which is not being sure one way or the other very rare instances where sheikh have any type of bearing on what we do some issues of sheikh only when we talk about Udu and Tahara, Udu or sheikh and there's a lot of scholars about how much they have a general principle and the theme there is Udu and Sheikh certain things are not removed by doubt the medic here on a map understood this but also they said that as al-asr al-barawati dimmah so if you have doubt about your Udu all of the schools except the mediki school will say if you're certain that you have Udu initially and you're not certain that you lost it then you remain in a state of Udu however the medikiya say that if doubt enters whether you had Udu or not even though you were certain before that is enough for you to be religiously and to remove your Udu so they understood that as well that's why I say sheikh doubt it's generally it's not used and then the lowest form which is called wahem delusion which means it's not based upon any indication one is just merely deluded into thinking bearing but in actuality there's no bearing a man who is taking his hadi or his sacrificial animal to hajj and the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam saw him walking with it not riding it so he asked him why aren't you riding the animal he said ya rasoolallah na hadi, na ta hadi this camel, female camel I'm going to sacrifice it at the hajj the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was like ride it why aren't you not riding it in other words he had a wahem right he had a wahem or delusion in thinking well because it's going to be sacrificed then maybe it's too sacred to ride upon I'm my way to hajj but there's no purple that says that right that's just something you came up with that has no bearing whatsoever so the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told him no ride the animal there's nothing else in discussion but on the way there there's nothing to prevent you from riding it so we we go by matters of absolute certainty specifically in matters of akhida of kareed and most of the time actually it's going to be something less than absolute it's going to be what's called because here we're talking about mu'amalat things that are performed so for example in tahara one of the reasons that people get was-wasa right or to have like an OCD type of issue with tahara is because they mix up absolute certainty with near certainty in tahara and wuzl and so forth you are not requested to have absolute certainty what does that mean it means when I wash my arm for example I do not have to ensure that every square nanometer nanometer had water touch it it's enough that according to my best attiqat because the mu'amalat al-zali said naqum al-athladoon fi di'abadat alama na taqib la ma hawfi nafsil amm very very important crucial sentence he said there we are taken into account into that which we believe to be real or true not that which is fi nafsil amm which means as it actually is so that means if I do the lul and according to my knowledge what I perceive I did my whole arm al-as but at the dhimla I've done what I have to do however if it turns out my Allah's knowledge that I actually missed a spot if I missed a spot am I taken into account for that is Allah SAW is he going to take me into account no he's not why as the mu'amalat al-zali said naqum al-athladoon fi ma la taqib what we believe to be true and this is true in most of al-afaaad this is true in the deeds so I believe I did the lul correctly call us I don't have to go beyond that I don't need to invest in electron microscope and put my arm underneath it every time I make lulu and then look in the microscope and make sure that you know every single cell of my skin has H2O molecule attached to it I don't have to do that that's not necessary why because that's burdensome right this deen is meant to be easy or facilitated look for tazdeed look for taqib do as best you can we have to be approximate as far but no one will try to do it in what they think to be an unachievably perfect way except the deen will defeat that the deen will overcome that so that's not asked for that's why people get into trouble sometimes because they think well no I have to do it perfect in this sense perfect is not required of you nor is it achievable so leave it just do according to the best of your ability so in has its different categories obviously but when we talk about al-aflida affirmation of reality we're talking about absolute certainty so when we talk about Allah we're talking absolute certainty he exists and that he has these attributes but as far as his understanding his essence or the true nature of his attributes then we call that ma'rifah right he or she does according to what they know and not necessarily that they know Allah exactly as he is so truth then is affirmation of the existence or attribute of the thing as it is in reality an interesting thing in the Islamic paradigm is truth kind of has two components to it there is ma'fi nafsil am in other words how it exists in reality and then the person who bears witness to that what does that mean if you would for example the munafiqun saying that nashadu an nakala rasool Allah wa'allahu yashadu an nakala rasool wa'allahu yashadu inna munafiqeen lakadibun take that let's unpack that the munafiqun come to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam they say we bear witness that you are the messenger of Allah is prophet not the messenger of Allah he is it's a true statement but then Allah says Allah bears witness that you indeed you are the messenger of Allah and he bears witness that the munafiqun that their liars but then they say a true statement no but they don't believe it they don't believe the statement so it's not a truth for them so truth then has two aspects truth has how it actually is and do believe it or not because if you don't believe it and just say you believe it it's not really a truth for you even though it's a truth what we say in reality so affirmation is included in the articulation of a truth statement then the intellect becomes the means by which to perceive these truths those of you who study Islamic sciences in Arabic the same word is used for intellect and reason which is aq so you have to know when aq is talking about the actual entity of intellect which is a central aspect of human condition or when it's talking about a source of knowledge or the way to reason something that's another application of the word aq and they're not the same thing even though I used two different words here but the same word is used so intellect is the means by which to perceive these truths and then reason becomes the method by which to discern these truths sometimes refer to us or pure reason and this is going to be built upon certain postulates like the law of non-contradiction and things like that there are certain things that can be demonstrated to you you know them self-evidently or intuitively one plus one equals two you don't really need to experience that or to be taught that or that the part is always smaller than the whole that it came from again that self-evident knowledge talks about right they will follow not into paradise until the camel passes through the eye of the needle well the camel is never going to pass through the eye of the needle why? because it's inconceivable and you don't have to try to actually see that so if the camel with its size and the eye of the needle with its size and nothing to be changed it's impossible inconceivable for the camel to go inside that just like it's inconceivable for one plus one to equal anything but two there is no universe where one plus one is going to equal to three it's the way that we understand the way that we understand the realities of this particular universe so I'm going to kind of go over this quickly because we kind of went over a little bit intellect and knowledge we talked about a little bit truth and we mentioned the idea of degrees of truth one thing that the last point on that slide as we mentioned about degrees of truth and based upon the certainty we talked about absolute certainty or near certainty this hierarchy applies to knowledge based upon authoritative transmission and demonstrated repetition not pure reason so something that I know self evidently is going to be of the absolute certain category and our belief in the existence of Allah is based upon that category the absolute certain category not the mere certain category so it's not going to be based upon evidence in the scientific sense as people talk about today so when people say well I want to believe in God but there's no evidence for that what evidence are you looking for right are you looking to go for the what it called the God particle the Higgins be so particle collider and somehow that's going to prove to you that God exists right they're looking for type of evidence an empirical evidence what's empirical again that which is perceptible to the senses right which I can see I can smell I can touch I can taste well Allah SWT is imperceptible by the senses so the evidence if there is any evidence is not going to be in the form of empirical evidence so last one show me the evidence that God exists right they're asking really for the impossible because you cannot point to something that is beyond perception and outside the total realm of sense perception by way of an evidence that's going to use sense perception right so when you say what evidence there's no evidence it's not that type of evidence there's another type of evidence right because we don't believe that the only way that you can know things is by perceiving by your senses there are other ways to know things and you have an intellect there are other means by which to know those are the means by which we know that Allah exists so more about this reason then since it's important and based upon it we're going to reach to other conclusions so it's the basis for discernment of reality from not reality and truth from falsehood these degrees are certainly do not apply it's all absolutely certain and there are two broad categories what we call self-evident proof and demonstrated proof so self-evident here proof we're not talking empirical proof Muhammad was able to use the word to describe this type of proof he called it al-Burhan so Burhan is an intellectual rational proof proof by way of reason not proof by way of empirical evidence so the Burhan will be of two types that which is self-evident which is necessarily known without demonstration wendaladi or demonstrated proof and Muslims were not the only ones to refer to these two categories if you read the Sama Theologica of St. Thomas of Aquinas he also refers to these two types demonstrated and self-evident so using all of that the understanding of reason the understanding of our intellect the understanding that the sharia was transmitted to us by way of authoritative transmission and it's also understood by our intellect then we can piece together a kind of what I call your boundary and gateway for understanding the whole thing all together and once we can piece that together and we can formulate it then these spurious type of accusations and these spurious inferences that aren't really there are easily dismissed because you're not approaching it via its boundaries we already described to you that within the tradition we also know how to interpret the tradition how to know and distinguish that which is discerned by reason versus discerned by authoritative transmission versus discerned by empirical evidence certainly we have things that are of empirical evidence language is empirical the the they realize the importance of the Arabic language and specifically the understanding of the Arabic language as it was during the time of the muzzul the time of the revelation and they knew that was the key to understanding the Quran and also understanding the sunnah so they devoted much of their time and their energies to preserving the language of the Quran specifically that classical 7th century Arabian understanding of the Arabic language and so they preserved all of the pre-Islamic poetry as well in the place and Nabila and the ones that we mentioned earlier and they also preserved the idioms and the linguistic devices and rhetorical devices all of these things were studied and they were documented in order to document the language of the Quran but all of that is based upon empiricism all of that is based upon actual physical evidence where the poets who used the word in this particular way Ibn Abbas for example they would say if something from the Quran was ambiguous what would he say seek its meaning in the diwan the poetry literature of the Arabs and it is said that he would also dedicate a day of the week to studying and reading with his students the poetry of the Arabs so it became a means by which to understand the Quran one of the 7 canonical reciters of the Quran Abu Amr al-Dani he said that that many of the people of that many of the people of were not from the Medina were not companions of the Prophet in other words they adopted spurious sex and understanding of Islam because of their ignorance of the Arabic language so they read the Quran by themselves they didn't have and then they interpreted it in a way other than the way that it was meant in other words so they didn't have enough of the empirical because again going back to empiricism enough of the empirical knowledge of the language in order to interpret it correctly so empiricism definitely plays a role in how we understand the Islamic tradition no one can say that it is not important or it doesn't have any validity as an epistemological method no it is a way of knowing it's an important way of knowing but all we're saying is not the only way it's not the whole game it's not the whole show but it's part of it so if we were to kind of delineate boundaries of the tradition other words are saying this is what Islam is and this is what it's not and that's a statement of itself because some of the post-marital philosophies are telling you everything is self-defined so Islam is what I think it is or what I tell you it to be and then that's okay no that's not okay it is a defined thing it does have parameters it's nonsensical to suggest the idea that I will define it in the matter I should define it that's like saying I like democracy I'm a democrat but I'm going to define it in the way I define it and I think that no elections and no elected members and no civil rights and no rule of law and whenever I say goes that's democracy to me but that's exactly what people are saying people are putting nonsensical statements as a preface in their books saying Islam is on thin ice with me and other stuff like that and making statements that there are suras in the Quran that we put there after the prophets however I said them this is what people are saying I was at a conference last weekend that's a very prominent conference in the United States and that's what some people were saying even Muslims this is where it's at this is what's being put out there in many of the religious studies departments of U.S. universities and so if your child or your daughter or your brother or sister are taking Islam one on one class and you think they're learning about Islam they may not be learning about Islam they're learning about the deconstruction of Islam so we need to be properly equipped informed and well aware of our tradition beyond just memorizing the ritual aspects of it we need to know how to be grounded and rooted in it to the degree we can counter these fallacious arguments and philosophies and methods so understanding the text of the Quran and the Quranic hadith is one of the main boundaries so Quran and the son of the prophet everybody has agreed that this is the root this is the way by which you understand what Islam is but everybody says that as they always say everybody claims that they've seen Leila but Leila says I don't know this guy so everyone says Quran and Sunnah but there is a method by which to go about understanding the Quran and Sunnah so one is as I just mentioned the parameters of the classic Arabic language so any sort of post-modernist notion that the original intent of Allah SWT behind the meanings of the Quran is irrelevant right away that should raise red flags immediately no we understand it in the language it was revealed yes there is a sort of sort of dichotomy almost paradox in that the Quran is the eternal speech of Allah which is an uncreated attribute but yet the Quran with its language with its words, with its letters with its sounds definitely is created in that aspect and this was an early polemical discussion in the last discourse that happened around the time of Ahmadi al-Bahambal and Luu Biraafir these were kind of the main theological key numbers of the time how do we reconcile how do we reconcile what seems to be a revealed book but it's the uncreated word of Allah SWT so one of the resolutions of the Qalam which was that well there's two types of love there's two types of words that we infer from the Quran or two types of Qalam so there's Qalam in lovey or Qalam in nefsi Qalam in nefsi is the uncreated attribute of Allah, the eternal speech of Allah which is not defined or delimited by language or by letter or by sound because those are created things but there's no way of expressing that meaning of language right then that would be Qalam Allah in lovey by the words so the words themselves in terms of the letters and the sounds indicate point two the uncreated word of Allah SWT namely the meanings so you cannot get to the meanings or Qalam in nefsi except by way of Qalam and lovey the words themselves so the words then as indicators of that significance so then that means there is a divine intent and a connection between the symbols that we call letters and words and the actual meanings right and Sayed Na'ali for example referred to kind of this multi varied aspect of understanding the Quran he said that every letter or every word in the Quran has al-zaahir an-abati al-zaahir an-abati and so it says an inward and an outward and Allah also said something in the third one and amun taliq so it has an inward and outward and perhaps the third one is it's purported meaning or manifested meaning and then amun taliq where you can go from there so there are inward meanings there are inward meanings, there are meanings that can be inferred and in the Islamic paradigm one of the conditions that these meanings have to be complementary not contradictory complementary not contradictory and modern discourse has a real problem with that right the idea that there can be multiple meanings and they're all a reflection of the author's intent is problematic how so well in the Quran for example there's a verse that says in the Quran itself right no one means to touch in the physical sense so no one will touch it except so if we're talking physically that means the fuqah inferred from this those who are in a physical ritual state of purity and there's an ijma'a of the ulama the four schools of law that someone must be in a state of in order to touch the pages of the mus'a with certain exceptions here is that the only meaning no others said there's also an inward meaning a spiritual meaning if you will in other words those who are except in a state of spiritual purity will they penetrate the meanings of the Quran to penetrate the means to understand to realize the meanings of the Quran that's another meaning those two meanings are not contradictory you can have both at the same time it can mean both things so this sort of multi vocal way that the Quran can can furnish its meanings right it's something quite unique about it as well and even on an individual basis when you read the Quran you go back once and twice and three times there may be things that come out for you that didn't come out the time before there may be things that are revealed via the meanings of the Quran in our day that were not revealed to our predecessors that's also quite possible right and they have a famous saying that says but you may find in the river that which you don't find in the sea and there was actually a very famous professor his name was and he had two major works of Tafsir one of them was called and the other one was called I believe in Nahul al-Madeed so at Bahra al-Mu'id the all-encompassing ocean the sea and it's much bigger book we studied it to get through what page of that is going to take you ten readings of me very elaborate talks about all of the and the a very sort of technical advanced and I would say difficult Tafsir then he had another one called the river that it kind of keeps on giving extends and much shorter and much easier to understand but they said he wrote the Nahul al-Madeed came later he said there are things in there you don't find in the Bahra al-Mu'id there are insights he came to even though it was shorter and easier to comprehend and probably ostensibly written as an abridgment of the larger one but he had new things that were in the Nahul al-Madeed that were not in the Bahra al-Mu'id so the language is paramount here and one of the dangers is in the Arab world unfortunately now that this language is being lost it's deteriorating and I don't mean that people not learning the rules of grammar and things like that but the conceptual frameworks behind the meanings of the language they're being replaced by foreign ones you pick up any Arabic newspaper today and you read it it's like you're reading a western language newspaper except it's translated right it's just like it's basically just rehashing something they picked up from a foreign language and kind of rehashing when putting in a word even using idioms that are foreign to the Arabic language right and these things are being introduced and they exist in English language but they sound funny when you bring them over and translate them right one of the ones that they use all the time in the Tahrir al-Paltes they'll say you know which has no meaning technically in Arabic because from English it's translated you know this country or America has a role in Allah but we don't use we don't say play a role we don't use that wording in the classical Arabic construct you know because live it means to play literally it doesn't have the metaphoric meaning of to assume a particular role right so you would say you would say something like that but not you find this a lot and many of the young people today I thought a group of Arab students a couple of years back and many of them they couldn't even write Arabic in fact probably the millennial generation or younger they write Latin letters but substitute numbers and things for like a ayin or letters that don't exist in the Arabic language in English language they would write their text messages and things like that not in English but in Arabic but transliterated with Latin letters and they don't really have an appreciation for how to write the Arabic language and many of them could not discriminate between you know seeing and saw and then and then and so forth the you know the muraqqaq letters versus the muraqqaq because it all sounds like you know just a va sound or a s sound and they don't know how to but yet the Arabs think and speak in English and then translate it to Arabic. It's basically kind of the cigar that we're seeing. And so it needs a revival. Many of these books that are used in the the education ministries in Arab countries, they are unchanged from the 1950s. But yet you look at the foreign language instruction books like in English and the pedagogical method has been updated and they have these very bright pictures and tables and things. And so when a student looks at the Arabic language one and he's like, that's like from 1952 when he's still talking about medical work. And this one has an iPad that comes with it and DVDs and it's all been updated. What is the impression that's left? And even on top of that, in what's called the national GPA, the national average, oftentimes Arabic language is not included in that. It's like an ancillary subject that doesn't count as much as physics or chemistry or history of that matter. So this de-emphasis, this marginalization of the language then is leaving an impression with many young Arab Muslims and non-Muslims alike like Arabic language is not important and that a little bit gloss, it's not Arabic. That the language of the Anglo-Franco of the Asian certainly not Arabic and it's just a drag and we have to learn and learn it. And the prestige and status is assigned to languages that are Latin languages. For a while it used to be French maybe two, three decades ago but it's not even French anymore, definitely English. So anyone who can speak English like an American or like a Brit and can do it fluently then you're like gold in a lot of these countries. But to have a fluent Arabic tongue, not really a big deal, who cares? What are you going to use that in? It's not something that has any sort of practical application. For in and in learning or in and in learning, what are you doing? Number two, scholarly consensus. This is something that's also been assailed and attacked. So we said by virtue of the language it's multi-vocal. It can speak in many voices and there are different interpretations that may be complementary. But does that mean that I can make it mean anything I wanted to me? No. Because it's bound by this concept called consensus. So the Nusulists themselves are circumscribed, right? The boundaries made about them by this issue of consensus. What is consensus? Is it some sort of antiquated patriarchy where a bunch of males, Muslim male scholars got together in a room like in Vatican Council too or in the Council of Nicaea or something like that and they all took votes. And they said, okay, what do you all think of? You all think we need Bulu to do the prayer? Yes. All in favor say yay. Nobody raises their hand. And then so it's decided that you have to have Bulu to pray. No. It didn't work like that. It's not the way it happened. What happened is that consensus is reached by a consensus of individual Nushtahidun, right? Individual people who have the requisite intellectual tools by which to make a stimbot to interpret the Quran and Sunnah. And each one of them, in their own, let's think of it as independent laboratory arrived at the same result. So it's really kind of an empirically based tool. So it's the same as, for example, if we all said we all want to figure out the boiling point of water. Let's see. This is before Centigrade and Fahrenheit and pre-Fahrenheit, pre-scales and so forth. And we want to figure out when does the water boil. So each one of us retreats to their independent laboratory. And so I go in my laboratory and I measure the temperature by which it boils and I get 211 or something like that. And then Yusuf goes in his laboratory and he gets like 212.2. And Fudan and other people go in their laboratories and they're all basically within 212 a degree or so of that. And then we say, you know what? It seems like there's a consensus here that water is going to boil around 212 degrees. So in conditions it's going to be 212 Fahrenheit. And it's not going to be anything different than that. Then we reach a consensus. Well then some guy walks into the masjid or let's say into our laboratory. It's not a masjid, make it the laboratory. And after all these hundreds, if not thousands of independent scientists all measured the boiling point of water to be 212. He comes and said, you know what? You guys are all wrong. You've been doing it all wrong for decades. The boiling point of water is actually 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That's what I think. Well, do you have any proof for that? I don't know. This is my opinion. And now I'm pretty sure about it. And I think that's what it is. Are you a scientist? No, I work, I sell a piece of coffee. So I've worked with the coffee machines and I'm feeling like if you get it to 70 degrees the coffee will still kind of combine with the water in a good way. So I'm thinking that works too as a boiling point. We would like lack of out of the laboratory. This guy is a hack. He's a quack and a hack. He's always talking about getting him out of here. But yet this is what is happening now. People are openly challenging consensus issues in the deed and say, well, I think it's going to be this way because I think that's what I think. And that's what it is. So the consensus of all that means each one of them by their juristic methodologies, which are not always uniform. There are differences. Marek had a set of juristic tools a little bit different than Abu Hanifah, then Imam Al-Mashafi, then Al-Hamd al-Mahamd, then Al-Awza'i, then Sufiyan al-Bur'ayyino, Sufiyan al-Thawri, then Al-Tabari, all these people are in that category. And Sittinah Al-Isha, she was also a Muslim, Imam, they all had their particular methodological tools. But somehow, despite that, they reached the same conclusion. They were looking at the same Muslims, or slightly different, maybe some of them had Al-Haitha, some of them had, but nevertheless, they reached the same conclusion about this issue. That's how the consensus works. And there are not that many issues like that. Some of them, I tried to write a book about it, and they numbered maybe a hundred in terms of what we call Ijmah al-Jali, clear consensus. There's another type of Ijmah called Ijmah Sukhuti, which means that no one dissented, so it's assumed that there was a consensus on the issue. But whatever the case may be, it wasn't about people taking votes and old men in robes figuring out what the Dean is so that they can subjugate and maintain their system of power and authority over the hapless laity. That's the narrative. That little story there is what they teach in academia sometimes. This is what they put out in their dissertations in their books. They wanted to keep a monopoly over the people, and they were often colluders with the sultans and the tyrants in a way so that they can keep the people under their thumb, and they can maintain their system of authority, and they didn't want anyone going interpreting the Qur'an for themselves because that would remove their authority. Well, that narrative actually happened in the Muslim world, that happened in Europe, that happened with the Protestant Reformation, that happened with modern Luther, that happened with the Papal indulgences and the church. So all of that history, that understanding has been superimposed upon its lab and says, well, this is your history too. I work with you. That's not our history. That's your history. No one came after you. We weren't selling people places in heaven for money. You did that. The Catholic Church did that. We never did that. We didn't have that type of clerical body at the top that would say what the doctrine is. That's how the church operates. The church operates what the Pope says is, the Dean is the Dean. No questions asked. There's not this idea of Istanbul and interpreting the Bible or the Old and New Testament to arrive at a conclusion. This is what Martin Luther was protesting. This is what started the Protestant Reformation. This is how we got all of the Protestant denominations and after that the evangelical denominations. We don't have that history like that. Maybe some similarities along the way here and there but certainly didn't turn out in that same particular way. So for us, it's not about this artificial clerical class at the top. We're all colluding together. I would describe it as I just described it now more like independent scientists each working in their own laboratory and then they arrive at the same conclusion. To me that would be a more accurate metaphorical description of what's going on. So when someone comes and claims to have something completely new and I'm pressuring that nobody else figured out before, well, you're dissenting with something that's a consensual issue. We already figured this part out. We already know that marriage is between man and woman. There's not going to be a marriage between man and woman at the moment. It's the issue of consensus. No one dissented. There's nothing you can bring. There's no type of evidence you can cite. There's no argument that you can make that will make that legitimate. By Islam, absolutely not. We have to be clear about that. They can say what all they want. But there is no, there's no dissent. It's an issue of consensus. There is no relationship outside of marriage, number one to begin with. And that relationship has to be within a marriage and it's going to be between a male and a female who are otherwise not related and they can marry one another. That's it. And then there are certain conditions that go along with that. There has to be a dowry and witnesses and Siva and, you know, they have to agree and all that type of thing. This is a consensual issue. Right from the filth, from the jurisprudence, everyone is working in an independent laboratory. This is the conclusion that they reached. There are five prayers in the day and they have different numbers of barqas. No one is going to be removed from the burden of having to pray. That doesn't happen either, right? There are some Muslims who made such claims. They said, you know, a member of the Junaid was asked about people who said Qad Wasalu, you know, they've arrived at a spiritual plane where they don't have to pray anymore. He said, now, Wasalu is a saqr. He says, yes, they've arrived and no one is going to be free from the confines of the Sharia. Everyone is bound by the Sharia. Whether you are Wadi al-Awliya or whether you are, you know, Ashqal Ashliya, you're still going to have to be confined by the confines of the Sharia. These are consensual issues. So, you know, this is a boundary of the D. I was once asked in the aftermath of the Orlando massacre that happened in that gay club, and I said, you know, we understand that people may have inclinations for same-sex affinities and things like this, and that's been around since time immemorial. We know that people have those inclinations, but for us, the issue is not the inclinations, the issue is acting upon it, just like people might have inclinations even for the same sex, but has to be within a marriage. So, you know, we don't take people to task for their own inclinations. Test, tribulation, and so forth, that's what I said. And the reporter said to me, yeah, yeah, yeah, but when are you guys going to accept homosexuality, make it legitimate within your religion? I said, never. He's like, what? No, you just heard me, never, it's never going to happen. I don't have the authority to do that. As someone who's a student of the D, I don't have the authority to do that, and I know that no one is going to reach that conclusion. Because it's an issue of consensus. You guys want to talk about tolerance, you want to talk about having an appreciation of other opinions, I see that you're very intolerant. Because this is something that's part and parcel of the way that we look at life. We don't force anyone, we don't put it upon anyone, we don't enforce it upon anyone, if they choose to do otherwise it's up to them. But you cannot enforce upon us a particular way, right, when this is something we have no doubt about it. So he read the article, I said a million things about that incident, what he puts at the top of the page obviously, Muslims may be sympathetic but don't accept homosexuals or something like that. Or they're not quite ready to accept them yet or something that lasts for them. But I think we have to be confident, we have to stand our ground in the face of this massive assault, not just from that type of issue, but many, many things. And we have to know what the Dean is, and it's definable. One of the things that makes it definable is this issue of consensus, right? Modesty and covering both for men and women, these are issues of consensus and there are minimum amounts. And the hijab, as it's described today is a fault, it's an obligation, there's no way around it. It's not something that it may be, maybe not, maybe people in trouble don't go around long, maybe it's the male patriarchy, everybody reaches the same conclusion. One of the issues is to apply it or not, that's her choice. And we don't force it upon her. But if you're asking what the Dean says, what the religious depilation of the Dean is, it's unequivocal. It's a matter of consensus. And it should be enough for the informed Muslim when I say it's a matter of consensus that they don't ask me for a deal after that. Well, what's the deal? It's not mentioned in the Qur'an. Actually no, it is mentioned in the Qur'an. It's mentioned in Surah al-Nur. If you're looking for something in your head, that's very specific. And our understanding of it doesn't have to be in the specific language that you're looking for. The Qur'an, for example, doesn't say that as in it doesn't say don't commit fornication. It says, don't approach it. So someone who's playing games can say, oh, it says don't approach it. So it doesn't mean don't do it. Right? So I'll just do it and I'll approach it. In other words, I won't do the muqaddimat, I'll just do the actual act. This is playing around with the language. Because in the Arabic language, as we said earlier, go back to understanding the text of the Qur'an and the Qur'anic hadith, there is a rhetorical device called fahwal khitaab. What's fahwal khitaab? It means that there are two components to any text. Something called the mantuq and the muqqum. Mantuq means that which is articulated in explicit letters. Then there's something called the muqqum. That which could be understood. So when it says don't approach it, don't do the muqaddimat. Don't do the things that might lead to it. And by virtue of if you're not allowed to do the things that lead up to it then certainly the thing itself is even going to be more haram. So this khitaab and this command from Allah SWT it's contradicting the things that lead up to it and certainly as well the actual thing itself. When the Qur'an says in terms of treatment of parents don't say don't say and don't revile them in speech. Does that mean I can push them down the stairs? Because it didn't say that specifically. If you can if the lowest thing is to say in Arabs today they still say of means like later for you as we would say in English. I want you to go take out the garbage and it doesn't change over the time. Allah SWT that is prohibited to say to the parent. To let them see that from you. So that means anything above and beyond that is going to be prohibited as well. This is what we call and if you didn't study a juristic methodology you didn't study the surah al-fil you wouldn't know that. How did we get this particular concept? Go back to the mushdah-e-lun in the laboratory because that's what they all said that's what they agreed upon. They all came to the same conclusion that the language means this the intent behind it is this and it's based upon consensus all of them reached the same conclusion. You want to come up with a whole different deen and a whole different set of tools and a whole different way of doing it? I don't understand that. Be my guest. Just don't call it Islam. Call it something else. Call it what you want to call it. Call it new wave, I don't know what. But don't call it Islam. Certainly not Islam. We said the Arabic language understood the the Scarlet Consensus Scarlet Consensus then also leads to extrapolating based upon a holistic reading of Luno Suwis, Nengah, and Sunnah that there are certain overarching themes that the laws of the commands of Allah are seeking to to imbibe within us to preserve within us to say this is significant. This is important. This is why this is happening. This is what is referred to by some as Maqasid Shariah and generally they say that the Maqsa of the Shariah that the main goal of the Shariah Jand al-Masarih wa dar al-Mafasid is to anything which is in the interest of humanity for that to be committed to us and even encouraged and anything that is not in the interest of humanity that will harm humanity to be removed and to be avoided. This is based upon the Muhammad in Shariah, the Shariah of Muhammad which is all naam wa khadiya min an-nitla it is all blessings and all that is good and there's nothing in it that's arbitrary as a punishment. This happened with previous Qum'ah. The Muhammad in Shariah came you're hailu laqum al-tayyibat wa you're hailu maalikum al-qabahif so everything that is in other words it's good in and of itself is going to be halab and anything that is Qabif which is harmful in and of itself is going to be haram that's a blessing that's a huge thing because Bani Isra'id didn't happen like that right? Ha bi al-dunni min an-nadina hadu haramna alayhim tayyibatim wa idlat lahm so by the wrongdoing min an-nadina hadu that came before you haramna alayhim tayyibat here it is t'haimat tayyibat so things that were t'ayyib that were good in and of themselves were made haram why? it's done min an-nadina hadu by their dhun by their corruption, by their wrongdoing this is a punishment, it's anitma for them that's why it's like that but we don't have anything like that in our Shariah there's nothing that is anitma so every single thing that's a command that in order to do there's a t'ayyib thing in it there's a wisdom behind it there's something that's going to be in our own interest even in this life let alone the spiritual life and the life of the next world and also those things that are haram that are prepared for us it's for our own good and it's to avoid something that is harmful so they discern that this is what the Shariah is all about but on that they discern five kind of major categories of how these things can be understood and they put it in a hierarchy so the highest is the preservation of the integrity of Islam in other words what we know Islam to be it's morals, it's ethics it's values, it's principles in other words to understand how to go about doing our life in a way that Allah has commanded us to do it preserving that is quite important this is what we call the deen because if we lose that we may have physical life but what type of life is going to be it's like a life that's no life so this is at the highest level the highest category one right below that is the preservation of life life is a gift from Allah Allah has bequeathed us life and existence and so it's not to be taken lightly it's not to be forfeited lightly it's not to be sacrificed lately intellect that which allows us to discern truth from falsehood that which allows us to discern right from wrong so if we don't have that what type of life are we going to have wealth or property or the ability of people to have things that are considered to be affiliated with them this is part of the social structure the communal structure of humanity there's also a preservation for that so all of the akam the economic commercial transaction law that you find in Islam it's geared so that there will be no social or civil strife that comes out of transactions why because they said that al-diya mabniya al-musha'a right, iqtaslaad mabniya al-musha'a that buying and selling commercial transactions it is necessarily going to be contentious that's just the nature of it why is it going to be contentious because I have something to sell and you have money to buy it with to sell for as high a price as I can get and your interest is to buy for as low as price you can get those two interests are not reconcilable can't have both so what's going to happen a negotiation right so this negotiation it can be contentious or it can be civil right and if there's anything within that negotiation where one of us feels that we have been tricked or duped or usurped or not given the whole truth then it's not going to be just a commercial transaction it's going to be an effect here we're talking about society too we're talking about use of something, a lemon car that Toyota Prius he told me about that ran great and gets 100 miles per gallon that thing is a lemon and it doesn't even go into third gear and now I'm getting 20 miles per gallon and the electric part doesn't work and I keep out the thing and he didn't tell me that so now I'm not just upset about the car I'm a little upset at use of I'm not that used to do something like that similar to our amazing example and so as a result you know I'm mad, I'm angry and maybe I'm not going to stop that use of maybe I'll look at his family maybe I'll look at his neighborhood other things because people are wearing degrees of commitment to upholding human decency so part of the sharia then is to avoid all of that to avoid all of that so it seeks to eliminate those issues that would be contentious and one of those contentious issues for example they mention is a war or uncertainty in the transaction so the transaction first and foremost should be made upon the assumption of certainty in other words I know what I'm getting I know the car that I'm getting and all of the things in it and he knows exactly what he's getting in terms of how much I'm going to pay and that there should be no fooling around with that that's why they said you don't sell something you don't possess so if I'm a fisherman and I haven't got fishing today yet but I want to sell use of you know two terms of tuna I haven't quite yet fished out of the pacific ocean right and I promised to deliver and he pays me two thousand dollars and then Wednesday comes around I'm supposed to deliver and I tell you I don't have it well now what I have his money but I spent it now what happens to you so what do you call that is that now it will come alone and if it's alone then what about the opportunity cost for use of it we could have bought something else with that we could have bought from another merchant with that money but it all started it was predicated on uncertainty there was some element of an unacceptable element of uncertainty in the transaction that allowed that to happen so the preservation of these the thing that they are affiliated with them and that they can see it as their own property and to dispense with it as they please in a manner that conforms to the confines and the precincts of the sharia that's their right that's an important concept and they discern that from a holistic reading of the sharia and then finally family and communal structures sometimes this is put before well sometimes after sometimes something called honor is also put there which is and all kind of related so honor family this idea of heaven that people should know where they fit into the community which means they need to know who their mother and their father are they need to know where they fit into the greater community and social structure and so if that is not preserved then people won't know who they are people have this loss in the sense of their identity and everyone has a natural inclination to want to know where they came from they want to know where their parents are they want to know where their grandparents are they want to know where their extended family is and they want to feel secure in that and so many of the family law issues that come up in Islam in terms of marriage and also in terms of divorce in terms of bilaw and halana and custody and alimony and all those things that are discussed in the Islamic calendar that are also there to preserve this sort of communal structure and associated with that is preserving the honor of people so the had punishment that is associated with honor is to accuse someone falsely of adultery or to accuse someone of being a product of adultery that's the had punishment in other words there's a mandatory punishment that the judge must dispense if someone does that because it's not just someone's no one you come from but also to have that protected in the sense that no one should be able to assail that by way of speech or slander is also an important concept because you can assail someone even though it may not be true but once that spreads and it gets out there that also will cause strife within the community and within the social structure so that's also imperative within the shaygah that deal with diva and namima and slander and kolamni and all those things also are important in that aspect so number four the Islamic paradigm or world view which we're saying is how do we see the world how do we see reality this is informed by our belief system or our theta answer such questions as why am I here where did I come from or am I going why am I significant or we have means by which to find out the answer at least in a general sense in an individual sense that's something that inshallah will guide you what's my specific role in all of this but at least we have the sense of grounding that steers us in our life and how we know about living our life so that makes then a link between embodying this paradigm in other words I'm here for a purpose there's a reason I'm here for my mistake I'm not just meant to be here to exist and eat and drink and be merry and that's all there is to life and just fulfill my physical desires but there's a greater purpose behind that so then there's a link between this and having a moral code to live your life deliberately and understand that your actions will have effects upon others and that you can bring happiness into other people's lives or you can bring misery you have the power to do that so you have to choose which one you're going to try to do all of that goes into the understanding of why am I here and what am I supposed to be doing here versus someone who has no such grounding who has no sense of morality in the world this way then invariably they're going to fall on the lowest common denominator of their existence which is let me just fulfill my physical desires so all of these scandals we're hearing as of late in this state of yours California with Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein and all of the stuff that's happening why are we surprised why did we think that people who don't have a particular moral code that they live by would be anything but that when they're in a position where it seemed that there were going to be no repercussions at the time they're in a position of power influence authority over the victims then what's to stop them nothing except if you have an internal moral code that's what we're stopping so once that's removed then why are we surprised if you don't have a moral code that you live by it's not about the repercussions that may happen necessarily that's going to stop you because they may or may not happen but there's something of a more powerful force that will keep you in check and tell you that I have a bigger job to do here than just fulfill my physical wants and desires so number five or six of them we'll finish them before the break the general principles of the prophetic teachings or the sharia also this is based upon a holistic reading and this is a little more specific than the five moqasid that we mentioned earlier so there are these things like no harm reciprocating harm that level that they're all so anything that we implement from the sharia should be predicated on that understanding as a general consensual issue that as we go away from the other no one bears the burden of someone else no one is going to be taking into account for someone else's mistake that's a core principle and Yathinelei as we mentioned earlier certainty is not removed by doubt so these are all types of core principles that inform our approach and our moral behavior not just in fiqh but in general in the etiquettes and adab in our interpersonal relationships when harm is mean in an emotional way I'm not justified in harming them back just to get back at them let me go by the overriding principle that don't want to give up because the prophecy has said it like that you didn't qualify it so in reaction to harm you are not justified in reciprocating that harm you are to remove the harm if you can or you're to alleviate it but to reciprocate it just as a matter of revenge because I just said about the prophecy I said that you would not see revenge or retribution on his own behalf or his own personal slights he's only talking about when something of the commands of the Shari'ah are violated that's a different story but and then finally understanding of the context what's sometimes referred to as tasawur tasawur or phlegm of the waltah right so we have this set of principles we have this set of values but then we have real life on the ground situations and so whenever you have a practical application then you have this huge body of theory and axioms and laws well then there's going to be a space between those two when do you apply and how do you apply and is the situation what I think it is so that I can apply it or it's not the situation that I think it is and I believe Muslims are getting into a lot of trouble in this particular area so we have to take into the particular context of the situation it's as simple as some well meaning and well intention brothers can come walking into MCC right now and they have their shoes on and they walk into the mosannas with their shoes and dragging dirt and so forth and then brother asif goes out to them and says brothers why are you wearing your shoes on the carpet in the masjid he said akhi you don't know the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he used to walk with his na'aleen he used to walk with his sandals in the masjid we're doing the sunnah what's the problem the problem akhi is that the inside of the masjid the sand was the outside they had sand inside just as they did outside they didn't even have any type of floor covering and so in their particular context right there was no difference from them wearing their sandals or not wearing their sandals but now we have an overarching principle that love are what I did on no harm or supercuting harm and we like na'alafah and na'alafah cleanliness is from iman we're doing our masjid clean especially from people tracking dirt on their shoes from the outside and they could have walked possibly on a type of na'alafah and then you bring it in here you're the one who's not practicing the sunnah at this point you're contributing it because you took something out of context you didn't apply it properly the principle is right follow the sunnah correct imperative but you didn't follow it right because you didn't understand the context of it so understanding the context understanding the wafta understanding the circumstances in our situation is extremely important otherwise on what basis are you going to make an evaluation and say this ruling applies here or this principle has an application here you have to understand what's going on you have to be able to see what's going on otherwise if you don't know how could you possibly make a proper evaluation so this includes the context regarding the applicability of rulings of contemporary circumstances just as I just mentioned very famously he said you cannot take the fidewah of a previous generation of scholars and apply them somewhere else just like that because fidewah means specific situation fidewah is a response to a specific practical situation someone there's a wustafdi they ask the question and they said my situation won't be too profound and the mufti answered them so you can't just take it like that and say well I think the situation is the same unless you're qualified and you have the credentials to make that determination you can't just put it there it doesn't work like that Imam Maddik very famously recounted in the Tertibun Mederik of the IELT he said a group came from Andros from Islamic Spain and they came to Maddik and they asked him 48 questions and he said to 36 of them and they said what should we tell the people tell them Maddik doesn't know and they left and most people stop there at that story but there's a second part to that story the non-Maddikies to be fair stop at that point if the Maddikies know but there's a second half to the story so students around him said yeah Imam we've heard you answer these questions before with us you know they answered them because you've told us you've had answers to these questions so why did you not answer them he said they're going to Spain they're going to Andros and if I have a change in my HD head about this particular Mas'ela you guys are here with me I can just tell you but they're leaving and I may never see them again so why am I going to do something that I'm not certain about and give it to them and they're going to apply it there and I have no way of changing it afterwards this is called warah this is being scrupulous because even if he did give him his moushteh and opinion at the time it would still be valid even if he changes my later on Imam Shafiq where he famously has a method of cladine one method, a jadeed and they're both valid in the sense that even though he may have reoriented some of his opinions in one a different direction it doesn't mean that the older opinion is invalid but nevertheless Imam Maddik was very cautious so he wasn't even proxy he said there's a different context there I'm not sure what the situation is there so for us we should be careful about saying well you should do it this way or asking an Imam over seas this is our situation because I've seen in front of me people describe certain situations I've seen people from America go to someone Imam over seas and they say you know what I have a gas station and unless I sell pork and alcohol I'll go bankrupt what should I do and then Shaykh will ask him what does that mean you'll be like in the street and destitute and I'll just be completely ruined what should I do he says well it's either between you living in the street or selling pork and alcohol at your gas station then I guess you have to sell it and then he comes home and he's smiling I have my fatwa but moushteh and ishteh you give him a wrong impression you will not go bankrupt if you don't sell alcohol and pork in your gas station market what it was called gas station store and you could probably do another business anyway you're not going to be out in the street if you have enough money to manage a gas station then you have money to do something else so there was a wrong scenario that was translated to begin with and based upon that the fatwa came back in response to the way the question was asked not in response to the way the situation actually is so we can only see some of these spurious fatwa be careful because if we're not seeing the first half of it how was the question asked how was it posed then it's very likely if it sounds funny that something was missed there and then finally knowing the difference between immutable and flexible aspects of the sharia a thalabit so thalabit means those things are unchangeable they're immutable, they're consensus issues they're not going to be subject to you know because we live in America this is the way we do it now we're still going to pay five times a day we're still going to pay Jomar those type of things but I have to wear a pho and a kufi and Islamic dress would that be better for me here not necessarily that's the question that you had am I going to practice asuna in that this is what the prophet may have wore something like this or is asuna to wear the custom of the people that you're associated with that's up to you to figure out to think about that and to arrive at a conclusion but it's certainly not from the thalabit it's not from the things that are immutable what's immutable is that you are modest in your dress that your aura is covered your nakedness is covered as stipulated by the sharia that that it doesn't accentuate the body parts of the knees that is form fitting and also that it's not transparent with males and females if you've done that unless you want to wear purple and blue and whatever colors and so forth what is free to do so as long as they're following the thalabit part am I going to do that but understanding which aspects are like that and which aspects are like this is also part of the boundaries of the sharia and we'll stop here from now Hamd al-Adami