 Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu everybody Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, Alhamdulillahi wabarakatuhu Wassalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi wa rahmatullahi So, welcome to everyone. There's not a fair for coming. How many of you for just a short time saw the little video that was sent out? You guys saw the video? Okay. So, I want to just give a very quick introduction. I know this is still a little bit of a mystery what's going on here, but inshallah as we go through it it will become less mysterious. So, do you see this aya here on the board? And so this is going to be very interactive. I'm going to ask a lot of questions. And this is originally geared for kind of age, eighth grade and up. But I've done it with adults as well and they've liked it. So, if it feels like it's a little bit low level just bear with me inshallah. But answer the questions. I'm going to basically treat all of you like I treat the kids that I teach. So, you kind of put yourself in like a 13 year old shoe. Answer the question for yourself. So, Bismillah. So, we'll start. So, I want to first start out by just asking what is this? You can raise your hand. I can call on you sister or brother side. Yes? This is an aya. So, I'll just write it in English. An aya. Okay. What is an aya? An aya is a verse in the Quran. That's right. Allah SWT says here, Audhu Billahi min ash-Shaytan al-Jim, Qulillahumma Fatih al-Samawati wal-Agh, Aalim al-Ghaybi wa Al-Shahada. And in other aya's, he says, Fatih al-Samawati, sorry, Inna fi khilqi al-Samawati wal-Agh, Waqtilafi al-Layli wal-Nahari, Li'ayati bi'uri al-Albab. So, in that aya, Allah SWT says that in the alteration of the night and the day, there is an aya for those who deeply reflect. So, in that aya, Sister, do you mind? How should I refer to you? Um Habiba? Sorry? Um Hanifa. Okay, Um Hanifa. So, in that aya that I just mentioned to you, that in the alternation of the night and the day, it's an aya. Allah SWT refers to the sun and the moon and the stars as an aya. What is the meaning of this word in that verse? That the sun is an aya. It's a sign. So, if we, we're gonna use this meaning because this is actually more closer to what the actual meaning is. So, when I say the word aya, it means a sign. Okay, so now let me ask you another, this might be, okay, let's do this actually. What if you were driving and you saw a very oddly shaped, you've seen a version of this sign on the road. If you see this sign while you're driving, what does it tell you? Children are near or park ahead. Yes? So, that means that a sign by definition tells you about something other than itself. Yes? Have you ever seen somebody stop their car and get out and just look at the sign and like take out their measuring tape and start measuring it and tasting it and smelling it? Like, that person would be very odd if you saw that. They're like, what are you doing? Like, I want to understand what this thing is. I said, but that's not the point. The point is that it's indicating, it's telling you that there's a park ahead. That's the point of the thing. So, I want to ask you now, so is that, does that make sense, everybody? Okay, any question, there's one rule, this is in our foundations, there's one rule we have in our foundations, is that the only possible thing you could do wrong is to not ask a question if you have one. So please ask. Now, if I tell you that there is a person who's devoted their whole life to memorizing the Quran and they spend hours and hours, and this, by the way, happens all the time, they spend hours and hours and they memorize the whole Quran. But that person never learns any of the meanings of any of the ayat of the Quran. Never learns the meanings. In fact, actually, you could say there are, there are non-Muslim academics that work at universities and they memorize ayat of Quran in Arabic. But they don't believe in it. They don't act on it. But let's just take the example of just a Muslim child from a non-Arab country like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, some place where Arabic is not the regular language. And they spend their whole life and they study the Quran, but they never, they memorized it. They memorize all the ayat. They know all the letters. They know all the words. They know all the verses. But they never learned what it meant. They never learned what it meant. So would you say that this person has fulfilled the purpose of the Quran? Nobody will say that, right? No Muslim will say that this person has fulfilled the purpose of the Quran. They will actually say that, Masha'Allah, very Mubarak, very good, but you really missed the point. Is it not? Correct me, please. You can correct me at all. If you think this is I am off, tell me. You will say, no, you completely missed the point. Everybody here is Muslim. Everybody here believes this, what I just said, yes? Okay. So now I want you to think about that. And I want you to think now about how we learn about nature. From a young age, when we go to school, or you're all homeschooling in a curriculum, all the curriculum basically comes from the same kind of mindset. We learn from a young age, from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade, we basically do hith of ayat. We learn that there are different kinds of trees. We learn that there are deciduous trees and there's evergreen trees. And then we learn that if you zoom in on one of those trees, you see a leaf. And we learn that if you zoom in on that leaf, you will find cells and other kinds of cells that make a cell wall in the plant. And then you learn that if you zoom in even more in the cell, you will find something called chloroplasts. Has anybody heard chloroplasts? So if you haven't, you're learning about an ayah for the first time. There's something called chloroplasts inside the cell. And that if you zoom in to the chloroplasts, there is something called chlorophyll, which is a molecule and is very difficult to draw. But subhanAllah, interestingly, this molecule actually does take the shape of a daffodil, which is very beautiful. So it actually looks like this. I know it looks like a flower, but actually this is a diagram for a molecule. It actually looks that way. So you have learned one ayah, two ayahs, nine ayahs, ten. If you want to use each concept, cell is an ayah, chlorophyll is an ayah, chloroplast is an ayah. Let's write it so that chloroplasts. There's a thing in here that we in our age call chloroplasts. We don't know actually what it's called. Allah knows actually what it's called because Allah created everything and He knows the actual names of things. But in our time, in our context, because of history, it so happens that we have called this chloroplasts. We will find out what it's actually called. This is called chlorophyll. Okay. Didn't Allah create all of these things? Right? What's your name? Hanifa, masha'Allah. Allah created all these things, right? These are all signs of Allah, right? This is also a sign of Allah? Yeah? These are also signs of Allah? Yes. Hanifa, if I ask you, if somebody memorized this, have you memorized any Quran Hanifa? Masha'Allah. So if you memorize this ayah, for example, and let's say there's somebody, Hanifa who memorizes this ayah, but they go their whole life and they never learn what this ayah means. Is that sad? Sad. But what about these ayahs? These are also ayahs. Aren't these ayahs? Everybody agrees these are ayahs of Allah? Everybody agrees just like the sign that the point is not the ayah, the point is what it's pointing to, right? So we all know that this has a meaning and we ask, Oh, Astaghfirullah, what is the meaning of this ayah? You ask your Quran teacher, what is the meaning of this ayah? Because you want to learn the whole point of the ayah. But let me ask you a question. When was the last time you heard somebody ask their science teacher, oh science teacher, what's the meaning of chloroplast? What is the meaning of chlorophyll? Does this sound like an odd question to us? Raise your hand if it sounds like an odd question. Odd question, isn't it? But hold on. Why should it be an odd question? Don't you all believe? I believe. We all believe. We're in this room. We all believe that chloroplast is an ayah of Allah. Why has it not ever occurred to me to ask what does chloroplast, what does a chloroplast mean? What does a tree mean? What does chlorophyll mean? Isn't the point of an ayah its meaning? The point of this ayah is its meaning. We all agreed in this room that if you go your whole life and you learn these ayahs, you memorize them, but you never learn their meaning, you'll say how sad. Completely miss the point. Completely miss the point. But we go through our whole lives literally doing hives of all these ayahs. Look, I went into science and for those, we all have a certain amount of science that we have to do as part of our curriculum. How many little bits of knowledge in our mind? DNA and ribosome and cell structure and gravity and E equals MC squared and forces. Are these not ayahs? What will happen? Isha, you tell me. If you're in a science class and you ask your science teacher, what's the meaning of this ayah? What does this mean? What does chlorophyll mean? Because that's the point. Is it not the point of the ayah? What will the science teacher say to you? It will explain to you that this word means this molecule. Yes? However, what if you ask them, what does a tree mean? They'll be puzzled. Why will they be puzzled? Yes. They'll assume that you know that the word, when I say tree, that this equals this thing that we see outside. Yes? Yes. However, when I say, this is very good, which you said is very good, it's making me think, this by itself is a sign of Allah swt. Just like this is a sign of Allah swt. This has a meaning. The meaning of this is this. That's true. But what's the meaning of this? It is a sign of Allah. You're right. Just like this is a sign of Allah. What's the meaning of this, Aya? That's the meaning, right? But what's the meaning of this? When you look at a tree, what's the meaning of it? Do you know? Okay. Yes? Yes? Yes? Yes? This is good. So what you're doing is, so what Isha is doing is, he's going into his knowledge and he's saying, what other stuff do I know about trees? And he's mentioning, trees give us oxygen, trees give food, trees give shade. However, what you just did was you mentioned other signs. Yes? Food is a sign. Oxygen is a sign of Allah. Shade is a sign of Allah. So the way that you answered the question right now was, if I asked you, what does this Aya mean? This one. And then instead of telling me the meaning of it, you said, well, there's another Aya that says this and there's another Aya and there's another Aya and there's another Aya. But that wasn't my question. Do you see? The question was, what does this mean? We have this, we have this meaning. We understand when we read this that it means something. But when we read this, we don't even know, what does that even mean to say that a tree has a meaning? A tree has a meaning. Is it not a sign? Any questions? I know. So, exactly. So, you learn this Aya, you learn this Aya, you learn this Aya, you learn this Aya, you learn this Aya. Just like you learn kullahu wallahu ahad qun Aya, Allahu samad another Aya, lam yelaydu wa lam yulad another Aya, wa lam yakullahu kufu an ahad another Aya. You learn these four Ayas. This is a little bit good, it's a strange concept because we're so not used to thinking about it this way. That a tree has meanings. And those meanings, they ultimately go back to Allah's Parantala. And the way that we try to understand that is we do it through understanding Allah's Parantala's names. So, for example, when you look at a tree, for example, and you see that it has these beautiful grand all of these leaves that come out. And when you look at the green, it's easy on the eyes. And when you look at the leaves flowing in the wind, then it gives you feelings of ease. It gives you feelings of relaxing. It makes you feel at ease. When you feel the heat of the sun and then you go underneath that shade, you feel all of a sudden a relief. And so, as you feel and experience these things, because you know that this tree is a sign and all of these things you're experiencing from the sign of Allah, you know that Allah is the one that gives you relief. That Allah is the one that is gentle. That Allah is the one that is easy on His slaves. And many, many, many, many, many different names from that tree you learn. When you mentioned also that the tree gives food, it gives food to us and it gives fruits to insects and it gives food to birds. And the more you learn in your science class all the different things that it gives food to, the more you're able to learn more names of Allah swt. Those names are the meanings of the things that we study. But, does that make a little bit more sense now? Let me just stop there. Are there any questions? Yes. Allah swt. Okay, so when we look up... Okay, so here's an important thing. All of you guys have young kids, okay? How old is the bus? These two. So what we want to help ourselves first do and help our children also do from a young age is that when we direct them to look at the signs of Allah in creation, instead of taking them just from one to the next, you want them to, whatever eye they're experiencing, to be able to reflect on their meanings. And how do we do that? So just a quick example is that you look up at the sky and instead of... especially if you have a science background, instead of your mind going into why is the sky blue and there's a reflection of the this and then there's bacteria or whatever, I don't even actually know why the sky is blue. And then there's clouds and you see these big white clouds and then instead of your mind going to clouds are actually water droplets, H2O, that is condensed. This is not the point of the cloud. Allah didn't create the cloud simply so that your mind would just bounce from one sign to another. Allah swt created the cloud so that when you look at the cloud, your mind goes from the cloud to Allah. The way that we do that is we say, oh look, how does that cloud look to you? Just to your eyes. Oh it looks so white and fluffy but it's fluffy, it looks soft and it looks gentle but it's so big, right Hanifa? Aren't clouds so big? They're huge but they're so soft and fluffy and you feel like you could just hug it. It would be so nice if you could just sleep on one. Right? Yeah! That's how you feel. You see that response? That's how we should feel when we see a cloud. But even the best part, even better part is that understand that the reason the cloud is that way is because that's the way that Allah is. The reason the cloud is so big is because Allah is grand. The reason the cloud is fluffy is because Allah is gentle. The reason the cloud is can turn dark. And the Prophet SAW when he, our teacher, he taught us that if you want to think like the Sahaba thought how the Prophet SAW thought as best as we can understand from the Hadith that we have then I can pretty much bet that it wasn't when they saw the cloud coming they're like, is this a quinoa nimbus or a quinoa stratus? That's probably not what was going through their Mubarak minds. We actually have evidence from, of course we're not there to follow the Prophet SAW around throughout his life but you can get a sense of how the Prophet SAW would respond to nature. At one time it was raining and he took off his shirt and exposed his chest to the rain because he wanted to feel the mercy of Allah on his being directly. Or another time when the clouds were coming and they were looking angry. You know clouds look angry sometimes before a storm like very gray and dark like exactly like before a thunderstorm. So the Prophet SAW saw these clouds and they said his Mubarak face turned pale. And he became anxious appearing and he rushed into the masjid and he started praying. When they asked him he said I was concerned that maybe because a messenger has been sent and the people aren't accepting the message what if Allah is sending the azab that he sent on the prior nations? But then when I saw that the rain came and it was a mercy then I realized no this is Allah's mercy. Meaning the Prophet SAW is asking himself what does this mean? Allah is creating these dark clouds what does it mean? So does this give a little bit more of a clear understanding that when we say this tree has a meaning we all understand this ayah has a meaning. We all understand that if somebody memorizes all these ayahs but they never understand what does it mean it's a shame. But the same is true for these ayahs. Does that make sense? Yes. I wonder if I'll ever see a I wonder if I'll ever see a poem as lovely as a tree. And it's a whole poem about it. That ends with the God. I forget the last verse. Can you repeat that? Poems are made by fools like me but only God can make a tree. Poems are made by fools like me but only God can make a tree. That's how the poem ends. That's a good example of how we want to bring a lot of our reflections and our homeschooling teaching of Allah's signs with poetry from language arts. That might be a natural way to extend bringing about reflection. Yes. Just a quick step back the program that you have that you are involved in with the Rose Garden here this is very important to you know these are it's an environment where you're able to explore these kinds of ideas about sharing like for example what sister Sana just said using poetry at the right age for helping children interact with nature understand nature, experience nature and give verse expression to it through these beautiful words as opposed to just like a textbook that just says this, this, this, this robot. That shouldn't be the means by which they approach Allah swt signs. Poetry is actually a very beautiful way to approach Allah swt signs because Allah swt signs itself are a kind of poetry Allah swt signs Allah swt signs are Allah swt statements in a sense obviously the statements of Allah in the Quran are uncreated eternal that's a different matter but Allah swt the tree is a created statement of Allah swt so we have to ask what is Allah saying now what I wanted to share with you in addition to all this is kind of an introduction is that right now when we study science we become very well practiced over years from K through 12 at learning just what all the signs are and never ever thinking about the meaning because we are taking it from a poem from a people that the way they have structured the curricula the way that they have the way that they teach it and because it's based on what they believe the people who design the curricula in general they don't believe that it has meaning now again of course there are poets and there are people all over that feel that it does but the issue is that in terms of the pedagogy meaning the methods of how it's taught in the classroom and that extends to me pretty much every homeschooling curriculum as well pretty much sisters can correct me on that but in general the way that science is taught the way that we interact with nature is through our science classes and the way that those science classes are taught is essentially practicing the mind it's practicing the mind in not seeing means so much so that if you ask somebody well what is the meaning of a tree they will just I don't really understand what you mean but if you ask somebody what is the meaning of this they understand what you mean but it should be that when we're studying in our science classes that we are constantly learning new meanings as we're learning each and everything so the issue is that we have a very well structured curriculum in science classes that teaches you to look at everything from like a meaningless perspective and so what we try to do in our was we try to help kids construct their own glasses that they can put on and then pick up any science textbook for example and then because they put those glasses on they are able to see the meanings and those glasses what are they made of they're made of so basically what we try to do in our and this is what I'm going to do with you in the last 45 minutes is we try to create these little mind glasses that you don't have to make a new textbook that is like an Islamic science textbook it's not necessary all we need to do is we need to just understand what Allah has said in the Quran and what the Messenger of Allah has said and what the Ulama have said about those two sources and we're going to ask you some questions and everybody will then make their own glasses that then they can put them on and they can read the sign and realize and understand what is their meaning as opposed to just like we read these signs and we understand what is their meaning so that's going to just a little bit abstract so I'm just going to dive into this and then inshallah hopefully it will be I don't know yeah so one ayah of the Quran we cannot say that it is limited in its meaning there is an utterance of Allah SWT so similar what Khilr is saying is that similar to that a single ayah whether it's a tree or a chloroplast or anything else actually its meanings are unending because it points to the one who is unending and beginningless so there's plenty of meaning for everybody and everybody so anyway we'll just pause there before we go on any comments or questions anyway yeah yeah when we were reciting certain verses of the Quran and Tataway prayer like a lot of people were crying because it was affecting them and I always thought like why are they crying how is it affecting them, what does it mean so when I was a kid when I was a child when I would hear people telling me a lot of people were crying because as a child at that time you couldn't understand it is that what you're saying I didn't know what it meant it wasn't going in and the tears weren't coming so my goal this is my dua is that if somebody has to study E equals MC squared they cry every Muslim whether they're studying liposomes or E equals MC squared that when they read it they cry why should it not be because these are the signs of Allah why should it not be like you're saying exactly this is a beautiful thing that you just said but I didn't understand the meaning so I couldn't really relate I couldn't understand the meaning of the eyes of the Quran just to give a framework a way of thinking made up of the basics of the Quran and the Hadith that now it equips each Muslim that they can read the meanings of the ayah just like you need to learn Arabic if you want to learn the ayahs in the Quran then you need to learn a little bit of Arabic and you need to know a little bit of Fiqh you read the ayah establish the prayer for my remembrance you need to know a little bit of Arabic these are basics you need to know a little bit of Fiqh that Afim of Salah what does that mean it means pray five times a day what does Salah mean, how do you do that it means pray like this, make wudu like this do like this you need to know a little bit of the soul of what is zikr you need to know all of these different things basics, basics so that you can understand that when Allah swt established the prayer for my remembrance what does it mean but instead of for the ayat in the Quran for the ayat in creation this is the program that we've tried to develop which we taught our own kids over about six months or so but we're trying to condense it into like a three, four day intensive for young teens so bismillah let's get started yes, Hanifa you have a question please okay can I make the question easier for me what about what does what about if you wanted to ask what does the sky mean are you saying that that sounds like a strange question that's a very, very very important question and I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to continue to show you what I'm going to show you and then afterwards you can see if answer your question or if it didn't I don't know if it will but I'll do my best that's a good question hold on to that question okay, Hanifa how old are you 9 alright so all of you are now 12 or 13 years old as far as I'm concerned but you answer the questions as you are I'm going to talk to you though like you're 12 or 13 so you just got like three more years okay kids does everybody here know what is a spectrum does anybody know what is a spectrum okay what is a spectrum or you can give an example if you've heard of it okay so I'm going to show you a spectrum this is a spectrum we have a hot water tap over here there's the water coming out this is the hot water and we have a cold water tap over here this is cold water this is 100% hot water the hottest the hottest the hottest if you put your hand under this you might burn yourself this is really really really totally 100% cold water 100% cold 100% hot Hanifa how is the temperature of the water here is it more hot or is it more cold still hot but is it less hot than here it's less hot than here so this is still hot what about um what about the temperature of the water here it's less cold than here is there some hotness of water here so there is maybe we could say 75% for example cold here and 25% hot but it's mostly cold because it's on the cold side and what about on this side mostly hot it's mostly hot but there's still some cold some cold um what about over here what about here Rahma what's the temperature here this is the middle point close to medium so medium would be what does that mean in terms of how much hot is there and how much cold is there yeah this is getting close to 50-50 right we're getting close to 50-50 so what about right here Hanifa how is the water temperature right there not all the way at this side but it's right next to it 90 or like 99% right 99% so wait a minute that means this is 99% cold yes so what's the other 1% there's a little tiny bit of heat still left by the time you get all the way to this side there's still some heat so a spectrum is when you start with a lot and you slowly gradually become less to the other slowly gradually come less to the other and you could you could do the same from this side too right it's really cold and it slowly gradually becomes less and in the middle is the perfect middle mixing point where exactly where they both meet so I should actually make this more accurate right here this is actually the 50-50 so this this is an example of a spectrum this is actually a two-sided spectrum so a spectrum is when you start on one side and it's a lot and then you gradually change to the other side any questions so now I have something to tell you that maybe you haven't heard before Hanifa but here's this very interesting fact that we learn from Allah and His messenger so Allah is His messenger that all of Allah's creation is a spectrum all of Allah's creation so I'm going to draw this again but in Allah's creation instead of hot and cold that's interesting that's a nice idea that sounds like heaven and earth sky and sea close on one side of the spectrum is the unseen world this person knows a lot in Arabic we call it on the other side of the spectrum we have the seen world or the seen world or another word for it another phrase for it which Imam Ghazali taught us is the world of quantity and measurement which means the world of quantity and measurement what does quantity mean it has to do with numbers the amount of something and measurement means measure something so on one side is the world of the seen which you can see, touch, feel hear, smell, taste and on the other side is the unseen so now I'm going to go around I'm going to ask each person I'm going to say something and I want you all to tell me where it should go on the spectrum on this side is the seen on the other side is the unseen and this is in the middle since we were talking about this Um Hanifa tree in the seen side should I put it here does everybody agree that's where the tree should go yes why do you think it should go here so the point that you're making if I understood you correctly is that remember that this is a spectrum so things that are the most seen are all the way on this side and things that are really really unseen are all the way on this side it's all Allah's creation but I'm going to leave both these trees up here for now I tend to agree with Doha but we're going to see what happens how about what about Jannah Jannah and Jahannam where should we put that the unseen here Hanifa what do you think you're seeing here or this is fine this is all unseen right here closer to this side closer to this side okay feel differently okay so we'll put Jannah here okay how about how about how about cells how about cells where should we put cells so like here this way cells yes well I think we're going to put this tree here so I'm going to remove this tree because remember it's most seen all the way to this side and it becomes less seen as you go across obviously right so where if tree is here where should cells go so sorry before meaning this way or this way left of the tree or right of the tree right of the tree okay so like here for example okay so cells are but Hanifa do you know what a cell is you know what a cell is have you ever seen a cell with your eyes no but you believe in cells but you've never seen it with your eyes okay so do you believe in cells who believes in cells who has seen a cell with their eyes through a microscope you've seen a cell who has seen a cell through a microscope okay so some people have not so Hanifa you haven't seen a cell through a microscope yeah but you believe in cells so have you ever seen a cell no and lots of them I'm announcing right next to you she's never seen a cell the real is over here actually there's lots of people who haven't seen cells but they all believe in cells but you've never seen one so how do you know that it's there beautiful excellent answer masha Allah he said you've never seen a cell but you know that cells exist yes but you never saw it for yourself but you know that there are other people that have seen cells and you trust those people isn't it right Hanifa maybe did your dad tell you about cells you learn from your teachers at school and you trust your teachers at school right you should trust your teachers at school right you believe in cells yeah but you never seen it but you believe in it because you trust maybe your dad told you maybe your mom told you maybe your teachers told you wait hold on but what if you saw a picture of a cell in a textbook or on a YouTube video then can you say you've seen a cell not really right because somebody could have drawn it it's still just a picture it's not the actual thing if you look under a microscope yes then you will see for yourself a cell however if you haven't seen it for yourself then you just have to rely you have to trust somebody else and that's perfectly fine thing to do we trust people who believes in China raise your hand if you believe in China everybody believe in China has anybody seen China here in this room none of us have seen China but China exists yeah okay how do you know that China exists people haven't but you haven't so how do you know how does Hanifa know that China is real yes so there were other people that went to China they saw it and then they came back and they told their family and their family told other people and it spread around and so you learn that China exists China exists cells exist but the way that some people learn about them is by trusting others yes and the way that others learn about them is by trusting other people in like a chain right one person told another told another told another and there were so many people told you that China exists that you and you trust all those people I believe I trust that China exists yes so this is some very important thing I want to explain to you that if you really think about it there's really only three ways that you can that you Ishrat that you Om Mariam that you Om Hanifa that you Doha there's only three ways that you can know if something exists or not or if something is true or not there's only three and your homework assignment will be to challenge to find something besides these three what are those three the first is direct observation you saw the thing with your own eyes the actual thing not a picture of a cell in a textbook but you actually looked in a microscope and you saw the cell with your own eyes you went to China and you saw that China is a place that's one way of knowing directly see, hear, touch, feel then the other way the second way is what we call sound reasoning I'm sorry, I'm sorry sound report sound report meaning yes so we'll come back to news another time let's just pretend that somebody comes to that door right now and they say oh my goodness there's a building down the street it's on fire it's on fire and none of us know this person he's just a stranger off the street but he does seem concerned maybe we'll believe him we'll probably believe him but we're not sure well we don't have to you just told me you believe in China without seeing with your own eyes right so ideally yes you're right that's the way that it should be is that oh I know this person Amotare comes into the door and he says we need to get out of here there's a fire next door and we all trust Amotare completely we know him we know his character we know who he is and so we say okay we believe you we don't even need to see it we just run out the other side but what if somebody that we don't really know comes in from this side and he says there's a fire and then somebody else comes in from that door and there's a fire now we don't know any of these three people but all three of them are saying the same thing building next door it's got a blue roof it's got green doors it's a very strange building it's got a pink walls and the other one also says there's a house next door it's got a blue roof it's got pink walls it's got a green door and the other person says the same thing and we don't know them but they're all saying the same thing so we say okay this is probably true right this is probably true so now we have based on report from somebody without seeing it we believe it and that's perfectly good most of our knowledge actually comes from this category really if you think about it I mean we know all kinds I know that there's a country called Papua New Guinea probably will never go there in my life but I know that it exists I know that there's all kinds of strange sea creatures that I've seen on TV I wasn't there to see those sea creatures with my eyes somebody took a video camera took a picture of it and then showed me the image so that's report I know all of these things exist so most of our knowledge actually comes from trusting other people exactly just like that lemurs only live in Madagascar I don't know how about what if lemurs live in Ethiopia no but from what I say I read a textbook in the textbook it said lemurs live in Madagascar I trust the person who runs the textbook company I trust the writer of the textbook I trust the person who took the picture I trust all of the people that worked to get that textbook to me I'm a very trusting person I trust a lot of people but that's okay that's how it's supposed to be who knows what was the name that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was known by even before he received revelation from Allah swt what does that mean Hanifa masha Allah beautiful Muslims have such wonderful names the trustworthy the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was the trustworthy so that's the second way of knowing something before we get to the third way of knowing something we only have 10 minutes and this is another 2 hours that's okay so let's do this what about angels where should angels go on this on the unseen side where should we put angels on the unseen side okay here alright does anybody feel differently mission the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and prophets in general they see angels yes okay yes that's a very important point and we're actually going to come to that but first so prophets can see angels yes okay who else sees angels of course Allah swt sees everything but who else in creation sees angels yes we have heard I don't know exactly where it comes from but I've experienced this and we've heard this from people of knowledge that young babies can see angels what about outside the human world yes the roosters prophets sallallahu alaihi wa sallam yes animals can see angels the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam informed us that when the rooster crows in the morning he sees angels by the way this is a very interesting point I was reading some science articles about roosters and when they crow and they don't crow when the sun comes up or when the dawn comes they crow right before that which is at the hajjah time before the dawn comes there's so many angels that are coming down at that time so many angels so that's when the roosters crow so and that can help somebody get up at the hajjah this is the most important point so Hanifa let me ask you a question prophets see angels babies can see angels sometimes roosters see angels so where should we put angels over here on the unseen side here okay but some people do prophets see some very righteous people also sometimes can see angels like pious people exactly roosters see angels roosters are on this side right somewhere over here prophets also here so how can we just leave them over there why should angels be I challenge now the folks in the audience why should angels be only on the unseen side because so many people that you see in this room these kinds of people some people can some people can't there's a hand up you think it should be here but close to the middle mark that sounds very reasonable there is one thing though that separates very clearly the things that we know on this side versus the things that we know about on this side yes so this is an important point that Sususana brings up is that even though we ordinary people we can't see angels but we feel angels who has felt Hanifa how does it feel Hanifa have you ever been to Makar Medina you have how did you feel when you were in Medina you felt like you were in ease why did you feel so happy why do you think you felt so happy in Medina and at ease I was at a peaceful place there's a lot of peace and quiet around masha'Allah do you know what it was that you were feeling there no one of course the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is there you feel the effect of his soul that is there but the other thing can you imagine how many angels there must be in Medina so when you feel that peace in Medina you are feeling the presence of angels actually you know one time I was in a masjid in Long Island in New York and it was the last 10 days of Ramadan and we were doing our taravi prayers and we invited some non-muslim neighbors and experienced the taravi prayers and they sat for the whole taravi in the back the women put their jobs on and everybody sat there and at the end of it when they left they all were saying so peaceful so wonderful so peaceful now they are actually feeling because the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that whenever people gather to remember Allah angels gather around them and they also they stack from this arm all the way all the way up so imagine the effect of that of course hearts were going to feel it but can we know let's say there is a non-muslim they don't know about Allah and his messenger but they can feel the peace so do they know for sure if they don't have somebody to tell them do they know for sure that these are angels that they are making me feel this way they don't know for sure they may understand there is something called angels they may understand there is something called sakina that's another thing that Allah has created sakina is also a creation of Allah they understand these things they understand that they might exist but do they know that that's the thing that's making them feel at peace right now they don't know how do we as Muslims know though that angels exist how do we know the prophet the trustworthy because Allah showed him and he saw it with his eyes and his heart and then he informed us because he is a Nubbi the messenger Rasul is messenger what does Nubbi mean we say prophet but actually what does it mean what does Nubbi actually mean prophet in English means someone that tells you something about the future Prophet S.A.W. did tell us something about the future but that's not all that he told us about he told us much more than that what does Nubbi mean Surah Naba information, news, yes Zahid meaning a Nubbi is somebody who informs he informs you of something that you can't know otherwise so the prophet S.A.W. the point that we are saying here is that anything that is on this side of the spectrum the way that you can know about it for sure, for sure, for sure is through this way through sound report through the prophet, through Allah or his messenger S.A.W. telling us now as we said you can feel the presence of angels that you don't need that for but to know that definitely there are angels and definitely there is something called Sakina that comes down on the hearts of the believers and that definitely there is something called Jannah you need a prophet to inform you of that of course there are many, many people that were not Muslim or not Christian or not Jewish and they thought that there must be some afterlife there are many people like that they thought there must be some afterlife but how can I know for sure there is no way there is the yes go ahead is it real? but there is a specific type of person you have to ask who is the only person that can tell you for sure if Jannah or Jahannam or angels exist like prophets the prophets the prophets are the ones that have been given knowledge of the unseen and they inform us they inform you of that which you don't know that's the way that you know for sure so if you meet somebody and they are like yeah I don't know if I believe in the afterlife or I think that maybe there is angels that makes sense if they are not Muslim because they haven't accepted a Nabi of course Christians will because they accepted Issa they made certain mistakes after that yes but they accepted Issa and Issa they are the same thing that other Anbiyah taught that there is something as Jannah and Jahannam and angels so actually we have maybe 2-3 minutes we'll just go right until the end I think so you can't directly observe angels in most cases but you can know for sure that angels exist through sound reports and you can also experience them through sound reports okay so then what about so what should we put angels over here angels have to be on this side because you can only know about it from hearing from somebody else trick question where does Allah SWT go it's a trick question remember this spectrum is about Allah's creation is Allah creation no Allah doesn't belong on this Allah is above all of this He's above all of this so this is just about what Allah has created okay quickly wifi where should wifi go 50 mark anybody agree or disagree you feel like it should be over here why can you tell me why you think wifi should be there have you ever seen wifi it's unseen but you can't maybe you could feel vibration with wifi you can measure wifi yes you can use it and you can measure it so it goes in this world of quantity and measurement but it is kind of it's more unseen than cells and cells are more unseen than trees so remember this is the spectrum it's becoming more unseen as we go this way okay now last one minute this is usually a half an hour conversation but we're going to do it in 30 seconds where should the human being go on this yes Hanifa because mashallah yes you can see people everywhere so you should put them all the way here but hold on it's not so simple yes arms, legs, lungs, heart eyeballs, yes many parts hold on Hanifa do you have a soul yes we have souls so where does the soul go because doha api what she said we have souls so where should the soul go okay so we're going to put the human here and we're going to put the soul over here soul is just brain anyway right don't think so why did you say dead okay so then we should put it this way right in the dead center right in the dead center so at this point this is when I pick on the kids and I ask them I ask them to tell me how do they know that I'm talking to them and they're like well my brain does this my brain does that my brain does this so then we explain to them we tell them a whole story and we're going to quickly go through because so we're going to do a Qama right so we tell them a whole story that you live your life, you go through your life imagine that you become grandpa one day and then you're on your death bed you are lying there and then all of a sudden you see the angel of death coming to you and because Alhamdulillah you lived your life well it looks beautiful he looks beautiful and the angel of death he takes you and now you are above your body and you're seeing your body and you see your family come into the room and they realize that their grandfather passed away and they start crying and you feel bad but what you feel mostly is you feel very much like a thirst and they're very careful when they wash your body because the Sharia says that because actually you feel everything that they do to you and then when they put you in the grave you see everybody, the last person walks away and then you see Munkar and Nikir come and then you start you have to answer the questions and then after they leave, inshallah your grave is expanded then you feel at peace and you actually, Imam Ghazali says you will actually remember to the point that even when I was in the dunya I was wearing a shirt and the person who is in regret will feel deep sadness and pain and regret so you are in the grave you are seeing, you are hearing you are feeling, you are thinking you are experiencing you are remembering but your brain is being eaten by worms just like right now you are seeing and hearing and thinking and feeling it is because you are not your brain you are your soul right now when you hear me and you are thinking about what I am saying and you are thinking and you are worrying about salah it is all your soul that is happening so salah has started we are going to just completely ruin it and we are going to do it this way human being cannot go in one place like you have said the human being is actually their own spectrum and it goes across the whole thing because you have your body and you have your heart and you have your cells and you also have a wifi that goes between your heart and your brain and you have akal and you have nas and you have karb and you have sir and you have ruah and it goes from all the way one side to the other and this is why Allah swt says that we will show them our signs outside and within themselves always it is the whole world and also the human being you know what let's quickly meet after salah and we will take questions and then we will finish because that is the live side that is a big question so Hennifer you were asking a question before we were saying that the human being we have the body like our arms and legs and everything inside but we also have cells inside us too our body is also made of cells well so this is the issue is that human beings we have we have right because why think about it you have your arms can you see my arms you can see me so I have to be here like next to the tree but I also have cells all my body your body are made of cells and we also have soul but soul goes would go over here so it is like my arms and legs go here the cells that my arms and legs are made of they go here and then did you know also we have Wi-Fi inside us did you know that it is not exactly Wi-Fi but they are in our heart our heart sends special like kind of like radio waves they are like unseen radio waves yeah and nerves are cells nerves are kind of cells so that is nerves and then I don't know if you know guys know this but you can actually measure the effect feelings of gratitude so if somebody is feeling grateful that actually looks a certain way when you can actually measure you know how you have a heartbeat it is not exactly regular it is not like dub dub and then 50 milliseconds it is not like that there is between each heartbeat the time changes a little bit and when we measure those time changes it is called heart rate variability meaning the time between each heartbeat changes so when we measure those changes we can actually find patterns that when somebody is feeling grateful the heartbeat variability looks different it looks like a smooth line and when somebody is feeling agitated or hateful heartbeat variability you can trace it on a piece of paper actually looks angry and they have also measured that depending of course on the strength of the person's gratitude and their soul and all these things this is like my top student right here absolutely so the heart belongs but where is the sugar in the heart where is that sugar happening is it so where does that come from that comes from our soul the sugar is in your the heart is not this thing inside here that is beating like this the heart is something that is unseen so you have gratitude, you feel sugar you feel gratefulness in your heart and your physical heart over here responds to that and we can measure that we can measure the effect of the unseen and you have your akr and you have your nafs and you have something called khayyar which is our imaginative faculty our imagination imagination doesn't just have to do with unicorns imagination is something much more grand than that just a whole different discussion that we will get to another time inshallah but the point is like Hanifa was saying is that there is a spectrum because you can't just put a human being just here because we are not just jisim it's not just our body and we can't just put it over here because it's not just spirit so actually the human being is also its own spectrum and then if you take the whole course right what you will learn by the end of it is that actually Allah swt has made the seen world very small compared to the unseen world so actually it's not really it's not really like this what I showed you here was just a teaching tool it's not actually it's not actually like this and this is unseen and this is seen it's actually like this and this is seen and this is all unseen the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that this that the we have seven heavens and the lowest heaven which is when you look up at our entire universe is the lowest heaven so meaning the whole universe from big bang and everything all of that every single galaxy and all of the stars that takes light millions of years to travel through is the lowest heaven the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that the example of the lowest heaven to the second heaven is like a ring in a desert so this whole universe that is expanding in every single moment is like a ring in the desert compared to the second heaven the second heaven compared to the third heaven is like a ring in a desert and the third heaven so it goes exactly by the time you get all the way up the seven heaven it's ring in the desert ring in the desert all the way and then actually if you look at the hadith it says the seven heavens and the kursi all together are like a ring in the desert compared to the throne yes, Allahu Akbar I love these kids, Masha'Allah they are just on it Masha'Allah what's your name? Masha'Allah so what that shows us is that actually I call it the iceberg principle you know icebergs the iceberg is like it looks really big when you look at it on top of the water when you look under the water it's actually like this on the top it looks really big the iceberg it's much bigger you call it iceberg principle or actually it's called the Akbar principle everything you look at in this dunya always it's actually bigger it's actually much greater because Allah is yes and it's like huge underneath yes, exactly so then this kind of step by step we show the kids different Quranic ayat and hadith, we have conversations we kind of take it just like what we're doing with Hanifa and they answer the questions and they will try to put it we do more examples so that it kind of goes and then we say, well Allah swt actually said that there's seven heavens so this is also still not correct because actually what it's really like is like this this is our scene world and this is the unseen and these are seven heavens six, seven and remember this is actually not even correct because remember this whole heaven which is our whole universe is just a ring in the desert compared to this one and this is just a ring in the desert compared to this one and this is just a ring in the desert compared to this one and this is just a ring in the desert compared to this one so actually it gets so big that I couldn't even fit it in this room let alone in the sky that's how big it is and we will talk more and more but remember we talk about there are patterns we can't go into all of it but Allah swt has told us much more about all of this Allah swt has told us a lot that Allah swt gives a command that when He gives a command every single time He gives a command Allah swt gives did you guys watch that video on the thing that we sent in that you see when He talks about shooting stars Prophet ﷺ is informing about shooting stars that when Allah swt commands something first when He utters gives the command the angels by the throne they glorify Allah swt and then the angels in the next heaven down they hear that glorification and then they glorify Allah swt and in the angels in the next heaven down they hear that glorification and then they glorify it keeps on going all the way until the angels all the way down here and then the Prophet ﷺ said the angels at the world he doesn't say ask the angels that are near the throne, what has your Lord commanded? So then the angels inform them, so the angels that are up here holding the throne, they up here, they tell, give the command, they say this is what he commanded. So they say it to these angels, who then say it to these angels, who then say it to these angels, who then make that command occur in this life. So this is happening at all moments for every single thing that is happening in creation. The angels have a lot of work and there are a lot of angels. And there are other things that we can learn that become important, that become part of developing the mindset of meaning to be able to look at the creation. So for example, some of the Olimah that they say that as you go up further in the heavens, things become simpler and clearer. And as you go down towards our world, things become multiple and more and many and less clear. You can kind of think of it as like the higher you go, the purer it is, and the lower you go, the more murky it gets. If you kind of imagine Allah swt as being above all of His creation, obviously Allah swt is not in any direction. We all know this would appear that we discussed these things. Allah swt is not in any particular direction. Allah swt does not literally sit on His throne. Allah swt is not above or left or right or up or down. Directions do not apply to Allah swt. But we have the way, the system that He has created in His creation is that as you go higher, you become purer, which makes sense. As you go higher, it becomes purer. And as you come down, it becomes less pure and more things and impure and little bit darker as you come down. And there's much more we talk about. So by the time we are done with all of this, then we can now talk about anything. We can talk about natural selection. We can talk about physics. We can talk about chemistry. And we know where it goes. We know what we're talking about. So all the way down here. And we know that everything that happens down here, it only ever happens as a result of the command coming all the way through. So when you see a tree, and Allah swt is above everything. And Allah and all of His beautiful and magnificent names are above everything. So when you see a tree, what you are actually seeing is not a tree. What you are actually seeing is the command of Allah as if it has taken the shape of all of His names that make up that tree. He is gentle and He is kind and He provides risk. And He is firm and He is strong because the bark is firm and it's strong. And He is, you know, all the reflections. The point of it is not that we feed children reflections. That's not the point. The point is not to be like, hey, when you see a tree, it's A, B, C, D, E, F, G. These are all the names of Allah. You should memorize this for this. That's not the point. The point is we give all of the background knowledge so that everything that you look at, you realize, oh, this is so much greater than just the thing that I'm looking at. When I look at this tree, this is actually the result of this command that is coming down. And all of His names and what names are manifest in this tree? Now that's called science. That's the whole point of studying nature. The whole point of studying nature is to understand what is its meaning? What names of Allah are here? What does this really mean? I was talking to Khidr just now about, for future sessions, to do some exercises that we can do kind of these exercises where we look, have a tree, or we have whatever it is, and then we can go through and reflect on the meanings of it. There's a lot more. This is normally something that's done over weeks. So we tried to condense it in a couple of hours. So inshallah we'll stop there because it's 2 o'clock. Is there any questions, comments, or anything inshallah? I know. The kind of work that you're doing at the Rose Garden with the kids from a young age, that's very important. You can just take one thing away from when you talk to your children about anything in the creation. If they're coming up with their own explanations for a thing, that's good. Let them give their own explanations. Sometimes they'll say, Bala, do you know why the tree grows like this and then they'll say something that is completely not what is the reality? But it's okay. Don't have to correct them, especially at a young age. They just let them explore. They're rather also to turn their attention more to looking and experiencing things, what you experience with your eyes and your ears and your touch and your taste. Instead of giving them bits of information that it took actually 500 years to understand, okay, cloud is actually condensed to H2O, which is actually not even really true in reality, but whatever, that's what it says in the textbook. It took us like a thousand years to get to that point. It doesn't really help you do anything, especially not at a young age. What we want to teach our children at a young age is what's important to know about nature, that this tells us about something about Allah. So the way to do that is what they do at the Rose Garden and other places is, actually I don't know if Rose Garden is the only place I know who does it, is that they have them experienced through their senses. That's all you need. This is what Allah gave us. That's all you need. You look with your eyes. What does the cloud look like? What does this feel like? Oh, it feels hard. It feels lumpy. It feels like silk. What do you hear? How does it make you feel? I mean, it doesn't have to be just with words. How does it make you feel right in an essay on it? That's how I work. But for kids, it's more just natural in the moment, present in the moment. They don't need these scientific explanations. Keep those away from their minds at a young age. Because what you want is you want to exercise, not the ability to figure out what's the scientific explanation for this. You want to exercise the ability to connect everything that they're seeing back to Allah. And you realize that if you want to help your child do that, you have to do that yourself. That is actually the harder work. That is actually the harder work. And that's where the discussion happens. And by the way, all of this stuff is really 10% of the formula. So if our goal is to preserve our iman and to draw closer to Allah through whatever it is that we study, then the way to do that is 90% of it is matters of the heart, and 10% of it is matters of the mind. So 90% of it is the love that you show your children. You tell them to make dua. We need to find a parking spot. Make dua. They made dua, you found a parking spot. Going to Makkah, going to Medina, going to the Masjid, going to school. They have a nice person that has positive experiences, beautiful experiences, feeling the peace of the Masjid, feeling the peace of the Dikr gatherings, parents that are taking care of each other and taking care of the kids, and all just the things that we all do as parents is we do our best. It's all in Allah's hands. We just do our best. We don't have to be perfect. We just have to do our best for Allah's sake. So that's 90% of it. But the 10% that's left is kind of like configuring the mind to deal with what's going to be a lifetime of studying science from a perspective where they say it's really exercising the meaningless muscle. That's how it's taught in the way that it is. Okay, fine. They want to present it that way? Fine, let them present it that way. We just need to put on the right glasses so that when we look and we study at these things, we can make these connections. So we know from the hadith that the Prophet ﷺ said that the roosters, they crow when they see the angels. And then we know from the science that the roosters, they crow not at the dawn, but before the dawn. We know that that's the same time as the Hajj. Now, in those articles that I was reading, they were going into the biological clock of the rooster. And they're going into the brain chemicals of the rooster. And that's all there. Those are all signs of Allah also. However, what the point that they are missing is that all of those things that are happening inside the rooster, they're happening inside the rooster. All of the brain chemicals or whatever it is that they were talking about, that happen, that is associated with the rooster crowing. The source of all of those things happening are commands that are descending from the Saba Sama Lot down. That's how it happens. You're missing the picture if you don't realize that actually. That's actually how it happens. So for example, when you hear that you're in the brain chemicals, this person is depressed, this person is sad. So we measure the brain chemicals and it was low and so we find there's an association between low brain chemicals and depression. Okay, fine. But actually what is the root cause of that? There's a soul. And something's going on with that soul. And as a result of that, those brain chemicals are changing. This is actually the reality of everything in this world. It's that its source is in the unseen and it manifests in the scene world. Like a waterfall that's coming down at all times. So this is all stuff that through many examples and discussions and different things, we try to create this mindset or this glasses of this way of looking at things. So you can read about E equals MC squared, you can read about chloroplasts, you can read about chlorophylls, you can read about trees, you can read about this, you can read about that and it's just subhanAllah, modify, make all of connections and see what it all means. We ask Allah for kulfi, inshallah. Yes, forest bathing. Yes, this is a very beautiful thing. Actually we were just hiking yesterday or today, I think yesterday and today. And we were out somewhere far and if you just stayed quiet, it was incredible. All you heard was you didn't hear any machines, you didn't hear any humming, buzzing, car horns, driving, highways. You just heard the wind to the leaves, the birds, the insects. And you can feel that effect on you. And other important things to understand in that is that we understand, Allah himself says very clearly in the Quran that everything is praising Him and glorifying Him. Everything in the heavens and the earth, but you just don't understand the language in which they do so. Now what that indicates is that everything is actually alive, because something cannot speak if it doesn't have life. So even the rocks, they have a certain amount of life in them, because Allah has created the rocks, they can't be without some effect of life in them. And the proof of that is that the time before the Prophet ﷺ received his wahi, the veil was lifted and as a miracle, he heard them say salam. In that moment, that was the glorification of the rocks for Allah in the form of their salam to the Prophet ﷺ. So rocks have meaning of life associated with Him. They are alive, but they're not as alive as a plant is, which is not as alive as a earthworm is, which is not as alive as a human being is. Now of course, biologically we understand the rock doesn't have life and the plant has life. That's also true, we understand that in that sense. But we must know from the, because we've been informed by a Nabi through the Quran that actually every single thing in nature, every single thing has life. The rocks have life, the dirt that you walk on has life. If it didn't have life, how could it be that when on Yom Kiyama, it's going to say that this believer prayed on me. The earth will testify. One of the Fouqaha wrote in his, I forgot his name, said that you know when you go into the Masjid and you, the Suf is there and you're late to join. So if there's, what you're supposed to do in the Fouqaha books is that if there's more people on the right side and there's less people on the left side, you're supposed to go and join on the side that there's less people to fill in the roads. So he says, he says the reason for it. He said, what's the, what's the Allah, what's the reason for this? The reason, he said, was because, and this is like a great, one of the great, I think, Shafiq Khuha. He said, because the wall on the left side is in pain. Because it is farther from the believers that are worshiping Allah than the wall on the right side. Allah says everything in the heavens and the earth praises Him. How can something be dead if it's praising Him? If it's praising Him, it's not. It's like everything is this, this thing is Allah. Everything has life associated with it. And actually I can do a whole separate, I can do a whole separate lesson that will actually show you through biology that to this day, biologists actually have great difficulty developing a criteria for what is considered alive and what is considered dead. To this day, they have difficulty. There are like 150 different criteria of life. What is life? What is dead? Which tells you, we really don't have, we really have no way to make a hard line between the two. Even from a strictly scientific perspective. Certain aspects are, yes. Yes, we try to address those things. The long-term goal is to have some books. The long-term goal is to have some books where we can do these things. That's the simple thing, they have criteria of life. That thing has to be growing, it has to be able to reproduce. It has to be able to have metabolism. There's like four or five things. But in every single criteria, they have that it has to be able to it has to be able to reproduce in order to be considered alive. Which means that by this criteria, one rabbit is not alive. Because one rabbit can't reproduce by itself, can it? Can one rabbit reproduce by itself? It cannot. So according to the criteria, it's not alive because it can't reproduce. It needs another. So meaning the point is the criteria are, if you actually look at them, they actually have cracks. And honestly, if you read the literature, these are all things we can talk about. Again, like I said, there are literally lengthy discussions to this day what counts as living, what counts as not living. Any time you have a situation where you're trying to develop a criteria for something and you have like 500 criteria, that means we don't really know what. We haven't been able to figure it out. And the reason is because, and actually SubhanAllah, I just read an article the other day, now they are coming and they're saying, actually maybe we have to acknowledge that actually things are alive even like at the atomic level. They're now actually even saying, just from our observations. So Alhamdulillah, finally they'll catch up to what the Haqq is. It will take them who knows how many years, right? So anyway. Okay, SubhanAllah. Any questions you can ask? Yeah. Yes. So you know how we kind of introduced this idea of layers of creation? So we go into that a lot more. And that's all, the first, we have two courses. The first course is the foundations knowing the world and knowing yourself. In that, we do the spectrum more, we talk about the human being and then we talk about the layers of creation. And actually we have a whole unit on what is the human being because there is a lot of claims about what we are in when you're studying natural science or you're studying psychology or studying these things. There's a lot of claims about what the human being is. Just a bunch of chemicals bouncing around in our heads and that produces all of our behavior. Neurobiologists tell us all standing in my biology class that I have no free will because it's just my neurochemicals bouncing around in my head. To which of course the response is to go and punch him in the face and then tell him that I had no free will because it's just the neurochemicals bouncing around in my head. But that, giving them the actual, what is the human being where we talk about what is the qald and what is the purpose of the qald? How does the qald know? How is it different than how the akal knows? What is the akal? What are the layers of the akal? And what is the naf? And what is the khaya? And what is the relationship between all of these things? So we go through all of these, that's like a whole unit and then the third unit is the layers of creation. We talk about that, we talk about meaning. And then we have a second course called Introduction to Sciences. In that is where now we get into understanding what is a science and what are the different sciences? Where do they go? How do they correspond to the different layers? And so you can kind of see where everything plugs in on the spectrum. And so that's where, and actually this is all work that has already been done by Orlema from centuries ago. Any time somebody would study any science, whether it was rational, we didn't have a difference between secular and religious. It was revelatory sciences, those that relate to revelation, and rational sciences, those that relate to human efforts at understanding. And in that division, the rational sciences would be also things like physics and chemistry and anthropology and biology and all of those different things. And in that, they actually have this concept called the 10 principles that before a student would start studying any science, they would understand these 10 principles of that particular science, which was what is the goal of the science? What is the intent behind the science? What are the methods of the science? Who is the founder of the science? And it contextualizes it and it plugs it in. What's the point of it? There's all these 10 principles. And that places it in the mind that, okay, where does this go? What's the purpose of this? What's the purpose of studying biology relative to my purpose in life? What's the purpose of studying chemistry relative to the purpose of my life? What's the purpose of studying sociology relative to the purpose of my life? This work has already been done. It's just sitting in the books. So, yeah. She was saying that Sheikhamsa Yusuf had, before starting the Seerah, the 10 principles that she mentioned that Sheikhamsa, before teaching the Seerah, he went over these 10 foundational principles. So, this is actually something that we want to develop for modern biology, because that hasn't been done yet. So, we want to develop it for modern biology and physics and all these things, so that we can see where that fits in. And we can also see where the old sciences fit in, because they still have a role also. The old physics and the old biology and the pre-modern chemistry, which we call alchemy, they have a less role, but there's certain things that are important to understand about them, so that we don't have a relationship with them that, oh, that was then, we didn't know anything, now we've figured everything out. That's not the case. There's a whole spectrum also there as well to understand. So, yeah, we do address that. And not just their definition of human being, but also this whole spectrum and the unseen, because, okay, Shaitan exists, yes? But a psychologist that's trained in modern psychology doesn't believe that Shaitan exists. So that means that their entire schema of mental health means that every single thought that you have, it comes from yourself. Whereas, if you know that actually thoughts come from Shaitan, thoughts can come from angels, thoughts can come from Allah, thoughts can come from outside, then when certain negative thoughts come into the mind, we actually have the option of knowing that, oh, actually this has nothing to do with me. This is not from me. Like Yusuf al-Islam said to his brothers, he said, it's Shaitan that did this. He, that was his, this is not from you. Meaning, a modern psychologist who doesn't believe in Shaitan, he will actually tell this person with all the authority of science that, you're thinking this, but you have a problem. Whereas, somebody who just understands these basics if they think about it, they're like, oh, that's Shaitan, don't worry about that. Now, how difference is to tell somebody that you're really messed up versus you're fine. This is Shaitan, don't worry about it. Okay, yeah, they might have to do their own journey of trying to ignore that, but that's a very different starting point than, yeah, this is all coming from you and you just must have had some really bad trauma when you were a kid. Go and yell at your parents. You know? This is a big seclusion. Everything is from Allah swt, even including all the things that people do to us from the perspective is also from Allah swt. Everything is a test from Allah swt. You have a choice. You can get lost up in the people that are in front of you or you can think about the one that is in charge of everything. So, I think we're getting finished on time now. So, inshallah, we'll finish with that. Oh, okay, please, yes. So, where should we have the... So, when they take the tea, where should they go after that? Outside, there's a place? Okay. Okay, so Bismillah, if you'd like to help yourself out, then we'll take the tea. JazakAllah. We ask that you always connect us to you through your creation and through your Quran. Ya Allah, we ask that you teach us the meanings of the Quran and give us the Tawfiq to act on them. And we ask that you teach us the meanings in your creation and teach us to act on them. Ya Allah, we ask that you grant everybody here opening and Tawfiq and Shifa. Ya Allah, and we ask that you grant this to all of the Muslims. Ya Allah, we ask that you grant us your Maghfirah and your Rida. And we ask that you grant this to our parents, and to our families, and to our teachers, and to all of the Muslims. And Ya Allah, we ask that all of the people that are here in this Qom that you have sent us to. Ya Allah, we ask that you guide them to your Deen. Ya Allah, Ya Qawda Rahim. May Allah protect us from our sins and from our sins.