 I'd like to thank the Muslim Community Center of the East Bay for having me, may Allah bless all of you, Amin. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is reported to have said, and this hadith is recorded by Bukhari al-Muslim, he said, peace and blessings of God be upon him. Islam is built on five, i.e. pillars or supports, to witness that there is no God but Allah ﷻ and that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is messenger of God and to establish the prayer, to give charity, to make pilgrimage to the house and to fast the month of Ramadan. So the analogy is of a bunyan, of a building or an edifice. If one of the support columns is weak or missing, then the entire edifice is in danger of collapse. So the first support, shahada has two meanings. Number one, to simply testify or affirm on your tongue and in your heart that there is no God but Allah ﷻ and that the Prophet ﷺ is the messenger of God. That's the basic meaning. But shahada also means to literally witness, shahada yushahidu, that is to see, that is to experience and understand that there is only one God. That's the higher meaning, to see divine unity in the multiplicity. This is called tohid, which is usually translated as oneness or unicity or even monotheism, but it literally means to make one, to unify. And all of us do this intuitively to a certain degree. If you were to look at a picture of a redwood tree and then a picture of a palm tree and then a picture of an oak tree, despite their particular differences in appearance, you unify them in your mind by looking past their particular differences and tap into their very essence, their tree-ness, if you will. In other words, you recognize a unity among them. When the Sahaba looked at the natural world, when they looked at the phenomenal world, what's known as the aalamu shahada, they would see nominal or spiritual realities that all pointed to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. They would see Allah's mercy, Allah's wrath, Allah's power, Allah's knowledge in all things. Sayyidina Ali, Karamallah wajah, who in Sunni tradition is known as the quintessential wali of God, saint of God. He said, I never look at a thing except that I see Allah beforehand. He sees Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in all things. This is the actualization of Tuhid. But what does he mean by that? So when Sayyidina Ali looked at his wife, for example, as Sayyidina Fatima Ali, did he see Allah? The answer is yes, but what does he mean by that? You see when the true Mushahid looks at his wife, for instance, his basar, his physical eyes sees her physical person, but his basira, his inner sight, or his mind's eye, right? That sees the nima of Allah, the rahma of Allah, the karam of Allah, the blessing of Allah, the compassion of Allah, the generosity of Allah. When a Mushahid looks at the ocean, his basar, his physical eye sees water and waves, the horizon, but his mind's eye sees the qudra, the omnipotence, the power of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. When the Mushahid looks at the earth and realizes that the earth were just a little closer or farther from the sun, or if the gravitational constant affecting the earth were just a little bit off, there would be no life on earth. His basira sees the ilm, the omniscience, the incredible knowledge, the endless knowledge, the perfect knowledge of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Everything is a manifestation of the will, knowledge, and power of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Qur'an, We do not look at the camels and how they were created, and at the heaven or at the sky and how it was raised, and at the mountains and how they are set up, and at the earth and how it is spread out. So remind, you are indeed someone to remind that of course here Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is speaking directly to the Prophet ﷺ, but by extension to the ummah of the Prophet ﷺ. It's interesting here in this passage, all of the verbs in the first four verses of this passage, this is some Sulat al-Rashiyah, all of the verbs are in the passive voice. This is an aspect of the Balara, the unmatched eloquence of the Qur'anic discourse. You see, the point of that is that the Qur'an wants us to think about who did these things, who created the camels, who raised the heaven, who set up the mountains, who spread out the earth, and of course the answer is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. You see, the Qur'an wants us to see Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in all things. We will continue with our reflections in the next session, inshallah. Until then, As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi