 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. In our last session, I mentioned that nowadays in our quote-unquote progressive culture, things are no longer defined by sacred text or by intellect but by our feelings. The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, يأتي على الناس زمانهم. لا يبقى من الإسلام إلا اسمه. He said that there will come a time upon the people and nothing will remain of Islam except its name. So this hadith indicates that there is a quote-unquote normative definition of Islam. You see those core principles and supports, the usul and the arkhan that made Islam Islam will be removed from the religion until all that remains will be a name without a reality, like a hollow plastic apple. If I held a hollow plastic apple in my hand and showed it to you from a distance and asked you, what is this? You would say, well, that's an apple, but is it? Certainly not, but why not? Because apple has a precise definition, a round fruit of a tree of the rose family which typically has thin red or green skin and crisp flesh. That's an apple, that's the definition. If you asked me for an apple and I give you an orange, you would be confused. Islam has a normative definition. Postmodern liberals and critical theorists, they hate the word normative. They hate that word. They hate the word normal. There's nothing normative. There's nothing normal, they say. And we as Muslims, we have to disagree with this. Islam has a normative definition. This definition includes certain theological, legal and moral non-negotiables. These are obviously known, clearly delineated, axiomatically true, totally agreed upon. Imagine someone who said, I'm a Muslim who believes that it's okay to drink alcohol in any situation. See, that's not Islam. Imagine someone who said, I'm a Muslim, but I believe it's okay to be an open and practicing homosexual. And I'm a Muslim, but I believe it's okay to be an open and practicing homosexual. That's not Islam. Imagine somebody who said, I'm a Muslim, but I believe that Jesus is God. That's the worst. That's shirk. That's not Islam. Imagine a Catholic who said, I'm a Catholic, but I don't believe that in the divinity of Jesus. I don't believe in the Trinity. I don't believe in the papal authority and the Magisterium. Is that really a Catholic? So this is why things have definitions. Al-had in Arabic, al-had means definition. Literally meaning limit. A definition delimits, demarcates, specifies a thing. If definitions become endlessly subjective, then words can have no real meanings. Imagine a country without borders. If a land mass lacks borders that demarcate its territories, then it's not a country. If the definition of Islam is whatever I want it to be, and whatever you want it to be, and whatever he wants it to be, and whatever she wants it to be, and whatever she wants it to be, one of these made up non-binary pronouns, then Islam has no longer has a definition. It's just a name. La yabqa minal islam ila ismu. Nothing will remain of this religion except its name. You see, shaitan, he wants to take the immutables, the thawabit, these non-negotiable foundations. He wants to take these things, and he wants to make them mutable. Mutaghayarat, which is going to change the entire face, the entire essence of the religion. If we lose our thawabit, then we lose it all. If we lose our foundations, the entire edifice will collapse. Feelings are now defining religion. Feelings are now defining men and women. We live in an age of feelings, as we said in previous sessions. Imagine, this is just a quick thought experiment, imagine that there's a talking sea creature who claims to be a shark with a blowhole, a beak, and a flat tail. Okay, to you it looks like a dolphin. So you say to this creature, you can't be a shark because a shark has a definition. It has certain necessary attributes that make up its essence. For example, a shark must have gills. But then this dolphin tells you, no, no, no, but I feel, I feel like a shark with a blowhole. Now, somebody might say to this dolphin, oh, you're so brave, more power to you. But that should not be our response, because that's not real. We're not living in reality. We respond to the no, so what? Your feelings are irrelevant. You are a dolphin. Stop being delusional. Another challenge we have to deal with is this insidious revolt against tradition, traditional religion, traditional values, and young people in particular are led to believe that faith in God is somehow antiquated or old-fashioned, even opposed to reason, and that faith equates to, quote, belief without evidence. That's how Richard Dawkins defines faith, belief without evidence. Faith, they say faith is for simpletons. They say intelligent people use their brains, right? What is especially disturbing about this phenomenon is that Islam is often portrayed as being the one major religion that is most fundamentally antithetical to reason. And this is simply erroneous. As Muslims, we have traditionally adhered to a three-dimensional epistemological approach. That is to say, we can know that things are true based on three sources working in conjunction. Okay, the senses, the intellect, and revelation, al-Hawas, al-Aqal, al-Wahi. Okay, and with respect to the latter two specifically, the intellect and revelation, or we can say al-Aqal and al-Nakal, since both of these came from the very same source, they cannot really be in conflict. Okay, it's like chemistry and physics. These are two ways to explain the physical world that do not contradict, cannot contradict, but have different foci. Right, so what I'm trying to say is that revelation does not task us to embrace the irrational, i.e., the falsifiable. Somebody might say, well, what about belief in the day of judgment? That is totally rational. It's not irrational. First of all, it's not falsifiable. No one can tell you that they know that there is no such day. Okay, no one can tell you that. Okay, secondly, injustice in the earth is what all people find morally repugnant. We intuitively hate injustice. This is across time and culture. Are we really to think that murderers and rapists and genocidal maniacs who are never brought to justice in this world, they just get away with it? So this is related to the moral argument for God. The intuitive human desire for justice is a function of our theomorphic human nature. In other words, we are made in the image of God. This is a Hadith in Sahih Muslim. Somebody might say, why am I quoting the Bible? Yeah, it's mentioned in Genesis chapter 2, but this is also a sound Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They said, well, what does he mean? Meaning we are a created and contingent reflection of God's names. We seek justice because he is perfectly just. He created us to be representatives, his representatives on the earth. But let me give you something maybe a bit more concrete. If I heard from one of my teachers, let's take the moon landing as an example. The moon landing. Now, according to traditional exegetes, the Qamar, the moon was believed to be in the Samat, and thus inaccessible to human beings. That was the standard tafsir. A leading scholar during that time, during the time of the Apollo missions, was asked, what do you say about this? And this was his response. He said, either the American government is lying, which a case can be made, by the way, not some crazy conspiracy theory. I mean, in 2021, NASA can't even figure out a way to get humans beyond low earth orbit. I mean, that's just a maximum of 1200 miles above the surface of the earth. Yet between 1969 and 1972, they claim that seven manned missions made it to the moon and back safely. Each journey is a round trip of 478,000 miles. That's a bit of a mystery. So either they're lying, okay, or he said the exegetes have made a mistake. You see, our understanding of the revelation is sharpened by the intellect, is sharpened by evidence. This is Nurun ala Nur, according to Imam al-Razi, the meaning of Nurun ala Nur. An Ayatun Nur is the intellect upon the revelation, a constant joining of the intellect with the revelation, a reconciliation of the intellect with the revelation. Okay, so in this example, the Quran was not falsified. The Quran cannot be falsified. An interpretation of the Quran was sharpened. Again, if we did in fact go to the moon, so there's a big difference. The Quran cannot be falsified, but interpretations can be sharpened, can be refined. So it is the revelation itself. This is an important point that constantly bids us to exercise reason. Okay, so we will continue with our reflections in the next session. InshaAllah ta'ala. Until then, As-salamu alaikum warahmatullah.