 There is a beautiful hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, which is recorded by Imam Tulkari Muslim. And he said, he said, All of you are a shepherd and all of you are responsible or literally will be questioned about your flock. So what is our flock? Certainly not our goats and chickens. Our flock is our intellect, our family, our limbs, the seven inroads to the heart, your eyes, your ears, your tongue, the stomach, the genitals, the hands and the feet, these are your flock. To use a Vassalian analogy, these are the servants of the subjects of the kingdom, the Arif of a manlaka. And the purpose of these servants is to protect the king. The king is the heart, the thunder, the state of the heart. The state of the heart is the most valuable thing in your life. There is a piece of flesh in the body that if it is sound, the entire body is sound. And if it is corrupt, the entire body is corrupt. The Prophet of Allah, peace be upon him, said, indeed it is a heart. About Ibrahim, peace be upon him, Allah says, He brought to this Lord a sound heart, a heart that is free of spiritual diseases. And there are many of these on top of the roof. And we see refuge in Allah, peace be upon him. We ask the Prophet of Allah, peace be upon him, to help us overcome these diseases. The major ones are Qibla and Hassan and all of the root of all of these diseases, according to the Prophet of Allah, peace be upon him, is the love of the world. The love of the world, love of wealth, love of status is a root to every sin. Seek wealth and status of Allah, peace be upon him. The time is short, the affair is very serious, take your mind very seriously. Even Aqiba said that every name or title of Allah, peace be upon him, has three aspects that relate to His creation. And we call these ta'aluk, ta'aluk and ta'aquk, or association, appropriation, and actualization. So for example, Allah, peace be upon him, is a medic, he is a king. So what is our ta'aluk, what is our association to this name? It's a recognition that he is a king and we are his subjects. We recognize that. There are people who don't recognize this. This is self-evident for us. It's axiomatic for many people. It's not self-evident. They think they're the king of everything. But what is our ta'aluk? How do we appropriate or assimilate this name? Well, Allah, peace be upon him, is a king of the universe. We have to understand that we have to be king over our faculties, over our limbs. So we have to engage the spiritual path. And then when we reach our goal, this is called ta'aquk. This is called actualization. So in other words, the goal here, the tell-off of the human life, is to mirror the divine names and attributes. This is the tell-off, this is the purpose of our life. As he did, sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam, There are seven geo-messengers from amongst yourselves. It crushes him that you should perish. Harithun alaykum, deeply covetous, is the overview. Bid muminina, to the believers he is kind and merciful. These are two divine names, but without the definite oracles. To mirror the divine names and attributes. This is true in all of the Abrahamic traditions. This is basali, this is Aquinas, this is Maimonides. A theological or teleological metaphysics, an end-oriented or goal-oriented metaphysics. So our metaphysicians, they've identified four causes of the creation of the human being. There are four causes of the creation of the human being. There is what's known as the efficient cause, which is the direct force of production. This is Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. He is Al-Fa'in. He is the free agent, absolute volition according to his nature. Al-Rindadru Fahriya, efficient cause. And then there's something called material cause. The stuff or material from which something is produced. What is the prime matter? The material prima from Latin, from which the creation of the human being is produced. What is the prime matter? It's nothing, it's ex nihilo. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'A'la created from nothing. Fa'a qanana tafa'a ma rabbuta hu'a a'ayya ha'ayyan. Wa fa'a qanana tafoo shay'a. You are nothing, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'A'la created you. So there is no material cause to the creation of the human being. Now modern science, or Newtonian physics stops here, they only recognize the efficient and material causes. In other words, the entire universe of the existence is just matter and emotions. This is a purely materialistic, mechanistic conception of existence. But are scholars continued? Traditional scholars of the Abrahamic tradition continue. There's a third cause of the human creation. Besides efficient material causes, there's something of formal cause, which deals with the essence of what is produced. What is it, essentially? It's crudity. It's maghia. It's wattness. What is the human being, essentially? Khabibah t'u-Lawfiqat akhurtin al-Muran. The Faisaloi, the representative of al-Masr al-Qa'ala upon the earth. Modern philosophers tend to be nominalistic. They deny essential natures. They deny human nature. This is led to a lack of objective morality. This is for the likes of massive skepticism and relativism. They say, well, if there's no human nature, what else can we get wrong? Right? So this is led to a distrust, a neutering of the akala, of the intellect, human reason. Right? And finally, this is led to something called volunteerism, which is a strange philosophy which shifts primacy to the will over the intellect. The will should never exceed the jurisdiction of the intellect. The purpose of the akala of the intellect is to keep the will of the desires in check. The word akala literally means this. When the Bedouin came into the question, and his camel was running around outside, and the prophet said, whose camel is this? And he said, that's my camel. It's a wakalu al-Allah, a person of Allah. The prophet said, yeah, ilha, but the wakalu al-Allah. Hollow her, enter her first. This comes from the same root as the akalu. The akalu is supposed to control our will and desires, not the other way around. Otherwise, you have this philosophy of do whatever you want. Not what is right, because we do not know what is right. Right? This is what they say. We don't know, we can't know what is right, we can't trust our intellect. So do what you want. A worship of the nus, a worship of the hawah of desires and appetites. One of our teachers said recently, the Quran wants people to think deeply. That's why you have juma istikhaniyah. You have interogated questions in the Quran, which is the type of effective question in shahiyah. Ar-aitan al-intalatuhah, ilahu hawah, have you seen the one who has taken as his God his hawah, his desires? This is very, very common. So there's a formal cause. And then finally you have a final cause. With Arabic, it's called that indatu al-va'iyah. Why is it? So the formal cause answers the question of what it is essentially. The final cause answers the question, why is it? It's purpose. It's telahs. The purpose of creation. The purpose of the creation of the human being is given explicitly in the Quran. Allah is the kind of one to have it tells us. In this ayah, this is the first person singular. And there's an affirmation after negation. Very strong rhetorical statement. وما خلقت الجنة وإنس إلا ليعملون. In the Imam al-Baghawi says, so the Quran says, in meaning I did not create, jinn or ins except the worship. Imam al-Baghawi says, and even Abbas said, the meaning of that last part is إلا ليعملوني. Except to know me. But how do we know Allah SWT? Not as we said, by associating, assimilating or appropriating, and finally actualizing the divine means and attributes. To truly be representatives of Allah SWT upon the earth. To have a firm grasp of the Kitab of Allah SWT, and to have an inherent invitation of the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW. So this is our metaphysics. It recognizes human nature that is unique and dignified, goal-oriented by contrast. The dominant epistemology and Western academy really around the world. College of universities is something called postmodernism. We need to understand what this is and how to deal with it. Or else this lid-down will continue. This is a pandemic. You have Muslim students all around the world who are losing their religion when they go to college. This is very strange. Muslim students in Paris and Grandcars were Ru'a Ma'a and Sadaqeem and Awliya. May Allah SWT make it easy for us. We need to understand what this is. The postmodernism rejects ultimate or absolute truth with a capital T. There is no ultimate or absolute truth, they say. You have to find your own subjective truths, lowercase t, plural. Live your truth, as they say. There is no true self in God's image to be actualized by disciplining your desires. You must invent your true self, self-invention by engaging your desires. Postmodernist philosophy is self-contradictory and we have to be able to expose these contradictions. To say that there is no absolute truth is to make a statement that is absolutely true. In other words, they are saying that the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. A'jeeb lakd. Postmodernists hate traditional value systems. They hate traditional religion. They deny objective morality. Moralities fluid and relative, they say. This is why traditional students or religiously confessional students, in other words, won't be in college without students or Muslims who believe in the Quran and Sunnah. They are so reluctant, even afraid at times, to take a theological or moral stance in a university classroom. To say, for example, that pantheism or incarnationalism is incorrect theology or to say, for example, that homosexuality is sexually perverse is to invite upon oneself a hailstorm of ad hominem epithets such as close-minded, arrogant, ignorant, antiquated, dogmatic, bigoted, traditionalist. Postmodernists are dogmatically opposed to dogma. So for many of these young believers, there are only two viable solutions in their minds. Either to sell out or to cause him, basically, to hate Shaitan. There's nothing like Allah SWT whatsoever. He doesn't have a cause. He doesn't have a cause, or else you're stuck in infinite regress. This is how the Quran was to reason with people. So if you're a Muslim educator, a professor, a chaplain, a teacher from graduate school to Sunday school, it is your duty to say to our young people, Salaf Allah, Allah SWT speaks the truth. Fattibi Rumilat Ibrahim Hanifa. Follow the religion of Ibrahim A.S. The tradition of Ibrahim A.S. The archetypal monotheist, Edward Lane says in his famous lexicon that itibaa, which is following our adherents, one of the meanings of this is to imitate, imitate Ibrahim A.S. Allah SWT also says, Laa ta-ta-ta-tiwoo, laa ta-ta-tiwoo, Fattibi Rumilat Ibrahim A.S. Let don't follow the footsteps of Satan, fa'aikoo yaaqoo bi fa'aqja'i wa munkha'i. For he calls to perversity and falsehood. So these words have meanings, nor is it definition. They are defined by Allah SWT and the sunnah. The Quran is theologically and morally judgmental. And we must be prepared with reason to defend those judges, even if people have discounted reason. Continue to be reasonable in his reason that makes us human according to our philosophers. If we are a rational animal, it is our differential, it is what makes us distinctive. Continue to use reason, engage in dialectic with people. Don't engage in a type of rhetoric. Don't try to change opinions based solely on emotion. We have to appeal to logic. This is very, very important. Now, the literary method of postmodernism, I don't have a lot of time, just bear with me. The literary method is called deconstructionism. According to deconstructionism, no one interpretation of a text, such as a religious text, should be privileged over other meanings. They love this word privileged. The social sciences aside, even the hard sciences, are feeling the pressure of postmodernism. There was a French feminist philosopher who said that, I'm not making this up. She said the equation E equals MC swear to sexist, because it privileges the speed of light over other speeds. Apparently, there are now also infinite number of genders. Reason and scripture, say there are two, X, Y and XX, Vakar Bahunzad, but now we're told by social scientists, college professors and Facebook, that people who maintain this rigid binary are just vignettes. This is Aitim and Hadid. The great American Muslim scholar once said, Shaitan wants to change the thawabit into muzawayara. He wants to change it in mutibles into mutibles to their classic laws of thought, such as the principle of identity, the principle of non-contradiction. So male is male and not male is not male. There are 3,500 biological differences between men and women. It is not purely a social construct or a feeling. If you're a man putting on your grandmother's shoes, does it take you into an old woman any more than barking like a dog when they turn into a dog? This is very, very strange. We consider these things axiomatic, but all of these things are being called into question. It's very, very strange what's happening. It's a zoo out there. People can't handle it. It is Shaitan who wants to blur the minds of gender. This is why, and I won't say it being the official symbol of the Church of Shaitan is androgynous because it shatters the gender binary as it were. So according to the constructionism, meta-narratives, that is to say, standard interpretation, standard tafseum of text is totally rejected. All readings are valid and equally important, they say. What is only demanded is to be interesting. In other words, as long as it's entertaining, as long as it feels good. So now we have religious departments and seminaries all around the world, a method of textual interpretation called radical hermeneutics, queer hermeneutics, transgender hermeneutics, third-way feminist hermeneutics, neo-Marxist hermeneutics, it is a zoo out there. The quest for truth or the intended authorial meanings of a text are totally abandoned rather sacrificed upon the altar of self-interest and feelings, so grammar, logic, rhetoric, syntax, definition, consistency, context, who cares. Scripture not bends to accommodate us, not us to accommodate it, rather than interrogating our own positions at night of scripture. We interrogate scripture and let our own positions. In short, scripture can now mean whatever we want it to mean, according to them. The Prophet S.A.W. said, there will come a time and nothing will remain of this religion, and that we are coming at Islam in that ismum. Nothing will remain of this religion except its name. It's just going to be a name without a reality, a non-name without an essence, and nothing will remain of this Quran, wa layaqlani al-Quran al-Lagrasmum, except its script, its words on a page, deprived of its meanings. We ask Allah SWT to give us the tawfiq, because people out there, is there's an increase in apostasy, an increase in depression, in despair. We ask Allah SWT to give us the tawfiq and to give people hope, give people a sense of purpose, give people a sense of the goal. The Prophet S.A.W. said, wa layaqlani al-Quran al-Lagrasmum, speak the truth even if it's bitter, wa layaqlani al-Quran al-Lagrasmum, and don't be afraid of people. Don't be afraid of people. Fear Allah SWT. People need an alternative to this madness. Everything is being questioned, the very foundation for being shaken apart. And we have to save her. Isstifama Jusayn al-Malzani said, Isstifama is the greatest miracle. Is it greater? He said, Ahmad al-Rizairi, he said, if you see a man flying through the air, walking on the water, don't believe in him. Unless you see his Isstifama, his uprightness to the religion. A man came to the Prophet, gave me advice. He said, Qun al-Malchu bildab, say, I believe in Allah, to muskafim and be firm and upright upon that. This is the greatest miracle. We have that, wa As-Sufrullah al-Laghum, as-Sufrullah al-Laghum, wa As-Sufrullah al-Laghum, wa As-Sufrullah al-Laghum, wa As-Sufrullah al-Laghum, wa As-Sufrullah al-Laghum.