 I welcome you once more to another live episode of this show, Back to the Basics, inshallah in which we shall be going back to the basics of our discussions with others who belong to other persuasions of thought, other ideologies and indeed other religions and sects. In the previous few episodes we have laid out the basics of a methodology and we attempted to convince the viewers that the way in which these discussions have been taking place has not been particularly fruitful. Dear viewers, firstly allow me to apologize for any technical issues today. We have been broadcasting to you slightly later than the normal time we normally do so, so please accept our apologies from the Imam Hussein TV channel on that issue. But in regards to our show tonight we wanted to continue with where we had previously left off. In regards to the discussion as to how we ought to address individual doubts, individual issues which are raised about this beautiful religion, the original Islam, as was espoused, taught and expounded by the holy Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa ala and indeed by his holy Imams from his progeny, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all, we had been stating that in order to address these issues we need to have a more serious approach which does not allow us to crumble down in the face of every individual doubt issue and shubha or an issue which is unexplained to us that comes to us straight away. Rather we need to create a methodology and have an approach which allows us to have a sustainable and accurate way of looking at religion. Our ancestors, those of our pious predecessors did not merely abandon a religion because a secondary, supplementary and very very branched out issue of religion was something which was unclear to them. Rather they took the religion on the basis of what the bigger questions were and what the bigger doctrines were and those were the issues that concerned them. Of course there is an approach to discuss those smaller issues which some people would like to raise and inshallah to Allah during the duration of this show we will eventually get there. But for now our concern has been in order to create a methodology that allows us to discuss the bigger picture and in doing so deal with those smaller issues but as part of the bigger picture as opposed to an individual thread sticking out we're looking at that thread as part of a wider tapestry or part of a wider fabric of beliefs. In the previous episode I introduced the concept of religion and indeed school of thought in light of the concept of being a world view. Now a world view is much more than just being a view of the world of course that is accurately what it is but nonetheless a world view has been defined by myself as an interconnected set of beliefs which impacts and affects and shapes how we view ourselves the universe and our phenomenon around us such as our experiences. I've stated that everyone falls under a world view and most societies espouse and teach a very dominant world view so everyone has a world view even if they don't know it and that world view is that which is used to interpret the data and experiences that we see around us and it is in this light that I wish to propose that we ought to view the original Islam of Anim Muhammad as a complete package as a complete set of beliefs as a complete world view which must be compared to other world views. In the previous episode I stated some of the qualities of world views and what they may particularly be interested in such as their view of humanity, their view of Allah Azawajal, whether or not there is a God and what the nature of that God is, their view of what human beings are, are they good or are they evil and more importantly their view of knowledge, how we ascertain knowledge, how we acquire knowledge, how we gain knowledge and whether or not that knowledge is accurate or not. And in the previous episodes I have stated that one of the key criteria that we ought to look at when analyzing any world view is its respect and adoption in regards to the intellect. Can the human intellect be trusted and is the human intellect something that is to be given primacy and importance? And we quoted some of the narrations from Aal-e-Muhammad A.S. particularly from the 12 Imams pertaining to the intellect and the great status that they give it to just remind the viewers of one or two of these narrations, allow me to just quote them very quickly. Imam al-River A.S. has stated, according to this narration in Al-Kafiyah Sharif, the friend of every man is his intellect and his enemy is his ignorance. Likewise, they've stated, or Imam al-Sadiq Aal-e-Muhammad A.S. has stated that the intellect is that by which Allah Azawajal is worshipped and that by which the gardens of Paradise are attained. So you see that the Imams of Aal-e-Muhammad have given a great and very important status to the intellect. Yet when looking at a worldview, there are four more tools than to look at just the intellect. So allow us to go through some of those tools that we want to use in analyzing every worldview we come across. One of the tools of interrogation is to ask, is this worldview consistent? That is to say, does it align well with itself or is it self-contradictory? Because as the Quran states, as Allah Azawajal states in the Quran that if this book were to have been from anyone other than God, from anyone other than Allah, you would have found in it much inconsistency. So we see that inconsistency is a hallmark of being a fabrication. So we want to check, is a worldview consistent with itself and indeed with our experiences? Number two, how is the explanatory scope of this worldview? That is to say how much of the world and what we see around us, namely people, their behavior, can this worldview account for? So if a particular worldview is incapable of accounting for the good we see even in the world, then that worldview is false. If a particular worldview is incapable of accounting for or explaining or providing a good explanation for the good we see in the world, then again, that worldview is false. How does this worldview account for our inner experiences, things such as free will, consciousness and other feelings and experiences such as love and beauty? If this worldview states that we are forced into everything and that there's no such thing as free will, then naturally this worldview would not account well with our understanding of things such as free will and therefore we'll have to be rejected. The fitra, does this worldviews ethics jam well with the human fitra or that innate disposition? Is this worldview livable? Can it be lived? Can its principles be implemented on a daily basis? Does this worldview provide us with intellectually and emotionally and spiritually fulfilling thoughts? Is it fulfilling? And does it provide us with hope? So these are some of the tools that we would need to use in assessing any particular worldview. In light of that, I want to look more again at the concept of the intellect because this is a key issue in asking is this worldview consistent with our day to day lives? Is it consistent with the nature upon which Allah Azawajal has placed us? The reason we ask that is we find that Allah Azawajal has given us human beings one thing universally. That universal thing, as I've mentioned in the previous few episodes is the intellect. And I'm very sorry to the viewers if it feels like I am, to some degree, flogging a dead horse or constantly repeating the same issue. This issue is the one issue that if is understood will be the key to the salvation and preservation of a safe worldview. And will be the key to exposing the doctrinally deficient and doctrinally corrupt worldviews which claim to be Muslim and claim to be divinely inspired. And therefore it's important for us to keep this in mind. Just to strike an analogy. We've already stripped stricken the analogy of several of the atheist beliefs in regards to the human ability to trust his intellect. And we started, we cited Charles Darwin as stating that he could not trust the intellect. We started, we stated, we cited another professor of the philosophy of science called Patricia Churchland, who stated again that according to her evolutionary experience and her evolutionary training, she did not find much reason for us as human beings to trust our intellect. So allow me to cite another case of where someone philosophically beheads themselves just in order to show the viewer what I mean by this. This article was produced on the internet. It is by a Christian apologist who engages with Muslims by the name of Richard Zetter. The article is entitled the nature of Christ and the Trinity, letting scripture speak. And he states the following. I'm often challenged as to how Jesus can be both God and man and how the Father, Son and Spirit can all be one God. So he's highlighting the apparent, docturally absurd nature of the Trinity. These are valid questions, questions that Christian theologians discussed up until the Council of Chalcedon in the year 455 AD and indeed since then too. While the discussions of theologians have been helpful, brackets I enjoyed studying the early church fathers for a term at university and modern theologians for another term, though I enjoyed that less, they are to me as a Protestant, a guide and not an infallible authority. I am primarily concerned with what scripture says concern in these matters. Anything further is speculative. Speculation can be helpful and has a legitimate role, but must be recognized for what it is. Now let's come to the important part of this article and I want you all to focus with me very seriously. He's pro he's positing the fact that it's a rational dilemma for God to be both man and God at the same time and to also be three and one at the same time. And of course, any one of a decent intellect can understand why. He asks, how can Jesus be both man and God? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but that's what scripture tells me. If I phrase it simply, there is nothing I consider illogical. Do I myself, do I consider myself limited in what I'm affirming? Yes. Do I consider myself to be guilty of contradiction? No. If I want to proceed further, I would say that Christ had a human and divine nature. How do these two interact? I don't know. But I would like to say that this taps into a broader issue that affects Christians and Muslims alike. How does a transcendent God interact with his creation at all? Who truly knows? Because we don't understand the reality of God or the heavenly realm. How can we know precisely how it interacts with us or realm? It would be like asking someone without a nose to describe the smell of a flower. It is just impossible. They have neither of the faculties nor concepts to explain such a task. But if God can interact with a physical universe, and I, who am I to say he can't? Why can't he interact in a sustained, localized and in a human being, i.e. Jesus' body? As for the Trinity, scripture tells me that there is one God, but that the Father is divine as is the Son, as is the Holy Spirit. By divine, I mean fully divine, not some kind of semi-deity. This is all the words of this particular writer and we're coming to the issue here. But this violates the oneness of God. Many Muslims cry. Why? Because the Muslim definition of God may be unitarian, i.e. only one person in the Godhead. But I would argue that the Bible has no such definition. Fustador is wide open for the Trinitarian belief is three in person, but one in being. So when scripture teaches the Trinity along with monotheism, I have no problem. I try not to start with preconceived notions of what monotheism means and he goes on to say put simply unless God tells me what is meant and tell by monotheism I am in the dark and the Bible in my reading tells me Trinitarian monotheism is just fine indeed it is the truth. As you can probably tell on matters of theology proper slash the Trinity, I do not think highly of reason. Now this is the crux of the matter. I just don't think that we can know using that method. I prefer relying on divine revelation. In this I like to think of myself as bearing similarity with the below and he cites a academic text about Islam which states more than any other sect the emergent Sunni school took to heart the Quranic warning against an over reliance on man's frail reason and understanding God and morality. Now of course this is written by Sunni. Now we don't agree that the Quran warns against man's limited and frail reason rather. We argue that Islam teaches the primacy and importance of the reason. So he goes on to say this human reason with its limited understanding of reality and its inability to grasp God's power and truth was not fit to act as a litmus test for the wisdom of a prophet. As Shah at Wali Allah Dehlui remarked when it comes to knowing what is best the messenger of God is more trustworthy than our own reason. And so he says to the above methodology Amin that is to say I am not I that is not the same against reason. Reason leads me to believe in God i.e. Big Bang and cosmological arguments but in the veracity of the Christian faith but as to the very nature of God I'm just not sure philosophy is as firm a foundation as divine revelation. God himself knows better than we do. Now some of you may be thinking why did I take my time out to cite such a complex article? What was the point in citing such an article? I want to run you through the steps that this poor individual has gone through in his life and trying to find the truth. And Richard is a man I've sat down with myself personally. He's a man that I've tried my best to reason with and I notice that that reason wasn't going very far because he argues that he's had an experience of God and the scripture tells him one thing and who is he to question the scriptures. But I asked him how is it that he trusts these scriptures given that he had to use his intellect in order to trust that these scriptures are true and now these scriptures go against his intellect. So it's essentially doing the following. It's saying I've been given an intellect. So I now have two choices. God or no God. Using my intellect I know that no God is absurd for surely there's an often a plethora of evidence for the existence of God. Therefore I'm going to become a believer in God. Now that I'm a believer in God I need to look at the different religions. Now this individual Richard in particular he chose to go with Christianity. Using according to him intellectual reasons again. So he reaches Christianity. Now that he's a Christian he believes in the Quran. Now he's a Christian sorry he believes in the Bible but the Bible according to him teaches certain things which do not align with human reasons. So instead of going that one step further and using his human reason to go okay just as I did with atheism reason overrides non-reason so I'm going to go with theism he should have done the same with the Bible. Reason overrides non-reason and therefore I'm going to reject this particular doctrine of God. But instead he chose to adopt what we call fideism. A belief where you say that look at the end of the day our reasoning is limited and if you read some of his articles he'll come up with a good explanation for this. He'll say that we as a fallen race after the fall of Adam from original sin can no longer trust our reasoning abilities but if that's the case why was this reasoning ability trusted in order to reach Christianity? And that's the real question. We need to ask ourselves why is there this what we would call in Arabic is the wajir, inconsistency and we say that inconsistency is the sign of a defeated argument. Coming back to inconsistencies I want to cite some of what we find on the internet coming from our protagonists, people of a right against Shiaism from what we call the Salafi School of Thought or as more popularly known in the west as Wahhabi School of Thought but I'm not one to call people by a name that they don't like. So let's call them Salafi even though we differ entirely with them on who the Salafi Salih are. Those who they call the Salafi Salih we believe are the Salafi Talih. We don't believe that they're generally good individuals with the exception of one or two shared individuals from that crop. We differ on this but that's not the nature of our discussion right now. I want to cite what this particular individual says. This is taken from a internet forum, a very popular one for semi-scholarly discussions called Muntaka Ahlul Hadith. Firstly we have a quote from one of the main scholarly figures on that forum. His name is Sheikh Haitham Hamdan. He states the following. The position of the Salaf that is to say the first three generations according to those Muslims who call themselves Sunni is simply that our great Lord Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has a form that is suitable to His Majesty, Allah. Now what does this statement mean? What does that statement really, really mean? All of us who understand the English language know that the word forum has a particular meaning and that meaning is to have certain limitations. It means to have a certain structure. So what does it mean to have a form that is suitable to His Majesty? Now if we were to ask Haitham Hamdan, he would say that look, I'm not judging. We don't need to go into how the Salaf didn't knew that. We just say it's suitable for His Majesty. But let me ask you this. Is form something suitable for the great Divine Creator? It's like me saying that someone has heartburn or illnesses which are suitable to His Majesty. Could I say Allah has illnesses which are suitable to His Majesty? No. Because illnesses are deficiency. Likewise, a form is a limitation. Going further, someone in the same threads, particular someone I actually know in person, very friendly individual by the name of Bassam Zawadi, he said to the following, you can't call Allah an abstract object because abstract objects don't have causal effects. Ej, the number seven can't cause something to happen but we all know that Allah causes the universe to come into existence, hence he is not an abstract object. He goes further. Christian philosophers, brackets, and I'm assuming Ashari philosophers will argue back that Allah is like an unembodied mind. He writes in brackets, I don't have a serious objection to the meaning of the statement as I do with actual words used, thus arguing Allah does not have a form. However, just because Allah does not have a body, that does not necessitate that he does not have a form. Now listen very carefully to the analogy that Bassam Zawadi gives here. Even Casper, the friendly ghost in the cartoons has a form, yet no body. So if our limited minds could imagine this for the creation, then what about the creator? La ilaha illa Allah. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah. We seek refuge with Allah of the Almighty for such a thought process. Did you understand what he just likened Allah as a rajeal to? Casper, the friendly ghost? Billahi alaik. I ask you all in the name of Allah. Casper, the friendly ghost. Really, this is how we're going to be doing theology from now on. And look at this last line. So if our limited minds could imagine this for the creation, then what about the creator? Ahib Asam, the whole point is that if we can imagine something about the creation, then we don't want to imagine it about the creator. We can't take the limitations of human creation, of animal creation, of plant life. We can't take the limitations of even the creations of the human mind. Things as pathetic as Casper of a friendly ghost and apply these analogies to Allah. This is the sophisticated theology. This is using your mind. He states, if Allah does not have a form, then what are we going to look at on the day of judgment? The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi said, we will see Allah as clearly as the moon on a cloudless night. How on earth does that happen if Allah has nothing of Himself for us to see? So we see the thought process here. They have a text. That text seems clear to them. That text goes against reason entirely. So what they're forced to do is turn a blind eye to reason in order to justify this text and look at the amazing theological prowess that comes out from this process. Casper of a friendly ghost indeed. I'm going to quote that once more. He says, however, just because Allah does not have a body, that does not necessitate that he does not have a form. Even Casper of a friendly ghost in the cartoons has a form, yet no body. So if our limited minds could imagine this for the creation, then what's about the creator? Dear viewers, I hope you can see why certain world views must be rejected from the start. Any world view which has absolutely zero iota of respect for your human intellect. Any world view which tells you, yes, your intellect may tell you one thing, but the text says another. So we're going to go with the text. Either they've misunderstood the text or that text is not worthy of being obeyed and followed because such a text goes against the human mind and that human mind is the very gift, the very hudja which Allah Azza wa Jal has given you all. As the Imam states, it is that by which ar-Rahman has been worshipped. And we thank Allah Azza wa Jal for giving us this pure original Islam at the hands of Ale Muhammad, this blessed and pure progeny from the Holy Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa ala. Dear viewers, I thank you once more for joining me in this episode of Back to the Basics. And we hope to come back and join you again in discussing further these issues. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you all live here from the Holy City of Karbala and do not forget us in your du'as, insha'Allah. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.