 Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, today we're gonna finally react to Sheikh Abdel Hakim Murad with his lecture Tasawuf is at the heart of Islam. This is absolutely amazing because I wanted to react for the longest time to Sheikh Abdel Hakim Murad and moreover I really wanted to understand the spiritual aspect of Islam which apparently is called Tasawuf. I read a bit about Ibn Arabi, a bit about Rumi, but many many people will say that those people are heretics. Nevertheless, Tasawuf as far as I know is accepted even by the mainstream of Islam as the spiritual teachings of Islam. Correct me if I'm wrong here yet again. With no further ado now, let's have a look. But Imam al-Junayt says, defines it quite simply, Tasawuf is a good character. So whoever improves your character has improved your Sufism. That's what an indigenous definition is, not an orientalist definition, not a modern polemical definition or not the Iranian definition which really problematizes and sometimes persecutes Tasawuf. But the indigenous definition is simply transcending yourself and applying that inner dimension of the sunnah. So it's rather to be a total package, not just for what you do with your body which is the fiqh or what you do with your mind which is the aqida but something deeper still. And this is really what I am looking for guys as I said countless times, I come from a spiritual background, I come from a Christian background, I went to the Amazon rainforest to drink aqa with the shamans and whatnot. I was and I still am extremely interested within the spiritual aspect, within the inner aspect of faith, of knowing God. And this is why when I started looking into Islam, I fell in love with the strictness of Islam, with the guidance that Islam provides for the family structure and society. But I was missing this spiritual aspect, I was looking for it and I didn't truly understand where to find it. This is why this lecture here is extremely interesting to me. Let's continue. Your consciousness, your internal subjectivity, your rur, your nafs, all of that needs to be purified. Anybody who doesn't think that they need sorting out in their internal lives really doesn't have too much self-reflection, that is a necessary discipline. And when the alama say, they mean it in a shara'i sense as well. Because if you look at the books of Asal al-Filq, the books which explain in extraordinary detail sometimes, the rules whereby the sunni legitimately deduces the rulings of the sharia from the Qur'an and the sunnah and it's really complicated because the text sometimes really complicated and Arabic is really difficult and you have to use all kinds of rigorous methods of deduction rather than just saying what you think it means. That the first thing you have to get a handle on is your own self-awareness. Because ultimately these things are about theory choice. And theory choice is determined by the human subjectivity which is often subject to emotion. And this is people, the Holy Prophet alaihi salatu wa salam says, a judge should not give a verdict when he is angry. We can see why, but that is the case, and it's also the case for fatwa. Nobody, however many qualifications he may have, is allowed to give a fatwa if they're in a kind of state of emotional turbulence. And this it seems to me is part of the tragedy of the umma nowadays, which is that instead of setting aside the lower tendencies of envy and fear and anxiety and rivalry and the stuff that every one of us, including myself, have within ourselves to identify to muhassaba and self-knowledge and putting it in its box and stamping on it and keeping it out of the way of dealing with the Qur'an and the sunnah, instead we open the sort of box, the Pandora's box, of all of those affarit, all of those demons, and they're the ones that sway us when we reach for particular fatwas and options. That's a catastrophe, and that's really the end of the Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah, and that's the tragedy of the umma today. People saying, I know that the consensus of the umma is X, but I'm really angry, and therefore I'm going to follow Y, because I've seen this clip on YouTube where somebody seems to be saying that you can interpret it that way. That's the end of the Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah, because that's breaking all of the rules. And the reason for that is Lemya Tathawaf, that individual, has not worn the prophetic robe, the robe of not really being interested in dunya, and being in complete control of emotion. Very, very interesting man. Just by listening to this man, I get the idea of a complete system finally. If we look at Buddhism, Buddhism is concentrated in words. Buddhism is concentrated only on this inner work, to be totally honest, because you don't see a strict ruling for society. Anybody can do whatever they want, essentially, and ultimately they're going to get reborn, again, incarnated and whatnot, but you see the monks doing the inner work. Then if you look at Islam only from the material perspective, you see Sharia, you see strict rulings, but is there really a complete implication of material world, dunya, as he said, and the spiritual world? Is it truly a complex system that embodies everything? And the way that Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad here speaks about it, makes perfect sense to me personally. Yet again, I'm not a scholar, I cannot know, but it resonates with me listening to it. He speaks about a person that is basically spiritually evolved, if you will, and then that person has the power, has the foresight to apply certain rulings, and otherwise you cannot, the spiritual aspect would be missing within that material ruling. This makes sense to me. So, a philosophical way, abolishing emotion, because that would be inhuman, but instead to have it all in due balance and the ego to be disengaged. All of the problems of today's ummah, it seems to me, are the result of ego, nafs, shaitan, hawa, and when that gets into the driving seat in religion and its institutions, then you have a kind of inversion. Instead of religion becoming the symbol of everything that brings hope to humanity, and a symbol of that which is a thousand times better than the sort of mega consumer turmoil that the world is now trapped in, instead of it being a symbol of beauty and openness and something ideal, it becomes simply a mirror to the envy and the anger and the viciousness of the souls of the people who now think that they're in charge of the texts. Absolutely, man, and this is how I saw Islam within Germany. I know I sound like a broken record. I have to repeat this over and over again, but I'm simply sharing my own perspective, growing up in Germany. I didn't see a beautiful representation of Islam. I saw a violent representation, and I'm not saying that this is correct, but this is what I saw. Or, as he said correctly here, a better option, because when I was living in the West, yeah, the West wasn't great, but nevertheless, it seemed way better than the other option, which would be Islam. Islam, the way that was represented to me, was violence, was destruction, was strict rulings, laws. There was no beauty in it, the way that I perceived it back then. Now learning about it, I of course can see the beauty, but I would wish that we have more people talking about it like he does. So if that's the alternative to Yatthasawaf, then it is haram. The alternative to purifying the self is to have an impure self, and you can't disengage the self from the process of delivering fatwa and choosing your fatwas, and therefore religion becomes just a mirror of the ugliness of your inner life, of your infestation, perhaps even your mental illness. You find interpretation has to graphically find that deep inner imbalance, and the result is a catastrophe, and religion becoming the inversion of what it should be. Instead of showing to people through the sunnah, Islam is the sunnah, the beauty of the heart of the chosen ones, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and the joy with which people enter Islam, instead you show them the raging volcano of your anxieties and fears and disquiet and envy and viciousness. If you're showing them that, and you say that is Islam, then that is the ultimate blasphemy against the holy prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, because you're saying my ugliness is the sunnah, and you're attributing the turbulences and the darkness of your own ego, or sub-ego, to the best of creation sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and that's the worst thing anybody can ever do. To attribute ugliness to the one who is the purest is about the worst decision that anybody can take, and this is the way the shaitan and the nafs and the howa operate. They want to take the best things, those things that give most light and hope and serenity to humanity and the human heart, and to turn them into things that are scary and ugly that drive the world away. So instead of da'awa, invitation, you have tanfir, repulsion, which is inevitably what happens when people are not able to jattasawaf to control themselves, to understand themselves, to overcome their lower impulses. So in that sense, we would say that classical Islam, as enshrined in the doctrine of Imam Laqani, is correct. He's actually correct. Whether or not you define Sufism as a particular type of tasawaf or not is not really the point. Tasawaf, as understood by the al-Amaa, all of those commentators on Bukhari means the process of self-transformation, the process of diqr, the process of remembering Allah, the process of fiqr, the process of reaching out and seeing the humanity and the vulnerability and the needs of others, and not really paying too much attention to your own insecurities because inwardly, when we really think about ourselves, we see there's not an awful lot there that's really beautiful and interesting. So forget that. Look at the other. Look at the ghayr. Without that possibility, without that tasawafah, Islam is simply a megaphone for our own shaitan, for our own hawah. And therefore, not to engage in tasawaf, it is clear. And this really should be a matter of consensus for Muslims. If we're using this indigenous vocabulary, that tasawafah is actually an obligation. If the alternative is tanfir and the uglification of Allah's religion and the taking of decisions and fatwa choices that are subversive and close the doors of Allah's mercy, to human beings who have never needed their creator more than they do in this age of confusion and precariousness, that's a monstrous sin. So we would probably say, we don't need this thing's Sufism, but we would probably say using the indigenous vocabulary, we have to have this thing tasawaf and that's why the ulama consistently, really without exception, down the centuries of our civilization have agreed that we do need this thing called tasawaf. And even some people say, but Imam Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah says the Sufis do this and that, read him for yourself. Don't listen to what the brothers in the masjid are telling you. Read him. I guess his commentary on the Futuh al-Ghayb of Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, he loves Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, case closed. Who is a Sufi if not Abdul Qadir al-Jilani? Yes, of course, he has issues with certain aspects of the Wahdat al-Wujud school. That's fine. He has issues with them. They're well expressed, but it's not against us. Yeah, Wahdat al-Wujud is the unity of being expressed by Ibn Arabi and even though this could be only described as a monist perspective, if you truly look into it, I can understand how people would see it as pantheism and with that as shirk. Tawaf, Ibn Taymiyyah, it's not against tasawaf. Who is? This is one of the remarkable points of unanimity and consistency in our civilization. Despite the many voices and the plurality which we've always said has constituted its most authentic theme, still the olima have agreed, the al-Sunnah al-Jama'ah, that this tasawaf really is necessary in order to operationalize your Islam. Even if you don't use that word for whatever reason, even if you just say self-knowledge and dhikr and riyadhah and muhassabah and sabr and shukr and hosn al-kholaq, use that vocabulary instead, that's fine. But the term the olima have usually preferred to define the science of those inward processes of transformation is tasawafah. So we would conclude that Islam can do without Sufism, but Sunni Islam is constituted by having tasawaf at its heart and without it it will have no heart. All right guys and this is it for today's video. Absolutely beautiful lecture, absolutely amazing speech by the sheikh here for me personally, as you clearly noticed, this puts puzzle pieces together. This makes sense and resonates to me, because first and foremost I am interested in the spiritual aspects of religion. I always was. Theology, history is interesting to me to a certain extent, but then I am very curious about purifying myself. What do I have to do in order to go to paradise? How will I cleanse my soul? What do I have to do here in the spiritual inward aspect of my reality, of my existence? I don't believe to be just a mere flesh body, just a biological machine like the atheists do believe. I believe that I am body and soul. So therefore if I put in the work for the body, what is that work required for the soul and looking into the spiritual aspects of Islam is very gratifying here. If anybody in the comment section knows more about tasawafah, please let me know. I really want to learn more about it. But what is even more interesting to me personally is, is this Sheikh here acknowledged? Do people see him as a good representation of Islam or do they see him as a heretic? Seeing him I see a man that obviously converted to Islam and now he has a certain viewpoint on Islam. I would like to understand if they see this man as a heretic, as somebody that got into the religion, didn't really understand the religion and now tries to innovate it. I do not know. I'm just a bystander. I'm trying to learn, but because he is a Westerner, I of course have to assume that he got into the religion. So I would have to be very, very critical here, of course, of his statements. As I said, for me personally, absolutely beautiful, absolutely amazing speech, the deliverance, everything about it, the content of his speech resonates. But is it really true what he has to say? Please let me know in the comment section, guys. I would really like you to clarify this for me. All right, guys, but this is it for today's video. If you liked it, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel via Patreon, all the links are in the description box below. Thank you so much for your ongoing support, guys. And as always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.