al-hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen wa
sallahu wa salamu ala Ashraf Allah meeya
l-mursaleen sayyidina muhammad wa ala
alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in
bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim it's my
great honor and pleasure to introduce
our brother Hamza Yusuf whom we all know
and love and we are so fortunate to have
him here with us in Louisville again a
couple of Ramadan's ago he called me
early in the morning he was in tears
because one of his children had come
from school and was learning things that
were really quite incorrect and wrong
and so we said about on a project
together we're working together as a
tuna and fauns be tied to bring out the
entire Illuma Deen from a recent
extraordinary critical Edition and at
the same time do a version we are
working on a version for 12 year olds
and 5 year olds with illustrations and
it's the most amazing project and there
have been people here in the room like
Ambreen Parata who have already helped
us with this and we're working very hard
to make this possible and so that's why
hamsa tonight will speak about the
critical importance of al-ghazali in our
times
welcome Salam alaikum warahmatullahi
wabarakatu alumna suddenly wa sallim wa
barik ala sayyidina muhammad by the ADI
wasabi will send him to SEMA what I
heard over Apple with Allah and I did
our Deen I was just wondering if ooh is
that your computer because it was your
screensaver a Rastafarian flag
okay that's interesting so because I
thought I saw Rastafarian flag between
those images and I so I'll begin with a
quote by Bob Marley which released Imam
al-ghazali Bob Marley said he said to
free yourselves free your mind from
mental slavery none but ourselves can
free our mind and have no fear of atomic
energy for they cannot stop the time how
long will we stand aside how long will
they kill our prophets as we stand aside
and look but some say that's all a part
of it we have to fulfill the book so I
thought it if you go Bob Marley quote
there the the picture that was chosen
for Imam al-ghazali was it really
troubled me because I think Imam
al-ghazali if he saw it the first thing
he would do is take a sledgehammer and
and literally tear it down because Imam
Malik Hassad II was a great iconoclast
and and unlike the those who destroyed
the idols that are worshipped made of
stone and wood and other things he was
interested in destroying the idols that
our minds generate he was interested in
destroying the idols of the ego and he
actually considered the greatest Idol to
be the idol of the self and so this is
this is his starting point really in
letting us recognize that ship this
concept that is so profound and constant
in the Quran this idea of associating
with God he really felt that the the
great association with God was the idea
that the self had some kind of
independent existence and and that was
the idol that he was engaged in
dismantling and deconstructing and in
that way he will continue to be relevant
for for all time
because he said about really to
articulate as best he could the way that
that could be done and that and that's
his great opus the IO Medine so what I'd
like to do is look at three aspects of
Imam al-ghazali and conclude with why he
remains relevant for us today the first
aspect of his life is that he was born
in an incredible time and place to be
born for somebody of his genius because
there there have been probably countless
geniuses that were born and still are in
places where their genius is never
nurtured or enhanced and I've met some
really brilliant illiterate people that
had they had the opportunity to go to
school and to learn and and to cultivate
their minds in fact I was once in in
Arabia I was in Jeddah and there was
this really unusual Eritrean she was an
Ethiopian girl so we're back to
Rastafarians she was a ezo peon girl and
and she was working as a maid in this
house and she was like a wild
thoroughbred they had such a hard time
with this girl and because she was just
constantly challenging them and
questioning things and finally she
actually lost her job because I would
ask about her when I would go back how
was she doing but she lost her job
because they couldn't handle her and
what was very clear to me was that she
was she felt so wronged by just being in
this economic hardship of having to
leave her country to go to a foreign
country and to be treated in a condition
that really wasn't that humane and so
she was constantly rebelling against
this there are many many stories like
that around the globe
she Imam al Azadi however happened to be
born first of all into an extremely
pious family his father loved scholars
his father was not a scholar but
he loves scholars and he spent his time
serving scholars and his one desire was
that his children would become scholars
and he died early on lefty mama Hasani
and his brother Ahmed orphans but before
he died he left a little bit of money
and put him in the care of a very pious
man and told him to raise them in the
best manner so that they would be pious
people and what happens is Imam
al-ghazali both he and his brother were
actually very very intelligent and
displayed their their brilliance very
early on in the madrasa and they learned
what could be learned in booths at the
time as he entered into his early youth
where he would be ready to move to the
next level he was sent to a place he's
born literally in fact he's born at the
head of the 6th century Islamic era and
he he goes to this school and it just so
happens that probably the most brilliant
scholar in the Muslim world was there at
the time and we underestimate the impact
that this has because just to give you
an example there there the the ping pong
champion of Great Britain wrote a book
called ping and in that book he says
he's going to answer the question of why
he became the ping pong champion of
Great Britain a lot of people don't know
that after China Great Britain is the
second most important ping pong country
in the world
British people don't really do too many
outdoor sports so they're really good at
ping pong but this man said I would like
to argue that I was just this really
talented genius ping pong player but
that would be a lie and so I'm going to
tell you why I really am the great ping
pong champion of Great Britain it's
because when I was 8 years old my father
brought bought for some reason a proper
tournament sized ping pong table a very
good quality and put it in the garage
and I haven't had a ten-year-old brother
who loved to play
ping pong and so we played ping pong all
day long and so what he says is he was
sent to a school because his house was
one house away in the zoning and he
happened to go to the school with the
best ping-pong instructor in Great
Britain and because he had mastered this
thing as a child he was prepared to have
this great teacher and he ended up being
apprentice if taking a this teacher took
him as an apprentice and he literally
learned all of these things that he
would not have learned in another place
and so we forget this is the element of
other and we forget about this that that
we would like to take credit for a lot
of what we do and who we are but so much
of it involves other things that have
nothing to do with us it's pure
circumstance one of the things robert
frost's said in a beautiful poem if you
should rise from somewhere up to nowhere
from being somebody up to being some
from being nobody up to being somebody
be sure to repeat to yourself you owe it
to an arbitrary God whose mercy to you
rather than to others won't bear to
critical examination stay unassuming if
for lack of license to wear the uniform
of who you are you should be tempted to
make up for it in a subordinating look
or tone beware of coming too much to the
surface and using for apparel what was
meant to be the curtain of the inmost
soul Imam al-ghazali was a nobody who
became a somebody he was from nowhere
and became from somewhere but he forgot
to stay unassuming so he had the best
teacher in the Muslim world Imam and
Joannie
and he was his best student in fact imam
al Joannie said about him he's an ocean
that you can drown in which some people
say was a kind of double-edged
compliment imam al-ghazali at a very
early age mastered all of the sciences
at that time and and that was a place
where they were learning all of these
intellectual tools he mastered logic and
very
the Asian one of his first books was a
book on logic he mastered grammar he
mastered rhetoric he was a rhetorician
in both Persian and in Arabic he wrote
his poetry is not that extensive but he
was an excellent poet he's one of the
finest literary stylists in the Arabic
language and this is something notable
because many of the scholars who write
in Tufts here while they write in good
in good Arabic they're not known for
their literary style whereas he
constantly uses extraordinary metaphors
stunning turns of phrases and and tropes
and figures and so he's a delight to
read simply as a literary piece of
literature but what was happening team
America's ally is he was learning very
quickly that to be clever and brilliant
was something that impressed other
people and in that culture which took
education very seriously it was a way of
advancing yourself and he became very
obsessed with this he could pretty much
win and he did he won every argument he
ever got into and he became according to
his own statement he became intolerable
as a person and at a certain point he
latches on to the coterie of the one of
the rulers at that time a minister after
finishing with imam and Joannie he comes
to him and enters into his court and
becomes one of the court scholars and
this was a way of career advancement
what we would today call scholars for
dollars so he was in this environment
and this minister who nizam al-mulk
is one of the most extraordinary
characters in in islamic political
history he himself was a scholar of his
own weight but he recognized that Allah
has Ali's genius could be used to
forward his he had an agenda and that
agenda was to establish a certain type
of SUNY normative Islam a sunni
orthodoxy because he was living at a
time where you had it's my early
botanist these were Issa Terrace who
wanted to e cetera sized Islam to where
the outward meanings were really not
important but it was the inner message
of the of the tradition and so he goes
then and begins to write polemical
writings against the botanist and
against others and at the same time he's
writing books in a really large spectrum
of interest he had a vast encyclopedic
mind and was capable of grasping very
very difficult concepts so he goes and
in the eighth in the the five 90s
Islamic era he in a period of about four
years he has this immense output he
writes a critique first he writes a book
on what are called aims and purposes of
the Philosopher's Mufasa then
philosopher and then he refused those
aims and purposes in another book which
is called Tibetan philosophy which a
hundred years later leads to the
refutation of a very Weiser even Russia
called Tabata to have wood which is the
in coherence of the incoherence because
he called it the in coherence of the
philosophers also the deconstruction of
the philosophers so at this time he's
got this incredible output he's made in
his 30s he becomes the head of the knee
la mía ahead professor at the nizamiah
and Baghdad and this would be like being
appointed to the head of Harvard one of
the chairs of Harvard at a very early
age and in the Muslim world this was
really unprecedented
so his classes would bring literally
thousands of people these were done in
very large masjid in baghdad and not
just students could come but other
people a time of incredible intellectual
activities so all these people are
coming and imam Azadi gives dazzling
speeches he gives incredible
classes very eloquent on everything at
his hands literally all the tools of
knowledge he pretty much knows
everything there is to know and this was
said in the pre-modern world this was
something that was quite possible you
could literally master what was known at
the time I mean we forget that the
Encyclopedia Britannica of the first
edition I think it's in in 1734 has
three volumes it was it was quite small
because there the this explosion of
information that occurs in the
nineteenth and twentieth century prior
to that somebody like Goethe could
literally be a master of what was
capable of mastering in terms of outward
Sciences during his life this is what
Imam al-ghazali did but he himself was
struggling he would he was profoundly
troubled by his own state and he wrote
his autobiography moped monopod which is
the savior from error and what he does
is he categorized four types of
knowledge he argues that there is the
knowledge of the Philosopher's which is
a rational knowledge the knowledge of
the theologians which is a knowledge
with that has rational component and a
component of Revelation and then the
knowledge of the esotericist and he
would philosophers at that time would
also be what we would call today
scientists because they understood that
natural philosophy was actually a branch
of philosophy so they considered
scientist to be natural philosophers so
he would mean by today he would
categorize the scientists under that
category people like Dawkins and and and
those who expound a materialistic view
of the world the abaya on the who were
called the naturalist or the
materialists or de dion is another term
that was used so what he does is he he
basically he writes this incredibly
revealing autobiography about his own
crises and he tells us what happens to
him and basically what happens is he
goes to the to the Masjid to give his
lecture and there's all the students
and he is incapable of speaking he can't
speak and he said that for the year
prior to that he had wavered whether to
set out on this path or not - and what
he meant by it was the path of
realization because the the third the
third category of knowledge that he
argues were called the ISA terraces they
were people that claimed that there were
certain people that had special
knowledge that were inaccessible to
other people and we just had to follow
these people and then finally he said
the last claim was to the people of
tasseled who argued that knowledge was
the knowledge of experience of taste and
that real faith came from experience and
not from a set of logical propositions
that you memorized in a in a textbook
and so he studied each of the previous
ones all all three and he mastered each
of them and what's interesting about
al-ghazali
is he he did not suffer fools lightly
but the reason for that is because he
had really taken all of these arguments
to their logical conclusions and he
argued that sectarianism is based on
people not taking their arguments to
their logical conclusions he felt that
the sectarian mind was a superficial
mind because they were trapped in an
inability to exhaust their own thought
and realize that their own thought if
they exhausted it was actually a dead
end and because he went to the end of
each of these positions and realized
that they were dead ends and in that way
there's a postmodern element of Hazael
II which is very interesting what he's
arguing is these narratives these grand
narratives that these these these groups
erect and then really become idols that
they put up can actually be dismantled
if you if you use the right tools to
dismantle them and this is what he does
with each group he dismantles their
arguments the only group that he said
that he could not dismantle was these
people of tussle
because what he said was their argument
was not a rational argument and he had
all