o you have what the picture they took
didn't you take one of the pictures at
the beginning
that that was at the moment
remember when we were at the macan know
what they said at the beginning
yeah did you take that yeah
alhamdulillah
the uh this is this is an ancient
city that we're in you know the uh
the the before the muslims were here it
was uh
iconium so it had a
pre-islamic history but it was the
capital of the seljuk, one of the great dynasties of the...and great they were great servants of islam, the seljuk empire. And this this was their capital. But now it's honored, now it's honored because it houses the...
no not that it was at roomies at yesterday
the uh it's
it's a city that people from all over
the world visit and they go
to visit the
the scholar and the saint and the poet
gelato dino romi who's actually
jalaluddin
he's originally from afghanistan his uh
his father
was from the the time
people benny time which is one of the
clans of quraysh so on his father's side
he's a bakari
a taimi from abu bakr as-siddiq and then
on his mother's side his
his grandfather was a scholar
was a from a ruling family in central
asia
so
you know we were at the makam yesterday
and and
whenever they would teach the methanawi
they always began with the the a verse
from the methanali
in the first lesson
which is never think that the paths to
god are difficult to pass
never think that the paths to god are
difficult to pass
to work with holiness is never difficult
and that's reiterated by ibrahillah who
says
that if you think that allah can't
change you in one moment then you know
nothing about the power of allah
so
we're here in the city and it's it's a
really
beautiful city it's noted for its piety
in turkey amongst the big cities
it has about a million half people here
but they're noted for their
piety and somebody asked one of the
people that's helping us here who's from
kunya what they do for their nightlife
he said
come in ramadan and we'll show you our
nightlife
that's a good answer
but the you know mawlana is
he was a very notable scholar he was not
an insignificant scholar he was actually
known for
his mastery of the sciences of islam
and he was a exoteric scholar
for a good part of the first part of his
life
his father was a very well-known
islam in central asia and
he was born in 1604
which is around 1207 by the christian
era
but he uh his father got in a lot of
trouble because he was
a he wouldn't be silent about a lot of
the
abuses and innovations of the rulers of
belgium that area and so he would
go around preaching and he actually had
a lot of influence he was very
influential as a
preacher and a scholar and so he was
he was basically persecuted so that he
left
uh balch in 1607 and
he went on a journey his son at that
point was about three years old
so they had to leave with their
and to make hijra from a a place of
persecution
to a freer place what's interesting
though is within a year
was completely destroyed by the mongols
so allah subhanahu wa ta'ala many many
of the scholars died and
it was a terrible time for the muslims
but allah
wanted something else for for
that family and obviously particularly
for jalaluddin
but he went to they went to damascus
they were in different places he
actually met farid
when he was a very young boy because he
was and
then atar gave him his famous
book of poems and he actually said that
he's going to be a great poet he told
his father that he was going to be a
great poet and a master of the path and
and then when he when he came they ended
up in cuna and he was
trained here and i think what a lot of
people
who are from the arab world are maybe
not as familiar with
the the scholastic tradition
of this part of the world but they were
very very serious
students they had a great madrasa system
there were several madrasas in this town
which were colleges not
schools they were colleges what we would
call colleges today religious colleges
but they were religious colleges where
they studied many many
sciences in the west we have
the concept of the trivium which are the
the three language arts in in
the muslim world there were about 30
language arts
that they would master so it was a much
more advanced and sophisticated
uh system when you get into it advanced
islamic tradition by this period 13th
14th 15th century
these people were studying
texts on
one of the sciences that that they were
very very
uh focused on was called which is
a science that teaches you how to
analyze
the meanings of words in context so it's
a contextual analysis of words so that
you can quickly ascertain
what type of
word is being used to remove ambiguity
because one of the
most difficult problems with language is
ambiguity
and they also had
istiara was a very important science so
they have their own tradition
they would teach balara which has
been and
is part of balar but because it's such
an important part which is the science
of metaphors because
much of language ibrahim one of the
great
grammarians and philologists in the
islamic tradition
argued that the vast majority of
language is actually metaphor
that when you begin to analyze language
you will find that what you're dealing
with
is metaphors we're using metaphors all
of the time
so they would study that
in order to better understand and
comprehend language
he uh he had a very very popular
madrasahiro college
and he he
had mastered all of these sciences at a
very high level
and he was also
extremely popular and apparently from
the stories because there are some
interesting biographies that were
written very early
that have people that knew him
personally but
he was he was a very very unusual boy as
a child
and this is always
you know one wonders
about these great minds
what they were like when they were
children
the
the talk that ken robinson gave
about the problems of education a few
a few years back and he just mentioned
about
you know we tend not to think of
shakespeare as a child but what was he
like when he was
in grammar school and how would the
english teacher
really dealt with somebody like that
so i think the same is true it's very
interesting there's
some teachers their students
actually surpassed them quite early on
is a good example of somebody who had a
very early age had a massive opening
even though he was actually considered
to be not very bright
in the classroom which is often the case
with
great geniuses is that people think
they're actually stupid
and he had a massive opening
and his teacher actually ended up
putting him in
the chair to start teaching the classes
so that does happen but
he obviously had an extraordinary
experience by meeting a teacher who was
completely
what we would almost call an antinomian
he was a very unusual
wandering itinerant
preacher who had incredible impact and
was usually chased out of places because
he had such a
massive impact he was a charismatic but
when when geraldo dean fell under his
spell he really went had a massive
transformation had incredible spiritual
openings and then from him
poured forth all of this incredible
poetry that's
read all over the world it's been
translated into countless languages
and there's pilgrims that come from
japan that come from
england australia all these different
places
to come visit this place
and i think you'll see we're going to go
inshaallah and visit the
the madrasa where it is the cells are
there
they their halwa was a thousand and one
nights they would do a khalwa
they they had to do um
before they were actually allowed to
study so they
had to go through a period of spiritual
transformation
one of the one of the stipulations was
that they couldn't
speak ill of anybody or if they were
treated badly they could never retaliate
they would just have to accept
everything that was done to
them and
they had a very rigorous discipline i
think people forget how
serious this early community was about
their religion and we tend to
as modern people it's very difficult for
us to imagine
the the type the intensity
of practice and the intensity of
dedication and devotion
that these early peoples had in their
religion
one of the the
one of the andreussian poets he said
we have a good example in uh bishop
hinden and in his sister and kreis and
leila leyland
uh and in may and railan these are these
are
famous love stories of the early arabs
and what he was saying
is is that the reason god puts the romeo
and juliets in the world
is as a proof against anyone that claims
to love
god that the intensity
of erotic love the intensity of
love between two human beings can be so
great that people actually go mad
and they'll do anything for the beloved
and
and so those people are there in the
world as a proof
according to that poet against people
who claim to
love god if you say you love allah
you know the the proof is on the one
making the claim
so if you claim to love allah the proof
is in following the prophets the light
is and that's the proof so
that's the the the proof of your love
and the sahaba had complete tamahi they
were completely
annihilated in the love of the prophet
same to such a degree that
bilal after many years of being in
syria came back to visit medina and some
of the
medaines convinced him to give the adhan
it was very difficult for him but he
decided to
and when he gave the adhan people
heard the adan for the first time from
bilal since the time of the prophet and
they came out their homes just weeping
they were just crying
that that's how present the prophet
ism was in their lives
they said if the prophet's name was
mentioned his face used to change the
color
in his face would change they had
ish you know real love and
so he went through that intense period
and
what he talks about is love and mahaba
which is
i think you'll study with siri hamza in
the
text on ibn ayasha
and the last one is mahaba the
the stations that you adorn yourself
with because in in
traditionally in that path you have
what's called tahlia
and then you have tahlia and then you
have tajliya and the tahlia
is the emptying out it's what the in the
christian tradition they call it kenosis
where you empty out the self
of because the self is is full of itself
you know you talk about people's
you know you say he's full of himself
that's exactly what
what it means he's full of himself
one of the things about darija
lot of people don't think what these
terms mean
you know in darija but one of the things
the egyptians they say and they don't
know what it means but i
i'm convinced it's from their own
spiritual tradition
if an egyptian wants you to say watch
out he says
khali balak min nafsik
you know isn't that how they say watch
out khali balik min nifsek
but if you actually look at what it
means in arabic it means
empty your mind of your ego
do the of yourself
that's how you watch out if you because
the only thing that gets you in trouble
is your nufs that's the only thing
it's the only thing that gets you in
trouble is your enoughs
and so the the muslims were
very serious about doing work on
themselves
now they're serious about doing work on
everybody but themselves
they don't want to do any work on
themselves because there's nothing wrong
with them it's
it's america that's what's wrong it's
israel that's what's wrong
it's uh bashar that if we could just get
rid of that guy
everything would be perfect it's
everything
but where it all starts that's why and
if you look at our condition
that's the whole basis of it the prophet
saw i saw him
he began by emptying them out
he made them vessels for the truth but
first he had to empty them out
like the famous you know the martial
artists who
wanted to study with the master and he
goes and he and
he meets this master that he's been
trying to get the the opportunity to
teach study with them
and he's he says oh and i studied with
master so-and-so
we did this i did wing chun and then we
studied with him and i did
this system and then i studied with this
i did this and he's
he's telling the master all these people
he studied with and all these things he
learned
and so when the tea came he just kept
pouring the tea
the master and it until the the cup was
just overflowing
and and this this man says well why are
you
the cup's full he said so
he said no you should stop fully filling
it because it's full
so it can't take any more he said no of
course not if it's full it can't take
any more
he said well you're full so i can't it's
the same thing you're full
and and you find this motif in many uh
teaching stories about hassan ashadhari
when he went to meet
ben and here's a man who went from
morocco he was a great scholar studied
in the karween
and then he went to tunis he studied he
went the east and he was looking for a
spiritual master when he got to iraq
one of the people of iraq told him he
said the man you're looking for
is in morocco so he went all the way
from morocco to iraq and the iraqi
man said no you're looking for
so he went back and he went up
the mountain for anybody that's visited
that part it's
it's near tatuan he went up the mountain
to
to where this great sage was living
and he when he first met
him he he came in the close of the ulama
he had all these
beautiful jalabha and
and uh she said
you know did you do hustle he said yes
he said
he said you didn't do so he goes back he
does also again he comes back
he said you know he said yes he said no
you didn't go back
so he goes back and then on the third
time
he he you know got the point he's
obviously doesn't mean
what he what he so he took the clothes
of his servant and he put them on he
gave his servant his clothes
and then he came and he said
now you're ready to come you know you
have to strip away if you
and and this is you know that people
don't want to do this anymore
we're like you know gelato dino rumi
tells a story about the barber
you know they used to do tattoos so you
go to the barber you get your hair cut
you get a tattoo
like now in america right
and so he goes to the barber and he
tells him
i i want a tattoo he said well what do
you want he said i want a lion
you know people see people wonder why
everybody's getting tattoos now tattoos
are
about the ego you know descartes said i
think therefore i
am now they say i ink therefore i am
that that it's a way of letting people
know
i'm i'm different i'm special
i've got this butterfly on my back you
don't have one of those
right and and then they get more and
more
and they can't stop because it's not
working you know you just keep
trying to make it work so he wants a
lion because he wants to feel like a
lion so put a lion on my back
and so the the tattoo artist he says
all right so he starts with his needle
name ah oh
what's that you know he said that that's
that's
the tail he said you know make it a line
without a tail
so he said okay so then he starts again
oh
what what's that he said that's the ear
he said no don't make a line without
ears he said okay and then he starts
again oh what's that
he said that's the main no no make it a
lie without a mane
and then he does it again he says what's
that
it's the stomach he said no i don't want
a stomach on the lion he said listen
even god didn't make a lion like this i
i can't do anything for you
and rumi says why he's telling the story
is that this
is people on the spiritual path he says
they want
they want without any work they don't
want the pain
of sacrifice of working they they want
the finished
product just there for everybody to see
but they don't want to do any of the
work to get there
so historically you know muslims
this i think what we tend to forget
about our religion
is this religion is actually about
getting close to allah that
that's the point of it it's literally to
get close to allah
and not only to get close to allah but
to experience
the divine in our lives to actually
experience
the presence of the divine
that we're we're in a world that has
angelic beings demonic beings
and we share this space
there's angels that come with believers
and their shale thing that come with
with the people of
foulness and misdeeds so
drawing near to allah there there are
basically
two paths you know to to getting close
to allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
one of them is the path of salvation
which is for common people
that's the path of just the man who came
to the prophet and he said ya rasulallah
if i pray five times a day if i
pay my zakat if i fast ramadan if i make
the hajj
will i enter paradise and the prophet
salallahu said yes
and there's a reward i said i avoid the
haram he's
the prophet said you'll enter paradise.
and then
he said then wallahi that's all i'm
going to do. and he left and the prophet
said
he used the diminutive the little man
he'll have success if he's truthful but
that
is the bare minimum that's salvation
that's somebody who's getting close to a
lot with the bare minimum
those are the people that just do the
bare minimum that they have to do
to get the paycheck you know there's
jobs that you have
and if you just do the bare minimum
you'll get the paycheck if you do less
than that they fire you
right but there's people that's all
they'll do just the bear and then
there's people that
they want promotion they want to get
close to the boss they want him to like
them they want this this
is the way the dunya works though
and that's the path of purification
of taskia and sanctification and
and getting close to allah of takdis of
of drawing near to allah through extra
acts these are the nawafel
so you have the pharah and then you have
the noah the more nawafil you do the
closer you get to allah but it's
predicated on the foreign
so if you're not doing the farah then
you're wasting your time doing the
nuafit
and one of the signs according to the
people
of that science one of the signs of
following
of following your own desires is that
you prefer
nawafil over farah so there will be
people that will stay up all night and
then they'll sleep through fajr
right really there's people that do that
they'll like do dikka
late into the night that they have go to
a mullet or do something and then they
sleep through fajr
these are people that's telbisu iblis
and that's the way iblees fools people
and tricks people
so the the um
the the path of of both salvation
and this other way the high this higher
way of really trying to draw draw near
to allah
and through serving his ummah
serving his creation sacrificing both of
these are predicated on knowledge
the one that is the way of just
the foreign and doing the bare minimum
you have to have the bare minimum of
knowledge which is called
the other way is the way you have to
have the
in but then you also do the kithaya
you do extra and our
tradition because of the sophistication
and the problems that are attendant with
revelation and a tradition
emerged in the islamic
ethos and the tradition emerged
in order to protect revelation from
misunderstanding
the early companions allah blessed those
people with
a level of knowledge and understanding
that's unparalleled in our tradition
the first community they they if you
study the history
they were amazing brilliant people but
if you look at the sahaba
there are only a handful of sahaba that
gave fatwa
they're called the mukthirun there's
only a handful of sahaba they gave
even though he gave had many hadith
narrations
he didn't give a lot of fatwa in fact he
gave
a moderate amount according to one
rebaya but
one of the things about the early
community is that they were loathed to
give fatwa
so if you went to ask one of the sahabah
a question they used to say go out so
and so he knows better than me
and then they would go to him imam noah
he writes this
in his book on fatwa and then they would
say
go to so-and-so go to so-and-so and and
it would go until it came back to the
original person
now you have people that are they jump
to answer
and very quick to give an opinion
imam alex tradition they call the fatwa
nazila
which means musiba and imam malik if he
was asked a question in
he used to say innalilahi
which is what you say when you get have
a tribulation
because basically a fatwa is a response
of a scholar who's trained
and in that response he is saying it is
my belief
that this is what god wants you to do in
this situation
that that's essentially what a fatwa is
you're saying it's my belief that this
is what god would want you to do this
situation now you get another person
who can give a different fatwa he'll say
it's my belief
this is what god wants you to say and in
many many
situations you can have different views
because one god is vast and two
understandings differ so
the prophet salallahu actually taught us
that there can be two correct
opinions and sahih bukhari the famous
one that the usuli scholars use
is the one of praying asar
the prophet isaiah said told them not to
pray asar
until they got to benikoreda and
the group went when assad time came
half of them said it's time to pray and
the other half said no the prophet said
don't pray until we get there.
they said no he didn't mean that he
meant get there before assad
and the other group said no no he meant
that
that we should pray when we get there
and and we shouldn't pray assad until we
get there
so they split so one group prayed asar
before they got there and the second
group waited they delayed their prayer
when they got there they told the
prophet what happened he didn't say
you're correct and you're wrong
he just left it at that they were both
correct they both made an ishtihad it
was an ishtihadi situation
and that was it now you have people that
believe there's only one way in islam
and it just ha
so happens to be their way
but you really we have this problem that
there's only one way in islam
and it's my understanding the reason
that this happens
[Music]
that they didn't start differing until
knowledge came to them
and they became arrogant with their
knowledge
says about that he says
he said that it's one group saying oh
i'm right and you're wrong you don't
you don't have anything so knowledge can
be a source of conflict
and this is why imam al-khazadi in in
his
the first book of the year he lays the
foundations for a correct understanding
of knowledge
what is knowledge what is it a lot of
people don't know what knowledge is
they don't understand the nature of
knowledge that there are knowledges that
are precise
and then there are imprecise knowledges
there are knowledges that have a lot of
ambiguities in them
uh one of the aristotle the great greek
philosopher he said that
it's the mark of an educated mind to
demand precision
only to the degree with which that
knowledge allows it
so in mathematics you can get a very
precise answer
but in in other sciences
that answer might not be precise it's
just
ambiguous by the very nature of the
subject
and one of the greatest problems with
language and the reason why the modern
world
loves mathematics so much and is loath
to to really explore language in the
ways
that it did in the past one of the
reasons for that is the ambiguities of
language
the modern world doesn't like
ambiguities
and so
people have lost the sciences that
enable them
to communicate with the least amount of
ambiguity
because you have to exhaust language
studies and that's why the muslims did
this
and one of the sciences that this was
predicated on
was the science of what they called
mantech
and and its sister science was called
in the west these are called logic and
dialectic
logic and dialectic and from these
sciences
and there are ancillary sciences that go
with this
like is one of them is another because
balarama is important
these became the foundation of islamic
studies
in the muslim world everywhere you went
they became the foundation
and all of our scholars right from this
perspective
you cannot understand any
of the major works of islamic
scholarship
without understanding these foundational
sciences that they were working with
and so uh
what i thought i'd do tonight just as an
introduction
is read
from the opening of a book which to me
it's one of the most important books
in our tradition because it's the
foundation
of what's known as the science of tasaw
and increasingly it's become clear to me
that one of the great calamities of the
modern islamic
situation is an idea somehow that tasov
is extraneous to islam that it's
not part of islam that the reality of it
is
is that it is it's a central core
teaching of islam which does not mean
that there are not
a lot of problems inherent in to soul
just like there are problems that are
inherent in fick you have
fukaha that go astray you have
muttaqielimun that go astray
you also have mutasawifa that go astray
so they're just like any other group
and in fact they're more susceptible
because of the nature of their science
to going astray but one of the things
that modern muslims have done is that
they've thrown the baby out with the
bath water to use a
english idiom in in
in trying to purify our tradition
from all of these innovations and all of
these problems that came into it
they've they completely dismissed this
uh science and so this book was written
by sidi ahmed zarooq
the great north african scholar who was
from fez
he died in misrata in libya
but he wrote a book called kawai datasov
and in this book what he wanted to do
because he was an osuli scholar
and this is called which is to
give the foundations of something
seal is very important in our tradition
because
right
he says that the one transmitting
something has to prove that it's sound
but the one claiming something has to
give his his dalio
for it so if you say
to a keta you you have to prove that ibn
massaud really did say that that's part
of our tradition so
the nakan the one transmitting has to
prove the soundness of his transmission
but the muday the one claiming something
who's just saying
here's the foundation of this that or
the other he has to give his dalio
to show why so if you have even
istimbalt
like where did you get that idea from
well i'm deriving it from the fact
of this this and this and then you make
your argument and these arguments are
done
through reasoning and this is why
reasoning is foundational to the human
condition
one of the uh
teachers in turkey he was a he was a
magician they called him mantaki
you know a lot a logician and he had a
student
and he taught him logic and when he
finished all his classes because logic
is
it's not that difficult it has
abstractions that are
sometimes a little complex to grasp but
basically
all of you are logicians everybody in
here is a logician unless you're
mutually in you know like somebody who's
who's just handicapped intellectually
uh or uh majnun
which is possible also
right but if you
if you are
a sane human being then
you are always reasoning you're either
doing it well
or you're doing it poorly but you are
definitely reasoning
the heart has reasons that the head has
no knowledge of
but when if you fall in love you get
married people say love is irrational
it's definitely got some irrational
components but
there's a reason why you get married
there's a reason why
you most people love for reasons
they fell in love with their beauty
their goodness in fact
they say about the prophet saw i saw
them that the reason why you learn the
shema
is because attraction to the beautiful
qualities of a person is one of the
reasons
that love is cultivated so just reading
about him he was very beautiful he was a
very
physically a very beautiful person he
was the most beautiful
of of man and he
he was everything was was was balanced
with the prophet he had beautiful
hair he had very wavy black hair it
wasn't curly it wasn't straight because
everything about him is balanced so even
his hair was balanced
it wasn't straight and it wasn't cruelly
the extremes was the two extremes of
hair you have curly hair
you have straight hair his was right in
the middle of those two extremes he had
wavy hair
parted in the middle it went sometimes
to the bottom of the earlobe
sometimes to his shoulders he had a very
very beautiful
uh complexion they said it was like the
moon
and i asked one of my teachers
we were watching a harvest moon rise and
it was that beautiful
color that's not white it's off-white
it's like a wheat color
and i said is that the color they meant
he said that's the color they meant it's
not because
he was not pasty white like the moon
when it's right up on the sky
no he had a reddish tint to his
complexion he had beautiful eyes he had
very very white
his whites what they call
ophthalmologists in america call happy
eyes
when the very white he had very very
white
the whites of his eyes were very white
and then he had very striking
dark eyes that were penetrating he had a
beautiful aqualine nose
it was which is an aristocratic nose uh
in
in many many cultures an aquiline nose
is seen as a
a beautiful nose and one of the reasons
that's called aqualine is because it's
it's akna in arabic but in in in english
uh they call it aqualine because it's
like the aquila the eagle
an eagle has a very beautiful i once saw
an eagle perched on a fence outside my
house and i just watched it for a little
while and i just
i realized the eagle completely
is aware that it's an eagle
if you observe an eagle even for a short
amount of time you will see that an
eagle is so
aware that it is superior to every other
bird
and the way it just it just looks around
like i am not afraid of
anybody or anything
it's just got this amazing and so the
arabs love
eagles and they name their children
after them and
they're very very noble birds but they
have these beautiful
aqualine beak and the prophet sally
saddam had a beautiful
forehead and he had very strong he had
broad shoulders he's very strong and he
had beautiful
he had a very small light uh
hair that went down and but he wasn't
hairy at all he was his body was very
um his skin was did he did not have a
lot of
body hair but he had very slight uh hair
on his
on his chest that went down to his navel
very strong legs he had
strong hands he walked in a very
distinct way
those are all qualities that if you
study them you
it actually makes you want to see him
you want i want to see that i want to
experience
that and then they describe how he spoke
and the mellifluous nature of his
speech it was when people listened to
him they were enraptured
and when he spoke it was like birds
perched on their heads
it was as if there were birds perched on
their heads they were just
so intent to hear what he had to say
but the reason that they describe that
is because that's one of the reasons
that you love a person for physical
beauty
and then you love them also for their
character and that's another reason but
the main reason that people love is
because of
when people do good to you and that's
why allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
he's the moisen i mean he's constantly
doing good to us
and that should engender love in you
and so love has reasons there are
reasons why we love it's a rational
thing
as well and so anyway this
turkish logician taught this
this man logic which is basically three
things it's
it's it's understanding is the first
operation of the mind basic
understanding what they call
a um
what they call a uh savage
it's a simple apprehension just
understanding something what it is glass
of water
and then the second act of the mind is
is judgment
tasadil or the proposition making a
statement
either negating or asserting something
about something
so it needs a subject and a predicate
the moldur and the mahmoud
and then the last operation of the mind
is chias or reasoning
going from what's known to what's
unknown
and so he taught him these things and
then he said
i want you to go into the marketplace
spend the day in the marketplace and
come back
so he went spent the day in the market
he finished his because he's going to
give me jazza and mantel
right so he went to the marketplace
spent the day in the marketplace he came
back
he said how was your day
he said i did what you told me i was in
the marketplace all day he said
did you notice anything he said no
he said you're not ready we need to do
this again so
they studied logic second course
did it all understanding judgment
reasoning finished his course
so he said to him i want you to go and
spend the day in the marketplace
okay so he goes spends the day in the
marketplace
comes back he said how's your day in the
marketplace all day just like you told
me
nothing he said we have to do this again
did the course in logic again went
through the three operations of the mine
when he finished it he said listen i
want you to go to the marketplace spend
the day in the marketplace
come back he goes spends the day in the
marketplace comes back
he said how was your day
he said oh my god i couldn't believe it
they're all practicing logic
he said now you're ready he gave missy
jazza
because that's what that's what it is
the whole world is
people reasoning making
understanding basic things
asserting things or negating things and
then making arguments
that's what's going on everywhere you
look that's what's going on
come in there's a discount today
all right there's a discount today
so what's going on in the mind oh
if i buy today i'm going to save money
therefore i should buy today
right it's logic the whole thing is
predicated
on reasoning and that's what the student
finally got that it's happening all
around you
and that's one of the really interesting
things about studying logic
is that you begin to
refine that process and are better able
to understand what's being said to you
and better able to communicate what you
want to say to others
so i just want to show you
this is the book by sidi ahmed zarrow
called
and i'm going to read two kawaii and
talk about them quickly and then we're
done
the first kaidah he says fisher
[Music]
[Music]
of him so he says
that kalam before we can talk about a
thing
in other words before we can do make
judgments about things
we have to understand what the nature of
that thing is
this is a qaeda before you can make a
judgment about a thing you have to
grasp what that thing is so this is what
he's saying he's saying
that at kadam
it is a branch of comprehending its
essence
and and comprehending what its benefit
is
be sure so this occurs in the mind
mukhtasebin al-badihiyan it either
occurs discursively
through reflection through being taught
or it's intuitive you just grasp it
immediately so you have immediate
knowledge
and then you have mediated knowledge so
immediate knowledge is two is greater
than one
nobody needs to teach you that a child
will understand that
but that one that 2.5 percent
in zakat is 140th that's
that you have to understand because you
need to understand what
fractions are you need to understand
what decimals are and you need to
understand the relationship between the
two
so that's a different type so those are
the two types so he's saying
that before we can speak about something
we have to grasp
what its essence is and what its benefit
is through this
mentation through this mental
rashi assignation would be a big word
for it in the west
and then he says in order
these are all logical concepts so this
is called extension
in logic so the afra that this is
all those things that it extends to
because you have what's called
comprehension
and extension all right the
comprehension
is is the the or the understanding of it
what it is and then uh
what it applies to all the things that
it applies to
so in order for you to for it to be
understood through it
and also the encouragement to know it's
to know its benefit we'll encourage you
to study it
and to to be able to articulate
its subject matter and so you should
understand this so here's the beginning
of a book on
which is all based on mantak
like you cannot understand this if you
haven't studied manta
so here's a this is our tradition if you
read tafsir
if you read apida if you read
any of the major sciences of islam
especially
you will find that they're all relying
on the the reader's understanding of
this mustard
and not just these but several other
sciences especially when you get into
the later scholastic tradition
by the time you get to somebody like
he's he's got bellare going he's got
mantak going he's got grammar going he's
got what that going
it's it's a mustar hadith
all of these subjects he was well versed
in
and this is how he's teaching
so then he says
the essence of something is its reality
the the essence of a thing
is its reality to understand the essence
is to understand the reality
right
and its reality is what
it it's some summarily means what it
means by summation
what it can be summed up into
with and the definition of that
is through ahad which is a term
in latin terminus means the end of
something so a term
is is the end of something in arabic had
is the end of something
so the head is the end of something and
so this is
that's that is the most comprehensive is
as a definition but then you have what's
called a rasam
which in western logic is called the
descriptions so something
and and when we get into i'm just giving
you this is just
a you know it's like at the restaurant
when they give you a sample
so don't we're going to go into this in
detail over the course
of the next couple of weeks inshallah so
don't worry about not getting any of
this
right now when when you get a hadoo or
something you need to know what are
called the five predict predictables
which are the al-father khamsa
right so you have gins the genus you
have the knot the species
you have the hassa the differentia and
then you have
the the the the the um the arab
which is like the it's uh you have the
proprium
which is the uh and then you have the
fossil sorry the fossil which is the
differentiate the hasa which is the
propium or the property
and then you have the arab and some call
the those two types of
accidents the aradon lazy moon and then
so those five things are going to enable
you to give the hud
the definition or the description the
hud is is
is the genus and the difference
so the genus is what you can say about a
lot of things
the khasa is what's specific to that one
thing
so with a human being what's our
definition traditionally in
in in logic
what do they call the human being
what's that
which in arabic means the speaking
animal but they really mean the rational
animal
in the west we call it the rational
animal so our genus is rational
this is different from biology because
you know they talk about genus and
species so yeah those are biological
terms this is logical terms they're two
different sciences
so don't get them confused the gene i
mean they're they're related but they're
used
very specifically in in these sciences
for different for
things that they mean in that science so
the the
the genus is the general
and then the the the the fossil
is the difference so with the human
being we're an
animal but many types of animals so what
makes us unique what's the fossil
what differentiates us from other
animals rationality
this is the definition so this is a
logical definition
everything can be defined in this way
and this is the foundation of defining
things
because when we speak in language when
we want to know what
is right what is us
very often it's in the thing itself
if you understand those two words then
you'll understand what the definition
of us is and these are called
right so this is this is how this works
and so he says
the the rasam the description is clearer
or it can explain something
it helps you understand it quickly
see now all of this was to introduce the
definition of tasawolf
all of this so he's given you now he's
told you before we can talk about
something we have to define it
what's its definition it's it's reality
what is the reality of tasawolf
has been defined it's been described and
it's been explained
in many many different ways
it will reach up to about 2 000
different definitions
all of those definitions go back
to one fundamental meaning
sincerity in your
god-directedness
its sincerity in your inner direction
towards your lord
that's the definition
so what does that mean what it means is
the genus of tasawolf is ichlas
that's the genus it's sincerity
but the difference because you can be
sincere
as a doctor you're sincere like you say
he's a very sincere
doctor just means he doesn't cheat you
he's doing what should be done
right so that's the genus sincerity
applies to many many different things
he's a sincere student
he's a sincere son
we can apply that but what is the
difference
what's the fossil it's sincerity
in your directedness towards god in
those things that apply
to your lord so you are sincere in your
ibadah
you are sincere in your muammar for the
sake of allah subhanahu wa tala that's
tasawolf and that's why you can be a
sufi
and and and be
like have nothing to do with that word
there's people
in in in uh
places that they might even not even
like tessault
they don't want to have anything to do
with it but they have sitka
to allah and in that way they have tasov
so the name is just a name
what's the reality of the name if you're
stuck on the name you're a nominalist
the name is just a name whether you call
it tasw
right whatever you call it it doesn't
matter those are names
the muslims for centuries called it
tasawolf there's no reason to abandon
that name really there's no reason
there's people that have tried to get
rid of it
but there's no reason to abandon it once
you clarify what it is
and the early the earliest sufis imam
al-junaid said
no one can speak about this matter that
hasn't mastered the book and the sunnah
that's what imam junaid said
imam tasturi said i hear
things about this matter but i always go
to two just
witnesses to hear their testimony
the book and the sunnah and this is why
siri ahmed zarooq says
the sufi has to submit to the faki
and the fakie doesn't have to submit to
the sufi
if your tasof is not in accord and not
some narrow-minded provincial faki who
only has one way of doing thing no
to the broad-based interpretive
tradition of the fukaha which includes
the methodology
of the great imams of this ummah so
there's imams that say
that you can do the maulid and that's
the majority of the later scholastic
reason there's
imams that say no don't do that that's
fine it's a hilar issue
if you don't want to do it that's fine
but if you do do it
it has to be free of things that are
moon karat
but to say it in and of itself is a
munkar
no because
the worst that can be said about it is
that it's macro
according to the uluma but to say that
it's prohibited or something like that
i mean that's an extreme position that
very few scholars ever took so anyway
that
that's my introduction so inshallah
tomorrow i'm going to
start with the 10 mabadi which
are foundational in our tradition what
are called the body
one of the great 18th century scholars
versified the 10 my bad in that it's in
your book
and then i versified it for you in
english if you want to memorize it in
english
so those are the ten mibadi i'm going to
do those tomorrow inshallah and that's
usually that was the introduction
to any islamic science always began with
this it begins from an early period
they started doing this and the reason
for it was to give the student
a comprehensive view of the subject
before you went into it
it's like seeing the forest before the
trees
which helps just to see the whole thing
before you go in and say okay that's an
oak and that's the elm tree and that's
an acacia tree and
just to understand what a forest is and
so
the subject is uh
is uh part of that and the name
and its sources where it comes from
it's also it's ranking one of the things
that we fail to do now
in in western education we don't rank
knowledge anymore so
nobody knows what's more important i
mean if you go
if you look at the if you go to any
college
most of you have been to college some of
you are in college some of you are going
to be going to college
next year or something if you go to
college they have these
catalogs they begin with astronomy and
they end with zoology
this is a to z
there's no ranking they don't tell you
what you should take
what's important this is more important
than the other muslims
always rank their sciences it's called
the
or
what's the virtue of the science and the
shut-off is
what it what the subject matter so if
the subject matter is god
it's a very high science if the subject
matters dunya
it's the lower science if the subject
matter is language it's a very high
science because it's a
it's a tool to understand god
so these are the rankings hierarchical
nature of science because we believe in
marathi there are degrees of knowledge
there are degrees of existence we have
four levels of existence you know
there's degrees in our tradition of
existence then you have
metaphysically you have other realms as
well the molk the markov
so um anyway
questions answers
dumbfoundedness
any questions
i've been teaching for about 10 years
and
obviously before that i was a student
and i'm worried that modern education
has
deconstructed our reasoning skills and
we'll
if if it has in your opinion do you
think we'll need 13 years to reconstruct
them also
yeah i mean you know the modern world is
it's in a mess i think all of us are
pretty aware of that
and that's not to say that the
pre-modern world wasn't either
in some ways there's a lot of good and
and in in some ways this is one of the
better times that people have been
living
so um i'm not completely dismissive
of uh the modern world but there are
there are
things about the educational system in
the past that were very problematic
and but there are things with the modern
system of education that are also very
problematic
um there are still places where you can
get a reasonably good education
i would say but in terms of
those basic fundamental skills that are
very important to grasp
and should really be learned at a
relatively early age
in the west they they were grammar and
logic and rhetoric and then also the
skills of numbers so these are the two
types of literacy what we call uh
literacy with language and then numeracy
or literacy with numbers
and these are the two ways that human
beings think
we think qualitatively which is
linguistically through language and then
we think
think quantitatively through number so
and when we get into the categories
which are part of the tradition of logic
there are ten categories
and after substance you know the two
categories
that immediately follow that are
quantity and quality
come and cave in arabic and so
we it was a book by a french philosopher
the turn of the century it was written
the reign of quantity and a lot of
people noticed this about the modern
world that it was a world of quantity
and quality was being taken out of the
world
not completely and not entirely but
quality is
much less important to the people today
than it ever has been the idea of
mastery
is is is we have mastery in a few things
i think in music there's still a
commitment to mastery
uh in certain sports there's a
commitment to high levels of mastery
but the idea of mastering the mind the
idea of mastering the soul
the idea of mastering arts and crafts
becoming
great craftsmen becoming uh really
you know masters of these things it's
very very unusual
in the modern world to meet people that
are really committed to mastery of
anything
and obviously the highest thing is to
master yourself
and that is very difficult
ahmed zarook said it's easier to move a
mountain with your fingernails than it
is to actually transform your
nature so it's but it is possible and
imam razadi
argued that anybody who claims that you
cannot change
nature is a liar and he said
you can you can take a dog and train a
dog
and he's saying what you can't
you can't take a human being that has
rational
nature and not transform it
you know you can take a dog that has you
know
all over the place and teach it to do
very relatively sophisticated tricks
and teach it to sit and what you can't
discipline the self
you can a dog you can discipline but
your own self
you can't teach it to stop don't do that
it's not good for you
you know this is incontinence which
is a beautiful word in in in the
19th century in america and it was a
moral term it wasn't a medical term
and and and continence is
is the idea of restraint self-restraint
incontinence
is ecracia or the lack of self-restraint
now it's been reduced to
incontinent to stool and urine this is
this is what's been reduced to people
that can't control their most basic
bodily functions
are called incontinent but in reality
you should be able to control your your
nature
and and this takes time it takes
practice and it takes skill
but the modern world wants to strip that
away so
certainly learning these skills are very
important
uh in in the in the modern world
logic has been reduced to what's called
material logic and we'll get into that
in the third
lecture uh we'll get into
material logic you have formal logic and
material logic material logic
one aspect of material logic is called
the fallacies which are called the
safsatta
or the mohawk are
fallacies of reasoning so it's the
content of your logic
and and we we uh
we're very susceptible to them
politicians are
use them all the time and we're very
susceptible because the mind is
susceptible to hasty generalizations
i mean i'll give an example if you look
on if you watched cnn
before coming to turkey you probably
would have cancelled your trip
because they made it appear that this
whole country was in revolution
and when when you got here in istanbul
you're there and it's it's very peaceful
and it's so ludicrous for people in new
york don't go to turkey you know it's a
dangerous place you know they're all
they're gone crazy
you know meanwhile there's people
getting mugged all over the place in
central park right i mean this
this is so much safer than being
in new york and but you know people are
afraid to come to turkey because they
watch the news
and the news is constantly using
fallacies
and sometimes it's just pure deceit
but you know i mean they said for
instance how many people heard that they
were going to tear down all the trees to
build a mall
how many people heard that okay that
look at that
that was a complete lie they weren't
going to tear down
they were actually going to remove some
trees around the edge of the park
to to restore the fort that had been
torn down
it was an ottoman military base and they
were going to make a museum
they weren't building a mall right so it
was this kind of oh this massive
you know this insane liberal capitalism
gone mad
turkeys on steroids they're going to
turn everything into malls
no they were going to preserve the trees
make a museum
and the so-called mall was actually
cafes
around the area for people to
enjoy the the place but
it's a very very uh
secular part of istanbul
and some of the people there the
majority of pubs in istanbul are in that
area
and because they put a 10 p.m
limit on sale of alcohol which is the
case in many states in america
right they have these laws i mean you
have many many cities in the united
states where you can't sell alcohol
after and then you have dry days it
wasn't that long ago before we had dry
states right so
this whole idea that you know oh that no
you can't do that
if if they see fit to uh if they
if if they're having problems with uh
with
um disorderly contact because of the
sale of alcohol
then that's part of what public order is
you have to succumb to the public order
but if you looked at it you know these
these were
these are tactics people can't think
clearly anymore
they showed a picture of a million and a
half people
and cnn said oh this was a protest
against the president no it was actually
a protest for the president
a demonstration for the president and
then cnn retracted that a little later
and said oh whoops we made a mistake
that was actually a pro
presidential you know so the people
opposed to it were a few hundred people
that they gave nine hours of
unprecedented
live coverage on cnn international i
mean where were they when iceland was in
rebellion against
the the uh the parliament because the
banks
they weren't going to pay the banks
where were they how many people got to
see all the greek
rebellions and the abuse that the greek
protesters took from
i mean you know you
need the tools of thinking in the modern
world because
you're up against a massive propaganda
machine and it's it's a propaganda
machine that
is is not so much a conspiracy but it's
just
they all think the same way they look at
things the same way
and so turkey because turkey is
a a a a country that has
a very very troubling um history for the
west
turkey was once the center of one of the
most powerful
dynasties in human history and had an
empire
that was unprecedented and lasted for
a very long time and there are people
that
there there's a little bit of
schizophrenia in the country they were
deeply traumatized
i mean imagine imagine in
in united states or in canada imagine
obama announces we have decided
that starting tomorrow all of english
will be written
in the pinyin chinese script because we
realize that china
is a rising power and we want to prepare
our young people
early so that they'll be able to read
chinese
so tomorrow all the textbooks are going
to be published in chinese script
it's still english don't worry you're
not going to be saying nihoma you'll
still say how are you
but it's going to be written like the
chinese write their script
i mean imagine the trauma that that
would cause in a nation
and that's what was done here they went
from their arabic ottoman script
to a latin-based script overnight
and then imagine the trauma to the kurds
of prohibiting them from speaking their
language this is what happened to the
native americans
they were prohibited to speak their
native languages in the united st
to speak their native languages on the
reservations
right imagine that and here
for the first time now they've
they're they're allowing them to teach
their language to teach
this is what they've done so this
so-called fascist turkish government
that's being presented to western people
is is removing a lot of the the
the darkness that had descended upon the
people from before
but people are very worried you know
there's people that are secular and they
think oh these are the muslims taking
over
well they're muslim people but they're
committed to a secular state
right and and and the idea that islam
and secularity are mutually exclusive is
false because the vast majority of
islamic history
had relatively secular states they
they weren't really islamic states the
whole
concept of an islamic state is a fantasy
in in the in the minds of a lot of the
modern islamists
but if you actually study
muslim history that you will find yes
islam was the state religion
but the states functioned
just like a secular state functions
because religion actually has very
little to do
with the running of a state
building roads has nothing to do with
what meth have you follow
you know oh that's a hanafi road no
that's a medhab
right the madhhab is means road in
arabic but medhep is a school
is a metaphor taken from the real method
which is a road no a road is you can
build it from
stone you can build it from asphalt you
can build it from concrete
and that's just what you want is honesty
you want vetting you want transparency
those
are secular ideals as well right
a post office is not an islamic concept
right the you don't need we need islamic
stamps
yeah you can have put okay put the head
of like muslims
on their coins okay in america they have
kind of laid
allah that's
right all right that's okay america's a
secular state it still has to
not allah right so that's okay you can
have
god we trust it's not you can be secular
and still
trusting god it's okay right
municipalities are not you know the the
water doesn't
i need a hanafi you know they call it
hanafiya in arabic
i need a hanafi hanafiya this is a
maliki hanafiya
no you don't need you just need a
hanafia you just need a
a water right tap that works
and that's municipalities and all you
want is some honest guy in there if he's
a secularist who's honest
fine if he's a muslim who's honest fine
as long as the water gets there
it's been purified it's not going to
make you sick right
seriously think about it the vast
majority of government just does not
relate to religion it just relates to
common decency
and that's why you can live in i mean if
muslims
were were literally taken from like 8th
century
uh syria or palestine and dropped into
norway
they would think that you know it was
like the caliphate of omar ibn abdul
aziz
like there's so much social justice they
would be amazed
at how much social justice are in these
scandinavian countries
they're secular countries so this whole
idea
no you have to have had punishment
you know this this is what so islam is
reduced to there's
four agreed upon had punishments 13
there's debates about you know sir even
apostasy laws all these things they're
all debated
there's nothing fixed in stone and then
the the prophet saw i sent him he said
avoid implementing penal punishments as
much as you're able to
maybe no we want to cut and let's get
these hands cut off
you know i mean if you had if you
implemented had punishment for theft
you you couldn't shake hands anymore
you wouldn't be able to shake hands
everybody'd be like you know
nice to meet you right from from the
from the president all the way down to
the street sweeper man we would am i
making this up
[Music]
so you know anyway that's a very long
answer to a very short question
so oh know
would you recommend a book for beginners
to read on logic well that's what we're
doing it's a beginning book on logic
miriam joseph's book is very good for
and and it helps if if english is your
first language
it definitely helps to study logic in
in english before you do it in arabic my
own personal experience
i read it in arabic it was very
difficult for me initially
and after i studied it in english i
studied it several years ago
using aristotle's text with my father
and and
after that it it when i went back to the
arabic it was just very
much easier to do so and there's there's
good but it's important to note that
this is
traditional logic it's not symbolic
logic which is very different symbolic
logic is a type of uh
mathematical logic
that um it's useful for certain things
um but for reasoning
uh in terms of language
it's not very it's not useful at all
because of
certain problems that it has
associated with it all right so
alhamdulillah
i just want to also for the people that
are online just welcome you
uh for um
being part of this and everybody we i
really hope inshallah you have a
wonderful experience your time
in turkey there they've been incredibly
hospitable it's a beautiful people
they're good people
um and they're all types
of people there's and the whole spectrum
is here in turkey but they're still very
decent people whether they're
secularists or committed to islam
i think you'll by and large find a very
very
a lot of just human decency that's been
my experience
i've been in turkey now several times
and spent
you know periods close to a month
a couple of those times and that's been
my experience with the people
from the top all the way down
to you know the simple people
um and they and it's a great tradition
they have a great tradition here
and and they're also i think one of the
things that i really like about turkey
is
um they still have an aesthetic sense
that a lot of muslim countries have lost
so they
they tend to really beauty is still very
much part
of their culture and they have beautiful
parks they have beautiful
a lot of beautiful architecture still um
istanbul is arguably i think the most
beautiful city
aesthetically outside of
medina because i'm not going to say
anything is more beautiful
than medina i mean now medina is the
mosque
uh alone and it's a very beautiful
mosque
it's the most beautiful mosque in the
world and um
so but after medina i would definitely
say
i mean i was in istanbul and i said to
this
turkish man he told me he'd studied in
san francisco i said oh that's uh that's
our is
that's our istanbul and he's like
i said you know the bay it's got water
and
hills and he just went no
no no it's uh
and also make dua for the organizers
they've worked really hard
dr aisha and her team really sincere
group of people
worked very hard to make all this happen
so inshallah may allah make it a blessed
time for you a time of learning and
opening
and my advice to you is you know don't
turn on the tv
uh try to avoid you know
just unplug
for a little while you know you're all
plugged in
it's good to unplug for a while and
and just try to focus on your studies as
much as possible
we didn't plan having a mall next to us
so my advice don't go into the mall
dr yang is coming tonight so we we
traditionally we always had an exercise
component in the rela and then
joseph uh who used to do
the do you remember joseph he in new
mexico and things he used to do the
tai chi and the kung fu
and he died so after that
we just didn't do it but we'd always had
that component because i
you know i think it's very important for
people muslims tend to neglect their
bodies a lot
and uh traditional societies there was a
lot of exercise just
being in a traditional society walking
and uh
horseback riding and archery and uh
wrestling
all the prophet sam was a very active uh
all the way through his whole life he
was physically very active
he did had no fat on him so allah did
he he was described as having a very
flat stomach
even when he was 63 years of age he was
very muscular he's sinewy and very
strong
and uh omar binarb once saw a man who
was overweight
in mecca and he said that would be
better if it was on somebody else
right so in other words your extra
caloric intake
you know might be better if you give
that to somebody else now don't
judge anybody because some people have
uh you never know about people so if you
see people that are overweight
you know just don't be judgmental about
them or arrogant or anything because
some people they really
they don't eat a lot and in fact imam
banani says that some of the olia
are tried with fat like allah makes them
fat even though they don't eat anything
and and i've seen that with some people
you know that
so you know don't don't make any
judgments about people about that and i
don't want people to feel bad
or anything like that but it's good just
to do exercise
you can be women should you know
traditionally they were
you know had good weight
and and so there's no blemish in a woman
who's got
weight on her it's actually healthier
for a woman to have fat
uh you know really so
this these skinny women end up losing
their
their periods they can't have children
and you know this happens like they do
too much exercise
and they actually um
end up losing their femininity and
becoming a different there's new hybrid
species out there that's
androgynous so but it's good inshallah i
hope people
enjoy it he's he's a qigong master
and qigong is not a religious uh
exercise it there is relation to the
taoist tradition
and to shaolin temples and things like
that so so there are there is
association but it's
it's a it's the exercise that went with
martial arts in china
and it's very very uh
invigorating for people that do it on a
regular basis and practice it but he's
going to be working with you so you can
pretty much
learn how to do it during the time and
it's good to learn it from somebody
there's a lot online and things like
that
but according to the new york times the
longest living
human being ever was a qigong teacher in
china
they ascertained he claimed to be 235
years of age
but they did ascertain that he was at
least 170
and and he taught qigong to the imperial
troops and the new york times sent a
team over
to find out about him in 1932 i think so
that was actually
um and ate goji berries and
drank green tea and gensang
so i mean i don't know if anybody really
wants to
stick around here for 175 years but
but the time we're here we should try to
be as healthy as possible you know
because
it's it'll help you yeah
my mom was at the grocery store and you
know how they have those all those funny
national enquirer and all those and she
was my mom's 94
this year and she was there was another
old lady in the line
and she looked at my mother and then she
looked at the magazines and she said
aren't you glad we're on our way out
set up my nickel