Islamic Theology 5/10

 was in the shop on the regime's menara some lawyers hitman wanna anyone sorry
was sent him to see me but I hold over Aquitaine about me alone there in Medina
Alama al antenna in the contract aluminum ion beam at Lambton I was in
Elma one of the Edina Hickman Turkmen for Elena Metapod and Jared even from
Mosul in the home under seed in o Muhammad why I didn't care on what I heard over a 14 mm earlier darling
before we get into the the the purpose
of these these railings you know why we
started them the the Muslims have a tradition of traveling for knowledge in
fact that's where the word comes from rata that's what they used to call them and a lot of scholars actually wrote
their there raha lat so they have their journals and they would keep them on
their journeys and they would talk about who they met and what anima they took from and these became a type of
literature in the Muslim world but the the benefit of traveling is getting away
from the mat leuf you know what's your custom to the people of tassels say that
the thing most destructive to a person is routine is falling into routine and
that's why God throws so many wrenches into the lives of human beings because
without those wrenches we become cogs in a machine of our own device so there's a
benefit in getting out of one's routine Ramadan is certainly a month that every
year turns everything upside down and for a lot of people the first few
days are quite difficult because of that turning upside down for people that fast throughout the year it's not as
problematic there's a reason why fasting in Rajab and Shaban are considered
virtuous acts because it's preparing you for Ramadan so that you don't come into it
cold turkey so to speak so the it's a
benefit to go one of the problems with the modern world is that we have technology that enables us to pretty
much be in the same place wherever we are we also have a type of hegemonic
corporate global culture that tends to provide the same services wherever we
are so you can go to the depths of Africa and stay in the Intercontinental
Hotel and have the same marmalade that's
made in England and same tea that you drink in Hong Kong or somewhere else
so the the problem with that is obvious
for people that actually have experienced travelling at a different
level but one of the most important things about travelling is in fact in
some ways and I've spent a lot of time in airports so this is not something
that just kind of popped into my head I spent a lot of time thinking about
airports in some ways the world is like an airport it's like we've been put here
and we're all waiting to get on a plane to somewhere else and one of the things
that's so interesting to me about airports is that people tend to generally be on their best behavior
lines or even in the Muslim world lines tend to be better in airports than they
are in other places because they're non-existent in other places but people
tend to be quite well behaved in airports there's a kind of compartment that's quite surprising
people are very there's a lot of deference there's people helping each
other helping with the bags and part of the reason is because everybody knows they're going through the same torture
of being on a journey so it certainly helps when other people are willing to help you out in that so there's a
perhaps a utilitarian aspect to that but nonetheless travelling brings out the
best in people and it brings out the worst in people which is why the Arabs call it sefa which means to expose use
fiddle on and Marty the the same word for ambassador Sofia because he he tells
the people he's sent to what the intentions of his government are visa vie those people so he's revealing the
intentions of his government so Suffolk is a type of Revelation for yourself and
for others and one of the things that's interesting about people when they travel there's a lot of people think
somehow things are gonna get better if they can just get out of where they are now for some people that's true if you
have malaria it's usually wise to move out of the malarial swamp area in order
to get treated if you stay in the malarial swamp area you can treat yourself or have somebody
treat you with quinine and but you get reinfected one of the bizarre aspects of
american penal system is that they force parolees to go back to the same place
that they committed the crime and actually to stay there sometimes within
very small narrow areas so they go back to the same gangsters that got them in
trouble in the first place and the same types of temptations and setting allowing them to actually get out of
those environments so sometimes that's true to get out of an environment is actually a useful thing if somebody's in
a domestic situation where there's a lot of anger and violence and trouble they're not going to really be able to
start meditating seriously until they get out of that type of environment because
it's just difficult to be able to concentrate when there's a lot of anger and hostility in the room that's true
just for people normally so the there
that that does happen there was a benefit in leaving but for a lot of people when they go to another place
they find out they're the exact same person that they were in in the place they just left and the same things that
they struggle with are those same things that they find themselves struggling with there so people come to me and say
I really want to learn Arabic but I have to go somewhere to learn Arabic and I
there's maybe an element of truth to that sometimes but a lot of times when they go to that place where they think
they're going to learn the Arabic they end up doing exactly the same thing they were doing in the other place and so I've met people that have gone to the
art world live two three four years and their intention was to learn Arabic and they come back and and you say talented
otterby and they say oh yeah yeah that's happened a lot on the other hand I've
know people that have never left America that can read fluent Arabic so you have
to look into your hearts and look at what your intentions were because the
prophet sal is a time and it's one of the most important hadees and in some ways it's the single most important
hadith in the Melamed open yet actions are my intentions when le Colima in
Manoa and every man or a woman has what he or she intends in their actions from
in Canada jarate radula era dunya you see Baja Oh in Mauritania who have a
hitter to Yamaha era la you know he ends up by saying man Canada is arathi with
Allah he wore a suit if a territory Allah he wore a suit woman Canada he Jarrah to who so whoever's he Jarrah is to Allah and
His Messenger and then he repeats it then his migration is to Allah and his
messengers he repeats that but when he says but whoever's migration is for some
worldly attainment or for a spouse they're trying to get then their hitter is to
what you know mahadji day he didn't name it again with a lot his measure we've
repeated it but with those low things he
didn't really waste the words in mentioning them again because they weren't worth mentioning and so that's
the difference between people some people have high him and him is your aspiration it's what your heart's
connected to we have an American saying from Ralph Waldo Emerson
you know hitch your wagon to a star in other words have high him and when you do things
Imam a Junaid once saw a man about to be
executed for brig injury and he greeted the man and and one of his students said
do you greet a man like that he said I'm impressed with any man that's willing to
risk his life for what he wants you know and so and that's Ark that's in essence
part of the mystique that we have with bank robbers in America you know people
people are kind of there's there's a hidden admiration for people that are willing to just risk it all for what
they want Mona Rumi said you know if you want to
fornicate find a princess you know don't don't waste something like that on you
know something low because if you're gonna go to hell you might as well go to hell in in a really nice vehicle do you
know just go in style so you have to
look at your you know what your nia is you know what what you want now one of
the things that our tradition roots itself in is the idea of a dub and Etta is it's a difficult word to translate I
mean I don't really I have a I have a
report card from my great-grandmother Lillian Cummings she was in high school
in Wisconsin in 1882 because I have her little handwriting on the book because I
got the book from my father who got it from his father but I know she had a
toothache on December 10th 1882 very strange thing to know about your great
grandmother who you never met but she has a report card in this book on
rhetoric and the very first thing on that report card that she was graded on
was comportment now we don't even use
that word anymore in this culture in fact most people don't even know what that word means comportment I think
people that speak Spanish note because they still use it but most well if you ask the average American what is
comportment isn't that's in the car you put something into it or they law so
comportment is is comes from a two Latin
words which mean how you carry yourself you know like a porter carries things
your comportment is the way in which you carry yourself so adapt is related to that not
everything in the Sharia is specified there are certain things that relate to
a Deb I'll give you an example when
bilal radhi'allahu brought Sophia and
her sister who were notables from the Jewish community when he brought them to
the Prophet SAW in his tent he passed through an area where the this battle
had taken place at the high bar and there were some dead relatives Jewish relatives that they had and one of the
women began to wail because she was so distressed by seeing her
in that state and the profit came out to see what happened and when he saw this
he said what are you doing he said I was I was bringing Sophie and her sister to you and he said couldn't you find
another way to bring them and Bulow said I didn't think you would mind and then
the Prophet looked and he said I know I am a touka where is your mercy you know
in other words this isn't you don't need Sharia you don't need like a revelation
to have basic common decency and so a
lot of a dub is just that it's just a basic common decency one of the things
that is a hallmark of Islamic learning
is the relationship between students and teachers is a relationship of respect
and compassion the Prophet said lay Samina Malaya ham severe Anna will I you
what there Kabir Anna he is not or she is not from among us the one who does
not respect our elders and Kabir is not just an age but it's in knowledge it's
in anything that puts you in that in that ranking and and does not have
compassion for our young ones so there's that relationship of you know a teacher
is supposed to be compassionate with the students but the students are also shits supposed to show respect to the teachers
so those things are required some things some some is just purely breeding it's
the way you were raised I've noted that a lot of people coming from the South Asian community tend to
have that drilled in them and in America
we tend to have a more informal relationship with teachers and to be
honest with you when I study in West Africa and it's certainly a lot more informal than it is say in Syria but if
you if in Syria students are kicked out of classes all
the time and teachers won't teach
certain certain students if they exhibit certain behaviors mo madacorp oddly lana
was very strict in his modulus especially if it was hadith because of
the you know the exalted nature of it so there's definitely a great benefit in
having that comportment and and learning it and acquiring it now personally I'm
I'm I used to be a lot harsher about this and I'm only talking about because
I was kind of asked to talk about it but I do think that it is important and I was years ago I was in in Medina and one
of my teachers from early on when I was maybe 19 one of my teachers in
Mauritania came in and we met him I hadn't seen him in a while and I hads
about several Western students and he just started talking about what I was like when I was his student and I had
completely forgotten a lot of things but I was very happy when he he just said
that I had an immense amount of respect for him and he said that he used to make
me tea because I didn't know how to make Mauritania and tea and he said and I didn't I don't even remember this but he
said this he said that I demanded that he teach me how to make tea because I could not have my teacher make tea for
me so I think part of the benefit that I derived from the teachers that I studied
with was from having that drilled into me because it was drilled into me my
father was very he was old-school in
terms of you know he taught he told me once he saw Robert Frost give a reading
I think was at Fordham University my father went to Fordham for a year but he
said he saw Robert Frost and he and frost came out and he said there was a undergraduate that was in the front row
and he was kind of slouched down like this and he said frost came out
and he looked down at this man with a utter contempt like just a winsome scorn
and he looked down at him and he said sit up and and my father said that this
young man just stood up and for the rest of the reading he was like that the
entire time that was a university student and that was in the 1950s now
nowadays that teacher might get shot if they try something like that I don't
know but that certainly was very different experience from my experience
at school and how students but we're not we're having another tradition and we're
trying to maintain that tradition to the best of our ability and so it's
important and that's all I'm gonna say about that
so alhamdulillah we're going now on a section here
this next section is about the beatific
vision now the reason that I use the beatific vision for the yeah is because
in in Christianity the beatific vision
is part of the afterlife and I think some Muslims tend to forget that we do
share a lot of truths with the previous dispensations with the Jews and the
Christians the Jews consider one of the highest degrees in Judaism was called tzaddik tzaddik is Cydia it's from the
same in fact min Hajj in Maine manag in Hebrew is mentioned Sheraton women Hodja
in the Quran so the min Hogue is is is the way or the methodology that's used
in the Sharia so the Quran shares words with the previous traditions because
they're the same truths that were being explained the the bietak the beatific vision which is yeah is the
greatest bounty of the next life whereby the inhabitants of paradise will gaze upon the countenance of God without any
veil and there's different layers of this some people have access on a
regular basis and regular we don't I'm not talking time it's not even something
that we can really comprehend but there's different people's depending on
the types of people in this world and how they prepared for the next world but the the word you know the the Quran says
the sorry the Imam how he says I wrote you to Haqqani identity be ready
Hobbiton what I came here so the Rodya is is a reality for the
people of paradise without enclosure there's no a hapa so you don't see God like there's a hatha when I look at this
glass I'm seeing the the glass it's more hop right I can see it there's
no doubt that when we talk about the vision of God what a keffiyeh and there's no modality so what does that
mean the word modality refers to the form in which something is understood
the way in which equality is or can be possessed by a thing as in green as a mode of the quality of color so or it
can be possessed by things in green as a motor thus the beatific vision is a vision the mode of which is incomprehensible and in his commentary
on imam how he's cree dr. honey and may Danny who was one of the the scholars
from Syria says the vision of the transcendent holy essence of God the
sublime the exalted without encirclement or Direction is true and real for the people of paradise however this vision
is not with dimensions or limits due to God's transcendence beyond finiteness descriptions limits and containment
it is a modal belief in its nature and has no Direction distance description or
light rays connecting the seer and the seen nor any distance between the one gazing in the object of his gaze for all
of that is related to the vision of bodies and substances and God the sublime and exalted is not a body
contained in dimensions therefore envisioning God the sublime the exalted cannot be likened to gazing upon a god a
body vision is in accordance with what is being seen so that's what he says now
this is an important point to do to
mention that because Imam Appa Howie
what's what's interesting is that his he
is writing at a time when there was a great deal of confusion about what a lot
of these things meant and he's one of the first formulators of a Creed to
really get to the essence of what we believe in and there were people during his time
that actually denied the possibility of seeing God there were other people that understood it in an anthropomorphic
sense that that Allah subhana WA Ta'ala will be seen in some kind of way that we
see things in the world and and one airs on the side of what's called Tish BIA
which is imminence in to a certain
degree I mean these terms are dangerous in Western theology because Tish BIA is it can be also understood as
anthropomorphic or anthropomorphism to seem as a is a type of Toshiba which is
more anthropomorphism but Tish BIA is how God is liken to us in other words in
order to speak about Allah subhana WA Ta'ala we have to use words and in using
words we enter into the problem of language language by its nature is
problematic because language is sym