rican scholar

musa ferber sheikh musa ferber has a translation of that of the the mokhadima

of eventual and he's very qualified translator he's

graduate from um program and has studied for a long time

so that's that's something available in english

immaterial then are angels jinn and satan also immaterial

well in that they're not in our dimension so when we're talking about materiality we're talking about things

that can be that our tools and and what allah has given us

has access to so the jinn are alongside of us we we can't see them

but they can see us in the afterlife it's the opposite we can see them they can't see us

so um and they're called jinn because they're unseen now jinn also means anything la

upsar so technically and this is the famous controversial

interpretation of muhammad abdu about jinn being microbes

and if you've ever seen electron microscopy of some of these viruses i mean they look

like really bizarre little creatures so um even though viruses there's a debate

about you know are they do they have life or are they

they're inanimate so they have they have some kind of

form they certainly can wreak havoc through through their replication and using our cells

but um the the gin

are um they're all they're all around they tend

to according to our tradition they live in more um isolated places but they do they can

bother human beings and and wreak havoc

so and they're a good jinn and they're bad gin and every tradition i mean it's one of

the mysteries of our planet that there's there's no traditional culture that doesn't have some concept

of the spirit world there's no culture you'll you'll find no pre-modern culture that doesn't have

some understanding now material scientists would say well of course because they're trying to

explain all these phenomena that they couldn't understand and it was just an easy way of doing that

well that's fine again we'll just have to wait and see the prophet saws was asked about how his

ummah would end and aisha and ibrahim wrote a book called

at my own fifa

you know help in the virtues of plagues

because again muslims have a very different way of viewing things i mean i'll give you a good example

i was once in mauritania with a very famous sheikh his his he's the father of one one of the former muftis of muritani

uh he's a beautiful sheikh in moritani very learned man and a student of sheikh

abdullah bin bayez but mukhtar will dambara his father was amazing sheikh and he was well into

his 90s and we were eating and in muritani they have lots of flies

so it's just allah because it's hot desert climate there's a lot of flies in fact moritans would often pour sugared

water in the corner to get all the flies to go over there so they could eat without the flies i mean that's how bad

it could be and so there's constantly swatting flies away so the sheikh asked me you know do they

have flies in america and i said actually you know we don't really have that many fly we

don't we don't see flies very often he said

he said you like getting all the blessings here

like he didn't see it as a good thing he saw this there's a different way of looking at

the world you know it's just dunya is supposed to be you know zubab

right i mean that's the name of the devil lord of the flies beelzebub

yeah lord of the flies yeah so this is the dunya is a place of flies

you know it's a stinky place you know it's got this is the nature of the dunya and that's why the unum say you know don't

bathe for a few days and you start stinking like just even our bodies you know just and children don't like babies

don't stink because they don't have sin no sin

for those who do not understand arabic but can read it is it better to spend time reading the translation for strongholds or reciting it you never i

mean i don't think they're mutually exclusive it's creating a bit of a false dilemma there i i don't i think you can

do both um work on your arabic it's

you know but reading it there's a great blessing in reading the uh the quran

especially in ramadan so just reciting the quran in arabic is a great blessing whether you understand

it or you don't it it really does affect the heart and

so i i would try to do both

is that is there any other what are some of the ways which we can tune out our unwanted guests

allah

remember allah that's that's a dua you know allah allah is with us allah is

present with his knowledge he's with you wherever you are

and uh you know they they'll go if you let them go don't hang on to them

you know you if you try to kick them out they can get aggressive you know

just yeah just let them go

but dicker is good you know also the with the ten are really important because

you know that that those were given to the prophet because of the

shale thing that that were doing the blowing on the knots you know there were 11 knots because 11

is one of the devil's numbers and that's why he was given 11 ayahs to combat their 11. so we have r11 they have their

11. yeah

why was the quran mostly directed to male interlocutors for example women referred to secondary like tell your

women well i mean it's it's a yeah this question is not a question

that would have come up a hundred years ago so this is a very modern question

although arguably one of the women one of the

wives of the prophet asked why the quran was addressing the man all of the verses

after that that began to say

men and women believing men and women and so i felt for me when i read that

i really felt like it was all i was telling the women to speak up you know that you need to be heard that you need

to and that if if you do then allah responds i mean the woman that that uh

you know if you look at the uh patsemia i mean it's a very powerful because she

went to the prophesizem and asked him for help and he told her be patient

she was really being tormented by her husband and so she complained directly to god and god spoke to the prophet

sallallahu alaihi salaam and it's an amazing story in the in the quran

so i think men are

you know men are meant to be maintainers and to take care of the women and

islam has a traditional understanding of these roles it doesn't

mean that one is to oppress the other and in fact a lot of the problems and the reason for the rise of feminism was

because of all of the egregious abuses against women

and there's a lot of women that don't want to go back to that because out of fear

that um that they're they're going to lose out but we've also lost a great

deal by losing um these these orders of taking care of

women the modern world has removed a lot of the roles that traditionally men played

but one of the things that's very dangerous and it's very interesting ukraine suddenly uh masculinity is in in

favor like suddenly you know they're talking about these heroic men i

mean there was a man that blew himself up the other day it was literally a suicide bombing and they were praising him

and the hypocrisy of it's just incredible but the point is is that when things

break down and they do break down and they can break down here just like anywhere else i mean this idea that

americans think somehow we're immune to what the rest of the world goes through things can collapse we have an economic

house of cards that could literally collapse and what happens when it does well what

happens when it does when you have uneducated irreligious people

it's rape and pillage that's what happens so who's going to defend the women in those situations all the

feminism is out the window it's just out the window you know we're

we're supposed to educate our women and you know the prophet did set aside a day for the women

but generally they were in the homes they were taking care of the family they were doing those things that was the traditional world so the modern world is

very different and this idea somehow that we have to readjust islam

i mean islam has always recognized the barsa there are women that are in the world and active in the world

islam is always recognized khadija is a good example of that you know but she used agents to do

she wasn't the one going on the caravans she hired people to do that type of work

so and we know there are brilliant female physicians they're brilliant female

lawyers imam tabari was of the opinion that women could serve in all those including the judiciary

so he considered women capable of doing that that wasn't the dominant opinion amongst the other imams but there there

are those opinion abu hanifa accepts uh women in the judiciary in certain things in civil courts not in criminal but so

these are these are things that we're all grappling with and i don't necessarily have the answers but um

i know that a fool in his culture are soon parted and and that um

that you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater you know there's a lot of good from the past that we need to conserve

and our religion is essentially not a politically conservative religion i'm not using the word in that way it's a

conservative religion in that it tries to preserve the best and it's very wary of

innovation because innovation is very destabilizing and unsettling and so it's

always you know our tradition teaches us to have another to look down the road

see what are the consequences things are moving way too rapidly which is one of the signs of the latter days the prophet

is them said a day would be like an hour

last questions

my

you

Part 4

starting the last 10 days of ramadan i know there's a slight difference for

some people it's the 20th

21st and for other people's 20th but last night for some was the 19th and for

others it was the 18th right now 19th or 20th yeah so tonight's

21st for most people this i wanted to again

bring this dua to the forefront after bismuth

i think it's a extremely important dua for a number of reasons one the

prophet isaiah said in the reward relates is that anybody who hears it

should learn it so that in itself is justification enough to learn the dua

but it's also prefaced by a statement that the prophet isaiah said whoever is suffering from

depression should recite this and if they recite it sincerely then inshallah the depression

will be removed so this is an antidepressant dua and i think there's a secret in that

it's a dua of asking allah to make the quran the spring of

your heart because the quran will bring the heart back to life

allah brings the earth back to life after it's dead and the quran is

is it has the bushra i mean one of the reasons why

the um one of the reasons why the

the news is so depressing is because the good news that the

prophets bring would not have the type of impact that it would have uh

if everything was good news if it was all good news then what really is the bushra

of of the prophets their bushra is that this abode is a trial and tribulation

for a short time and then after that for those who pass the test

it's busha it's a good news and so for for people that live in the light of

that truth they the world is not going to bring them down in the way that it will bring down other people because the world

really is designed to break hearts it's designed to wear people down that's the

nature of the abode and if you accept that truth then you'll really appreciate the good

times that you have you'll really be grateful for those times that allah intersperses

between the tribulations to keep you going because if it was all tribulation

people couldn't handle it so this dua is very important

mella answered that prayer i wanted just to look at a few of the hadith

they're very strong hadees about these last 10 days relates that the prophet sallallahu

alaihi saw him said kana rasulullah is allah he said that the prophet sallallahu alaihi salaam

then he would bring the night to life and remember that most of his nights in the normal year

were brought to life so the fact that she's saying this about these nights

is very strong so he also woke his family up

because save yourselves and your family so we have an obligation also to

to to wake our families up and he was very very

uh serious during this time means he tightened up his loincloth in

other words the the izaar what they call lungi in india which is

was one of the prophetic raymond's the prophet isaiah wore a

lungi um so he he bound it up so he was very serious during this time

and that's obviously a kinaya for he he wasn't he didn't

he wasn't with the women so and even um

so they had a vision this is a which is different from a dream a vision is a true

event that occurs the prophet sim said it's 146 of prophecy it's that aspect of

prophecy that every human being even an a disbeliever can have access to this i

like the pharaoh who had a true dream so

in the last seven nights so you're going to see 7 and 10 you'll see some different views

so what he means there is that the all these different people have the same vision

so that's the tawapat you know they they coincided in those seven last days

so especially those last seven days although all 10 are important obviously

the 25th the 27th and the 29th are very strong

days um and the unimah differ about that allah says

so that leila mubaraka which is in surat is considered to be

leila some say it's which is another big night there's a

hidap about nushatban but historically it's been practiced it's interesting that the maliki

school traditionally it was not practiced but the monarchies themselves ended up

doing it so it's practiced all over the maliki countries in the south asian culture it's very strong

and it was the opinion of many of the great scholars that it was a good night it was a blessed night to

to do of there's certain you know people that see it that it it wasn't strong and or

there wasn't uh validity to it those are the in the rahm of allah and it's very

important for people not to make incar of other people that are doing these practices but these are

firmly established practices in the muslim community so abu hurairah radhillah who said ani nabi

is that the prophet saws

so whoever will stand in prayer on the laila

out of faith in you know in belief with with faith well also

in other words yeah and allah that they they're really trusting that allah is going to reward

them so there's a there's a they're reckoning with their lord that that he's going to

reward them for that so they're doing it with that intention that allah is going to respond

to their worship it's forgiven all the things that

proceeded obviously generally with these it's the the

what are called the venial sins the lesser sins not the major sins the

enormities you need tawba specifically so the seven mubicads things like that

[Music] again she said this is another hadith but reiterating that imam muslim relates

cannot rasulullah is allah

he was constantly with allah so in ramadan it was even more intense but then in the last 10 days it was even

intensified so there was more during this time than any other time so

those are all really i think important reminders we're in the last 10 days so inshallah may

allah give us the ability to fulfill these these

just encouragements from our prophet's life and the prophet did not make things that were not far

he encouraged people so these are really encouragements this is all from the men do bad there's no there's nothing wajib

here but but this our our prophet saw i if he is

doing it and and and his his sins were forgiven

even though his sins are the the hassanath of you know we we don't say his sins like he doesn't have

his mason but it's

you know so that's but if the prophet saw isaiah has a completely clean slate with allah

and yet he's doing this and when i saw his feet had

become swollen from standing so it's called venostasis when you when you stand for a very long

time especially a an elderly person when they stand for a long time sometimes the

the the the fluid will gather around the ankles so you'll see that kind of

so she saw that and and he said she said to him you know you don't have

anything to worry about with your lord he said shouldn't i be a grateful servant and

shakur is meaning constantly grateful you know shouldn't i be always grateful

for what allah has given me so we go back to surat al-baqarah inshallah this is such a important

it's such an important surah in our tradition i mean all of the quran is important but there are so many

there's so many rulings that come there's so so much uh

knowledge in this single chapter and the prophet called them the zaharayan the two zahara

the the uh surat and he actually said that they would

defend they would be shade for people in their graves so and he's he said to

leave this is you know to take it as barakah to leave it as hasarat to take it as a blessing

to leave it is remorse and only really firmly rooted people are

able to take on al-baqarah so we were looking at the early ones he's

giving the analogy now of these people so the hypocrites um

you know it's if they're in darknesses thunder and lightning they put their fingers in their ears and literally they

did this literally um this is one of the proofs for majaz in the quran because they don't

literally put their al-sabih they put up so some of them

call that a hat you know where it's just omitted

like assad

are in their ears because you can't put the whole finger in the ear so this is a figurative figure of speech

but they used to do that when the prophet isaiah came in when they came to mecca the hypocrites when they ever

heard they heard the quran they would plug their ears so they didn't want to hear it

and even the kofar they would give people cotton

when they would come into and they'd say oh we have a big magician here you don't want to hear him because

he bewitches people so

you can't

to strike um and so it it seizes their their light

[Music] every time that their light is shed for them they walk in it and when it grows

dark upon them they stand still and if god will god could remove their hearing and their seeing for god has power over all things

and we did this so now this is uh the first injunction in the quran this

is the very first command in in in the quran

linearly if you begin not chronologically because the first command chronologically but if you begin linearly this is the very

first command and it's a command to all of humanity

this book is unique in that it was sent to all of humanity and it was sent in a

clear arabic language the prophet isaiah was given this book it's not written by men it was written

down by men but the book unlike the bible unlike previous dispensations

this is a direct revelation and it's the final in our in our understanding this

is our faith that this is the final book yayo hannes oh you owe humanity o people

dr cleary is translating it oh people oh people ur

serve your lord worship your lord serve your lord allah

the one who created you allah

so that you may be conscientious and he chose conscientiousness which i think is a really good

word choice he was a master linguist and knew many many languages

but he really understood the importance of going to the roots of languages so here

conscientious obviously there's it's a latin word khan usually means with and then siencia

is knowledge with understanding so you may act with understanding it's

very interesting that all of our world religions see ignorance as fundamentally the

fundamental problem with human beings is that they're ignorant so the buddhists say that the

fundamental problem is ignorance the the jews and the christians have this understanding the muslims have this

understanding i mean we call the time before islam is called jahaliyah the time of ignorance now it's interesting

that the word in arabic for ignorance has both the meaning zealous

and the meaning of ignorant so it's somebody who's who is easily excited

they get angry easily because that is from a lack of of knowledge about how the world works

so the fact that you're getting upset the fact that you're getting frustrated is your spiritual immaturity

because when you are when you have knowledge of god

everything is from god and so you have a completely different perspective of reality it's just a very

different perspective so one of the early meanings of conscientious in in english was to be

scrupulous in one's moral behavior and this is really what taqwa is

wakaya is prevention the arabs say that a penny of prevention is better

than a pound of cure right so the wakaya is prevention

uh the the the the muttaqi is the one that guards himself

he guards himself so and that's why tokya is when it's permitted for instance if

you're under threat of death you can actually deny your faith which is called tokyo because you're you're guarding

your your your you're guarding yourself with that so this is a this is the meaning of the

word taqwa in in in arabic is a really important concept in islam

the uh even asha the great north african scholar and really

somebody who taught most of north and west africa their their islam

says

so taqwa is ishtinab avoiding what's prohibited

because right whatever

the prophet isaiah has prohibited you avoid it and and the prophet saw i saw him says

that if i command you to something then do it if i prohibit you something avoid it but if i command you do what do mustafa

so it's more important to avoid the prohibition because the awamer are many

the owamir are many and in fact

that he understood the amar there was for

wujoub because if it was for the umar of the prophet isaiah because

the prophet has awamer he has commands that are for that are recommended or or macro like

telling you not to do something so it's really important to understand that taqwa is essentially

the even jose kelby he says there's five categories of taqwa the first one is

taqwa shirk or taqwa kufar and that every muslim is a muttaqi

so that puts us all inshallah in the huddle

i mean that's a great blessing so that's like you know enough so that's

but he's still muttaqi because he's afraid of shirk and then you have

the the person who's he fears the the the haram right

i mean he's fears like kabalyero and things like that and that's another level of taqwa and

then you have the person that fears the makuru you know just

and then you have the person that fears the mobile hat imam adi said

about the dunya he said

what's permitted from it you're going to be accounted for and what's haram from it you're going to

be punished for i mean allah can forgive people but that's the essential principle

so that means that so that's why they say

the people that do without in the dunya those are actually the bet the highest people they're the most intelligent

people and uh so that's uh very important and then and

then finally the uh the last one is just the people who fear

uh just that other than god occurs to their hearts

and that's mohammed the highest mohammed

this is a really amazing uh analogy here so he made the earth

a bed a couch for you a firash so it could be bed or couch

the ulama say that the reason allah used firaj is because if it was too hard you

couldn't build on it and if it was too soft you couldn't build on it so allah made the earth

soil if you look at soil it's perfect for building on it's not too hard and

it's not too soft you can dig it you can put your foundations in it and yet it's stable so it'll it'll hold you and

that's how you want a bed you don't want it too soft you don't want it too hard you want it right in that middle and so

that's why it uses that term wasabi and the heavens a roof now what does a

roof do a roof protects you well sama with dunya you have different heavens

but we have this it's called the the protected

roof over us and now we know with van allen's belts that we actually have this

extraordinary roof over us that's protecting us from radiation bombardment like it's going on

constantly and had we not had that roof it would annihilate us there could be no life on earth

so the fact that allah calls it a bina that it's a roof over you is quite

stunning because that's exactly what it is it's a protective barrier

um and and one set of mines and he sent down and who sends water

down from the skies

and who brings forth from it fruits for your sustenance

generally first and foremost means fruit like the fruit how we categorize food so

we have fruits and vegetables and grains and and then and then the animal

products but if you look at uh the arabs use fruit also for anything

that's beneficial like the fruit of his wealth it's what you

get benefit from so he brought forth all of these benefits for us as provision

risk so now he's giving us a reason like

allah is saying look he did all of this he created you he created those who came before you so you can't say oh my

parents created me because who created them who created those before them it has to go back it's chicken and egg

right so that's circular reasoning or infinite regress

they're both false it's impossible so allah is saying we did all this that

perhaps you might have taqwa you know guard yourself be conscientious about your lord be aware of your lord and then

he made the earth this wonderful abode for you he gave you a protective uh roof over you a canopy he

and then he sent down water from the from the skies and brought forth all of this provision for you janna

we made every living thing from water so all this provision comes out and you see like the dead earth brought back to life

it's amazing all the green that takes over and and so then allah says

[Music] don't set up anything

do not suppose anything to be like god don't set up idols besides god the nid

is alike it's it's the same as don't make something the same as god

and that's why the a man once said to the prophet either

allah don't don't make my mashiach it's a conjunction that indicates

they're the same so if you will then if god wills and you will so he was saying

no my will and god's will are two different things don't make me

a partner with god i don't have the meshia of god i have my own volition but it's not god's

mashiach so now what's important about this verse is the jumlah halia that

you do it knowingly when you know and this is this is why our tradition

and this there's a lot of about these issues but i'm inshallah giving you the the normative most common

belief that the prophet told us we should be with the majority of people be with the vast majority of believers

the belief is is that if people have not been given a message if they don't know then they're not taken to account for

what they do out of ignorance they have to have something

we will not punish people until we send a messenger now the martezra said the

rasool is that the messenger is the intellect and there is a maturity understanding

that the intellect does have some tech leave in it but generally

the the dominant opinion of both the two dominant schools the maturity and the

is that people are not punished until the message comes to them it's made clear to them and they reject it and so

this is a really important point because a lot and and i'll just say we'll get to this if we get to it inshallah there's

another verse in baqarah and and uh that

just indicates the previous dispensation dispensations but one of the things that's important to understand is that

imam al-ghazali wrote a book called which is a very important book and the

american scholar [Music] dr abdul hakeem

jackson translated into english it's it's called

the boundaries of tolerance i think in english so it's available in english but it's it's a very important

work that imam al-ghazadi wrote to to really define kufar

one of the things that he makes clear in there and he actually says that he can't say more about it because he had a kind of opening from a kish

about it one of the things he makes very clear is that the vast majority of people

you know we have to be very careful about condemning people because

there's so many variables in dealing with why people believe what they believe

and this is something even understood because he was a great sociologist he really understood

enculturation and how people are inculturated into their beliefs so it's very hard for people to give up the

beliefs that they grow up as children in fact the famous jesuit

the founder of the jesuit saint ignatius loyola he said if you give me the child before seven i'll have him on his

deathbed that was that was a understanding like if we can get them really early and indoctrinate them which

is why a lot of this horrible stuff that's happening now is happening through childhood

indoctrination because they know if we can get them young i mean just look at some of the children's books that are

being published because they know that they the a whole generation is going to die

off the dinosaurs the people that knew how life was before all this madness

and once they're gone nobody will know it'll be like reading old history right

so i mean my my grandfather told me

he witnessed the introduction of cars into san francisco as a 10 year old

which is quite amazing i mean and now we have

you know flights to the moon and people are have cell phones like dick tracy that

was all fantasy in the 1950s and 60s dictation had a little

watch where he could talk to people on it and now people do it all the time i mean i i knew that the end of

time was near when i went back after 10 years to mauritania there's a young bedouin boy

in the desert and he said to me hasta la vista baby and i just i knew that this was because

when i first went to mauritania they they didn't even some of them did not know where america

was they just vaguely heard of a place called i'm not making this up like people say i exoticized moritan i

know what i saw i know what was there it's very different now it's still

amazing but it's very different from what i saw i mean i saw a place that was relatively

untouched in fact i would argue entirely untouched by modernity pre-modern people

living with pre-modern understandings and to see that because i don't i don't there probably

still are a few places where you could find that i'm sure but it's very rare now everybody's been

tainted by modernity and post-modernity now so this so he mentions in there that

even if people get a distorted version of islam they're not rejecting islam they're rejecting a distorted version if

you look at how much propaganda has been done on western peoples about islam it's

first of all it's a thousand years of propaganda it's not just recent it's been going on for centuries

about how evil islam how evil the muslims are the cruel turk

right i mean turkish people are very it's amazing anybody that goes to turkey they're really struck by the the

goodness of the people they were they were very tough in war that's undeniable but as a people

they're they're actually very kind to animals they had all these alcohol for animal helping animals endowments and

things anybody that goes to turkey is struck by the general goodness of the people

um so

there's really really important verses about that so you know if you see somebody

who's worshipping idols you know just recognize that a lot of times it's just out of ignorance it's what they were

raised doing and really it's i would blame the muslims

more than anybody because we've just failed to to really bring tohey to people like

bring because we're the last people of tahite i mean we really have i i one of my professors when i was

doing undergraduate in religious studies he he was a christian but he's when he

taught the the different types of monotheism when he got to islam he said well now this is

radical monotheism like that's how he defined it radical monopoly in other words it

doesn't tolerate any association with god because you know in christianity you

have you have the mystery of the trinity in judaism there's quite a bit of

anthropomorphism in the tradition traditionally i mean i think rabbis would argue that but traditionally there's

there's quite a bit there's and there's been books written on that

now this is like a real question keva

how can you deny god there really should be an exclamation point there you know how can you deny

how can you deny god well kuntum awata you were dead

in other words you were la shay you were nothing like

like he brought you to life god and god gave you life you me to come and then he will cause

you to die he will then kill you and then bring you to life

[Music] then you'll be returned to god so

that's a really just it's so clear there's no commentary needed

no commentary needed [Music]

he made everything in the earth for you this is a proof that al-ashad iba

that the foundation of things there is a khilaf about that but the dominant opinion is that

everything is halal unless there's a proof that it's haram this is one of

them that proves for that

so god it is who created for you all that is on the earth then turn to the heights and estawa

means to direct one's attention even though we have to recognize that there's always going to

be some anthropomorphism in language when we speak about god we can't get away from it but we have to

understand that you cannot take it in a literal sense that god then turned his

attention to there's there's no time god is is in the eternal

he he is the eternal now a god is present there's no past present or future it's

always present so so there's no turning any direction

in that way but the mastawa is after so we're in a time-based

understanding so thumb is used and then i mean that it does mean that but it's

really about the chronological creation of how allah did it but allah

the reality is outside time and space we cannot place god within time or space

he's he doesn't take he doesn't occupy space because if he occupied space it would mean he would be limited

and if he was in time it would it would mean that there he had

there's a past and a future that there's change within god because

time is actually according to aristotle time is the measure of movement

and movement is change and so god doesn't change there's no change in god

so the seven heavens these are these are mystical concepts but there's

also we know now there's also the seven layers uh so

it could have multiple meanings and the thing about the quran is you can't limit the meanings there are there are

multiple possibilities in the quran and and god is completely aware of all

things now here we're entering into a very

interesting section uh because this is a foundational story

so this is really rooting our species in a cosmology like

how did we come about where did we come from and what are we doing here so these

are the big questions in in philosophy they say there's five big questions the the ontological the cosmological

the um uh eska know the ontological cosmological epistemological

uh satoriological and the eschatological so those are really big words for

basically saying you know what what what it what is this

where did it come from how do we know what should we do while we're here and

where are we going those are the five big questions and the beauty of religion

is that they answer all five scientists can't answer they'll attempt to answer maybe the

cosmological now but they don't still know where the big bang came from like okay you got to the big bang what

was before the big bank and if the laws preceded the big bang then

there was something before there was there was something

so uh so this is a really important

and when your lord said to the angels

i am placing a deputy on earth khalifa could be translated in different ways

deputy is certainly one of them because you put a kharifa in your place and that's essentially what a deputy when

you deputize somebody you're putting them standing like a deputy stands in place of the law they represent the law

it can mean steward it can mean also a successor and it can mean also

sometimes translated as vice gerund and vice regent so like a vice president somebody who's

when when the president's not there they they they fulfill that that role

in any case the khalifa here according to our udama

is adam ade so allah says i am placing a deputy on

earth

when allah tells the angels that i'm placing a deputy on earth they say will you put someone who will cause trouble

there he he uses trouble for facade you see so corruption is another translation

there are several translations but in any case and shed blood

and and while we sing your praise so there the wow is a again it's a had

this is you're doing this and we're in this hall of total obedience to you

so this is called it's not they're not

challenging god it's called sual estefan explain to us we know you're

hakeem we know you know all things explain to us why you're doing this now

there's different versions the ulama in the tafsirs

they say mentions this some some of the uluma

said that they were making ps the angels that they had seen the jinn

had been down on earth before and they had free will and they wreaked havoc and

iblis didn't get it under control and so when allah said he's placing another one

and they were like we just saw what happened to this like

you're going to do this again like they're trying to understand like is this all gonna happen again

and so and then and then they say you know they're they're gonna sow corruption and

they're gonna shed blood like the jinn did and then we're praising you like this

can explain this that's that they're asking for an explanation and this is a really good question

in fact uh according to a wonderful book written

by jeffrey lang even angels ask i mean it's a beautiful book but one of the things that he was

he was an atheist it's actually one of the best conversion stories that i know of because he was an atheist and when he

read the he had these arabs in his class he was a mathematician he was teaching the arabs

you know given the quran and and he was just thought this mythology

he was completely just uninterested so anyway he decided to read you know just

he said he got to this like it's right at the outset of the book and he was like this is my question

like the angel they're asking god he said that was my question like why would god create a world so he's already

preempting he's preempting god is preempting you

on the problem of evil because that's what all the atheists say how could god create a world that has all this evil in

it well god's gonna explain why so this is really a beautiful

refutation of the problem of evil it's like the angels wanted to know like it's

you're going to start this again all this evil why would you do that

so allah says i know what you don't know

now what's interesting is look now the very first usage of alamo

here that's the very first usage that allah is setting up in these coming eyes it's

quite stunning how many times the word is used here and yet it begins i know

and you don't know and that is the equation that that's it

god knows and everybody else doesn't know other than what god has taught them

and so there's a humility that's that we're being called to in this

animal

[Music]

is a beautiful word alima in arabic means to know but allama means to put an

imprint and it actually means to imprint in clay so in cuneiform the original

writing they were literally imprinting it into clay and so the alama is a sign

that you put into the clay those kuniforms so that those are the alamats

and so allama adama is to imprint give us this knowledge and this is why we

have these the potentiality for knowledge

in human beings is what's there allah has put that in us the potentiality is

there and it's going to be displayed by adam allama adam alasma

so adam was taught now adam in arabic some say it's from adeemur some say it's

from udmit

so it's that that he's created unlike the jinn

who are hidden creatures adam and his offspring are manifest

the other one is that he's created from top soil

and it's also utma is sumra so it's it's it's a dark tawny color so he he was

created from he was created from all the soil but if you look on the soil the vast majority of soil is dark and tawny

which is the majority of people on the planet the outliers are extremely dark and extremely light

so those are the outliers so there is soil that's white and there's soil that's pitch black but the majority of

people are somewhere in that spectrum of summer and and so that's why adam alayhim

he had all the recessive genes for white and for uh extremely dark but the

the the the he was he was of that dark tawny so it's more the middle types of

people on the earth that have these it's a dark color he was not white and he wasn't

extremely although hawa in arabic tends to mean very dark

so i mean we do know with genetics that that the lighter skin is recessive and so we

know that the first people were dark how dark and i mean that's all we'll

we'll know inshallah when we see our father and our mother inshallah

so so allah and ibn abbas said even the

name of kasa

is the wooden bowl and the milk is the ladle that you take out of so he was taught all the names now what is this

ability and this is where fakhrin al-razi to me is really one of the most interesting he of all

the mufasyron he had the most profoundly philosophical mind and he's been criticized for that

because he did but all the scholars

have really marveled at his tafsir but one of the things that he

says and this is extremely important to me because i it really understands what

we're here to do he said that what adam the ability that adam had

was to see the universal in the particular

of of the of of things what enables us to name

is to see the one in the many and that's what universes mean so one out of many like diversity you know you

have a lot diversity university is one out of many

and so the universal is the one from which all the others the

particulars are understood through it's the universal that so that ability

to make one is central to the human condition and that's why we're called

literally means to make one and and that's why taheed is making god want god is already one so what does it

mean to have tahit it means you are understanding god's oneness you in your own mind are understanding

the oneness of god and that's what tohit is so toheed is used constantly

the only reason we can communicate is because of the tahit the tohatic ability of the human mind the ability to see one

in many that's the only reason humans can communicate and that's why if we say if you say

camel why do we call a bacteria in camel and a dromedary why do we call them both

camels if you look at them one has the bacteria and has two humps

it's got that um tina turner hair style it's it's and then you have the uh you

know the dromedary has one hump like how is that possible

how is that possible because you are seeing the universal essence of that

thing you're seeing the one in the many and that's why you can look at a chihuahua and you can look at a great

dane and you can see the dogginess of those two things you can see the

universal in the many differentiations of god's creation you can say that's a flower

because you know what a flower is you can say that's a tree because you know what a

tree is now nominalists argue that that's just a trick of the mind this is kind of the kantian

category that the mind is simply playing a trick on you by that these aren't the

same and that's nominalism where i mean that's a radical nominalism where there's no there's nothing there's no

universals there's they don't even have a mental existence it's it's it's

if you get into islamic tradition you'll find that there

there were some differences is there a mental existence and is there actually what are called ayana thabita

which some of our scholars argued that there were actually these original source forms

that were shown to adam and that's where we get our knowledge from from those original source forms

and and and so this is a really really powerful and important

section for understanding our tradition

and the home there some of the ulama say it's because the that's

it's a pronoun for rational beings you you would say he or

or or or who for if it was uh but but because they're the rational

beings were in there also it's included in there so when you have you know

they all got up except for the donkey so that's called a um

so the home is the donkey's included in the pronoun of

anyway those are grammatical problems

[Music] so allah showed the names to all the angels

the musamayat and asma al-musamayat he showed them and he said tell me their names

if you're telling the truth

right i know what you don't know subhannaka that's tanziya that's for

just glory be to god transcendent as god above anything we can imagine

[Music] we have no knowledge there that

la nifidejins we have no knowledge except what you have taught us

you are the all-knowing the most knowing for you are most knowing most wise so al-alim is

hyperbolic form of and hakim is hyperbolic form of hakim so these are exaggerated forms to indicate

that immense you know all knowledge and all wisdom you have all knowledge you have all wisdom you are the most

more than any anything any one

so this is uh you know them admitting but look at the look at all the

allama

and then the imba which is a type of you know transmitting knowledge ambioni you

know let me hear you transmit the knowledge um and then

which is in kuntum because real knowledge is truthful and

so you know if you have knowledge then you're truthful if you're speaking knowledge because

knowledge corresponds with reality knowledge is not false knowledge is true

subhanallah

and then hikmah what's the purpose of knowledge is wisdom so look at all of that just in those few eyes it's really

quite stunning just how much is there

and then he said

adam tell them their names

and then when he told them their names god said did i not tell you i know the mysteries of the heavens and the

earth i know the unseen i know we're animal and again i know look at

that i know

i know what you disclose and what you've been concealing in other words i know

that they're going to sow corruption i know they're going to shed blood i know but i also know what you've been

concealing about them that there's going to be mbf from them there's going to be awliya from them

there's going to be uluma there's going to be righteous there's going to be salihun they're going to do good they're

going to and they'll do it unlike you purely out of free will

because you do it because i have programmed you to do it you can't

disobey me they have the ability just to disobey me and yes many of them will

but but many of them won't so it's really just um

stunning

see now okay as a toba for your bad opinion

as a toba for your bad opinion show them respect

in in in asian cultures in asian cultures they bow to show respect

you bow to your master like the sensei and and so in

the the sujood here is bowing according to most of our scholars so they actually were told to bow to do like a bow

of respect for adam with

so they all bowed down and and it's he's right to translate it bao because you could say prostrate but

bow is the correct transition i think so here again this is called is

so it's it's it's this is how the grammarians would interpret that for sahaja yogis like i

said they all got up except for the donkey so you can you can have something outside of um

so when it said we said to the angels to bow down well iblis was included in them

because he was among them he was honorary in that mella even though he was from the jinn kanam and el

jinni you know the quran says that he was from the jinn some you'll find these

in tafsir some of them say that he was transmogrified into a gin that he was originally an angel

and that he was given that free will and then he disobeyed and so he was you'll see these things i once was in a measure

this many many years ago this is like 40 years ago almost and

it was the majjis of sheikh muhammad mariki and sheikh muhammadan the mufasir was in the masjid and he

mentioned this ayah and then he said he really got upset and kind of really gave a strong

darts about nobody should say that anybody was from the angels he was from the jinn

shouldn't be any khilaf but there is weak but you know you have to acknowledge

these things so that's the normative opinion and the correct one of

course so he refused and showed arrogance

you know the beauty of arabic the cinta is is used in arabic it can be used for

for to seek something out so you you say like you stat limu like

to seek out information or it could be used for to deem uh yourself a stasi no like i

consider it very beautiful so it's used that it also means

it can be less aurora to become something so these are different ways

that that adif affects the noun in this case it's he

deemed himself great is so kabura means to be vast or great

right so these are all so

he refused about because he deemed himself too great to bow down and he actually said

like i should bow down for and he actually says like black clay so he actually uses that

word and that's why racism really is a demonic it's from iblis

we should really call it iblisism because he literally uses the word black

and smelly like he said it's black stinky clay like

i'm gonna bow down to black stinky clay and i'm made out of fire like i'm i'm

this high element you created me from fire and and you want me to

bow down to this black stinky clay so he's arrogant and so that really is

the beginning of what what modern people call racism it's arrogance and that's why the root problem is arrogance

racism is real arrogance that's what it is it's just it's arrogance in the heart if

anybody thinks they're better than another person they're arrogant it's as simple as that

and and the prophet sam said you will not enter paradise if you have even a mustard's weight of arrogance in

your heart so and that's why you know the sahabi that called bilal

even a soda which he obviously meant it as a negative term

you know akin to maybe using a derogatory slur against somebody um

when the prophet said he he didn't call him like you're a racist or he said

you still have jihadiya in you so he wants to treat him like

he's letting him know that's a jihadi statement he wasn't jahil because he was a

believer and he was a devout believer but he was saying yeah you still have something in you that you need to excise

and when he understood that he went and he he asked the man to put his foot on his his cheek he

literally went onto the ground and said put your foot on as a way of making toba like he humiliated humiliated himself

before that man as a way of making tawba to humble himself and that's why

adam was given the the the khalifa be the khilafah because he was humble

iblis see if you if you look at it please iblee says you let me astray

now when when when when adam was led astray by iblis he could have

very easily said the devil made me do it and a lot of people take that route

the devil made me do it so he could have said that but he didn't

he said we i oppressed myself we oppressed ourselves

we did it he took responsibility and that's the person that can be in charge the one

who's willing to say the buck stops here the one who's willing to say i'm responsible not to put the blame on

somebody else right napoleon famously said that

victory has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan

you know nobody wants to take blame but if so and you know there's a great story

of um cervantes who wrote the famous it's considered the first novel in the west there is

actually a novel before that i think in japan but it's the first

novel uh in the west called don quixote it's very interesting

and it's heavily influenced by islam but don quijote

cervantes a spaniard living at the time when the muslims were being persecuted in spain

this is right during the inquisit height of inquisition and there's a lot of characters in his play that are in his novel that are

clearly hiding out from the inquisition they're muslims and he's he actually got he you know he's got this scene where he

puts on his little toupee and starts doing subaha and he has his little is

a very interesting story but anyway there's a great uh

event that happens in his life he was captured and [Music]

by um corsairs algerian and he was taken to algeria

and and he was put in prison well they tried to make an escape and so the uh

the the the warden of the prison he ordered them all to be punished and

cervantes came out and he said no no only punish me

he said you can give me all of their punishment because i was the one that instigated this

and he he knew immediately that he was a nobleman

just from that act because it was such a noble act and he was he was an aristocrat so he pulled him out he ended

up learning arabic he lived seven years he became the governor's secretary and he learned a lot about

islam which is why you find hadis all throughout cervantes and i discovered that i read

don quixote in spain many many years ago and could clearly see a lot of the muslim

influence it was one of my father's favorite books but there's recently been researchers that

have started to recognize the he actually says it was written by

ben hammett bengali you know mohammed bengali so he

attributes it to an arab the whole book that he's just the amanuensis in any case that was a little diversion

so uh and here really it's about ingratitude

which is the meaning of kuffar he was an angry he was of the ungrateful

because he's not a disbeliever in that way there's a masada masala the moafat masala there's a famous

masala in the almond about this because

this is the between the the ashaira and the maturity

because does was iblis always a kafir with god

right and that's the the masala it's it's how you come to god on the yom

qiyama that determines the reality and that's why i say you can say inshallah not out doubting your iman but

not knowing your hatimah so you're you're you're you're not you're admitting that i don't know my

hating i'm hoping that i'll die a believer but there are people that the prophet isaiah

said they lived their whole life a cafe and then right before they they they

become a believer and there's other people they live their whole lives

[Music]

and we said adam live in the garden you and your wife and eat of it comfortably as you wish but do not go near to this

tree for you will become abusive tyrants vladimir meaning you will become

basically your your lower self will

that it'll be tyrannical over your higher self so

this is now adam is in jannah he's he has his mate

she's not mentioned the only woman that's mentioned in the quran is maryam

all the other women are mentioned like this and the reason for that is

because in arab tradition you do not mention

the wives of other people in a or major gathering it would

it would be considered a naive i mean modern arabs now do it because they've lost these kind of formalities but

traditionally it would have be a huge idea to mention that but and so

a man can mention his wife but not so this is like an adab

a a type of adeb but it's a distinction of maryam because she is amateur law

so it's her makam that she's the only woman named in the in the quran is that

she has that maqaam with allah subhanahu ta'ala it's as if he's saying she's mine

and and it's it's her makam is so high ale hasanah

so

you know comfortably you're going to have all you need to

so there's always these are always the the caveats in in life you always have

this you can do uh whatever you want but don't do that don't open the box

it's like there was um had a his wife who he loved zainab

and uh he he was the adan had gone off he he there was a

there was a a a a scorpion in the room and so he put a

bowl on it he was going to deal with it afterwards because the on went off and he just said zainab

don't don't lift the bowl so she goes in of course you know the moritan says

she got curious she goes in she lifts the bowl she got stung by the

so shure comes back he sees his poor wife she's got stung by the scorpion

and he looks at her and he says

he said i've seen some men they strike their wives may my hand be paralyzed if i ever lifted

against zainab because she was a good woman a beautiful story

so uh but that's the thing you the temptation is always there now there's a difference of opinion

because we know the prophets cannot disobey they don't disobey openly some of the

ulamas say that the alif lam there is for ahad in other words it was specifically that that that

that he thought that it was specifically that tree but not the fruit

whereas it was actually for the estebarak it was for all those types of trees so that's some of them say that

you know there's different opinions about this some say the nehe was tenzi that it was it was makru

it wasn't so you're going to get different opinions of trying to get out of this

problem allah but

what is the tree now in the in the christian tradition they always use the apple even though

the apple's not mentioned in the bible in our tradition the majority said it was wheat

and in fact imam nasifi says that some of them say

like how could man not disobey his lord when his main staple is from the tree of

disobedience because we eating wheat some say it's the karma

which i was thinking is interesting if indian you know that word is from karma because they say they use that word

karma you know like the vine like is that where all the karma began

it was from the karma hello adam so anyway those are those funny

like phony etymologies that people find

so he was told you you you you'll oppress yourselves

[Music] but then the obsessor he uses that term because wasa is a type

obsessive compulsive thoughts that iblis uses he gets people to use these terms so

made them both slip and fall from there and azella means zelda is to slip and

then obviously it can cause a fall

because he convinced them to he tells them in another ayah

another chapter he tells them can i tell you this tree of eternity

and a dominion that never ends so he tricks them

and they and they eat from the tree the quran doesn't put the onus on the woman you

find that in the bible um i mean it's not it just clearly says

they both um ended up you know they both ate from the

tree and that's what happened so uh

so some say because the the devil was regime

that he actually was at the gate of paradise when he called them

and then there's also a that says that he he went into the femme the mouth of a serpent and that's how he got in

was the haze and didn't see the serpent so it wasn't that he was a serpent but that

that was the vehicle that he used to get into jannah allah

these are all you know in the end we only know what's sound

which is in either the mutawatar quran or in the sahih hadith but you stand you statin

they're mentioned in the tough series for a reason

go down descend let you all descend

[Music] so some of you this is a heart it's a description of our state

so go down you're now you're in the world of you were in paradise now you're in the world

of free will and appetites and so this is tabari with adi this is the badukum

uh that means some of them say it means the humans fighting one another and then iblis also

and others say it's iblis is our enemy and he's really the source of all the problems

but ramadan is a proof that you know there's more here working than iblis

and and and there you will be be there and there will be housing and food for you so you have this musta in the earth

on earth for a while um so you have a residence

and you have matat you have what you need you know food and provision really provision

then adam received instruction from his lord and god relented toward him for god is most relenting

most merciful

so we said let all of you descend from there so in the commentaries they say

here it's adam hawa and then iblis but if guidance

does indeed come to you from me then whoever follows my guidance will have nothing to fear in other words you won't

fear this the future and you won't have sorrow for the past so that's why health and husband are

used often in the quran and the hadith because one is fear of makru in the

future some harm and the other is hazan of what's passed

and as for those who ungratefully repudiate our signs and that's a beautiful translation of kafaru

because it's it's getting both meanings ungratefully repudiate

he's he's really getting both meanings of ingratitude but also repudiation the fact that you're rejecting

so it's it's really a nice i don't know if that's his or if there are other people that that use that but he he

dr clear actually had many creative uh solutions to the problem of translation

of these words and um bruce lawrence acknowledges that and and

so does uh actually thought that he said it could potentially become an

important translation like he recognized that there were some really interesting aspects to it

um and accuse them of falsity and they are the company of the fire of habanar

companions of the fire company of they are the ones who will stay in home feed

how much time oh okay you know uh just before i end uh

i just want to say please um support the college

you know we have lots of plans but we can't implement the plans without your help

we're really almost done with a just a phenomenal

studio so we're going to be able to be providing you world-class inshallah that's our hope anyway no claims but

really we're going to aspire to really producing world-class

materials um for online learning different subjects

have provided you know interviews have have doing lots of plans for that

the college is growing we need your help to grow further this has

been a labor of love for a lot of people i know we've had an immense amount of support

out there but we really need continued support i know it's difficult times for a lot of people also but

it's in difficult times that it's it's good to do what you can it's always good to do what you can because

allah is our lord in difficult times and in easy times

and with hardship comes east occurs on one night how can we understand this in life the fact that people begin fasting on different days

well stay up for all ten i mean that's the lesson in that

because it definitely is one night i mean obviously allah can do whatever he wants

he can give you the reward for your nia you know that's up to god to do

that i i don't know but there is one night in the last 10 nights

it could be any of the 10 nights but traditionally it was because of the hadith to look for it in the in the odd

nights tonight is an odd night for some of us and it's an even night for others

i would say that's all the more reason to just try to benefit from all the last 10 nights

why is polytheism and unforgivable sin in islam

that's a good question i think what's important to remember again

that the um who allah forgives and who he

doesn't is entirely up to allah wa ta'ala and allah does say

that that on you like he does not forgive that he is

associated with um and like i said earlier

it's clearly stated

so it's a very um arrogant thing to

associate with your lord who's given you everything

in terms of allah being infinitely merciful this was it's a problem in in qaram and you you

do see different attempts at solving this ibn utamian there's people that argue that

he didn't say this but it's very clear that he did argue for what's called

that the fire eventually is extinguished um even onoby's solution to it was

that eventually the fire actually they become nadiyun like they're just people

of the fire and so they actually they still have the ad that but it's like a masochistic

um there's people and it's very interesting we have these people on earth that enjoy being

punished i mean that's a very interesting phenomenon like people pay people to whip them

you know or do these funny things so and then uh

you know so and then also there are hadith about

that allah continues to take people out of the fire as long as they had even a mustard weight of of

iman in them so we don't know

i'm not i believe in the quran i believe whatever allah said

i don't have any problems with whatever allah wants to do because it's his world

he created it i imam ali said oh allah you are the way

i love so make me the way you love and i i think one of the things that

there's a kind of arrogance that that we i don't know that we kind of assume that god should be a certain way or like we

don't like things about god i mean i whatever i have never had a problem with sharia

i just don't have problem with sharia i actually really understand property laws

like i really i do understand why you have to have mercy as well and

and you don't implement hud punishments when people are in very dire straits but

i think if if some of the shariat laws were applied you you'd see behavior really get a lot

better pretty quickly you know there's a reason because

you have in these laws of retribution life because life becomes very difficult when

laws break down and people don't obey the laws and it just becomes dog eat dog and people just take over so

ring structures in the quran have all been discussed in the last two decades where they discussed classically not

that i know of there's there's some interesting studies and ring structures you find ring structures in

a lot of ancient literature so it's it's not unique uh to the quran although

the um cuper's book is a very interesting book

and and i think also farin who's in kuwait i think he did his work

at uh uc berkeley but he's he's done some very interesting work on that and showing that the types of

ring structures are they couldn't have been worked out like as a kind of pre-planned the way the

quran was revealed you couldn't have put it together like that so there are some very interesting

things i don't know enough about it to have an opinion though

any other questions

what are the names that allah taught adam what the prophet well i mentioned what ibn abbas said he said it was all

the names which there's amongst our ulama but i think it's an argument

you know that he taught the the language is tokifiya so the original language and there's a

khilaf about what it was some say it was arabic some say it was

a type of siryania imam says woman

little babies when they babble they're actually speaking the first language

because they're talking to the angels well adam i don't know but um

so the names were like he named things he gave everything a name

can you please explain ayah there's no compulsion in religion it's pretty self-explanatory that one

deen you shouldn't force people into a religion

because they just create monafie you just create hypocrites

people sh the prophet isaiah didn't compel people the people entered islam freely i mean

obviously there are the laws and some people find those

confusing in light of deen

there's written on this of late and and it's it's something that i think modern

muslims are are grappling with in the modern world but i think that is not an abrogated it's a very

late verse it's not abrogated and i think we should take it at face value

it's a it's a it's the we're the only world religion that has that principle

no other world religion has that we're the only one that that made that statement

so uh and and we should just honor people you know this is an age of fardenia it's

an age of individualism um in the past you know the apostasy laws

were to protect the believers that was the purpose of them and most people were happy to see them implemented even

though they were rarely in in a muslim history rarely were there any read the laws implemented that's simply a fact

many many heretics lived to ripe old ages i mean there are periods where you

have these things in fact the blasphemy when you have the martyrs of cordoba which were christians that

were really distraught at how many christians were becoming muslim that they started going into mosques and

and cursing the religion and doing things to become martyrs like they actually wanted to be martyred and the

cadet would find all these excuses not to to do it like they were crazy and

muslims did not like to implement capital punishment

i'm not going to say it was all rosie and kumbaya because it wasn't there's a lot

of horrors in islamic history and just like all human history but

overall i think it was certainly a lot better than anywhere else on the planet i think if

if you had a choice to live anywhere in the world a thousand years ago most people would choose in the muslim world if they if

they could see the world as it's as it was they would have chosen the muslim world so we've fallen on hard times but

the religion hasn't you know muslims have but the religion's the same same truths

that's it [Music]

strong we've had a really good uh response to that in the last few months and i really appreciate that and the

whole college on behalf of the whole college just really thank all of you for your support but i do hope that you'll

think about giving a donation in these last 10 days to zaytuna even if you've already given one maybe just just a small one for the

reward of doing that something extra but

you

Part 5

 

[Music]

a

[Music] ramadan invites us back to the book of

allah scholars and sages of the past would devote this month of revelation to the

quran marveling over its endless delights and wonders in the spirit of this tradition

president hamza yusuf invites the 12 000 strong community to the first command

book club named for the quranic command read the first verse revealed to the prophet

muhammad upon him be god's blessings and peace this unique book club takes devoted readers on a literary journey to

the great books of past and present join us this ramadan to study the

greatest of all books the quran we will read a daily segment of our berry's translation

and engage in weekly discussions with president youssef where he will guide us through the linguistic miracles and

timeless wisdom of god's speech join twelve thousand strong and our community of learning today

[Music]

[Music] many of us remember what it was like to

be a student it's a time when the mind and heart open to new ideas

and we marvel at new discoveries [Music] what is it like to be a student at

cetuna college you walk through a campus that seems hidden from the world

an oasis of natural beauty you learn with teachers who nurture both the heart

and mind [Music] you come together and study and worship

breaking bread with kindred spirits and enjoying the fruits of the zaytoon

garden zaituna is different it's a special place

it merges the best of the east and west and prepares young minds for what's ahead

they'll be ready to greet the world with tools for any field of study without the burden of debt

this is your gift and it is transformational when you give to the tuna college you

help revive an intellectual legacy and a tradition of spiritual excellence

most importantly you remember the glorious promise from our creator

those who give of their wealth and the way of god are like grain that sprouts seven ears with a hundred kernels in

each year and god gives manifold increase to whom he will and he is all embracing all knowing

[Music] many of us remember what it was like to

be a student it's a time when the mind and heart open to new ideas

and we marvel at new discoveries [Music] what is it like to be a student at

cetuna college you walk through a campus that seems hidden from the world

an oasis of natural beauty learn with teachers who nurture both the

heart and mind [Music]

you come together and study and worship breaking bread with kindred spirits

and enjoying the fruits of the zatuna garden zaituna is different

it's a special place it merges the best of the east and west and prepares young minds for what's

ahead they'll be ready to greet the world with tools for any field of study without the

burden of debt this is your gift and it is transformational

when you give to the tuna college you help revive an intellectual legacy and a tradition of spiritual excellence

most importantly you remember the glorious promise from our creator

those who give of their wealth and the way of god are like grain that sprouts seven ears with a hundred kernels in

each ear and god gives manifold increase to whom he will and he is all-embracing all-knowing

[Music]

for most of you it's the 27th uh for some of you where it'll be the 27th

tonight inshallah allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept all of your prayers and our prayers and

allah

the last segment of the jewels i wanted to just

present a little project one of the things about

my commitment to this dean has always been the it that i saw in islam especially in the

early community the the muslims

really mastered life on earth they mastered all the sciences but they also

mastered the art of living just living really beautifully

san was so central to the entire islamic civilizational project so

everything was done with the sun there are a few areas where it's remained in our tradition surprisingly

one of them is the quran itself one of the most fascinating things to me is that

i have a lot of arabic books that i've purchased and i'm always struck by how many mistakes there are in modern arabic

publishing about a hundred years ago the bulacria and the other

publishing houses the halobi publishing house there were several of these publishing houses also the

hydera in fast they're actually error free generally i mean very very

rarely you find an error in the because the uluma were the ones that were doing it they were publishing the books but today

the books are filled with mistakes largely because there's it's just commerce

but the quran is produced consistently without mistakes and that is a real miracle of the quran itself also

calligraphy there's still really some great calligraphers turkey still has many great calligraphers the great

sheikh chellabi who i was fortunate to meet him he's the chef of the

great american calligrapher mohammed zakiriya who studied with him and also aisha

holland who was a student of mohammed zakiriyah so this tradition of really a

commitment to essan in in that but if you look at the architecture the modern muslim

architecture it pales in comparison to the great architecture of the past the schools are almost like prisons

just really ugly whereas the traditionally the muslims built the most beautiful schools in the world nobody

has schools like the early muslims if you go to fess it's filled with these great matrasas that are museums that

people go and literally just gaze in awe at the structure so one of the things

that i i really want to do with say tuna is just make it a just a place that

people want to visit for the sheer beauty of it and we we have in uh

in in our tradition this beautiful hadith allah is beautiful and he loves beauty

and that's why muslims dressed beautifully they spoke beautifully they were committed to beautiful language

poetry just excellence in everything and

i think this is something we really have to reestablish because people by fitra are attracted to beauty there it's just

a fitra aspect and one of the hallmarks of modern society is the the attraction to

ugliness and this is because people are so divorced from their fit so clothes have become ugly buildings have become

ugly schools have become ugly there's so much ugliness in the modern world that it's quite stunning

uh when when you're accustomed to beauty it's just so stark

so in san francisco there's a famous place they call the japanese tea garden if you go there it's it's very beautiful

but it celebrates japanese culture uh japanese culture is famous for

this commitment to and when i was in japan i was so

amazed by the commitment to ehsan that's still there they they do everything with

and even in the western things that they master they master it with essen some of the greatest classical musicians alive

today are japanese musicians many of the great conservatories of america are

filled with asian students both chinese and japanese but the japanese have this incredible commitment to sn but also to

cultivation cultivation of the spirit uh even the warrior the traditional

bushido culture but cultivation of gardens the tea ceremony for anybody who has

ever witnessed a tea ceremony it's really quite beautiful the dress the traditional japanese dress which you

still see especially in places like kyoto so it's really just it's a stunning

civilization that i was just amazed at and they would i just felt like islam

they would bring so much to islam and they would gain so much from islam because

they they really have so many qualities the the cleanliness is amazing

but this is the japanese tea gardens people walk through it and just enjoy the sheer beauty of the place and then

uh we come to zaituna so we have the blessing of the barakat garden which

we've only started this is just the beginning but it's going to be something really stunning and barakat is a

beautiful word because it's about blessings this was from a really great palestinian

farmer adul barakat who who was a philanthropist and a very

successful businessman and many other things but here he's opening the garden for us so he actually donated

these are i think members of his family so it's

the son of palestine for his leadership in business philanthropy and moral guidance

so we only donations we do not uh

put money people's money into things unless they've given us permission to use it for this

that or the other so in terms of the garden all the donations are specified for this

the people that are committed to this project but we're actually producing fruit and vegetables

we have an incredible piece of property it's probably one of the finest pieces of property in the bay

area and it's on the top of holy hill which is quite amazing so it already had beautiful gardens

they've just fallen on on bad times but we have a whole plan to renovate these

gardens so this is an example here we've had a really brilliant persian architect

who designed this for us i was inspired by the alhambra i used to

give tours at the alhambra palace when i lived in granada i was studying with the moritanis i used to go up there and give

unofficial tours until they actually kicked me out because people would join my tours from the official tours and and

uh they they got upset but uh because they would tell lies on the official tours they would literally

just make up these horrible things but the alhambra this is an example just

of muslim beauty the alhambra palace there is a

very strong argument that actually a large portion of it was a matrasa it was actually a college

a lot of people don't know that so and it's designed like a traditional

madrasa so this is zetuna this is how it looks today but

we really have plans just to make it something really stunning sofia hall

this is how it looks again beautiful we have just these

beautiful gardens so my hope is that we create something where people

will visit it so when they come to the bay area they'll want to go to the zatuna gardens

like the japanese tea gardens and then they can learn about our religion we can educate people

um about so this this is uh you know i think a really really good and then

obviously always in america you have the monetization of things so you have a

bookstore a a tea thing so at the japanese tea gardens you

end it with a tea and then it's overpriced tea usually

but also have you know a bookstore because books are so important to our civilization so i hope you know some

people are inspired by that by that vision so now we go back to dr cleary's the essential quran alhamdulillah we

reached to um [Music]

do not obscure truth by falsehood or knowingly conceal the truth obviously the verses that were perceived this are

two bani and so the argument was that don't conceal what you know about this

messenger that the prophet saw sentiment is is uh is foretold in your book so we

know that the prophet sam was foretold he is

in arabic shiloh in uh in genesis in 49 10 when

jacob is telling his sons he had 12 sons and he's telling his sons that the scepter will not go from judah in in

other words from the jewish tradition uh to

anyone else until shiloh comes and shiloh in hebrew there's a

difference of opinion about what it means some say it means the peaceful one others say it means a gift a divine gift

like that's one of the names of our prophet isaiah the merciful gift but it also

means the one who it is it belongs to and the prophet on the sh

shiloh is the one who on the yom kiyama says it belongs to me it's mine and so and

then also we have in deuteronomy 18 we also have in isaiah

there are several arguably um

also in the song of solomon there are several references to our prophet sam some people say why isn't it clear

why is it done like this and

part of these things are just about iman and

i think for me it is clear like when i looked at it and really studied it it seemed very clear to me um

obviously there's confirmation bias that i'm not um you know

immune to that but it really did seem very clear to me so well

be constant in prayer and give charity this is constant theme in the quran prayer and charity prayer and charity

the zakat is the obligatory charity there's also other types of charities

this is uh it's a it's a type of figurative speech in other words you know

using part of something like to represent the whole of something

do you do do you command people to be just he's

translating as just here and there is i think one of the meanings of probity or

righteousness and to be just as to be righteous in fact justice in latin

means it comes from jews which is law but it also means right and so doing what is

right do you command people to do what's right because it's appropriate in this verse

to that it really is about are you telling people to be one way and then you're not so you're telling them to be

righteous but you're not being righteous so i think it's a what i've realized in studying his

translation is that he really finds the most what the french call him

the real perfect word for any of the given situations and

it's it's actually quite stunning what he's done uh in in many of his word choices so

watan sauna and then you forget yourselves even though you read the book

now won't you reason won't you understand won't you use your intellects

so now allah gives the treatment so after defining the illness he gives

the treatment was allah you know seek help with patience

and prayer some of the mufasa and say here is fasting so it actually means

it's really holding the heart together on things that will unsettle the heart so patience

is like shahawat

and and things like that the appetites so patience is really important

so in prayer is very important and the is an inward state

um one of the salaf and this mentioned in the tafsir

one of the salaf was at a monastery and he was one of the monks he asked him if

there was a place a bokata a pure place where he could pray and he said the monk said to him

purify your heart and then pray wherever you want and

he said that like i felt shame

because there's a lot of truth to that if you have in your prayer then you have everything you need

in fact the monarchy opinion in in monarchy fifth books on this is there has to be at

least a moment of in the prayer even just one moment but you can't let the prayer go in a total

state of heedlessness

so these are people who consider that they will meet their lord

and that they will return to god so again this is consistent with his

practice of not using the male pronoun as a referent

so he he's using names of god

uh

and beware of a day when no soul can recom can compensate for another soul at all

this is the at the outset of the piano and this is why when when

the quran states that when the trumpet is blasted there's no la and sababen you know there's no

relationships that's at the outset but there is a point where allah gives permission for

shafa'a so at this stage there's no shafa'a and

that's why this has been misunderstood so some of the sects have misunderstood because

[Music] do you believe in some of the book and reject other parts of the book so this

is true there's no shaft at this stage but then

no one will intercede except without him so once god gives permission then

there's intercession at that point

so adiron here normally means justice but in this case it means ransom so adaline in the quran

has five different meanings but this is one of them and so this is why if you don't have commentary

you can often get lost in the in the quran because

so it can it can mean insof to be uh in the moro

there actually generally it means kirimata tohit so it can also mean shahada of tahit

be fair in your judgments be just it can mean

like the the value of something it can also mean um

ransom as in this case but other can also be shirk so

so because to make it like it so to make god like

make something like god so these are all meanings and and most of the major terms

in the quran have this uh difficulty that they can mean very different things in the context

this is a famous verse verse 62 and also it's repeated three times in the quran a similar iteration

was

[Music]

jews christians or sabians those who believe in god in the last day and who

do good have their reward with their lord they have nothing to fear and they will not sorrow so

whether they're muslim or hadoo from yahudah that was one of the

names of one of the sons and so uh

yahood in in arabic they're called yahood or so those who

uh who are jews and then nasara there's a khiraf about

some of the ulama say it's from nazareth so they were called the nazarenes the nasara from nassaran

and then sabine dr cleary actually has a very interesting

i really like this here so he said in verse

256 of the same chapter there's no compulsion in religion it is not certain

exactly who these sabians were pen rice it was one of the orientalists that did a

dictionary says they consider themselves followers of the prophet noah as islam spread over the globe after the

passing of the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam the term sabian seems to have been understood depending on the time and situation to include

other great eastern religions like zoroastrianism and buddhism the primary verb from the

root sabaa means to rise as of a star hence some of them said they were worshipped the stars

but here i mean they couldn't worship the stars if they're amongst people

so using the sense of the root as referring to rising stars the name and the image

of revering celestial bodies might also figuratively represent

followers of remote lights of revelation so these are

the remote lights of revelation that were more distant from the early community of islam

than where judaism and christianity so you know muslims tend not there are in

our history many muslim sages that really understood hinduism to be

a a divinely revealed religion we can't say that for any certainty it's not

it's not possible unless the quran or the clearly states that but the great dara

shuru the the great scholar

and prince he was the son of shah

jahan who built the famous taj mahal incredibly pious person but devout

devout committed to

just finding the truth and he wrote an amazing book called mashmal bahrain in the meeting of the two oceans he

actually learned sanskrit he knew he read the the torah the

new testament the hindu scripture all in the original languages he's a

brilliant man but he um

in his own right he was given a mantle by his sheikh who was a kashmiri and he actually said he went to the paradise of

kashmir to learn these these realities he so he wrote a book on

the shepahat of the of the oliya he wrote biographies of the saints but

he he actually translated it's the first translation of the of the upanishads

into persian and so it was a really really momentous event that he did this

and from that came the first translation into french so it was translated from translation into french and then it came

into english but he was convinced that the um

that the hindu religion was a religion of toheid and that the common people misunderstood so what you see in the

kind of common expressions is just like you see in some of the muslim lands where you have ignorant muslims

you know tying things onto tombs and doing things you always find ignorance amongst uneducated peoples but aloha

adam who the sabians are

those who believe in god in the last day those are the real two fundamental things believing in god in the last day

there's a hadith in a bukhari that even if there's a mustard weight of belief in

god that people are going to get out of hell eventually so who do good and have

their reward with their lord they have nothing to fear hof and husan are

are put together because hope is fear of something in the future housing grief is

over things that happened in the past so these are people that are live in the present and this is the they say

that the the the sage the the person uh this of this um

commitment to reality is somebody who lives in the present they're not in the past or the

future this begins really with bani israel and

dr cleary removed that i think because he wanted to focus and he actually mentions that he he he

uh he mentions in his uh in his commentary that this verse of which i have only translated

part contains a beautiful summary of a believer's relationship to god and

humankind and i think it's really important uh because i think the reason

why he omitted is because again these many of these verses are speaking to benny is

and and looking at kind of the the view of that they had they were remiss in in

practicing what they were told to practice and that's how the verse ends but this middle section so this is what

bani is commanded and we this is a so

so it's a beautiful summary of what he said of your relationship with god and then your relationship with humankind in fact

ibrahimovic says that this is the summation really of

the the prophetic uh message because he said it has uh an action that is hospital

it's specific to the heart and that's tohit and then it has an action which is cross to the body the specific to the

body which is the physical prayer the movement of the prayer salah because that's the comma of the

prayer is a physical thing and then it has it's it's got something specific to

wealth so it's got the heart to heed the body prayer the wealth

your zakat and then the general ruling which is

towards allah's creation and then he puts it in the order that it's appropriate so the first is walid

because of their huck your parents their right is so great and then your relatives and he says

so those people that are related to you first and foremost uh that have blood ties with you and then with religious

ties and then waliyatama because they're the orphans are the the weakest people there's nobody

weaker than an orphan if if you think about it because these are children

children that do not have parents and who cares more about a child than the mother and the father so a fatherless

child is the weakest and that's why immediately after you know your blood ponds the orphan

itself taking care of the orphan and also the widow many many examples of that

because they also are at the end of life like the children at the start of their

life they don't have their caretaker very often there are widows at the end of their life that don't have the

caretaker the husband that was looking after them and then the mesakin

the weak amongst us is not to the people over you they're the ones that give hassan to you so it's looking at those

below you this is where your son is and then how do you treat all of humanity

i mean this is a the the power of these verses really are

they're just so stunning in their perfection really and and this is this is what's so

extraordinary about the quran is that you can look at it superficially but when you actually go into it and see the

arrangement and then

that's the general relationship with him just just how many problems result from people not

speaking kindly we recently had this poor boxer get in a fight on an airplane because

somebody was just wouldn't stop unrelenting you know and

or we had uh you know a a slap that was heard around the world

because somebody made a joke about somebody's uh bald wife you know that was a fa i mean just

you know how many problems would be eliminated just by implementing and all of humanity and lin nasi

speak beautifully to people speak speak nicely to people just being nice it's

not that difficult but there's just so many angry people out there

and partly because people haven't weren't speaking nicely to them

right i mean that a lot of it is just the abuse when they were young being told horrible things being bullied

all these things and then what he was like i'm really stunning

and when we took your promise that you should not shed blood of your own and would not drive your own from their

homes and then you confirmed again this is bani israel as you yourselves bear witness

so this came because in in medina in medina when the prosaicer moved to medina and

remember the the medaneese people they were agricultural people and

commerce people the jews had the commerce so the jews controlled the marketplace and then the the elves and

the khazraj they had date farms mostly so this is but the jews were merchants they were

they were buying and selling the the beni porreira had a they were the uh

hula fa the allies of al-aos and benin with al-khazraj so

they were even though they were both from benica they're from the same yemeni tribe

and beautiful people also even before islam there's a famous story because they knew

the last prophet was coming there so they always treated people they were famous for their hospitality

because they they believed that there was this last prophet that was going to come and in fact there was about a

hundred years before the prophet isaiah arrived um they were attacked

uh by uh the city was actually and at night they would send food out to

the to their enemies and the the the chieftain who was leading this

assault on medina was so struck by that he didn't understand and then they explained to him

that they had heard that this last prophet would come and they should honor them and this is

why they've the ansar were always famous for this for honoring people so what would happen

is because it was like that you know allah but you know we have in our

tradition with this famous feud for people from this country that know about this the hatfields and the mccoys and

they were actually related so there's this these things that happen and they usually happen over ridiculous things

but you have these uh these fights that occur between people so they had this famous day yom

which they used to say poetry and then it would rile them up they'd get in fights

again but the jews would actually fight with them and what they would do so that

would that because they wanted the else to win they would fight against uh the benin

aldir so the benigoreda would fight against their own co-religionists and they would actually destroy their homes

they would kick them out of their homes they would take their wealth but but here's the odd thing when they were captured

by the house they would actually ransom them so they would pay the ransom

and the elves couldn't figure that out this is like you're you're fighting against them and then you're paying your rent well the torah tells us that we

have to do that because there are co-religionists and so they the owls thought it was crazy that like

on the one hand you're fighting and then on the other hand you're ransoming them so this is why it says

you admitted that it was prohibited for you to fight your co-religion so they told them that and then they asked them well then why are you fighting them and

he said we don't want our allies to be humiliated so it was purely out of pride

that they were going against their uh religion

says you're killed your own people but it's actually the way it said is you kill yourself but it means killed your

own people it's a proper translation but the way it's said in arabic gets lost in here you kill but then you yourselves

killed yourselves and this is because when you kill

your own people it's like killing yourselves and even when you kill anybody unjustly

it's like you killed all of humanity so this is really important

so and drove out of their assisting efforts against them with iniquity and enmity

so

so we gave moses the books and the book is the the pentaton the torah

which has the five books of the genesis exodus deuteronomy

numbers in leviticus so those are the five books of the old testament

and caused the messengers to follow after them so there's a whole succession of prophets

and then we gave clear proofs to jesus son of mary and one of the things that was very

interesting in arabic normally you omit the alef so isa it would normally be written bin

maryam not ibn even though the the aleph isn't pronounced here

but what's really interesting is this makes so it says jesus

but it's like it's a second name so it's like jesus but also the son of mary so

it's it's really letting you know the maqaam of mary and mary's macam after

the prophet sam there's nobody that's blessed more on this planet than mary

i mean no billions of blessings go to mary i mean the the catholics

have a devotional practice to hail mary the ave maria it's a very famous

classical piece hail mary so so uh the um

he is the son of mary and he was given these bayonets so

amongst the beginner first of all she she was impregnated by an angel

so and these are the four the quadra of god is displayed in

these aspects so adam has no no father or mother

has a father no mother isa has a mother no father and everybody else has a father and a mother so the

quadra of allah is displayed completely in in our creation

the um the bailly nuts are many so one she only she was only pregnant for an hour so it

was a very quick uh and then she um

when he came out of the womb he he was speaking and in fact when kash

this is in the talmud by the way so this is not this this was said to mary according to

their own uh and if you read jesus in the talmud which was printed by princeton

university press there's a whole section about this that this is the soundest opinion even though later

there were attempts to say oh we're that wasn't talking about jesus it's talking about somebody else but there's a claim

in the talmud that jesus was the son of panthera who was a roman

centurion and that that stuffed allah that that his mother was was a prostitute and

that's why it says in the quran your mother was not a prostitute so the jews said to her you

are a prostitute and but mary then she just said you know the child and the child spoke

it was so intense that they all left except for zechariah he was the only one that could take it when the child would

speak because it was a newborn child and it spoke and so that was one of the big unite and

then also ibrah al-aqma right the that he he

ibrahim he healed the blind and blind was not like cataract

in arabic is blind from birth so the akma is the

one blind from birth so there's no sight there's i mean these are these are problems with the uh

the actual nerve so the optical nerve so they can't see whereas other types of blindness can be

cured um so that would be less miraculous than the akma right and then and then the abrasive is

the one who has like um these diseases of the skin like leprosy and vitiligo

and other types of i mean about us can be used for different things but it's leprosy is one of the meanings so he was

given these clear proofs and and then he knew what they had in their homes

in in their what can you do like what they had in their homes he also

raised lazarus from the dead i mean that's and that was witnessed by many many

people he expelled the demons from possessed people many many nights

and we strengthen him with the holy spirit so we believe in the holy spirit and that's a pretty literal translation

spirit that is holy they say it's

the holy spirit the sanctified spirit so um the holy ghost or the holy spirit

in in traditional orthodox and catholic and then later protestant iterations

they believe that this is one of the what what in arabic is called the

hypostasis so these are these are like parts of the godhead uh the the persona of the godhead the

three persona uh we don't believe that we believe that the holy spirit although we believe in

the holy spirit the holy spirit we believe is actually the angel it's the the head angel of all the angels

um so gabriel and that's why the prophet saw i said when hassan abu nuthabbit was

reciting his poetry he said may the holy spirit you know strengthen

you in that and people can have that the angelic spirit strengthen them in

their in their um

are you not haughty and arrogant whenever a messenger comes to you right

so whenever you don't like what he comes yourselves don't desire it so then you get arrogant

so some of you branded liars like jesus they they actually called him they didn't believe him they didn't

believe his message they called him a magician and other things

and then others you killed like yahya i mean he was actually killed zakaria according to our tradition

[Music] wretched is that for which they have sold themselves and here estero most of

them will facilitate it means this again arabic you have to be very careful with

the arabic in the quran because ashtara usually means to to ba to to purchase but here it

actually means to sell that they should reject what god has sent down them in arrogant jealousy

so there's a kind of there's a jealousy here you know that

that that why is it coming to them why didn't it

come to us and if you look you know this began if

you look at these verses it's it's you know allah says

remember my blessing that i have blessed you with so the nema there

the bani is being told to remember the nema as a way to direct them to the muni

so one of the things that the people of allah say is

the slaves of blessings are many but the slaves of the blesser of blessings are few

so the the nema here they're reminded you know that allah

gave them all these blessings but he can give bless these blessings to other people as well that it's not simply for

them that that the prophets that there are other peoples that had prophets and

that the final prophet was not from bani israel he's from uh

beni adnan he's from ismail and i will make of

him a great nation how could it be great if it's not a

religious nation how could it be great with god what numbers like god cares about numbers

how could it be great and yet genesis abraham was told that i have heard thee

about concerning ismail and he said i will make of him a great nation.

and the the tents of shiloh i mean the tents of shiloh are in

so that shiloh is is our prophet isaiah so

so they have brought on themselves wrath upon wrath if you reject

this thing if you reject because it doesn't suit yourself

then you you're bringing and that's him you know you you incur this

the wrath and it's not wrath like petulance it's not god's a petulant creature

you know like like human beings god is is beyond emotion god does not

have emotion he's the creator of emotion but his

is only for us to understand because he's given us

so but he doesn't he's not getting angry like oh you've he knows everything

people are going to do so we we don't anthropomorphize our lord

but he says wrath upon wrath

in other words he didn't use magic as some of them claimed the book of solomon is a a cult

book claiming that it was this magic that solomon had so far uh

in in islam not with uh like you know muhammad ali used to do coin tricks and things like that that's that's different

i mean that's my crew but but but

is magic incantations invoking putting spells on people doing these

things that's kofar

they were the ones that used the magic so the he calls them the obsessive were ungrateful

and if you look at his argument for using that term it's very interesting um because

it's it gets to the root of what shaitan is about

and what what came down to the angels at babylon so babel is near al-khufah in

iraq in in the in the country of iraq there was a place babel and babylon the

scarlet lady the of babylon babylon is in the old testament they were very very profligate people

diverted and they were warned and and they were destroyed so babylon is everything

negative in the old testament is personified in babylon

so these two angels americanis

are these two angels there's khiraf about this and you'll get into uh you know

even actually says the hadith about them being given free will they were they were

the most worshipful among the angels and all the angels were complaining about humans because constantly there was all

this these horrible the angels would bring their reports on

what humans were doing and it was all just negative and corruption and all these things and so harut and marut

were given the free will and then they because of that they lost their melakia

they lost their their angelic nature and were given human nature and they did what humans

did and so it was to show the angels that that's one opinion so but you'll you'll

see different things but the point is they did teach

and but they said in them we are a test and that's that's one of the fundamental

fitna also in the quran means different things it can mean sedition it can mean

civil strife right so like civil war is called fitna that fits in

so but here it means test we are a fitna because fatanah iftinhu the original

meaning of it in arabic is to test gold for dross so when you heat up gold you test it for

dross and that's why when things break out when fitna breaks out you see who's gold you see who's silver you see who's

copper and you see who's toxic lead like people really reveal themselves in fitna and that's why it's such a useful

word in that way because whenever fitna when fitness come suddenly people that never do anything they're full of energy

and they're on the phone and do oh did you know this and that and there's where were you like

you never volunteered at the mosque i tried to get you to volunteer for the bake sale you were too busy

but now that there's a fitnah you have so much free time

very interesting humans yeah

and the worst ones are your beast friends right

and this is really demonic because the worst thing that you can do

is separate between a family so when there's love in a family when there's a bond and people that separate that in

fact in the hadith which is in sahih muslim ibris

you know it's it says that

he put his throne on water because god's throne is on water so iblis is a great mimicker

when i first went to to las vegas i realized that it's a perfect imitation of not

perfect stuff of the law but it really looks like the area around mecca

like anybody who's been there and been to mecca they're struck by that fact and

and and las vegas is a international hajj of sin

people make pilgrimage from all over the world to las vegas

to to to sin it's called sin city and and people go

from all over the world to mecca for piety and so

it's clear that he made his his hajj there i mean that's

so he put his throne on water and then he ba

so he sent out his raiding parties syria is a raiding party in a military term so

he sent out his saraya his raiding parties like they're going out to raid

human beings that's what they do

and the one closest to him in station is the one that does the greatest harm

in in the raiding parties so when they come back

so they come back and they say to iblis oh and he's like on his throne you're listening to oh i did such and such and

such as he said you didn't do anything you know i got him to kill i didn't do

anything i got him to steal you didn't do anything and then one of them that one of them

had

i didn't leave him until i separated him from his wife and iblee says

you're the you're the best so that shows you because all those

other things come from that fundamental breakdown like all the social problems come from

family breakdown and that's why if you look in all these places where there's high crime

just look at the kids where's the father where where was the where was the father

to discipline him to show him the right way to give him the path it's all very clear so that's why all those other

things are nothing because from doing what the one he said

he gets all those other things so break the family destroy the family

that's it

yet they hurt no one thereby except by the evil god and this is important because this is in the end our deen you

know it's only by the island of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allah has permitted these things for ahikmah and we have to

respect that we looked already at you

you know are you going to put in the earth the one who sows makes trouble and trouble is a brilliant

uh translation when i when i looked at it because i realized you know if you translate a facet as

corruption that's only one aspect whereas if you look at trouble in the dictionary it's got all it's got civil

strife in fact the troubles of ireland are the civil war of ireland they were called the troubles so it's

got everything it's got mental troubles you know like he's in trouble with the law

you know so it really is a it's actually a really good term for that at that point but anyway

so they learn what would harm them not what would benefit them

that those who had bought it had no share in the hereafter khalakleb

that had no share in the lab

and wretched was that for which they sold themselves if only they knew that's bit it says

it's an interesting um like sanne so one is the worst and the

other is the best you know you know what a good man zayd is or

so now anno

so if they had only they had been faithful and conscientious the reward from the presence

of god men and would have surely been better if only they had known

to god belongs the east and the west so allah possesses the east and the west

and here is a joomla so wherever you turn them

so it's it's really indicating the essence of god so there is

the face of god in other and also it's translated um some of them say jihito

law that it's the direction you're wherever you face you're facing god

in allah and that's why

the secret of allah's book is in the names at the end of the ayahs

why would he use that here is it's a brilliant translation i don't know if he's the only one that used that

but it means

that he encompasses all things which literally in arabic was means vast

or wide but here it literally means the omnipresent he's encompassing all things all-knowing alim

so he is in other words wherever you turn there is the is the law and then he knows so

he knows what

and they say god has begotten a son subhanah there's tanziya transcendence

god glory be to godzilla bella who

no to him belongs all this is istit daraq in arabic

in other words it's going no rather no it's changing the the humafist

everything is obedient to god kunut is obedience khan it is the one who's in a state of obedience it's it's the pious

one before god swarath is done at fajr for the shaffirs and the

monarchies

so imam says that the reason that this

whole error came in was because one of the names of god

in the previous shariah was father so the jewish tradition and the christian

tradition use the name father as and and i don't know if it's related

to father you know allah because it's a it's a sanskrit father comes from originally

from sanskrit but it's very interesting that father is very similar

but so he says that it's because

god the father and which was a valid name in fact even tamiya in his extraordinary six volume work on the uh

the bible says that it it was abrogated for the muslims as a name so we can't call god the father because of the

gendered language which makes it very interesting that dr cleary decided to translate this in a gender to this

language because people were thinking that god has a gender with that name

it's very interesting so

the uh god uh subhanah bellahumaf is

he possesses everything in the heavens and the earth

and it is isn't it interesting but badiru the originator didn't use fatiru badiru-samawati the originator so

it has no badiya is truly creative and that's why

you know they used to have uh traditionally there was no such thing as creative writing

courses because there's no such thing as creative writing actually the courses previously were

learning how to imitate other writers so it was imitating great writers so he

actually learned how great writers wrote creative writing is this idea oh you

create it in arabic the word to

to for a human means to lie because the only creator is allah

everything else is imitation humans are only imitating allah is the only

khalakha and that's why there's no such thing really as creative right like he's a creative person creative like how what

what did he create everything is just imitation

and so uh ibdah is is this word vedir

art is a better term it's innovative so you can innovate you know it's something

that somebody does something new and that's from the latin

novaree which is new novus you know new so vadiya is is something

you know an innovation pediru

whenever god decrees anything god says to it be and it is fayocono and that pha is not sababia it was very interesting

because usually if you have an amar you'd have a first sababia

be and it is there's no severe you know there's a because this the sub

of you know them there's no illa there's no there's no cause and effect in that way

there's no sebabee we we use it majasan with allah you know it's a figurative it's purely figurative

and now say we believe in god and what was revealed to us and what was

revealed to abraham and ishmael and isaac and joseph and the tribes

there's but jacob had 12

sons and i think five were from leia

and then he had uh two uh concubine and then he had um

raheel or rachel and raheel who's rachel who's the mother of

um yusuf and benjamin and benjamin uh in the jewish tradition she died in

childbirth with benyamin but raheel was honored by the muslims

and her maqam was in palestine it's still there but now it's a jewish mam the muslims don't visit anymore but it

used to be it was the muslims that actually it was the ottomans that built the makam of

amazing i think leia is buried at the where the uh

where sarah and where all the um in in khalil al-khalil

so the the asbath are the tribes so there's 12

sons reuben was the oldest and you have levi and and and danny and

and jad god which god is still used in egypt that's

one of the sons god jad yeah so these these were the sons

that and and what was given to moses and jesus

now look at this so they're all the the jewish prophets right

so but then it says

all the prophets

they're all from god so we unlike the previous dispensations

reject some of the prophets and accept other ones we accept them all

we accept moses i mean we have palestinian kids named musa

you know and they're under israeli occupation they name their kids musa

the the prophet of the jews we have muslims named isa

the prophet of the christians because there are prophets that's why when i was talking with rabbi

lerner may god give him a healing he wasn't well but uh when i was talking about

brother he said when arch i said your citizens are tradition you know we're like

we get what you have and then we get more i mean

we don't make any distinction so even though there's tafadal in the messages and the prophets have greater numbers

they have different makama those things that's that's all but in their essential

prophecy we don't make any distinction between them the prophet saw islam said don't let father

don't prefer me over eunice evan metta in the nebula don't think that

you know no we're we're all from god and and that's why you should never say our prophet's greater than your prophet

or something like that because there's no there's no benefit in that there's no point in in that i mean we

should know who our prophet sam was we should know that but you don't

attack other people's religions or traditions

and your god is one god

there is no god but the one

that is right there everything is right there

and and how does god choose to define himself

after telling us he's one what does he want us to know about him

so the mercy of participating in creation that you participate in being

because god is is the ultimate being and so he has allowed us to participate

in an attribute of his even though it's temporal he's allowed us to participate

in wujoud and that's namited ejad and that is such

a great blessing but then within imdad that yumidu he's constantly sustaining us he's

keeping our bodies most of us 98.6 temperature we've got

things in our body right now that are fighting viruses and bacteria allah

created all of that for us allah is doing all that that's his in debt and then food and sustenance he

enables you to break down your lipids and your proteins and your carbohydrates oxygen to sustain yourself

you know that you breathe in and going to all that and this all from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala

and then look like okay right after that

after he says there's no god but god

he he wants us to see what he why he's god why we should worship him why we should

adore him why we should submit to him

behold in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of night and day and the ships that sail on

the sea to profit the people and the water god rains from the skies thereby enlivening the earth after it has died

and spreading animals of all kinds of

and spreading animals of all kinds there upon and in the shifting of the winds i mean now we know the whole wind system

on this planet it's a completely organized and in fact it's our human beings that are causing the disruption

of these incredible do not disturb the earth do not corrupt

the earth after we rectified it for you we said it right there in our

signs right and then with sahab and

and then the clouds enslaved there between the heavens and the earth

you know there in our signs for a discerning people they're in our signs for people that

have reason that can think about these things and then uh a little further this is further down

lei said or alberto [Music]

it's one of those comprehensive words it's hard to translate but it has to do with

it can also be charity it can be upright behavior it can be piety it can be obedience

all these things that you turn your faces east and west so in other words it's not the formal

aspect and i think i i really like she has a very nice

here is one of the most beautiful summaries of essential islamic beliefs and practices

it is not righteous that you turn your faces east and west this seems to mean that the heart of religion is not

defined by superficial profession or allegiance as defined in terrestrial terms

some translators what render the wow here as or but the more usual and seems to me

to be more inclusive and thus more suggestive of the transcendental aspect of devotion even as is practiced within

everyday life so it's quite beautiful which you know so

like the east or the west he says the east and the west to make it inclusive here

[Music] the treasured light verse included in this section of readings from the quran

says that the light of god is like a lamp a lit with oil from a blessed olive tree that is neither of the east nor of

the west and then so they those who believe in god and the

last day and the angels and the books and the prophets so there except for the qatar it pretty sums up our belief

and who donate goods and money goods and money it was very interesting

see these are really nice nuance aspects of this translation who donate goods and money

for love of god it also can be despite your love of the goods of the money so

the could be so it has both meanings they give it out of love of god but also they love those

the things they're giving so it's it and that's like the prophet saw i said was asked

you know that you are the best when you're

healthy you're sound because people on their death bed you know will give it away right no when you're healthy and

sound and you fear poverty you you hope for increase and

you fear poverty i mean it's quite stunning to relatives and orphans again the most

important what masakeen women is and the wayfarer and to the needy was

the needy here really are the beggars people who are asking

freeing the slaves and who are constant in prayer and who give alms for welfare and those

who fulfill their promises when they make them and who are patient and suffering adversity and hard times

so is difficulty in your circumstances the is

difficulty in your actual body so they're patient when they have difficulty also

can mean like and poverty and also humiliation those

difficulties the ra can mean here marat or zamana like chronic disease

people have chronic pain for those of us who have chronic pain you

know people who have chronic pain know how difficult it is and traditionally those type people

you know like my mother and father's generation they didn't even complain they didn't even mention it to people because they didn't

want other people to know that we would make them feel bad it's like

you know there's a there was a comedian who died a while back and he

had cancer for 10 years and he never told anybody even his own family didn't know uh jan or daddy

mentioned this to me because he liked this uh norm macdonald but he

he didn't tell anybody he was sick and they asked him why when he they found out he was dying and he said he just

didn't want to make anybody sad you know so there's people that they just they they suffer enduring that's

what it means enduring law you know patient enduring

in war and jihad but also hard times they're all sound meanings suffering adversity and hard

times they're all sound meanings they are the truthful ones

[Music] and then 254.

so there's spend before that day comes there's no

bartering there's no friendship there's no mediation and it is the ungrateful who abuse and oppress

and then this is the great ayat the prophet isaiah said it was the greatest verse abu under he asked him

what was the greatest verse in the quran he mentioned this and he struck him on it gave him a strike on his chest and

said you know congratulations on that knowledge

because this really gets at the again the essence of the quran is really a book about god

from god about god and goes back to god like he he recites

it the prophet isaiah said the best thing that you can give to god is what came from god which is the quran

so it came from god it goes back to god god

allah exclamation mark

the end of time won't come until nobody says allah allah you know you know there is no god but

the one the living the self-subsistent these are two really important

attributes of god drowsiness does not overtake him sinneh is like just a nod off just a knot

does not overtake god nor sleep well i know the humaf is

he possesses that's who god belongs what is in the heavens and the earth who could there be who can intercede with

god ladies who can intercede except by leave of god

god knows what is in front of them and what is behind them but they do not comprehend

anything of god's knowledge

the throne of god extends over the heavens and the earth and the preservation of them both is not oppressive to god it's not a burden

it doesn't weigh him down

and then [Music] comes immediately after that once god's declared

it's amazing no compulsion in the religion

it's clear so if somebody's blind you can't guide them unless they want guidance

but if somebody just says leave me alone you have to leave them alone

[Music] so whoever just believes in idols are things worshipped other than allah

and believes in god and has taken hold of the most reliable handle that uh does not break for god is all hearing

all-knowing those who spend their wealth in the way of god and then do not follow what they spend with reminders of their

generosity or with abusive treatment they have their lord they have their reward with their lord and there is

nothing for them to fear and they will not sorrow again hope kind and forgiving words are better than

charity followed by abuse because there's people that are abusive with their charity they could remind you of how much they

helped [Music] don't tell me uh how much you've done

for this religion that's what the prophet was told to say to these bedouin who were coming out we

supported you we join your religion you know wanting something

don't tell me what a great boon your islam is to this religion

no allah can remind you of his blessings to you so and that's why al-manan is a

negative term except for god god has every right to remind us but when you remind other people

and partly it's because in reality it's from god you were just a subup so don't tell them what goodness you've done for

them because in reality it came from god it's just god has told us you know we have to thank people and encourage people

and then don't nullify your charities by reminders of your generosity or by abusive behavior

as do those who spend their wealth to be seen by the people without believing in god in the last day and what that is

like is a hard stone with dust on it on which a heavy rainfall so it's just barren and there's nothing nothing comes

out of it the example of those who spend their wealth seeking to please god and strengthen their souls is that of a

garden or a null and that it's quite beautiful i mean i don't know if he's the first

one to use that but it's a perfect term because uh noel is a you know the grassy knoll at dallas there's a place where

you know they think there might have been other gunmen but it's called the grassy note because it's an elevator it's an eminence so is

elevated it's in english language no it can also mean null like the null of a bell like nell the death knell of the

bell ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee but also asks not for whom the bell knows

it knows for thee so null can also mean the ringing of a bell it's a verb to know the bell

the messenger and then this alhamdulillah we got to the end so the mecca i want to get to at least finish

bakara the messenger believe

so the messenger believes he believes the prophet when the jewish rabbi came and gave his description of the torah he

said i meant to be rasulullah i bear witness that i'm the messenger it strengthen his iman

remember when he got the message he was troubled he didn't know

and that was his sincerity who am i that was who am i to get a

message from god who am i and that's why it's so arrogant you see

these people that god spoke to me really god

creator of the heavens and the earth knower of the scene and the unseen spoke to you what did he tell you

i mean it's like that is a sure sign of madness and that's why the prophesied sin was so troubled

but then look here's the proof this is what came out of him it's not like somebody wandering around talking to

himself saying that god's speaking to him i mean this transformed the world

this transformed western civilization all these things that western people see they don't even know that it came from

ikra bismi arabica lady all the mathematics all the architecture all the

science if you read george sartan's multi-volume on the history of science

the first two volumes are all muslim names right

so this is what came out of god speaking to a man

by their fruits you shall know them don't look at isis in the same way you can't look at pedophilic priests to

determine what catholicism is you know no look at our civilization look at what the muslims built

look at look at the taj mahal look at the alhambra palace

what kind of people built those

these are the remnants that we leave behind to tell you who we were so after we're

gone look at what we have left behind if you want to know who the muslims were

look at what these people left behind and those were people that were following this book and they were

following our prophet saw isaiah and that's why they were given toffee and when they die

deviated and the prophet isaiah said you will deviate you will follow the way of other peoples

that went before you the jews and the christians and the other religions he told us that and he warned us of that

and that's why muslims have to make taubah and so do all the faith each believes in

god and god's angels right well mo minoon we believe in allah

and his angels and his books and his messages

we don't make distinction these are all prophets from god and they say we hear and we obey him

we ask your forgiveness our lord

does not compel a soul to do what is beyond its capacity this is from allah's rahmah

it gets what it has earned and it is responsible for what it

deserves our lord

do not punish us do not take us to account if we forget or if we air

in because nisian and khatta are different you can forget and you can make a

mistake if we forget or we air to air as human to forgive is divine

right so we make mistakes but we're asking allah and then we ask him for what we know and

what we don't know because sometimes we make mistakes not even knowing

do not place on us a burden

[Music] like you put on those who went before you they had great burdens of piety and

practice the muslims we have it easy compared to the previous dispensations of what they had to do to get close to

allah and we're in the latter days of this ummah which is even easier to get close to allah subhanahu ta'ala in these

latter days when so many people are turning away from allah

and please our lord do not make us carry that for which we lack the strength

and please grant us pardon and forgive us

and have mercy on us you are our mawlana you are our

protector um they have no protector you are our protector

so help us against the ungrateful people help us against the ungrateful people

that are wreaking all this havoc in the earth alhamdulillah so that is uh

i that's what i was hoping to how relevant are concepts like stress syllable intonation pitch the quranic restoration

how do they affect the meaning is there a book explaining the poetics of the quran you know poetics we're using that term

obviously i i understand how he's using that term because quran is not poetry

but but it has in it in english poetry meaning beautiful language not poetry not sure

right so stress civil intonation pitch these are all very important in in in the quran

what are called the in in tajweed those are ishtihad so those are the ishtihad of the the

quran and they're different israel so you have different there are places where it's haram to stop obviously

because it will it will affect the meaning and in the house quran it's very nice because they give you the a little

signal uh of the huh yeah

like not just yet don't stop here right because you can uh

corrupt the meaning of it um like the khatib who said to the prophet

something and then he said because he added a wow where there shouldn't be so

stress is very important syllable intonation all these things when you get into deep tajweed studies

the great quran of this ummah actually learned the muhammad

and recited the quran based on the mahamat so the are

what traditionally in music theory are called modes which are slightly different from key signatures so in music you have key

signatures but you also have modes so you have these famous modes that have been identified like the doric mode

right the phrygian mode these are modes so like there's melancholic modes like if

you look at irish music it's it uses uh melancholic modes that's why when you

listen to it it's it's just not the jigs are very upbeat but a lot of irish music is very mournful

so so uh the great masters of tajweed learned the

modes and they would recite that they still do this believe it or not in fact there's on on youtube there's actually a

then from turkey who shows you the different makaams that are used in the different prayers so the fajr he uses a

makam to wake people up and so the this is how sophisticated our religion got was that they were using

uh the intonations uh to do that and stress so

raising the voice i mean one of the sheikh nuren who allah

lot of people very attracted to his recitation that's those

where he's going up and down those are all regulated so the stress will affect the meaning the wakufa are interesting

because you have like imam who aloha i mean i have no problem with

this some people have a problem but he actually his he said were purely from kash

that uh although according to you can't use it for like you can't the

you can't use kash for the prayer time like to have a question the prayer times in you can't use it you have to

do the go out and measure the shadow or now people just look at the prayer time

on their watch or their adhan which they can end up praying at the wrong time in any case

the um the very interest like help the imam is moroccan he has like kalila

[Music] it completely changes the meaning so

kalila they are a few minaleili they don't sleep at night whereas if you

don't do the waku there it's [Music] they only sleep a small portion of the

night so the the stops can really affect the meaning

that's different from raibafihi and then hudalin so the walks

it gives a lot of possibility for many many interpretations which is really interesting one aspect

of the quran the names of jacob's sons and wives are not in the quran does that information come from yes

they're mentioned in our tafsirs they it comes out of the bible the prophet sallallahu alaihi salam

permitted us to quote the bible and just he said

don't be absolute don't deny it and don't be absolute in its affirmation but

there are many useful things there's been a modern trend amongst the mufasirun to

completely remove all of the israelites there is some benefit in that because a

lot of the superstitions that got into the tafsir came out of

the previous dispensations but on the other hand there's a lot of interesting things how do we understand the quranic

verses give giving glad tidings to jews christians jews and saviors in the light of perennial thought i mean obviously

the perennialists like that verse i think for me the best thing that i've

read on this subject is faisal which is imam al-qazadi's book

that allah allah is going to judge people we're not judges we can't say anybody's

going to heaven and hell the quran makes it very clear that if

people do this this and this they're going to hell but in the end there's something called

in our tradition the of allah allah fulfills his what in terms of his threat if he does not

fulfill his threat it doesn't diminish him whereas if he if he didn't fulfill his

promise it would diminish him so the example they give if if a ruler says

to you know some somebody in another land he said wallahi is

like if he comes here i'll slaughter him and then the man comes and he forgives him

nobody's going to say oh that he didn't fulfill his promise they'll actually see it as a good thing

he said oh he's a merciful ruler whereas if he said

if he comes i'll give him a thousand dinars then he comes he says sorry i'm not giving you anything everything you

say ah what a miser that guy was right so allah makes threats he doesn't have

to fulfill the threats but he makes promises and he has to fulfill the promise although he has promised that he

will fill jahannam so that's not a threat that's a promise so

you know people should be concerned about that i'm trying to study arabic to better understand the quran how long did

it take you i mean i'm still learning arabic so it's going on 44 years

arabic is an ocean and you know i still

i still study arabic i learn words i learned a word today that i didn't

know so it's it's the ocean the the muritan is

nobody can learn all of arabic except a prophet so there's always something new to learn

always something new to learn i didn't know tamara meant to for your

hair to fall out you know there's in the hadith it says

the prophet seems his face changed like the the

they say like you know you could see that he was upset in his face but also means for your hair to follow

i didn't know that so there's always something you learn any other questions

i understand the quran is eternal means but i don't see how many verses with us how can those verses be applied in different scenarios then

well remember that the quran is in quran

which is the matrix of the book so the quran there are infinite possibilities with

allah's words allah says if the oceans were inc and the and the forests were pans

the words of god would never be exhausted so allah could rearrange he could i mean

it's just infinite possibilities out of 29 letters allah can adi

and then but there are other possibilities i mean the there are infinite possibilities to

the meanings that that allah could generate from uh from the quran

so what do you think of the view by imam and other scholars that say the mary was

i mean yeah that's been pointed out some of them said asiya also

the prophet isaiah mentioned about the perfected women the kumbh amongst the women

i mean maryam is you know i my understanding the word or what i was

taught the dominant opinion of uh the school of uh of akida that i was taught is that

the prophets are males and the reason for that is

is that the the position that allah has put the the

male in the male is and the male has a daraja the male is

has allah has given an authority to the male

which doesn't diminish the female and it shouldn't be seen like that it's actually a tribulation for the male

because it's it's a it's a big tribulation to be put into that position

so um but if if she was a prophet you know we'll find out in the afterlife

i mean this is a valid difference of opinion the mature the dominant opinion

is that they're from the men but clearly the angel spoke to her which

i mean that's that's a revelation certainly

and there's a difference obviously between the messenger and a prophet so the rasool has the book or has a new sharia

whereas the prophets are given revelation so the idea that that she

had revelation from god i mean that's clearly in the quran and that's why i mean many mention this that that they

considered her to be amongst those who received prophecy um

aloha adam you know i the safe position always to stick with

the majority and the dominant opinions are there for a reason so that's that's where we hold to inshallah

inshallah i hope that you continue to support the college in the last few days of ramadan

even if you've already supported it maybe you could think about giving a second one just out of

a desire to see more that we can do the more you help the more we do the garden

project that has to be specified we don't use any of your donations

uh for things that somebody might think that's extravagant or why are they doing that and

they should use their money more wisely and that's a valid opinion i've thought about that too but my goal is about dawa

and about making this religion again as attractive as it should be

and that's one way that people are attracted it's it's a way to it's like honey you know to bring

uh to to uh to attract people with beauty and then then you can explain to them

what the religion is because we have a lot of bad information about our religion in this country and around the

world and we need to work better you know another thing i've been thinking a lot about is we really need to have more

outreach to the hindu community in the united states because the hindutva is is a very

serious problem um and and the muslims are really under threat

uh in many places where there are there are extremists it's always ignorance

because educated i know that educated hindus that really understand their religion must be horrified by a lot of

what's happening and it's really important not to collectivize people and not to generalize about people but to

really to recognize that there's good people everywhere i mean we have

a hindu lady that's helped us every year with taxes she's a really good lady and she's all you know just a

really sweet lady and i have no reason to have any animus towards her

at all on the contrary she's been very helpful to me and so i feel gratitude and

you know and i think that's the way we should be with people is just judge people

by the content of their character not by the the creed that they happen to follow

because there's a lot of bad muslims you know and and then there's a lot of good

people outside of islam and it's really important just to acknowledge that and to recognize the goodness in people and

i think in doing that we're truer to the nature of our religion and certainly truer to the

nature of our prophet samus he was a mercy to all the worlds

and and and we were said speak nicely to people inshallah

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