the some of the apocryphal texts it has to be in the hebrew bible whereas the catholics accept

texts that are in the apocryphal as well so anyway

is that

Part 3

[Music] welcome back for those coming back and welcome for those

uh coming for the first time cello we're going to continue with this

examination of some of the verses that imam al-azadi determined were

at the essence of the quranic narrative but before we do that i wanted to

introduce many of you might know this but it's it's a very beautiful dua

all the prophet sallallahu alaihi sam supplications are beautiful but this one has a particular

just beauty to it that um is really worth learning and the prophet sallallahu alaihi sam encourage people

to learn it it's

that is used um for the quran

and it's there's a lot of secrets in this dua but it begins saying uh

there's a etieroff there's an acknowledgement of your ubudia to allah subhanahu ta'ala and and the fact that

you not only are a servant of allah but you're the son of a servant of allah and

you're the son of a maidservant of allah subhanahu ta'ala so there's an acknowledgement getting back to that

quranic injunction on the to abu dhabi

that he created you and those who came before you so we are in this chain of

createdness so i am your servant or your slave the son of

your servant the son of your maidservant naasi the nausea is the forelock uh

traditionally it's something that you control animals with generally is is uh it's something that um

but it's also aloha refers really also to the frontal lobe

this is really where the higher cognitive thinking occurs and um

so that the nausea is in your hands one of the uh in the traditional muslim

uh scholastic tradition they had the tassels that came off the tarbush that you see in western academia

that was actually to remind the sheikh when he graduated they were given the tarbush with that tassel which was like

the nausea and the idea was to remind them that that nausea is in the hand of allah subhanahu ta'ala and if you give a

hukum a judgment from allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala you should be aware that he could seize you at any time so you

should be very vigilant in when you answer questions i was once

with sheikh abdullah he's a great great scholar one of the truly great ulama of muritania of of

this time allah he was this he was a student of um

and he um with the famous he was from the tribe of tajikanit the famous tribe in muritani known for

knowledge in fact the mauritanians knowledge is from tejakanet

but he um he was a brilliant brilliant scholar

who um who was once i was with him at the

sharia court in abu dhabi because i used to spend time with the the mufti's and with the quad with shaykh

i was very young in my early 20s but i remember these two men came from egypt

and they wanted to ask a question in barack and it was a complicated thing so muhammad al abdullah

was a very he was muttaqi in his fatwa he said come back tomorrow and i'll give

you an answer and one of the egyptians looked at me and he

said dab out of haga like does he know anything

because they're so used to people answering immediately so the idea that somebody actually wanted to think about

it and was just completely uncommon for them and i and i said to the man you

know so um that

reminder is very important that we can be taken any time in our lives

your judgment your hukum is what will occur nothing else in in

terms of my life it's your outcome whatever allah has decreed and he is al-haqem and his hakim

so he's both the ruler but he's also the wise and that's both related to hoko it's

also related to the ich kam in fact we have uh speaking of nausea in

in the the jokama or the hokuma if you google this you'll see it is actually a

type of halter that's used to control the horse and it comes from hakima

because the spanish got it from andrussia and then they brought it to the americas so it was a unique arabian

halter that still used uh for people that know about horses

just is your judgment what your and there's

which one is the the pre-existent which one is that is the the one that's uh

implemented in the world but these are semantical differences largely so the adhd

whatever you have decreed for me is just and and the reason for that is because

allah he cannot

his his attribute is justice he cannot be unjust he's also a rahman or raheem

he also has mercy so these these are two they're not contradictory they're working based uh these attributes will

manifest to us based on how we behave if we're constantly demanding justice and

allah will judge us by that accord if we want forgiveness if we're

showing mercy to others have mercy on those on earth and the one

in heaven will have mercy on you well

be just with people on earth and god will be just for you in heaven so justice is important

it's it's it's a beautiful attribute of a ruler but in human interactions between one another in a community you

want more mercy than you want justice and uh there there's a

there's a play by shakespeare called the merchant of venice which is about this conflict in christianity between

the jewish trope of being a religion only of justice without mercy and then the christian being a

religion of mercy that overrides justice and and so they're they're both

important but the point here is that whatever comes it's going to be uh just

and this is about things that happen to you that you might not like

whatever comes we have to see it that allah is he he is our malik

and the malik can do whatever he wants with his property he can do whatever he

wants and you cannot claim that he's oppressed you or he's wronged you because you belong to

allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because

i'm asking you by with the istiyana or

with the name every name that is yours samayta bihinfsek that you have called

yourself or that you have revealed in your book

some of the uluma have worked out that there's about 121 names of god in the quran the 99 are the

famous names that are related in the hadith

but if you go into the ishtar names like khadal for instance in for yacht

and there's a hilar about that about words that allah uses a verb

then can can uh can the name be taken out of that to

give a name of allah so but the actual names of allah are unknown to us the the

number o or you taught

anyone from your creation and some of the ulama derived from this that even people that aren't prophets can might be

given a name that that is uh allah reveals to them

or you it's a name that you have kept hidden inside

this unseen realm so you've you've kept it for yourself

so you're asking through all of these for what and

the spring of my heart which means that which brings my heart

to life in allah brings the earth

back to life after it's dead there are spiritual deaths of the heart but just like that you can have a type

of defibrillation you can you can have a cardioversion a spiritual cardioversion so in in

medicine when somebody's heart uh stops or if they go into like a um

a a type of ventricular fibrillation it's very dangerous um they can do this

cardioversion where they they basically introduce electricity which is energy into the heart uh to get it to uh back

uh to its um its normal rhythm well like that

there's spiritual cardioversion allah can literally

take a dead spiritual heart and i'm saying literally and bring it back to life

and and there's a beautiful one of the most extraordinary hadees in my estimation

is a hadith of ubermen cab when he actually had he had momentary doubt this is called

the hather so it's not he's not doubting because he was a believer but he

actually heard some people and this is in imam bukhari's collection of he heard some people reciting the quran

and it was different from the way the prophet saw isaiah had taught him and he's one of the great quran reciters

obey even so he he hears it and then he hears another one and it's different

and he said where did you get that reading from they they said the prophet sallallahu isaam taught us so he he

takes them to the prophet and he said ya rasool allah these men are reading the quran different from the way you taught me

and and and so the prophet isaiah said and he told them and they recite and he

said that's the way i taught them kadadika owns it like it came down like that and

then ube when he said that he had this he said it

came to him some some doubt in his heart and it's very clear in the commentaries

that this is not doubt of iman it was like a khatar that came into his heart it was from iblis it was waswasa and

this is very important there's a very important distinction between waswasa and between your own inner what's called

hadiths are two different things so you can have

thoughts that are very foul that are horrible that you don't like these you should see them

and i mentioned this earlier you know dr cleary talked about the uninvited guest and the host you

have to distinguish between the thoughts that are uninvited into your heart they just come in as uninvited guests and you

have to dispel them and so he had this and then he said the prophet saw what was what had come over him like

some kind of something a spiritual state and he struck him in his chest

and he said it was is as if i saw god before me in complete awe

and it's extraordinary hadith like he suddenly had like an enlightenment

and he's he's one of the most important people for transmitting the quran but the prophet did a type of you know like

a type of cardioversion a spiritual cardioversion on him

which is quite stunning the prophet saw i said also a man once came to him

complaining about his heart and the prophet put his hand on his heart and he said in the kind of food you have some heart trouble and he said

go to hadith who was the great yemeni physician who'd studied in june de

shapur in iran with the traditional he studied in the medical school in persia so he was one

of the few arab doctors so the prophet i think was like scan he was doing like a

like echocardiogram with his hand and and then uh referred him to the

specialist in any case

make the quran the spring of my heart it's such a beautiful dua

bring my heart to life with this book and make it the light of my breast of my

chest make it the light of my chest you know alumnus

you know that there's an insurance and no as you know spreads out so

make it this this radiating light within my breast

and the difference between the two is is subtle but it essentially has the same meaning

if it has a fat then it's kashif it's it's to

yikshif to uncover um if it's jila ahuzny then it's uh

it's the muthib it's the the hab it's the to make it go so one is to uncover

the others to make it go so they essentially have the same meaning so that you'll see that both related

and the removal of my anxiety and hum is very interesting because the prophet saw

is

that stress and and this is what i i really think this word if we translated it today would be

stress that's the word we use hum is whatever's preoccupying you it's

what's really troubling your mind it's what you're thinking about it's

what's occupying your thoughts and when people are stressed out then they have whom

so the hum is is the prophet isaiah said

stress is half of aging and you can see people when they go through very trust stressful situations

you can see them within one year it's as if they've aged 10 years many people have seen this and experienced this

people's hair turns gray they grow they go bald just from from so much stress

so stress really can age people and and that's the releasing i mean we know all now about free radicals and all these

things but the prophet saw is was really a stress-free individual because

he had complete trust in allah subhanahu wa and because this dua which he recited often was answered

obviously um so the quran would remove his his

so that's something to think about it's a beautiful dua though and i i

would recommend it i mentioned you know i i wanted to do a little bit on the the uh

because i didn't talk about them so one of the really unusual aspects of the quran is that it begins if if we see

al-fatiha as really what introduces the quran and in fact

it's it's a methane it's it's the seven verses that really essentialize the

quran itself so the whole message of the quran is in surat al-fatiha which is why

we recite it every day and it was one of the earliest surahs given some say it's the third

surah the first was ichara the second was mudatyr and the third was al-fatiha there's others

say that it was revealed later and and some of the ulamas say

it's not it's not out of the out of the idea that it was actually

revealed twice to the prophet because of its importance so the the fatiha

really opens the book bismillah there's a big debate i mentioned that

about whether or not that's from the the quran everybody agrees that it's from the

quran in surat

so everybody agrees that it's an ayah in in the quran

but is it an ayah at each one of these and

some of the ummah said that it was a fossil and that was imam malik's opinion imam malik said

and this is opinion and he's reiterating what

imam al-baqalani said that the proof that it's not from the quran is that there's a iftiraf

about it he said that that is just a proof because the quran

there's no about it it's yes

in the letter that was sent to um to

to suleiman from the queen of sheba so uh

alif lam neem and then you have what's called the med de las verhafi here so

the uh the the mujahideen have a mnemonic that they give which is come

how much of the has diminished so those are the the calf

the meme the iron the scene the lamb

the noon the the cough and the sod so those all have the med which is

sit harakat so when you recite the haroof and

the ones those have um just the normal med but these have six

so alif has the normal med eddie fla [Music]

and what do they mean well what's interesting about the hero

i mean to me what fascinates me and i haven't seen this in the tafsir but all of the mufassirun are in agreement

that they mean something what they mean is they say aloha adam

some of them and even abbas is one of them said that they're actually letters that indicate that words

so for instance the arabs in jail the arabs one of the things that

ibn ashur says in his tahrir with which is a great tafsir one of the

things he says in there is that he said the arabs were known for their intelligence they're very brilliant

people and they had an incredible gift with words and one of the things that they did was they would speak with

letters so for instance um and and they give the example and this is from azad the great

grammarian he says it's not far-fetched that these are literally words because

uh the arabs would say things like

so i said to her stop so she said which means

so she used a letter to just to to say a word so some of them say like adiflamim is

like and some say it's allah jibril so the lamb is for jibril and

then meme is for muhammad these are all you'll find them in the uh the com the commentaries

um and uh uh ibrahim mentions this even

actually says that they're names of angels and so when you say them the angels respond because they want to hear

the quran recited so it's like calling angelic presence because the prophet saw i saw him said that the angels want to

hear the quran and they actually travel the earth just like we look up at the sky and see stars the angels look at the earth and

they see places where dikkar is being made those are like stars for them and then they'll go to those places

so the are very important they've put the people have attempted to

see how many of the mukatta's how many sentences you could get from them and

there's only a few but one of them is that has all the muqatta'at is

this is a absolute nus a text from god

that that is wise and there's a secret in it so that so that contains all of

the there are fourteen letters in the mukha they show up in 29 surahs

now what's interesting about that is it's half of the arabic letters and and yet

the number of sodas they're in is the number of arabic letters there are and so it's almost as if

when the quran is coming into language because we have to remember

that the eternal quran that when we talk about i'm only using this as a talin because

generally the ulama say this should not be said unless you're teaching

when we say the quran is karama kadeem

it is the eternal word of god it is not the letters

or the the most half that we have here it's the eternal meanings

and it's as if here you have these letters are taking form as they

come into meaning and and one of the things and i'll talk about this uh inshallah when allah says

and so the kerimat is the uh because it's the it in that case it's

actually the fat in so it's saying and the the power of this is that

meaning is there are two things happening in meaning there's meaning coming to you

and then there's meaning that you are perceiving so

what that those two indicate is that meaning is not limited

to a perspectival approach in other words it's not subjective

this is the whole modern philosophical madness that everything is just in your

head that there's nothing that you can know except what's in your head

what that ayah is indicating in its is that there is a relational

there there is a relation between meaning which is real and between the one who is

decoding the meaning who is also real and it's allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that's

facilitating that through this extraordinary bringing these two things together which

is this world that he's created that is all of his to jelly yet and then the human being which is

divinely created in order to recognize all of the

attributes and the names of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and see allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala's creation as as

this incredible epiphany of divine reality that allah is revealing himself

to his creation through the alam through the world the alam in arabic is called

ismu allah it's the the noun of instrument so the world is an instrument

to know god that's why it's from the root alimah which is to know so the world is the means by which allah is

enabling us to know him and so it comes into language and language according to

to many of our ulama is when allah

he taught adam the names it it meant that that god gave us he's

imprinted in us the ability to articulate reality and that that our

articulation of it if it's true it corresponds with reality if it's false it doesn't and so

this is the book it begins eddie flamm meme

and then the book comes it's the meanings come to us that book

and this is the beauty of this uh this is the nature of the

and one of the most amazing things about the quran to me is

so there are some will prove that you can't stop on by consensus but many of the

there are different ways that you can stop and it will change the meaning completely and so there's this

inexhaustible potential for meaning in the book of allah and this is why arabic was so important to be the vehicle for

this last message because arabic is uniquely positioned amongst the languages to contain all of these

possibilities and that's why it's inexhaustible muslims will always find new meanings in

the book of allah somebody asked if um what was the best

what was the best way to understand the quran he said time it's just time is going to reveal all of the

the the miracles of this book and so he huddled

in it is guidance for the conscientious and but i one of the things i want to just say about the the

before we go on and this is really amazing the people of tajweed are going to

appreciate this and if if you don't get it don't worry but just understand it really is something extraordinary

so uh if i show a quotes the kashaf which is the great

book by the famous muaticity scholar zamachari

it's a book that all of our great scholars recognize as being an exemplary book despite having some problems uh in

some of the tafsir but it was later basically rewritten for the sunni

tradition by imam marbel baui i mean he took most of what was in the kashaf and

rewrote it for so more students learn from imam bail bawi's

commentary than they did but the kashaf is a really important book because it's a rhetorical analysis

of the quran but he says here in the kashaf they're called

and they're also called and abu bakr radhilanu said that

was every book has a secret and the secret

of the quran is these opening letters of the the hijab so he says

so it's half of the names of these that we have these letters

so there's 14 of of that are found in the in the uh

and they're in 29 chapters based on the number of the letters in totality so all of the meanings these

inexhaustible meanings of the quran are in 29 letters half of those letters

are in 29 surahs now here's where it gets really

interesting so he says that those 14 contain

half of all of the attributes of the hadoop so all of the attributes of the hadoop

are there in those 14 but only half of them so

what that means is so like for instance you have mahamusa nilswaha assad with kaff with how was

seen what so that's half of the mahmoosa so the mahmusa letters

these are the attributes of the hemps so then he says the majora has half

mean

would mean

so there's there's that's the the the right so he's saying that you have there

so

so he says they're all mentioned the ones that aren't there are throughout the entire

quran and he said glory be to the one whose wisdom is so refined so that's

something really unusual about those because i just can't imagine somebody

would have ever worked that sat and worked all that out but it's

these this is called you know it's like the salt but it's it's very fascinating one of the things

that um some of the arifin said is that

allah gives openings to these letters to the people the closer you get to allah

in fact says something really beautiful he says

that allah has the oceans of knowledge and the prophets are the valleys

and the scholars are the rivers and and so allah gives from his oceans of knowledge

the valleys to the prophets for salat right

so so so so the the water comes and then the prophets

give to the ulama so they inherit from the prophets from

the the valleys of water not the oceans because they they can't they can't contain the oceans

they can't contain the valleys but they get the rivers and then they give they become the rivulets

for the common people the people that don't they become like they give the just enough for them to

get their sustenance so each group is getting a different

amount of water the the amount that they can take without

drowning so um oh here we go

so alhamdulillah that's uh i mentioned also

there's a lot of fat about but it's definitely what

it's not material so now when now that we can see things with electron microscopy for instance

we we don't consider that even though it's less it's not seen with the eye the raib is

something immaterial according to our ulama

the in fact that um that this is all of the infalcat

that allah has obliged us to do and those that he's

encouraged us as well because believers give us like charity is a proof of faith

and so it's also like what you should a husband supporting his family

is also from this

so those who believe in what was real to you which is the quran and what came before you

all the previous dispensations and with the afterlife they have

certainty yaquin comes out of istitlad and this is why allah is not

it's not one of his attributes mukin he's not the one allah doesn't have japin

because japin is is it's something that you gain through

experimentation and istidlal you get yakin like they say you know you you get burnt by

the fire you have yapping that the fire burns so that's not one of the names of allah for that reason and that's why we're

told to worship allah until the yakin comes to us which is death

because that's the ultimate absolute certainty of the afterlife is once you're dead

everybody's going to be 100 certain and the uh the atheists are gonna it's gonna

be a tough day for for people that rejected the truth but they had their chance and they had their

choice

and then allah talks about those who disbelieve

[Music] so as for the ungrateful and this is a

good translation that dr crew is using because kaffara means to be ungrateful so he put

there together as for the ungrateful who refused so he's really getting both meanings of

the word because when you just say refuse or disbelieve you're losing that

essential meaning of what disbelief is about it's about ingratitude to the one

who created you muhammad ali used to say that service to others is the rent that you pay to god

for the space you occupy in this world but service to others is one way of serving

god but service to god and service to others is the rent that we pay

so i would just add that addition but it's a it's a beautiful statement by the great

muslim boxer and and uh said he was a people's theologian

muhammad ali because he said that he spoke with real clarity about if you watch some of his arguments about why he

believes in god they're very powerful a lot gave him a lot of inspiration

so it's the same to them whether you warn them or not they they don't believe

and that's why uh some people they they just will not

believe you can show them everything is to seal over something like a khatam

on a letter and the khatam is a the stamp that you use to seal something

and then there's a uh over there hearing about him

and and there's a covering over their eyes so for them is a great torment and i

mentioned that last time about that amazing statement that leopold vice muhammad

assad wrote in his book about just seeing the hell that people are in

women what's interesting about this is amongst

humanity are those who say we believe in allah in the last day

what's really fascinating is if you look at the verses allah took four verses to describe the

believers two verses to describe the disbelievers and 13 verses to describe

the hypocrites so it's it's very interesting the hypocrites

are a very complicated um uh creature

because the inward and the outward are um disparate they're not they're not they're not the same

and everybody has some degrees with the exception of the purified the ambia and the siddiacon

and everybody has a degree of hypocrisy if you think you're free of hypocrisy you're

definitely a hypocrite and and i didn't say that that was hassan al-basri he said whoever feels free of hypocrisy

it's a sign he's a hypocrite so if sayna omar could go to hudaifah ibn

yaman and say i swear to god you have to tell me am i one of the hypocrites that

the prophet salallahu told you about that's um he was worried about being considered a

hypocrite and that's partly because invariably we have we play different

roles and we have we have inner lives and outer lives and sometimes they're not always congruous so people but if

it's kabalyer if it's then you're dealing with hip real hypocrites and so there's there's a

complete hypocrites and then there's a whole spectrum of hypocrisy so the the

monafic charles a complete hypocrite when he speaks he lies when he makes

promises he breaks them either

when he gets in a fight either when he gets in a uh

if he makes a promise he breaks it either either if he gets in an argument he starts

using foul language so these are all signs if they're all four or in a person they're just complete hypocrites

so so we have to work on that all of us in our own selves and do that so what what they do

now allah in the arabic language is to attempt something

they attempt to fool god so they try to fool god

but they do not succeed in deceiving anybody but themselves now what's interesting

there's uh imam in his

own so they only are really attempting to deceive themselves so it's it's it's

that thing of cognitive dissonance that people they they have to believe so they're

going to try to convince themselves that that they're actually doing this

for good reasons and things like that so there's a real self-deception here and

in the end self-deception is exactly that you're only deceiving yourself

in other words if you really really were honest with yourself you would see the

self-deception yeah so there's this kind of schizophrenic

attitude maya is really a beautiful word uh the the

arabs in modern arabic used for the subconscious when they translate freudians psychology they'll

call it the lesher or you know it's under the shore it's what you're

not sensing means to feel and

is poetry because the poet is somebody who feels more than other people he has higher sensibilities his sensibilities

are heightened is hair because

it's a very subtle thing to touch when you touch the hair

and also because it spreads out so sheen has is har tafashi so anything with sheen in it tends to spread out

like musha shims radiates ashiya like

rays there's a whole bunch of words that have that letter in it

so they they they only succeed in fooling themselves

in their hearts is disease

here is they have the mara of shubohat which is

doubts in their understanding they don't have any certainty about anything they're modab the boon you know

they they oscillate uh some that when they're with the believers they're with the believers when they go back to their

shelter and they're with their shelting so they they're they're sick people uh

this is allah allows them to get sicker

and they have a painful torment they're tormented in their own beings

because of what they were because of the lies that they tell to themselves and to others so they're lying to themselves

and they're lying to others

this is really i think one of the most amazing

qualities that you see in these people if you say to them don't make trouble he uses make trouble

so corruption i mean there's a lot of different ways i don't know how he does it in the um

in his final translation but here he says make trouble in the earth

if it's if they're told don't make trouble in the earth they say

they are only doing good they say we that we are only they say we

are only doing good so isla

one of the commentators of the quran said the first proof that their mufsidum is they claim to be

muslim because a true uh person who's doing good they never claim

they're doing good they just do it so the fact that they're saying oh we're

muslim that's a proof that they're musin what does the prophet say

i only want islam he doesn't say i'm muslim he says i want islam which is

very different from saying you're a muslim because it's not a claim

either i or you are on guidance or astray the prophet was told to say that to the disability even in even though

we're certain that he was on guidance he was told to say to them allah knows who's guided one of us is guided

it's it's a right making opposite claims one of the claims

has to be true it's either raining or it's not reigning god exists or he doesn't exist

the prophet saw i see him as a prophet he's not a prophet one has to be true because that's the

law of the excluded middle right it can't both be true so

for those who accept they have ammon that's why it's called

eman because they've entered into this state of security for those who reject

we have to wait let's all wait we'll see and

let's just wait allah says wait we'll see we're going to see so nobody should just hurry hurry this

thing up we don't want to hasten the just let it take its course we'll see

who's who's true and who's not true we're gonna yomo qiyama we believe it's real if somebody doesn't believe it's

real that's their prerogative allah has given them that prerogative allah out of his generosity to his creation has given

them free will they can either accept his gifts with gratitude

or accept his gifts with ingratitude it's one or the other but they're all

getting the gifts of allah and the greatest gift is participation in being

the fact that we exist that allah has enabled us to come into the world and participate in this extraordinary

epiphany this extraordinary theophany of divine attributes i mean it's just incredible

so

it's like a subconscious thing they're they're doing this if sad and they

really don't they're not even aware of it they're fooling themselves

and this is the people that all these do-gooders that go out and do these horrible things i mean somebody said to

me you know it was they were like talking about helping the women of

afghanistan here and i just my you know i felt like you know i think they've had enough of america's help

you know it's just i think they've had enough you know people need to be left alone to

sort their problems out in this poor situation in pakistan you know

i mean the all so many hopes were put on because the people live in that incredible

corruption and it's horrible and many of the the best and brightest of that country live now in america for one

reason because there's rule of law and that they could actually flourish here

many of them would much rather be in their own culture with amongst their own family but it was it was unbearable

for many people it's just unbearable to be in those situations and so opportunities arise for them to have a

better life for their children and for and that's a very natural thing to want to do to

better your situation but it's like in the reluctant fundamentalist when you know he tells

his classroom you know in america they have this thing called the american dream

what's the pakistani dream to get a green card to america

it's you know so somebody shows up and people can say whatever they want people say all these things i personally

i have hassan al-ban he appeared to me to be a man who

lived a very big life made a toba to allah subhanahu ta'ala and wanted to do something for his

country and was trying to do something and actually invited us to be part of that

in his rahmalullah and the universe i mean he was trying to do

something but it's like sultan abdul hamid and i'm not comparing the two but sultan abdul hamid

he was a lone figure amidst all of this corruption

what how much could one person do if you don't have the people around you

he gave you victory with those believers look at the people around the prophet

saw isam look how difficult it was at the early portion when he didn't have protectors

i mean it was very difficult for him his own people were being persecuted when omar came

and hamza came it was this huge spiritual uplift for for those people

because they didn't they now they had some people that were going to to let other people know that if you

mess with these people there's there's consequences people need protectors so there's all these people that have their

hopes and we should just be praying for

these people because it's just really difficult life on earth

is very very difficult as it is it when things are going well there's difficulties

everybody has their sorrows everybody has their tribulations everybody has their troubles there's nobody that

that's free of any of these things so when in addition to your own personal

troubles your your society outside is collapsing it's a mess the level of stress

of hum that that brings on and the only people that are free of that are are the aulia because they really

are in the hub they're just in that space the prophet saw i mean look at abu bakr

when they're going on the hijrah and abu bakr he keeps looking back and he's he's got all that and then when he's in the

cave he's like terrified you know that because he cared about the man who he was with

he and he wanted to practice and he was but the prophet the entire time just look at the prophet he was just reciting

quran he was just he had no concerns

because he was completely inner focused on allah subhanahu wa

ta'ala so he wasn't in the and abu bakr has an immense

and it would have been appropriate for him to to have those feelings for him to not be concerned about his beloved

prophet would have been inappropriate for him in that mukham so i'm not diminishing his mohammed in any way but

my point is that the prophet's law is in him just was not worried he did not have

those concerns what he worried about interestingly enough was us going astray

that was his concern he worried about non-muslims not hearing his message he worried about muslims

falling into the dunya those are the things that troubled the prophet saws and he he prayed for us

and then when it said to them

so when you they say to them believers the people believe they say shall we believe as imbeciles believe

like sufha safi is like a idiot a stupid person somebody that can't take care of himself

should we believe like idiots and this is this idea that religion's a crutch that it's for weak people

that that uh strong people don't need religion they just stand up on their own yeah until they get multiple sclerosis

you know until they need and until they're incapacitated and they need people around them to take care of them

i mean we're constantly in need we're in need in every instant our hearts could stop at any instant

i mean i had a dear friend who literally just collapsed the other day and

crushed his skull he had to have multiple surgeries and metal plates it put into his head he was a perfectly

healthy person a mountain climber a young relatively young man really strong

but he collapsed and he said it was like a great wake-up call for him even though he was already

a devout muslim but he was like i felt like god was really sending me a huge message i need to change my life i need

to get better that's an appropriate response to tribulation

instead of getting angry and why are you doing this to me because there's all these people that's their attitude why

are you doing this to me allah there's no why for allah you said

he's not asked about what he does he's not asked about what he's but you

will be asked they will be asked about what they're doing

and when they encounter those who believe they say we believe but when they are alone with their obsessions and

that's very interesting hello

is to be alone and and one of the things that dr cleary really

he had a great knowledge of the the mind and wrote many books on

meditation and on the mind so he really understood the nature of

obsessions obsessive-compulsive thoughts of these type of things that these can

really really wreak havoc on people and and so

shayateen are like obsessions there's there there there's this constant waswasa that goes on

um and they say we're with you

so we're with you we're with you we're just mocking them

the mustache all had terrible outcomes allah yesterday would be him this does not mean that god

shazam and jin salaam so allah does not do is in this way this is

this is a type of rhetorical device in which

it's saying that they're going to get what they're doing so

allah yes and amplifying their outrages

as they wander astray

they are the ones who have bartered guidance for error so they they traded guidance for error they they they gave

up their guidance for this

this is a beautiful expression that the prophet said and used when suhabar romi

made his famous hijrah and so hey they wouldn't let him leave because he had been

he's called a romi there's a giraffe about what his actual lineage was but

he grew up amongst the byzantines although he had arab lineage so but they

said you came to us a foreigner and you became wealthy here we're not going to let you leave without your wealth so he

gave up all he just said you can have it all i just want to go be with the prophet sam so when he got to medina

without telling the prophet what he did because the angel told the prophet what he did he said

your tijara was profitable because he gave up all of his dunya for

akhirah and these people do the very opposite of that

method is [Music]

they are like what they are like is one who lit a fire and when it illumined everything around

god took their light and left them in darkness unseeing so one of the things about life is that people do have

insights and they do have periods but winston churchill famously said everybody stumbles on to the truth at

least once in their life and the vast majority of people simply get up brush themselves off and carry on

and i think that he was really talking about himself because apparently and there was an article in

the guardian about some of his his diaries

and some correspondence between family members he actually considered becoming muslim at one time

and he was convinced by his family that it would destroy his political career if he did

and that was that was published in the guardian magazine you can look that up so but

people do make dunya choices like choosing to become a muslim

is choosing right now in our current time to become part of an oppressed minority really

so although some people seem to be happy to do that as well

but it's uh nobody said it was going to be easy

and [Music] allah promises with that with the hardship ease so

there's great difficulties in becoming muslim at a time when the muslim world is so beleaguered and the

muslims don't look particularly like they're flourishing as a community

i think inshallah there's a greater reward than when they're successful because a lot of people want to become

americans or europeans because of their success i once met a muslim who actually left islam and became a

mormon and i asked him why he did that amazing and he said he looked to the most

successful community and he just wanted to be successful he actually came back to islam thank

goodness but he literally told me he became a mormon because he wanted to be successful

so success with allah or success with mammon i mean you choose it doesn't mean

they're mutually exclusive one of the reasons

the prophet saw him entering paradise crawling was because

he he was so engaged in the world even though it was for other worldly means but he was so engaged in the world

as a merchant so there's no reason why you can't be a

successful merchant and a muslim in fact the prophet sam was the most successful merchant

so uh there's and there's it's good to be successful in your worldly endeavors

but if you're not then you it's either there are a couple different possibilities one you're not

following the proper sunan of success which is very often when dr cleary told me once that there's a year in um

in in china where the buddhists call it the year that grace descended because buddhism suddenly had this incredible

expansion during that year and he said it was actually the year that the monks got organized

so it's not mutually exclusive but people often i mean muslims are often

really poor at organization and execution i mean i know muslims that work at at the top

levels at like google or facebook or but then they're on the mosque board and they run the board

it's like they're not using any of the skill sets that they learn

in these other places just basic managerial skill sets of how to run things well how to get things done

properly these are all things that muslims should be foremost at because

allah loves a servant should he do a thing he does it with excellence

a servant in modern era because professionalism

so a modern translation of that could be allah loves a professional servant a servant who does things with with

excellence with with her with craft with skill a skilled servant

[Music]

they will not get back deaf dumb and blind is a very interesting i mean there are people that suffer these grave

tribulations in the world and and par part of their meaning obviously i

would never limit that but part of their meaning is for something like this to

to be realized that there are people that don't have

hearing in fact dr cleary was deaf in one area he was partially deaf and it's very

difficult to be partially deaf or deaf in the world many people now are young

people are losing their hearing because they blast these they have the headphones and earphones and so they

don't know the preciousness of hearing it's a great gift to be able to hear and

then dumb not be able to speak and all of us have been struck dumb at one time in our lives i mean everybody's had that

point where they literally were speechless were unable to speak but there are

people that can't speak ever and if they're lucky they sign there was an amazing man

at tuimarat where i studied with uh who who was um

he was he was a uh he was he was uh

blind he was deaf and dumb but he was not blind he could he could he could speak somewhat

but he could read lips he learned how to read lips i don't know how he did that he was a very unusual

person but the people all the people around you saw things there that just were very

unusual but and then blind to be blind is a great tribulation

but it's also something that

allah generally when he takes away some things he enhances with other

things so blind people are very often uh many of our greatest ulama were blind

in fact da lazhar had a special place for the handicaps because handicapped people unlike

in traditional western culture where they were literally relegated to uselessness in the muslim world they

were often given special training so they had special ed and in fact

actually did a study of all the handicapped ulama and he was amazed at

how many there were handicapped ulama so

but but allah is using this as a an analogy

for people it's as if they have ears but they don't hear they have tongues but they don't speak because they're not

speaking the truth and they have eyes but they don't see so they don't hear the truth they don't speak the truth and

they don't see the truth and this is the famous the monkey from india

you know which which is a a beautiful uh meaning like people take it the

opposite of what it actually means it's that we should hear no evil speak no evil and see no evil that that's a type

of purity uh in in people so alhamdulillah i think

yeah i think with a few more minutes or like a rain cloud

[Music] yes

i think he has a really nice

it's kind of really interesting

yeah so he says the manifestation here just before this he says about the

obsessions obsessions shayatin from this is derived english satan one of the names of the devil this arabic name

comes from a root meaning to be perverse or obstinate essential characteristics of obsession referring to satanic

rebellion against god manifests as arrogance ingratitude and possessive obsession with things of the world

another name of the devil comes from the root which has the meaning of whispering or suggestion referring to obsession as the

epitome of the satanic characteristic and the activity this particular verse depicts fools who publicly declare their

faith in god yet privately declare their devotion to their personal idols and

obsessions be it status wealth or anything else that may preoccupy their

minds the very levity which with which hypocrites and fools treat their religion as a profession without a

reality lets them go all the further both in the outrages committed openly under the

guise of piety and those committed covertly on the prompting of private obsessions outrageous here to yan means

to transgress exceed proper bounds wander and then he talks about the light that they see this

describes the unreliable light of artificial knowledge of which false religion is one variety

god took their light in the sense that falsehood does not stand in the presence of reality subjective projections do not

remain intact in the face of objective truth finite man-made thought fails to apprehend the infinite in itself

they will not go back they will not they will not get back to reality or their source as long as they are totally

preoccupied with their own fabrications so then about this verse here like a

rain cloud from the sky in it darkness thunder and lightning they put their fingers in their ears the manifestation

of religion includes mystery warning enlightenment and nourishment these are

symbolized by darkness thunder lightning and rain the ungrateful are mostly

concerned with with ignoring the warning for fear that it will prove true against

them what they do not realize is that reality encompasses them and judges them

whether or not they are consciously attentive of this fact

and then he says the clarity of divine revelation is blinding to the eye accustomed to the darkness of human

confusion with each renewal of revelation or revival of true knowledge humanity makes some progress when the

infusion of inspiration subsides however humankind again stagnates although this

process seems uncertain and erratic at least humanity has a chance to use its god-given faculties to recognize

revelation and live in its light it is not the same as if we had no sense at

all like blind deaf and down alhamdulillah

did the prophet isaiah explain the letters eddie flam meme at all i mean had he we wouldn't have anything to say

about what he said we the prophet saw i said so much of the quran he the prophet

his life is his commentary the prophet isaiah did not comment on

very much of the quran because had he done that nobody could interpret it after him had he told us oh it means

this then who would dare say that it meant something else

so the prophet's life is his commentary on the quran the chapter in al-bukhari on the uh

what the prophet sam said about the quran is actually quite small and in the tough sears there's there's not a lot

of of comment from the prophet saw isaiah about the quran itself

because his life is the comet the sunnah is the commentary

the the the companions did ibn abbas had things to say about it the the companions did

have remarks about alif lam you can see them in the mottawalat if you read fakhrizin al-razi's

first volume there's a lot on that again imam

extraordinary translation and really commentary as well because he has a lot of annotations

you you can find things in there in english

you spoke earlier about the two tough years that bail bowie and el bagawi has two approaches to quran can you

elaborate a little more the alberta and al-baghui are very important uh historically um

they albe is arguably the most read commentary in in in the madrasa

tradition the scholastic tradition imam al-baghui is is up there a lot of

al-berdawi is dealing with he he uses the mufradat of espahani

and then he uses the kashaf is one of his sources

so he he he uses um a few different sources

and does a lot of linguistic analysis but it's it's a brilliant commentary it's it's it's excellent imam al-baghwa

has a lot of he does it's

he gives a lot of early

exegesis so that he's more looking at a it's a lot of self

influence on it um it's a shorter commentary but they're

both they're both excellent commentaries the uh i mean you have some really truly

great imam with has a great commentary um

the uh in andalusia was very popular it's it's

more used in the west my go-to and favorite commentary just for kind of an immediate

uh look is uh the tassiely matanzi i mean i've been using this book for

decades you know it's it's a really beautiful there's a critical addition too that

came out from one of the saudi scholars which is it's actually really good um this one has just two two volume out

of there's four volumes but in two um books

so but that that this one has a secret like i uh

even just it has a secret i i've always been amazed at what's in there

um he was given the gift of really being succinct but but packing meaning and the

introduction is one of the finest introductions and i think um [Music] the american 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