Islam through English Eyes (2021-10-19) ​

0:00:06 I just wanted to share with you some gems from a British writer Gai Eaton 0:00:10 who died in 2010. He was a convert to islam and he had been a muslim for over 50 years when he 0:00:18 sadly passed away he was also an historian wrote many books and a popular speaker and he worked 0:00:25 also at regents park mosque in london for many years as well 0:00:29 and i want to quote some of these absolute gems uh from some of his books uh one of my favorite 0:00:36 books actually is a book he wrote called Islam and the Destiny of Man and in there he wrote 0:00:42 the modern westerner persuaded that he has a right to think for himself and imagining that he 0:00:49 exercises this right is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural 0:00:56 and historical influences and that his opinions fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into a pattern 0:01:04 which has nothing random about it that's an amazing quote i mean he's saying that we all like 0:01:10 in the west like to think uh for ourselves and uh and that we do that and we exercise this right 0:01:15 and in fact but in fact we end up thinking pretty much the same on most issues i mean of 0:01:21 the day whether it be politically correct issues or other issues so in fact it's a bit of a myth 0:01:27 that we all do think for ourselves we all think within the box rather than outside of it usually 0:01:32 in another quote from the same book he wrote about the agnostic very profound insight the agnostic 0:01:39 has a very curious notion of religion he is convinced that a man who says i believe in god 0:01:46 should at once become perfect if this does not happen then the believer must be a fraud and a 0:01:53 hypocrite he thinks that adherence to a religion is the end of the road whereas it is in fact only 0:02:01 the beginning of a very long and sometimes very rough road he looks for consistency in religious 0:02:09 people however aware he may be of inconsistencies in himself very true very true and this next quote 0:02:18 from the same book is such a beautiful couple of sentences that really it's just stunning i want 0:02:23 to share this with you people are not always what they say they are or even what they think they are 0:02:33 but there is one who sees us objectively and have and we have reason to be thankful 0:02:40 that he is called the merciful the compassionate the forgiving that's a beautiful quote 0:02:48 and the next one i must say made me feel rather awkward and uneasy when i read it he wrote in 0:02:55 the same book a man might spend a lifetime reading spiritual books and studying the writings of the 0:03:02 great mystics he might feel that he has penetrated the secrets of the heavens and the earth 0:03:08 but unless this knowledge was incorporated into his very nature and transformed him it was sterile 0:03:18 i began to suspect that a simple man of faith praying to god with little understanding but 0:03:25 with a full heart might be worth more than the most learned student of the spiritual sciences 0:03:34 wow painful very true very true and here's a quote from another of his books king of the castle 0:03:42 choice and responsibility in the modern world where he wrote men who scorn the idea 0:03:50 of submission to the divine will are outraged by the notion of a god who requires submission 0:03:58 are among the first to demand total submission to the process 0:04:02 in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it 0:04:11 any other attitude so they say is reactionary or escapist or anti-social perhaps after all they 0:04:19 have found a divinity to worship and if they have the only charitable comment must be god help them
0:04:31 and here's another quote from the same book which speaks of our human condition uh people who 0:04:38 lose people we love of grief and so on and he writes in king of the castle 0:04:45 we are all of us exposed to grief the people we love die as we shall ourselves 0:04:52 in due course expectations are disappointed and ambitions are thwarted by circumstance 0:05:02 finally there are some who insist upon feeling guilty over the ill they have done 0:05:07 or simply on account of the ugliness which they perceive in their own souls a solution of a kind 0:05:15 has been found to this problem in the form of sedatives and antidepressant drugs 0:05:22 so that many human experiences which used to be accepted as an integral part of human life 0:05:29 are now defined and dealt with as medical problems the widow who grieves for a beloved 0:05:37 husband becomes a case as does the man sadden by the recollection of the napalm or high explosives 0:05:46 he has dropped on civilian populations one had thought that guilt was away however indirect 0:05:54 in which we might perceive the nature of reality and the laws which govern our human experience 0:06:02 but it is now an illness that can be cured death however remains incurable 0:06:10 though we might be embarrassed by victorian death bed scenes or the practices of mourning people 0:06:16 a morning among people less sophisticated than ourselves the fact of death tells us so much 0:06:23 about the realities of our condition that to ignore it or try to forget it is to be unaware 0:06:30 of the most important thing we need to know about our situation as living creatures 0:06:38 equally to witness and participate in the dying of our fellow men and women 0:06:43 is to learn what we are and if we have any wisdom at all to draw conclusions 0:06:50 which must in their way affect our every thought and our every act
0:06:59 it speaks for itself
0:07:03 and in a much much shorter passage back in the islam and destiny a man book 0:07:08 he says religion cannot survive whole and effective when it is confined to one 0:07:16 single compartment of life and education death is either all or it is nothing either it dwarfs all 0:07:27 profane studies or it is dwarfed by them i really like that statement the theology used to be called 0:07:35 of course the queen of the sciences uh and now of course it's uh threatened to be abolished in 0:07:41 many university uh departments in the uk anyway but he says religion cannot survive whole and 0:07:48 effective when it's confined to one part of life like you know your leisure time what you do on the 0:07:53 weekend or something is either everything or it's nothing the muslims get this christians used to 0:08:00 get this not anymore i tend to find but muslims if there's one thing that muslims can teach the 0:08:06 west and teach christians too is that religion is either everything and not just a private thing but 0:08:13 includes politics it includes uh divine law and our spirituality and everything all it is nothing 0:08:20 anyway on to another quote and this is this is a nice one one of the fundamental themes of 0:08:28 the quran is man's flight from reality given the basic premise that god is and that his being both 0:08:37 transcends and encompasses all existence then unbelief is precisely such a flight 0:08:45 men and women throughout the centuries have tried at every opportunity to evade total reality and to 0:08:52 take refuge in little corners of private darkness even at the simplest everyday level there is 0:08:59 constant avoidance of the thought of death there is evasion of our inward solitaryness 0:09:06 which no amount of conviviality can entirely overcome and there is a refusal to acknowledge our 0:09:14 limitations and our sins not only is it the innate tendency of fallen man to forget god but there 0:09:23 comes about a luxuriant growth of forgetfulness in every sphere wow powerful words powerful words
0:09:36 i like this one this is uh particularly good just one sentence from islam and the destiny of man 0:09:44 there are strengths and virtues in a polygamous marriage as there are in a 0:09:50 monogamous one and it was muhammad's destiny to demonstrate both in their perfection 0:09:57 in that amazing their strengths and virtues in polygamous marriage as there are in monogamous 0:10:03 ones but it was muhammad's destiny to demonstrate both in their perfection because he was married 0:10:09 to his first wife for i think it was 25 years monogamously in a beautiful marriage and then 0:10:16 after her sad demise he had polygamous marriages of course for various reasons often political
0:10:25 and here we have um a lovely uh paragraph from islam and the destiny of man about the quran 0:10:34 the quran set on a shelf with other books has a function entirely different to theirs and exists 0:10:42 in a different dimension wow what an opening sentence it moves an illiterate shepherd to tears 0:10:49 when recited to him and it has shaped the lives of millions of simple people over the course of 0:10:56 almost 14 centuries it has nourished some of the most powerful intellects known to the human record 0:11:05 it has stopped sophisticates in their tracks and made saints of them and it has been the source of 0:11:12 the most subtle philosophy and of an art which expresses its deepest meaning in visual terms 0:11:21 it has brought the wandering tribes of mankind together in communities and civilizations upon 0:11:28 which its imprint is apparent even to the most casual observer wow
0:11:38 and this next quote is about how do people imitate muhammad and he writes this in islam and the 0:11:45 destiny of man to love muhammad is one thing but to imitate him to try to be like him is another 0:11:54 he was the last messenger and the last prophet so how can we expect to imitate what by definition 0:12:02 is unique and unrepeatable in the first place his virtues are to be imitated and they were 0:12:10 providentially exemplified in the extraordinary variety of human experience through which he 0:12:16 passed in his 62 years of life he was an orphan yet he knew the warmth of parental love through 0:12:24 his grandfather's devoted care for him he was the faithful husband of one wife for many years 0:12:31 and after her death the tender and considerate husband of many wives he was the father of 0:12:38 children who gave him the greatest joy this world has to offer and he saw all but one of them die 0:12:47 he had been a shepherd and a merchant when young and he became a ruler a statesman a military 0:12:55 commander and a law giver he loved his native city and was driven from it into exile finally 0:13:03 to return home in triumph and set an example of clemency which has no equal in human history 0:13:13 not only do we know almost everything he did we know the exact manner in which he did it 0:13:21 and that's some islam and the destiny of man i like that sentence where he writes guy eaton 0:13:27 he loved his native city and was driven from it into exile he went to medina of course finally 0:13:33 to return home in triumph and he set an example of clemency of mercy so when he had total power 0:13:40 he could have crushed his enemies destroyed them killed them but he showed them mercy and 0:13:47 guidance says this has no equal in human history absolutely extraordinary absolutely extraordinary 0:13:56 and just a couple more because i could go on over hours uh two more short ones and this 0:14:01 again is typical of guy eaton's just amazing ability to write brilliant prose condensed 0:14:07 spiritually powerful and and a way to change our perceptions of reality and this is this is 0:14:13 one such example from islam in the destiny of man just a few brief sentences he writes 0:14:20 the muslim does not feel dwarfed by the immensities of nature because he knows 0:14:25 himself to be the vice regent of god standing upright in the midst of such immensities 0:14:33 we those small in stature see the stars they do not see us we hold them within our consciousness 0:14:43 and measure them in accordance with our knowledge they know us not we master them in their courses 0:14:52 immensity cannot know itself only in human consciousness can such a concept exist wow
0:15:05 and maybe just one last one and this uh is quite hard hitting this one game from islam and the 0:15:12 destiny of man about science and scientists if the term science has any precise meaning relating it 0:15:21 to knowledge of the real then it is the science of tauheed it could be said and with good reason that 0:15:28 the cafe should never be permitted to approach the physical sciences or to involve himself in them 0:15:36 whoa what's going getting out here he does not possess the key to them and he is therefore 0:15:42 bound to go astray and to lead others astray he divides when he should unite and his fragmented 0:15:50 mind deals only with fragments it is little wonder that he splits the atom with devastating results 0:16:01 those who know nothing of the principle are incompetent to study its manifestations 0:16:07 then he quotes in the quran pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge surely hearing and 0:16:16 sight and heart all these shall be called to account that's surah 17 verse 36 powerful words 0:16:26 we will never hear them anywhere in the media or in our orthodox knowledge uh extraordinary 0:16:34 and then the penultimate one a beautiful paragraph this the sunnah of the prophet provides not only 0:16:43 a framework but also as it were a network of channels into which the believers will 0:16:50 enters and through which it flows smoothly both guided and guarded it is not his way the muslims 0:16:59 way to cut new channels for his volative life through the recalcitrant materials of this world 0:17:06 against the grain of things at first sight one might expect this to produce a tedious 0:17:13 uniformity all the evidence indicates that it does nothing of the kind and anyone who has 0:17:21 had close contact with good and pious muslims will know that although they live within 0:17:26 a shared pattern of belief and behavior they are often more sharply differentiated 0:17:33 one from another than our profane people their characters strong and their individualities more 0:17:40 clearly delineated they have modeled themselves upon a transcendent norm of inexhaustible richness 0:17:50 whereas profane people have taken as their model the fashions of the time to put it another way 0:17:57 the great virtues and it is the prophet's virtues that the believer strives to imitate can it seems 0:18:05 be expressed through human nature in countless different ways whereas worldly fashion induces 0:18:13 uniformity in media advertisements one fashion model looks very much like another how true 0:18:23 and the last sentence here from his book islam and the destiny of man 0:18:28 god gave to adam and to his descendants the gift of intelligence asking in return not for blind 0:18:36 praise but for a lucid and joyful understanding of the nature of all things and their source
0:18:47 that's enough for now i could have quoted literally endless paragraphs uh his books are 0:18:52 full of gems like that just wants to share a few of them here today until next time