Muslim schools Neil deGrasse (2021-01-26) #

0:00:00 islam rose again after this period
0:00:02 didn't have science
0:00:03 associated with it no new inventions in
0:00:06 math
0:00:08 you look at the period of islam in spain
0:00:10 the period where the great
0:00:12 alhambra was built there is no attendant
0:00:14 science going on there
0:00:15 it's done it's gone this is now
0:00:19 gonna be in the public sphere for people
0:00:21 to ridicule you
0:00:22 and to remind you of your incompetence
0:00:24 every time they see your face they'll be
0:00:26 reminded
0:00:27 of your academic incompetence on these
0:00:29 fields
0:00:37 how are you guys doing so i came across
0:00:39 a clip by
0:00:40 a new atheist academic called neil
0:00:42 degrasse now this individual
0:00:44 is put forward in a lot of the kind of
0:00:45 debates and public discussions and he
0:00:47 gets millions of views
0:00:48 and he represents the kind of new
0:00:50 atheism from as much as i can
0:00:52 um understand from his polemics
0:00:55 and really when i watch this clip i
0:00:57 thought to myself should i dignify
0:00:59 should i dignify these comments with the
0:01:01 response
0:01:03 and i at the end of it i said i have to
0:01:04 because this is such a ridiculous
0:01:07 showing of academic incompetence that i
0:01:10 thought
0:01:10 it must be answered so let's take a look
0:01:12 at this clip and dissect it
0:01:14 piece by piece at this point
0:01:17 islam is maybe just a few hundred years
0:01:19 old so the first thing he says he says
0:01:21 islam is just a few hundred years old
0:01:22 now i don't know how he defines a few
0:01:25 but at the time of islam is around 500
0:01:28 years which is
0:01:28 half a mil half a millennium so this is
0:01:31 already showing you is
0:01:33 precursors to the bigger errors that are
0:01:36 going to come
0:01:36 people are reading the quran and
0:01:38 interpreting it however they sort of
0:01:40 want to and feel like it
0:01:41 there's not a coherence to the practice
0:01:43 of islam until he comes around
0:01:45 he says something here which i don't
0:01:47 understand what he means by because he
0:01:48 says
0:01:49 before ghazali there was no coherence to
0:01:51 the practice of islam
0:01:53 now i don't understand what he means by
0:01:54 this because from a jurisprudential
0:01:56 perspective
0:01:57 the four imma or the four imams major
0:01:59 imams of sunni islam
0:02:01 and by the way also the major branch of
0:02:03 shia
0:02:04 islam were all established i mean you
0:02:06 had um
0:02:07 you know the form of the heb you had us
0:02:10 being established
0:02:11 by the book of hashem who wrote one of
0:02:14 the most
0:02:15 early commentaries or explications
0:02:19 of asura or the principles of
0:02:21 jurisprudence
0:02:22 you had the codification of all of the
0:02:24 major hadith books including bukhari and
0:02:26 muslim and so on
0:02:27 so i don't really understand what he
0:02:28 means but by the fact that there was no
0:02:30 coherence to the practice of islam
0:02:32 especially because al-ghazali himself
0:02:35 was positioned
0:02:36 or was from the school of thought of the
0:02:38 shaftas
0:02:39 and he was from the school of thought
0:02:40 from the perspective
0:02:42 so he was part of the discourse but he
0:02:45 was not in any way
0:02:46 um you know making his own school of
0:02:49 thought
0:02:50 i mean there were practices that were
0:02:52 already codified from
0:02:53 a jurisprudential creedal and hadith
0:02:56 perspective so i didn't understand
0:02:57 really what he meant by this
0:02:58 but let's go on and see what he says
0:03:01 next people are reading the quran and
0:03:03 interpreting it however they sort of
0:03:05 want to and feel like it there's not a
0:03:06 coherence
0:03:08 to the practice of islam until he comes
0:03:09 around now he says that
0:03:12 muslims were interpreting the quran in
0:03:14 whatever way they wanted to
0:03:16 but this is false because there were
0:03:17 principles of istimbat
0:03:20 uh as is mentioned in the quran you know
0:03:24 is the quran says that the those who are
0:03:28 able to do extrapolation
0:03:29 would be able to do so and this
0:03:31 extrapolation
0:03:32 is a method right so it's called um you
0:03:35 know tafsir method
0:03:36 or the exegetical method this was
0:03:38 already laid down
0:03:39 well before you know al-ghazali atabari
0:03:43 had his
0:03:44 magnum opus or his uh compendius or
0:03:47 voluminous or encyclopedic
0:03:49 uh tafir and this was well known and and
0:03:52 many other
0:03:53 or exegetical works were made thereafter
0:03:56 so this idea that people were
0:03:58 haphazardly haphazardly you know
0:04:01 interpreting the quran in the way that
0:04:03 they wanted to is far from the
0:04:05 theological truth
0:04:06 and this shows that this man is weak
0:04:09 academically in his presentation
0:04:11 and codifies the behavior of a good
0:04:13 muslim
0:04:14 in much the same way saint augustine in
0:04:16 his book cities of god
0:04:18 codified what it is to be a good
0:04:20 christian and he says
0:04:22 that augustine codified what it is to be
0:04:24 a good christian as if he was
0:04:26 you know in the uh in the fifth century
0:04:28 as he came along he was the one who did
0:04:30 so and there was not a patristic
0:04:32 uh backdrop to his uh existence i mean
0:04:34 many of the church fathers uh
0:04:36 predated augustine by hundreds of years
0:04:38 and we have justin marty you have uh
0:04:40 origin of alexandria you have all of
0:04:42 these uh big names and you have the
0:04:45 so-called ecumenical councils that you
0:04:47 know chalcedon and
0:04:48 and nicaea and all of these things i
0:04:50 mean was was there not a christian
0:04:52 community before augustine came along
0:04:54 and this shows you that his patristic
0:04:56 understanding or
0:04:57 understanding of patristic scholarship
0:04:59 is as weak or even probably
0:05:01 weaker than his historical knowledge and
0:05:03 or theological knowledge as it relates
0:05:05 to islam so let's go on
0:05:07 the assertion that the manipulation of
0:05:08 numbers is the work of the devil
0:05:10 all right so here he makes his big claim
0:05:13 he says that al-ghazali mentions
0:05:15 that uh it's the manipulation of numbers
0:05:17 are the work of the devil
0:05:19 as assuming or presupposing that
0:05:21 al-ghazali of
0:05:22 all people he could have chosen and this
0:05:25 is ridiculous
0:05:26 because al-ghazali of all the for anyone
0:05:29 who knows just a little bit
0:05:31 of either the philosophy of religion or
0:05:33 intellectual history
0:05:34 they would know who al-ghazali is for
0:05:37 all the people in the islamic world you
0:05:38 decided to choose
0:05:40 you chose al-ghazali to say that he was
0:05:42 against
0:05:43 science and mathematics and what's worse
0:05:45 is that the quote that he mentioned is
0:05:47 nowhere to be found in his compendious
0:05:49 works
0:05:51 the closest thing i found was something
0:05:53 in his
0:05:55 din which is a book his huge book
0:05:58 made many volumes voluminous
0:06:02 and in in his catabol
0:06:05 he mentions that people who go far in
0:06:08 excesses
0:06:09 when it comes to not just mathematics
0:06:11 but in other other fields
0:06:12 in kalam and otherwise that they would
0:06:14 be damaging themselves
0:06:16 but he actually mentions in the same
0:06:17 book by the way this book
0:06:19 is translated into english and you can
0:06:22 pick up
0:06:23 an english translation by kenneth uh
0:06:26 honor camp
0:06:27 and you'll find in page 38 that al
0:06:29 hazali says the opposite of what you're
0:06:31 saying that he said
0:06:32 al-hazari
0:06:35 that it's a communal obligation for
0:06:38 people to learn
0:06:40 the praised sciences as he calls them
0:06:43 of medicine and of mathematics you see
0:06:46 this is the distortion that the new
0:06:48 atheists have to resort to in order to
0:06:50 try
0:06:51 and attack religious narratives absolute
0:06:54 distortions
0:06:55 and they should be ashamed of themselves
0:06:57 that they're coming forward
0:06:58 and speaking in this way without the
0:07:00 academic competence
0:07:02 the academic competence of checking
0:07:04 their work
0:07:06 i mean if this was done in another
0:07:08 context
0:07:10 with other fields they would be all over
0:07:12 us and attacking us but this
0:07:13 is historical information which has been
0:07:16 distorted
0:07:17 and how dare you mention al-ghazali of
0:07:19 all the scholars you could have
0:07:21 mentioned
0:07:22 an individual who had a method which was
0:07:25 systematic
0:07:26 and if you really look at rene descartes
0:07:29 who was the father
0:07:30 of rationalism in the west and his book
0:07:32 the meditations
0:07:33 where he went through systematic doubt
0:07:35 in order to to come to
0:07:36 kojito uh ergosome which is i think
0:07:39 therefore i am
0:07:40 you'll realize that in
0:07:46 and all of those books that the same
0:07:48 method of systematic doubt
0:07:51 well before rene descartes came along
0:07:53 with it
0:07:54 was exhibited and presented by the works
0:07:56 of al ghazali
0:07:58 where he done exactly the same thing a
0:08:00 systematic doubt
0:08:01 a skeptical approach and then the kalam
0:08:05 method
0:08:05 and the arguments from kalam which are
0:08:08 all over the academic
0:08:10 world now uh popularized by the likes of
0:08:13 william lane craig and others
0:08:15 in atheist discussions were taken from
0:08:17 la jazeli
0:08:18 why if he is somebody who is averse
0:08:22 to the logical process or reverse to
0:08:24 mathematics or reverse
0:08:26 to medicine and science
0:08:30 in his book al mustafa which is one of
0:08:33 the most
0:08:34 elaborative books on the topic of the
0:08:36 principles of jurisprudence
0:08:38 he starts this book with a discussion
0:08:42 on epistemology and he
0:08:45 started a tradition of doing that
0:08:48 such that even hanabila who are more
0:08:51 conservative and reserved
0:08:53 especially when it came to kalam the
0:08:56 systematic theo theology someone like
0:08:59 ibn kodama
0:09:00 in his book in his usual book which he
0:09:03 which
0:09:04 which was really at a copy or of a
0:09:06 template of al ghazali
0:09:08 he also did the same thing in the first
0:09:09 manuscript that you find so he started a
0:09:12 tradition
0:09:13 of a discussion about epistemology and
0:09:16 about
0:09:17 these philosophical matters how dare you
0:09:19 attribute to him
0:09:21 of all people in the muslim world
0:09:24 that he was averse to and against
0:09:28 science mathematics and technology you
0:09:30 should be ashamed of yourself
0:09:32 and this is you actually you should come
0:09:34 out and apologize
0:09:35 you should come out and apologize to the
0:09:37 muslim community and to the academic
0:09:39 community not just the muslim to the
0:09:40 academic community
0:09:42 for distorting the his his intellectual
0:09:44 history
0:09:45 of the medieval period in such a way you
0:09:48 should come out and apologize i want to
0:09:50 see an apology on your twitter
0:09:51 or whatever it is you use yes because
0:09:54 how dare you come out and lie
0:09:56 flagrantly blatantly and obviously
0:10:00 lie about something which you didn't
0:10:03 have the
0:10:04 common decency to double check you make
0:10:08 me sick
0:10:09 you make me sick and this is what the
0:10:12 new atheist movement has to resort to
0:10:14 flagrant and obvious lies in order to
0:10:17 distort
0:10:18 the public narrative and to try and
0:10:20 bring people away from religion
0:10:22 you have failed and you should be
0:10:25 ashamed of yourself
0:10:27 two actions that you see in nature
0:10:30 are the will of allah
0:10:34 well if you drop a stone and it falls
0:10:37 allah will that
0:10:39 he's talking about philosophy and then
0:10:40 he makes a bigger blunder he says
0:10:42 you see all the actions are from the
0:10:44 will of allah and here he is referring
0:10:45 to occasionalism
0:10:47 occasionalism which is a an ashari
0:10:49 doctrine and by the way al ghazali if
0:10:51 you really read his books
0:10:52 he didn't believe in it in as much the
0:10:54 same way as many of his predecessors
0:10:56 did as many of the scholars even in the
0:11:00 in the west now
0:11:01 uh have spoken about he believed in a
0:11:03 second order causation
0:11:05 but anyway this is aside the point you
0:11:06 wouldn't even understand what i'm
0:11:07 talking about
0:11:08 what is important here because you
0:11:10 you're full with all due respect and
0:11:11 you're ignorant of these things
0:11:13 so you i've got to speak and you're not
0:11:14 going to understand but what you should
0:11:16 know is
0:11:17 what's really funny and ironic is people
0:11:19 that you have had interviews with on
0:11:21 this topic
0:11:22 of determinism and free will like sam
0:11:24 harris who
0:11:25 wrote a book called free will believe in
0:11:28 determinism
0:11:29 and so they don't believe so you're
0:11:32 saying here the will of god so
0:11:33 this stops curiosity and stops our uh
0:11:36 kind of motivation or incen
0:11:38 disincentivize us from doing things if
0:11:41 that's your explanation
0:11:44 your curiosity stops but a determinist
0:11:48 even if they're an atheist who believes
0:11:50 in an uninterrupted causal chain
0:11:53 will have exactly the same philosophical
0:11:55 baggage
0:11:57 so when you were seated in front of your
0:11:59 friend sam harris
0:12:00 who wrote a book called free will and he
0:12:03 wrote at the bottom of it sam harris but
0:12:05 actually he should have wrote he
0:12:06 shouldn't have put his name there
0:12:07 because it wasn't sam harris with his
0:12:08 free will that wrote that book
0:12:10 but it was a set of uh determined
0:12:13 uninterrupted events caused events that
0:12:16 wrote that book
0:12:17 you should have inquired about that
0:12:20 about
0:12:20 why could it be the case or could it be
0:12:22 the case that a deterministic world view
0:12:25 will interrupt someone's incentive
0:12:28 to do things because otherwise
0:12:30 everyone's a puppet everyone's doing
0:12:31 things without uh
0:12:32 free will so if you're arguing that this
0:12:36 disincentivize people from or
0:12:39 makes them less curious from doing
0:12:41 things like science then this
0:12:43 argument can be made on the world view
0:12:44 of determinism
0:12:46 you see you've shot yourself in the foot
0:12:48 because of your lack of knowledge not
0:12:49 just
0:12:50 in theology and history but also
0:12:51 philosophy philosophy of religion
0:12:53 and other other than that so you should
0:12:55 be ashamed of yourself once again and
0:12:56 you're embarrassing yourself
0:12:58 you are absolutely embarrassing yourself
0:13:00 the more you talk the more you make
0:13:02 blunders
0:13:03 and you're getting caught out and no
0:13:04 longer is the muslim community or even
0:13:06 any religious community i'm going to say
0:13:08 idly by
0:13:09 watching individuals like you talk
0:13:11 rubbish and make mistakes and blunders
0:13:14 and and just leave you to do what you
0:13:15 want to do and maybe some of our youth
0:13:17 will listen to what you have to say
0:13:18 and be convinced no we're going to hold
0:13:20 you to account to academic account
0:13:23 not just on a peer-reviewed journal that
0:13:24 only a a few elites can
0:13:27 can can look at no this is now
0:13:30 going to be in the public sphere for
0:13:32 people to ridicule you
0:13:34 and to remind you of your incompetence
0:13:36 every time they see your face they'll be
0:13:37 reminded
0:13:38 of your academic incompetence on these
0:13:41 fields
0:13:42 islam rose again after this period
0:13:44 didn't have science
0:13:45 associated with it and look at this
0:13:48 claim that he makes he says
0:13:49 islam rose again after this period
0:13:53 but i didn't have science oh my god now
0:13:56 you've
0:13:56 just now you've humiliated yourself with
0:13:58 all due respect to you
0:14:00 that you don't actually deserve you've
0:14:03 humiliated yourself
0:14:04 how have you humiliated yourself you've
0:14:06 humiliated yourself
0:14:07 completely humiliated yourself so let me
0:14:09 give you a few a few names
0:14:11 ibn nafis when did he die ibn nafi is
0:14:14 one of the
0:14:15 greatest figures of the medieval period
0:14:18 and in the arab uh world in the islamic
0:14:22 period 12 13 12 13.
0:14:25 this is how many years after al-ghazali
0:14:27 died maybe about 200 years
0:14:29 in fact exactly 200 and two years
0:14:32 yes or 102 years so what
0:14:36 even nephews was not uh he was
0:14:38 brainwashed by al-ghazali
0:14:39 somehow the works of al-ghazali stopped
0:14:43 everyone from doing science does this
0:14:44 even sound rational to you
0:14:46 i mean your irrationality your new
0:14:49 atheist irrationality is so
0:14:51 limited that you can't even understand
0:14:54 oh one book is it really going to change
0:14:56 the way everyone operates in the entire
0:14:58 islamicate period
0:15:00 even nafis when did he die i mean didn't
0:15:02 even want to dignify yourself by
0:15:04 checking these things up
0:15:05 i mean some of the contemporaries of
0:15:08 al-ghazali were doing mathematics
0:15:10 i he died uh like a couple a
0:15:14 couple of dozen years after he died some
0:15:16 years after gazali
0:15:19 i mean oh he was a mathematician why
0:15:22 didn't he stop doing maths
0:15:24 i mean this is ridiculous the geographer
0:15:28 wait a minute what about atosi
0:15:32 a torsi who copernicus
0:15:36 references yes he references in his book
0:15:41 and obviously copernicus you know is the
0:15:44 figurehead of the scientific revolution
0:15:46 in the 16th century and though albertani
0:15:50 is the only islamic astronomer
0:15:51 copernicus actually names recent
0:15:54 detective work
0:15:55 has uncovered clues that copernicus
0:15:57 based many of his ideas
0:15:59 on the work of other islamic scholars
0:16:01 the clearest example
0:16:03 is copernicus's use of a mathematical
0:16:05 idea
0:16:06 devised by the 13th century islamic
0:16:08 astronomer
0:16:09 el torsi you have never read the works
0:16:11 of copernicus because if you did
0:16:13 you'd know it's not just a tulsi that he
0:16:15 references
0:16:16 but he also references
0:16:21 was an ottoman into the 15th or
0:16:24 15th or 16th century
0:16:27 well after al ghazali he was an ottoman
0:16:31 but he was instrumental
0:16:35 he was absolutely instrumental in
0:16:38 influencing the copernican revolution of
0:16:41 the scientific revolution
0:16:43 which is probably the biggest paradigm
0:16:45 shift to use the
0:16:46 term of thomas kuhn that the western
0:16:49 world has ever had in terms of
0:16:50 scientific
0:16:51 enterprise only to be compared possibly
0:16:54 within
0:16:55 the movement from newtonian to
0:16:56 einsteinian physics how
0:16:58 dare you stand in front of people
0:17:02 and teach them false information
0:17:06 how dare you do that
0:17:09 how dare you stand there
0:17:13 and say the things that you've said
0:17:14 without even having the dignity
0:17:17 and the self-respect of checking those
0:17:19 things out
0:17:20 and look what he says after that he says
0:17:23 there's 1.3 billion muslims
0:17:26 let's take a look he says there's 1.3
0:17:29 billion muslims
0:17:31 and how many muslims won the nobel prize
0:17:34 and he says he calls us the best measure
0:17:36 there is 1.3
0:17:38 billion muslims in the world today who
0:17:41 are
0:17:41 not participants on the frontier of
0:17:43 scientific discovery
0:17:45 what's the best measure of this to check
0:17:46 out the nobel prizes
0:17:48 i tallied them okay how many jews have
0:17:52 won the nobel prize
0:17:54 in the sciences here they go
0:17:58 the best measure wait a minute so he's
0:18:01 the argument here is that something
0:18:02 inherently in islam
0:18:04 because of al-qazali so in other words
0:18:06 everyone every muslim now is influenced
0:18:08 by
0:18:08 hazards so even the shiites or even the
0:18:11 the
0:18:12 not influenced by him or other uh other
0:18:14 mederhab or other people
0:18:15 everyone's influenced by al ghazali and
0:18:17 al ghazali has influenced them to
0:18:18 to drop a science and technology and
0:18:20 mathematics and so everyone because they
0:18:22 they needed to tell them that they
0:18:24 dropped everyone dropped science and
0:18:26 technology even though
0:18:27 even though samar khan which had the one
0:18:29 of the biggest
0:18:30 uh and most influential observatories of
0:18:33 the muslim world
0:18:35 uh was actually established some
0:18:37 centuries after ghazali's death
0:18:39 even i mean i'm shocked as a physicist
0:18:43 that you don't know about the the
0:18:44 history of physics
0:18:46 you're an ignorant person and now you're
0:18:49 making the claim
0:18:50 that of a 1.3 billion actually this must
0:18:52 be a an old
0:18:53 statistic because there's way more than
0:18:54 1.3 billion according to pew
0:18:56 another mistake 1.8 billion let's say
0:19:00 muslims in the world
0:19:01 and he says look how many people won
0:19:02 nobel prizes well okay let me ask you a
0:19:05 question how many black people have won
0:19:06 nobel prizes
0:19:07 let me ask you a question how many black
0:19:08 people now if i say that to you
0:19:11 and you say well that's because of
0:19:12 poverty and slavery and all of those
0:19:14 things
0:19:14 and colonialism okay all of those
0:19:16 excuses can be afforded to the muslim
0:19:18 world
0:19:18 most much of which have been colonized
0:19:21 especially after the ottoman fall
0:19:24 so uh it disenfranch enfranchisement and
0:19:27 poverty and all those things and
0:19:29 yeah i mean you can make the same
0:19:30 excuses and then he compares us with
0:19:32 jewish people
0:19:33 which is a false comparison i don't know
0:19:35 why he does that because obviously
0:19:36 and the nobel prize i mean let's be
0:19:38 honest the nobel prize
0:19:40 and this is this just shows me how much
0:19:42 of an uncle tom you are with all due
0:19:44 respect
0:19:45 yes because you respect the white man so
0:19:47 much
0:19:48 that when the white man and his
0:19:50 institutions they decide
0:19:52 who wins the nobel prize because it's
0:19:54 obviously ideologically linked
0:19:56 right to the western post enlightenment
0:19:59 experience
0:20:00 they decide who wins nobel prizes you
0:20:02 think that's somehow a measure of
0:20:03 objective scientific
0:20:06 discovery and enterprise and so on and
0:20:09 that's why you could never
0:20:10 ever debate a muslim who knows just a
0:20:14 little bit of islam a little bit of
0:20:15 history
0:20:16 you would never step forward and put
0:20:18 yourself
0:20:19 your neck on the academic chopping board
0:20:21 because you know what would happen
0:20:24 what would happen is the people would
0:20:26 see
0:20:27 an intellectual decapitation
0:20:32 so you roll back into the hole that you
0:20:34 came from
0:20:35 and if you don't offer the apology then
0:20:37 you've got to live with the humiliation
0:20:46 of
0:20:53 you