No Doubt Course (Session 4): 10 strategies on how to deal with your and other people's doubts (2020-11-18) #

0:00:02 [Music]
0:00:09 [Music]
0:00:18 so
0:00:19 welcome to this uh what are we the
0:00:22 fourth week
0:00:23 of the no doubt uh
0:00:26 session course whatever you want to call
0:00:28 it uh 10 strategies on how to deal with
0:00:31 your and other people's
0:00:32 doubts now uh typically what happens
0:00:36 is that when we start these sessions we
0:00:38 like to
0:00:40 go over what we had covered in the
0:00:42 previous sessions
0:00:44 and i'm going to follow that same uh
0:00:48 that same activity that same sunnah you
0:00:51 can call it
0:00:52 and review some of those some of the the
0:00:55 the strategies that we've already
0:00:56 covered and we've covered i believe
0:00:58 we've covered about
0:00:58 four and today will be our fifth
0:01:00 strategy but before i get into the
0:01:03 specific strategies that were covered
0:01:05 i think it's important to kind of
0:01:07 recalibrate
0:01:09 ourselves and kind of look at
0:01:12 where we are in this journey through
0:01:15 these strategies
0:01:16 because remember there were some
0:01:18 prerequisites
0:01:20 that uh hamza had covered in the very
0:01:22 first class
0:01:24 and i wanted to just reiterate and touch
0:01:26 upon some of those
0:01:27 prerequisites some of those uh some of
0:01:30 those ideas that we need to have before
0:01:32 we enter into
0:01:33 before we enter into these strategies
0:01:35 and before we we we ponder upon these
0:01:37 strategies
0:01:38 so one of the things that he mentioned
0:01:40 which i took a lot of benefit from and
0:01:42 that was the idea
0:01:43 that we want to um stand in the
0:01:47 possibility
0:01:48 and the idea is that to stand in the
0:01:50 possibility
0:01:52 that these strategies are going to
0:01:54 they're going to work
0:01:56 now one of the things is is that
0:01:59 that predisposition that a person has
0:02:02 whenever you start any endeavor is going
0:02:05 to determine
0:02:07 how much benefit you take out of this
0:02:09 particular endeavor that you are engaged
0:02:11 in um and so this
0:02:14 course is no different if you're coming
0:02:17 in to this course thinking well you know
0:02:20 what
0:02:20 um i'm going to go through this all of
0:02:23 these strategies
0:02:24 and my intention is to disprove
0:02:28 all of these strategies and to be honest
0:02:31 uh i think you could very well do that
0:02:34 and i don't have any doubt that you
0:02:36 could do that frankly
0:02:37 and the thing is is because it has to do
0:02:40 with
0:02:41 your uh you know where you are
0:02:44 in the sense that if you're not open if
0:02:47 you don't have this
0:02:48 epistemic humility this humility that
0:02:51 says okay that
0:02:52 perhaps these strategies will indeed
0:02:56 take me out of uh being inflicted with
0:02:59 shubuhat with destructive doubts if
0:03:02 you're not even considering the
0:03:03 possibility
0:03:05 then frankly your intellect
0:03:08 your akal can justify the exact opposite
0:03:13 you know they have a saying in in urdu
0:03:15 where
0:03:16 it's said that uh uh that the
0:03:20 that the akal the akal
0:03:23 right that that the intellect is like a
0:03:25 hired lawyer
0:03:27 it will make whatever case you want it
0:03:30 to make
0:03:31 right so you can imagine now that you
0:03:33 have the the defense attorney
0:03:35 and the defense attorney when he or she
0:03:37 is defending their client
0:03:39 it's not necessarily about whether the
0:03:41 client is guilty or innocent
0:03:44 whether they know that or not meaning
0:03:46 the lawyer could very well know
0:03:48 that their client had robbed the bank
0:03:51 and yet the job of the of the lawyer
0:03:54 isn't to
0:03:55 you know have the truth be manifest but
0:03:58 rather the job is to defend
0:04:00 their client and to give that that that
0:04:02 position
0:04:03 uh a a a to to prove the position
0:04:07 basically
0:04:08 and so that's true with with any
0:04:10 endeavor you pretty much engage with
0:04:12 especially
0:04:13 when it comes to uh this idea of dealing
0:04:17 with shubuhat right and specifically the
0:04:19 10 strategies we're talking about
0:04:21 so right from the onset we want to stand
0:04:24 in the possibility that these
0:04:26 strategies are going to work have a type
0:04:29 of humility
0:04:30 and you know this is a this is a
0:04:32 strategy that even when we look at the
0:04:34 quran
0:04:35 the quran employs this strategy and not
0:04:37 really a strategy but
0:04:38 the idea of this predisposition the fact
0:04:42 that
0:04:42 you have to be in a certain mindset
0:04:45 before you
0:04:46 traverse any sort of path of
0:04:49 knowledge or whatever it might be
0:04:51 whatever sort of endeavor that you're
0:04:52 going upon
0:04:53 so for instance right after surah
0:04:55 al-fatiha
0:04:57 in the second chapter of the quran in
0:04:58 surat al-baqarah
0:05:00 and i'm sure many of you know the first
0:05:02 opening
0:05:03 ayat of surat al-baqarah alif
0:05:08 is that this is the book
0:05:12 wherein there is no doubt right there's
0:05:15 no
0:05:15 rabe there's nothing to doubt there's no
0:05:18 doubt
0:05:19 but and this is a guidance but a
0:05:20 guidance for who exactly
0:05:24 the concept of taqwa is in fact
0:05:28 very profound you know it comes to this
0:05:30 idea
0:05:31 of a person understanding that they want
0:05:34 to protect themselves
0:05:35 that if there is some negative
0:05:37 consequence to the path that they're
0:05:39 taking
0:05:39 they want to be very careful on that
0:05:42 path
0:05:45 he gave the example of a person walking
0:05:48 through a
0:05:49 thorny patch in the sense that they're
0:05:51 going to be lifting up their
0:05:52 their lower garment and carefully
0:05:54 walking through it because they don't
0:05:56 they want to avoid harm and just like
0:05:59 that
0:05:59 if that is the predisposition that
0:06:01 you're starting from
0:06:02 if that is your starting point to say
0:06:04 that look i'm open
0:06:06 i don't want in the end i want to save
0:06:09 myself
0:06:10 from anything negative if that is the
0:06:13 the the mentality that we're starting
0:06:15 with if that is the
0:06:17 the uh the base state that we're
0:06:19 starting with then these
0:06:21 ten strategies you know are going to be
0:06:24 in sha
0:06:24 law very very effective and it becomes
0:06:28 very important
0:06:29 because look when we think about
0:06:32 where we're starting no one can say
0:06:35 that we start from a point zero meaning
0:06:38 that you start in the belief
0:06:39 in nothing or a belief where we're gonna
0:06:42 start with a
0:06:43 clean slate and we have absolutely
0:06:46 nothing to hang our hats on
0:06:48 okay in other words someone could very
0:06:50 well say look
0:06:51 this whole uh this whole series
0:06:54 is about doubts but the position that
0:06:57 i'm gonna start with
0:06:59 is that i doubt everything
0:07:03 okay now someone may say okay well
0:07:05 that's an interesting position to start
0:07:06 with you're gonna basically doubt
0:07:08 everything so in other words what
0:07:10 they're saying is you can't be sure
0:07:12 of anything that's where they're
0:07:14 starting from okay
0:07:16 now that person you want to ask them
0:07:19 so you can't be sure of anything are you
0:07:22 sure about that
0:07:23 because there has to be at least one
0:07:25 thing that is absolute
0:07:26 at least one thing that you're sure
0:07:28 about before you start
0:07:30 on any endeavor and that particular
0:07:34 uh starting point again it can't be in a
0:07:37 vacuum it has to be something that you
0:07:39 that is absolute okay and in fact the
0:07:42 very term
0:07:43 absolute comes from this idea of ab
0:07:46 solute that which is not soluble
0:07:50 so it's like the person that comes and
0:07:52 says i have the perfect
0:07:54 solvent it can dissolve anything
0:07:58 so i can use my my my my mind
0:08:02 and my rationality it can solve every
0:08:04 single problem there's nothing it can't
0:08:06 solve
0:08:06 so it's like the person that says i have
0:08:09 this solvent it is
0:08:10 it is it can dissolve anything so you
0:08:12 want to ask that person
0:08:14 what bottle would you keep that solvent
0:08:16 in that
0:08:17 bottle is ab solute that which is not
0:08:20 soluble
0:08:21 that which is not solvable but by
0:08:24 necessity
0:08:25 you need it to hold that solvent in
0:08:28 so when we think about you know our
0:08:30 rationality we
0:08:32 know that by necessity there must be
0:08:34 something outside of our rationality
0:08:36 that we start from a starting point and
0:08:39 it can't be a zero starting point or
0:08:42 a vacuum starting point it has to be
0:08:44 something
0:08:45 so from that perspective the starting
0:08:47 point of this course
0:08:49 was that our first principle our
0:08:52 starting point
0:08:53 is the fitrah and so we spoke at length
0:08:57 about
0:08:57 what we mean by the fitra we said that
0:09:00 you know that there was a few opinions
0:09:01 related to that
0:09:03 uh one opinion was that it it basically
0:09:05 it holds the knowledge of god
0:09:07 but i would argue that the fitra is our
0:09:10 starting point
0:09:11 that which lies outside of
0:09:14 you can say pure rationality and yet
0:09:16 without it you can't move forward
0:09:18 so it is our starting point so when when
0:09:21 i was talking about standing
0:09:22 in the possibility there you have to
0:09:24 stand in the possibility of these
0:09:26 strategies working
0:09:28 with the starting point that indeed
0:09:30 allah exists
0:09:31 now you may doubt that you may be coming
0:09:33 from a position saying well i'm not sure
0:09:35 about that
0:09:36 you may have left islam you may be
0:09:38 thinking about islam
0:09:39 but i'm saying for the purpose of this
0:09:42 series
0:09:43 just stand in the possibility because
0:09:45 you have to start
0:09:47 somewhere so our starting point is the
0:09:50 fitrah
0:09:50 and of course as hamza had mentioned
0:09:53 that there are certain things that cloud
0:09:54 the fitrah
0:09:55 meaning the fitra is your tool by which
0:09:58 you're able to see truth
0:10:00 and that tool can be clouded it can be
0:10:03 blocked
0:10:04 and there are many things that would
0:10:06 actually block this tool so
0:10:08 one of the things that hamzah mentioned
0:10:10 is the spiritual disease of
0:10:13 sarge is like witnessing yourself
0:10:16 in the sense that you stand outside of
0:10:19 yourself
0:10:20 and you look and you're amazed about how
0:10:23 great you are
0:10:24 right so just that that same position of
0:10:26 saying well look
0:10:27 you know i already know what i need to
0:10:29 know i already i'm already
0:10:31 at the point i need to be and so i am
0:10:33 just so amazing
0:10:35 and by the way this happens to people
0:10:37 who are practicing
0:10:39 religious people as well right you can
0:10:41 stand outside of yourself witness
0:10:43 yourself
0:10:44 and be inflicted with the disease of
0:10:48 considering yourself great because you
0:10:50 prayed the hajjud last night and so
0:10:53 in a in a type of metaphorical sense
0:10:55 you're
0:10:56 standing outside of your own self and
0:10:58 witnessing yourself
0:10:59 and admiring yourself this becomes
0:11:02 something that
0:11:02 blocks a person from the truth it's that
0:11:05 that
0:11:06 ego that one has okay so it could be you
0:11:08 know it could be this
0:11:09 very disease that blocks the fitra or
0:11:11 blocks you can say the heart
0:11:12 from accepting what is reality what is
0:11:15 true
0:11:16 now so we you know we you know we spoke
0:11:20 about this we said our starting point is
0:11:21 the fitra
0:11:22 our first principle is the fitrah and
0:11:25 the means by which this fitra is
0:11:27 unclouded by
0:11:28 which you're able to see and i'm going
0:11:30 to get into this concept of
0:11:32 seeing in in in a little bit uh
0:11:35 is done by a number of it can be there
0:11:38 are a number of things that you can
0:11:39 employ
0:11:40 to uncloud the fedra right one of those
0:11:42 that's
0:11:43 that's on the slide there is revelation
0:11:45 we'll talk about that
0:11:46 a little bit today rational arguments uh
0:11:49 we'll talk about experiences to some
0:11:52 extent right there are some
0:11:53 spiritual experiences that you can have
0:11:55 that would uncloud the fitra
0:11:57 and of course reflection and
0:11:59 introspection okay
0:12:01 introspection meaning reflecting upon
0:12:03 those deep
0:12:04 existential questions why are you here
0:12:07 you know uh how did you get here and
0:12:10 what happens
0:12:11 when you die you know that
0:12:14 going back to the concept of standing in
0:12:16 the possibility
0:12:18 every person you know they they have
0:12:21 certain knowledge that you kind of know
0:12:24 about
0:12:25 all right and the idea is is that you
0:12:28 would
0:12:29 know about this you have knowledge that
0:12:31 that is almost abstract in a certain way
0:12:34 this abstract knowledge it actually
0:12:37 in order for it to be of any benefit
0:12:39 because remember our starting point is
0:12:41 i'm going i need to
0:12:42 uh traverse this path in order to
0:12:45 benefit myself
0:12:46 in order to protect myself from harm and
0:12:50 abstract knowledge can be beneficial
0:12:53 and it could just be just that abstract
0:12:55 what
0:12:56 moves abstract knowledge from being
0:12:57 beneficial or just being
0:12:59 or being nothing is implementing that
0:13:02 and so when we talk about reflection
0:13:04 introspection part of
0:13:06 what we're thinking about is having the
0:13:09 initial question of your existence
0:13:13 why are you here you know where did you
0:13:16 come from
0:13:16 and what happens when you die right
0:13:19 those are essential
0:13:20 questions that you know everyone
0:13:23 at some point in time would think about
0:13:26 you would at least hope they would think
0:13:27 about so the question of death for
0:13:28 instance
0:13:29 i mean that's in a sense that's a type
0:13:31 of abstract knowledge
0:13:33 everybody knows that they're going to
0:13:36 die
0:13:36 right whether you're muslim when you're
0:13:38 not muslim whether you're whatever the
0:13:39 idea is
0:13:40 you are you have this knowledge you're
0:13:43 going to die
0:13:45 how many people act upon that knowledge
0:13:48 to say okay well if that's the case i
0:13:50 know for a fact
0:13:51 i'm going to die what am i going to do
0:13:54 about it
0:13:55 how will i prepare for it and having
0:13:58 that predisposition
0:14:00 puts a person with an ability to think
0:14:03 clearly or rather the fitra to be
0:14:05 unclouded for them to see the truth
0:14:07 now get again i'm going to get in this
0:14:09 concept but what we mean by seeing here
0:14:11 but it goes back to reflection
0:14:13 introspection
0:14:14 about how exactly to see the truth as
0:14:17 the truth
0:14:18 okay so we spoke about the fitra
0:14:22 the thing some of the elements that may
0:14:23 cloud the fitra
0:14:27 and then we you know we we spoke about a
0:14:30 few other things then launched into
0:14:31 some of the strategies so what we've
0:14:33 covered so far
0:14:35 we've covered the strategy to be aware
0:14:38 uh no attention to make the distinction
0:14:42 and your environment and today inshallah
0:14:44 we're going to be covering
0:14:45 the strategy of studying islam before i
0:14:48 do that
0:14:50 let's briefly very briefly inshallah
0:14:53 look at some of the strategies that we
0:14:55 have already covered so let me look at
0:14:56 the first one
0:14:58 the idea of being aware
0:15:02 when we understand that there are um
0:15:05 there are things that will take us away
0:15:08 from our
0:15:09 base state or that base
0:15:12 assumption the belief in god that islam
0:15:14 is true
0:15:15 that the prophet saw is truly a
0:15:17 messenger etc
0:15:19 if there are if we know that there are
0:15:23 certain things that will take us away
0:15:24 from those
0:15:26 core foundational fundamental beliefs
0:15:29 then those are things that we need to be
0:15:32 aware of
0:15:33 and this was a practice of the
0:15:35 companions as well
0:15:36 so you have a hadith related by hide
0:15:40 who says and this is actually very
0:15:41 profound by the way he says that the
0:15:43 people
0:15:44 used to ask allah's messenger about the
0:15:46 good
0:15:47 he says you know uh kananas
0:15:51 yes rasulullah
0:15:55 that the people used to ask allah's
0:15:56 messenger about the good
0:15:59 wa but my s for myself
0:16:06 i used but as for myself i used to ask
0:16:09 him
0:16:09 about the evil why for the fear that it
0:16:14 might
0:16:14 overtake me and this is as we've already
0:16:17 covered this in some depth
0:16:19 that this is a very this is this is a
0:16:21 strategy that it's not
0:16:23 it's not some sort of uh
0:16:26 you shouldn't be going through some sort
0:16:27 of eureka moment right now saying oh wow
0:16:29 that's that's a brilliant strategy how
0:16:30 come i didn't think about that
0:16:32 this is when you you know when you think
0:16:33 about anything
0:16:36 this is something that you would want to
0:16:37 implement okay the example that hamza
0:16:40 had given
0:16:40 was about you know jumping into shark
0:16:42 infested waters
0:16:44 okay now if you're aware that there are
0:16:47 dangerous sharks in the water you know a
0:16:50 rational human being is not going to
0:16:53 jump in
0:16:54 at least they're not going to jump in
0:16:56 without some sort of strategy to be able
0:16:58 to
0:16:58 navigate those waters right and so
0:17:02 therefore if that is the case when it
0:17:04 comes to
0:17:05 you know your physical body how much
0:17:08 more so
0:17:09 when it comes to the most important
0:17:11 thing that you have
0:17:12 which is that core foundational
0:17:15 fundamental
0:17:16 beliefs okay that iman that you have
0:17:20 and that's why the prophet sallam
0:17:22 himself used to supplicate to allah he
0:17:25 would say things like
0:17:29 oh turner of hearts keep my heart
0:17:32 firm upon your religion
0:17:35 and this is this is not myself this is
0:17:38 not
0:17:38 you know all of you any of you this is
0:17:41 the person that was getting
0:17:42 direct revelation direct wahi
0:17:46 right he's get you know this is not you
0:17:47 know he's not reading the quran
0:17:49 generations later
0:17:51 but rather he's getting direct white and
0:17:53 he
0:17:55 is making this supplication obviously
0:17:57 one of the elements of that is to so
0:17:59 that we can learn it and we can
0:18:01 implement it
0:18:02 but the first so the first strategy we
0:18:05 learned and that we we we're trying to
0:18:08 implement
0:18:08 is to be aware to understand that there
0:18:12 are
0:18:13 negative forces out there that those
0:18:16 shubu that are going to have an effect
0:18:18 upon us
0:18:19 so if one of the things we need to do
0:18:21 then is to avoid those shubuhat
0:18:24 right and that can be you know if you if
0:18:26 you know that
0:18:27 that um that those shubuhat exist
0:18:30 online for instance you know a lot of
0:18:32 times what happens is
0:18:34 is that you get online and you start to
0:18:37 read
0:18:37 certain websites and you know those
0:18:39 websites are basically
0:18:41 you know speaking about right
0:18:44 how to critique islam for instance you
0:18:46 may have certain christian missionary
0:18:48 sites
0:18:49 and purpose of those sites
0:18:52 is a critique of let's say the sharia or
0:18:55 a critique of certain
0:18:58 theological principles in islam and so
0:19:01 on now if you know that's the case
0:19:03 then what should you do well first thing
0:19:06 if you're trying to avoid those
0:19:08 is to avoid the shubuhat right if you
0:19:10 know that's there
0:19:12 avoid the websites you know that's not
0:19:14 to say that you'll never be able to
0:19:16 engage in those things
0:19:17 but the idea is at kind of this initial
0:19:21 stage
0:19:21 you want to avoid those places so we
0:19:24 said to
0:19:25 understand okay so the second uh
0:19:27 strategy that we had
0:19:29 second strategy was to not pay attention
0:19:31 no attention given
0:19:32 all right uh you will get shubahat you
0:19:35 will get
0:19:35 these destructive doubts that come to
0:19:37 you and as
0:19:39 the hadith abu hurairah mentions that
0:19:41 the prophet salallahu
0:19:43 said that satan will come to one of you
0:19:45 and he will say you know who
0:19:47 uh who created this and that until he
0:19:49 says to him who created
0:19:51 your lord when it comes to this let him
0:19:53 seek refuge in god and
0:19:55 stop such thoughts and another narration
0:19:58 let him
0:19:59 say i have faith in god mantu billah
0:20:02 right remember it goes back to this
0:20:06 core idea that you have to have a
0:20:08 stopping point
0:20:10 you cannot start in a vacuum now the
0:20:12 issue is if you
0:20:14 are you know if this is the thought
0:20:16 process you're going down who created
0:20:18 you know who created this who created
0:20:19 this ukraine then who created allah i
0:20:21 mean a it's a nonsensical question
0:20:23 but besides that it can lead to a doubt
0:20:26 and so the the point is is to reaffirm
0:20:30 those foundations right
0:20:33 i believe in allah okay allah a samad
0:20:36 the absolute we spoke about the absolute
0:20:39 the idea that every human in any sort of
0:20:42 rational endeavor has to have some
0:20:44 absolute
0:20:45 from the islamic standpoint that
0:20:46 absolute is allah that is
0:20:48 the islamic tradition and so and so
0:20:50 therefore
0:20:51 when you this this type of questioning
0:20:54 starts even within oneself
0:20:56 the place to go to is to seek refuge
0:20:59 with allah
0:21:00 and stop the questioning right and
0:21:02 affirm aman to bill
0:21:04 so that was the second strategy that we
0:21:05 had looked at
0:21:07 the third strategy if i get my slides to
0:21:09 work here
0:21:11 is to make the distinction now
0:21:15 there are things that need to be
0:21:17 recognized
0:21:18 there are valid questions where you will
0:21:21 ask
0:21:22 from the position that you believe in
0:21:24 allah you
0:21:25 believe in the prophet sallam you
0:21:27 believe in the in those in
0:21:29 the core fundamentals of islam and then
0:21:31 you're asking
0:21:32 an honest question this particular ayah
0:21:35 okay i'm not really understanding how
0:21:37 it relates to x y and z they're valid
0:21:40 questions
0:21:41 and the sahaba asks questions all the
0:21:43 time in fact the quran
0:21:45 quotes some of those questions yes
0:21:49 they ask you concerning the ruah right
0:21:52 say that the is from the the um of allah
0:21:55 et cetera right yes
0:21:59 they ask you concerning what to spend
0:22:01 and so on
0:22:02 and so you know valid questions there's
0:22:05 no problem with valid questions
0:22:07 but from that position of stability
0:22:11 okay so i've been speaking about the
0:22:12 concept of the absolute
0:22:14 a starting point you can't start from a
0:22:16 vacuum what's really interesting
0:22:18 is the term e-man because i used this
0:22:20 term you know in the
0:22:22 in just a few minutes ago or a few
0:22:24 seconds ago the term iman interestingly
0:22:26 enough when you look at the etymology of
0:22:28 the word
0:22:28 iman comes from which means security
0:22:32 safety a person that has iman
0:22:35 has a type of religious
0:22:38 security not really excuse me rational
0:22:41 or cognitive security
0:22:43 that's there and that's coupled with
0:22:46 a spiritual tranquility and when you
0:22:49 couple both of these this is what we
0:22:51 call
0:22:51 iman because you are in the state of
0:22:54 stability
0:22:55 okay from that state of iman that state
0:22:58 of stability
0:22:59 when you ask questions these are valid
0:23:02 questions
0:23:03 once that state of stability seems to
0:23:06 you know starts to become
0:23:07 unstable well then you've got a problem
0:23:10 because then those questions are in fact
0:23:14 okay now sometimes those questions are
0:23:17 not
0:23:17 but they they're called uh or
0:23:20 whisperings and
0:23:22 it's imperative that you're able to
0:23:25 distinguish between valid questions
0:23:27 those questions that are destructive
0:23:30 doubts that are going to
0:23:31 shake the foundations right to to do
0:23:34 away with that
0:23:35 that security and tranquility that's
0:23:37 built into the very concept of iman
0:23:41 or that they are uh whisperings that can
0:23:44 just basically be ignored right many
0:23:46 times or a couple of other strategies we
0:23:49 might get into today about how to deal
0:23:50 with that but
0:23:51 but so understanding that we need to
0:23:53 make the distinction now
0:23:54 i think uh hamza had used a diagram
0:23:58 related to uh i don't know plants or
0:23:59 something i'm gonna look at these
0:24:00 berries
0:24:01 all right if someone doesn't know
0:24:04 the difference between these berries and
0:24:06 they all
0:24:07 you know they look good like you know in
0:24:09 fact i'd probably go and go for the
0:24:11 middle one there that looks pretty good
0:24:12 to me
0:24:13 but the reality is is that these berries
0:24:17 you need to understand that some of them
0:24:18 are poisonous
0:24:20 and so the the picture that that's there
0:24:22 on on the left
0:24:24 uh is in fact grapes you could eat them
0:24:26 and you'd be fine you might enjoy them
0:24:28 they might be sweet
0:24:29 whereas the other two where as
0:24:32 visually they may be more appealing but
0:24:35 in fact they're poisonous
0:24:36 and being able to make the distinction
0:24:38 becomes imperative
0:24:40 when navigating through these
0:24:42 destructive doubts
0:24:43 right okay the fourth point that we
0:24:46 spoke about
0:24:47 and that was last week um dr uthman
0:24:52 he spoke about the environment and he
0:24:56 mentioned a couple of studies the line
0:24:58 study which i thought was really
0:24:59 fascinating
0:25:00 there's another interesting study uh
0:25:02 where they did
0:25:04 on people who would order dessert and so
0:25:06 if you've ever been to a company
0:25:08 uh dinner or you've ever been to you
0:25:10 know out with
0:25:11 i don't know if this is as true as you
0:25:13 know being out with friends and things
0:25:14 like that
0:25:15 um you know you you might have like a
0:25:19 large group of people and let's say that
0:25:21 you
0:25:22 are interested in ordering dessert
0:25:24 alright so for myself i like
0:25:26 the chocolate lava cake right the
0:25:27 picture that's there you know the the
0:25:29 middle when you when you
0:25:30 chop into it put your spoon into it hot
0:25:33 you know hot molten lava chocolate kind
0:25:36 of oozes out from the middle you got the
0:25:38 the ice cream the cold ice cream it's
0:25:40 just
0:25:41 it's it's delicious right so let's say
0:25:44 you're there and you want to order this
0:25:46 dessert or whatever dessert that you
0:25:47 like
0:25:48 and you notice that when they ask the
0:25:50 first person let's say you're sitting at
0:25:51 the end of the table
0:25:53 that person says i don't want dessert
0:25:54 second person says i don't want dessert
0:25:55 it goes all the way down to you you've
0:25:57 passed let's say
0:25:58 eight nine people you are unlikely to
0:26:01 order the dessert
0:26:02 okay and these were studies that were
0:26:04 done i mean you have to be really kind
0:26:06 of obstinate
0:26:07 to me to say i'm gonna have the dessert
0:26:08 anyways and it's not
0:26:10 impossible but the point is is that your
0:26:13 environment
0:26:14 has an effect upon you and the people
0:26:18 around you
0:26:18 have an effect upon you and what's
0:26:22 really fascinating is that many times
0:26:25 we're not able to you know uh see the
0:26:29 environment around us or
0:26:30 to be able to sense how the environment
0:26:33 is affecting us
0:26:34 and this is very much the case in the
0:26:37 day and age that we live in today
0:26:39 right where you've got uh you know
0:26:42 you've got
0:26:42 online interactions and
0:26:46 the people that are running social media
0:26:48 sites like facebook
0:26:49 like twitter uh instagram
0:26:52 i mean they have so much data and they
0:26:56 know
0:26:56 so much about your habits that they can
0:27:00 basically engineer uh behaviors
0:27:04 and that would that would be done
0:27:05 without you even knowing it right kind
0:27:07 of you're being pushed in a certain
0:27:08 direction
0:27:09 and that's the thing that's very
0:27:10 dangerous about the environment right
0:27:13 and so uh so understanding and
0:27:16 recognizing the environment you're in
0:27:18 and our tradition speaks about this in
0:27:21 many instances
0:27:22 the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
0:27:24 says
0:27:26 that the the person is upon the religion
0:27:30 of their friend
0:27:32 and you know and to be honest this is
0:27:34 something that even with
0:27:35 children you would do this right like
0:27:38 and this and again this is not about
0:27:40 being a muslim or a non-muslim but this
0:27:41 is something that
0:27:42 in your own experience you would
0:27:45 experience this
0:27:46 so if you have children let's say you
0:27:48 know you have
0:27:49 your your eight-year-old son and he
0:27:51 wants to go out and play
0:27:52 now he he can play with with jimmy who's
0:27:56 coming from a household that's let's say
0:27:58 broken you know his uh
0:28:00 dad is on crack and you know and he know
0:28:02 and there's some physical abuse there
0:28:04 and you know and when you see jimmy he's
0:28:07 he doesn't have a shirt on just kind of
0:28:08 running around in shorts no shoes and
0:28:10 he's always cursing at people using
0:28:12 profanity
0:28:13 and then your son comes and says i want
0:28:14 to go play with jimmy
0:28:16 now let's say there's another kid that
0:28:18 lives down the street
0:28:19 and i don't know let's call him uh
0:28:23 you know jonathan right and jonathan
0:28:26 you know he loves to read and he's very
0:28:29 respectful when he comes over
0:28:30 he addresses you he's humble and he's
0:28:33 always asking about your well-being
0:28:35 now you've got to ask yourself which
0:28:38 person do i
0:28:39 want my son to hang out with right and
0:28:42 again this is not a
0:28:43 muslim non-muslim issue anyone would say
0:28:45 look
0:28:46 because i recognize environment is going
0:28:48 to have an
0:28:49 impact i would want my son to hang out
0:28:51 with jonathan
0:28:53 because clearly you understand the
0:28:55 ramifications of the environment that
0:28:58 your child is in
0:29:00 and that is also true for adults as well
0:29:02 your environment
0:29:04 plays and has a deep impact on
0:29:07 your psyche right on your personality on
0:29:11 your sarcia
0:29:12 et cetera and so understanding your
0:29:15 environment and
0:29:15 recognizing when you're in a certain
0:29:17 environment that's pushing you
0:29:19 to a to a certain to a certain place
0:29:22 okay so we spoke about so we spoke about
0:29:26 uh your environment dr uthman spoke but
0:29:29 spoke about that
0:29:30 and now we're coming to today's topic
0:29:33 and that is studying islam all right so
0:29:37 that introduction wasn't too bad uh i
0:29:39 probably took longer than
0:29:41 probably the dr uthman or hamza have but
0:29:44 i think it was important to fortify
0:29:46 those concepts and especially as we're
0:29:48 as we're traversing further and further
0:29:51 away from our
0:29:52 first and second strategy and so on and
0:29:54 so forth and the background
0:29:56 hopefully it was it was beneficial now
0:29:58 let us start today's
0:29:59 strategy in earnest and that is studying
0:30:02 islam and the point that i want to start
0:30:04 from
0:30:05 was the concept of destructive doubts
0:30:09 and specifically the etymology of the
0:30:12 word
0:30:13 that we use right which is shubha or
0:30:15 shubuhat
0:30:16 in the plural right so
0:30:19 the etymology of the rule let's start
0:30:21 with this and so the
0:30:23 for those of you who may be studying
0:30:24 arabic understand that the word
0:30:26 shobha or shubohat in the plural comes
0:30:28 from the triletal
0:30:29 trilateral arabic root shin baha
0:30:33 chabaha okay and
0:30:36 you know there was some talk uh there
0:30:38 was in in the first
0:30:40 uh in our first week hamza did mention
0:30:42 the idea that
0:30:43 you know that a a a
0:30:46 is called that because it resembles the
0:30:49 truth
0:30:50 but i wanted to dig down deeper into
0:30:52 into the etymology
0:30:53 to clarify that because when we speak
0:30:56 about studying islam
0:30:58 it becomes important to understand why
0:31:00 studying islam
0:31:02 is an effective inshallah and effective
0:31:05 strategy
0:31:06 to remove shubuhat okay so
0:31:09 we'll start off with the first example
0:31:11 that i wanted to give
0:31:12 and this comes from the quran in surat
0:31:14 al-baqarah
0:31:15 where allah mentions the
0:31:19 muslim going to bani israel
0:31:23 and he goes to bani israel and
0:31:26 um he goes to he goes to bani israel and
0:31:30 says to
0:31:31 his you know the people he says
0:31:37 indeed allah has ordered you to
0:31:40 slaughter a cow
0:31:41 now if you know anything about bani
0:31:43 israel and you know they weren't
0:31:45 the type of people to say we hear and we
0:31:49 obey and they take the cow and they
0:31:50 slaughter it
0:31:51 rather they started a line of
0:31:53 questioning
0:31:54 okay what kind of cow what color should
0:31:57 the cow be
0:31:58 and so on and so on and so on okay and
0:32:01 by the way
0:32:01 me just you know the idea of bani israel
0:32:04 not being you know being a bit obstinate
0:32:07 and uh you know not just immediately
0:32:09 submitting
0:32:10 it's not just something that comes from
0:32:11 the islamic tradition the other day i
0:32:13 was on
0:32:14 a an interfaith kind of call and
0:32:17 the the person who was representing the
0:32:19 jewish faith judaism
0:32:21 uh he was a rabbi and he kind of joked
0:32:24 about this as well he goes you know us
0:32:25 you know we're not exactly
0:32:26 you know we were kind of stubborn in
0:32:28 certain things and so on
0:32:30 um but anyhow so
0:32:33 they basically started to ask musa they
0:32:36 started to ask moses what kind of cow
0:32:38 what color
0:32:39 call upon your lord and so they come to
0:32:41 a certain point
0:32:42 where they say to us
0:32:48 right so call upon your lord to make
0:32:50 clear to us all right
0:32:51 what so why what is the clarification
0:32:54 there's a cow
0:32:55 take it slaughter it what do they say
0:33:01 all of these cows notice
0:33:05 the trilateral root that's there shin
0:33:07 baha
0:33:08 all of these cows they look similar to
0:33:11 us
0:33:12 they're con similar they're so
0:33:15 close in that we just can't tell
0:33:18 one from the other okay so it's not
0:33:22 clear there's some sort of problem here
0:33:25 and so we need some sort of clarity
0:33:28 right and so and of course they ended up
0:33:30 and they continue to say
0:33:35 right indeed if allah wills will be
0:33:37 guided okay
0:33:39 point being is the the what they're
0:33:41 using is the term
0:33:43 right in other words they're
0:33:47 so similar we can't tell one
0:33:50 from the other we can't tell which cow
0:33:52 is which all right
0:33:53 now that just starts with the idea of
0:33:55 what we mean by
0:33:56 shubha right or shubu they're very
0:33:59 similar
0:34:00 and they're similar in the sense that
0:34:02 you can't tell there a better way of
0:34:03 kind of
0:34:04 expressing that is things that are con
0:34:06 similar so there's no clarity there
0:34:08 okay the next example is that coming
0:34:12 from the quran itself
0:34:14 because as allah says in suratul
0:34:16 al-imran
0:34:17 he says
0:34:22 and so it is he who sent down to you o
0:34:24 muhammad the book
0:34:26 in it are verses
0:34:30 that these are these are verses
0:34:34 that are and and the word the the
0:34:36 translation
0:34:37 says these are verses that are precise
0:34:40 but mohammed
0:34:41 refers to those things that are locked
0:34:43 in place in the sense that it's like a
0:34:45 machine
0:34:46 that you can kind of put in a certain uh
0:34:49 a certain piece
0:34:50 and it gets locked in place and it's
0:34:52 it's clear in the sense that you know
0:34:54 the machine
0:34:54 operates because of the precision of
0:34:56 that particular piece it's locked in
0:34:58 place
0:34:59 and it causes the machine to move
0:35:00 forward and it's clear
0:35:02 and so allah says that
0:35:05 those right
0:35:08 those ayat that are locked in place that
0:35:11 are you know from
0:35:12 you know another perspective say
0:35:14 explicit
0:35:15 they are the literally the mother of the
0:35:18 book or the foundation of the book
0:35:20 and then allah says
0:35:25 and there are others which are mutasa
0:35:28 bihat
0:35:30 now there's a lot of translations you'll
0:35:31 see that they say that with
0:35:33 refers to um you know kind of
0:35:37 esoteric verses or verses that are
0:35:40 metaphoric but literally again it goes
0:35:43 back to the idea
0:35:44 of shin baha right shabba to mean that
0:35:47 there is something that is not clear
0:35:50 because they are so
0:35:51 similar meaning the verse could mean
0:35:53 this or could mean that
0:35:55 how do you decide between which meaning
0:35:57 is true
0:35:59 well it you know the ayah mentioned that
0:36:02 before it mentioned the mute
0:36:03 meaning those ayat that are
0:36:06 explicit okay now just to give a kind of
0:36:09 a simple example
0:36:10 like what do we mean explicit implicit
0:36:12 like what is this referring to
0:36:14 well you know you and let's say you and
0:36:16 your your friend pull up to a certain
0:36:18 uh 7-eleven actually this is probably
0:36:22 going out all over the world so i don't
0:36:23 know if they have 7-elevens all over but
0:36:24 pull up to a gas station right or a a
0:36:26 petrol station whatever you guys call it
0:36:29 and the sign says closed
0:36:32 now you don't look over at your friend
0:36:34 and say hey man
0:36:35 i wonder what that means closed
0:36:39 that sounds really deep i wonder what it
0:36:40 means no the sign
0:36:42 is explicit it is mahkam it is locked in
0:36:45 place in terms of its meaning there's no
0:36:47 kind of it doesn't mean if it says
0:36:49 closed jani you understand
0:36:51 what closed means now you have other
0:36:54 statements
0:36:54 that are not going to be explicit they
0:36:56 have implicit meanings
0:36:58 and how do you navigate that you
0:37:00 navigate
0:37:01 those mutes those that are so similar
0:37:04 could mean this or could mean that by
0:37:07 way of those explicit verses
0:37:09 okay so now we're seeing that there are
0:37:12 there are means
0:37:13 by which you can navigate those things
0:37:16 that are so similar
0:37:17 that you can't tell one from the other
0:37:20 so one of the ways to do that is to go
0:37:22 with that which is explicit and this is
0:37:23 specifically when we're talking about
0:37:25 the
0:37:25 quran the last example that i'll give
0:37:28 is what uh in in in a certain
0:37:31 sub-science
0:37:32 within the islamic sciences which is
0:37:34 known as phil
0:37:36 it is the first of imitation and this
0:37:39 relates to the
0:37:41 you know within the islamic tradition
0:37:43 remember we were talking about
0:37:44 dr uthman latif's section
0:37:48 and we said that uh you know
0:37:50 understanding your environment
0:37:52 well i had mentioned that your
0:37:54 environment
0:37:55 you know the the the islamic tradition
0:37:59 uh pays a lot of intention to your
0:38:02 environment
0:38:03 in the sense that remember i said that
0:38:05 the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
0:38:07 said that you are upon the religion of
0:38:10 your friend
0:38:11 when it goes when we go back to the the
0:38:13 hadith that we mention about the fitra
0:38:15 right every child
0:38:19 is born upon the fitra and then it is
0:38:22 his parents
0:38:23 who make him a jew or a christian or a
0:38:26 median
0:38:26 right meaning that there is an influence
0:38:30 the environment okay now in speaking
0:38:33 about the environment and influence
0:38:35 one of the ideas that is uh expounded
0:38:38 upon
0:38:39 is how do you navigate uh
0:38:43 you know being influenced by your
0:38:44 environment and one of the ways to to
0:38:46 understand that
0:38:48 is who are you following
0:38:51 who is your uh idol who is your
0:38:55 who is the person that you take as you
0:38:57 know or what society or what are the
0:38:59 norms and and the customs that you take
0:39:01 to be central okay and so there's a
0:39:04 hadith
0:39:05 where the prophet sallallahu alaihi
0:39:06 wasallam says
0:39:11 now what's interesting is that the verb
0:39:13 form that's used
0:39:15 because
0:39:19 right that there's a there and the word
0:39:21 is
0:39:23 not now
0:39:26 what's the difference without getting
0:39:28 too deep into
0:39:29 uh taslif or arabic morphology
0:39:33 if the prophet sallallahu alaihi
0:39:35 wasallam would have said
0:39:38 with the with the alif there they're
0:39:40 extending that would
0:39:42 mean that whoever happens to look
0:39:45 like another person or happens to um
0:39:48 you know wear the same clothes or eat
0:39:50 the same food then that person is from
0:39:52 them so if they are
0:39:53 an evil people and you happen to wear
0:39:56 the same clothes that they wear then
0:39:57 you're amongst them
0:39:59 okay however the prophet sallam didn't
0:40:01 say man
0:40:03 he said whoever imitates a people
0:40:07 and here the significance is someone
0:40:10 that has a
0:40:11 psychological motivation to
0:40:14 be like another people to adapt
0:40:17 to adopt those elements of another
0:40:21 people
0:40:22 because they feel themselves inferior
0:40:27 okay and this is extremely important
0:40:29 when we're coming when this idea of the
0:40:31 environment that we're in
0:40:32 because the environment that we're in
0:40:33 can have uh
0:40:35 deep ramifications and if this dichotomy
0:40:38 is not set up
0:40:39 that you have that you you are you you
0:40:42 psychologically now understand that we
0:40:45 don't want to imitate people
0:40:47 and this is very different than just
0:40:49 having to to wear clothes of the society
0:40:51 of the people around
0:40:52 you different dynamic here again that
0:40:54 doesn't have to do with a psychological
0:40:56 motivation
0:40:56 but here the idea is is because you
0:40:59 think of
0:41:00 yourself or islam or being muslim or
0:41:03 being
0:41:04 you know upon you know islam as
0:41:06 something that's
0:41:07 lower than the society around you
0:41:10 this is where the problem occurs and it
0:41:12 has to do totally
0:41:13 and wholly with one's psychological and
0:41:15 spiritual state
0:41:17 and that's signified by the fact that
0:41:19 the prophet saws didn't say
0:41:21 bahabi but he said okay
0:41:24 so some examples of the etymology of the
0:41:28 word
0:41:28 uh you know but the core
0:41:32 idea that i wanted us to take away is
0:41:34 that it refers to things that look
0:41:36 alike okay there is things that are con
0:41:39 similar and hence remember in the first
0:41:42 session
0:41:43 hamza had mentioned that it is you know
0:41:45 something that looks like the truth
0:41:46 something that imitates the truth they
0:41:47 may even have
0:41:48 elements of the truth within it okay
0:41:52 how does the and so what do we do with
0:41:54 that
0:41:56 and what's very profound is that the
0:41:58 example or the means that the quran uses
0:42:02 in order to navigate through
0:42:05 those shubuhat all right and it uses
0:42:08 in many places in the quran throughout
0:42:10 the quran it uses
0:42:12 light as a parable and i want us to
0:42:14 reflect upon this just for
0:42:16 for a few minutes here right i want you
0:42:19 to imagine
0:42:20 that you enter into a a a dark room
0:42:24 and there's something that's you know
0:42:27 lying in the corner of the room
0:42:28 and you're not really sure let's say
0:42:30 it's night time the lights are off
0:42:32 you know it's just you can't really tell
0:42:34 what it is
0:42:35 and you know you're having some trouble
0:42:37 you're like did it did i see it move
0:42:40 what was it what is it and it's not
0:42:43 until and and and maybe that that that
0:42:46 would that would cause some sort of fear
0:42:47 within you
0:42:49 as well in the sense that well if you
0:42:51 don't know what it is
0:42:52 and if it's moving well i mean it's
0:42:53 clearly something there right
0:42:55 could be a you know i don't know like a
0:42:57 large rat cat who knows what
0:43:01 it's only you only get clarification
0:43:04 about what that particular item is when
0:43:08 when you turn on the light so now
0:43:12 the idea is is that once you have light
0:43:16 you're able to tell what exactly it is
0:43:19 whereas before
0:43:21 there was some there was some there was
0:43:24 it was a shubha there was some
0:43:26 doubt right what is it could be this
0:43:28 could be that it could be this
0:43:30 it's only when you turn on the light
0:43:32 then now you're able to
0:43:34 see clearly okay and so
0:43:37 the quran in a way that is very profound
0:43:40 uses
0:43:41 this idea of light when it comes to
0:43:44 understanding things
0:43:45 and the idea of knowledge being light
0:43:48 okay so for instance allah says in the
0:43:51 quran
0:43:52 um
0:44:02 of the heavens and the earth the example
0:44:04 of his light is like a niche
0:44:05 within a which is within a lamp the lamp
0:44:07 is within a glass and so on and so forth
0:44:09 the point here is that the example or
0:44:12 the the idea that's used is the idea of
0:44:15 light
0:44:15 all right the idea of illumination when
0:44:18 you think of
0:44:19 your uh physical sense of seeing
0:44:23 right what they call ocular vision
0:44:25 without light
0:44:28 that sense becomes defunct
0:44:31 like it you can't use it okay
0:44:34 by necessity you need light to see and
0:44:37 you need light for clarification when it
0:44:38 comes to
0:44:39 the you know physical objects around you
0:44:42 okay
0:44:43 and that is true when it comes to
0:44:45 recognizing
0:44:47 those things that are true and those
0:44:49 things that are false
0:44:51 you need a type of you can say spiritual
0:44:53 light
0:44:54 okay and that spiritual light comes from
0:44:58 revelation okay it comes from the quran
0:45:00 it comes from sunnah
0:45:01 etc so from so light is a profound
0:45:05 parable that's used in the quran
0:45:07 to signify the idea of being able to
0:45:10 tell
0:45:10 what is what okay similarly the quran
0:45:13 identifies
0:45:14 itself as in terms of light ya yohanas
0:45:21 [Music]
0:45:22 o mankinders come to you a conclusive
0:45:24 proof from your lord
0:45:28 [Music]
0:45:30 all right and they've sent down to you a
0:45:32 clear light sending down to
0:45:35 you meaning the quran and it's described
0:45:37 as what
0:45:38 a clear light you know in fact when you
0:45:41 look at
0:45:42 the the sunnah of the prophet sallam
0:45:44 many times that's
0:45:45 used uh you know that we find this very
0:45:48 idea
0:45:49 of an illuminated bright um
0:45:53 uh path okay so for instance the prophet
0:45:56 sallam said
0:45:57 uh taraktukum al-baydah
0:46:06 it's night is like its day meaning it's
0:46:08 so clear that even at night
0:46:10 you've got the tool that you need right
0:46:12 that path that revelation that
0:46:15 that knowledge that's coming down right
0:46:17 so therefore
0:46:18 uh so the quran is used as light the
0:46:20 sunnah
0:46:21 is used as light from we find the hadith
0:46:23 and i think the next ayah kind of
0:46:25 uh also kind of mentions the idea of the
0:46:27 prophet sallam
0:46:28 the the fact that he is the messenger
0:46:30 and what he's brought being light
0:46:32 right so there's come so all people the
0:46:34 scripture this come to you
0:46:35 our messenger making clear to you much
0:46:37 of what you used to conceal of the
0:46:38 scripture and overlooking much
0:46:40 there is come to you from allah a light
0:46:42 in a clear book
0:46:44 right
0:46:46 [Music]
0:46:49 there's come to you from allah a light
0:46:52 nur
0:46:53 and a book a clear book so here the nude
0:46:56 is referring to the prophet
0:46:57 sallam by some of the mufasareen and the
0:47:00 book is referring to obviously the quran
0:47:02 the book
0:47:03 so the point is is that when we look at
0:47:06 the islamic tradition we find that
0:47:08 light is the parable that's used uh
0:47:11 to signify a clarification and signify
0:47:15 what you're what we're trying to do and
0:47:17 from the context of what we're speaking
0:47:18 about today
0:47:20 we're talking about studying islam
0:47:24 and when a person traverses the path to
0:47:28 study islam
0:47:29 it is from this viewpoint that we are
0:47:32 studying islam
0:47:34 okay because islam and the sciences
0:47:37 within the islamic framework
0:47:38 are not like other subjects not like
0:47:42 other
0:47:42 topics we would study something you
0:47:44 would study in uh let's say in
0:47:46 in in school so if you're studying
0:47:48 biology or organic chemistry
0:47:50 or english or history these are all
0:47:54 you know things that you may be
0:47:55 stuttering studying in the abstract
0:47:58 in some sort of abstract way you're
0:48:00 gaining this information and perhaps
0:48:02 you're using it
0:48:03 to get a job or whatever it might be but
0:48:06 studying islam has a different dynamic
0:48:08 and it goes back to what i started with
0:48:12 that when it comes to what you know when
0:48:15 it comes to our starting point that we
0:48:17 have a
0:48:18 heart we have a fitrah and the goal when
0:48:21 it comes to studying islam
0:48:23 is to uncloud the fitrah
0:48:26 okay the goal when it comes to studying
0:48:29 other things
0:48:30 is not that it's different and so when
0:48:33 it comes to studying islam
0:48:35 there are with this objective in mind
0:48:39 it means that it isn't just a rational
0:48:43 exercise it's not just about cognition
0:48:47 but it is also about one's state
0:48:50 because you know abstract knowledge
0:48:53 doesn't
0:48:54 necessitate your being your state
0:48:57 just knowing about something doesn't
0:48:59 mean that you will act upon that thing
0:49:01 or doesn't necessitate it
0:49:03 that acting upon that particular
0:49:05 whatever it might be
0:49:06 requires an intention requires volition
0:49:09 and requires you to actually
0:49:11 come into that state of being okay and
0:49:13 we'll give an example here
0:49:15 and this is a uh you know in the in in
0:49:18 sahih muslim
0:49:19 uh zedem in this hadith he reports that
0:49:22 the messenger of allah
0:49:24 he said oh allah i seek refuge in you
0:49:26 from knowledge that does not benefit
0:49:28 allah
0:49:41 refuge in you from a knowledge that has
0:49:44 no benefit
0:49:45 remember when we started this and we
0:49:47 said okay so the person
0:49:49 they have a certain predisposition that
0:49:51 they want to
0:49:52 benefit themselves okay so here
0:49:55 excuse me the prophet muhammad
0:49:57 sallallahu islam is saying
0:49:59 i'm seeking he's making a dua so first
0:50:02 of all
0:50:03 remember we said that studying islam is
0:50:06 not like studying other subjects
0:50:08 because there's the the the the rational
0:50:11 or cognitive
0:50:12 aspect of studying islam meaning you're
0:50:14 going to be studying the subject
0:50:15 but then there's the spiritual aspect
0:50:18 notice
0:50:19 that this very hadith is in the form of
0:50:22 a
0:50:23 dua and dua is linked to spirituality
0:50:27 okay so that's the first thing to notice
0:50:29 but coming back to it
0:50:30 you see oh allah i see refuge in you
0:50:32 from a knowledge does not benefit
0:50:34 from a heart that is not reverent or
0:50:36 from a heart that is doesn't have hoshua
0:50:39 and we'll talk about that in a second
0:50:41 from a soul from enough
0:50:42 that is not content and from a
0:50:43 supplication from a dua
0:50:45 that is not answered what's very
0:50:48 fascinating
0:50:49 about this tradition about this
0:50:50 narration is that there is a deep
0:50:53 connection between
0:50:54 all four of these things that the
0:50:56 prophet sallallahu
0:50:57 alaihi wasallam is seeking allah's
0:51:00 protection from
0:51:01 okay or seeking allah's help to to to
0:51:03 stay away from
0:51:04 all right so let's start backwards
0:51:08 a supplication that is not answered
0:51:12 okay well actually let me start from the
0:51:13 first one i see graphene from knowledge
0:51:15 does not benefit
0:51:16 the scholars mentioned that what kind of
0:51:18 knowledge
0:51:19 is non-beneficial knowledge okay
0:51:22 non-beneficial knowledge they say
0:51:24 generally they say it's
0:51:25 it can be categorized into two
0:51:29 one is the knowledge that has no
0:51:32 benefit in this ephemeral world
0:51:35 or in the afterlife meaning in the dunya
0:51:39 and in the it has no benefit okay
0:51:43 now this this type of knowledge in in
0:51:44 the book and you know classical books
0:51:47 mention things like
0:51:48 memorizing genealogies right which
0:51:52 had somewhat of a benefit at a certain
0:51:53 point but sometimes it just
0:51:55 you know it just led to like nothing
0:51:57 there's not any sort of real benefit it
0:51:58 was just kind of an exercise
0:52:00 right or memorizing certain types of
0:52:02 poetry
0:52:04 and you know and and things like that
0:52:05 that really don't didn't really have
0:52:07 much benefit in this world
0:52:09 and had no benefit in the achara because
0:52:12 there's just no benefit
0:52:13 and i was thinking what would be a a
0:52:15 contemporary example of this category
0:52:18 and you know one of the things that came
0:52:21 to mind
0:52:22 was memorizing sports statistics
0:52:25 so you find people you know especially
0:52:27 at least here in the states you've got
0:52:29 march madness you've got
0:52:30 you know football statistics and this
0:52:32 player with you know this quarterback
0:52:34 does this and that and these stats and
0:52:36 you know this many touchdowns and blah
0:52:37 blah blah blah blah and all of this
0:52:39 information
0:52:41 that you know unless you're a newscaster
0:52:43 and getting paid to do that
0:52:46 i mean it's not necessarily going to
0:52:49 benefit you in any way
0:52:50 it may be entertaining and there's
0:52:51 nothing wrong with that but
0:52:53 in reality it doesn't have any benefit
0:52:55 in the dunya
0:52:56 and it doesn't have any benefit in the
0:52:58 achara so this is the first category
0:53:01 the second category of knowledge that is
0:53:03 not beneficial
0:53:04 is knowledge of islam
0:53:08 now you might be thinking hold on a
0:53:09 second this whole section
0:53:11 is about studying islam is about
0:53:13 studying islam so that we can
0:53:16 do away with so we can do away with
0:53:19 destructive doubts
0:53:21 so how is it that the knowledge that
0:53:24 does not
0:53:24 benefit would be knowledge of islam
0:53:28 well it's the knowledge of islam that is
0:53:31 not
0:53:32 acted upon because then it just becomes
0:53:35 information
0:53:37 and so knowledge that is not beneficial
0:53:39 it's knowledge that
0:53:40 is not acted upon okay so the two
0:53:43 categories once again knowledge is not
0:53:45 beneficial
0:53:46 knowledge that has no benefit in this
0:53:48 ephemeral world or in the hereafter
0:53:51 and knowledge that of islam
0:53:55 that one does not act upon that there's
0:53:56 no so it doesn't affect one's being
0:53:58 it's just abstract knowledge okay so
0:54:01 that's the first thing
0:54:02 now what is beneficial knowledge well it
0:54:05 is knowledge of
0:54:06 allah who allah is allah's names and
0:54:10 attributes
0:54:11 you know when you when we start to
0:54:13 navigate the quran
0:54:14 and start to really ponder upon who
0:54:17 allah is who allah describes himself to
0:54:19 be
0:54:20 and start to reflect upon how that
0:54:22 impacts us and our life
0:54:24 it is things like this that lead us to
0:54:26 beneficial knowledge
0:54:28 right knowledge of allah now here's
0:54:29 what's interesting we said that there's
0:54:31 a connection between all four of these
0:54:33 so knowledge of allah is beneficial
0:54:35 knowledge right and
0:54:36 by extension that means the quran the
0:54:38 sunnah etc
0:54:40 so the knowledge of allah when a person
0:54:42 has beneficial knowledge
0:54:44 right so the second thing is that
0:54:47 we seek refuge from a heart that is not
0:54:49 reverent in other words a heart that has
0:54:51 no
0:54:54 is a term that you can kind of translate
0:54:56 to mean like to be in
0:54:58 awe or to be in a state of
0:55:01 reverential fear as it's sometimes
0:55:03 translated
0:55:04 okay that state of awe is
0:55:08 like when you go and you see something
0:55:10 that's just
0:55:11 you know in the natural world that's
0:55:13 just gorgeous okay like you go
0:55:15 uh you know for those of us who live in
0:55:17 north america
0:55:18 uh let's say you go to niagara falls and
0:55:20 you stand and you see the falls
0:55:23 most probably be the canadian side but
0:55:25 anyhow you're looking at the falls and
0:55:26 you're just in a state of awe
0:55:29 because you understand the grandiose
0:55:32 nature
0:55:33 the grandeur of the the object you're
0:55:36 looking at
0:55:36 and your heart comes into a state of awe
0:55:39 right that
0:55:39 feeling when it comes to being expressed
0:55:42 related to allah that's what's being
0:55:45 spoken about here so a heart
0:55:46 so the prophet is speaking seeking
0:55:48 refuge from a heart that is not
0:55:51 reverent from a heart that has no okay
0:55:54 so
0:55:54 connecting both of these a person that
0:55:57 has beneficial knowledge meaning
0:55:59 knowledge of allah
0:56:00 will then because they know allah be in
0:56:03 awe of allah
0:56:05 now the and i'm going to now go from the
0:56:07 back now from a supplication that is not
0:56:09 answered
0:56:10 right so i'm skipping the the third
0:56:12 element here
0:56:13 what kind of a supplication is not
0:56:15 answered so we know that the prophet
0:56:17 sallallahu alaihi wasallam
0:56:19 mentioned that there was a person who
0:56:21 was out
0:56:22 in the on a journey and this journey
0:56:25 many scholars say that it was a journey
0:56:26 for either seeking knowledge
0:56:28 or going for hajj or something good and
0:56:31 you know you know this person has some
0:56:33 sort of issue in the midst of their
0:56:35 journey
0:56:36 and they start calling out to allah
0:56:37 rabbi rabbi oh my lord help me help me
0:56:40 and so the prophet sallam says how will
0:56:42 allah answer
0:56:44 his dua when his food is haram
0:56:48 his drinking is haram his earning is
0:56:50 haram and his spending is haram meaning
0:56:52 that you know that he's he's he's just
0:56:54 doing a whole bunch of haram right whole
0:56:55 bunch of things that are forbidden
0:56:57 so a dua that is not answered is one in
0:57:00 which a person
0:57:01 is doing all sorts of sins and
0:57:04 specifically related to spending
0:57:06 money and earning money and not being
0:57:08 careful when it comes to your spending
0:57:10 and earning
0:57:10 okay now let's go to the the third
0:57:13 element that the prophet saw is asking
0:57:15 allah for protection from that is a soul
0:57:18 that is not complained
0:57:19 and not content from nafsin
0:57:24 a soul that is not contempt is one that
0:57:26 wants more
0:57:27 and more and more and more right
0:57:30 you're never satisfied so you've got the
0:57:33 latest xbox you need the next version of
0:57:34 the xbox you have
0:57:36 you know uh a tesla you want the newer
0:57:38 version of the tesla there's always
0:57:40 something more and more and more and
0:57:42 more that you want
0:57:42 so that contentment the prophet sallam
0:57:45 is asking
0:57:46 allah to protect him from a soul that is
0:57:48 not content
0:57:49 it just wants more and more and more
0:57:51 right
0:57:53 okay let's come back now a knowledge
0:57:56 that has no benefit
0:57:57 is one that's absent from knowing allah
0:58:01 studying about allah's names and
0:58:02 attributes knowing who allah is when a
0:58:05 person
0:58:06 doesn't know allah doesn't study who
0:58:09 allah is
0:58:10 what sort of impact that has upon the
0:58:12 person this person has
0:58:14 no hoshua they're not in this
0:58:16 reverential fear or reverential state
0:58:19 of awe when they're not in a state of
0:58:21 reverential awe
0:58:23 they are totally focused on this
0:58:25 temporary world
0:58:27 and so they constantly want more and
0:58:29 more and more
0:58:31 when the soul is in such a state when
0:58:33 the nufs is in such a state that it just
0:58:35 wants more
0:58:36 and more and more it will not
0:58:39 really care the person will not really
0:58:41 care whether
0:58:42 whatever they're getting is from means
0:58:44 that are halal or means that are haram
0:58:47 and so therefore when they do now
0:58:49 supplicate to allah
0:58:51 that supplication is not answered okay
0:58:54 so we find this deep connection and this
0:58:56 is just one narration from the prophet
0:58:58 sallam
0:58:59 related to the idea of stunning the
0:59:02 point i was trying to make with this
0:59:04 and kind of getting into some details
0:59:06 related to this dua
0:59:08 is that studying islam is not like
0:59:11 studying other fields because studying
0:59:14 islam
0:59:14 is not something you do in some sort of
0:59:16 abstract way it
0:59:18 must have an impact on your being
0:59:20 otherwise
0:59:21 it's not really you're not really
0:59:23 benefiting from that study okay
0:59:28 all right and that's why when you look
0:59:30 through look at the quran
0:59:32 you'll notice that there is always
0:59:36 a connection between knowledge
0:59:39 and some aspect of spirituality okay
0:59:42 and you know when when people if you
0:59:44 ever read a book on
0:59:45 you know the seeking of knowledge
0:59:48 there are certain key ayats that are
0:59:50 that are stated by authors so if you go
0:59:52 to
0:59:53 for instance
0:59:56 and you look at the chapter on knowledge
0:59:58 certain ayats that are there
1:00:00 you look at uh you know uh other books
1:00:03 on knowledge
1:00:04 you know whatever it might be you'll
1:00:05 find that there are certain ayats that
1:00:06 are
1:00:07 almost you know by necessity always
1:00:09 quoted
1:00:10 okay one of those ayat is this one here
1:00:12 inna innama
1:00:16 right that verily the only ones and
1:00:19 innama
1:00:20 is a particle of exclusivity right so
1:00:23 when you see innama
1:00:24 in nama it means only exclusively so
1:00:27 innama
1:00:29 verily the only people that have this
1:00:32 hashia this
1:00:33 we talked about this right the the
1:00:35 reverential awe and fear
1:00:37 and and and being careful when it comes
1:00:39 to allah
1:00:41 from uh from his slaves from his ibad
1:00:44 are the ulama now the uh here is not
1:00:47 referring
1:00:48 not what we think of when we think of
1:00:50 right meaning like
1:00:52 right it means comes from
1:00:56 which means knowledge so the people who
1:00:59 truly fear allah who truly have this
1:01:01 reverential fear
1:01:03 this ah this state where um
1:01:06 you know this hashia like let me give
1:01:08 you a different
1:01:09 context to understand hashia uh
1:01:12 sometimes what happens is especially if
1:01:13 you're married
1:01:14 you do certain things to not upset your
1:01:19 your spouse okay so that on a lower
1:01:22 level is a type of hashia you don't want
1:01:24 to anger your spouse so therefore
1:01:26 you know you know that let's say you
1:01:28 know she's very particular about the
1:01:29 trash being taken out on time
1:01:31 so you take it out right because you
1:01:33 have a type on
1:01:34 on a lower kind of micro level you have
1:01:37 a type of
1:01:38 kashya of your spouse okay and vice
1:01:40 versa whatever it might be
1:01:42 so this idea that a person would have
1:01:45 hashi of allah
1:01:46 because again it's about affecting the
1:01:49 being of the person
1:01:50 that you develop and you're careful with
1:01:52 the halal and the haram and then it
1:01:54 affects you
1:01:55 deeply it affects your heart and so
1:01:57 therefore
1:01:58 this has allah comes from the people of
1:02:02 knowledge okay so notice the spiritual
1:02:05 idea of
1:02:06 hashia of this state of the spiritual
1:02:09 state
1:02:10 is connected with the idea of knowledge
1:02:13 okay so studying islam
1:02:14 is not like studying other subjects not
1:02:17 like studying other topics
1:02:19 because there has to be a connection
1:02:21 between your spiritual state your state
1:02:24 of being
1:02:24 and the knowledge that that you're
1:02:27 taking in
1:02:28 and by the way that's why they said that
1:02:30 when you look at how the sahaba were
1:02:33 they said that they were people who
1:02:35 would be
1:02:36 pious and they would have their piety
1:02:39 and it would be built upon knowledge so
1:02:41 it was knowledge upon piety and piety
1:02:43 upon knowledge
1:02:44 so they would use their knowledge to
1:02:46 become more pious because they were more
1:02:48 pious
1:02:49 they were able to gain knowledge and you
1:02:51 had the cyclical relationship
1:02:52 between piety and knowledge that they
1:02:55 exemplified
1:02:56 right so anyhow so we find that in the
1:02:59 quran
1:03:00 allah the idea of spirituality and being
1:03:03 and knowledge
1:03:04 with or sorry the idea of of of of
1:03:07 of you know the the idea of knowledge
1:03:09 and the idea of spirituality and being
1:03:12 okay let me just mention one other ayah
1:03:13 related to that so
1:03:15 in some of the books that that that you
1:03:16 may read on knowledge or
1:03:18 that have chapters of knowledge usually
1:03:22 uh what's mentioned
1:03:25 with this particular ayah is one portion
1:03:28 of this ayah
1:03:28 okay
1:03:38 are those who are who know equal to
1:03:40 those who do not know
1:03:42 but here's something very important to
1:03:44 notice so here it's just saying
1:03:46 are those who know equal to those who
1:03:47 don't know okay now someone may say
1:03:49 okay well so it's just speaking about
1:03:51 knowledge and usually
1:03:52 this section of the ayah is what's
1:03:55 quoted
1:03:56 in books that's that that are
1:03:58 encouraging people to study and so on
1:04:00 the islamic sciences
1:04:02 but what's kind of missing is quoting
1:04:04 the entire
1:04:05 the entirety of the ayah okay because
1:04:08 here we find that just like in other
1:04:10 places there's a connection between
1:04:12 knowledge spirituality knowledge
1:04:15 and being your state right how do we
1:04:18 know this
1:04:19 look at the beginning of the ayah amman
1:04:23 ana alailisa
1:04:32 is the one who is devoutly obedient
1:04:35 right
1:04:36 all right throughout during the periods
1:04:38 of the night right
1:04:41 in prostration and standing sadji then
1:04:46 that this person is standing prostrating
1:04:48 he is
1:04:50 fearful of the hereafter okay
1:04:53 now look all of this is spirituality
1:04:55 it's the state
1:04:59 rugby excuse me and hoping for the mercy
1:05:02 all of these have to do with one
1:05:04 spirituality one's state
1:05:06 so it's after all of this this
1:05:09 these ideas of spirituality and state
1:05:12 and being and connecting
1:05:14 then when allah asks like is the one who
1:05:16 does these things equal to the one who
1:05:18 does not and then
1:05:19 allah says
1:05:24 is the one who knows equally the one who
1:05:26 does not know
1:05:27 meaning there's a link between knowledge
1:05:30 that is beneficial
1:05:31 knowledge that will have an impact on
1:05:32 you and knowledge you know
1:05:34 and other knowledge other kind of uh
1:05:36 intellectual endeavors that you might be
1:05:38 engaged in
1:05:39 okay
1:05:44 all right so now just kind of covering
1:05:48 um you know the the idea of seeking
1:05:51 knowledge
1:05:52 in general right obviously we know that
1:05:54 within the quran
1:05:56 and within the within our with the
1:05:58 hadith literature
1:05:59 there's a lot of um a lot of verses a
1:06:02 lot of hadith that encourage
1:06:04 the muslim to seek knowledge but what
1:06:06 i'd like us to really focus upon
1:06:08 and i've listed some of those here um
1:06:11 what i'd like us to focus upon
1:06:13 is to understand that how does
1:06:16 knowledge uh help with
1:06:19 shubuhat so if you haven't unders if you
1:06:22 haven't
1:06:23 kind of grasped the idea at this point
1:06:25 we understand that
1:06:28 those things that are con similar that
1:06:30 are
1:06:31 unclear that cause one to have these
1:06:34 destructive doubts
1:06:35 that obviously it's a two-fold approach
1:06:39 so one of those has to do with your
1:06:41 being and one of those has to do with
1:06:43 the very
1:06:44 exercise of seeking knowledge
1:06:47 because as we mentioned the parable
1:06:49 that's given in the quran
1:06:51 and in in many hadith is the idea of
1:06:54 light
1:06:54 just like ocular vision clarifies
1:06:59 is it you're able to see by way of your
1:07:02 ocular vision because of light
1:07:04 so too you're able to see the difference
1:07:06 between those
1:07:07 things that resemble the truth right
1:07:10 and those things that are actually true
1:07:12 and that happens by way
1:07:14 of a type of spirituality and a type of
1:07:17 seeking knowledge putting in the effort
1:07:19 to actually seek the knowledge to go out
1:07:22 and and study
1:07:24 so you have um you have
1:07:28 the these these elements you know one
1:07:30 thing that i wanted to mention
1:07:31 uh just real quick i was talking about
1:07:34 ocular vision and i said in the
1:07:35 beginning that i would i would expound
1:07:37 upon this a bit
1:07:38 so in arabic ocular vision or the
1:07:40 physical
1:07:41 sensation of being able to see something
1:07:44 with the eye
1:07:45 the physical eye that you have generally
1:07:48 that in arabic is called basar
1:07:51 and the the the the
1:07:55 the concept of being able to recognize
1:07:58 the truth
1:07:59 right uh
1:08:03 by way of the faculty of the heart okay
1:08:06 so it's almost like a direct recognition
1:08:08 is called that idea or that ability is
1:08:11 called
1:08:12 bashida all right in english we have
1:08:13 that dichotomy as well
1:08:15 so you have sight and then you have
1:08:17 insight so even in english we say oh
1:08:19 that that guy he has he has deep
1:08:21 insight on x y and z meaning it's
1:08:24 something that's
1:08:25 deeper than just um uh
1:08:28 than just you know just kind of looking
1:08:30 at something or just kind of
1:08:32 by way of your senses understanding
1:08:34 something it's much deeper than that
1:08:36 okay so that dichotomy interestingly
1:08:38 enough
1:08:39 imam al-ghazali uh rahimahullah touches
1:08:42 upon that when he speaks when he speaks
1:08:44 about character
1:08:45 right so in islam the word for character
1:08:48 is
1:08:49 the plural okay and the word for
1:08:52 your body or your creation or your your
1:08:55 kind of external
1:08:56 material self is called
1:08:59 and so you know there's a tradition
1:09:02 that's attributed to the prophet
1:09:04 muhammad
1:09:06 it doesn't it's it's unlikely that the
1:09:09 prophet sallam said it or it's not there
1:09:11 there's no sort of strong chain that
1:09:12 goes back there nevertheless
1:09:14 ali mentions it and he and and it's a
1:09:17 dua
1:09:18 again alam whether it is truly from the
1:09:21 prophet sallam or not
1:09:22 i mean there's no the chain doesn't go
1:09:24 back there and it's not strong but
1:09:27 so it's a dua where the prophet sallam
1:09:29 says oh allah just as you have made my
1:09:32 hulk beautiful so to
1:09:35 make my beautiful right so you notice
1:09:38 the play on words there
1:09:39 chalk so just like you made my external
1:09:43 beautiful so to make my internal
1:09:47 beautiful because your
1:09:50 your uh your your your character
1:09:54 comes from inside and that
1:09:57 juxtaposition of your external self and
1:10:00 your body
1:10:01 versus your internal character and how
1:10:04 you
1:10:04 in your adap and how you how you are
1:10:07 with people
1:10:08 that's an internal uh reality that's an
1:10:10 internal
1:10:11 working and so just like that imam
1:10:14 al-ghazali mentions
1:10:15 he says you can compare this to basaran
1:10:17 basida
1:10:19 someone who's just worried about this
1:10:21 temporal temporary world and just kind
1:10:23 of
1:10:23 they're going to look at the world via
1:10:25 basar ocular vision
1:10:28 but someone that's going to be thinking
1:10:29 deeper and using the
1:10:31 other kind of uh kind of uh
1:10:34 other epistemic tool of the heart
1:10:38 by which they can see truth by combining
1:10:41 knowledge and spirituality
1:10:44 is is sorry about that
1:10:48 uh isbasida and you'll you'll find this
1:10:52 uh you'll find this in in various
1:10:55 sorry about that okay
1:10:58 and you'll find this in in in various uh
1:11:02 ayat of the quran for instance okay um
1:11:05 the the this juxtaposition right talking
1:11:07 about bastard and basida anyhow
1:11:09 so let's go ahead and move on um i just
1:11:12 wanted to confirm can you guys
1:11:14 still see my screen i just wanted to
1:11:16 make sure
1:11:20 if you can please just go and type this
1:11:21 because i got a call in between it kind
1:11:24 of affected it so can you guys see my
1:11:26 screen
1:11:27 if you can please yes you can wonderful
1:11:30 okay
1:11:31 sorry about that okay so seeking
1:11:34 knowledge
1:11:34 then therefore one of the starting
1:11:36 points of seeking knowledge is having
1:11:38 the correct intention
1:11:40 all right and there's lots that can be
1:11:41 said um and i don't want to get too
1:11:44 deeply involved in this something that
1:11:45 i'll encourage you to study
1:11:47 but for instance
1:11:52 he said learn knowledge understand it
1:11:54 and benefit from it
1:11:56 live by it remember that whole dichotomy
1:11:58 of being
1:11:59 and the learning part and do not study
1:12:01 it in order to decorate yourself with it
1:12:03 for if you
1:12:04 live long you will likely see a time
1:12:07 when knowledge will be used for
1:12:08 beautification like a man beautifies
1:12:11 himself in his garments
1:12:12 so the idea again that knowledge you
1:12:15 know one kind of corrupt way of using
1:12:17 knowledge
1:12:18 is just for the intention so that people
1:12:20 will say that you're
1:12:22 all that in a bag of chips okay that's
1:12:24 the expression we have here in the
1:12:26 in the states at least i guess here in
1:12:28 texas i don't know if it's all over the
1:12:29 states but meaning
1:12:30 so people will look at you and say like
1:12:31 wow that's amazing in fact
1:12:34 that's a spiritual disease called
1:12:37 right which comes from which means to
1:12:39 see so when you show off
1:12:41 it's called this is spiritual disease
1:12:43 related to that is asuma
1:12:45 which is so that people will hear about
1:12:47 you come from samara which means to hear
1:12:49 which means to hear and so
1:12:53 one of the things that's vital when it
1:12:54 comes to seeking islamic knowledge
1:12:56 is to have a pure intention that it be
1:12:59 knowledge
1:13:00 that you are seeking for the sake of
1:13:02 allah to improve
1:13:04 your state right your position with
1:13:07 allah
1:13:08 your internal being and all of those
1:13:10 things so intention
1:13:11 becomes very important because remember
1:13:13 we were talking about the fitra and the
1:13:15 clouds
1:13:16 those things that cloud the fitrah those
1:13:17 things that block the fitrah
1:13:19 well that can happen in the process of
1:13:21 studying islam as well
1:13:23 right why because the intention was off
1:13:26 and when the intention becomes corrupt
1:13:27 that becomes a type of spiritual disease
1:13:29 which as we mentioned and by the way
1:13:33 everyone it's not that as i'm speaking
1:13:36 about this
1:13:37 it's not that you know once you start
1:13:39 studying islam
1:13:40 you and once you have a correct
1:13:42 intention you know it's settled you will
1:13:44 always have a correct intention you
1:13:45 always have a pure intention you always
1:13:47 do things for the sake of allah
1:13:48 no this is a dynamic this is something
1:13:51 that's
1:13:52 you know you're constantly vigilantly on
1:13:55 guard
1:13:56 when it comes to the state of your heart
1:13:58 right that's why you know if you
1:13:59 remember when hamza is talking about the
1:14:00 the word for heart is kalb
1:14:02 and which means that it's always in the
1:14:04 state of you know being overturned in a
1:14:07 state of motion
1:14:08 it's always you know it's interesting
1:14:09 that even the physical heart never stops
1:14:11 moving
1:14:12 in a set it's always beating and so the
1:14:14 heart is always kind of
1:14:15 you know turning from this perspective
1:14:17 and so therefore you have to be on guard
1:14:19 when it comes to seeking knowledge or
1:14:22 anything else within the islamic
1:14:24 framework that you have a pure intention
1:14:26 that's for allah and you have to renew
1:14:28 those intentions
1:14:28 and there's you know this is another
1:14:30 topic in and of itself
1:14:32 but how do you deal with the disease the
1:14:34 spiritual disease of arya
1:14:36 okay just very quickly
1:14:39 some of the scholars mention that you
1:14:42 know uh
1:14:43 that if you have acts of worship that
1:14:45 you do
1:14:46 and there are some acts of worship that
1:14:48 you do in public like praying in jamaa
1:14:51 obviously we're talking pre coven right
1:14:53 but if you're praying in jamaa
1:14:55 and one of the things is you might be
1:14:56 like oh i'm in the first line and look
1:14:58 at everyone's looking at me or whatever
1:14:59 it might be
1:15:00 so couple that with private acts of
1:15:02 worship where it's just
1:15:03 you and allah right so again the point
1:15:07 is
1:15:08 having a correct intention when one
1:15:11 chooses the path to seek
1:15:13 knowledge to seek islamic knowledge okay
1:15:16 uh just a couple more quotes um
1:15:19 [Music]
1:15:22 reports
1:15:26 he said oh a youb when allah brings
1:15:28 about knowledge for you
1:15:29 bring about worship of him and do not
1:15:32 let your
1:15:32 soul concern be too narrated meaning
1:15:36 that it's not just about forwarding the
1:15:37 knowledge but it's also about it
1:15:39 having an effect on you by way of your
1:15:42 spirituality and your being
1:15:44 okay and uh the final quote
1:15:48 oh man this is not my day
1:15:57 sorry about that okay the final quote
1:16:01 uh a very famous scholar ibrahim
1:16:06 he says that he says whoever seeks
1:16:09 knowledge sincerely
1:16:10 for the servants of allah to benefit by
1:16:12 and to benefit himself
1:16:14 then being hidden from fame is more
1:16:17 beloved to him than seeking loftiness
1:16:19 he is the one who becomes more lowly to
1:16:21 himself strives more
1:16:23 in worship fears allah more yearns for
1:16:25 allah more and becomes more humble
1:16:27 amongst people he cares not what
1:16:31 he has of this dunya night or day
1:16:35 again the point and the the thing that
1:16:37 we're trying to stress
1:16:38 is the idea of knowledge
1:16:42 not being in a vacuum not being abstract
1:16:45 but having an effect on your being and
1:16:46 part of that is related to having a
1:16:48 correct intention
1:16:49 okay now so what does knowledge do
1:16:52 we talk about the parable of light we
1:16:55 talked about how it illuminates and
1:16:56 therefore you're able to tell when you
1:16:58 have things that are con
1:16:59 similar that you're able to now see them
1:17:01 clearly and see which one is true and
1:17:03 which one is false
1:17:04 okay um what it does and what we see
1:17:08 that what knowledge does what true
1:17:09 knowledge what you know
1:17:11 islamic knowledge does is that it
1:17:14 dismantles hat right so remember if we
1:17:16 understand shubu had from those things
1:17:18 that are similar
1:17:19 how does it do that well one of the ways
1:17:21 is it clarifies things
1:17:23 and in fact it and when we talk about
1:17:25 islamic knowledge specifically
1:17:27 islamic knowledge because the source is
1:17:30 al-haq
1:17:30 right allah one of the names of allah is
1:17:33 the truth
1:17:34 the source is the truth and therefore
1:17:36 knowledge that's related to the truth
1:17:39 is going to be extremely potent
1:17:42 and extremely powerful right and that's
1:17:45 why
1:17:45 the the the the terminology or the
1:17:49 or or or the words that are used when
1:17:51 allah
1:17:53 juxtaposes truth with falsehood you know
1:17:56 for instance in this ayah allah subhana
1:17:58 wa tala says
1:18:03 in fact we hurl the truth and yak difu
1:18:07 is like a very strong world it's a word
1:18:10 it's like
1:18:10 throwing the the huck throwing the truth
1:18:13 at baltil
1:18:15 and it will basically it will it will
1:18:19 you know it will crush it it will
1:18:21 destroy it for those of you who speak
1:18:23 urdu
1:18:24 you know that the word for brain and
1:18:26 urdu or mind in urdu is dama
1:18:28 and here yet right it's
1:18:31 it's basically saying that when the
1:18:33 truth is hurled against
1:18:35 falsehood the botan it causes the brains
1:18:38 to be demolished
1:18:40 right so it's like it's it's like
1:18:42 cracked open
1:18:43 the head of falsehood right this you
1:18:46 know and
1:18:47 um and so anyhow so so that's the the
1:18:50 sense that you get that it's something
1:18:51 very
1:18:52 powerful not only that but uh
1:19:03 and it it quickly vanishes meaning when
1:19:06 you
1:19:06 have you know when when you're using
1:19:09 this
1:19:09 the the knowledge of islam that comes
1:19:11 from the sources of islam that comes
1:19:13 from al-haq
1:19:14 once it is hurled against falsehood
1:19:17 it basically smashes the brains out and
1:19:20 it's quickly gone
1:19:21 it just it it it vanishes right and
1:19:24 that's the sense you get from the ayah
1:19:25 itself
1:19:27 all right uh similar you have a
1:19:28 statement from ibm
1:19:30 al-jazeera he says
1:19:33 regarding the fitna of shubuhat this is
1:19:36 due to having a weak
1:19:37 vision and a lack of knowledge this
1:19:40 fitna
1:19:41 this trial this tribulation is sometimes
1:19:44 a result of incorrect
1:19:46 understanding and misinformation all
1:19:48 right
1:19:49 now that being the case
1:19:54 let's take a look at some of what
1:19:57 someone may consider
1:19:59 right i have two examples the first
1:20:01 example i'll take
1:20:02 is the example of women's inheritance
1:20:05 now one of the
1:20:06 one of the things that sometimes we hear
1:20:10 or people say is that you know women
1:20:14 in islam only inherit half
1:20:17 of what men inherit
1:20:20 therefore islam is a chauvinistic
1:20:24 religion and therefore it is false
1:20:27 okay now there's a lot of assumptions
1:20:30 built into that
1:20:31 that idea the first thing before we
1:20:34 tackle this
1:20:35 and how and see how knowledge helps in
1:20:38 dismantling this idea or
1:20:40 at least understanding the idea so we
1:20:42 understand what is true
1:20:44 and what is false let's understand a few
1:20:46 things about the human
1:20:47 the human condition itself or human
1:20:49 beings right
1:20:50 the first thing we need to understand is
1:20:53 that human beings
1:20:55 um use heuristics to understand the
1:20:58 world now
1:20:58 heuristic is like a shortcut
1:21:02 a shorter version of all of the
1:21:04 information
1:21:06 okay because no human can take in
1:21:10 all there is to know okay you just have
1:21:13 that
1:21:13 that epistemic limitation right i mean
1:21:15 hamza spoke about the idea from the from
1:21:17 the
1:21:18 uh from the viewpoint of testimony like
1:21:20 you can't know everything therefore
1:21:22 you're dependent upon the research of
1:21:24 somebody else
1:21:25 let's say in the scientific realm okay
1:21:27 but even if
1:21:28 even having all the research all the
1:21:31 papers
1:21:33 you as a human being are limited i mean
1:21:36 how much
1:21:36 are you really going to read even about
1:21:38 one subject how much can you really read
1:21:41 you can't even you can't think to know
1:21:42 everything there is to know about
1:21:44 everything
1:21:45 and so as human beings we make
1:21:47 heuristics
1:21:48 we make um kind of principles
1:21:51 shortcuts in order for us to
1:21:55 to understand the world and give us a
1:21:57 clear
1:21:58 world view and so these heuristics
1:22:01 um we use them to understand things
1:22:04 around us
1:22:05 okay now one of the simplifications
1:22:08 that we have to understand is that when
1:22:11 we are looking at islam
1:22:13 uh especially people that uh you know
1:22:16 that are trying to
1:22:17 let's say disprove islam those
1:22:20 heuristics that they
1:22:21 are that that that that they try to
1:22:24 proliferate
1:22:25 are heuristics that are
1:22:28 concepts that are overly simplified okay
1:22:32 women's inheritance being one of them
1:22:34 and so what i'd like us to do is reflect
1:22:36 upon
1:22:37 the islamic civilization okay now you
1:22:39 have this civilization
1:22:41 that almost spans a millennia and a half
1:22:44 okay now this you know civilization
1:22:47 is it possible that it's legal system
1:22:51 and we're talking about
1:22:52 inheritance law here is it possible that
1:22:54 its legal system
1:22:56 just had kind of simple principles by
1:23:00 which they kind of moved forward and
1:23:01 that was it and it
1:23:02 lacked any sort of sophistication it's
1:23:05 something we should think about
1:23:06 okay and i'll come back to that in in a
1:23:08 minute here when we talk about
1:23:10 heuristics when we talk about shortcuts
1:23:12 we need to understand
1:23:14 that heuristics um
1:23:17 heuristics we use them all the time okay
1:23:19 and i'll give you two examples one
1:23:21 you we use heuristics in our day-to-day
1:23:24 usage of language
1:23:26 okay so for instance uh in the
1:23:29 in the function of what we call ellipsis
1:23:32 uh what is ellipsis uh so ellipsis is
1:23:35 something like if you said
1:23:38 um i put the t on the stove
1:23:42 all right now what you've done there is
1:23:45 you've given a
1:23:46 shortened version as part of your
1:23:48 language
1:23:49 of what you actually mean what you
1:23:51 actually mean
1:23:52 is that i put tea leaves in the teapot
1:23:57 and put the teapot on the stove and
1:23:59 turned on the stove
1:24:01 that's a lot of words the shortcut i put
1:24:04 the tea on the stove
1:24:06 okay or uh i spoke to new york yesterday
1:24:09 and they said that everything's great
1:24:11 now you're not gonna say i spoke
1:24:12 to someone at the company you know whose
1:24:15 name
1:24:16 was jill and she said that the company
1:24:18 itself
1:24:19 everyone on the board of directors has
1:24:22 said that everything is okay or whatever
1:24:23 it might be
1:24:24 so you're using these shortcuts okay
1:24:27 which in
1:24:28 which in in in in the philosophy of
1:24:31 language or in linguistics excuse me
1:24:33 is called ellipsis so we use shortcuts
1:24:36 even in our day-to-day
1:24:38 uh language when we're speaking okay and
1:24:41 one of the things that scholars do
1:24:43 speaking about heuristics and his
1:24:45 connection with um you know studying
1:24:47 islam is
1:24:49 scholars try to look at statements that
1:24:52 come
1:24:52 from uh you know our sources
1:24:56 and see what was the meaning based
1:24:59 upon the ellipsis that was used okay so
1:25:02 one of the examples
1:25:03 very famous hadith
1:25:07 actions remember we said that innama is
1:25:09 a particle of exclusivity
1:25:11 so actions are only by intention
1:25:15 okay but the thing is there is a there
1:25:18 is ellipsis here
1:25:19 because are we saying that actions are
1:25:24 so
1:25:30 intentions our actions only correct my
1:25:32 intentions
1:25:36 or are they complete by actions and
1:25:39 what's really interesting
1:25:40 is that scholars took different
1:25:42 interpretations of this very hadith
1:25:44 to give different rulings so what they
1:25:48 would you know kind of you know expound
1:25:50 upon this
1:25:51 this linguistic you know linguistic
1:25:53 heuristic that we use
1:25:55 uh it came to different rulings right so
1:25:57 if we said actions
1:25:59 are correct by intention it means that
1:26:01 the intention has to precede the action
1:26:04 right if you say that they are completed
1:26:06 by actions that's the word you put in
1:26:08 it means that after the action is done
1:26:09 you can then say oh i intended to do
1:26:11 this
1:26:12 two very different places to reach
1:26:15 but all of that is a type of
1:26:18 heuristic that's expounded upon or
1:26:20 expanded
1:26:22 in order to have an understanding of
1:26:24 what's being said
1:26:25 now that's just in the realm of language
1:26:28 this occurs
1:26:29 in general cognition as well okay so
1:26:31 there was an experiment and i spoke
1:26:33 about this
1:26:34 in another webinar that we did uh for
1:26:36 sapience which is which was called a
1:26:38 beauty and the recognition of god
1:26:39 that there was an experiment where they
1:26:41 would take people to
1:26:43 you know like a a beautiful mountaintop
1:26:46 and um and they would ask them questions
1:26:49 now what they were trying to
1:26:50 study was what was the effect of awe
1:26:53 upon
1:26:54 cognition like do you think better when
1:26:56 you are in the state of awe
1:26:57 okay and for more information on that
1:26:59 you can check out that webinar
1:27:01 um on sapience or it will be on sapien
1:27:03 soon inshallah
1:27:04 but the point is is that uh the the the
1:27:08 question that they asked or how the
1:27:10 experiment was put together
1:27:12 was that they had people in that place
1:27:16 listen to a story which lasted about
1:27:19 i wanna say five minutes if i'm not
1:27:20 mistaken so a five minute story about a
1:27:22 romantic dinner
1:27:24 and then you know it's like the man came
1:27:26 he's wearing a suit and you know they
1:27:28 sat down
1:27:28 that the waiter gave them a menu the
1:27:30 woman was wearing this and so on and so
1:27:32 forth so the story goes on
1:27:34 and then at the end of the story they
1:27:35 asked did the
1:27:37 table were there candles on the table
1:27:40 okay most people answered or a big
1:27:43 significant amount of people
1:27:45 answered that there were candles on the
1:27:48 table
1:27:49 oh excuse me people who were not in this
1:27:51 scenic area who are not experiencing awe
1:27:54 answered that there were candles on the
1:27:55 table okay
1:27:57 when in fact the story did not mention
1:28:00 any candles on the table
1:28:01 and the people that were experiencing aw
1:28:03 by way of being on this mountaintop
1:28:05 whatever it is
1:28:06 actually accurately pointed out that
1:28:08 there were no candles
1:28:09 all right now my point in mentioning
1:28:10 this is why do we assume
1:28:13 candles are on the table because our
1:28:16 minds make
1:28:17 heuristics that we are you're not
1:28:19 listening to the entire five minutes
1:28:22 you're in fact filling in the blanks
1:28:25 right
1:28:26 by way of these shortcuts because
1:28:27 immediately when you think of romantic
1:28:28 dinner you're
1:28:29 already picturing candles
1:28:32 and yet those candles are not factually
1:28:35 being mentioned in the story
1:28:36 so the idea that general cognition we
1:28:40 use heuristics
1:28:41 all the time right when we're thinking
1:28:43 about things
1:28:44 and you can think about even when you're
1:28:45 reading a book or reading like um
1:28:47 you know a magazine or whatever it is
1:28:49 you're not necessarily reading
1:28:51 every single word you're in fact
1:28:54 skimming through the you know you're
1:28:56 kind of reading in a way that you're
1:28:57 kind of going from beginning to end and
1:28:58 so on and so forth
1:28:59 okay so heuristics are used all the time
1:29:03 that that's kind of the point here
1:29:04 right these shortcuts that we use in
1:29:06 order to simplify
1:29:07 the world around us simplify our world
1:29:09 view
1:29:11 how do we understand gender roles when
1:29:13 it comes to the islamic framework
1:29:14 well one heuristic when you're looking
1:29:17 at islam from the outside
1:29:19 and again you have your environmental
1:29:21 factors that are saying
1:29:22 hey you know what islam is oppressive
1:29:24 towards women
1:29:26 well women inherit half of what men
1:29:28 inherit
1:29:30 okay now we're not saying that
1:29:33 heuristics
1:29:34 by like you know by necessity are wrong
1:29:36 but what we're saying is is this a
1:29:38 valid heuristic and the only way that
1:29:41 you can know that
1:29:43 is to dig deeper to study
1:29:46 the topic in itself all right so i
1:29:49 started with this question about did the
1:29:51 islamic civilization lack sophistication
1:29:53 and the reality is is that when you have
1:29:55 this type of heuristic this type of
1:29:57 shorthand to say like okay this is what
1:30:00 islam
1:30:01 you know when it comes to inheritance
1:30:02 law women get half
1:30:04 what we're assuming is that the islamic
1:30:06 civilization lacked
1:30:08 sophistication meaning that that you
1:30:10 know close to
1:30:12 a millennium and a half or whatever 300
1:30:13 years whatever it might be
1:30:15 um that entire empire
1:30:18 that entire civilization did not have
1:30:22 any sort of sophistication
1:30:23 okay and in something as complex
1:30:27 as inheritance law it's quite
1:30:30 a uh it's quite an unfortunate
1:30:34 and uh myopic way of looking at
1:30:37 inheritance law okay and i'll tell you
1:30:41 why first of all
1:30:43 in islam in islamic studies inheritance
1:30:45 law
1:30:46 what they call is one of the most
1:30:49 difficult topics to study it is very
1:30:52 complex
1:30:54 and let me give you an example of kind
1:30:55 of why i say it's complex
1:30:57 right and i think you may appreciate
1:30:59 this inshallah
1:31:00 all right you know everyone knows about
1:31:03 you know
1:31:04 at least most people these muslims love
1:31:05 saying this that hey you know
1:31:07 algebra comes from al-jabbar right
1:31:10 and it was the muslim mathematician
1:31:13 muhammad who came up with algebra
1:31:16 all right what was the basis like why
1:31:20 like how did he come up with algebra
1:31:21 what was what was the context
1:31:23 in which he came up with algebra now for
1:31:25 those of us who
1:31:26 it's been some time since we studied
1:31:28 algebra remember algebra is
1:31:31 you know you've got your unknowns your x
1:31:32 your y and you've got two sides of an
1:31:34 equation
1:31:35 and you're trying to now figure out by
1:31:38 equating both sides
1:31:39 you know what is what are the unknowns
1:31:42 okay
1:31:43 so in the book where he
1:31:46 introduces and talks about and expounds
1:31:48 upon this
1:31:49 new science of algebra algebra
1:31:54 the book itself which is called kitab
1:32:00 which can be translated as the book or
1:32:02 the compendious book i guess that's how
1:32:03 it is here
1:32:04 on calculation by completion and
1:32:08 balancing right so al-jabbar
1:32:09 is referring to completing and balancing
1:32:11 is referring to having
1:32:13 both sides of the equation be the same
1:32:15 okay
1:32:16 so what does he say in the introduction
1:32:19 of this his introduction
1:32:20 he says imam
1:32:24 the commander of the faithful amir
1:32:25 mohammed so he was
1:32:27 uh you know he was working during the
1:32:29 the rulership of
1:32:32 and at this time if you know anything
1:32:33 about islamic history
1:32:35 you know that there was an intellectual
1:32:38 vigor at this time meaning that people
1:32:41 you know that that when it comes to
1:32:43 uh studying the the the various sciences
1:32:46 whether we're talking about medicine or
1:32:48 geography or
1:32:49 astronomy whatever it might be that this
1:32:51 was kind of the
1:32:52 the apex okay this this this time period
1:32:55 so he says that that the amiibo right
1:32:58 the the
1:32:59 moon has encouraged me to compose a
1:33:01 short work
1:33:02 on calculating by the rules of
1:33:05 completion and balancing in other words
1:33:09 confined confining it to what is easiest
1:33:12 and most useful
1:33:13 in arithmetic such as men constantly
1:33:16 require
1:33:17 in what in cases of inheritance
1:33:21 legacies partition lawsuits
1:33:24 and trade so what was the reason he
1:33:27 comes up with the entire this entire
1:33:29 science that we use till today
1:33:31 called algebra what is the reason he
1:33:34 wanted to
1:33:35 simplify the rules of inheritance
1:33:38 to simplify farad right and in fact
1:33:42 uh half of the book half of this book
1:33:45 is relate is about inheritance is about
1:33:48 half of this book
1:33:50 right now if you think about it it makes
1:33:52 sense
1:33:53 if you studied algebra you understand
1:33:55 that okay you have two sides of the
1:33:56 equation you have unknowns
1:33:58 and when you think about familiar
1:33:59 relations right who gets what when
1:34:01 someone passes away
1:34:03 you know it there's a lot of unknowns
1:34:05 you could have you know a person
1:34:07 who um let's say their their wife has
1:34:10 already died and now they have died now
1:34:11 they have
1:34:12 four children and their children have
1:34:14 children and yet
1:34:15 you know let's say one grandparent is
1:34:16 alive okay that's one type of equation
1:34:19 let's say both grandparents are alive
1:34:21 let's say there's only three children
1:34:23 let's say there's two girls one boy
1:34:24 let's say there's an uncle so many
1:34:26 unknowns so what muhammad in musa
1:34:31 what he's doing is he's trying to now
1:34:33 make that
1:34:34 or simplify that in a way that one can
1:34:37 calculate that easily
1:34:39 and that comes to be known as
1:34:42 algebra right coming from al-jabbar all
1:34:45 right
1:34:46 okay so this entire idea okay
1:34:49 women get half of men it is such an
1:34:52 oversimplification
1:34:53 it's almost mind-boggling as if you just
1:34:55 wrote off the whole civilization
1:34:58 all right let's take a look at it though
1:34:59 in some detail first of all
1:35:01 we understand that there are nuances
1:35:04 related to inheritance law
1:35:05 and by the way you know i'd asked a
1:35:08 couple of students from islamic
1:35:09 universities they said
1:35:11 when you are studying in an islamic
1:35:13 university you have
1:35:14 four semesters of farad
1:35:17 it is not an easy subject to study
1:35:21 whatsoever and just like any other
1:35:23 subject
1:35:24 that has levels you have levels in order
1:35:28 to understand right in order to to study
1:35:30 the the the topic of frayed
1:35:31 anyhow so in by by going to this
1:35:34 question there's a couple of things we
1:35:36 need to understand when we're going to
1:35:38 allocate the shares of inheritance first
1:35:40 of all
1:35:40 proximity all right so how in other
1:35:43 words how
1:35:44 close is the person to the deceased
1:35:46 right so
1:35:47 for example the daughter of the deceased
1:35:49 inherits half the estates
1:35:51 than her grandmother would whereas the
1:35:53 deceased father is entitled to only a
1:35:55 fourth all right
1:35:56 then you take into consideration the
1:35:58 generational position of the errors
1:36:00 okay for example a daughter will inherit
1:36:02 more than her grandmother
1:36:04 all right then there's the other thing
1:36:06 to now look at
1:36:07 when you when we look at the entire
1:36:09 framework of islamic society
1:36:11 we understand that there's a social
1:36:13 hierarchy
1:36:14 and some of the wisdoms of the
1:36:17 inheritance law are found in that social
1:36:19 hierarchy
1:36:20 okay so one of those elements of the
1:36:23 social hierarchy
1:36:24 is that it is the financial
1:36:26 responsibility of the father
1:36:28 to provide uh for his wife and the wider
1:36:31 family the wife is entitled to her
1:36:32 husband's wealth and her own personal
1:36:34 wealth
1:36:35 is her own and she has complete autonomy
1:36:38 when i got married i remember my wife
1:36:41 says you know it's so wonderful
1:36:42 your money is my money and my money is
1:36:44 my money
1:36:46 okay so i mean because
1:36:49 at the end of the day the husband is
1:36:51 required
1:36:53 right according to sharia according to
1:36:55 islamic law
1:36:56 to spend on his family
1:37:00 the woman the wife the daughter is
1:37:04 not required whatever money she has is
1:37:07 her
1:37:08 money okay and
1:37:11 um
1:37:15 and so uh sorry one second
1:37:26 right sorry about that uh and so
1:37:29 what we said is we have to understand
1:37:30 the social hierarchy within islam as
1:37:32 well what is the
1:37:33 what is the inherent wisdom you know i
1:37:35 was uh i was talking to my son the other
1:37:37 day and we were
1:37:39 listening um we were listening to a
1:37:42 short talk on the history of coffee
1:37:44 i know it's very strange but it has a
1:37:46 islamic kind of history right and it
1:37:48 kind of
1:37:48 you know it goes from one place to
1:37:50 another and it ends up in yemen and goes
1:37:51 from i think it was from somewhere in
1:37:53 africa then to yemen and then
1:37:54 the arabs would would have it and then
1:37:56 they would use it to you know
1:37:58 because it would keep them awake at
1:37:59 night and eventually ends up in the
1:38:01 ottoman empire now the ottoman
1:38:02 legal code is very fascinating uh
1:38:05 because that's where you can really
1:38:07 analyze
1:38:08 uh the the sophistication of islamic law
1:38:11 because it's not only
1:38:13 source material meaning quran and sunnah
1:38:15 but now you're adding direct
1:38:16 case law much like you have you know
1:38:18 within
1:38:20 jurisprudence in the united states or
1:38:21 any other country you've got case law
1:38:24 and so one of the interesting rulings
1:38:26 within the ottoman empire was that if a
1:38:28 husband
1:38:30 did not provide for well first of all if
1:38:32 a husband doesn't provide for his wife
1:38:33 adequately that is grounds for divorce
1:38:36 like the wife can basically say well
1:38:37 he's not providing for me
1:38:38 peace out see you later yeah but
1:38:42 one of the things that the ottomans
1:38:43 established was that if the husband
1:38:45 doesn't give his wife
1:38:48 a certain amount of coffee per year that
1:38:51 can also be grounds for divorce
1:38:53 okay so just an interesting tidbit
1:38:56 but again coming back to the social
1:38:58 hierarchy we understand
1:38:59 all of these nuances when it comes to
1:39:02 women's inheritance now
1:39:04 let's look at scenarios itself
1:39:08 so when you break it down there are only
1:39:11 four scenarios in which a female
1:39:12 inherits half of a male
1:39:14 so that heuristic that shorthand that
1:39:16 kind of how we view
1:39:18 islam and a quick way to view it so we
1:39:20 can vilify it
1:39:21 well here's the here's the reality there
1:39:23 are four scenarios in which a female
1:39:24 inherits half of a male
1:39:26 okay for example the presence of a
1:39:28 daughter and a son or indeed a
1:39:29 granddaughter and a grandson
1:39:31 in which the son or grandson will
1:39:32 inherit twice as much as the daughter
1:39:34 again you ca but even in this case
1:39:36 remember the social hierarchy within the
1:39:38 islamic framework
1:39:40 okay so there are four scenarios in this
1:39:41 case four these are there are four
1:39:43 scenarios here
1:39:44 female inherits half of the of the of
1:39:46 the male
1:39:47 11 scenarios where the female inherits
1:39:50 the same amount as the male
1:39:52 so for example the inheritance of a
1:39:54 mother and father with the presence of
1:39:56 the deceased son
1:39:57 in this case both the mother and father
1:39:59 were inherit one sixth
1:40:00 while the son will receive the remainder
1:40:02 and there are 16
1:40:04 scenarios where a female inherits more
1:40:07 than a man
1:40:09 so that entire idea that we were
1:40:11 initially talking about
1:40:13 that women you know islam is oppressive
1:40:17 to women and one of the one of the
1:40:19 justifications
1:40:20 is this shorthand to say women inherit
1:40:24 half of men and it's much more nuanced
1:40:27 than that
1:40:28 right so when we are now going to be
1:40:32 considering studying islam let us oops
1:40:35 let us understand
1:40:38 that people work with heuristics they
1:40:41 work with these shorthands
1:40:42 and in order to get clarification you
1:40:44 need to actually
1:40:46 study the topic and this is remember we
1:40:49 said
1:40:51 is that which resembles the truth in
1:40:53 order to from an external point of view
1:40:55 how do you understand
1:40:56 you know the role of women within islam
1:40:59 especially in a world view that that
1:41:01 views is
1:41:02 women islam to be oppressed well this is
1:41:04 a quick easy way of just saying well
1:41:06 here's evidence to show
1:41:07 that women are oppressed within the
1:41:08 islamic framework okay
1:41:10 and yet when you start to study the
1:41:13 details the nuances the background the
1:41:15 social hierarchy
1:41:16 the actual shares that go into
1:41:18 inheritance law
1:41:19 and the complexity of inheritance law
1:41:21 itself to understand
1:41:24 it's not that simple it's not just
1:41:26 simply saying
1:41:27 women inherit half of men and therefore
1:41:30 it's oppressive there has to be a lot
1:41:31 more study
1:41:32 related to that and therefore studying
1:41:34 islamic knowledge
1:41:36 you know this is an example of how once
1:41:38 you start to
1:41:39 you know study in detail
1:41:42 those things start to now uh transpire
1:41:45 right you
1:41:46 start to see clarity and those shubuhat
1:41:48 you're able to recognize
1:41:50 hak over bottle the truth over falsehood
1:41:54 so let's move on to our second example
1:41:57 and this example is related to the age
1:41:59 of consent
1:42:01 you know one thing that islam is accused
1:42:04 of
1:42:05 is that it facilitates child abuse and
1:42:08 this idea comes from the
1:42:11 marriage age of i shall illah right the
1:42:14 wife of the prophet
1:42:15 sallam and so the idea is is that
1:42:18 because
1:42:19 the prophet sallam married aisha at such
1:42:21 a young age
1:42:22 that therefore child abuse pedophilia
1:42:26 is completely acceptable in your
1:42:28 religion and it's such an abhorrent
1:42:30 thing
1:42:31 uh that clearly this is a problem for
1:42:34 islam and this and this can be a very uh
1:42:37 a very profound shubha for many people
1:42:40 but
1:42:41 in this section we want to now break
1:42:43 down this
1:42:44 entire idea of the age of consent
1:42:48 and take a macro view of it okay in the
1:42:50 sense that
1:42:51 remember this entire section right
1:42:54 within our strategies
1:42:56 this particular strategy of studying
1:42:58 islam what we're trying to show
1:43:00 again is that by studying islam you're
1:43:04 able to do away with those
1:43:06 shubuhat or shubohat that arise remember
1:43:08 our whole
1:43:09 analogy or parable of light is to shed
1:43:12 light
1:43:12 onto us a particular topic and therefore
1:43:15 the shobha
1:43:16 is removed because of that now if you
1:43:19 remember
1:43:20 i was speaking about a little while ago
1:43:22 speaking about heuristics
1:43:24 and the idea that human beings need
1:43:27 heuristics in order to understand the
1:43:29 world around them
1:43:29 they need shortcuts so just like that
1:43:33 when we look at issues of islamic
1:43:36 jurisprudence
1:43:38 is like islamic law you could say
1:43:41 uh we understand or rather scholars of
1:43:44 the past
1:43:45 understood that just like human beings
1:43:48 need heuristics in order to understand
1:43:50 the world
1:43:51 this is true even when it comes to
1:43:53 understanding certain
1:43:55 uh moral realities or or casting
1:43:57 judgment
1:43:58 upon a certain a a certain
1:44:02 idea that's considered moral or immoral
1:44:04 okay and that's
1:44:06 basically from the viewpoint of the
1:44:08 sharia now
1:44:09 when you're going to make that
1:44:10 determination we
1:44:12 scholars understood that there is a vast
1:44:16 corpus of islamic legal literature
1:44:20 in other words obviously you have the
1:44:22 sources of islamic law being the quran
1:44:24 and the hadith literature but even if we
1:44:27 put the quran aside for a second because
1:44:29 you know people do memorize the quran in
1:44:31 fact they memorized the
1:44:33 numerous qur'aats of the quran etc but
1:44:35 even if we look at just the
1:44:37 the vast hadith literature that is out
1:44:39 there it would be
1:44:41 very difficult for a
1:44:44 let's say a budding a budding scholar
1:44:48 someone that's looking for to become a
1:44:49 scholar let's say a legal scholar
1:44:52 uh to be able to understand or
1:44:56 encompass all of the hadith literature
1:44:58 that is extent
1:45:00 right and that's just hadith literature
1:45:02 that's not including
1:45:04 case law and by the way there's you know
1:45:07 in in in the western legal tradition
1:45:09 case law forms a a integral part
1:45:13 of how rulings are made and it's no
1:45:15 different within the sharia as well
1:45:18 i mean when you have certain uh
1:45:21 cases or you're presented with a certain
1:45:23 situation or a judge is presented with a
1:45:25 certain situation
1:45:27 the judge can make use of case law as
1:45:29 well
1:45:30 and so if you were to consider okay all
1:45:32 of the hadith literature that's out
1:45:33 there that needs to be
1:45:34 taken into consideration all of now you
1:45:37 add to that
1:45:38 uh case law which some of that might
1:45:40 form legal precedent some of it might
1:45:42 not
1:45:43 uh that is a a vast
1:45:46 body of literature a vast uh
1:45:49 you know ocean of information and so
1:45:53 scholars of the past understood that
1:45:55 when a person is now
1:45:56 on the path to studying islamic
1:46:00 jurisprudence
1:46:01 they would need some way to simplify all
1:46:04 of that
1:46:05 they would need some sort of heuristics
1:46:06 just like as human beings we need
1:46:08 heuristics
1:46:09 they would need some sort of heuristics
1:46:10 to be able to
1:46:12 take all of that vast body of literature
1:46:15 and still be able to derive a ruling
1:46:18 without let's say
1:46:20 having studied everything from end to
1:46:22 end and
1:46:23 frankly there is no end right he just it
1:46:25 would just keep on going on
1:46:26 like i said just you know if you were to
1:46:28 take just the the
1:46:30 the case law that's uh that's within the
1:46:32 ottoman archives
1:46:33 i mean that would take a lifetime to go
1:46:35 through it all of the various nuances
1:46:38 the cases that have been brought forth
1:46:40 how do you now how does that apply
1:46:42 to x y and z situation it would
1:46:45 one you would need many lifetimes so
1:46:47 scholars
1:46:49 looking at the at at this i
1:46:52 at the vast body of literature that's
1:46:54 out there
1:46:55 said we still need to make legal rulings
1:46:58 and we're not going to be able to
1:46:59 encompass all of that
1:47:00 so let us now come to some let us
1:47:03 formulate
1:47:04 valid heuristics so remember i said that
1:47:07 not all heuristics are bad
1:47:09 there are shortcuts that we make we said
1:47:10 some can lead you to arrows
1:47:12 but then there's also going to be some
1:47:14 valid heuristics from a
1:47:16 jurisprudential so from from a legal
1:47:18 point of view
1:47:20 what are those valid heuristics that the
1:47:22 scholars put forth
1:47:23 and i've listed five of them here and
1:47:26 this is for if you're interested in
1:47:28 studying this further this is known as
1:47:29 um right legal maxims
1:47:33 is sometimes how that's translated right
1:47:35 or or
1:47:37 is is a legal maxim if we're talking
1:47:39 about the singular
1:47:40 so what are these what are these
1:47:41 heuristics that that a
1:47:43 a student of knowledge a budding scholar
1:47:46 a budding legal scholar is supposed to
1:47:47 use
1:47:48 so the first one uh is
1:47:51 and by the way these are derived from
1:47:55 islamic sources in the sense that
1:47:58 they are derived from either the quran
1:48:00 or the sunnah
1:48:01 so the first one that i listed up there
1:48:03 no there's no harm and no causing of
1:48:05 harm
1:48:06 sorry there's actually it should say
1:48:08 there's no causing harm nor separating
1:48:10 of harm
1:48:11 this first principle is taken from a
1:48:13 hadith of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
1:48:15 wasallam
1:48:16 and the prophet sallallahu alaihi
1:48:18 wasallam said
1:48:22 that there is no causing of harm and
1:48:24 there's no reciprocating of harm
1:48:26 and so that is taken as a heuristic that
1:48:29 when you're going to
1:48:30 judge a case we understand that that is
1:48:32 an overarching
1:48:33 principle that you need to use and move
1:48:35 forward with when judging a case
1:48:38 okay the second one i have up there is
1:48:40 certainty is not removed by doubt
1:48:44 right again these are because i we don't
1:48:47 this is outside the scope of
1:48:48 of this particular session and this
1:48:51 particular course
1:48:52 that you know how these are derived and
1:48:54 like i said if you want to read more
1:48:56 about it you can read
1:48:57 uh the uh on the topic of quite the
1:49:00 fifia
1:49:01 so certainty is not removed by doubt
1:49:03 what's very interesting is if you
1:49:05 remember when we were talking about
1:49:06 uh uh with what suicides right
1:49:11 this actually this principle uh
1:49:14 helped a lot of people when they were
1:49:16 having with
1:49:17 us related to their wudu now you might
1:49:20 be thinking wait a minute how how does
1:49:21 this apply
1:49:22 so when you if you understand this
1:49:24 principle that certainty is not removed
1:49:26 by doubt
1:49:27 in other words if you are absolutely
1:49:29 certain about something
1:49:30 and you have a doubt that creeps in that
1:49:33 doubt does not trump
1:49:34 the certainty the thing that you're
1:49:36 certain about all right now how does
1:49:37 this apply to will do
1:49:39 uh so so basically and and i'm sure many
1:49:43 of us have been in this situation
1:49:44 where you would you're just about to
1:49:47 start the prayer or you know you're
1:49:49 you're on your way to
1:49:50 to pray let's say awesome and you're
1:49:52 like do i have will do or don't i have
1:49:54 will do
1:49:54 and you're not really sure so in a sense
1:49:57 you're in a state of
1:49:58 doubt now what the scholars say is what
1:50:02 should you do in this case
1:50:04 should you rush and then go make will do
1:50:06 is that what's incumbent upon you
1:50:08 uh or do you do the opposite
1:50:11 do you basically say and and this is how
1:50:14 it should be approached
1:50:16 is that i know for sure
1:50:19 i prayed lahar right so we're talking
1:50:22 about astra prayer now you say i know
1:50:24 for sure i prayed
1:50:26 and i made will do but i'm uncertain
1:50:29 i'm doubtful whether i broke my wudu
1:50:32 between zohar and assa
1:50:34 so which which position do you take you
1:50:37 take the position of certainty in other
1:50:38 words
1:50:39 you're certain you pray and you're
1:50:40 certain you had will do for so
1:50:42 that doubt of do i have will do or not
1:50:45 you don't go with that you go with the
1:50:47 certainty so you assume you have udu
1:50:49 and you pray also no that's not to say
1:50:51 that you shouldn't make a fresh wudu or
1:50:53 you know if you're doubtful there's
1:50:54 something
1:50:54 wrong with renewing your wudu or just
1:50:58 making it just in case
1:50:59 but a lot of times when especially when
1:51:01 people were con
1:51:02 confronted with whisperings you know
1:51:05 with was what
1:51:06 right that was we says scholars said
1:51:08 this is the principle by which you move
1:51:10 forward
1:51:10 and this has ramifications in many areas
1:51:13 i just gave one in terms of
1:51:15 this also the ramifications when you're
1:51:17 in the middle of your salah
1:51:19 you know are you are you you you forget
1:51:21 am i did i just pray the third raka
1:51:23 or the fourth raka well what are you
1:51:25 certain of well you know if
1:51:27 you're between three and four you're
1:51:28 certain of three you're doubtful of
1:51:30 whether you prayed the fourth one or not
1:51:32 you go with what you're certain with
1:51:33 that you pray three raka's and then you
1:51:35 do the
1:51:36 sajda to sal et cetera okay so uh so the
1:51:39 second
1:51:40 heuristic or the second legal maxim is
1:51:43 that certainty is not removed by doubt
1:51:46 the third one is hardship begets
1:51:48 facility
1:51:50 in the sense that when you are presented
1:51:52 with two
1:51:53 options and they're both equal in terms
1:51:56 of their
1:51:57 rulings you go with the one that is
1:51:59 easier for you
1:52:00 right as allah says
1:52:05 that allah says that allah does not want
1:52:09 uh to to to make things uh hard for you
1:52:12 but rather he wants for you is
1:52:14 right you read
1:52:19 allah wishes for you ease and does not
1:52:22 wish for you
1:52:23 hardship and so based on that eye of the
1:52:25 quran
1:52:26 when you are presented with two uh
1:52:28 choices
1:52:29 two choices that are of legal weight
1:52:32 meaning one
1:52:33 option does not have a greater
1:52:36 uh uh have greater evidence than the
1:52:40 other
1:52:40 you go with that one which is easier
1:52:42 okay and by the way this doesn't mean
1:52:44 that you just go with whatever is
1:52:45 easiest
1:52:46 right because you feel like it again
1:52:48 we're talking about two options where
1:52:50 you understand that there's evidence for
1:52:52 both of them there's no preponderance of
1:52:54 evidence in one case or the other
1:52:56 and so therefore if you have these two
1:52:57 options go with the one that's easier
1:53:00 okay the fourth one and by the way
1:53:03 i think two or three of these are going
1:53:04 to have uh have an impact on our
1:53:07 discussion related to the age of consent
1:53:09 so i'm not just mentioning it for the
1:53:10 sake of information
1:53:12 but it's good to know that you know how
1:53:14 do you come to conclusions is based on a
1:53:16 study of islam
1:53:18 and again part of that study is
1:53:21 understanding legal maxims from from for
1:53:24 this for
1:53:25 for this purpose okay so the fourth one
1:53:28 uh culture slash custom has legal weight
1:53:31 of right so
1:53:35 that we that this
1:53:38 idea that scholars legal scholars had
1:53:41 that we have to understand
1:53:44 when we look at a people's culture
1:53:48 and people's customs and by the way i
1:53:50 mentioned two words here
1:53:51 al-arf and and most people consider
1:53:55 these two terms synonymous right so both
1:53:58 are
1:53:58 custom culture but some scholars make a
1:54:01 difference they say
1:54:02 is related to the society right comes
1:54:05 from the arabic term arafat which means
1:54:07 to know
1:54:08 and so is that which is known among the
1:54:10 people
1:54:11 right and another related term is maroof
1:54:14 that goodness that is known among people
1:54:17 so when allah speaks about in joining
1:54:19 the good the word that's used there is
1:54:20 maroof
1:54:21 so enjoying that goodness that the
1:54:23 people
1:54:24 you know kind of have an idea already of
1:54:26 because again we believe every human was
1:54:28 born upon the fitrah so everyone has an
1:54:30 idea of goodness
1:54:32 and part of that goodness is manifest in
1:54:33 people's culture
1:54:35 anyhow so you know that
1:54:38 so the other word ada is more related to
1:54:42 a habit or
1:54:43 or something you do uh you know uh
1:54:45 something you do over and over again
1:54:47 okay anyhow so that culture and custom
1:54:51 have legal weight
1:54:53 why do why do scholars you know put this
1:54:56 as a
1:54:57 as as a heuristic the reason is is
1:55:00 because they understood
1:55:01 that culture social practices social
1:55:04 habits
1:55:06 are not locked in place and this becomes
1:55:09 very important when we're going to
1:55:10 understand
1:55:11 the uh the the connection that one's
1:55:15 morals have with the culture and climate
1:55:19 and society they live in okay because
1:55:22 some morals are
1:55:23 linked to the to to to the society and
1:55:26 the culture you live in
1:55:27 some morals are not some morals you can
1:55:29 say are indeed
1:55:30 universal or as we say objective so
1:55:33 you know the killing of a a a a a in
1:55:37 an innocent child okay that's obviously
1:55:39 rape obviously those things are
1:55:41 those things are wrong no matter what
1:55:43 time society or culture you're in
1:55:45 but certain other morals certain other
1:55:48 practices are going to change
1:55:52 based on the society you're in based on
1:55:55 the time period you're in
1:55:57 so scholars looked at this and they said
1:55:59 there are
1:56:00 that the fact that you have uh the the
1:56:03 fact that there's no such thing as
1:56:05 a culture that is trans-historic
1:56:09 means that you can take it and you can
1:56:11 apply it throughout any time period
1:56:14 or transnational meaning you can take it
1:56:17 and implant it anywhere else and you say
1:56:20 that this is just
1:56:21 how the correct culture is because
1:56:24 culture is determined by the people it
1:56:26 is what is known by the society
1:56:28 okay and that has legal precedence it
1:56:30 has legal weight
1:56:32 that needs to be taken into
1:56:33 consideration so i'll give you a quick
1:56:35 example of this um let's let's say you
1:56:38 have a
1:56:39 judge who's trying to decide on how to
1:56:42 distribute the the household assets
1:56:46 uh in a divorce case so now you have a
1:56:49 couple that's divorced
1:56:50 the judge has to you know basically say
1:56:52 okay well who gets what
1:56:54 that judgment is going to be dependent
1:56:58 on where this case is taking place
1:57:00 if this case is taking place in let's
1:57:02 say um
1:57:04 you know let's say five years ago in
1:57:06 saudi arabia
1:57:07 well uh if there's a vehicle
1:57:10 and at the time saudi arabia you know
1:57:13 out
1:57:14 did not allow women to drive the vehicle
1:57:16 is going to go to the man
1:57:17 if there are certain uh kitchen supplies
1:57:20 and things related to the kitchen
1:57:23 according to that culture
1:57:24 the the kitchen supplies would go to the
1:57:27 to the woman
1:57:28 right again it's based on on the culture
1:57:30 of that area uh if there's guns
1:57:32 or weapons who gets the guns and the
1:57:35 weapons
1:57:35 well based on that culture you know that
1:57:39 that would go to the the men and so on
1:57:42 go to the man excuse me
1:57:43 and so but if you took that very case
1:57:47 and let's say transplanted it to
1:57:50 midland texas you're actually going to
1:57:53 get a different distribution
1:57:55 the judge would be uh would be unfair
1:57:58 it would not be an appropriate judgment
1:58:00 to take that very ruling
1:58:02 and apply it to the same case uh if if
1:58:06 that case was taking place in texas like
1:58:08 right i i
1:58:09 i put midland because it's a small town
1:58:11 in texas i chose that one
1:58:13 but why well because in texas
1:58:16 the dynamic and the culture of the
1:58:18 society is very different i'll give you
1:58:20 the example of the guns
1:58:21 in the household in that case
1:58:24 five years ago from saudi arabia the
1:58:26 guns and the weapons
1:58:28 would go to the man in texas
1:58:32 it's not that clear cut because in texas
1:58:35 we love our guns man right we got
1:58:38 we got the right to bear arms yeah so
1:58:42 what you find is that it's not only men
1:58:45 that own guns
1:58:46 and use guns and use guns for hunting
1:58:48 but women do it as well
1:58:50 you know my wife she um many of her
1:58:52 colleagues she's a teacher
1:58:53 and many of her female colleagues they
1:58:56 you know
1:58:57 they they they very often go hunting and
1:59:00 they have gun collections and things
1:59:01 like that
1:59:02 so you couldn't so in this case the
1:59:04 judge would have to use a
1:59:06 use the culture and custom of the people
1:59:08 to say okay well who does the
1:59:09 who do the guns go to now right
1:59:11 especially if there's some
1:59:13 uh you know there's disagreement there
1:59:15 it wouldn't be
1:59:16 as easy or as as as black and white as
1:59:19 if the case was being taken
1:59:21 was happening in in saudi arabia um okay
1:59:24 so the heuristic that scholars put
1:59:28 that that scholars formulated that
1:59:30 culture has legal weight
1:59:34 the fifth one is manners are based upon
1:59:36 the intention behind them
1:59:38 okay and i think this to understand this
1:59:41 we could
1:59:42 we could uh we could we could
1:59:46 we could look at uh the the the western
1:59:48 legal tradition or common law
1:59:50 and the idea that there is a dichotomy
1:59:52 or an understanding rather
1:59:54 of the spirit of the law and the letter
1:59:56 of the law okay
1:59:58 and scholars when they looked at you
2:00:00 know that you have the text the actual
2:00:02 text of
2:00:03 the law and then you have the reality of
2:00:06 the human being
2:00:07 all right so let's let's take an example
2:00:08 to elucidate this point as well
2:00:11 imagine that someone now steals
2:00:14 in in an islamic uh
2:00:17 you know in a place where the where the
2:00:19 the where the sharia is present right
2:00:20 let's say in the historic
2:00:22 in the islamic empire at some point the
2:00:24 immediate dynasty whatever it might be
2:00:26 okay now the punishment that islam
2:00:29 requires is the cutting off of the hand
2:00:31 and people in our day and age love to
2:00:34 take this and run with it
2:00:36 in the sense that well look how barbaric
2:00:38 islam is
2:00:39 someone steals something you cut off
2:00:41 their hand again
2:00:43 remember what i was talking about we
2:00:45 assume that there's no
2:00:46 nuance and no sophistication even though
2:00:50 you know these rulings are coming from a
2:00:51 civilization that spanned you know
2:00:53 almost 1300 1400 years
2:00:57 anyhow so if in this case
2:01:00 like if if something gets stolen it's
2:01:03 not just an automatic judgment this is
2:01:05 what people don't
2:01:06 sometimes they don't understand that
2:01:08 there is nuance
2:01:10 and one a judge and a quadi
2:01:14 must look at the surrounding
2:01:16 circumstances
2:01:17 as to why the person stole
2:01:20 okay so that's one by the way there's
2:01:23 also
2:01:23 there's also the concept of what did
2:01:25 they steal right so if someone stole
2:01:27 like a pen
2:01:28 from work well they're not gonna you're
2:01:30 not gonna cut the guy's hand off right
2:01:32 obviously that's very different that
2:01:33 that the idea of the value of the item
2:01:35 that's stolen
2:01:36 is also taken into consideration but for
2:01:38 our purposes in understanding this
2:01:40 heuristic
2:01:41 uh matters are based on the intention
2:01:43 behind them the scholar the quadi
2:01:45 the judge has to now ask the question
2:01:48 well
2:01:48 did this person steal because they were
2:01:51 desperate and needed to feed their
2:01:52 family
2:01:53 in which case the punishment is not met
2:01:55 a doubt because there's
2:01:57 you have to look at what was the
2:01:58 intention behind it
2:02:00 so these heuristics again when we are
2:02:03 looking at at the
2:02:04 corpus of islamic literature
2:02:08 these heuristics serve as a means to
2:02:10 simplify them
2:02:11 and their and and we consider them valid
2:02:14 heuristics
2:02:15 now that being the case let's move on
2:02:19 so let's come back to out the issue we
2:02:20 were talking about the false accusation
2:02:22 that islam facilitates child abuse
2:02:24 okay remember i said one of the
2:02:27 heuristics
2:02:28 well first of all before i get there
2:02:31 what is the issue
2:02:33 why is it that this is problematic for
2:02:36 someone living in the modern world
2:02:39 right so before i get into the technical
2:02:41 uh you know the definition and all these
2:02:43 things
2:02:44 why is this an issue it's not it's not
2:02:48 it's not something that we should say
2:02:50 that okay well
2:02:51 this person who who considers this an
2:02:53 issue has no reason to consider an issue
2:02:55 in fact there is reason the culture and
2:02:58 society that we
2:03:00 live in today um has a number of
2:03:05 uh has a number of
2:03:08 let's say collective iniquities
2:03:11 that cause us to take a step back and
2:03:14 say
2:03:15 nine seems kind of young all right
2:03:18 now when you talk about those collective
2:03:19 iniquities of the modern world
2:03:21 some of those things are like
2:03:26 what's it called the uh
2:03:29 you know children being sold into
2:03:30 prostitution and so you have you know
2:03:33 across the world
2:03:34 you know people are being cracked down
2:03:36 upon selling children into prostitution
2:03:38 so and that's something that that's
2:03:40 wrong right uh you have
2:03:42 cases where there is uh there is true
2:03:46 child abuse right where someone takes a
2:03:48 child
2:03:49 uh you have cases where children are
2:03:52 individually kidnapped
2:03:53 and then raped etc
2:03:56 so the the the the idea that this could
2:04:00 feel wrong the purpose of this is not to
2:04:05 say what you're feeling is
2:04:06 necessarily wrong but understand that
2:04:09 there are a number of factors remember
2:04:11 going back to dr uthman
2:04:13 thief's presentation on influence uh
2:04:16 there are a number of factors you know
2:04:17 you have a proliferation of pornography
2:04:20 in the world today which also leads into
2:04:23 you know the idea
2:04:24 of you know children on film etc
2:04:27 where it's going to lead to more abuse
2:04:30 of children right
2:04:32 but all of those things all of those you
2:04:34 know the proliferation of
2:04:36 pornography you know child sex
2:04:38 trafficking all of these things
2:04:40 all play into your kind of
2:04:43 moral intuition in a sense okay
2:04:46 which gives us a certain socio
2:04:50 socio-ethnic bias because we assume that
2:04:53 because we have this feeling again
2:04:55 there's a number of factors why
2:04:57 because we have this feeling that this
2:04:59 feeling must be true
2:05:00 trans historically transnationally all
2:05:03 right
2:05:04 and remember one of the principles we
2:05:05 spoke about earlier is scholars
2:05:07 understood
2:05:08 that certain practices you cannot apply
2:05:12 trans historically and transnationally
2:05:13 okay and we're gonna dig into that a
2:05:15 little bit more okay
2:05:17 so this accusation that islam
2:05:19 facilitates child abuse
2:05:21 let's come back to our the first uh the
2:05:24 first heuristic that i mentioned and
2:05:26 that was of harm
2:05:28 the principle of harm or or that that
2:05:31 that uh that there's no
2:05:35 causing of harm and and no reciprocation
2:05:38 of harm
2:05:39 how did israelis how did scholars define
2:05:41 this right and by the way the term
2:05:42 usually there
2:05:43 is referred to you know the idea of
2:05:45 scholars who study
2:05:47 principles of jurisprudence as opposed
2:05:49 to the actual
2:05:50 not opposed to because they probably
2:05:51 studied both but as opposed to
2:05:53 the actual rulings themselves okay so
2:05:55 the assuli definition of harm
2:05:57 it's categorized into two categories
2:05:59 number one
2:06:01 the a type of harm which is
2:06:03 psychological
2:06:04 or mental okay so a harm of the mind
2:06:08 number two a physical harm a harm of the
2:06:11 body
2:06:12 okay when scholars looked at the idea of
2:06:16 harming the mind a psychological harm
2:06:18 they understood that psychological harm
2:06:21 is attached to factors
2:06:25 or excuse me attached to sociological
2:06:27 factors
2:06:28 in other words it's attached to the
2:06:30 social mores the social customs
2:06:33 of where someone is
2:06:36 right because in one place something
2:06:40 could be considered
2:06:41 a a a a you know a a
2:06:44 psychological harm whereas in another
2:06:46 case it might not
2:06:47 and like i said we'll dig into that but
2:06:49 understood under excuse me understand
2:06:51 that when it comes to the definition of
2:06:53 harm you have bodily harm
2:06:55 and then you have harm of the mind or
2:06:58 psychological harm
2:06:59 and psychological harm is going to be
2:07:02 contingent upon sociological factors
2:07:06 it's going to be contingent upon
2:07:08 social customs it's going to be
2:07:09 contingent upon the earth
2:07:12 okay and again is not
2:07:15 trans historic and trans national
2:07:18 okay the idea is
2:07:22 of of our first heuristic is that we
2:07:24 it's there to promote
2:07:26 physical well-being and mental and
2:07:28 psychological well-being that's kind of
2:07:29 the objective
2:07:30 to preserve physical well-being mental
2:07:33 and psychological well-being
2:07:34 if we assume that it is universal
2:07:38 across all cultures and across all
2:07:40 places at all times
2:07:42 this would in fact may end up causing
2:07:45 harm and going against the principle
2:07:48 right
2:07:49 so therefore we have to understand
2:07:50 psychological harms have an attachment
2:07:53 have are contingent upon
2:07:55 sociological factors uh and so that's
2:07:57 why it's important to understand
2:07:59 the particular uh culture
2:08:03 climate um you know society that we're
2:08:07 living in
2:08:07 and understand that they're not
2:08:10 transnational and they're not
2:08:11 trans-historic
2:08:16 okay let's come now to aisha
2:08:20 now of course as i'm sure
2:08:24 you you are aware uh that
2:08:27 from our tradition we know that i shall
2:08:31 was married at six years old to the
2:08:33 prophet sallam
2:08:35 and at the age of nine the marriage was
2:08:37 consummated
2:08:39 now that on its face
2:08:42 if you just looked at that in a vacuum
2:08:44 or i shouldn't say in a vacuum in
2:08:46 in our present day and age you would say
2:08:49 nine years old
2:08:51 nine and you'd maybe look around you
2:08:53 know people around you or girls around
2:08:54 you and you look them they're nine years
2:08:56 old it's like man
2:08:57 how could anyone marry a nine-year-old
2:09:00 right
2:09:00 especially someone who is 53 so maybe
2:09:03 there's this in
2:09:04 in in intuitive or rather you know
2:09:06 internal kind of like
2:09:08 you you there's this uh moral
2:09:10 incongruence
2:09:11 for lack of a better term okay but again
2:09:14 let's go back to what we spoke about in
2:09:16 terms of the harm principle
2:09:18 or not the harm principle that's
2:09:19 actually not what i should you that's
2:09:21 not the term i should use
2:09:22 but let's go back to our idea of harm
2:09:24 right that there's no
2:09:26 causing of harm and there's no
2:09:27 reciprocation of harm
2:09:29 and apply it to aisha so one of the
2:09:32 first things we
2:09:33 we look at when we're looking at mental
2:09:35 and psychological well-being
2:09:37 which again remember it's attached to
2:09:39 one's culture climate and custom
2:09:42 we see that aisha radihana that she was
2:09:45 one of the most
2:09:46 knowledgeable of the companions of the
2:09:47 prophet muhammad so someone that's going
2:09:49 to be going through some sort of
2:09:51 psychological and mental trauma and
2:09:53 issues
2:09:54 and you know where they're where they're
2:09:56 going to be going through
2:09:58 kind of a mental abuse or a
2:10:00 psychological abuse
2:10:02 uh it becomes difficult to then
2:10:06 see this person as being one of the most
2:10:08 knowledgeable
2:10:09 of the companions of the prophet
2:10:11 muhammad meaning she was a scholar in
2:10:13 her own right
2:10:14 and keep in mind when we talk about
2:10:16 scholarship remember
2:10:18 we said that islamic scholarship is not
2:10:21 like studying other things
2:10:23 okay so there's a spiritual element and
2:10:26 then there's the informational element
2:10:28 okay we spoke about that as well so that
2:10:31 being said
2:10:31 she's one she was one of the most
2:10:33 knowledgeable companions of the prophet
2:10:34 sallam
2:10:35 okay she you know in terms of uh
2:10:38 narrating hadith i think she comes in at
2:10:41 number
2:10:42 four in terms of the the number of
2:10:44 hadith so abu harar comes in at number
2:10:46 one
2:10:46 in terms of the number of hadith the
2:10:49 body of
2:10:50 the the number of narrations that are
2:10:52 that come from a narrator
2:10:54 comes number one she comes number four
2:10:56 she has 22 000
2:10:58 20 uh sorry uh 2200 around 2200 hadith
2:11:02 that she narrates now i want you to
2:11:05 think about that from the perspective
2:11:06 that there were certain companions
2:11:08 who narrated very few or none like i
2:11:10 think uh
2:11:12 and i could be wrong about this but i
2:11:13 think khalid narrated no hadith
2:11:16 right like what we know about is you
2:11:19 know from
2:11:19 other sources but he himself a hadith of
2:11:22 the prophet
2:11:22 sallam as far as i know again you might
2:11:24 need to check me on this
2:11:26 that he didn't narrate even one aisha
2:11:28 becomes one of the four most scholars of
2:11:31 this ummah
2:11:32 at her time you have people companions
2:11:35 who are extremely knowledgeable
2:11:37 going to aisha for understanding rulings
2:11:40 in certain areas
2:11:42 and that's why he's who
2:11:45 who's a who's a who's a commentator of
2:11:48 bihari he says that a quarter of
2:11:50 legalistic uh
2:11:51 juridical rulings present in the sharia
2:11:54 are by way of aisha
2:11:55 a quarter so remember that entire body
2:11:58 of
2:11:58 corpus of islamic law we're speaking
2:12:00 about when you think about the rulings
2:12:03 the responsibility for that a quarter of
2:12:04 that comes by way of aisha
2:12:07 now that's not something minor you have
2:12:10 this
2:12:11 you know a tradition that has effe that
2:12:13 that that
2:12:14 you know maybe about two billion people
2:12:16 across the world follow and a quarter of
2:12:18 the rulings
2:12:19 come from aisha so you really have to
2:12:22 think about
2:12:23 well if this was someone that had
2:12:26 a you know psychological trauma deep
2:12:29 psychological trauma
2:12:30 and you know that that she was not well
2:12:33 mentally
2:12:35 they they don't really connect right and
2:12:38 aisha even from
2:12:39 you know you look at not only the fact
2:12:40 that she is you know
2:12:42 the the the the one one of the greatest
2:12:45 scholars of this ummah
2:12:46 besides all that and the fact that she
2:12:48 narrowed so much but even that like when
2:12:50 it came to her
2:12:52 what we know about her in terms of how
2:12:54 she was
2:12:55 as a person you know she was very
2:12:57 outspoken when she voiced her opinions
2:12:59 not someone who's timid oppressed etc
2:13:02 but she would voice her opinions and be
2:13:04 very uh you know very very brazen in
2:13:06 that
2:13:06 she was very outspoken from that
2:13:08 perspective and of course
2:13:12 you know one like you you have to ask
2:13:14 someone themselves like how is your
2:13:15 psychological state
2:13:17 like how are you as a person from her
2:13:19 own description
2:13:20 when it comes to her marriage right this
2:13:23 marriage that is critiqued
2:13:24 she says that it was it was one of love
2:13:27 of dignity respect
2:13:28 and affection in fact you know coming
2:13:31 back to the term of physical harm
2:13:34 the prophet muhammad sallallahu alaihi
2:13:37 never physically harmed any family
2:13:40 member no
2:13:41 child no wife nothing right you don't
2:13:44 find that
2:13:45 you find the exact opposite you find
2:13:47 patience you find love you find
2:13:48 affection
2:13:49 and aisha is testifying that for her own
2:13:52 marriage
2:13:53 okay so uh so remember we talked about
2:13:55 physical well-being we said that
2:13:57 there was no i there's no there's no
2:14:00 evidence whatsoever
2:14:01 that the prophet sallam harmed
2:14:03 physically uh
2:14:04 his wives and specific in this case
2:14:06 aisha or any children
2:14:08 for that matter okay now what's really
2:14:11 interesting
2:14:12 is you may say okay fahad like we get it
2:14:14 but still man
2:14:15 nine years old and the thing is is
2:14:18 remember we were talking about
2:14:20 culture of earth can we apply
2:14:24 our standard our idea that nine years
2:14:27 old is too young
2:14:29 can we project that backwards like
2:14:32 can we we should ask the question
2:14:35 was it part of the social custom and
2:14:38 norm of the time
2:14:39 to marry young and we'd and we
2:14:42 would say yes it was and not only in the
2:14:44 arabian peninsula
2:14:46 as we'll present a few examples in a
2:14:47 little bit but that was across the world
2:14:49 it wasn't that oh just these
2:14:51 you know crazy backward arabs who are
2:14:53 coming out of the desert like
2:14:54 they're just here you know they're just
2:14:56 backward and crazy and you know
2:14:57 and they just you know marry little girl
2:14:59 that's not the case
2:15:01 in fact it was all over the world from
2:15:02 the roman empire to
2:15:04 all over the world okay so we asked the
2:15:07 question then
2:15:08 for the time the place and the setting
2:15:12 that that this marriage happened was it
2:15:15 part of the social mores at the time to
2:15:17 marry
2:15:18 young and we have we would say yes and
2:15:20 what's the evidence for that in the
2:15:22 sense that
2:15:23 you know how do we know this well we
2:15:25 know this because
2:15:27 we understand that the life of the
2:15:29 prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
2:15:31 was one where he had many
2:15:35 many enemies and they would stop
2:15:38 short at nothing meaning they wouldn't
2:15:40 they would go to the end of the earth
2:15:43 to try to to try to discredit the
2:15:45 prophet saws
2:15:47 they could use whatever was in their
2:15:48 arsenal right
2:15:50 so you know aside from physically going
2:15:53 to war
2:15:54 with the the with the the prophet salam
2:15:56 and the muslims because that happened
2:15:57 too
2:15:57 right i mean these were you know these
2:16:01 were
2:16:01 physical ways to stop the message of the
2:16:04 process
2:16:05 and it wasn't limited to that it was
2:16:07 trying to discredit him
2:16:09 his message and his personality and his
2:16:11 character
2:16:12 because if you could discredit his
2:16:14 character which is of course
2:16:16 what people tried to do today by
2:16:18 insinuating that
2:16:20 he was a pedophile still happening today
2:16:23 but my point is that at the time of the
2:16:25 prophet sallam
2:16:27 that there was this this
2:16:31 uh this motivation to discredit him
2:16:35 did and and what would have been what
2:16:38 would have been
2:16:39 what what we should have seen to
2:16:41 discredit the prophet sallam
2:16:42 if this was something that was not
2:16:44 normal at the time
2:16:46 would be that the enemies of the prophet
2:16:48 sallam the people trying to describe the
2:16:50 prophet sallam would have pointed this
2:16:51 out
2:16:52 ah look at this man he married a
2:16:55 nine-year-old
2:16:56 but here's the interesting thing nobody
2:16:59 mentions it
2:17:01 doesn't bring it up nobody brings it up
2:17:03 in fact
2:17:05 let's now so nobody brings it up at the
2:17:07 during the life of the prophet sallam
2:17:09 like during his lifetime
2:17:10 nobody brings it up but let's keep going
2:17:12 now when does this first become an issue
2:17:15 even when we look at uh from the from
2:17:18 the
2:17:19 from from from the western standard the
2:17:21 western academic
2:17:22 study of islam when does this become an
2:17:25 issue
2:17:25 when like when we look at polemics like
2:17:28 christians for instance we were know we
2:17:29 know that that they started to
2:17:31 they start to critique islam very early
2:17:33 on right so you have
2:17:34 one of the first critiques uh or one of
2:17:37 the first uh
2:17:38 polemics of islam comes by way of john
2:17:40 of damascus who was
2:17:42 a i think he served as as as a minister
2:17:44 a christian minister
2:17:46 in the umayyad uh omad rule the umayyad
2:17:50 dynasty
2:17:51 and so he wrote a lot on trying to
2:17:53 discredit islam
2:17:55 right now many of that had to do with
2:17:56 like the prophet saw being a false
2:17:58 prophet
2:17:59 that he stole uh material from
2:18:02 christian and jewish scriptures and so
2:18:04 on and so forth
2:18:05 and then in that early writing of john
2:18:08 of damascus you don't find this issue
2:18:11 it's not even mentioned right when does
2:18:13 it first get mentioned
2:18:14 in the the the western uh you know
2:18:18 western academic tradition especially
2:18:20 when it comes to islamic state when does
2:18:22 it first get mentioned
2:18:23 it gets mentioned first as late as the
2:18:25 20th century
2:18:27 the first mention that we you could you
2:18:29 can find is in 1905
2:18:32 david margolieth in his rise of islam
2:18:34 mentions
2:18:36 something about uh aisha and the prophet
2:18:38 sallam being a
2:18:39 a a what did he say like an ill-advised
2:18:43 union
2:18:44 right and and what that points to is
2:18:46 that
2:18:47 even within the rest of the world it was
2:18:49 not considered
2:18:51 against the social mores or wasn't
2:18:53 considered as something immoral
2:18:55 to mary young
2:19:02 all right so remember we said that
2:19:04 social customs are going to change
2:19:07 and when we try to take our
2:19:10 current present social norms and social
2:19:14 mores and we project them backwards
2:19:18 this can be very problematic
2:19:21 okay um you know and then i think
2:19:25 one one this phenomena of taking our
2:19:28 current
2:19:28 worldview our current society and our
2:19:31 current
2:19:31 uh morals and then projecting them
2:19:33 backwards throughout history
2:19:35 i think the term for that is presentism
2:19:37 right and historians have to deal with
2:19:38 this as well like we're
2:19:40 in a certain place and time when we're
2:19:42 studying history
2:19:43 how do we you know decrease our own
2:19:46 uh socio-ethnic biases to the minimum
2:19:50 to not cast judgment upon people of the
2:19:52 past
2:19:53 um because we understand that those
2:19:56 biases are there
2:19:57 all right so for instance we have a
2:19:59 couple of of examples here so
2:20:01 professor of history margaret wade
2:20:03 labraj
2:20:04 she says that it needs to be remembered
2:20:06 and we're talking now about
2:20:08 kind of the world in general at that
2:20:09 time uh it needs to be remembered that
2:20:11 many medieval widows were not old
2:20:14 important uh uh heresies were often
2:20:17 married between the ages of five and ten
2:20:19 five and ten and might find themselves
2:20:22 widowed
2:20:23 while still in their teens right and by
2:20:26 the way you know what's
2:20:27 interesting uh i think dr jonathan brown
2:20:29 mentioned that he read something about
2:20:31 imam
2:20:31 shafi and that imam sharafi
2:20:34 he was a judge or served as a as
2:20:38 a as a judge or a governor of yemen i
2:20:41 think he was a judge of yemen
2:20:42 and he says that there was a case that
2:20:44 was brought before him
2:20:46 the case of a 21 year old grandmother
2:20:50 and what what that means is in other
2:20:51 words that you know
2:20:53 a woman got married and then conceived a
2:20:56 child at 10 years old
2:20:58 and then her child conceived a child at
2:21:00 10 years old that's what a 21 year old
2:21:02 grandmother implies
2:21:03 it just you know to kind of highlight
2:21:05 the idea of what the world was like at
2:21:07 that time
2:21:08 so um you know professor margaret here
2:21:11 says that it needs to be remembered that
2:21:12 many medieval widows were not old
2:21:14 okay uh professor richard wordley and
2:21:17 professor stevens
2:21:18 small bone they mentioned in medieval
2:21:20 and early modern
2:21:21 european societies the age of marriage
2:21:24 remained low
2:21:25 with documented cases of brides as young
2:21:27 as seven years
2:21:29 although marriages were typically not
2:21:30 consummated until the girl reached
2:21:33 puberty
2:21:34 at the start of the 19th century in
2:21:37 england
2:21:37 it was legal to have sex with a 10 year
2:21:40 old girl
2:21:42 now this last point that's up there we
2:21:44 are here today because of such
2:21:45 social practices uh is this perhaps
2:21:49 a self-defeating objection meaning if
2:21:52 we're going to critique that
2:21:54 uh is there a problem to say like okay
2:21:57 well what they did
2:21:58 and marrying so young was wrong well i
2:22:01 don't know if we could do that and i'll
2:22:03 give you a
2:22:03 a kind of a personal example
2:22:07 so uh i i went to my my father once told
2:22:10 me
2:22:10 he said that i'm not the the birthday
2:22:13 that he had he's told me that
2:22:14 my birthday that's listed on my on my on
2:22:17 my passport
2:22:18 um i'm not really sure if that's my
2:22:19 birthday and i said
2:22:21 what do you mean you're not sure if
2:22:22 that's your birthday like how what
2:22:24 he says because we didn't you know at
2:22:26 the time uh
2:22:27 because he was coming from the the uh
2:22:31 the indian subcontinent so he says at
2:22:33 the time they didn't they didn't issue
2:22:34 birth certificates
2:22:35 when children were born and so i really
2:22:38 don't know when so we just assumed it
2:22:39 was
2:22:40 april 6th of just random date i don't
2:22:42 know if that's what he chose but some
2:22:43 date
2:22:44 april 6th then just chose a year and
2:22:46 that was that
2:22:47 um and so this i was i thought about
2:22:49 this i said wow that's so strange and so
2:22:52 i went to my grandmother and i asked her
2:22:54 i said when was
2:22:55 dad born when right when when did when
2:22:57 was born she said um
2:22:59 you know i think he was born in the
2:23:01 spring
2:23:03 you know and so even like any sort of
2:23:05 specific year specific month it was just
2:23:07 it she couldn't really you know she all
2:23:10 she could say that he was born in the
2:23:11 spring
2:23:12 now the thing is um when i inquired
2:23:15 about
2:23:16 her being married she said that i i i
2:23:19 from what i remember she said she was
2:23:20 very very young
2:23:22 right maybe 10 11 12 maybe nine like
2:23:25 it's just
2:23:25 very young and
2:23:29 so as i started thinking about my
2:23:31 grandmother who by the way
2:23:33 uh my father's mother is still alive now
2:23:36 to put this into perspective
2:23:38 uh and this is why i'm saying that if
2:23:39 she says she was married very young
2:23:41 9 10 11 whatever it was that that i
2:23:44 believe her because
2:23:45 i have a 16 year old son and that's and
2:23:48 my 16 year old son can go
2:23:50 and interact with his great grandmother
2:23:53 and i don't mean someone who's just kind
2:23:55 of not there or just kind of you know
2:23:57 almost
2:23:58 no someone who's very lively can
2:24:00 interact has full-fledged conversation
2:24:02 everything
2:24:03 and so he can interact with his
2:24:04 great-grandmother and i started thinking
2:24:07 imagine if i went to my grandmother
2:24:09 right my son's great-grandmother
2:24:11 and this woman who had seven
2:24:15 children and and these seven children
2:24:18 and you know one of them was is an
2:24:20 engineer one of them's a doctor one
2:24:22 in this obviously my my uncle my aunt et
2:24:24 cetera my dad
2:24:25 um you know actually two of them are
2:24:26 doctors one of them is an engineer one
2:24:28 of them
2:24:28 i mean just different professions and
2:24:30 then they in turn
2:24:32 had children meaning my generation and
2:24:34 they have various people in various
2:24:36 areas
2:24:37 you know myself or whoever it might be
2:24:39 and then now i have children
2:24:41 who are in high school and going on
2:24:43 college and so on and so forth
2:24:45 all of this now imagine if i went i
2:24:48 started thinking imagine if i went to my
2:24:49 grandmother
2:24:50 and told her you know your husband
2:24:54 he was um you know what he did was
2:24:56 morally
2:24:57 incorrect he was a pedophile for
2:25:00 marrying me at such a young age
2:25:02 you know what she'd probably tell me
2:25:06 have you lost your mind right a
2:25:09 relationship that was wonderful
2:25:11 full of love and mercy and and
2:25:13 companionship
2:25:14 that had beautiful children and full
2:25:17 life
2:25:17 and i'm gonna come now and and say that
2:25:19 about her husband
2:25:21 even if her husband was old i mean he
2:25:22 passed away many many years ago
2:25:25 it would be how wrong would that be for
2:25:27 me to say something like that to her
2:25:29 and yet you know and and why would that
2:25:32 be wrong
2:25:33 because at the time in the situation
2:25:35 that she was in
2:25:36 in the culture the climate at that time
2:25:39 it was
2:25:39 not considered bad to be married at such
2:25:42 a young age
2:25:44 in fact uh i think even dr jonathan
2:25:46 brown was mentioning
2:25:47 from you know if you don't like the the
2:25:49 the fact that it's a
2:25:50 example from the subcontinent right the
2:25:52 indian subcontinent because
2:25:53 obviously that's the developing world
2:25:55 and so that's they're obviously backward
2:25:57 whatever it might be
2:25:58 well dr jonathan brown mentions you know
2:26:01 a very something very similar in his own
2:26:02 family
2:26:03 he says in my own family he had someone
2:26:06 in his family
2:26:07 maybe you know granddad great granddad
2:26:09 whatever it might be someone by the name
2:26:11 of captain
2:26:12 fm smith and he and he was and he was he
2:26:15 participated
2:26:16 in the civil war he was from texas and
2:26:19 he says that
2:26:21 when he you know he went to a certain
2:26:22 place went and saw a little girl of six
2:26:24 like he went to his friend's house he
2:26:25 saw his little girl of six he's six
2:26:27 years old and she was playing he says
2:26:29 and he said i want to marry her. now
2:26:31 this is here in the states
2:26:32 texas you know he's from texas
2:26:34 participated in the civil war
2:26:36 and he says i want to marry her when you
2:26:38 know she's six years old he made the
2:26:39 decision to marry her and married her
2:26:40 very young
2:26:41 um and and and and from that
2:26:45 you have talked to jonathan brown right
2:26:48 from that relationship
2:26:49 and in fact he says that my uh
2:26:52 you know this woman who married um you
2:26:54 know maybe his grandmother great grandma
2:26:56 whatever it was
2:26:57 was able to get a pension in the 1920s
2:27:00 meaning
2:27:01 because her husband had died and there
2:27:03 was a pension due to her
2:27:04 based on the fact that he participated
2:27:06 in civil war and the government owes
2:27:07 that to her
2:27:08 she got it at a very young age right
2:27:12 and so this this idea that we're going
2:27:15 to take a
2:27:16 current practice based on a number
2:27:19 to say okay 9 years old 8 years old 10
2:27:21 years old 12 years old
2:27:23 superimpose it and assume that it's
2:27:25 trans historic and transnational
2:27:28 in fact could be very problematic right
2:27:31 okay so let's move on
2:27:37 now here's where here's where one of the
2:27:39 issues comes up by the way
2:27:40 that when we do this when we try to take
2:27:43 a
2:27:44 a current you know social
2:27:48 norm and project that backwards that
2:27:51 leads to
2:27:52 an acronistic conclusion now what do i
2:27:54 mean by an acronistic conclusion
2:27:56 an anachronism basically is something
2:27:59 that's misplaced in time
2:28:02 okay so if i came to you and i said you
2:28:03 know when you know
2:28:05 so and so roman general was about you
2:28:07 know was trying to figure out when to
2:28:09 attack the enemy
2:28:10 he looked at his watch and decided it
2:28:12 would be at four o'clock
2:28:14 now romans didn't have watches
2:28:18 so that would be and that would be
2:28:19 incorrect that would be an anachronism
2:28:21 to say that right so when we so what
2:28:24 we're trying
2:28:25 the idea is is to project our
2:28:28 present uh culture and society
2:28:31 back on the past and assume that it's
2:28:34 universal it's it's trans-historic
2:28:37 it is a mistake it's an anachronism okay
2:28:39 why
2:28:40 does it arise what happens well
2:28:43 i think this uh this statement from uh
2:28:46 sian halcrow and nancy tyle tales if i
2:28:50 from pronounced that right
2:28:51 from a study that was done called the
2:28:53 investigation of childhood and social
2:28:55 age
2:28:56 problems and prospects here's what they
2:28:58 mentioned
2:28:59 they say much of the tension in the
2:29:01 investigation of age
2:29:03 in the past arises from the assumption
2:29:05 that we can link
2:29:07 biological to social age
2:29:10 distinctions between the categories
2:29:12 particularly
2:29:13 child adult are
2:29:16 the are the product of the current
2:29:18 limitations of osteological methods for
2:29:21 age estimation in adults
2:29:23 and that using biological developmental
2:29:25 standards
2:29:26 for aging results in the construction of
2:29:29 artificial divisions
2:29:31 of social and mental development between
2:29:32 those categories
2:29:34 also in contrast to modern western
2:29:36 society where social age is closely
2:29:38 linked
2:29:39 to chronological age in many traditional
2:29:41 societies
2:29:42 stages of maturation are acknowledged in
2:29:45 defining age
2:29:46 these stages take into account not only
2:29:48 the chronological age
2:29:49 but also the skills personality and
2:29:51 capacities of the individual
2:29:53 so let's let's let's let's analyze this
2:29:55 for a second
2:29:57 you know they mention a few things one
2:29:59 biological age
2:30:01 that we understand that a person is
2:30:03 going to be
2:30:04 uh mature based on their
2:30:08 uh their the their biology
2:30:12 um and then you have the concept of a
2:30:14 social age
2:30:15 society determines determines when they
2:30:18 are
2:30:18 when they are mature now in in
2:30:21 pre-modern societies
2:30:23 these two concepts were linked that
2:30:25 someone would say if someone is
2:30:26 biologically mature
2:30:27 then therefore they are considered
2:30:30 mature
2:30:31 okay um now does that present a problem
2:30:35 it may
2:30:36 because someone may be biologically
2:30:38 mature but
2:30:39 they're not let's say mentally mature or
2:30:41 mature based on the society that they're
2:30:43 in
2:30:44 okay and then a clear example of that is
2:30:46 our modern age
2:30:48 you know you can say people mature
2:30:51 become biologically mature
2:30:52 but mentally they may not be that mature
2:30:55 and this is going to be different in
2:30:57 different places even today
2:30:59 and there's a number of factors related
2:31:00 to that so someone let's say
2:31:02 who was born and brought up in the u.s
2:31:05 uh
2:31:05 you know who had a relatively
2:31:07 comfortable lifestyle
2:31:09 you know they had their parents who were
2:31:10 well off and
2:31:12 for them you know they're gonna have
2:31:13 things like okay we're gonna go to high
2:31:14 school we're gonna go to college
2:31:16 graduate school whatever it might be the
2:31:18 idea
2:31:19 that they are going to mature at a
2:31:22 slower rate because things are
2:31:23 easier for them as compared to someone
2:31:26 living in another part of the world
2:31:28 where life is more precarious we can't
2:31:30 discount that
2:31:31 right someone living in in a place where
2:31:34 life is more precarious
2:31:35 where in order to get water you have to
2:31:37 walk for miles and miles and miles
2:31:39 and then you can basically go to a well
2:31:41 take out water
2:31:42 then take it back purify it that type of
2:31:45 difficult lifestyle
2:31:47 when someone's exposed to that early on
2:31:49 they're going to
2:31:50 naturally mature faster than someone
2:31:53 that has
2:31:54 water that they just open the tap they
2:31:56 wash their face and they turn off the
2:31:57 tap
2:31:58 and that's not uh again that's that's
2:32:00 not we can't just discount that
2:32:02 and that's we're talking about one time
2:32:04 period right and we're just talking
2:32:05 about two separate societies
2:32:07 so you have a traditional society and
2:32:09 you have a kind of a more modern
2:32:10 contemporary western society
2:32:12 even between that you would find that
2:32:14 there'd be a difference in
2:32:15 what we would call mature right someone
2:32:18 that has a more precarious life
2:32:20 has gone through more hardships is going
2:32:22 to mature more right
2:32:24 as opposed to someone that has things
2:32:25 that are easy they're not going to have
2:32:27 the same level of maturity from
2:32:28 just a kind of a psychological mental
2:32:32 uh or or even cognitive uh
2:32:35 viewpoint they're going to be different
2:32:36 maturity levels now
2:32:39 so so so there is there is still a
2:32:41 problem by assigning
2:32:43 biology to uh considering
2:32:47 assigning age or assigning maturity to
2:32:50 biology
2:32:51 versus assigning uh maturity to society
2:32:54 right so the distinction between
2:32:56 biological age and linking that to
2:32:57 social age
2:32:58 this is generally how things worked
2:33:01 in the islamic framework and in much of
2:33:03 the world
2:33:05 okay so for instance within the islamic
2:33:07 framework
2:33:08 how someone would be considered or what
2:33:10 in terms of legality someone's
2:33:11 considered mature
2:33:13 it would not be based on chronology it
2:33:16 wouldn't based on a certain number per
2:33:17 se
2:33:18 i mean sometimes it would no doubt but
2:33:21 many times
2:33:22 when judgment was supposed to be made it
2:33:24 would be based
2:33:25 on how mature the person is and one of
2:33:28 the standards that was used was biology
2:33:30 okay so if the so for instance when it
2:33:33 comes to the
2:33:34 the the the the the the spiritual angle
2:33:39 we see that when is a so the scholars
2:33:41 ask when is a person
2:33:42 held accountable for their deeds before
2:33:45 allah right when is a person baalir
2:33:48 so scholars made this distinction that
2:33:50 when a when when a person hits puberty
2:33:52 this is when
2:33:53 they're mature enough their ballet right
2:33:56 that they're they've reached the state
2:33:58 where now they'll be held accountable
2:34:00 for their deeds whereas before this
2:34:02 point
2:34:02 they would not be held accountable okay
2:34:05 so
2:34:05 there is taklif like their mukalif
2:34:09 they're responsible for their deeds now
2:34:10 before allah
2:34:12 as opposed to before this there may be a
2:34:14 time period where they are
2:34:16 mameyas in other words they can
2:34:18 distinguish between right and wrong so
2:34:20 there is a stage
2:34:21 where a child can distinguish between
2:34:23 right and wrong and that's considered
2:34:25 romanians they have to me
2:34:26 there's there's distinguishing between
2:34:28 right and wrong
2:34:30 right and so you have you know someone
2:34:33 who's mumey is
2:34:34 someone who's mukalif what's the
2:34:36 difference between that like
2:34:37 how do you determine who is mamiya's and
2:34:39 who's mukhalik well
2:34:40 puberty was taken as the standard okay
2:34:44 now again this has to do with the the
2:34:46 idea of
2:34:47 how your deeds what you'll be held
2:34:49 accountable for and this has
2:34:50 ramifications on rulings like you know
2:34:52 if a child makes hajj
2:34:54 have they fulfilled a requirement and
2:34:56 you know obviously this this has
2:34:58 uh this gets into that discussion my
2:35:01 point in mentioning this
2:35:02 is that you know uh pre-modern societies
2:35:05 did use biology as a means to understand
2:35:08 maturity
2:35:09 right to understand you know this this
2:35:11 what they're talking about linking
2:35:12 biological age to social age
2:35:14 okay however in the modern world
2:35:17 what's being linked to social age is
2:35:19 chronological age
2:35:21 but this becomes a bit of a problem
2:35:24 because if we're going to link
2:35:26 chronological age
2:35:28 to social age it means that we're not
2:35:30 taking into consideration
2:35:32 different levels of maturity at
2:35:33 different ages we
2:35:35 just assume 18 is mature you know you
2:35:38 know
2:35:38 you know 16 is mature but i know a lot
2:35:41 of
2:35:42 40 year olds that are still playing
2:35:43 video games and i would say well i don't
2:35:45 know if that if he's really mature
2:35:46 right so i mean how do we determine that
2:35:50 you know an interesting exercise i
2:35:52 always tell people i say you know when
2:35:53 you go to these uh
2:35:55 at least in in some of the the
2:35:57 pharmacies here they have these machines
2:35:58 where you can stick your finger in
2:36:00 and they tell you your biological age
2:36:03 right and you get really happy when your
2:36:05 biological age
2:36:07 is low compared to how much you how old
2:36:09 you really are right so if you're 50 and
2:36:10 your biological comes out
2:36:12 your biological age comes out to be like
2:36:14 40 42
2:36:15 you're like wow and someone's like oh
2:36:16 you're in really great shape your
2:36:17 biological age is
2:36:19 is much less than your actual age right
2:36:22 chronology or a chronological age can be
2:36:25 very problematic
2:36:26 right
2:36:30 and and that's why we see that when we
2:36:32 look at secular law
2:36:35 using chronological age is problematic
2:36:38 because it's very arbitrary
2:36:39 right and this can lead to a number of
2:36:41 number of issues so for example
2:36:43 in new york the the age of uh consent is
2:36:46 18.
2:36:47 right now the exception there is that
2:36:50 you know
2:36:51 to the exception to being to to to
2:36:54 to consent at 18 is that children of 16
2:36:57 and 17
2:36:58 are allowed to marry with parental
2:36:59 approval and 1415
2:37:01 they can marry if they have the
2:37:02 permission from a judge in addition to
2:37:04 their parents
2:37:05 so it's not like 18 is a cutoff but you
2:37:07 can even get married as
2:37:08 as young as 14. north carolina
2:37:12 14 years old scotland 16 years old
2:37:15 colombia
2:37:16 marriage is legal at the age of 18. boys
2:37:18 over 14 girls over 12
2:37:20 may marry with consent excuse me of
2:37:22 their parents
2:37:23 here's the thing in one country you're
2:37:25 considered legally married
2:37:26 in another country you're considered a
2:37:29 potential
2:37:29 pedophile so the reality is is that
2:37:33 there is no such idea of a
2:37:36 universal age of consent you don't have
2:37:39 it
2:37:40 across the world i know we like to think
2:37:41 like oh 18 across the world
2:37:43 it's not really true right there is no
2:37:45 universal age of consent
2:37:46 so in one place you would be considered
2:37:49 perfect perfectly it would be perfectly
2:37:50 legal
2:37:51 you'd be in your right to get married at
2:37:53 16. in another place
2:37:55 you would be considered you'd be looked
2:37:56 down upon right
2:37:58 um so it's very arbitrary especially
2:38:01 when you're going to
2:38:02 you know link social age
2:38:05 with chronological age all right and
2:38:09 so here here we go you know hamza
2:38:12 specifically told me
2:38:13 man you got to stay away from using
2:38:14 comic book references and then in my
2:38:16 brain i said
2:38:17 oh so he wants me to use comic book
2:38:19 references i got it
2:38:20 okay so i i i i wouldn't be
2:38:24 uh putting in my own flavor if i didn't
2:38:26 add a certain comic book reference
2:38:28 all right talking about the linking of
2:38:31 biological age to social age versus
2:38:34 chronological age to social age
2:38:36 uh there was this episode of young
2:38:38 justice okay so
2:38:40 young justices show produced by dc
2:38:42 comics
2:38:43 and uh you know included in you know the
2:38:46 justice league
2:38:47 as you can see there's batman superman
2:38:49 wonder woman etc
2:38:51 and they have and then so these are all
2:38:52 considered the senior leaguers like the
2:38:54 justice league this is the
2:38:56 this is the league that every superhero
2:38:58 wants to join or something
2:38:59 now you have the a a a subset of that
2:39:03 which is called the young justice league
2:39:04 or something like that it's basically
2:39:05 like young teenagers or young
2:39:07 you know you know people not mature
2:39:10 enough to join the justice league
2:39:12 now what you see there in the picture is
2:39:14 that they're having a round table
2:39:15 meeting
2:39:16 and they're asking you know should you
2:39:19 know
2:39:19 is is super boy the picture on
2:39:22 on the on the left there uh in the black
2:39:25 t-shirt
2:39:26 is should he be uh inaugurated within
2:39:29 the justice league because you know he's
2:39:31 he's fought many battles and so on and
2:39:32 so forth and you know helped the cause
2:39:34 of justice or whatever it might be
2:39:36 now one of the complaints that one of
2:39:38 the the issues that came up they said
2:39:39 yeah but
2:39:40 according to league rules you have to be
2:39:43 18
2:39:44 at a minimum to join the league
2:39:47 and you know he is three years old now
2:39:50 you might be wait wait how is he three
2:39:52 years old
2:39:52 well because he's a clone of superman
2:39:55 and so
2:39:55 he was basically he was constructed in a
2:39:57 lab three years ago
2:39:59 so now the issue arises well then
2:40:02 do we break that rule or how do we get
2:40:04 around this then someone brings up
2:40:06 what about mcgann right the the the
2:40:09 martian that you see on the right there
2:40:11 i mean if we're gonna go by age if we're
2:40:13 gonna go by only by maturity meaning
2:40:15 like we're just gonna judge a maturity
2:40:17 um you know by the way megan is a
2:40:19 character she's a bit immature
2:40:21 right so she's like uh like an early
2:40:23 someone like an early teen
2:40:24 like 12 13 14 maybe 15 at best right how
2:40:27 she talks and things like that
2:40:29 so someone said well if we're going to
2:40:31 go by age and we're going to reject
2:40:33 um super boy right the clone
2:40:37 then we should allow mcgann to enter
2:40:40 the justice league because she's 55
2:40:43 years old
2:40:44 the martians mature a lot slower
2:40:46 apparently in this world
2:40:47 and so she should she's definitely a
2:40:48 shoe-in to be a leaguer
2:40:50 so this becomes a problem like who do we
2:40:52 let in who do not let in
2:40:53 if our standard is chronological age i'm
2:40:56 not going to get into the conclusion
2:40:57 there's just a whole bunch of confusion
2:40:58 whatever it might be
2:41:00 but we understand the the issue now
2:41:02 right that our modern world
2:41:03 when we attach a chronological age to
2:41:06 maturity
2:41:07 or social maturity this can become very
2:41:10 problematic
2:41:12 okay so at the end here's where we want
2:41:14 to understand this discussion
2:41:16 and conclude this discussion that we
2:41:19 cannot
2:41:19 superimpose a number
2:41:23 across various cultures and various time
2:41:26 periods
2:41:27 right we cannot say that culture and
2:41:29 custom is
2:41:30 transnational and uh trans-historic
2:41:33 right skull
2:41:33 our scholars understood this and even
2:41:35 from our perspective we understand this
2:41:38 yes it becomes a bit you know it makes
2:41:40 us uncomfortable
2:41:41 but we have to ask the question why does
2:41:44 it make it makes them comfortable
2:41:46 does it make us uncomfortable because of
2:41:47 the number does it make
2:41:49 us uncomfortable because of our our our
2:41:52 the place and time and setting that we
2:41:54 live in
2:41:55 or is it something else and what it
2:41:56 comes down to
2:41:58 what we would say is the idea of harm
2:42:01 remember
2:42:02 one of the issues why we're
2:42:04 uncomfortable is because we see uh you
2:42:06 know
2:42:06 children being used in pornography right
2:42:08 for the viewing pleasure of people we
2:42:10 see sex
2:42:11 child sex trafficking and all of that so
2:42:12 it comes down
2:42:14 you know at the core as an issue of harm
2:42:16 because remember me going to my
2:42:17 grandmother and saying oh
2:42:18 you know your husband was a pedophile i
2:42:20 mean that's also a type in a sense a
2:42:22 type of
2:42:23 you know quote-unquote harm because i'm
2:42:25 you know it's almost offensive to her
2:42:27 right so what so let's come down and
2:42:30 understand that the issue
2:42:31 isn't about a number but it's about harm
2:42:35 harm and benefits all right so we'll
2:42:38 conclude this uh
2:42:39 this example by saying by by this
2:42:41 statement from
2:42:43 zahara he writes in islami he says the
2:42:46 defining principle within the sharia
2:42:49 is that any harm is to be warded off as
2:42:52 long
2:42:52 as it can be avoided as the safeguarding
2:42:55 of man and preventing harm from
2:42:57 befalling upon him
2:42:59 in any way whatsoever is a firm
2:43:01 established
2:43:03 principle in islam remember we talked
2:43:04 about uh heuristics et cetera it's one
2:43:07 of one one of the heuristics that we use
2:43:09 all of the legalistic juristic rulings
2:43:12 are built upon achieving
2:43:14 the benefit of the slaves of allah and
2:43:16 every right is stipulated
2:43:18 with avoiding any harm and i think this
2:43:21 is you know
2:43:22 when you look at to kind of take this
2:43:24 from a different angle when you look at
2:43:25 the
2:43:26 sharia and you start understanding the
2:43:27 principles legal principles and things
2:43:29 like that
2:43:29 and you compare it to other legal
2:43:31 systems in a way that's unbiased that's
2:43:33 that's difficult obviously we live in
2:43:35 the modern world some of us live in the
2:43:37 west
2:43:38 but you really you you really are
2:43:41 impressed with it
2:43:42 right and uh the other day i was i was
2:43:45 listening to
2:43:46 um a podcast where they were talking
2:43:49 about the u.s constitution
2:43:51 and there was a play that a woman had
2:43:53 put on and
2:43:54 by the way the podcast called
2:43:55 throughline a play that a woman had
2:43:57 put on where she had been brought up and
2:44:00 it's very
2:44:01 interesting that she would as a child do
2:44:03 plays related to the constitution
2:44:06 meaning the place she would act out how
2:44:07 great the constitution the united states
2:44:09 is how wonderful it is
2:44:10 and she says that when she matured she
2:44:12 realized that
2:44:14 you know it still had flaws as as a
2:44:17 document
2:44:18 that's there as a legal document as a
2:44:20 constitution
2:44:21 it was there to serve it was there to
2:44:23 protect and yet in her
2:44:25 in her in her experience when it was put
2:44:28 to the test
2:44:29 many times it didn't protect so one of
2:44:31 the examples she gave was a case
2:44:33 where you know a woman comes in to a
2:44:36 police station
2:44:37 says you know my husband who was beating
2:44:39 me uh you know he just came and took my
2:44:41 children
2:44:42 and you need to do something about it he
2:44:43 has a restraining order that i had we
2:44:45 had
2:44:46 issued and you signed off on she told
2:44:48 the police officers this
2:44:49 the police officer said okay wait till
2:44:50 10 wait till two and around two o'clock
2:44:52 in the morning
2:44:53 the husband shows up at the police
2:44:55 station with a gun in his hand
2:44:57 and he walks in and shoots himself
2:45:00 and when they go out to the car they
2:45:02 find all four of her children
2:45:04 he had killed them so the lady then sued
2:45:07 the police department
2:45:08 and the case went to the supreme court
2:45:10 and
2:45:11 the supreme court went back and forth
2:45:13 and discussed the term
2:45:15 shall what did it mean when it says that
2:45:18 the
2:45:18 that the the police department or
2:45:20 whatever whatever the constitution says
2:45:22 about
2:45:22 shall protect so the conclusion that
2:45:25 came is that the word shall does not
2:45:26 mean
2:45:26 must it's not necessary and so from from
2:45:29 her own
2:45:30 personal experience this became a
2:45:32 failing of the
2:45:33 of the constitution you know um and of
2:45:36 course there were other areas that said
2:45:37 the constitution was really great you
2:45:39 know that it did actually serve its
2:45:40 purposes
2:45:41 you have positive rights and negative
2:45:42 rights and again that's a whole another
2:45:44 discussion
2:45:45 but the point where i'm what we want to
2:45:47 conclude from from from this section
2:45:49 is that understand again what
2:45:53 when you are now navigating a certain
2:45:56 something that you may consider a doubt
2:45:59 one of the ways to one of the main ways
2:46:02 to navigate that
2:46:03 is studying the topic in detail okay
2:46:06 understanding the islamic tradition and
2:46:08 understanding how deep
2:46:09 our own scholarship has gone into
2:46:13 you know expounding upon these issues
2:46:16 way before you and i came onto the scene
2:46:18 okay all right
2:46:20 so let's go ahead and uh conclude this
2:46:22 uh the second example of aisha but let
2:46:24 me not
2:46:25 leave you in a vacuum and let's
2:46:28 let's stop on this question of what
2:46:30 should you study well first of all i
2:46:32 think we need to understand when we're
2:46:33 looking at our strategies
2:46:35 uh when we started started this webinar
2:46:37 we said you had the strategy of being
2:46:38 be aware no attention make distinction
2:46:40 your environment
2:46:41 and today we talked about studying islam
2:46:43 or to study islam
2:46:45 some of the strategies will happen
2:46:47 before the shobah hits or before you're
2:46:49 exposed to it right
2:46:50 so be aware no attention some of them
2:46:54 some of the strategies before and after
2:46:56 make the distinction that can happen
2:46:57 before that can happen after your
2:46:58 environment again
2:46:59 before you want to be cautious of that
2:47:01 and after you want to remove yourself
2:47:02 from a certain environment
2:47:04 what about studying islam well
2:47:07 i think that you need both before and
2:47:09 after
2:47:10 when a certain when you're when when you
2:47:13 said okay well i've got this question
2:47:14 and it's kind of nagging me
2:47:16 whatever it might be then it it's
2:47:18 required
2:47:19 you should go and study it in detail
2:47:21 don't take a don't rely on just a
2:47:24 heuristic
2:47:25 right that we that that we use as human
2:47:28 beings and say well it must be that
2:47:30 go and deeply research it and study it
2:47:32 now that's afterwards
2:47:34 but in addition to that i would say that
2:47:36 have a
2:47:37 program for yourself of studying islam
2:47:40 on a consistent basis
2:47:42 because again remember we said that the
2:47:45 study of islam
2:47:46 is very different than the study of any
2:47:48 other subject it's not just abstract
2:47:50 knowledge
2:47:51 but it needs to have an impact on your
2:47:53 being and therefore
2:47:54 consistently studying islam builds the
2:47:57 knowledge
2:47:58 but also has an effect on your being has
2:48:00 an effect on your world view
2:48:02 so have some sort of a program where
2:48:04 you're connecting with the quran
2:48:06 right and again this program i mean
2:48:09 there is so much that's available out
2:48:10 there now
2:48:11 you can pick right whatever you know as
2:48:14 you say whatever floats your boat
2:48:15 whatever you like pick a particular
2:48:18 program
2:48:19 you know start the program even if it's
2:48:21 10 20 minutes a day
2:48:23 but make it consistent and start in
2:48:26 earnest with sincerity the study of
2:48:29 islam
2:48:30 over the long term so this is why we say
2:48:32 this would be before
2:48:34 you know the shubohat hit and by the way
2:48:37 when you've now equipped yourself with
2:48:40 the study of islam on
2:48:41 from you know preceding the hitting of
2:48:43 the shoba
2:48:44 it doesn't it doesn't become a shobba
2:48:47 anymore
2:48:47 okay and one of the examples i'm going
2:48:49 to i'm going to you know
2:48:51 kind of you know bear myself now i'm
2:48:53 going to kind of open myself up now
2:48:55 you know the issue of aisha that we just
2:48:57 discussed
2:48:58 um alhamdulillah it was never really an
2:49:02 issue for me
2:49:03 like i kind of early honors to like look
2:49:04 this is the prophet salallahu
2:49:07 right and all of the evidence and
2:49:09 everything that i read about this man
2:49:11 sallallahu
2:49:12 islam and here's this issue and
2:49:15 when someone told and and when you and i
2:49:16 i think i just kind of
2:49:18 briefly looked at the idea of like well
2:49:20 it wasn't the culture and custom of the
2:49:21 people
2:49:22 and that was it and that was it you know
2:49:24 and i'm not saying that i'm not saying
2:49:26 that to
2:49:26 to downplay the issue i'm just saying as
2:49:28 a personal
2:49:30 uh kind of from my viewpoint i mean
2:49:33 there were other things that were issues
2:49:34 don't get me wrong
2:49:35 but from this particular issue
2:49:38 alhamdulillah wasn't and i attribute
2:49:39 that obviously first and foremost to
2:49:41 allah
2:49:42 who is the one who guides all of us but
2:49:45 also because there was
2:49:47 some sort of uh some sort of a study
2:49:50 that preceded my exposure to the issue
2:49:53 right
2:49:54 and allah knows best so we'll go ahead
2:49:57 and conclude there
2:49:58 uh subhanallah
2:50:14 you