Peace, War & The Purpose of Prophethood (2020-11-28) ​

0:00:01 okay salaam alaikum brothers and sisters
0:00:03 welcome to
0:00:04 uh another or the second part of this
0:00:07 sapient series on the prophet sallallahu
0:00:09 alaihi
0:00:10 uh last week we had started
0:00:13 a presentation on the truthful
0:00:16 uh the claim of the prophet sallallahu
0:00:18 alaihi regards to him claiming that he
0:00:20 was the messenger of god
0:00:21 and the truthful nature of the claim and
0:00:23 he really broke that down in a lot of
0:00:24 detail
0:00:25 today we are continuing with the series
0:00:27 with shakhtar
0:00:29 who is going to be covering the topic uh
0:00:31 war peace and the purpose of prophethood
0:00:33 challenges will be a very interesting
0:00:35 discussion or not a discussion a
0:00:37 presentation
0:00:38 and then we'll be taking questions at
0:00:39 the end inshaallah so without further
0:00:41 ado salaam alaikum
0:00:42 how are you
0:00:51 good to be here especially with yourself
0:00:55 yeah we've done a few live streams in a
0:00:56 few different places this is the this is
0:00:58 the first for both of us
0:01:01 so without further ado i'm going to
0:01:02 leave it to you i'm going to pop off
0:01:04 screen
0:01:04 i'm going to pop on your slides and
0:01:06 you'll you'll you're good to go whenever
0:01:08 you're ready inshallah
0:01:09 sounds good inshallah okay let me know
0:01:12 when the slides are up
0:01:14 yup give me a second
0:01:21 oh there we go okay there you go you're
0:01:23 good to go knobs perfect okay
0:01:28 [Music]
0:01:30 so welcome to our uh second session
0:01:35 and uh the title of this particular
0:01:36 session is called peace war and the
0:01:38 purpose of prophethood
0:01:40 now i'm not really sure what you think
0:01:43 this is going to be about
0:01:44 uh whether you think we're going to be
0:01:46 looking at certain extremist groups
0:01:48 uh islamophobia whatever it might be
0:01:52 but my guess is that um it'll be a
0:01:56 little bit different than what you're
0:01:57 used to
0:01:58 in topics that have a similar title okay
0:02:01 so that being said let us go ahead and
0:02:02 start so the first where we want to
0:02:04 start
0:02:05 is when we talk about the prophet
0:02:07 sallallahu alaihi wasallam
0:02:09 and we're looking at this from the
0:02:10 perspective of you know
0:02:12 peace and war uh we act we want to ask
0:02:15 the question what kind of a prophet was
0:02:17 he
0:02:18 was he a prophet of peace or was he a
0:02:21 prophet of war
0:02:22 now the thing is is that there's this
0:02:24 concept of
0:02:26 breaking it down as a dichotomy that
0:02:28 either you're going to be in the camp
0:02:29 which says
0:02:30 that he was a prophet of peace and that
0:02:32 everything that he did
0:02:34 everything in his life was
0:02:37 gearing towards the goal of peace so
0:02:40 even
0:02:41 in the uh in the seemingly
0:02:45 um offensive battles that he engaged in
0:02:48 right not defensive
0:02:49 offensive battles that were seemingly
0:02:52 offensive
0:02:53 uh that too was also based on the final
0:02:55 objective of peace
0:02:57 okay and these are you know certain a
0:02:59 lot of people want
0:03:00 you know have this idea in the sense
0:03:02 that this was the main objective of the
0:03:03 prophet sallam was to establish
0:03:05 peace on the other hand end of the
0:03:07 spectrum
0:03:08 you have certain people who let's say
0:03:10 are not very friendly with
0:03:12 the the the muslim world the islamic
0:03:14 framework
0:03:16 and they want to cast the prophet sallam
0:03:18 as a warlord or a prophet of war
0:03:21 and obviously they bring in their own
0:03:23 evidences
0:03:24 now when you're going to categorize or
0:03:26 try to fit the prophet
0:03:27 sallam in one of these boxes you're
0:03:30 going to look for evidence
0:03:32 okay uh and you can find evidence
0:03:35 from his personality in whichever
0:03:38 category you want you choose
0:03:40 you can find evidence from his
0:03:41 personality and you can find evidence
0:03:43 from the general
0:03:45 chronology of the sita and i'll get into
0:03:47 that in just a second what i mean by
0:03:48 that
0:03:48 but let me start with personality if
0:03:50 someone wanted to find evidence
0:03:53 for the prophet saws being someone who
0:03:57 was engaged in warfare and was very good
0:04:00 at warfare in fact
0:04:02 you know if someone wanted to give
0:04:03 evidence for saying that he was one of
0:04:04 the greatest
0:04:05 military tacticians you could find
0:04:07 plenty of that
0:04:09 within uh reports related to his
0:04:11 personality
0:04:12 so for example we have one from sahih
0:04:14 muslim
0:04:15 reports that by allah and by the way
0:04:17 just to give you the context
0:04:19 this report comes during the battle of
0:04:21 hunain it was a very
0:04:23 it was a very difficult battle for the
0:04:24 muslims so
0:04:26 al-bara reports by allah if the fighting
0:04:29 became hot
0:04:30 meaning if it became very difficult we
0:04:33 would seek a
0:04:34 barrier we would seek a protection the
0:04:36 word that's used is uh
0:04:38 we would seek this you know you guys are
0:04:40 familiar with the term taqwa right so
0:04:41 seek a barrier seek protection so by
0:04:44 allah if the fighting became hot
0:04:46 we would seek a barrier or protection in
0:04:49 the prophet sallam
0:04:51 and the brave among among us was the one
0:04:54 who was
0:04:55 next to him that is next to the prophet
0:04:56 sallam so the picture that's being
0:04:58 painted
0:04:59 is that the most the person who was the
0:05:02 bravest
0:05:03 amongst the companions was the one that
0:05:05 was let's say beside the prophet sallam
0:05:08 everyone else was behind the prophet
0:05:10 sallam so the prophet sallallahu alaihi
0:05:12 sallam
0:05:12 is leading the charge in this battle in
0:05:14 the sense that he's at the front line
0:05:16 so when it comes to someone who's
0:05:18 engaged in war you could say that he is
0:05:20 you know like a lion on the battlefield
0:05:22 sallallahu
0:05:24 like there you couldn't find someone who
0:05:25 was more apt and more uh
0:05:28 ready more brave because even when you
0:05:30 think about
0:05:31 the companions
0:05:35 you find that even the bravest amongst
0:05:38 them
0:05:38 let's say they weren't behind the
0:05:40 prophet sallam they would be beside the
0:05:41 prophet
0:05:42 right so when it comes to understanding
0:05:44 let's say a personality trait
0:05:47 you could look at personality traits of
0:05:48 the prophet sallam
0:05:50 and take reports like this and conclude
0:05:52 that
0:05:53 perhaps he was a prophet of war again
0:05:56 i'm not saying that i'm saying that
0:05:58 but someone that has some sort of
0:05:59 animosity towards the islamic framework
0:06:02 may make that conclusion obviously as
0:06:04 muslims and we'll talk about this in a
0:06:05 second
0:06:06 in a few minutes uh we're gonna we're
0:06:08 gonna draw a different conclusion from
0:06:09 that
0:06:10 all right you could also look at the
0:06:12 other perspective
0:06:14 that was he a prophet of peace was he a
0:06:16 prophet of mercy
0:06:17 and so obviously again there is a
0:06:20 plethora of evidence a plethora
0:06:22 a you know it just too much material to
0:06:25 go through
0:06:26 when it comes to understanding this part
0:06:28 of the prophet said slums personality
0:06:30 right so i've just enlisted one
0:06:43 he saw him kissing his grandson al-hasan
0:06:46 and so by the way is
0:06:49 someone who's a bedouin right so he's
0:06:51 kind of very rough very
0:06:53 you know just kind of he has this
0:06:55 concept of machoness or manliness
0:06:57 so he's looking at the prophet salam and
0:07:00 he says he says i have
0:07:01 and he sees the process from kissing
0:07:03 al-hasan right sees him kissing his
0:07:05 grandson
0:07:05 the prophet saws grandson hassan so he
0:07:08 looks at me says i have
0:07:09 10 children and i don't kiss any of them
0:07:14 okay and so the prophet sallam then says
0:07:17 verily whoever does not show mercy
0:07:19 will not receive mercy okay so
0:07:22 reports like this reports and there's
0:07:25 like i said a plethora of other reports
0:07:27 you can
0:07:27 you can go to which show a very
0:07:30 a kind natured uh
0:07:34 peaceful merciful uh personality
0:07:37 and someone that wanted to conclude that
0:07:40 the objective
0:07:41 of the prophet sallam was one of trying
0:07:42 to establish peace
0:07:44 no matter where he goes and whatever
0:07:45 situation he's in that peace is the main
0:07:47 objective
0:07:48 they would then go to reports like this
0:07:52 and so when it comes to understanding
0:07:53 was he a prophet of peace when he was a
0:07:55 prophet of war
0:07:56 what i'm trying to start us off with is
0:07:59 that
0:08:00 if one wanted to make a conclusion in
0:08:02 whichever camp you choose
0:08:04 you could find evidence on both in both
0:08:07 camps
0:08:08 you could find evidence from the
0:08:10 perspective of his personality
0:08:12 and of course you could find evidence
0:08:14 and plenty of evidence from the
0:08:15 perspective of the sita itself
0:08:18 the life story of the prophet the
0:08:19 chronology upon which
0:08:21 you know the chronolog chronological
0:08:23 history that we find
0:08:24 called the sita the life story of the
0:08:26 prophet sallam so when we're looking at
0:08:28 it from the
0:08:29 viewpoint of the sita
0:08:32 you find that people that would be
0:08:35 trying to cast the prophet
0:08:36 sallam as a prophet of war this
0:08:40 phenomena is not something new so i
0:08:41 mentioned like uh
0:08:43 modern-day islamophobes right your
0:08:45 robert spencers and people like that
0:08:47 uh but this is not a new phenomenon the
0:08:50 whole concept of
0:08:51 of apologetics or rather um you know
0:08:54 people that are trying to cast doubt
0:08:56 upon who the prophet islam was goes all
0:08:59 the way back
0:09:00 to someone known as john of damascus so
0:09:03 when we're tracing back
0:09:05 the history of orientalism the history
0:09:07 of western academia
0:09:08 and specifically related to islamic
0:09:10 studies and their viewpoints
0:09:12 you can t trace this all the way back to
0:09:13 john of damascus he was in fact
0:09:16 a christian who i believe was a
0:09:20 a minister in the umayyad dynasty so he
0:09:22 was very close to the
0:09:24 to to to the to the government
0:09:26 institution at the time
0:09:27 and he worked very closely but he wrote
0:09:31 a text that basically was trying to cast
0:09:34 the religion of islam and the prophet
0:09:36 sallam
0:09:37 both as being false okay typically when
0:09:40 you find that
0:09:41 that someone is someone is trying to
0:09:43 cast or someone within
0:09:45 academia or someone within you know
0:09:47 someone like john of damascus
0:09:49 or that entire kind of gamut of
0:09:53 of people that are studying islam from
0:09:55 the perspective of
0:09:56 vilifying islam they basically have four
0:09:59 main objections that you'll find
0:10:01 okay so and john of damascus in fact
0:10:04 covers all of these
0:10:05 so the first objection they would have
0:10:07 is that he was that the prophet saw they
0:10:09 would accuse him of being an imposter
0:10:10 or an uh opportunist right so he's
0:10:12 basically he was looking for a way
0:10:15 to get
0:10:30 uh
0:10:34 the quran and the things that he's
0:10:36 preaching was in fact derived from
0:10:38 judeo-christian sources
0:10:40 and so again john of damascus in fact
0:10:43 doesn't consider islam
0:10:44 a separate religion rather he considers
0:10:47 it a kind of an
0:10:48 aberration of christianity like
0:10:50 something that's that's that's
0:10:52 that is um like like a sect of
0:10:55 christianity
0:10:56 and so the claim is made that okay so
0:10:59 the message
0:11:00 was stolen it was taken from judeo chris
0:11:02 christian sources
0:11:03 uh it was taken from the the hebrew
0:11:06 bible
0:11:06 and the christian bible and basically
0:11:08 pieces of it were brought together
0:11:10 and the process presented on i mean last
0:11:13 time uh
0:11:15 kind of uh went through some of these
0:11:17 and so i'm not gonna get into those
0:11:18 details
0:11:19 the third one uh was that the prophet
0:11:22 sallam was extremely lustful
0:11:24 and he was a a sexual deviant naruto
0:11:28 and so you know you find that the main
0:11:30 issue that john of damascus starts to
0:11:32 speak about
0:11:32 is the issue in the sita related to
0:11:35 uh zainab and zaid the the the the
0:11:39 the adopted son of the process which
0:11:42 later on
0:11:42 he was not adopted this separate story
0:11:44 but they try to highlight that
0:11:47 and use that as a means to show that the
0:11:49 process was
0:11:50 you know sexually deviant and he was
0:11:52 overly lustful and therefore that was
0:11:54 one of the
0:11:54 that was one of the reasons why he did
0:11:57 the things that he did
0:11:58 the fourth one and the one that we're
0:12:00 going to be focusing on
0:12:02 is that the prophet saw was a violent
0:12:04 fanatic
0:12:05 now why this why this becomes
0:12:09 a reality and especially someone going
0:12:11 back as far as john of damascus
0:12:13 is because when you think about the
0:12:14 islamic expansion
0:12:17 that indeed it was by and large
0:12:20 a military expansion right especially in
0:12:22 the very early days when
0:12:24 when they were confronting the byzantium
0:12:26 empire and the persian empire
0:12:28 these were military expansions now from
0:12:31 that idea when the christians would be
0:12:34 you know when when their lands would be
0:12:36 conquered and they
0:12:38 they tried to conceive of the idea of a
0:12:40 prophet from the christian perspective
0:12:42 right we're talking about the byzantium
0:12:43 empire right now from the christian
0:12:45 perspective
0:12:46 the idea of a prophet will be someone
0:12:48 who is a
0:12:49 peaceful person and that peace would be
0:12:52 basically the only criteria which you
0:12:55 would judge
0:12:56 whether someone's a prophet or not and
0:12:57 they took this from the ideas that they
0:12:59 were learning about
0:13:01 jesus so for instance the bible has
0:13:04 many verses about jesus saying if you
0:13:05 know if someone hits you on one cheek
0:13:07 give him the other cheek
0:13:08 if someone wants your uh wants your
0:13:10 lower garment give him your upper
0:13:12 garment or something to this effect
0:13:13 the idea is that it's it's it's someone
0:13:16 who
0:13:16 a prophet is someone who's basically
0:13:18 going to be trying to establish
0:13:20 peace and now you have these people that
0:13:22 are coming in
0:13:23 who are taking over the lands by way of
0:13:26 conquest
0:13:27 and now they're claiming that this was
0:13:30 commanded of them
0:13:31 by the prophet saws and so now this idea
0:13:34 becomes well
0:13:35 he's not a prophet in fact he's just a
0:13:37 violent fanatic and this idea
0:13:40 transfers all the way through even to
0:13:41 modern days and so you find that when
0:13:44 muslims are cast
0:13:45 they're considered backwards violent
0:13:47 just inherent something inherently
0:13:49 wrong with the religion that causes them
0:13:51 to be violent of course
0:13:53 this uh this idea itself
0:13:57 is you know negated from the very
0:13:59 concept of prophethood itself because
0:14:01 to cast prophethood to mean only peace
0:14:03 and that's the sole objective
0:14:05 it becomes difficult to prove that even
0:14:07 biblically so you'd have to negate
0:14:09 uh you know something as basic as
0:14:12 um david and goliath to say that okay
0:14:16 so you know that are we saying that that
0:14:17 story that never happened how do we
0:14:19 reconcile that
0:14:20 right and other stories of prophets that
0:14:22 that engaged in warfare and things like
0:14:24 that
0:14:24 but nevertheless uh this was another
0:14:27 claim that was
0:14:28 cast and this was another element that
0:14:31 was used to show that islam is in fact
0:14:33 false
0:14:34 so from this perspective if you wanted
0:14:36 to show that the prophet
0:14:38 islam was a violent fanatic and you
0:14:39 looked at the sita you could start now
0:14:42 picking out battle after battle after
0:14:43 battle
0:14:44 you could look at the battle of buddha
0:14:47 which
0:14:48 there could be a claim or could be a
0:14:49 case made that in fact it was not a
0:14:52 battle of self-defense
0:14:53 uh a case could be made that it was not
0:14:55 a battle to retake
0:14:57 one's possessions as well in fact it was
0:15:00 purely an
0:15:00 offensive raid a case could be made uh
0:15:04 you could look at the battle of ahud you
0:15:05 could look at the battle of khandak you
0:15:06 could look at
0:15:07 battle after battle after battle and if
0:15:09 you wanted to
0:15:10 try to cast the prophet sallam in this
0:15:13 mold
0:15:14 from the sida on the other end of the
0:15:17 spectrum
0:15:18 if you wanted to cast the prophet salaam
0:15:20 as someone who is only looking for peace
0:15:22 and the entire objective has to do with
0:15:24 peace
0:15:25 and that peace should be upon the land
0:15:27 and all of this you could
0:15:29 there's a number of uh um um there's a
0:15:32 number of incidents within the sita that
0:15:33 you could take as examples
0:15:35 some of them for instance the fact that
0:15:37 the prophet sallam
0:15:38 hosted the christians from najib so if
0:15:40 you're coming from a christian
0:15:41 background
0:15:42 uh this would be this would seem as
0:15:44 something where you know that that the
0:15:45 prophet islam is accommodating
0:15:48 uh the relationship that the prophet
0:15:49 islam had with the
0:15:51 the najashi or the king of abyssinia uh
0:15:54 the treaty of hudaibiyah
0:15:56 is another uh you know it's a peace
0:15:58 treaty
0:15:59 so you could look at elements within the
0:16:00 sita and cast the prophet salem to be
0:16:03 someone who was looking for peace
0:16:04 and then you could interpret whatever
0:16:07 sort of warfare that the prophet saw was
0:16:09 engaged in
0:16:10 to be for the eventual um the eventual
0:16:13 idea of bringing peace
0:16:15 right and that being the sole goal and
0:16:17 purpose
0:16:18 of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
0:16:20 wasallam okay
0:16:22 so before we now start to look at at
0:16:25 at these two ideas and these two uh you
0:16:28 know how the process
0:16:29 is cast and you know how how do we
0:16:31 navigate this space
0:16:33 let's now take a let's take a a few
0:16:35 moments and understand
0:16:37 what when we think about war what are
0:16:40 some of the objectives of war
0:16:42 when you think about war throughout
0:16:43 history and you could pick whatever war
0:16:46 you want world war one world war two you
0:16:48 could pick up
0:16:49 you could pick the the the the
0:16:51 greco-roman wars you can pick the war of
0:16:52 independence if you're here in the
0:16:53 states
0:16:55 if you think about it war has certain
0:16:57 objectives
0:16:59 right a lot of times that war has to do
0:17:01 with money or property
0:17:03 that's one objective in the sense that
0:17:05 when you think about the age of empires
0:17:07 right so at the time of the prophet
0:17:09 sallam you have the byzantium empire and
0:17:11 the
0:17:11 assassinate empire or the or the persian
0:17:13 empire and these two are
0:17:14 these two forces are now fighting for
0:17:17 more property more
0:17:18 more more their expansion of power and
0:17:20 so you have you know both kind of
0:17:22 going back and forth and now islam comes
0:17:24 to the fore
0:17:26 and starts to push both of them back but
0:17:27 anyhow so the objectives of war
0:17:29 you could say are money or property you
0:17:32 want to acquire more land
0:17:34 okay you could have the objective being
0:17:36 expansion of power and dominance
0:17:38 again during the age of empires you're
0:17:40 trying to expand your territories
0:17:42 in order to have more power and more
0:17:44 dominance of course that
0:17:46 may also lead to the idea of more wealth
0:17:48 coming in uh
0:17:49 and more subjects that you can tax etc
0:17:52 uh it could be by way of the ego or
0:17:54 honor
0:17:55 to say that you know it's part of our
0:17:56 honor to now spread out
0:17:58 and show that indeed that we are upon
0:18:00 the truth and so now
0:18:02 the objective of war becomes one of
0:18:04 showing that
0:18:05 the byzantium empire is strong and that
0:18:08 no one can mess with it
0:18:09 or conversely the persian empire is
0:18:11 strong and that no one can mess with it
0:18:12 whatever it might be so these are just
0:18:14 some of the objectives of war that we
0:18:16 could think about
0:18:18 what about the objectives for peace and
0:18:20 this is one that's uh
0:18:21 i thought was really interesting when
0:18:24 you think about
0:18:25 what would be the objectives for peace
0:18:28 we can say
0:18:28 by and large humans prefer peace and
0:18:31 when i say that
0:18:33 i don't mean in the sense that humans
0:18:35 will always prefer peace
0:18:37 i mean as a general state of affair
0:18:40 human beings
0:18:41 prefer a peaceful environment okay and
0:18:44 that has a lot to do with the fact that
0:18:46 a peaceful environment
0:18:47 you know is part and parcel of having a
0:18:49 stable environment
0:18:51 if you are always worried about what's
0:18:53 going to happen next to your children to
0:18:55 your loved ones
0:18:56 uh if there's going to be an attack
0:18:57 outside your outside your door
0:18:59 that's not preferred or if you yourself
0:19:01 have to
0:19:02 get you know uh cast yourself in a state
0:19:05 of war and fighting
0:19:06 that's not really something that human
0:19:08 beings generally prefer
0:19:10 so just as as as a just as a part of
0:19:12 humanity
0:19:13 humans prefer a state of peace because
0:19:16 that stated peace means that you'd have
0:19:17 a state of tranquility a state of
0:19:19 comfort
0:19:20 and you know one of one of the one of
0:19:22 the best examples
0:19:24 if you want to look at this from an
0:19:25 individual perspective is the state of
0:19:27 peace within one's house
0:19:29 so if if a husband and a wife are having
0:19:32 issues
0:19:33 that instability becomes very
0:19:36 problematic for the husband and wife
0:19:38 and so the goal then becomes how do we
0:19:41 now come to a state of stability
0:19:43 within the familial uh the familial
0:19:46 uh space right the family area where we
0:19:49 say okay
0:19:50 we want to have a state of stability and
0:19:52 so therefore we now start looking at
0:19:54 well it's not about who's right and
0:19:55 wrong but now it comes to like how do we
0:19:57 negotiate um our relationship and this
0:20:00 is just the familial unit the smallest
0:20:02 unit of society
0:20:03 to negotiate a a kind of a truce right
0:20:06 to use the
0:20:07 some of the the verbiage that we're
0:20:09 going to be using uh
0:20:11 for what for what purpose for stability
0:20:13 like the other day i was uh
0:20:15 i was at someone's uh i was doing a
0:20:18 hotba
0:20:19 for someone's nikka and one of the
0:20:21 things that i mentioned
0:20:22 was uh i had brought out or printed out
0:20:26 with me a um kind of like
0:20:29 10 tips to having a great marriage
0:20:33 and these tips came from divorce lawyers
0:20:35 right
0:20:36 so they're saying after all of our
0:20:37 experience with you know divorce cases
0:20:40 here are 10 tips you can use to do the
0:20:42 exact opposite so you can have a
0:20:44 fulfilling
0:20:45 and stable relationship one of the tips
0:20:47 i thought was really interesting
0:20:49 was uh one of the lawyers said look
0:20:52 you know that if you get into an
0:20:54 argument you should basically
0:20:56 just give in right and here's what he
0:20:59 said he said you can be
0:21:00 right or you can be happy okay
0:21:03 the choice is yours and it reminded me
0:21:05 of something that the prophet sallam
0:21:07 said
0:21:07 where he said that that i promise uh i
0:21:10 promise a house in paradise for the one
0:21:12 who gives up argumentation
0:21:14 even if they're right right so
0:21:17 my point in mentioning this is that when
0:21:19 we talk about the objectives of peace
0:21:20 even starting from the family unit the
0:21:22 familial unit
0:21:24 uh and then moving outwards generally
0:21:26 human beings
0:21:27 want a state of peace how much a human
0:21:30 is willing to capitulate
0:21:32 and to give in uh is really what's at
0:21:35 stake when it comes to the idea of peace
0:21:37 how much
0:21:37 how much negotiation can we do and can
0:21:40 we reach a point where
0:21:41 things are comfortable stable and
0:21:43 tranquil
0:21:45 so those are just some of the objectives
0:21:46 we looked at the objectives of war
0:21:48 and we looked at the objectives of peace
0:21:51 all right
0:21:52 now with this in mind how do we
0:21:55 understand the ceta
0:21:56 if we take one position over another
0:21:59 right so we say
0:22:00 the prophet sallam was either a prophet
0:22:03 of peace
0:22:04 and the entire concept of his mission
0:22:07 was
0:22:07 peace uh how do we understand the sita
0:22:11 how do we understand the life story of
0:22:12 the prophet sallam if we take the
0:22:14 viewpoint that he was
0:22:15 a warmonger as you know uh
0:22:18 as those who want to vilify islam
0:22:20 mention that he was a warmonger and his
0:22:22 whole
0:22:22 entire uh you know mission was one of
0:22:26 spreading islam by the sword right or
0:22:27 whatever it might be it's just war
0:22:29 and there's just a violent person and
0:22:31 you know you know bringing a violent
0:22:33 religion whatever it might be
0:22:34 from that perspective then how do we
0:22:36 view the sita because we said
0:22:38 that whichever perspective you take you
0:22:40 can find evidence to support
0:22:42 your perspective but the problem then
0:22:44 arises
0:22:45 is that just like you can find evidence
0:22:46 to support a a context of peace
0:22:49 you can find evidence to support a
0:22:50 context of war and vice versa
0:22:52 so someone that wants to now construct a
0:22:55 context of peace to say the main
0:22:57 mission of the prophet sallam was to
0:22:59 establish peace
0:23:01 that person then has to contend with the
0:23:05 battles of the prophet sallam within the
0:23:06 sita someone that wants to
0:23:08 establish that the prophet saw was a
0:23:10 prophet of war has to then contend
0:23:12 with other elements within the sita
0:23:14 right and this is what we're going to
0:23:16 talk about now
0:23:17 when so when we look at the sita and as
0:23:20 you can see in the diagram you could
0:23:21 basically divide the sida or the life of
0:23:23 the prophet sallam
0:23:24 the 23 year mission so starting from
0:23:27 when he he claimed prophethood of course
0:23:30 the muslims would say that
0:23:32 he was a prophet when he was you know
0:23:34 when he when he was
0:23:35 told the world that he was a prophet um
0:23:37 to the time of his passing
0:23:40 this period is 23 years and scholars
0:23:43 generally divide up this
0:23:45 the the life of the prophet sallam um
0:23:48 at the point at which he makes hijrah or
0:23:51 he migrates from mecca to medina
0:23:53 so you have the meccan phase pre-hijra
0:23:56 and then you have the medany phase or
0:23:58 the medina phase post-hijra
0:24:00 right post-migration and pre-migration
0:24:03 in the meccan phase you don't find any
0:24:06 any concept of warfare at all right in
0:24:08 fact
0:24:09 uh the quran states uh kofubi adiakum
0:24:13 right
0:24:14 withhold your hands don't now don't lift
0:24:17 any sort of arms don't even not even in
0:24:19 self-defense
0:24:20 this should be a you know to cast it in
0:24:23 in modern parlance
0:24:25 it should be a um a peaceful protest
0:24:28 right so you want to you're thinking
0:24:29 more in terms of if you want to cast in
0:24:31 in
0:24:32 in modern terms you're thinking more of
0:24:33 a a a
0:24:35 uh martin luther king or gandhi
0:24:40 type view of how we're going to now you
0:24:42 know move forward
0:24:43 right it's a peaceful protest
0:24:44 non-violent protest right kufu be the
0:24:47 eid
0:24:48 and so in mecca for the 13 years that
0:24:51 the prophet
0:24:51 sallam is there the command from the
0:24:55 quran the command from allah
0:24:56 the command from god is that you will
0:24:59 withhold
0:25:00 do not retaliate do not become violent
0:25:03 do not you know
0:25:04 you're not gonna respond and even if
0:25:05 they're torturing you and whatever it
0:25:07 might be
0:25:08 you're not gonna respond right so
0:25:09 peaceful protest but then you
0:25:12 then it comes to the point of the hijra
0:25:13 the process migrates to medina
0:25:16 and you find that there's now something
0:25:18 very different that's happening
0:25:20 now you've got the idea that you can now
0:25:23 go to war you can engage in battle so
0:25:26 it's almost like again putting in modern
0:25:28 terms
0:25:29 uh you're looking at peaceful protest go
0:25:31 from a martin luther king type dynamic
0:25:34 to a malcolm x type dynamic where it's
0:25:36 like hey if they put a hand on your
0:25:38 woman you send that person to the grave
0:25:39 right whatever it might be
0:25:41 so it's almost as you have this
0:25:42 dichotomy that's now
0:25:44 moving from one to the other you have a
0:25:47 phase of just
0:25:48 total peaceful protest and then you have
0:25:50 a phase that's saying we can now engage
0:25:52 all right and there's lots of evidences
0:25:54 for that within the medany phase battle
0:25:56 after battle you have the battle of badr
0:25:57 the battle of
0:25:58 the battle of so now someone could now
0:26:01 make the case
0:26:02 that it went from the meccan phase
0:26:05 because they were small in number
0:26:07 they didn't have the ability to fight
0:26:10 and so therefore
0:26:11 they didn't fight because if they would
0:26:13 have fought they would have been
0:26:15 completely wiped out so if we're looking
0:26:17 at the process
0:26:18 as a strategist to expand his
0:26:22 his uh his message to expand what he's
0:26:24 trying to do
0:26:25 and uh get it out to the masses it
0:26:28 wouldn't make sense for him to engage
0:26:31 with um with the enemy at that time
0:26:33 because they just didn't have the
0:26:34 manpower they didn't have the ability
0:26:36 to engage however when it comes to after
0:26:40 the hijra
0:26:40 now he gets to madina now there's a
0:26:42 bigger force
0:26:44 now he has the ability to engage and so
0:26:46 therefore he engages
0:26:47 and so therefore we can conclude that
0:26:50 the reason
0:26:50 and this is again coming from the
0:26:52 context of the prophet sallam was just a
0:26:54 war monger right that that was the he
0:26:55 was a prophet of war
0:26:57 so the person making this argument say
0:26:58 meccan phase the reason why he didn't
0:27:00 engage
0:27:01 didn't have the ability medina phase he
0:27:02 gets the ability and then there you see
0:27:04 it
0:27:05 battle after battle after battle after
0:27:06 battle but there's a problem
0:27:09 you have certain things within the
0:27:10 medina phase that form kind of an
0:27:13 anomaly to this narrative
0:27:15 and one of the main elements that form
0:27:18 the anomaly
0:27:19 is the treaty of hudaibiyah all right
0:27:21 and we'll get into that a little bit
0:27:23 you know get into more details related
0:27:24 to that but just to you know as as a
0:27:27 as kind of a a a cursory understanding
0:27:29 of the treaty of hudaibiyah
0:27:32 when the muslims and and the treaty of
0:27:34 way they be it happens after the major
0:27:35 battles within the
0:27:37 you know the first part of um the the
0:27:39 medany phase
0:27:40 so you're talking after bother after
0:27:42 after honda
0:27:44 you know later on the prophet saws
0:27:47 now has a dream
0:27:50 that he's going to make umrah is going
0:27:52 to go back and make a pilgrimage to
0:27:54 mecca
0:27:54 he gets to mecca he's stopped by the
0:27:57 quraysh the people of mecca
0:27:59 told to go back they engage in a peace
0:28:01 treaty
0:28:02 which on the surface of it seems like a
0:28:04 very unfair
0:28:06 peace treaty and now the other dynamic
0:28:08 we have to consider
0:28:09 is that after having gone through all
0:28:11 these battles and now
0:28:13 having established themselves as a power
0:28:15 meaning the muslims now have established
0:28:17 themselves as a power
0:28:19 because one of the greatest tests was
0:28:21 the battle of khandak or the battle of
0:28:22 the trench
0:28:23 this is where you had the um the largest
0:28:27 contingency of arab arab tribes come
0:28:30 together
0:28:30 which had never done before which is
0:28:32 about 10 000 people never happened
0:28:34 before
0:28:34 in the history of the arabian peninsula
0:28:36 that they're coming and attacking the
0:28:38 city of medina
0:28:39 right and once they were able once
0:28:41 muslims were able to push back on that
0:28:43 other tribes start to come and become
0:28:45 muslim and join the muslims
0:28:47 so now you could say that by the time
0:28:49 they get to go
0:28:50 to mecca to make umrah to make the
0:28:52 pilgrimage they're at the height of
0:28:54 their power
0:28:55 they could easily just go in and
0:28:57 practically but at this point
0:28:59 the quraysh had been so weakened that
0:29:01 they could just overtake it
0:29:03 it it would it would it would seem like
0:29:05 that would be the natural thing to do
0:29:07 however when the prophet when the
0:29:09 quraish tell the prophet
0:29:10 sallam you can't move any further you're
0:29:12 not going to make ramallah this year
0:29:14 and they engage in a peace treaty the
0:29:16 peace treaty itself
0:29:17 not because the peace treaty something
0:29:20 there was something wrong with the idea
0:29:21 of peace
0:29:21 but because it seemed very lopsided
0:29:24 right especially considering someone
0:29:25 who's at the apex of
0:29:27 their power to now capitulate on certain
0:29:30 things for example
0:29:32 uh one of the one of the one of the
0:29:34 clauses within that peace treaty
0:29:36 was that if someone was to become muslim
0:29:39 in mecca
0:29:40 and they ran away to medina the muslims
0:29:43 of medina would have to return
0:29:44 that person to mecca now mind you
0:29:47 they're going to return this person to
0:29:48 mecca
0:29:48 and this person is once they return to
0:29:50 mecca they're going to be going through
0:29:51 physical torture
0:29:52 a boycott etc and yet part of the treaty
0:29:56 was
0:29:57 if someone if someone converts becomes a
0:30:00 muslim
0:30:01 comes to medina you have to return to
0:30:02 mecca basically you have to return them
0:30:04 to
0:30:04 torture however if someone in medina
0:30:09 reneges on their faith leaves islam and
0:30:12 comes to mecca
0:30:13 the meccans don't have to return that
0:30:14 person to medina all right
0:30:17 the other aspect was you cannot make
0:30:19 umrah this year you cannot make the
0:30:20 pilgrimage this year and so
0:30:22 it seemed like a very lopsided peace
0:30:24 treaty and yet the prophet sallam still
0:30:27 engaged and still
0:30:28 you know uh so concluded this peace
0:30:30 treaty why
0:30:32 if the prophet sallam was truly a war
0:30:35 monger and the main idea that he was
0:30:37 just a violent fanatic
0:30:39 this forms a very strange anomaly in the
0:30:42 sita the treaty of hudaibiyah and we'll
0:30:44 come back to this
0:30:45 all right so that's one of the anomalous
0:30:48 kind of issues when you look at the sita
0:30:49 and try to cast the prophet sallam
0:30:51 as just a warmonger
0:30:53 [Music]
0:30:56 okay so that being said um
0:30:59 how are we supposed to understand the
0:31:01 sita and what i'm going to be arguing
0:31:03 today
0:31:04 is that this simple dichotomy of being
0:31:07 a prophet of peace versus a prophet of
0:31:10 war that the objective
0:31:11 is just one or the other is in fact a
0:31:14 false dichotomy
0:31:16 and the true way to really understand
0:31:19 the sita
0:31:20 has to do with the islamic framework of
0:31:23 how the
0:31:24 sea does understood all right and i
0:31:25 think a good way to
0:31:27 um understand or a good way to kind of
0:31:30 formulate my argument
0:31:32 is an approach that ahmad al-dawudhi
0:31:36 takes in his book the islamic law of war
0:31:39 and he says in this book he says the
0:31:40 insider approach
0:31:42 so he talks about something known as an
0:31:43 insider slash outsider framework
0:31:45 insider muslim framework outsider uh
0:31:48 western framework so he says
0:31:50 the insider approach refers to what
0:31:52 muslims advocate
0:31:54 about their specific understandings of
0:31:56 the issues in question
0:31:58 the outsider approach in this book
0:32:00 refers to the understandings of these
0:32:01 issues in the western literature
0:32:03 that has been consulted so you have two
0:32:06 frameworks
0:32:07 one of these is an insider framework
0:32:09 inside of referring to a muslim
0:32:10 worldview
0:32:11 how the muslim views who the prophet
0:32:14 sallam was
0:32:14 what was his mission and so on so forth
0:32:17 and then you have an outsider framework
0:32:19 that outsider framework being a western
0:32:21 framework or western academic framework
0:32:23 western islamic studies framework and by
0:32:25 the way just because we're saying that
0:32:27 there's an outsider framework
0:32:29 we're not automatically assuming that
0:32:31 someone that's taking an
0:32:32 outsider framework or a western
0:32:34 framework is going to assume that the
0:32:36 prop system is a warmonger
0:32:38 as we're going to see in a few minutes
0:32:40 that there are other for
0:32:41 there's an outsider framework which
0:32:42 casts the prophet sallam
0:32:44 to be a prophet of peace but
0:32:47 again like we're mentioning if you try
0:32:49 to cast the prophet sallam as the
0:32:51 it has the objective of peace all the
0:32:53 time you're still going to run into
0:32:55 issues when you consider the sita
0:32:57 when you consider his personality right
0:32:59 so out by outside of framework i don't
0:33:00 automatically mean
0:33:02 someone who's casting the prophet sallam
0:33:03 as a war monger i mean someone this
0:33:05 is casting the process to them either as
0:33:07 a prophet of peace or as a prophet of
0:33:09 war
0:33:10 okay and we're going to see that the
0:33:12 insider reproach
0:33:14 is really the only way to make sense of
0:33:16 the sita
0:33:17 make sense of the life story of the
0:33:19 prophet all right
0:33:21 so that's so that was the thesis and
0:33:23 i've kind of laid it out on the screen
0:33:25 here as well
0:33:26 so the insider slash muslim approach is
0:33:28 the only way to make sense of the sita
0:33:31 the outsider slash western approach only
0:33:33 presents more problems and questions
0:33:36 that's the central thesis of what uh
0:33:38 what i'm gonna be
0:33:39 what i'm discussing today all right okay
0:33:42 let me take a look so remember i said
0:33:44 that just because i said outsider
0:33:46 framework
0:33:47 it doesn't mean that i'm automatically
0:33:49 assuming that someone who's not muslim
0:33:51 must cast the process as a warmonger
0:33:53 because there are people who are outside
0:33:55 of the
0:33:55 islamic framework in the outsider
0:33:57 framework outside of western framework
0:33:59 that try to cast the prophet as a
0:34:02 prophet of peace and that that was the
0:34:03 sole objective
0:34:05 however what i'm arguing is that if
0:34:07 you're going to do that
0:34:09 you have to make concessions in other
0:34:12 elements
0:34:13 of the prophet sallam's life and his
0:34:15 sita okay
0:34:16 so for example um craig konstantine
0:34:19 he wrote a book recently the humanity of
0:34:21 muhammad a christian view
0:34:23 and so what he's arguing is this idea of
0:34:26 religious pluralism so he says going
0:34:28 beyond religious tolerance
0:34:29 the prophet in fact advocated for
0:34:31 religious pluralism
0:34:33 now how do we distinguish between
0:34:35 tolerance and pluralism
0:34:37 we understand of course that if if
0:34:39 someone were to claim that the process
0:34:40 system was
0:34:41 tolerant of other viewpoints then that's
0:34:45 a no-brainer
0:34:46 however if someone was to argue that the
0:34:48 process um uh
0:34:49 advocated for religious pluralism this
0:34:52 becomes very difficult because when we
0:34:54 say religious pluralism
0:34:55 what we're saying is that there is
0:34:58 the concept of other religions having
0:35:02 the truth or being true
0:35:04 and aside from the logical issue of this
0:35:07 right because other religions and
0:35:08 specifically christianity
0:35:10 would claim that the prophet sallam was
0:35:11 not sent by allah
0:35:13 that's one claim another claim that that
0:35:16 that that the islamic framework makes
0:35:18 is that uh isla islam or jesus
0:35:21 was not the son of god and was not god
0:35:23 incarnate nor was he crucified
0:35:26 now these claims between these two
0:35:28 distinct groups
0:35:30 the christians and the muslims or the i
0:35:32 should say mainstream christianity
0:35:33 and islam how does one then say
0:35:38 how does one reconcile that and
0:35:41 one kind of claim that can be made is
0:35:43 that the prophet islam
0:35:44 was all about religious pluralism that
0:35:46 even if you had
0:35:47 one set of beliefs or another it didn't
0:35:49 matter you would still be entering
0:35:50 paradise
0:35:52 which again becomes a very it becomes an
0:35:55 untenable position
0:35:56 because there's so much other there's so
0:35:58 many other elements within the sida
0:36:01 and within the life of the process
0:36:02 within hadith within the quran
0:36:04 that run completely antagonist to this
0:36:06 view but
0:36:08 taking an outsider framework you almost
0:36:10 by necessity can't just stop at
0:36:12 religious tolerance
0:36:14 you have to move forward and by claiming
0:36:16 religious pluralism
0:36:18 uh you can then make a case for peace
0:36:20 but then you have other issues you have
0:36:22 to deal with
0:36:23 one of the issues of the book is that uh
0:36:26 dr konstantin talks about the uh
0:36:30 the the the the christian delegation
0:36:32 from najib and he spent some time in
0:36:34 that
0:36:34 to kind of show uh how the prophet saw
0:36:37 the fact that the prophet
0:36:38 allowed them to pray their mosque the
0:36:40 discussions they had
0:36:41 that this was a way to bolster his case
0:36:44 for religious pluralism
0:36:45 whereas i would argue that's a case to
0:36:48 bolster his case for religious tolerance
0:36:51 not necessarily religious pluralism
0:36:53 anyway but that's a separate
0:36:55 argument but hopefully you've understood
0:36:56 my point is that even if you take
0:36:59 the an outsider framework to say that
0:37:01 the process system was peace and that
0:37:02 was the main objective
0:37:03 there are certain things that you have
0:37:05 to forgo
0:37:07 one of those is to say that islam that
0:37:10 the prophet
0:37:10 sallam claimed that islam was the truth
0:37:13 in exclusion to everything else
0:37:15 right uh that becomes then you can't
0:37:17 really say that
0:37:18 anyhow uh so craig constantine is one
0:37:21 example
0:37:22 another example juan cole who recently
0:37:24 wrote this book muhammad
0:37:25 prophet of peace amid the clash of
0:37:27 empires he says the quran insists on
0:37:29 liberty
0:37:30 and conscience and forbearance towards
0:37:32 enemies and it prohibits unprovoked
0:37:34 aggressive warfare
0:37:35 okay fair enough but then he goes on to
0:37:38 say
0:37:39 it promises salvation to all righteous
0:37:42 monotheists
0:37:43 not just the followers of the prophet
0:37:45 muhammad now this kind of again
0:37:47 lends to a certain um a certain paradox
0:37:52 because if that was the case then a lot
0:37:54 of questions would arise
0:37:55 if it was just that look salvation is
0:37:57 for any monotheist whether you're
0:37:59 christian or jew or anyone that claims
0:38:01 monotheism
0:38:02 and it's not just what the prophet
0:38:03 sallam was upon
0:38:05 then why not you know then why bring a
0:38:07 new religion
0:38:08 why not just adopt christianity and you
0:38:10 know kind of start
0:38:12 ahead of the game why not just contact
0:38:14 the byzantium empire who are already
0:38:16 majority christians and move forward
0:38:20 by using the power of the byzantium
0:38:21 empire right
0:38:23 why not when it comes to the the jewish
0:38:26 tribes of medina
0:38:27 to contact them and use their wealth to
0:38:29 move forward
0:38:30 so it it it becomes a bit
0:38:33 difficult to reconcile the idea that the
0:38:37 prophet
0:38:37 sallam would come with a religion which
0:38:39 is islam
0:38:40 and yet still say well it doesn't matter
0:38:43 if you accept it or not
0:38:44 because again you have very pointed um
0:38:48 uh incidents within the sita where that
0:38:50 is not the case
0:38:51 in fact the very last um
0:38:54 uh the very the last uh author that i
0:38:56 mentioned craig considine
0:38:57 when he mentioned the uh the christians
0:38:59 from najib
0:39:00 the prophet saw sallam at the end of
0:39:02 that discussion even though it was
0:39:04 peaceful even though
0:39:05 it and it showed religious tolerance but
0:39:07 the prophet sallam
0:39:08 at the end of that basically and by we
0:39:11 would from the muslim standpoint
0:39:13 as the quran mentions told the
0:39:16 christians of najib
0:39:17 that look we can either agree on these
0:39:20 things
0:39:20 or you can be under muslim rule right
0:39:23 islamic rule
0:39:25 or we can go to war or if look if you're
0:39:28 not willing to
0:39:29 you know to to to accept any of that
0:39:31 then you bring
0:39:32 all the people of your family your
0:39:34 children your wives
0:39:36 and yourselves and we'll bring the
0:39:37 people of our family you know our
0:39:39 children
0:39:39 our wives and we will then uh
0:39:43 we will invoke the curse of god upon the
0:39:45 one who is the liar
0:39:46 now this is quite this isn't really
0:39:49 religious pluralism here now
0:39:50 this is going far beyond because if
0:39:53 they're going to paradise and muslims go
0:39:55 to paradise then why would you need to
0:39:56 do something like that
0:39:58 and of course when the christians of the
0:39:59 jedi heard this they didn't want to do
0:40:01 this they were
0:40:02 people who did believe in god etc so
0:40:05 they didn't
0:40:06 they basically accepted the terms and in
0:40:09 fact one of the
0:40:10 the one of the the brothers of one of
0:40:12 the leaders said that you know why did
0:40:14 we accept that
0:40:15 and the leader of uh one of the leaders
0:40:18 of
0:40:18 of the tribe of the of the christians
0:40:20 from the juan said look we know that
0:40:22 he's truly a prophet
0:40:24 but we're not going to accept it because
0:40:25 then we lose our support from
0:40:28 the byzantium empire we lose money we
0:40:30 lose this we lose that
0:40:32 and he basically said so we didn't
0:40:33 accept it because of that and he turned
0:40:35 around and went back and
0:40:36 accepted his step so again it this idea
0:40:40 of religious pluralism
0:40:41 becomes very uh it's an untenable
0:40:44 uh position to take but frankly as from
0:40:47 the outsider framework
0:40:48 you're almost limited to that position
0:40:50 okay
0:40:52 so let's review the thesis once again
0:40:54 the thesis was the insider slash muslim
0:40:56 approach is the only way to make sense
0:40:58 of the sita
0:40:59 the outsider western approach only
0:41:02 presents more problems and questions
0:41:04 as hopefully we have outlined
0:41:07 okay now what is the insider slash
0:41:10 muslim
0:41:11 approach to the sita or the islamic
0:41:12 approach to sita
0:41:14 before we expound upon that we're going
0:41:16 to make we're going to present two
0:41:17 assumptions
0:41:18 the first assumption is we're going to
0:41:20 take a teleological
0:41:22 uh view of history all right i'm going
0:41:24 to get into that
0:41:25 for in a second the second assumption is
0:41:28 that we're going to say that the quran
0:41:29 is a source of knowledge
0:41:31 now again this is an insider approach
0:41:33 and so these assumptions
0:41:35 uh that we're taking are we're taking it
0:41:37 from an from an insider worldview or an
0:41:39 islamic worldview
0:41:40 whether you accept them or not but i
0:41:42 would say that if you don't accept them
0:41:44 just hang that non-acceptance in
0:41:46 abeyance for a few minutes
0:41:48 as we go through the arguments
0:41:51 and then you can come back to and we can
0:41:52 revisit that but it's a very important
0:41:54 point when i speak about the
0:41:55 teleological view of history what do i
0:41:57 mean
0:41:58 so the teleology
0:42:01 in the in the sense of histo
0:42:03 historiography
0:42:05 is a form of historical enquiry which
0:42:07 attempts to construct a narrative view
0:42:09 of history
0:42:10 as a progressive march in one direction
0:42:12 in other words towards an inevitable end
0:42:14 point
0:42:16 now by and large scholars of history
0:42:18 historians
0:42:19 have negated this theological view of
0:42:22 history
0:42:23 okay and they say that the one who kind
0:42:25 of came up with this theological view of
0:42:26 history
0:42:27 uh was um well no i think i had his name
0:42:31 here it was
0:42:34 uh herbert butterfield in 1931. and the
0:42:37 reason why they negated this is because
0:42:40 what herbert butterfield came up with
0:42:42 was this idea
0:42:43 of a uh of a view of history's
0:42:46 progressive
0:42:47 march in one direction but that march
0:42:49 would conclude
0:42:50 that all people and all cultures would
0:42:53 eventually they would reach the apex
0:42:55 of uh of culture of sophistication
0:42:59 by by becoming uh liberal
0:43:02 and by adopting liberalism and
0:43:05 enlightenment
0:43:06 right so from you know looking at his
0:43:08 perspective from
0:43:09 1931 he called this wig history i'm not
0:43:12 sure why he called it wig history
0:43:13 but the idea was when we talk about
0:43:16 teleology
0:43:17 a purpose to to the entire historical
0:43:20 uh endeavor we say that people started
0:43:23 in a state of
0:43:24 they were they weren't as intelligent uh
0:43:26 so you know uh sociologically they
0:43:28 weren't as developed
0:43:29 etc and they eventually moved towards a
0:43:32 more refined developed people
0:43:34 and but how do you define that you know
0:43:37 uh
0:43:37 uh um how do you define the developed
0:43:40 and uh sophisticated
0:43:42 people and you know civilized people you
0:43:44 define it from the
0:43:45 lenses of liberalism and the lenses
0:43:49 of enlightenment now what is the reasons
0:43:52 why historians
0:43:53 don't don't don't adopt this view
0:43:57 well there's a number of reasons uh one
0:43:59 reason
0:44:00 is that it negates other cultures and
0:44:03 other societies
0:44:04 and it assumes that liberalism and
0:44:08 the enlightenment and those
0:44:09 enlightenment thinkers were at the apex
0:44:12 and of course when you look at other
0:44:13 civilizations and other uh cultures
0:44:16 you find it's very difficult to kind of
0:44:18 uh
0:44:19 it's very difficult to to reconcile that
0:44:22 that that
0:44:22 the teleological view of history from
0:44:24 that point of view okay
0:44:26 um second the other interesting thing
0:44:28 that i was thinking about is that when
0:44:29 you think about teleology in general
0:44:31 the idea of history having a purpose
0:44:34 the idea of anything having a purpose
0:44:36 becomes a bit difficult
0:44:38 when you are taking a a naturalistic
0:44:41 worldview
0:44:41 right so in a lot of the subjects that
0:44:43 we study
0:44:44 in the western framework in especially
0:44:47 in academia
0:44:48 the idea is that one that's portrayed
0:44:50 whether it's physical sciences and i
0:44:52 would argue even the social sciences
0:44:54 is one of naturalism you cannot
0:44:57 bring uh something that's outside of the
0:45:01 natural world
0:45:01 to give explanations and history is no
0:45:04 different
0:45:05 and so if you if you claim a
0:45:06 teleological view of history meaning
0:45:08 that there's a purpose and there's a
0:45:10 a you know there's a there's a direction
0:45:13 uh
0:45:13 that that that that history is going in
0:45:15 it's going from a less progressive to a
0:45:17 more progressive
0:45:18 state then this assumes that there's
0:45:20 some sort of purpose involved
0:45:22 and of course if there's purpose
0:45:23 involved and there's there's some sort
0:45:24 of intentionality
0:45:26 to the history itself which would
0:45:28 indicate that there's
0:45:29 a type of intentionality and therefore
0:45:31 there's a
0:45:32 something that transcends history it
0:45:34 transcends the world
0:45:36 which from a religious person's
0:45:37 standpoint would be god
0:45:39 and so even that but the position itself
0:45:41 is very difficult to
0:45:42 to substantiate like a teleological uh
0:45:45 for instance
0:45:46 you know one of the other areas that
0:45:48 sometimes you have to give up on
0:45:50 or someone that holds that world you
0:45:51 have to give up on is a teleological
0:45:52 view of biology
0:45:54 so if you assume that all of your organs
0:45:57 and things like that don't have a
0:45:58 purpose
0:45:59 well then you can't really move forward
0:46:01 in
0:46:02 medical sciences you have to assume that
0:46:04 the heart has a purpose
0:46:06 you know your muscles have a purpose
0:46:07 your biceps have purpose triceps have a
0:46:09 purpose and so on
0:46:10 in order to make progress and if you do
0:46:14 away with the entire concept of
0:46:15 teleology
0:46:16 because your worldview dictates that
0:46:19 things happen by chance and are random
0:46:21 and there's no purpose because that
0:46:23 would indicate intentionality
0:46:25 um if that's the case then you're kind
0:46:27 of stuck in a certain position when it
0:46:29 comes to even the very biology
0:46:31 that you're studying and then so
0:46:32 therefore and a lot of philosophers
0:46:34 would say okay so you just
0:46:36 you you have this fake sort of teleology
0:46:38 that you assume
0:46:39 but you don't actually believe it right
0:46:41 and i'll refer you to a
0:46:42 really interesting talk by uh dr robert
0:46:45 coons he's a professor at the university
0:46:47 of texas austin
0:46:48 and i don't know the exact title is
0:46:49 maybe called like the teleological view
0:46:52 of biology
0:46:52 that you can refer to about you know
0:46:55 more on that
0:46:56 now when i say a teleological view of
0:46:59 history
0:46:59 i'm not referring to what uh what robert
0:47:02 butterfield was referring to or herbert
0:47:04 butterfield was referring to wasn't i
0:47:06 don't mean that history is
0:47:08 on this progressive march towards
0:47:11 liberalism and towards uh enlightenment
0:47:15 right that's not what i'm referring to
0:47:16 what i'm referring to is from the from
0:47:19 the viewpoint from the insider viewpoint
0:47:21 the islamic worldview that there was a
0:47:24 first man and the first woman
0:47:26 adam and eve and therefore
0:47:29 that history as it goes on that there
0:47:32 was a progression
0:47:33 and so because you have two human beings
0:47:35 which then became
0:47:36 four six eight whatever it might be then
0:47:39 there was not only an intellectual
0:47:41 progression
0:47:42 right much like a child who's growing up
0:47:44 they have a certain level of maturity
0:47:46 intellectually
0:47:47 and they have a certain stature
0:47:49 physically so you could look at kind of
0:47:51 human history
0:47:52 in a very similar fashion and this is
0:47:53 what i mean by when i
0:47:55 talk about a teleological view of
0:47:56 history that from an intellectual
0:47:58 standpoint
0:47:59 there was a progression right that
0:48:01 you're moving towards
0:48:02 a progressive march in one direction
0:48:05 being towards the future
0:48:06 and as generation after generation comes
0:48:09 they're getting more and more
0:48:10 uh you know their cognition is
0:48:12 developing more and more
0:48:14 so they're able to understand things
0:48:15 whereas the generation before them did
0:48:17 not
0:48:18 okay and that's something that even we
0:48:19 view in our modern
0:48:21 in the modern world right things that i
0:48:23 understand perhaps my parents or
0:48:25 grandparents would not understand
0:48:26 just in the realm of something like
0:48:28 technology right
0:48:29 so i'm saying from the viewpoint of
0:48:32 philosophy
0:48:33 that there was a progression there was a
0:48:35 certain uh
0:48:36 point where phyllis the philosophies of
0:48:38 the world kind of reached an apex
0:48:40 and from the from the point of view of
0:48:42 sociology
0:48:44 so when you think about you know how
0:48:46 human beings developed
0:48:47 there was the idea of a of of
0:48:49 individuals
0:48:50 who formed family units right so a
0:48:52 husband and a wife and these were you
0:48:53 can say our
0:48:54 our caveman days if that's what you want
0:48:56 to call it and so
0:48:58 that familial unit now because there's
0:49:01 an objective
0:49:02 of trying to find food and and sustain
0:49:05 yourself
0:49:06 joins other familial units that being
0:49:08 said
0:49:09 a familiar unit that has children who
0:49:11 then get married themselves
0:49:13 this familial unit starts to grow and so
0:49:16 therefore society is also marching in
0:49:18 this direction
0:49:19 in a progressive direction why because
0:49:21 as humanity starts to grow
0:49:24 you have people moving from the familial
0:49:26 unit to a tribe
0:49:28 to cities to let's say uh
0:49:32 civilizations and so on and all of this
0:49:35 now
0:49:35 needs a type of intellect or a type of
0:49:39 a cognitive sense to organize all these
0:49:41 things so as humanity is moving forward
0:49:43 they're developing
0:49:44 intellectually they're developing in
0:49:46 terms of you know how they're supposed
0:49:48 to get along in terms of societies
0:49:50 so that's our first assumption there's a
0:49:52 teleological view of history and this is
0:49:54 what i'm referring to
0:49:55 the second assumption is that the quran
0:49:57 is a source of knowledge
0:49:59 so for within the insider perspective
0:50:02 within the islamic framework
0:50:04 is that you have two sources of
0:50:06 knowledge you have the natural world
0:50:08 around you
0:50:09 which you're able to to to take
0:50:10 information and interpret that
0:50:12 information
0:50:13 but you also have the quran which is
0:50:15 revelation which comes from
0:50:17 you know the source of that we believe
0:50:19 that the quran is the literal speech of
0:50:20 god
0:50:21 and so we take the quran as a source of
0:50:23 knowledge and so therefore in
0:50:25 understanding
0:50:26 how we're going to understand the sita
0:50:28 it behooves us to take the quran as a
0:50:30 source of knowledge from an insider
0:50:32 perspective
0:50:33 so i hope these two assumptions are
0:50:34 clear because they're going to
0:50:36 be very important as we move forward and
0:50:38 i think i'm uh
0:50:39 i'm at 15 minutes so i may take a few
0:50:41 more minutes and get to the crux of what
0:50:43 i'm talking about
0:50:44 all right so let's start our analysis in
0:50:46 earnest so we said
0:50:47 the quran is a source of knowledge when
0:50:50 you go to
0:50:51 uh the 61st chapter which is surah
0:50:54 the muslims would say that god says or
0:50:56 allah says
0:51:02 [Music]
0:51:05 they want to extinguish the light of
0:51:07 allah with their mouths but allah will
0:51:09 perfect his light
0:51:11 although the disbelievers dislike it now
0:51:15 from the from the text itself you'll
0:51:18 notice that
0:51:18 there is a certain word here which says
0:51:20 but allah will perfect his light the
0:51:22 term that's used is
0:51:27 right that he will and the word that's
0:51:29 used there
0:51:30 it imam is this idea of completion
0:51:33 of making something whole right and so
0:51:37 remember coming back to my view my
0:51:39 teleological view of history
0:51:42 what the i is referring to because the
0:51:44 the i or the verse right after it will
0:51:46 tell us what exactly
0:51:47 that means is that there is a
0:51:50 progression
0:51:51 so it starts from uh allah
0:51:54 who has created human beings who then
0:51:57 sends
0:51:58 to groups of human beings prophets and
0:52:00 messengers
0:52:01 with a central message that central
0:52:04 message
0:52:05 is again this is from the insider
0:52:07 islamic perspective
0:52:09 that god is one and the only one worthy
0:52:12 of praise
0:52:13 and worship and that and that allah is
0:52:16 worthy of worship and exclusion to
0:52:17 everything else
0:52:18 including yourself so submitting to
0:52:20 worshipping
0:52:21 love all of that is for allah alone
0:52:24 now as humanity starts to develop
0:52:27 uh prophets and messengers are sent at a
0:52:30 specific point
0:52:32 and to a specific people at a specific
0:52:34 time in the chronological history of
0:52:36 humanity
0:52:38 okay and so what's the reasoning behind
0:52:40 that
0:52:41 well if we're looking at the
0:52:42 teleological view of history we
0:52:44 understand
0:52:44 that if the human is developing sorry
0:52:47 not the human but if society and the
0:52:48 humanity is developing
0:52:50 much like a child is developing you're
0:52:52 going to basically
0:52:54 give the child what it needs for the
0:52:56 specific context that it's in
0:52:57 or the specific age or the maturity that
0:53:00 it's at
0:53:01 right so perhaps early on you have a
0:53:04 child that
0:53:05 may not understand the wisdom behind
0:53:07 certain things
0:53:08 you would tell them okay you know do
0:53:10 this or don't stay away from the stove
0:53:12 right and until the child actually
0:53:14 experiences like burning themselves
0:53:16 they may not understand it so initially
0:53:18 you may
0:53:19 issue certain rules and regulations so
0:53:22 certain prophets
0:53:23 with the way their message was
0:53:24 constructed again the
0:53:26 crux of the messages worship god alone
0:53:28 do not worship other than god
0:53:30 right uh that we sent and you know allah
0:53:32 says uh
0:53:34 uh and we sent to every nation
0:53:39 we have sent to every single nation a
0:53:41 messenger saying
0:53:43 worship god and do not worship anything
0:53:45 else do not worship tahud
0:53:46 that's the core message but the the
0:53:50 the as humanity at the stage that it's
0:53:52 in how is it going to understand it
0:53:55 so based on how it's going to understand
0:53:56 it a messenger sent
0:53:58 with a message for that community at
0:54:01 that time period in its chronology
0:54:03 and its location is sent with a message
0:54:06 specifically for that community in that
0:54:07 time period
0:54:08 okay so if you think about prophets of
0:54:10 the past
0:54:11 so again from the muslim framework all
0:54:13 the prophets were muslim
0:54:14 they all uh you know taught islam taught
0:54:18 that there's nothing worthy of worship
0:54:20 except allah
0:54:22 and so from that perspective we believe
0:54:24 that all the prophets were muslim
0:54:25 that being said when a prophet is sent
0:54:27 to a community
0:54:28 it's going to be related to the needs of
0:54:30 the community at that particular time
0:54:32 and it's specific to that community
0:54:34 right so with that in mind
0:54:38 and you know you can think about moses
0:54:40 being sent to the children of israel
0:54:41 whatever sort of issues that they were
0:54:43 going with you think of jesus being sent
0:54:45 to
0:54:46 also the children of israel and that
0:54:47 they had certain issues as well
0:54:49 um you know it's very interesting uh not
0:54:51 that muslims
0:54:53 believe that the bible's revelation but
0:54:55 uh i believe there is a verse in the
0:54:57 bible
0:54:57 and again i'm not using this as evidence
0:55:00 but where
0:55:01 uh jesus says something to the effect of
0:55:03 um
0:55:04 that i have much to tell you but you
0:55:06 cannot understand them now or bear them
0:55:08 now
0:55:09 and it is only when i guess the
0:55:11 comforter or something like that comes
0:55:12 that you'll be able to understand them
0:55:14 so it's interesting because it kind of
0:55:16 lends credence again i'm not using this
0:55:18 as evidence but it lends credence
0:55:20 to this idea of a teleological view of
0:55:22 history right
0:55:23 prophets and messengers being sent at
0:55:25 specific times to deal with their
0:55:27 specific people
0:55:28 i have not been you know that uh
0:55:30 rasulullah illabani israel that
0:55:32 jesus was sent as a messenger tuban
0:55:34 israel to the children of israel and so
0:55:36 on
0:55:37 however now you have the prophet
0:55:39 muhammad
0:55:40 sallam and he's the final messenger and
0:55:43 he's not sent to a specific group
0:55:45 but he's or a specific people and he's
0:55:47 not sent for a specific
0:55:49 time period but he's sent at a time and
0:55:52 everything moving forward
0:55:53 being the last messenger to all of
0:55:55 humanity
0:55:57 so if that's the case you find prophets
0:55:59 and messengers that are being sent
0:56:01 to different stages within the human the
0:56:03 human project you can say
0:56:05 and now the apex of that project when
0:56:08 humans are have reached a certain level
0:56:10 of maturity
0:56:11 intellectually sociologically
0:56:13 economically et cetera
0:56:14 in all those areas then you have the
0:56:17 final messenger that's sent
0:56:18 okay so when allah says
0:56:23 they want to extinguish the light of
0:56:24 allah with their mouths but
0:56:27 that god allah will complete his nude
0:56:30 his light meaning
0:56:31 he will complete that project that he
0:56:33 actually started right
0:56:35 that uh that technological view of
0:56:37 history all right
0:56:38 so this is suit of the stuff it's the
0:56:40 61st chapter
0:56:42 uh what i really wanted to speak about
0:56:45 if that wasn't really what i speak about
0:56:46 uh was the next ayah the next verse in
0:56:49 surat isaf
0:56:50 so and this is what we're going to talk
0:56:52 about now in terms of what was the
0:56:54 purpose
0:56:55 of the prophet sallam what was his
0:56:58 mission
0:56:58 what was he trying to accomplish was it
0:57:01 just peace
0:57:02 or was it just a personal war or what
0:57:06 and so we have two verses that we're
0:57:08 going to juxtapose
0:57:10 all right one of those verses is is from
0:57:12 surat asaf
0:57:13 chapter 61 verse number nine which
0:57:15 follows the last verse we just spoke
0:57:17 about
0:57:17 which is verse number eight okay and the
0:57:20 other verse that we're speaking about
0:57:22 is um from hadid which is uh
0:57:26 from chapter 57 of the quran so the
0:57:29 first verse says
0:57:40 all right it is he who sent his
0:57:41 messenger with
0:57:43 guidance and the religion of truth so
0:57:46 two things that this messenger
0:57:48 referring to the prophet muhammad saw
0:57:49 sallam uh is sending with
0:57:51 guidance and with your tooth for what
0:57:53 purpose to manifest it over all religion
0:57:56 although those who associate others with
0:57:58 allah dislike it all right so we're
0:58:00 going to take this ayah
0:58:02 and compare it to the next ayah this
0:58:04 ayah the first one
0:58:05 is speaking about the prophet muhammad
0:58:07 the second ayah
0:58:08 is speaking about messengers that aside
0:58:11 from the prophet sallam or
0:58:12 messengers in in a general format so
0:58:14 remember theological view of history
0:58:17 messengers are sent at different times
0:58:18 different places but the culmination of
0:58:20 that
0:58:21 is a final messenger whose message is
0:58:24 from the time he sent all the way until
0:58:26 the end of
0:58:28 of of of the entire human project right
0:58:30 and that again lends to the idea of
0:58:32 a teleological view of history so the
0:58:34 second ayah
0:58:36 is
0:58:40 uh and indeed we have already sent our
0:58:42 message we sent our message with clear
0:58:44 evidence
0:58:44 right
0:58:49 and we sent down with them the book the
0:58:51 scripture
0:58:52 and the mizan mizan is um they call it a
0:58:55 balance like when you weigh out
0:58:56 something
0:58:57 um you kind of you know you're able to
0:58:59 find you know weigh things out and the
0:59:01 idea is
0:59:02 you use a mizan or a wei scale to
0:59:05 make sure things are just okay so now
0:59:08 this is
0:59:08 what what does it talk we sent our
0:59:10 messengers so god here is saying we sent
0:59:12 our messengers
0:59:13 so we're talking about like you know
0:59:16 moses jesus
0:59:17 noah abraham isaac and so on and so
0:59:20 forth we sent them
0:59:21 with three things so notice in the first
0:59:24 ayah
0:59:25 they were sent with two things and the
0:59:27 second ayah sent with three things
0:59:29 so the first ayah said that he it is he
0:59:31 who sent down his messenger with
0:59:33 guidance
0:59:34 with al huda and what and the true
0:59:37 religion
0:59:38 right and the second ayah sent with
0:59:41 sent our messengers with clear evidences
0:59:43 number one
0:59:44 with scripture with a book and a balance
0:59:47 three things
0:59:48 all right so how do we
0:59:51 how do we understand these two things
0:59:52 well let's now let's understand that
0:59:54 we're not juxtaposing these two ayats
0:59:56 now what do we mean
0:59:57 when we understand that that that uh he
1:00:00 is the one who sent down his messenger
1:00:02 with guidance with guidance
1:00:06 that huda is the quran and there's other
1:00:09 i don't really have time to get into it
1:00:11 but
1:00:11 other evidence we know hudal and so on
1:00:14 and so forth
1:00:15 we understand that huda here is
1:00:16 referring to the book referring to the
1:00:17 quran
1:00:20 and this is the true the religion of
1:00:22 truth okay
1:00:24 um so these are the two elements that
1:00:26 the prophet salallahu sent with
1:00:28 in the hadith
1:00:32 clear evidences al-kitab and the balance
1:00:36 clear evidences
1:00:39 when you look at the prophets and
1:00:41 messengers that were sent in the past
1:00:44 they would bring miracles for their time
1:00:47 to their people so when you look think
1:00:50 about jesus
1:00:51 he's sent and he brings certain miracles
1:00:52 he's able to by the permission of god
1:00:55 resurrect the dead right by the
1:00:57 permission of god
1:00:58 cure the lepers by the permission of god
1:01:00 you know he does many miracles
1:01:02 and it's based on the time and place and
1:01:05 people that he's sent to
1:01:06 so he has miracles he has a book which
1:01:09 is the injeel
1:01:10 right and those uh and the mizan
1:01:14 mizan is him being the judge himself
1:01:17 right to say okay this is right this is
1:01:18 wrong
1:01:19 in the sense of a sunnah for those of us
1:01:21 who are muslim
1:01:22 we understand that that you had the
1:01:24 example of the prophet in front of you
1:01:25 so what are the three things you have
1:01:27 clear evidences
1:01:29 those miracles you have the book from
1:01:32 the from the case of
1:01:33 uh jesus that would be the um
1:01:37 the the the uh the injeel and then you
1:01:40 have the balance the mizan
1:01:41 which is themselves to judge like what
1:01:43 is right and what is wrong
1:01:45 uh similarly with moses musa you know
1:01:48 he's sent with clear evidences he goes
1:01:50 to pharaoh
1:01:50 and he you know he he shows them the the
1:01:52 snake and all of that
1:01:55 excuse me so he's given clear evidences
1:01:58 he sent the book the torah and the
1:02:01 balance he's the one that's not going to
1:02:02 be doing the judging
1:02:04 so now you have these three elements
1:02:06 what's curious now is that why is there
1:02:08 only two
1:02:09 in the ayah that's referring to the
1:02:10 prophet sallam why
1:02:12 because if there's going to be a last
1:02:14 and final messenger
1:02:16 that has a certain distinct purpose then
1:02:19 that
1:02:20 miracle has to be part and parcel of
1:02:24 something that
1:02:25 anyone coming after the prophet would be
1:02:28 able to
1:02:28 analyze would be able to understand so
1:02:31 when it says that
1:02:36 he sent with bill huda being the quran
1:02:38 the quran
1:02:39 is combining and it's combining the
1:02:42 scripture
1:02:43 al-kitab into one right so therefore the
1:02:46 miracle and the scripture are one of the
1:02:48 same thing
1:02:49 so now it's been combined and why would
1:02:51 that be the case that's the case because
1:02:53 if we have this teleological view of
1:02:55 history and that culminates with the
1:02:57 prophet sallam
1:02:59 then that miracle has to be something
1:03:00 that's accessible to everyone after that
1:03:03 okay all right and then we said that the
1:03:06 the guidance
1:03:06 uh with which is the religion of truth
1:03:10 uh which would be in other words the
1:03:12 prophet sallam himself that's bringing
1:03:13 bringing islam
1:03:14 and him being the judge the sunnah but
1:03:17 then the curious thing here is
1:03:20 to make manifest over all other deens
1:03:24 now a lot of people it's translated here
1:03:25 all over the religion the term deen in
1:03:28 fact is much broader than that
1:03:30 and it has many implications which isn't
1:03:32 just limited to religion
1:03:33 it could mean your entire way of life
1:03:35 your entire system
1:03:37 to be able to judge what's right or
1:03:39 wrong and so on and so forth
1:03:41 and so these things that are being
1:03:43 brought are to manifest over that the
1:03:44 term
1:03:48 you know the the the the trilateral
1:03:50 route to the terminal youth
1:03:52 hirahu is uh
1:03:56 refers to the back and so the idea
1:03:59 is is that when you're going to be
1:04:00 riding on the back of an animal
1:04:02 you know you're going to be riding on
1:04:04 top of it so you're going to be kind of
1:04:05 overtaking it not only that but
1:04:09 also refers something that's clear right
1:04:12 it's clear
1:04:13 why because when someone's riding on the
1:04:15 back of an animal and everyone else is
1:04:16 walking
1:04:17 that person is taller than everyone else
1:04:19 and so they're visible to everyone else
1:04:21 that's coming
1:04:22 so not only is the evidence that which
1:04:25 is
1:04:25 visible and clear but it's also going to
1:04:26 be manifest meaning
1:04:28 that thing that god was going to
1:04:30 complete
1:04:31 is being completed by way of the
1:04:33 messenger and
1:04:35 the quran in other words what the
1:04:36 messenger brought okay
1:04:39 when we understand this analysis and
1:04:41 i've kind of run through it a bit
1:04:42 quickly
1:04:43 um when we understand this that there is
1:04:45 an apex
1:04:46 we find that apex to both rationality
1:04:49 and philosophies
1:04:50 and society as a whole that there is a
1:04:53 certain maturity level
1:04:55 that the quran and the prophet sallam
1:04:58 are being sent
1:04:58 at the time when humanity has reached a
1:05:01 certain level of maturity
1:05:03 and because they reached that certain
1:05:04 level maturity you have a direct example
1:05:07 about how
1:05:08 islam actually becomes manifest in a
1:05:11 practical means
1:05:13 right so there's this idea of you have
1:05:15 an
1:05:16 ideology and the manifestation of that
1:05:18 ideology
1:05:19 one of a lot of modern thinkers and
1:05:22 philosophers especially whether it's a
1:05:23 political philosophy
1:05:25 argue that when we think about something
1:05:26 like democracy uh or we think about
1:05:28 liberalism itself
1:05:30 there's been no actual end point
1:05:32 manifestation
1:05:34 it's actually a myth right in terms of
1:05:37 where we're trying to go
1:05:38 however when you think about islam there
1:05:40 was a manifestation
1:05:42 in fact you had the prophet being the
1:05:43 leader of a community and
1:05:45 you know the the the generations after
1:05:47 him abu bakr
1:05:50 who were able to implement that in a way
1:05:52 that was observable and practical
1:05:54 so it's not that it was just a theory
1:05:56 but it was actually implemented
1:05:57 so from that perspective we see that
1:06:00 that
1:06:00 favor or that that that mission was in
1:06:03 fact completed
1:06:04 now what was the mission it was
1:06:07 basically to bring
1:06:09 people to worship god alone
1:06:12 that's the main kind of objective
1:06:15 and purpose of prophets in general and
1:06:19 specifically the prophet muhammad
1:06:21 sallallahu alaihi wasallam when we
1:06:23 understand
1:06:24 that the main mission of the prophet
1:06:27 sallam
1:06:27 was to bring people closer to islam to
1:06:30 make manifest over everything else
1:06:32 manifest not only in the sense of that
1:06:34 okay this is how
1:06:35 a system of life should be organized but
1:06:38 even rationally and intellectually which
1:06:40 is that this is the manifestation that's
1:06:41 happening
1:06:42 this is what's to be brought forth and
1:06:44 now we start looking at the sita
1:06:46 we start finding that things start to
1:06:48 fit and come into place
1:06:50 when you understand this was the sole
1:06:51 objective islam
1:06:53 is to be manifest over all other ways of
1:06:55 life all other religions all the
1:06:57 you know ideologies that are out there
1:06:59 right and
1:07:01 when the prophet islam chose a certain
1:07:03 time to go to war
1:07:04 and it chose a certain time to negotiate
1:07:06 peace it was with these lenses
1:07:09 that he's making these choices so it's
1:07:11 not just peace for the sake of peace
1:07:13 even though and i'll get into this in
1:07:15 just a second that peace
1:07:16 lends itself to the mission in a way
1:07:19 that's
1:07:20 better than war lends itself to the
1:07:22 mission right depending on the context
1:07:24 that we're in
1:07:25 all right so now with these lenses in
1:07:27 mind
1:07:28 let's go back to our original question
1:07:30 how do we understand the sida
1:07:31 mechan phase okay make sense we've
1:07:33 already talked about well
1:07:35 if they're oppressed you're not going to
1:07:37 take up war
1:07:39 when it comes to the battle of badr and
1:07:40 ahadak all of these
1:07:42 okay so now in order to get the message
1:07:45 out you have the age of empires you have
1:07:47 people that are fighting back and forth
1:07:49 and so in order to get that message out
1:07:51 you're going to basically
1:07:52 go to war because that is the way things
1:07:54 were done at the time okay
1:07:56 now you have the anomaly of hudaibia
1:07:58 though and by the way this is just one
1:08:00 of the anomalies that just for the sake
1:08:01 of time
1:08:02 you have the anomaly of hudeibia
1:08:04 remember we said that
1:08:05 it's very strange because they were at
1:08:08 the at the apex of power
1:08:10 and why would you negotiate a peace
1:08:12 agreement which is totally lopsided
1:08:14 it was so it seemed so lopsided that
1:08:19 one of the great companions of the
1:08:20 prophet sallam he himself
1:08:22 who was known to be you know stringent
1:08:24 upon following the the prophet saw
1:08:26 sallam
1:08:27 he goes to the prophet muhammad says ya
1:08:29 rasulullah
1:08:30 aren't we upon the truth oh messenger of
1:08:32 god aren't we upon the truth
1:08:33 and there upon falsehood and the prophet
1:08:36 said says yes
1:08:37 he says aren't you the messenger of god
1:08:40 he says yes
1:08:41 the prophet says yes because then why
1:08:43 would we agree to these things
1:08:44 and so the prophet muhammad says i will
1:08:46 not disobey what allah has said
1:08:48 and so it was even perplexing to the
1:08:51 companions that had gone with the
1:08:53 prophet sallam to who they bear
1:08:55 what's interesting is the revelation
1:08:58 that comes
1:08:58 on their way back so remember they were
1:09:00 told you can't make umrah this year you
1:09:02 can't make
1:09:02 pilgrimage this year you got to go back
1:09:04 you can make it next year and by the way
1:09:06 this would be very upsetting for someone
1:09:08 that hasn't been to mecca
1:09:10 in let's say eight seven ten years
1:09:13 right whatever the years however many
1:09:15 years have passed you haven't seen for
1:09:17 some of these for some of them that was
1:09:18 their home imagine being kicked out of
1:09:20 your house
1:09:21 and this is the first time you can go
1:09:23 back home and they tell you
1:09:24 ah never mind you can't you have to wait
1:09:26 till next year
1:09:27 you'd be very upset right and yet
1:09:30 again with those stipulations that
1:09:33 seemed lopsided the processor agreed
1:09:35 to this peace treaty all right again
1:09:39 why well when you understand the
1:09:41 objective
1:09:42 the purpose of prophethood what was the
1:09:44 objective
1:09:45 we understand you know why this treaty
1:09:48 was enacted
1:09:49 in fact on the way back as i was just
1:09:51 about to mention uh
1:09:53 allah sent down revelation
1:09:57 right that indeed we have given you a
1:09:59 clear victory now someone may ask like
1:10:02 why would god
1:10:04 call this incident a clear victory it
1:10:05 was so lopsided
1:10:07 ibm who's one of the one of the people
1:10:10 who has penned
1:10:10 some of the sita he says
1:10:14 no previous victory in islam was greater
1:10:16 than this
1:10:17 so all of those battles that were fought
1:10:20 all of the the
1:10:21 badr and uh you know uh and all the
1:10:23 other battles
1:10:24 he says no previous victory in islam was
1:10:27 greater than this
1:10:29 there was nothing but before this treaty
1:10:32 in other words he's saying there was
1:10:33 nothing but
1:10:33 battle be when men met so when people
1:10:36 met it was just
1:10:37 war one after just fighting each other
1:10:40 but when there was an armistance where
1:10:42 there's a peace
1:10:43 when there was peace and war was
1:10:45 abolished
1:10:46 and men met in safety and consulted each
1:10:49 other
1:10:50 none talked about islam intelligently
1:10:53 without entering it
1:10:54 you see so even this is from ibm
1:10:59 another um another author of a fatal
1:11:02 body um
1:11:04 uh i'm forgetting the name the author of
1:11:07 fatal body but anyways someone can very
1:11:09 refresh my fresh my memory
1:11:11 but he he also writes that he actually
1:11:13 quotes uh
1:11:14 uh imam al-uzai if i'm not mistaken he
1:11:17 says
1:11:18 why did allah call this a victory
1:11:20 because the number of people that went
1:11:22 with the prophet sa
1:11:23 was around 13 hundred in two short years
1:11:27 of peace
1:11:28 it that number when they eventually went
1:11:30 to mecca after two years
1:11:32 that number went from that thirteen to
1:11:34 fourteen hundred to ten
1:11:35 thousand why and he gives the same
1:11:38 reasoning he says because
1:11:40 in those two years of peace whereas
1:11:42 before people were fighting and
1:11:44 at each other's throats and constantly
1:11:46 in a state of war instability
1:11:48 they could never speak about islam but
1:11:50 in those two years of peace
1:11:53 people could come they could discuss
1:11:55 freely
1:11:56 and no one that was confronted with
1:11:58 islam was presented islam
1:12:00 could help but accept islam so that is
1:12:02 why allah called it a victory
1:12:05 so when we're looking at these incidents
1:12:07 we have to understand that
1:12:08 in order to have a a cogent
1:12:12 view of the sita a proper view of the
1:12:14 sita to understand
1:12:15 why certain things happen sita you must
1:12:18 by necessity understand
1:12:20 the mission of the prophet muhammad to
1:12:22 try to take it out of that context
1:12:24 leads to more questions than answers
1:12:28 all right i'll leave you with one other
1:12:30 this is the last i'm going to cover
1:12:31 which i thought was really profound
1:12:33 you know if we talk about war and peace
1:12:35 and these things and you know obviously
1:12:37 as humans we want heuristics
1:12:38 you know was he war did he prefer war
1:12:40 did he for peace
1:12:42 you know you could say that when it came
1:12:44 to war
1:12:45 in fact there's a statement from ibn
1:12:46 taymiyyah who says that the prophet said
1:12:48 he would consult uh with the companions
1:12:51 about
1:12:52 war more than any other subject uh one
1:12:55 narration
1:12:55 one one uh an uh analysis of the sita
1:12:58 mentions
1:12:59 that the prophet only spent 200 days
1:13:02 of his prophethood amongst those 23
1:13:04 years at
1:13:05 in war the rest of the days they were
1:13:07 sent outside of war
1:13:09 right so when we look at kind of which
1:13:11 one is the is the preference
1:13:13 we could say that yes the prophet saw
1:13:14 did prefer peace but why did he prefer
1:13:17 peace
1:13:17 was it only for the sake of peace so
1:13:20 that people could be stable
1:13:21 or was there something deeper than that
1:13:24 was the prophet system caring about
1:13:26 people
1:13:26 only about their well-being in this
1:13:28 temporary world or did it have to do
1:13:30 with extending for their well-being
1:13:32 about what happens when they die
1:13:33 and they face allah and they're given
1:13:36 you know that that
1:13:36 the prophet says i'm not only concerned
1:13:38 about what happens in this world
1:13:40 that the poor are fed and the orphans
1:13:42 are taken care of and those of course
1:13:44 there's no doubt about it you would see
1:13:45 plenty of evidence
1:13:46 for that in the sita but
1:13:50 he was also concerned his you can say
1:13:53 his
1:13:53 humanity his mercy his compassion
1:13:56 extended beyond this world and that was
1:13:59 the purpose
1:14:00 of why he was sent and taking that
1:14:03 purpose out of
1:14:04 out of view and trying to analyze his
1:14:06 life
1:14:07 it won't get a person anywhere so i
1:14:10 wanted to leave you with this last
1:14:10 statement from shakusam
1:14:13 and he says and he's referring to after
1:14:15 the prophet system passed away
1:14:17 and if you know about the siddha you
1:14:18 know that after the prophet passed away
1:14:20 a lot of those arab tribes that had had
1:14:22 become muslim and joined the islamic
1:14:25 empire started to renege on their faith
1:14:27 right
1:14:28 and one of one of those communities
1:14:31 sent a a message to abu bakr who was the
1:14:34 leader at the time saying we're not
1:14:35 going to pay zakat
1:14:37 now abu bakr and umar these were your
1:14:40 two kind of best
1:14:41 friends of the prophet salaam abu bakr
1:14:43 was known to be a little more
1:14:44 soft-hearted
1:14:46 and um known to be a lot more a little
1:14:47 more rough right a little more harsh
1:14:51 and abu bakr says if they're not going
1:14:54 to pay
1:14:54 zakat we're going to attack them
1:14:57 and um thought that this was harsh which
1:14:59 is very strange right because abu bakr
1:15:01 supposed to be soft almost which is hard
1:15:02 she says how can you attack them
1:15:04 when they have made the shahada they've
1:15:06 said
1:15:08 they've claimed to be muslim and so then
1:15:11 abu bakr says
1:15:12 that i will not uh i will not accept
1:15:15 someone separating
1:15:17 acts of worship whether they are salah
1:15:19 or zakat right i'm not going to accept
1:15:21 that
1:15:21 and we're going to attack them and
1:15:23 eventually um came around
1:15:25 but what's interesting as an observation
1:15:27 when yusuf karadawi mentions he says
1:15:29 and he mentions this in his book he says
1:15:32 it should be pointed out for the first
1:15:36 time in the history of humanity
1:15:37 a state that is under abu bakr fought
1:15:40 for the purpose
1:15:41 of protecting the rights of the poor and
1:15:44 the weak sectors of society
1:15:46 most states stand in support of the rich
1:15:49 and the strong
1:15:50 so if you remember when i was talking
1:15:51 about the objectives of war when do
1:15:53 people go to war
1:15:54 usually it has to do with military
1:15:56 expansion
1:15:57 money property etc here is someone
1:16:00 that's
1:16:01 now very close to the prophet sallam has
1:16:04 been taught
1:16:05 has been under the tutelage of the
1:16:06 prophet sallam for a long period of time
1:16:09 manifesting the idea that war is not to
1:16:11 be engaged
1:16:12 for just a purpose of trying to acquire
1:16:14 land but rather
1:16:16 it's engaged for the purpose of people
1:16:19 coming closer to god
1:16:20 one of the ways that you worship god is
1:16:22 by paying zakat
1:16:23 and one of the the functions of zakat is
1:16:26 that you take this
1:16:27 god from the rich of a community and is
1:16:29 to be given to the poor of that same
1:16:30 community
1:16:31 so in this case it's not that the money
1:16:33 that was taken from the rich of the
1:16:35 of that of that tribe was going to come
1:16:37 to the the national
1:16:40 the national treasury and then abu bakr
1:16:42 would basically use it
1:16:44 it was to be taken from the rich of that
1:16:46 tribe
1:16:47 and given to the poor of that tribe so
1:16:49 what yusuf karadawi mentions that this
1:16:51 is probably the first time in human
1:16:52 history
1:16:53 where someone's going to war not for the
1:16:56 purposes that we would typically think
1:16:58 but rather it's to elevate the poor and
1:17:01 the impoverished
1:17:02 and that elevation is directly linked
1:17:05 with the purpose of prophethood
1:17:07 when it comes to the idea of why was the
1:17:09 prophet sallam sent
1:17:10 it was to elevate humans to make them
1:17:14 worshipers of allah to give them a
1:17:16 better spiritual state
1:17:17 so not only limiting the social rights
1:17:21 not only limited to the economic rights
1:17:24 but also ensuring that people have
1:17:26 spiritual rights so i'll go ahead and
1:17:28 stop there with the presentation
1:17:30 i know it's a bit long uh if you guys
1:17:32 have any
1:17:33 questions let me know
1:17:39 it was mashallah a very very uh
1:17:41 enlightening
1:17:42 presentation i i definitely benefit from
1:17:44 it as well uh
1:17:45 and just to just i just to so summarize
1:17:47 it for myself what i'm gonna one of the
1:17:49 things i'm gonna take away from it
1:17:50 because i always had this idea i've been
1:17:52 thinking about especially recently
1:17:53 is you know people say the prophet
1:17:55 sallam was a you know war mongerer he
1:17:57 was a he was just a warlord et cetera et
1:17:59 cetera all of these narratives you hear
1:18:01 out there
1:18:01 yeah but people seem to miss the picture
1:18:03 what was the objective of islam in the
1:18:05 first place it's so people worship the
1:18:06 creator
1:18:07 now i was thinking of it in a very
1:18:09 simple way prior to your presentation
1:18:11 today which is look
1:18:12 if the objective is human beings turn
1:18:14 back towards the creator in this life
1:18:16 and worship him
1:18:17 and submit to him without not with com
1:18:21 without compulsion right they do it off
1:18:23 their own will
1:18:24 yeah well then fighting them and killing
1:18:26 them is not really aiding in their
1:18:28 objectives
1:18:29 yeah yeah so yes but now the way you've
1:18:31 put it for us today mashallah it's
1:18:32 really helped me connect with all of the
1:18:33 dots now which is look
1:18:35 you you you can't say the prophet you
1:18:37 know
1:18:38 the objective wasn't peace or war the
1:18:40 objective was that human beings submit
1:18:42 to the creator and worship him
1:18:44 now keeping that in mind what
1:18:46 facilitates that like you mentioned
1:18:48 peace facilitates that far more in in a
1:18:51 greater way than war would ever do
1:18:53 yeah so jazakallahu maya bless you um
1:18:55 i've just taken what you've said and
1:18:56 just put in late terms now hamdulillah
1:18:58 hopefully you've done the presentation
1:19:00 in five minutes and call it a day no no
1:19:02 that's only because i i i normally do
1:19:03 that i stopped i tried on this clearly
1:19:06 trust me i used to milk hamza like this
1:19:08 and i just milked you now it's
1:19:09 alhamdulillah
1:19:10 but but it was brilliant so brothers and
1:19:12 sisters if you if you have any uh
1:19:14 questions for sheikh uh please uh put
1:19:17 them up on the screen now and shaykh
1:19:19 while they're sending in the questions
1:19:20 there was uh a question earlier we've
1:19:22 had a guest on last week as well and
1:19:23 they've come on again today
1:19:25 uh the question isn't directly related
1:19:27 but i guess it's the starting point
1:19:28 uh he has been persistently uh making
1:19:31 the point that uh
1:19:33 you know the the prophet sallam took
1:19:35 islam or made islam
1:19:37 or concocted it by taking things from
1:19:40 the jews so it's based on judaism it's
1:19:42 just
1:19:42 judaism repackaged basically so your
1:19:45 thoughts on that anything you want to
1:19:46 say in regards to that
1:19:48 so i would say that there's a number of
1:19:50 ways to kind of
1:19:52 um negate that point all right one of
1:19:55 the clearest ways that one can
1:19:57 what i would recommend and this is not
1:20:00 having a discussion with me
1:20:01 or you or just trying to have this as a
1:20:03 debate but to pick up the quran
1:20:06 take an honest look at it because as i
1:20:08 mentioned my presentation
1:20:10 one of the functions of the quran is not
1:20:13 just that it's scripture right is that
1:20:16 it has the function of being a miracle
1:20:18 as well
1:20:19 right and so when we talk about miracle
1:20:21 that's going to come from just different
1:20:22 perspectives
1:20:23 if you happen to unders like linguistics
1:20:26 and language
1:20:27 you're going to find that miraculous if
1:20:29 you are a person who understands certain
1:20:31 economic
1:20:32 principles you're going to find that
1:20:33 some of the economic principles that are
1:20:35 expounded upon in the quran
1:20:37 which by the way are very different than
1:20:39 what's expounded upon in the bible
1:20:41 are very profound if if you are someone
1:20:44 that
1:20:45 you know you know that has a flavor in
1:20:47 something else
1:20:49 you'll find that in the quran but you
1:20:50 have to come to the quran
1:20:53 not from the position of well i already
1:20:56 know what it's going to tell me
1:20:58 right because even when the quran starts
1:21:00 off right after the first chapter
1:21:02 uh allah says
1:21:07 right that this is the book when there's
1:21:09 no doubt a guidance
1:21:11 for the mutt taking so you know that
1:21:14 that the narration that i mentioned way
1:21:15 at the beginning
1:21:16 right right we took the process as a
1:21:19 shield
1:21:20 the person who wants to understand that
1:21:22 what happens when i die
1:21:24 in other words that existential
1:21:25 realities like i want to protect myself
1:21:28 from whatever negative consequences
1:21:30 happen when i die
1:21:31 that's kind of where we're headed when
1:21:33 when we want to start reading this book
1:21:35 right if you're really worried about
1:21:37 what happens when you die
1:21:38 and that you're willing to let go of ego
1:21:40 and everything else and say look i'm
1:21:41 going to approach it
1:21:43 as an honest person who's just going to
1:21:45 engage with it
1:21:46 then that in of itself will give you the
1:21:48 answer you're looking for
1:21:50 right if you want to approach it as look
1:21:52 they took from this source and that
1:21:53 source and that's where the processor
1:21:54 constructed it
1:21:55 yes we can get into deep discussions
1:21:57 about that how it differs
1:21:58 how it was more accurate and so on and
1:22:00 so forth but at the end of the day
1:22:02 the mission of the prophet sallam was to
1:22:05 take a person like yourself
1:22:07 and make them make them worshipers of
1:22:10 god and fulfill the purpose of their
1:22:12 life
1:22:13 right so it's for you directly it's for
1:22:15 your own benefit
1:22:17 to engage with the quran directly like
1:22:18 that as opposed to coming and just
1:22:20 saying oh you know he took from here and
1:22:21 there
1:22:22 you want to do that that's fine and you
1:22:23 can and that you can we can have that
1:22:25 discussion and we can kind of show that
1:22:27 okay that's not really the case and so
1:22:28 on and so forth
1:22:29 but what good is that really going to do
1:22:31 if our starting point or our
1:22:33 prerequisites
1:22:35 are not fulfilled you know that was kind
1:22:37 of the purpose of me presenting all of
1:22:39 this as well is that if we don't
1:22:40 understand that as the goal
1:22:42 then really you know you can put the
1:22:44 prop system in any category you want and
1:22:45 similarly you can put the quran in any
1:22:47 category you want
1:22:48 you know
1:22:55 islam was the prophet's mission to
1:22:56 spread the religion of islam
1:22:59 and therefore his teachings values and
1:23:00 truth into people's lives and societies
1:23:03 for a greater good and to worship god
1:23:05 question question mark
1:23:07 yes so very simple answer
1:23:10 [Laughter]
1:23:13 mashallah okay brilliant next one
1:23:16 is about okay it's not related it's okay
1:23:18 i don't know if you want to address this
1:23:19 up to you sure
1:23:21 dear brother i need your help when the
1:23:23 quran says
1:23:25 uh this is the clear signs but when
1:23:27 muslims don't
1:23:28 even know what these letters stand for
1:23:31 uh
1:23:31 or we don't agree upon it okay
1:23:35 so i mean this is actually going to be
1:23:37 quite extensive
1:23:38 it could be a very long answer but when
1:23:40 we look at like the letters you
1:23:41 mentioned
1:23:43 you know etc noon and so on and so forth
1:23:46 that these are known as
1:23:48 right and there's been a lot of
1:23:49 different ideas behind it
1:23:51 but one of the things i think is really
1:23:53 interesting and for us to understand is
1:23:54 that
1:23:55 what is at the crux of islam like the
1:23:57 word islam itself means islam to submit
1:24:01 right that's not only meaning like
1:24:03 submit your desires it also means
1:24:05 uh to some extent to submit your
1:24:07 intellect as well
1:24:08 right that doesn't mean we're not
1:24:10 supposed to use our intellect but we
1:24:12 understand that our intellect is going
1:24:13 to have
1:24:13 limitations we're not going to
1:24:15 understand we're not going to understand
1:24:16 the entire gamut of
1:24:18 every single thing there is to know
1:24:20 right otherwise we'd cease being human
1:24:22 and we'd be allah right so
1:24:25 by our created state by necessity we
1:24:28 have to have a limitation
1:24:30 in our cognitive faculty just like we
1:24:32 have a limitation
1:24:33 in our ocular faculty meaning the
1:24:35 ability to see you can't see everything
1:24:37 you're limited you can't hear anything
1:24:39 you're limited your rationale is limited
1:24:41 as well
1:24:42 so the question isn't about well if mean
1:24:45 i don't understand it but
1:24:46 it's in a sense to have you understand
1:24:48 that your position
1:24:50 that allah is the one who's right
1:24:56 knows and your knowledge is limited and
1:24:59 the function of that limited knowledge
1:25:00 is to get you to the point to understand
1:25:02 what your position is
1:25:04 and what the position of allah is your
1:25:06 position as one who is someone who
1:25:07 submits to allah
1:25:09 and the position of allah is the one who
1:25:10 is to be submitted to right
1:25:12 so just because we don't let's say know
1:25:14 the exact meaning
1:25:15 i don't see that as a problem per se for
1:25:18 someone that is sincerely seeking allah
1:25:20 subhanahu wa
1:25:21 and allah knows best question here by
1:25:24 abbas he says
1:25:25 i think one of the purpose is also
1:25:29 uh how to settle how to set a pluralist
1:25:31 society according to god isn't it
1:25:34 uh one of uh so i'm assuming it's about
1:25:36 the prophet referring back to the
1:25:37 process
1:25:38 that one of his purposes was to settle a
1:25:40 pluralist society according to god
1:25:42 isn't it so i mean i don't know if he
1:25:45 means religious pluralism or just
1:25:47 pluralism in the sense of tolerance
1:25:49 right because this becomes
1:25:50 it's two different things right if we
1:25:52 mean a plural society where people are
1:25:53 free
1:25:54 to practice their religion or whatever
1:25:55 it might be this is a different
1:25:57 this is a different dynamic right
1:25:58 because islam didn't come
1:26:00 to force people to become muslim or else
1:26:03 kill them
1:26:03 right this is and frankly you can't
1:26:06 really do that you can't force someone
1:26:07 to believe something
1:26:08 right if i come to you and say hey ron
1:26:10 you know if you don't believe
1:26:12 that it's uh you know it's 1 30 right
1:26:14 now i'm gonna kill you
1:26:15 and so you could be like okay fine fine
1:26:16 i believe it's 1 30. but that doesn't
1:26:18 mean you actually believe it it just
1:26:19 means
1:26:19 you're scared of dying and then that's
1:26:21 it but that's not really the purpose of
1:26:23 prophethood right again it's to people
1:26:24 to sincerely engage with islam
1:26:27 and actually believe what what it is now
1:26:32 when we talk about religious pluralism
1:26:34 what that's indicative
1:26:36 of is to say that it doesn't matter what
1:26:38 you believe
1:26:40 and you can just be upon what you're
1:26:41 upon and what whereupon is what we're
1:26:43 upon and we all just want to live
1:26:44 together and
1:26:45 peace is the main objective right
1:26:48 and how you reach god it doesn't matter
1:26:51 when in fact the message of the process
1:26:53 is exact opposite how you reach god is
1:26:55 important
1:26:56 so if you're talking about a pluralistic
1:26:57 society one of tolerance then yes
1:27:00 the islamic society the the the muslim
1:27:03 framework is one of tolerance
1:27:04 right we tolerate other people's beliefs
1:27:07 right
1:27:08 and i'll give the example of like in a
1:27:09 familial uh unit
1:27:12 you tolerate certain habits of your wife
1:27:14 right
1:27:15 you don't become a you don't become a
1:27:16 pluralist with your wife right
1:27:18 you know if you believe that you know
1:27:20 your wife should make sure she puts the
1:27:22 cap on her toothpaste
1:27:23 or whatever it is right you don't say
1:27:25 well i believe that too we'll just leave
1:27:26 it off we'll be
1:27:27 no you you tolerate it right so but
1:27:31 you have this idea that you tolerate it
1:27:32 for a certain reason right and that
1:27:34 reason is to get them to
1:27:36 to to to to to understand the reality of
1:27:38 the islamic framework
1:27:40 again pluralism itself there's nothing
1:27:43 wrong with being pluristic in the sense
1:27:44 of tolerance you tolerate other people's
1:27:46 views
1:27:47 and that's how you engage with people
1:27:49 your gut people are going to
1:27:50 you know you have different viewpoints
1:27:52 and you need to have that space to
1:27:53 engage
1:27:54 so that's the purpose is not to say that
1:27:56 islam is here to just force its view on
1:27:58 everyone and that's it
1:28:00 at the same time it's not to say that we
1:28:02 believe in religious pluralism and that
1:28:04 no matter what you believe
1:28:05 you know as hamza says all the rivers
1:28:07 lead to the same sewer right that's not
1:28:08 what we believe
1:28:09 okay so so so i guess what you're saying
1:28:12 there's a distinction here islam
1:28:14 encourages tolerance
1:28:16 because it provides or allows for a
1:28:18 society in which you can
1:28:19 then share and exchange ideas and share
1:28:21 the true message of islam
1:28:23 but when it comes to belief we know
1:28:26 we're very clear that this is the truth
1:28:28 and this is the way to god etc so we're
1:28:31 not encouraging perennialism or or
1:28:33 like you said all roots lead to god
1:28:35 that's that's different
1:28:36 right okay uh we'll take one more
1:28:38 question again not directly related but
1:28:40 i think
1:28:41 it's a good one to end on inshallah the
1:28:43 question says mm says question the
1:28:45 current pandemic situation is making a
1:28:47 lot of
1:28:47 people in the west interested in
1:28:49 religion but because of propaganda
1:28:51 negative information out there they are
1:28:53 not even considering islam how do we
1:28:56 help them now this is very like i've
1:28:59 been thinking about this as well because
1:29:01 you would see a lot of people are
1:29:02 turning towards spirituality
1:29:04 they are turning towards religious
1:29:05 spiritual figures like sadhguru is
1:29:07 recently becoming extremely popular
1:29:10 you know the elite rich actors
1:29:13 you know everyone's turning towards them
1:29:14 for advice especially during this
1:29:15 lockdown
1:29:16 or pandemic but they're not turning
1:29:18 towards islam and i think
1:29:19 there's a lot of truth to this question
1:29:21 but how would we address this
1:29:22 or what would you say the way forward is
1:29:25 so let me just be blunt
1:29:26 okay um very clear question here
1:29:30 imran um is the prophecy that i'm with
1:29:33 us
1:29:34 anymore nope no
1:29:37 so does that mean that now the job is
1:29:39 done
1:29:41 like or does that mean that the people
1:29:44 that claim to love the prophet sallam
1:29:46 to follow the prophet sallam to um you
1:29:50 know want to be upon the sunnah of the
1:29:51 prophet sallam
1:29:53 doesn't it imply that the job is now
1:29:56 transferred to the people that make
1:29:57 those claims
1:29:59 so when we're saying that okay so like
1:30:00 you've got propaganda with all these
1:30:01 things okay
1:30:02 but the thing is that we have stopped
1:30:06 doing the job of the prophet sallam
1:30:08 right
1:30:09 and when that's and when that happens
1:30:11 you're going to find the negative
1:30:12 consequences that we find
1:30:13 right now whether that means us doing
1:30:16 the job in terms of proactively calling
1:30:17 people to islam
1:30:19 right having people understand the
1:30:21 tranquility
1:30:22 and peace that one gets when
1:30:24 understanding the deeper
1:30:26 existential questions of why they're
1:30:28 here you know where they came from and
1:30:30 what happens when they die
1:30:32 that existential solace that you you
1:30:35 reach
1:30:35 can only be found in islam so the
1:30:38 reality is
1:30:39 are we doing a good enough job
1:30:41 explaining that to people
1:30:43 or is it something that we have in our
1:30:45 pocket and we're just hiding it and
1:30:46 we're saying like we're good to go
1:30:48 and we're going to jannah and good luck
1:30:50 right it's like
1:30:51 because that's not how the prophet saws
1:30:53 was the entire
1:30:54 context or the entire focus of this of
1:30:57 this
1:30:58 web of this live stream was understand
1:31:00 that the prophet saws had a purpose
1:31:02 and that purpose had to do with
1:31:03 compassion compassion for
1:31:06 the people who are listening right now
1:31:08 who are muslim
1:31:09 that you're muslim because the process
1:31:11 was compassionate
1:31:12 and if you're not forwarding this
1:31:13 message on bringing people from a state
1:31:16 where they are let's say confused where
1:31:18 they are you know having trouble in
1:31:19 their life
1:31:20 and you're bringing them to a state
1:31:22 which moves them closer to allah and
1:31:24 serenity and tranquility knowing the
1:31:27 answers of existential questions
1:31:29 then what does that say about you and
1:31:31 your compassion
1:31:32 you could give all the money you want to
1:31:33 help feed someone
1:31:35 but that's compassion i'm not denying
1:31:38 that i'm not negating that
1:31:40 but if you really want to look at
1:31:42 compassion at its
1:31:44 perfection you look at the prophet
1:31:46 sallam and that compassion and
1:31:47 perfection
1:31:48 means that he didn't only care about
1:31:50 people as their state was in
1:31:52 this world but what their state will be
1:31:55 when they pass away
1:31:56 right so if we're talking about okay
1:31:58 there's a lot of propaganda and all that
1:31:59 let's all whoever's here today muslims
1:32:03 make a commitment that we're going to
1:32:05 try to share islam as much as we can
1:32:07 and that beauty that we find in islam
1:32:10 we're going to try our best to share
1:32:11 with everyone else
1:32:12 you know in whatever capacity you can
1:32:14 and allah knows best
1:32:17 may allah bless you uh i think we will
1:32:19 come to an end we'll wrap it up now
1:32:20 inshallah
1:32:21 sounds great brilliant may allah bless
1:32:23 you except brothers and sisters please
1:32:25 uh continue
1:32:26 to share this uh anyone that watches us
1:32:28 after the live is over also
1:32:30 uh we have one final installment of this
1:32:32 series next week
1:32:36 yeah although we would like to have
1:32:37 sheikh on more uh
1:32:40 earlier planning on doing this in two
1:32:41 parts but no no i think i was able to
1:32:43 cover it
1:32:44 up brilliant um so yeah brother sisters
1:32:47 please share and
1:32:48 i will speak to you guys next friday