The Hidden Philosophy Poisoning the Modern Muslim minds - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

[00:00:00]that the single most dangerous threat to Islam and arguably and I think Sam so makes this argument to religion in general is secularity. And and the essence of secularity is this idea what what Charles Taylor calls it is imminent closure. So in religious tradition you have what's called the transcendent and the imminent. And muta'ali is one of the names of Allah and it means the transcendent. So it's be what's beyond this world. What what transcends this world. Uh it's ma wara' al-tabi'a. It's the metaphysical world.

[00:00:38]So there's this world that we're in.

[00:00:39]This is and this is actually dunya. It's considered the lowest place in this hierarchy of worlds.

[00:00:46]Allah is rabb al-alameen and there's a khilaf about what that means. And I prefer the opinion of Ibn Abbas because in Arabic it's called jam' al-aqil which uh if if if it meant the worlds like other worlds or all the worlds then it would it would have said rabb al-awalam.

[00:01:10]But it said rabb al-alameen and Raghib says in al-mufradat that the reason Allah says alameen Ibn Abbas said it meant al-ins wal-jinn.

[00:01:20]So all the sapiential beings which means those beings that have aqil the ability to reason, to think, uh to intuit.

[00:01:34]Um and so he saw uh Ibn Abbas considered that to be al-ins wal-jinn. Rabb al-alameen rabb al-ins wal-jinn because they're al-mukallafun. They're the mukhatabun.

[00:01:47]They're the ones that God is speaking to in this khitab al-taklif, right? So you have khitab al-wada' to khitab al-taklif. You you you have these these these two different ways that we're spoken to.

[00:02:02]And the taklif is who's responsible. Who who is responsible? When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, "Fa'alam annahu la ilaha illallah." Who is that amr being addressed to?

[00:02:12]That's the mukallaf. So, like a child is not mukallaf.

[00:02:16]So so Raghib al-Isfahani takes it a step further and he says, every single human being is a alam.

[00:02:28]That you are a world. You are the microcosm.

[00:02:33]All of the worlds are contained in you.

[00:02:36]And you couldn't even experience them if they weren't in you.

[00:02:40]And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has made each one of us a world and when we die, a whole world dies with us. Every single human being that's on this planet, when you die, just as there has been many worlds before us, there's people that imagined things that none of us ever imagined. There's people that have said things that none of us have ever said. Because every unique human being is a world, is a alam.

[00:03:04]Tahsib nafsaka jirmun saghirun wa fik antal al-alam al-akbar. Imam Ali said, "You think you're some insignificant body and in you the whole cosmos, the macrocosm exists. So, you are a world."

[00:03:18]And so, rabbul alamin is the lord of all these worlds that are sapiential, that that are able to comprehend, to think, to and to discover their lord.

[00:03:32]So, what immanent closure according to uh uh according to Charles Taylor is when you close off the transcendent, when you don't allow for the transcendent to come into your world.

[00:03:47]So, you've closed off otherworldliness.

[00:03:50]You've closed off the idea that there's a transcendental realm and what you're saying is this is all there is.

[00:04:00]Like one of these celebrities said, "The afterlife's a hype."

[00:04:04]You know, this is the idea because and and and and marks the idea that religion is just an opium that a heartless world gives to those suffering in it so that they can suffer uh less painfully.

[00:04:22]Right? That religion is an opium.

[00:04:25]You know, and and the irony of that I think is that they got rid of religion cuz Marx said we need to get rid of religion by removing the causes of pain which is the capitalist evil system. So, if we could just get rid of that, everybody's going to be pain-free and happy.

[00:04:43]So, we don't won't we don't we won't need religion to to numb our pain. So, they got rid of religion for most people and now they actually need real opium to numb themselves. So, they're all like on drugs and taking fentanyl opium, opioids, right? Just to get through or or at the end of the day to get themselves, you know, plastered just so they can forget about this meaningless life that they're experiencing.

[00:05:16]So, he says in considering the status of the Quran from within the context of secular modernity, one of the first requirements is to examine the often implicit assumptions of that context that in turn inform such a consideration.

[00:05:31]As Arthur Arthur Lovejoy has generally observed, so this is a quote.

[00:05:35]There are first implicit and incompletely explicit assumptions or more or less unconscious mental habits operating in the thought of an individual or a generation. So, this is not just in the individual, but a whole generation. What what what what is termed the zeitgeist, the spirit of your time. Like atheism is very popular now. It wasn't popular 200 years ago.

[00:06:02]You would you would be hard-pressed to find an atheist. Cuz it just wasn't popular. Whereas now, it's a cool thing to say I don't believe in God. So, young people are now it's hip to be atheist. They haven't really thought about it. They haven't read the great atheists of the 19th century. They haven't certainly haven't read the great scholars of theology that made their arguments for the existence of God. But they are embracing the zeitgeist of their peers.

[00:06:32]And everybody says And and and the tragedy is they really think these ideas are their own.

[00:06:39]Which is why you know, I've I've said this anecdote before, but um Guy Eaton told me this that he had a neighbor and he asked him uh uh what he did and he he said that he you know, he was he studied theology.

[00:06:58]And he said, "Well, I'm an atheist." And then he said, "Well, have you read you know, did you read like uh Thomas Aquinas on reasons to believe in God?" He said, "No." He said, "Did you read uh Meister Eckhart?" "No." "Did you read Averroes?" "No." "What about Ghazali?" "No."

[00:07:16]"Saint Gregory?" "No." He said, "Sir, you're not an atheist, you're an ignoramus."

[00:07:21]Right? Because if you haven't thought about it, if you haven't really deeply gone into these and looked at the cuz there are arguments for and against.

[00:07:31]But if you haven't delved deeply into that, then you have no business say just say I'm ignorant. I don't know. At least be an agnostic. I don't know. I haven't studied the issue.

[00:07:43]So, these are the unconscious mental habits operating in thoughts of an individual or a generation. It is the beliefs which are so much a matter of course that they are rather tacitly presupposed than formally expressed and argued for.

[00:07:57]So, they're just assumptions. They're unconscious in in that we're not even aware that they are directing the way we think about things.

[00:08:10]The ways of thinking would seem so natural and inevitable that they are not scrutinized with the eye of logical self-consciousness.

[00:08:18]That often or more most decisive of the character of a philosopher's doctrine, you know, Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. If you don't think deeply about life and and really wonder like what are we doing here?

[00:08:34]Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing?

[00:08:38]Uh what happens when we die? Was there a pre-existence before we came into this world?

[00:08:45]How did we form in the wombs of our mothers?

[00:08:50]How did we come from a Allah says min ma'in maheen, from a a lowly liquid? How how how how is this possible? Where did Where did my thoughts come from? Where is my language from?

[00:09:05]Where are all these things? These are things that to think about seriously.

[00:09:11]And the thing about the intellect is it has a ceiling.

[00:09:16]The human intellect has a seal and each one of us in some sense has sit There's some people that just have much greater understandings than other people. That's part of life.

[00:09:27]There's a tafawut fil fahm. There's There's degrees in understanding.

[00:09:31]Somebody like a Razi, we couldn't even imagine a Razi today. I I really believe that. Like if Razi, we just wouldn't even as Razi said in his introduction that he knows that a human being could not learn what he learned in one lifetime.

[00:09:48]Like he even was aware of the gifts that Allah had given him.

[00:09:54]Including Mufatih al-Ghaib.

[00:09:56]The keys to things that just were hidden from others. Because he came up with things that nobody had thought of before.

[00:10:04]Or al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid, or even I mean Ibn Sina, where did that where did that come from? This intellect that is in probably the top five of human beings that have lived in the world.

[00:10:17]I mean Peter Adamson considers him more influential in the West than even Aristotle in some ways.

[00:10:25]So, there's differences of of understanding even amongst the Sahaba. The prophet said, "Ya aridal qafa."

[00:10:34]About the man who took Allah said, "Hatta yatabayyan al-khayt al-aswad min al-abyad." Like until you can differentiate between the white and the And so the man's out there trying to He with two threads.

[00:10:46]And the He took it literally. And the prophet said, "Ya aridal qafa." Ya'ni it's like somebody who's You're not using your head.

[00:10:57]Because it's not literal. It meant the the thread of the white dawn. Not trying to distinguish between two threads in the dark.

[00:11:07]To be a modern as opposed to simply inhabiting mod- modernity is first and foremost to accept whether reflectively or reflexively, you know, so in other words, that you whether you accept it just because you've really thought about it or it's just a reflex.

[00:11:24]The worldview of modernism, a worldview characterized most significantly by the rejection of the transcendent. Charles Taylor who has termed such a worldview the closed imminent frame. In other words, this is the frame you're looking at. So, I was once up here, and some of you have seen the amazing sunsets that we get um if if you can see at the uh the hall here, the Binbeya Hall.

[00:11:49]There you can see the sunsets, and they're quite stunning. And one of the things about a sunset, as God's my witness, if that happened once a year, the whole Bay Area would go out to watch it.

[00:12:01]They would. If it happened once a Think of it happened once every 10 or 15 years, the whole world would come out to see it.

[00:12:10]And yet, Allah gives it to us every day, and it's so amazing. But, I was with my son, and I just said to him, "How can people not believe in God when you see something like that?" And he's And he looked at me, and he always uh answers me with questions uh whenever I ask him a question, cuz he's a little worried, I think, about his answer. So, he said, "Dirty windows."

[00:12:38]It's a good answer.

[00:12:40]Yeah.

[00:12:42]Cuz the eye is the window of the soul.

[00:12:44]And so, if your if your windows are dirty, you're not seeing what's self-evident. Because what a sunset is, it's the it's the transcendent penetrating into the imminent.

[00:13:00]That's what it is. A a the beauty of a great sunset is the transcendent penetrating into the imminent. And that's why people feel there's always people up on Grizzly Peak for the sunset. They're always up there.

[00:13:16]What are they witnessing? They're witnessing transcendence. Because what they're witnessing is a recognition of beauty.

[00:13:24]And Allah is beautiful, you have Jamal.

[00:13:26]And that's why Allah makes things like sunsets because Allah is beautiful. And then he made us beauty recognizers. And not just beauty recognizers, but beauty makers. So, he made us Muhsineen.

[00:13:39]People that want to make things beautiful, which is why Muslims have always, whether it's their carpets, their their clothes, their food, their masjids, their their buildings, if you look at traditional Muslim culture, the hallmark of it is beauty.

[00:13:58]And it is the single And I I would argue this. And I'm a Western person. Like I I'm from this culture.

[00:14:06]My ancestors are mostly from Ireland.

[00:14:08]I'm from this culture, but I genuinely believe not in some kind of tribal way because I'm not part of Bani Islam. I'm a convert to Islam.

[00:14:17]I genuinely believe the most beautiful architecture in the world is Muslim architecture.

[00:14:25]And I think Diane Dark would agree with me. In fact, she makes an argument that much of what's beautiful in Western culture comes from Muslim culture.

[00:14:37]I mean, she wrote a whole book on it.

[00:14:38]And again, she's an English woman. She has no horse in the race, as they say.

[00:14:42]So, what is that thing that was in these early Muslims that even if you look at the Bayt al-Maqdis, right? And and the sincerity of the people also because Raja ibn Haywah, who was the Palestinian, he's actually called El Filistini, the Palestinian. Al-Hayah, Ar-Raja ibn Haywah. He's called El Filistini.

[00:15:07]They He was given a huge budget from Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan to build the Dome of the Rock.

[00:15:15]And when he finished it, you know, he had Muhandisun, but he was the head Bash Muhandis. You know, he was the head.

[00:15:23]When he finished it, there was quite a bit of gold left over.

[00:15:28]And Abdul Malik wanted to give it to him because he was so happy with what he'd done.

[00:15:33]And he said he didn't want to ruin his intention.

[00:15:38]And so what they did instead was they uh put the gold over the dome.

[00:15:45]So so they they gold leafed it and put that gold over the dome. That That's where the original gold comes from.

[00:15:52]But when you look at that, that is one of the earliest Muslim pieces of architecture and it's it's I was once in a talk by a Western architect who was talking about that this was almost a perfect building.

[00:16:06]And he said what it was missing was uh a mediation piece.

[00:16:10]So if you look at domes, they always have the the the the bottom frame, but then they have a second uh frame because the dome represents heaven and the base represents earth. And and there has to be mediation between the heaven and the earth. This is This is traditional architecture. So that's what he was saying. And when he finished the lecture, I went up to him afterwards and I said I think you're you're wrong about that. And he said about what? He said about the mediation.

[00:16:36]That that it's a fault in the in the architectural design. He said, "Why Why do you think that?" And I said, "Because this building is symbolic of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's ascent into heaven and Gabriel, who was his mediator, had to leave because there was no mediation.

[00:16:57]It was a direct."

[00:16:59]And he he said, "That's a That's a really interesting point."

[00:17:06]But you'll notice that on the buildings with the domes, there's always that that uh that middle piece. So it's not there in the Dome of the Rock. It's earth and heaven meeting directly.

[00:17:18]>> [snorts] >> So, he says that you can see the process of secularization and in fact in America, I mean one of the very strange things about this country, it's it's the first country that was not founded on some kind of religious doctrine.

[00:17:39]They did not want a religious state. And if you look at Article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli between the Muslims, that which was ratified in the Senate in December, uh I think it was 1789. Everybody agreed on it. There was no descending voices.

[00:17:57]It was published in all the major newspapers. And 1/3 of the original budget of the United States was going to pay um tribute to uh the Muslims in North Africa. 1/3 of the budget.

[00:18:12]$800,000.

[00:18:15]So, in Article 11 it says that America's not founded on any religion.

[00:18:22]And therefore there's no animosity nor should any ever arise between America and the Muslims. They say Musliman or Muhammadan.

[00:18:32]So, that was not in the Arabic text.

[00:18:36]It's in the English text. They didn't put in the Arabic text because the the Muslims wouldn't have even understood that.

[00:18:42]Like how they're Christian. How how could you not base it on a religion?

[00:18:47]But novus ordo seclorum, that's what's on our dollar bill. A new secular order.

[00:18:52]A new order of the ages. It's if it was properly translated it would be a nizam al dunyawi al jadid.

[00:19:03]That's the proper translation because one of the things that and this is a problem with the Arabic translations. Be because the Arabs they translate things and they get them wrong.

[00:19:13]So so so there's a lot of mistranslations in when they when they go into like somebody was telling me cuz they were trying to translate bipartisan and uh uh mujma' al-ittifaq. And I said no, it's bipartisan just means both sides agreed on it. So it has to be a ittihad al-janibain.

[00:19:33]You know, something like that. But in any case mustalahat are very difficult to translate. And and secularism was translated into almani from alman from alam.

[00:19:46]almani with a fatha.

[00:19:48]As as time passed, the Arabs didn't weren't used to that form. So they called it ilmani with a with a kasra meaning scientific.

[00:19:59]So then people start thinking that the the the secular is scientific as opposed to uh the religious which is not scientific. And this is very consonant with modern uh people. Is this idea somehow that science This is what Stephen J. Gould, the evolutionary uh biologists uh called I think he was a maybe a geologist. In any case, he was evolutionary scientist. And he talked about the two magisteria.

[00:20:30]You know, these non-overlapping magisteria. Magisteria is taking it from the Catholics. They have the magisterium.

[00:20:37]So this idea that science has a magisterium in other words, a domain of understanding and religion has a domain of understanding, a magisterium. We don't we don't believe that.

[00:20:49]We genuinely believe that our religion is completely consonant with its it it it is it harmonizes with truth.

[00:20:59]That we don't have a dual truth theory like uh Ibn Rushd.

[00:21:05]We don't That's not the the our position. Our We genuinely believe that Islam will not go against truth.

[00:21:17]It's not going to go against truth.

[00:21:19]And I love uh Muhammad al-Amin ash-Shanqiti when because most of the more times did not believe the Americans got to the moon.

[00:21:30]And apparently 30% of Americans don't believe that the Americans got to the moon. In any case, whether they got there or not, uh they went to Sheikh Muhammad al-Amin ash-Shanqiti. And uh and because it said "We have a camera in here." Like the the Quran says that the camera is in the heavens. And and it says, you know, "The sky is a second floor." Like the jinn can't get up there anymore. They used to go and do inter terrestrial space and things. They can't do it anymore cuz their technology is much more sophisticated than ours.

[00:22:04]Right?

[00:22:05]Which is why they're loaning it to us now these late lately.

[00:22:10]So so they asked him about that. Do you Do you believe And this is one of the greatest mufassirun of the 20th century.

[00:22:18]So they asked him, "Do you believe they got there?" He said, "Well, there's two possibilities.

[00:22:21]They're lying or we misunderstood the Quran."

[00:22:27]So what he was saying was our belief is the Quran has to be consonant with the truth. It has to you ask the heart.

[00:22:39]It can't because both are from the same source in our belief.

[00:22:48]So this is the process of secularization took several hundred years in the West.

[00:22:55]Took several several hundred years.

[00:22:56]People don't realize these things. You know, we're We've inherited a whole world view that people resisted for a very long time.

[00:23:04]And when we were in in Mauritania, I was with Bassel Dayani, who's a really brilliant PhD engineer, did very well in Silicon Valley as a um an engineer, and was honored for some of his work.

[00:23:20]But he studied with somebody who was a scientist from NASA.

[00:23:25]One of his professors at school was also worked at NASA.

[00:23:29]And we had this he he was trying to convince one of the ulama about the roundness of the earth. Cuz there are still pre-modern people in the world.

[00:23:39]I mean, apparently Sheikh Ibn Baz in in Arabia also had problems with that.

[00:23:44]And I once had a pilot, believe it or not, um on a plane who recognized me, and he was traveling as a as a passenger, but he was a pilot for Kuwaiti Airlines, and he did transatlantic flights. And that that was the question he put to me. He said, "Is the earth round? Do you think it's round?"

[00:24:02]And I said, "Why would you ask me that?"

[00:24:04]He said, "Cuz I'm up there at 40,000 ft, and I I just don't see it."

[00:24:08]I said, "Well, you're going great circle and everything."

[00:24:11]And he he said And then he said, "Well, why do we have to go around the Antarctica? Why can't we just go over the Antarctic and make trips to New Zealand much quicker?"

[00:24:21]Anyway, you know, the interesting thing for me about that is you can have somebody he obviously had to have the bachelor in science uh that you can have an educated person that still believes uh beliefs that were uh very common. So, when Bassel got back, because this Mauritania was just thought Bassel was the idiot for believing that the earth was round.

[00:24:44]Cuz he said it just you know, I mean, when you look at the sunset, nobody says, "What a beautiful earth turn."

[00:24:53]Would anybody ever say that? No. What a beautiful earth turn. Gorgeous.

[00:24:58]I mean, we're experiencing phenomenologically we are you know, the phenomenon of it.

[00:25:03]We experience the movement of the sun.

[00:25:06]You know, this is the the Quran speaks to people as they experience things.

[00:25:15]But the Muslims centuries ago believed that the earth was round. Aristotle believed the earth was round. The Muslims did not have a problem with that idea either. But most common people did not. So a lot of ulama did, but the common people just assumed it's what you did haven't they looked at the earth how we made it flat. And as far as looking at it, that's how it's made, right? You can't experience it any other way.

[00:25:39]In any case, when he got back he called his professor from from NASA and he said, "Vassil, leave the poor man alone."

[00:25:50]He's actually it's it's actually much more intuitive. His belief. He said it took us about 500 years to change the views of people and most people even in the 19th century still did not buy it.

[00:26:05]So the point being is that the you know, the secularization which and that was part of it also of just taking away the wonder of the world and explaining everything through mathematics, through measurements.

[00:26:21]One of the things about the uh in in and and and I I only recently found this out and it really struck me as it cuz I always wondered why the Arabs said al-hayawan al-natiq.

[00:26:32]Right? When when when they translated books of logic, they called the human being the logical animal, right? The rational animal. That's that's how it's translated in English. Aristotle. It's it's it's it's zo- zoan logoi, you know, the the the the rational animal. But in in Greek, the word logos also means speaking.

[00:26:56]So, it means the rational, it means reason.

[00:27:00]Means talking or speaking. So, the Arabs took the notak because that's one of the meanings of it. Because you can't speak without reasoning.

[00:27:10]I mean, sentence structures have to be uh intelligible. Or else it's gibberish.

[00:27:17]Gibberish.

[00:27:19]You know where that comes from? Jabir ibn Hayyan.

[00:27:22]It's amazing. Cuz when his books got translated to Latin, they couldn't understand it. They were too complicated. They said gibberish.

[00:27:29]Jabberish.

[00:27:31]Haha. You can look that one up.

[00:27:34]So so the uh So the uh the hayawan notak is the talking animal.

[00:27:46]That's That's how they they understood it, the Arabs.

[00:27:49]That reason is uh translated into Latin as ratio, which means to measure. And this is the switch. You see? Because we move from qualitative to quantitative.

[00:28:06]And we're in the age of quantity, where quality is removed. I'll give you one example just with architecture.

[00:28:15]There was a movement in Germany, of all places, to remove decorations from buildings. Because they thought, what's the function of it?

[00:28:30]It's not functional.

[00:28:31]It's a waste of money.

[00:28:34]See? That's purely quantitative reasoning.

[00:28:38]But, it adds quality because it adds beauty. And that's an intangible. You cannot measure beauty.

[00:28:46]You can't measure how beautiful a sunset is. You can measure the amount of red, maybe, but you can't measure the beauty of it.

[00:28:55]That's qualitative. And so, this is an age secularization is a a movement from quality to quantity.

[00:29:03]And this is why everything becomes measurable, and what you cannot measure is not real.

[00:29:10]So, it and it and see, if you look even in reality, reality comes from res in Latin, which means matter.

[00:29:19]So, the very word in in the in the in the languages that come from Europe, the very word for reality is already about matter.

[00:29:35]What's the word for reality in Arabic?

[00:29:38]Haqiqa.

[00:29:39]What's the ishtiqaq? Al-haq.

[00:29:42]That's a name of God. So, reality in Arabic is not reality in English.

[00:29:48]It's a completely different worldview.

[00:29:51]And that's why language will reveal the worldview of a people more than anything else, the way they talk.

[00:29:57]It will reveal their worldview. Like, let's kill some time. Muslims would never say that.

[00:30:04]They would never say that.

[00:30:09]Al-waqt yaqtuluna.

[00:30:11]Time kills us. Al-waqtu ka sayf.

[00:30:16]Kun sariman kal-waqti. Be a sword like time.

[00:30:24]Right?

[00:30:25]But, that tells you something about a worldview. Let's go kill some time.

[00:30:34]The acceptance of imminent closure such that it appears obvious, natural, or given is based not so much upon careful argumentation as upon a general narrative or set of narrative. And this is what people don't understand. If you do not learn philosophy, you will adopt somebody else's philosophy.

[00:30:55]Because there are philosophers that thought of all this stuff and it trickled down. Economics doesn't trickle down.

[00:31:03]You know, a rising tide raises all boats as Reagan said. You know, trickle-down economics is not really I don't think that's accurate. But trickle-down philosophy is totally accurate.

[00:31:16]You're going to You're going to see the world through the eyes of Hume, of Locke, of Rousseau, and now of Foucault, of Marx.

[00:31:30]I mean, this is this is the worldview that people have. Muslims now read the Quran with a completely Foucauldian worldview.

[00:31:39]Because they have absorbed it and and it's it's like a corneal transplant.

[00:31:44]It's not like a lens. It's like a corneal transplant. Suddenly everything uh is is viewed through that perspective.

[00:31:59]So, one of the things he says non I mean, there's other things here, but I'll say So, uh Edward Feser, who's very interesting Catholic. I think he's Catholic, but he's a metaphysician who's written a lot and written some really important books about uh hopefully we'll get him up here one day to the college because uh I you know, I I really benefited from his books, but he um he says, "If scientism faces such grave difficulties, you know, if you actually look at it, right?

[00:32:39]So, and scientism is not science.

[00:32:40]Scientism is this kind of fundamentalist view that like Dawkins is a really good example of somebody who's completely uh committed to scientism because his view is we don't know everything yet, but we're going to. So, he has faith in science.

[00:33:01]It's faith. Like Dr. Winters says, "The multiverse is the last refuge of the atheist."

[00:33:08]Because where did this come from? Oh, well, there must have been other universes.

[00:33:15]Cuz they can't say God. So, they'll have faith in Even though they have no mathematical proofs for a multiverse.

[00:33:21]There's none. Nobody has come up with any mathematical proofs for a multiverse. And yet, they will say this came out of maybe other. And then you have infinite regress. You have the same problems dealt with the salsum.

[00:33:34]It's all these same Even Ash'ari gave children in Morocco the answer to that one.

[00:33:40]So, why then is it so powerful? Why are so many intelligent people drawn to it? The answer, to paraphrase a remark by Wittgenstein, who was a very important philosopher at the beginning of the last century, um in another context is that a picture holds them captive. In other words, they have completely imbibed a worldview. And so, the picture holds them captive. It dirty windows.

[00:34:09]It's It's That's what it is. It's dirty windows.

[00:34:14]Hypnotized by the unparalleled predictive and technological successes of modern science, they infer that scientism must be true because it's so good. One of the most amazing things is in the Muqaddimat of Imam al-Sanusi, on the section There's six things he identifies as the reasons for Kuffar.

[00:34:37]And one of them is Jahannam Rakab.

[00:34:39]Is compounded ignorance.

[00:34:42]And he says the people most susceptible to this are engineers.

[00:34:48]And he said the reason is because they have such an exact science.

[00:34:54]And because they get the right answers in their science, they assume that they can get the right answers all the time.

[00:35:02]Whereas and this is a problem of not having humanities because Aristotle said it's it's the mark of an intelligent person, an educated person to know the degree with which provision precision is allowable in whatever they're studying.

[00:35:20]Because some things are not precise.

[00:35:25]When you interpret language, when you interpret the Quran, you're not dealing with mathematical mathematical precision. That's why there's so much difference of opinion about the language. And and even in is it referring to the Muslims or the non-Muslims? I mean, sometimes you'll even have that ambiguity in the Quran.

[00:35:43]The the Damir, does it go back to the Kuffar um So he says and that anything follows from scientism, however fantastic or seemingly incoherent, must also be true.

[00:36:01]And then he says about the Quranic studies non-Muslim Quran study has tended towards acceptance of or acquiesces acquiescence, you know, submission to an enlightenment naturalism, materialism with respect to what it recognizes as real. See, we get back to real. What is real?

[00:36:20]It has in the main isolated the intellectual ration rational from the poetic and religious because poetry, and this is why the prophet was accused of being a poet. Poet see, humans have thinking and feeling.

[00:36:35]And and they have to they have to have this this balance. And this is why AI is thinking without feeling.

[00:36:44]Most people now are feeling without thinking. They're both disasters.

[00:36:50]They're both disasters.

[00:36:53]And and and so when you when you when you the sha'ir is the one who feels.

[00:37:00]Sha'ir.

[00:37:01]You know, they they they sense things that other people don't sense. And that's why when they're real poets, when they're really good poets.

[00:37:12]In fact.

[00:37:15]Cuz he's here.

[00:37:16]Right now, sure.

[00:38:12]I can't find it, but Harun sent me a a beautiful poem the other day.

[00:38:21]Wish I could find it.

[00:38:26]Uh Yeah, thank you.

[00:38:30]Yeah, thank you.

[00:38:32]So So, this is a poem he wrote.

[00:38:35]And And And he has very beautiful poetic sensibilities.

[00:38:40]What does it mean that we have to use the body parts of our murdered children as bait to try to fish for dead hearts?

[00:38:50]What type of creature are we hoping to pull out of the bloody water?

[00:38:56]What does it mean that we just landed the first commercial vessel on the moon, but we have failed to stop the earthly slaughter?

[00:39:06]I mean, that's a sentiment. You know, that's That's feeling something very deeply.

[00:39:12]And And that's what poets do. They're able to see things and make you think about things that other people aren't.

[00:39:20]And so, to eliminate poetry from the world is not a good thing. And that's why the prophet could not be a poet, although he liked poetry. And we know Ehi, his favorite poet was Ibn Abi Salt.

[00:39:35]And And And he's He asked He was once had somebody riding behind him on on Al-Qaswa, and he said, "At I will say I mean Ibn Abi Salt."

[00:39:43]And he said, "Yes." And so, he recited some lines, and then the prophet said, "Ehi, let's hear some more." And he recites some more, and he said, "Ehi."

[00:39:50]And he went on until he recited about, you know, dozens of lines, and then he said, "That's enough."

[00:39:57]The prophet Alaihi Wasallam listened to poetry. All of the great Sahaba have diwans.

[00:40:02]All of them. They all have diwans.

[00:40:05]Because poetry is very important. It humanizes people. The Bushido tradition, they taught the samurai how to write poetry. The Yeni Sheri in Turkey also had to learn poetry, not just in Turkish, but in Persian.

[00:40:19]The the crack troops because you want it's part of the process of being humanized. And so that's one of the things that they get rid of the poetic.

[00:40:28]It has in the main isolated the intellectual and rational from the poetic and religious. That's why they call the prophet a sha'ir because there's a relationship between poetry and religion.

[00:40:43]One of the po- poet who's in America when 9/11 happened, he wrote a poem.

[00:40:50]And he ended the poem by saying, a a bitter wind crosses uh over the land.

[00:41:01]A hard rain falls on the sea.

[00:41:06]If terror strikes without a warning, they must be there must be something we don't see.

[00:41:12]What fire begets this fire?

[00:41:16]This straw thrown upon the flame.

[00:41:26]If no one asks, then no one answers.

[00:41:29]That's how every empire falls.

[00:41:33]So, the poets are important people.

[00:41:39]They're important.

[00:41:42]And they don't like poetry. This this this culture hasn't We haven't produced a serious poet. I mean the the the last How is it Robert Kennedy could quote ask Aeschylus, the Greek poet, in a speech?

[00:41:55]When was the last time you heard an American politician quoting a poet?

[00:42:03]Seriously, Kennedy uh had Robert Frost, right, at the inaugural, right? And then I mean, I'm sorry, but what what passes as poetry these days, I mean, if you look at it, it's not it's not real poetry. It's just You know, there's almost It's like a lip service that they pay. We have to have a bring somebody in.

[00:42:28]For most So, then he says, "The former deal with what is really real, by which is meant the phenomenal world of sense data. This excludes a priority possibility of a numinous transcendent dimension as given in the {quote} unquote real world."

[00:42:48]And then he goes on um But here's just a few things about the problem with this naturalist attempt to account for the faculty of reason itself.

[00:43:05]Anyway, good book. Hope you guys join the book club if you're not in it.

[00:47:59]>> Mhm.

[00:48:52]>> Mhm.