A Life Worth Living

A Life Worth Living

Opening Recitation and Introduction

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. I want to, since we're in sacred space, I wanted to start out with a recitation of the Quran, which this particular section deals, I think, very cogently with the topic that we're on.

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Historical Context: Understanding Between Civilizations

Since the English were at war in many Muslim areas, not so dissimilar to our time now, some of the best of the English at the time, and I'm speaking now as somebody with a lot of Irish ancestry, some of the best of the English at the time actually were deeply troubled by the misunderstandings between Islam and between Europe. Like Edwin Arnold, who was an editor at the Daily Telegraph, and a very interesting man, there's two with similar names, but he's actually in the famous 11th edition of the encyclopedia, but he wrote a book called The Light of Asia about the life of Buddha, trying to educate English people about Buddhism, because they were also occupying many Buddhist countries. But then he wrote a book about Islam called The Pearls of Faith, which I'm hoping to republish that book, because I found it quite extraordinary that somebody of such high stature in that society was so distraught about the misunderstandings and lack of communication that he desired to actually spend so much time doing it.

But Thomas Carlyle said about the Quran that it was one of the most difficult readings that he'd ever done, and that this is a masterpiece of rhetoric, where do we put Homer and Shakespeare and others.

The Challenge of Understanding the Quran

And Arabs invariably will say, well the problem is you don't know Arabic. And to a large extent, as somebody who spent a great deal of time learning an incredibly difficult language, I would definitely concur with that statement. The Quran is very much an Arabic book, in that it was revealed in the language of the Arabs, but it is not an Arabian book.

And that's a very important distinction. The Quran has only one chapter that in some ways is similar to the Bible which is a much easier book to read for western people because it's very linear which is the twelfth chapter of

Joseph or Yusuf which is a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The way the Quran works is sometimes it's here, sometimes it's there.

The Rhetorical Device of Iltifat

In fact in Arabic there is a rhetorical device that we actually, as far as I know, do not use in the English language. It's called iltifat and it is to switch, for instance, you go from you to I to he and so in switching in that way it can be quite disruptive for a western reader and make it very difficult. Why is it doing that? Part of the reason that the commentators give is that God has all perspectives and so to speak only in first person is to speak only from one perspective.

But another reason is like a zen koan, it's intended to wake you up hence it's called iltifat. I'll give you an example. In the opening chapter of the Quran, al-Fatiha, it begins:

In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God the Lord of the worlds. Al-Rahman al-Rahim reiterates the Merciful, the Compassionate. Maliki yomidin, there's two variants, there's actually more than two but those are the two dominant ones.

The Possessor, the Master of the Day of Judgment, the Sovereign of the Day of Judgment or the Day the Debts Fall Due and then it goes, Iyakana, it switches to a direct address. To you we worship. So it begins by talking about God as if God was not present and suddenly it moves in which you are directly addressing God.

The commentators say that the reason for this is when you enter into the prayer, the heart takes time to enter into the Divine Presence and at the point that you say Iyakana, it is the point that you should be in the Divine Presence.

The Structure and Coherence of the Quran

So it opens, God is greater and then you begin praising God and then you enter into your discourse with God. So one of the interesting things about our time is that we have this deconstructionist movement in literary studies where they show the inherent contradictions in a lot of literary works.

One of the challenges of the Koran is to show the contradictions in it because it says:

If it was from other than God it would have many contradictions in it and there are several tafsirs that deal with what they call the deep structure of the Koran. That it has a superficial randomness but the deeper you go into it

the more structure you begin to take from it. This obviously takes a long time to do.

The example that the Koran uses is that it says:

I swear by the positions of the stars. That also means the positions of the verses in the Koran. So it's Tawriya in Arabic rhetoric, it's a double entendre.

So it can mean the position of the stars, it can also mean the position of the verses in the Koran. And it says if you but knew this is a vast oath.

The Stars and Divine Presence

One of the things about the stars is somebody who spent time studying astronomy and lived in the Sahara in West Africa and one of the reasons why I believe that atheism is much more widespread today than at any other time is because of artificial light.

Because I truly believe that if people could actually see the stars in all their glory without any light as I have seen them. On occasion it reduced me to tears just looking at the stars. You know the beautiful verse in the Bible that says the heavens declare your glory.

You can really understand that verse if you're out in the middle of the Sahara on a completely moonless night with all the stars. As if you could reach out and pluck them from that canopy. And Plato said if it wasn't for the stars how could we come to know God.

I would love that our society would just turn off the lights every once in a while, maybe once a month, have all the lights in the cities just turned off so people could see the stars and be reminded of something. The word desire in its root meaning means to seek out the stars. That we are heavenly directed by our nature, hence getting high.

The Human as Khalifa: Understanding Our Role

This verse says that your Lord, and here your is in the singular to the Prophet Muhammad, your Lord said to the angels. And I'm not going to go into the literal and figurative debates in between fundamentalists and between traditionalists because these debates are endless. But what it says literally is your Lord said to the angels I am placing in the earth a caliph, a khalifa.

The word khalifa in Arabic has several meanings. One of the meanings is somebody who actually stands in place and represents. Another is a steward, somebody who takes care of things like when you go on a journey

one of the things you say in the prophetic tradition is oh Allah I'm leaving you as my caliph, my khalifa for my family and my wealth.

So in other words I'm leaving you to take care of them. So it says I'm placing in the earth a vicegerent, sometimes it's translated a caretaker, a steward. I'm placing in the earth this caliif and the angels say:

Are you going to place in it one who sows corruption and sheds blood and we praise your glory and and deem you holy.

And God's reply is:

I know what you do not know.

The Angels' Question and Human Nature

This question of the angels is a very interesting question. There's a lot of debate about why they asked this question.

All the commentators in their agreement they weren't disagreeing with God. They were just asking a question because in Muslim tradition before humans were here there were spirit spirits that were here and they sowed a lot of corruption and then there was another Iblis was sent down to take control and he did that and so some say that the the angels were looking at the previous inhabitants of the earth that sowed corruption and said are you going to do this again and and the verse replies I know what you do not know.

But what's interesting in their question they asked two things will you place in the earth one who sows corruption.

Fasad is a beautiful word in Arabic. It has a very negative connotation but it's beautiful in that it encompasses all of these different types of human violence. It can actually mean pollution.

It can mean corruption. It can mean something like when food goes bad the Arabs say Fasad. When food goes bad. And the second thing they say and will you shed blood.

The Triune Nature of Humanity

Our commentators say this refers to two components in the human being because we are triune creatures according to most of the ancient traditions. The Greeks had the Soma, the Psyche and the Numa.

There are many trinities in the human character. But the one here that the Muslims argue which is found also in the Greek tradition is this idea of the human beings having this body that has appetites and it has emotions. And when the appetites take control it sows corruption.

When they're not controlling the appetites and when the emotion of anger takes control the worst thing that can happen is murder. And very few people kill. I mean there are definitely psychopaths out there.

But most murders happen in moments of rage. Most domestic violence happens in moments of rage when people are angry. A husband doesn't think hmm should I go hit her? That wouldn't be the best thing to do in this situation. It's usually this lower nature takes over. This irascibility in the soul takes over and they do this. And so the appetites and the emotions are what caused this corruption and what caused this bloodshed.

Knowledge as the Divine Response

And so the Quran says that the reply to this is I know what you don't know. What is that thing and why is that word used twice? Because knowledge is used over 800 times in the Quran. It's one of the most recurring words in the Quran as a thematic word.

Knowledge. I know what you don't know. And then it says:

And we taught Adam the names.

And this is the Adam that is Adam and Hawa. It's the Adam before the separation. We taught Adam the names.

All of them. And then we showed those names to the angels and and said to that to the angels tell me the names of these things if you are truthful in what you've said. And they said:

Glory to you we only know what you have taught us. We have no knowledge except what you have taught us and you are the wise and the all-knowing.

And then it says to Adam tell the names and Adam told the names. And when he told the names God says didn't I tell you that I know the unseen of the heavens and the earth and I know what you were concealing what you were revealing about man that he will sow corruption and man will shed blood and what you were concealing that this is a learning creature.

The Test in the Garden

And then it said live in this garden but don't go near this tree. And so most of you are familiar with that from the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition. Don't go near the tree which is not in Islam considered the tree of not the knowledge of good and evil.

It's just a test. Don't go near this tree you can eat anywhere you want but don't eat this tree. The devil says this tree will give you eternal life and it will give you a dominion that will never perish.

And so you should eat from it. And so they eat from the tree. The woman's not blamed in the Quranic narrative. They both actually take responsibility. But what's interesting is they take responsibility. And the word that's used in the Quran that happens to them is:

A zealoma. Shaitan like Shaitan. The devil tripped them caused them to trip. So this what is known in Christianity is the original sin.

The fallen nature. In the Quran it's described as a slip. And now it says go down one of you an enemy to the other. In other words the devil an enemy to man. Go down to the earth for a time and guidance will come whoever follows that guidance I will bless him and if you don't then be forewarned. And so this is the narrative in the Quran of the human condition.

The Three Components of Human Nature

That the human being has this nature that has knowledge. So the ability to reason, the ability to acquire knowledge. But it also has these two other components.

These emotions that get the best of us and these appetites that sometimes overwhelm us. And obviously the two dominant ones are lust and the appetite for food. Hence Imam al-Ghazali in his famous work called Reviving the Sciences of Islam.

Imam al-Ghazali says he has a book called Breaking the Two Desires. Breaking the Two Desires. The desire of the stomach and the desire of the genitals.

Because this is the source that if one can control these two elements in our nature that we can live without sowing corruption and without shedding blood. But if we allow these two aspects of our nature to take over we lose this ability. And according to the Quranic narrative the way this is done is acquiring knowledge.

Knowledge at the Center of Islamic Civilization

And this is why the great orientalist Franz Rosenthal who wrote a wonderful book called Knowledge Triumphant. He also translated Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary work the Muqaddimah. Franz Rosenthal said I know of no other civilization and this is a world-class historian.

He said I know of no other civilization in human history that put the acquisition, the development and the transmission of knowledge at the very center of their purpose. That this was the ethos of Islamic civilization. And this is why knowledge, particularly knowledge of language, although they had a great, great, great interest in the quantitative sciences of mathematics.

Obviously we know algebra from Al-Jabr which is Jabr is fixing broken things. And so algebra is that gibberish comes from Jabr bin Hayyan. Because some of the medievals found his work so difficult they called it gibberish. The central study of Muslim civilization was the language arts. And the work that was done very early on in lexicons, in grammar, in rhetoric are stunning. To this day they're being studied with interest.

And there's actually a PhD dissertation that a Palestinian wrote arguing that a lot of Noam Chomsky's best ideas came out of Kufan and Basran grammarians from the third and fourth century. Whether that's true or not is for the academics to work out. Great minds do think alike.

Fools seldom differ. But great minds do think alike. So sometimes people just have the same insights.

Leibniz and Newton apparently discovered calculus at about the same time which is quite extraordinary. But things do happen like that in the world. So the acquisition of knowledge becomes really at the center of the Islamic tradition.

The Command to Read

The very first word that is revealed in the Quran is:

Read in the name of your Lord. Read. And this is why there's a wonderful book that was written about the love of libraries and the fact that in many Muslim countries the most prized possession in the house was the library.

Often people showed their libraries off. Seville, Sevilla in Spain. And I lived in Spain and Seville is known as a party town.

Seville was also known as a party town a thousand years ago. And Ibn al-Arabi the great Quranic exegete said if a musician dies in Qurtuba he has to send his instruments, the family sends the instruments to Seville to be sold. But if a scholar dies in Seville they have to send the books to Qurtuba to be sold.

So. But this really was at the center of Islamic civilization.

The Prophetic Tradition on Seeking Knowledge

Now the Prophet Muhammad said be a scholar, be a student of knowledge, be a helper of the two, or be a lover of those.

But don't be, Abd al-Aziz ibn Omar added something to that. He said don't be the fifth one and perish. And so the commentators say that the Prophet left that door open.

That if you were not somebody who was actively seeking knowledge and acquiring it, at least be somebody facilitating that. Like the wonderful people that built Yale University, right? Because it wouldn't be here without those people that give their money to support that. Or be at least if you can't afford to help them, love them.

The Example of Imam Al-Ghazali

I'll give you an example. One of the greatest scholars in the history of Islam is Abu Hamad al-Ghazali. Abu Hamad was born in a poor family.

His father was a wool carter. His father loved the scholars and his great prayer was that God would make his sons scholars. He died and the sons were left orphaned.

Both Abu Hamad and his brother Ahmed became two of the greatest scholars in the history of Islam, particularly Abu Hamad. And this was something like every Irish family gave at least one of their children to the priesthood. Every Muslim family wanted, or to the nunnery, every Muslim family wanted at least one of their children to be a scholar.

This was so deeply rooted in the Islamic ethos. So it really saw the pursuit and love of knowledge as at the root of the human condition.

The Beauty of Simple Faith

Now, having said that, some of the most beautiful human beings that I have ever met, and this is a true story, I was in West Africa and it was a very dark night.

Our car got stuck in mud in the middle of the Sahara, literally. And we walked a ways because somebody had told us there's an encampment in this certain area. We found a Bedouin who was a sheep herder, illiterate.

He was so happy. And he was the only person out there with his goats and sheep. He was so happy to see us.

He went, he slaughtered a goat, he fed us. It was an extremely windy night with a lot of rain. When we woke up, he had stayed the whole night holding the centerpiece of the tent to make sure that it didn't collapse on us.

That was his hospitality because we were his guests. And the Prophet said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari 6019)

Whoever believes in God on the last day, let him honor the guest. And that was, somebody who was with me from England could not believe it.

This man had actually deprived himself of sleep in order to ensure that we slept. Some of the best people that I have met in this world have been illiterate, simple believers. And that's the truth.

Learning for the Sake of God

And I have absolutely no contempt for those people at all. What I see is that some people are facilitated to learn. The circumstances are right for them to learn.

And other people are deprived of that. The people that do have the gift of learning should actively be engaged in trying to spread that gift to other people. Because learning in the true sense of the word, not learning for a degree, not learning to become somebody of stature or somebody of wealth, but learning really for the sake of God in our tradition.

And the Prophet Muhammad said, one of the signs of the latter days is that people will learn for other than the sake of God. So at the root for me, and I can only speak for myself, I'm technically speaking on behalf of a tradition, but that is far too weighty as far as I'm concerned. And I think it's an example of the impoverished state of our community that people like me actually represent the tradition.

And I don't say that humbly. I say that knowing what the tradition is, spending a good part of my life in it and reading.

Misunderstanding Medieval Islam

When I hear people call ISIS medieval, it really upsets me because I spent a lot of time with medieval scholars.

And I know for a fact that they would have nothing to do with these people. And in fact, if those people would actually read these people, they certainly would not be doing what they are doing. And I think, unfortunately, the medieval period gets a bad rap.

I think people would really be stunned at what they find. And just to give you one example, I'm going to read from one of the greatest representatives of our tradition. And this is Abu Hamad Al-Ghazali, who writes about why people disbelieve.

And he says, he died in 1111, so this is a thousand years ago. Firstly, there are some who, failing to find God by observation, conclude that there is no God and that this world of wonders made itself or existed from everlasting. They are like a man who, seeing a beautifully written letter, should suppose that it had written itself without a writer or had always existed.

People in this state of mind are so far gone in error that it is of little use to argue with them. Such are found amongst the physicists and astronomers, in particular. So, a thousand years ago, you had the same debates and arguments.

These are not new debates. In fact, people forget that Karl Marx did his dissertation on Greek materialists, the people that Socrates was going around destroying their arguments. So, it's not like they haven't always been here. They've always been here and they will always be here. And they're part of, from our perspective, as a believer, they're part of God's creation.

The Metaphor of God's Banquet

And one of the wonderful things that Hafiz, the great Persian poet, said, if you saw that the world were all guests of God and you understood that this was a banquet that he invited them to, how would you treat those guests, even the rude ones? Ghazali says that the world is like a banquet and God has put out these silver and gold plates and perfume, but it's a banquet where you come and then you have to leave and another group comes and then they leave and another group comes.

He said, what you should do is go in, eat the meal, smell the perfume and be deeply grateful for the banquet and show that gratitude. And then he said, and then leave. He said, what some people do is they start taking the silver and gold plates and tucking them away for themselves.

Challenges of Representing Tradition

And so, I think that it's very difficult in these days to represent traditions. There are a lot of things in traditions that people see as odious. They see them as hateful.

They see them as discriminatory. And I think a lot of tradition is problematic. One of the things that we teach our students at Zaytuna is that tradition is inheriting a lawsuit.

And you really, you have to recognize that there are ongoing debates and these debates have to be brought out again. There's no double jeopardy in tradition. So, we have to debate these things and trying to understand our traditions in the light of the world we're living in is very difficult because it is a confusing world particularly.

We've lost a lot of the things that have enabled us in the past to be much more human.

The Purpose of Adversity

One of the things in these verses that I read out, one of the things that I think they indicate is that the adversity is part of life. And this is certainly in the Quranic narrative.

And there's a reason for adversity. We learn through adversity. We learn often compassion from our own suffering. We learn to be compassionate with others. Empathy is one of the most important qualities in all of our religious traditions. And to be empathic is very, to be an empath is actually quite difficult in this world.

There are people that suffer greatly because they so much feel the pain of other people and have very difficult times. And then we also have sociopaths and they're very real. And these people, it's estimated, I read one book, The Sociopath Next Door, that estimated that about one out of 20 people in the United States is sociopathic.

That's quite a large number. That means there are probably a few in the audience tonight, you know. And some of them function quite well and learn to at least pretend to be empathic because they know that it's decorum.

But then others simply don't care. They can eliminate large numbers of people like Stalin or Bashar Assad or literally eliminate large numbers of people without, I mean, they say Hitler used valerian to sleep at night, but it's amazing because I've tried valerian and it doesn't work that well. I mean, so I would think he would have needed propofol like what Michael Jackson was using.

But if you're sociopathic, you're not losing sleep over killing large numbers of people, it would appear. And so this is our challenge.

Living a Good Life: Coming to Know God

For me, living a good life is trying to learn this knowledge of my tradition, which says that the real purpose of our existence here is to come to know God, not in the way that angels know God, which is immediate knowledge, but to know God through difficulty, through hardship, through suffering.

And in coming to God, the soul is expanded. One of my favorite metaphors from the pre-modern world that was used in the Christian tradition, and I actually found it in a verse in the Quran in Surah Yunus, is the wheel of fortune. One of the most important works of the medievals was the Boethius book, The Consolation of Philosophy.

And in the second chapter, he uses this metaphor of the wheel of fortune, fortuna, fate, that says in the tradition, you can't worship me. In other words, you cannot placate me, I do what I will. But in the wheel of fortune, and this is in the chapter of Yunus, where it says:

(Quran 10:22)

Yusayyirakum means to cause you to go around in the land and in the sea.

And when you're in a ship and a good wind comes, everybody rejoices and is happy. But then they see a storm off in the distance, and then they begin to feel something, and then the waves begin to pile up, until they think that they're going to be destroyed. And they call on God in absolute sincerity, oh, just save us from this, and we will be grateful.

Right, this is the bargain with God, when troubles happen. A lot of people do this, by the way. It's a very common event.

The Wheel of Fortune and Finding Stillness

But in the wheel of fortune, you had regno, which was I rule, and joy was the emotion associated with that. So, it says in the Quran, they rejoiced in this. And then you have regnave, at three o'clock, which is I used to rule.

Right, so they're on their way down, and the appropriate response for that is fear. And then you have the six o'clock, which is I used to rule. And then you have the nine o'clock, which is regnabo, I shall rule.

So, it's this hope. Part of the purpose of these medieval people, and they understood this, was to get into the hub, so that the wheel no longer affected you. To enter into the hub, the eye of the hurricane, so that the world and all of its vicissitudes and calamities, and all of these hardships that happen in the world, that you're in this center of stillness.

And that stillness, according to our tradition, can only come from the remembrance of God.

The Fundamental Sin: Distraction and Boredom

And this is why, if there is a fundamental sin in Islam, they debated on whether it was pride, which is the sin of the devil, but Imam al-Junaid said, the fundamental sin of the human being is ascetia. It's his distractibility and boredom.

Kierkegaard says, once God is removed, people are left with boredom. And so, they will pursue all these pursuits, what they call the early Christian desert fathers called the noonday devil. And when you read the descriptions of how the noonday devil afflicts them, you see that they're distracted and looking at the window.

And see, like now, people looking on their cell phones. I was on the airplane two days ago, and I was sitting next to a man that was furious that the internet wasn't working, and said, how dare they advertise? I can't be off this thing for more than 15 minutes. And the whole flight, he was so agitated, like just moving, and this is what they call ascetia, sloth, spiritual, it's a spiritual sickness, and it has afflicted our civilization to the utmost degree.

We are afflicted with profound boredom, and we're constantly attempting to distract ourselves with drugs, with sex, with money, with pursuit of fame, pursuit of power, of all these things that the Prophet Muhammad said the truest thing that the poet ever spoke was that everything other than Allah is vanity. Thank you. I hope that wasn't too long.

Dialogue: The Purpose of Existence and the Reality of God

Question: Coming to know God, you said, that is the purpose of our existence. On today's day, 50 years ago, Time magazine came with an issue, the title page of it was, is God dead?

Response: Is God dead? Well, I think, you know, if we look at it as a concept, it's certainly dead in a lot of people's minds. If somebody says, it's not raining, and it's raining, it doesn't change the fact that it's raining.

And I think that the Quran says, let's wait it out. It says to the atheists, and the kafir is really an atheist at heart. It says to the atheists, let's wait it out, just wait it out.

But atheism is a position. For me, I prefer agnostics. I actually have some sympathy for atheists, and this is why. And I think God, in some way, must have some sympathy for them, because the only people that remember God as much as believers are atheists. Like, they take God seriously, and I think that is such a compliment to God, that at least they take Him seriously. And one of the interesting things about atheists is, in some ways, their idea of God is so great that they can't believe in Him.

They're disappointed. It's like unrequited love. Like, I can't believe you could do this. It's Ivan and Ilyosha's discussion. You know, how can children suffer?

Understanding God's Will and Human Suffering

One of the things in our tradition, we have, don't think that God has to do what you want. And then it says, haven't you seen how children suffer? But you're not troubled by that? By children suffering? I'm not.

As a human being, I have to be troubled by it. I mean, I would be sick. I'd be one of those sociopaths if I wasn't. I mean, if I see my son, I worry about my sons. Like, if my wife says, I say, where's Isaac? She says, he went to the bathroom. I run to the bathroom, because I've read too much about what happens in bathrooms, you know.

So, I run to the bathroom. I would hate to see, you know, especially defilement of children. I mean, to me, that is one of the great, truly great crimes worthy of hell.

But I mean, in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, you have this figure of Job. Job. Job.

Yeah, it's a great story. It's an amazing story in the sense that in the end of this story, Job has insisted that he was not in the wrong. He didn't do anything wrong.

Uh, not quite that he didn't do anything wrong, but that he wasn't in the wrong so much as to suffer. Yeah, his friends were telling him, you deserve this. There's only, that's the only possible.

But the interesting part of it, that the end of the story, God tells, says, Job has spoken rightly of me. Right. When Job kind of struggled, rebelled.

Right. Is there some sense in which this kind of... But he didn't speak the truth. He spoke rightly.

I mean, that's the... Yeah. It's an adverb. Right.

So you don't... Because he might have spoken his truth. So you don't think that... Because you can speak rightly and be wrong. Maybe, maybe.

But I think what I'm after is whether suffering is not kind of a wound in our existence that will remain so just in the light of our faith in God until clarity comes at the end of the ages.

Suffering and Free Will in Abrahamic Tradition

Well, one of the things about Abrahamic tradition is we... The Abrahamic traditions didn't really develop a concept of karma. It's not really... Like in Hinduism, it's much easier for them to grasp these things.

But there's certainly an element working when people say... The Quran, for instance, says:

(Quran 6:164)

No soul bears the sins of another soul. Ibn Arabi said that that's only in the next world. It's not in this world.

The people do bear the sins of other people. The Quran also says beware of tribulations that don't just afflict the innocent, but afflict... That don't just afflict the guilty, but afflict the innocent as well. And so, first of all, suffering... We learn a great deal from suffering.

And I'm not going to justify the heinous crimes and these things. But part... And this is, for some people, very, very glib response to the suffering. But free will is a package deal.

You know, there's people that say, oh, why didn't God smite that person who was going to shoot those children at Sandy Hook Elementary School? Well, why didn't he break your hand when you were cheating on your tax returns? You know, why didn't your tongue suddenly be paralyzed when you were telling those horrible lies to your wife? It's a package deal. And so, in that way, much of what we see in human suffering is from what our own hands have wrought. And that's very much a Quranic motif.

And this is why Muslims, historically, were not as troubled. Now, you can say, well, what about the children? They didn't deserve to do that. We're the caretakers of the children.

And that's, again, free will. We are the caretakers. So when the atheist says, where's God in all this, our response is, where are God's people? And in some ways, I mean—

Question: Like, we have moral responsibility.

Response: I guess I would say, I think we are on the same page here. I would say, in some ways, that there is kind of a push, even in the heart of a theist. It's a struggle with God for God, rather than, so to say, struggle against God.

But I think you said something which I thought very interesting, namely that an atheist is closer to God in denying God than the person who is indifferent.

The Relationship Between Believers and Atheists

I've never met an atheist that can't start talking about God within the first couple minutes of a conversation. And that's a relationship, right? And they're taking God seriously. And it's all these so-called believers that don't, you know—

God's just an errand boy, like, fulfilling my desires, you know? And a lot of people lose their faith. I mean, I like, you know, there's a 60s song that said, you say you lost your faith. You know, it's not like that.

You had no faith to begin with, and you know it. You know, I mean, I struggle with that concept of losing faith, personally. And I've met people that have lost their faith.

Yeah. I mean, for me, and I don't know if this is— you know, atheists consider this some kind of disease in our brains. But for me, to deny God is just— it's something I cannot imagine.

And the way I look at it is, He created us. God—and I apologize for the gender usage. Some people take offense to that, but the Quran uses that.

Whereas our understanding of God is absolutely genderless. We don't believe in any gender. But God—we are the dominion of God.

A Lesson in Acceptance: The Paralyzed Teacher

And I remember one of my teachers was paralyzed. And I'll never forget this. I was about 19.

I was in the United Arab Emirates, and I was studying Arabic. And a beautiful man from Mosul, from Iraq, Abdurrahman Sanjari. And we went to see him because he'd had a stroke.

And this was like— he'd just gotten home from the hospital. Half his body was paralyzed. And I remember him literally saying:

Subhanallah. You know, glory to God. Look at that. I could move that yesterday, and I can't move it today.

And it was not contrived. He was in a type of witnessing that was really powerful. Because we could all feel it.

Like, he was marveling at what had been done to him. And that's why you would say that Job did not speak truthfully. The truthful speech about God would be a marvel over what one has suffered.

And you know, because you've studied Islam pretty well, so you know. We have big debates about attributing certain things to prophets. I mean, the Old Testament has things that historically Muslim theologians and the Quran reject.

So it's a little more— But if you do like Job did, you can be speaking rightly about— you can be speaking truthfully about God.

The Example of Prophet Yunus

Well, I mean, like Yunus in the Quran and also in the Bible. But Yunus takes responsibility and says:

Subhanakani kuntum minal ghalimin. I was a wrongdoer. Even though he—

And this is the position for us is always to go back to ourselves. The reason that Adam was given the caliphate and Iblis was not is because Iblis blames God.

The devil blames God. And says, you led me astray. You did this to me.

And Adam says, I made a mistake. And he takes full— He doesn't blame. And so that's a very powerful motif in our tradition, is the idea of always looking at the self.

Self-Examination and Confronting Tyranny

And one of the things that Dr. King said in the letter from the Birmingham jail is that if you want to stand up to the tyrant, make sure you look into yourself and see, do you have any of those qualities? I mean, there are many,

Like, you know, in the Muslim world, you have a lot of tyrannical households. And so if you have a tyrant over you, you have to ask yourself the question, you know, is this a reflection?

America, you know, we've become— All you have to do is watch modern television to know that we've become almost a nation of complete idiots. Because anybody that could watch a lot of what it goes, passes of popular television, has to have completely, completely surrendered their intelligence.

And I remember I was with my father, who is one of the most erudite people that I've ever met. And I took my boys to see— We were at SeaWorld. And I had been taken as a youngster by my grandmother.

And I remembered a very different— It was much more nature-based. And this one was all really stupid sitcom-type things with these incredibly dignified animals. And it always bothers me when people put stupid dresses on animals and things like that, because animals are so dignified.

And to degrade them like we degrade ourselves is just so unjust. But it really troubled me. I turned to my father and I said, what is this? He said, this is 60 years of television.

The Loss of Beauty and Real Pleasure

Well, entertainment has— We have become very much an entertainment-oriented culture. But let me turn back to the question of God. Doesn't it trouble you? I mean, you talk about suffering.

That, to me, is suffering. Oh, it troubles me. It troubles me a great deal.

That, to me, is— You know, I was just at the hotel. One of the books they had out just on the— It's kind of these phony libraries that you'd like to put in. But I picked up this book, and it was a novel from, I don't know, 100 years ago.

And it had a character in there who was on a ship. And he was learning grammar. And he'd memorized a book of grammar.

And then he had this dog-eared copy of the Bible and of Charles Dickens. You know, and it was like this yeoman, or rather sailor, sorry. And just a simple person.

But this was what— You know, Thoreau finds this farmer reading Homer in Greek out there, just farming his land in Massachusetts. And I think what we've lost in our civilization, in terms of just real— The pleasure derived from real beauty is something, to me, that I think troubles me as much as a lot of these other things that people are troubled by. And this is a direct result of choices that people have made, you know.

The Purpose of Existence: Knowing God Through the Self

So how are the choices related, as you see them, from what you described as the purpose of God? Of our existence. And the purpose of our existence, you said, is to know God. To be aware of God.

Or, as Islam puts it, as you put it also, to submit to God. So can you trace the— And to submit to God is not— You know, this idea of being a servant of God, which is also a New Testament term. It's a very similar term as the Arabic Abdullah, to be a servant of God.

It's Knowledge of God in our tradition is, first and foremost, one has to know the self. Because we have been made in a metaphysical image of reality. And the soul, which in our understanding is indivisible, and yet it controls this body.

And so, in our own selves is a model for us to come to know reality. And this is why the Quran says:

In your souls, don't you see? Don't you see? And so, coming to— You know, we have a tradition, it's apocryphal, but it's used in many books, that he who knows himself knows his Lord.

So does the knowledge of God always go through the knowledge of self? Or is it vice versa? Always through knowledge of self.

Self, the signs in the self and on the horizon. The Quran says:

We will show them our signs in the self and on the horizon until it becomes clear to them what truth is. Al-Haqq, which is the name of God.

The horizon is a meeting place between heaven and earth. The human being is a meeting place between heaven and earth. In the 33rd chapter of Quran, it says:

Surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the differences of your tongues and your complexities, are signs for people who—of knowledge of God.

Of knowledge. And the relationship between the heavens and the earth, and tongues and complexion, is that language is a celestial thing. And this is one of the ways of knowing God is through language.

Language and the Universal in the Particular

And that's why there's a revelation, which is words. I mean, this verse, if you look, that God taught Adam all the names. Fakhruddin al-Razi said what he taught Adam to do was to see the one in the many.

To see the universal. And if I say, you know, this is a glass. It's not a glass.

It's actually a plastic. It's plastic. But I call it a glass.

It doesn't matter if I ask you to bring me a glass. It doesn't matter what type of glass you bring me, because you have the concept, the one in the many. And to see the one behind the many is one of the reasons why we've been given this gift of seeing the universal in the particular.

We don't use that term anymore. People talk about kinds and classes.

Natural Theology and Revelation

So you don't need revelation? Well, this is a debate amongst scholars.

The Maturidi theologians argue that natural theology is possible, and that you can come to know the oneness of God and truth. I tend to incline towards that view. The Ash'ari tend to argue that revelation is absolutely necessary.

Revelation, the gift of revelation is in knowing the measurements. Like, we all know that charity is good if you're a decent person. Like, helping others is a good thing.

But how much is an obligation? Like, that's part of the blessing of revelation. Is it like in the Quran, it's 10% if your crops are come about by rain. It's only 5% if you have to do all the aqueducts and the irrigation.

And then you have out of every five camels, you have to give one. You know, it's all worked out in that way. So it's very detailed.

So you said purpose of human existence is... Like, we give 1/40th of our standing wealth. We have to, tithing.

Like, every Muslim has to give 1/40th every year of their standing wealth if they're an adult and they have that wealth.

So that's one of the benefits of revelation. Another is how to pray.

The Gift of the Five Daily Prayers

Like, for me, one of the great gifts of Islam is the five prayers a day.

Because I have learned to truly love dawn and even pre-dawn. What does it give you? What does the prayer give you? When I'm in a really good state, it's amazing. So it just depends on my state.

I definitely, I get a tranquility. The Quran says:

That by remembering God, the hearts become tranquil. And I definitely feel very much at peace.

I was once with, and I don't, I'm not, I hope I'm not. But, you know, I was once with Yusuf Islam, who was the singer. And we were in a very worldly place.

And he said, can we go pray? And I said, well, we're travelers, we can wait. He said, I need. And we went to his hotel room and we prayed.

And it was just, it was a beautiful moment because we both really appreciated getting out of that hustle and bustle that we were in, in a very worldly environment at the Waldorf Astoria. And just going into a type of seclusion for even 10 minutes. And does the prayer... I get the monastery, by the way.

Like, I didn't used to get it. I think I'm at the age where I'm understanding the monastery. But does the prayer kind of place you into perspective with yourself? Does it realign yourself? It definitely realigns me.

It totally realigns me. And we have a set of things that our prophet said that I say after every prayer. Which are, to me, in some ways, as beneficial as the prayer.

For instance, the first thing you say is, you know, forgive me three times, because prayers are always deficient. And then... Oh God, you are peace. And from you comes peace.

And to you returns peace. Cause me to live in peace. And that's a prayer our prophet said every single day, five times a day.

And it's a reminder. And it's a reorientation.

Death and the Religious Impulse

Because one of the things... And one of the reasons I became religious, for want of a better word, you know.

Because in some ways, I'm not. But one of the things that happened to me was, I did have a near-death experience in a head-on collision. And what I realized at 17 was, I could die anytime.

I'd never really thought about it in that way. I had a nosebleed where I bled out a large percentage of my blood when I was seven. And I had to be taken to the hospital.

And I woke up, the entire blanket was covered in blood. That was pretty traumatic. You know, just coming to terms with bleeding and losing a lot of blood is very intense.

But the car accident forced me to just deal with the fact that we can die at any moment. And that is one of the strongest aspects of religion. I think without death, there would be no religion.

We wouldn't have religion. Oh, I think, I think... I don't know. I just wrote a piece about the world to come.

And in this piece, I've argued, actually, that we are not attached to the good, to the good, which is to say, to God. Because we somehow fear a loss to ourselves. Because we fear that we will lose things around us, or that we ourselves are going to be lost.

But fundamentally, we are attached to God because we are created for God. And attachment to God is more fundamental to us than the fear of any kind of loss. I need not be motivated by fear of death, or any kind of fear, to continue to be attached to God.

I agree with you. That's interesting.

Religion in the World to Come

And so what happens in the world to come? Because I think people here in this world, the things that make them think... But what happens in the world to come for Islam? There's no religion, thank God.

Well, there is what? There is worship of God? There is a submission to God? There's no religion in the afterlife.

Religion's over. That's the whole problem, right? What does God do? God solves the problem.

No, it can't be right. There's no religion. There's no religion.

Even St. Thomas Aquinas said, only *caritas* remains. There's no faith and hope are of the world. But relationship to God... Only love remains.

But relationship to God remains. This is actually strengthened. So my relationship to the divine... Then we're talking religion.

We need to define our terms. But I mean, attachment to the good... I'm talking about like praying. You don't pray in heaven.

No, that's right. You enjoy God in heaven. It's just joy.

It's the beatific vision. I see. It's going to be wonderful.

But if that's true of heaven, must not... That's the real getting high. No, no, no. You're there.

You're in the celestial realm. You don't need to... You don't need to get high. Actually, you rejoice in the good that's something outside of you.

There's a reason why people get high, though. Because they want ecstasy, ecstasis. They want to get out of themselves.

And this false self that we embody in this world... Is not the true personality. Because I don't believe like in some religions, there's this idea of the total annihilation of the self. And there are a lot of... In Sufism, there's a lot of misunderstandings about that.

The idea of the obliteration. No, we are raised up as... With names. And we enter paradise with names.

And on the day of judgment, the prophet said, people are called by their name and the name of their mother, not their father, to bail the bastard children. Children that didn't have any... And I know that might be a politically incorrect term, but it's an old English word.

Fear and Joy in Approaching God

You know, back to our little dispute, friendly dispute that you and I had. I think that we are attracted even here in this world to God. Not only through fear. Oh, no, I agree.

But also through joy we find God. I agree. But don't forget, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

It's the beginning. Well, we come to fear God in joy, meaning to have awe before God, to discover the beauty of God. That's fine.

But I really think that that is a very rarified... I don't think it's real in terms of what's on the ground of just human beings. I think human beings... I think fear is a very important... There's a reason why... You know, I mean, I've seen... You see these hypocrites on the road, and I've been one of them. You know, they're speeding along, and then they see the cop, and suddenly they slow down, you know.

And I have this friend who was speeding along, and he saw the cop, and he didn't slow down. The cop pulled him over and said, why didn't you slow down? He said, I didn't want to be a hypocrite, and he let him go.

Honesty is a wonderful thing.

You know, why do people... Why are we so afraid of authority? I mean, these are... This is what our tradition calls *fitrah*. It's something about primordial nature. It's in our nature.

Children fear punishment. There's a reason why they do that. A lot of children obey, and it's childish, undeniably.

Spiritual Maturity and True Worship

But most of us move spiritually. In Sufism, they call a spiritually immature person a *walad*, a child, even if you're 80 years old. Like Imam al-Ghazali wrote a book, O You Child, and he wrote it to a man well into his 40s.

Because he was spiritually immature. And so, a lot of us are spiritual children, and that is what works with children, is hope for the reward and fear for the punishment. But that's not the goal in... The goal in our tradition is to be free.

I mean, Rabia al-Adawiyya said, if I'm worshipping you for the fire, throw me into the fire. And if I'm worshipping you for the garden, you know, deny me the garden. She said, let me worship you only as you.

But you mentioned children, and I think that's a very important analogy. But it's also true that children, most fundamental for children, is neither fear nor hope, but this primordial or prior attachment of the primary caregiver to the person. It's only that that makes the child grow, right?

But it also, it knows, like it learns pretty quickly, you know, when it cries at the child. I mean, this is Erickson's, you know, that first trust versus mistrust. I mean, a child has fear, and if that fear is not assuaged by a true caregiver, then it gets traumatized.

One has needs, right? But I think this kind of unconditionality of love, and I think that indicates something about also character of divine being who's always present.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. And I don't want to speak on behalf of the tradition, you know, because... Yeah.

Learning from Other Traditions

So I think we have to close our conversation here, even though it could go for quite some time. So I'll ask two questions. One is, what do you think, or do you think there's much that a Muslim, *qua* Muslim, can learn from other religion or from secular worldview?

I think, I think Muslims, I think historically, our faiths have learned a lot from each other. I know that Islam benefited greatly from Judaism and Christianity by interacting with rabbis and priests in that early period, and vice versa.

So it's simply a fact that Aquinas is heavily indebted, even though he refutes certain aspects of Islamic theology and the *summa contra gentilis*. But it's clear that he was heavily influenced by Ibn Sina, by Ibn Rushd of Arawis, and Abin Sena, by Ghazali himself. And he, you know, he does, he does name his sources.

But do you think contemporary Muslims have something to learn from Thomas Aquinas? I've learned a lot from Aquinas, personally. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in Catholic tradition. I've benefited greatly from Catholic tradition.

I love Catholic tradition. I think it's a very rich, especially the ethical tradition in Catholicism. I mean, I really feel like Muslims are so far behind in ethics now.

And part of it is because the ethical tradition has been destroyed in a lot of ways. I think the Iranians still have a strong ethical tradition in Persia. But the Sunni Muslims by and large, their ethics is very, very, it's, it doesn't have, I mean, I'll give an example.

I do not believe that any medieval scholar would have ever justified suicide bombing. I just, I do not believe that any of them would have concluded that this is actually permissible by Islam. And the Shia have been pretty consistent in not permitting it.

Whereas, unfortunately, amongst some of the quote-unquote Sunni scholars, they've said that it was permitted. And that to me is, it's pure legalism without any understanding of ethic, philosophical ethics. But if they were really rooted in a philosophical ethical tradition, they would never arrive at that.

And a lot of what's happened I blame the so-called scholars. Because we have, our tradition has fallen on hard times. I'm not going to deny that.

And that's part of the reason, like I said, why I'm here, is it's fallen on hard times. But it's a great tradition. It can benefit from other traditions, especially in the modern period, because Christianity has grappled with things.

The Resilience of Jewish and Christian Traditions

Judaism has grappled with things. I mean, Judaism was forced to live for long periods of time as minorities oppressed minorities in societies that were very, very vehemently against them. And yet they survived.

I mean, they lost a great deal. I think the Holocaust was a devastating blow to Judaism. But the Jewish tradition is still a very vibrant intellectual tradition.

And I think there's still, you're an example of that. I think there are still world-class theologians in the Christian tradition and ethicists that are working at a high level. Part of the reason why I started that college was in the hopes of inspiring some young people to take that route and restore, help to restore our tradition.

Because we have, I believe, as somebody who I think knows Western tradition, I'm not a master of it by any stretch, but I'm familiar with it. And I know Muslim tradition much better, I think, because I've just really immersed myself in it for 30 years. My father, who knows Aquinas very well, read a great deal of Ghazali and said to me, I don't think the West ever produced the Ghazali.

What Christians Can Learn from Islam

So that's nice leading into my next question. I want to invert my first question and ask you if you were to name one thing that I as a Christian or those of us who are Christians or those of us who belong to other religious traditions need to learn from Islam. What would that one thing be? It's kind of one thing is needful.

There's a line from the biblical tradition. What would that be? Toynbee said that the two great things the West could learn from Islam was the brotherhood, because he felt that the West had failed to acknowledge the human family, that there's still a great deal of racism. And I believe still our culture has a great deal of racism.

Notwithstanding Obama, there's a lot of good people that are trying to overcome racism. One of the things that's deeply troubling me, and I was talking to it with somebody just a few minutes ago. One of the things that's deeply troubling with me, the first time in world history, you have a civilization that is really attempting to overcome racism.

The anti-discriminatory laws are unprecedented in human history. And so it's so troubling that there's so much tension right now.

Morality Based on Verbs and Adverbs

And one of the things that I like to tell my students is that there are two types of morality. There's morality based on nouns and adjectives, and there's morality based on verbs and adverbs. And true morality is deeply rooted in verbs and adverbs. And I'll give you an example.

If a black, if a policeman kills a black man, if you're in nouns and adjectives, there are people that automatically assume that the policeman was in the right. And there are people that automatically assume that the black man

was in the right, was wrong. Or if a Palestinian does something to a Jew, or a Jew to a Palestinian, there's people that their morality is based on nouns and adjectives.

And that's what determines their morality. Real morality has to be rooted in verbs and adverbs. The operative word is so-and-so killed, so-and-so killed is the operative word.

And then the adverb comes in, either an adverbial phrase like in self-defense or justifiably. That's real morality. And so getting out of looking at people as other than you, you know, like Arabs, I mean, anti-Arab discriminate, you hear people say things now in the United States about Arabs.

If you just did a replacement for any other ethnicity, it would be completely unacceptable. People would lose their jobs. But to say it about Arabs, it's just no big deal.

And that's pure racism. It's all it is. It's just racism.

And it's not to say that Muslims have not been victims of tribalism and racism. There has been. But one of the beauties of Islam, and I've seen this all over the Muslim world, is that they would never not eat or be friends with somebody because of the color of their skin.

They might not marry their daughter because the tribe or something like that. That definitely happens. He's a Baluchi and they're Punjabi, you know, like the, you know, like the Patels always have to marry Patels, you know, things like that.

That happens. But I truly witnessed in many Muslim countries, you know, a real just, you know, I have a Libyan friend who told me that he thought Farrakhan was right. This was after 9-11.

I said, why would you say that? He said, no, you know, white people are the devils. I said, why would you say that?

He was joking, you know, but he said, because I found out that I wasn't white. Because Arabs think of themselves as white, you know.

I mean, West African, the West African would have done his home so bail on, which means white people, even though they could be like, very dark, but they still consider themselves white. So I feel racism is a major thing. And it's not about color.

The Irish have been racially objectified for centuries by the Anglo-Saxon. And they're as white as the moon. It's not necessarily about color.

The Prophetic Teaching on Equality

But there is a hadith, and this directly speaks to this. The prophet said:

(Source Name)

"[English translation here]"

(Sahih Muslim 2564)

That God does not look at your colors. He doesn't look at your forms, but he looks at your hearts and your actions.

He doesn't look at your bodies or your forms, but he looks at your hearts and your actions. And to me, you could reinterpret that to say he does not look at your adjectives and your nouns, but he looks at your verbs and your adverbs. Martin Luther King said something quite similar, if I recall.

Thank you very much for this conversation and for this last call for radical equality