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Ep 09- Talking about Islam with Shakeel
13 Plays10 months ago
I want to be clear, I in no way support any religion and this is not an attempt to promote religion. Because of recent events, I want to try and understand more about Islam, with an open mind, and give an Islamic scholar space to talk. My head nodding is not agreement just an attempt to convey understanding. Please join us. And please leave questions in the comments for next time.
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Transcript
Introduction of Imam Shaqil Saeed
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello listeners and welcome to another episode of Philosophagery. Today we have a very interesting guest who I'm very grateful came on to speak to us and it's an Imam by the name of Shaqil Saeed who's here to talk to us about Islam.
Understanding Among Faiths
00:00:19
Speaker
Given the times that we're living in, I think it's important that we try to have a deeper understanding of those that we share our lives with and share our societies with because
00:00:31
Speaker
There is a lot of turbulence out there that comes from, in my opinion, comes from emotional writings on Twitter made to outrage people.
Background of Imam Shaqil Saeed
00:00:42
Speaker
So let's try and get a deeper understanding with Shaquille. Shaquille, thank you very much for coming on and talking to us. My pleasure. You're welcome. And you're an imam from Leicester in England. Yes, that's correct.
00:00:57
Speaker
and Imam is a priest of the Islamic faith? Yes, so somebody who studies for a number of years to try and gain an adequate level of knowledge in the science of Islam and then I studied for six years and then after that I graduated as an Imam and I've been serving here in Galway community for the past six years
00:01:26
Speaker
Lovely.
The Science of Islamic Knowledge
00:01:27
Speaker
You said a word there I didn't expect, or a phrase, the science of Islam. Yeah, so in terms of the science of Islam, every knowledge is a sort of a science, right? Because it's the way it works, the way it's like a ginormous jigsaw on each puzzle, each piece of the puzzle needs to go in place.
00:01:50
Speaker
for it to make sense. So the same way there's a large amount of Islamic knowledge out there, but each of them needs to be placed correctly together to make sense of what the religion truly is.
Philosophical Insights on Learning and Reasoning
00:02:04
Speaker
That's very interesting. While doing a bit of research for this, I came across words from a 12th century English philosopher.
00:02:18
Speaker
A natural philosopher. So back then, natural philosophy was the name for science. But in it, he said he had traveled to Al-Andalus, I think, which was Moorish Spain, which was Islamic Spain at the time. So his words quote, from the Arabs, I have learned one thing to lead by reason. I will detract nothing from God, but very carefully listen to the limits of human knowledge.
00:02:47
Speaker
only where this utterly breaks down should we refer things to God. To me, that sounds similar to what you said as the science of Islam. Yes, exactly.
Denominations in Islam: Finding the Correct Path
00:03:00
Speaker
So, much like Christianity, of which there is many forms, is there many forms of Islam?
00:03:09
Speaker
So yeah, of course, there's different denominations within the religion of Islam. Obviously, everyone will be biased towards their own denomination and say that they are the true upholers of the religion. But yes, like any other faith, you have many different branches. Our beloved Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him actually said that Islam will divide into 73 sects.
00:03:34
Speaker
and 72 of them will be deviated and only one will be correct. And then he taught us the measure of how will we know which one is the correct one.
Belief in Divine Books
00:03:44
Speaker
He said the one that lives by the Quran and my teachings. So as Muslims, obviously we have the sacred texts of the Quran, the Holy Quran.
00:03:58
Speaker
like the Christians of the Bible, the Jews of the Torah. Similarly, we have the Quran. But as Muslims, we have many fundamental beliefs. One of them is to believe in all the books sent down by God. So as a Jew will believe in the same God that we believe in, as Christians believe in the Father, we also believe him to be the only one true God.
00:04:21
Speaker
Obviously, we have our differences in beliefs apart from that, but we all worship the same one God. And part of a belief in Islam, one of the fundamental assets or tenets of faith is to believe in all the books that were revealed by God. So as a Muslim, although we follow and uphold the Quran, but we have to also believe in the Bible and we also have to believe in the Torah.
Unity Among Prophets
00:04:49
Speaker
and also we have to believe in the book given to David, also the Psalms. So all these books we have to believe in, but because they have been altered and changed around by the many centuries that passed over them, we don't believe the word that we have or the form that they are in today being the version that were revealed by God, but we believe in the original version.
00:05:16
Speaker
So many times there's this misconception spread that Muslims are inconsiderate towards other faiths. But in one saying of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, he said that all these prophets, prophethood is like one big family and we're all brothers.
00:05:39
Speaker
And we had Adam, we had Noah, we had Abraham, and we are all brothers in the same mission. And we all came to propagate the same message, and that's the oneness of the one true God. Worship Him, submit to Him, follow His laws and His commands, and don't fall into the whispers of the Satan and the devil.
Finality of Prophethood
00:06:00
Speaker
and then he goes on to say that I've just come to lay the final brick of completing the building. So he likened the the prophethood to a building and he said every prophet's come and placed his brick but the building isn't complete until the final brick is placed and I have come to place that final brick
00:06:24
Speaker
so in that it shows the humility and the humbleness of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that he himself although we find him to be from all the prophets the most beloved in Islam but at the same time he wouldn't boast or brag about his status in the eyes of Allah rather he would always show humility and humbleness and
00:06:46
Speaker
He, in other words, he was saying this building cannot be completed without the others. So me coming on my own was not enough. I needed all my brothers in, in profit would to be there or else this mission of completing the message from God would not be complete. So we believe that many messengers, um, we believe in older messengers that are mentioned in the Bible of the Torah, the, uh, whether that be Adam, Noah, Noah,
00:07:12
Speaker
Abraham, Isaac, all the different messengers that are mentioned, we believe in all of them, but we believe the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him to be the final messenger.
00:07:23
Speaker
So now we believe there will be no more messengers to come. So now if somebody comes and says, I am a messenger and God has sent me, immediately we will know his faults because our prophet already told us and God has revealed within the Quran that the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is the final messenger. So now there will be no more messengers. Okay, so that follows kind of my very rudimentary understanding
00:07:52
Speaker
of these
Islam as the Completion of Religion
00:07:53
Speaker
religions. And I do know the three, what they call Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they all pray to the same God. Yes. And my understanding is that according, again, this is rudimentary, please correct me, according to
00:08:16
Speaker
Muslims Judaism came first and they were chosen by God but they messed up and they didn't do it right and then Jesus came and brought about Christianity but they wrote down all the writings wrong and they messed it up and you know what I mean and then but then Muhammad came and he talked to was it the angel Gabriel
00:08:39
Speaker
gave him the Word of God and that was written down and that should never be touched, like never be adapted or changed because that's what the other two did wrong before, basically. But is there not something kind of inherently
00:08:59
Speaker
How would I say, totalitarian about that? You know what I mean? That, okay, we're the last and that's it now. There's no more. Do you know, is there not? So as Muslims, we don't believe there was different religions. So we wouldn't say Judaism is a different religion. We say that was the same religion.
00:09:19
Speaker
But it was just the Prophet Moses was the one preaching and he was the messenger alive at the time. And we believe that the message that Jesus gave was also the same religion. We believe all the messengers that came, they came with the same religion and the religion we call it Islam. But Islam in itself is
00:09:40
Speaker
It's not a religion, it's an ideology. Religion is sort of, it's a denomination and it's like a group of people, but Islam is a concept, it's an ideology of Islam in itself, in Arabic language, means to submit to, and then obviously Islamically it would mean to submit to God.
00:10:02
Speaker
So Islam, it means a Muslim in its linguistic meaning would mean anyone who submits his will to God.
Submission to God Across Prophets
00:10:12
Speaker
So we believe in that essence, Adam, Noah, Jesus, Moses, all these messengers, they were all Muslim.
00:10:21
Speaker
because they all submitted their will to the one true God and they didn't follow their own desires, their own whims and their own. So we don't believe necessarily that there was a different religion Judaism and there was a different religion Christianity. We believe these are old man-made words and man-made labels, if you see like trying to divide the people, whereas there was only one message and that was to submit to the one true God. But obviously anyone can claim to submit to the one true God.
00:10:50
Speaker
But like you're saying, it sounds a bit totalitarian. But for that, you need to have your evidences. And when you have your evidences, then it makes sense. So as Muslims, we obviously we believe all these religions were all one. It was all Islam.
00:11:08
Speaker
They're all submitted to the one true God. So not Islam in terms of the religion itself, but in terms of the linguistically meaning that they're all submitted to the one true God. It wasn't a different religion. It was all the same. But how will we know that?
00:11:26
Speaker
the Bible or the Torah or whatever other religion you have in Hinduism or Sikhism whatever the religions are throughout the world how do we know which one is the one correct one and for that you need the evidences obviously God is above
00:11:43
Speaker
any sort of discrepancies or sort of shortcomings or weaknesses. Like the definition of a God is a supreme almighty being that is in need of no one and every other being is in need of him. So if he was in need of us, then that would automatically not make him God. So
00:12:07
Speaker
him being God, he has to have the quality of being free from any sort of need of the creation. So God is the only necessary being and everything else is contingent upon that being. Of course, yes, everything is dependent upon that and then we believe that
00:12:27
Speaker
God set down revelations. And just like you have laws, for example, maybe on one day you're driving down the road, the speed limit is 50 kilometers per hour. And then they realized that, no, there's more houses being built up, the council slow it down to 30 kilometers per hour now. So you can't say, I lived on this road for 20 years and I've been driving 50 kilometers per hour and I got to pull you over
00:12:53
Speaker
Did you realize what speed you're going? And like, yeah, 50 is like, no, it's changed to 30. No, I've lived here all my life. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to follow 50 because for the past 20 years is 50. You can't do that. No one accepts that as an acceptable mode of living. You have to, you have to live by the current law.
00:13:12
Speaker
And we believe that Islam is the final law that was sent down by God. And now to be successful in the eyes of God, you have to live by that final law of being the final revelation of the Quran. Okay. I get it. That's interesting. But I like the analogy you used about speed limits there. That brings me to a point when it comes to living within the law.
00:13:41
Speaker
Is it more important for a Muslim to live within the law of the Quran?
Muslims and the Law of the Land
00:13:46
Speaker
Or to live within the law of the land, like you're saying speed limits? Like could a Muslim do 50 and say, hang on now, the Quran says I can do 50, so. No, no, obviously it's the thing, the beauty about Islam is that it's so practical. It takes, so in Islam we have, you would say,
00:14:05
Speaker
The teachings, they branch out into five categories. One is in terms of beliefs, so the beliefs a person has. Two would be in terms of the rights of the people and the rights that people have you.
00:14:21
Speaker
have upon you and then you have social etiquette, then you have dealings and transactions and then you have characteristics and traits of the heart. So Islam branches out into if you take all the teachings of Islam you can place them into one of these five categories. So because of that Islam is a very fundamental practical way of living life because it addresses
00:14:49
Speaker
every single situation of a person's life. So coming back to your question of whether it's important to follow the law of the land or is it more important to follow the Quran, but Islam teaches us to follow the law of the land is necessary as long as it does not cause you to sort of oppress or sin. For example, if the law of the land is
00:15:14
Speaker
go and kill innocent people and the army's given a rule that you have to go and fight. If you don't fight, you're going to be in prison or you're going to be killed.
00:15:24
Speaker
So following the law of the land at that time, it would not be permissible. You cannot do that. You can't just go around killing innocent people. You have to obviously give consideration to what the law of the land is. Of course, it's important. But at the same time, if the law of the land itself is corrupt, then it's no longer able to be implemented.
00:15:48
Speaker
So as long as the law of the land is not doing something that will break and, sorry, as long as it does not make you or lead you into sinning, then it is fine. There's certain things, for example, in Islam, we have insurance. In Islam, insurance, car insurance, home insurance, all of this, it's impermissible.
00:16:13
Speaker
But because of the law of the land, we say that it's because the law of the land is that you must have car insurance to drive. So for a Muslim now to drive without car insurance, although Islamically it's not permissible for him to have car insurance.
00:16:29
Speaker
But he has to have coinshore because it's the law of the land. So that's where you see the adaptability and the practicality of Islam of where, yes, you have to uphold the laws of the Quran and everything like that. But at the same time, you're living in a world where not everyone is Muslim, not everyone has the same ideology. So you have to
00:16:49
Speaker
respect that you have to live by that and obviously within reason you need to adapt where you can and of course that doesn't mean that you just water down the religion and you change it to suit the whims and the fancies of the people no it has to be upheld in this authentic message it can't be changed just because somebody finds it offensive or somebody finds it not for them so at the end of the day
00:17:14
Speaker
We believe Islam to be the one true message from God and if somebody is in search of sincere guidance and truth then only will after he's sincere will he find it.
Pursuit of Truth in Religion
00:17:29
Speaker
So I always like to say to again guidance a person needs to have two qualities he needs to have. Number one is first and foremost sincerity. He needs to be sincere in the search of truth.
00:17:43
Speaker
And number two, he needs to keep going, no matter how long it takes. He can't say, oh, I searched for six months and I didn't find it. No, if you're sincere, you need to keep going. And because you're sincere and you never gave up, you'll find the truth. Now, I leave that broad to anyone. They can find the truth if they think that's Christianity, if they think that's Judaism, if they think that's atheism, whether obviously everyone has their own
00:18:08
Speaker
But you need to be sincere to yourself. And the difference is that many people, they say, no, I tried to search for the truth, but I didn't find it. That's why it led to me believing in this way or that way. But in the back of their mind, they know that they're lying to themselves. They weren't sincere. Their conscience will be telling them what they're doing is wrong.
00:18:32
Speaker
But they will just carry on with it because it's a normal society or because it feels good. For example, taking drugs. They know in the back of their mind taking drugs is not good.
00:18:43
Speaker
but people will consume the drugs. Why? Because it makes you feel nice. It makes you forget about the worries of the world. So similarly, there'll be aspects in life or instances in life where a person has to, his sincerity will be put to the test. And it's at that time, if a person remains sincere in his search for truth, God will show him the truth. And when you see the truth, you need to just, whether the thing is like,
00:19:11
Speaker
Sometimes the way the human has been created, he likes his desires. So his desire, for example, you're craving to eat cake. So naturally a human will give into that desire and want to eat it. You're craving to whatever, like you're craving some drugs or some alcohol, whatever it be. These are all natural inclinations of a human, the desires.
00:19:39
Speaker
but the Islam tells us that you don't follow your desires you follow God and that's where the basically the line is where Islam tells us yes you have this natural inclination of something but then you have to follow the word of God and following the word of God after that desire this shows your sincerity so if somebody just comes and says Muslims don't have no desires we don't fall into sin
00:20:06
Speaker
we don't think bad or have negative thoughts about others, this is all false. We humans, just like everybody else, we have our shortcomings, we have our faults, we have so many wrongs within our society as a whole. But the line is where your desires are pulling you towards something which is bad, which is negative.
00:20:27
Speaker
something that is not good for you but then you have to push your desires aside and you have to follow what is God saying to you because God obviously as Muslims we believe he created us and he knows best what our needs whether that be physically, spiritually, mentally, whatever it be God knows that because he created us similarly like somebody
00:20:50
Speaker
invents a phone. So the person who invented the phone, for example, Apple or Samsung, whatever it be, the company, they will know how best to use that device. They will be able to tell you, you can do the X amount of applications on there, this many things you can do on there. But if you download certain software on there, you're going to destroy it and it won't be functional anymore.
00:21:17
Speaker
So if somebody says, no, it's my phone. I can do whatever I want with it. I'm going to download whatever I want in it. Sooner or later, he's going to get a virus and his phone's going to crash. And all of a sudden, all that money that he spent on a brand new top of the range phone is no longer useful because he's destroyed it with the virus that he put inside and downloading malicious wear. So similarly, Islam, we say God created us.
00:21:43
Speaker
He knows what is needed for our spiritual health, what's needed for our mental health and what's needed for our physical health. So all these aspects are taught to us either in the Quran directly or taught to us from the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. So in light of those two sources of guidance, we live our life to the best of our ability in a nutshell.
Logic and Reason in Islam
00:22:08
Speaker
No, no, no, no, that's okay. That's okay. That's pretty good. But the truth, one must follow their own truth or one must find their own truth and be sincere to that. How then does one recognize truth? How does one recognize their own truth? You just know it's truth.
00:22:38
Speaker
OK, but that kind of goes against kind of scientific validation, you know, like is, in essence, that not just some feeling that I think it's true. No. So Islam is that Islam doesn't revolve around feelings. It's not how you're feeling. So feelings, feelings ups and downs. Islam is very intellectual, is very everything has to be logical. It can't just be about feelings.
00:23:07
Speaker
But then obviously when it comes to logic, as humans, we're very restricted within our logic itself.
Creation as Evidence of God
00:23:13
Speaker
We don't have infinite logic that we can just comprehend everything. Some things are just uncomprehendable.
00:23:23
Speaker
Because of that, Islam does say you need to make reason, it's a religion of reasoning. In the Quran, God tells us, do not see the skies, the mountains, the different creations and do not see within them signs of my existence. How did the mountains just pop up and how did the clouds and the earth and the sun and the moon, how did they all orbit in perfect sync? Are these not signs for you? So that's what God tells us to do, go and look at my creation.
00:23:51
Speaker
He orders in the Quran, go and look at my creation and then after looking at the creation that I created, ponder over the existence of the one true God who created you and submit to him.
00:24:04
Speaker
that's where the sincerity like for example somebody with all due respect you might say is an atheist or um but majority of atheists i would say they are more agnostic than an atheist um because they they do believe in some sort of thing that created but they're not sure so they like to just say oh i don't believe in religion but they will be more agnostic in terms of they think there is something there but they don't know what it is
00:24:31
Speaker
uncertainties. And that's where the search of the truth comes in. You need to be sincere, you need to truly ask. Obviously, as Muslims, we believe God hears and sees and everything that a person does. So when you call out to the one true creator, for argument's sake, if somebody's saying it's not true, it's all just a fairy tale or whatever it be, but
00:24:55
Speaker
For argument's sake, if you're sincere in search of the truth, then why don't you call out to the one true creator? If he's all a fairy tale, you won't get anything. And if it's true, then you need to make sure you're sincere and keep going. Don't stop. If you're sincere and you keep going, one day you'll get there. Sometimes for some people it's only a matter of one week. Some people it's only a matter of a few hours even. A life experience or listening to somebody talk about Islam,
00:25:24
Speaker
It convinces them and some people it takes them 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. They have Muslim friends all their life. They saw how Muslims live all their life, interacted with them. They really liked Islam. They fought Islam. Wow, it's very beautiful.
00:25:40
Speaker
but they just didn't want to give in to their desires because they knew if I'm Muslim I have to leave all the illegitimate sects, I need to leave all the drink, I need to leave the alcohol, the partying, the music, all these things that I like to do, I enjoy, I have to give it all up, so then that's what I'm saying, so you have to be sincere.
00:26:01
Speaker
The insincerity comes when you know something's the truth but you don't want to give it up because you want to carry on following your desires and that's what stops people from in their search and the pursuit of truth is when they just give up and they see something is very good they accept it but they just think oh what will my family think?
00:26:21
Speaker
If I accept this now, what will they think? They'll disown me, they'll call me a terrorist, they'll call me this, they'll call me that, you know? But with all these so-called labels nowadays,
Fulfilling Divine and Human Rights
00:26:31
Speaker
you know? But people who have Muslim friends, they will know that a Muslim is far from being a terrorist. He's somebody who's very kind, compassionate. I would say there was one scholar and he was asked to sum up
00:26:46
Speaker
the purpose of Islam in a nutshell. And he said the purpose of Islam is to fulfill the rights of God and to fulfill the rights of the people. So you fulfill the rights of God, but at the same time, you need to make sure you're fulfilling the rights of the people. If you're only doing one of the two, you're not correct, you're not complete. To be complete, you need to be respectful, kind, compassionate, loving to the creation, and at the same time, submissive to God.
00:27:16
Speaker
Okay.
Knowledge Pursuit in Islam
00:27:20
Speaker
That's interesting stuff. I myself, I class myself as non-religious. I get what you're saying about atheism. I think atheism seems to be a hard belief that there is nothing. I'm not so sure about that. It seems to be a religious stance in itself. I believe that there is
00:27:45
Speaker
unexplainable mystery, there's absolute limits to human knowledge and what we can know and we are very limited. And I do, from looking into Islam a bit, there is
00:27:59
Speaker
there's a striving for knowledge more so than there is especially in the early Christendom where the Catholic Church tended to keep the knowledge to themselves and only the priests could read the Word of God and everybody else just had to do what the priest said and that was it for in Islam
00:28:21
Speaker
As far as I know, Muhammad was himself illiterate when he was hearing the word of God from Gabriel and Gabriel said, now go and read. And that has gone on to kind of produce this yearning for knowledge throughout Islam and yearning for science. And our numbers were brought to Europe from Islam, apparently the number zero and the one to nine.
00:28:47
Speaker
And that made mathematics a lot easier because before that it was the Roman numerals. Anybody who's seen Roman numerals know how many.
00:28:55
Speaker
how much writing that's going to take if you start doing big multiplication. But in Islam, it's much more accepting to, as you said, look at God's creation and try to understand astrology and try to understand the stars and what's going on. And it's because of this that a lot of early Islam
00:29:23
Speaker
translated and transcribed Aristotle's work and actually brought that into Europe. So it kind of furthered ancient Greek philosophy in many ways. Continue. Yeah, so you were going to give us some insight about the revelation towards gaining knowledge
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, so it's interesting you mentioned that Islam obviously promotes education, it promotes its followers to gain knowledge, rather it's not just recommended, it's an essential part, a compulsory asset of
00:30:09
Speaker
the faith itself to gain the knowledge. Within Islam we have many, many intricate details. When it comes to other religions, I don't find it in that sense. For example,
00:30:26
Speaker
For example, we have the five daily prayers.
Structure of Islamic Prayers
00:30:29
Speaker
And within the five daily prayers, there are so many actions that you have to do. Some of them might be compulsory. Some of them might be optional. Some may be emphasized, but not essential. So you have different rulings within the prayer itself. If you miss this out, your prayer is invalid. You need to repeat the prayer. So it's very, very detailed and very, very intricate. And I don't find this in other religions.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's very hard for a man who, like you were mentioning, was illiterate, couldn't read or write, to come up with such a sophisticated form of so-called religion or bring down a book or a book was revealed to him, which is so eloquent in his speech that no one till today could replicate it. So one of the challenges of the Quran itself
00:31:21
Speaker
God says to if you do not believe the Quran to be the word of God then why don't you bring a book similar to it and then he said not even a book bring a chapter and not even a chapter bring a few verses that could match the Quran and one of the beauties of the Quran is its eloquence in the Arabic language so the Arabs were known for their poetry and
00:31:45
Speaker
Each prophet was given a sort of miracle that would correspond to the place that they live in. So for example, at the time of Moses, there was a lot of magic and there was a lot of the sorcery type of thing. So he was given the staff, he was given different miracles to address that and to prove that this is magic and this is miracles. There's a difference between a miracle and magic.
00:32:13
Speaker
So in Islam, sorry, in the time of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, the thing that was very strongly upheld was poetry, eloquence in Arabic language.
Impact of the Quran's Language
00:32:24
Speaker
And that's where the Quran came and it revealed such an eloquent language, like the Arabs were masters of the Arabic language. But till today, Arabic is before the Quran was revealed, they thought they knew Arabic.
00:32:38
Speaker
But when the Quran revealed, it changed the whole Arabic language. Now to learn Arabic language, even if you're not a Muslim, you're an Arab Christian, you have to refer to the Quran for eloquence. To learn the grammar, to learn the grammar of the Arabic, you need to go to the Quran. Even if you're a Christian, even if you are Arab Jew, like it doesn't matter. So that's the eloquence of the Quran. So you're mentioning about the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. He is somebody who is very
00:33:06
Speaker
kind-hearted, soft-natured, you know, and somebody, obviously, in the past, people would, the ones who would have control or power or might or wealth, they would oppress the lessors, you know, so-called people of a weaker nature. So likewise, in Mecca at the time, the leaders, they would oppress the
00:33:29
Speaker
the followers you would say and this would always sadden the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him he would see that people's belongings again took away from them just out of greed for absolutely no need whatsoever just you want it so you can just take it and this would cause him a lot of grief so he would like to go in sort of what would you call it as
00:33:53
Speaker
he would go into seclusion, sorry, he would go into seclusion in the cave of Hira which is just outside of the Makkah. So it's just a mountain, so obviously at that time and the city of Makkah was mountainous, so it was a little
00:34:12
Speaker
part within the middle of the desert and all around was all full of mountains. So originally we believed the Prophet, Abraham, he brought his son Ishmael to live in that land and thereafter they propagated, they populated, sorry, that land. So before they came there was nobody in the land of Makkah.
00:34:37
Speaker
And then the son Ishmael, who is also the forefather of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So when it comes to the prophets, sorry, I'm going all over the place, there's not really structure, just bear with me.
Lineage of Prophethood
00:34:55
Speaker
When it comes to the prophets, many of the prophets came, but then when it came to the Prophet Abraham,
00:35:03
Speaker
then prophethood remained within the family of Abraham. So when it came to the family of Abraham, he had his son, he had two sons, he had Isaac and he had Ishmael. From Isaac, all the messengers that came, they all came from the children of Isaac. Whether that be Jesus, whether that be Moses, whether that be Solomon, all these people came from the children of Isaac.
00:35:30
Speaker
So that would be what we would think of as the Judaic Christian, or the Judaic side of it, would it? Yes, yes, yes. And then on the other side, the second son of Abraham was Ishmael, and the only prophet that came from Ishmael was the Prophet Muhammad that came many, many hundreds, even a few thousand years later.
00:35:55
Speaker
So he came from there and all the hundreds of different messengers came from the family of Isaac. So when Ishmael stopped in Mecca, it was just a barren land and it was nothing there whatsoever. And God sent Abraham as a test.
00:36:14
Speaker
to go and leave your wife and Ishmael who was just the newborn baby at the time in the middle of the desert. Obviously in the middle of a desert being left in the scorching heat of Arabia, that's a death sentence. He knew this, of course he knows this, but like I said, sometimes God tests us in ways to see if we are sincere.
00:36:34
Speaker
And once you prove your sincerity, God opens the doors to ease. So he did this, he took his wife, his newborn son Ishmael to the desert.
00:36:45
Speaker
And he left them there, he left them with a bit of food and water, and he began to walk away. So his wife, she saw this, Hagar, and she saw this, and she started to say to him, where are you going? Why are you leaving us? And he was very, of course, emotional. He couldn't take his words out. And he was finding it very burdensome to be able to do this to his own family. But he wanted to prove to God how sincere he is.
00:37:15
Speaker
so he he was refraining from poking because he was on the verge of crying you know so she says to him did God order you to do this and he just signaled to her yes and then she says okay if this is the command of God then go for God is the one who will look after us and you don't need to worry about us so like this he left now in the middle of the desert is only Ishmael and his mother Hagar and she's
00:37:45
Speaker
left there after a bit the food is finished, the water is finished now the baby gets hungry there's nothing to give to the baby so she starts to search for food and she starts to search for food she runs up one mountain known as the Mount Safa and there's another mountain known as Mount Marwa so she ran from this one mountain to another mountain she ran seven times
00:38:10
Speaker
back and forth to go to some high place. Maybe she'll see a sand cloud showing that there's some travelers going by and she can flag them for some help. So she did this while she's doing this. Ishmael is still crying.
00:38:27
Speaker
and then the angel Gabriel he appeared, God sent the angel Gabriel and he hit his wing onto the floor near the feet of Ishmael and water began to gush out from there and when Hagar saw this she quickly went there
00:38:44
Speaker
and she tried to build a sort of mound around the water to preserve it from being absorbed into the sand. So she started to do this and she started to say zum, zum, zum, zum means to stop. So she saw the waters going into the sand and she sees this is essential for life. So she's trying to tell the water stop, stop. So she says zum, zum. So then now we have that same water so still existent today.
00:39:10
Speaker
and it's in Makkah and it's people, millions of people throughout the world, they go there for pilgrimage, they bring back this water and scientifically they've seen that this water is one of the best sources of water in the entire earth.
00:39:27
Speaker
And the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, he said that if she had not stopped and build that mound around where the water was gushing out, then the well of Zum Zum would not have been a well, it would have been one of the most vastest of rivers throughout the world. But she built this mound and it turned into a well instead.
00:39:52
Speaker
So this was the history of, so the reason I'm saying this is to get a background of the city of Makkah.
Transformation of Mecca
00:40:01
Speaker
So this Makkah was absolutely barren. There was no one there. They got a water source in the Mula'u desert. Now they began living there.
00:40:08
Speaker
he began to happen and then obviously while they were people would pass by from Yemen to Syria for trade and Mecca comes in the middle of both of them and when they would pass by they noticed all of a sudden there's a water source up here now and obviously water in the middle of the desert means life so they came there they saw okay there's a lady with her son they asked for permission in those days people were very noble
00:40:38
Speaker
They wouldn't just come and intrude and take over people's possessions. They would understand some sort of, you would say, nobility. They'll have nobility within them, you know. So they came and they asked, do you mind if we take from the water and we stop by here? She said, as long as you do not take away the water or try to usurp it. For me, I don't mind. You can use it. There's plenty for all of us.
00:41:03
Speaker
So like this, eventually people began to populate there and the city became bigger and bigger. It became actually a city after. So many hundreds of years, the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is born. He is born into the family of the leader of Makkah. So in terms of lineage, he's very noble. He's very high status.
00:41:25
Speaker
So could he have wanted prophethood to say that or sorry, could he have claimed prophethood for the desire of fame or status or power? No, because he was already one of the sons of one of the leaders, the grandson of the leader of Makkah at the time. And from all the grandsons that the leader had, he was the most beloved to him. So
00:41:51
Speaker
In terms of popularity or status, he didn't have a need for that. He was given that from birth. Is Mohammed an exemplar?
Muhammad as a Role Model
00:42:03
Speaker
Like Jesus now on Buddha would be exemplars to Christians and Buddhists like a Christian would say like, what would Jesus do in this situation? And they try and act. Is Mohammed the same for Muslims? Would he be an exemplar that people would try and copy?
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by example, but if you mean like as a role model, yes, definitely. That's exactly what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Someone to try and aspire to live. Yeah. Most definitely. Yes. 100%. Do you think there's, again, I think this about Christianity and Buddhism too sometimes, but do you think there's something that we're trying to, we're trying to live like people that lived thousands of years ago?
Relevance of Ancient Role Models
00:42:48
Speaker
when we have come so far, maybe, in our knowledge, that perhaps it'll be better to find more modern exemplars to live by.
00:43:00
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? I think the same when Christians think, what would Jesus do? I'm like, well, Jesus never knew how traffic lights were and he never, you know, he didn't deal with the problems of modern society. So is there something that's kind of inappropriate to such ancient knowledge from modern times? The thing is technology advances, but human life is the same. A human hasn't changed by nature.
00:43:31
Speaker
technologies come, there's cars, there's phones, internet, there's all these amazing video calls we're having this meeting right now, whereas in the past we'll have to travel and meet each other. But humans as nature, the nature of human has not changed and they will never change.
Religion vs. Technology
00:43:48
Speaker
The human by nature will always be the same.
00:43:50
Speaker
So that is what religion calls a person to his natural disposition of the equilibrium, you would say, of spirituality, of where you're at equilibrium with God. You're not falling into your desires. You're just totally submissive to God. And that's obviously the ultimate aim. It's not easy as it is. Sounds, you know, it's very difficult to do.
00:44:20
Speaker
That's the ultimate aim to do, you know, like you said, wouldn't you need a modern modern day example. But then, of course, any example or any role model of today wouldn't
00:44:35
Speaker
be of the highest in terms of as a Muslim as a highest state and in terms of morals, etiquettes, characteristics, the way that he would prove what he would say for his actions as the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him like
00:44:51
Speaker
Even now if you search the most influential personalities, I think he was number, and the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was number one, as the most influential personalities throughout the history. There was one person, I can't remember, who wrote a book. He wrote a book upon the most influential personalities in the world.
00:45:14
Speaker
And as far as I can recollect, it was many years ago, the Prophet Muhammad was number one. So when it comes to each and every asset of life that a human needs, the Prophet SAW peace be upon him has addressed it. Because Islam is not for technology or obviously Islam adapts to the needs of the time. Like I said, for example, the law about insurance and things like that.
00:45:41
Speaker
But a human doesn't need technology to exist. The technology needs the human to exist. Without human life, technology doesn't exist. So sometimes we get so caught up with the technology and we think that we're dependent on technology, but it's technology that's dependent upon the human. So what you're saying, the way I take it, is that
00:46:10
Speaker
Religions, they basically are providing ideas on how humans understand themselves and on how they deal with each other from human to human relations rather than, as you said, the technological world. That's going to keep evolving and adapting anyways, but how we deal with each other within that is what religious guidance gives us.
00:46:36
Speaker
You'll see now, I would say, I would argue that the world today is far worse than it was 100 years ago in terms of morals, in terms of actual care and feelings for another person.
00:46:52
Speaker
Nowadays, people just press a button and you kill 100 people. They think it's Call of Duty, you know? They think it's just a video game. And they have no sort of remorse, no sort of repercussions. The thing is with man-made law is it can never be enforced.
Perfection of Divine Laws
00:47:10
Speaker
Somebody commits a crime. You might say that you're going to put him in prison, but who's going to put him in prison?
00:47:16
Speaker
Like there's one out for Netanyahu now for his arrest. He went America, America, the so-called upholders of democracies and international law.
00:47:30
Speaker
a person who the International Court has declared as a supposed war criminal comes to your country and then you do not even arrest him or sort of detain him for further questioning or interrogation or investigation.
00:47:47
Speaker
It shows how far the world has come in terms of its morals. It's lost them. It doesn't hold them. So I feel the world... I understand that, but isn't there... No, this is a very complicated thing that's happening over that part of the
Palestinian Resistance and Global Policies
00:48:01
Speaker
world. And I would certainly disarm the whole of Israel if I had a magic wand, you know. But just to that point there on letting Yahuwah go into America, isn't there kind of...
00:48:13
Speaker
Hamas leaders in Arab countries that aren't being kind of, they're not exactly being arrested either. And they would, you know what I mean? Just kind of give. But by international law, the Palestinians have a right to armed resistance.
00:48:31
Speaker
by international law. So if the world or the community want to class the Palestinians as terrorists, but then they need to make up their mind of whether they believe in international law or not. That's where Islam says, look, man-made law is such that it has its flaws. It'll never be perfect. That's why we have to follow the law that is set by God, because God is perfect. He's the only one that is free from faults.
00:49:01
Speaker
And just to really complicate things here. Does it say somewhere in the Quran that God gave Israel to the Jews? Not Israel. So Israel basically is the name of Isaac's son whose name is Yaqub. OK. So Jacob, one of the names of Jacob is Israel. So Israel is actually his name.
00:49:31
Speaker
Any of his children are known as the Children of Israel. So Israel is not a land. It's not a location. It's a people. It's a people. It's the Children of Jacob. Okay. They would know. So anything that was written back then referring to Israel wouldn't be talking about a place. It was talking about a person.
00:50:02
Speaker
It was mainly addressing towards the Jews and the Christians, because Christians, even though Christians would say that they're not Jewish in terms of religion, but by ethnicity they are, because it's Judea, the place where they are from, you know, that land, that place.
Value of Life in Islamic Teachings
00:50:23
Speaker
I get you, I get you. The people of that time were all from that family, so that's what it's addressing.
00:50:30
Speaker
For example, there's one verse in the Quran where God says that, I'm just paraphrasing, killing one person is equivalent to killing the whole of mankind. So if you kill one innocent person, obviously that doesn't mean if somebody is coming into your house and he's going to kill you, you can't kill him. No, Islam, like I said, is very practical. Now this person is going to kill you, he's going to kill your wife, he's going to kill your children. Now you have a right for self-defense.
00:50:57
Speaker
Now you have, if you have to, regrettably, you'll have to might even take his life. But if you don't, he's going to take four or five people of your family's life. So it's the lesser of the evil, of the two evils. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. The Quran God says like killing one innocent person is as if you've killed a whole of mankind.
Contradictions Between Teachings and Actions
00:51:19
Speaker
Like just one person. This makes total sense to me, of course, killing innocent people is wrong and
00:51:27
Speaker
What's happening in Gaza right now, the idea of the collective punishment of the whole of the Palestinian people is just mind-boggling how that can continue in this day and age. But how is it that there is Islamic terrorists who attack Western countries and attack innocent people in Western countries, how can they
00:51:57
Speaker
How can they hold this in their head as Islamic theology? It doesn't matter with anything you're saying that this would be okay. Are these people, are they real Muslims? How does this, how do ye understand this happening?
Misinterpretation Leading to Extremism
00:52:16
Speaker
Of course, I have the same question you have. How do we come to this conclusion that this is what Islam is?
00:52:23
Speaker
Because Islam is not that, you know, it's total opposite. In the time of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, there were Jews living there, there were idol worshipers living there, they had their rights, even though he was a Muslim country, a Muslim, there was no
00:52:39
Speaker
issue, everyone had their rights, everyone was free to practice their religion. For example, let's say we live in a Muslim country which runs according to Islamic law. Now if a person attacks a church, Islamically the Muslim country is their responsibility to protect it.
00:53:04
Speaker
So although we might not follow the same religion, we might differ in our beliefs. But as a Muslim, we have to protect the Christian church. Why? Because they are under your rule. They are your responsibility. You have to provide for them. The Islamic sort of state or whatever you want to call it, a government ship, a governorship.
00:53:27
Speaker
has many, many rules. And part of that is everyone has the freedom to practice their own religion. Everyone like, for example, in Qatar, now you had the whole controversy. And then there was alcohol being served, but then they made it made sure
00:53:44
Speaker
that alcohol is only served within designated zones. You can't openly walk on the street and drink alcohol because obviously, Islamically, drinking is not permissible.
Religious Freedom in Islamic Governance
00:53:55
Speaker
It's impermissible. So if you're drinking, you're promoting other young Muslims to also try and get tempted into drinking and going into that sin.
00:54:05
Speaker
So that's where Islam says, no, you can't openly do something on the street that is a sin. But if within your beliefs, within your religion, something is fine, then as long as it's done within the confines of your own four walls, that's between you and God. That has no say that a government does not have any say on what happens in the four walls of your house, as long as it's not affecting a third person.
00:54:31
Speaker
I got you. You had the designated zones where there was alcohol, but it was all zoned out so the public can't see it. It was blocked. Okay, I get you. I'm going to go back to the question of how do people who carry out these terrorist attacks
00:54:54
Speaker
and they shout al-Aqbir while they're doing it beforehand. How do they manage to justify that through Islamic theology? Because I don't understand any Muslims I've had contact with or talked to. They're always kind and respectful and nice people. And I just don't see how one leads to the other. Would you call these people true Muslims? Are they carrying out
00:55:21
Speaker
No. And are they carrying out anything that really has something? No, no, of course not. How is the man confused? So look, at the end of the day, we believe the human is affected by the devil, the Satan.
00:55:42
Speaker
He tricks people in different ways. So somebody who's not very religious, he'll trick them into getting into sex, he'll trick them into taking drugs, he'll trick them into robbing banks, doing things like that.
Deception and Misinterpretation by Extremists
00:55:54
Speaker
And somebody who's religious, now for him to trick a religious person to come and rob a bank, he's going to say, no, how can I rob a bank? That's not permissible. So while he'll make the religion a means of his deviance.
00:56:09
Speaker
So he takes the religion and he makes him interpret the religion, the text, according to his own way. His extremist ideology killed him for that and killed this and killed that.
00:56:21
Speaker
And then he'll go and he'll go there and he'll think I'm practicing on the religion. But ultimately what that is, is a deception of the devil. The mission of the devil is to take us all astray. Because he disobeyed God and he was banished from Paradise. And because of that he took it upon himself to take revenge on the children of Adam.
00:56:42
Speaker
and by taking as many of them along with him into the hellfire so that's ultimately his aim so like i said people who are religious they won't be tricked by drugs and alcohol and all these sort of things because they in their conscious they're like no this is impermissible so he'll trick them in other ways of trying to paint an innocent person as an enemy
00:57:04
Speaker
and then kill this person and why will you be rewarded? Because he's an enemy. But who said he's an enemy? He's not done nothing. He's a totally innocent person. So they'll use logic, for example, such as when you're on a battlefield, for example, America went to war in Afghanistan. Now, for an American soldier to shoot an Afghani terrorist, or what you're going to call it, shoot at him, he won't think that what he's doing is something bad. He'll think it's something rewarding.
00:57:35
Speaker
He's defending his country, he's protecting his loved ones, he's protecting his whole country from people with this sort of ideology. That's what he's thinking. So in his mind, he's doing something good.
Extremism Across Religions
00:57:45
Speaker
So in the same way, what's happened to them is that the devil has managed to trick them into believing that the innocent people somehow have something against them and they're somehow deserving of death or whatever they think in their mind.
00:58:04
Speaker
So they think now that this person that they're going to kill is not just an innocent person, he's somebody who's likened to a person that you are the battlefield and you have to kill him or else he's going to kill you. Whereas, of course, that's absolutely nonsense, you know. But unfortunately, that's how people like, it's not just Islam itself, you have the crusaders.
00:58:26
Speaker
A hundred percent. A religious denomination has its own extremists within it. That's true. That's why I'm coming to the essence of the thing.
00:58:42
Speaker
that to take a so-called religious person deviant, you have to deviate him in his beliefs. You can't deviate him through alcohol and drugs. He won't fall for it. So the Satan, he tricks them in this way, where he uses Islam to deviate them, makes them make up their own interpretations of the religion, whereas the
00:59:06
Speaker
when they open the actual text and the way the way that is interpreted by the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, he'll see the total opposite. I feel like there's a lot of
00:59:24
Speaker
There's a lot of similarities between the Irish people and some Muslims.
Irish Support for Palestine
00:59:31
Speaker
And I think it's commonly known how the Irish government and we fully support Palestine because we recognize
00:59:40
Speaker
the struggle. Something that's happening there that has been similar to things that have happened here. Yeah. And it's taken Ireland a long time to kind of reach maybe a place of forgiveness with the British of the past. But it's hard because the British people now aren't the British of the past. You know, so I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm British. I'm sorry. I apologize.
01:00:08
Speaker
No, no, no, no. As I said, it's not it's it's the British of the far past. And even then it was it was the political structures and everything that was that was involved. But in the famine in 1845 here in Ireland, you know about the Irish famine? Yes, yes. The Ottoman ruler of Turkey
01:00:31
Speaker
Well, it wasn't Turkey back then. He was just the Ottoman ruler. He wanted to send 10,000 sterling to Ireland. But Queen Victoria said, no, no, no, don't, don't. She said, I already sent them to which is.
01:00:47
Speaker
a thousand was like a million now. And she said, so please only send them a thousand, which was like, I can't believe she stopped. She stopped money coming to us in the time of famine. But but the Ottoman ruler said, OK, so he sent them a thousand, but he also secretly sent three ships full of food. And the British tried to stop them ships landing as well, but they managed to sneak in to draw the harbor.
01:01:14
Speaker
and unload all their food there. And even now, draw at a football club still has the crescent and stare on its emblem, which I just think is something that we should take note of. Do you know what I mean?
Challenges and Acceptance of Muslims in the UK
01:01:29
Speaker
There's a lot of criticism going on about the past and we should remember that there's links, that there's links a lot older than the hatred that's brewing these days.
01:01:40
Speaker
But something else that I think you might be able to speak to actually, I've talked to my parents who were living in England during the time of the troubles here in Ireland and during the time of the IRA bombing campaign.
01:01:56
Speaker
And when they were living there, they got pulled from buses and questioned. They got treated differently in workplaces. They walked into rooms where people went quiet because the Irish people walked in, you know, because everybody associated the Irish then with the IRA and the bombing campaigns that were going on. And many, many, many, I'd say probably
01:02:21
Speaker
probably a higher percentage than did, did not support the IRA and these bombing campaigns that were going on. It just wasn't part of what the Irish people wanted to be. But being Irish in England then was tough. Is it the same kind of vibe, like the riots that have happened recently,
01:02:44
Speaker
The problems with Twitter and the way propaganda is spread now, is it hard to be a Muslim in England now? Do you feel like everybody is looking at you, like if you're a member of the IRA? I think it depends on where you are in the UK, where there's a large amount of Muslim population.
01:03:06
Speaker
the general British or white population they would they would see past their lives you know and they would be totally supportive and they'll be the anti-fascist demonstrators and they'll be standing in support of the Muslims you know and obviously the main concern is in those areas where
01:03:28
Speaker
The Muslims are a vast minority and then the other opposition or the racist or whatever you want to call them, they are there. So then obviously now it's very difficult and very sort of scary to be living in such an environment.
01:03:49
Speaker
I felt largely the British population are far from it. We passed that sort of racist ideology because we integrated so much and so many diverse communities now, not just Muslims, but of all different race and all different backgrounds. That isn't seen as a sort of a division nowadays in society.
01:04:13
Speaker
what the person actually is doing and saying that divides people rather than what they look like. We might differ on our viewpoints, but we won't generally differ just because I'm a brown person and you're a white person. I feel like this is those people who are sort of still backwards or still have their racist mentality that sort of do this. But as
01:04:40
Speaker
Living in England, even during now with these riots going on, it's difficult to say as a whole, but if you live in a community where there's a large amount of Muslims around and the local British public have seen and experienced Muslims,
01:04:59
Speaker
then you won't be scared of what these riot people are trying to do because you know that most of the people I work with them in my colleagues and this and that they know that I'm not like that and they're supportive of me so but it's scary when you think that the whole world is against you because in certain areas
01:05:18
Speaker
When the Muslims are in vast minority, it seems as if the whole world just hates you and they just want to get a chance to kill you. So then obviously it would be scary. And thankfully, the government did a good job on dispersing those riots and putting an end to it. But like I said, in truth, some of these people, they've got nothing better to do. They just want to fight.
01:05:41
Speaker
They don't even know anything about race. Some of them are ethnically not even white themselves. They might come from Eastern Europe, and they've been living there hundreds of years. And they think to themselves that they're ethnically Anglo-Saxon. But when they search their own bloodline, they'll realize that, oh, no, they're Swedish, or they this or they that. So it's really a lack of uneducated
01:06:10
Speaker
uneducated, like they're not educated much, you know, and it's those lower, those sort of people that fall into these lies, but the educated middle class or working class people can see past that.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
Ireland's Troubled History with Catholicism
01:06:25
Speaker
I'm glad to hear that's how it felt over there for you, that largely the British people are accepting. And as you said, the government dealt with the riots well, but the amount of people that came out for the anti-fascist protests, again, whatever you want to call the other side, was impressive.
01:06:45
Speaker
Yes, yes. In some places they were far more than the Muslims themselves, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was good. Something else that happened here in Ireland and under religion, like Catholicism, we probably, you could call it a fundamental type of Catholicism that was in Ireland for many, many years.
01:07:10
Speaker
Uh, and some horrible, horrible things happened. Um, and I think the Irish take that on as a type of national shame because, uh, what happened in the industrial schools, what happened in the Magdalen laundries and the mother and baby homes, um, all the babies that were found in the sewage tank out in, out in tune and, uh, a lot of the abused children, uh,
01:07:40
Speaker
that then went on to become some of Ireland's most notorious criminals in the 90s. It's felt that a lot of that came from religious piety and from
01:07:55
Speaker
Basically, if somebody in an Irish family was thought to be maybe turning out gay or homosexual, they would be pushed in towards the priesthood so as to kind of not embarrass the family. And that ended up with a lot of repressed homosexuals as priests. And then we got them to mind all the children.
01:08:18
Speaker
which like looking back was an absolute recipe for disaster. We put our most vulnerable youngsters in the most harshest dangers possible. But I think Ireland has accepted that because a lot of the public, not that it was largely spoken about, but a lot of people kind of knew what was going on but was
01:08:43
Speaker
was too afraid to go against Catholicism and the power that the church had here. And it was very intertwined with the state itself. Now, what went on there? There's nowhere in the Bible that I know of that says a priest should abuse kids. It doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible. However, the structure of the religion
01:09:12
Speaker
made the conditions so that was not only possible, but probable. And so that's, I think, Irish people worry about fundamental religion because that is part of our history. That's part of our national shame. The stories that are being thrown around on Twitter and other places about grooming gangs,
01:09:41
Speaker
I think that scares Irish people because of our history. Because like, oh no, not more fundamental religion that's going to abuse children. Because that's part of, we had that, we did that. Yeah. So that scares people here.
Desires and Divine Guidance
01:10:00
Speaker
So I guess my question to you is that is there anything in Islam that obviously doesn't directly tell people to go and do abuse children? But is there anything either a sect or something that allows the conditions?
01:10:20
Speaker
for these things to happen. No. Of course, from a logical perspective, put religion aside, it's not correct. Morally, even a person that's doing it morally, he knows what I'm doing to this young child is not correct. So, you don't need, sometimes, just your natural morals, your natural disposition and disposition that you're born with, like will tell you, your heart will tell you,
01:10:48
Speaker
that what you're doing is wrong, you know? And that's sometimes God gives us guidance through just our own morals, like just our natural feeling within our heart. So of course there's nothing in Islam that promotes or endorses or says that that's correct. Like any other religion, I don't think there's a single religion that would say
01:11:11
Speaker
Absolutely. If he did say that, then I would say that that's 100% not a religion and that's totally like man-made. Something else. Yeah, something else, you know.
01:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's obviously a shame. Like I said, within every religion we have, within Islam, within Christianity, whatever it be, you know, we have our shortcomings, we have people who are sort of propped up or dressed up as the so-called Muslim or the so-called priest, but then they do things that are totally unethical, things that totally go against the teachings of Jesus, peace be upon him, totally against the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. So again, like,
01:11:52
Speaker
a person who's truthful to himself, they will see past these lies, you know, and they'll be able to see that it wasn't the religion that made them do it. It was the person that was dressed up as a so-called religious person, but he himself was evil. It's not the religion that made the person evil. Yeah. But do you think the kind of repression of sexuality, which is prominent in Catholicism the way it was,
01:12:22
Speaker
And maybe even from your own speaking here, maybe a feature of Islam as well is that we kind of suppress our desires to do better things, but in some ways, and perhaps it's dragged out by modern society too, them suppress desires become some form of deviant logic that allow or that enable people to think that them things are okay.
01:12:51
Speaker
Is there something in the room? This is like a fine line, you would say, between the right thing to do. If you say that everyone should be able to express their desires openly, then obviously it opens the door to things such as incest and bestality and things like that.
01:13:15
Speaker
that logically at the moment we are saying that, no, this is a no-go. But maybe in a hundred years from now we'll say, no, this is a human desire, do it. That's where the fine line comes in. And like I said at the beginning, Islamically, we know this, that as humans we have desires and these desires will pull us towards good, they'll pull us towards bad.
01:13:44
Speaker
But how will we know which ones are good and which ones are bad is what God tells us. And if we follow and we truthful in our claim for truth.
01:13:54
Speaker
or we say that we follow the truth, we uphold the truth, then you have to follow what is within that text. And the Quran tells us that doing things such as that is impermissible, then you have to stay true to that. Obviously, statistically, there's been a lot of research recently on this LGBTQ and stuff like that, and they have found that
01:14:21
Speaker
majority of people or a large amount of people that do follow this sort of movement that they have had past negative experiences as a child or some sort of trauma that has made them form this sort of sexuality or whatever you want to call it. So like recently, not recently, but a couple of years ago, I
01:14:48
Speaker
saw this sort of documentary on YouTube, I don't have an idea what it was called. And in that there was a person that was formerly a member of the LGBTQ, and he had had a sex change also at a young age. But then he had realized that what a mistake they had made. And then he was he went on to address like it was all
01:15:17
Speaker
some sort of mental issues, hormonal issues. If I were just given this correct amount of hormones, for example, a woman might have a high level of testosterone, which will make her more manly. So just because she has a high level of testosterone doesn't mean she's sexually a man. Now she needs to change her sex into a man. It can just give her some sort of hormone balancing medicine that will make her into a natural thing, you know.
01:15:46
Speaker
So there's a lot of research ongoing and still going and there is definitely a need to do so into how we can sort of address this issue and help people. Because ultimately, what we want is everybody to be able to live in happiness, you know. Yeah. And so is there
01:16:06
Speaker
Is there like zero acceptance of gay people in Islam or LGBTQ people in Islam?
Islam's View on LGBTQ Desires
01:16:15
Speaker
Is there zero acceptance to the validity that they believe they are gay? From what I'm getting from you there, it sounds like you think there's some sort of something happened to these people that
01:16:36
Speaker
made them turn out like that, rather that they were born into the world as a gay person? Is that possible? I wouldn't say that's the case always, but a lot of these cases is to do with personal trauma or some sort of abuse that they had as a child.
01:16:52
Speaker
But as a Muslim, the Quran tells us that it's not permissible to do that. But just because a person does do that, does not take a person out of the fall of Islam. So a person can't say, you wouldn't say because a person is gay, he's no longer Muslim. Rather we would say he's just sinful, just as drinking alcohol is not permissible and he's drinking alcohol, he's still a Muslim, but he's sinful. So he needs to repent.
01:17:21
Speaker
So the things we've desires is.
01:17:24
Speaker
having a desire for something is not sinful. It's when you act upon that desire is what makes it sinful. So for example, a person, like you said, might be born with these natural inclinations as a child, but these are all desires that a person has. Now the test for a human is will he submit to his desires or will he submit to God? So just like any other thing, whether that be drugs, alcohol, illegitimate sex, whether it be,
01:17:53
Speaker
all these things are tests. So similarly, a person's sexuality is also a test.
01:17:59
Speaker
So it's not like if a person is gay, he is far more worse than somebody who is drinking. These are all sinful. These are all impermissible. So if a person has those desires, maybe naturally he has those desires. He feels as a man, he's more attracted to men than he is to women. That's a natural desire. So that desire itself is not sinful.
01:18:24
Speaker
So as long as he doesn't implement and act upon those desires, he doesn't do anything that would make him engage in impermissible activity with a man, then he won't be sinful. He's fine. But that does sound intolerant.
01:18:44
Speaker
Do you know what I mean of gay people? Well, it's impermissible to act on those desires. It sounds like there's an intolerance of gay people. I understand where you're coming from, but at the end of the day, you have to ask a question of
01:19:05
Speaker
Do you really think that Quran is the Word of God?
Poetic Influence of the Quran
01:19:09
Speaker
And if you're having your doubts and you're thinking that, no, it's intolerant, then that shows that you don't actually think it's the Word of God. But as a Muslim, if you're saying you're Muslim, then you have to believe that the Quran is the Word of God, whatever's within the Quran is authentic, there's no man-made insertions within it, alterations, changes,
01:19:34
Speaker
like that. Quran itself is originally revealed in Arabic language and till today it's in the original Arabic language. There's not a letter, there's not a single letter within the Quran that was not the same as the one that was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. And the beauty of the revelation of the Quran is that
01:19:56
Speaker
It was revealed over 1,400 years ago, but it remains in its original form in the Arabic language exactly how it is. We don't have a King's, a James Version and a new order and all these different versions that you have of the Bibles in Islam, even if you follow a different denomination within Islam.
01:20:20
Speaker
you will still have the same Quran. So even people who follow different denominations, they won't have a different version of the Quran. They all have the same Quran. There is only one Quran.
01:20:31
Speaker
that going back to your question is is if a person thinks that's intolerable then that means he's not being true to himself if he if he really thinks that the quran is the word of god then he has to put his desires aside and if he doesn't think that if he doesn't think that the quran sorry and if he thinks that it's intolerable and it's inconsiderable over other people that shows that he has his doubts within the quran so then he's sort of
01:20:59
Speaker
a person's being two-faced where he's saying that he's a Muslim, but then he's saying that, oh, no, because it's intolerable, it can't be correct. So then it can't be the word of God, then can it? Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying, but like I said, I'm a non-religious person and I don't necessarily believe in the validity of the prophets, but I totally respect and understand that other people do. That's absolutely fine.
01:21:32
Speaker
Poetry is very important in the Arabic world and you have like the millions dollars poets competition I think in Saudi Arabia and apparently poets are given some high prestige in the Arab world and they're often listened to in political spheres and things like this.
01:21:54
Speaker
I think that's something that is very like old kind of almost pre-Christian Ireland too, is every village had a bird and words and stories were very important, spreading wisdom and knowledge. Does that, and what she said about the words of the Koran being very poetic and beautiful and written down and
01:22:19
Speaker
all unaltered since the very beginning. Do you think that has something to do with, like, do you think that the Quran has something to do with the popularity of poetry in the Arab world? Because I think that's fascinating. I like how people can transmit things that aren't easily kind of said in scientific language, but they can be put across in poetic language.
01:22:52
Speaker
Poetry is obviously very influential and very effective in getting a message across. You could say something in simple words, but it won't have that deep feeling that a poetic sense would have, you know? So it's very important, but we wouldn't like, for example, one of the accusations that put on the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is that first they said he's a magician, or he's a maniac, he's mental,
01:23:09
Speaker
I think that's
01:23:21
Speaker
He's having hallucinations and he's just learned poetry, he's just saying the words of soothsayers and many accusations that people put on him. But one of the accusations that nobody ever ever put on him was that he's a liar.
01:23:39
Speaker
nobody ever said that he's a liar because he was historically proven to always have said the truth always been like in Makkah even before he was a prophet he was known as the most honest and the most trustworthy like these were two of the instead of calling him Muhammad which is his name and they would call him Al-Amin are the most trustworthy or as-sadiq the most truthful
01:24:07
Speaker
So they would call him these nicknames when they would talk to him.
Muhammad's Honesty and Trustworthiness
01:24:11
Speaker
So this was even before he was a prophet. And when he first came to his people in Makkah to make the claim of prophethood,
01:24:20
Speaker
He climbed on top of a mountain. He called all the people all the older obviously in those days The city would be very small. It would only be a few hundred people if so, you know So they all gathered he's on top of the mountain. He's addressing everyone. He says If I told you I
01:24:38
Speaker
that behind this mountain, there's an enemy and he's about to attack our city, would you believe me? And everyone in sync, they all said, yes, of course we'll believe you, we've never seen you ever say anything which is not true. And then he says, by Allah, I take the oath in the name of Allah, that I am a messenger sent by Allah and he has sent me to warn you about the devil and that he's trying to take you astray.
01:25:07
Speaker
And then immediately people said, oh no, you're lying. Like they tried to say, oh no, what he's saying is false. So originally they never ever called him.
01:25:19
Speaker
a liar in terms of the actual what he's saying is false but they try to put us away you know like for example if you don't agree with something and you're like oh no that can't be true so they'll say it like that but they won't ever ever actually believe that he's a liar because they know statistically historically he was proven to be a person that was very truthful so in the Arabic itself is very poetic and the way that it
01:25:48
Speaker
brings the same message across in different different ways like but the Arabic itself was given to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him who couldn't read and write until his death he wasn't able to read and write and that's the miracle of the Quran that it was given to a man who could not read and could not write but yet he produced a work that readers and writers of the highest caliber cannot match and that's the challenge of the Quran
01:26:18
Speaker
that historically the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, never knew how to read
Scientific Truths in the Quran
01:26:24
Speaker
and write. But he was a man that was able to bring scientific miracles proven in the Quran, the whole way, the earth orbits, the sun, the moon, and the whole process of the embryo within the womb of the mother, the different stages of life. Many, many scientific facts within the Quran, how the universe expands
01:26:46
Speaker
and it's continuing to expand. All these things were mentioned 1400 years ago, which scientifically we did not know until only 100 years or so ago, you know. There's a lot of, there's a massive intellectual history in this land. I really kind of appreciate that about it, that since the very beginning it's strived
01:27:10
Speaker
for knowledge, which hasn't been apparent in all other religions. In the 14th century, there was a guy called Ibn Khaldun in Egypt, a sociologist, and he had a lovely theory of the cyclical kind of theory of history.
01:27:32
Speaker
that civilizations, they're much like biological beings and that they are born, they grow, they mature, and then they inevitably die away. And he had a concept called asubia, which I believe is what binds people together. I think he called it a unity of hearts and a unity of desires.
01:27:59
Speaker
And so at the start of a civilization, the Azalea is strong amongst people and they are united and they are together and they have one direction.
01:28:11
Speaker
but then coming towards the end of civilizations, they have too much, they squander, they take everything for granted and that inevitably leads to kind of their downfall and they're then being taken over by the next civilization.
01:28:31
Speaker
And this is constantly happening. And I think there's a lot of kind of modern theorists now that agree with this kind of idea that there is cycles of history. I think it's said, you can hear it said in short terms by hard times make hard men. Hard men make soft times. Soft times make soft men.
01:28:57
Speaker
and soft men make hard times. And then it goes back again and in that cycle and over and over and over. And his claim is that what we need to stop, not to kind of stop this happening, but to have a long lasting civilization.
01:29:18
Speaker
is that we kind of basically all abide by religious rights and that we keep the Asabia strong and that we keep our unity of hearts and our unity of desires strong. The idea of Asabia, I think, was quite strong in the Western world. Post World War II, everybody had a unity of hearts. We knew what we had fought for and what we had fought against.
01:29:45
Speaker
And we had a unity of desires that we will not let this happen again, that we will have freedom for everybody and liberty and blah, blah. Now, that has been used to justify terrible things by empire since like drone strikes and funerals and horrible such things like that. But it does seem like the Asebia of the Western world
01:30:12
Speaker
It does seem like individualism may have got to the point of deviance.
Global Unity Beyond Religions
01:30:20
Speaker
in that it's not actually doing good for even the individuals, let alone society as a whole. Now, obviously, for Ibn Khaldun, Islam was the perfect religion for everybody. If everybody follows under Islam, we'll all be good. And I'm sure anybody else who's watching who listens to Ibn Khaldun might think, oh, no, I think my Christianity or I think my Buddhism might actually do the same thing. So there's going to be bias there.
01:30:52
Speaker
Is there an Asebia that we can have globally where everybody has a unity of hearts and a unity of desires to a certain extent? And would it be possible that we could have a story that would allow us to have that continuous global Asebia and would kind of
01:31:20
Speaker
all religions be able to fall under this. Would Islam be able to take a place beneath a larger Asabiyah? Am I making sense? Yes, yes. So rather than, because again, the accusations that Islam is colonial, et cetera, and maybe most religions are colonial to a certain extent, it's kind of inevitable.
01:31:49
Speaker
But would it be possible for a Muslim to accept that there is something larger than Islam? An Asabiyyah that can unite everybody globally? That's a logical fallacy because then you shouldn't be a Muslim and you should follow what the other thing is, isn't it? Is there something bigger than Islam? Why are you a Muslim? Follow the other thing.
01:32:16
Speaker
Okay. So basically, we've been blunt, right? Without being around the bush. If I thought it was something better than Islam, then why am I Muslim? I would be that thing that is better than Islam, right? So the only reason I would come back to your question, do I think there could be a better thing, a better Asabiyyah than Islam? I'd say no.
01:32:44
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So that doesn't undermine other people's way of thinking of the way that they want. Like I said, Islam teaches coexistence. It teaches that
01:33:02
Speaker
people have a right to live their own life. Ultimately, when you zoom out of this whole thing, the world that we live in, ultimately, Islamically, what is this life's a test? What's the test? Do you follow your desires or do you follow God? You zoom out, that's what this whole life is. It's all about a test. What's it a test for? Tests are for something that come after the test. So what is the test for? A next life?
01:33:31
Speaker
That's not the afterlife. We believe if you are truthful and you're righteous and you submit to God, you'll be gifted eternal paradise.
Life as a Test of Desires vs. God's Path
01:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, this is the same problem I have with Christianity and a lot of religions is that they seem to push another world and next life or some other kind of thing before this world and this life. And you know what I mean?
01:33:57
Speaker
The thing is, this world itself, for example, if somebody argues that it's only this life, then the argument would be that in this life you have hardship, you have happiness, you have ease, you have pain, you have all these different things. But surely the person who's been oppressed and killed or whatever it be, when will they get there?
01:34:24
Speaker
eternal retribution, you know, and that's where the Day of Judgement comes in, where no matter how you will have to pay for that on the Day of Judgement, the Day of Remembrance, if you're good you'll be rewarded and if you're evil you'll be punished. And obviously if you're evil but then you repent it to God, then God will forgive you.
01:34:45
Speaker
So it's not like if you do certain things, I say you're doomed forever. No, Islam teaches you can be the worst of people. But if you repent to God, then God can forgive you. Ultimately. That's very much like the Christian teachings too. And I think the common comeback to that is so if Hitler said sorry at the end,
01:35:09
Speaker
it'd all be good, he'd get into heaven? No, of course not. For example, let's say Hitler lives in an Islamic country, where there's Islamic law, he'd be sentenced to death. But this life is only... But if he had apologized or if he had repented at the very end, he might be sentenced to death, but he'd get into heaven because God would judge him, okay, you've repented. No, but then that's why we have the whole balance of
01:35:36
Speaker
When it comes to repentance, we have two types of different repentances. One repentance is those things that pertain to your relationship with God directly, nobody else. It's just you and God. And the second type of repentance is between you, God, and a third person. So in the second type, you can only be forgiven if that third person forgives you. If the third person doesn't forgive you, God won't forgive you.
01:36:04
Speaker
So when it comes to killing an innocent person, I will only be forgiven if I killed an innocent person, if the innocent person chooses to forgive me. But if the innocent person doesn't choose to forgive me, no matter how sincere I am in my repentance, I will not be forgiven by God. Okay, that makes sense. That's the difference. I kind of like that conception. In Christianity, it's different. In Christianity, you can do whatever you want and just repent and you'll be forgiven by God no matter how many people you killed or whatever.
01:36:34
Speaker
in Islam it's not like that in Islam if the person doesn't choose to forgive you then you won't be forgiven and obviously God can give them incentives to forgive you if God desires to do so so for example God can like promise them such amount of reward and instead of taking retribution from you they'll take that reward instead and forgive you so you could have scenarios in that way but
01:37:01
Speaker
The thing is one of the attributes and characteristics of God is in Arabic language known as Al-Adal. And Al-Adal means the most just, the one who is just, the one who doesn't reward with, he doesn't punish except for the one who deserves it, who actually deserves it. So one of the questions that many people raise is that if a person he's seen for 50 years, why is he given eternal hellfire?
01:37:31
Speaker
And that's not fair, that's not fair, you know, it's not just. But then in Islam, we say God is all-knowing. He has the knowledge of all. He sees, he hears all, he sees all. He knows that if this person lived for the whole of entirety,
01:37:49
Speaker
then this person would still not have repented. And because of that, even though he only sinned for 50 years or 60 years, but God knows in his knowledge that he would have continued living that life of sin, hence the sin is not for the 60 years, it's under intention of sinning for eternity, that is being given hellfire of eternity.
Prioritizing Intellect Over Emotions
01:38:10
Speaker
So God, obviously, like you say, logically, as humans, we're very emotional, right?
01:38:15
Speaker
but Islam teaches us that we need to put our intellect and our logic on and sometimes you obviously emotions are important but sometimes emotions can make a person make decisions that are very bad like
01:38:29
Speaker
Emotionally, you might say something to me. Emotionally, I might attack you and then I'm regretting you for the rest of my life. Or how could I have done that to you? How could I have done that to you? You're such a good friend, you're this, you're that. And then that one moment of emotion, I destroyed our whole 20 years of friendship. So emotions are something that are important. Of course, it's a part of human nature, but many times it's the emotions that destroy a person. It's the emotions that are the downfall,
01:38:59
Speaker
of a person. So sometimes your intellect, that's why Islam tells us that, yes, emotions are important, but intellect is what rules. If your emotions are within your intellect, it's fine. If your emotions are opposing intellect, follow intellect and forget about your emotions. Obviously, it's not as easy as it is said, you know, but that's the battle.
01:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's very much what the Adelaide of Bath said that he learned from the Arabs. That reason comes first, you know, and only then at the very end do you kind of reach out to God for an answer when you've brought reason to its full use. You mentioned that when I was asking about the larger Asabiyyah and you said, no, no, no, if you're a Muslim and you think there's something larger, then you go follow that. You don't be a Muslim anymore.
01:39:56
Speaker
How do other Muslims feel about people who do that, about apostates, about people who leave Islam? I won't beat around the bush. You know yourself the stories that are told that Muslims want to kill infidels and kill apostates. And is this taught in Islam?
01:40:18
Speaker
So look, the one thing is a person, he doesn't believe in Islam, he apostates and he leaves Islam.
Apostasy and Its Consequences
01:40:25
Speaker
That itself is a sin, a major sin, right? One, the greatest sin, you know? But that in itself, it would be one of the greatest sins. It would be one of the greatest sins. Okay. So for example, a person, he does that, but he keeps it personally.
01:40:48
Speaker
In his worldly life, there will be no repercussions. So for example, a person is a Muslim, but he doesn't believe in it anymore, he doesn't pray, he doesn't worship, he doesn't do all these things that he has to do, he drinks, he gambles, he does all these things that Islamically he cannot do.
01:41:07
Speaker
But he doesn't publicize that he's left. He doesn't promote people to come and join him in leaving Islam. And Islam is false and you must all realize that it's false. And he's just like, it's not for me, I've left. So publicly, he'll have no repercussions. He'll live his life. In the hereafter, he will definitely have repercussions. He'll forsake, so you'll have to go to the hellfire for it.
01:41:37
Speaker
Right. Unless he repents. Yeah. Okay. On the other scenario is a person he apostates and then he promotes apostasy. And he says to people, be like me, apostate. Islam is, I was a Muslim and I left Islam. So now the sin of his is not that he's apostating and leaving Islam. The sin now is treason.
01:42:04
Speaker
He's being a traitor to the state. The state is an Islamic state. So now he's a traitor to the state. He's trying to destabilize the entire state by people. But what if that state, for instance, is Ireland? You know, what if like he's living... No, I'm talking about Muslim country, right? Superficient. I'm not talking about an island. In today's day and time, if a person leaves Islam, that's between him. That's it. Nothing.
01:42:35
Speaker
So just just just to clear this up because because some people will find it scary and I don't want them cutting and clipping this sense. He told you if you're Muslim in Ireland and you leave and you start talking crap about Islam or you start to continue. Exactly. Yeah. So so there is no.
01:42:55
Speaker
or dead standing body who leaves Muslims in Ireland. Wherever there is a death penalty within Islam, the capital punishment star in Islam, a blame man cannot take them. It has to go through a whole judicial hearing.
01:43:12
Speaker
It has to go through the courts.
Sharia Law and Freedom of Religion
01:43:14
Speaker
Is this Sharia law then? Yeah, it has to go through the courts. So nowadays we have this word, right? Sharia law. I was going to ask you about that. What is it? But I don't know what it is. Sharia law is doing that which pleases God and staying away from anything that displeases God.
01:43:35
Speaker
So Sharia law just basically means doing what pleases God and staying away from anything that pleases God. I see you walking on the street. I say, good morning. How are you doing? Give you a smile. I'm following Sharia law. Why? Because I pleased God by talking nicely to you. I made you get happy in return. God's happy with me because I've made another creation happy. This is Sharia law.
01:43:57
Speaker
So nowadays they scare people. Sharia law, Sharia law. Sharia law just basically means following the commandments of God and staying away from anything that God has made him miserable. That's what Sharia law is. Do Muslims want Sharia law to be the universal law of everywhere? Do they want it? You can't just want it. It has to be implemented.
01:44:26
Speaker
come itself. You can't force it on the people. In Islam, we say that there's no compulsion in religion. If a person, he decides to be a Muslim, he's a Muslim, you decide to be irreligious. You don't want to affiliate yourself with any religion. Islamically, if I was to take a knife and become a Muslim, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to be sinful. If I did kill you, I'd go to hellfire for killing you.
01:44:54
Speaker
So Islam says, yes Islam is the truth but everyone has to find the truth themselves. It's an individual test. I can't give you the answers to the test paper and then when you pass through the master's you've already got a PhD or you got a bachelor's in such and such degree but when you actually go into the field you know nothing because you just copied my answers.
01:45:15
Speaker
Like, you're not a doctor, for example. I get you. I like that there's no proposal. You have to give your own answers for yourself. I can't give you the answers for it. So it's all a personal test.
01:45:28
Speaker
So like you said, do Muslims want a Sharia law? If somebody says that, no, Muslims don't want a Sharia law, then they are not saying the honest truth. The truth is that as Muslims, we believe the Quran is the divine revelation given from God, free from any sort of deficiency within it. There's no deficiency in it. Why would somebody not want to live by that?
01:45:54
Speaker
Now comes to the question, living in Ireland, do you want it to be implemented here? Like, would you forcefully implement? No. It's the right of the people have to decide what they want. If the people decide, yes, the Irish public, Muslim, non-Muslim, whatever they be, they decide, then fine, happy. We have an Islamic judicial system and all this. That's fine. But that's when the people decide. But I can't just have my own person, oh, I'm going to do this. And then, no, that's totally un-Islamic.
01:46:24
Speaker
okay so it has to come in like with the people so there's two parts of the answer that you said as a Muslim would I want Sharia law to be implemented number answer straightforward yes and the reason for my answer is if I didn't want it to be implemented that means I have my doubts on the
01:46:47
Speaker
the form or the way that Islam is. If I believe it to be perfect as I do, then why would I not want it to be for everyone? When you find some goodness for yourself, for example, let's say you started up a business and quick, you made some money quick and you became very successful, very in a short amount of time. Your son, you have a son.
01:47:11
Speaker
He starts, dad, I want to start business. You tell him, son, I did these things, do these things. So why would you not want that same goodness for your own son? You would, right? I understand that, but I think... When someone sees goodness, then they would want that same goodness for everyone else. But that doesn't mean now you're going to force your son to do that same business. And if he doesn't do that same business, you're going to say to him, no, you're a failure, you're this, you're that. Oh, that's his own journey now.
01:47:38
Speaker
You give him the advice, now it's up to him. Does he take it? Does he implement it? Does he do the same business or does he do something else? That's between him. But what is up to you is share what you believe to be good. And if he accepts it good, if he doesn't accept it, that's his choice.
01:47:56
Speaker
That, yeah, I get it. And it's a good example, but I want to give you another one.
Parental Guidance in Islam
01:48:03
Speaker
What if, let's say, for instance, Ireland became an Islamic country and Sharia law was implemented and I became a Muslim and I had a son and it turned out my son was gay and he was unrepentant about it. But he was born into a Muslim family, which would have been mine.
01:48:27
Speaker
What would be the right thing for me to... How should I treat my gay son under Sharia law if this was in an Islamic country? Treat him with love and compassion. With love and compassion. Treat him with love and compassion. Advise him. Tell him what you're doing is not right. You need to change. What if he didn't change? And he said, no, that. He said, I think this is fine and I'm going to continue doing it. When you love somebody, you will continue to the whole of eternity to try and help that person.
01:48:56
Speaker
If you're giving up on him, that means you didn't really love him. So if he's your son, you're meant to love him. Yeah. So you're not going to give up on him. You're going to keep advising. But if my son loves his friend, Bob, and he doesn't want to ever give up on him, we'll say, you know what I mean? That follows down there. You got to keep advising him. That's it. Okay. You can't take a knife and go and kill him.
01:49:24
Speaker
like somebody like it's some extremist person and say like, oh, are you taking either? No, where does it say that in the Quran or thing? No, you're not meant to. Right. You can say anything about about killing gay people or killing infidels in the Quran. That's it's no like that. There is no advice. I'm just trying to be clear because people say these things and it's like it's not about gay people. Right. It's a sex out of marriage.
01:49:53
Speaker
itself is a crime. It doesn't matter if it's gay, if it's straight. If a person fornicates, meaning he's not married, and then he has sex with another person that's also not married, then he will be given lashes.
Deterrents in Islamic Law
01:50:12
Speaker
And from now on, he'll go on a blacklist. He'll be on a blacklist before he gets a job, before
01:50:21
Speaker
He gives witness for anything his testimony will not be accepted anywhere. So if he has to give testimony in court or anything, he will not be accepted because of what he did. Now if a person he adulterates, he's married and then he did that, then he will be stoned to death. But this is what we hear in the thing, but we don't get to the next bit. The next bit is very, very important.
01:50:51
Speaker
Well, like stone to death is pretty final. You know, that's what everyone you miss is they say the stone to death and they don't say the next bit. But there's a condition in order for the court to rule this and sentence this person to death by stoning. Then you need to have four witnesses who saw the act taking place, not just saw them lying naked in the bed together. They have to actually see the penetration.
01:51:21
Speaker
four people at the same, they have to see this with their own eyes. You're telling me, is that possible or is it impossible? OK, so does that mean people aren't getting stoned to death for adultery because it's impossible that four people could have seen the actual penetration? So people aren't getting stoned to death anywhere for adultery? Well, I'm not aware of it, but if they are, then that's not because of Islamic law. They're doing it because of their own culture.
01:51:51
Speaker
Islam, I'm talking about Islam is strictly like in the time the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, you didn't find a single incident where somebody was caught doing adultery and then there was four witnesses and then they were stoned to death. You do find an incident where in the life of Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, a lady, she was stoned to death, but that was only through her own confession. And that as well is an amazing
01:52:22
Speaker
story itself. She did the same. She wanted to repent. She wanted to repent. So people confess to these things. Then you don't need witnesses if somebody has confessed or taken. Yeah, but then that's if he confesses, if he denies it, then you can't do anything. Yeah. And the thing is you have to have four witnesses to actually see the actual act taking place. It's not you saw them coming out of the room.
01:52:52
Speaker
Yeah. Surely there's going to be questions as like, why were you four guys in there watching this going on anyway? The thing is, in all these capital punishments, they are not there to torture people. They are there to act as deterrence for protection of society.
01:53:15
Speaker
So the ultimate aim is not to kill somebody who has sinned. The ultimate aim is to preserve morals within society. So if somebody is doing something like that, for example, he's fornicating or adulterating, then Islam says that's impermissible. But now if you allow it to go on sooner or later, like we have now, everybody's doing it. And it's not seen as something bad.
01:53:41
Speaker
And then you'll have a society where that aspect of your Islam has lost. It's no longer there. So you've not preserved your religion. And the difference in Islam is that Islam is not like other religions. It's preserved. Each and every aspect of Islam is preserved no matter what it is. And it's preserved through action of the people. And coming back to your point,
01:54:09
Speaker
Is there anywhere in the world if somebody has been stoned to death because of adultery? Maybe there is, but that's not, if it wasn't done through four witnesses, then it's not through any Islamic court. It's not Islamically correct. Unless they confessed. Yeah. So the story I was mentioning about this lady, she did it. She wanted to repent and she came to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. And she said to him, oh, Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.
01:54:37
Speaker
I have committed adultery and stoned me to death. She said it to him. He turned his face away from her as if he never heard her. He turned his face away from her as if he never heard her. She came to him on the direction that he turned his face. She said it again. He turned his face again away from her. And she said it again, third time. And then he said to her, you must be mistaken. Kissing is not adultery. You just kiss to go away.
01:55:08
Speaker
He's trying to push it away. He's saying, oh, you got the definition wrong. You just kissed. Don't talk about this. Go away. Go away. But she was sincere in her repentance. So she wanted to repent. So she said, no, I did do this.
01:55:25
Speaker
Then the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said to her that, go and see if you are pregnant and if you're pregnant, then come back to it. Then after a while she came back, he said, I'm pregnant. He said, go again. He said, go and give birth to the child. You can't kill an innocent child. The child has not done nothing wrong. You have to preserve life. One of the teaching of Islam, it preserves life.
01:55:55
Speaker
So, again, when she gave birth to the child, she came back, of course, now, within her original confession, till giving birth to the child, there's nine months or 10 months. So, however long you want to say until she came back to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Now, he didn't have some sort of tag on her to keep her eye on where she could have run away. She could have changed her mind. She could have gone. She could have left.
01:56:23
Speaker
She could have done what she wanted and he's not going to send no police behind her to try and track her down. No, it's total freedom. Yeah. She comes back. She's given birth to the child. The prophet says, she says, oh, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. I want to cleanse myself from my sin. So please issue the punishment on me. He again, he said to her, go back.
01:56:46
Speaker
because your child is dependent on you, he can't live without his mother. So bring your child up until he's able to look after himself and then come back. Now, of course, at minimum, I would say four, five years, at least until a person, a child is able to look after himself, eat, clean themselves or whatever it be, at least four to five years, you would say minimum, if not more, you know. So again, she comes back four or five years, four or five years, she had time to change her mind.
01:57:15
Speaker
and it would have been forgotten about. Four or five years later, she comes again and she says, here, look, this is my child. And she gives the child some food to show that it can eat and do everything by itself. And it's independent now. It's not dependent on the mother to survive. Then the Prophet, peace be upon him, said that, okay, then the stoning will be done. But that was only through her own confession. And after that,
01:57:44
Speaker
The Prophet peace be upon him. He didn't say this woman was so evil and she was this, she's disgusting and she's the worst of people. He rather, he praised her. She committed adultery. He praised her. And he said that her level of repentance is so great in the eyes of Allah, in the eyes of God.
01:58:03
Speaker
that if her repentance was shed and spread out on all the people of Medina of the city, then each and every person will be forgiven and not a single sinful person will remain. So there's a person who committed adultery but he's praising her and he's saying how great of a woman she was.
01:58:22
Speaker
Yeah, he's praising the repentance. He's praising the repentance. Yeah, I understand that. I don't know. We're living in such a different way now. Like I said, these are all deterrence. They're not actually the government's looking to implement these things. These are just there to
01:58:44
Speaker
scared of people. Well, you could say the same about guillotines and you could say the same about life imprisonment. I mean, the government aren't there specifically to imprison people or to guillotine people, but they're all deterrence. But yes, people have been guillotined and people do get life sentences. I wouldn't say jail is a deterrent though.
01:59:07
Speaker
I have complex views on Jair and I'm not sure it's the best form of punishment either. Someone will kill someone, he'll get 20 years or 30 years, after 30 years he'll come out but then he'll go and kill another person within the first week of him being released.
01:59:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think in jails as well, people tend to tend to learn of people who have committed other crimes. And you seem to be making schools of crimes, you know what I mean? In a lot of places, rehabilitation, not enhancement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's true. Yeah. And it seems like a more enhancement goes on than rehabilitation in a lot of these places. That's true.
Closing Remarks
01:59:56
Speaker
Shaquille, I really love talking to you, but I'm afraid we're going to have to bring it to an end now soon. I'd love you to be back another time. If we could come back and have another conversation, I'd be very happy to do that. I love you myself. Thank you for inviting me on. Looking forward to seeing you again. Take care. Thank you so much.