Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Lives of Man Book · Acedra
Home
Explore
History
Lives of Man Book
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
125 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:14
the topic this morning is the lives of man and it's actually the title of a book by a very famous Yemen scholar Nam abdah alad it's available through Killian press and a lot of what I'm going to cover is actually derived from that book directly out of that book I'm going to do some other things as well but the uh the actual topic is this man was uh a brilliant scholar from the Yemen who lived uh almost about 200 years ago but the topic is is a is a very old Topic in the Islamic tradition
1:00
there and there are several books in the history of Islam that deal with this uh tradition of the lives of men and uh the book is is published by uh ABD Hakim winter in England who does not like the politically correct uh American English and so uses man and I know some people uh in in America now don't like having man inclusive of women but it's interesting that uh the word the original word which is a Germanic word Minch uh means the male and the female it's the idea of a human being and the
1:49
woman is a man with a womb right so the the the woman is a man who happens to have something that the man doesn't have which which is a womb and uh so um having said that the lives of a human being have been defined as five according to a quranic uh
2:23
presentation the uh his name is she Abdullah a b d a l l a h alad a l h a d d a d and he uh was considered a renewer there's a tradition in Islam that says every 100 years uh that God sends somebody who revives or renews this Dean this tradition and he's considered one of them he had an extraordinary impact on um on Yemen as well as all over the Muslim World his books have spread all over so the five periods the first period is a pre-World
3:11
period
3:17
and the phenomenal
3:27
existence and newal existence in Islam are there's a diad here called mul and malakut the mul is what we can see anything that you can see feel touch the sensory world and most of our Scholars would include in this uh what we now know of the Unseen phenomenal World which would be the world of x-rays like light waves sound waves gamma rays this world that we can't see but it's palpable we can we can measure it we have access to it the malakut is a realm that we cannot see we
4:13
do not have access to it there's some inner penetration because the Angelic uh world can move into the Angelic world is in the malakut and yet they can move into the so the mul is impacting the malikot is impacting the mul and the mul impacts the malakut in that things that are done in the mul are either pleasing or disturbing to the malakut and that has to do with things that are done with the the moral component so when people are doing righteous things the malakut actually is
4:59
is happy and rejoices about it when they do uh foul things then the opposite occurs and and I'm going to go into that now the uh the importance of knowing about these according to the Islamic tradition is that unlike a 20th century man who in a lot of ways has removed him or herself compl completely from The Unseen experience if you go into traditional cultures uh you know Vibra would call this the the magical uh realm the the realm of Enchantment the pre-industrial realm
5:46
that people existed with a sense of magic and they looked at the world uh because it was not understood they looked at it it in a way that caused them to experience an unseen explanation for so much of what was happening around them so weather uh illness all of these things that happened right now if you look just to take for the example of illness in most cultures illness was often attributed to evil spirits attributed to the evil eye uh obviously as medicine became more advanced and you
6:31
can see the Greek attack on this uh centuries ago I mean you know the Greeks moved into a r rationalist mode and many of the Greek uh philosophers did not like those explanations and and they're they're uh conspicuously absent from a lot of their uh text which is interesting given that that was a popular belief in their culture but if you look at modern uh man uh we have seen explanations but they're no longer magical so bacteria is not something that we see it's it's an unseen realm I
7:09
mean you can see it on the microscope but most people the doctor says you've got a virus it's not something you saw right he doesn't bring out a slide and you know show you a microscope and there it is but it is something we understand and people have had biology classes so they do have an idea so we we have identifi if IED uh many of the things that are impacting our world and given them material explanations and those material explanations caused a disenchantment with the world so we no
7:44
longer uh are enchanted by what is around us uh when we look at uh natural phenomena many of us have some basic explanations for it so when weather strikes us uh we have scientists that tell us this is El Nino phenomenon and when drought comes they explain the reasons for that and yet in the in the ancient world and still in a lot of places on the earth these things are seen as coming from The Unseen World in other words drought is still understood in most parts of the world to be uh from
8:27
displeasure so for instance the Muslims still believe that drought is a sign that blessings have been removed and it's seen as a reminder and that's why the Muslims will go out and do a rain prayer and they bring their animals out they bring their children out and the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that if uh a people begin to cheat in their buying and selling and have unjust weights and balances the rain is withheld from them and then he said had it not been for dumb
9:04
animals they would have gotten no rain at all in other words it's not the humans that are uh worthy of the rain but it's the animals that aren't doing anything wrong so this is still part of uh the the Muslim world and you will find this also within the indic culture within the uh uh Scenic culture you're going to find this uh in many many cultures and certainly amongst uh traditional Christians uh in in uh American culture you will still find uh that many of them
9:36
when they read the newspaper you know they will see these as signs right What's happen these are signs from God so introducing at an early age the Unseen World is introduced to Muslim children and they are made aware of the Unseen World world and so of the five lives of man only one of them is what we're going to experience in this realm the other four are in another realm and this is an indication that the majority of creation is actually hidden from us the Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
10:30
wasallam said that the likeness of this dun and the other world is like somebody who puts their finger into an ocean and pulls it out what is on his finger in relation to the ocean is like the Unseen World in relation to this world and he also reported that he saw the angel Gabriel in his original form and he filled the entire Horizon of a desert landscape so if you could imagine uh looking out towards uh Santa Fe and seeing an Angelic being fill the entire
11:16
Horizon right having an experience that was a a a spiritual experience that took place for uh that human being and giving him an insight into the relationships quantitative relationships of this world to the other world and there are many examples of that in the tradition so the second uh realm and I'm going to go into each one uh more is the period of life from birth to death so the first one is the pre free uh worldly real and this is called uh the period which I'll get into in a second
12:16
the the second is dun now in Arabic the word dun comes from a root word Dan and it has a few meanings one of them is reaching out for grapes that will they every time you you get near them they move a little further away from you so it's the the idea there is that the phenomenal world is that we as we attempt to grasp it we're moving away right Paul Simon has a a song called Slip Sliding Away right the nearer you are to your destination the more you're Slip Sliding
13:07
Away right and it's about death is that you know you're and and and that uh that idea is captured in a wonderful Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam in which he drew in the sand a
13:26
box and then he drew a line
13:34
and he drew uh a a line up here he didn't write it but he drew a line here at the top of this line and then he drew a line out here and he said that this was a man's journey in life and these lines were the they were the vicissitude of his journey at each stage things will happen to him if they don't do him in he moves to the next
14:11
one until he reaches at this the AEL is your appointed term and it could be at any point because people are different it could be at any point along the way but there for people who go all the way through they reach old age and what gets them is known as Haram and there's a tradition in which the prophet said peace be upon him that the the children of Adam God has given them the ability to do all things except conquer Haram they can't conquer old old age and he also said that anxiety was half of
15:05
Haram right that having a lot of anxiety uh will will actually uh cut your life in half so as you're moving up through life you reach this AEL but then he had a line outside of the box and he said this was a man's am which is his hope
15:32
so a man's hope is always Beyond his time and it's this is a really important Motif there's a verse in the Quran that [Music]
15:54
says leave them these people that reject what you're telling them them about the inevitability of the next life leave them to eat and enjoy themselves and to be entertained and Yul means to preoccupy themselves with their
16:18
hope and indeed they will come to know in other words their Ile will come and then they're going to realize that the preceded The Hope and he also said that people two things never grow old in people desire for life and desire for uh more right in and and it means here it doesn't mean all people it means people that uh are duded so the this this desire for extended life and and the interesting thing is the longer a person is here the more accustomed they get you know you get up every morning
17:09
you've had your rituals your coffee your breakfast you go to work you see the same people uh you get accustomed to being here and we we get uh we we're we're we're in this very interesting uh experience of the permanent and every once in a while there are things that happen that kind of shake us a little bit like one day you come to work and so and so was in an accident or so or you get a phone call and your mother just died or a good friend or something they're these
17:49
reminders and they kind of shake people a little bit but most people brush themselves off and and just go along get on with it right so so we we have this really and this is all about this lower World The Dun because it's like the grapes we're always reaching for it and it's always moving away because the moment we came into life into this dun realm uh our death we're moving inevitably towards our death one of my teachers in the desert when I was leaving uh and it was a camel journey of
18:24
about a day uh the last thing he said to me he said this journey that you're taking this morning is like your life you're moving towards a destination and every step that your camel makes takes you a step closer to that destination and he said Every Breath You Take is a step closer to the termination of your breaths so keep that in mind along the way and I was with a a West African we arrived at a uh an airport and he'd never been on one of these uh moving uh not the the escalators but the
19:06
actual sidewalks yeah and we got on it and we were standing there moving along and he said this is amazing this is just like our lives we think we're standing still but we're moving towards our des and then it was really interesting cuz at the end of the uh of the sidewalk there there was a sign said uh caution the end comes
19:40
abruptly so there's that is the metaphor right and this is the point that unlike that escalator where you know where it's going to end the the you know this this walkway of life that we're on the end can come at any point and so keeping this in mind is something that's really important I'm going to go a little bit into that and then the third uh stage is known as the
20:14
Barak and a Barak is a space between two places like in the Quran it says about the two oceans that between them is a Barak the the Sweet Water and the salt water between them is a an interspace and if you if you've ever seen where big rivers meet the ocean there's an ad mixture of the sweet and the salty that has a completely different uh ecology it has a different uh the the the water is not the same that is that's what a Barak is it's an interpace that's not this or that it's
20:55
neither this nor that and so when when we die there is a place that is neither this world nor is it the next World you're in this interpace and and this is where people are in their graves and and we'll get to that also inah and then the fourth place is the Gathering Place where the
21:26
hash and the takes place and this is going to be final judgment uh takes place in this
21:39
realm What's called the day of judgment and then the fifth is the final
21:52
Abode either divine presence or a alienation from divine presence it's one or the other now to look at the word uh in Arabic for a life is called an and a Kuwaiti term of endearment a wife will call her husband or the husband will call the wife my life and if they're just getting to know each other they'll say part of my life soar is a it's not an entire life it is a part of life so for instance in the Quran it says that the prophet is the Quran says to the qur that the prophet
22:49
says to them I dwelt among you a lifetime before this Revelation in other words the first 40 years so this is an right the first 40 years is a lifetime and some say there's a verse in the Quran that mentions that uh God gave people a full life and it said that it's 40 years that if you've had 40 years on the earth then you've had a full life right and whatever comes after is just Bounty right that you should be grateful you made it to 40 so human beings within this Duna realm
23:33
have stages also and and we'll get into that so that's what Anar is it's a it's a life now the first life was the life before conception and there's a verse in 7172 in in your uh translations in the chapter 7 172 when it said says that when your lord brought forth from the children of Adam from their loins their seed and made them testify of themselves the Thea the all of Adam's progeny every human being that would ever exist was brought forth on a plane in this pre-World
24:21
stage and they were told by the in the divine presence am I not your lord all Every Soul that has ever existed is existent now and will ever exist was brought into this divine presence and said am I not your lord and those Souls replied in the affirmative we indeed you are our Lord and we testify to that truth now this truth is buried in the soul and there's not a lot in the Quran or in the Hadith about this pre-World uh there's only one other event that we know of which is another
25:15
contract was made with the prophets that they would all tell their peoples of the last prophet that's the only other indication that we have about about this pre-World realm now from this pre-World
25:38
realm there is a downward descent from this uh divine
25:53
presence the human being descends into into the womb after 120 days at 120 days the the the this soul that was in the divine presence enters into the womb of its [Music] mother so for the first 120 we're dealing with a biological phenomenon that does not have spiritual life right it has biological life that is actually the mother right the biological life is the mother the individuation of that Soul does not come until 120
26:46
days at 120 days it enters into the womb and begins to experience
27:04
and it's interesting because this is about the time mm does that up abortion at all well there were some Scholars who felt that before 120 days abortion was permitted but the dominant opinion is it's not there are there there is an opinion of Scholars that abortion before 120 days was not and it's not considered murder before 40 days but it's considered prohibited by the vast majority of of uh the Muslim Scholars uh for a number of reasons one because it's an interruption of a Divine
27:40
process uh two because uh there's a serious danger to the the woman which it's not permissible to put yourself into a type of danger uh for something because the Quran says you
27:56
know don't kill your children out of fear of provision uh because uh it says that children are provided for they come with their own provision that's a belief in Islam that your children bring their own provision right they their food everything they're going to get was already decreed for them so you're not you know you're not it's they're not taking from you they're actually bringing their own and for most people you know that they actually see an increase with children
28:33
you know they'll they'll they lives actually there's an increase that comes with children now during this time and it's interesting because about 120 days the heartbeat right is audible you'll start hearing the heartbeat and during this time the the the soul is in this this is like a
29:00
every death out of these five stages there is a death and a birth so as you leave one realm and die from that realm you're born into another realm so we are we are dying and being born into these Realms and during this time it's it's believed to be important for the woman to be be in a good spiritual state to uh and that these will affect the child what she eats making sure that her food is halal also her thoughts her State and that's why in traditional cultures it
29:42
was very important uh that a woman was felt very secure that there wasn't anxiety that there wasn't and this is why even with divorce uh the divorce period is the entire pregnancy so that she doesn't have anxieties about uh provision and things like that and it's not encouraged to divorce uh during pregnancy now at the point that the child moves into the next stage from this bar into the dun and that's why dun means the lowest world it is the lowest we are in the
30:24
lowest World in this hierarchy of Worlds when the child comes into the dun the first thing that is done is the Adan is recited into the right ear and the formula which is known as the which is done before the prayer is recited into the left ear and then you put something sweet on the tongue dates like choose some dates and put it on the tongue and the reason for this is that there are two important things that every human being should know about the D the first is the and the second is
31:14
the the is the promise that you will go back to the divine presence from when you came this is a promise you will go back to Divi divine presence because the child is moving into the realm of Separation they're still in Divine unity and this is why children are not in a differential State they can't differentiate at this
31:47
point what what will happen is the the promise is the garden but the garden has a key in other words you the garden is not earned but it's also not given without struggle or effort I mean the Muslims confer with the Christians in that it is through Grace that people are uh that people are uh are given the the divine presence but that Grace is given through effort in other words there's nothing that you could do to make yourself worthy of that Grace so it's not something that can be achieved
32:39
or earned but at the same time there has to be the move towards that that it's not given without that effort and that's why in the Quran you will see verses that indicate that this is a reward for what you are doing it's it's a reward that is is is is Way Beyond whatever the people were doing but they don't get that without the effort so the is is this the the when the child is born it is the and not the because they're not in the realm of of the uh the punishment they're in the realm of
33:16
the promise and this is why children that die before puberty uh have no accounting according to the dominant opinion and in fact one of well I'll get to that when we I might forget so I'll mention this now one of the things that people whose children die uh before they reach puberty on the day of judgment they will bring water to their parents on the plane when everybody else is suffering and and then they'll actually be happy that that happened like the pain they had in this world is
33:56
transformed into a joy in the next World and other people Envy them they're envious that they have those uh children that come with this relief on that day and they seek out their parents they go and find them so the the promise is what is what is told to the Child
34:25
Is This is a reminder to the soul that's embedded in this infant it's a reminder you see you have this in many Traditions you know the platonic tradition talks about this PL believed that we what this world was was an arena to remember what we already knew in the world of archetypes before we came into this world we we knew truths and this world we enter into forgetfulness and what we have to do in this world is wake up to what we already knew and this is the allegory of the
35:10
cave of realizing that there's a journey to be made we have to get out of the the shadow show of the illusion right which is really interesting because in a way uh human beings now if you look at film and television which are the dominant preoccupations of many many human beings now it's very similar to The Cave because people are watching these images projected from lights flickering on their TV screens and in their movie theaters and their Illusions and there's this whole other
35:49
real world out there and there are people now that are preferring this world of Illusion this vicarious world this virtual reality to a whole other world which the world that they're dismissing is still considered to be another television it's just a better
36:19
program so that is the reminder to the soul and there's a belief that the soul hears that and it resonates and there's a there's a deep belief in the Islamic tradition that when people hear that it resonates with them that they recognize the truth of it m just remind people mean saying saying right I mean everybody know does anybody not know what means everybody knows that right there's no God but Allah yeah that's that is that is the the I mean from the Muslim perspective that is the reason we
37:10
were created to testify to that truth there there's no other purpose and Muhammad which I mentioned you know earlier is only the latest formula there were Isa Jesus is the messenger of uh Abraham is the messenger of Allah possibly Buddha was the messenger of of the truth uh Krishna I don't know about because they're not mentioned by name but there are many traditional Muslim Scholars that said that there are high probabilities that those Traditions were prophetic Traditions uh that came to
37:46
their people with their language and their understanding which is where you'll get uh these differences but the the truth of is something that Souls recognize and kufur is covering up that truth that's that's what uh a a person who is not in a state of submission is called a cir which is often translated as Infidel which is not a correct translation Infidel is actually a Latin Christian term for people that didn't accept Christianity infidelis without faith the the belief the cfir is
38:29
somebody who's covering up this truth that its own soul knows because these lower passions have overwhelmed the higher essence of that human being and they don't like what the implications of that are so they choose not to look at it this is how the Muslim view it now once the child enters into this realm it will go through five
39:08
stages mhm what is the the is the warning that if you do not maintain your pre-World contract which is that you testified to the truth of the Lord ship of your creator that you uh you you you're you're in trouble you're in trouble now there is a belief in the Muslim tradition that if you have not been reminded you're not taken to account for your forgetfulness right because the overriding mode of of the Creator is Mercy it's not wrath the Quran says the mercy has preceded the Wrath right
39:57
and there's a tradition in which the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that God has 100 parts of Mercy 99 he has retained in his presence and one part he has allowed to descend to the dya and it is that one part that a mother nurses her child with that the F the the mayor rais es her hoof from stepping on her F so every Act of Mercy in this world is only from that one part and the 99 have been uh remain in the divine presence for the day of
40:49
judgment now the second stage is the stage of the lower world so you have the womb and then you have the
41:02
childhood now there's some interesting things before that just about the womb there's many verses in the Quran like 232 and four 4 uh 22 verse 5 which deal with the phenomenon of the womb and one of the uh there's a a embryologist by the name of Keith Moore who wrote uh one of the dominant textbooks for embryology it's used I don't know if it is now but it was a few years ago at UCLA's medical school and he wrote in in the introduction that there was no embryological knowledge uh before I
41:50
think it was maybe the 17th or 18th century whatsoever and there was no no detailed knowledge until the 20th century with the Advent of of uh a lot of the technology that's enabled us to look I mean now we've seen the Miracle of Life right you can watch the whole thing happen and there's a Yemen scholar ABD Majid zindani who who read this and and wrote him a letter saying you know you're wrong that in the 7th Century there's very detailed embryological information
42:27
and Keith Moore actually uh ended up going to Yemen and meeting with this man and being shown all of these verses and rewrote his introduction to his textbook and there's some videos of his presentations about that in which he admitted that the detailed information in the Quran is the earliest uh example of accurate uh scientific information about uh the embryological state ages and somebody asked him if it was possible for the prophet to have known that and he said that unless he had uh uh
43:04
microscopic information and and was able to go in and actually see these because uh it says in the 225 uh oh Humanity if you're in doubt concerning this Resurrection then know that we created you from dust and then from the drop of a seed n now N is a really interesting because these are not good uh translations uh n there is a verse in the Quran which says uh that that the
43:46
man we created the human being from a and then it says this in classical uh Arabic EX is was always problematic because N is a singular feminine form and the adjective that's used to describe it is a
44:15
plural and you can't do that in Arabic grammar so it was always considered problematic but the word
44:29
means the the message is this intermingling of lots of uh things so the idea is that we created you from this seed that has an intermingling of many
44:50
things and from that n we made you an this is the next stage the the word in Arabic means a leech like now what happens with the zot when it's inseminated right it gets inseminated the sperm goes up and there's a very interesting Hadith of the prophet and they asked him how are males and females determined because the the the uh the Arabs had a lot of superstitions about how you know there's they still do this Arab women will say you know uh uh lie on your left side or you know they've
45:35
got all these funny things that they're supposed to do if they want a boy or a girl and right and uh and they actually believe positions influence that sexual positions things so he was asked how what determines the male or the female and he said
46:00
the female and the male water race this is in sah Muslim he said the female and the male water race and the one that gets there first will determine whether the uh the child is a male or a female which is important for a number of reasons because women were often blamed uh In classical Arabic tradition for having not producing males it was considered something was wrong with the woman right and so that indicates you know the X and the Y chromosome that you have the male and the female water and
46:45
water is also used in the Quran in many verses uh that are now interpreted to be the genetic material we feed them all from the same water water but we vary them with that water and ma means sperm as well in Arabic insan man's water is his sperm so the the means a clinging thing so when the zot comes down it literally clings to the side of the womb and it will embed itself in the womb and actually will will break down to to cling into the womb so and then it begins the to derive its uh
47:28
nourishment from the embryonic uh sack and then it talks about being the three veils of Darkness uh in the Quran which Keith Moore identified as these uh the three layers within the womb and then it says and then from a lump of Flesh it says mud and mud is a chewed lump of Flesh and when the when the if you see it on the that that first uh period it looks like a chewed morsel it looks I if if an Arab was told to describe what that was he would say mud even though it's still microscopic
48:07
it's a chewed lump of Flesh it looks like somebody literally it looks like teeth marks where where the uh where the uh spinal cord is forming in that initial period it looks like teeth marks somebody literally bit into it and then it says shapely and shapeless because part of it has started to shape and other parts are still left unformed so you can see this in at the embryonic level you can see that some of it is shaping and others still have no shape And then it says that we may make
48:42
it clear to you that's why this is being told in other words it's saying if you're in doubt about what we're doing look at this in order for it to be made clear to you and and we will and then we cause what we will to remain in the wombs for an appointed time so inside the womb this there is an in the womb as well so this is a life there's an evolution that happens in the womb and some of it will not reach its EDG in the same way as this there could be a spontaneous abortion
49:20
there could be an abortion uh that's willed or an accident so once the uh the the child comes out it comes into the next stage of dun so dun has five
49:39
stages the first stage is one through he says five and there's another one that goes with seven which is consistent with the Western tradition you could either go 1 to 7 or 1 to 15 if you go 1 to 7 which is also considered a classical Islamic uh category during these first seven years it's the responsibility of the parents to nurture the child this is a time that there is absolutely no responsibility none it's prohibited to uh to have any physical discipline during this time even up till 10
50:24
physical discipline is is not permitted uh in in in uh in Shar uh other than uh the scholars say like twisting the ear right um grabbing the stomach you know pinching the stomach giving them pinches any type of physical violent force is prohibited uh in any situation whether it's male adult female adult or child is prohibited for any uh violent physical abuse that is har in sh absolutely and there's no proof or justification for it and we we're going to look at the verse that a lot of
51:03
people misunderstand including unfortunately uh some Muslims um about that but it's it's well known in the uh Islamic Shar that it is prohibited uh to physically uh strike uh anyone with violence mhm um I just question about the embryology was that from the Quran or the no that's Quran that's Quran yeah it's uh there's several verses that deal with that actually but the one I gave you was
51:39
225 now in 225 uh it continues and it says afterward we bring you forth as infants the word in Arabic this stage is called the now means in Arabic T is a parasite the is somebody that cannot live on its own it it needs a host so the child needs the parents and this is the responsibility of the parents to nurture the child now the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that every child is born on F and this is an important Concept in Islam f is the inherent
52:32
nature of the human being it's his Aboriginal
52:40
nature It is believed in Islam that human beings are good in their nature and it is it is diseased societies that will uh affect the the the the the nature in a in a diseased way now this obviously does is not congruous with the traditional Christian belief of the corrupt nature but there is a similarity between the Islamic and the Christian belief in that there is a Hadith that says that every child is born with a black seed in the heart and this is similar but not the same as as the
53:32
understanding of original sin how would you describe the let's call it CRA babies in their yeah this is going to be uh the CH the actions of the parents affect their children and there are like in the Bible the idea of visiting on Seven Generations which is you know it's a lot you're dealing with 64 parents uh there is that Concept in Islam that your actions do affect your Offspring but there is no accountability of The Offspring in other words nobody Bears
54:15
the burden of you do not like in some of the Chinese traditions you have the idea of inherited curses you know that a family gets cursed for doing wrong in one generation and their offspring will suffer the fate of that curse but there is a belief in Islam that you that righteousness will affect your Offspring and also wrongs will affect your Offspring we don't you don't think that it has anything to Bear upon the the concept of of inherent nature because a
54:49
CL baby in a sense is a starts all with a an addic an addtion right and the mother is responsible for that not the baby so the mother has has affected the and that's we have that ability to completely destroy the F the parents can do that to the child they can ruin it I mean that's what happens f is not you know children will not be
55:22
uh if if they are nurtured properly now there is Bad Seed there is a concept of Bad Seed in Islam there's definitely a concept in other words there is a belief that there are which are demonic uh humans and this results uh one that demons will actually part partake in the insemination that there's hadiths that indicate that people that are like in fornication in and it's it's interesting because Islam accepts marriage in every tradition you know even though it it
56:00
doesn't accept uh the the the Buddhist as a people of the book um that you know they're accepted as a uh as a tradition in that they can pay the the the jizya tax according to Imam Malik but they they their books are not accepted as uh revealed books they're not rejected but they're not accepted it's not in the Articles of Faith like the the Bible and the gospel but Buddhist marriage is accepted if if two Buddhists become Muslim their marriage is valid they don't have to
56:38
renew that marriage because marriage is believed to be a Divine institution that it was through Revelation that marriage came about so marriage in any tradition is accepted and therefore children that are born of legitimate marriage in any tradition uh those children have the protection of the the sanctity of the of the Union children born out of wedlock do not have that protection and there can be effects on the children because of that and one of the things that the
57:09
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said is beware the wrath of bastard children beware the wrath of bastard children that if you do that to children they will be angry and their wrath will come back to you and he said if illegitimacy spreads amongst a people then they are spreading the wrath of God amongst themselves and the Wrath is in the children because that was a right that you have deprived them of they have a right to legitimacy and if you do not give them that you have oppressed them and
57:51
oppression engenders anger and they're often they don't know why they're angry right they don't know why they're angry but they're angry and and for our country when you're looking at 70% illegitimacy rates amongst uh certain communities right and and the dominant Community it's it's it's in the 40 percentile range right that which a lot of you grew up in an age where you know girls disappeared in high school right I mean it's really amazing how much has changed in in in our
58:35
generation right I mean in in 1968 a woman was kicked out of Vasser for living with a man in an apartment 68 and it's it's really interesting how how that's happened in this culture so this fitra nature is this inherent nature and it is that the potential for good and evil exist but the inclination is to to good if it's nurtured but the seed of evil can be nurtured also and if that's done then you get people that that will they're inclined to doing bad stuff not good
59:23
stuff mhm question Shia then and say in a Muslim country are parents responsible for misdeed of children absolutely absolutely and there is no responsibility until puberty of the child it all falls on the parents after puberty according to the Hadith the parents are taken to account in the next life but not in this life once the CH you know like if you've got CH uh children that were raised brutalized right by their father you know or a crack cocaine mother who
1:00:02
doesn't do anything for a child these type things the responsibility this is why you can't judge people in this world in any absolute sense the prophet said I was commanded to judge outwardly but not inwardly we we do not have the authority to make inward judgments against people we can only judge outwardly and those outward judgments in Shar are related to transgressions but you cannot condemn people to hell you can't none of that that's all inward judgment and we have no Authority in that
1:00:41
realm the variables that are involved in any Human Action are so vast that no individual can grasp them we can't but responsibility is lies on the adult once you reach adulthood you are responsible and in Sharia it's not going to hold up in court to have a psychologist in there explaining what happened when they were children and why they're doing that that does not hold up in in in Sharia Court although Sharia laws are often uh contextualized in that a might
1:01:25
not decide to implement a punishment one of the the penal punishments because of contextual circumstances that that does exist so there is that realm it's it's very uh organic the Islamic legal system it's it's not black and white at all ask the question I'm looking at the ages between seven and 15 which is a huge uh difference uh do some communities or Traditions do the 1 to seven and the other 1 to 15 I'm looking at all of you know a lot of the crime that's being committed by
1:02:07
pre 15 yeah that's that in in Shar if they're adult they're responsible although uh this culture by by Islam you cannot apply Islamic law in the United States you can't it would be completely acceptable because Islamic law is organic it's it's a it's a holistic uh system you cannot have so like let's chop off the hands of uh of Thieves and you have a consumer culture uh where where the whole society is is is is is locked in to the uh the system of creating consumption as an
1:02:53
addiction right I mean you have to change it's it's you know the Islamic uh legal system the first chapter of Islamic law books is called the chapter of Purity I mean it it's a spiritual tradition before it's a legal tradition and so you can cannot impose the legal laws on a materialistic Society you have to introduce and this is why the meccan stage precedes the medinan stage the meccan stage had no legal rulings it was a stage of changing the perceptions of the people and once that
1:03:37
shift took place this radical Paradigm Shift once that took place then the rules begin to make sense but to apply the rules without that would be Injustice which is what you know this is the kind of conservative approach let's just make harsher laws right see the problem is the laws aren't harsh enough well you know why are people doing what they're doing you know and why is it that our uh our prisons you know are over 60% uh in fact in most places it's more like 75 80%
1:04:21
minority you know why is that well that's more evidence you know that these are inferior type people I mean there's a lot of that's an unspoken uh belief amongst a lot of people in this country you know I mean there's a lot of people that are politically correct in their uh public discourse not in their private discourse there's a lot of people that say well you know these people you know they're different from us they have different values whatever or no values
1:04:56
so whereas the Islamic situation is saying look what's going on right that the these situations are being produced what's engendering this because this is alien you see if you go to uh black African if you go to a gambian village where there's no crime right I mean it's true or not true and isn't it a large percentage of the African Americans in this country are from sen Gambia right this this is their genetic uh inheritance so why is it that a gambian African uh in his village is not
1:05:39
uh stealing raping and pillaging right and their 12-year-olds aren't going around doing gang banging and yet the same genetic Bank in uh in the inner cities of uh of New York or uh right or Chicago are doing that you see what's going on well from the Islamic perspective you have a diseased society and therefore you have symptomatic pathology and the pathology is manifesting in children that are being raised in a disease in gendering
1:06:23
culture so during these seven years it's not encouraged to teach children either because they're learning they have their own learning schedule and in traditional cultures you did not begin to train children until they reached seven which is consistent also with the um the Waldorf right Rudolph Steiner felt back in the 20s that if we begin to educate children at the age of five we are going to see precocious sexual development occurring and the reason he said that is
1:06:55
is because you're dealing with a Divine programming that's designed at at if you if you bring programming that's not meant to be introduced earlier then you're going to pull the whole process down so instead of the sexual maturation occurring like in this culture when people who here might have grown up in the 50s uh at the age of 14 most boys and girls were not thinking about sexual experimentation right really they weren't and you can talk to your parents if you're not that
1:07:31
old right I mean this is not I'm not making this up this is even the Manar has you know uh the the the the the period now we have early onset periods we've got girls now at s and 8 that are beginning to menstrate in in certain areas right so something's going on right now if you introduce uh it's actually considered damaging now this is not true of all children there will be because they you're going to have children that want to read at the age of three or four
1:08:07
but the vast majority of children are not going to be like that and so they're doing their work between 1 and seven they know exactly what they're supposed to be doing and you let them do that they're developing their their minds and and they're actually they are according to Islam and according to a lot of our neurological research uh it's confirming these ancient beliefs because this is not just Islam this this this is congruous with many Traditions seven was an age of
1:08:38
initiation in many many traditions and in the uh classical European oral culture before uh Christianity litered that area uh seven was actually you were an adult at seven you went from childhood to adulthood at the age of seven because in oral cultures seven-year-olds speak like adults and you'll notice a radical change in the uh the ability of a of a child to articulate at about the age of seven and8 there there's a real change in their ability to express themselves and
1:09:17
this is why even in England uh you know in the 8th 9th century uh seven-year-olds and 8-year olds were being hung for a horse theft right which I mean obviously that's uh horrific but it's indicative of an oral culture and how they View and this is why you will find marriage occurred in oral cultures at early ages also uh it was not uncommon in in Europe uh Asia the Middle East Africa for an eight or a nine-year-old girl to be married not uncommon at all because they were
1:09:50
considered to have already reached uh the age of maturation in the oral understanding so at the age of seven they enter into what's called which is the age of discrimination they can now they're beginning to understand certain uh certain things IM al-ghazali said you can introduce to them now the concept of time in a real way so they can understand things like uh that they're in time creatures and also the responsibility of actions although they're not fully responsible
1:10:27
yet because they don't have all of the hard wiring
1:10:34
yet so this F and it's in the chapter of called the chapter of the Banes or the Europeans or Rome means Europe it also means the byzantines it says that to set your face to the religion which is the religion of nature the F given by God and then it says and do not change that nature which is an indication that we can alter the fit of people and we have thousands of years of anthropological evidence that most cultures were benign cultures I mean we have a great deal of
1:11:15
evidence you know we would like uh those people who make weapons uh would like us to believe that we are aggressive by nature in other words that by Nature we like uh to inflict violence and aggression there are many uh people that there's there's a vested interest in having that uh the truth is that most of the evidence that we have from Aboriginal cultures is is contrary to that uh the Shon Indians you know this is a good example of a culture that really rejected violence as a uh as as an
1:12:00
option right and there are many many other many African uh cultures where this is very clearly the case that that violence was seen as surgery you know that you did not use that route unless there was no other alternative uh whereas in our culture it's it's Primary Care right it's lines in the sand and anybody who knows Arab uh psychology knows that you don't draw lines in the sand if you want to stay at the the table of dialogue right if you want to reach some and and you know it's it it's
1:12:46
really I don't want to get into politics but uh that what happened in in 1991 was an act of Madness complete Act of Madness and we were as a culture collectively drawn into something that had nothing to do uh with our vested interests right and and unfortunately it's still going on but uh Arab posturing is anybody who knows the Arabs is that they're people that posture this is part of their nature and uh Saddam Hussein you know was was literally doing a classic Arab posturing because uh the
1:13:32
uh OPEC countries reneged on a promise that they made that they would help him with his War debts that were incurred during the Iranian uh Iraqi War and they renaged on it and he put his troops there at the border as a to force their hand and they were told by our foreign policy here you know we're going to stand behind you don't you know you can stand up to him right and that was a very uh easily you know a uh not an intractable problem at all but unfortunately uh there are people that
1:14:10
have vested interests in using the violent option before the Diplomatic options right there's a lot of money to be made in war Beckel was already was already before that War Began had contracts with the Kuwaiti government to rebuild their infrastructure right so I mean thorough said an educated Soldier is usually called a deserter right if if you really know what what the fight is about you know sorry count me out on this one right what a wonderful W it would be
1:14:53
they say if somebody called a war and nobody showed up right and you know the ancient peoples when they used to fight they had these War bonnets if it rained they'd call off the battle and and they used to do you know the prophet Muhammad is seen as as this VI in the west as this violent person over over 23 years less than 1,200 people were killed in all of the engagements that took place less than 1,2 we have it's recorded every battle how many people died and they actually preferred to have
1:15:35
you know the heroes would go out and they duke it out and then they you win and they'd all go home right and that's I mean with that be a great way right let let uh it's like uh uh you know uh Lindberg said the America first during World War II he said it's not their sons that are going to die in this war right the war mongers they never send their sons right and that's why the IRA nation in the iaqua nation it was the women that were the war council the women decided whether the nation would
1:16:15
go to war with another tribe with the belief that it it was the women who sent their sons to die right and there's the great uh Greek play yeah thank you about the women all going on
1:16:43
strike okay
1:16:52
fine
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat