[
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/2022 EHF Peace Prize Presentation Dr_ Sherman Jack_GCr62RHh5rY&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837942.opus",
    "text": [
      "Dr. Jackson or Dr. J as we call it, It's quite fitting for you to be receiving an award in Michigan This community is still in denial about your departure to USC which was a decade ago Dr.Jackson, your intellectual contributions, your students and your leadership has changed the way people see Islam and Muslims",
      "Muslims. You helped establish a nationally significant institution right here in Michigan, and for more than 20 years Alim has built the capacity of generations of American Muslims in critical thinking. You're an approachable scholar grounded in community, and you've made a lifelong impression on students many of whom are today's scholars but",
      "and receptive to being shaped by the students you teach. And that receptivity of having a two-way approach makes you an incredibly sought out scholar and mentor. And Dr. Jackson, I've had the privilege of seeing you in action whether it's meeting President Obama or eulogizing at Muhammad Ali's funeral or as a bridge builder across sectarian lines helping draft the landmark Sunni Shiite code of honor",
      "of honor. You have always exhibited the highest level of integrity, your scholarship has been transformative and your ideas are playing a critical role in advancing the inclusion off and within American Muslim communities so thank you for your mentorship and congratulations on being named Peace Prize Laureate for 2022. To accept this award tonight Dr. Jackson's",
      "will be receiving the award on his behalf. He's a long-time student, a mentee and now a peer to Dr Jackson. Thank you Ustadh Abaidullah. In the name of God, the source of mercy and giver of mercy First of all I would like to say that all of us here are praying for the speedy recovery of Dr Jackson May Allah give him good health. May Allah SWT restore his health",
      "I feel great honor that they have been given this opportunity to introduce Dr. Jackson with my dear sister, Dr. Hadia Mubarak. I still remember the first time I met Dr.",
      "And I couldn't help it to notice his elegance. Very elegant man. One of the first thoughts that came to my mind was, wow, this man really knows how to dress. Clearly that is still true today. His etiquette and manners stood out even more than his nice suit. Then I heard him speaking.",
      "It was then that I realized that he was not only elegant, but eloquent. With such a strong intellectual presence. Since I cannot be eloquent like Dr Jackson, I have to try to be as elegant as him. But I think I'm failing miserably in this one. And my children can testify to that.",
      "And he never shared the name of his tailor with me. Then I got to know Dr Jackson closely. I developed such a strong friendship with him. He always been so sincere and clear, precise when he advised me. Every phone call between us",
      "between us, me and Dr. Jackson, I start with light-hearted conversation how are you ma'am Majid? How is your family? How are you Dr.Jackson? How's your family somehow we always find ourselves transitioning to a deeper conversation about concept intellectual argument regarding variant subjects which leads to the wheels turning in my head he does that to all of you",
      "for the rest of the night. And because there's different time differences, by the way, between East Coast and West Coast, maybe I'll be talking to Dr Jackson at 7 o'clock his time, 10 o' clock my time, then I lose sleep and miss my bedtime because of great thoughts that he shared with me. I just want to remind all of us here that Dr Jackson has touched us in many ways",
      "ways. And those thoughts, those ideas that Dr. Jackson shared with me did impact how I think and my share...I share the thought next day in my classes, in my lecture, in Friday's sermon. If you would like to know Dr.Jackson ask his student about him",
      "Dr. Jackson has several students in my community who have been really benefiting from great teaching of his one of his student is Shahid Imam who fell in love with the seerah, the life of the Prophet peace be upon him because of Dr.Jackson and many people fell in",
      "Shad Imam teaches Sira in my community. Shad shared with me and told me, Dr Jackson helped me, Shad saying, helped me to understand that the teaching of Islam is not about knowledge and words but it's about making it relevant to the lives of others. He always reminded me Islam is a process",
      "Those are the actual notes that Chad took from the class of 2000, from Al-Alim program. I have taught several years at the Alim program with Dr Jackson and every time Dr Jackson teaches his class before mine, I hear the student talking about how much Dr Jackson's classes have transformed him.",
      "them and how much made them fell in love with the prophet muhammad peace be upon him not dr jackson if you are in his class he does only have very commanding voice as you know those who come to hebrew class at nine o'clock he cannot go to sleep at nine clock in the east coast here in dr jacksons maybe it was my class um but he will keep you asking keep asking the audience",
      "audience. Do you know what I mean by that? Do you do you know that I mean Dr Jackson, you meant a lot to all of us and may Allah preserve you and protect you. Finally I would like to say that Dr Jackson is one of the people I feel most proud of when I see him speaking about Islam or about Muslims community",
      "in the different platforms. Whether he's speaking to the President of the United States or pushing back against a former Prime Minister of England. You know what I'm talking about, Tony Blair. Yes, we can always depend on Dr Jackson to stand his ground and speak the truth. When others assume the worst,",
      "bring the best in the conversations. Dr Jackson, I would like to thank you for standing your principles and sharing with the most eloquent powerful way ideas and thought that brings about better understanding of Islam and Muslims. Dr. Jackson this man from the tribe of Sudan",
      "appreciate the man from the tribe of Philadelphia. Thank you, Al-Hebri Foundation for honoring Dr. Jackson and his contribution not only to the Muslim community but to humanity. Before I leave the stage, Dr. Johnson, can you please share the name of your tailor? Thank you.",
      "Good evening. It's a blessing to be with all of you. In 1999, when I first attended the Adam Islamic Studies program in Concordia, Michigan, little did I realize that experience would set me on a trajectory to become a professor of religious studies 15 years later.",
      "in this large auditorium as I scrambled to quickly write down every last word of Dr. Sherman Jackson's lecture on Islamic law. I walked up to Dr. Jackson after his lecture one evening. I asked, I run track and cross country in high school but my parents don't know if this is religiously permissible. Is it permissible? I asked. You see, this is what I mean by a culturally informed understanding of religion. An indigenous Muslim would not ask me this question, I recall him saying.",
      "While he didn't directly respond to my question, he brought my attention to a larger issue. Islam does not exist in a vacuum outside of culture, time or space. My experience at the summer program was transformative. For the first time I began to make sense of my identity as an American Muslim and my religion in a way that was historically grounded and theologically liberating.",
      "like I needed to choose between being an authentic Muslim or fully embracing my American identity, I now recognize this as a false dichotomy. I was so invigorated by the discussions at Alim that I attended again in 2000. This earned me the nickname Alim rerunner. Several years later, I would find myself in a doctoral program at Georgetown University engaged in very critical and historical debates on Islam",
      "Instead of feeling disoriented or shaken by this experience, I felt an academic courage cultivated by my earliest experiences in Dr. Jackson's classes. I was not afraid to speak my mind or critique a position in our readings that I found to be flawed, biased, or plain inaccurate. I wasn't willing to let biased arguments go unchecked. There was too much at stake.",
      "early 2008. Our class had just finished reading an article by a well-known orientalist scholar who claimed that a mass number of prophetic traditions known as Hadith were fabricated in the Sunni canon. A few Muslims sitting next to me shook their heads in disbelief, one of them said I can't believe the Hadith are fabricated! My hand shot up. I intensely debated the author's theories many of them ahistorical baseless and dependent on",
      "this fabrication. As a student of Dr. Sherman Jackson, I felt a sense of guardianship over the Islamic tradition. While this tradition is not impeccable it is not a free-for-all dump in which any writer scholar or student could throw around any statement unsubstantiated by empirical evidence or lived realities. Dr. Jackson's scholarship revives the relevance of the Islamic",
      "His scholarship models what it means to be a free thinker, unbridled by the hegemony of certain discourses whether it be neoliberalism on one end or dogmatic traditionalism on the other. His sense of humor makes his lessons unforgettable. While giving us an analogy on how Meccan and Medinian culture differed in a class on prophetic history, he once described eating brunch at a fancy restaurant in Texas and being shocked to find that it served grits on its menu.",
      "You know what we call grits in Philly? We call it po' folks food. Twenty years later, I still laugh when I remember that story. Beyond Dr. Jackson's wit, intelligence, eloquence and brilliant scholarship one of his most endearing characteristics to his students is his warmth. A few years ago when I was visiting Los Angeles I reached out to Dr.Jackson to pay him a quick visit.",
      "and me an elaborate and delicious meal. Dr Jackson is a sincere and selfless man respected for his knowledge, eloquence and unflinching courage in many ways he is the Muhammad Ali of the academic boxing ring in the field of Islamic studies in the West when he flexes his intellectual muscles",
      "that you put into the enterprise of coming out to join us for the Al-Hibri Peace Award celebration. I had approached this moment with great excitement and anticipation. For me, this was not going to be just an evening on which I received an award. It was going to a reunion of sorts where I got to reestablish relationships with old friends",
      "people who have informed and shaped my life in various ways from across the country to enjoy the benefits of brotherhood, friendship, community. All this in the context of an Al-Hibri event which as we all know is always top notch. Unfortunately for the last four days I've been hospitalized",
      "redirect the progress of my condition from one that would lead to peril, to one that could be managed and ultimately overcome. By Allah's permission, the doctors were successful. I have been restored to a place where my condition is manageable and the prognostication is that insha'Allah i will enjoy a full recovery. It won't be short it may not even be easy",
      "not even be easy but insha'Allah it will be full. When I learned that i might not be able to join you this evening, I was really really really sad and I was sad not only for myself but also for the sadness that I knew that my absence would bring to the hearts of so many of you who sacrificed",
      "to be at this event only to discover that the awardee himself would not be present. I want to say to you that, uh, I apologize for any bad feelings, any disappointment that I may have brought to your hearts and if, if apologies perhaps too strong a word, I just want you to know that I feel the disappointment that you feel and I wish that I could remove it but perhaps",
      "another occasion on which we can remind ourselves that at the end of the day, we are not in charge. What Allah wills will be and what He does not will not. I want to end by thanking the Al-Hibri Foundation, not only for this award but for the graciousness with which they have handled this whole situation with my health",
      "And I want to express a very special thanks to Farhan Latif. You know, events like this take so much work, so much planning. They are so stressful, so many phone calls, so may emails, so my arrangements, so little things that can go wrong and then to find out at the end of this process",
      "dealt with all of this stress to find out that the awardee himself will not be there. I mean, that's got to be a real punch in the gut. I'm very sorry for that but I want to thank Farhan for the fact that rather than deepen my sense of guilt for not being able to be there he made it a point to convey to me",
      "that he and countless other members of the Al-Hibri Foundation have put into this effort. Despite all of that work, I and my health was a priority over the event itself. That was very meaningful to me and I appreciate that Farhan and may Allah reward you richly for your efforts",
      "to move on to greater and higher heights. At the end, I want to say Alhamdulillah, may Allah's blessings and his peace be showered upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad. As-salamu alaykum. I will now welcome Nancy Elhibri, Ustad Obeidullah Evans and Farhan Lateef to the stage for the presentation of the 2022 Elhibiri Peace Prize.",
      "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Peace be upon you.",
      "I want to begin with the salute and an offer of sincere yet guilty thanks to my wife and family. The kind of things we offer to those who do things for us that we know we could not possibly deserve. While I am the one receiving this award this evening, they have contributed selflessly",
      "achieved over the years, often at the expense of what any family could reasonably expect from a husband or father. I have not the words to express the debt of gratitude I owe them for I cannot calculate the magnitude of service that I have volunteered them to make.\" Yet as the Prophet informs us",
      "not thank people is not thankful to God. So let me just say here before the world, to my family from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I must admit that when i learned that i had won the El Hibri Peace Award, I was as surprised as I was happy. These feelings however soon gave way",
      "and speak not only about my work, but about myself. Not superficially, but really down to the bone as it were. Yet if our present moment teaches us anything, it is that we cannot allow fear to be our guide, that we must push cowardice aside and say what needs to be said and do what needs",
      "my work, among the most noted and perhaps controversial characteristics of much of it has been its decidedly American thrust. The society by the way not the government. My aim has been to place the grand glorious intellectual heritage of Islam by all accounts among the",
      "Part of my project has been to reconnect Muslims with the transformative and life-affirming powers of their intellectual tradition. Not to be slavishly copied and pasted as if what worked in 13th century Baghdad will work in 21st century Dearborn. The aim has been rather, to look this legacy, to",
      "Islam has always negotiated society. Our young people and some of our older ones need what I call Islamic literacy, Islamic knowledge that is not for the sake of simply being able to boast knowledge but for the purpose of empowering them to come to terms with the realities they confront in their daily lives here in America. This American focus however was",
      "Growing up on the tough streets of Philadelphia, I was as alienated from America as anyone else in my neighborhood. We didn't necessarily hate America but we certainly didn't see her lofty ideals reflected in our daily reality. Though we participated in such holidays as the 4th of July or even Memorial Day beyond their celebratory trappings which for us included gang colors",
      "apples, those are hats. We felt virtually nothing added to this when I converted to Islam in the late 1970s. I came under the tutelage of brothers from the Daughter Islam movement for many of whom Islam itself was part of a protest gesture against America. I remember that one of the most oft repeated hadith back then was whoever imitates the people is among them",
      "which we took as a religious mandate not to identify with America. This gave my hostile indifference, religious meaning bordering on what almost felt like a religious duty. So what happened? I converted to Islam in 1978 by the early 1980s, I was in Egypt studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo and trying",
      "increase my knowledge of Islam. There I heard about this Ezhari sheikh who was supposed to be the man in tafsir or Quranic exegesis. Feeling entitled as a new convert in the lands of Islam, I decided to pay him a visit to see if he would take me on as a student. He explained that he didn't have time but he directed me to four thick volumes which",
      "These books were not on tafsir but on the life of the Prophet ﷺ. As-sīratu nabawiyyah by the famous exeget and hadith scholar Ibn Kathir. He told me that if I was serious about the Qur'an, I would have to acquaint myself with as-sirah which he intimated all of the prophet's companions and even his enemies knew as a matter of course.",
      "understanding the Qur'an. Upon engaging the seerah, really for the first time, one of the most riveting insights that came to me was the Prophet's thorough embeddedness in Arabian society along with his tenacious attachment to his people. The Prophet's message was not an abstract system of menacing rules hovering above society like some alien UFO. It was a universal",
      "message that he directed to the concrete specificities of his society. Part of the whole point being to model to Muslims how they can and must do the same for every society in which they find themselves. The Quran spoke powerfully to such detailed specifics of Arabia as their burying their infant daughters alive, and how they entered",
      "The point was not to replicate these practices, but to send the message that Islam goes to society, not in the abstract, but in the concrete and addresses it where it happens to be. Meanwhile, the Prophet's critique of his society was not that of a hostile frustrated outsider pushing his wayward society away, but of a self-confident thoroughly invested insider,",
      "Arabian project, who wanted to see Islam play its proper role in shaping the prevailing order and if possible bringing that order to a better, if imperfect state of existence. Warts and all this engagement with the Sierra was the beginning of a fundamental change in my thinking though I was not entirely aware of it at the time. Contrary to what many think about the way I center America in my work,",
      "not and is not the fact that I was born in America, that explains this orientation. Especially in light of the war on terror and the vicious Islamophobia unleashed on Muslims after 9-11. Many Muslims and some non-Muslims see Muslims who take a less than rejectionist posture toward America as attempting to insulate themselves by currying favor with",
      "order to be seen as one of the good Muslims. While this is undoubtedly the case with some, while this is undoubtably the case was not it was emphatically not the case for me. First, for a black American to try to ingratiate himself with America through the medium of religion simply makes no sense. Religion has never been able to trump race in America and even if America accepted",
      "Second, and perhaps more importantly in my mind,",
      "Truth be told, it was neither the fact that I was born in America nor any desire to curry favor with the dominant group that drove this change in my thinking. It was the example of the Prophet ﷺ or at least my understanding of that example that initiated the process of my moving away from rejectionism and toward the realization",
      "in general could assume their proper place in society, in a society to which they did not belong. Even if one's aim in engaging America was strictly for the purpose of dawah or calling Americans to Islam, the Prophet's example suggested that one can simply, one simply cannot guide a people whom one holds in contempt. I remember it must have been some 20 years ago giving",
      "a presentation on Islam in America at a conference in Doha. Afterwards, Pastor Bob Roberts came up to me and said, okay let me get this straight you want an Islam that is absolutely true to all of its essentials but that is at the same time American? Yes I said his response was amazing. Now Bob is an empathetic friend",
      "Muslim community. So you can imagine what it must be like out there in the hinterland, but even for him as a friend given the fundamental conflict presumed to exist between Islam and America, it was amazing for a prominent American Muslim to be talking about an Islam that is American. And let me be clear here lest I'd be misunderstood",
      "that there are conflicts between the vision of Islam and what is increasingly, the vision America. And all this must be duly confronted not pasted over or conveniently ignored. Yet once again no one who engages the seerah of the Prophet can deny the depth magnitude and entrenched nature of the conflicts that separated Islam from Arabia",
      "idols, to women running around the Kaaba without clothes, to the initial treatment of the Prophet himself. In truth however my engagement with the Prophet did not occur in a vacuum it coincided with another major development that actually took me by surprise as I mentioned I was introduced",
      "experience of being abroad, however, that brought me to a realization that I am American. This had nothing to do with any patriotism, any more than me and my homies participating in Memorial Day or Fourth of July celebrations did, or even our enlisting in the U.S. military, despite what some uninformed outsiders might think. Nor did it have anything",
      "10 million people and they never shut up. This is true, I know. Warm, humorous, engaging and full of life, they fully embraced me and taught me more than I could ever measure including a thing or two about the meaning and burdens of friendship. And certainly as a Muslim there were ways in which I felt",
      "Which is not to say that this is how my Egyptian friends always felt. I arrived in Cairo some eight months after Sadat's assassination, when things were pretty tough for those bearded Sunnis which is what they called openly religious men back then Wahid Sunni But for all the warmth and sincerity and Islamic brotherhood with which the Egyptians greeted me",
      "I simply could not shake the feeling that I am just not one of them. Even if on some days, I might have wished I was. For example, when I had to deal with those goddarn taxi drivers. Again, this was not a matter of any conscious rejection on my part. It was simply an undeniable fact.",
      "reinforced what I thought I was learning from the prophetic seerah. Just as he was an Arab in Arabia, I was now to be an American in America and yet expanding his realization across the board has in recent years plunged me into an intellectual dilemma that I, in fact we, as the American Muslim community must find a way to come to terms with. Simply put if despite my status",
      "as racial minority in a society that has been described as a racial caste system, the experience of being abroad could bring me to a more conscious awareness of being an American. It is reasonable to expect that the same experience of bein g abroad would have a similar impact on those who immigrated from the Muslim world to America. In other words they too would come to a deeper realization",
      "or Turkish, or Pakistani, Indian, or Ghanaian. In fact even black American Muslims who have never had the experience of living abroad might identify with Philly, or Brooklyn, or Chicago but not America. What we have then are experiences of being abroad that tend to push Muslims in mildly contradictory directions",
      "in terms of how they relate to America. And the question becomes, how can we wrestle this problem to the ground and end up with a sense of community that is both functional and mutually empowering to all? I do not know the answer to this question but I think once again, the prophet Sira might provide some direction. I wish I could detail at least one of the lessons",
      "will simply not permit this. In the end, at any rate there are perhaps two visions for Islam and Muslims in America. The first was articulated by the public intellectual Van Jones. According to him, the American Muslims have been called to save a great faith and a great nation at the same time. The other vision is that of Sigmund Freud who when he visited America in the 1930s described it as a mistake",
      "A giant mistake. Freud did not believe that all the disparate peoples from across the globe could be fashioned into a functional political community. It is up to us to choose which of these visions will define our course as we move forward. In closing, I want to express my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to the Al-Hibrily Foundation,",
      "and prestigious award, but for the vision reflected in the very fact that such an award exists. It warms my heart to see a Muslim organization in America maturing to the point of recognizing the importance of valorizing and incentivizing the kind of work that everyone knows needs to be done, but only those who are driven by a very unique",
      "I nor anyone else who has received this award ever set out to do so. Rather, we do what we do because we cannot not do it. Just ask our spouses. The fact that El Hebrei has chosen to honor such efforts with public recognition is the stuff of which great civilizations are made. Civilizations that understand that those who seek recognition do not always deserve it.",
      "and those who don't seek it are often most worthy of it. This award has already strengthened my resolve, and added to my hope regarding the future of our community here in America. In the name of myself, my family, and the entire Muslim community I thank Al-Hibri Foundation for this honor. May Allah continue to guide, strengthen, and bless your efforts. And may Allah's everlasting peace"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/ALIM Winter Program 2023 - Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ Im_kRsb8YGpC1o&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750822450.opus",
    "text": [
      "As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. My name is Omar Deykin, I am 13 and inshallah I will be reciting Surah Al-Isra 9 to 15.",
      "ويبشر المؤمنين الذين يعملون الصالحات أن لهم أجرا كبيرا وأن الذين لا يؤمنون بالآخرة أعتدنا لهم عذابا أليما",
      "وكان الإنسان عجولا وجعلنا الليل والنهار آيتين فمحونا آية الليل وجعلها مبصرة لتبتغوا فضلا من ربهم",
      "وكل إنسان ألزمناه طائره في عنقه ونخرج له يوم القيامة كتاباً يلقاه منشورا",
      "اقرأ كتابك كفى بنفسك اليوم عليك حسيبا من اهتدى فإنما يهتدي لنفسه ومن ضل فإنا ما يضل عليها ولا تزر وازرة وزر أخرى",
      "I'd like to ask Bilal al-Hakeem, another one of our students from the HIFS program, to come forward and do the translation inshallah. Asalaamu Alaikum. Just give me a second here.",
      "And that those who do not believe in the hereafter, we have prepared for them a painful punishment.",
      "And for every person, we have imposed this fate upon his neck. And we will produce for him on the day of resurrection a record which he will encounter spread open. It'll be said, read your record. Sufficient is yourself against you this day as accountant. Whoever is guided is only guided for the benefit of his soul. And whoever errs, only errs against it. And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. And never would he punish until we send a messenger.\" Now subhanAllah, these ayahs to me they really kind of sum up life.",
      "sum up life you know we have we are the ones that make our decisions I always thought of it like we're like wood carvers and we're making the vase of our akhira now we either have the option to make this vase that will break up after your like hold it in your hands it'll like crumble two pieces or we have a vase that is beautiful and shiny or we can have a vaze that is you know just complete doesn't work out and looks kind",
      "Allah has made life simple. Like, Allah is not gonna make you be lost. Like in ayah 15 or sorry like ayat 10 or something, Allah says, فَمَحَوْنَا آيَةِ دَيْلِ وَجَعَلْنَّا آیَةٍ نَهَىٰ That Allah He brings forth the sign of the day and then he brings forth a side of the night so it's not like you only have signs for like 5 p.m. every day and that's it Constantly every single day 24 hours you have signs and all you have to do is look up",
      "I apologize for taking a little longer than I'm supposed to. And remember everybody, you have to... your akhla is in your hands so carve your vases to the perfection inshaAllah. Jazakallah khairan.",
      "Muhammad Ali was a huge mine it's wonderful mashallah to see so many familiar and new faces in tonight here for this very special program I was asked to say just if you kind of opening remarks if you will and then we'll of course turn it over to our illustrious speakers",
      "I wanted to just begin with a story. It's actually a personal story. Many of you who have known me over the years know that I've talked off and on about this little program known as Alim, right? From time to time. Maybe heard it in a khutbah or a talk, something like that. And I've had a number of students ask me, well what is it? What was it? The American Learning Institute for Muslims believe it or not, was established a quarter",
      "25 years ago. It feels weird for me to be saying that like that, but yes, 25 years is when it was started and I was fortunate enough to attend the program in the year 2000. I actually just showed, do me a favor read the date at the top of this notebook. July 2nd, 2000. This is, I have kept",
      "for the last 23 years. And as you can tell by the wear and tear on it, it's used quite frequently. The one month summer program that Alim offered me back in 2000 set me on... Set me and I would argue the people in that program on a trajectory of learning, of educating, and of living the ideals as best we could of Islam. Now it's not an easy thing",
      "easy journey as many of us know there's a lot of struggles along the way there's difficulties but unfortunately in today's world what we are most confronted with is confusion confusion",
      "allow me, allow us to see truth as truth and to follow it. And to see falsehood as falsehood and to stay away from it. In today's world brothers and sisters, truth has become mixed with falsehood. There is a lot of half-truths semi-truthts non-trutes that are out there that are vying for the position of truth",
      "And as a 20-something year old at the time, I was inquisitive about my faith but I was not necessarily grounded. Right? So I knew how to pray. I did. I mean Alhamdulillah Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward my parents and the community that was something they had established. I knew How to Pray. But when Dr Jackson in class asked us the question and said what do you do when the Imam stands up for fifth Rakaah? None of us knew.",
      "None of us knew. That wasn't a fair question. Depending on the madhab, right? Now he tells me it's not a fair questions, right. Back then, it seems like oh my god I don't know the answer to this. What do we do? How are we going to deal with our faith? And in that program for those who have attended actually just by show of hands how many people have attended an alim program in the past? Masha'Allah about 25-50%",
      "to 50% mashallah so as you know these programs are designed for us to study different disciplines seerah, aqidah history and you really realize how rich our tradition is but ultimately I feel looking back on it now that it gave me two things two very important things number one alim provided",
      "to ask the hard questions. The courage, to ask a hard question. Why does that require courage? Because all too many of us will hear a hadith and it'll beat us upside the head and now all of sudden we're out of faith. Too many of are not asking the hard question when our own children are the ones bringing it to us. We refuse to engage but Alim gives us the tools to ask those questions.",
      "you know what, I can still be a Muslim even if I have questions that are unanswered or things that I don't know. That was the first thing that it empowered us with. The second, it gives you a real dose of humility. Humility to realize that you may think you know the answer but in our tradition, the opinions are vast. There's not just one way",
      "And I think for me, growing up as a Muslim in America, seeing people of different madhabs, ethnicities, backgrounds and faiths, that really helped ground the idea of diversity in faith. And yet, worshipping the same God. As Dr. Jackson said and Imam Munir at the program, unity is not uniformity. It does not require us all to be and look the same.",
      "but it does require us to have one another's back. It is in that context, brothers and sisters, that years ago when I came back into the community after college having attended the Alim program that I found a community that was willing to address and hear their courageous questions that were being asked. We have leaders and teachers in our community like Imam Majid,",
      "that want us to engage in that questioning they want us, to engage and how do we answer those hard questions. That's how we're going to ground ourselves and inshallah our progeny in this faith. So for I wanted to give that as some context because this weekend we're gonna ask them hard questions didn't know it yet but we're gunna ask them our questions we're gona help see if we can answer some of those questions",
      "one in which there is a need, there's actually many tools available for us to be able to deal with so much of what's going on in the society around us. And we're gonna talk, if anyone that seen the program you've seen, you know, we're going to be addressing the concept of Tawheed, what that means for a Muslim. We're going talking about the history of modernity and post-modernity and how do we deal with that in today's context? What are the practical realities",
      "What are some of the things that we need to be able to address from within our own tradition? And by the way guys, this is not something that's new to us for anyone that has read this book or Variation of a Carl Truman published last year strange New World Now he is an admitted Christian in this book Trying to grapple with the exact same questions that you and I are grappling with what types of to what extent can we adopt neoliberal theology into what extent do we need",
      "extent do we need to be wary of that? And he does a fantastic job of tracing the history of how certain ideas and ideologies in our culture got to where they are. It's important for us to understand this as we go out and ask those hard questions in search of the answers from within our tradition. So I wanted to just caveat that or give you kind of a primer for that. For tonight, inshallah ta'ala,",
      "an introduction to some of the different sessions that we will be discussing over the course of this weekend. For those that have not registered, we have tables set up outside. We encourage you to register after tonight's program and really get ready to put your thinking caps on. We're going to require some of us to be thinking so to speak. So inshallah what I'd like to do is I'd",
      "Okay, all right. So she's punted it over to Dr. Jackson now. So inshallah ta'ala. We'll go ahead and begin with some introductory remarks for a session with Dr. Jackon then we'll go to Asadu Baytullah and then we will end inshAllah with Dr Seydem I would normally do a really nice long introduction productive but that's what he is going to do so...",
      "According to Shad punted to me and so I'm going to",
      "to have punt back to her in some ways perhaps putting her on the spot. I want to begin my remarks building on something that Shad said and circling back to something that says of Zainab's father,",
      "who I considered a friend and mentor said on many, many occasions. And he was very emphatic about this. Shad mentioned that there were many competitors out there for the position of ultimate truth",
      "ultimate truth and I think that on some level, that's true. But I think at the same time we have to be careful and I'm tiptoeing up to this point because it's a point that many of us may not be comfortable with considering and I am not trying to be gratuitously provocative",
      "I don't have time for that. And I mean that very seriously. Many of you might not know it, but I recently went through a health situation",
      "that was potentially lethal. So I'm on time that Allah has given me beyond anything that I could have done for myself or even that the doctors could have been for me. So, I'm not here to impress anybody. I'm here to try to be provocative and get a bunch of likes or whatever it is those people do on social media.",
      "I'm here because, well I'm hear because I was invited but what I want to say. I wanna say because I think it's really important that we as Muslims come to a point where we have the courage, we have",
      "whereby we can look out at the world and diagnose it for what it is, and not for what we would like it to be. Because as long as we just look at the word in terms of what we'd like it be, we will throw stones at it but won't change it. And we will continue to live as people who live lives of dependency. What do I mean by that? We're here this weekend talking about",
      "talking about what post modernity, postmodernism and all that stuff. Post-modernism is a response to what? Modernity alright. Modernity is the product of whom us? Us! The response through that modernity postmodern",
      "Not us. And yet we have to live in a world that is infused by the ideas and the sensibilities that has been produced by someone else's history. And this is what takes us back to a comment, not a common theme that Shakhtar used to say all the time",
      "all the time and I'm gonna preface it with a very potentially controversial question not to be controversial but in order for us to begin to think about this critically if there are competitors for truth what is our goal? To make our truth triumphant",
      "That's a real question. What's our goal? To make our truth triumphant? What is it? No, no, no. Don't... That's not a different issue. If you want me to come back to that. It's a different issues. My point is this. Even if I",
      "The Qur'an tells us very clearly, even if you bring them every ayah they won't follow you. That truth is manifest it does not necessarily mean that they will follow and so this raises the question and nobody leave now because I don't want to hear him say this and we didn't heard him explain it sit tight",
      "Sit tight. Is truth enough? Is the truth of Islam enough? If we make it clear that ours is the truth, will that be enough to change the world? And this takes me back to... I've been getting to it for a long time now. To shakhtaha.",
      "Shaykh Taha used to say that if you read the Qur'an, there are three dominant themes in the Qur-an. One is Tarheed, the oneness of Allah, the one who alone has any control over human destiny as well as the physical world. Tarheeed. The second is tazkiyah",
      "that we are not just minds, all right? We are integrated human beings. We have souls, we have psyches and those things often dictate our behavior far more than what's in our mind. Far more than whats in our minds. And so we are in need of purifying ourselves. You know one of my tests",
      "and I fail it all the time. But insha'Allah, as a test, it keeps me in a position of keeping my eye on the prize. I was told a story by a dear friend about Moulana al-Mawdudi. And let me just say,",
      "I'm not quite in the camp of a Mawdudi. That's not a... He doesn't agree with me either. I mean, that's not an... I mean I'm a Malik and I'm no a Hanafi. No, no. I'm trying to score any points at the expense of Maulana Mawduidi. But despite the differences that we might have here he is one of my heroes. Heroes! And I'll tell you why. Talk about Tazkiyat al-Nafs",
      "At one point, al-Mawdudi was condemned to death. They passed a death sentence on him, right? On various charges. The jailer of al-Ma'ududi tells this story. He says, I've seen men aged 30 years",
      "years in one night waiting to be executed on the morn. 30 years I've seen them with my own eyes this guy went to sleep and snored y'all don't get that do you?",
      "You talking about islams lillah? You're talking about knowing who is in charge? That's not here. We all know that here, don't we? I remember the night before my dissertation defense. Didn't sleep a wink. This guy was looking at death and guess what?",
      "And guess what? They didn't execute my own duty. Who's in charge? Did he know that here or here or hear the whole thing? That's Tazkiyah. That's tazkiyah. Shaykh al-Aman used to say, Tabheed wa tazkiyah and the third thing and this is what he used to",
      "Amaran, that is building civilization because civilizations carry messages and civilizations make those messages either valuable, seemly esteemed or not. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? A civilization that is less accomplished",
      "less accomplished may have the best idea about x in the world nobody will take it because the carrier civilization does not confer that air of confidence on those ideas another civilization and we don't have to name any right maybe very highly accomplished as a civilization",
      "that are absolutely ridiculous and yet people will latch on to those ideas because they are carried by that civilization. And one of the things that we as a Muslim community must get back to is the idea that yes, we must hold fast to tarheed. Yes, we",
      "But at the same time, we must again become makers of civilization and we have to get off civilizational welfare to the West or anyone else. And until we do that, our truth is for anybody who's affected by that superior",
      "superior civilization is going to be just like that truth that I talked about of that little lowly civilization over here. And not even just for the rest of the world, for the people there as well. You know, Shad mentioned that there's a lot of confusion out there and I know that many of us we feel that confusion. No? Right?",
      "I can tell you that, Muslims are debating issues today in America that I could not have imagined anybody even having a question about just 30 years ago. 25 years ago, maybe 20 years ago all right? But what I want to offer you is the fact that this is not the first time",
      "that were rife with confusion. All kinds of competing ideas, ideologies, religions etc. You take somebody like an Imam Abu Hanifa. Abu Hanifah died... I said what? Died in the year 150 of the Hijrah.",
      "150. In Iraq, when he died in 150 the percentage of Muslims could not have been more than 13 percent 15 max oh yeah Muslims were a numerical minority and most of these places that became",
      "for 250 years. I know some of you, this is shocking though it's unbelievable huh? Tell you what you do go ask any scholar who studied Islam historically anyone this not just me this is common knowledge anyone they were a numerical minority right how",
      "to rise to the challenge of all of that confusion. Part of it was that they were makers of civilization. People live culture and civilization far more immediately than they do ideas. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? Right? And the best civilizations are those",
      "in ways that they can be absorbed spontaneously. And the Muslims succeeded in doing that and one of the ways that did, they did not shrink from these challenges. They did not shrnk from these chalenges. And I'm gonna try to wrap this up in a minute. This is one of those challenges we have now",
      "Now, they were able to approach those challenges from the perspective of their own deem. Their own values, their own principles. Not simply trying to... I mean this is part of the challenge we have. We're Muslims in America and by the way all over the world now you have to learn somebody else's history",
      "All right, just to be able to compete on the world stage. No? No? That's part of the price that we pay when we fail to produce an Islamic civilization. They didn't have to do that. They could just take out their swords and charge intellectual swords.",
      "No, no I'm very...I mean the other source too. I'm not a pacifist right? But even they conquered the territories! No question about that all right? How then did they stay a Muslim minority for 250 years? What were they doing for 250 Years? It would not have taken them 250 years to forcibly convert all those people would it? What was they doing? They were gaining adherence. People were converting to Islam",
      "converting to Islam. Islam became the thing to be, Islam became a natural thing to become and they had the confidence to do that. This is why for me one of the greatest challenges we have and Chad alluded to it and I know it sounds like almost a hollow mantra",
      "One of the greatest challenges we have is a challenge of unity, which is not uniformity because individuals can't make civilizations. Do you understand that? If you want to make Islam easier to practice, you need communities that exemplify that practice. You need communities",
      "You need communities that exemplify that practice consistently enough That that practice becomes normalized and human beings naturally inclined towards that And even if they don't you as a practitioner of that will be normalized yourself Let me give you an example what I'm talking about. And then I'll say a few words about this post-modernism stuff in the weekend we can wrap up",
      "We can wrap up. I was, and I think that may have told this story before but it always comes back to me. I Was in the airport When I was about obey-the-laws age And running all over the place all the time In Detroit Detroit against everybody right? And I was standing in Burger King line at the airport",
      "In the morning one to give me one of those egg and cheese croissants, you know You know what I'm talking about? right there was a well-dressed black American gentleman standing in front of me with A crucifix, you don't talk about across And I'm talked about when them balls crosses, I mean, you",
      "You know, not the flat. Right? And he was standing in front of me. And the woman behind the counter came out and dumped a bunch of wrapped sandwiches in the bins, you know, and they slide down. This man stopped her. He said, excuse me, miss. What's in those sandwiches? Don't tell me no swine.",
      "tell me no swine because I ain't eatin' no swines. What's wrong with that picture? What's the problem with that pictures? I'm sorry, so tell me what's wrong about that picture and not was he only not eating pork he said what don't",
      "I need no poor. I need a swine What was going on there? I'll tell you my interpretation of what's going on Hmm Everybody relax. I'm gonna take a deep breath The nation of Islam And by the way for those of you who may be wondering, I was never a member of the Nation of Islam No, no, no because I want you to know this is not some recounting",
      "This is not some recounting of the good old days. I was never a member of the Nation of Islam, all right? But it goes to the point that I'm trying to make. We have to understand this, allright? And when we understand this we'll stop sitting around waiting on the scholars to do everything because they can't do everything. They can't half of what needs to be done. Scholars don't make civilizations you do!",
      "had changed the cultural orthodoxy of the entire black American community. You understand that? And I don't want to exaggerate, I'm not saying entire but everywhere you went in the country you saw that influence okay put it that way all right and this man lived where? In Detroit a very highly densely populated urban",
      "urban area, all right? Where the cultural influence of the nation translated into a new black cultural orthodoxy. You follow what I'm talking about now? To the point that even people who are not affiliated with Islam saw it as consistent",
      "Now you imagine in that context me or you obey the law and this happens. Now we're at the family reunion. At the family of a union as a Muslim, you are tiny minority. You understand what I mean by that?",
      "It is now to the point you can refuse to eat pork and ain't nobody tripping. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Now, you can practice your deen normalized. That was not the result of a fatwa.",
      "repetition and confidence. Does everybody follow what I'm talking about? And so now, I have an easier time practicing my Islam. Did you understand what I mean by that? Alright? I have a easier time professing what it is that I believe. Alright?",
      "are tremendous or many people. All right? And this is why we have to add what Chata talked about in terms of that third, that's third obsession with building civilization. Did any single member of the nation do that? I mean make that change? How'd that come about? It took numbers. That took",
      "numbers and repetition. And when we are all divided, can't stand each other, scared of each other don't trust each other how can we do that? How can we to that? And I think one of the things we have to pay very close attention to is you know... You know, the country's changing, is it not?",
      "Towards what? We still have opportunities now that may not be there tomorrow. We need to capitalize on that. And so one of the things I want to just encourage us to think about, because you see once we recognize Amran",
      "civilization building as a part of what it means to be a Muslim community because make no mistake about it, all right? Whether we like it or not, we are in a stage of civilizational competition and there are winners and there losers. And what we want to be is winners",
      "we then can recognize everybody in here has a role. There are no spectators here, everybody in you to make that contribution. How? By how we carry out... You know sometimes I'll be at one of these like elite meetings",
      "meetings you know what i'm talking about you know right I mean I don't even know why I'm there but I get invited you know and uh like it's time for Asaf well you're the only Muslim there and you feel it",
      "You start sweating a little bit. I got to pray also, man! Right? And then you excuse yourself for a minute to go to the restroom and make wudu. And you're walking down the hall... This happens. You walk in that hall, you see a janitor with a mop",
      "and a bucket. And he says, and by the way I have no idea how people know this, I could be in Versace and they just know I'm a Muslim. I'm serious. You're walking down the hall and this janitor with a bucket and a mop, he says what?",
      "You go back into that room, what? Look here, I got to mix a lot. No, no, you follow what I'm talking about. The power in numbers. Even prophets ask not to be left alone. We are social beings, we need that and we have to stop being each other's worst enemy in that regard.",
      "We have to recognize our contribution to our situation, alright? In circumstances that we don't have to fear what many Muslims around the world have to feel. Alright? Let me just very quickly say something simple about this whole postmodernism business that they asked me to talk about. What I want to say is",
      "What I want to say is a couple of things. One, postmodernism as I mentioned is a response to modernism and modernity is itself in large part, and we're talking about the intellectual dimensions of modernity. We are not talking about capitalism or the rise of the nation state. We starting to get into details now aren't we? I'm turning into professor?",
      "I'm gonna move away from that. But modernity has many aspects, but the main aspect that affects us is intellectual aspect of modernity and the emergence of reason as the new authority in place of a Christian institution, in place for the church. The Enlightenment did not get rid of authority it replaced one authority,",
      "for another reason. But this is a very specific kind of reason that I'll talk about more in detail tomorrow and while the Enlightenment saw that reason as a way of liberating themselves from the authority of the church, that particular mode",
      "all right because it bound people to abs uh let me i'm trying to i'm time to simplify this you see if I sit here in where we at now Dulles DC",
      "that is based on my reasoning, alright? And then for some reason because I have the civilizational authority to do this, all right? I normalize that understand of justice for the entire world. I've never been to China but I can tell them what justice is on the basis of what? Reason!",
      "way but I can tell them what justice is on the basis of reason. This disembodied transcendent reason turned out to be in itself another form of being shackled. Postmodernism, which",
      "against enlightenment reason. In the process, however it destroys all understandings of ultimate anything there is no such thing as truth because reason that was supposed to produce that truth has been proved to be not transcendent, not neutral, not ideologically free, not culturally free so they reject it all",
      "Contrary to what many of us think, Islam is not the only entity that has issues with postmodernism. Postmodernism rejects Marxism vehemently. Why? Because Marxism based on reason comes up with this grand narrative where it can solve everything on the basis of a theory, based on reasons. This is out.",
      "even attacks modern science. Why can't you have modern science? Because you cannot have facts, and why can you not have facts? Because the reason on the basis of which those facts are supposed to be based is not neutral. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? Alright? Once we get there then what about morality? Completely relative.",
      "All right, and so how do we sustain a moral vision in the world? All right. I'll end with this and maybe not maybe I will deal with it in more detail tomorrow is that What I want to say is that it's what's tragic about this is that the whole world has come to understand Reason in the way that the modern West characterized reason",
      "Islam's understanding was not there. It was not a part of that global discourse, all right? And not only that the whole world now is influenced by the Western revolt against that reason. Islam had its own discourse with that region as well that did not lead to postmodernism as we have it and so what",
      "have in our cumulative heritage as Muslims, alright? There's a whole nother vision of the world that we first of reality, of human existence and we first have to become familiar with that and then acquire the courage and the confidence to take that out into the world. I'll stop here insha'Allah because I've talked more than enough and inshallah will see you again tomorrow",
      "Subhanak Allahumma wa bihamdik. Ash'hadu an la ilaha illa anta astaghfiru wa atubu ilayk salam alikum JazakAllah khairan Dr Jackson for those beautiful words that's just the intro guys so there's a lot more where that came from inshallah tomorrow for those who don't know dr. Jackson is the king Faisal chair of Islamic studies at the University of Southern California but along with him we are very",
      "very honored also to have Ustadhul Baytullah Evans, a good friend if I may call him that Mashallah. Also the first African American graduate of the Al-Azhar University.",
      "As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.",
      "It goes without saying that it's a great honor and a great privilege to be in your company this evening. I want to thank all of the volunteers at AYLUM, and all of staff that labored often behind the scenes indefatigably to give us opportunities not only to speak from the stage",
      "and dates, verses of scripture etc. but also to be enriched by each other's company you know whenever I think about these programs I think how much I enjoy listening to our asatira, our dhikartir, our doctors, our instructors but also how much i enjoy the sorority and fraternity of the muslim community",
      "And during COVID, we did not have these opportunities readily available to us. So to be back in space together, learning together, sitting together, eating together, I'm extremely grateful for that and I'm particularly grateful to the people that work so we can have these",
      "Dr. Jackson, Dr. Zainab. We'll be hearing from Ina Magid during the program. People that I've always looked to as mentors, teachers, role models quite frankly and so I look at this list of presenters and I ask myself what am I going to contribute to this conversation? And a few impressions come to mind.",
      "You know, when my wife, may Allah preserve her. And if you see her tell her I said that after saying her name. When she was pregnant with our second child together we went for a prenatal visit and they determined through looking at the ultrasound",
      "enlarged nuchal translucency Which is they're looking at the images and they called it the nukel fold And so the doctor came in and the doctor seemed a bit tense and panicked and he said The baby has an enlarged nuclear translucency, and I said, I don't know what that means He said well for all practical intents and purposes It means that the child might be at greater risk",
      "greater risk for Down syndrome and I still remember the look that my wife and I gave each other. He said but if you want to we can do a test called an amniocentesis and through that test, we can determine with amazing specificity",
      "the child is. And so I said, hold on before you do that I have to do something very important give us a couple of days what I had to do was go on Google No seriously! I went and I googled to see had anyone else dealt with this? And if they did what did they do? And so i'm reading all of these messages on a message board",
      "board. And some of those messages, I still remember them and one in particular was life-changing for me. One person said yeah we did the amnio and we learned that our baby had a 1 in 10 000 chance of having Down syndrome. And so the amnio was very comforting for us it provided great consolation",
      "and I learned that my baby had a one in six chance of having Down syndrome, but the baby was born healthy. And stories like this. But then one woman said, we did the amnio, and the doctors determined that the chance of my child having Down's syndrome was infinitesimally small. Like as she said, my husband and I,",
      "relieved at this news. She said, then I delivered and when they handed the baby to me, I looked at the baby and just from the phenotype of the baby, I knew the baby had Down syndrome. And she said, I immediately said to myself if there was a one in some thousand chance of my child having Down syndrome and my child actually has Down syndrome, how bad",
      "How blessed am I? I was that one in 20,000. One in 30,000 I have been chosen for this task and it might be this task through which I gained God's grace and his forgiveness. I'm reading this on my phone and I'm like crying because it reminded me of something",
      "the servant sees that what he or she is dealing with is something God chose specifically for them, they recognize that this has not been chosen to hurt me because God is with his servants Rahim, merciful. Why am I mentioning",
      "a context of struggle, a context difficulty has been chosen for us. This is the ikhtiyar of Allah. And in just 20 short years... I've been Muslim for over 20 years to steal Dr Jackson's joke, I converted when I was 3. I've be muslim for over twenty years",
      "And subhanallah The challenges that my daughter, my eldest is inshallah soon to be 17 Insha'Allah the challenges that she experiences trying to sustain her commitment to Islam are almost nothing like my own Nothing and this was only 20 years ago",
      "years ago you know she's a junior in high school and I look at her and I say I was the junior in higher school when I accepted Islam and I looked at her, and I'm just like wow. You know one of my friends he works as an Imam or he used to work as an imam in Boston and he said that one day",
      "him in earnest, Iman why can't my girlfriend and I have a sexual relationship we're consenting adults. The young man was a college student he said really what's wrong with that? And my friend said when he heard the question he said this is it this is the moment",
      "just entered my office and asked me something that was directly asked to the Prophet. I am going to repeat the answer of the Prophet, and this young man is going to come away with the same thing the young man who asked the Prophet came away with. And so he said, he went through all of the requisite etiquettes. He said,",
      "come close to me. This is all from the Hadith.\" He said, he said, come close. He said do you have a sister? Young guy said yeah. Do you have aunts? He said yeah, do you",
      "They have mothers Would you like for someone to do that to them? And he said the young man looked him squarely in his eyes and said if that's what they want That's what I want He said he was flabbergasted speechless You weren't supposed to say that",
      "You were supposed to say no. And then he was going to say, in the same way other people... He said that he realized that in that moment for that young man what made a physical relationship moral was not that there was clear-cut responsibilities between those engaging it",
      "under the provisions of the Sharia this was a relationship that had the endorsement of family and community. The only thing that he needed for physical relationships to be moral was consent. He said, this is a different world. Now my question and what I think I'm going to be trying to address during",
      "make the ideals of Islam relevant? How do we communicate them effectively in this world? And it is a task. It is difficult, in fact I would even venture to say its perilous but one thing that I remember Dr Jackson said to me just in a casual phone conversation",
      "Many years ago, we were talking and you said to me, what do you think about this hadith of the Prophet ﷺ? كان رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم يعلمنا صلاة الاستخارة كما يعلمن سورة في القرآن That the Prophet صلى اللہ عليه وسلام used to teach us استخار The way he would teach us chapters from the Qur'an.",
      "I said, mashaAllah. Right? And then Dr. Jackson said no. This actually suggests that even, mishaAllah when you're that cute you can just walk right in front of me oblivious to the whole thing, you know. MashaAllah He said this suggests",
      "did not have all the answers. Even the guidance that the Prophet ﷺ was upon, that Allah Ta'ala gave him, did not obviate the need of appealing directly to God spontaneously asking God what should I do? And this is something",
      "And that if we aren't doing that, if we don't find ourselves compelled to ask Allah, what should I be doing? What should I tell my teenager? What Should I be talking about during my MSA sessions? What I should be speaking to my neighbors about and I really don't know but I'm appealing to Allah for him to guide me",
      "then you aren't being honest about the nature of what we're dealing with. But, the good thing for us is if we are sincere Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will aid us and reward us. And if we err inshaAllah with tawbah Allah will forgive us. But what we want to talk about are some of those communal mechanisms right?",
      "some of those technologies of the self that we have to make accessible to people so that some of what we have in our tradition becomes intelligible, become something that you know its efficacy it's significance,",
      "And we also endeavor to share that with our neighbors so I couldn't only have that was thoughtful Allah leave a little community said muslimi well, I want and in hand you'll be there about it Shall I will ask dr. Zainab to say a few words about her session as well which will be tomorrow morning Dr.. Zainob as you all know masha'allah is a professor of Islamic studies at Howard University and Just amazing yeah",
      "She's a community member also. Dr. Jackson, brother of Aida Allah, I'm honored and humbled to be with you",
      "with you in this program and on this table. Thank you, Dr. Jackson about being our teacher in different ways. You're teaching us how to really bring Islam back as an Ummah. And this is also part of just to add to what you said",
      "about the maqasat Qur'aniyya, what my father rahimahullah said about tawheed, taskiyah and Imran which built that civilization. But he added the concept of ummah and this concept of Ummah community it cannot of course build without taking this responsibility for every",
      "every person in the community and this is, this was what I think his last years of his life he worked on uh the Quran. And as as Asuli, as someone who established different methodology to understand",
      "that personal relationship with the Book of Allah. With building that strong and compassionate relationship, with the book of Allah, will allow every one of us according and based on our background understanding level of iman",
      "to dive into the Quran, ask questions, strengthen our relationships. Come always with that kind of whatever that you have, you will have that dialogue with Allah. Dialogue with the Quran and of course as methodologies try to understand",
      "offered by our scholars as methods in practical way. For, of course and that's what inshallah I will try to cover tomorrow really to help my students and by the way I'm also using the same methodology even with my non-Muslims",
      "the seminary or the divinity of Howard University. And I connect them with the book of Allah as well, because I believe this message is not only for Muslims but it's for humanity and when we establish that understanding, we get the result and that's what in my classroom I find that sometimes really it's just like last week",
      "Last week, this week in fact on Tuesday one of the students she was telling me about the salah and the prayer. What would you like to know about Islam or something? And suddenly I found her raise her hand",
      "What is this? She said, the dua. And the way how you make that dua and when you raise your hands as if you open your hands and your hearts and asking God, the creator to come to you. And she started crying. And",
      "For Muslims, when they open their hands and ask Allah it's something different. This is one thing. And about the community last semester also I always speak about that community because I believe even with the African American community",
      "to build that kind of ummah. Now they know, they don't use even the community, the word community but they use the ummah because they understood this is something it's part of our relationships and that's what we have to always improve. I'll give you one story and then I will give you the prerequisite for my class tomorrow inshallah or my session tomorrow before",
      "we get to approach the Quran inshallah, to find our answers and our questions about Tawheed. Last semester also part of the practices and exercises I asked my students to interview one of the Muslims just to learn more about the concept of Tawheid, Ummah family",
      "And suddenly one of the students, he said can I question or ask or interview my sister? Baby sister. He said baby sister because he's a Christian. He says my baby sister is Muslim for 20 years and I haven't spoken with her for 20",
      "start this class. Now I feel my heart is open to call her and ask about her, an interviewer.\" Then he came next week. Wallahi, he was crying. And he said, I left my sister for 20 years because she became Muslim,",
      "with her, I reconnected. And he emphasized this just also on Tuesday. He was telling me my baby sister says to you,. That's I think what we really as Dr. Jackson emphasize that we have to have that confidence in what we believe and how we approach it",
      "that love, not only for Muslims but for humanity because that's what it is. The message that we carry and that's how the Quran teaches us. And as we come closer to Allah his words and the Quran, we will find ourselves there. So the question for everyone of us do you know the Quran?",
      "The second question, does the Quran know you? And how does the Qur'an know you. What are the signs that you can find for yourself that the Qur-an knows you?",
      "work on this tonight and at Fajr, you need to work on your heart because this Quran was revealed upon the heart of Prophet Muhammad. And once we come to approach this book, we have to really come",
      "of my heart where am I what is the state of my hard I will inshallah tomorrow also because that we don't have time today I want you to look for three characteristics that the Quran described the hearts the healthy",
      "And the three categories are al-munib, al-qalb, and munib. And as you know of course the heart in the Quran is qalb and also fuad and also it's mentioned sadr but mostly we are talking about qalab, the heart so there's munib which is returning and turning to Allah all the time",
      "And this is in Surah Qaf, Surah 50. For all of you, you can go back and recite it and read it. And the second one is Al-Mutmain. And this also you will find it in Surat Ar-Ra'at, Surat 13, Ayah 28. And you can read the entire surah and reflect.",
      "Ibrahim alayhi salam and the stage that the final stage is Qalb Saleem which is also with Ibrahim Alayhi Salam so we have to always ask ourselves how was your heart today? And insha'Allah, that will cover many issues but",
      "Subhanallah, there is a math heart institute which is an American Institute has nothing to do with the Quran and subhanallah they found so many things about that what Allah and I don't want to really just connect this with that but what Allah is using about the heart Yaqilun",
      "now it becomes as part of the signs that people maybe not even before that pay attention to. But Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him also, sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam who explained to us about that heart when its sound, the entire body is sound and when it's corrupt or spoiled",
      "I have a slide for you, but it didn't work to show you that that's what it was. It has been now found that the coherent in the heart when you reach this, the entire body, the entire faculties will be in coherence which is its start with that insha'Allah.",
      "Zakat Malo Hayden, Dr. Zainab may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala give us all to speak my Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la Enable all of the people who are here and noble our illustrious scholars have shared their words today Inshallah we're gonna go ahead and break for Asia just two quick announcements inshaAllah what we're going to ask everyone to do is We're gonna we're Gonna have to clear out this area here so we can get ready for Salah So in as orderly a fashion as possible also Just announcements we have a bake sale on the end at the Kahwa cafe",
      "the Kahwa Cafe so please go support the local MSA's with the bake sale inshallah and I want to ask everyone to make a special dua for the Qortuba volunteers and the Alim volunteers that have helped put this program together specifically brother Arif mashallah and sister Amna have done an amazing job here from Qortaba, Sister Shireen and the entire staff at Alim may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward them Jazakumullahu khayran inshaAllah we'll see everyone tomorrow morning. As-salamu alaikum",
      "على الفلاح الله أكبر الله أکبر لا إله إلا",
      "Straighten the lines, fill in the gaps. Allahu Akbar!",
      "الحمد لله رب العالمين الرحمن الرحيم مالك يوم الدين إياك نعبد وإياك",
      "وعلى جنوبهم ويتفكرون في خلق السماء",
      "ربنا ما خلقت هذا باطلا سبحانك فقنا عذاب النار",
      "ربنا إننا سمعنا مناديا ينادي للإيمان أن آمنوا بربكم فآمنا ربما فاغفر لنا ذنوبنا وكفر عنا سيئاتنا وتوفنا مع الأبرار",
      "ربنا وآتنا ما وعدتنا على رسلك ولا تخزنا يوم القيامة إنك لا تخلف الميعاد",
      "مال الرحيم مالك يوم الدين إياك نعبد وإياك",
      "يوقد من شجرة مباركة زيتونة لا شرقية ولا غربية",
      "ولو لم تمسسه نار نور على نور يهدي الله لنوره من يشاء ويضرب الله الأمثال للناس والله بكل شيء عنيم",
      "في بيوت أدنى الله أن ترفع ويذكر فيها اسمه يسبح له فيها بالغدو والآصال",
      "الله أكبر سمع الله لمن حميده الله أکبر",
      "السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته",
      "Allahumma salli wa sallim wa barik ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi.",
      "Dr. Sherman Abduh Hakim Jackson, Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans and Dr. Zainab Alwani",
      "and understanding what our perspective as Muslims should be. Often times we forget that Islam has a rich intellectual tradition, rich intellectual traditions. There are modern philosophers today that reference the works of Al-Ghazal who we know as Al Ghazali, of Ibn Rushd or of Avros who we known as Ibn Rusht",
      "we know as Ibn Rushd. These were known as the pinnacle of civilizational and philosophical authority at their times. And for us, what Dr. Jackson was mentioning just before Aisha that Dr. Zainab and Ustad al-Baytullah were building on is that we can't do this alone. We can't",
      "a civilization. It has to be all of us that are involved and what I mean by that is that some people think that if you had a million more, two million more ten million more scholars that your problems would be solved right? Some people say oh yeah only we had 20 million more score 10 million more Scholars then we could solve these problems but the reality is brothers and sisters",
      "on an everyday basis is not with scholars. It's with the average Muslim. Getting more scholars would be nice, but raising the Islamic literacy of the general public, of us, the average Muslims, is what we need. So that when you and I come to the table to discuss issues, we're coming and we're singing from the same sheet of music. We're understanding things with the same foundational baseline.",
      "That is what the pursuit of knowledge should be for every single person here. At Adam Center, we're offering these programs not just so that we can pontificate in a vacuum somewhere. It's so you and I are educated about how to deal with our issues. How to address the problems of modern society. How do build a better world for our children and our societies' children. That ultimately what we need.",
      "And the Prophet, alayhi salatu wasalam, in one of his first khutbas that he ever gave after the hijrah to Medina. He told the people, spread peace. Feed food to one another. Maintain your ties of kinship.",
      "But perhaps most importantly, brothers and sisters, pray at night when the people are sleeping. And you will enter paradise with peace. Our civilization, our ethos is in prayer. Without a connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it doesn't matter how many accomplishments you have in the world. If this is missing, we lose everything.",
      "What do I mean by that? Our Akhira is gone. We have to build a better society infused with God-centeredness, infused with god consciousness, infused wihgod firstess. Putting Allah first. That is what the Prophet taught us. This is why he was able",
      "difficult situations that he was placed in because he wasn't doing it for himself. He wasn't even doing it other people, he was doing it solely for the pleasure of Allah. That's the civilization we want to build. That what we have built and inshaAllah ta'ala that's all of you and I included are going to build here in America. May Allah give us the best in this world and the next world and protect us from punishment of fire.",
      "May Allah give us tawfiq in all of our affairs. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us the knowledge to be able to correct the wrongs in society. May Allaah protect us from all of the evils in the world around us and allow us to be those who benefit society at large. May ALLAH give us a proper understanding of His book and his teachings. May allah infuse within us a love for his beloved",
      "which pleases him. Jazakumullah khairan inshallah ta'ala for those that are interested the Aalam program will begin tomorrow morning at 9 a.m it'll be downstairs in the community hall. Jazakkumullah Khairan"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/An Intimate Conversation With DR SHERMAN JACKSON w_L4TyBdhiVfs&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750825078.opus",
    "text": [
      "I want to begin by thanking Dr. Jackson and his family for surprising us with this visit One of the prayers of the Prophet was to ask God for good surprises, and just refuge in him from bad surprises So this visit and this evening is really a very special and blessed surprise for us We didn't anticipate such an honor having Dr.Jackson and his Family with us this weekend",
      "But we feel that Allah has answered that prayer for us, and He gave us this beautiful surprise. And it's a very great honor to always be in the presence of scholars. It's an honor. But it is particularly for us at Ta'if Collective an honor to be in presence of Dr. Jackson because he's one of the people who are in a very real way behind a lot of what we do here. So Dr.Jackson maybe will just get right to the point why this text? Why now?",
      "First of all, I want to say in all sincerity that it is really a blessing to be here. And when I say in",
      "is the fact that we are succeeding in moving beyond a certain stagnation, that continues to grip certain segments of the community wherein we don't have the kinds of safe spaces that TATLIF both aims to and actually succeeds at providing for Muslims to be able to come into and to share in the journey of Islam.",
      "Islam and to do so in a way that is not cultic. And by not culting I mean that Islam has to be understood and lived in the matter that it empowers human beings to live life as it is, not just life as we would like it to be.",
      "opposed to empowering them to confront and deal with reality. That is closer to a cult than it is to a religion, and what we need are safe spaces where we can come and we can put on the table the everyday realities, and by that I mean both the challenges and the opportunities because I think that oftentimes you know we've learned a certain rhetorical style",
      "way of thinking, especially for Muslims who live in this part of the world. We always think about reality in terms of the problems that it poses and far less often in terms opportunities that are before us as well but both in terms the opportunities and challenges we need to understand Islam and to understand",
      "be made to address that effectively and that Islam empowers us to confront and face anything a human existence has to offer. And I think one of the things we need to sometimes remind ourselves is that Prophet Muhammad, his life was not the most hunky dory life you can imagine, in point",
      "that many of us could not think of facing once, let alone repeatedly. You know, repeatedly having loved ones die and die and be injured and lost etc., and yet this does not bring him to despair, this does",
      "know, he's only worth worshiping when we get what we want and when we don't, we sort of stomp our feet and walk away. You know, we need to be reminded that, you know, Allah will test us with good and He will test",
      "all that we have and all that don't have, this is ultimately up to God. And we can never allow ourselves to forget that fact. It reminds me of one line in this book where Ibn Atta'allah says that a person who sees the source of his difficulties",
      "created entities, other human beings, political systems, whatever they happen to be. If he sees the ultimate source of his problems in created entities... He's like a dog who a man hits in the head with a brick and then the dog goes and bites the brick because he doesn't understand that the man is not the ultimate",
      "their bounty, their wealth, their education, their riches, their beautiful family who sees the source of this and anything other than God is like a horse who when its trainer appears on the scene he wags his tail in happiness but when its owner shows up he pays them no attention. Right? This book was",
      "not really a part of a sustained plan. And in some ways, it sort of imposed itself on me. When I wrote Islam and the Black American, and then Islam and The Problem of Black Suffering, these were not books that were designed or written to be",
      "to be limited to a black experience. And I hope that those who actually read the books will see that, but again for me Islam has to deal with concretes and we cannot stay on the level of abstractions",
      "in America, and I'm one of them. That community is one that is predominantly people by individuals of African descent. Black Americans are the majority of the convert community in this country. And I don't say that as some sort of bragging point but that's a reality",
      "reality. That is a fact and you don't have opinions about facts in terms of whether they're facts or not, they are what they are. And for me Islam has to deal with concrete facts that is a FACT! And if you think that we can talk about Islam as an abstraction I was sort of reminded when you said that you know you asked why am i doing this? Well to help Islam and the Muslims",
      "These are broad abstractions. Anybody can say that. Anybody, anywhere in the world, anytime and under any circumstance could say that but if we're going to get concrete and deal with the real live realities, the real life history, the",
      "living in this part of the world, we have to get concrete. And that was the whole point of dealing with Islam and the black American, in part. The other part was that in America... I said what? In America. I think that one of the civilizational forces",
      "of America. One of the historical failures, let us say, of America and most Americans recognize this now. This is not a complaint. It's not a sneer. This isn't a nasty criticism of America simply a recognition of a fact but one of the",
      "the matter in which America has dealt with the issue of race and racial hierarchy. And any religion that has ambitions to become a religion that inspires the best of any society, it has to be able",
      "to deal with that society's very concrete illnesses. And so Islam and the black American, and Islam and problem of black suffering is not simply addressed to black American Muslims but it is addressed also to the broader American society with the aim of trying to highlight and model",
      "historical reality in American society. And I believe, personally, again that any religion that aspires to any kind of broad-based societal recognition in a society like America has to come to terms with the issue of race and that has to be a part of its moral repertoire it has",
      "theological repertoire. It has to empower people to get beyond a problem in moral terms, and ways that can be grounded in religious teaching. This book, in a sense, goes beyond the last two because it goes, in essence, from the more specific to the more general without getting out of the specifics",
      "I just came back from overseas. I won't say any country, so it won't sound like any kind of critique. In fact if I mentioned the country would be misleading because although what I'm about to say took place in this country",
      "conference that included people from all over the Muslim world. But one of the things that I noticed, and it's not the first time is the extent to which Muslims the world over remain saturated with",
      "with the sensibilities, with the presumptions, with presuppositions, with ideals and vision of the dominant civilization in the world today. That is sort of Western liberalism. And these sensibilities continue to very fundamentally shape",
      "but not only how they think, but how they actually feel. What it is that they actually aspire to and this is across the board. This is whether we're talking about the Muslim world or we're taking about America. And it appeared to me that in very concrete terms what this reflects",
      "to get beyond such externals as fiqh and theology, um...to the nitty-gritty of the issue. Our social reality as Muslims is not determined by our fiqhh.",
      "may tell us we must do this, we must not do that. We should do this. We shouldn't do that but that will not determine what we actually do or do not do. I can learn Babu Sola and I can",
      "What time Fajr is? That won't get me up for Fajar. And to think, therefore, that fiqh and theology and all of these things that deal with externals, and I'm not saying it all deals with externels, but the bulk of it deals with",
      "that discourse will somehow change our social reality, that's a misguided notion. At the expense... Just give me 30 seconds here. At this expense because I want to say this in a way that you can take this away. It's a takeaway point. It something you can process and remember.",
      "I'm thinking about an Italian thinker. My name is Antonio Gramsci. Some of you may have heard of GramsCI. Those who haven't, GramsCi was an Italian Marxist and he was in prison for his activities and while in prison he wrote the prison notes",
      "And he developed this theory of hegemony. Basically, it went like this. Gramsci sort of turned Marx on his head. Marx had been of the opinion that society was shaped by those who monopolized the means of production, the means",
      "to control wealth, control society. Gramsci however looked specifically among other things at America he was an Italian in an Italian prison but he looked at America before and after the Great Depression we all know that during the Great",
      "monopolize the means of production, what happened to them? They lost those means. The whole stock market crashed, all right? People went from riches to rags overnight and yet Gramsci recognized something. Society basically didn't change. The same kind of deference I used to give",
      "although you were no longer a rich industrialist, I still continued to look up to you and treat you with the same deference that I had treated you with before. If the means of monopolizing production is really what controlled that, then that should have ceased to be a reality but it did not. And so Gramsci came to the conclusion that",
      "those who control the means of producing and disseminating ideas and images. Because ideas and image deal with the pre-conscience. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? In other words, you know they can hit you in such a way that they get beyond all your rational defenses",
      "If I follow what I'm, this is a little abstract. I don't want to be too abstract but it's why we want the things that we want? Why do you want those Nikes? Let me just think about that right? Pair of ZoomZoom sneakers, Nikes. Why do we want them Nikes It's not the quality of the sneaker Right? Why Do We Want The Nikes",
      "is because we have been infused, all right? By pre-rational forces that attribute a certain value to those Nikes. You follow what I mean by that? And so there is this pre- rational reality, alright? That thing that pushes me from behind, okay?",
      "I began to see that we teach fit, we talk about fit. We talk until we're blue in the face and nothing changes. You know the rights of the husband, the rights or the wife, the right of women, all these... Nothing changes or very little changes. Why? Because the pre-rational animators, that nefs has in a sense been marginalized",
      "been marginalized in our discourse. And so for me, in order to be able to try to introduce something that would bring the nefs, the self, the pre-rational self back to center stage where we as a community could recognize the importance of addressing that as well and this book is not designed",
      "a grand solution to all our problems in that area. It is simply designed to initiate a process whereby we as a community can begin to recognize the importance of addressing our nefs, and so that when we talk about our problems, we don't just talk about them in terms of the apparent problem. When we talk",
      "we don't simply talk about having lessons in fiqh and having lessons theology but having nothing that deals with the refinement of the self. How do I train myself? How do align my desires, alright, with obedience to Allah? How did we do all these things both individually and collectively? And so for me this book stemmed out of a sense",
      "that if we don't acquire the ability to address these kinds of issues effectively then again very little is going to change in our individual or collective lives because the added accumulation of information more and more and",
      "Interplay between fit and tasawwuf or spiritual cultivation. Obviously when you title the book, you title it with something that catches our attention. Sufis... And in your introduction, you talk about some of the historical development of Sufism. You describe Ibn al-Talib as an approach to Sufim as a minimalist approach. So there's...you're highlighting the fact that there have been these kind of conversations amongst the scholars historically about what is Sufizm? How would it be properly practiced?",
      "in a way that automatically highlights some of that kind of tension. If you could tell us a little bit about the title? Yeah, very briefly. As you probably noticed from both Islam and the Black American and Islam and The Problem of Black Suffering, I am one of those who believes that Islam is a storied enterprise. That means that Islam",
      "in the world and through history to understand and to self-police itself. And, the point of departure in that regard is the cumulative effort of the Muslims to do that i.e., tradition. But tradition is only a point of departuure. And it's a grand mistake for us to imagine",
      "for realities that people in the past never even faced before. It's a point of departure. Sufism as a part of that tradition has come into the modern world and certainly into communities in the West, as a very controversial entity. And I don't think I have to go into very much detail about that fact.",
      "This is problematic because Sufism is the repository of some of the most profound, some of themost valuable, someof the most effective discourse about refinement ofthe self not only in Muslim history but in human history.",
      "what Muslims have had to say in this area and compare that with virtually any other tradition in human history. These guys are giants, and yet because of the controversial nature or the controversial reputation let us say of Sufism, all right? Much of the community in the West has been cut off from that entire tradition. So what I tried to do was",
      "was to highlight a point that I initially made in Islam and the Black American, and that is the following. That Sufism has traditionally included a mystical element or a mystical dimension and a non-mystical dimension. A dimension that deals with precisely the self, the refinement, the training, and the disciplining of the self.",
      "It is the mystical dimension that sometimes has gone to excess, to the point that it has engaged in certain forms of pantheism. And I'm just being blunt and explicit here because that, my understanding, is historical reality. What is pantheist? Just for those who... Pantheism whereby the dividing line, boundary, distinction",
      "the distinction between God, the creator and creation is blurred. And this whole notion that somehow we can ontologically unite with God become literally one with God. That is the notion of pantheism. And there have been expressions of Sufism that advocate that.",
      "just describing the situation as it is. And that is precisely what has made Sufism problematic for many, from whom Sufisim is problematic. However, that's not all of Sufisme and what has happened in modern times is two things. One, those who want to attack Sufismo equate Sufisms as a whole with its most extreme expressions of mystical pantheism",
      "So if you accept Sufism, that means you accept what? The most extreme expressions of pantheism. And in that way, Sufisim as a whole is what? Is banished to the margin, if not excluded. On the other hand, those who want to apologize for Sufisme say that Sufisms simply what? It's only spiritual refinement.",
      "It's only ihsan. It's onl disciplining the self and in that way they can say about people who are opposed to Sufism, that they're opposed to what? They're opposed spirituality. They're oppose to disciplineing the self. They oppose spiritual refinement. Did everybody follow what I mean by that? And so the average everyday Muslim",
      "Muslim ends up lost in the sauce, confused. Not really knowing where to go but given the decibels of the controversy over Sufism and it's pretty loud, it's scary. It can scare lots of people away from it. Okay? And so what I tried to do was to point out that there are these two aspects of Sufisim. One has been known",
      "Not all forms of mysticism are pantheistic. I want to be clear about that, alright? But there's this whole other dimension of Sufism that is spiritual refinement, disciplining the self, dealing with the pre-rational, the pre conscience, alright. That should be made accessible to all Muslims because they all need it. We all need",
      "This text stuck out for me because it was my understanding that is exactly what Ibn Ata'Allah was trying to do in this text. For that reason, virtually all of those aspects of Sufism that have been traditionally a cause for controversy and attack are eliminated completely from this world. There's no pantheism there.",
      "There's not even necessity for a Sufi sheikh. There's no specific word. Concepts like fanat, baqa' they don't exist. Concept like tawassul or istighatha you know beseeching saints for favors or beseeking dead saints for favor doesn't exist there and so to me it appeared that what Ibn Atta Allah was trying to do",
      "to do was to strip Sufism down of all the controversial elements, that is the self-refinement side of Sufisim so that the everyday average Muslim could freely and openly access that without fearing all this controversy and attack and tension within",
      "the minimalist approach of Ibn Abdullah in this book. In fact, he's not even saying... The word Sufi itself doesn't exist, doesn't appear there and what he wants to do is to say look we all need to refine ourselves. We all need",
      "regime of disciplining the self. We have a tradition that has very effectively done that. There are other aspects of that tradition, however, that render it inaccessible to the average everyday Muslim. I want to put all that aside and present this to the everyday Muslim for his or her own personal and communal use. This is why",
      "you know what I'm trying to do here with this question mark that big old question mark is, I'm try to be true to Imam Atta Allah because he does not affirm any Sufism for non-Sufis alright. I want to keep it as a question. Rather than take some doctrinal position and then",
      "plunge us into yet what? Another controversy, alright that defeats the whole purpose of what we're trying to do. Alright so what I'm trying to is to make this accessible and to do so through translation because if I were just to write a book like this on my own I might be seen as one of the parties in the controversy.",
      "This ain't me. This is Ibn Ata'allah, alright? Can I read this one little... In the introduction, I want to give you a sense of what I'm trying to do here. I'm sorry, I'm getting a little older. I gotta break out from here.",
      "I'm trying to do here because this is scary stuff. Why do we need safe spaces? Because so many of our spaces are so scary! And what I'm trynna do is show that, well, this interest on the part of Ibn al-Fa'ala is not just Ibn Al-Faa'ala's interest. There are other great enormously important scholars who have the same interests",
      "You have to say this. Ibn Taymiyyah, who is supposed to be for many people what? The archenemy of Sufism. This a quote from Ibn Tamiyyih. Alright?",
      "Such that those who veer from the proper course in this regard fall into two groups. One, a group that accepts both what is true and what is false of the Sufi way. And two, a Group that rejects both what Is True and what Is False of the sufi way such as many groups of Theologians and Jurists",
      "position, this is Ibn Taymiyyah. And the right position is simply to accept of this way as well as any other way that which is consistent with the Book and the Sunnah and to reject of it as well",
      "was from the Shadili order. And Abu Hassan al-Shadili, may Allah have mercy on him, was known to be very sober in his Sufism, to have no patience for those who felt that Sufisim was some kind of alternative to Shariat. He had no patience with that. In fact he was not one of those who even believed that Sufi's had to run around as poor",
      "or you know, mendicants. You understand what I mean by that? Beggars! In fact it's reported that a Shabali used to dress well. Clean. And one time a Sufi came into the masjid where he was teaching and after his lesson went up to Shabalai and said",
      "God is not worshipped in these kind of clothing that you are wearing. What are you doing? And Shavadi and this Sufi was dressed in a very coarse woolen like knapsack, right? And he reached out and grabbed Shavadis clothes. God is worshiped in these kinds of clothing. And Shabadi looked back at him and said hmmm. He reached out",
      "Uh-uh. God is not worshiped in the kind of clothing that you are wearing. My clothing tells the people that I don't need anything from them. Your clothing tells me tell the people, that you're a need of them and so they should give you. This is Sharia. This was Sharia, Sharia straight no chaser. Alright? No, no, I mean it very seriously because this is part",
      "This is part of the controversy that comes into Sufism. That Sufis believe you don't have to ask Sharia. Of course, that's not true. There were some Sufi who advocated that but that's what Sufim as a whole was ever about. But these are some of the kinds of controversies that have come down to us and have left us in a position where we feel very hesitant about accessing this tradition",
      "There's so many problems that we are having because so many of us even in terms of the Sunnah of the Prophet I would suggest that you know, we stop playing these games If you don't know yourself and if you're not honest with yourself The Sunna of Muhammad is not likely to do you very much good at all Yeah, I know",
      "Because if you are a coward or if you stingy, you can cut your nails and shave your underarms all you want. That is not going to deal with your problem. And so many of us do as the Sudanese say. He looks at the elephant but he only curses his shadow.",
      "our own internal flaws. I have my flaws, I have issues, I've got my weaknesses they're very different from yours and I need to address mine, I need identify them, I'm going to come front and center with them, i need to be honest and courageous about that and then I need the seek ways of addressing them alright? And to just focus on those aspects of the Prophet's Sunnah that had nothing to do with that",
      "the worst people become the representatives of the sunnah. I'm not saying this is the case in any particular individual, I'm making charges here but you understand the point that I'm trying to make? And so we have to be honest and courageous and humble about who we are. If my problem is that I am stingy then I need a regime of charity. Right? You follow what I'm saying?",
      "courage, I got courage. I don't need to deal with that but that's what I want to deal because that's easy. Alright? This is about getting us honest and getting us courageous with ourselves."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION __ with Dr_ Sherman Jacks_qIRAUyYs94c&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750824088.opus",
    "text": [
      "I want to begin by thanking Dr. Jackson and his family for surprising us with this visit. One of the prayers of the Prophet, peace be upon him, was to ask God for good surprises and to seek refuge in Him from bad surprises. So this visit and this evening was really a very special and very blessed surprise for us. We didn't anticipate such an honor having Dr.",
      "We feel that Allah has answered that prayer for us, that he gave us this beautiful surprise. And it's a very great honor to always be in the presence of scholars. It's an honor. But it is particularly for us at Tadif Collective an honor to be in presence of Dr. Jackson because he's one of the people who are in a very real way behind a lot of what we do here. So Dr.Jackson maybe will just get right to the point why this text? Why now?",
      "بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله نستعينه ونستغفره وانا استهديه وناعوذ بالله من شؤون أنفسنا ومن سيئات عمالنا",
      "First of all, I want to say in all sincerity that it is really a blessing to be here. And when I say in our sincerity, I mean that because what this gathering represents",
      "is the fact that we are succeeding in moving beyond a certain stagnation, that continues to grip certain segments of the community wherein we don't have the kinds of safe spaces that TATLIF both aims to and actually succeeds at providing for Muslims to be able to come into and to share in the journey of Islam.",
      "Islam and to do so in a way that is not cultic. And by not culting I mean that Islam has to be understood and lived in the matter that it empowers human beings to live life as it is, not just life as we would like it to be.",
      "as opposed to empowering them to confront and deal with reality. That is closer to a cult than it is to a religion, and what we need are safe spaces where we can come and put on the table the everyday realities, and by that I mean both the challenges and opportunities because oftentimes you know we've learned a certain rhetorical style",
      "way of thinking, especially for Muslims who live in this part of the world. We always think about reality in terms of the problems that it poses and far less often in terms opportunities that are before us as well but both in terms the opportunities and challenges we need to understand Islam and to understand reality in such a way that Islam can be made",
      "made to address that effectively and that Islam empowers us to confront and face anything a human existence has to offer. And I think one of the things we need to sometimes remind ourselves is that Prophet Muhammad, his life was not the most hunky dory life you can imagine, in point",
      "that many of us could not think of facing once, let alone repeatedly. You know, repeatedly having loved ones die and die and be injured and lost etc., and yet this does not bring him to despair, this does",
      "He's only worth worshiping when we get what we want and when we don't, we sort of stomp our feet and walk away. We need to be reminded that Allah will test us with good and he will test as with evil. And part of our role as a community is to be able to mutually enjoy one another in ways that enable us to confront all of that with the sense of dignity and humility knowing",
      "all that we have and all that don't have, this is ultimately up to God. And we can never allow ourselves to forget that fact. It reminds me of one line in this book where Ibn Atta'allah says that a person who sees the source of his difficulties",
      "created entities, other human beings, political systems, whatever they happen to be. If he sees the ultimate source of his problems in created entities... He's like a dog who a man hits in the head with a brick and then the dog goes and bites the brick because he doesn't understand that the man is not the ultimate",
      "their bounty, their wealth, their education, their riches, their beautiful family who sees the source of this and anything other than God is like a horse who when its trainer appears on the scene he wags his tail in happiness but when its owner shows up he pays them no attention. Right? This book was",
      "not really a part of a sustained plan. And in some ways, it sort of imposed itself on me. When I wrote Islam and the Black American, and then Islam and The Problem of Black Suffering, these were not books that were designed or written to be",
      "to be limited to a black experience. And I hope that those who actually read the books will see that, but again for me Islam has to deal with concretes and we cannot stay on the level of abstractions",
      "in America, and I'm one of them. That community is one that is predominantly people by individuals of African descent. Black Americans are the majority of the convert community in this country. And I don't say that as some sort of bragging point but that's a reality.",
      "reality. That is a fact and you don't have opinions about facts in terms of whether they're facts or not, they are what they are. And for me Islam has to deal with concrete facts that is a FACT! And if you think that we can talk about Islam as an abstraction I was sort of reminded when you said that you know you asked why am i doing this? Well to help Islam and the Muslims",
      "These are broad abstractions. Anybody can say that. Anybody, anywhere in the world, anytime and under any circumstance could say that but if we're going to get concrete and deal with the real live realities, the real life history, the",
      "living in this part of the world, we have to get concrete. And that was the whole point of dealing with Islam and the black American, in part. The other part was that in America... I said what? In America. I think that one of the civilizational",
      "of America. One of the historical failures, let us say, of America and most Americans recognize this now. This is not a complaint. It's not a sneer. This isn't a nasty criticism of America simply a recognition of a fact but one of the historic failures of America has been",
      "the matter in which America has dealt with the issue of race and racial hierarchy. And any religion that has ambitions to become a religion that inspires the best of any society, it has to be able",
      "to deal with that society's very concrete illnesses. And so Islam and the black American, and Islam and problem of black suffering is not simply addressed to black American Muslims but it is addressed also to the broader American society with the aim of trying to highlight",
      "historical reality in American society. And I believe personally, again that any religion that aspires to any kind of broad based societal recognition in a society like America has to come to terms with the issue of race and that has to be a part of its moral repertoire it",
      "theological repertoire. It has to empower people to get beyond a problem in moral terms, and ways that can be grounded in religious teaching. This book, in a sense goes beyond the last two because it goes in a set from the more specific to the more general without getting out of the specifics",
      "I just came back from overseas. I won't say any country, so it won't sound like any kind of critique. In fact if I mentioned the country would be misleading because although what I'm about to say took place in this country",
      "conference that included people from all over the Muslim world. But one of the things that I noticed, and it's not the first time is the extent to which Muslims the world over remain saturated with",
      "with the sensibilities, with the presumptions, with presuppositions, with ideals and division of the dominant civilization in the world today. That is sort of Western liberalism. And these sensibilities continue to very fundamentally shape",
      "but not only how they think, but how they actually feel. What it is that they actually aspire to and this across the board. This is whether we're talking about the Muslim world or we're taking about America. And it appeared to me that in very concrete terms what this reflects is",
      "to get beyond such externals as fiqh and theology, um...to the nitty-gritty of the issue. Our social reality as Muslims is not determined by our fiqhh.",
      "may tell us we must do this, we must not do that. We should do this. We shouldn't do that but that will not determine what we actually do or do not do. I can learn Babu Salah and I can",
      "What time Fajr is. That won't get me up for Fajar. And to think therefore that fiqh and theology, and all of these things that deal with externals, and I'm not saying it all deals with externels but the bulk of it deals with",
      "that discourse will somehow change our social reality, that's a misguided notion. At the expense... Just give me 30 seconds here. At this expense because I want to say this in a way that you can take this away. It's a takeaway point. It something you can process and remember.",
      "I'm thinking about an Italian thinker. My name is Antonio Gramsci. Some of you may have heard of Gramschi. Those who haven't, GramsCI was an Italian Marxist and he was in prison for his activities. And while in prison, he wrote the prison notes",
      "And he developed this theory of hegemony. Basically, it went like this. Gramsci sort of turned Marx on his head. Marx had been of the opinion that society was shaped by those who monopolized the means of production, the means",
      "to control wealth, control society. Gramsci however looked specifically among other things at America he was an Italian in an Italian prison but he looked at America before and after the Great Depression we all know that during the Great",
      "monopolize the means of production, what happened to them? They lost those means. The whole stock market crashed. People went from riches to rags overnight and yet Gramsci recognized something. Society basically didn't change. The same kind of deference I used to give to you as a rich industrialist",
      "although you were no longer a rich industrialist, I still continued to look up to you and treat you with the same deference that I had treated you with before. If the means of monopolizing production is really what controlled that then that should have ceased to be a reality but it did not. And so Gramsci came to the conclusion that",
      "those who control the means of producing and disseminating ideas and images. Because ideas and image deal with the pre-conscience. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? In other words, you know they can hit you in such a way that they get beyond all your rational defenses",
      "This is a little abstract. I don't want to be too abstract, but it's why we want the things that we want. Why do you want those Nikes? Let me just think about that. Right? A pair of Zoom-Zoom sneakers? Nikes. Why did we want them Nikes It's not the quality of the sneaker. Right. Why",
      "is because we have been infused, all right? By pre-rational forces that attribute a certain value to those Nikes. You follow what I mean by that? And so there is this pre- rational reality, alright? That thing that pushes me from behind, okay?",
      "I began to see that we teach fit, we talk about fit. We talk until we're blue in the face and nothing changes. You know the rights of the husband, the rights or the wife, the right of all things, nothing changes or very little changes. Why? Because the pre-rational animators, that nefs has in a sense been marginalized",
      "been marginalized in our discourse. And so for me, in order to be able to try to introduce something that would bring the nefs, the self, the pre-rational self back to center stage where we as a community could recognize the importance of addressing that as well and this book is not designed",
      "grand solution to all our problems in that area. It is simply designed to initiate a process whereby we as a community can begin to recognize the importance of addressing our nefs and so that when we talk about our problems, we don't just talk about them in terms",
      "we don't simply talk about having lessons in fiqh and having lessons theology but having nothing that deals with the refinement of the self. How do I train myself? How do i align my desires, alright, with obedience to Allah? How did we do all these things both individually and collectively? And so for me this book stemmed out of a sense",
      "that if we don't acquire the ability to address these kinds of issues effectively then again very little is going to change in our individual or collective lives because the added accumulation of information more and more and",
      "Interplay between fit and tasawwuf or spiritual cultivation. Obviously when you title the book, you title it with something that catches our attention. And in the introduction, you talk about some of the historical development of Sufism. You describe it as an approach to Sufisim as a minimalist approach. So there's your highlighting the fact that there have been these kind of conversations amongst the scholars historically about what is Sufizm? How would it be properly practiced?",
      "in a way that automatically highlights some of that kind of tension. If you could tell us a little bit about the title? Yeah, very briefly. As you probably noticed from both Islam and the Black American and Islam and The Problem of Black Suffering, I am one of those who believes that Islam is a storied enterprise. That means that Islam",
      "in the world and through history to understand and to self-police itself. And, the point of departure in that regard is the cumulative effort of the Muslims to do that i.e., tradition. But tradition has only a point of departures. And it's a grand mistake for us to imagine",
      "for realities that people in the past never even faced before. It's a point of departure. Sufism, as a part of that tradition, has come into the modern world and certainly into communities in the West as a very controversial entity. And I don't think I have to go into very much detail about that fact.",
      "This is problematic because Sufism is the repository of some of the most profound, some of themost valuable, someof the most effective discourse about refinement ofthe self not only in Muslim history but in human history. And I say that you know not just as a Muslim",
      "what Muslims have had to say in this area and compare that with virtually any other tradition in human history. These guys are giants, and yet because of the controversial nature or the controversial reputation let us say of Sufism, all right? Much of the community in the West has been cut off from that entire tradition. So what I tried to do was",
      "to highlight a point that I initially made in Islam and the Black American, and that is the following. That Sufism has traditionally included a mystical element or a mystical dimension and a non-mystical dimension. A dimension that deals with precisely the self,",
      "It is the mystical dimension that sometimes has gone to excess, to the point that it has engaged in certain forms of pantheism. And I'm just being blunt and explicit here because that, in my understanding, is historical reality. What is pantheist? Just for those who... Pantheism whereby the dividing line, boundary, distinction",
      "The distinction between God the creator and creation is blurred. And this whole notion that somehow we can ontologically unite with God, become literally one with God. That is the notion of pantheism.",
      "describing the situation as it is. And that is precisely what has made Sufism problematic for many, from whom Sufisim is problematic. However, that's not all of Sufisme and what has happened in modern times is two things. One, those who want to attack Sufismo equate Sufisms as a whole with its most extreme expressions of mystical pantheism",
      "So if you accept Sufism, that means you accept what? The most extreme expressions of pantheism. And in that way, Sufisim as a whole is what? Is banished to the margin, if not excluded. On the other hand, those who want to apologize for Sufisme say that Sufisms simply what? It's only spiritual refinement.",
      "It's only ihsan. It's onl disciplining the self and in that way they can say about people who are opposed to Sufism, that they're opposed to what? They're opposed spirituality. They're oppose to disciplineing the self. They oppose spiritual refinement. Did everybody follow what I mean by that? And so the average everyday Muslim",
      "ends up lost in the sauce, confused. Not really knowing where to go but given the decibels of the controversy over Sufism and it's pretty loud, it's scary. It can scare lots of people away from it okay? And so what I tried to do was point out that there are these two aspects of Sufisms one has been known to engage in excess not all",
      "Not all forms of mysticism are pantheistic. I want to be clear about that, alright? But there's this whole other dimension of Sufism that is spiritual refinement, disciplining the self, dealing with the pre-rational, the pre conscience, alright. That should be made accessible to all Muslims because they all need it. We all need",
      "This text stuck out for me because it was my understanding that is exactly what Ibn Ata'Allah was trying to do in this text. For that reason, virtually all of those aspects of Sufism that have been traditionally a cause for controversy and attack are eliminated completely from this world. There's no pantheism there.",
      "There's not even necessity for a Sufi sheikh. There's no specific word. Concepts like fanat, baqa' they don't exist. Concept like tawassul or istighatha you know beseeching saints for favors or beseeking dead saints for favor doesn't exist there and so to me it appeared that what Ibn Atta Allah was trying to do",
      "to do was to strip Sufism down of all the controversial elements, that is, the self-refinement side of Sufisim so that the everyday average Muslim could freely and openly access that without fearing all this controversy and attack and tension within",
      "minimalist approach of Ibn Atta'Allah in this book. In fact, he's not even saying the word Sufi itself doesn't exist, that doesn't appear there and what he wants to do is to say look we all need to refine ourselves. We all need",
      "regime of disciplining the self. We have a tradition that has very effectively done that. There are other aspects of that tradition, however, that render it inaccessible to the average everyday Muslim. I want to put all that aside and present this to the everyday Muslim for his or her own personal and communal use. This is why",
      "you know what I'm trying to do here with this question mark that big old question mark is, I'm try to be true to Imam Atta Allah because he does not affirm any Sufism for non-Sufis alright. I want to keep it as a question. Rather than take some doctrinal position and then",
      "plunge us into yet what? Another controversy, alright. That defeats the whole purpose of what we're trying to do. Alright so what I'm trying to is to make this accessible and to do so through translation because if I were just to write a book like this on my own I might be seen as one of the parties in the controversy. Anybody follow what I mean by that? Well this ain't me.",
      "trying to do here because this is scary stuff. I mean why do we need safe spaces? Because so many of our spaces are so scary! And what I'm trying to show that well, this interest on the part of Ibn al-Fa'ala is not just Ibn Al-Faa'ala's interest. There are other great enormously important scholars who have the same",
      "I have to say this, this. Ibn Taymiyyah who is supposed to be for many people what? The arch enemy of Sufism. This a quote from Ibn Taimiyyah alright? The corrupt doctrines and practices that have infected these people have caused some groups to reject the way of the Sufi's altogether root and branch",
      "such that those who veer from the proper course in this regard fall into two groups. One, a group that accepts both what is true and what is false of the Sufi way, and two, a Group that rejects both what Is True and what Is False of the sufi way. Such as many groups of theologians and jurists. And",
      "position, this is Ibn Taymiyyah. And the right position is simply to accept of this way as well as any other way that which is consistent with the Book and the Sunnah and to reject of it as well",
      "was from the Shadini order. And Abu Hassan al-Shadini,, was known to be very sober in his Sufism, to have no patience for those who felt that Sufisim was some kind of alternative to Shariat. He had no patience with that. In fact he was not one of those who even believed that Sufi's had to run around as poor",
      "or you know, mendicants. You understand what I mean by that? Beggars! In fact it's reported that Shadrach and Zedekiah used to dress well. Clean. And one time a Sufi came into the masjid where he was teaching. And after his lesson went up to Shaddaih and said,",
      "God is not worshipped in these kind of clothing that you are wearing. What are you doing? And Shabadi, and this Sufi was dressed in a very coarse woolen like knapsack. You know what I mean? Right? And he reached out and grabbed Shabali's clothes. God is worshiped in these kinds of clothing. And Shabladi looked back at him and said hmmm. Reached out and sampled the man's burlap sack and said uh-uh",
      "Uh-uh. God is not worshiped in the kind of clothing that you are wearing. My clothing tells the people that I don't need anything from them. Your clothing tells me tell the people, that you're a need of them and so they should give to you. Listen to Shadrach. Listen Shadra. Sharia? Straight no chaser. Alright? No, no, I mean that very seriously because this is part",
      "part of the controversy that comes into Sufism. That Sufis believe you don't have to ask Sharia. Of course, that's not true. There were some Sufi who advocated that but that's what Sufim as a whole was ever about. But these are some of the kinds of controversies that have come down to us and have left us in a position where we feel very hesitant about accessing this tradition",
      "to so many problems that we are having. Because so many of us, even in terms of the sunnah of the Prophet, I would suggest that you know, we stop playing these games. If you don't know yourself and if you're not honest with yourself, the Sunnah of Muhammad is not likely do you very much good at all. Yeah, I know. Uh oh!",
      "Because if you are a coward or if you're stingy, you can cut your nails and shave your underarms all you want. That is not going to deal with your problem. And so many of us do as the Sudanese say. He looks at the elephant but he only curses his shadow.",
      "own internal flaws. I have my flaws, I have issues, I've got my weaknesses they're very different from yours and I need to address mine, I need identify them, I'm going to come front and center with them, i need to be honest and courageous about that and then I need the seek ways of addressing them alright? And to just focus on those aspects of the Prophet's Sunnah that had nothing to do with that",
      "the worst people become the representatives of a sunnah. I'm not saying this is the case in any particular individual, I'm making charges here but you understand the point that I'm trying to make? And so we have to be honest and courageous and humble about who we are. If my problem is that I am stingy then I need some regime of charity. Right? You follow what I'm saying?",
      "I mean, courage. I got courage! I don't need to deal with that. But that's what I want to deal wit'. Because that's easy. Alright? This is about getting us honest and getting us courageous with ourselves."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Black Culture _ Assimilation with Dr_ Sherman Jack__1750821994.opus",
    "text": [
      "I am the beneficiary of an attachment to a culture that took root in this country over a period of 400 years, a proud independent culture. There is a cuisine, there is a dress, there's a swagger, there as a whole culture all right? In which I'm an active participant.",
      "the whole idea of assimilating into America makes no sense."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/CelebrateMercy_ Dr_ Sherman Jackson on Polygamy in_Q6XrGEy9i1A&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750822386.opus",
    "text": [
      "My name is Sherman Abdul Hakim Jackson. I'm the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California. I've been asked to come and talk to you, to say a few words about the issue of the Prophet and his marriage or his marriages in fact",
      "his marriages in fact, and point of fact more specifically about the question of the Prophet and the fact that he was married to more than one woman at a time. What is called popularly polygamy but what technically is actually polygyny. And the reason I've been asked to talk about this is that it's been pointed out that oftentimes when Muslims speak",
      "in his marriage of the Prophet as family man, the issue of polygyny is sort of swept under the rug as a topic to be avoided. And I think it is important that the topic itself not be avoided but that it be brought out front and center and that it'd be spoken about in a way that empowers both Muslims and non-Muslims",
      "Muslims do not fall prey to some of the ideological extremism on one side and non-Muslims do not fell pray to some other ideological extremist on the other side but rather that we come to understand polygyny as practiced by the Prophet as it actually was. The first thing that we want to understand in this context is a very important lesson",
      "and as upheld in Islam is a 100% thoroughly absolutely volunteer arrangement. Muslim women exercise, enjoy, have the right to agency in determining who they marry. Polygyny is no exception to that basic rule. Even the Prophet Muhammad himself did not use",
      "fact that he was the prophet, he was a messenger of God. He was a man who was recognized in his community as having that authority and relationship with God. And despite that fact, he himself did not seek to use that authority as a means of imposing polygyny on any woman who did not want to be part of that arrangement.",
      "or clans in Arabia whose women were not very easily ingratiated with the institution of polygyny and the Prophet himself explicitly avoided any overtures of Polygony to those tribes, or to the women of those tribes. Again refusing to use his authority as prophet to try to impose Polygyny on anyone. So again Polygyyny, first thing we need to understand",
      "is that it is an all-volunteer arrangement. Now this raises some question about the relevance of polygyny in modern times and this, of course, is a huge topic but I think we might make some headway in beginning to understand it if we begin with the following point of departure.",
      "America is not one culture, but many cultures. However we may define those cultures as American cultures. And the fact that I am comfortable in my particular American culture does not disabuse me of the recognition that my culture is not universally valid. That there are other peoples in America who have an American culture",
      "differs from my own, or may differ from my on. There are people in other parts of the world, in other times, in all places for whom an American culture may not be the chosen way in which they go about regulating their affairs of their lives and so we must be careful that we don't uphold one particular culture as being universally valid",
      "And I say this to say the following, Islam does not obligate anyone to engage in polygyny. Rather it holds out polygyna as a means for those cultures, those individuals in particular times and particular places under particular circumstances who may see in polygamy",
      "effects that occur when sexual relationships are not regulated through marriage. And in particular, some of the harmful effects that may fall upon children and women are some of these harmful effects, that polygyny assuming that the men involved have",
      "Because again, we have to understand that Islam doesn't obligate this institution but it allows it for the purpose of enhancing the health of society. Not bringing problems into society and for those individuals, those peoples, those cultures in those times, those places under those circumstances",
      "regulating sexual relationships through the medium of marriage where all of the individual individuals involved can be protected and any individuals that might issue from those unions can be protect, it can have the safety net. The emotional advantage of a full fledged family with a mother and a father and natural attachments to both Islam holds out polygyny as",
      "means of regulating those affairs. And so to summarize, we must note again that Islam does not impose polygyny on anyone. Number two, polygyncy is an all-volunteer arrangement no one is forced to enter into a",
      "that there are circumstances, times, places, cultures, peoples that will recognize polygyny as a preferred means of managing sexual relationships by confining upon them the advantage of family as opposed to some of the other ways in which these relationships are sometimes managed",
      "that we as a society would hope that we will be able to avoid Jazakum Allah Khair Thank you very much Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullah"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Abdal Hakim Jackson -- Sharia Law_ The_MZWVK6mM34c&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750822735.opus",
    "text": [
      "I think it's total hypocrisy for anyone to the United States to tell anywhere in the world and not execute since we have capital punishment, and we're killing people all over the world. There is pressure from within Afghanistan for the religious community there who is following Sharia law as they interpret it. That's my understanding of the article I read.",
      "people from other, would there be any influence that could go to those in power in Afghanistan to interpret Sharia law? Would there be another place they can come and have some kind of discussion with Karzai in Afghanistan? I don't know. I think though a couple things if you're asking about the possible influence of an American Muslim community",
      "exercise in that particular incident. No, I can't think of anything positive. I think it has to come from Muslim communities and other. Yeah but I don't know. Again part of the problem here is if we assume that the reason why this young man found himself at this position is purely legal then we could expect people who convinced them",
      "My understanding is that he violated Sharia law.",
      "vindication, no legal explanation is going to change that. I don't know. I can say this, I don' t know the particulars of the case, prima facie it sounds ridiculous to me and as a scholar of Islamic law, I cannot imagine why somebody may receive a death sentence for downloading material that... Wow!",
      "I wanted to talk a little bit more about man-made versus God made laws. Because my understanding is that everything, only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala understands",
      "Sure. Yeah. But don't ask me that.",
      "Look, I think that what we have to distinguish between and you asked the question man so if i get a little bit technical here I apologize but I hope I can stay simple. We have to disinguish between primary religious authority and secondary interpretive authority And of course the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet are the primary religious authorities for Muslims",
      "The Quran and the Sunnah cannot interpret themselves. The Quran doesn't jump out at you and say, I mean this. And so Muslims have to interpret the Quran. And there's a whole tradition of interpreting methodology in the whole universe that has been established of boundaries of communal interpretation. And whereas we tend to look upon this with a lot of suspicion because religious communities are notorious",
      "are notorious for being, you know, finalistic and just very closed to interpretation. Let me give an example of just how vast the differences in interpretation can be. There was a classical scholar who wrote a book he died in year 318 of the Muslim calendar, wrote a title The Book of Unanimous Consensus. And this is a book in which I mean this was a major scholar",
      "Ibn al-Mumar, he actually had a school of law of his own. That's how big he was. He cataloged all the issues on which there was unanimous consensus among the jurists of Idlib. The Saudis published this book about in the 1970s. It came out to be about 140 pages. A contemporary of his, the famous Al-Qabri who died in pretense, so he is contemporary.",
      "The book of disagreement. And this will catalog all the issues on which the jurists of the day disagree. 3000 pages in manuscript! This is actual reality, alright? So the idea of variant understandings, interpretations here and there... It's not going to have a problem with that.",
      "In fact, what it had a problem with is any one individual claiming the authority to compose their interpretation on the community. It did not accept that. So what I'm talking about in terms of man-made law, obviously all interpretations are mediated through secular history. We are ensconced in time and space. That in and of itself, to me does not necessarily",
      "not necessarily make it man-made law what I was talking about is the fact however that before and negative indications for example let's say just general implications yeah you know it's probably a good idea to have people driving around in a way that kills each other all right but if there are no directives or injunctions in terms of how this should be regulated none at",
      "So for example, if I were to tell you look, I don't have to have a driver's license. There is nothing in the Quran, nothing in this synagogue that would ever bind me to having a driver license. And if I was to challenge you to produce proof that I do, you'd have a very difficult time doing that. By man-made, I'm simply talking about",
      "as a broader interest all right that scripture may allude to but does not address and we have to come up with ways of addressing it that's what i'm talking about they always recognize this all right and by the way in my talk i was not implying that american law may not be i mean it may be a violation of god's law",
      "man-made at all is a violation of God's law. That's problematic. Now with regard to Professor Wadoon's statement on women leading the prayer, see here I'm a homeless pluralist personally and I don't mean that as a cop out.",
      "I don't, I mean I have to allow every opinion because I really don't know what I think. Right? Or I don' believe in absolute truth. I do believe in Absolute Truth. Absolute truth exists and I know what it is! I also don't though that I might not be able to convince you of what it",
      "additional authority that I don't have, I can't impose it upon you. The problem I have with the way that Professor Madhu's opinion is talked about is that if people recognize yes this is an opinion that deserves recognition then they're good but if an opposing opinion, does everybody understand what I mean? Opinion emerges these guys hate winning",
      "I take winning. Do you understand the point that I'm making there? And I think that when we're talking about opinions at Islamic law, we have to recognize that we're talk about opinions of Islamic law. There may be many things that I want or that I would like to see. For me to be able to claim those as a basis for the way",
      "communities of structure in switzerland i then have to validate that at islamic law and I may or may not be able to do that and if I'm not able to that, then I cannot claim it in the name of Islamic Law. Do you understand what I mean by that? And I think that rather than look at the conservative side of this, and there is a conservative side to it, what we should look at is the fact that oh wait a minute there's also a positive",
      "Because the very fact that I can claim whatever I want to claim as Islamic law also means you can't do the same thing. So it protects both of us. In other words, if Professor Wadud and I'm not... This is not against Professor Wadood though. Anybody get any wrong ideas? But if she could claim an opinion, alright, then sometimes we sound a bit like her.",
      "What about the opposing opinion that this is a matter of worship?",
      "I mean, go to any local mosque and you'll see some people in there praying like this. You'll also see some praying like that. You're also going to be praying like... But clearly prayer is a matter of witness observance",
      "And clearly all of these are matters of interpretation. I don't know, they don't say that religious observances are not open to interpretation. What they say is that you cannot do analogy in the area of religious observance. In other words, in terms of simple transactions, let's say",
      "Let's say, if I owe you $100 and I pay you $ 100 and I say, You know what? That was really nice of you. Here is 50 more. Alright? That's a good fee. Did you follow what I mean about that? But I cannot say, well God said pray two units for the morning prayer but",
      "I think I'm going to play 9. Because the more, the better. I can't do that. Because religious observances are not open to analogy. Analogy. Do you understand what I mean by that? Okay. Alright. How many units are there...",
      "In other words, in religious observance let's take Ramadan for example. Not as the canonical prayer. That is the point. Not at the canonical Prayer. Okay alright I cannot pray nine rakats or nine units for the morning prayer and consider myself doing a better job because of more than merit",
      "Okay? In the area of religious observances, I can analogize all over the place. I'm sorry, in the area civil transactions, muhammadah, I could analogize it all over this place. That's what they say you cannot do in religious observance. Not that you cannot reason on them or debate them or have different opinions about them. Is that... okay.",
      "Dr. Jackson, my name is Peter and on this matter of Sharia law I'm conversant on that completely but one of the things that I hear a lot in our discourse now in this country bothers me because",
      "of people taking solid positions on different things. That concerns me in the extent that we've seen, I come from the heritage of the Reformation. My forefathers were all Catholic and Lutheran. We had North and South fighting. We have Blacks and Whites fighting. And one of the things that strikes me when",
      "Washington and I see statues, and I that statue of justice with the blindfold and it's a balance scale. And I think of the word united. There are a lot of things here that especially after 9-11 that I think tend to really bring people to a focus with a lot",
      "And one of the things that concerns me about that is that this is the United States of America. Now, counties have different laws, cities have different law, states have different clause. The Mormons are going through a period where they had problems with the law about multiple wives but I think one of",
      "that if there, and I have to defer you about Sharia law but we have statute of law and we have Sharia Law and somehow there are certain people in this country who are going to have certain rights under Sharia laws. I think that begins to tear at the fabric of what we talk about as the United States. And I'm very concerned about that",
      "I'm very concerned about that. And I wonder if you've got some thoughts about that because, um...I would like to see a spay of the United States and I would like ot see a lot of the racial and ethnic and economic jealousies and positions of division put in proper perspective",
      "tend to get us out of that perspective. Do you have some thoughts? Yeah, I do. We don't have very long, but let me see if I can say a few things that might hold some value and coherence at this time rather than hour. I agree with the heartfelt commitment",
      "the unity of union as a world. I do somewhat, however, beg to differ with that notion that unity necessarily entails uniformity and I think that one of the major challenges",
      "and as a civilization we've gone through challenges before. I personally think that, you know, Isaiah Berlin had a very insightful point to make about this. One of the points he made is that",
      "think that diversity and quote unquote division is the root of schisms, of civil strife, war etc. In point of fact however it may be that its not division but it is an attempt to overcome division through a single solitary solution alright? That really really pits us at each other in ways",
      "in ways that war and conflict are unavoidable. And what we may be looking at, and what maybe, may, may... I want to say this openly. This is no more anyone else's country than it is mine. And more than a fact, and I don't mean this directly to you personally here but just to put this in perspective, my people were here before many other people",
      "or many other people in this room. I don't want people to get this idea that, well you know how really committed are these people to the American project? I'm deeply committed to the America Project but I think one of the things that the American Project may be faced with is the fact that we will now have to learn how to deal with diversity as diversity",
      "by a superimposed uniformity and one of the contributions if the Muslims ever get their act together that Muslims may be able to make to this miraculous project experiment maybe to make us a bit more comfortable with how we deal with diversity and difference",
      "I'm not one of those who believes that the answer to our problems, or I should say our problems. The answers to our reality as Americans is simply sort of reduce everything to a bland gray and I really do think",
      "The real challenge for us, and I don't mean this simply in terms of slogans or even ideological statements. I mean a real moving of furniture where we actually come to see the solution in how I can accommodate difference as difference",
      "as something that I must conquer and overcome. I think we have to resist this urge, and this is why young man here, this is what kind of extremism is so offensive to me as a Muslim because it assumes almost divinity. No one has the right to impose their opinion on me in the absence of some kind of God sent authority",
      "opinion as only an opinion. Right? And so I think that, that may be where we need to try and think about how we can go. I don't think the 21st century will end as it started.",
      "and not simply a mass assimilationist program that parades as a pro-lism. I think that will be the challenge for the 21st century, to find a way to come to terms with them. I'm sorry that you make that statement here at Stanford. The motto of the university is Die Luft der Freiheit weht, the winds of freedom blow. Thank you."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Abdal Hakim Jackson Sharia Law Theocrac_FNrRgYkV3ME&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt0gcJCdAJAYcqIYzv_1750832007.opus",
    "text": [
      "Thank you very much Professor. As I contemplated coming here, the question that came into my mind is that I understand",
      "is some of the Western European countries, there's consideration being given to having Sharia law or perhaps simply Sharia courts as part of their judicial system. And I read probably about a week ago that there is some location here in the United States that's also considering that. Can you tell me two things? One is what is the impetus for taking that action and what are the potential implications?",
      "Well, first of all let me just clarify your question. What was the emphasis for taking that action on the part of Muslim community or on the state officials? The state officials I think in this case.",
      "I do think that we will be in a mode of political thinking that is much more committed to a more genuine pluralism.",
      "different traditions, religious and otherwise into a singular one size fits all legal order. And so I think that the alternative to that is a more genuine pluralism. And I think the vast disparity with some of that is being made. I think quite frankly when you talk about Sharia being introduced in any Western country essentially what you're talking about is family law.",
      "You're not talking about criminal law. You're talking about commercial law, basically what you are talking about is family law. So you're asking do Muslims have the right to marry, divorce, inherit according to Islamic law or not? That's essentially the extent of calls for Sharia in the West.",
      "I've never heard of anything beyond that, any serious movement. Of course you get random call over, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about some serious movements. That's the extent to which a call for Sharia takes on any significance in the West. You're talking about family law. The follow-up question would then be how do women's rights and protection of children fail? Well again here's where we get an interesting",
      "interesting discussion about what or how we define women's rights. And of course, the real issue is whether or not this is a voluntary system or not. I think it's a mistake however to assume two things. First that all Muslim women will simply join yes we want a stomach club because that would",
      "that all Muslim women say, no we don't want Islamic law. We prefer American inheritance laws over Islamic inheritance laws because there are Muslim women who simply say I believe this is what I'm obligated to do in order to live the kind of life that is pleasing to God and I want the right and ability to be able to do that. And to impose a non-legal, a non Islamic system",
      "less oppressive than the Islamic system may be from another perspective. So again, it depends on how we define women's rights. I think... and let me just be clear here because I don't want to be apologetic here. I believe that there needs to be a serious discussion about the tyranny of liberalism in all these discussions about women's right.",
      "You said that Muslims understand the difference between Muslim and non-Muslim areas, Muslim and Non-Muslm laws. I'm going to say something that's gonna be a little controversial. What about the... No! What about Jitland Poston? Why? The cartoon of Mohammed as terrorist.",
      "Obviously the first reactions that they had, you know, stopping on Danish flag, barring people who said I'm not selling more Danish material. That was perfectly fine but when it started going to murder, that's when it turned very ugly. What do you think about that? Well I think a friend of mine, Zaid Shaffer wrote a column in which he called it the class of decadence",
      "Class of uncivilization. Class of the uncivilized? Yes. I think it's ridiculous. Look, look, I think that again there are many things we can do legally that we should not do ethically and I think there are a number of things I want to say about this.",
      "I'm not offended by the cartoon.",
      "And I think that what we're really seeing here is reaction to the fact that, put it this way. What do you think would have happened if those cartoons hadn't emerged out of Guatemala? What do",
      "even if they noticed, they would have probably been like, silly Guatemalan speech. Or something like that. But it is the fact that as I say, the West has come into this power to define that has people reacting unheard because they feel helpless in the face of this voice that can define them in ways that they feel no way of sort of getting from underneath.",
      "Having said that much, the reaction to me and every single solitary intelligent informed Muslim jurist I've ever talked to was completely not a Slav. And I think that again...I mean Christians do things all the time now that we don't attribute to Christianity. Why does this reaction have to be necessarily representative of a Slavic?",
      "If I could just make a follow up. A lot of people would say that for example bombing abortion clinics, which I also strongly disagree with is part of their Christian faith.",
      "are out of their Christian faith. So it's very hard for a lot of people to see the difference between what they say is Christianity and what the majority says. You know, same thing with Islam.",
      "But to simply say that anything a person who is wearing a cross does, is Christianity. I don't think that's fair. In the same way as anything anybody who has a Muslim name does is Islam. I think we know this is not fair. And I think that we in the West have to think about why we allow ourselves to go down those kinds of paths. Alright? Look, let me just ask you this and then I'll come up with something for you in a second.",
      "You know, if I were the bottom of local KKK headquarters Why would you say I did that? No no What if I quoted for you champion verse from a Koran? Would you say that? Nah he's just using the Koran as a justification The real reason is what? Because we know that history We know that History Alright",
      "But then, you know, some Muslims do something and go get me a copy of the Quran. I mean really this is...you know the world is too small we have too much destructive capability and we have, you now, the ability to communicate both positively and negatively in unprecedented ways. Alright? We all have to be responsible more responsible alright not only for what we do but how we validate",
      "that things are brought to us. I mean, we should not be taken up in these things. Yes? Okay, um... The uh- I have two things about you if I may. The first thing is that I think if all Muslims believed what you said here today then we wouldn't have any problems like there would be no- You don't know the problem it's called life! Yeah, right. No slashes or limitations or talk of that or anything",
      "I think that because of those people we can't completely dismiss Islam as something that needs to be studied by our leaders and understood. There seems to be some consistence in things like the Muhammad cartoons,",
      "and people continue to justify their actions based on Islam. And just because there are a majority of Muslims who disagree with that, I don't think that can... That means we should just disregard Islam as something completely benign. Well, I was with you all the way up to the last point. But let me say this in all sincerity. Let me first of all congratulate you for your courage",
      "No one is more concerned about, nor bothered by those more stridently",
      "those more stridently violent, rejectionist voices. They're Muslims! I mean we deal with this as an everyday reality because this is a part of what is seeking to define us as a religious community and so the only point that I can hear, I'll get to the other one in just a second,",
      "out, not simply on the basis of pragmatism. I have a whole lecture here that could've gotten to the nitty gritty stuff and it would've bored you all to tears. But on the bases of serious indulgence of the most authoritative articulations of Islamic tradition and who seem to come to terms with precisely these kinds of problems. This should be taken seriously. That's number one. Number two, if any religion in the world",
      "in the world had to live up to the criteria that said we will only assume that you guys are okay when nobody in your community says anything stupid. I don't know what religion is about. Third, third there are dislocations in the Muslim world and the Muslim World is in a state",
      "state of transition and there are developments that are going on in the Muslim world very positive developments people who used to be committed to violence for example after your lecture a few weeks from now all the group who killed Ammar Sadat they have come 180 degrees to completely renounce violence this is happening we don't hear about",
      "We don't hear about this, but it's happened. So there are developments in that regard. And then finally... I think America as a society has taken a gigantic step in racial racism over the last 25 years. But if I wanted to",
      "to you know I can still find concrete justifications for saying that you know they still judge them let me about them and I think the same courage but I have to want to accentuate positive in that regard a little more indulgence maybe maybe do with regards",
      "should not be concerned about those people who want to kill innocent civilians, who want blow things up. We should be concerned and we should condemn them. And we do! And no one is more concerned about that reality in terms of what it's doing to Islam both physically... Who are the biggest victims of terrorism in the world today? Muslim terrorism I mean! Muslims are the",
      "this who are the biggest victims in terms of the image but their collective image of terrorism in the world today muscles so no one we have a mutual interest here all right now i'm going to be one last point because you raised the issue we have to stop this business um sort of chopping off the legs",
      "We have to stop this business of chopping off the legs of every Muslim intellectual who stands up and wants to give a vision of Islam that's different from that stereotypical vision. We have stopped that because America will not, America does not need a headless Muslim community. America needs a Muslim community with strong, respected, respectable leadership",
      "And that is the most effective means of offsetting those who are unfortunate voices, either here or abroad. So in this regard I think we need to begin to recognize our mutual interests and maybe stop some of these business of these sort of subterranean civilizational wars that we fight underneath the surface and find all kinds of excuses for doing so.",
      "Who do you refer to when you mean cut off the legs of people?",
      "It's almost as if to say that we don't want any credible Muslim leadership emerging unless it is a Muslim leadership, alright? That does exactly what I said at the opening of my talk with the Dr. Big Brother. The other point is a quote from Al-Mawardi but I think... Who? Al-Mawardi. But I'll wait and ask you after because I could take too much time.",
      "I'm just a... phantom here, I guess. No, no, I'm very serious about that. By the way, Muslims are the first ones who need to understand this. Can I make a comment to his question? I don't know. I was working my question. Sure.",
      "like yours that's not to say you cannot ask it and have an answer to it, that is legitimate in itself but the fact that by asking the question to me means to me like you have this tunnel vision and not just by saying you I mean the general American public or most of the American public who asks such questions because",
      "Why a country like the United States, which should be called a hypocrisy not a democracy goes and invades Iraq kills over 1 million people since the first Iraqi invasion in 1991 most of which are civilians and children and women innocent civilians. And that's not cold",
      "talks about that or say oh you know a Christian country of the United States is killing Muslims in Iraq nobody labels it as a Christian crime or has been done by Christians so everyone has a logic to distinguish okay or when what's his name McVeigh who was a white christian goes and bombs a building",
      "Christian fundamentalist or a Christian terrorist. But the minute a Muslim does something, whether it's in self-defense or whatever, the whole Islam is blamed. No, of course not. So my question is... I just said that my bottom name for KKK was in the name of Islam. Nobody believed me though, right? Why not?",
      "justice, common sense and basically simply their revenue making laws. You indulge in fully engaged process by which laws are changed?",
      "I would like to ask you a question regarding freedom of speech. Because I think that is a very important area, that forms not only the American democracy but also the whole Western Enlightenment understanding of freedom of",
      "to me that there is a big gap and how can we bridge that gap. One thing I can say is the Enlightenment idea for example is the Voltaire's, there is this saying attributed to Voltaia for example that you know although I hate what you are saying I will defend with that but in the case of Islam as I understand it the Makassar of Sharia there is one thing in protection",
      "How can you, or how can anybody stand by when somebody is criticizing the Quran, Allah, Prophet, Hadith and all that? And as I understand in the case of Prophet Muhammad's biography there were a couple of two three poets that were dispatched because of their...",
      "with extreme prejudice. So, given all that weight of Islamic history how can we accommodate? Because as you have repeatedly said it's very important that we ask questions and discuss especially in this kind of situation where we are at the university side",
      "It seems to me that for most Muslims, whenever there is a criticism of the religion or the prophet or anything comes by and they say oh this is like a shoving fire in the ghetto. So you know unless we can bridge this gap it seems to be that there's going to be a big collection. Yeah I quite frankly while the issue of competing notions and understandings of freedom of speech",
      "speech is certainly an important one and one in which we can have a solid exchange. I don't think that most of what is happening with regard to Muslim reactions to the exercise of freedom of speech has necessarily to do with different conceptions of freedom",
      "by which I mean the following. And I've had conversations with Muslims that confirm this. You see, part of the problem we have today is that Muslims feel even the whole discourse on violence is sort of stacked against Muslims because it focuses only on physical violence",
      "forms of violence that are equally, if not more hurtful would simply happen not to be physical. Does that make any sense to you? In other words, if a three year old came here and insulted me, I mean called me really nasty names, I'd probably just laugh at the kid. Right? And that's because the power differential between myself and that kid is such that he can't hurt me with those words.",
      "with those words. If that same three year old kid, however came to me with a baseball bat and cracked me across the shin I'd feel like anybody else felt it. And what's...what Muslims are suspicious in this regard because physical violence can hurt the West although it does have this power of definition but what can Muslims say? You see, like that 3-year-old",
      "3 year old. What can Muslims say, alright? About actually have the same effect on the West as what the West says, the effect of what the west says has on them. Does everybody see that? That's part of the problem. And so you're not talking about well they have a different understanding of freedom of speech from this freedom of",
      "Even if we talk about different perceptions and we arrive at a Muslim understanding that is exactly the same as the Western understanding, those reactions will still be there because the hurt will still remain. And that has to do with a power differential in the world.",
      "to be you know explored in the more scholarly thing my point is that it won't make a difference much of a difference I mean you may have freedom of speech look look can president bush obama or anybody use the n word but that's the point why it's freedom of",
      "You know Bob, every time I come to Stanford, all those hard questions. It's a great place! So I'd like to possibly get your commentary on a different matter which is that you see conflicts between Muslim laws or Muslim rights per se with Western laws or US law in particular. I've heard people write about the fact that oh who's America to say I can't have women on my team?",
      "within Muslim law? Or are those even considered part of Muslim law, or they just, where they have their allowances. I just think that this is more... Yeah, yeah, I wanna ask a sort of follow up double clarifying question here. Is your question primarily political or is it legal?",
      "Or is it, what should we do politically speaking in this context? In other words the point that I'm trying to make to you is this. If its a legal, in other words a question at the summit of law alright there are any number of legal interpretations that we could come up with with regard to those very quote unquote permissions that you quoted for example",
      "I had a conversation with the Grand Mufti of Egypt and he told me, and he explained why in traditional Islamic legal terms it's forbidden to physically discipline your wife in America. Forbidden! Now I'm not saying that's the law of Islam. Don't get me wrong, I'm",
      "How do we understand this law? There's a range of possibilities. So that's one question. The other question would be, politically speaking what do they do in America in the face of that? That's a different question. So with regard to the possibilities, there are endless possibilities. Politically again, Muslims have to get active but before Muslims getting active really had very much effect",
      "much effect. I think that the first priority of Muslim community in America has to be to indigenize the discourse on Islam, because right now people are looking you right in the face and they're talking to you and thinking about things that are happening 8000 miles away! And all",
      "in terms of the kinds of proposals that you may bring forth is what they see on television. And that's because the Muslim community has failed, and my opinion continues to fail, to indigenize the discourse by this time. That is to me one of the top priorities of the Muslim Community in America. I want to make a couple points. First of all people should see the movie Bill Badd Arabs given that the West has always portrayed",
      "always portrayed Arabs in a very bad light throughout the time they've been media. That may have a big impact"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Abdal Hakim Jackson Sharia Law Theocrac_KyN-36uC0FY&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750831333.opus",
    "text": [
      "On behalf of the Muslim Students Awareness Network and Islamic Society, Stanford University I'd like to welcome you all to the third part of our annual Islamic awareness series entitled this year Our Jihad to Reform The Struggle To Define Our Faith First of all we would like to acknowledge and thank our co-sponsors",
      "Islamic Studies, the Department of Religious Studies, The Office of Relitious Life, The Freeman Ogle Institute, The Billy Achilles Fund and the Bechtel International Center. Without their support we would not have been able to bring such amazing figures to campus here. The title of today's talk is Laying Down the Sharia Law, Democracy or Theocracy? Question mark. Dr. Term Jackson, Professor of Islamic Studies at",
      "at the University of Michigan to discuss whether Sharia, the Islamic legal system and code of conduct and religious practice is compatible at all with values such as pluralism, democracy, secularism, and human rights. Too often we have had this conception that all that is needed is to open the source text",
      "social and political system pop out ready to be implemented as Sharia law. Furthermore, the idea of the Shariah as a system in which the state has exclusive authority over the creation of a uniform legal code was not present in pre-modern Muslim societies. And it is here that the Islamic legal tradition that originated",
      "such as the relationship between religious and political orders in the formation of public policy, in order for Muslim societies to define a democratic and pluralistic form of government that at the same time is representative of their historical and social realities. Before we get started I have the great honor of introducing our speaker today.",
      "from the University of Pennsylvania in Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East in 1990. Presently he is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Visiting Professor of Law, and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University Of Michigan. From 1987 to 89, he served as Executive Director for the Center of Arabic Study abroad in Cairo, Asia.",
      "University and Wayne State University. In addition to numerous articles on Islamic law, theology, and history he is the author of following books, Islamic Law and State The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shahabuddin al-Kharafi On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam by Abu Hameed Al Ghazali's Qais al-Alqa'riqah And most recently Islam and the Black American Looking Toward the Third Resurrection",
      "Professor Jackson is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, ARLIN, a primary instructor at its programs and member of its board of trustees. He's also a former member of the FIC Council of North America, past president of the Sharia Scholars Association of North Americans, and past trustee of the North American Islamic Trusts. He is a sought after speaker and has lectured throughout the US and in numerous countries abroad.",
      "Please join me in welcoming Dr. Truman Jackson. Good evening. Thank you very much for that very kind introduction. I do have something of a question to give, but though I'm standing here listening",
      "things that my lecture is going to include and I was wondering how you came up with all of them before you actually heard my lecture. And, uh...I've had to make a sort of executive decision here as how to proceed. I have prepared a formal lecture but I'm afraid if I go into reading it that I might float off into the ionosphere",
      "and issues that are humane to the field of Islamic studies but might not be quite that much interest to those of you who are here. So in lieu of that, what I'm going to try and do is simply talk to you in what I hope will turn out to be an intelligent and a comprehensible form about the whole enterprise of Islam, Islamic law",
      "the context of Muslims as they negotiate their place in the American project. And, in that regard I want to make it very clear that my primary concern here will be on Islamic law and the American state and not the states of the Middle East or Muslim world.",
      "once I'm done and I'll be more than happy to try and address them to the extent that I can. Alright? So let me begin by saying the following, I want to contextualize my remarks this afternoon by pointing to the following observation, and I think it's very important for us to recognize this in order to arrive at the needed degree of objectivity as we proceed",
      "of Islam in the world, and more specifically in the United States. And that observation has to do with the fact that the West has for some time now enjoyed a certain power of definition. That is to say it has succeeded at producing understandings of both itself and others that the latter has felt compelled to somehow indulge or respond to.",
      "And in this sense, the West in general and the United States in particular now as the leading sort of representative of the West has found itself in a position where it has been able to play big brother.",
      "to sort of incentivize others into seeing the world in a manner that confirms U.S. sensibilities and interests. The theme I have in mind is sort of a crowning gesture of the entire book, 1984 where the protagonist Winston is put into a chair and the official of the state holds up four fingers and says to Winston how many fingers am I holding up?",
      "and Winston says four, and the state official says no I'm holding up five fingers. And then he tweaks the dial on the pain chair and this continues all the way to the point that Winston finally exclaims that he's trying to see five fingers Now a way in which this is relevant to discussions on Islam particularly in the West",
      "to try and prove that their religion is compatible with this or that real or ostensible Western norm. And, um, this often has the effect of putting us in a position where we're trying to speak across conflicting boundaries. When we're talking about Islam, we simply speak about Islam but we sort of oscillate between speaking from",
      "from the context of a medieval pre-modern order and a modern order. We oscillate between East and West, we oscillate in terms of assimilation to the American project or participation in that. And the effect of this is almost invariably a certain amount of abstraction whereby we end up sort of talking about an Islam",
      "that it's concretized on the ground in the lives of any particular community, but it's sort of an abstraction that hovers somewhere over the Atlantic. And this makes Islam a very elastic construct that can be stretched in many different directions and out which many, many different possibilities emerge some of them being justifiable or defensible others less so.",
      "What I want to do is to break out of these liminal spaces and talk about Islam in the very concrete context of America. That is, to say that I want plant my feet firmly in America and speak about the whole enterprise of how Muslims and Islam can come to terms with the American project.",
      "to the dominant order. In fact, what's most important about this particular approach at least in my mind is that it assumes that Muslims are possessed of agency. That the Muslim community in America is not simply some kind of empty vessel into which this sort of pre-mixed effluvium called Islam was poured and then it quickens into this prefabricated Muslim community. On the contrary,",
      "Muslims in America are possessed of agency. And the way that Islam comes out looking will depend on the kinds of choices that Muslims in American make. And part of the importance of these kinds of exchanges is that they very fundamentally inform the kinds discussions that would go into the kind of choices Muslims will make. I want to make it clear, however as I proceed, that what Islam ultimately becomes in America",
      "in America will depend on time. And so there's a certain amount of, sort of theoretical dimension to what I'm going to say because in terms of what Islam actually comes out to be, there is a time element that cannot be ignored. Now, I am going to proceed on the basis of four basic questions. One, legitimacy of Muslims living in a non-Muslim democracy.",
      "Two, the legitimacy of Muslims being loyal to a non-Muslim democracy. Three, the question of Muslim solidarity with the government and people of a non Muslim democracy. And four, the legitimacy of Muslims sharing goals with the peoples and the government of a Non-Muslism Democracy.",
      "The question of Muslim residence is in a real sense the leading question here. In fact, it informs all of the other questions because after all if it is not legitimate for Muslims to live in a non-Muslim democracy then of course everything else that they say about loyalty, about solidarity etc., is sort of a makeshift holding pattern",
      "they feel necessary based on the level of power or the kinds of situatedness that they come into, at which time they may very well discard this particular approach. And so if we can establish the legitimacy of Muslims living in a non-Muslim democracy then of course the kinds answers that they proffer to questions having to do with loyalty and solidarity can be invested with a semblance of credibility.",
      "Now, we have heard I think many sort of warnings about the extent to which Muslims are given to the tendency to tell American society at large whatever it wants to hear with regard to what Islam is and what it represents.",
      "the focus in what has been said about critics of the Muslim voice in America, um, has been based on an analysis of immigrant communities in America. In fact there is a running assumption to the effect that all we need to do is look at the immigrant community and that will tell us",
      "the possibilities of Islam. And I think that it's important to stop and note here, that there is perhaps a difference between how an immigrant community of Muslims who come from other lands sort of come to their articulations of Islam,",
      "community would do the same thing. In other words, questions of loyalty, questions solidarity, questions empathy will be very different for an indigenous Muslim community that is a community that was born in this country, that emerged out of the very people of this country and has a history in this",
      "indigenous against immigrant communities, but to point to another range of possibilities in terms of what Islam can be in America. That is to say that people who are Muslims, who are thoroughly committed to their religion, can on a visceral and very natural level come into a mindset where as Muslims they feel a sense of solidarity,",
      "of empathy with the people of the society in which they live. In fact, I'm reminded of an incident that happened not long after 9-11. There was this big meeting in a church in Philadelphia sponsored by Tabitha Smiley called The State of Black America and this is shortly after 9 11 and there's still a lot of 9 11 mania in the air",
      "moderator for this particular section asked the question of the panelists on the stage and he asked what can we as Americans do to make Muslims feel more welcome in this country? And so before he could get the question out fully, the Reverend Al Sharpton stopped him and said the following. Wait a minute, I want to get something straight because",
      "not lose sight of the fact that the Muslim community is already welcome among us. Because in the black community in America, there's not a person in this church he said who doesn't have a brother or a father or a son, a sister, a cousin someone in their lives who are either related to them or close",
      "The very idea that there is this essential contradiction between Muslims identifying with and having a sense of solidarity with non-Muslims in a society like America, I think that notion must be challenged. But this is not really the fundamental point I want to make here so let me move on to that. There are some very influential people who have",
      "in the academy who have put forth the view that if Muslims are to be true to their religion, it is impossible for them to coexist peacefully and honestly with non-Muslims. And I want to give just one name here so that it's established...I'm not trying to...how should I put this? I'm not",
      "making this up and that there are actual works that have been published, that you can consult and see what it is I'm saying. And I'm talking here about Professor Patricia Cronin of Princeton University. In her latest book she makes the claim essentially that as I said it is impossible, by the way for those of you who are writing things down that book is called God's Law. She makes a claim",
      "It is impossible for Muslims, if they are going to be sincere to their religion, to live honestly and peacefully with others. This is because jihad according to her is nothing less than an institution of religious imperialism. And that Muslims on this understanding must subdue their influence",
      "their influence as a religious duty and it is only after they have successfully fulfilled that duty, that Muslims can peacefully and in good conscience live in any society. Professor Croner goes on to make the point that this is again a religious dooty and in this context non-Muslims need not be guilty of any hostility against the Muslims. In fact, I am quoting here",
      "their very existence is a cause of war. End of quote. Now she goes on to point out that the abode of Islam, abode peace dichotomy, Dar al-Islam, Dar Al-Hara dichotomie, is a religious prescription for Muslims. That is to say that Muslims prescriptively divide the world into",
      "an abode of Islam and an abote of war. Muslims can live in an abod of Islam, but the only action that is legitimate for Muslims to assume vis-a-vis an abot of war is one of hostility. Now what I want to do, and by the way the implication of this of course is that Muslims who come to live",
      "Muslim politics can only adjust to their reality by relaxing their commitment to true Islam. And this is one of the ideas that lends some credence to the idea that when Muslims speak about peace, about tolerance, about pluralism, about coexistence, this is really nothing more than a tactical maneuver. It's designed",
      "time and to the point that society sort of falls asleep and wakes up one morning to find themselves in front of this grand Muslim power that is then going to show its real face. Now, by the way these are very serious people who are writing this. This is not popular literature as it were. This comes from the highest echelons",
      "is call attention to the fact that there are many aspects of Islamic religious tradition that are the result of history and not religion. And this becomes a very difficult thing for many of us to get our minds around, and at times I wonder how much of this is indebted to the sort of enlightenment or post-enlightenment attitude we have towards religion?",
      "and the context of which Islam becomes sort of quintessential pre-enlightenment religion. The religion in which people still believe in that stuff, still really believe literally in the dictates of revelation",
      "of everything that they do. I don't know how, I've heard this from credible sources. Someone told me that right after a 7-7 happened in, 7-6? I'm trying to be hidden. Okay. The bombing in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said to someone go out and get me a copy of the 4M. Of course this is supposed",
      "explain why 7-7 happens. And what I'm suggesting here is that part of this may be indebted to the idea that for sort of pre-enlightenment religion, religion is the answer for everything. So if you want to know why Muslims are doing what they do or why they believe what they believe, you need consult nothing more than their scriptures. Well this idea I want",
      "challenge a fundamental. And I'm going to do so through a reading of one of the most authoritative jurists, Muslim jurist from the classical Muslim tradition. This is a man by the name of Al-Mawardi. Al- Mawardi was a jurist of the Shafik school of law and he wrote a big 14 volume opus on Islamic law. He",
      "He was a major authority in the field and his books are still held in esteem and revered with authority today. In this book, Al-Muwaddi is clear that the designation of both Islam and peace is not a religious prescription but rather an historical description.",
      "It is not a prescription for how Muslims should look at the world. It is a description of how Muslims found the world to be. That is to say that Muslims basically looked out at the World and discovered that the only places where they can live as communities in peace are places over which they have political authority.",
      "in non-Muslim lands, they find it very difficult. And by the way this is a pre-modern world now. They find it difficult to survive as communities. Now that's where the distinction of both of us saying about peace comes from and the proof of this is that Alman Vardy is explicit in stating that anytime",
      "Anytime a Muslim finds himself in a country where he or she is able to preserve their religion and practice the basic rudiments of their religion, even if they are not able to spread their religion by persuasion or by the sword,",
      "renders that country an abode of Islam. And, as Mu'adhidi goes on to say basically that if a Muslim should find his or herself in such a situation, in a non-Muslim polity where they are able to practice the fundamental tenets",
      "should not migrate from that country. And Al-Mawarid gives the implication that, the reason for this is that if he's able or she's able to practice their religion by leaving that country, that country would be less likely then to be guided to Islam. Alright? Now we don't need to overindulge some of the sort of medieval connotations of Al-Mawardi's thought here but the real point for us to recognize",
      "that clearly the whole notion of an abode of Islam and an abote of peace is based on historical reality, not on religious prescription. And therefore if Muslims should find themselves in a general sense, in a position or in a historical circumstance or context where in which it is possible for them to practice their religion then certainly",
      "if we apply Al-Maladi's logic, that would render the place where they live an abode of Islam. Now Muslims here in America have constitutional guarantees, freedom of religion and yeah... While we may differ on our understandings or interpretation",
      "interpretation of how that is often concretized. Certainly the idea of overt religious persecution is not one that sits well in the context of the American constitutional order and here again we run into a problem that is oftentimes confronted when thinking about Islam. When we think about Muslim communities, in non-Muslim politics",
      "to assume the historical reality of premodernity in which religious persecution would probably be the norm, rather than think about modern reality. A modern reality such as that is the United States when that is not the case. Alright? And part of what I'm trying to get us to do is to ground our understandings and our thoughts about the sun in a concrete reality of the United",
      "Now, in some there are many in the academy who would sort of locate Islam at a particular time and place and a particular mindset. And then imply from there that this mindset binds all Muslims to that particular understanding.",
      "if they're not really, really committed to Islam. But now I'm going to go on and be fair here because this is not simply a tendency that we find in Muslims. Muslims are also known to carry these kinds of ideas. And one of the major ideas in this regard that I think does a lot to impede Muslim ability",
      "This idea of Al-Hakimiya, an idea called Hakimiyah. I'm going to explain that in just a second. And this is a very well known idea in sort of Muslim activist circles. It was popularized by the Egyptian idealon Sayyid Qutb and a little before him, the Pakistani Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi.",
      "says the following, that part of what the Muslim testimony of faith entails is that God and God alone is a repository of all fundamental rights and obligations. In that context anyone who recognizes man-made rights",
      "over the hanging down of law. In other words, to the extent that Muslims recognize man-made law and man- made polities they are guilty of violating Islamic monotheism by attributing to someone other than God the right to make laws to confer rights and impose obligations. Now...",
      "Qutb and Mawdudi, and those who subscribe to this notion are in a sense aided by the fact that there was an extent. I mean the whole idea of God being repository of ultimate value, alright? That is central to the religions of Islam. And there's no justifiable cause for attacking Qutba or Mawddudi on that score. But you",
      "But to move from there, to the idea that any man-made law is to be guilty of violating Islamic monotheism, that is a stretch. And I want to establish that by the following.",
      "a certain amount of legal discretion that was recognized to the ruler. The ruler could make laws that govern all kinds of things, from licensing medical doctors to requiring meat cutters to certify their meats to issuing licenses for people who were going to teach in madresas etc.",
      "etc. I mean, all of these things were aspects of laws and rules that Muslim rulers could hand down. And this was universally recognized as being a part of the ruler's discretion. Now while these were man-made laws, alright? The only criterion they had to fit was that they not in any way fundamentally violate the law of Islam. Outside of that however,",
      "is being legitimate, but perfectly necessary. Because Islamic law is not a law that has every single solitary detail of what we need to regulate life. In other words you're not going to find speed limits in the Quran. They are not there and of course the ruler would have to come forth and implement some kind of rule that would regulate that reality. This was part of classical Islam. Man-made",
      "man-made to be sure, but in no way a violation of God's rightful monopoly over law. In fact there were jurists who actually championed the idea that what we need is to promote greater discretionary powers to the ruler not in order to undermine the law but actually to add to the efficacy of the law and here we're talking about",
      "So, liberal thinkers. We're talking about jurists who are at the heart of the very Islamic legal tradition. In fact some people whom we habitually think of today as being puritanical. Ibn Taymiyyah for example and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya championed the idea of giving discretionary powers to a ruler in order to add to the efficacy",
      "to the efficacy of Islamic law and in order to be able to realize justice in instances where the actual dictates of the manuals of Islamic Law seem to fall short. So, to give you an example of what I'm talking about, Ibn Khayyam Al-Jawziya says that... This is rather disturbing so just hold on to your seats, but it's his example not mine.",
      "mutilates his wife's genitals, we're not talking about circumcision here. But if a man mutilated his wife genitals then it becomes illegal for him to divorce her and if he should divorce her either because he wants to or she wants to then he remains financially responsible for her up until her death",
      "Now this was clearly a violation of the letter of the law that you would find in any manual of Islamic law. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya, however, insisted that the rule be given this kind of discretionary power in order to be able to affect justice in those instances whereby a literal application of the",
      "he and his teacher Ibn Taymiyyah are explicit in stating that any place we find justice, that is to be considered an application of Islamic law. Now my point here is not to argue for the substance of these deductions on the part of these jurists. It's simply to question however",
      "a man-made law or a man made injunction, they are somehow guilty of engaging in acts of shibber or violations of Muslim monotheism. Now there are all kinds of other examples of this that we could point to. Muslims and this is another problem that we find in works such as those of say Qutb and others is the following",
      "There's a fundamental difference because what we have to consider here is the time period in which we happen to exist. And we happen be on this sort of tail end of development in the Muslim world that sees a lot of Islamic thought come out of the post-colonial mode of thinking, that is to say where Muslims were trying",
      "that they could reclaim rights and positions that they felt had been lost to them. And part of that was to attack and criticize the prevailing order. And what you'll find in all these works is a very virulent attack on Muslim rulers who refuse to apply Islamic law. And that, in itself, it's fair enough.",
      "I mean, just look at how we feel when the government threatens not to apply the Constitution. It's the same sort of sentiment. The problem however is that oftentimes these books are read with a sort of false transferability in them. That is to say that we assume",
      "A Muslim polity that does not apply Islamic law applies equally to a non-Muslim polity that doesn't. In the same way Muslims should oppose a Muslim polity, they should oppose non-muslims. This is very problematic and this was never the opinion or attitude of pre modern Islamists",
      "pre-modern jurists. Pre-modern Jurists recognized non-Muslim polities as legitimate and the laws of non-muslim politics as legitimate. And to make a very long story short, this is very easily identified in the principle of what's called extraterritoriality. And without getting too technical here, extraterriteriorality produced institutions",
      "Islamic law, there are standard features in the manuals of Islamic law that granted for example merchants from non-Muslim countries who were traveling in Islamic lands exemptions from Islamic law and allowed for them to have their cases tried according to the law of their own land. So if you were a Venetian merchant",
      "and you got into a dispute with the Genoan merchant, Islamic law would allow Italian law to adjudicate this dispute between the two of you as opposed to impose Islamic law. This was the attitude. Clearly they understood that is their law, that it's a legitimate law, and we will simply act as bailiff in this particular incident. And the point I'm making here again",
      "that a Muslim's attitude toward a Muslim state, that flunks or violates God's law is not transferable to a non-Muslim state that does not have Islamic law. In fact I want to sort of backtrack in a sense and locate what is really at the heart of this sort of exaggerated opposition",
      "man-made law because in the modern Muslim psyche, man- made law has come to constitute an anathema. When you hear that there's a very sharp visceral reaction because it is understood to be not only a violation of but a flaunting of God's law. Well part of the reason for that is this as I said in premodern times Muslims were quite comfortable with a modicum",
      "a modicum of discretionary powers in the hands of men. What happened is that when modern Muslim states came into being, the state assumed a monopoly over the law and with that monopoly over law it sort of from a Muslim perspective, from the perspective of Muslim activists,",
      "Islamic law with laws of foreign origin. It's in that context that man-made gets equated with a disregard for, a contempt for God's law. In pre-modern times, man-made did not have that connotation and this is part of what we must be very careful about when we're trying to talk about Islam because if we're",
      "happen to be. We can equate man-made, for example with contemporary Islamic law even in a place like America where that is I hope clearly not the implication. Alright? Now this raises another very important issue and there are only few others that I want to get to but I think it's very important to understand and that is this we tend",
      "as purely a matter of Muslim interpretation of Islamic scripture. And therefore, what renders something Islamic is whether or not we can find some description or injunction that urges or requires of Muslims",
      "In other words, if we want to know about the compatibility between Islam and democracy for example what we look for is where does the Quran require Muslims to establish democracy? And if Muslims are unable to show whether the Quran dictates democracy or",
      "would lead to support for democracy, then the attitude is that you see, you see Islam doesn't really support democracy. And when Muslims say that they're just telling you what we want to hear. Alright? Now what I want to try and convey to you is the following From its conception Islamic law has always",
      "has always included a reflex that said, that in society, that is pre-Muslim society there may be any number of ways of doing things values and institutions that are perfectly fine. And what we as Muslim jurists will do is process these on the data of scripture",
      "that is compatible with that, that is to say does not violate that we will then reinscribe with Islamicity. In other words non-Muslim institutions can become Islamic ones by a simple act of inscribing them with Islamic legitimacy and so for example if you take some of the symbols of Muslim societies",
      "Of course, the mosque. You have your dome and your naif sinaret. That does not come from a Qur'an. It does not comes from a practice of a prophet. They didn't have these kinds of things in Medina where the Prophet was. Muslims only found these in non-Muslim lands and re-inscribed them with Islamicity. And they did this time and time again with any number of legal institutions.",
      "Alright? And so what we're looking at is that Muslims may come to America and they may find things in society that the Quran did not put there, that the practice of the Prophet did not but which can certainly be processed in a manner that they can be inscribed with Islamicity. They can become Islamic. Not necessarily in the sense of being completely normative",
      "completely normative or representative of an idea but certainly acceptable from the point of view of one who wants to live a life that entails a serious commitment to religion. And so when we speak about Islamic, Islamic law is not simply the dictates of the Quran and the Sunnah.",
      "Islamic law alone. And so when we talk about Islamic law in America, we should abandon this notion that what that entails is Muslims coming to America and simply superimposing... In other words American society in and of itself from the perspective of Islam has no legitimacy. And a really truly committed Muslim community will simply want",
      "the whole thing and wipe it out. Wipe it off, and replace it with an Islamic border. Alright? This is never the way that Islamic law has operated. And this is again Islam in its most authoritative classical expression. Let me just give you one idea quickly that sort of underscores this fact. If you go to a mosque",
      "to the table of contents in any manual of Islamic law, classical Islamic law you'll find all kinds of chapters. Chapters on surety, chapters on debt forgiveness, chapters",
      "all of these chapters. The fact of the matter is that these chapters are not reflective of either the dictates of the Quran or of the Sunnah, what they are reflective of is reality that was found in the lands into which the Muslims came alright? That produced dispute situations that the Muslims then institutionalized and",
      "Many of these institutions come from non-Muslim lands and non-muslim backgrounds. Some of them are accepted in total, some of them only after a certain amount of modification or adjustment. But this is the way typically that Islamic law grew. Not only that, this was at a time when Islam was a numerical minority in these lands. In his book Conversion to Islam",
      "of the medieval period, Professor Dick Bullitt, Richard Bullitt from Columbia University makes the point that the central lands of Islam did not become majority Muslims for centuries after the Congresses. For centuries, Muslims were a political minority, that is to say they held power but in numerical minority.",
      "the societies over which they assumed rule were majority non-Muslim. Now, think about the fact that all of the founders of the schools of Islamic law died during a period when Islam was a minority. They all died in the third century of Islam,",
      "before Muslim society became predominantly Muslim. And so what we're seeing here is an ability on the part of Islam to interact with non-Muslim society in a manner that recognizes that there may be any number of aspects of that social order, political order, economic order that are perfectly legitimate from the perspective of Islam and that can be adopted and inscribed with their legitimacy in Islam.",
      "Now let me move on to, very quickly, the issue of loyalty. And here I've already alluded to the fact that we should not assume that whether or not Muslims are loyal to a party like America is based solely upon religion and I think this is something that",
      "does in a sense is that it puts all of the onus on the Muslim community and assumes an ideal order. That is to say, it assumes that the American state is conducting itself in an ideal fashion or that the",
      "It's 10 p.m. No, no, it's on. I won't be long. It's um...it's 10 pm. You are a black American male. Mid-30s. Uh you're driving on the back road of anywhere USA. Your car breaks down.",
      "You do not have a cell phone. Therefore you'll have to get out of your car and knock on somebody's door, to get help. To get out the car, you come upon a patch of houses. Half these houses have American flags hanging outside them. The other half does not. Which of these houses do you not want?",
      "Now the point that I'm being made here is, and whenever I ask this question to predominantly black American audiences or even audiences of color as it were overwhelmingly the one without a flag. Alright? And the point I'm making is why is not taking into consideration in terms of gauging whatever levels of alienation that Muslims may have from their host polity",
      "In other words, why is religion the only ingredient that's ever pointed to as an explanation for why Muslims may feel a degree of alienation? Alright. I think this is a point that really calls out for some consideration. Now two more points and then I'll start open for questions. The other point is this",
      "This, I think has a lot to do with a certain culture and this is more so the case among immigrant Muslims but there's an extent to which sort of by osmosis or enculturation even a number of indigenous Muslims have adopted this. And this is this. Classical or pre-modern Islamic law emerges out of what political theorists",
      "political theories refer to as a weak state tradition. By weak state, I'm not talking about military power, all right? But I'm talking about states in which the state itself is not the focal point of people's primary identity. In other words, pre-modern states are sort",
      "use. Over here you have sort of the primary sense of loyalty to family, tribe etc. On the other hand you have primary public loyalties to religion sect even maybe school of law. The stake here is actually in the valley and that's the lowest level of loyalty",
      "the outside I mean for this thing my state on the opposite then they're the opposite all right you have no family here in family and religion maybe ethnic group or race year and that the maximum sort of sense of identity go to stay",
      "I'm trying to make here is that in coming out of a weak state tradition, Muslims are still at the transitionary stage where a weak-state culture informs their sensibilities about the degree of loyalty they give to any state. Not just American states but to any states. And I know there's some here who say wait a minute",
      "to the Muslim world where Muslims seem to be very loyal to their states. Well, two things here I would say don't believe everything you see first and then second thing. Muslims identifying with Muslim states primarily has been repositories of cultural and ethnic identity that is to say that to be an Egyptian",
      "or to be an Indian, for example is a cultural historical identity that precedes the state and transcends the state. The state is held to be a sort of repository of that identity and it's on that basis that they identify with the state if that state goes away they still identify as Egyptians, Indians etc. It is part of their ethnic identity",
      "identity and it's on that basis that they identify with the state. This is part of what you might want to call a certain gap, that's going to take amount of time before Muslims can emerge out of this weak state mentality into a more strong state one but here I have just two little questions. First,",
      "One of the issues, and by the way not only religious Muslims but religious Christians in America have raised this point. Professor Stephen Carter for example makes the point that one of the, one of these issues that religion faces in America is that our thinking in America tends to begin with the state and the interest of the state, and then figure out sort of how religion can be brought into conformity with the interests of the State. Alright? Now if that's the case I think it's fair to ask a question",
      "Why religiously committed Muslims, or Christians for that matter, or Jews for that Matter should not reserve their deepest religious commitments for something other than the state given that the state is never going to prioritize a religion as a repository of values that inform and provide a basis for life.",
      "The second issue that I want to raise is this. Let's suppose that Muslims emerge out of this weak state mentality and they arrive at a strong state political culture, that is to say that they identify with the state and they go look to the state to provide it with and to oversee a social-political order that is in conformity with their vision of the good. What would happen?",
      "If Muslims in America, for example, were to say you know what American states? We want to push for full prosecution for adultery and fornication. Would that be looked upon as simply being purely a matter of Muslims pursuing legitimate interests? And by the way if you look at this from the perspective of the black American community right now",
      "a community where upwards of 65% of children are born out of wedlock. Would that be recognized as a legitimate aim, or would this sort of be looked at as some sort of stealthy fifth column attempt to impose the dreaded sharia on society? And so the point I'm making here is that if Muslims are to come into a full identification with the American state",
      "then there are some give and take that has to be made on both sides. Let me end by saying the following, I think we are in a point of our history where we are desperately open intelligent honest courageous discussions debates and exchanges about the possibilities of America",
      "Islam in America. It's my hope that we will not suffer from what the French intellectual Guy Debord refers to as the tyranny of the spectacle, the tyrannies of the spectacles and what he is referring to is the fact that we end up in a society in which the images",
      "to actually encounter that group. In other words, I am talking to you face-to-face. I'm touching you. I am exchanging with you but rather than hear me the image that is produced about me comes between you and me so that you cannot hear me and you can not trust me and therefore we cannot get beyond where we are right now. Of course this is going to take a lot of courage",
      "I'm not making a political slogan here, but let me just end by saying yes we can."
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      "A strong community is also confident. And I think that in the long run, if the Muslim community in America becomes strong and confident and big... When I say big, I don't mean just big in numbers but I mean big in spirit. Big in spirit in a way that the Prophet was, in which he was dealing with the society that did all kinds of things to him, that did kind of things through his companions. And yet he was always able to rise above that and keep his eye on the prize",
      "and remain focused on the fact that he had a mission for which he was responsible to God. And because of that, he was able to, as I said, keep his eye on the prize. If Muslims are able to do that, then I think that we'll be able to deliver on the promise of being able to bring some aid and healing",
      "of the society that might not appreciate that from us. And I hope that what we're able to do as well is the same thing that the Prophet was able to, alayhi salatu wa sallam, is to ultimately not say but convey the fact that you know we are here rahmatan lil'alameen You know we we are Here to do what we are doing because we believe it is good",
      "because we believe it is good. And if, if, If we're able to do that you know I think that we will have sort of fulfilled our mission, our mission in America one of the things that I hope that we'll be able to",
      "of one people, of one race even of one language, one religion. It is not bound by a common history or common blood but it is a collection of people from all over the world and that means that we cannot be limited to the intellectual or the religious",
      "to bear on the challenges and promises of American society. So Western civilization as a construct will have to open itself up for contributions from people other than those who come from Europe, and I think, I hope that Muslims will be able to rise to the point where they understand this insight",
      "can bring to their mission in terms of they're carrying out their duty to Allah and America, insha'Allah."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ Comfort with Cultural Plurali_GjTkYy1GpHQ&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt0gcJCdAJAYcqIYzv_1750831819.opus",
    "text": [
      "Part of what we have to understand that we have acquire as a Muslim community in America, each one of us, we have the ability to be more comfortable with cultural pluralism. That defines our community. And to want to meld everybody into some kind of common identity is not going to work. I have to be willing to recognize you for what you are",
      "what you are, you me for what I am. Hopefully the values at the center of that drain will keep that thing spinning in such a way that we'll all still be moving in the same direction. We'll have a common orientation but not a common culture. I don't like hot food and I ain't eating spicy food. No no, so that means I can't have",
      "That means I can't have Desi homeboys? Of course, I can. No no you follow what I mean by that but I think that many of us as we were talking earlier today, we confuse unity with uniformity. We're never gonna be uniformed. That's not how Allah created us and I think we just have to get a little more comfortable with being a bit more culturally pluralistic all right.",
      "And I think that in our case, in America, perhaps more so than any other Muslim community in the world because we are so diverse. Like you said, look at this community. We're from everywhere and in the name of community, I have to be willing to recognize",
      "Right? And they're going to serve hot food. I'm going nibble on a little bit of the rice and nibble a little bread. I don't know if you guys noticed this earlier today, but... Right? Maybe a little shrimp. I can't have it all my way. And you can't happen all your way. That's part of the price of being in a multicultural community."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ Critical Thinking and Islamic__1750824056.opus",
    "text": [
      "We're bringing students in at their most vulnerable. We're breaking down some of that misunderstanding. We are having them explore what it is they understand about Islam, not understanding about Islam and doing that in an open classroom with other students. And then we reassembling them in terms of their own ability to discover what Islam is. That takes intimacy, that takes trust, that take connectedness. One of the reasons I think we've been as successful as we have been is precisely that intimacy",
      "that intimacy and that trust, and that confidence. When you render them literate, you render someone else who's able to go into a classroom and stand up for themselves and stand out for the ummah."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ _How Mature Communities Think_ANm2cg_9VCo&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750830103.opus",
    "text": [
      "Brothers and sisters, we are not likely to see everything that we want to see out of this Muslim community in America in my lifetime. And perhaps not in your lifetime.",
      "may not be realizable in your lifetime, that Zaytuna or any other institution may not exactly what you want it to be in your life time. Is that enough of a reason for you not to support it fully given the promise that it has for posterity? This is how mature communities think and this",
      "is part of what we must do as a Muslim community. So I ask you tonight to join me in celebrating this enormously powerful, miraculous achievement on the part of Zaytuna and all",
      "to dig deep down inside yourselves, to tap into that sense of mission. To find a sense of Mission and with that sense mission to think transgenerationally, to think about what your children's childrens' children are going to be enjoying in terms of institutional support",
      "exactly the kinds of things that we as a Muslim community need to do here in this land, that is America."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Jackson - Miraj Academy Honoring the Qu_QJVGOCxL6CU&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837862.opus",
    "text": [
      "a sense of historical perspective. This is not just another day, all right? And this is not even just the achievement of these young men. This has been the culmination of efforts and prayers and sacrifices that have been going on for some time.",
      "How many of us almost on a daily basis make prayer, make dua for the Ummah of Muhammad? And some of us even say, We do this all the time. And now we're seeing some of this unfold before our eyes. Let us recognize that. Let's not be like those people, many of whom the Quran talks about who are just ghafini. So that's the first point that I wanted to make.",
      "The second point I want to make is that, you know as we celebrate this occasion. I'm getting nervous now, it's time for us. Anyway, the whole series is the second point that I want",
      "individual accomplishment of these beautiful young men. I think it's important that we also celebrate as a community and that we see this as a communal accomplishment, alright? And it's really important and I'm just going to say something here that I think merits saying because",
      "something that we own now as a community. And so, and so, so now we are like so many other Muslim communities in the world. They produce their profiles. We produce ours. And I say that not in the spirit of competition,",
      "it's important for us as an ummah, as a global community that when various and sundry parts of that community come together that they are able to come together as equals who come together to discuss the issues of the ummah. The possibilities",
      "as fully invested, fully committed and fully qualified to contribute to the well-being of the umbra. And so we have to see this as a community as well. And this is part of our pride as a Community. And all communities have to have that.",
      "also as a community. This is a communal accomplishment and that we, as we walk out of this room and we walk about now, we should be proud that we are now like every other Muslim community on the planet. We produce our Hufaq. And I've said for some time the American community of Muslims, the American Muslim community has to become",
      "It has to become a self-authenticating community. And this is not, again, this is no matter of competition. This is not a matter of ego. Obey the law told a story I don't want to tell too many stories because it will mean me undying you know. Anyway but I remember this was also in Egypt. I was standing with the Shaykh and after the lesson he said listen I want you to help me do something",
      "I said, what? He said, uh, I got all these questions from these women from the West. Because they had this online thing, you know, Assam Online, everybody can send in and ask questions, they give back to us. And he said, I've got all of these questions for these ladies from Europe and America. I want you to help me answer them. He's a sheikh!",
      "in ways that I don't. You know aspects of that reality that I cannot even fathom. So, I want you to help me answer these questions. That's all I mean in terms of the American Muslim community becoming self-authenticated because no one knows our reality like we know it and we have to be there, the ones who address our reality. And this is a part of that. This is a",
      "All right. See, I'm rushing, man. Anyway. I also think it's important for the community to recognize its role beyond the accomplishment of these young men and that the community,",
      "scholars who are not shiuch, who are PhDs, who're not any of that to recognize yourselves as co-producers of this phenomenon. Not mere recipients of what the refah and the scholars and the sheikhs and every no you're",
      "and you have to recognize yourselves as co-producers. Alright? The Prophet, he was the recipient of revelation. And he had all kinds of challenges that he had to confront. Alright. But who trained the army? Who drew the maps? Who made the weapons? There were all kinds",
      "That did not just come from him. And the community had a critical role to play in that. And unfortunately, somehow, and this is my perspective, take it for what it's worth, somehow we have been taught that community, these guys are just recipients. You know, the scholars tell you, and then that's it. Well, we need skills. We need talents.",
      "We need talents, we need gifts beyond those of what some of us scholars have. And we need you. We need you and you must understand your role in this collective enterprise of establishing and living and perpetuating Islam in this part of the world that you too are carriers of the message of Muhammad.",
      "So this is a part of a bigger whole, of which you are a critical element. And I think it's important for us to recognize that. Finally... It's been back and forth. Finally, I'm not the fundraiser here. But it's really, really,",
      "Right? We must recognize our collective responsibility for building and sustaining the institutions that we need to build and sustain. And that is going to require money, and time, and efforts, and ideas! Not just buildings.",
      "And so what I want to encourage us, you know, to do is to recognize our responsibility to support efforts like this. And that this is a communal responsibility and I wanna share just one little insight with you. You know when I was in graduate school in the library",
      "reading all kinds of things I had no business reading because they weren't assigned but because I was interested as a Muslim in these other kinds of thing. One of the things that sort of almost confused me, it became a question in my mind. It's like wait a minute we know there was no Department of Education in pre-modern Islam right? There was no Ministry of Education",
      "education and all that stuff. So it's like, wait a minute now. Where did all these Ghazalis come from? Where do these Nauwabis come from where do these Ibn Taymiyyahs come from, where do people come from right? How did the institutions that produce these people how are they established? They were established by",
      "community members of means who wanted to use their means as a way of drawing near to Allah and who donated their means to establishing schools and institutions that will preserve this deed. The community did that, voluntarily did that they said I want to draw near to",
      "And I then am going to donate this for the purpose of sustaining his being. And hopefully he will look upon me with some mercy and a blessing. They believed that. This is part of the challenge we got to get back to. We have to believe these things. We had to believe in these things, and that's why I said it's important for us to recognize the miracle that's unfolding before us right now",
      "The last thing I'll say to the young brothers, because some people have said something about this. And I want to try and hit the middle of it. I think it's important for you guys to carry yourselves deeply. And now let's say carry ourselves also with pride. Humility yes, absolutely. But you have to try to hit that sweet spot right there. You know? It's like the prophet Mohammed would say",
      "I am the mass of humanity and no arrogance, no pride. You got what I'm saying? So he has on the one hand, he's saying, I'm it. No, no. I'm in because Allah made me it. And I'm going to tell you that I'm",
      "But I have no conceit. I have not pride. So, I'm walking that middle ground. Alright? And so you have to walk with pride and dignity because you represent a community. And you represent that community not only to your community but to the broader community. Alright, and you then are part of what they see Islam as representing.",
      "You have to be humble. Alright? And if you ever, I'll give you a little bit of a... Somebody, one of you guys from Philly, right? Alright? So you know what I'm talking about. Right? Whenever you feel this little temptation, you know, to get a little hearty, you remember where we come from. If you got time for how hard you hit,",
      "You don't have to say it. Do you understand what I'm talking about? If you have to, that means you're not carrying it right. Carry it right and you won't have"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Jackson Muslim or American OG Wisdom_2XExuK8reec&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750831035.opus",
    "text": [
      "Talking about all this America stuff, American Islam stuff and I'm sure it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Because a lot them don't really hear... they hear my words but they don't hear my message. And I'm not blaming them. They don't know me. They dont recognize the fact that if you're a convert and I am a black American male convert",
      "has woven into the very warp and woof of its, it's very existence an ongoing, very deep and profound critique of America. So you know my talking about America, American Islam and the fact that Muslims have to get Islam and it's tradition, it is holy book, it sunnah, it, it genius to speak effectively",
      "to realities that define their lives as Americans. When I say that, many people hear assimilation. They hear bowing to the dominant culture and that's not at all what I mean. And the reason I know this sounds so uncomfortable for them is that it used to sound the same way to me.",
      "you know, it makes me really embarrassed and sad to even think this. I remember when I was a young convert in Philadelphia back in the late 1970s...I was three years old man, I'm joking.",
      "One of the major controversies we had was with Imam W.D. Muhammad, rahimahullah. And the controversy was his insistence on putting the American flag on the front of their newspaper. And for many of us this was anathema of the first order. This proved to us that these people have still not fully entered into Islam.",
      "And that's why I say, I know how all this American stuff I talk now sounds to a lot of people because it used to sound the same way to me. But you ask me a specific question. I learned that I was an American when I went abroad, when I want to the Muslim world. That's when I really discovered that I wasn't American and I think that if I had a gazillion dollars we could solve",
      "solve a lot of this dissonance and dislocation. Six months in the Muslim world, Muslims in America will discover that they really are American. And there's nothing wrong with that. In the same way if you're an Egyptian, you don't agree with everything about Egyptian society, you didn't agree about everything about Egyptian politics, you wouldn't agree everything about Egyptians foreign policy, I see no reason for me to bear that burden as an American.",
      "sad fact that Muslims have become so overly politicized, the politics just saturates their psyche that they can't think outside of purely political terms. But I'm sure that despite the fact that Mecca was a pagan capital that prosecuted the Prophet and turned him out and turned the Muslims out,",
      "أعتقد أنهم فقدوا مكة كانت هذا هو المنزل لعبة أحبتي في العربية سأقول هذه الكلمة لا أعرف إن كنت أفعلها بالعربية أو بالإنجليزية",
      "That child who once was me came to me once in a strange face. He didn't say anything, we just looked at each other and then walked away.",
      "and then walked along the way. We were joined together in the name of that leaf that dangles in the wind by our roots, then we departed and went into a jungle whose author is the earth and whose narrator is the seasons. Oh child who once was me come forward now what is it that joins us together?",
      "joins us together still and what shall we say to each other. So in a sense that's another way of saying you know the man grows up to be the child, that all the ambitions, all the dreams, all of the hoped for possibilities those are developed in childhood. My childhood was here. The things that shaped me fundamentally were",
      "has most come out of a rearing, an experience, a dream."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson of USC at Tayba Foundation Fun_GCoQSo75ryU&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750839151.opus",
    "text": [
      "Dr. Sherman Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, and Professor of Religion in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He was formerly the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Visiting Professor of Law and Professor Afro-American Studies at the university of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. Jackson received his PhD from the University",
      "Indiana University, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan. From 1987 to 89 he served as executive director of the Center of Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo Egypt. He is the author of several books, mashallah. He's also the co-founder, core scholar and member of the board of trustees of the American Learning Institute for Muslims ALIM program. I know a number of students who are here today because they were so excited when they heard Dr. Sherman Jackson was gonna be speaking",
      "was going to be speaking, they were part of the Alim program and they were eager to come hear him again. It's an academic institution where scholars, professionals, activists, artists, writers, and community leaders come together to develop strategies for the future of Islam in the modern world. Additionally, Dr. Jackson is a former member of the Fifth Council of North America, former president of the Sharia Scholars Association of North",
      "including the Washington Post, Newsweek Blog on Faith and The Huffington Post. He's listed by the Religion Newswriters Foundation's religion link as among the top 10 experts on Islam in America and was named among the 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Study Center in Amman Jordan and the Prince Al-Waleed bin Palal center for Muslim Christian understanding it's my honor to introduce Dr. Sherman Jackson",
      "First of all, I want to thank Sister Hina for that very inspiring interview.",
      "that you missed your calling until you got up here and gave that long introduction of me. But thank you for your very kind and gracious words. I also want to offer a very heartfelt and deeply sincere note of gratitude to Sheikh Rami, not simply for what you are doing",
      "and what you have done, but for affording me the opportunity to come and see what you are doing. Because it has been my view for many years that the demographic that you are serving is one of the most critical",
      "the words that I will share with you tonight, I ask Allah to direct my heart, direct my tongue and to open your minds and to Open your hearts so that my words might actually penetrate where they are intended to go. Because if we properly apprehend both the challenge and the opportunity that this particular demographic represents for us",
      "then we not only stand to confer the most profound service upon our community, but rather We will reverse what the modern world has lost due to the inability of Islam and Muslims to live up to their mission. That is what is at stake here.",
      "I want to, I'm sorry. I have to switch glasses. It happens when you get older. Um, I wanna in my remarks tonight, um, I, I want try to do something that I hope is consistent with what Sheikh Rami had expected of me. Um I've been around for a while and I know one thing about",
      "about the Muslim community in general. We have a hard time really appreciating the gravity of the words that I said just a few minutes ago, we have a high time appreciating how people who are ex-felons and some of them even felonies,",
      "can stand up here with a straight face and talk about what these people can contribute to the future of Islam in America. For many of us, that is simply unfathomable. That is hyper-romantic. That it's not a realistic expectation either of that demographic or the Muslim community or of America.",
      "to suggest to you the following. Part of a problem we have in that regard is that our tendency is to think about that demographic purely in terms of what we can do for them and, in that",
      "and these poor convicts who come from these horrible backgrounds that we imagine, impoverished broken families etc. probably had no alternative but to involve themselves in crime and so they really got what was coming to them but it's sad anyway so we're going to reach down",
      "down into the more charitable dimensions of ourselves and give a little bit of charity. And maybe if we give enough, we might even end up feeling good about ourselves. What I would suggest is the following, and when Amin was up here speaking, I was reminded",
      "One of the strengths that we saw in Brother Amin was the courage that he had to be honest about his contribution to his own situation. I wish we had more Muslims like that. I want you have more Muslims who could be honest, about their own contribution to their own situation, all right? But even that, I want",
      "know you don't have to be a bad person to end up in prison in America. You don't need to be guilty of anything to end-up in prison, in America I know that's very very hard for a lot of you to believe all right trust me on this one okay there are a lot",
      "a lot of us who are not in prison because we didn't get caught. Because we didn'y get caught! And so the idea that this is some kind of separate breed of human being, that ends up in prison, alright? That we can only look upon as these poor helpless sort",
      "sort of welfare cases, please disabuse yourself of that idea. That could be any one of you. That can be anyone of us. Alright? And see it's hard to talk about this because as a Muslim community we want to identify with the dominant group and we want the disassociate ourselves from anything",
      "What happens when you are vanquished people? Vanquish people, by the way this is not me don't blame me. Ibn Khaldun said it. Vanquished People are in love with the victim. They love him and secretly want to be like him",
      "And because of that, we tend to move away from our brothers who don't seem to be going in the direction of gaining us the validation from those whom we most wanted. We as a Muslim community have to recognize this is a defect in us. I want you to just think about something for one minute and I'm not gonna go over time but if you were in Arabia",
      "Arabia let's say in the year 569 that's like the year before the prophet was born or you know 620 or 619 or 609 before he became prophet who in their right mind would have thought this little ragtag",
      "tag-tag backwater underdeveloped group of Arabians would have shook up the world. Who would've thought that? In a thousand years, no one would have thought that and were these Harvard grads? Were these Stanford grads? These were better ones almost",
      "And yet, Allah blessed them with the Prophet and with the ability therefore to believe in themselves. One of the greatest tragedies that has befallen us as a Muslim community in the modern world is that we have been robbed of the ability to believe ourselves. I don't mean for me to believe personally. Many of us got that. That's part of the problem.",
      "That's all we think about. It's me personally. As long as I go to Stanford and I get the PhD, I can do it. And I ain't like y'all. No, no, no. We become like Qarun in Quran. We disassociate from Bani Israel. No no no. I got mine that's them. That ain't me. I've got mine. Alright? We have to overcome this",
      "this and we have to be able to look for all the talent and resources that Allah has placed in this Muslim community. And we have believe in the ability of Allah to bring great things out of this community including that demographic, and that's what I want to talk about a bit tonight. We have to move from this obsession with what we can do for our brothers and sisters who",
      "and sisters who are incarcerated or who were formerly incarcerated. And we have to start thinking about what they can do for us because once we understand that it is something that they can't do for US, then we see the writing of that check not simply as a charitable act but as a",
      "in our own community. And one of the habits I want us to resist falling into, you know the pressures on Muslims today they're so great and so ubiquitous right? We just wanna hurry up and get out of this thing. You follow what I'm saying? Just take Islamophobia away something! We just want to hurry up",
      "to start learning how to think transgenerationally. You hear what I said? We have to stop thinking that if it's not doable in my lifetime, then it's worthy of investment. We have stop thinking like that. Right? As a wise man once said, anything that's worth my committing my life to is probably not achievable",
      "in a single lifetime. And that's what we have to begin to realize and understand, and recognize when we do that, when we think transgenerationally. The people who started Harvard University were not graduates of Harvard. I'm not joking about that. You think about that?",
      "Harvard did not graduate from Harvard but they were people who are not disabused in the ability to believe in themselves and then the possibility of what they could do so on what level on what basis do I talk about them what this particular demographic can",
      "Many of you may have heard, maybe not. I'll say it anyway. And I want to... See this is hard because some of you don't know me. When you know somebody, you can read their heart so even when their words are not what they should be, you know what they're talking about because you can",
      "I have said and I will say it again. The Prophet Muhammad would not have been able to succeed, not only in carrying out his mission but laying the foundation for the way of life that is our way of Life today without the support,",
      "the help, the comfort and the aid of his clan of Bani Hashem. This is a fact! We can pretend that the problem was this gangster who just showed up on the scene and... That wasn't the way it was. Without Bani Hasheem they may have doused this thing real early on but his clan came to his defense",
      "his defense. And they came to his defense not because they believed in him as prophet, they came into his defense because they recognized him as one of their own and this is the way human societies work. This hyper individuality that's become all the mood",
      "today that's an anomaly in human history. Most societies have identified with communal identities and Benny Hesham was like, well wait a minute now he is one of us and we're not sure about all this stuff he's talking about this revelation and all this other stuff but we know this if you harm him that's",
      "what I'm trying to get at here, right? To harm one of ours is to harm us. It's a harm our reputation. It is to hurt our sense of honor and we ain't gonna let that happen. You follow what I am saying here? Now, I have said it and I will say it again. We have in this America today",
      "has been a trial and tribulation for Muslims, especially since 9-11. And in our communities we know some of the difficulties that we're dealing with. People falling off like flies. Don't? As we say where I come from, from Philly, don't hate the player, hate the game. I'm just telling you what it is. Alright? We know that.",
      "And yet, if we would open our eyes, check our egos. We would be able to see that we have a Bani Hashem right here in America. Who is that Bani Hasher? Let me share something with you. You can go online and look at it.",
      "I think it was 2000, might have been 2001. Certainly no later than 2002. Tavis Smiley, you know Tavish Smiley? Tavist Smiley had a big old thing called the State of Black America and this particular year it was held in a church in Philadelphia and at one point they had a bit panel and it was all dignitaries like",
      "Like, like little people like me weren't there. And so at one point the moderator asked this whole panel, the moderator said what can we do to make Muslims feel like they're more a part of us?",
      "The reverend, Reverend Al Sharpton jumped in and he said this. He said whoa wait one minute let's not get it twisted because there's not a person in this church who doesn't have a brother,",
      "You know one of the reasons why? Because they think Dr. Jackson up here doing a black thing. Well, lie he... No! No! Any more than the prophet was doing a Bani Hashem thing. Do you understand what I'm talking about? We have to get out of the clouds and come into real society. This is the makeup of American society. And we have already an organic",
      "an organic connection, alright? To one of the least alienable communities in America. And notice when they boycotted the Muslims in Mecca Bani Hashem came not only to the Prophet's defense but to what? To the Muslim's defense. Omar is not from Bani Hesham. Omar was from Bany Adi",
      "He was with them, all those Muslims. Uthman is not from Bani Hashem. He's from B'ni Abd al-Shams. He benefited from the protection of Bani Hasheh. So we as a Muslim community have a vested interest in protecting our relationship and the integrity",
      "that role that that Benny Hanshin can play for Islam in America. And if we lose our Benny Hanshim, some of the people in this room are gonna suffer most. I hope you can listen to my heart. This ain't no black thing. Ain't got nothing to do with that. This is what I learned from studying the life of my teacher, Muhammad ibn Abdullah.",
      "My prophet, this is what he taught me. This is how real societies work and unfortunately today I have to deliver the news we are losing that connection to our Bani Hashim We are losing our connection to that Bani Hasm",
      "mentioned Malcolm X, and that is an act reminder to make. But one of the things we have to recognize is Malcolm was part of a movement. We focus on the individual alright? And we forget the context in which Malcolm was operating. You follow what I mean by that? There was a context they had already primed",
      "community to hear this message. Alright? And from there it could go on beyond that community. I can't tell you the number of white Americans than I have encountered who've told me point-blank my entry into Islam was reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. As I said, however unfortunately we are",
      "we are losing our connection. In fact, the relationship between the black community and Islam today is weakening. And what you have to understand this is not in the interest of Islam. And if it's not in",
      "that you saw displayed in this brother sitting up here. America needs some of that. We are a divided country today, and we don't have leaders who will model the character and the virtues to help us heal those wounds. In fact our leadership conducts itself in a way",
      "to be able to come together. America now is beginning to pay a price for many of the wrongs that have been committed in this country for many, many generations. Some of it is coming home to roost now as Malcolm would say but here we are, we are the Muslims. We have a commitment",
      "to justice. But some of y'all don't like this but I'm right and y'al wrong if y' all don't it. Justice, we don't treat justice as some item. Justice always has to compete with other considerations in society. What do I mean by that? How can",
      "how can i say that when the prophet muhammad came back into mecca from medina after being forced to leave came back what would have been his right according to arabian convention to do revenge well that would have",
      "but he understands something. He ain't look I'm first and foremost, I'm the prophet of God. I'm a messenger of God my job is to open up enough spiritual and psychological space in the people to get them to be able to receive this message. I can't do that with a strict commitment to justice alone.",
      "from a position of strength, not weakness. And that's why it was appreciated because it was what? From the position of stream, not me. You tell me if you got caught with less than 18 grams. Yeah. If you got cut with less",
      "And yeah, you plan to do a little bit of business with it. But if it was 18 grams! How can you tell me that warrants triple life? How can go to prison for 18 grams under a sentence of triple life and come back",
      "and come out not wanting to kill the whole world. You hear what I'm talking about? That is the virtue of forgiveness! We learn something about that from our prophet, and when we look at many of the ills that are plaguing our communities in America if we're looking for a way to bring this land back",
      "to give that community the sense of ownership that it must have if it is to embrace this thing and take it to the next level. We understand that that demographic, the demographic of felons and ex-felons who have seen the power of Islam in their lives. There's a brother sitting in his hallway today.",
      "38 years in the penitentiary. You hear what I said? And can still love. You know what I'm talking about? See, that's the power of Islam. Some of us can't even listen to our wives yell at us for 38 minutes. What do you mean? 38 years. You understand what I am trying to say?",
      "Is that what I'm trying to say? We need these brothers to model what Islam really can do. What Islam really represents, what Islam is and part of our problem today somebody else owns the narrative about Islam they don't know about these people all in terrorism bombing women this that",
      "in the lives of human beings. It is this demographic, this demographic more effectively than any other because America is a popular culture not high culture. If you want to go to the inner cities of America and that's where the future of Islam in America is it ain't in the suburbs. If You wanna go to those inner cities these are the people you better have someone with you to go. That becomes... Look Jack",
      "I'm from Philly. And they told me, why don't you come back and be imam? And I told them, I will not come back until I find my lugabratzi. Some of y'all know what I'm talking about. But this is part of the investment in Islam. Do you understand that? Let me ask you something. Does it have to be you? Do you have to lead Islam in America? Otherwise you don't care about it. Do",
      "Do you? Do you or can we get behind ourselves and say, We want Allah's religion to flourish. We want...we want to see...see you gotta understand something about converts I'm a convert to Islam almost 40 years I converted when I was 3. Time? Okay",
      "But you see, what you got to understand is that our families, you understand that? I got brothers who are Christians. Cousins who are Christian. We got Jews in our family, people out there. We want to see us as a community model of what this Islam can be. As the brother said, he came into Islam not reading some books, listening to some sermons.",
      "some sermons seeing models of what Islam could be in the flesh. For some demographics, no one can model that better than these brothers and sisters. And we need to understand their value in that regard. Okay? Because many of you, you can contribute many things but you can't go to Oakland and do this. You can't",
      "You can't go to Harlem and do this. You can not go to North Philly and do it. Alright? And the fact that you can should not disabuse you from the recognition of how important this is. Where would we be today without the legacies of the Muhammad Ali's, without the legacy of the Malcolm Xs? How many of those are we going to produce over the next generations?",
      "This is how we have to begin to think. So when you think about supporting pa'iva, think about the fact that some of these brothers may become shayukh and that's fine. Alright? That's fine but we got to get out of this mentality where they only people we recognize as contributing something important are our shayuqh. They ain't! I studied Islam my whole adult life.",
      "They ain't. We ain't! We need architects, we need urban planners, we needs comedians, we needed fashion designers, we everything that makes up a civilization and some of these brothers if their talent and expertise is in non-shutty issues then let us support them to be all they can be",
      "becomes a part of Islam as it's supposed to be lived. I have a whole lot more that I wanted to say but my time has come to an end and the brothers being very patient and kind with me, and I want to return the favor. I just want to end really by saying brothers and sisters please we are at a",
      "Islam in America. Okay? If this generation fails, right, what will the next generation have to work with? We have to capitalize on the gains that we have made so far and we must invest in this community and invest",
      "it doesn't matter. This is the Muslim community, the Muslim Community that is going to go on and make its contribution, its contribution to what America really should be so that stuff like what happened brother I mean doesn't happen anymore we want to make our contribution so think of this not simply as charity but",
      "but as an investment. As an investment in your own future, in terms of what your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren will inherit. Jazakum Allah Khair. Wassalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson on Building Confidence in the _6-8vm5fFCjo&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836776.opus",
    "text": [
      "A strong community is also confident. And I think that in the long run, if the Muslim community in America becomes strong and confident and big... When I say big, I don't mean just big in numbers but I mean big in spirit. Big in spirit in a way that the Prophet was, in which he was dealing with the society that did all kinds of things to him, they did all kind of things through his companions, and yet he was always able to rise above that and keep his eye on the prize",
      "and remain focused on the fact that he had a mission for which he was responsible to God. Because of that, he was able to keep his eye on the prize. If Muslims are able to do that then I think we'll be able to deliver on the promise of being able to bring some aid in healing to the society at large even segments of the society that might not appreciate that from us",
      "is the same thing that the Prophet was able to do, is to ultimately not say but convey the fact that you know we are here, rahmatan lil'alameen. You know we're here to do what we're doing because we believe it's good. Not because we think it's against you, but because we belive it's Good and if we're able to",
      "One of the things that I hope we will be able to do is to understand in a sense that America is not Europe. America is no country of one people, of one race, even of one language or religion. It's not bound by common history and blood but it is a collection of people from all over the world",
      "the intellectual or the religious, or the cultural history of Europe in terms of what we bring to bear on the challenges and promises of American society. So Western civilization as a construct will have to open itself up for contributions from people other than those who come from Europe. And I think, I hope that Muslims will be able",
      "they understand this insight and they see the importance of what that kind of perspective can bring to their mission in terms of their carrying out their duty to Allah in America, insha'Allah."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson on Diffused Congruence Podcast_n3dOWZdIeZA&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750834351.opus",
    "text": [
      "Welcome to Diffused Congruence. This is episode 21 of the American Muslim Experience. My name is Zaki Hassan, and joining me as always is my co-host Pervez Ahmed. Thank you, Zaki. Good to be here. How are you doing this Sunday morning?",
      "this Sunday morning. I'm doing very well, I'm sitting relaxed it's kind of nice and ready to have a fun conversation and to that end why don't you go ahead do the honors and please introduce our guest. Switching things up a little bit yeah usually Zaki does the honors but it is indeed my honor this morning and to our listeners to introduce and to welcome to the show Professor Sherman Abdul Hakim Jackson who",
      "Islamic thought and culture, professor of religion in American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He was formerly at the university of Michigan he has taught in the past uh at the universities of Texas, Wayne State University Indiana. Professor Jackson received his PhD from the University",
      "core scholar, member of the Board of Trustees of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, ALIM, out of Michigan. America and the former president of the Sharia Scholars Association in North America. That's a whole lot to say that we are deeply honored to have Professor Jackson on this show. Welcome, Professor Jackson. Thank you, Professor. As-salamu alaykum.",
      "You know, Professor Jackson is someone that I consider to be a personal teacher, a personal mentor and someone that i've had the good fortune of studying with so it really means a lot to have you on the show. It's good to be here, really good to Be here. Wonderful wonderful. So now there you are in Southern California prior to that we were together in Michigan but I imagine your story sort of goes back years prior to Michigan if you would love",
      "We'd love to hear sort of your early beginnings and your early roots, and then sort of background. My background going back how far? I know that anyone who has heard you speak on a number of occasions or is a student of yours knows that you hail from Philadelphia? Born and raised out there?",
      "you know, sort of what you're alluding to is the whole conversion story? Well no not necessarily. We'd like to know a little bit about Professor Jackson the person as well. Well yeah I mean I was born in Philadelphia grew up in Philadelphia sort of came of age...I was born",
      "amidst lots of goings-ons in the country. I grew up in a very urban context in Philadelphia, which it's funny because now I can recognize that we grew up",
      "I had no exposure to anything else. And to be quite frank, I think that one of the things that I still wax nostalgic about is the very, very high and thick and deep levels of community that I enjoyed as a child. And, you know, community can come in a lot of different forms.",
      "Philadelphia, you know back in the 60s, all the way into the 70's was a city that was very much defined by its gang activity. And one's life was really to a real extent sort of not defined although in some instances maybe but certainly informed",
      "of where one lived, and that geography itself was defined by the boundaries of gang territory. So that was always a part of sort of my mental landscape. And it's funny, you know, even I haven't been back to Philadelphia in a couple few years now but when I do, you",
      "by those realities. And when I go to certain parts of the city still today, I get a certain tingling that sort of reminds me of where I am. So, you know, I grew up in that kind of reality. Is Philadelphia pretty segregated? Like racially segregated?",
      "But in some ways, you know, that was what made it feel unsegregated, if that makes sense to you. In other words, I mean, you",
      "know, and you know collective premiums and stuff like that. You know so you saw people like that, you saw police officers if you went downtown you saw whites. And when you went to school a good number of teachers were white but sort of like I think I heard Dick Gregory say it once you know, I saw so few white people that you know I grew up thinking",
      "you know, 90% black. So that's how segregated the neighborhoods were and there were a few whites I remember when I was very young, you know there was still a smattering of whites left in the neighborhood but by the time I became a teenager 95-97 percent of them had left. And so yeah it was a very segregated city",
      "But as I said, as a young child growing up, I didn't sort of feel that kind of segregation because my world was defined by the community in which I lived. And as a as a younger person, you know, the reality of where I was going to school and who I was hanging out with how safe I would be or not,",
      "immediate than issues of race and racial confrontation. I really became much more aware that as I got older, sort of moved beyond the confines of my neighborhood. I think that one of the things that sort of did inform me maybe even aspects of my personality is",
      "In our neighborhood, we had the misfortune. I'm not sure if that's the right word to use. But our gang territory – and I was very active. I don't want to put on any goody-two-shoes sort of guys here. I mean, I was an active member in that culture. But one of the misfortunes that we had is that in our whole gang territory,",
      "gang territory. I mean, we had a large area geographically speaking but we only had elementary schools in our entire gang territory so that meant that for junior high school and there was at middle school then back when I was a kid you had elementary school, junior high which was... Junior High School was seventh eighth and ninth grade and then you went to high school which",
      "zero junior high schools and zero high schools in our gang territory. So that meant we had to go outside of our territory, to go to junior high school and to go the high school. And that in a sense reinforced the camaraderie and the meaning of being sort of now in my sophisticated academic mindset I would call it communitarian in one's orientation.",
      "You don't, you know, I knew guys who probably would have ended up in the NBA or the NFL whose careers never saw the light of day because we did not enjoy the luxury of being able to stay after school for basketball practice or football practice. Because you had to leave right after school ended? Yeah, as you roll in with the homies and you roll out with the homeys or you may not roll at all. So that was a part of my reality.",
      "brother who was, how can we put it? We don't want to be too exposed too much. Anyway, I had an older brother who really, how could we put a prominent in our gang and my father",
      "He was a devoted father. And in fact, I mean one of his achievements you know, I was in a family of five boys in urban Philadelphia during what we used to call the gang war era and all my brothers survived and none of us went to prison that was an enormous accomplishment for my father.",
      "of our turf to go to high school. And, you know, he got in his share of trouble and my father said that if you go to this high school and you start getting into the same trouble there's going to be trouble with me. So I ended up going to what is called a vocational technical high school which was very, very far out of my...out of our territory. I had to take two trains",
      "and a bus to get to school every day. And again, this was still in the gang war era. So I went four times the distance from home that my older brother had gone from home just to go to high school. But what that did was it put me in a situation where I became very used to venturing out on my own and making alliances, meeting people.",
      "meeting people almost as a survival mechanism. So I've always been, I won't say comfortable but the prospect of having to sort of forge into new territories by myself was one that I sort of got used to as part of reality",
      "of surviving in my childhood. So by the time I got to college, I mean, I can count on half a hand you know, the number of whites that were in classes that I took. This was just a continuation sort of of my high school experience where I just had to venture out on my own and had to find the survival mechanisms,",
      "the fortitude, you know, the determination to survive and forge ahead. And that sort of goes back to my childhood. So did you – so like when you, again, like when we go to that vocational school at the technical high school, you said. I remember when I got to the University of Texas there was a colleague I had",
      "graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, and we were sitting around his living room one day just talking about our childhood upbringing. And he said to me, you know, I don't know if you realize it, but I can probably count on one hand the number of people who went – no, I can put in a phone booth of the number",
      "Seriously, right. That was my question. That's what I was trying to lead to. Yeah.",
      "When he was 18, he just picked up, left South Carolina and came to Philadelphia. I think he said with about $50 in his pocket and just made a new life. But he was very keen on education for his boys. And for him, education was graduating from high school because that was sort of the forbidden fruit",
      "that he never had the opportunity to have. And we saw that as his apex duty as a father, to make sure that his children graduated with a high school degree and vocational technical schools were sort of this innovation that said there's a line in the autobiography of Malcolm X where he talks about wanting",
      "lawyer and the teacher tells them well you know that's sort of an unrealistic uh aspiration for you know you should really perhaps think about being a carpenter or something like that so the idea was that you know these kids are not likely to you know to be able to do very much with their minds so let's teach them how to make a living with their hands. And so these were schools that were really designed to train blue collar urban inner city, inner city poor black kids and at that time I mean we're still in a",
      "I don't want to call it an industrial age, but maybe an industrial-age. You know the job finding prospects were not bad. I went to a vocational technical high school. I studied or majored in instrumentation. I got my first job at Westinghouse. I was 18 years old and at that time they had a program where you could leave high school for your second semester",
      "and carry all of your grades from your first semester into your second semester, and then graduate while working. So I went to work for Westinghouse Corporation. And just to give you an idea of how this worked in...I left Westinghous in 1979 because my first year of college,",
      "full-time my first year of college because my parents couldn't afford to you know pay for college so I worked my first-year full time and then I decided I you know I couldn't do that anymore um and I had some savings so I went my second year and then after",
      "The vocational technical school produced the following. When I left Westinghouse in 1979, my hourly rate was $9.71 an hour. This is in 1979 with just a high school diploma. And this was a job with full benefits, medical, vacation, the whole nine. I mean, this was sort of a blue-collar career.",
      "career. But at the time, I mean, I think I was just beginning to come of sort of quote-unquote intellectual age and I could just feel a billion brain cells dying every day that I went into work and I decided that this is not what I wanted to do with my life. And this was around the time",
      "in life. And so I became a Muslim around 1978, and so this was the time of really getting serious, making some real serious life decisions. So all these things sort of coincided. So I ended up sort of getting serious about college, getting serious",
      "of the beginning of the next phase in my life. Well, and to that end I would love if you could talk about your own academic advancement. I mean getting into an Ivy League school and UPenn et cetera. What was the process in transitioning there? You know a lot of people find that sort of strange and I think that has a lot to do, if I might be permitted to say so, it just has a",
      "poor blacks in the ghetto. I can say with all honesty, with no hesitation, with know exaggeration that I know for a fact that you know, I left behind in Philadelphia guys who I hung out with. I mean homeboys who were gang one with me and doing all kinds of other things who was smarter than me.",
      "You know, I think one of the real differentiating factors in my case was my father. Because my father was, you know, he was old school and he was a disciplinarian. He was not in any way, he",
      "you had no business doing, um, you know, you paid the piper. And again, as I said, he went to fifth grade and his burning obsession. Um, there were two things in our household that my, that would send my father to the roof. One was fighting among ourselves. My father would not tolerate our fighting among",
      "a no-no. You know, bickering and stuff like that, yeah, but physical fighting he just, no, no. That's a no, the second no- no was getting a bad report card period. He just didn't play that again. He had been denied himself you know, the opportunity to even get beyond elementary school and you know he always suspected that had",
      "that had he had that opportunity, his life would have been very, very different. Because my father and I can tell you now, I know a little bit about intelligence. My father was an intelligent man who just wasn't educated. So he insisted that school was important at that time. You know, report cards where you got two grades for every subject.",
      "grade in the subject itself, and then you gotta grade for behavior. And my father would always compare the subject grade with the behavior grade. So if you got a C or D in the Subject, you better get an A in the Behavior because if the subject seemed to be affected by the behavior, you wanna pay the price.",
      "The differentiating factor between me and a lot of guys, you know, in the neighborhood I grew up with was my father. And the fact that, you would just not he would not relent on the idea that you must go to school if you can't understand the math or the science or whatever. You can sit there and behave. But he made it very clear that our lives matter and that he was not going to abdicate his responsibility as our father",
      "as our father to the end of allowing us to forfeit the opportunity to get something that he never had a chance to get. So I was always, um, yeah, I was never permitted just to blow school off like other guys in my neighborhood were. I would just never where it was permitted to do that now I could do all the other things. I mean, I hung out, you know,",
      "the other things that everybody else did but i knew i was coming home to a father who had certain expectations and you know, a decent report card was always one. So I had enough sort of um to get into college. I remember my mother taking me down to the University of Pennsylvania to take the SATs",
      "I mean, it was her idea if I remember correctly because I wasn't really interested in going to college. I didn't start college until I was 22 years old. When I graduated from high school, I had no real interest in going into college and that interest sort of developed subsequently once I started working because I wanted to retire by the time I was...I started working at 18, I wanted",
      "Getting back to your question, I think what really sustained me was that I didn't think that I would get into college. I first went to Temple University in Philadelphia and I remember talking to the guy on the phone in the admissions office",
      "I was just elated. So, I went to Temple and then two years later, I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania because by that time I started out my major was accounting. I wanted to be an accountant, you know make a lot of money wear a suit and all that stuff, you now but I found it both boring and then I hit those reversing entries which just took me for a loop. I couldn't understand reversing entry in accounting",
      "So I changed majors. I was a religion major for a little while, and then at that time Temple University had this program. Professor Ismail Faruqi, rahimahullah, was at Temple, and he had made an arrangement with the University of Pennsylvania whereby Temple students could go to Penn",
      "allowed to come to Temple and take courses with Faruqi, because he was recognized as an eminent Islamist at that time. So this is, as I said before, around the time that I converted to Islam, and I wanted to learn Arabic, and part of that was really related to the state of the community at the time.",
      "at the time, I mean, you know, I remember, like I said, I came from the tough streets of Philadelphia. And I don't want to exaggerate that. Lots of guys who sort of quote unquote make it out of the ghetto, they like to turn themselves into these great bigot in life sort of gangsters. I wasn't that. I held my own.",
      "And, you know, my homeboys would rather have me there than not there. But, um, you I wasn't crazy. Some of my home boys, I don't know. I wasn' one of them. But anyway that's where I came from and when I came into Islam, you",
      "who, you know, in my jahiliyyat day would barely be able to walk on the same side of the street with me. And then they were dictating to me how I should live my life because now I'm a Muslim, you kno? Right. And I said no way! This is not going to work for me. These people are gonna drive me out of here. So that really gave me an incentive to learn Islam on my own and from there",
      "And from there, I really wanted to learn it for myself because, you know, I just did not have confidence that, you people who now felt the fact that we both were Muslims entitled them to dictate to me how I would live my life. That wasn't working for me. So I really decided that I wanted to",
      "one of the first steps was learning Arabic. That's when I started going over to the University of Pennsylvania to study Arabic, and then you know, I liked it. I really liked it, and so I decided well why not just...you know? And I'd heard about this... they had an actual Near Eastern Studies program a whole department at the University",
      "about this professor George Moctese and all this stuff. So I decided, you know, well let me...I might as well just transfer to Penn and major in Islamic studies and make a go of it. So that's what I did. So i spent two years at Temple and then I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania",
      "I want to make is that, you know there are lots of blacks in ghetto circumstances who are extremely intelligent. They're not educated but extremely intelligent and you know I graduated and my undergraduate degree from Penn was with honors and i can tell",
      "hung out with that I'm sure had they gotten the opportunity, that they would have graduated with honors as well. So it's not as odd or strange to me that a young black kid from the ghettos of Philadelphia would end up in the Ivy League and performing well. I mean, I just think that some of these guys didn't have some of the guidance and some of",
      "to be totally honest about it, Islam really did make a very fundamental difference in that regard because it imbued me with a sense of mission and seriousness. And then as I said, you know, I didn't start college until I was 22. And that was a good thing actually for me because I don't know if I would have been ready for it at 18. And I still see kids today who are not",
      "or at least what I was wondering as well, and I think Zaki's question being informed by because it seemed like you're like where you were headed in terms of your trajectory. You know coming out of a vocational school was not a career in academia per se right? Or so how that sort of shifted and how your interest shifted And so now I think now you're kind of talking about how perhaps you know Not only your background and your father being a disciplinarian but also",
      "but also your own conversion to Islam and the role that played in that growth as well. So I guess without belaboring or bearing the lead here, what sort of drove you to Islam? Or initially was the point of interest there? Was it social factors or more religious theological?",
      "Well, I don't know that you can really – I don' t know if you can separate all those things out. And let me just say upfront that I am personally not very much swayed by conversion stories. I tend to think that – I mean they're interesting, don't get me wrong. But I tend",
      "Sometimes they are sort of post-facto rationalizations of a series of engagements, events, epiphanies that are not sort of rationally stacked in a manner that they would logically lead to any particular conclusion. I grew up in a household",
      "in a household that was not religious in the sense of my parents sort of maintaining any kind of catechism in the home. But we went to church when I was a young child, and, you know, we all participated in the Easter program.",
      "At that time, you had to do a little performance for the Easter program. You have to memorize some verses from the Bible or some kind of religious poem or something like that and perform it in front of the congregation. We all did that. It's called Say Your Peace. And my mother was and still is very religious.",
      "My father had developed a very cynical attitude towards the church and towards religion, but he was not anti-religion. He just felt that it was practiced in a way that was so hypocritical that it turned him into a cynic. Myself, I never really",
      "recall being inclined towards any kind of atheism in my life. Even during the times, I mean, you know, we're gangbanging like crazy, man, you",
      "I mean, but the idea of my own contingency. Now, of course, at 13, 14 years old, who even knows what contingency is? Right? I can only think of it in those terms in retrospect. But I never had a problem with the idea...of God. In fact, I always basically believed in God.",
      "expressing that in a manner that seemed to be consistent with the sort of individual and cultural profile. That was me, um, being a Christian, um just wasn't it wasn't cool. It wasn't masculine enough. Um, it didn't seem to be serious enough.",
      "you know, again this is mid 70s. You know the Nation of Islam was really making its bid I was never a member of the Nation Of Islam One of the things that sort of impeded my inclination towards the nation was that I always knew that this sort of race-based religiosity it might be",
      "it might have a lot of utility in this or that particular context, but I never accepted it as true. So I was influenced by sort of the general atmosphere that the nation had spawned. But I never was inclined to be a member of the nation and I think that in retrospect people have to recognize that",
      "a sort of atmospheric change. They really did redefine, you know, Black American culture. You know, they rearranged the furniture in the Black American mind during the 1960s and 70s. I mean, as I've written, I really do feel that not just as an academic but as someone who actually lived that history that they did do a lot to redefine Black cultural orthodoxy. We were all",
      "We were all a part of that in Philadelphia. So when I was about 20 or so, 21, because after I went to work for Westinghouse, I also left and went into the military for a couple of years and then came back out. And by that time...",
      "I was really searching for, as I said, some spiritual anchoring. Some existential anchoring because I wasn't afraid. Lots of people say religion is this, Christ, this, that and the other. I wasn' t afraid other than the idea of well there is... This can all be just live, eat, have sex",
      "have sex, you know, go to the club and just die. I mean, it's got to be more than that. And so I set out on a spiritual trek. And to be quite frank and honest, I knew that the sort of religious apathy",
      "but I did not know that Islam would be the expression through which that would happen. It could have been, you know, Buddhism. It's spirituality or something like that. But I think that what did make the difference was that, you",
      "I respected for what their conversion had to represent. And I remember if anything was a sort of tipping point in this conversion to Islam, there was one night in particular that I remember",
      "And we were standing on the corner. You got to remember, I wasn't a Muslim at this point. Right. And we're standing on The Corner group of us, you know, watching girls, you Know, jump into the swimming pool and stuff like that. And there was one guy there who I knew he was older than me. And he was as we would put it back in the day, he was showing up gangster",
      "stuff. And so we were standing there, you know, shooting the crap, you these kinds of conversations that just sort of roam aimlessly. Right. And I noticed one thing about him which was that he wasn't using any profanity and this was completely out of place for that kind of setting and for somebody of his profile. So I'm standing there okay all right this is interesting",
      "And then I noticed somebody would, you know, pass him the wine bottle. And he would say no thanks. Nothing judgmental. No attitude. Just a very confident no thanks until my passing my joint and no thanks that I'm looking at this guy because I knew him and I knew who he was. He'd been in and out of prison couple of times.",
      "And I'm like looking at this guy and I'm saying, what is going on with him?",
      "within which that could be affected. And I was very moved by that. So, I remember after we began to sort of disperse, I remembered edging over into him and asking him basically, what's up? Right. And he told me that he said, well, you know, I'm an Orthodox Muslim. And at that time the distinction Orthodox meant that you were not with a nation.",
      "He said, I'm Orthodox Muslim. And I said, oh yeah! So he was working at a barbershop at that time so you know I walked him back to the barbershops and he was telling me about it and then he went into the barber shop and came out and gave me a little small booklet I still remember it was this green cover towards understanding Islam by Maududi and he said you might want to take a look at this and if you want I'll take you down to the mosque sometime",
      "sometime and etc. And I remember taking that book home and reading it, and that was really the beginning of a real transformation for me personally. But it was more of a matter of finding the packaging,",
      "in which I could feel like I could stay within my own skin. It wasn't some, oh, I discovered God. I had always believed in God. That was never a problem to me. The problem was how does one live a life of religious commitment and at the same time not lose the ability to sustain one's profile as oneself? How do you not become a weirdo",
      "a weirdo, you know. You know some kind of outcast or something like that. So that was the beginning of the move to Islam for me and then as I said once I came into all the Muslim community I very quickly became aware of you know the need to deepen this understanding and to learn it for myself",
      "And that was the beginning of that.",
      "as you said, orthodox Muslim or Orthodox Muslim communities? Well at the time I didn't know it but yes. The Dar al-Islam was actually quite... What's a word i want to use here? It was quite influential in the Philadelphia community and in fact",
      "One of the leading institutions was the Islamic Center of Philadelphia, which was down on Broad Street. And I only learned this subsequently. The Islamic Center in Philadelphia had moved from 19th street in Philadelphia, Masjid Mujahideen that was a Donald Islam mosque. It had fissured a bit and a faction",
      "had gone on to establish the Islamic Center of Philadelphia. They, by that time, had shed some of the Dar al-Islam ethos and was very much inclining toward a more sort of mainstream almost gentrifying version of Islam in Black America but that's actually where I professed my shahada. That's why I took my shaha",
      "on the Islamic center of Broad Street. So it was, it had Donald Islam roots. Roots, right, which itself grows out of- And they were very distinct from the nation. There was no cross-fertilization between those movements. Right, and I think it grows out Brooklyn and is formed by not only the Islamic mission? Yeah, I mean- The Islamic mission of America as well",
      "the famous State Street Mosque. Yeah. Which was immigrant-based, I think, which was not like a predominantly American. But the Dara itself broke off of that in part... We tend to talk about these movements in a single stroke but there was variation and I think",
      "that i mean the dark didn't have a sort of militant uh ethos to it and that's part of what the islamic center in philadelphia um had thrown off they'd have thrown off sort of that that that militan ethos right and it was looking to itself as being both more international and more mainstream american got it um and i still remember the imam down there who was a very charismatic figure",
      "who really sort of steered the ship toward a more mainstream, but very definitely Sunni expression of Islam in Black America. And I think that one of the things that was very impressive about this community, you know, it was at the Islamic Center of Philadelphia",
      "uh philadelphia that i first met uh dr omar abdullah wow um he was at the time he was a professor at temple university and he would come down to the islamic center to teach classes and i remember sitting in one of those you know sort of early classes you know just to learn this lab by doctor",
      "Dr. Amar, Dr. Omar Khuda Abdullah. And this was again part of the sort of quote-unquote almost mainstreaming of this particular faction of the Dar. Although it was not exclusive and you did have other members who brought more of the Dark influence along with them so it was something of a hodgepodge but I think that on the Imam at",
      "I recognize it at the time, but I do now that Farooqi was one of those individuals who had this academic profile and he had this international network of connections. Some of them in some rather very high places and yet Farooq would take the time. In fact, he seemed to see it as a duty",
      "you know, to come down and speak at places like the Islamic Center. You know, he would be a part of, you know not conferences but lecture series that brought together various parts and factions of the community. He really did... To a limited extent obviously given his profile",
      "But I did recognize, you know, he felt a certain affinity towards the community and a certain, I think sense of obligation toward the community. And he did what he could do to fulfill that sense of obligations. So yeah, I met Dr. Furuqi through this connection with the Islamic Center Abdullah",
      "another... Who himself was a student of perhaps another leading figure in Muslim figure in academia, that being Dr. Fazlur Rahman. Yes, at the University of Chicago. Yeah, isn't that fascinating? Because they represent that history of Muslims in academia teaching Islamic studies. Yeah but I didn't recognize any of that history at the time and quite frankly did not",
      "At that time, I wasn't really yet on my way to becoming an academic myself. Right. Okay. This happens during undergraduate then? Yeah, late undergraduate. I think that it was – it wasn't very long before it finally dawned on me that you're not going to do very much with a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern Studies. So you're going to have to double down and take this the distance.",
      "Otherwise, this is going to end up to be just a royal waste of time. So I want to circle back and go back to something that you pick up there, which is so now you then transfer over to the University of Pennsylvania. You are now a student of Professor George McDesee, who himself is a just a leading figure in sort of an academia. Is that through his mentorship?",
      "Mentorship leads you to your interest in pursuing studies in Islamic law and theology, and the writings of. I don't know. Look when I went to Penn, I was an undergraduate still. So in fact, I'm not sure,",
      "taking undergraduate classes with Professor Mectese. I may have, but they're not a vivid memory for me. So it was... Or yes, no maybe I did when I was a senior. I took a couple of those you know undergraduate graduate classes the 400 level. But then I just",
      "It was Roger Allen who actually asked me if I was interested in pursuing a graduate degree. And to be quite honest, when he first approached that topic to me it sort of scared me. I didn't know if I ready. I said yes and so you know I went through all the requirements for that",
      "program and it was as a graduate student that I really came into this relationship with Professor Makdasi. And his inspiration was not so much in the direction of this particular pursuit, i.e., Islamic law or theology or whatever. Although he did inspire me in that vein",
      "by the way he was able to make this scholarship just pop out of the books. I mean, he was a very vivid writer. He was able just to make stuff come alive and in fact, I think that his articles are just classics in that regard but I think more inspiring not because he was very",
      "intent on making sure that Islamic studies was grounded in a very deep and fundamental facility, mastery at homeness with the sources, the Arabic sources of Islamic studies. And he used to tell us this is what's going to separate the men from the boys in this field.",
      "Right. A master of the language. And he used to, you know, he used tell us, you go get a couple these books written by some people you think are big shots and then you go to the bibliography and you'll see all this French and German and then the Arabic will be third or fourth in terms of priority. This is not the way to do Islamic studies. You have to be in a position where you can follow those sources wherever they take you.",
      "very big in that regard. And so his real inspiration was establishing a standard by which one was to pursue Islamic studies, and that meant being very well-rounded in it. So in his curriculum we didn't just study history and law and theology. We studied literature as well. You had to do from Ibn al Qais up to Adonis",
      "And I mean, in Arabic seminars on this stuff.",
      "upon these sources all kinds of presuppositions, attitudes, assumptions that come from without. Right, right. Now do you spend some time overseas also studying language at this point? Yeah I mean as I said when I first came into Islam it just became clear to me that I wanted",
      "finished my undergraduate degree I went to Egypt. I was a fellow in the Center for Arabic Study Abroad program so I went there and by that time you know, Arabic was sort of like everything to me so I really immersed myself in this whole Arabic business so by the time I went",
      "stayed there for a year. It was then that I really came in contact with, you know, the traditional scholars and began that track. I came back a year later to the University of Pennsylvania to continue my graduate study. And then a few years after that, I went back to Egypt this time as executive director for the Center",
      "for the Center of Average Study Abroad. The CASA program, right? Yeah, and at that time was at that I was really actually able to pin down, you know, a sheikh and start studying Manichifikhtin theology and other things like that. And I did that for the next two going on three years alongside all the other things that I had to do. And then I came back",
      "When I first came back to the United States, I didn't come back to University of Pennsylvania. I came back for my first job at the University of Texas. It was there that I had to finish my dissertation and then I went on to... Indiana after Texas right? Then I went from Texas to Indiana and then from Indiana to Wayne State for a year and then",
      "University of Michigan and that was in 1997. I still remember that year because that year was the, was the year that U of M went 14-0 and they won the championship in football. So you started at University of michigan in 1897? Yes. Okay okay because where you come on my radar is when i'm an undergraduate at the university so and i remember you being at the University of Austin at the time or sorry Texas in Austin. I was at Texas from 1989",
      "I think it was to 1992. Okay, which makes total sense. Right, right. Many of my older cousins even who attended UT took classes with you and so yeah that's when I first began to hear about Professor Jackson. Anyway, so fascinating so far. And for those just for the listening audience you mentioned FUSHA that's classical Arabic. You mentioned CASA which is the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad",
      "Studies Abroad, which remains and certainly at the time when you were a fellow as well as the executive director sort of the premier study abroad of Arabic program offered to students in the United States as well. So now you are at the University of Michigan. One of the things I didn't mention",
      "all of your numerous publications, 2005 Islam and the Black American 2009 Islam in the Problem with Black Suffering. And then more in some of the more recent works which we will get to but I want to say so in terms of a lot of your writings it seems that if we could put them in sort of two large buckets of again dealing with Muslim intellectual history certainly",
      "Islamic Law and Islamic Theology. Because even, especially I would argue like not only your book on Ghazali but also your book is Islam in the Black American, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering focus on issue of theology. Could you talk a little bit about, and I know this sort of begins, I know one of the starting points of both your conversation on Islamic law as well as Islamic theology",
      "is from this notion of both Islamic law and Islamic theology being negotiated constructs. Could you talk a little bit about that, and how we can begin to tie a lot of our conversation now moving forward into some of the challenges that confront the Muslim community today here in the United States? In a real sense I don't see how Islamic law",
      "law and to a different extent, but also Islamic theology. I don't see how they could not be negotiated constructs. I mean my emphasis, I shouldn't say emphasis, you know it was after I came back from overseas,",
      "really did dawn upon me, you know studying overseas was the extent to which what I was studying would really require a real heavy project of translation. There were historical factual",
      "factual, even in some ways epistemological assumptions that were perfectly fine in their own context but that would simply not have very much application in an American context. And I remember just thinking to myself when I was studying some of these things how one would have to seek to translate this stuff into a form",
      "that would render it effective in addressing American reality. And so after I published my first book, which was Islamic Law and the State, it wasn't long after that that I began to really become interested in this whole business of placing",
      "real, contemporary American reality. And from my own perspective, most especially the reality of Islam in Black America. I mean, I don't find that idea to be all that revolutionary and I'm a bit surprised sometimes when people sort of see it as such. But in a real sense, I",
      "from what those classical ulama themselves did. Right, but I think at the same time you would appreciate the fact that although it might not seem revolutionary certainly to a lot of for example Americans non-Muslims who their interaction or what they know about Islamic law or Islam in general is not this idea of a negotiated construct",
      "dictates from above and you know quote unquote you know sharia and divine law and yeah but i you know quite frankly i think a lot of that muslims even muslim sam i'm saying yeah i think quite frankly I think a Lot of that has to do with certain assumptions that we have about religion that come out of the european past thank you we assume You know when we say religion well most of the time. We're talking about a very concrete specific experience",
      "specific experience of Christianity in the world, then we simply assume that has universal application to all religion and all places at all time. And given the hegemonic deployment of some of the major facets of modern thought, you know, some of these assumptions have seeped into the Muslim content as well. So they too tend to think",
      "you know, that interpretation is blurred with revelation. That we don't see the difference between accepting the Qur'an on one hand just as an example and accepting this or that particular interpretation of the Qur-an on the other. And sometimes it's very difficult for people to differentiate between the two. But from my perspective again having studied Islamic intellectual history",
      "What I'm trying to do today, and this is not an apology. This is my perspective on the issue. It's not different from what Muslim intellectuals have been doing virtually from the beginning. And that is how do we take the revealed sources along with the recognized story articulation of the meaning of those sources? How do we place them into meaningful conversation",
      "circumscribe and inform our lives. That's right, and for those again you know I don't want to throw around these academic terms it's just assuming that our listeners are going to keep up is the very essence of what we mean when we say a negotiated construct right? We're talking about translating in this case revelation the Quran or the prophetic teachings yeah and engaging them in a conversation. No no no see this is where this is why I do differ somewhat",
      "the Quran and the Sunnah. Because if it's just the Quran, and the sunnah I mean you can get lots and lots of very different interpretations out of the Quran & Sunnah It's the Quran And Sunnah as these have been articulated by The community of Muslims that we recognize",
      "as being sort of the authentic community in terms of its custodianship of these sources and of these communally understood and articulated meanings of these resources. Certainly, I was speaking more to this earliest community of Muslims and the fact that this has always been a reality whether you go back to the first century of Islam or you're talking about Muslim scholarship",
      "Muslim scholarship today. That's what I meant when I said... Yeah, but I mean, I think one of the things that sort of may complicate this a bit is this, is that you know, the early community is responding in a very spontaneous manner. That is to say that what they are getting out of the Quran and the Sunnah and the legacy that is remembered from the Prophet's actual presence here among",
      "They are interpreting that in a context in which they are spontaneous in their interpretation. There are no sort of superior civilizations out there basically dictating to them that you should be trying to reconcile this stuff with this, and that should be the litmus test in terms of whether or not you are really sort of arriving at interpretations that are valuable.",
      "Now, part of the problem is that Muslims will tend to want to sort of seek refuge in what you might wanna call prefabricated understandings of Islam and all of its aspects because they resent this whole notion that we should have to reinterpret Islam in light of realities that are not our doing.",
      "Wow. Right. There's a lot to process there. I'm taking it all in. You're still with us? I've just been listening. For me, it's like sitting at coffee and just listening to two people who are way above my intellectual pay grade and just sort of letting it soak in. That's Parvez's fault. You know that, right? That's what? That is Parvez' fault.",
      "But let me just try and sort of simplify that then.",
      "community is fascinating. And I think that would make it, uh, that'd be a good starting point. Well, I mean the whole idea of Islam and the problem of black suffering is simply this. I think um, and this is especially true in the post 9-11 moment in which we live. Right. Muslims are not going to be the only ones now reading the Quran, picking up collections of hadiths and trying to understand what is this Islam thing?",
      "We now live in a context where people want to know what Islam is, what it represents, what",
      "of certain fears about religion. And many of those fears are a product of European history, not so much of Islamic history. And we can get to the ISIS thing and all that later on. But the whole idea that to the extent that you allow religion to express itself openly, you are bound to divide society and you're bound to produce fissures that are unbridgeable within society. And this comes out of the whole sort of European wars of religion",
      "wars of religion and the whole nine yards. And I think that what we have to recognize then is that there are these questions out there about Islam within the context of the Western society in which we live, and you know Christianity has had to face these questions but now we are here in the same society, we live in the",
      "us as well. So, you know the whole point of the problem uh Islam and the problem of Black suffering is to anticipate these questions coming into the Muslim community just like they came into the Christian community and into the Jewish community. And I think that whether these are questions of our producing or not there are questions that we will have to confront",
      "sort of an example of how Muslim theology would approach this question of, how do you explain the reality of black suffering, disproportional transgenerational enormous suffering in the context of a claim that God is all powerful and God is good. Now that question came to the Jewish community and Rabbi Richard Rubenstein wrote about this",
      "about this it came to the christian community um james uh i'm sorry uh uh i can't remember his name now jones william r jones is god a white racist wrote about it and the black theologians have been had been writing about it. And so my point was that this is not something, I mean Islam also considers God",
      "And if that question was relevant for Christians, relevant to Jews, it's going to be relevant for Muslims as well. And so we have to take it upon ourselves to be able to put forth where Islam stands on these kinds of issues because they're not issues that we can simply avoid or ignore. Now the point I was making earlier is that some Muslims may say, Well look, that's really the West's problem. That's not our problem.",
      "our problem. Slavery, for example, was never racialized in Islam. So let them deal with that problem and I resent the whole idea that Islam should be dragged into a conversation that it really has nothing to do with it. This is a Western problem. Let the West worry about it. And on some level, I guess, you know, some Muslims will think like that.",
      "think like that. But I don't think that, that kind of attitude will be enough to prevent these questions from confronting Islam front and center. We now live in the West and whether we like it or not many of the West's problems issues presumptions points of departure they are as much a fact",
      "Muslims and this is the new context in which Islam has to articulate itself. And I think we have to be very careful that because We live in a context where we are not the ascending civilization, we can too carelessly internalize many of the presumptions and points of departure That come from A Western approach to religion",
      "that is suspicious of religion, that is perhaps dismissive of religion. That is hostile to religion and if we're not careful we can internalize many of those sensibilities and then bring these into our articulations of Islam so I mean I'm not naive to the point of in any way suggesting that this is not easy simple, there are risks involved",
      "And that's why I think that Muslims have to be very assiduous in the way in which they approach these things, because whether we like it or not, we are making history here. This will be the platform on which future generations – this will be their point of departure. Correct, correct.",
      "not only the role and place of the Muslim community in America, but certainly what's happening just in modern times in general. And that is this idea of—and I think this is very relevant today—that you know the greatest challenge to religion is not persecution, but rather the greatest challenges to religion",
      "certainly in terms of, okay, well how does Muslim theology or Muslim intellectual history in general or as an aggregate deal with whether it's the problem of black suffering, whether it is the problem ISIS or whatever. I mean, how do you now translate or sorry enter into a conversation with Muslim tradition and to issues that are relevant and modern and then certainly live realities today?",
      "Well, no. I think that what we simply do is the same thing that Muslim tradition did. You don't imagine there were no Mu'tazila in the time of the Prophet and the Prophet, he was not addressing Zoroastrians and Manichaeans and even maybe perhaps up in places like Baghdad, Buddhists and other people like that. And what Muslim tradition is intent on doing is taking these realities as realities",
      "integrity while at the same time speaking effectively to these realities. And I personally, I mean, I just see that as being what Islam has done all along. Now there are two things that I think I want to say here. One is that, as I said before, this can be risky business especially when you live in a context where you are not the ascending civilization and when that is the case",
      "with the standards, the dictates, the sensibilities of the ascending civilization. Even if some of those sensibilities are not consistent with Islam and this is where the risk comes in. And so we end up sort of interpreting Islam in such a manner that really demotes the Quran and the Sunnah as the true basis of our articulations",
      "articulations and sort of promotes Western sensibilities, Western points of departure. You know, Western concepts as being the real litmus test for whether or not we are successful in this whole enterprise of trying to articulate Islam. This is one of the dangers. And so you know, to the extent that Islam comes out promoting all of the things that",
      "then we have a good interpretation of Islam. To the extent that Islam comes out not promoting the things that the West says are good, then we had an unsuccessful retrograde understanding of Islam Clearly in all of that, Islam has lost its place as the ultimate criterion for how we judge ourselves in terms of our engagement of Islam So that's one of the risks The other thing that we have to recognize is",
      "recognize is that and I think many Muslims are a little bit uncomfortable with this. I mean, Islam has never been a single articulation. Imean you know pluralism is the fact of Islam and so when Muslims get into this whole business of let's look at Islam and how it would address the problem of black suffering from",
      "We will necessarily all arrive at a single articulation of Islam. Some of those articulations will be to my liking, some will not But this is the process and this is what Islam has always dealt with There's never been I mean Certainly not from the time that quote-unquote classical Islam comes into its own you know the number of issues on which they there has been a unanimous consensus",
      "consensus have been the minority. On the majority issues, there's always been more than one opinion. And I think that while many of the opinions that come out of this attempt to place Islam into conversation with the realities of American reality, some of those articulations will not be to my liking. Okay? And I won't articulate why that is the case and maybe I won' t persuade those who differ with me",
      "with me that my idea is better? Maybe not, but this is Islam. And in the absence of the Prophet coming back and identifying one of these parties as the right party and the other as wrong, I mean we have to continue this whole business of negotiation. And of course there are risks there. But ultimately if Muslims are still holding on to an organic understanding of Islam, ultimately",
      "And ultimately, we have to recognize the fact that guidance, divine guidance is a reality. And ultimately that's what we all want.",
      "That's an idea that we have to be very careful about because I can be very reasonable, very rational and wrong. That's right, and arrive at the wrong conclusion in spite of having sound logic or sound rationality. That is right. So ultimately what we're looking at is how do you approach God's pleasure? This reminds me of something you wrote—I think it was in the introduction to a book—the notion of legitimate protectionism",
      "of legitimate particularity, something I think you borrow from Goldzer in terms of talking about this idea of Muslim history or Muslim intellectual history always acknowledging the fact that it was never a monolith. And not only acknowledging it but celebrating that idea. One of the problems I have part of is as I said, I become a Muslim I think in 1978 by 1982 I'm in the Muslim world and I'm studying",
      "And I'm studying classical scholars, not modern Muslim movements. And I think that anybody who's point of departure is a classical tradition, this is so unproblematic. And again, I think in the West, you know, in the 18th century, you had situations where rulers were determining their religious affiliation for everybody who lived in their domain. Islam never had that. Nor among Muslims nor from non-Muslims.",
      "The idea that Islam is very at home with a reasonable pluralism, and that's an important point to make as well. Of course not everything goes. But there are lots of opinions on which the greatest Muslim scholars could simply say I don't think that's the right opinion but I'm not to the point where I can say this violates the standards",
      "the standards of due diligence that we as a Muslim community recognize to the point where I can place this outside the fold of Islam. That's right, and I think this is something that's often missed, you know, a point you just made when, especially in these conversations about banning Sharia from certain jurisdictions and all these state legislators and lawmakers trying to put it on the books",
      "itself is not some sort of a codified law. Even throughout Muslim history, it's something you alluded to that even under the apparatus of a quote-unquote Muslim state, the application of one law for all people was not",
      "Sharia bills and all these things. I mean, they're based on, you know, I would say a combination of one ignorance and then two just blatant bigotry. That's right. There are people in this society who fear that look either we are dominated or we dominate. And these Muslims are coming here. You know, they are rising in numbers. They are an educated community etc., etc.",
      "and we want to make sure that they are dominated for fear that if they are not dominated, then they stand to dominate us. You know, this is just bigotry. But again, I think that Muslims too don't have to be very clear about what is Sharia then? What does it advocate?",
      "its attitude toward the American political sphere. What is the relationship between Sharia and the U.S. Constitution? Can it recognize it, does it not? If not what do you want non-Muslims to do? I mean these are all issues that have to be very I think clearly articulated. And I think that one of the risks we run right now is that if Muslims are not at the forefront",
      "for Muslims by those who have the attitudes that we see in some of these anti-sharia bills. We will be out there telling everybody what Sharia is. Right, right. Informed of bigotry and ignorance. Of course. And by the way, I mean again let's be fair here. Neither ignorance nor bigotery are exclusive property of non-Muslims.",
      "Right. A lot of ignorance and a lot of bigotry of their own certainly certainly And I would argue and I mean one of the like the point I was making earlier I mean ignorance or their own Muslim intellectual history of their on intellectual history, of their tradition Of course and so much of the way in which they view their own You know whether it's proxy or its their own tradition is Is it comes from a completely a like a framework that? Isn't you know",
      "isn't you know articulated or it isn't something that uh is historically valid and correct well yeah but i think that again i mean we have to be careful about that as well i mean look i believe muslim tradition is a point of departure but you don't have to make a decision here right we start talking about historically valid okay this may x maybe historically valid but that doesn't resolve the issue because the issue is okay then do you want to go back to x",
      "x or do you recognize that x was valid in a particular historical context and now we need a new x for a new historical context um and simply try to black box that x into this space i mean yeah that's potentially problematic agreed agreed agreed wow uh i think i think and you know if we could you know like i in my view or my estimation one of the other ways in which",
      "you combat ignorance and bigotry is to create a culture, produce a culture that is meaningful and relevant. And I know that's something that you write about, you talk about this idea of Muslim unleashing their cultural genius, the idea of cultural production. And again, that being something that has always been",
      "to create, uh, to negotiate cultural space wherever it's gone and to create and foster a culture that is relevant as well as that is not alien. Yeah, you know, but to be honest with you, I mean, I begin, you",
      "is purely instrumental. It's purely instrumental? Yes, it's purely instrumenta. What do you mean by that? I mean that we use culture to promote this or that. Now, I'm not denying that there is an instrumental dimension to culture but culture is not purely instrumental, culture is where we are. In other words,",
      "life, not always being in a position where we're trying to use it for this or use it",
      "And it is the expression of that because that's where most people are on a daily basis. Most people are not with me, with all these books on theology, all these book on law and legal methodology. Most People are far removed from that. Most of the people live in the world of okay how do I engage friendship? Okay, how do i engage neighbors strangers alright um",
      "space between the masjid and my home. That's where most people are. And I think that the point that I'm making about unleashing Muslim cultural genius is not so much to instrumentalize it, but to allow Muslims to develop a relationship with friendship, a relationship",
      "different pieces, all of which tend to contradict each other. That there is this at-homeness with my religious sensibilities even as I engage you as a friend, even as i engage youas a neighbor. I can enjoy your friendship. I could have fun. Fun that does not leave me guilt ridden because fun and Islam are not mutually exclusive. How do I come up",
      "expressions that really carry that message. And one of the things that, you know, I ask myself this question sometimes and it's going to be a little bit controversial because there are lots of sensibilities out there about this kind of thing. Let me try and keep it less controversial. Go ahead. I take somebody like Abu Nawaz. Abu Nawas is this poet",
      "in the Abbasid period. The guy talks about wine drinking like it's crazy, the guy you know, pederastry I mean, the guys moral corruption his poetry is full of this stuff. And I ask myself why didn't Abu Nawaz just apostatize?",
      "Why didn't he just leave Islam? You know, I want to drink wine. You know. I want be with boys. I wanna chase women. And I'm not gonna... Islam won't let me do this. I'm outta here. Yeah. Why didn' you just leave it? What was it about Islam that kept Amin al-Waz identifying as a Muslim? Right?",
      "Right? And one of the things I suspect is that there was this civilizational matrix in which he lived. That was simply too powerful, too important, too meaningful to him. These contradictions notwithstanding. And we're all a bunch of contradictions on some level. But this is the power of Islam as civilization. And you can see at the end of all these guys' lives... Well, somebody like",
      "you know somebody like up in the west turns around and writes religious poetry and all these kinds of things but islam has this civilizational power to it all right to touch people, to caress people, you know to be with people where they are on their daily basis. People who are not theologians, who are jurists, who do not sit around reading legal theory and all",
      "contradictions and flaws, and keep them aspiring to be Muslims. That's civilization. That is culture. All right? Right. And it's – I mean, I don't think – I certainly you would agree someone like Abu Nawaz is not anomalous, right? You know, I think… Look at Farabi. Look at Abed Sina. Why did these guys just say love? No, even in just poets, look at someone like Omar Khayyam.",
      "the subcontinent like mirza ghalib you know who write about erotic love and about about about uh about wine drinking and like you're saying but at the same time remain oh erotic",
      "we have this integrated self. And one of the problems that I suspect that we hit in modern times is, and it's something I'm still thinking about, I'll go out on a limb and just share my thoughts at the moment on it. Please, please. Is that I think that, you know, and I gave a lecture about this in Doha, in Arabic, maybe I'll send it to you sometime. But the point I made",
      "colonizers come to Muslim lands, you know it is the ulama of Sharia who seem to hold the key to any kind of legitimization. And so what they understand is that they have to displace both Sharia and the legitimizing power that it contains in order to be able to open the way for their own rule in these territories.",
      "where Muslims have to retrench and circle the wagons around Sharia. What this does, however, is that it tends to block everything else out. So the idea becomes if we reinstate Sharia then we've reinstated Islam. We get it all back. All this civilizational, all this intellectual and all these other pursuits don't receive",
      "the priority that they should receive. And we end up overly, obsessively focused on Sharia'iyat even our understanding of Tajdeed or reform today it's all about reform in Sharia'. Alright? That's right. Not understanding that your kids and my kids you know a cool outfit can be just as permissible",
      "uncool outfit. Sharia is not going to determine what's cool and what's not cool, all right? The question becomes where is the intellectual genius? Where is the cultural genius that will produce this sensibility of cool that also does not erect these seeming barriers between that and my religious sensibility and identity? These are not issues",
      "These are issues of cultural genius. These are issue of civilization, all right? You know one of my favorite masjids in the world is the Blue Mosque in Istanbul in Turkey. The guy built this! Look at the religious imagination! Look what goes into this and much of it is appropriated from old Byzantine architecture and you know all these kinds of things but look at this!",
      "Look at the power of caressing that it carries. You're not going to get that from studying Sharia, all right? And the idea that Sharia and Shari'i scholars and Sharia scholarship is all that we need to bring it back, I think that's a fallacy that we've fallen into, and I think",
      "of Islam, but practical sort of... When I say practical, I mean in practice. How do we come back to an enjoyment of Muslim community that is not past this? That is not guilt ridden? That it's not overly dependent on values and presuppositions",
      "challenge or alienate Islam? How do we come back to that? I think it's some, yeah. You've said so many profound things. Bottom line is that everybody has their role and there may be people who are not jurists who want to play... If you look at Islam in America take somebody like Muhammad Ali. Look at that! That's right. Look",
      "there are people out there who are artists, you know, who are architects, who interior decorators designers etc. Why leave all of that genius thinking that it has no contribution to make to the texture of Muslim life? All right? To the point that okay fine it goes off and dumps all that genius someplace else.",
      "I think that's highly problematic. And this to me is part of, again, bringing Islam into meaningful conversation with the realities that define and inform our lives. So much to get to, Professor Jackson. You know, I don't even know where we're running right past the 90-minute mark.",
      "I'm going to apologize to your audience. No, no, not at all. This has been fascinating and in fact this gives us more of a reason to have you back sooner than later because we didn't even get to talk about one of the things I really wanted to talk",
      "because they can go and get a copy of the book off Amazon, from the Yale University Press. Speak a little briefly about how that comes about, because I think it represents in some ways a departure from some of your most recent works, but at the same time not so much, because it continues in that same vein. I want to make two points about that book. One of them that I gleaned as a subtle interpretation",
      "book that's not quite accurate. I mean, let me get to that second but you know, I arrived in Egypt my first time when I went back in 1982 as a student this was about six months after Sadat was assassinated and I didn't realize it at the time but I was there just sort of witnessing the aftermath and all that had produced out of this and I read the papers and I'd read all these kinds of things going on and at that time I didn' t really understand them in their full context",
      "context. But what I came to see later on was the following, you know, the people who, the guys who killed Sadat, they went to prison. Five of them got executed but the Gamaha Islamiyah which is the largest faction among these people, I mean give me a sense of their size at one point, the number of imprisoned Gamaha members was estimated between 20 and 30 thousand. That's just the number in prison not on the outside. Right. So these",
      "So these guys were huge. And in prison, they began to study Sharia, to study their actual tradition. And to make a very long story short, they came to the conclusion, you know what? We were wrong. We were right. This violence against the Egyptian state, this violence against our own society, this does not promote the interest of Islam. And we're not backing off of our commitment to the establishment of an Islamic state.",
      "Islamic State, to the reinstatement of Sharia as our code of life. They are still committed to that but they're saying this wanton violence is not consistent with the law of God. So in 1997 they renounced political violence and in 2002 they issue a series of manifestos that articulate why it is that they're renouncing violence and they call it a realistic perspective",
      "Sharia based approach and what they're saying is two things. Islamist movements have to pay attention to the realities of the modern world, alright? Not look at them agnostically not ignore them not sort of try to you know swoosh them away but to confront them as they are that's number one and two they have to then have a Sharia approach to this reality",
      "once it has been correctly understood. So they produced these series of manifestos called Correcting Misunderstandings, and the first installation is the foundational one. It is called Initiative to Stop the Violence, a realistic perspective and a Sharia-based approach. And in it,",
      "now that what they did in 1981 was wrong and what Sharia has to say about how Muslims go about the business of reinstating Sharia in the context of their own Muslim society. Now, what I found to be interesting and one of the reasons that I wanted to translate this book into English was the following. These guys renounced political violence in 1997. Have you heard about it?",
      "It's a very little known fact in the West. They produced these manifestos in 2002, that's 13 years ago and still they have not sort of been looked upon as a meaningful movement within the context of modern Islam. This is despite the fact that these guys again,",
      "that they are not quote unquote liberals or progressives, or whatever label you want to use. They are committed Islamists who are saying that Sharia is telling us that this is not the way in which we're supposed to proceed. So I thought that was a message that would be very important for both non-Muslims in the West to hear as well as some Muslims in the west to hear.",
      "especially coming from people about whom it could not be said, that they're just, you know... Soft. Soft. This is OG. We're talking OG, right? In the modern sort of culture. Absolutely. You can't get any more OG than that. These guys do decades in prison. All right? And, you",
      "this be part of the discussion about Islamist movements in the modern world? Because the West wants, I mean, the West is obsessed with the Qaeda and the ISIS version. And it just completely ignores these kinds of activities, these kinds",
      "especially American Muslims, with access to a discourse that is not apologetic but that is thoroughly grounded in an understanding of and commitment to Sharia in terms of how we address this issue of wanton violence in the name of Islam.",
      "although they study with us Hadees, and they themselves take it upon themselves to study the tradition. And they come up with their own understanding of it. Some people have the sense that, well, are you advocating that people move away from the ulema in terms of their articulations of Islam? I'm not advocating anything. I'm simply showcasing what actually happened. That's what you meant when you said you gleaned an interpretation of your book. Well, yeah.",
      "Well, yeah. I mean because they do not rely on azharis although they do go back to Muslim tradition and they are quoting Ash-Shatibi and Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Hastafi and all kinds of other scholars in their articulations so they have access the Muslim tradition to the point of coming up with an understanding of Sharia that tells them that this is not the way to go and again",
      "And again, you know, these are battle-hardened, committed isthmists who are saying not that, well, you the West doesn't like this. Well, you make us look bad. Well you make me look barbaric. No, Sharia says we do not do this. Right. Like sort of post 9 11 expediency. This isn't that. No. Exactly.",
      "Because it starts 1997. Right, exactly. It hasn't even happened yet. Exactly. My point exactly. By the way, this is one of my fears right now about what's going on in Egypt because society can only take so much and it is a fact if you go into the introduction I do to this work the prison experience in the Muslim world contributes a lot to the radicalization of Islamists",
      "And what's going on now with the massive incarceration, you know, handing down of death sentences, group death sentences. You know, I hope that this campaign on the part of the Gamal will hold up.",
      "of my biggest fears about what's going on in Egypt right now. But for the moment, they seem to be holding court. So again, Professor Jackson, we could have you on to talk about so many things and we'd love to have you",
      "You were among a group of Muslim American leaders, I think back in February who met with him. You were chosen to make sort of prepared remarks to the president. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Well, that meeting was actually off the record so I can't make any direct articulations. I can say that in a general sense – I mean I can make any",
      "There was an attempt, you know to reorient the president's thinking about Islam to the point where Islam in America because he is the President of America and American Muslims are his constituents so that Islam in",
      "becomes more prominent in his thinking when he thinks about Muslims. That we as American Muslims are not always just sort of dumped into this basket of what's going on 8,000 miles away, as if that can represent our thinking, our sensibilities, our interests as Muslims in America and to think in that context",
      "that context about all the contributions um that muslims have made uh have made to america i think that one of the things that islam does not get a sufficient credit for um is all the contribution that muslums have and continue to make to amerika and i'll say especially especially in poor black communities in america where islam has reached and has reformed",
      "and has really lightened the path for a demographic that the rest of society has basically given up on. Islam has proven itself in that regard, and I think there needs to be more recognition of that and more investment in that very fact. So part of what was articulated to the president was exactly this",
      "I know that the media tends to calibrate all of our sensitivities to the point that, you know, the word Islam means Middle East. But I think it's important for it to be recognized that the Muslim community in America is in the millions, in the Millions of American citizens and their perspective, their realities",
      "their realities, their sensibilities, their aspirations, their hopes, their fears has to be a part of what the president of the United States is thinking when he thinks it's not. So here we are again on the crux of another election. I think that whole idea really kind of scares me in terms of how understanding or receptive",
      "you know, the present landscape looks with regards to that community? Well, look. I think that we have some serious challenges ahead. Yeah. But, you know...I think that should not misread these challenges. Enemies are not always bad.",
      "Enemies sometimes keep you sharp. They keep you aware of what you really stand for. Um, they, they force you some time to dig deep down and come up with your best self. And I think that the coming years will do that for many of us. For some of us we will run for cover but for many",
      "where we have to locate our best selves and to bring our best resources, to bear on the future of our reality in this country. And I think that in some ways it will force us out of the luxury of thinking that we can just float through life without making our commitments",
      "I think we're in for some difficult days. But difficulty is not all bad. The legacy of the Prophet, if it teaches us nothing, it teaches that ultimately we have to do the best that we can do and there are no guarantors of success.",
      "of success other than Allah. And what he wills to be successful will be successful, and what he does will not. What we have to do, we have always be clear in our commitment. And I think that sometimes when you are put on the spot, you're forced to come to terms with what you really are. And i think that we could use some of that quite frankly. Yeah here's hoping!",
      "and how that sort of emanates from Muslim tradition. And I think in many ways it sort of dovetails on something that you've said throughout the show, which is this idea of having a conversation with our tradition but in a way that is meaningful, and that's what we're hoping to do with this podcast. So I think, again, thank you so much for taking the time out to being with us and to sharing your experiences, your insight.",
      "with us. Well, thank you very much Parvez and I want to congratulate you on this show. I really do think that one of the things we need more of is the ability to come together and exchange ideas experiences and actually encounter each other. One of the problems Islam in America faces right now is that",
      "the optics of media coverage of Islam in the world, the basic human faculty of encounter, the ability to encounter other human beings as human beings has been degraded and diminished. And this works in favor of the forces of bigotry and ignorance in this country. So what you're trying to do now I think enhances the ability on the part of people",
      "human beings and whether we agree with them or not, you know. As long as our faculty of human encounter is intact then we can find ways other than bigotry and prejudice, blind bigotr y and prejudice because not all prejudice is bad but that's another show. Blind bigoty and prejudice that refuses to engage me",
      "me, you know, as a human being or I refuse to engage the other as a huma being. Spaces like this, I think make a healthy contribution to bridging that gap. So congratulations and keep up the good work man. Well thank you so much. Yeah that means a lot. That means a lo. And I don't think Zaki or I could have articulated any better in terms of what the sort of real one of the purposes of the show has been and continues to be. So thank you",
      "Well, jazakum Allah khair and keep up the good work. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. And with that, that wraps up our fascinating – this is the longest conversation that we've had on Diffuse Congruence. And for a show that prides itself on conversations, that's definitely a high bar for us. So we're very excited to be able to share this with everybody.",
      "Fuse congruence at gmail.com. Prevez, you're on Twitter. What's your Twitter handle? I think Professor Jackson will appreciate this. It's at the new Madhub M-A-D-H-A B And Zucky, how about yourself? Where can people find you on Twitter? I'm at Zucky's Corner that's the A-K-I-S corner. I'm also at the Huffington Post where my reviews and interviews go up regularly as does this show and with that, that wraps up this episode. Thank you once again",
      "episode. Thank you once again to Dr. Jackson for coming on and we will catch you all in the audience next time. Thank"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Jackson pay Tribute to Muhammad Ali at _llC08lWeN2g&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836736.opus",
    "text": [
      "And I see that in someone who was not a scout, who was an imam, who didn't even have a college degree. Someone who was a boxer. Someone whom many of us in this room may even be given to sort of look down upon. But his life should",
      "Should be a lesson to us all. Of just how powerful we can be. When we are willing. To stand up for what it is that we say. That we believe in. And when Allah tells us. That he will not be left to say that we believe. Without being tested in our belief. We must know that that is true. And each and every one of us.",
      "us must be willing to prepare his or herself for that time when they may be called upon to sacrifice for their beliefs, to sacrifice this religion. And we are living in times now where it is time for those who truly believe in this religion and its transformative power not only",
      "in our personal lives, but for the world. It is time for us to prepare ourselves to be willing to make that sacrifice. I want to say three things. Actually four, but I'm going to try and speak them into three because I have a limited amount of time. And I know that L-Tough and Hostley always get nervous when I get up here because I always go over time and I'm",
      "I'm gonna touch upon three points as I go about this business of remembering the beloved Muhammad Ali. The first is a sort of personal but also what I believe to be a communal debt that we all owe Muhammad Ali",
      "And we all owe Muhammad Ali's family as well. And I want to share with you, and I hope that this insight that I'm about to share will not be abused in any way, but I want share with a very deep and agonizing fear that I nursed for many years since the time that we learned that Muhammad Ali was ill",
      "One of my biggest fears was that when the hour arrived for our beloved Muhammad Ali to be taken away from us,",
      "the honor of representing our Muslim brother as he was prepared to leave this world and go on to the next. One of my fears was that, the funeral would not be one that was defined by the sentiments,",
      "by the representation of the Muslim community. My fears were that many in that pantheon, particularly a black leadership in America would move in and that funeral would be essentially taken away from the Muslim Community I don't know how many of you are thinking about this but for years there was a fear of mine",
      "that the person whom during his lifetime reigned as THE most famous popular person in the world, a black American Muslim. In his time of death",
      "would lose the honor of sending him off as he should be sent home. I had nightmares about this, I shared this with a number of people privately. I was deeply worried about this and one of my worries is that if we lost control over the funeral of our brother, I would have hung my head in shame for the rest of my life",
      "should have hung his head in shame for the rest of our lives. But because, and this is a testimony to His greatness He is great in death even as he was in life Because it was Muhammad Ali and the Ali family that made sure that this was a Muslim funeral",
      "that the Muslims were at the center of this funeral. Make sure that it was known that this man was a Muslim, a member of this community and that Islam was going to represent him in his sending off. We are all in the debt of Muhammad Ali and his family. And I know many of us may be thinking",
      "Well, what makes you think that the family would have had it any other way? Are you raising some questions about their level of commitment to Islam? And let me put that to rest right now and say no, not at all. I'm not raising any such questions. But the reality is the following. That there are many forces in this country",
      "that marshal social capital, cultural capital, political capital and yes financial capital. And these forces at times are able to bring pressure of unimaginable proportions.",
      "Thank you to the family for withstanding whatever pressures may have been exerted and ensuring that the honor and dignity both of our champion and of this Muslim community was preserved in this, his hour of death. The second point that I want to make",
      "is that it's time for us to recognize that Muhammad Ali was truly a Muslim hero. And what I mean by that, is that the fight he was fighting was a Muslim fight and I say that because many of us think that Muhammad",
      "was not a Muslim hero as much as he was a black hero. That he was fighting for the dignity of black people and now that we live under the circumstances that we are living today, some of us we are sort of willing to come in and sort of commodify him",
      "may serve interests that are meaningful to us, even if we didn't identify with the issues that were meaningful to him. Be that as it may, I think that those people who tend to see Muhammad Ali as only a black hero and not a Muslim hero are missing a fundamental point.",
      "It is true. Champion the cause of overturning white supremacy and the systematic subjugation of black people in America. That is true What is not true, however Is that this because the victims of that at the time happened to be black",
      "this is an exclusively black issue. In reality, the war that Muhammad Ali was fighting was the same war that had Adam square off with Iblis in the garden. If we will recall from the Quran",
      "When Allah tells all of the angels to bow to Adam, all of them bow and says Iblis. What does Ibliss say? This is not the khutbah you can talk to him.",
      "Did he say I am better than him because what I have done? I am Better Than Him Because What I Have Achieved. I Am Better Than him Because What i have contributed He Said I am, Better Than them Why?",
      "Versus what he is made of. It was Iblis who wanted to identify some essential character in him that raised him above Adam because of what he alleged was some essential",
      "existence on this planet begins with. That entities who want to hold themselves up as being essentially, inherently superior to other creations of Allah and that will manifest itself here on earth in many different ways. In America it happened",
      "in the form of white supremacy and particularly how white supremacy happened to affect black people. But at the root of the issue, it was the same issue between Adam and Eblise. And so what Muhammad Ali was fighting was that perennial battle that we all must fight",
      "And it is only when we are able to see that, that we will see Muhammad Ali as fighting a Muslim battle. Because the reality is this. Regimes of oppression operate on one ability. As I said at his genazah, it is not simply good enough",
      "good enough for me to be able to lord over you that's not good enough because for me together to do that i'm going to have to spend money energy power what i really want is to be",
      "my Lord over you and in order for me to do that I have to reduce you to a sense of inferiority. And once I've reduced you to the sense of inferiority then the plan is to tell you that you can only redeem yourself by doing what I say makes you new. My humanity",
      "is unquestionable. Your humanity is subject to your fulfilling criteria that I set. That's iblisism! That's imlisism and many of us in this room have some of it.",
      "I see some faces. I'm not trying to be irreverent, but we are living in times when the truth needs to be told because we don't have the energies to waste. We have to understand what it is that we're up against. Muslims cannot be out there complaining about Islamophobia and then turn right around in their own communities"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ Supporting A Dynamic _ Health_AKN7zOjJSyA&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750821952.opus",
    "text": [
      "One vision that I think we might benefit from considering in terms of how we understand the dynamic of community. And communities have to be places at the center of which are ideals and hopefully people who keep those ideals clear",
      "and keep them strong. And because they keep those ideals clear and strong, what they generate... Excuse me. What they generate, can you hear me? All right. What the generate is a centripetal force at the center of community",
      "of community. So if you imagine, if you know like when you take a bath right and take the stopper out all right what does the water do? See it swirls alright it's swirls so so you have this",
      "You have this phenomenon, right? Now, this is the center of community. What we want to do as a community, to be successful as a Community and a community that consists of Muslims, alright, of all different kinds of levels. Alright? We want... And this is for especially the people who see themselves as playing a special role",
      "a special role as leaders of whatever type within the Muslim community who see themselves as preserving the integrity of the community. What we want to do is, we want conduct ourselves in a way that we add centripetal force to those ideals so when it's turning this way",
      "Anyway, we'll get the message here. If it's turning that way, it's drawing people what? It's drawing in all right and that's where places like this come into play. Where Muslims have a place to come",
      "where Muslims have a place to come and enjoy instruction, to share ideas, to reinforce their values. That gives us centripetal force to all of this. And once it starts spinning, it begins to draw people in. In fact, it will even draw non-Muslims closer to this because of that centriptial force.",
      "But that centripetal force, it requires the kinds of hearts that are able to get beyond the individual self. The hearts that can think on communal terms. And one of the things that that requires is that we as a Muslim community reacquire a sense of mission. Of mission! You see if you and I are involved in a common mission",
      "We may have a difference of opinion, we may have disagreement. But because we share a mission I can only go so far in acting out that disagreement with you. Why? Because I know if I take you off the play then I've done what? I jeopardized the mission. And oftentimes the way that we react to each other is really",
      "a reflection of the fact that we no longer have a sense of mission. And we no long recognize each other as all being apart of the mission, alright? You can't do Islam here by yourself and neither can you and neither you and either can you. We need each other really literally, alright.",
      "He may be a weak Muslim, way out here. But as long as the community is functioning in a healthy way, you see what I'm saying? If it's functioning healthy and that centripetal force is going where do you think he'll be in 10 years? At least there. You get the point we're trying to make. And this is how dynamic communities work. Alright? But when division and rancor and misunderstanding",
      "understanding, and yes jealousy, envy. Negative competition when that gets here what happens? Doesn't clog it up I wish you did just clog it. What happens? It reverses the revolution and it turns into a centrifugal force and it starts doing what? Spinning everybody out",
      "Spinning people out. Alright? Spinning People Out. Alright, so within 10 years instead of being here he's here ten years he's where? Further away. Alright and that means that those of us who see ourselves as holding some special role in the community we have to be mindful of the community. Alright we have",
      "We need more than just religious scholars. We need everything that goes into what a community, what a civilization is. You go home tonight, what are you gonna do? Don't lie to me because you can go to hell for lying. Okay pray and then what? Huh? Go to bed? Netflix!",
      "Netflix. Alright, what else? Go read. Alright. See this is what I'm trying to get at and then I'll stop here and we can open questions. How much of Netflix... And I'm not making a value judgment here. Everybody relax. Relax. But how much of netflix is going to reflect your values?",
      "in such a way that would add to this centripetal force. We don't need literature, we don't eat poetry, we dont' need art, we do not need humor. You mean we go to the masjid pray and go back out into that world and were absolutely dependent on everybody else for everything else we do? That's a formula for schizophrenia. I'm not joking, I'm just laughing, I am not joking.",
      "The world outside reflects nothing of your values, your sentiments. Alright? Your sensibilities. Okay? Alright? That's part of that centripetal force. And that's why we need our artists. Alright. We need our comedians. We leave out fashion designers. We get all of them and we need to recognize all of that work as Islamically valuable",
      "Islamically valuable as what? As islamically valuable and of course art has parameters all right, humor has parameters Right fashion design has parameters Islamic speaking we're talking about. All right, so we're not talking about simply laissez faire Okay, but we cannot just we cannot ignore all right the realities that we live every day people live",
      "People live not in the world of theology and law. People live in a world of culture and relations. That's where they live every day, all right? And so that all has to be a part of that. And the whole point is a healthy community is a community with that centripetal force, allright, it's drawing people in, okay? And how we get that going, okay, I mean that's a theoretical question at the point of discussion, alright?",
      "But understanding that as a community, we have to be able, all right? To try to... I mean, that's what ideals are all about. It's all about drawing them in and getting people to be the best that they can be, all",
      "And if they're not that tomorrow, then it might be ten years from now. So that's just a concept of community that hopefully will enable us to think in more organic terms instead of this zero-sum term and that either we are perfect community or we're nothing. That's a danger because",
      "that will breed a sense of helplessness, all right? And people will give up."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ Understanding the Prophet_s ﷺ_JGcvk_UEVXM&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750825170.opus",
    "text": [
      "This was, wow, almost 40 years ago. I converted when I was three. I was at the time, I was studying in Egypt and there was a very noted sheikh and he was very noted for his knowledge of tafsir",
      "tafsir. And of course, this wasn't very long after I converted to Islam so about four years or so and so when I heard about him I went to his office and I said look I'm you know I'm an American Muslim I'm studying here in Egypt and I'd like to and I heard that you are you know your a master of tafsiri and I would like",
      "and learned from you. And then something sort of shocking happened, he just stood there for about 45 seconds and just stared at me and he didn't say anything. And when he finally did say something he said close the door behind me",
      "and I was just a little bit, a little confused. A little bit what's going on? And then he went over to his bookshelf and he took down four thick volumes and it was a Seerah al-Nabuwiya of the Prophet by Ibn Kathir",
      "What he said to me is that if you really want to understand the Quran, alright? You need to start with an understanding of the seerah of the Prophet. So rather than just come to me and learn tafsir which by in large would be atomistic, ayyaa",
      "was all about, you really need to study this. And I went on to understand that while the seerah is something that we all have to exert a lot of effort to learn, in point of fact, in a general way, everybody living in the time",
      "Quraysh, including his enemies. In other words they knew the backdrop of the Quran just as a matter of course and because of that their understanding of Quran would be one that was deeply rooted in the realities that the Quran sought to address. And so it became clear to me",
      "that studying the seerah of the Prophet ﷺ was critical to getting a big picture."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr_ Sherman Jackson_ What_s ALIM__laTw8BAB_As&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837226.opus",
    "text": [
      "Why A'lam? Because it fulfills a need on the part of young people to acquire what we at A'Lam like to call, the kind of Islamic literacy that they need in order to be able to navigate American society both within and without the Muslim community. A'lm was actually started by students not by teachers. It was a need that students recognized that they had for instruction on things about Islam",
      "within the confines of an academic classroom. So they wanted to find ways to be able to continue some of the discussions that we're having in those classrooms, but in a way that enabled them to more fully engage in the kinds of questions and concerns they had as Muslims. ILEM, in a sense has never been about ILE. Ilem has simply tried to serve a particular educational mission. And that educational mission is basically summarized",
      "it's not politicized, it's a literacy for this time as opposed to that time. It's a literacy that hopefully has an element of being timed on it to it and so that being the case we have no reason you know to change with the winds because we're not in the business of trying to keep up with the Joneses as it were or as I said nudge out this organization or nudge"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Dr Sherman Jackson_ White Supremacy - Modern Shirk_yQBqIlJ8KUI&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836639.opus",
    "text": [
      "I've noticed the effects of white supremacy in the Muslim world. How do we make our brothers and sisters abroad aware of its presence in their societies and cultures because it seems most Of them are unaware of it Because it's so going in their way of thinking Bilal again, I mean I would tend to",
      "I would tend to agree with you, but I think that the real point and this is why I was hesitant even to talk about this kind of thing because it's so easy to be misunderstood. But I see it as... This is one of the problems of modern Islam. I see very clearly and I mean it has to be dealt with.",
      "that this is contravening Islam. I'm saying it's not as a black man, I'm sayin' this as Muslim and I'm sayin' this not even somebody who's affected by white supremacy. I am sayin' because white supremacy constitutes a false regime of validation in the world today. It has effect on everybody. And I think if we can find a way of getting Muslims to see this in Islamic terms,",
      "eradication of white supremacy as i've defined it we talk about white people let's just get that straight right uh but the eradication or white supremacy has been an islamic priority then maybe we can you know we could we could make some advances in terms of understanding this thing and and then maybe inshallah uh of coming up with ways to come to terms with it there are a number of psychological uh and philosophical ideas that have emerged from the west",
      "the west like democracy and freedom and human rights yes navid uh as i said and this is why i didn't want anybody to leave before i got finished absolutely there are ideas that emerge from the modern west i'm not saying that all ideas that emerged from the mother west are wrong or we must reject them simply because",
      "is this, is it the substance of that idea that we're attracted to or is it merely the fact that the West promotes it? Because if it's merely the way that the Western promotes it then what that saying is that they have an authority and a power of validation that can put us in a situation where we accept things not because we agree with their substance just because we want to be validated by them.",
      "by them. That is what we have to be aware of. I'm not, I'm Western. I am not African. A lot of people don't like that. Been here 400 years. I' m not saying we are going to reject everything in the West. What I am saying however is that I am going to critique it on the basis of the universe and assess it on a basis of values and meanings Allah has revealed to us and on the",
      "Acceptable or non-acceptable. Not on the basis of, well if I accept it they'll think I'm great. If I don't accept it, they'll thing I'm primitive. That we have to be very careful about."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/_GivingTuesday - Insights with Dr Sherman Jackson_0QdmTfX5aZ4&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750821577.opus",
    "text": [
      "Six months in the Muslim world, Muslims in America will discover that they really are American. And there's nothing wrong with that. And in the same way that if you're an Egyptian, you don't agree with everything about Egyptian society, you didn't agree everything about Egyptian politics, you'll agree with every thing about Egyptian foreign policy, I see no reason for me to bear this burden as an American. You know it's a sad fact that Muslims have become so overly politicized of politics just so saturates their psyche",
      "that they can't think outside of purely political terms. But I'm sure that, you know, despite the fact that Mecca was a pagan capital that prosecuted the Prophet and turned him out and turned the Muslims out, I'm so the Sahaba missed Mecca. I'm suree they missed Meccca. That was their home."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/_Gotcha_ Islam-Dr Sherman Jackson_gRmxFsezTrk&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750825215.opus",
    "text": [
      "One of the services we have to bring to this Muslim community in this place, in this time is we have overcome this tendency to engage in gotcha Islam. What do I mean by that? We have to be a community that is not punitive in its orientation",
      "A community that does not want to punish, that does relish the idea of punishment. Gotcha! But a community that always even in punishment and it's not as much as punishments but even in that always wants to build human beings up never wanting to tear them down",
      "I'm going to even go out on a bigger limb, or what do you call it? A weaker limb. And say this. Many of us are carriers of an authoritarian dictatorial impulse. And you know where we got it from? 200 years of dictatorial, authoritarian, tyrannical rule",
      "rule in Muslim countries throughout the world. And many of us have imbibed this as the prism through which we now see Islam, Islam as social control and many of these places want to use Islam as a social control because if you control society then society can't control you. And",
      "imbibe this and therefore our tendency is to want to pounce, is to be punitive in our orientation. And I'm not here to argue that anything goes Islam. This is nonsense but let me just share one example of this from the Sunnah Muhammad. A man comes to the Prophet and says O Rasulullah",
      "hadith. This is Sahih Muslim. Comes to the Prophet and says what? Oh Rasulullah, I have committed a sin so apply the punishment of the book of God to me. He says this to the prophet. You know what the prophet said to him? Didn't you just make Salat with us? Didn'you just offer the prayer with us?\" He said yes! The Prophet said what to him",
      "You have been forgiven. You have be forgiven. Now many of us are uncomfortable with this kind of stuff because they see it as what? Opening the door wide open for all kinds of indiscretion but we have to understand that the Prophet was a man who was dedicated to producing strong, empowered confident Muslims",
      "Muslims who would take Islam for themselves, own it for themselves and go on to be all that they can be. This is the kind of community we have to become. We have to support one another. We HAVE TO BE THERE FOR ONE ANOTHER. And we cannot be serious about serving society at large if we're not serious about SERVING EACH OTHER."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Honoring Excellence_ Dr_ Sherman Jackson Speaks at_0EUhF3NiZCM&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750838778.opus",
    "text": [
      "Like everybody else, I've only been given 10 minutes to speak. Okay, okay. Alright so what I want to do though first of all I've been asked to talk give a word of sort of counsel or advice to the community those who have spoken to the students and by the way I'm gonna sing it you guys are good",
      "really radiant, masha'Allah. What I want to say to the community is the following few points. I think that as we sit here in this room on this particular table it's really important for us to have a sense of historical consciousness where we are in the history of ourselves",
      "And I know that a lot of people in here might not have the historical trajectory that others in this room have. But I think it's really important to understand, you know, sometimes communities pray for miracles and they pray for miracle and then when the miracle comes, they don't even recognize it.",
      "What we have to do is recognize that what we are seeing in the development of Islam in America, and let me say it. I don't mean to exclude anyone. This is a focus not an exclusion. Let me say Islam in the black American community. It's time that we recognized this development for the miracle that it is.",
      "For the miracle that it is. The occasion that we are here on today, is a crowning jewel of that miracle. And let me just share again, the stroke of consciousness. I don't know if I should say this but I will. I'll be 70 years old my next birthday. I knew who Pharma was when I was a child.",
      "When I was in elementary school, there weren't even any Muslims. And by the way, this is in the city of Philadelphia, one of the most black Muslim cities in the country today. But when I was a child, there was none of that there. None of that here. All right? And as I've said before, on the day when I",
      "in the house. That one day he's going to grow up to be a Muslim, that you're gonna visit his home and your granddaughters are gonna be wearing scarves and your grandchildren will be praying in this strange language, that the city that you live in was gonna be teeming with Muslims, but at one point the most famous human being on the planet would be a black American named Muhammad",
      "Muhammad Ali, no one would have believed him. No one would believe that. Noone could have imagined that and yet it happened. And its time for us as a community to regain our ability to believe in the possibility of miracles because a miracle is really nothing more and nothing less than Allah saying what?",
      "That's all of this. And for us to maintain our connection to Allah, our connection",
      "a sense of historical perspective. This is not just another day, all right? And this is not even just the achievement of these young men. This the culmination of efforts and prayers and sacrifices that have been going on for some time.",
      "The second point I want to make is that, you know as we celebrate this occasion... I'm getting nervous man. It's time stuff. Anyway, in all seriousness the second point that I want",
      "individual accomplishment of these beautiful young men. I think it's important that we also celebrate as a community and that we see this as a communal accomplishment, alright? And it's really important, and I'm just gonna say something here that I think merits saying because this is part of our communal property,",
      "It is important for us as an Ummah, as a global community that when various and sundry parts of the community come together that they are able to come together as equals who come together to discuss the issues of the Ummah. The possibilities of the ummah",
      "fully invested, fully committed and fully qualified to contribute to the well-being of the Ummah. And so we have to see this as a community as well. This is part of our pride as a Community. All communities have to have that. So as we celebrate this I want to remind us",
      "also as a community. This is a communal accomplishment and that we, as we walk out of this room and we walk about now, we should be proud that we are now like every other Muslim community on the planet. We produce our Hifaa. And I've said for some time the American community of Muslims, the American Muslim community has to become",
      "It has to become a self-authenticating community. And this is not, again, this is no matter of competition. This is not a matter of ego. Obey the law told a story I don't want to tell too many stories because then we'll be undone. But I remember, this was also in Egypt, I was studying with the Shaykh and after the lesson he said listen I want you to help me do something.",
      "He said, I got all these questions from these women from the West. Because they had this online thing, you know. Everybody can send in and ask questions. They get fed plus. And he said, God is questions from from these ladies from Europe and America. I want you to help me answer them. He's a sheikh! But he said you know the reality in ways that I don't.",
      "in ways that I don't. You know aspects of that reality, that I could not even fathom. So I want you to help me answer these questions. That's all I mean in terms of the American Muslim community becoming self-authenticated because no one knows our reality like we know our reality and we have to be there, the ones who address our realities and this is a part of that. This is a par of a communal effort.",
      "All right. See, I'm rushing now. Anyway. I also think it's important for the community to recognize its role beyond the accomplishment of these young men and that the community... And I mean those of you who are not K'faw,",
      "scholars who are not shiuk, who are PhDs, who were not any of that to recognize yourselves as co-producers of this phenomenon. Not mere recipients of what the refrains and the scholars and the sheikhs and every... No you're not recipients, you are co-producers",
      "And you have to recognize yourselves as co-producers. Alright? The Prophet, he was the recipient of revelation and he had all kinds of challenges that he had to confront. But who trained the army? Who drew the maps? Who made the weapons? There were all kinds things that the community needed",
      "That did not just come from him. And the community had a critical role to play in that. And unfortunately, somehow, this is my perspective, take it for what it's worth. Somehow we have been taught that community these guys are just recipients. You know, the scholars tell you and then that's it! Well, we need skills, we",
      "talents we need gifts beyond those of what some of the scholars have. We need you. We Need You and you must understand your role in this collective enterprise of establishing and living and perpetuating Islam in this part of the world that you too are carriers of the message of Muhammad",
      "This is a part of a bigger hope, of which you are a critical element. And I think it's important for us to recognize that."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/How are Fatwas Misunderstood_ with Dr_ Sherman Jac__1750840915.opus",
    "text": [
      "Guy asked him, Sheikh is it permissible to have trees inside your home? Do I follow this? Is it permissable to have tree's inside your homes. Now the sheikh happened to be from Saudi Arabia alright okay in Saudi Arabia vegetation is like wow you follow what i mean? I'm in a van riding down the highway with a guy in Saudi Arabian one day right and the guy starts going look look",
      "come present look up in the mountains I look up into mountains there's a little green shrub about the size of my fist no and you know it excited him this was something right so the guy asked to shake shake is it permissible to have trees inside your house huh what did she say hey now I'm sure",
      "goes out and says, yeah did you see Sheck said we can have Christmas trees. No this actually happened."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Islam Between East and West with Dr_ Sherman Jacks_9jE1M8Ii0ek&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750823303.opus",
    "text": [
      "Bismillah ar-Rahman ar- Raheem. Assalamu alaikum everybody, welcome to our Frames program for November we're really excited to have Dr Jackson joining us today for a discussion with Ustadh Abaylullah on the book Islam Between East and West before we get started I just wanted to make a few quick announcements insha'Allah we just want to let you know that our winter program registration for winter program has just opened so",
      "open. So we would love to see everybody join in from and join into Virginia this year inshallah. We're hosting it with our beloved Imam Majid so I'm just going to share the flyer quickly. The Aala Winter program will be on foundational frames navigating post-modernity with integrity and this is MLK weekend inshAllah Friday January 13th through Sunday",
      "You can register at theislandprogram.com and we will put that in the chat. Scholarships are available, and there are more details to come on speakers and things like that. But definitely if you're interested and you're available that weekend, I suggest that you go. It's going to be a really beautiful program. Our next announcement is that we are open for the summer program as well, inshallah. And the summer",
      "30th at Benedictine University as usual and I'm going to share the flyer for that quickly. Here we go, so the summer program will be Benedictine university in Chicago Illinois it's July 8th through the 30th and we have our world-renowned scholars Dr Jackson inshallah i think he'll",
      "Alhamdulillah, we have different scholars join in. So I definitely suggest if you have not come before to register for this, it fills up pretty quickly every year. So i suggest if know your summer schedule now go ahead and register. And our last announcement before we get started is that we are kicking off our campaign for Giving Tuesday this year. You can go to the ALAM website alamprogram.org",
      "in supporting scholarships for students and programming such as our winter program, and our summer program that's the flagship program. And this helps bring a diverse group of students to alum each year so we can get people from all across the spectrum, all over the community, allover the country through your support. So check out alumprogram.org to register for all the programs that are mentioned as well as to donate to the Giving Tuesday campaign.",
      "further ado, I will go ahead and bring on our beloved scholars and teachers Sara Bailallah Evans and Dr. Jackson to start the discussion on Islam between East and West Bismillah",
      "As-salamu alaykum, how are you? Alhamdulillah, how we doing?",
      "I hope you're doing as well as you look. Jazakallah khair. And I hope to say for you, mashallah. What did you say? I'm doing this on my own. Oh really? I am hoping that this will hold up but inshaAllah we'll do what we have to do. InshaAllah there's a slight delay",
      "the flow of conversation at all so inshallah i want to get right into this man you know this book islam between east and west was a direct recommendation you know you suggested you know, this book can you give me a sense of why you thought this would be good for our um you know book club? Why you thought",
      "Well, first of all I read this book many years ago. I don't even remember how many years. How impressed I was by the approach which is not to say that I agreed with everything in the book but what impressed me",
      "a Western Muslim struggling to find a voice with which to take Islam public and to integrate it into the burning and the important issues of the day. I saw Ali Yazid Govich really doing that in a European context, he was someone who was clearly islamically literate not at all alienated from Islamic tradition while at",
      "while at the same time thoroughly versed in the European tradition and what he was trying to place Islam in conversation with. And, in the process of doing so, in my view, he mainly managed to engage European thought not from a posture of reaction. You know when you're constantly reacting implicitly",
      "implicitly you're assuming that what you're reacting to has a rightful claim to be right. And therefore the only way that you can salvage the rightfulness of your own position is to somehow reconcile with that to which you are reacting. Well, he wasn't doing that. He wasn't in this reactionary mode but he was very critical",
      "in his engagement of European thought and is it his attempt to show how Islam can come to terms with the challenges of a modern world. I was very impressed by that when I read it, I still have a number of thoughts and tropes on my mind that I remember from this book. And I've thought that",
      "in terms of a book club, it might be useful as a model for how young Muslims who are grappling with some of the same issues which he's grappling can begin to think about approaches to engage in the society in which they live. No, beautiful. The thing that immediately came to mind when I was reading this book",
      "one have the authority because we live in a time of hyper compartmentalization, hyperspecialization. He's really writing I would say as a man of letters when i'm reading this book you know he's clearly not writing in the register of an Islamic scholar and I don't think",
      "or an art critic, or... Okay, I see you're on the move. You're on a move. Well my phone is... My battery's getting low so I don't want it to go out on us. So I'm gonna go and get a charger so I can put it on but go ahead we should be all right. He's not writing in the strict register of an art historian but rather he's writing in this, I would call it the tradition of the adib.",
      "as someone of broad learning and his approach is an interdisciplinary approach, even at times delving not deeply but not superficially into the natural sciences. And I was thinking to myself who within our context writes with a similar scope in mind?",
      "in mind? Or can anyone? I think it seems like I may have lost Dr. Jackson. What should we... Sabir, what do you think we should do here? Oh, he's back on. So did you hear me? Yeah, I could hear you. I got the cord. I want to apologize to everybody because I realize this is very awkward for everybody. I apologize.",
      "everybody. I apologize, but I'm supposed to be on my computer and this crazy stream won't work on my computers so... So here we are. It just gives the conversation some texture. It gives it some texture, you know? Alright. So yeah, what I was saying, he's really writing- Well make sure that the conversation is about the book and not about Mother of Four Paws",
      "of course but i was saying you know he doesn't appear to be writing he's certainly not writing as an islamic scholar um you know like a formally trained islamist scholar no no i wouldn't agree with that no i would agree with",
      "He is certainly writing as an Islamic scholar. I mean, he mentions for example Sayyid Qutb at one point in the book and of course people would say well Sayyed Qutba's not writing as a faqih nor as a mutakallim but certainly as an Islamist thinker and I think that although his and Qutbs thought are very different",
      "in some very important ways. I think he's equally writing as an Islamic scholar and that was one of the things that attracted me to what he had to say, namely that he was approaching the issues he approached as a Muslim, as a European Muslim who was not trying to apologize for Islam nor trying to run away or circumvent the issues that confronted him",
      "Muslim, but as a Muslim seeking to bring Islam to bear on the realities that informed his life and his community at large. Certainly, but his approach is an interdisciplinary approach. I mean he's very comfortable talking about art, art history. He's very",
      "saying I think in our time but let me ask you this, and then we can get more into the substance of the book. How is all that any different from let's say an El Ghazali or an Ibn Taymiyyah for example? I mean these guys are talking about everything. Yeah but i'm saying people now don't do",
      "much stricter division of labor in terms of what one can speak about with authority. Well, again you know one of the points that I'm making in a forthcoming book is that Islam itself is not limited to Sharia and so you don't have to be a scholar of Sharia yet to be an Islamic scholar. I agree wholeheartedly, yeah of course.",
      "I think that he very much was writing as an Islamic scholar and not simply of a Muslim scholar, the difference being that he wasn't saying okay this is just my personal opinion as a Muslim. He was really trying to articulate the ideals of Islam and how they related to the various topics that he was discussing. No, I certainly see that going into",
      "going into some of what you find from him, it's interesting. I've heard you mention a lot of the themes that I found in the book at different points just being very familiar with a lot your work. So at one point he talks about the bipolarity of Islam which dovetails very nicely to my mind",
      "And he situates Islam kind of as a synthesis between a Judaic idea, which you know, he says look even Maimonides could not find a strong basis for an ukhrui kind of idea in Judaism. Right? They don't really that you know from what I understand at least from the book I haven't done any independent exploration myself is that Judaism",
      "Judaism, look I don't want to get in trouble like Kyrie and Kanye. But Judaism is... No but you can just limit it to what he's saying and I think that... The point is one broader than Judaism for example. Yeah no it is. It is but he's say it's very outwardly focused. It's very focused on there's a certain externality to Judaism",
      "Christianity, there's certainly a strong emphasis on the akhirah and the internal life of the human being. At one point he even terms it pure religion but then he says Islam has this bipolarity right that its folk...it's kind of dual in",
      "the social, the political, the outward. Islam does not shun or reject bodily pleasure or appetites and at the same time it still encourages its adherence to cultivate a longing for the next life. It requires spirituality, et cetera. And you've talked a lot about living righteously, living fully maybe some thoughts on that idea?",
      "Well, I mean to me again that is in a sense the whole thrust of the book and I think that... And I want to be careful here because sometimes you can misremember things but I think one of the things that attracted me was my recognition of the fact that religion in the modern world today has been largely reduced",
      "reduced to a single sort of spiritualized dimension. And the moment you start, and when I say in the modern world, I mean in a modern world that lives under the historical and intellectual even epistemological hegemony of Europe. Which means that the entire modern world has internalized",
      "aspects of this notion that religion is relevant and pertinent almost strictly to the spirit. And the moment you start talking about sex or beauty, or power, and these kinds of things,",
      "a secular context. And I think that very notion has been internalized by many Muslims and in point of fact even in strictly political terms, that is one of the notions that keeps Muslims sort of stagnated because the kinds of disciplines, the kinds",
      "that Muslims need to be able to compete on the world stage, all right? Are very materialistic in orientation. All right? So you're talking about technology, technologies of war, economic instruments and all these kinds of things, all of which have to be developed in order for Muslims to be",
      "then Muslims also internalize the idea that I must move away from Islam in order to dedicate any of my energies to these kinds of pursuits. And that's just a recipe for disaster, right? In other words, to be religious is not to be involved in these kinds and these kinds activities. And part of what he is saying",
      "takes the fact that we are material beings, we are embedded in bodies and these bodies are themselves embedded in space and time. All right? And that space and times is real. If I put my hand in fire it's going to burn. At the same time our material being is not the extent of who we are as creatures.",
      "We are endowed with something very special from our Creator that both empowers us and in some ways compels us to pursue, cultivate, and maintain that relationship with that transcendent creator. And so that religious side where we focus on the Creator",
      "focus on the hereafter, you know. We focus on a morality that's a part of who we are, a very fundamental part of what we are and by the way let me say parenthetically there is a guy I know up at Yale he used to be the dean of Yale Law School and he few years ago wrote a big gigantic book thousand pages or something like that entitled Confessions of a Modern Pagan",
      "And the whole point of the book is that modern atheism is not sustainable. And it's not sustainable because it cannot address or fulfill the inner callings of the human self. And for him, the reason why he's going back to paganism, for him he can't pursue that kind of fulfillment through traditional religion",
      "traditional religion, and we can get into why that's the case in a minute. But traditional religion has basically lost the balance. But the idea that there is nothing in life to pursue beyond the material, that's simply unsatisfactory. All right? Yeah, I think they're unsatisfacting, the most honest people. And it's not sustainable. So what Govind is saying",
      "Islam recognizes this dual dimension of the human being. All right? And what it is an attempt to do, is to establish cultivate and maintain that balance. We are neither exclusively spiritual nor are we exclusively material. And yet we are both of these combined. All Right? And we do not move about in society either as a material or",
      "or as a spiritual being, we move as both. And that's why for him the whole point of Islam is how you can effectively address the material side of life on the one hand, that is to live fully all right? To engage ones talents, all right, to deploy them in ways that are fulfilling materially speaking",
      "while at the same time not ignoring that inner self, all right? That lu'ah or that nafs, okay? Which binds one to God. So how do you live fully on the one hand and righteously on the other? And he says quite frankly that living fully is the call, it's a sort of raison d'etre",
      "as Marxism, communism, socialism with their very sharp focus on issues of social justice and the welfare of the disenfranchised. He sees Christianity as being an exclusively sort of spiritual calling. And he sees Islam as combining these two together.",
      "comes in. It's neither one nor the other. It is kind of a synthesis of these two. You know, I think about that... One of the points he makes is that one of the reasons religion is in this state it is in now is because religions and this goes back to what I made up about the guy at Yale. This is why he is going to paganism by birth he was a Jew but not going back to Judaism or Christianity or Islam",
      "going to Islam. He's going to paganism because religion has lost the balance between the spiritual and the material, right? And you know, religion sort of wants to deny the material. All right. Materialism wants to",
      "lost because at the end of the day, I mean we are these material and spiritual beings not just cause I'm saying so. All right? Because it's a fact. And I don't mean...I know that sounds sort of securitist but one of the points he makes in the book is this pointing to",
      "we cannot deny this transcendent aspect of ourselves, this dimension of ourselves that goes beyond the material. And he says this, he says if you consider that almost all religions from the beginning have had some notion",
      "some notion, some concept plays some value idea of salvation. And then he raises the question, salvation from what? Even if they don't know, they know something. You follow what I mean by that? And that is the spiritual, the transcendent dimension of who we are.",
      "that our existence in this life can't just be about coming into the world on one day and going out on the other. And there are no other considerations beyond that to be observed, to be taken seriously, to God is in life. In other words, it's a human being completely denied this spiritual dimension of who they are. No, I remember Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad,",
      "He said, if someone completely denies this transcendent aspect of who we are and doesn't seek any metaphysical understanding whatsoever, they have to understand that what they're doing is the anomaly. Because seeking that salvation, trying to honor",
      "is what our species has done since we were recognized to be human, you know. And yet in some... Right, right time of memorial. But this is, you there's a very profound hadith from the Prophet, that quite frankly when I first encountered it perplexed me because probably",
      "was under the influence of that very conceptualization of religion, all right? That sort of reduces it to spirituality. All right? I mean that's a tendency in the modern world and this is one of the reasons why materialist ideologies have been able to achieve some of the success that they've been",
      "the material dimensions of life all right which also cannot be denied right if you can't deny the spiritual dimension you certainly cannot deny the material dimension all right but the hadith of the prophet said uh the truest of names asmat for the human being are al-hadith because i thought he was going to send something like you know abdullah",
      "Abdullah, you know or Abdulrahman or something like that. He said the truest names are Al-Harith and Al-Hammam. Al-harith, the toilet speaking to the material dimensions of who we are all right I think it was Naeem Akbar who once said you know when you find a grown man",
      "who has absolutely no ambition to work, to toil. You can know that there's something wrong with that individual in the same way that if you see a child who has no interest in playing. Allah! Right? I keep, man, you brought it now in my... How many of you let's spend a long time without hearing his name?",
      "the yeah, the ingrained nature of our desire to toil, to produce. All right? To use our hands, to use our minds all right? Mm-hmm. To make a print on the world we can't separate ourselves from that. At the same time we are anxious beings. Yes. Right? We are anxious",
      "I think that quite on a contemporary note, I think the American society right now is in one of the most anxious moments I've ever seen it in my entire lifetime. And part of the problem here and part of The Problem Here is that we have no programs for managing that anxiety. Allahu Akbar. Which Islam is.",
      "Mm-hmm. No, no. You know, Ibn Hazm famously said that the defining characteristic of human beings is halak, is anxiety. Right? And that a lot of our activity is merely an exercise in trying to stave off anxiety. Trying to staves off anxiety... Well yeah! That's right.",
      "I might get some trouble mentioning this name too. But anyway, that's why Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, he said fear, cosmic fear in the human being is the mother of all culture and civilization. Culture and civilization are simply ways that human beings devise",
      "devised to normalize ways of minimizing their anxiety. If I'm anxious about how I look, you see what I'm saying? We can normalize a certain fashion that assures that I'm going to be looked upon favorably in terms of my looks. That's culture but the source is that",
      "as human beings. And I think that one of the challenges we face and why, you know, it's my prayer that Islam will find its voice in the modern world. One of the problems that we have is that if something like Islam is not brought to bear on the management of this dimension of the human condition, all right? Others will likely exploit it as we're seeing right now today, as we see right now. Because these are things that if they're not managed, they will be exploited",
      "He said, we have a question from him. Mashallah. Is this concept of religion as the spiritual tightly tied to the afterlife? This is a question From one of our... Yeah, I need some clarification on Zayn. Could you clarify? No, no, the problem is,",
      "The problem is, you know, religion can have so many different definitions. So maybe he could clarify a bit and I can try to answer from that perspective. So what did he mean by that? Maybe just read the question again. Maybe I didn't hear it. He said, Is this concept of religion as the spiritual, as opposed to the material, tightly tied to the afterlife?",
      "I think I have an impression. Not necessarily. Hmm, why not? No, not necessarily. We have to remember that Arabian religion was not tied to the afterlife at all. In fact, that was one of those difficult concepts for them to embrace and yet they had all kinds of rituals",
      "all right, that defied the logic of materiality. Okay? All right? You know, the worship of the idols themselves was an attempt you know try to crack the combination of the universe and keep the forces of nature on their side. I mean that defines the language or the logic, of materialism and yet there they were. The Arabians were steeped in that with no concept of the hereafter so they were very religious but not at all",
      "at all tied to the hereafter. And we should be very clear that paganism or shivic, Arabian pantheism in and of itself implies religiosity. You can't be a Mushinik and not be religious. No, of course. One thing that he does in the book that I thought was for me it was quite a novel device",
      "was that he divides culture and civilization. Saying that when he at least invokes civilization, he's talking about those material improvements. He's talking the social dimension, the secular even perhaps I know you have a forthcoming book about the Islamic secular but when he talks about culture",
      "devices, all of those. He includes art in the dimension of culture. He include ritual in the Dimension of Culture etc and what he says is that whenever people in the West talk about progress they're only referencing civilizational progress. They're only reference seeing technological advancement material advancement etc but culturally you actually see a great consistency",
      "he you know, even goes back and talks about how, you know paleolithic art was not as good as neolithic art talking about, you these cave drawings that people have studied and analyzed events a very high level of sophistication. And so this idea that with the improving material conditions",
      "are actually becoming better you know he denounces this as a false idea right and I think that this becomes relevant to well okay this minute well I mean I mean you mentioned a lot there that they're",
      "Going back to his, the division that he draws between culture and civilization. And the basis upon which he makes that division. To be quite honest with you I don't agree with him. Basically what he argues is that culture is in a sense the externalization of the spiritual but he says culture",
      "culture, all right is always quintessentially religious. All right? Right. That it emerges from the innermost of human beings and it is not an attempt to satisfy any material need. It is more an attempt",
      "is simply the application of intelligence to material world. So, you know, you produce cars and airplanes and factories and all these kinds of things. I mean, to be fair to him, his context are some of the materialistic ideologies that are confronting him as a European Muslim. I get that.",
      "But I'm not sure that if I am an Islamically cultivated individual, all right? Whereby I understand that my entire life is a gift. And I live in the shadow of that",
      "of that understanding, right? I'm not sure why the internal... Let's call it... And by the way, you know I don't like the word spiritual. But we're speaking in English so we'll just go with that because I don' t know what people mean by that.",
      "for the sake of expediency. You're right, no so what I'm saying is that I'm not sure I see a contradiction between the expression of my innermost reality and the application of that to the material world. So you take somebody like Sinan",
      "They're the great Ottoman architect. All right? Clearly, architecture is in a sense the application of intelligence to the material world and yet Sinan was clear all right this is for the glory of God. See I think he would argue that architects belong to the realm of art.",
      "Fine, but architecture... Yeah you can't. But you can see you could say let's say architecture belongs to the world of art. But man is not simply involved in architecture. There's construction as an application of intelligence to the material world. Something has got to cut those bricks. Something's gotta lift them. Somethings gotta place them.",
      "according to him. So I think in other words you can have a religious civilization. Civilization does not have to be strictly material and strictly quote-unquote secular. I see that, I think... In fact I would argue that at its best Islam was a religious",
      "And one of the things that comes out is that, I mean, Sinan was not a jurist. Right?",
      "as a world presence. Who could deny that? It's undeniable. It's Undeniable Muslims all over the world I remember, I remember Obeyed. I'm not going to explain it. I remember when I went to Turkey, I Remember going into the blue mosque and Sinan didn't do the blue mask. It was similar to other big gigantic Turkish mosques",
      "and my point being that as a muslim you know interfacing with this edifice it informed my sense of identity as a Muslim right i mean that mosque this is who we are we got it going on",
      "Allahu Akbar. No, you know I recommend a vigilant Islam goal just for that reason. That is critical to the health of any religious community. The man contributes in ways different but not necessarily any less important than the contributions of the faqaha.",
      "the only utility of his separating culture and civilization is that he's saying an improvement civilizational does not necessarily imply an improvement culturally. And the reason I think that's relevant for him is because he's dealing with, but what'd you say?",
      "What'd you say? I think, I didn't catch that last part. No, no, no. I was just waiting. I'm sorry. No but I would say that- I don't think that is necessarily all that profound a point. Take money for example.",
      "I mean, we all need money. Right? You know, we'd all like to make a little more money but there's a point after which more money is not going to improve the quality of your life. I mean everybody knows that. So non-cultivating progress does not necessarily make us better human beings. My point however... my point is that",
      "as well to the point that we denigrate progress, as if progress will preempt the possibility of becoming a human being. So there's a contradiction between progress and being a better human being, and to me this in a sense contradicts his thesis because if you bring the balance back together between the spiritual and the material",
      "the material all right why can't you have progress all right that results in a human being and i don't i don' think he would necessarily disagree that you can have this simultaneous civilizational and cultural efflorescence. I think",
      "in a time of progress religion outmoded religion is necessary yeah i don't agree with that right no so and i mean you even find i mean i think to put it i mean go ahead we should be careful though i i think we should I think we be careful about blindly denigrating the whole concept of progress because we fall into that trap",
      "into that trap. You see, excuse me, progress is material non-religious all right and it's not long in the minds of many people that that non- religious gets associated with religious all right so we can have progress if we're going to have religion okay I can imagine this",
      "this part of a classical Islamic civilization. I can't imagine it and by the way, I mean, I recently had a personal experience and I'll share this with you. As you know, I was hospitalized a few weeks ago and the doctor said to me",
      "uh thanks for the wonders of modern medicine because a hundred years ago i would have had to tell you you should go get your affairs in order wow because there was no cure or the ailment that you that you have right here",
      "And we also love that progress. But I think what he had in mind was something I read from Reinhold Niebuhr talking about technology and civilization advancement, he said, these are improved means to an unimproved end. Meaning there's a certain struggle to be moral, to be upright that is perennial, that doesn't change if you have a circle.",
      "But yeah, I get that and I agree with that but that's only if we disconnect the two. In other words, if progress is just a blind mechanical progress, all right? Uninformed by any vision that is itself informed by the concept of life itself being a gift from God.",
      "yes that mechanical progress can lead to exactly what he's saying right but my point is not necessarily so if it's informed all right by that vision that ties us to God I mean I think the real benefit of a word like this",
      "What is he encouraging us to do?",
      "but I think in going the route of this radical separation between culture and civilization, and the way that he does may have overindulged those European thinkers whom he was responding to. Sure, I mean, but this is I think the thing with any thinker... This takes nothing away from the book! It's a great book, it's one my favorites.",
      "of the book this is a great great book it's one of my favorite bookmates so far and i'm about almost you know three quarters through the book i've enjoyed the book thoroughly i see the utility in some of the",
      "of the devices that he's using in the book. I don't think that, again, I don' agree with all of them but what I particularly appreciate is his ability to converse with his intellectual milieu in an intelligible way, you know? In a way that is taking seriously",
      "taking seriously the positions, presuppositions of the people he's engaging with and also taking seriously Islam. And I would like to see more of that among Muslim scholars, thinkers, intellectuals in our time. I find that either they are dismissive",
      "only a very superficial engagement with Islam or only a superficial engagement, with some of the leading theories, ideas conceptual framework etc. I mean how many Muslims now talk about critical theory but know nothing about critical",
      "was part of the value of the book. You see, Obeyed and let me just speak personally here all right I mean you know you're a young Muslim a convert all right? I mean in a sense uh a triple minority all right number one you're",
      "Number three, you're a black male in the academy. All right? And so now you're looking for models that can be instructive for you in terms of how you can craft a language, a tone, a critical posture",
      "with your own society. And for me, his was a model all right because you just don't think those things up overnight by yourself. You build on models of other people who have come before you and that was part of the value of this book for me so for example I mean he just like we find in the Quran I mean",
      "Marxism, for example or communism without categorically dismissing them. He can point out this is an important insight of Marxism. This is another critical insight of marxism. Marxism is right about this it's right about that and then he can go on and be critical about what he thinks it's wrong about",
      "right and so the label marxism doesn't do all his labor for him rather he disaggregates it and critically engages it you know on its individual tropes um that was very refreshing for me you know you know 25 years ago i think when i read this but that was really refreshing for because what i was used to seeing is that you know marxist stuck out um that doesn't send it away",
      "And so his model was very important to me personally. No, no, like I said, I find the book it's a brave book. It's a courageous book and I hope the people that have read the book with us are inspired to begin thinking about our context more critically. I mean that's you know essentially what we want to do at Aalim is empower people",
      "I think that even though this book is of his personal authorship, these are...I think this is obviously the product of a conversation. This is what happens when people converse seriously and",
      "and engage in discourse seriously about the ideas that define their context. And they take religion seriously, and that's really what we want to do at Island, to give people not only the license but to equip them with some of the basic fundamental even rudimentary skills, know-how, background equipment",
      "in an inspiring and profound way. So I think this book is definitely in line with our kind of organizational mission and focus. Yeah, I mean, I've always posed the question, you know, in an American context as to whether what we really need",
      "Ibn Taymiyyah or Al Ghazali, or a Muslim man who never understand the Hawa Was. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I do. But you know, I think in order for that to happen people that are very comfortable have to be willing",
      "You know, because staying kind of ensconced within the confines of the tradition. There's safety for me in that man. There is safety. There validation there is community and I'm talking trans historical intellectual community. You know? I'm sitting with the great I'm reading the traditions of the of the greater other map of the past and trying to instantiate those to the best of my ability. But I think waiting into the",
      "kind of unchartered waters of crafting a thoroughly American Islamic discourse response, you know somebody might talk about me and I'm like get my feelings right. I might make a mistake! You know I might... Yeah your message is loud and clear and I am sure some people will talk about",
      "to the trope of tradition as you raised it. That's what I see the tradition doing, all right? Yeah, Ghazali wrote works like El-Masit which are volumes on Shafi'i Fiqh, but he also wrote Tahaifat al-Filasifa. He also wrote Al-Hiyat. These were attempts",
      "everyday challenges that he was confronting in his society. And of course we can say the same thing about Ibn Taymiyyah, we can see the same things about al-Qarafi. These were men who are thoroughly ensconced in society trying to figure out how Islam could successfully be brought to bear on both the challenges and the opportunities that confronted them. So",
      "I don't see sort of, you know... And there are different ways of doing this. I'm not, I don' want anybody to be the president and I'm claiming that the way I'm trying to do it is the only way to do It. There are many different ways in doing that but I just don't See... I mean think about it this way Abe. You wanna know one of the reasons? I mean outside the Ummah",
      "outside the Ummahat, which you read with Mashayikh. But when you start getting into the Mutun of Fiqh and all that stuff where they get into detailed questions of exchange rates on gold and silver and all this kind of stuff, right? You don't know why that stuff is so hard to read because it's... I'm sorry? You dont' know what they're talking about! You don' t know the culture, you don't' know the context, you dont'know the reality to which all this stuff was applied",
      "applied you see what i'm saying all right that's what they're doing so to me tradition is precisely that it's not a removal from the realities of society and again i mean you know i mean i'm an academic so i may be removed from the economic dimensions or maybe",
      "other dimensions. There are different ways of doing it, all right? But I don't see tradition as something that we ain't got nothing to do with this. We're just going to read books that are 500 years old and be good. Yeah, no, a lot of people suggest that is the difference between tradition and traditionalism. That traditionalism is that... And when I say traditionalism,",
      "I mean, you know, I guess I'm trying to express that tendency to take undue comfort in shirking one's responsibility to address the contemporary reality on the ground. And tradition as- Well, I mean- Oh but let me... Let me, no, I meant, I, on one level, you now, I quite agree with you,",
      "another level, you know I just would not underestimate the enormity of the challenge that this entails. And not everybody feels that either intellectually or emotionally or maybe even financially they're ready to really enter into",
      "into this kind of lion's den. No, because it can be a lion's dead. No it is. Trust me. Because you got the other side too. So I mean",
      "you're thinking of work and what some of the Muslims may have to say about it. Okay, fine. All right? Now Muslims are going to be coming after you too. It's alliance then. Sure, sure, sure. So I know we wanted to hold... We want to keep you only for about an hour so we, you know, I think our time has expired but I do want you... Are you in a position",
      "Are you in a position to say a word about what you've been working on? No. Oh, okay. Well no, let me try and explain that. I mean even going back to the work of Zbigniew Górzevich, all right? By the way",
      "I had a Bosnian student. She's not Muslim, but a Bosnia student when I was wow because I was at Texas when I had her that was in the early 90s man. And I was telling her about this book that I was reading by this Bosnians guy and I told her his name",
      "His name is Izzet Bey Govich. Izzat Bey Govech. MashaAllah. You see how it's written? It's Izet Begovic. It sounds just like a, you know, some kind of Slavic name or something. But she said it breaks down into Izzot Bey Govic. Ah, Izet Bey. Govic. You say that?",
      "But the point that I was making is that, as I'm sure you've noticed, many people will probably take him to task for some of a novel language that he uses. You follow what I'm saying? And they will critique or maybe even misunderstand his point because he's not using that language in the way that they're used to seeing it being used.",
      "is to take that language away from the dominant civilization, all right? Such that it can acquire new meanings that better empower Islam to speak in its own voice. All right? You see? And if you don't read the whole book or a sizable segment of the whole books and you just read one section where the language is used sort of imaginatively like this, you get the wrong impression.",
      "All right? So my preference is, you know, inshallah this book that I'm talking about will be out in June. So everybody have a chance to read it. Then they'll be able to see the arguments in the context. You understand what I'm saying? Because part of the challenge that we face as Muslims in the modern world,",
      "of politics, of economics, all right? Of sociology. We cannot leave the language in the hands of the non-Muslim West and then expect to be able to articulate ourselves in the voice of Islam. Allahu Akbar! No this is very good point. That's part of what he's saying by saying we have",
      "We have to get away from this notion of religion as purely spiritual. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, no, this is addition to religion. No, you talked about this before and just... You want to create the taste or you want to recreate the... What was the term you used? By which you are judged. Well, this beyond the book, I mean, to me",
      "I mean to me and again this is part of the point that the book is making Islam, I'll say this about the book. Islam never was, never will be entirely categorically and exclusively dependent upon the fuqaha alone",
      "with everything that Islam has been able to achieve or to blame them for what we perceive Islam, particularly in the modern world, cannot have achieved. This deem is a condominium in which all Muslims have something to contribute. As I said, what do you think Sinan's architecture added to Islam? You don't think",
      "you know 11 12 years old little boy you know eleven twelve years old you don't think they get a sense of the grandeur of this dean just by standing in front of that message i'm sure they do because i do and you don t has any impact on their ability all right to sustain themselves as muslims in society really",
      "is seen as secular and material and not religious. That's precisely the kinds of things that we don't indulge in or those Muslims who do indulge them are seen as secular and probably see themselves as secular. This is a disaster. No, I agree. It's a disaster! So this is what this book is trying to tackle.",
      "We had one question. What do you mean by an American Ibn Taymiyyah or Ghazali? What qualities in particular? Well, what I meant by that is this. Al-Ghazali mastered Islamic tradition. You know, fiqh, usul, theology",
      "theology. I mean, he wrote major books on all these issues. An American azali would be an American like obey the law who has simply mastered Islamic tradition as traditionally constituted. A Muslim Reinhold Niebuhr,",
      "on the other hand and i need to explain this because a lot of people might not know who right home neighbor is right home was uh was it was very influential but ryan hole niebuhr all right was a seminary trained theologian so he had mastered christian tradition all right",
      "America, placing that tradition in conversation with America and trying to move America in a direction that was more consistent with that vision. Right? If I only know, you alluded to this yourself a bit, if I only known Islamic tradition then that dimension of come to terms",
      "terms of America that has to do with understanding America. All right? That's left out, okay? And Niebuhr turned out to be... I mean presidents listened to Niebuh and he wasn't one of these apologetic no-no-no. He wasn't apolo... No, no. Niebu was taking it to him all right but his focus",
      "issues in America that appear to violate his Christian vision. And I'm sure, you've read Hawa, so he's doing the same thing. I don't know, ask the person if that answered their question. This is not a denigration of Muslim tradition. That would be silly. In fact,",
      "In fact, one of the real deficits that we suffer is that the average everyday Muslim is not more intimately or it's not more literate with regard to what Muslim tradition is. Instead most Muslims are afraid of a Muslim tradition and because of that",
      "Number one, we lack confidence because we think that the only people in the modern world who can speak intelligently are Kant and Foucault and whomever. That's on the one hand. And on the other hand, you know, we don't have any filters or any tools with which we might begin",
      "you know, the process of doing what is that Bagović was doing. In other words, communism and Marxism is right here and it's right here but it's wrong here and its wrong there and this is why. Because when you don't have those filters it's either wholesale rejection or wholesale acceptance.",
      "need to speak on Western topics in a productive way. But that depends on what Western topic you're talking about, you know? You know if I mean... You see one of the things that and this is something of a challenge",
      "honest answer to that is I don't know. Even myself, I don t know how much knowledge I need to address a particular issue and understanding of what I need comes out of the very process of trying to address it itself. Allahu Akbar. So I m not at a point where I say yeah I got enough knowledge to address anything. I don",
      "but when I get into you know trying to address something then I discover all right, I need more some more familiarity over here. Uh I need some more over there. I forgot some things from there um I think I remember so and so saying something that or so so so that determines uh you know the trajectory of the kind of scholarship",
      "I think that on the other hand, it's a mistake to think that all of the issues are sharia. When you start talking about how much knowledge do you need? Am I trying to address let us say a cultural issue? Well in that case, I may only need to know the parameters of what culturally permissible from an Islamic standpoint but how to move the culture from one point to another, that's not a matter of shari'i knowledge",
      "So when you say how much knowledge I need, that can mean a lot of things.",
      "My mind is so worn out, it's got duct tape on the spine. SubhanAllah. No no and the fact that you know the book was written 40 years ago right? And still in many ways I found it relevant and compelling. I think you know speaks to some of his profound insight as a writer and as a thinker.",
      "I think, I mean, I'm not in the habit of judging a book by whether or not I think it got everything right because he's not talking about. You follow what I'm saying? That's a separate subject. All right? But the value of the book is he talking",
      "which if we engage as a community, all right, will enhance our understanding, our effectiveness, perhaps our stature in society. And I think the answer to all of those is emphatically yes for this kind of book. Absolutely. Even if we disagree with him, you see what I'm saying? No. In that disagreement will come insights that will prove meaningful to us.",
      "No, no. I agree with the methodology. That's one of the burdens Muslim scholars and I'm not talking about myself but that's one or the burdens a Muslim scholar bears. You write a book everything is supposed to be right 100%. And that's not necessarily what you're trying to do. MashaAllah. But this was for me a great book so may Allah reward him and have mercy on him insha'Allah",
      "Insha'Allah I remember he died not till after the book came out Ameen, Amein Ya Rabbul Alameen So inna insha'allah Bismillahirrahmanirrahim wa al-asr Inna linsana lafik khusr Innal ladina aminu wa amilu as-salihaati Wa tuwasi bil haqqi wa tuwasif il sabri Subhanal rabbika Rabbil izzati Amma yusifoon Wassalamuna ala al-mursaleen walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen Jazakallah khair Assalamualaikum Waalaikumussalam warahmatullahi wabarakatuh",
      "It will take place in the Adams Center in Virginia, MLK weekend inshallah. So January 13th through the 15th. Register now at alamprogram.com. We have scholarships available and we have several teachers coming to join us this year inshAllah including Issa Al-Bayla so I definitely encourage you to register before that fills up.",
      "inshallah, so that we can keep these programs going and keep supporting students to attend our summer programs, our winter programs. We want to keep, inshAllah, inspiring new thought for Islam in America. So check out our website, alamprogram.org, to support Giving Tuesday this year, inshaAllah, so we can",
      "Last but not least, we do have our summer program. The registration is already open. So if you go to alamprogram.org, you can register for that and it takes place July 8th through the 30th in Benedictine University in Chicago, Illinois. It fills up very quickly so I suggest that you do register if you are interested inshallah. And it covers several topics if you have not attended our program yet such as hadith science,",
      "science, and contemporary issues as well. So those are just our few announcements we are so glad that you joined us today please keep the team in your doors and we will place the links in the chat for our campaigns and our registration inshallah."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Islam Conference Session 1 - Sherman Jackson_iaAXOAmnFjg&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837017.opus",
    "text": [
      "Oh, okay. Well thank you very much. First of all I'd like to uh i really have to thank our technology assistant here at the University of Southern California Jason for being so kind to accommodate my",
      "uh my circumstances he had to get up very early in the morning and get here and set everything up. And so I just want to extend my thanks to him, also want to thank Grant Underwood and everybody there at BYU who contributed to the possibility of this conference happening it looks really good on camera i wish i were there um i wanna start off with something that",
      "off with in a speech and in a very long time. And I'm hoping that the relevance to our topic will bear itself out. And speaking here of an incident involving a figure folklore in the Middle East by the name of Juha. If you're an Arab, he's an Arab. If your Persians are Persian, if you're a Turk, he is a Turk.",
      "One day Juha went to the mosque and he stood up at the rastrum to give a talk. And he said to the audience, do you know what I'm going to talk about? And they said no. And so Juha said well if you don't know what i'm going",
      "is to give a talk to the mosque. And he mounted the rostrum and said, do you know what I'm going to talk about? This time they said yes. So Juhad then said if you know that I am talking about there's no reason for me to talk it. He left again. But came back a third day and looked at people and said do",
      "And this time they figured that catch old Juha. And so half of the audience said yes, and the other half said no. And in that way, they were going to sort of trap Juha in his own game. Juha then paused for a moment, looked back at the audience and said, well, then let those of you who know tell those of us who don't know. And he left again. That's tempting. Now, Juha is in a sense",
      "almost sort of kind of relevant to the topic today in the following sense. Everybody assumes to know the West when we mentioned the West, we assume that we know what we're talking about. We're talking",
      "individual rights and freedom that everyone assumes they know. That's sort of a given what we presume not to know, what we don't know or what very few of us are assumed to know is Islam and particularly how this foreign sort of strange pre-enlightenment,",
      "to the West as we all know it. In some sense, the aim of this conference and again in some sense might be described as being for those of us who know that is Islam to tell those of US who don't know that it's Americans or Americans and then we can all just go home. It's really a matter",
      "a matter of how we are able to bring society at large, to an understanding of Islam that will then empower us to sort of get a sense of what the possibilities of Islam and Muslims fully integrating successfully in acceptable ways into American society.",
      "I want to complicate this conversation a bit by challenging both the common understanding of the West and the common understandings of Islam and Muslims. I want challenge the common understating of the west as simply secular liberal democracies,",
      "And I want to challenge the understanding of Islam and Muslims as simply, in a sense, the result of just the latest chapter in the story of American immigration.",
      "it is only on a reconfigured understanding of both the West and Islam and Muslims that we will really be able to apprehend what is actually at stake in this whole business of the relationship between Islam and muslims and quote unquote the west so now let me begin with",
      "My challenge to the category or the construct of the West is actually in the way that we use the construct, the West. We say the West",
      "West oftentimes. When in point of fact, what we really mean is America right? When we talk about especially Islam and its relationship to America, we often use the term the west",
      "and coterminous. And what I want to do is interrogate, in fact challenge that understanding because by continuing to use the West as a synonym for America we conceal from ourselves seminal",
      "of how Islam and Muslims can or will relate to the West. And let me give you just one parenthetical example of a unique feature of America that will inform this conversation as I hope to make clear, as we proceed.",
      "is the only major Western democracy in the world with a major contingent of native-born, and many instances transgenerationally native born Muslims. I'm speaking here about Black American contingent other Muslim community in America",
      "This fact, I think Black Americans make up perhaps the second largest single group of Muslims in America. And while the numbers may not be that big, this is unique among Western democracies. You don't have this in places like Europe and England and France and Germany. Right? In America a major contingent of Muslims are native born",
      "the people have been here for centuries. We have to remind ourselves of the fact that at one point, the most famous person in the world was a Black American Muslim by the name of Muhammad Ali. The point of this will become clear as I proceed hopefully but one of",
      "I want us to sort of acquaint ourselves with is the fact that this contingent of Muslims in America says something about the possibilities of American identity, that we don't get when we just think of the West. And again, this will hopefully become clear as I proceed.",
      "Now, America and this is again persistent to my challenge of the whole construct of the West. America is not and never was intended to be a simple extension of Europe. In fact, the German scholar of American studies Joseph Yaffe put it this way he said",
      "He said, America was conceived with the idea of establishing something fundamentally new. Specifically, America conceived to be Europe. It was an alternative to Europe. America was to be a motley collection",
      "all over the world brought together to form a new political community. While the nations of Europe were bound, or at least could think of themselves as being bound by a single or common biological linguistic cultural religious and even psychological history Americans",
      "as a whole are bound by none of this. We're too diverse for that. In fact, Americans are bound as Americans by an idea and that idea is a political community held together by mutual subscription to a constitution. That is what America was conceived up to be",
      "And that is why it could consistently accommodate people coming from all over the world, all of whom in theory at least could be equally American. But again this is a part of America that I think many of us oftentimes overlook and",
      "as to why, as I perceive. But the fact of the matter is that as quiet as it's kept precisely for this reason, it has often been very difficult for Europeans to even understand America. What is this thing? Freud, for example, when Freud came to America in the early decades of the 20th century,",
      "Freud described America as, and I quote a mistake. A giant mistake. How can you do this? Hitler later on would dis-America as a half Judaized, half Negrafied society. For him, this won't work.",
      "It's too diverse. It's to very jaded, it doesn't have enough of a common link as late as 1973 Hannah Arendt who herself was now a European immigrant to America in an interview she expressed again this is as late",
      "Right? Again, based on the idea that somebody who looks like me and then somebody who looked like Donald Trump. And then somebody that looks like JLo right? Um um and then someone who looks presidential candidate Wayne that they can all be just American. I mean Europeans had a hard time understanding this",
      "understanding this i think that as americans we often don't realize it but this whole hyphenated identity thing we have going on this makes no sense to europeans um in europe for example while we have asian american i mean asian hyphen american we have italian hyphened american arab hyphen American",
      "there are no asian french hyphen there are not arab hyphen french there are none italian hyphen French. There are French and then dot dot right I mean you have all these throwaway categories but again",
      "a common background, a common blood, a history, a psychological orientation as it were. This is what it means to be a nation. That's not what America is. Now part of the challenge that America has consistently confronted precisely in this context is that while America is not Europe",
      "not Europe, never was intended to be Europe or even an extension of Europe. It has struggled from the very beginning with the impulse to homogenize, to try to forge a single social identity beyond the question of everyone's belonging",
      "with the idea of what is going to constitute a normative social cultural presence, a normitive social cultural way of being that can be identified as normatively American. And we have tried to forge a single social cultural sort of public existence for America",
      "America beyond the fact that we are a single political community. This is the vision of America that is captured in the image of, quote, the melting pot. The notion that everyone is supposed to somehow dissolve into a single American social cultural identity. Again, not simply politically but also socioculturally.",
      "The problem that this presents, and I think that at the time that this particular decision was made it was not perceived of as a problem. But the problem with this comes in with the fact that the racial identity that was looked to inform or to underwrite",
      "this authentic American identity was whiteness. American authenticity as a social cultural identity came to be identified, equated with whitenness and so American authenticity again beyond the question of constituting",
      "constituting a single political community right to be authentically american somehow ended up related to whiteness and we have to remember here and some of us may not the first congressional hearings that were held in america over",
      "to America and everybody was coming to America, um, was that part of the criteria for citizenship was that these people be free white persons of good character. Right? That happened in 1790. We're going to accept as citizens free white person's a good character now, of course",
      "Now, of course under that criterion Blacks Asians Native Americans Latinos others they did not qualify for citizenship. Of course later this would change and all of these groups will qualify for a citizenship blacks, for example, became eligible for citizenship in 1877 around that time.",
      "even as these other groups qualified for and eventually became citizens, their status as Americans in terms of their everyday quotidian existence at work, at school, at the gym, what have you. Their status as American both in terms",
      "and then how they perceive themselves would be informed by a social psychology that has shaped the minds and the sensibilities of the majority going back to 1790. In other words, we would end up with a social hierarchy, a social hierarchical that was infused with racial connotations",
      "even as we maintained legal equality. And this produced a social reality wherein some Americans ended up being more American than others, or at least as being perceived and perhaps even perceiving themselves as being more",
      "the American myth of e pluribus unum. I think it's still on the back of the dollar bill, e plurbis unum meaning from the many one and it revealed in the place of this American myth, the American reality",
      "E pluribus duo from the many two. And the two were white and non-white. In earlier periods of American history, non-whites essentially meant Blacks. Black was quintessential non-White category that's changed over the years as we'll see as I proceed.",
      "Now, I know that for some of us maybe many of us this manner of presenting things may strike them as a sort of black man's history of America. But this to my mind is part of the problem it's part of",
      "knows this history that I've just defined, no one knows it better and perhaps even more painfully than ethnic whites in this country. Ethnic whites who were at one time excluded from the category of whiteness and fought like hell to gain admission into it. The Irish know this very well. Read Ignatius how",
      "how the Irish became white. The Jews know it very well, read Eric Goldstein's The Price of Whiteness. The Italians know it, read Matthew Frank Jacobson's Whitenest of a Different Color. In fact Arabs know it. My colleague here at the University of Southern California has a book entitled Between Arab and White",
      "talks about the struggle of Arabs to gain admission into the category of whiteness as part of their attempt to get on the right side of E-pluribus Duo. In fact, I'll go even farther. I know I'm not there with you, I wish I were but this conference is being held in Utah. All right? Earlier generations of people in Utah, earlier generations",
      "of Mormons know this history as well. In fact, I'm reading a very fascinating book by Paul Reeve and the title of it is Religion of a Different Color The Mormon Struggle for Whiteness This is America. This is a part of what it has meant to negotiate this landscape",
      "this is something that is not necessarily captured in this sort of vague uh sort of very what's the word i'm looking for it's very clean and washed over the west where we're just talking about democracy and secularism and constitutions and liberalism",
      "It is contemporary generations who don't necessarily know this and for that reason, don't know what they have contributed and what they continue to contribute to it as a result of which we still struggle with trying to get America to understand what it means for her to come back to her truest self. And that is not as a European outpost",
      "who all hail from a single biological, religious cultural or ethnic or even psychological history. America is the place of multiple authenticities and so part of my point is again that when we talk about Islam and Muslims in the west if what we're really talking",
      "really talking about is America, then we cannot simply limit ourselves to conversations about secularism and democracy and liberalism and all these things. E-Provost duo has to be a part of the conversation. In fact, I'm going to close with some comments that I think",
      "I think will empower us to see E. Paribas duo as part of the way that even Muslims can contribute to the whole enterprise of bringing America back to herself, as opposed to this drift into this flattening out of what it means to be an American. But now let me shift very quickly",
      "to the question of Islam and Muslims, right? It's important for us to note that e-pluribus duo would exert an impact not simply on the relationship between Muslims and the dominant culture in America but on the relationships between Muslims within the Muslim community. All right? E-PURBUS DUO would affect that",
      "And that's what I want to talk about in the last two minutes, which I hope I'll get a little bit of slack on other than have remained. Now, I can't cover everybody when I speak about the Muslim community. The Muslim community is so diverse it's unbelievable. There are white American Muslims, Native American Muslims. In fact, I got an email from a sister a little while back who said to me",
      "Dr. Cornel West Coates- So I want to start off by saying that the American people are not just a single American convert to Islam all right, there are all kinds of people who come into the Muslim community and, of course, I can't deal with all of them. Dr. Concerned when i'm going to present what i'm gonna try to do is based my analysis on the three main groups of Muslims in America, this is black Americans Arabs.",
      "that I want to use sort of as props. And I don't mean these dates to be actually representative of detailed history, but they're props that we can hang some hats on that enable us to keep up with the conversation. The three days are the following 1619, 1965 and 2001, right?",
      "is symbolic of the arrival of Blacks in the United States of America. Now, what's important about this is that this date begins its own sort of quasi-independent historical narrative and trajectory of which Black Americans, including Black American Muslims remain a part.",
      "that precedes their actual coming into Islam, right? And here we have to remember that American blackness was made not in Africa but in America. And this is partly what people like James Baldwin had in mind when he said that Negroes, that's the word they used back in the 60s, Negroes don't exist anywhere other than",
      "other than in America. In fact, Baldwin referred to Black Americans as the first, the world's first genuine Black Westerns. All right? I'm getting a note on my screen Jason, I'm sorry. Oh okay, I am sorry. So Baldwin identified them as the world s first Black Westerners.",
      "Now, what's really important about this however is that the black presence in America partly because it goes back to 1619. Establishes the fact that in America there is a possibility of multiple authenticities, multiple American authenticities. We do not have to be a single thing in order to be authentic Americans.",
      "No one asked black Americans here today. Where are you from? No one has blacks that right and no one is likely to tell Snoop Dogg, go home. Right. Black Americans are part of the American landscape that's baked in and part of a point that I'm trying to make here is that that establishes and maintains as an immovable fact that America is not and cannot be a single authenticity.",
      "All right, now it is well known that there were Muslims among America's slave population. But Islam among Black Americans today is not a continuation of that slave past. They weren't able. The brutalities of slavery wiped Islam out among the slaves. In fact, Islam among black Americans is largely a 20th century phenomenon and what's important to note here",
      "is that while the conduits by which or through which Black Americans were reintroduced to Islam, they remain vague. What is not vague is that for Black Americans, Islam has always been called upon to assist them and how they could come to terms with living the reality of American blackness. All right? Now let me switch to 1965.",
      "1965 is the date, is the year in which the National Origins Act was rescinded. The National Origines Act, which goes back to 1924, was an immigration act that ensured that America would remain overwhelmingly white and Northwest European. The national origins act repealed that immigration formula",
      "formula and opened up the gates to immigrants from other places, including the Muslim world. And that's when we begin to get large critical masses of Muslims coming to America. Now it is not my contention that there are no Muslims from the Muslim World in America before this date. That is not",
      "because post-1965 thing entails two issues. One is that, as I said we get the critical mass you get Muslims coming to major cities establishing mosques, establishing Islamic centers, establishing",
      "that they came to America precisely at a time when Islamic revivalism was afoot in the Muslim world. And just think of it in these terms, and I'm almost done, I won't go too far away. The National Origins Act was promulgated in 1965. Sayyid Qutb, and i'm using sayyid qutb here symbolically as a symbol uh yes as a",
      "of the full arrival of Islamic revivalism in the Muslim world. He's executed in 1966, that's the period that we're dealing with. And so Muslims who come from the Muslim World at that time tended to be a lot more religiously conscious. Okay? Now having said that much, Muslims who've come to America from the most some world are coming from societies",
      "is not the salient societal fault line. That distinction belongs primarily to one, religion and two, social economic class. In coming to America, Muslim immigrants would seek instinctively to do what every other immigrant group to America would seek to do, and that is to get on the right side",
      "of e pluribus duo many of them even qualifying from the beginning being legally defined as white by the american government all right and so becoming of the immigrants would include a positive photo taxes towards american whiteness pursuant to getting on",
      "immigrant groups did irish italians and others this however would place them at odds with the black american community whereas immigrants are getting on one side of e-pluribus duo black american muslims are on the other side of that e-pub is dual and this breeds tension within",
      "Muslims who come from the Muslim world tended to be more educated. They came either with degrees or got their degrees here, went home and came back, or even perhaps even stayed. Now what we have to understand, and I'm just trying to as young people say keep it 100, there's an extent to which, and lived in the Muslim World for a number of years, there is an extent",
      "There's a degree to which that implies westernization. Upward mobility, in a sense, is facilitated by and is measured by your facility in foreign, particularly Western languages. And so you have even in their coming a certain predisposal to aspects of the dominant culture that put them at odds with Black American Muslims.",
      "who tended to be from the lower classes within America. Now, the last thing that is implied by all this is the problem of religious authority. Muslims who come from the Muslim world are presumed to know infinitely more about Islam than Black Americans. These are people who speak Arabic or some",
      "or some other Islamic language, they have the advantage of transgenerational socialization in the ways of Islam and therefore transgeneratioal instincts about what it means to be a Muslim that they might not even be able to articulate. That Black American Muslims don't have. So this empowered that community to define what it meant to be Muslim in America and to define the agenda of American Muslims",
      "And just to make a long story short, this meant that things like issues like Palestine or Kashmir would always make it onto the agenda. Affirmative action? Police brutality? Maybe not. Those are not Islamically relevant issues.",
      "community in this way. All right, now switch to 2001 I'm almost done, I promise. September 11th, 2001 changed, I think, in some palpable ways the internal dynamic of the Muslim community. Even Muslim immigrants who have been legally classed as white begin",
      "their legal whiteness give way to a social nonwhiteness. In other words, even though they were legally justified in checking the white bonds on this or that form, they no longer experienced being perceived as white in the culture at large and so while they have illegal whitenness,",
      "Now we begin to hear immigrant Muslims talk about the racialization of Islam. This is something that you begin to here, all right? This was not heard back in the 1980s. Nobody talked about the rationalization of a slam back on the 1980's or even the 1990's, all Right? But now we began to get the racialisation of Islam Of course this baffles black Americans where it doesn't offend them I mean what are you talking about?",
      "even find now immigrant Muslims increasingly identifying with the category of people of color. People of color, not white, not black but people of colour all right? Now I'm not sure if this represents a full or permanent switch from an identity with one side of e pluribus duo to an identity",
      "the other side i don't know if this is the case but what is clear and this is one of the impacts of 9 11 is that the black experience has taken on more significance for immigrant muslims than it used to by a long shot i i go back to the 19 you didn't hear that",
      "Dr. Cornel Westbrook- Back in the 1980s, you would not have heard Martin Luther King quoted in any Friday sermon and any mosque certainly not an immigrant mosque. Dr. Concerned Speaker 2 and a half after. Dr。 Concernd Speaker 3 September 11 2001 Martin Luther king the civil rights movement all of these things become germane and pertinent to the perceived plight of Muslims in America and so 911 in a sense.",
      "11 in a sense has brought the Muslim community internally together in ways all right that they were not quite on the same page before. Right and this is part of again, the dynamic of America what E Pluribus Duo does alright now I want to be clear as I as I close now I wanna be clear it is not my contention",
      "or terrorism, or secularism, or liberalism, democracy, or any of these things are not part of what must be negotiated. What Muslims must confront in negotiating their place in America. That's not my contention. In fact, I have personally written on every single last one of these topics as something that Muslims must address. My argument is simply",
      "that as far as America is concerned, without e pluribus duo we are actually not dealing with America. We are dealing with a caricature of America and that I think will skew our analysis and leave us with a false sense of accomplishment in what we arrive at in terms of our conclusions. Let me conclude then",
      "that may in some ways be taken as a controversial note, but this is a conference and besides I'm far away. You can't get to me anyway. In my view more than any other group the Black American community by the very fact of that it cannot be alienated from America on one hand",
      "on the one hand, and it is unassimilatable in terms of a public identity. Even when Blacks walk the same, talk the same have the same money as others, the physical semiotics let's just call them all right will always mark them as another kind of American. All right? This to me has the effect",
      "effect of preserving America's ability to stay American, to preserve America's identity as America and to prevent the Europeanization of America. And here I want to be clear by Europeanization, I do not mean whitening. The issue is not race. I mean it is but it's not you'll see what I mean in a minute",
      "But I'm not referring to the whitening of America. What I'm referring to is the obliteration of the normativity of hyphenated identity for Americans. We are Arab-Americans and Irish-Americans, and Italian-Americans,and Asian-Americans. The Europeanization of America will wipe that up.",
      "help to preserve America's identity as America. If, and this is a very big if, if Muslims now have found it to be the proper thing to migrate from the white side to the non-white side of e pluribus duo then perhaps they too will come to be seen",
      "and to see themselves as actually contributing to the process of saving America from itself rather than being a threat to republic. Thank you very much. And I guess I'm supposed to sit down now? Okay."
    ]
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    "text": [
      "First of all, I want to apologize to our dear moderator. I just don't like long introductions. They sort of bore me and make me nervous. And secondly, I'd like to really thank the interpreters",
      "for their very diligent work. And I hope that my remarks will not tax you too much. Actually, I have just three points that I would like to put forth for our consideration in terms of the theme that we are here to contemplate, namely navigating challenges",
      "and seizing opportunities. I think that this is particularly relevant in the political season, and the overall social-political context in which we are living now. So the first issue that I would like to put forth for our consideration is an enormous challenge, a challenge I think as a community we have got to come to a level of being more attentive",
      "And that has to do with how we negotiate on the one hand, the enormously important and complex social political challenges that we face. Including the challenge of building and sustaining meaningful alliances with communities other than our own.",
      "ability of preserving and protecting our own moral identity as Muslims. How do we have political alliances with other communities, other communities whose moral point of departure may differ from our own? How can we come to the point where we recognize shared interests between us",
      "be so overtaken by the existencies of the moment that we are willing to forget our moral identity as a Muslim community, including some of those things that might separate us from some of our allies. I think in this regard we might want to remember something that probably all the converts in",
      "in the room remember particularly those who come from a Christian background and those are the words of the Bible for what does a man profit to gain if he should gain the whole world but lose his own soul and sometimes we get into the political arena and it seems like perhaps all",
      "And what I want to submit to us is that we have to be careful at the same time about protecting our moral identity. Because to be a Muslim is to have a moral identity We stand for certain things and we do not stand for other things, and we cannot allow the existences of the moment to cloud that for us",
      "we have got to find a way to get beyond the simple logic of quid pro quo. And that's a fancy word that simply means that if you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. If you support me, then I'll support you.",
      "un-nuanced, unsophisticated way. We have to engage it as a community that is principled, that is self respecting and that is discriminating. When we reach out to build alliances with other communities, we have to be willing and able to say these are the things that we can join you on,",
      "march into battle with you on but these are the things that we cannot do that and we have to be a self-respecting community I had a friend once his father was uh the Mauritian not the Martian the Maurician from the country Mauritius off the southern coast of Africa he was the Mauritan ambassador",
      "and I asked him once, I said what is the first principle of diplomacy? And he said to me the first the first principal of diplomacy is that if you're going to speak to another interest group then you have to be willing to recognize their interests and you have",
      "And so as we go about this business, especially in this political season of trying to reach out and build alliances and call people to causes that are meaningful to us. And be called to causes they're not meaningful to others. We cannot lose our soul. We have to stand for who we are.",
      "uh controversial but we're living in that age all right i think that so for example when it comes to communities like the lbgt community we have to be discriminating and we have",
      "do with sustaining a life but we are not necessarily, we're not standing with you when it comes to supporting a particular lifestyle. A lifestyle that may violate our moral identity. We have to be willing as a community to stand up and be who we are because if we're going to stand",
      "We have to remember that there's a difference between supporting somebody else's right to life and to live, and supporting their lifestyle on the other hand. And we should expect them in many instances to say the same thing but we have to be clear about who we are. The second issue I want to raise is an even more in some ways potentially controversial",
      "issue but as I said we're living in times where we have to face reality and we have the best reality with each other. I've said on other occasions that in my view, the black community in America is potentially the Benny Hashem of a Muslim community you know if you normally think about the seerah and sunnah",
      "You know that he was able to sustain and prosecute his mission in Mecca Because he had the backing. He had a support of His clan of Benihasha Who came to his support not because they believed in him as prophet most of them at that time did not but because they recognized and accepted him as one of their own and They said",
      "And they said that as Bani Hashim, it would be an offense to our honor to allow anyone to accost this man who happens to be one of our own. The Prophet took full advantage of the fact that he belonged to Bani Hasheb and that Bani",
      "physically. I have long argued that the black community in America is potentially the Benny Hesham of the Muslim community and one of my fears that I have right now today is that we are squandering an extremely important relationship with the black Community in America because we are being very hypocritical",
      "We are trying to commodify black causes and use them for our own interest, and then turn around and demonstrate virtually no concern for the lives of the welfare of the black community at all. And this hypocrisy, this hypocrisie, this hypocrisy will have a devastating effect on us because let me tell you something,",
      "terrorists Try being looked upon as hypocrites and people who are liars and do not believe in what they say They stand for if we get branded at as that We will be isolated. We will able to achieve nothing and just to give you an example of Just how serious this is Many of you here today because we were celebrating the legacy",
      "of the great Muhammad Ali here at ISNA. But I want to share with you something that hopefully may give you insight into what I'm trying to convey. In 1967, when Muhammad Ali refused to go into the military and he argued",
      "his understanding of his duty as a Muslim. So he was taking a stand as a muslim the black community at large rallied to Muhammad Ali's defense and these are primarily non-Muslim black Americans, and we're talking about many people who had just",
      "Bill Russell we're talking about people like Jim Brown. We're talking accomplished athletes accomplished entertainers People who saw Muhammad Ali as one of their own and who were therefore willing to come his defense as one? 1967 all right fast forward just about 30 years in",
      "Everybody's talking about the San Francisco quarterback refusing to stand up for the anthem today. He wasn't the first one! In 1996, Mahmoud Abdul Raouf, the basketball player for the Colorado Nuggets, for the Denver Nugget, he refused to stand-up for the national anthem and what happened to him?",
      "And what I want to convey to you now, however, is that in his case the black community did not come forth as they came forth for Muhammad Ali. And we here sitting in this hall have to ask ourselves why? And one of the reasons why is that the image of Islam in America had evolved from a point",
      "Immigrant phenomena and Mahmoud Abdul Raouf was no longer looked upon primarily as one of their own but as one them This is what we have to be careful about allowing to happen And again, and again the Prophet Muhammad recognized himself as belonging to a people and that the natural bond among people Is a bond that should be invested in",
      "It's a bond that should be developed and grace and note this Not only the prophet and the people of Benihasha Benefitted from the protection of Benhassa people like Omar who was so many honey people like I will back to who some anything They also benefited from the production of any answer. So one of my concerns now today is that the Muslim community is being very",
      "is being very, very remiss in the way in which it's going about dealing with the black community. The black community is not stupid and you cannot fool them and we can't pretend to care. We cannot talk about we want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Black Lives Matter and yet we're not even willing to come into our own masajid",
      "own masajid. We cannot do this, this is not sustainable and the very people who will expose us in this regard are black American Muslims in our own communities. This is something to which we must pay attention. We can't be a community of hypocrisy. We have to be a",
      "Muhammad and who follows the Sunnah of Muhammad and seeks to translate that into the context of our own reality today. The last point that I want to move to is really a point that my dear sister Dr. Ingrid Mattson brought up as well, I just wanna frame it in perhaps a slightly different frame but",
      "I think that it's really important for us as Muslims, especially as we move ahead in the social political arena That we reconnect to a civics of khilaf To a civic that accommodates disagreement Not any disagreement principle disagreement but yet a civis that accommodated",
      "disagreement We have to understand we have a problem in our Muslim community and Dr. Maxon referred to it in part We want to turn every issue into a religious issue and into a Religious issue that's a litmus test issue Not every issue, and then we want to return our position on the issue Into the Islamic position only issue To the point that if you don't agree with me",
      "don't agree with me you're not agreeing with Islam and I'm therefore justified in freezing you out we have to understand that not every issue in the political arena is an issue that yields a hook'em that reels religious ruling voted for this candidate or voting",
      "It may not promote our interest in the way that I think they should be promoted. But that does not mean it is haram. That does not means people who vote that way are bad Muslims. It simply means that they have a perspective that is different from my own. And we as a Muslim community, we have to learn to develop civics that will enable us to accommodate that.",
      "We're not going to all agree on the issues. And I don't mean simply on the technicalities of the issues What do we do when there is a candidate who votes the way or a senator or a congressman Who votes the ways we would like them to vote on Palestine but has a negative position on affirmative action? Or who votes in the way we would have liked him to vote for affirmative action,",
      "position on Palestine. These issues may divide the Muslim community between those who privilege the issue of Palestine, on one hand and those who privileged the issue affirmative action on the other as a community we have to learn how to manage these kinds of disagreements and this is the civics that I'm talking about and if there's any community",
      "home at home with a a civics of disagreement it is this muslim community and that is one of the miracles of islam in the world a religious community a religious that has been able to accommodate difference virtually from day one we must get back to this brothers and sisters because if we don't what's going to happen",
      "Underneath the surface and we're going to be alienated from each other. We're gonna inflict internal bleeding on each other All because we are incapable of seeing that we're not going to always disagree And then all our disagreements are not fatal disagreements We can disagree and yet still recognize ourselves as Muslims who are bound together in a common cause I really pray and hope that Allah will guide us",
      "wisdom the strength and the courage to make our way back to a civics a civis of disagreement and disagreement is principle disagreement and i'll say this and stop we are not a community of undisciplined passions after shaytan in the quran there is no more there's",
      "Hawa is what takes us to the hellfire. We don't want to be a community of hawa, of undisciplined passion disguised in the guise of political expediency. We must be a Community of Principle we must be A community of moral identity and we must Be a community that embraces a civics of principle disagreement Jazakum Allah Khair Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullah"
    ]
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    "file": "herman_jackson/Jihad - Sherman Jackson_crM6L1S00P4&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836573.opus",
    "text": [
      "Without further ado, I would like to introduce to you the speaker for our seminar on war and warfare in the Middle East and North Africa in historical perspective. Our speaker today is Professor Sherman Jackson who is professor of Arabic and Islamic studies and Islamic law. He actually has a position also at Law School and teaches a course there on Islamic law he will be teaching",
      "law. He will be teaching it next semester, as well as other courses related to Islamic Law and Islamic Theology. Professor Sherman Jackson obtained his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania from the Department of Oriental Studies in 1990. Since that time he has been teaching at various institutions in Bloomington, University of Indiana in Bloommington until",
      "until he came to the University of Michigan, to the Department of Near Eastern Studies. And that was in 2000? 1997. 1997. No, 97. And he's been teaching and researching with us since that time. Professor Jackson has a very long list of publications and honorary appointments. For instance,",
      "as Thornau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, which is an honorary title awarded to the best teachers and researchers on the campus. And Professor Sherman Jackson is one of them definitely recognized by the university, by the Provost's Office and the College of Literature Science and the Art.",
      "enumerating his awards and honorary positions on various boards. It will take the rest of the lecture, therefore I just will mention the books that he has published. His first book appeared in 1997. It was entitled Islamic Law and the State, The Constitutional jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al Qarafi. Later, in 2002,",
      "theological tolerance in Islam. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's Faisal Al-Tafrika Bayn al-Islam was Zandaka. Then he published, in 2005, another major monograph, Islam and the Black American Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. And his most recent book has just come out fresh from the printing press,",
      "suffering published by Oxford University Press. The topic of the presentation is general today, but Professor Jackson will specify it's about jihad. Welcome Professor Jackson to the seminar.",
      "Thank you very much, Professor Kanisha for that very generous introduction. I was actually sitting there asking myself what would possess me to come before you and give a recorded lecture on jihad but here I say what I really want to try it and that you will take that into consideration as I try",
      "very useful thoughts into that very limited space of time. What I'd like to do is to discuss the issue of jihad in two distinct modern contexts. The first is what I would call the domestic context, that is to say jihad as it is thought about and engaged in in the context of the domestic politics",
      "So we're dealing with jihad in sort of the domestic context. And that to me, in some ways is one of the more interesting contexts because it's one of those contexts where some of the most interesting developments have taken shape in recent years. From there, depending on how much time we have, I'm going to move onto jihad and the",
      "of the intellectual developments in terms of how jihad is thought about among prominent Muslim jurist thinkers and activists in the modern Muslim world. So let me begin with jihad in the sort of domestic context, and I think that one of the reasons that this becomes an important topic",
      "brings forth a state of mind in which religion and religious fundamentalism are looked upon sort of as almost natural reactions to modernity. That is certainly the case when we think in terms of Protestant Christian fundamentalism, and I think that the tendency is by analogy to extend that same sort of mode of analysis",
      "experiences a certain degree of maladjustment to some of the developments that sort of constitute modernity and one of the natural reactions in that context is a sort of religious fundamentalism, i.e., Muslim fundamentalism of which jihad is a leading if not the leading constituent. Now this for me raises a question and the question",
      "and I'm placing fundamentalism between inverted commas for reasons which I hope will become clear in just a bit. But is Muslim fundamentalism an inextricable product of Islam as a religion? Or it is a byproduct of modernity, as a specific intellectual and most specifically political context? That is to say,",
      "as Muslim fundamentalism a product of certain inherent aspects, certain interpretive dictates of Islam as a religion with which Muslims experience difficulty or from which Muslims experienced difficulty extricating themselves in modern times? Or is it not so much Islam as",
      "to bring about this maladjustment between Islam and the modern world. Now, I'm going to put forth a thesis which in a sense will both confirm and challenge some of our most deeply held at least examined presumptions about this topic. And I want to say that Islam is in fact now adjusted",
      "And that particular feature is the nation state. It is primarily, if not exclusively in its effort to come to terms with particular aspects of this maladjustment that produces the phenomenon that we generally recognize as Muslim fundamentalism. Now let me try and clarify what I mean by that.",
      "First, when we think of Muslim fundamentalism one of the first things we have to do is dispense with the demonstrably false connection between literalism as a mode of scriptural interpretation and Muslim fundamentalist as a mood of collective religiosity. In point of fact what we generally recognize as Muslim fundamentalists has little to nothing",
      "of scriptural exegesis. And it is certainly not grounded in any commitment to what we would generally understand to be literalism. In point of fact, Islam, in terms of its religious heritage never did really produce a literalist canon that constituted a leading mode of scriptual interpretation. This is... I realize this is very counterintuitive",
      "counterintuitive, especially given the analog to Christian fundamentalism in which case literalism was the very foundation of everything that flowed from that. But that is not the case with Islam. In fact even those groups who have been traditionally recognized as being literalist in Islamic history I think should",
      "movement or the Zaharite movement if you spiron-tize your Vals in Arabic. The Zahirite movement which is usually translated as the literalist movement. The Bahraites were, in fact not literalists at all. They presumed that a literal interpretation or a plain sense interpretation was",
      "the possibility of going beyond the literal or plain sense to more figurative or allegorical interpretations. They did not deny that at all. In fact, their chief representative a Spaniard by the name well he's the chief representative of whom we know his works are the works that are still extant and they constitute the foundation upon which we base everything that we know about Wahidism today basically",
      "a man by the name of Ibn Hazm, Ibn Hasm says explicitly no one believes that mercy has wings. No one believes humility has wings and this is therefore a non-literal figurative interpretation. In fact even the paragon of sort of strict again what we have tended to refer",
      "a sort of strict literalism. The leader of the Hanbalite school, who yes Ahmed ibn Hanbal believed that there were no justifications for interpreting Qur'anic references to God's hand figuratively but that is not because he did not recognize figurative interpretation as a mode of interpretation. There are references in the Quran",
      "figurative references. So for example, in the chapter entitled The Star that chapter begins by saying, Ibn Hanbal says explicitly that this verse means when it is handed down and that it does not mean literally",
      "Scriptural interpretation, per se, is not the sort of foundation of what we generally come to look upon in the form of Muslim fundamentalism. And it is therefore not primarily scriptural interpretation that promotes these tendencies toward violent attempts to seize power and to establish an Islamic order.",
      "Islamic order. That's the first point we want to make. Second, and this is related and hopefully will deliver us into an ability to understand what the true nature of any Muslim fundamentalism actually is, is that we must appreciate the magnitude of the fundamental difference between the basic presumption underlying",
      "underlying the pre-modern and what I would call, the Muslim state. And here again I'm being very deliberate and explicit in not referring to the pre modern Muslim State as an Islamic State. In point of fact what I am going to argue is that the Islamic State is the beginning of the problem because the Islamic state is essentially a modern nation state",
      "And that brings about a degree of dislocation, as we'll see in just a minute. Now what are some of these fundamental presumptions underlying the modern nation state? Well there are many but I want to focus for our purposes upon two and the first of these is that the modern",
      "All law that is to be recognized as law, that is say as carrying actionable sanctions are laws that are both produced and adjudicated by the state. Outside the state there are no repositories of law. No one can produce laws, there are",
      "the state exercises an absolute monopoly in terms of the implementation of the law. So a monopoly on the law is one of the first aspects of the theory underlying the modern nation-state. The second, is that justice slash equality",
      "via a uniform regime of law applied equally to all citizens across the board. That is to say that the state on one hand exercises a monopoly over the law, on the other hand the state in an effort to exercise its power justly and equally erects",
      "apply that equally across the board to all citizens without discrimination. Therefore, not only is law the preserve, the exclusive preserve of the state but the modern state presumes what I would call and other legal anthropologists have referred to it as well as legal monism. There",
      "equally and uniformly across the board. Now, this contrasts in some very meaningful ways with the pre-modern Muslim state. In the pre modern Muslim state, the state exercised no monopoly on the promulgation of law. In point of fact Islamic Law was seen as standing above the state or outside",
      "certainly not the product of this state and in point of fact to a very appreciable extent Islamic law developed unconscious opposition to the state. In other words, it was in part an effort to preempt the state from acquiring and exercising a monopoly over the promulgation",
      "These sub-state actors, private citizens acting on their own set out to produce interpretations of the Quran and the legacy of the Prophet. And these interpretations succeeded in gaining the assent of the community at large. Again as part of an effort to keep this business out of the hands of the state.",
      "demonstrate what I'm talking about here. To this day in Islamic law, and by the way my entire presentation here today is based on an examination of Sunni Islam Shiite Islam has a very different reality perhaps we could talk about aspects of that during the question-and-answer period but for Sunni",
      "The Hanafi school, the Maliki school, Shafi'a school and the Hanbali school. Alright? Two things about these schools. All of these schools are founded by sub-state actors, private individuals. Not a single school of law is named after a state official. That's one thing.",
      "Muslim states came into and out of existence. So you have the Umayyad state that is established, it goes out of existance. It's followed by the Abbasid state. It comes into existence, lasts for some time, it is chopped up into various and sundry sultanates. You get various Sultanate, Bueyyahid Sultanate Seljuk Sultanate Ayubid Sultanat Mamluk Sultanate they come",
      "They come and they go. The history of state formation, and the state apparatus is a very bumpy rocky history. And yet before schools of law throughout all this tumult continue to exist and buzz along almost as if they are unaffected by this. Again that gives us the extent to which law",
      "being separate from the state apparatus. The jurists wanted to be those who promulgated and interpreted the law, and they wanted to limit the state to a purely executive function that you will apply the law as we have interpreted it on the basis of the holy scriptures i.e., the Quran and the legacy of the Prophet.",
      "In this context, given the very decentralized substate provenance of Islamic law, legal pluralism, that is to say different regimes of rules applying to different groups in society was actually the norm. And not only was it the norm but unlike",
      "was not looked upon as a threat to state sovereignty at all. And let me just give you a couple of examples of what I'm talking about here, and this actually applied both to Muslim citizens as well as non-Muslim citizens. Give an example of the Muslim citizen. My first book which Professor Kanish kindly cited",
      "a Maliki jurist in Mamluk Egypt, in the 13th century. The Manikin School of Law was a recognized school of law but at that particular time it was a minority school and the majority school that is the favorite school of the Mamluks state was actually the Shafi'i school. Under",
      "sought to impose certain rules and policies that were consistent with the Shafi'i school but that were inconsistent with the Maliki school. And Shihabuddin al-Qarafi, whom I wrote my first book on was a Maliki scholar who wrote an entire book decrying this attempt",
      "on him as a Maliki. So for example, he would say according to the Shafi'i school to inaugurate the beginning of the month of Ramadan in which all Muslims are obliged to fast assuming you don't have certain excuses pregnancy illness etc., you're traveling but all Muslims",
      "you could be subject to certain sanctions. Well, according to the Shafi'i school all that's required to inaugurate the beginning of that month is the testimony of a single witness who testifies that the crescent marking the beginning up in the new month has actually been cited one individual go to the Chief Justice and says I saw the cresent the month of Ramadan has begun everyone must fast",
      "According to the Manneke school, however, you needed at least two witnesses because they saw this as being the equivalent of testimony in court. In which case you would have corroborating evidence. What Al-Qarafi argued is that I don't care what the Chief Justice says, I'm not fasting tomorrow and no one's going to do anything to me because according to the Maliki School we require",
      "And it is my right as a member of the Maniqee school to abide by that rule. And it's not the right of the Sultan to forwardize the rules of Islamic law, to make them uniform and apply them across the board even to those with whom that rule or for whom that role is a violation of their interpretation of the sacred law. Alright? Second example this one involving non-Muslims",
      "There was a question that arose regarding the permissibility of certain institutions, non-Muslim institutions in Muslim society. Now this is a Muslim society where Muslims were the majority and Muslims were in power. You're talking about a Muslim state. The Sultan is a Muslm all the ministers are Muslms, the army is Muslmm it's a Muslim State",
      "It's a Muslim state. And there are religious minorities in this state, among them being the Zoroastrian community. Now, the Zora Rasterian community presented a particularly acute problem for some Muslim jurists. They had an institution that they called self-marriage according to which a man could marry his mother or his sister or his daughter",
      "Now, personally when I first read this, I read this in a Muslim book on the rights of minorities under an Islamic or under a Muslim state. This is a medieval book and I read it and said wow! This looks a little bit polemical. I mean marrying their mothers, marrying their daughters so I went to our colleague Professor Gorno Winfor",
      "the Department of Near Eastern Studies, who's an expert on Zoroastrianism. And he smiled at me and he said not only did the Zoroastian priests allow this they actually encouraged it as a means of trying to protect those Zoroastean community from assimilation into the sea of Islam. Alright? So we've established that this was not simply a polemic",
      "of what was going on. And from there, he's asked the question, What do we as a Muslim state do about this business? They're marrying their mothers! They're marring their daughters! What do you do about it? And this individual and by the way this is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya The star pupil of a man by the name of Ibn Taymiyyah If any of you read the New York Times or other news organs",
      "may have read him as being credited as sort of the founder of modern Muslim fundamentalism. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya is his star pupil and this is what he says, If the Zoroastrian community does not seek adjudication from us i.e., the Muslim state, Muslim courts regarding any of the issues relating to their institution of self marriage then we do not do anything",
      "anything. That's their business. If on the other hand, they seek adjudication from us, they come to a Muslim judge, a Muslim court seeking an adjudicatio with regard to some element in self-marriage then we adjudicate that case not on the basis of Islamic law but on",
      "This is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah. My point being that for the pre-modern Muslim state, that kind of legal pluralism was not perceived to be a threat to state sovereignty.",
      "acted essentially as bailiff, alright? For the various and sundry regimes of rules that were produced by society as communal constituencies not as individuals. As communal constituenties at large. Now in all this of course Islamic law was presumed to be supreme. There's no question about that but there are three points I want",
      "One, that Islamic law as I said was not monolithic. There were various recognized interpretations of Islamic law. Two, as I've said it was not threatened by the existence of other legal regimes Christian Jewish Zoroastrian. Three and this is a point that is often not understood in modern times",
      "Islamic law, although it was supreme, was not fully comprehensive. That is to say there were any number of spheres of activity that could not be adjudicated under pure Islamic law. For example, there are no indices in the Quran that speak to speed limits. There are no statements from the Prophet Muhammad on",
      "we could develop a health care policy or determine what should be required to license medical doctors. All of these things were the domain of state policy and so what we end up with is this, law over which the state does not exercise ownership",
      "with policy over which the state does exercise a monopoly and which the jurors themselves ceded to the state. And what we end up with is therefore, the boundaries between law on one hand and policy on the other always being negotiated overtime with the jurists never being comfortable with wholly ceding law to the State.",
      "Right? Now, this that you've now been patient enough to suffer through sets the basis for an understanding of what is going on in modern Islam with regard to what we recognize as Muslim fundamentalism. Because modernity fundamentally alters",
      "paradigm for Muslim polities. From the West, the nation-state structure is adopted by the Muslim world. In this context law becomes a preserve of the state and law is made uniform. There was one single expression of the law uniformly applied across the board.",
      "an effort to Islamize the nation-state. That is to say, to adopt the nation state structure whereby the state exercises a monopoly over the law and law as uniform and simply replace the secular law of that state with Islamic law but still recognizing",
      "Recognizing as well that as state law there can only be a single regime that is applied uniformly across the board. And so what we end up with is Muslim activists coming to the conclusion that the only way of ensuring That that single code or single regime of rules, that is to apply to society",
      "society is actually Islamic law, is to seize control over the state. Whereas in pre-modern times jurists did not need control over this state in order to protect the sanctity of the law as they understood it. In modern times because the state exercises a monopoly over the law and only",
      "will be law, the need arises at least from the perspective of Muslim quote unquote fundamentalists to seize power over the state. And that is really what we are looking at when we witness the rise of violent jihadi movements in the modern Muslim world and we're speaking about the domestic situation",
      "are not committed to any particular literalistic interpretation of Islamic law. What they're interested in is ensuring that the law that governs the modern nation state, in the Muslim world, is Islamic law and this in itself raises any number of problems. And given the limitations of time when should we...",
      "Eight minutes for questions and answers. And we end at one? At one. All right. Well, put it this way. What would my old friend Al-Qarafi do in a modern Islamic state? The state announces that the beginning of Ramadan, the month of fasting, starts tomorrow. He doesn't agree with that.",
      "but him as a member of an entire corporate unit that has been traditionally recognized as the legitimate expression of Islamic law. In the modern Islamic state, he would have no recourse. Therefore, the modern islamic state threatens pluralism not only as it relates to non-Muslims, but as it related to Muslims as well. Clearly under a modern Islamic State what do you think will happen",
      "happen if some Zoroastrian comes forth and says, I have a dispute with regard to my marriage to my mother. How much recognition would that likely gain in a modern Islamic state? Again, pluralism is not a possibility there but the point that I want to make here is that pluralism",
      "state of the fundamental theory underlying the modern nation-state. And what we have is, the mixing of Islamic law with the nation-states producing this, what I would consider to be in some sense, this sort of monster of the Islamic State which is to be distinguished from the Muslim state. Alright?",
      "against the state being the repository of any religiously or religio-legal authority. I'm not arguing for the complete separation between religion and the state in terms of what is actually implemented, right? But the state exercising a monopoly over both the interpretation",
      "possibilities for legal pluralism, that is the problem that the so-called Islamic State raises. Now here I only have very few minutes and I wanted to just sort of lay out a context within which we may be able to understand some of what's going on and hopefully can fill some of this in the question-and-answer period. To be very quick however,",
      "are moving in the direction of a subtle suspicion on the part of these formerly fundamentalist movements that something is not quite right with their theory. That something is now quite consistent with what they have come to understand, to have been the traditional posture of Islam vis-a-vis the state. Now I want us to recall here",
      "And assuming that you read the two articles that were handed out, that the Gamal Islamiyah, and by the way, the Gamar Islamiyyah or Jamal Islamiiyah depending on what your Arabic is like. But the Gamall Islamiya was it the largest of the violent jihadi movements that appeared in the Muslim world in the late 1970s and early 80s they were the largest",
      "the largest. We must recall that they, in coalition with other smaller groups assassinated Anwar Sadat for one primary reason that Anwar was not ruling in accordance with Islamic law. That Anwar as",
      "this modern Muslim nation state was not holding Islam or Islamic law to be the law of that state. As a result of which they deemed Anwar al-Sadat to be an apostate ruler who was subject to the death penalty for apostasy, alright? This is not simply my interpretation, alright. They have stated",
      "Both before and after they assassinated Sadat. In an interview I read of Karim Zuhdi, oh it must have been now 2005 or 2006, don't quote me on that date. But it was recently, after he got out of prison. Many of them have gotten out of",
      "not apply Sharia. Right? He was not willing to make Islamic law the law of the state. Now what they're beginning to come to a suspicion of is that there's something not quite right about this, alright? In the readings what you'll see is that they begin to understand",
      "not to the state, but to society at large. And what they've come to understand is by over-emphasizing the status of the state they're jeopardizing the welfare of society. So in their efforts to take over the state you know, to knock off all of the miscreant rulers this that and the other",
      "society as it were. Now and this has led to a number of attempts on their part to adjust their doctrine, alright? So that they can still be seen as being fundamentally committed to establishing an Islamic order, alright but doing so in a way that does not obligate them",
      "with the modern Egyptian state. And they go through all kinds of rather interesting interpretive calisthenics in order to arrive at that conclusion. And by the way, when I say interpretive Calisthenic's, that's not a veiled reference to any kind of playing with the law. Anybody who has studied constitutional law and an American Law School which I have knows",
      "are not unique to these modern Muslim radicals trying to adjust their vision to accommodate a new reality. Most lawyers look upon interpretive calisthenics as legal acumen, I think is what they call it. All right. Very briefly here though, I",
      "that, you see part of what contributed to their rethinking of their approach was the fact that while in prison they were permitted to read books and to have teachers who taught them the traditional classical model of Islamic law. Alright? They're very explicit about this. The Egyptian government allowed for",
      "There were any number of Ezhadi jurists and scholars who were already themselves imprisoned. And these people got an opportunity to actually read for years the classical tradition, and they came to understand something's not quite right here.",
      "have not, I don't think quite come to terms with is again the extent to which the problem really is that the theory underlying the modern nation state and therefore the necessity of promulgating a new theory of state that can on one hand accommodate the specificities of Islam including its legal pluralism",
      "in a way that preserves all of the needed sovereignty of a modern nation state, given all that modern nation states are called upon to do. That is I think the next frontier. That's where the real imaginative innovations will come and I think that in the absence of that, alright? All you'll get is a continual moving around of the furniture because you will not be able",
      "out of the modern nation-state theory as it exists. Very quickly, two minutes, let me move to the international jihad and I just want to say a few words about this because there are some really interesting and really important developments going on in the discussion and the discourse around jihad with regard to how the Muslim world relates to the West.",
      "Just this past summer, one of the most prominent jurists in the Muslim world bar none whether you agree with him or disagree with him on this issue or that issue. In terms of influence he is one of THE most influential jurist in the entire modern Muslim world. Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi produced a new two volume opus over 1400 pages",
      "entitled The Jurisprudence of Jihad. And the main thesis that Sheikh Yusuf puts forth in this book are two main points. One, that jihad is primarily a defensive mechanism and it is directed only at those who express directly or indirectly hostile intentions",
      "integrity of the Muslim community. In other words, difference of religion alone is not a reason to engage in jihad against non-Muslims. It's only non-muslims who threaten the physical integrity of",
      "goes through a real, as I said, 1400 pages to vindicate this argument. And I think quite frankly that some of his innovations or some of insights into legal interpretation in general will be as far reaching as some of conclusions about jihad. That's the one thing. The second very important point that Sheikh Yusuf makes is that jihad",
      "in the sense of military confrontation is not the most important theater for Muslims to be concerned about in the modern world. What he seems to be saying is that, the most that jihad as military confrontation could bring for Muslims is the restoration of political authority. That is they become the autonomous political determiners",
      "cultural and their intellectual authority. That requires a very different kind of activity, and for Sheikh Yusuf that is the most important theater. So the real jihad for him is cultural and intellectual. And what he argues is that not armies, I mean military armies but we need armies of poets,",
      "writers of cultural, producers of culture and thought. Alright? That can return the Muslims' degree of cultural and intellectual authority. Only then will they be able to carve out the kind of dignified existence that they deserve in the modern world. And it is this jihad for him that is the most important. This book just came out this past summer. It's being hotly debated as we speak.",
      "a real important impact on the future discourse about jihad and relationship between Muslim, uh... the Muslim world and the West. Thank you very much.",
      "for many years and he now lives in Qatar. Yes? So that in his first rule, that jihad is a defensive method however against those who have expressed or implied threats against the Muslim world, however isn't that open to interpretation as an implied threat just open to whatever cultural",
      "who would never explicitly threaten the Muslim world, people might interpret things that United States actions or words do as implicit threats?",
      "Even the Gamal Islamiyah, these are the people who killed Anwar Sadat, say that no America was not the enemy of Islam as a whole and to the extent that they have become so, Osama Bin Laden must bear a lot of responsibility for that. In point of fact, America often helped Muslims in their struggles with others who threatened the physical integrity of the Muslim community. So the point being that yes it's always going to be a matter of interpretation",
      "whether you're Barack Obama or anybody else, leaders are always going to assess the degree of how much we are threatened by any potential adversary. But what Sheikh Yusuf does however is establish the fact that the very fact they are now Muslims alone is not a justification for going to Jihad. There has to be some manifestation alright? Of a threat to the physical integrity",
      "And for him, he argues basically that the greatest threat is not going to be the physical integrity. It's going to come in a way of Muslims losing, not exercising any cultural or intellectual authority as a result of which they themselves will read liberalism or Marxism or whatever it is that comes from the West into their own religious interpretation. You won't need them taking over",
      "in order for them to do that. OK, so I think our time's up. Many of the students have to go. So you can ask questions informally of Professor Jackson after this."
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      "I want to start by bringing you all in on a secret. This is the first Mawled at which I've spoken and",
      "to share with you as well the fact that when I received the invitation to come here, I saw it not simply as an invitation to celebrate, commemorate and memorialize the birth life and teachings of our Prophet, but also",
      "implement an aspect of his teachings and that is that anytime we have an opportunity to promote unity, to promote mutual understanding, to the possibility of lowering rather than raising barriers between us. We must take advantage of those opportunities",
      "major incentives for my coming here tonight. And I want to say, I know that I have a very limited amount of time. You know being a professor is a very strange profession because your students don't think you know it but they're grading you just as much as you are grading them and",
      "course evaluations at the end of the semester every year. What I want to do though is, I want try to convey something that I think is enormously important and I hope that you will pardon me if in any way it does not come off as perhaps light and perhaps a celebratory",
      "But part of the reason for that is simply age. There are verses in the Quran that speak about Allah having sent a warner after having extended to us the gift of life and many years of life,",
      "about which the Quran is speaking here was actually gray hairs. In that every morning when we look in the mirror, we have to be admonished that we don't have forever and that we have learn from the mistakes that we made. In fact, from the mistake that we've made and from the",
      "a certain weight of responsibility to speak in terms that I think will actually be meaningful because I think we're in that kind of moment, not only in this country but in the world at large. Now, I personally believe that we got some difficult days ahead and I think whether we are talking domestically or globally, we have some difficult",
      "And I think that it would behoove us to recognize the nature, the true nature of the difficulty that we confront. And I thing that far too often many of us in our thinking were just a bit too narrow. We think that the biggest challenge that we can front is the one pet issue that happens",
      "Or the one pet issue that happens to mean something to the group, but I happen to belong to as a group. And I belong to many groups so maybe it's this group or maybe it is that group or may be it's that group and all the while we're missing the big picture because to me the challenge that we confront certainly as a Muslim community it's bigger than Islamophobia It's bigger then Palestine It's even bigger than Sunni Shiite",
      "The challenge that we are confronting right now has to do with the loss of something that the Prophet worked his entire life to put in and keep into place. And that is a God-centered way of life. We are all threatened now with a civilization",
      "God-centered life is now superfluous. It doesn't mean very much, and I think that if we are honest with ourselves, if we just think about the last 20 or 30 years, the kinds of challenges that we have seen not simply to our communities but to our actual faith and to the faith of our children and our loved ones,",
      "sustains the kind of faith that used to be par for the course in human societies. And we now have to work to reinstate a God-centered life as a normal and a dignified way of being, but we cannot do that if we,",
      "God-centered way of life. We are the people who are divided and who sow division, and who so ranker, and whom model mutual recrimination and hatred. We cannot play the role that we are supposed to play in that enterprise if we can't find our way to being able as two previous speakers said",
      "open, to be more willing to accommodate, to not be so insecure because many of our negative gestures they come from no other place but a place of insecurity and this is exactly what we do not find in the Prophet. And so what I want",
      "was a model. And a model is not just somebody who talks, a model was not just about who gives out instructions but a model",
      "transforms others. You are transformed by simply being in their presence and noticing the way that they live, and even after their death, their legacy can continue to inspire and transform your life. That's what an example is. And I want to focus on one particular dimension of this prophetic example,",
      "We got some difficult days ahead. And I think we have to be realistic with ourselves because the fact of the matter is this, we've come into this hall tonight, we heard some very beautiful words and they brought us some very recollections but in one hour or two hours, I don't know when we're gonna finish tonight,",
      "And you know what we're going to do? We're going go right back out there in that world. That world, we're gonna get into our cars and turn on CNN or whatever. And we're gunna hear some stuff. You know all that stuff about mercy and kindness, alright? That's all fine as talk but you can't do that in the real world without at least one particular virtue",
      "of resilience. You've got to be able to be strong, you've got be able take that smack on the face, you have got to pick yourself up when you've been knocked down and if you can't do that then all the lofty talk we make is not going to amount to very much at",
      "And what I want us to understand is that we need to look to our prophet for strength in this regard. Because oftentimes one of the nemesis that we suffer is that, we don't understand how is it?",
      "I give charity, et cetera. And all this stuff keeps happening. And how am I going to be able to sustain my commitment when I don't seem to see the return on my investment in my life as it's actually lived? And here I want to point out to us that we may be looking in the wrong place because if we look at the example of the prophet",
      "the Prophet what we will understand is that sometimes these hardships are the means by which Allah opens our eyes to realities that we could not see without some of those hardships. I know this is not a very pleasant message to send, I know that but sometimes in our comfort",
      "And therefore, Allah may send us on occasion a test. And one of the biggest misleading comforts that we can fall into is that we come to think that we make the difference. That I'm going to do it all. That me myself have the ability independently",
      "The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam never believed that. He always believed that what he had was the benefit of his Lord and that what his Lord willed to happen, it would happen. And what his lord did not will to happen it would not happen no matter how hard he tried. And this is part of what we have to be brought back to because when we are brought back",
      "of humility and that recognition, then Allah is in charge. Then we will be able to stand up to and withstand anything a human existence has to throw at us. Anything a human existance has to do with us. So what I want to do very quickly, and I think that for me it's extraordinarily important",
      "that we are part, or we need to be part of a movement to change the world. And we want to change from a place where a God-centered existence is superfluous to a place were a God centered existence is normative and I wanna say something here in that regard That is not something that Muslims can do on their own. That Muslims can by themselves",
      "we must join hands with all of those communities that are willing to join hands us, to reinstate a God-centered existence as a dignified way of life. When we live in an atmosphere where our children, in their very socialization, in there very education, are challenged to the core on the very idea of belief in God",
      "We're talking about a need for civilizational revolution. And I'm going to say this because it's true, why else would I say it? Some of our Christian brothers and sisters, some of our Jewish brothers and sister they may think that Islamophobia affects only Muslims. They are sadly mistaken.",
      "Because Islamophobia as an attack on Islam is an attack religion, period. An attack on religion, Period, is an atack on all of these religions Christianity, Judaism, Islam what have you and this is part of what we must understand but when we get out there see part of the problem that we have is that yes it's one thing to talk about being merciful",
      "But what about when you run into all these people who don't seem to deserve mercy? It's one thing to talk about being kind, and you extend your hand. And they bite it! And you go out, you try to be nice, they spit in your face. What are you going to do? Because that's the real world. That's not the controlled atmosphere of this room. That is the real word. You will get disappointment.",
      "There are bad people out there. There are misguided people out here. There're misguiding forces out there and they all a part of the reality that we must confront, and how are we going to do that? We need to draw on the lessons of our prophet to gain this strength and resilience to be able to stand up to whatever that reality throws at us. So think about this. Think about the following. Here is a man",
      "Who, from the time that he receives these revelations He encounters difficulty. He encounters opposition and by the way he encounters what might be some of the worst kind of opposition you can encounter because it's one thing when a group of people who are",
      "who are not your people attack you. It's another thing when your own people turn against you, your own People. People who knew you all your life turn against You. يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِى نُزِّلْ عَلَيْهِ الذِّكْرُ إِنَّكَ لَمَجْنُونَ You are crazy! You are out of your mind! This is in Mecca and the Prophet and the Muslims are persecuted there",
      "He moves to Medina and this is what I want to focus on because many of us have this habit of thinking that once the Prophet moved to Medinah then everything is hunky-dory, and we're going to ride the wave to victory. And the rest as they say is history nothing could be further from the truth But I want talk about something in this regard",
      "of us should be able to identify because while the prophets political you know social-political challenges were challenges in addition to that he had to deal with personal challenges I mean stuff that hit you in your heart that a knock you on your backside and",
      "from the time he set foot in Medina virtually. And let me just share a few of these with you. Of course, the hijrah itself, why does the prophet make hijra? Many of us Muslims sometimes we don't like to acknowledge this because we want to be... But the reality is he left Mecca because he no longer could sustain his physical presence there. It was no longer safe for him. He was turned out of his own home so he has to leave",
      "leave and become an immigrant in Medina. Year one in Medinah, that's when they settle. Year two, you know what happened the first year? The second year of the prophets in Medenah? His daughter Ruqayya dies. Year three his uncle Hamza dies. Years four, his wife Zainab bint Khuzaymah who had only been married to him for months dies.",
      "Year five, you have this whole khabar al-ifq. This whole controversy with the Aisha and I understand the space where I am so let me just say this. Regardless of what you may think about these kinds of issues in sectarian terms, think about him. This is his wife. You understand that? Somebody accuses your wife publicly, publicly",
      "And you have to continue to go on and try to sustain your mission day after day after today. And it doesn't stop there, what happens? Year six, in fact the if was in year six, year five you got friends who are dying, Sadim Muaz and all these kinds of people. Understand what I'm saying here, these are personal friends",
      "All of this he has to absorb. Alright? Year 7, what happens? Ja'far comes back from Abyssinia. Ja'afar ibn Abi Talib. And what happens dies. Year 8 Zaynab bin Muhammad another daughter of the Prophet dies.",
      "dies. Now what's my point in all this? I want to make two points here. One, did the prophet ever say, oh Lord, what is me? Did he say that? What are we supposed to learn from this? We have to be resilient and when we're resilient,",
      "He is our model. It's not going to be easy, brothers and sisters. We got some difficult days ahead. And difficult not only in terms of the challenges that face us from without our community but within our communities because there are many within our community who are stuck in a certain mode of being, stuck in certain mode thinking. They don't even understand if she, Sunni division was the great challenge",
      "great challenge some hundreds of years ago it ain't no more. Some of you don't believe me I know for a fact there are people now, there are People now someone comes home and says to their parents mom dad I'm gonna marry a Sunni I'm going to marry a Shiite you know what some Sunni and Shiite parents are saying today?",
      "Because you know what it could be. You know where it's heading in many instances. We don't have this kind of time anymore, we don't' have this luxury anymore. Being stuck in that mode of thinking, you're going to be overtaken while you are still talking about Shia Sunni division and by the way, and Hattie knows what my thing is on this, I'm a Sunni, I have no intention of being anything other than that",
      "They're going to be Shia brothers. I expect them to have no intention of being anything other than a Shia. And that's fine. We are Muslims, now let's go and build. Let's go in builds because while we're sitting around arguing about Shias Sunni your children are being taught Shiasunni what? All of it is irrelevant. All of has no basis. They're being taught this now",
      "And you know they're being taught this. And some of us see the effects of this. This is not going to go away on its own. We have to be the agents of that change, but we cannot be the agent of that changes if we are small minded in our thinking and we don't have resilience because when we get out there and start talking about a God centered way of life it's not simply going to be accepted. The opposition is going to vicious and brutal",
      "and brutal. And we're going to have to come back, back to the example of our Prophet ﷺ to draw strength from that. To be able to get back up. To maintain our connection with the source of all power because this is what modern secular society wants you to do. It wants you let that go. And once you let",
      "out there will always overwhelm you. There's no way the Prophet could rationally convince himself, I got this. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Look at some of the battles he fought. The Meccans are three times what the Muslims are. Why would they ever think that it possibly prevail? This is what happened",
      "This is what happens when you are reduced to your own devices and your own device alone. But, when you're able to reconnect to that source of all power then you can get back to a belief in the miraculous. To a belief on the possibility of the miraculous And that was one of the first casualties. Second casualty",
      "That is one of the first casualties, all right? Of a decline of a God-centered way of life. And many of us are right there now. We feel helpless. We fear weak. What are we going to do? I don't know. And oftentimes the Prophet didn't know but I know one thing,",
      "to get in motion and to stay in motion, and to do so with dignity. And to do it with resolve, and resilience. If I do that, Allah's help will come. Allah's Help will come! We must believe that. The second reason I want us to stay focused on this is the following...",
      "all this death and this is personal death you understand the difference it's not like reading a newspaper oh so many people died in a car accident oh so much murdered way over there I don't know these people no we're talking about people in his life daughters sons wives friends all of this tragedy and by the",
      "How does he absorb that? And yet, and yet, this is taking me to my closing point. Do you get any sense of this in the Quran itself? What kind of strength is that? Do you understand what I'm trying to say? You see if a tragedy happens to me one of my children dies that's Samah Allah. Right?",
      "You'll probably be able to read in some of my writings. Wow, wow he was really affected by that you know? Some of my speeches may change a little bit. You follow what I'm saying because I just can't hide all that pain right? I can't take myself above all that paint right and by the way this is not once it's not twice every year it's going on alright how does he rise above that?",
      "that and delivered this Quran, pure unadulterated with his feelings having nothing to do with it. That's a man who has the sense of mission. And all of us have to acquire that sense of missions. And that sense a mission was resilient. Brothers and sisters resilience ain't about how much money you got. It ain't bout how much degrees you had.",
      "Rabbi Weissman said, it's not about how big your house is or how fancy your car is. How connected are you to Allah and the model of his messenger? That's what we must get. That's we must got. And when we make that connection, we get two things. One, there's no giving up. We don't have that in our vocabulary. We Don't give up.",
      "The odds may look overwhelming. We don't give up. In fact, we may even be losing. We dont' give up! Huh? We maybe so just... You know... Sometimes things can get so tough within the Muslim community",
      "Sometimes you just want to give up. I'm tired of this, I don't need it. This is America, I can go and go up on the hill and make my five slides a day and I'm done with that. You can't do that. We can't give up, we cannot give up And the second thing because we have resilience",
      "to a God-centered existence which carries with it God consciousness. And that means no matter how bad things are, we don't just strike out. We don't stop blowing stuff up. We do not do that. Is that what the Prophet did? We don' t do that! With resilience",
      "to all of our issues. And I want to make something very clear as I close. See, this is not... How can I put this? Hattie, I don't wanna get you in any trouble and I don'y anybody to get into any trouble but I wanna... See, This is not simply a matter of how Muslims can learn to behave in America. You understand what I mean by that?",
      "This is not what this is all about. This is how Muslims can learn to behave as Muslims, and if we understand that, we understand ultimately that for us to behave good as Muslims it's good for our country because we have resilience. You see, as I said, if I'm going to be kind",
      "I'm going to be kind to you and you're gonna spit at me, my first impulse is going to what? Be kind again. Be kind three times but in many instances that's exactly what we have to do. Where are we going to get the strength for that? Where are",
      "that because you want to bring good to society, society is just going to embrace you. They didn't embrace the Prophet. And they're not necessarily going to embraced us. We can't say what the hell with that society it's going to hell in a handbasket anyway and take our little religion and head for the hills we can't do that. That's not what our model taught us.",
      "resilience. I'll end by saying this, I think it's one thing to celebrate a man's life in ways that bring us joy and that bring good feeling. It's another thing to celebrating a man life by looking at how we can contribute to the perpetuation of what that man lived and died for.",
      "died for. You say you love Muhammad? No! You say, you love Mohammad? Isn't that what you say? What would he want you to do now? Where is his legacy now? What will you contribute to it now? This is the real celebration of the life of Muhammad.",
      "and I ask Allah to bless you all, to forgive me for anything that may have been a matter of misspeaking. And most of all, may He continue to shower His blessings and His peace upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Salat_ The Development of Discipline-Dr_ Sherman J__1750836131.opus",
    "text": [
      "But upon the benefits of Salat is discipline. When you keep your Salah regularly, your whole life becomes disciplined. Why do I have to look at my watch? Because I don't know how much time I got outside. Should I make Salah now or should I have time to do it when I get back home? I better do it now. And if we are regular with our Salah what we will find is that we will have greater discipline in our lives",
      "in our lives and it will creep up on us as just one of those parts of our character now. We think about everything that we do, we become natural planners all right? And this is a part of the whole package of Islam. Allah's not joking around when he says this is mercy to us."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Muhammad Ali Courage and Conviction -Dr Sherman Ja_7PXnUjM_Lek&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750827329.opus",
    "text": [
      "By just pointing out that service, if it's to be meaningful, it has to be principled. People who are not sincere they will often try to fool society. They will try to manipulate society even",
      "society, even exploit society all in the name of service. They want to bring society to a point where society feels a debt to them for the service that they have allegedly offered. Where in point of fact what they're really doing is making",
      "of their own interests. And what we have to understand is that as a Muslim community, for our service to be meaningful, for it to have long-term effect, for to be transformative of the society in which we live, it must be principled.",
      "of character not just people of interests and we cannot fall into this service discourse just in order to buy a little positive press or to deflect a little bit of negative attention. We have to truly be like those people about whom Allah says in the Quran",
      "We feed you for the sake of God. We do not want from you either any reward or any remunerative thanks. We this for the pleasure of God.\" And I think that as Brother Daoud said, one of things we have to understand about non-Muslim Americans and that's stupid",
      "And if we want to talk about building alliances, being able to enlist the goodwill of non-Muslims in society, we have to be people who demonstrate courage and principled commitment. That is what will bring the best out of non Muslims in America",
      "I remember a story written by a sports writer. And he was talking about Muhammad Ali, who I hope we will all keep in our dua. And Muhammad Ali at the time had been stripped of his title. And you got to remember this is a man in his 20s. 20s forfeiting millions.",
      "millions. I remember every time I see it on television, I get tears in my eyes. Muhammad Ali is sitting on television and has this big FOI hat on, and they say well you know you're going to be stripped of your title and you may go to prison. And he said the following, Well whatever the consequences may be,",
      "if they put me before a firing squad tomorrow, I'm ready to die. That's what he said. This sports writer said this. He said my father was not a man who was all that given to all this civil rights jazz and in fact, my father in the last election voted for George Wallace",
      "The man who said what? Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. He voted for George Wallace when he saw Muhammad Ali make that statement. You know what he said?",
      "very few opportunities to stand up in life and be a man. And this man is standing up and being a man, and you know who his father voted for in the next election? George McGovern! The most liberal candidate perhaps, I won't say most but a very very liberal candidate. He was transformed by the sincerity that he saw",
      "stand up and sacrifice for his own values. This is the model that we as a Muslim community must follow in America. And so when it comes to service, we must be sincere in our service. We must be people of character. We cannot be simply people of interest. And we should not be misled by the seemingly short-term gains",
      "in the long term. And we should not be misled by this. Non-Muslim Americans, they're a lot like Nietzsche, the German philosopher. Nietzche once said, my genius is in my nostrils. I can smell them a mile away. And non-Muslam Americans especially when it comes to religious people, they can smell insincerity a mile",
      "a mile away. And let us not be like the man who goes down into the manhole and spends all day there, and his clothing absorbs all the stench of the man hole but when he comes out he can't smell it. And therefore he thinks that other people can't"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Reclaiming the Miracles - Dr_ Sherman Jackson_jCA4A65dZBM&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836314.opus",
    "text": [
      "بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله نستعينه ونستغفره و نستهديه و أن نعد بالله من شؤون أنفسنا و من سيئات عملنا",
      "The title of my presentation tonight is Reclaiming the Miraculous. And I want to start off with a quote that comes from an Indian scholar, not a Native American scholar from India.",
      "Some of you may have seen this at times in some of my writings, but it's a quote that really stands out to me. And it reads as follows. Defeat is a disaster and so are the imposed ways of the victor. What worse is the loss of one's soul and the internalization of one victim because it forces one to fight the victors according",
      "to the victor's values within his model of dissent, better to be a comical dissenter than to be powerful serious but acceptable opponent. Given the state of our ummah today it is easy for many of us if not most of us to recognize the political even perhaps the civilizational implications of these words",
      "And perhaps the fact that we only understand words like these in political or civilizational terms, clash of civilization terms. Perhaps the fact is that we tend to understand these words and those terms as a confirmation of the words themselves. As a confirmation to which we ourselves have been defeated.",
      "of the global Muslim Islam in the contemporary world, we only see that loss in political or civilizational terms. And this leads us to sort of believe, to feel, to act and plan in ways that reflect the idea that if we could only reverse our political or our civilization fortunes, we could defeat our adversary and everything would be alright.",
      "all right. I want to submit you that it is precisely this kind of thinking, that is not only a sign of our ultimate defeat but it is likely a guarantor that we will remain defeated for we will continue",
      "within his permissible boundaries of descent. We will, for example, to continue to go out and commit ourselves to causes centering around issues such as social justice but we won't move forth with a platform of an amr bin ma'ruf wa nahyan al munkar. We won't do that because those fall outside the boundaries",
      "And at the end of the day, we will produce or contribute to the production of a social order that may be just on some definition. But that would ultimately leave us with the feeling that we are wearing shoes that are two sizes too small. Figuratively speaking, figuratively speaking of course I want to submit to you",
      "our most fundamental disaster, our most fundamentally defeat is not political or civilization. Our most fundamental defeat is the loss of the ability to believe in the miraculous and I want",
      "meaning monotheistic religion. The first thing that goes, that will lead to the unraveling of the religion is not even its moral fiber. I'm not saying that's not important but Toba can repair that. Toba Can repair that But when we lose our ability",
      "in the possibility of the miraculous. The powers that be will always be able to defeat us because they will be able implant within us, the belief, the feeling, the sense that the odds against us are always too great to even try to rise against. We will become the biggest most effective control over ourselves. They won't have to control us.",
      "We will always be able to rationalize our way into that which is safe, rather than into that, which is right. And we must ask ourselves and we must remember this, that our Prophet Muhammad began as an individual.",
      "Historical lessons are hard to recapture because there's too much history standing between us and that reality. But you have to remember what it must have been like, to be a lone individual in your society. You know I know I only have a little bit of time but please indulge me for just a minute. I remember going to the movies... A number of years ago",
      "So I was teaching in Indiana at some Islamic program and I needed a break so I went to see Terminator 2. You remember that movie? Now, as you might be able to tell, I am an OG from Philadelphia but I also have a sensitive side. I'm sitting in this movie, this is like the action movie of the decade",
      "I'm sitting in there and at one point these tears start coming down my face. And they start coming out of my face because I'm saying, that's it, that him. She is locked up in an insane asylum because she has a vision of what's coming upon those people and she's trying to save them and they're trying to destroy her.",
      "She sees it. They can't see it. What do they do? They say she's crazy! They lock her up! That's him! That' s him! And I stopped crying. And you gotta imagine, him being in his society. You know, it's one thing to have people who don't know you, who don''t like you attack you. It's another thing for your own people to attack you and he is by",
      "And he is by himself. By what rationality, by what reason would he ever tell himself I can do this? He had the belief in the power of the miraculous. He understood the importance of attaching himself to that source of all power and once",
      "Once that happens, then we come into the universe of the infinitely possible. And we have to understand something here, that even if we continue to believe in God, if we don't continue to be believed in the power of the miraculous, then will remain defeated and this is a possibility",
      "politically or civilizationally defeated. I mean defeated in the sense that we don't have any sense of the value of ourselves and what we have to the point that we dont have the confidence to stand up and offer that to the world. We are defeated. And remember, Bani Israel",
      "Let me just make a little side comment here because I know sometimes in the Muslim community, you know when we mention Bani Israel something happens to our brains all of a sudden. We're not talking about us anymore. Bani Isra'il were the Muslims of the time. Get that straight and keep it straight. They were the followers of Musa. That's why they are in that Quran to instruct us.",
      "Everything he had showed them. What did they tell Musa? Uh-uh, we not going in there. As we used to say back in Philly, they got some hemorrhoids up in there! We're not going it there. We're now going in until they come out. And then what do they tell Mussa? You and your Lord go and fight.",
      "They still believe in the law, but what? They have lost their ability to believe in a power of the miraculous. This is the first thing, this is the real casualty of any monotheistic religion and when we lose our ability to be believed in the miraculous, a couple of things are likely to happen.",
      "People will simply surrender. Just give it up because as I said the odds are too great, they're too formidable to even try to man any resistance against them so what do we do? If you can't beat them, join them. We just surrender and we may surrender and still put Bismillahirrahmanirraheem on the front",
      "on the front of what it is that we do. But, we have surrendered. On the other side or the other extreme is that, we begin to act in a spirit of desperation because we have forgotten that the ultimate end of any of our efforts lies with Allah and when we will see things coming out like",
      "given the magnitude of investment that we make in them, then we become frustrated and desperate. And we start blowing stuff up as if that's really going to bring... That's really gonna bring the solution that we want. The change that we wan. That's gonna represent the God-centered way of life that we are supposed to be the representatives of. We have to remember this. Look at what Allah says in the Quran",
      "وان جنح للسمي تجنح لها وتوكل على الله انه هو السميع العليم وان يريد ان يخدعك فان حسبك الله هو الذي ايدك بالنصر وبالمؤمنين وقلب بين قلوبهم لو أنفقت ما في الارض جميعا ما أذرفت بين قلبهم ولكن الله ألف بينهم انوا عزيز الحكيم",
      "If they, if they incline towards peace then you incline toward peace and put your trust in the law. You ain't got to cover every little hole. You aint got to have it wrapped up airtight and do what? Put your trust",
      "If they want to trick you, to fool you, To delude you. What does the Lord say? I got your back before didn't I? I came to your aid with my help and with believers who followed you And not only that what did I do?",
      "I made cat leaf among their hearts. I brought their hearts together. You know, you know, Imran Qayyim says this is a very valuable insight to me anyway. If President Donald Trump... No no relax, relax, no no no. No no no, relax. I don't believe in that, anyway.",
      "If Donald Trump sent you a letter saying anything, I send you this letter because I want to inform you that today is Saturday, May 12th. Right? If Donald sent you like that how many times would you be honest? You see my point? He would contemplate that thing and contemplate",
      "This is supposed to be our attitude toward the Quran. The Quran comes from God! Comes from Allah! He said what? I brought their hearts together. Look at our condition right now as Muslims in America, look at our hearts. What would it take to bring our hearts together? And what did Allah say? Pagan, uncouth,",
      "uncouth, idol-worshipping, also be a driven house. And he did what? What'd he do? He brought their hearts together. The prophet believed in that possibility. That's why he wasn't defeated. We don't believe in that",
      "It can't be done. That's what we believe and if it don't work out the first time we try, I'm outta here because we don't believe in the power of the miraculous. And this is the first defeat of any religious community that is the ultimate meaning of what it is to be secular. You believe in this worldly powers only",
      "There is nothing beyond our material achievements and our material accomplishments. And I want to be very clear here, the miraculous... Just go back to Quran, I don't have time to go into all these details. But just go back the Quran. The miraculous takes place with people in motion. You understand what I'm talking about?",
      "and wait for the knock on your door. See, when Musa was running from Firaun he came to the shore! What happened then? That's what we're talking about. He didn't sit back and say okay now um dear God tell us how are we going to get out of here. You give us the instruction and tell it. No! He got in motion. You get in motion and you stay in motion The miraculous is",
      "It is bringing something that is not ordinarily brought to your effort. That's what we have to understand. I'm not talking about no passive, you know, Zechariah or Abraham they told they're going to have a son when they say okay alright baby you will have a sign. No, no so we're not talking",
      "that a major goal of ours now as the Muslim community in America, has...in the world in fact, has to be to recapture our ability to believe in the power of the miraculous. To believe in possibility of the Miraculous. We cannot be followers of Muhammad or any of the prophets if we do not believe",
      "power of the miraculous. That's what it means to believe in Allah as Muhammad taught us, to believe Allah but there is actually a couple effects that go along with this when we lose our ability to believe the miraculous we are often blinded to the actual occurrence of miracles right here in our lives",
      "not looking for it and this has two effects one it puts distance between us i mean real distance between Us and God because we can see him working in our lives Allah drops bombs I mean miracles all over the place and we don't see it because we're not looking forward you know reminds me of something that iman al-fa'a Allah said he said imagine this imagine",
      "Imagine you're in a dark room, like after this event is over everybody leaves and you remember you left your cell phone. Your $600 cell phone, right? And the room is pitch dark so you come back in, you know where you were sitting and you sort of feel you're gonna feel your way to your table and get your phone, and you think you're the only person in the room. Pitch black, pow out of nowhere. How do you feel?",
      "Say it. Scared to death. No, right? That kind of stuff makes somebody have a heart attack. How'd he die? Somebody hit him upside the head. Made a heart atack! Right? Now imagine another scene. Okay? You come back into that same room. You know I'm here. You now I'm hear. It's still pitch black but you know I am here. Pow!",
      "Pow! And then stop playing. You get the difference? You get that difference? That's what happens when we don't know that Allah is here. That's the difference between knowing Allah is Here and not knowing Allah Is Here. That' s the difference in being able to believe in Allah's presence, His power and not. That is the first casualty. The other one is... This is what I really want to talk about for the last 10 minutes I got a hold of.",
      "This inability to believe in the miraculous will blind us to recognizing that we ourselves may be part of a miracle, maybe part of something miraculous that Allah has brought about in order to introduce His way into this world and to make us instruments",
      "instruments for the purveyance of His way in this world. And many of us, I'm sure are going to ask what miracle? And I want to submit to you that Islam... everybody breathe from the abdomen right now. My wife taught me this stuff. It's psychology. Breathe from the abdum. I want you hold on to your chairs. Alright? Nobody can leave now.",
      "Nobody can leave now, you gotta hear the rest of what I've said. I wanna submit to you that we are a living part of America. That the establishment of Islam in America particularly in the black American Muslim community is a miracle.",
      "I mean a miracle. And I know some of us, you know here come that old nationalist talk again. I'm not a nationalist, I'm a Muslim. I simply believe in divine providence. I know how Allah works and I've seen it. Alright? For those of you who are not black listening to this, I want you to consider this.",
      "If Allah brought about a miracle 1400 years ago with some pagan idol worshipping, backward lizard eating daughter burying Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula. Because that miracle served the cause we believe in all of us identify with it, Arab or not.",
      "If Allah can bring about a miracle through the Arabs in seventh century Arabia, he could bring about one through black Americans in 20th century America. And if He does we should all be ready to identify with that miracle. All of us. I don't say that because I'm black. I say that cause I'm a Muslim who believes in divine providence but let me try",
      "Let me try to give you some insight into this miracle. I wish I'd have brought the book, I could've read it out to you. I wrote a little book for my daughters. It's called Daddy's Redemption and I'm trying to make up... You know when you're a convert, I don't know if you ma'am Zane would be willing to admit this kind of stuff but when you are a convert and you're sincere, it takes you a minute to figure this thing out. And you go through all kinds of",
      "It's a contemporary insanity. If you're sincere because you're trying to figure it out. And you make all kinds of mistakes. And as a father, your children are there. You understand that? Especially the way some of us were taught in this country. You couldn't be an American father. You had to be some kind of other father. Right? So he's trying to learn all this stuff. So I wrote a little book to try and instruct my daughters to call daddy for redemption.",
      "One of the things that I say to them is this. This is to my daughters, you may think that the fact that you were born to a Muslim mother and a Muslim father is just normal no big deal because that is all you have ever known but on the day your father was born or the day that I was born",
      "If someone had come to your grandparents, your Christian grandparents, my parents who were raised poor in the Jim Crow South. In the 1920s and 30s that's when my parents are born. Had you come to them on the day that I was born",
      "your arms right now one day will grow up to be a Muslim. That you will visit your child's home, this one, right in their arms and you will find his daughters wearing hijab and you hear them praying in Arabic and you live in the city of Philadelphia where I grew up that is teeming with Muslims. You can't turn two ways without bumping into a Muslim if someone had told",
      "the most famous person in the world would be a black American Muslim with the name Muhammad. In fact, if someone had told you that Islam itself will be the second largest religion in the black community period no one would have believed that. No one could have believed it. Noone could believe that and yet it happened",
      "and uncles who are Muslims. Islam has communal conversion in that black community. What do I mean by communal conversion? I don't mean the whole black community is to become Muslim, I mean this when you meet anybody in America meets a black American who is a Muslim they say what's your name Muhammad, Ahmed, you're Muslim yeah oh",
      "I don't know if you still go through this, sister Diane but white Americans some Latinos Muslim or see you dressed like that where are you from? It is natural. It is accepted. It's authentic for a black person in America to be a Muslim. Now when I'm trying to get across who did this?",
      "Who in that community could have planned this? No one could have planed this. No one but Allah could have planted this. But it happened and now we have communal conversion in our community, a communal conversion which we all should invest because this Islam belongs here. That's one community nobody can tell",
      "Nobody can tell, go home. This is what we have to recognize and this is what you have to invest in but if we don't recognize the power of the miraculous, we won't even see it. So you know some of you I've been a Muslim 40 years, I remember the first time I saw Arabic. I thought that stuff was logographic man like Chinese or Japanese or something. Right? But then I learned. And see this is the other aspect",
      "of what I think that, you know we have to understand about this. Why did Islam come to black Americans? Not Latinos, not Native Americans. You think that's an accident? Huh? And by the way, I'm gonna say something here that might be a little bit controversial but I'm right.",
      "I know, I was touched by that five minute video. And I'm the last person to deny my connection with Africa. But some of us think that Islam in the black American community is just an extension of our African heritage. It is not, I'm sorry.",
      "It is not, I'm sorry. They broke that. For all intents and purposes they broke that We have no transgenerational Islam to speak of in that slave community If the father came, the son or daughter was not likely to survive as a Muslim Not only that, not only that Ten times the number of Africans who were brought to America as slaves went to Brazil alone",
      "Do you find anything like black Salafis in Brazil? Do you buy anything like the Nation of Islam and Brazil or anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere? Do your final Malcolm X do you find a Muhammad Ali? Do find any of this? This is not miraculous who could have done this who could apply this",
      "this. Who could have put this into place? And what we have to ask ourselves is why and what are we to do with it? Do we recognize this miracle, and if we do what are you to do in it? Why did America come to the black American community? The community, the one community in America that is the moral conscience of the nation.",
      "not known for conquest or domination. You see that? The one community of Americans who become more authentic as Americans, the more they protest against assimilation. You understand that? You don't get that. Some of us don't understand that. Let me say this in this room here. Now some of us",
      "that you can call a black girl. In fact, they're gonna try this. But the N-word can be used as a term of impairment. Don't try it! But there's one word that's always for jargon. You know what that is? Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom! Just imagine that. A community in America",
      "the more it protests against forced assembly. And this is a community to whom Allah sent Islam? That's just an accident? That was just an incident? Let me tell you a story, that sister I was thinking about when she was talking about going through the drive-through, what am I gonna do with this hijab? I got a nephew and he was about 12 years old or so when 9-11 happened. Now, you know he's a 12 year old",
      "You know, he's a 12 year old. In the hood. Okay? The day after 9-11 schools was closed, the second day they opened schools back up. Do you know what this young man did? To my identity? He went to school with a phone on him! Many of the people in this room were smacking American flags onto their car windshields.",
      "And he went to school with a phone on him saying what? What? What's right? Muslim. No, no you laugh. You laugh! These are the people among whom Allah sent Islam in this country and you think that that's nothing? That that's just casual, that's it's nothing huh?",
      "This is one law center slam too. In America, what group of Americans have made more contributions to one of America's most powerful and seductive exports? It's popular culture. Who has made more contribution to that than the black American community? And this is a community law center as a communal conversion. That's just an accident.",
      "In fact, why America? And this is one of the points I want to make. There's something uniquely American about this theme of Islam and black America. Why America? The richest most powerful country on the planet. Yeah, of course we've got our problems. But Maca too! Medina too! Right? Why America?!",
      "Why does all this come together like this? Is this not a miracle? If you tried to spread the slime in America today, could you do it like that? Could we do it right now? But it happened. Some of us don't realize how big this thing is. Let me just take a few minutes. I won't go too much longer but I want us to get this point because this is our collective legacy and it's precisely",
      "we don't have a sense of mission in America. Because if we recognize this miracle, we will recognize that we have a mission to preserve and perpetuate this miracle. That this American Muslim community is important. It is most important because we see this as part of God's miraculous action. This is like Allah telling the mother of Moses put him in the basket and send him downstream. And where does he end up? In the house of Pharaoh",
      "Pharaoh, the most powerful man on the planet. This is what this is. We don't get this! Right? Not only does slaps spread in rhetoric... I want to take some of the converts back because see sometimes the converts they don't give their props. No no, I'm very serious now and I say this it's almost...I mean it's been 40 years ago for me. I was three when I was a virgin.",
      "But what I'm trying to get across to you is that these people took it and did it. You understand what I am talking about? See, we don't get this. I remember it was at the Islamic Center of Philadelphia on Broad Street in Philadelphia. And a brother took me in the bathroom. I had just converted. And he said, I'm going to teach you how to make wudu. Right?",
      "You come to people and you tell them they gotta put water up their nose. And what? No, no, no! And what do they do? They do it! No,no,no! They do It! If this is what Allah wants, they do it. And not only in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. They do IT! I remember that first Ramadan I fasted. Boy, I ain't never seen a headache that big in my life.",
      "It was August in Philly. That day, right? And mother was like you know like nine o'clock at night or something like that. Right and then you come to mother's and you break your fast and it's like",
      "No, I'm serious You're a convert. You've never done this before in your life brothers and sisters you don't get this And they did it! Do you understand what I'm saying? They did it. They fasted again and again and they left drugs and they let women and they have alcohol Maybe not all at once maybe not perfectly but they did",
      "In fact, even when they didn't do it I know brothers will tell you what I'm doing is wrong. You understand that? So even if they didn' t do it, they did devalue. You understand what I am talking about? They did it! You know I am a manikin now and in the maniki school we have to work Alhamdulillah",
      "I remember learning how to make salat man, you know when you like sit on your... See y'all don't get that. Y'all dont get that! This is what the convert had to go through and then go through it and go through",
      "hundreds of thousands, created a culture out of it. You understand that? I don't know if you guys remember when somebody asked on the Tabitha Smiley thing in the State of America, somebody asked how can we make Muslims feel like they're more part of us? The Reverend Al Sharpton said what? Uh-uh, don't even get it twisted because there ain't a person",
      "a father, a nephew, a daughter, a cousin, a niece, a brother, a close family friend. Somebody in their circle who's not a Muslim. He said that. A Christian minister said that about Islam in the black community and here we are too stupid to see a law of the world. I hate to say it like that. And because of that we can't invest in it",
      "He's got no sense of mission. The Muslim sense of a mission has been damaged. He's gotten no sense on mission, because when you've got a sense of the mission, you ain't got time for pettiness. You ain't go time for mediocrity. You don't got to have an ego. It ain't all about you. It's about the mission. That's what you sacrifice for even in your own little imperfection.",
      "sacrifice if you've got no sense of mission and because we don't recognize this miracle, we can have a sense of issue. And by the way they just brought us up... Can you imagine a sister? Okay I'm you know I got so many I mean just learning fat talk. Can you",
      "They didn't. Are you getting this? Can you imagine to be a sister, okay, I understand now so I gotta wear this. What is it? Huh? Where does this go? Right? Can your imagine your first day showing up at work or at school with a hijab on? See what I'm saying? You see what I am saying? On your first date you walk in that thing and sliding all over.",
      "We don't know what you're doing. Right? No, no, no! But you do it! This is a level of commitment. This is whom Allah sent his lamb to in this country. Are you getting this, brother? This is your legacy. If we can believe in the power of the miraculous... if we can be that Allah still does miracles and if we",
      "of a miracle. I remember, I was at Harvard once at a conference and I'll cut this short right now. I was in Harvard once, at a Conference and one of my colleagues from France turned to me and said, I don't get this, we ain't real, we don't have anything like this in Europe. I've never seen anything like it. What you have in Islam and the black community in America, I've",
      "in Europe. Right? The second largest group of Muslims in America, native born. Father, grandfather, great grandmother, all Americans. You got this nowhere else in the western world. Nowhere but here. And we don't recognize what Allah has done here and when we recognize it I'll end on this because I know everybody wants to go home",
      "everybody wants to go home. When we recognize it, we recognize as well that we have to recognize our responsibility towards this miracle. What do we as a Muslim community do with this miracle? And those of you who think I'm just up here talking because",
      "to sell you in Florida somewhere as well. Okay, I'm very serious. I get tired of this. Muslims who can't think like Muslims. No, I am very serious, right? When Benny Hancher came out to protect the Prophet and all the Muslims, then Omar said, I ain't going with them, I don't know Benny Hanchef. Omar from Benny Hadi. He said what? No no no no, this is good for the Muslims? This is good Islam? It's good for me.",
      "This is the miracle that Allah has chosen to unfold. This is a miracle that I'm responsible for preserving and perpetuating, and growing. How many white American Muslims came to Islam by reading the autobiography of Malcolm X? Who? Who hip hopped? How many? How long are we going to go refusing",
      "refusing to recognize this miracle. I'm not asking anybody to be anything other than what they are. That would be dhulm. But as I said, Amr remained Hamar from Bani Adi. This man remained this man from Bany Abdu Sharif. Huh? But by the way when the Prophet... They held him up at Rudaibiyah he wanted to make",
      "Umar, they said Meccans said no you can't come in so the Prophet is going to send a negotiator. He says Umar I want you go into Mecca and negotiate with the Meccan's. Umar says what? Rasulullah I think I've been hard on them boys and I don't think they will take too kindly to me but I know who you can send. You can send Bruce Mack. Why would Umar say that?",
      "Why would Allah suggest that the Prophet was man? Do you know who was ruling Mecca at that time? You know who ran Mecca, at that Time? Abu Sufyan. Do you where Abu Sufiyaan was from? Bani Al-Khashams. Do what Uthman was from?. Bani al-Khasjams. This is our legacy. This Is The Wisdom We Have To Get Back To And If Allah Put That Miracle In That Community, That's What We Have",
      "It has to be in some community or we're going to continue to be run by our angles. Is that what's gonna be? Well, how is that working? How is that workin'? Huh? This is what I want to convey to us and this, by the way, is part of the importance",
      "to indigenize this religion in this country. That is our mission and we cannot betray Allah on the basis of any ego. He has chosen the first step. It's up to us what we're going to do about it, and let me say this some things are better retained than retrieved",
      "You understand what I mean by that? Huh? If you got it, you better take care of it. Because if you lose it, You may never get it back. And if we lose that connection between Islam and the black community, who is going to be our ally in America? Who is gonna be our Benny Hedgeship? Who?",
      "Allah laid it out for us. We can't continue to be oblivious to this, okay? So the last thing I want to say is this... I went a long time didn't I? I apologize, I apologize. No no, now I'm about to stop here but-but-but...no no no, I want us to be clear about this and I want it to be this ain't about no black thing any more than it's not even some Arab thing. Do you understand what I mean?",
      "Why do I learn Arabic? Because I want to be an Arab? Because i'm a Muslim. I want understand my Lord's revelation, that's why. Okay get that straight and keep it straight the last thing I want",
      "I can't see with those glasses, so I gotta... Oh! There you are. Let me just say it man. One of the things that has befallen us as Muslims in the modern world is we have",
      "We have allowed Islam, in a sense, to be reduced to a religion. To a set of internalized beliefs and a few ritual practices. And I'm not saying that those things are not important. I hope that we're all Muslim enough to... I mean, I ain't got to explain that. I don't know what you're talking about. But Islam is a civilization.",
      "is a civilization and that civilization was not just built by Malik and Abu Hanifa or Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyyah there were countless architects, there were countess military scientists there were countless seamstresses, countless accountants",
      "who had to contribute to that whole thing. And among the major contributors, to our success in the past especially the independence of the scholars which today all over the Muslim world is under moral threat The key to their independence was the fact that the moneyed community stepped up",
      "You ask yourself, where did Nile Ghazali come from? You ever asked yourself that? Does Ghazal just fell out of the sky? Where was he educated? He was educated in educational institutions. But there was no Ministry of Education. There was no Department of Education so where did these educational institutions come from",
      "They came from the pockets of independent wealthy individuals who said I'm going to do this as an act of qurba, of drawing close to Allah. I'm gonna give this money to sustain the intellectual life of my community so that they can remain independent and so they can call them like they see them without any fear of any kinds of consequences",
      "that kind of independence to return to our community, the moneyed communities are gonna have to step up. And I'm not talking... Can I be frank here? I'm going home tomorrow so you ain't gonna beat me up no way. I'm talking about the seven digits like every other community does in this country and one of the reasons why our moneyed community cannot do that then they have the confidence in us.",
      "about me take me out it's not about me, take me OUT okay right don't give me anything I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about us you understand that? I'm talkin bout US okay we have to understand every other community understands what it has to do in order for its voice to have the amplification",
      "independence that it needs in order for its voice to be able to see its way clearly for all the fog that defines and circumscribes our lives in America. So my appeal would be, to the money community, alright? You too take the responsibility of reclaiming, of reestablishing your belief in the miraculous. Understanding when that first wealthy person established",
      "that Ghazali graduated from? He didn't know no Ghazalih. He didn' t know a Ghazalia would come out of that but he believed in Allah says he is shaker, Allah says He's thankful what does that mean? What does that means? Does Allah say He's Thankful? Oh see that's the problem we don't know what Allah said why do we not know what",
      "Why don't we know what Allah said? Oh, maybe people just tired. All right, so let me just stop then. Huh? He gives you a lot for a little. A lot for the little. Allah is Shaka. We have to believe that it'll be there and if we don't believe that, that's part of the defeat. That is part of",
      "Do it. Do it! Do it!! And we will see those miracles, insha'Allah come to fruition. Subhanak Allahumma min hamdik Ash-shaytan al la ilaha illa anta astaghfiruq wa atubu ilaih Asalaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wabarakatuh"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Reflection by Dr_ Sherman Jackson_cWoA_qKxBnc&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836672.opus",
    "text": [
      "Bismillah ar-Rahman ar- Raheem. Wa salatu wa salaam ala Rasulullah, assalamu alaykum and good evening everyone. I've been asked to come to speak before you on the topic of our theme in 10 to 12 minutes. Anyone who knows me knows that it usually takes me longer than that to even say my name but i will try to carry out that task",
      "that task and this is a particularly difficult topic for me speaking here as a Muslim. And it's difficult for a number of reasons, first of all it's very difficult to follow all the fine speakers who came before me I am in fact still in the process of processing many of the profundities that I heard but secondly",
      "challenge of speaking as a Muslim in today's world with credibility. And that challenge cuts into directions. On the one hand, given the spate of unfortunate expressions of violence in many parts of the Muslim world it is very difficult to express to non-Muslims",
      "in which this is such a violation of the ideals of Islam. And it's understandable, in that context, that a credibility gap might develop but I would remind us that we are as humans individually and collectively not simply as good as our actions",
      "That is to say, all of us are afflicted with frailties. All of us on occasion caught in the grips of pettiness, of jealousy, of our inability to see the humanity of those who oppose us or whom we oppose but the real test of who we are as humans is what we aspire to be and",
      "is the extent to which we are willing to look our failures in the face, acknowledge them and get up and seek to overcome them. The second reason why it's so difficult for me to speak about this topic is that as an academic I spend most of my time with young people",
      "that detects hypocrisy. There's another word for it that I won't use. And when it comes to the issue of peace and love, one of the things we have to be careful about particularly in the context of how we appear to our young people is that we do not present these values as",
      "goals in and of themselves that can often be used to undergird, to validate, and to perpetuate an unjust, unfair, and inhumane status quo. That is to say that do we invoke peace as a means of opting out of the struggle",
      "a goal in and of itself or is it a means to a better world? And I think it's very difficult to speak to young people who face so much, who are fraught with so many challenges. Who are in many ways so bewildered. Whose idealism is smashed on a daily basis",
      "about peace in the face of a reality that is so far removed from any of their ideals. And the problem with this, if we are not careful, this threatens to undermine the very value of peace itself. To undermine the value of love itself. Because of love and peace are going to produce no more than what we have now. Than what really is the value",
      "is the value of all that love and that peace. That is the perspective of many young people. And so what I want to try to do is speak from the perspective a Muslim, that addresses the issue of peace as a means to resistance.",
      "non-Muslim brothers and sisters can understand that this is a genuine ideal in Islam. And that it is established by the very founder of the religion himself, and that no one, no matter whom they may be, can claim to be a better Muslim than the Prophet Muhammad. At the same time,",
      "That when we speak of these lofty values, we speak in such a way that those values are grounded in what they themselves can understand to be the actual teachings of the religion itself. And nothing can be more effective than that. Than the example of the Prophet Muhammad himself. May God's peace and blessings be upon him.",
      "share with you an actual event in the life of the Prophet Muhammad that demonstrates his recognition of the value of peace as a means of resistance. Peace as",
      "to foment war and confuse issues, and to create clouds of suspicion and hatred and darkness. All those things that enable us to hide our true emotions, to hide out true motivations, and therefore to perpetuate realities that are in and of themselves unjust, untenable, and not consistent with what God would want.",
      "Around the sixth year of his messengership in the city of Medina, he had himself already been forced to leave Mecca. They threatened to kill him. While in Medina he decided to make a pilgrimage to the Holy House in Mecca and at that time Mecca was still occupied by the pagan Arabs of the Peninsula",
      "of the peninsula. And although Mecca was a holy center for the entire Arabia, and it was supposed to be a sanctuary for all Arabians, all Arabian were supposed to free to come to Mecca and worship in freedom as they pleased throughout the peninsula but when the Prophet Muhammad announced that he and his companions were going to make this pilgrimage",
      "going to allow this. And they wanted to show the Prophet Muhammad that they were able to stop him from carrying out this pilgrimage and they also wanted to tell the rest of Arabia that they was still in charge. And so, they entered into this preliminary negotiation out of which the Prophet",
      "wanted to fight. But the prophet did not want to fight, the prophet understood that fighting does nothing but raise the defense mechanisms of the one against whom one is fighting and when those defense mechanisms are raised there can be no communication you can have all the truth in the world",
      "process what you're saying. They are too busy trying to protect themselves.\" And so the Prophet did not want to fight and this is something that is commonly unknown about the Prophet, he did not like to fight. He understood that the opening of psychological space is the means by which he can carry out that mission for which he's most responsible and that is communicating the truth.",
      "But the Meccans still wanted to fight. And so they sat down to draw up the terms of the peace treaty and the Mecans then tried to undermine the entire process. And, so the prophet started out by saying in the name of God the most merciful, the most beneficent. The Meccan stopped him and said no we will not accept that title",
      "We do not recognize this most merciful, most beneficent to whom you refer. Wipe that out and write in your name oh God. And their implication was that if you don't do that all bets are off and we will enter into war. The prophet Muhammad said wipe it out. What do you want me to write? In your name",
      "Then he proceeded with the treaty. This is what Muhammad, the messenger of God agrees with the representative of Quraysh on. They stop him. Wait. He says if I thought that you were the messenger",
      "Muhammad, the son of Abdullah. In other words negating that the Prophet was an actual prophet and what did the Prophet do? Fine wipe it out let's get on with the peace treaty so then they enter into the actual terms of the peace Treaty and the peace",
      "We will not permit this. Perhaps you can come back next year and we will vacate the city and allow you to make your pilgrimage. Fine. Second, anyone who leaves Mecca to join the Muslims in Medina without the permission of anyone who has authority over them, you have to send them back. But if anyone leaves Medina from the Muslim community",
      "to Mecca, even in defiance of anyone in authority over them. We do not have to send them back.\" A double standard here. What did the Prophet say? Fine. Third, we will enter now into a ten year peace treaty. No acts of aggression from either side. Neither from the Muslim side nor from the non-Muslim side and this is what the Prophet wanted. And finally",
      "The peace treaty stipulated that everyone in Arabia is now a free agent. That all alliances that had been in existence in the past, they're are now up for grabs and anyone who wants to rearrange or realign themselves with anyone else, they are free to do that. And this was...these were the terms of the peace treaty. Many of the Prophet's companions",
      "asked the prophet, why do we accept this humiliation? And the prophet said to him I am the Prophet of God. God would never humiliate me. The Prophet was using peace as a form of resistance. Peace as a means of denying the Meccans",
      "that would have done nothing more than continue to raise confusion, to raise up lines of defense mechanisms and distort the message that the prophet himself was trying to communicate. Here peace was a means to something beyond itself. The Prophet understood when he came to the outskirts of Mecca",
      "that he would meet. And he could have entered into war with the Meccans, but he understood that there was something more important to come out of this and what came out of it would later be reflected in one of the reports of a very prominent companion of the Prophet. The verses",
      "O Muhammad, we have granted you a manifest victory. One of the companions of the Prophet said I know that many people think that this manifest victory that God is speaking about here with regard to the prophet, I know they",
      "But they are wrong. The manifest victory that God granted the Prophet was nothing less than the treaty of Hudaibiyyah which he had reached two years earlier and what we see is that in this atmosphere of peace, Islam was actually able to reach more people",
      "dropped and who were able to entertain what the prophet had to say. Quadrupled in number, in fact it went up about tenfold. What I'm saying here is peace is not simply a strategy to get what we want but peace is a means of promoting an atmosphere in which people are free to choose the kinds of lives that they want to live.",
      "And this is a very difficult task for us to stomach in many instances because there are so many ways of lives out there or ways of life out there with which we disagree. If we want to promote peace, and if we want",
      "we will have to recognize and acknowledge that this will be a difficult task. An extremely difficult task, a task for which even love will be challenged. And I think here it's very important for us to recognize lest we end up defeated in our souls. That the most important love that we can have is love of God",
      "God. Because that is the love that ultimately enables us to get beyond ourselves. It says one of the great sages in the Muslim tradition said, he said, The important thing is not so much that you love God but rather that God loves you. And what",
      "earn God's love, it means that we must engage in lives of service. In lives of services that go beyond ourselves and in the process of doing so we will encounter many obstacles. Obstacles that somehow in many ways seem absolutely overwhelming and its at this time that I think we would be well advised to consider",
      "a piece of advice by that same Muslim sage. And he invited us to always remember, That while we are limited in our powers, in our strengths, in out capacity even to envision with God all things are possible and he says that",
      "If you were to go into a dark room in which you thought no one was there and someone was to hit you, you would probably be afflicted with horror. Because you don't know where it's coming from and you don' t know what is coming after that.",
      "there was a friend in that room and you ended up getting hit, you would probably turn around and say something like, would you stop playing please? You would not be afflicted with that horror. What he's inviting us to do is to remember that we are not alone. We are not",
      "to answer our prayers. It's up to us, however, to make sure that we never carry ourselves in the way that we seek to get God to work for us rather than we always remember that we work for God. Thank you very much."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/REFLECTIONS with Dr Sherman Jackson Diversity_Pqxg6qgbrYs&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750815081.opus",
    "text": [
      "Muslims are a community of over a billion people in the world. And that's a lot of cultures, that's alot of histories, that is a lot ethnicities, that a lot languages, you know, that lot differential events in the lives of people, that alot visions of past,",
      "of the past, visions of the future and we have to be able to accommodate and in some ways even celebrate diversity as corny as that may sound. You know before the modern period that to my understanding was like part of the DNA",
      "We've landed in a, you might want to call it even a psychological or a communicative space that turns diversity into trauma. That people are not able to accommodate diversity in a way that leaves them whole and secure.",
      "I mean, you ask any of the scholars. You ask Sheikh Hamza, you asked Sheikh Suhaib, you as Imam Zaid, you know, any of these scholars and this is not just American-born scholars.",
      "singularly right to the absolute exclusion of all other possibilities. This is the appetite that we have now and I think that you know, the whole notion of what's attributed to Imam al-Shafi'i and others but you know I believe that my point of view is right with possibility that it's wrong. I believe my opponent is wrong with a possibility",
      "This has virtually dissipated from our collective existence. And what I'm saying is that, that statement attributed to Imam al-Shafi'i is not simply a statement of a sort of intellectual posture or position. That's a culture. So the point that I'm trying to make is that this is not moral relativism.",
      "I believe that you are wrong, but I also know I'm not the prophet. And in the absence of the prophet today said I'm coming back saying you are right and you are wron we cannot know this definitively. You follow what I mean by that? To the point that I could impose my opinion on you. But in the absense of the Prophet coming back I absolutely believe I am right.",
      "you know, we're going to have to answer for the opportunities and the circumstances with which we have been provided. And I think that in that light whatever external challenges come to us as a community those are challenges... We don't control what other people do but I think in terms of the internal",
      "internal challenges, some of the trauma that our very unbrotherly and unsisterly discourses has unleashed upon us. Our inability to arrive at a point where we can really be a community that loves one another,",
      "one another. And that's so to the point that we can even disagree with one another! These are things that we as a Muslim community have to take more responsibility for and we have to understand that if these internal challenges are not addressed, alright? Even if the external challenges go away, alright, we are still going to be an impoverished community."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/REFLECTIONS with Dr Sherman Jackson Saving Our Chi_HF-z2fccqEg&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750836162.opus",
    "text": [
      "If you've converted to Islam, as an American, that very enterprise puts one in a position where one even comes to the point",
      "comes to a point where one begins to look at ones own culture, the culture in which one was born. And not just the culture but the reality, the sort of whole inner workings of the value system on which one is raised and brought up in society and which one you know was brought up and you know one comes to look",
      "it takes some time to get back to a balanced critique of where one is, whereby one has by the grace of God acquired interpretive filters that are ideally informed",
      "one is able to let in the good and filter out of the bad. But this is a process. When I say that culture is our issue, what I mean is that I think that to the extent that Muslims are dislocated in the West they're dislocated more culturally than they are even religiously",
      "even religiously. I mean, the challenge for example of raising children as Muslims in America to my mind and to my experience is primarily not one in which one has to worry about at least not primarily children somehow coming to some kind of reasoned or even unreasoned",
      "a conclusion that well Allah doesn't exist anymore, God doesn't exists anymore or Muhammad wasn't really the prophet. That's not our primary challenge. Our primary challenge is that we have difficulty carving out crafting sustainable social realities in which young Muslim kids",
      "children growing up, into adulthood even can feel integrated have values that say you know Zina is haram, wine drinking is haraam. That's all acceptable but that in and of itself doesn't impede me from a livable enjoyable healthy social reality alright",
      "that I can freely engage, not with guilt, not being pastist, not be over reactionary but freely engaged and live an integrated life that is lived fully and hopefully righteously. Instead what we have is a situation whereby none of the constructs",
      "especially for kids, and what I mean by this is this. All children want to be cool. They want to liked. They wanted accepted. They wants to know that they're okay. They wanna be held in high esteem. And when the values of a slave contribute nothing",
      "cool, to be held in high esteem, to say you're okay. Then Islam will begin not only to lose its meaning but to become an impediment to the very sort of almost social lifeblood of what children in a particular environment need. The challenge for us is how do we within boundaries that",
      "boundaries that we can with all sincerity and due diligence reasonably claim and hold the conviction that these parameters are authentically both derived from Islam and represent a good faith articulation of Islam. And within those",
      "How can we carve out a social and cultural identity, a social or cultural order that is sustainable, that is life-giving, that's life affirming in this space and at this time under these circumstances."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Sherman Jackson_ African American Islamic Scholar_r8c8h8guQhM&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750823153.opus",
    "text": [
      "hello hello everybody peace and power elevation beats all of you assalamu alaikum ramadan mubarak to all you beautiful people out there um i hope y'all had a great uh juma and a great fast",
      "so tonight i'm not going to uh really get into like a whole lot of you know presentation type stuff i just want to share some information with you guys also what i want to do is look into african-american scholars islamic scholars and so one of the islam scholars that i want people to check out for their own purpose",
      "about islam and black people practicing islam here in america etc i want you guys looking to sherman jason so dr sherman jackson is a islamic scholar i got his information right over here",
      "So according to the website, let's just go ahead and look at the website.",
      "University of Michigan. That's a picture of him. It says Dr. Jackson received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at the University",
      "He is the author of several books, including Islamic Law and the State. The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shahab al-Din al-Kharafi On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam Abu Amid al-Ghazali Fasil al-Tafriq Islam and the Black American Looking Towards the Third Resurrection",
      "of black suffering and mostly most recently sufi sufism for non-sufis ibn atta allah al sakadiri taj aruz all right so they also say that dr jesson is a co-founder of core scholar a member of the board of trustees of american learning institution for muslim an academic",
      "writers and community leaders come together to develop strategies for the future of Islam in the modern world. So it also says, additionally Dr. Jessen is a former member of the FIG Council of North America, former president of Sharia Scholars Association of North American and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust. He has contributed to several publications including",
      "blog on faith and the huffington post dr jason is listed by the religion news writers foundation religion link as among the 10 top 10 experts on islam in america and was named among the 500 most influential muslims in the world by the royal islamic strategic study center",
      "And Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. All right, so these are the books that he has written and also if you want to, you can check them out on Amazon. Okay, so here are the",
      "all right so here the books on amazon website so these are the list of books that he has written okay it could be found on kindle uh paperback copy",
      "and hardcover so as you can see these books are kind of pricey but especially this one right here which is the islamic law in the state the constitutional jewel presents shahab al-din al-kharifi",
      "the study in islamic law and society it costs over 236 dollars and three cents all right so let's see let's look at let's take a look at the introduction",
      "All right, the introduction. This book traces the ideological encounter between Islam and Black Americans from the polar Islamic",
      "of the early 20th century through the rise and preponderance of orthodox sunni islam by the centuries end while such a trajectory might connote it a preliminary historical emphasis this book does not aim at a descriptive survey of the places dates and personality connected with the spread of islam among black americans its primary focus is rather the ideological dislocation",
      "and attempt the adjustment that accompanied the shift in the basis of the religious authority following the influx of Muslims from the Middle East and Asia after the repeal of the National Origins Act and the Asiatic Bar Zone in 1965. So it also said,",
      "black Americans to settle upon a self-definition that is both functionally enabling and sufficiently authentic. The inextricable power and influence of white supremacy as a seminal feature of the contemporary globe come America's social political order, and third, the hegemonic presumptions",
      "and South Asian Islam particularly as manifested in the collective vision of Muslim immigrants to the United States. Alright, so this book just basically goes into the history about Islam and black people in America. So it's going to be talking about the Nation of Islam and all the other groups you know all the black nationalist groups that practice Islam",
      "in this country so that's this book and it costs around 47 dollars was 48 if you round it up it's around 48 okay but yeah that's just one information on let's see let's look at two more so let's",
      "All right, so under here was this introduction. The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-management",
      "to from self-mastery okay by reno never so it says taj l rs al howie neil taheel el nufis a full translation of which i present here under the title the bridegroom's crown containing instruction on refining the self is as is as its title suggests a work on spiritual education",
      "Atal al-Sukandari will celebrate Sufi in the pre-modern tradition of Islam. Given the modern polemic around Sufism, this alone might be enough to discourage many especially non-Sufis from taking any interest in such a text. It says but the bridegroom's crown so quickly defies",
      "many of the criticism and stereotype popularized by Sufism modern opponents that it soon reveals many of these popular misgivings to be misplaced. At the same time, it challenges modern proponents of Sufis by imitating alternatives to mysticism as a pitiful focus of the Sufi enterprise to be sure Ibn Atta Allah was an active participant in the modern debate around Sufim",
      "In this text, however, he largely steps away from this concern and devotes himself more directly to ingrating the common Muslim with Sufism sin qua non. That is a direct deep-seated and proper relationship with God above and beyond all other spiritual concerns or achievements.",
      "as a mean of reaching and inspiring everyday believers and elevating their moral spiritual and devotional confidence and resolve all right so so basically his book uh talks about i mean just categorizing that context is sufism really good for you know non-sufis meaning those who are in the sunni or shia",
      "of Sufi Islam. So basically in this book, he goes into the detail, the whole debate around Sufism because people debated at one point in time was Sufi even considered as true Islam? Is it really Islam or is it like an actual Islam or whatever?",
      "Even some scholars believe that Sufi is Haram. It doesn't follow the consensus of Allah. Yeah, it doesn't fall to Quran or anything like that so as how some Sunni scholars believe or some Orthodox Muslims, that's what they look at. They look at Sufi not as being truly Islamic practice and whatever the case may be. So yeah, that book",
      "And that book right here costs around $50.70, okay? So that's just some of the information that I wanted to share. Also he has a YouTube video lecture so I want to show you guys that.",
      "all right so here's one video that i think people should check out",
      "this video is called dr sherman jesson a history of black islam in america all right so you guys should check out this video and there's many other videos over here as you can see it's a long list",
      "But I just wanted to share that information. So if you guys want to look at someone who is an Islamic scholar and who was of African descent, this teaching about the Islam culture or whatnot, check out Sherman Jensen. There'll be more to come. So I like to always make sure I present scholars who's actually studying some type of history, whether it be science, whether",
      "philosophy, whatever it is. I want to be able to make sure that I present the individuals to you all and you guys can look into them yourself. All right? So with that being said, thanks everybody for supporting my channel. For those of you that have been very supportive, thank you for checking out my channel so with that",
      "That's it. Ramadan Mubarak and until next time, I will talk to you all later."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Sherman Jackson receives Prophetic Encourgement_iaRHyj5GKTQ&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837904.opus",
    "text": [
      "And... One is that I am about destroying you with the inside. God brought you out of a whole other lifestyle and a whole another way of living it to introduce you to something greater but I see a frustration on the inside and I'm seeing it by the spirit realm, a frustration in life",
      "Frustration business and it's causing a gall of bitterness and anger to show up on the inside But God said you want to break that today and reignite the fire for God that she wants me It is no discount. I've been there. Yes, yes. I'm in there as a pastor as official",
      "In a dark place upset things won't work right these days today this happened And then I'm angry. I'm upset out tripping with the fire they don't see but God comes in with the same love also And so today we just want to read that inside",
      "Because what you do is a crime. And if you don't love it, and you're just doing it for money, then you don' get the best out of it. And when I met you, you had a love, a passion, and a craftsmanship for it.",
      "It'll make you be fire-rated made and not even want to do business special with some You know what I mean? Some of us ain't some of the mother was too good. They could be just as treacherous And it can cause you don't I mean because you know Well before was like now about go get it in give this paper, but I'm enjoying",
      "And the Lord said to tell you how do you go get your joy back. He said that to give them some insight on why his flame is dwindling for me and other things that's going on in your life.",
      "I see the people too. I've called some names, but I'm not in Colossal Torah. God said it's conversations. God says you got to take your ear away from some conversation and it doesn't mean you had a conversation It just means people have had conversations So when you're sitting around people let me give you a perfect example If you believe in God for your business to turn on, this is law Say a lot of people been having issues with employees People needing people to stay And you're talking or you're around a midst of other people",
      "You see that? Uh huh. Remember they were saying last night, how bad it was. And so what happens is that fire, that wonder, that zeal, that zenith that she once had begins to little bit by little bit go out and God said you gotta do this with your fleshness. You gotta begin to confess over your business. You got to confess on whatever it seems like. It's trying to hit at you, slow you down or stop you. God says you've got to speak contrary to what you see. He told him to tell you man of God, stop observing the weak.",
      "You're going to see a turnaround. I'm talking about a turnaround in your finances, I'm telling you about a turn around in your family. God said even in your energy level, you are going to be seeing a turnaround Hallelujah! God said your energy is about to go up. I hear God say at one point you used to be just full of energy. You know just like getting up in the morning, I am ready to get it. Now if you don't get up, you can get up out of obligation and responsibility but you don' have that same energy.",
      "We observe the way you feel like I'm gonna do and I will show up but it ain't like it was. You follow what I'm saying? When I come to church, God says it's about to be like it works. Hallelujah! God said I'm about to put that sense back. I'm going to put the sale of that man to buy. Hallelujah. But I tell you, God has said get your one confession and forget to confess it on a daily basis. And God said watch when I turn everything in your favor. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.",
      "You mean it. You beat the streets every day, day in and day out. God said no, no,no,no He's pulling the rainies back. He's pullin' the rainie back. In the name of Jesus Monday through Friday Some Saturdays But he's pulling you back, pulling you Back, pulling your back. God says get back son Get back to the things that you've learned In Jesus name Amen"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Sherman Jackson_ SUFISM FOR NON-SUFIS_Lhj0TKbtR_Q&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750829522.opus",
    "text": [
      "First of all, I want to begin by thanking Mizan and all those who are responsible for affording me this opportunity to come to England. And to share with you some of my what I hope will amount to intellectual",
      "amount to intellectual capital and also the opportunity to benefit from yours. I think it's very important, especially in this day and age in which we live that we as particularly a Muslim community learn to recognize the plethora of talent and insights and experiences that we have in our community",
      "The second thing that I want to say, just sort of caveats that I think it would be remiss for me not to get out there in order to empower you to properly process and contextualize what I'm about to say. The first one of these is that while I have come here at the invitation of Islamic Circles",
      "of Islamic Circles and Amizan, I am here to share with you my own perspective. And I say that because I don't know about the degree to which what I will say will overlap with or even contradict what Islamic Circus as an organization may represent but I want to assure you that whatever degree of overlap",
      "what I'm going to say and what the organization represents is purely coincidental. Because I am here simply to try to share with you my perspective on the meaning, and hopefully the whole function and role of this book. The second thing that I want to say is that I think it's probably obvious from my accent",
      "And what that means is for me, I don't pretend to be able to speak in any way effectively to British reality. One of the things that I've tried to do in my writings is to discourage the tendency on the part of Muslims to speak",
      "to whom or about whom they are speaking seriously. My perspective is the perspective of an American Muslim, and I don't have any apologies about that but I do want to put that out there front and center and invite you to edit whatever I might have to say in such a way that you're able to make it meaningful to a British context. So just wanted to get those two things out there to begin with.",
      "with. So I've been asked to come and sort of talk about this latest book of mine, Sufism for Non-Sufis, Ibn Atta'allah's Taj al-'Arus. And the first thing that I want to invite you to do is if you look at the title of",
      "is the question mark that comes after the title. And what I want to say here is, that the question marks are not accidental. It's quite intentional and it's meant to serve what for me a very important function.",
      "not so much, in fact it's not at all any kind of advocacy of full-blown Sufism in any of its developed and ideologically deployed forms. Nor is it a suggestion that there's sort of an oxymoronic relationship between the idea",
      "possibility of non-Sufis getting anything out of it. So I'm not suggesting either of these, I'm no suggesting that what we want is a sort of whole scale migration into Sufism nor am I suggesting that it's ridiculous to suggest that Sufim has anything to say to non-sufi especially non-sufic who happen to be Muslims rather the whole point of this question mark",
      "is really and honestly to invite a conversation, a discussion even a debate within the Muslim community as to what benefit Sufism may be in the context of the modern realities",
      "and most particularly Muslims residing in the West. Now this question has both an academic and a practical valence to it, i.e., to say Sufis are for non-Sufis, well there's a practical dimension to that but there is also an academic one. The academic dimension is to ask the question,",
      "attempting to get the Sufi tradition, to speak to realities. The lived experience, the quotidian challenges that confront Muslims in their everyday lives common Muslims who for any number of reasons may not have any formal affiliation with Sufism? Is that part of what he's trying to do? That's one question",
      "The second question is, is this particular genre of writing particularly about Sufism along with the concrete obsessions and concerns that it reflects. Is there anything in this that may be urgently needed or perhaps urgently",
      "urgently beneficial to modern Muslims and the modern predicament? Now my own response to both of these questions is obviously yes. I think that Ibn Atta'Allah, who in his own right was a very prominent Sufi of the Shadhali order. He died in the year 709, 1309 of the common era.",
      "but died in Cairo. He was a major figure in the Shadhali order, he was the disciple of Abbas al-Mursi whom himself was the Disciple of Abu'l Hasan al-Shadhili after whom the Shaddaliya Tariqa was named. Al-Shathali wrote no real doctrinal treatises on the Shadhali doctrine",
      "the Shadri doctrine. Neither did al-Mursi to any real degree and thus, the whole task of defining Shadr doctrine fell upon Ibn Atta'Allah and following the death of his two masters he became the leader of the Shaddari Tariqa and one of its most articulate representatives",
      "of formal articulations of Shazari doctrine. And in that regard, he was involved in some of the many controversies surrounding Sufism at that time, the substance of which I'll get into in just a little bit. But on this particular work, he is not doing that at all. In a sense",
      "In a sense, he seems to be saying at least this is the use that I'm trying to put him to and we can debate the validity of that as we go on. And I don't know how some... Mizan said it's gonna be what kind of? What? Explosive day. I don' t know how explosive it's going to be.",
      "I hope not unless somebody's getting married or something like that, there's a wedding celebration or something. But there were and we'll talk about these in some substance in just a bit but obviously there were controversies surrounding Sufism and Ibn Al-Ta'ala was involved in some of these controversies. In fact he and Ibin Taymiyyah,",
      "they were near contemporaries and their lives actually overlapped each other. And so there were these issues that he sought to sort of negotiate with regard to Sufism, and without taking aside with regard whether Ibn al-Ta'ala's position on these issues was actually defensible or not in this particular work",
      "He appears to step away from all of that and virtually all of the issues that become problematic, become a source of controversy about Sufism are essentially stripped clean from this particular articulation. And what he seems to be saying is that beyond all of",
      "Whether he himself believes that those who oppose him regarding these controversial issues are right or wrong, that belief aside, he seems to be saying that there is something important in the Sufi tradition that could be of concrete practical use for the everyday common Muslim and that heritage is being sacrificed to all the controversy that has been generated around Sufism itself.",
      "itself. And so what he wants to do is sort of bracket the controversy and afford the everyday common Muslim access to those dimensions and aspects of Sufism that are themselves non-controversial, at least much less controversial in an effort to empower the everyday",
      "of taking aim against the ravages of the unrefined and the undisciplined self, the ego, the seat of our undisciplinary passions. Now I really do want you to take seriously the question mark that's in",
      "And this has been the response of some people who have, I won't even say read the book because some of them haven't. The title has elicited even some reaction let us call it from some on both sides of the divide and I'll talk about the divide in just a little bit but some people think that what",
      "a mass migration into Sufism. For those who are critical of Sufisim and who hold it to be a sort of theological, even religious virus that the Muslim community should be protected from they have read the title to understand that Dr Jackson is promoting a wholesale migration into sufism alright? That's not what I'm doing at all",
      "doing at all and we'll talk about that in just a bit. Others who again sort of ignore the question mark, I'm speaking here about the proponents of Sufism see this particular effort as a sort of illegitimate or unauthorized",
      "encroachment upon the authority of Sufi groups and leaders to define and control the diffusion of Sufis thought and practice. In other words, for them if there is going to be anyone who's going to speaking about the efficacies of Suficism it should be those who are formally attached to Sufi orders themselves",
      "in which the definition and the diffusion of Sufism is controlled in a manner that assures a degree of quality control. All right? And I think that there are number of considerations that could go into a response to this, but let me just say the following.",
      "As we'll see in my remarks that are to follow, my primary concern is this Muslim Ummah. And beyond that particularly those who have not had access to the kind of edifying educational sources and instruction",
      "instruction that can actually enable them to make the best out of a Muslim existence in the modern world and if for example just to take them as an example are remiss in the enterprise of getting fit to speak effectively to the everyday realities of everyday Muslims then before kaha should not",
      "should not blame others who step into the vacuum that is left behind. And I would argue the same for Sufism, in fact one in the United States, I don't know about again and I'll probably mention this a number of times because I just want to be clear about that but there's an extent to which in the",
      "job done ingratiating non-Muslims with Sufism than there has been ingratiatng non-Sufi Muslims with Suifism. In other words, there have been articulations that have gone to the end of inspiring non-muslims to partake of what the Sufi heritage",
      "sort of and I don't want to put too sharp a point on this because i'm not here to point these kinds of really bad fingers but if we just step back and look at the overall effect, Muslims who are not Sufis have largely been left to make their own way. And I have",
      "with those aspects of Sufism, which they would not have any difficulty and which would be very self edifying for them. And so this is part of what I try to do in this particular effort. Now why this particular book? And why this effort? There are a number of different ways...",
      "My throat is getting out of control a little bit. There are a number of ways that I could explain this, I think though that perhaps the most meaningful and in some ways hopefully honest would be for me to sort of share with you my own evolution as a Muslim scholar and thinker.",
      "to give you a sense of how I arrived at recognizing the importance of a work like this. My first book, and let me just say this, and I won't go into any great details but I do want to put you in a position where you're able to hopefully hear my words",
      "at least mean by the words themselves. I became a Muslim, I embraced Islam back in the late 1970s and shortly thereafter I went to the Muslim world and you know I studied etc., came back and ended up going to college and well finishing",
      "school and getting my PhD in Islamic studies. My first book was published in 1996, and this was a study of Shihabuddin al-Qarafi. I don't know if any of you have heard of Al Qarafi? If you're North African, you probably have. Shihabadin al-Kharafi was a very famous Maniche scholar",
      "in my estimation, accomplished and brilliant legal theoreticians that the Islamic legal tradition has produced. And I wrote my PhD thesis on him and this was followed by my first book which was entitled Islamic Law and the State, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shehabatina al-Qarafi. Well, I mean, that was part of you know, my sort of strict academic training but I also learned an awful lot",
      "an awful lot from Shihab ad-Din al Qarafi. And one of the things that I learned from Qaraf was, was the fact that one can be a very highly trained and even one may say elite scholar or intellectual",
      "engaged involvement with the community of which one is a part. And in an article I wrote about al-Qarafi, it's called Tips to the Jurisprudence, Tips to The Jurist Council, he talks about all kinds of realities that a jurist has to be aware of before he can give a fatwa",
      "And that means being aware of the realities of the common everyday Muslim. Because they will come to you asking you questions that reflect these realities. If you don't understand their reality, you're more likely to respond to them based purely on what's in the books. But what's on the books may not be reflective of the actual reality that they are living and therefore your response is likely to be misleading",
      "And so for Al-Qarafi, I mean he actually insisted on getting out into society and learning the ways of the people. The realities that inform their lives so that one will find oneself in a position to be able to respond in a way that is sensitive to those realities. Let me give you one just briefly controversial... Do I want to go controversial?",
      "Go controversial? No, no. I'm just joking. Let me just give you one example of what I am talking about. In his treatment of the issue of hashish, hashish people are smiling already. Hashish was a substance that didn't come into Muslim world until around 10th or 11th century.",
      "Franz Rosenthal has written an entire book about this and a lot of the details are there. But when it came into Muslim society, it generated obviously controversy. And there were all kinds of fatwas issued about the legal status of hashish, alright? Now, of course, there is a very real extent",
      "to which one would think that by analogy the status of hashish will be a pretty slam dunk case right I mean we simply analogize it to wine and I mean that is enough to determine the ruling on hashish but again for al Qarafi",
      "one of those tangential, what might be called today in this very highly charged atmosphere in which we live today some sort of ultra liberal kind of a jurist. He was quite mainstream but this was consistent with what he held to be the calling of the jurists. All right? He had no problem with determining hashish to be haram.",
      "But other issues connected with it, such as for example if you prayed under the influence of it was your prayer valid or invalid? Does everybody understand what I mean by that? So the issue of haram or not, that's taken care of. Everybody follow what I meant by that. You don't look so sure. Look at it this way.",
      "Look at it this way, maybe we can relax some people. Most hold that if men wear silk, it's not permissible for men to do what? To wear silk. Is that... You with me on that? Okay? What if I have a silk necktie on, alright, that you deem to be what?",
      "Haram. Okay? If I pray in that silk necktie, is my solat valid or invalid? That's a separate question from what? Is wearing silk haram or halal? Anybody follow that? Okay? Alright? So the question is not for al-qarafi, haram, halal. What happens now if you pray under the influence of it? Okay, so by following that?",
      "For him, I cannot sit back in my library and answer that question. And so what does he do? This is right there in his al-Faruq. What does he go? He goes down to the segment of the city where people were known to smoke hashish. And he sits there and does what? And observes them to see the impact of this substance on them",
      "on them as opposed to simply assuming that it would have the same effect as wine drinking. And out of this observation, he concludes that it does not have the saying effect and therefore I'm not willing to say that their prayer is invalid even though this stuff is haram and they should receive ta'zeer. Is everybody following that?",
      "following that okay so I'm not going to go back to America and look online and find out where I said that she says hello right I mean that's not gonna happen right but I raised that point to give you a real sense of how again involvement with the community all",
      "and the whole issue of why do writers write? I mean, if Al-Qarafi is writing this multi-volume work on X, Y or Z, why does he write it? He has children. He has a wife. He have neighbors. He had hobbies. You follow what I mean by that? Why does he writes his book?",
      "that he wants to effect in society. And he's very engaged in that regard. And so out of this experience with al-Qadhafi, I mean, this was one of the sensibilities that I acquired quite early in my academic career. Coming out of the publication of my first book which is in 1996 shortly after that",
      "You know, I was awarded tenure. And tenure gave me the ability to begin to define my own scholarly agenda. And from that time on, my attempt has included it has not been this exclusively but it has included the attempt to study Muslim tradition",
      "with the full rigors and standards, and even expectations that go along with the Western tradition of scholarship. I've attempted to study our tradition with all of that apparatus, and yet always keep an eye",
      "to the realities that define modern Muslim existence. And for me, especially in America, right? Now, for me part of my profile in this regard emerges out of the following insight and maybe this is something",
      "is something that we can discuss and debate later on in the day. For me, persecution is not the greatest threat to religion. As sad and as unfortunate as it may be, religion can survive persecution. In fact, it may even thrive under conditions of persecution.",
      "In fact, I was having this conversation with a Jewish colleague of mine once and she said exactly that. Not only is religion not the greatest threat to religion, I'm sorry persecution not the great threat to religious but religion can actually thrive under persecution. For me among the greatest threats to religion is apathy born of irrelevance. Apathy born",
      "of irrelevance where religion reaches a point where it cannot dress effectively meaningfully the realities that find define people's lives in ways that inspire them in ways give them a vision a hope and aspiration for the future that is infused with religious sensibility to",
      "Religion then becomes irrelevant and the attitude towards religion becomes not one of contempt but rather one of apathy. And in that context, it is not what the enemies",
      "enemies of religion are doing to religion that will determine the day, all right? But rather, the followers of that religion itself. Because when they fail to find in the religion that which makes it relevant to an everyday existence then religion is susceptible to dying a quiet death. Now, all of this for me takes shape",
      "history of Islam in America. And I'm going to beg your indulgence here for just a few moments, to sort of put you in the universe of realities that goes along with Islam in American because that's the reality out which I am operating. Is that okay? Alright. I mean I have to ask because you might be interested",
      "Islam wants this American stuff, you know. I don't want to be the ugly American here in England. But let me say this much. I'll try to be very brief and you have to understand this to try to understand what it is that I'm trying to do in this book and trust me, inshallah, I'm going to get to that whole point as we proceed but the history of Islam in America is quite unique",
      "pattern that some scholars have suggested is not uncommon when it comes to the spread of religion. And one feature of this is that heresy leads the way. There are scholars who have, who have suggested that heresies",
      "much more effective in spreading religion than orthodoxies. And that is certainly true, in the case of Islam in America. And don't anybody leave now because I don't want you to go away with a wrong impression here. So lock the door me zan. Now why do heresies have this",
      "have this sort of marginal advantage? Well, perhaps one of the reasons is that heresies tend to present target communities with a much more elastic if not empty vessel into which the target community can pour the contents of their own religious imagination.",
      "community can actually more effectively find itself in the very elastic and less full vessel of heretical articulations of religion. And this is a very important step en route to the full appropriation of the religion as their own.",
      "or two to reinforce the point that I'm trying to make here. If you look at the development of Islam in America, and Islam in American as an indigenous phenomenon is rooted in the black American community. And the first movements within that community were actually",
      "what one might call proto-Islamic movements. There were movements that had a certain vocabulary, a certain elan to them, a vague familiarity with some of the fundamentals of Islam. But their knowledge of the religion didn't go beyond that and so what you have as I said is a fairly empty vessel but if you",
      "But you follow what I mean by that? Alright. And that empty vessel became the means through which that black community was able to find itself in Islam, to the point that it appropriated Islam for itself because Islam in that moment was not this completely sort of",
      "sort of full glass up to the brim, all right? Or the rim. All right? In which the proposition would be what? Take it or what? Or leave it. All Right? And many instances you'd find that the target community would what? Would leave it because there is no space in there for them sort of to find themselves.",
      "Now, this was clearly the case with movements like the Moral Science Temple or The Nation of Islam. And in case you might be wondering I was never a member of either of these movements. No, if I was I wouldn't be embarrassed.",
      "I don't say that as some shameful disavowal. That's not my road to Islam, but having said that this moment was extremely important in the development of Islam in the black American community because what it did was that it enabled black Americans",
      "to indigenize Islam in such a way that every sense of contradiction between being black American and being Muslim was completely obliterated. In other words, there was no contradiction",
      "the efforts of groups like the Nation of Islam to sort of find themselves in this half empty vessel called Islam. And this is a very important moment in the indigenization of Islam in America. And so what that means is white Americans till this day still confront",
      "confront the reality of, in some quarters I don't want to speak for all white Americans experience because that's not my experience but I do know some white American Muslims quite intimately and this is often shared with me. White American Muslims are... Are there any white British Muslims here? So maybe well tell me if this sounds familiar.",
      "White American Muslims are often looked upon as sort of racial slash cultural apostates. People who have left their own group and joined them, alright? That what-are-you-doing sort of attitude whereas in the black community because of this process, I understand what I mean by that",
      "That is not the case. It is quite normal to be a Muslim and to be black, and that by the way was the importance of that moment. If we understand it in historical context, traditionally Muslims have not understood this historical process because we've been too busy reacting on theological grounds. The whole question is well what's the nation of Islam?",
      "of Islam real Muslims or not? Alright, I mean a legitimate question in and of itself. Okay but it does not tell us all there is to know and to value in terms of the meaning of Islamization in any society alright and so that's part",
      "of Islam in America, all right? In terms of native-born and I use this word for lack of any better term. If anyone has one, I'm more than willing to consider it but sort of native born indigenous Americans not the immigrant community which would happen a bit later on and we'll talk about that in just a minute, allright? But this was an important moment in the establishment",
      "of just how serious this is. And then, this may put you in a position to appreciate what I recognize as being some of the dislocations that later set in. Shortly after 9-11 there was a big meeting of black intellectuals and political leaders",
      "around the country. This included Cornell West and all kinds of people, the mayor of Detroit and all kind of people. It was sponsored by Tavis Smiley I think it was called The State of Black America. This meeting this particular meeting was held in a church in Philadelphia. And at one point you gotta remember this is after 9-11 alright? A very tense time in America.",
      "At one point, the moderator poses a question to the panel. And this is a panel of all black leaders and the question was what can we do to make Muslims feel more apart of us in America? And almost before he could get the question fully out",
      "Reverend Al Sharpton sort of interjected and said the following, whoa wait a minute. Wait a minute let's not misread the situation here because there is not a person in this church who does not have a brother, a sister, an uncle, a mother, a cousin, a close family friend who's not a Muslim.",
      "and therefore they are already a part of us. Okay? And again, this is coming out of this moment. Now the vessel cannot stay half empty forever as the target community proceeds to find itself in the new religion through the pouring or outpouring",
      "religious imagination, alright? Eventually religious imagination has to give way to religious thought. Because once we are already established as Muslims then the question becomes what is Islam and what is non-Islam? And here the premium of orthodoxy comes front",
      "particularly in Islam, almost automatically implies tradition. Because orthodoxy if nothing else, in order for it to be credible has to carry the implication that it is consistent with the understanding of the original carriers of the religion along with their heirs.",
      "And so tradition and orthodoxy come to form this sort of nexus in terms of how Muslims come, I'm talking about a newly converted convert community, come to recognize their place in Islam. All right? Now... Once black American Muslims succeeded at appropriating",
      "at appropriating the religion for themselves, they would ultimately have to end up yielding to the interpretive authority of those who could only be assumed to be more knowledgeable if not most knowledgeable of orthodoxy and tradition. And as we move through the 20th century this takes us into the second half",
      "half of the 20th century in which we begin to get the mass immigration of Muslims from the Muslim world. Alright? Prior to 1965, in America, the immigration quotas from the muslim world were in a sense too low to allow for the emergence of a critical mass of Muslims",
      "got rid of those quotas, all right? And the floodgates to immigration from the Muslim world proceeded. All right? So now what you have are Muslims coming to America from a Muslim world from 1965 on and carrying many of the sensibilities of the new fermentation of Islam in the Muslim World. All Right? I mean this is the era of Islamic revivalism",
      "revivalism. All of this is now coming to America and the carriers of this orthodoxy, and again here I hope that I can articulate this in such a manner that does not communicate any kind of blame game here. I'm not interested in a blame game what",
      "empowers us to avoid these kinds of mistakes. Okay? The carriers of what could only be presumed to be orthodoxy in tradition were quite removed emotionally, psychologically, existentially from the kinds of realities of America that had defined Muslims' lives.",
      "They knew very little about America. And this is not their fault, okay? Muslim communities who come from the Muslim world to America were quite educated. In fact, creme de la creme, all right? Highly educated, very quickly began",
      "generate surplus income, which very quickly empowered them to build and establish institutions with themselves would carry the imprint of their understanding and sensibilities about Islam. All right? And here we begin to see a certain amount of dislocation set in. You know today it's very common to hear words like maslaha, no?",
      "No? Makasid. No? These words not familiar, right? For those who are even more fancy in usul fiqh, taqiq al-manat and things like that. Those kinds of words may be very common today. They were not in the 80s and 90s in America. All right? And therefore the idea of adjusting to the particular realities of America",
      "This was not really in the cards. Okay, and as a result of that we begin to get this sort of dislocation alright? In the way that Muslims are able to practice Islam and to get Islam to speak effectively to their realities. This whole situation in a sense can be summed up by an accusation",
      "that is reported on the authority of Louis Farrakhan. Anybody know who? All right, and of course there has long been tensions between Louis Farrikhan in The Nation of Islam and black American Sunni Muslims. And Farrakhahn was reported to have said about black American sunni Muslims that these sunni muslims had done nothing but get off of the back of the bus",
      "to get on the back of a camel. In other words, they have exchanged dependency upon the dominant community of whites for a dependency intellectually, ideologically perhaps even emotionally on Arabs and Indo-Pakistanis. This is the degree of dislocation that begins to set in.",
      "I had suspected for some time that much of the problem here lay in Yuz' era of Muslim tradition, not in the tradition itself. That Islamic tradition was not the problem and not because of these misreadings, misdiagnoses",
      "Islamic tradition. And so what I tried to do was, I set out to try and address this dislocation as I sensed that Muslims and particularly those who ended up in positions of influence, I did not feel they really understood the full ramifications of what was going on because if Islam in black America died in America",
      "in America, there would be very little complicating the attempt on the part of many to argue that Islam and America was a completely foreign alien implant imposed on America from without. You better understand that's one of the differences between America and Europe. In America, the first major sort of critical mass",
      "black Americans who themselves have a very special, and I'm relaxed everyone. I don't mean any kind of biological racism here. No no but put it this way. No politician in America can use the N word and stay in office. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? Right? That's what I meant by a very sort of place",
      "So if indigenous people with a very special place, all right? Growing. Okay? And arguing that Islam is our religion and it belongs here as much as we belong here. And you cannot tell us go home. Does everybody follow that? If that dies what happens? Go home. Is that right? I didn't feel like people were really getting this.",
      "This is massive implications, okay? Not just for black American Muslims. And this is something that you know Allah knows so I'm not that worried about it, okay. I believe in dealing with the concrete realities of specific communities alright but I'm a part of an ummah too. Do you ever follow what I mean by that? Just because I talk about black American Muslim doesn't mean I don't care about Indo-Pakistanis or Arabs",
      "or Arabs, it doesn't mean that. It means I have to address those concrete issues and there's ways in which why should I expect you to know about that? Does everybody follow what I mean by that? And so I set out to try to address some of this. So I started in the late 90s. I don't think I've ever told this story",
      "in the public, maybe I have anyway. I started out in the late 90s writing that book Islam and The Black American. And in Islam and the Black American one of the points that I was trying to make was that the understanding of Islam that had been brought by the immigrants all right? Had been one that was grounded in realities and sensitivities that were not American. All right?",
      "But rather than sort of devolve into some kind of Muslim American nationalism, these issues had to be negotiated through our common subscription to Muslim tradition. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? I can't come on the scene and say no, we do it this way, it's a black thing. No, that's not the way we're doing it,",
      "that way, call Allah, call Rasool. And we all have to gain proficiency in that in order to be able to negotiate our issues, you follow what I'm saying? In a way that levels the playing field. Okay? Now halfway through maybe not even half way, through writing, you probably don't know this, through riding Islam and the Black American, I got scared.",
      "scared and I stopped. And I got scared because I knew I was challenging some very deeply ingrained sensibilities, ideas part of the status quo. And i knew that this would elicit or I suspected it would elicited a very strong reaction so",
      "the boundaries of theological intolerance in Islam. Right? I put Islam and the Black American aside, I went back and wrote Ghazali's book because what I wanted to do is basically establish a principle to say that there may be many people",
      "mentally with what I'm saying here who think it is unfair, who think that it is hurtful, who thinks it's biased. Many people think it's great too as well but what I wanted to establish was even if you think I am 100% wrong, okay? Wrong does not equal kufr. Does everybody understand",
      "Does everybody understand what I mean by that? So we do not get into these Takfiri wars simply because I've written something that does not meet the expectation or the vision of certain authoritative people in our communities. And it wasn't just my being afraid for myself, I don't want this for the Muslim community.",
      "I don't want this stuff. And you know, I try to avoid it. I'm not always successful. But I was telling someone the other day, I think Mizan and these guys, to me after the Islamophobes some of the biggest enemies for me are those Muslims who poison our discourse. Who make it impossible for us to have a civil discourse in which we can agree or disagree",
      "disagree, but hopefully come up top with the right stuff. This is not in our interest. We have to stop this. Colossians, okay I'm wrong or you disagree? Or maybe we just agree to disagree. But talk about what I did in third grade and all these kinds of things. All right?",
      "on the boundaries of theological tolerance in Islam to ensure that this would not result in these Takfiri wars. So, that was in 2002 that book came out. Went back to Islam and the Black American, alright? And that came out in 2005. Now for me one of the biggest challenges to religion is relevance.",
      "I mean apathy is like loneliness. It's not a joke. It is not a Joke, all right? And so for me Islam in America and I would argue Islam of the West as a whole has to understand that it is in the west now it is an American now and whether we like it or not the problems of American society become our",
      "become our problems. I don't mean in the details, you understand what I mean by that? But I mean the mega issues all right, in the society just like the mega issue of Medina becomes whose problem? Whose? It becomes a prophet's problem. Does everybody follow what I",
      "The prophet comes to Medina and does what? I have to address this. I can't say, well that's you pagan wars, I ain't got nothing to do with that. No! I'm here now. This is one of the mega issues of the society. And if I'm supposed to be representing a moral authority generating moral capital, I have",
      "To me, in America there are three fundamental intellectual issues that Muslims theologically will have to address if they're going to be really effective in these societies. One, the issue of epistemology. Modern Western epistemologies makes belief in God very difficult, if not an oxymoron.",
      "How can we know is reason the only way to know One two The issue of theodicy Theodicy Th I'm sorry Oh theodicey the issue of how",
      "do we explain all the evil and the tragedy in the world if God is all powerful and all good? Right. And you might not, I mean because we're Muslims, we don't necessarily have full and complete access to all these sensibilities alright but these sensibility permeate American society and I would argue permeate western society",
      "Western society. And if you're a child in a public school, in the West, you are likely to be directly or indirectly internalizing these very sensibilities. Alright? And bad inadequate theological responses to these kinds of questions put religion on the defensive. That's reality. The third issue is the issue of the fate of others.",
      "Now, I think personally that this has a lot to do with the storied evolution of the modern state. And part of that evolution is contained in the fact that the modern State in the West emerges out of an attempt to avoid religious strife in society. All right? I mean, this is sort of Hobbes' move from the behemoth to Leviathan.",
      "We have to take all of that power and give it to a single authority in order to get rid of all this religious strife and conflict in society. Now, what this, in my estimation will tend to promote is the sense that if religion",
      "an established existence in modern society, under the modern state. It has got to prove that it knows how to behave because we're not going back there. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? All right. Now when you start talking about all those people they are going to hell. Whoa! Does everybody",
      "That is the, that is don't get me wrong. I'm not no, no,no, no. Don't misunderstand me. I am not taking a position. I just saying this is an issue. I' m not saying Muslims have to say oh they are all going to heaven. No I'm saying that at all. Alright? But you understand this is and issue alright because those who say others are going to hell they are a danger. You follow what I mean by that? And this is one of the hidden pressures that will tend to domesticate religion in modern societies.",
      "So for me, one of these issues was the theodicy issue. And this is a long-standing issue in the black community given the reality of American slavery. So again, an attempt to get our tradition and I'm not trying to just come up with my own theological position on these kinds of things. I'm trying to model both for Muslims and non-Muslims",
      "efficacy, a Muslim tradition that it has something meaningful to say about these issues. And this was the whole point of Islam and the problem of black suffering. That was the point there. And I think that hopefully if you read that book what you will find is not just about blacks at all. It's about how",
      "How do we access sources of Muslim tradition to bring them to bear, to speak effectively on our modern realities? All right. So this was all a part of trying to do what I said with al-Qarafi. Engage our tradition seriously on an academic level and then try to get it to speak affectively to real live issues in society.",
      "All right? Now, having done that... I'll take one minute and then stop. Having done that, you know these are all very highly in some ways if I might be permitted to say so sophisticated and quite heady kinds of works. And although I do think they were important, I mean they addressed important issues,",
      "seem to me somehow, to address a certain imbalance. From my perspective we still as a Muslim community suffer from a certain imbalance that it is very difficult for us to somehow live spontaneously in the world. We're constantly reacting particularly against or for",
      "the West it's very difficult for us you know to live spontaneously all right and this in my estimation is one of the signatures of modernity for Islam because this is an unprecedented situation it was not like that in the past alright so much of what we consider",
      "today was not there in Mecca or Medina with the prophet. All right? Or artifacts, ways of doing things that were appropriated from predominantly non-Muslim societies. Right? But they could do this with a degree of what? Spontaneity. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? All right. I mean just think about this.",
      "Richard Bullitt, a professor at Columbia has a book entitled Convergent to Islam in the Medieval Period. And one of the points that he makes there is that the central lands of Islam were not even simple majority. That means 51%. I'm talking about Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia were not event 51% for about 250 years. Alright? So that meant that for 250 years Muslims basically lived",
      "Muslims basically lived as what? As a numerical minority, okay. All right now if Muslims become a numerical majority, a simple majority let's say in the year 250, okay, let me ask you this when did Abu Hanifa die? 150. When did Malik die?",
      "179, they're different. 179 or 198 whichever. When did Shafi'i die? 204. Even Jafar al-Sadiq died before Malik. When was Ibn Hanbal die? 241. Look at this. And operating in what? Societies where there are numerically",
      "they are numerically what? Does anybody follow what I mean by that? And the issues of that society become the issues we have to come up with, and that in a sense becomes our institutionalized fiqh. Now, I want to make it very clear, I am dead absolutely against the domestication of religion not only as a Muslim but also as responsible modern citizen. What I mean",
      "of religion to do nothing but applaud the nation state and the dominant culture. I don't believe that. At the same time, I don' t believe it is the role of religion just overreact. No no no no. And part of the over reaction is that we have accepted the claim of ownership by this ascending civilization in the world",
      "civilization in the world. Everybody understand what I mean by that? Such that we have now internalized the sense that we can only partake of certain things, but surrendering to an authority that they have. The early Muslims didn't have that. Did the Prophet's Mosque in Medina or Bilal got up there and said that have a dome? Huh? How about big minaret?",
      "Where'd that come from? So we go into these societies and we see them, we say hmm. Hmm. We want that. And we appropriate it. And if, and we inscribe it with what? Islamicity. All right? Okay? That's when we are able to live spontaneously. By far what I mean by that. All",
      "that ability and that imbalance is there. So I'm trying to figure out where's the imbalance? And I'll stop here but just say this, that... And by the way, the imbalance goes both ways. We overreact against or we overreacting for. Does everybody follow what I mean about that?",
      "what is the motivation behind this or that particular rendering of Islam? And here I went back to an insight that I got from Al Ghazali, but I'll save that for the next session and then we'll start there inshaAllah ta'ala. So I'm going to pick up inshallah where I left off with the whole issue of",
      "I think the source of the imbalance and the dislocation resides. And this goes back to an insight that was made by El Ghazali, and others for that matter. And even modern Western scholars have confirmed this insight in many ways which I think it might be legitimate",
      "it might be legitimately argued that postmodernism is in fact grounded on this very insight. Be that as it may, the insight itself is that while reason is a very central enterprise and the human project,",
      "our way through life with reason playing what is seemingly a leading central role. The point that Al-Ghazali makes is that reason essentially functions in the employ of the pre rational,",
      "may direct us towards how to realize the aims and objectives that we want to realize, how to avoid the liabilities that we what to avoid. But reason itself does not produce those aims and objective themselves, those goals themselves.",
      "they are essentially pre-rational. In other words, it is not the mind and this is exactly what Al Ghazali says, reason is but a guide while impulses and motives issue from the self. That is to say that I can be a very accomplished jurist",
      "a jurist whose internal constitution happens to be that of one who is very angry, then that will reflect itself in the way that reason guides me to whatever conclusions I ultimately come to. Similarly if I happen to be cowardly, then",
      "in directions that actually reflect the animus of cowardice as the motivating factor behind what I'm doing. All right? And so, the real point to be made here is this... Is... To think of the issue as being purely one of reason and how we reason our way out",
      "way out of the predicament that we are in, to some degree misses the boat. Because one of the major challenges, if not THE major challenge confronting not only Muslims I would argue but anybody who happens to be a member of the non-ascending civilization",
      "or invalidated by the way in which we relate to the criteria that are owned by that ascending civilization. And it is not a matter of reason, or the rational faculty because reason is not the repository of that appetite with which we seek that validation, or through which we see that validation.",
      "And so part of the solution to the issue becomes how to find ways to penetrate not the rational but the pre-rational dimension of us as human beings. Does this make sense? Does everybody follow, all right? In other words, if I'm a coward,",
      "If I'm a very scary person, alright? I mean, I can study, you know, treatises on courage and bravery. You know, I could study all that stuff until the cows come home as they say. That will not necessarily make me a more courageous person. Alright? In fact,",
      "become courageous not by reading things on courage but by actually engaging in death-defying activities that inform the pre rational dimension of who I am. And with that, I become a more courageous individual. So what we're dealing",
      "In fact, our ability to think may be part of the problem. Because we're animated to think always to a single goal and the issue is how do we change the goal itself? How do we alter what we want to be? Not how do find more effective ways of being it.",
      "How do we alter what we want to be? And here, clearly, Sufism has always been at the center of discussions in Islam on how to refine that dimension of ourselves as human beings that is actually pre-rational.",
      "that self, that nafs. Okay? All right? And here in my estimation was where much of the solution lied. This is where we can begin perhaps to address our inner realities",
      "reforming and refining our nefs, we become less susceptible to the regimes of validation that are out there that push us in one direction or another. And by the way I want to be very clear about something. Those regimes of Validation are both external and internal",
      "I'll say that again. Those regimes of validation are both external and internal, by which I mean there are ways in which the dominant ascending civilization in the world seeks to hold out the criteria for validation, all right? That demands certain things of us perhaps capitulations may be the best word",
      "are also regimes of validation within our Muslim community. Okay? All right? That in some ways, also hold out regimes of validations or demand things from us that make our social reality a very problematic one. And so the question becomes how do I and not",
      "do I inoculate myself or how do we inoculated ourselves individually as well as collectively all right from the ravages of a self that is susceptible to these various and sundry regimes of validation okay and for me it was clear",
      "was always very keen on addressing precisely this reality. And so that's where I began to see some promise in that dimension of Sufism, but of course there is also a challenge in that regard",
      "and things were problematic because of the very problematic status of Sufism among modern Muslim communities. And that status was such that oftentimes Muslims would themselves be very reticent about being involved",
      "Excuse me. Being involved with anything associated with Sufism, lest they themselves be subjected to either very harsh criticism or being inducted into modes of being and thinking that can take them to places that they really suspect they don't want to go. All right? And so here's where",
      "it became necessary to try and lay out in the introduction to this work what I hoped would serve the function of relieving some of the stress, tension, confusion, and diffidence about this whole enterprise of Sufism. Remembering what I said going back to the very beginning",
      "beginning that I am not and I'm still not advocating some kind of mass migration into Sufism okay because part and we'll see against in detail just a minute because part of what part of",
      "you are convinced that Sufism does have valuable things to offer the everyday Muslim. Would it then be also appropriate to say to that everyday Muslim, well if you want this dimension of Sufisim become a Sufi? What if he doesn't want to",
      "become a Sufi? Alright and you might ask well why would he not want to become a sufi I mean if he recognizes that there are these positive dimensions to Sufism, why then would he",
      "in the very constitution of his or her background, he's a Protestant. I mean that very seriously, that's not a joke. I don't mean a Protestant with a capital P but with a small p as distinct from some sort of Catholics where religious hierarchies and all these kinds",
      "of things are just not something with which his religious sensibilities will allow him or her to get comfortable with. Okay? All right? And yet, and yet these dimensions of Sufism remain something from what he would or she would benefit. Do we say go away until you decide to be a Sufi",
      "important enough for the community as a whole to afford people access to these meaningful and functional dimensions of Sufism. Alright? Now, my opinion is the latter. And that's what this is in a sense an attempt to do. But first of all I think I need to make it clear",
      "that for me, part of the problem with Sufism or let me be very clear about this. In fact what you will find in this book is important in fact not and I might even say emphatically not",
      "not a history of Sufism, but rather what you will find is an expose that is grounded in modern Muslim perceptions of Suafism. And in that regard I'm in a sense proceeding on the basis of perception is more important than reality because that is what will affect",
      "avail themselves of a particular thing. So what is the problem that's racking this perception business? First of all, Sufism has been very controversial in that it has produced proponents and opponents both",
      "both of whom tend to emphasize what is either deemed to be problematic or not about Sufism. And, what happens is that we use the phrase Sufisim and if I'm an opponent, if I am opposed to Sufisme",
      "of the phrase is to all those things that are problematic about Sufism. Alright? In other words, you know I take...I take the term itself to be far more connotative than the person who's using it might mean it. Okay? If I'm a proponent of Sufisim then I pretend in a sense",
      "and have never been any problematic aspects of Sufism as practiced or advocated, or taught by any Sufi's. And the average Joe Muslim is sort of caught in the middle. Sufisim has traditionally... I'm gonna be a certain amount",
      "compression that I want to engage in here just to keep a very long story sort of short, has traditionally entailed at least in its full-blown form not one but two distinct dimensions. One is the dimension that seeks to penetrate the whole business of how we refine that nefs",
      "How do we get to the pre-rational? To bring it in conformity with the will of God. How do you get it to love God, to rely upon God, and want to seek validation from God?",
      "of passions on a diet? How do we overcome those passions that want to push us in the direction of disobedience to God? How did we overcome things like spiritual laziness, heedlessness, shahwa. All right just rabbit passions how do we",
      "Part of the Sufi tradition and I think that it's really important to make that point because There may be some question even as to whether some of their early proponents of This particular form of spiritual refinement All right, which is purely about how to refine the self and To bring it into conformity with divine will",
      "divine will if you go back and read people like Hakim at Timothy not not your children the idea another Timothy um you know and he has a number of works all right see little oh yeah for example you know the responses to the people of Sarkis",
      "the difference between what we tend to find there is precisely that. How to get our pre-rational self disciplined? Disciplined. How do discipline it to the point",
      "this psychodynamic relationship with god with god all right you see put it this way it is one thing to know ahkam of salah it is another thing to want to get up for fajr and knowing akamasala will not get me up for fudge the mind say what i mean by that",
      "So reason and rationality alone are not the full answer. Don't get me wrong, they're important. It's important to know ahkam of salat as it is to know many other things but knowing that zina is haram is not necessarily going to keep me from doing zina.",
      "That is not here, but rather what? Here. And Sufism has always included this dimension of dealing with us as human beings virtually from the beginning. And some of the early ascetics are precisely revolting against some of",
      "that characterized the early community under Umayyads. And they're looking for ways of extracting themselves from that and reestablishing, sustaining, and deepening that relationship between this inner reality and God. There is on the other hand however what may be characterized as a mystical dimension of Sufism",
      "In fact, today the most common translation of Sufism is what? Mysticism. Mysticism in some ways is a problematic and multivalent term. And I don't want to give the impression that all mysticism",
      "is problematic or of a nature that it should be avoided. I don't want to give the impression that mysticism in and of itself is bad, and it's something that should be eschewed. However if the fundamental premise behind mysticism,",
      "of mysticism all of them tend to entail some notion of union with god all right and that union can be psychological that union could be emotional or psychodynamic",
      "ontological in the sense of an actual sort of physical, for lack a better word, physical-ontological coming together between human beings and God. Alright? Okay? Now that is the problematic dimension of mysticism",
      "has gone by you know a number of different names the most commonly used one or two is usually pantheism all right pantheist sometimes it's also referred to as monism alright these terms actually don't precisely mean the same thing but they're often",
      "The notion of God being transcendent fundamentally implies a very strict bifurcation and boundary between God as Creator,",
      "created all right uh don't mind my ishara here malish but if we could imagine that there is this strict boundary or bifurcation all right that separates god as creator from the rest of the universe",
      "of the universe from the universe not the rest of the Universe from the Universe as creation all right and something that comes into existence by a willful act of creation alright not something that come into existence as some kind",
      "Right? I mean, you know for me to pick up this book or ball up this paper. You follow what I'm saying? That is a direct and willful act. All right? That paper used to look like that now it looks like that. That's a direct an willful at okay? If you were close to me however, you would feel the temperature of my body. Does everybody follow what",
      "Does everybody follow what I mean by that? That is not a willful act. That is what? That's involuntary, alright? That simply flows from me by virtue of the fact that I am human. Does everybody understand what I meant by that and in that regard it's not a sort of creation in the same way that what? You understand what i mean? But I hope you get the point that I'm trying to make.",
      "trying to make. There's a difference between the universe being the function of a willfully created act of God, completely separate and distinct from him, and the universe simply being some kind of overflowing, involuntary overflowing of divine essence or being.",
      "But some forms of mysticism, particularly those that are commonly referred to as pantheism or mysticism tend to imply is that boundary between God as creator and the universe as created is either perforated, punch a hole, all right? Or obliterated.",
      "Does everybody follow what I mean by that? This form of mysticism, often known as pantheism, those other terms notwithstanding has been the problematic dimension of Sufism par excellence. The fundamental problem because that is a problem that connotes what?",
      "If there is no difference between God and creation, then that connotes what from a Muslim perspective? Then everything comes to be essentially divine. So we attribute divine attributes not only to God but to other than God. Now I want to try to be fair to both sides here.",
      "and you realize that this is incredibly dangerous territory. I mean to the extent that when you start talking about these kinds of things, it's very difficult to leave either side satisfied. Right? This is how controversial and how toxic an issue this has become.",
      "All right? But that notwithstanding, let me try to say the following. The issue even might be said not simply to be the issue of mysticism because not all forms of mysticism are pantheistic. Does everybody understand what I mean by that?",
      "One could even argue that there are mystical vignettes in Quran. That there are mythical vignette in Quran about how we come into a direct, not conceptual but experiential relationship with God. Does everybody follow what I mean by the difference between conceptual and experiential?",
      "All right, I mean theology is largely what? Hmm it's largely conceptual. Does everybody follow what I mean by that all right um and Theology is important for reasons that we already talked about earlier But there is a difference between the menu",
      "and the meal no I'm very serious about it I'm not being funny there's a difference between the menu and the mea. There is a difference knowing that God is Rahman conceptually and knowing that experientially there's",
      "and all these other things, okay? And there's a difference between knowing those things conceptually. Okay? And knowing them experientially. You follow what I mean by that? And to me, this is my personal opinion it's something we can talk about you know as the day progresses but to me one of the problems that we have in a sense",
      "in a sense with theology, modern Muslim theology. All right? Is that it somehow never gets to the experiential dimension as a result of which Muslims remain scared to death of God. Don't get me wrong. is fear. You understand what I mean by that? All right. But if I understand God to be only he who punishes",
      "he who punishes the by following what i mean about that only he who punished then i'm what i'm paralyzed you follow what i means by that all right and we read you know that here's raouf here's rahim here's all these kinds of things all right",
      "what I mean by that? All right. But somehow, that doesn't reach down to here. And this is very much manifest even in some of the questions that you hear asked. You follow what I'm saying? You know what I meant by that. I mean, well, doesn't God know that you were in that situation? Doesn't he know you tried your best but that's not good enough?",
      "Really? This is a problem. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that and we'll get into some of this in iman at-ta'ala later on, I am not saying what you want God will forgive you, I ain't saying that at all. But to just know God conceptually",
      "and not sort of psychodynamically. Do you understand what I mean by that? How can I really then rely on Allah? Does everybody follow what I meant by that? How can i really, I mean really rely on allah? Okay how can I",
      "Mysticism, alright? And let's call it its... I don't know how to put this. If the pantheistic extreme is over here, mysticism, let's say from here, because it's a range. Mysticism includes that. An experiential engagement of God. God says about Abraham in the Quran that he takes him as his what? Khalil.",
      "Khalil. Khalil, close confidant friend. Alright? There is a psychodynamic relationship between the two that God actually loves Ibrahim and God does love. Love! You understand love? Love! Alright? And Ibrahim loves God. Okay?",
      "Now, the problem with that is this. Because God is not a person for many of us, that whole enterprise becomes a very problematic enterprise. You follow what I mean by that? It's like my saying, I love this wall. No, I'm not joking. Are you out of your mind? Right? It' an inanimate thing. It's not a human thing.",
      "Like, I love my dog. Alright? Okay? Many of us have a problem with things like loving God for real. Hmm? Relying on Allah for real, okay? Wanting to please Allah forreal, alright? Not wanting quote unquote to disappoint Allah for",
      "psychodynamic relationship. And this is part of what Sufism from the early period has tried to cultivate, alright? And this mystical sort on this end of the spectrum having nothing to do with that. Is that by far what I mean by that?",
      "And as I said, part of this we find even in Quran. We found it in the Sunnah as well. Okay? Very very very famous hadith. All of you I'm sure know it. Alright? Where the Prophet says that, you know, in a long hadith, my servant continues to draw near to me through Nawafil until what? What does the hadith say?",
      "become his what with which he sees his ears with which He hears all right his hands with which you go forth alright now clearly the Prophet is not talking about collapsing the distinction between what creator and created",
      "he is referring to the fact that our senses are actually capable of a lot, lot more than our mundane existence would imply. And through a refinement of the self and a particular relationship with God we can know things. We can acquire supersensory knowledge",
      "Do you understand what I mean by supersensory? We can acquire supersensoring knowledge that is directly based on our relationship with God and the purification of that self. That is a part of mysticism as well. However, in the history of Islam, here's where you come to",
      "the really problematic dimension, the really problematic nature of Sufism that we tend oftentimes to take some part as the whole. And that's whether you're for or against Sufisim. Let me quote a few quotes for you. They're in the book as well. One early Sufi by the name of Bostami",
      "was quoted as saying, there is nothing in this cloak but God. All right? We know the very famous statement of Al-Halaj and by the way, there are scholars who doubt whether or not",
      "Halad actually said that, but whether he actually said it or not is certainly attributed to him. All right? This says is attributed to Ibn Arabi. All Right? Halad said what? I am the truth. Right? Essentially, I am God. Right. Now those kinds of articulations have been routinely",
      "have been routinely the source of a very wrenching conflict within Islam about Sufism. So much so that, that dimension of mysticism comes to be taken to be representative of mysticism as a whole and indeed",
      "indeed of Sufism as a whole. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? All right, and this is part of what makes the whole enterprise of even approaching Sufisim for modern Muslims so problematic. Is Sufisme shirk?",
      "You see what I mean? All right. Or is it just Ihsan? You follow what I'm saying about that? And these questions have been answered, you know, differently by proponents or opponents and in the middle lies all these everyday Muslims scared conflicted confused All right, and then you want to try and present something Sufism",
      "enough to deny them access. Now, I'm not... Of course, I am opposed as I think any conscientious Muslim would be",
      "to anything that connotes, not to mention that actually constitutes pantheism. Right? I don't think there's any question that is a proscribed form of religiosity from the perspective of Islam. Okay? The question becomes, all right, you know,",
      "legitimacy of interpreting certain Sufi doctrines, statements and the legacies of certain Sufis in a way that renders them constitutive of pantheism. Does that make? Okay now I'm not here to solve that question today.",
      "to convey to you is that while these sensibilities are there and there are those who condemn all Sufism, okay? Because they understand it to connote what? Right? Okay. All right. And the personal refinement side gets thrown out with a bathwater",
      "You get the other side, however. Who wants to deny that any Sufi has ever said, perhaps not that far, but who generally wants to denies that pantheism has ever been a part of any Sufism. That Sufis is just no, it's just refinement of the self. And both of these tendencies I think misrepresent",
      "misrepresent the reality. There have been those dimensions in Sufism, and there has been this dimension in Suafism. And in the history of Islamic thought, that have been who have been fair and courageously so. And I want to read very quickly",
      "a quote by someone who is routinely taken to be the arch enemy of Sufism in pre-modern Islam. And this is none other than, whom do you think? Ibn Taymiyyah. This is what Ibn",
      "has to say about the whole business of Sufism. He says,",
      "proper course in this regard fall into two groups. One, a group that accepts both what is true and what is false of the Sufi way and two, a Group that rejects both what Is True and What Is False of the sufi way such as many groups of theologians and jurists",
      "and the correct right position is simply to accept of this way that which is as well as any other way, that which consistent with the book and the sunnah. And to reject of it as well",
      "we have here is not a denial that Sufism can potentially include these problematic dimensions, alright? But a denial, that that is the whole of Sufisim. And on that basis, the entirety of Sufiism should be rejected. Alright?",
      "has to say is the fact that he's dealing with this dimension of mysticism, if that. Alright? And primarily with the issue of how we control discipline and refine ourselves. Okay now beyond the issue",
      "sort of quote-unquote problematic dimensions of Sufism even I'll talk a lot also all right and it's out of this work so for example another problematic institution associated with Sufis would be something like a to us soon alright it's the lava okay none",
      "Sufism has also been associated with sometimes certain almost cult-like relationships between the master and the disciple, which can be susceptible to abuse. Ibn Atta'Allah recognizes the potential benefit of having a sheikh",
      "But he nowhere says that you must have one. Does anybody follow what I mean by that? Certain Sufi practices, such as a wirt or a particular regime of ascetic practices, ibn At-Ta'ala suggests that these are things that will assist you in this whole enterprise of refining the self.",
      "but they are not things that he imposes as a particular mode of doing Sufism. And finally, he does not... He mentions the Shia Daliq. He mentions al-Mursi. But he does in any way imply that it is absolutely necessary to be a member of a Sufi Tariqa. Alright?",
      "are the things that I found valuable about this work because here is a work by a master Sufi that is not pantheistic, primarily not even mystical and that speaks to the ever important issue of how Muslims are going to undertake the enterprise of refining that self.",
      "putting it on a diet. This is the promise of Sufism for Muslims in the modern West. The challenge is, of course, all those things that I've laid out. We're going to have to manage this challenge",
      "challenge if we're going to be able to gain and maintain access to the promise all right now I want to say one last thing before I move on to one other topic Sufism has been",
      "of the kind of practical instruction for refining the self, all right? In the history of Islamic thought. Having said that I don't want to and I should not imply that Sufis were the only ones who made contributions in this regard. There are thinkers who may not have considered themselves to be Sufies",
      "All right? Even if the later Sufi tradition sort of adopts them as Sufis. All right, who made major contributions in this regard. All Right? My point is that I don't want to give the impression that only Sufism has something meaningful and valuable to say about refinement of the self. Allright? I mean, if you go back to people like a Tirmidhi there are those who would argue that, you know,",
      "some question as to whether Tirmidhi was actually a Sufi. And yet his works are replete with masterful instructions about how to go about and maintain the importance of refinement of the self. Personally, people can differ with me in this regard, but look at it this way.",
      "if you read works like those of let's say or even al-Muhasibi, all right? What you'll find there is that the primary focus is on how to develop maintain and enhance taqwa. Taqwa! That is their obsession, allright? And in fact",
      "the Tirmidhi would even say things like, The Awliyat, the Wali is simply the one who has Taqwa. Not the one necessarily has supersensory almost supernatural powers or anything like that. The Wali, is simply someone who has taqwa Alright? We find a similar obsession even in people like Muhasibi",
      "development of taqwa as a means of moving that nafs into conformity with the divine will later sufi works tend to be sort of focused not on but on cash all right on on removing the veil between us and god",
      "between us and God. And that often will imply a whole other cosmology, that's the beginning of many of the problems. Now if I sound like I'm being just a little bit diffident, noncommittal on this, the reason for that is that I am. And the reason",
      "I don't want these age-old debates from centuries ago in other parts of the world to cripple modern Muslims, deny or impede their access to this heritage which I deem to be extraordinarily important for them. You know oftentimes you know",
      "You know we are more bent on sort of defending people who lived a thousand years ago then we are Concerned about the realities of Muslims sitting right in front of us I'm not interested in doing that and I'm non-interested in you know sustaining these ongoing bouts this jadal All right, I think that's one of our problems",
      "problems okay as one Sheikh said in the introduction to Muhasabi's work you know sort of a play on one of the hadiths of the Prophet no community all right whose sole goal is argumentation will prosper",
      "in that and i really want to to bracket that all right so we can gain access um to this dimension now why even atallah there are other there are others uh works by those who are either sufis or you know their sufism per se may be of some question but",
      "for example, is one example of that. The problem with it is that it's too long. Muslims don't read it and in some ways you can say the same thing with some of Thirumithi's works alright? And others, they're too long, Muslims won't read them. Alright? This is a short brief concise to the point",
      "to the point work. And for lack of any better term, it's entertaining in word and you follow? It's entertaining. There is a sweetness to it. It's not all drudgery okay? So this is what nominated this work for me okay? To understand Ibn Ata'allah however we have",
      "We have to problematize a term that has indeed become quite common and is widely diffused not only in Muslim communities but in religious communities per se. And that is the whole notion of spirituality, all right? Spirituality is in some ways",
      "a very problematic term in modern times. And it's problematic in the following sense, since the rise of modern empiricism, positivism and the like there has developed a dichotomy between immaterialism",
      "materialistic vision of the world and life Juxtaposed in opposition to a spiritual one all right, in other words those who say the only realities that exist are physical material reality All right, and that spiritual thing is all in your mind all right And that's sort of the",
      "And that's sort of the anti-religious vision of life. The other side, which is the religious contingent, sees spirituality in opposition to materialism as being necessarily good. So when we use the word spirituality,",
      "in an almost categorically positive sense. But Ibn al-Ta'ala and Islam in general recognizes that there is such a thing as good spirituality, and potentially bad spirituality. Spirituality as a whole is not necessarily good. This is one of the traps, you shouldn't call it a trap, but this",
      "mind that we fall into and it impregnates the language, all right? As a function of our living in the modern world. Okay? And what Ibn Ta'ala wants to be very clear about, and this is part of Islam's struggle from the very beginning, okay? The pagan Arabs, were they spiritual? I wonder how many of you would have answered yes if I hadn't said this before. If I had just asked, were the pagan Arabs spiritual?",
      "Arab spiritual will be I said yes all right and the reality is yes they were alright and it's not an entire critique of that is that that is a bad spirituality all right those means are trying to extract service from nature or bad or illegitimate God is the only source of what you're looking for",
      "in this work. So I don't want us to get into the trap of using spirituality as this over-inclusive term, all right? His spirituality is about refining the self and bringing it into a monotheistic, heteronomous relationship with God. That is the goal, all",
      "do is look at some of the concrete prescriptions that he proposes. Read some sections from Ibn al-Ta'ala's work to give us a sense of exactly what the value of this could be. So, what I want to do now is move into the actual text of Ibn",
      "there any outstanding questions that people want to ask based on what's been said so far. I think as a prelude to doing that, one of the things that I wanna point out is... Well, couple of things that i wanna point. One is that Ibn Atta'allah work here is not a theoretical text. It is not",
      "or if you don't like that term, Sufi lay down theory about refinement of the self with all these fine distinctions and categories etc. But it is a work that is about practicality with regard to the whole enterprise of refining the self It is a practical guide that is fundamentally grounded in spiritual labor Alright? It's not simply a contemplative text",
      "but it is a text that seeks to inspire habits, practices and modes of being that contribute to the whole enterprise of refining the self. That's the first thing. The second thing I want to say is that Ibn Atta'Allah's work is an aphoristic text. By that I mean this is not a linear discussion where he seeks to lay out",
      "out arguments in sort of expanded notation, presenting a thesis and proofs and all these kinds of things. On the contrary his entire work is basically a work of aphorisms, statements that are designed not simply to appeal",
      "but rather in addition to our religious imagination. And, in some ways you might say that he wants both to animate and in a sense liberate the religious imagination, all right? But to do so in a way...and this is potentially one of the problems with Sufism",
      "the flourishing of the religious imagination. And one of the controversies around it is over the issue of how do we find the proper boundaries of religious imagination? I personally think that, you know... We have a tendency, I think in many aspects of modern Islam and that is that",
      "solutions for everything. And if there's not a final and ultimate solution for it, well just get rid of it. Just get rid the problem. Stamp it out. There is no attempt to sort of...just manage it. Manage it over time. There's no final solution, sort of like raising teenagers. You can more or less successfully",
      "Manage them over time, all right? No, just stamp it out. Get rid of it. Pretend that the problem doesn't exist or it's not as complicated as it is. Religious imagination is a problem but it's also a problem not to have religious imagination. All right? And in some ways part of what you were talking about",
      "were talking about, religiosity does in I think some very fundamental ways involve religious imagination. What we imagine God to be and our relationship with him. So we're dealing",
      "that very thoroughly engages in religious imagination. So he starts out by giving the first step towards the whole business of refinement of the self, and the very first point that he makes reads as follows",
      "follows. Ibn al-Ta'ala says that the first step toward refinement of the self is none other than repentance and without repentance this whole enterprise of spiritual refinement cannot be successful",
      "God at all times, the inspiration and power to repent. Indeed, God has invited you to this saying, And repent to God, all of you, O believers, perhaps you might succeed. And he said, Verily, God loves those who constantly repent, and He loves those",
      "I repent to God 70 times a day now if you want to achieve repentance at no time during your life should you be devoid of reflection reflect upon what you have done during the day if you find that you have been obedient to God thank God for this if you",
      "and turn to him in repentance. Indeed, there is no audience with God more beneficial than one in which you are critical of yourself. But do not rebuke yourself in a state of laughter and merriment. Rather, rebupe yourself in the state of seriousness and honesty, openly scowling with a heavy heart, crestfallen and humiliated. If you do this",
      "do this God will replace your sadness with happiness and your humiliation with dignity, and the darkness that engulfs you with light, and veil that obstructs your vision with disclosure.",
      "by darkness. Indeed disobedience is like fire and darkness is its smoke it is like someone kindling a fire in a room for 70 years do you not think that the roof of that room will be blackened? In the same way, the heart is blackened by disobedience",
      "One more excerpt on repentance. This is number 13, by the way. A person who engages in sinful behavior",
      "behavior. It's like a brand new pot beneath which a flame is lit for a duration, as the result of which its bottom blackens. If you hasten to wash it this blackness will be washed away but if you leave it and cook in it time and again this blackess will settle into",
      "Repentance is what washes away the soot of the heart such that deeds emerge carrying the scent of being accepted by God. So constantly ask God for repentance and if you obtain this, your time will be well spent for this is a gift from God that he places in whomever He pleases among His servants.",
      "servant may attain it while his master does not. A woman may attain, it while her husband does not a young person may attain,it while one advanced in years does not so if you attain it know that God has made you the object of His love",
      "who constantly repent and he loves those who purify themselves. Now one of the things that is very important about this, and it's also a very problematic about it,",
      "loves repentance that God look that got what god loves repentance and here he is he is drawing information directly from Quran all right um and again you know our theology will have something to do with this but I think",
      "we would be very well served to remember that God actually loves repentance. That repentance is a good deed, all right? Many of us, our focus is all off,",
      "only something that you do when you are absolutely sure what? Huh? Not only that, not only that you're wrong. We know we're wrong and we did it. Say it again. We think that repentance is only something",
      "we do what? Huh? Nothing. Right? And what Ibn At-Tah Allah is telling us, no, no that is the wrong approach. That is the right attitude. Alright? Okay? Because that is what will enable alright? The sweetness indeed the soot of that disobedience to settle in our hearts. Alright",
      "When we repent, okay? When we not only are we acknowledging our servitude to God. We're also doing something that God loves This is a good deed all right and here Here we come to another insight that often escapes us as human beings",
      "As human beings. If God loves repentance, a superficial reading of all this would also imply that God loves what? Does God love sin? Why are you guys so diffident? It's like, you're not sure? Does god love sin",
      "Sinners? God loves sinners. I guess it depends on what kind of sinners. The point that I'm making is this, is that God made us prone to sin. All right? The prophet told us, all human beings are prone to",
      "We're going to do that. We are in the grip of our passions, we are wracked by insecurities and many of our sins actually emerge from a place of insecurity. Much of what we do in the way of sin has a lot to do with that quest for validation in the social space.",
      "All right? And that's what draws us into sin many issues. But that's who we are as human beings. I mean, even the prophet himself said the most truthful of names for a human being is what? What? No. The most truthful names are al-harith wal-hamman. All right. We are constantly toiling. All Right? That's who",
      "are as human beings. Boredom is a real problem for us as human being and we are constantly anxious, worried about our status in the world. And because of that we are prone to these sins. God does not love sin but what he loves is for our commitment",
      "to lead to a struggle against these tendencies on our part. And this is precisely part of the meaning of ibadah, precisely part if the meaning ibadh. And I think that again, to recognize that tawbah is not only something that will assist us in overcoming",
      "overcoming that which is the source of our sin, all right? It is also a deed that God loves. And I keep repeating that but I'm gonna repeat... I don't think we get it, allright? You know many of us are sort of you know like Saint Augustine said Lord make me pure but not yet",
      "We don't even want to repent because we're still stuck in the throes of that which we've done. This is a mismanagement of our religiosity, okay? And part of the whole enterprise of refining the self begins with repentance. Repent to Allah and he quotes the prophet himself who says what? I repent to Allah, what?",
      "to allah what 70 times a day in other way at 100 times a alright and it's important for us to understand this is a part of ibadah this is worship right repentance is worship okay and it not about going out and doing more sense so we can do more repentance that's you know that's really childish approach uh",
      "to the whole enterprise, okay? But it is important because you know, the most difficult. The most difficult, it's just like you know sometimes we don't even want to read a Quran right? Don't answer that question but sometimes we only want to be in Quran right why?",
      "Because it's gonna sting. I mean, it's going to inspire yes but it's also what? That's me. You follow what I mean by that? It's going bring me to a level of accountability alright that's going make it very difficult for me to be as heedless as I've been up to that point and I'm not really prepared",
      "prepared, okay? To give up that heedlessness because I'm very much engrossed in what that allows me to do. Okay? Ibn At-Tala is saying that is a mistake because one of the things that you're overlooking is what awaits on the other side. Alright? What happens when Allah takes you into His mercy? Okay? What",
      "Okay? And let me just state here, I don't like these cameras but I'll say it anyway because they get you in trouble. People don't... Anyway, as a convert, I can see that. Why? Because when I first came into Islam there were things I could not imagine how do people live without them?",
      "I'm talking about certain kinds of activities and I won't say anything other than that. I mean, you work all week? And the weekend comes? What do you do? I couldn't imagine it. You follow what I mean by that? I'm very serious about that, alright?",
      "And Allah enabled me, you know step by step through repentance, through sincerity. Didn't always get it right. But this is a... You see? It's coming down! We don't see it and we have difficulty trusting it. Repent to Allah. He will help you with these things.",
      "says many of us don't repent because we know we're not ready okay and he says do not do not be like a person who says I will not commit to curing my illness until I find the definitive cure hmm",
      "the definitive cure until you commit to curing your illness. There is no sweetness in jihad, there is but the jagged edges of swords so prosecute the jihad against yourself that",
      "And it's the first step towards refining the self, putting that self on a diet. Don't be afraid to do it. Don' tell yourself it's not working. Every time I make Toba, the sweetness of what I do gets a little less sweet because conscience comes between the sweetness and the thing itself. You can enjoy a thing fully if you're constantly telling",
      "to tell you it's telling yourself i gotta stop doing this all right i gotta start doing this okay this is the first step towards self refinement all right and nothing else matters says all right in the absence of that nothing else matter okay and one of the things that we have to get out of is",
      "Oftentimes one of the things that preempts this whole Toba business is that we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people. Constantly comparing ourselves with other people, all right? Well look, my fitna ain't your fitna. I don't know what your fitnA is. I know what my fitnAs is. And if you have an easier time, alhamdulillah, I have a more difficult time. What I am going to do is the best that I can do sincerely, honestly, humbly to Allah and",
      "The last thing that I'm going to do is try to fake the funk. Pretend to be something that I am not. And what we really need is communities because this is another part of the problem that we have, our communities won't let us repent sometimes. Do you follow what I mean by that? It's hard to be somebody who's known for doing this and then you're on a straight and narrow.",
      "Even community members will look at you askance. You know what I mean? I'm very serious about this, it's real, this is serious business! Alright? And we're supposed to be a community... We're supposed be a communitiy that mutually enjoy one another in truth and steadfastness. Don't worry about that. Repent to Allah and constantly repent. If that's the only good deed you have,",
      "You have what? You have that. All right? So, that's the first step. I want to read you one last point about what he says about repentance though so that nobody leaves here with the wrong idea and he says this, One who constantly sins and asks for forgiveness is like one who continually drinks poison and follows it up with the antidote",
      "the antidote. It should be said to this person, you may not make it to the antidope one day and death may overtake you before you are able to administer it. So this is a blessing. This is a bounty. This",
      "That's it. He could have said that. He gave us what? This is a gift. Don't abuse the gift. Because as he said, and what he's implying here, you know, it's one of the insights that non-Muslims just don't get about Islam. And maybe",
      "you know, it has to do with the way that we're living it. Because, you know we tend to be so I don't know focused on social control right? We tend to me so focus on social controls but if Islam were really about social control clearly many of its rules wouldn't be what they are. Right?",
      "I mean, Islam is about human beings controlling their behavior based on a relationship they have with God. Do you understand that? All right? I mean I could fornicate every day for the rest of my life and never have to worry about what? Being punished or being stoned. How would I be stoned?",
      "You have what? If you get caught with what? One witness, two, three, four. Four. Clearly Allah wants to inculcate what? He wants to in-culcate and it has largely worked",
      "People who avoid, in some ways this most natural of activities based solely on their relationship with Allah. Based solely on their relationship with allah I want to please my lord and i do not want the rope between me and my Lord to snap To break Alright? I mean this is a part of who we are as Muslims",
      "as Muslims. Okay? And so, you know, we don't want to play with the gifts that Allah has given us and Tawbah is a mighty one among them. Alright? Following his advice with regard to the first step being in and of itself repentance or Tawba he moves on from there to talk about",
      "about the importance of following the example of the Prophet and there are some very I think important things that you know he has to say in that regard so for those of you who have the book number six is advice about following",
      "except through your own negligence in following the example of the Prophet ﷺ. And you will not be elevated in the sight of God, except by following the examples of the prophet ﷺ. Now following his example takes two forms outward and inward. The outward form is in such matters as prayer, fasting",
      "fasting, alms, pilgrimage, jihad and the like. The inward form is that your prayer be characterized by a connection with God and your recitation of Quran by reflection upon him. So when you perform an act of obedience such as prayer or recitation and find neither",
      "with some inner disease, be it arrogance, conceit or some similar malady. Indeed God says",
      "But even in this context, disobedience in a state of humiliation and recognizing one's need for guidance is better than obedience in a State of Vaingloriousness and Arrogance. Part of what he's saying here is that following the example of the Prophet",
      "following his outward manifestations. Following the example of the Prophet also includes following his religious character, following him and being humble, following Him and being sincere, following and being committed and dedicated to a God-centered existence. And when he talked about prayer",
      "and especially prayer, because this is something that many of us are often afflicted with. I remember the first time that I read this a number of years ago, and I was a bit confused when I first read it. He said, you know, when you make prayer and you don't find connection or reflection, this is know that you are afflicted",
      "my initial reflection I thought that was perhaps maybe an oversight of sorts. But then I began to really reflect on it and it came to me that, you know, I can see ways in which he's absolutely right because the reality is that the thing that perhaps distracts most from our prayer is that we are not fully there",
      "And part of the reason that we're not there is that we really do think or feel, which is worse than think. We really do feel in that pre-conscious or pre-rational side of us that our time would be better spent doing something else.",
      "time would really be spent better someplace else I mean this is the height of arrogance all right and this is why he's saying that when you find this alright and I'll soften it just a little bit we should perhaps reflect on is this a manifestation of arrogance on our part do we really think that we're too good to take this ten minutes",
      "us all that we have? Are we really too good to be there doing that act of devotion, all of us? I mean, we're thinking about what we just left to be here or we are thinking about where we want to get to when we are done. And this is one of the major causes of a disconnection between us and Allah.",
      "You know, you talk about the sweetness of that disobedience. All right? Connection with God is part of what mutes that. All Right? And we can't seem to get there because, you know, we're so attached, you now, to all those things that appeal to our passions and our senses. So this is a very important dimension of again refinement of the self.",
      "to what the whole point of this is supposed to be. In the introduction to this book, I lay out a number of issues and again, Imam Atta'Allah is very keen on recognizing that our self",
      "is in a sense that, that nefs. In a sense you might think of it as a natural adversary something that we have to take arms against at every waking moment of our lives and that by the way is in state of nature alright? In other words with no society even in a state of Nature",
      "nature if I'm on an island all by myself alright my nafs will continue to be a natural adversary which i have to be careful and not allowing to colonize me as an individual right but beyond that even up Allah recognizes that we do",
      "And it's in that context, all right? That the nafs really becomes a problem. Because the kind of validation that comes from the social circumstances in which we live and they can be either through appeals to the dominant culture or appeals through you know the sort of",
      "that we set up as Muslims. That's what I mean by that, if I got my beard and I know the right jargon and maybe you know the rigth gear, I can navigate my way through that community unmolested and I'm just cool and never have to address any of those inner issues that I have as an individual.",
      "As-Salamu Alaykum, Mashallah, Hamdulillah, Dawahakum. Gone. Right? And the amount of validation that I get from that can seduce me into thinking that that is all my religion is about. That's all my religious is all about. If the Muslims are pleased with me, I'm what?",
      "I'm a good Muslim. I'm fine if I can go into those public spaces, all right? And get the kind of validation that I'm looking for, allright? That can blind me to all my own individual flaws and I never address them. And as result of that 20-30 years, I don't grow an inch. I don' t grow an inch. I am no better a Muslim today than I was 20 years ago because I have not addressed any",
      "that are really my issues. All right? And this is a part of what we have to be very careful about as well, all right? You know, taking the public order, okay, as being the end-all to what it means to be a good Muslim. All Right? Taking the public Order as being an end-All of what it Means to be A Good Muslim. Okay? Because there are things about me that you can't possibly know. You should not know.",
      "You follow what I mean by that? I have flaws. They're none of your business, right? And I should not be displaying them in the public domain, all right? We don't have confession here as Muslims, you know? Hey, I got a wine drinking problem. Hey, look, we don't want... You should not know, all Right? Okay? But I should no be seduced or beguiled into thinking that because you don't know it ceases to be an issue.",
      "Because you don't know it's not an issue. It is an issue, all right? Because I care about my relationship with Allah, and I want to refine this to the point that I can have the best relationship that I could have because I recognize who he is and what he can do, allright? And this again going back again to what he was talking about in terms of the importance",
      "the Prophet and also notice he said something very bold here, very bold. Why do you think he says that but even in this context disobedience in a state of humiliation and recognizing one's need for guidance is better than obedience in a",
      "in a state of humiliation recognizing that i'm wrong all right that will be that will",
      "And I'll probably be backbiting people after that. You follow? It blinds me, you know, to a level of self-awareness of my own state. All right? And that's what that sort of religious arrogance can often lead to. Okay? So one has to be very careful about that. I remember seeing the basketball player Mahmoud Abdul Rauf. It's an American thing.",
      "Anyway, he has Tourette's Syndrome. And one of the things he said in an interview, you know, one of blessings of my Tourettes is that it has been a constant reminder to me that I'm flawed. A constant reminder...I never have to worry about becoming overly enamored with myself because my Tourettes constantly brings me back to a recognition that I am flawed.",
      "Alright, and this is part of what Ibn Atta'Allah is referring to by you know if I'm disobedient okay? But I'm broken by it because You know Ali Zedugovic. I don't know if you've ever heard of him he was the former president of Yugoslavia Wrote a very to me profound book in fact",
      "it's not a academic book, but it's a very serious book. And it's one of my favorite books on Islam in English. It's called Islam Between East and West. No, Islam Between east and west. And one of the points that he makes in this book is that a person is as good as they want to be.",
      "A person is as good as they want to be. Now, we don't wanna put too sharp a point on that. That's not to say that I will be able to do everything I want to do. No, but what he's saying is that",
      "informs the texture of their lives are their aspirations for who they want to be. So even when I'm not completely able to live the life that I want to live, as long as I want",
      "that say he loves Allah and he loves his messengers. Okay? And I can't tell you the number, you know of sincerity, you'd be surprised. Sincerity is it's an atom bomb man in the positive sense if there's such a thing as a positive atom bomb. That was a bad metaphor never mind.",
      "is a very powerful thing. A very powerful think, alright? I know people who have been led to Islam by people who were known not to be what they should be but their sincerity, alright, alright shined through and was able to inspire the person. People would say things like, alright look,",
      "Look, I'm not where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm practicing on the level that I'm suppose to be practicing on. Alright? You shouldn't be doing X Y and Z and I'm still working with that. Okay? But you can go down there to this masjid and there are people who can explain to you what Islam really is. Alright. And you'd be surprised",
      "I'm not where I'm supposed to be that's what actually inspires that person because what they want is to know that if I come into this thing will I be permitted to struggle as well or will I held to a standard all right of absolute perfection and the very sincerity with which",
      "Because one of the earlier man said that there is no power greater in terms of guiding people to Islam or guiding Muslims themselves to a straighter path than sifqa and ikhlas. There is no more powerful tool, no more",
      "Trust me, that has an infectious effect to it. And people oftentimes are far more listening to your heart than they are to your words. Far more listening for your heart then they are for your words and one of the benefits of this self refinement that we're talking about",
      "And this is one of the reasons why it was so important for me. You know, we really need to get some of this into our community because one of benefits of it is that you know when my heart is sound and I'm not saying that I'm a saint but my heart if sound then you will end up in a position where you can trust my heart. Do you understand what I mean by that?",
      "I can tell you anything because you trust my heart. I mean it's amazing some of the things that the Prophet was able to tell people, to their face, to",
      "that you are a person that has some weakness. You should not be pursuing political office. Can you imagine you saying that to me? Can you image you saying it to somebody? What would the likely outcome be? Why could the prophet say this?",
      "Huh? Because he trusted his heart. I know this is not coming from a place of pettiness. I knew this was not coming form a place jealousy. I known this is now coming from the place meanness and mean spiritedness. He's telling me this because I need to know this, and I trust his heart, and that's why I can tell him that. That's why he can tell me that.",
      "Now one of the things that I've noticed, especially among young people and I don't know if this is the case in Britain. I suspect that it is. Young you can't tell them anything. No no wait wait wait no no I'm not talking about hard-headedness. That's not what I'm talking about. I wish we could just go back to the days of just hard-headiness all right but what I am saying is that young Muslims have become so averse",
      "that anytime you tell them anything, they're saying what? Don't judge me. Is that a phenomenon in Britain as well? Nobody wants to be judged. What is this a reflection of? How can I not be judged? Can I sit here and eat a pork chop",
      "Nobody can say anything to me because you can't judge me, right? Of course you can judge me. But what I suspect is happening is this, is that I don't trust your heart and everything you say to me therefore feels like a condemnation. Everything you say it feels like what? It feels like the condemnation, hmm?",
      "And that's how we then have to try and negotiate community standards where no one can say anything to anyone, all right? Without them being offended. Right? And this is why I say you know this self-referment is not just something that is meaningful for us as individuals. This has communal ramifications okay because we need to uplift our community",
      "the upliftment of our community as a whole. Alright, let me move on to another thing that he says about following the example of the Prophet. Number eight and nine. God has gathered the whole of goodness in a house and made its key following the",
      "So follow him by being satisfied with what God has provided you, by eschewing and limiting your take of the pleasures of this world. And by leaving that which does not concern you, of words as well as deeds. And for whomever the door to following the example of the prophet is opened,",
      "For indeed God said, Say O Muhammad if you love God then follow me. God will love you and forgive your sins. And God is forgiving merciful. So if you want to seek the whole of goodness say, Oh Lord I ask you the gift of following your messenger",
      "in his words and in his deeds. And whoever desires this must abandon injustice to God's servants regarding both their honor and their lineage. Indeed, were people to enjoy safety from each other's injustices they would all hasten to God but they are impeded from doing this like a debtor",
      "debtor whose movement is restricted by fear of debt collectors. And I think this goes a long way in some ways describing our social reality and all of us have to ask the question, you know, to what extent am I an impediment to others being able to find their way to God? How come so many people avoid our misogyny?",
      "or massage it. I hate to say this, that's why I don't like those cameras but it's a reality is not? Is it? Why? Why and he's saying people feel like you know there's a debt collector after me so I'm not going to go there because that debt collector is likely",
      "sort of in the minds of many, fulfilling the role of debt collector. As if they owe us something every time they come to the masjid. They owe us to live up... All right? As if we're collecting a debt of something and that capacity, all right, you know, they move away.",
      "he's saying is that you know if we are to ex if we ought to follow the example of the prophet all right we have to avoid injustice to the people because we then become a reason for their moving away from god from them for they're not making their way to god and this is not consistent with the with the business of following the example",
      "And again, I want to be very clear here. I think that the issue of Islamophobia is an important issue but I also think that you know the internal dynamics of our own community",
      "an important issue and I think that you know we have to recognize that we ourselves, we Muslims, we are responsible for our social order. And we have be very careful about not especially in the name of Islam constructing social orders that are utterly unlivable for majority of Muslims. We have",
      "And we have to understand that we are the ones who exercise agency in this regard. All right? We might not be able to do anything direct and immediate about Palestine, you know. We might, don't get me wrong I'm not saying that's not a priority and that's an issue. I'm no saying that at all. But we may not be doing anything. We may not have the agency with which to affect that issue",
      "that we might want to, all right? And the same goes for Afghanistan perhaps or Iraq or any other number of places. All right? But what controls the social cultural reality that we as Muslims live as a Muslim community? Who controls that? Who control that? We do.",
      "We do. That's us, that's our watch, that is our territory. That is us. Alright? And as we go forward in recognition of this fact another aspect to following the example of the Prophet is that we have to be patient.",
      "The only important thing is to be right. And if I'm right, that's it. I'm Right, you're wrong, you simply have to accept it and that's It. It's not going to work that way. You know sensitivities are there. And those of us who want to be people who want try to change the reality of our communities, uplift our communities we have",
      "to be willing to recognize that it's going to take time. I've heard some comments like, you know about the uncles. I think they call them Uncle G or something like that? What does that mean Uncle G? Yes? Uncle yes? Huh? Oh okay, that's a term of endearment. Yes.",
      "Yeah. And again, you know without trying to assign or exonerate a responsibility we're going to have to recognize that following the example of the Prophet, that means being more sensitive to the psychological realities that inform the positions of those people with whom we are speaking.",
      "And if we're talking about how come, I'm just gonna speak frankly now. How come you guys can't let go of some of these old world back home habits of mind and points of view? How come that you just can't",
      "I think that to be fair in this regard, and this is something that I think we've not always fully understood. And when I articulate this don't understand me to be saying that you know, I like this reality. I recognize this reality, I don't necessarily like it. And that reality is this what Uncle G has",
      "is exactly what we are thriving for here as Muslims in the West. Alright? And what that is, is... What that is is a cultural expression of Islam",
      "that by proxy carries the values and sentiments of our religion in such a way that we don't even have to think about them. A cultural expression of Islam that normalizes the values, and sentiments, of Islam. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? That's essentially what we are striving for as a community in this part of the world.",
      "Right? I mean, you want to get married. We have a way... You follow me? We have away to get marry. Got dispute we have other ways to resolve disputes. Wedding... We have our cultural matrix that has enabled us to normalize our way of life. What we are essentially asking them and in that context",
      "In that context, once that first generation establishes that the next generation comes to understand that as being Islam. That's what they understand and what we are essentially asking Uncle G to do is let that go without something comparable to grab onto",
      "in its place. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? It's like when you're going, is it monkey bars or something? You know, you're on this bar, you can let it go if you can what? You can grab onto that one, you could let that one go. This is a part of what we are asking and we gonna have to understand that this is gonna be very difficult",
      "And I think that it's going to be a task that calls not only for all the right answers, but for some trustworthy hearts. For some trustworthy heart. They have to be able to see us as people who really and honestly have the best interest of Islam in this Muslim community at heart.",
      "And that's going to take time. I say this only because if we don't recognize the extent to which it takes time, that we have to exercise patience, we in our overzealousness to bring about the change you want to see may end up doing more harm than good. Just remember this.",
      "I know this is not very popular stuff, but what did the prophet tell Aisha about the Kaaba? He said if your people meaning whom? The Meccans. Quraish. If your people weren't so newly emerging out of their Jahiliyyah, hmm? I would tear this Kaaba down and reestablish it on the foundations of Abraham.",
      "But your people will go berserk. But your People will what? Your people will Go berserk.\" Now he could have said, What? Listen up Rasool Allah talking here. Huh! Knock that stuff off. Shoot. See what y'all think I'm Jahiliyya No really If he's recognizing the sentiments",
      "recognizing the sentiments that they have coming out of Jahiliyyah. We have to recognize it and please brothers and sisters, I'm not this is not some you know accommodationist let's just accept the status quo. That's not what I'm saying but we want healthy communities going forward. We want healthy community going forward you know in this demands of those of us who want to try to be you know agents of that change you know that we recognize this is gonna take time,",
      "Right? Which is why it's going to be supremely important that we get our commitment straight. And my commitment is not to my ideal. You understand what I mean by that, because sometimes this becomes a matter of me. Oh they rejected, oh they rejected my idea, oh no it's on. You know and I get addicted to that you know and become blinded to the fact that there may even better ways than my ideal, well maybe not.",
      "Well, maybe not. I'm joking, guys. Lighten up. There may be better ways of doing it. All right? Okay. Number 177 in which he's talking about dutifulness to God. How protective you are",
      "Otherwise he says, if I'm lying my wife is divorced.",
      "that this food was actually not poisoned, you would still balk at it. In fact, were you yourself to watch the dish in which this food contained several times, you will continue to shun it. Why are you not this way with your religion? In other words he's saying that, you know,",
      "exercise in trying to preserve our bodies, this should remind us of how cautious and how much scrupulousness we need to have when it comes to our religion. And the same way that we don't take even small chances with our bodies. All right?",
      "or the bowl that that poisoned food was in and you washed it yourself, you still do what? Maybe tomorrow. It dries out a little bit. Stick it out in the sun. All right? Although you yourself washed it. Now this is a... How much time we have? Not very much because this is going to be a... This is going",
      "controversial topic what did what the museum said we're gonna have what explosive scrupulousness regarding our religion is very important as the Prophet himself is reported to have",
      "leave that about which you have doubt for that about what you have no doubt and this scrupulousness is a fundamental value of religiosity in Islam having said that much we, we have to be careful",
      "Erring on the side of caution does not reduce us to what amounts, for all intents and purposes, to a sort of Islam 101. Whereby exercising caution becomes an excuse",
      "becomes an excuse for not engaging the world of reality in which Islamically authentic benefits and harms intermingle with each other. And, in the face of which rather than say simply well no let's just err on the side of caution we need to engage",
      "to engage to the point that we can seek to maximize the benefit and minimize the harm. And this, we do in pursuit of the pleasure of God. This is carefulness about our religion because outside of the ibadat, outside of what? The ibadats.",
      "all agree that the values, the principles even the rules of Islam have all been given to us for the purpose of enhancing benefits to society and minimizing harms. What does Quran say about wine?",
      "drinking and gambling what does it say precisely? What else does it that they ask you about",
      "harm along with benefits for people. But the harm outweighs the benefits. Is everybody following that? Why then is wine drinking and gambling made haram? Because Allah says that",
      "contained in those things are greater than the benefits all right and when that's the case he wants to eliminate that greater harm all right even at the expense of the benefits that might be in there you might follow what I mean by that and so this is a basic principle",
      "Britain or America, all right? We'll find ourselves... Let me give you an example. This is gonna be controversial. This for me, Zan, because he's been waiting for something exclusive all afternoon. Right after 9-11 there was a",
      "There was a sort of ceremony at one of the big stadiums in New York. Because 9-11 happened where? In New York, it was a big almost memorial type thing. All kinds of people got up and gave little talks",
      "the occasion, et cetera. And at one point there was a Muslim sister who was called upon to represent the Muslims. So she got up and gave her talk five, 10 minutes. And after she was done",
      "Rudy Giuliani. Who's Rudy Giulianni? Not only is he the mayor of New York, this is what Vice President Joe Biden said about him. Rudy Giuliano, he knows three things. Noun, verb and 9-11. He's the hero of 9- 11. So after this Muslim sister gave her presentation",
      "Rudy Giuliani sort of came onto the stage and signaled that he was about to give her a political hug. It's on national TV, hmm? What should she have done? Why?",
      "Why? Huh? The benefits outweigh the good. No, no, no. See this is what I'm talking about and see look, I don't want to take a position on this issue all right. What I really want to do is deal with the principle on the basis of which we would negotiate it okay",
      "Because here we have a direct injunction that all Muslims understand. I shouldn't even be touching someone of the opposite sex, although many are allowed and some don't. Handshakes, just relax, Muslims. But we have rules here.",
      "Rules here. We have a rule here, all right? And now we have a situation. It's 9-11. It happened, all the whole country is in an uproar. People are getting killed, because they even look like Muslims. They don't happen to be Muslims.",
      "What? National TV. What's wrong with these Muslims? All right, okay? If she does, then you have a violated rule and the question then becomes do you have the purpose of that rule itself in any way being violated?",
      "in any way being violated. In other words, do we have any sense that Rudy Giuliani might try some moves? Yes or no? Huh? Probably not, all right? So the maslaha, the benefit of that rule is not likely to be violated. On the other hand what would result from that?",
      "When we are negotiating this issue, debating this issue. You follow what I mean by that? All right? The issue becomes how you and I understand the relative benefits and the relative harms. Not he's deening and I'm not. Does everybody understand what I meant about that?",
      "You follow what I mean by that? All right, how do we as a Muslim community especially us in the West who are going to be consistently confronted with realities that violate formal reality. It's gonna be reality as it is not as it should be Okay How do we have a community arrive at a point where we can collectively negotiate these issues without them resulting in schism and",
      "And this is precisely, precisely part of what our tradition as Muslims, provides us with the ability to do. And again my point is I want to be really clear about this because this is also carefulness about the religion.",
      "may be a means of turning someone else away from it. All right? This is something that if we don't master it as a community, all right, we're going to continue to do that which is representative of the path of least resistance. And rarely is that going to be the thing",
      "the thing that maximizes the benefit and minimizes the harm. It's going to be the thing, oh I'm safe. Mansoor can't criticize me. Cumulatively however what does that lead to? No we can't address issues. We're dysfunctional.",
      "when I'm trying to get out of here. All right? And we have to have principles on the basis of which we negotiate this. Let me give you one example so that people maybe feel a little less, you know what you're talking about Dr. Jackson. You know there's a report story related on the authority of Ibn Taymiyyah",
      "of disciples and they saw some newly converted Mongols drinking wine. And his disciples saw these Mongols and said,, and they set out to stop them from drinking. Ibn Taymir is reported to have said no leave them alone don't bother them",
      "turned to him with these looks of incredulity on their faces and they said, what is this? And Ibn Taymiyyah said to them this. Listen to me. Allah forbade wine drinking because it takes people away from remembrance of God and from Salat. These people when they drink",
      "They're going to get drunk, fall out and go to sleep. And it's gonna take them away from rape, pillage and murder. Leave them alone. Now this can be a very scary principle especially for us now. This is the whole point that this whole book is trying to get to okay?",
      "Because we are going to be faced with these kinds of circumstances. Alright? If our nafs is not in a healthy state, hmm, we will always be given to do that, not which is most pleasing to Allah, hmm but what's as least costly in terms of the public validation we're likely to get either for Muslims or non-Muslims. Does everybody understand what I mean by that?",
      "by that? Right. We're not going to be able to undertake this with weak constitutions of Muslims from inside and we have to be Able, all right, to withstand you know I take the hmmm Mashallah, mashallah Is that necessarily the best thing in the interest",
      "in the interest of the community? Perhaps not. All right, all right and the most important thing is we have to have the means by which we negotiate this. Does everybody understand what I'm trying to say? In other words again Mansur it's not that Mansour is staqfullah you know Islam like no Mansour has a different factual assessment from my own",
      "He believes, all right, that hugging him, all Right will minimize a greater harm than the benefit of not. I don't believe that you follow what i mean by that? Does that make me a stronger Muslim than him? Make me a better Muslim than Him? What does that make Me? Just somebody has a different assessment and when we understand this",
      "understand this, Mansour and I can differ without giving Shaitan that ability to come between us. You follow what I mean by that? This is part of what we have to, and especially those of us in the West because we control much less of our social political reality than Muslims in other parts of the world. We control much",
      "we're going to have to navigate and negotiate our way through these things. And this requires two things, one a greater diffusion of religious literacy among us and two a stronger constitution from within so that",
      "to God. Why did Ibn Taymiyyah say this? Because he's scared of the Mongols, right? Why did he say this because this is what I believe God would have wanted they're gonna drink anyway and I'd rather see them drinking than murdering and raping and I believe that that's what God would want now again this is dangerous cuz we now in you know in the world we're very",
      "Let's face it, we face a very difficult social political reality. And the tendency is always understandably to want to release that pressure by not doing things in any way shape or form offend the dominant culture but that's something we're gonna have to resist as well. But always doing it in light",
      "in light of, you know, this calculus. And this is the calculus of Islam. This is the Calculus of Islam, all right? And so when it comes to being careful about our religion, okay, let us not understand that being careful",
      "and either unwilling or incapable of going beyond that to assessing the relative harms and benefits that are likely to accrue to any particular situation. Does everybody follow that? And this takes strong constitutions, this is one of the reasons why it's so important for this whole business of refinement of the self to be at the center of what we're doing.",
      "we have to resist the overtures of, you know, the dominant non-Muslim community. And sometimes we have resist the overages within our own communities. Alright? And at the very least, we may not get our way but the way in which we negotiate will leave us with a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. Okay? Because see what happens oftentimes is this. You know Mansoor and I, we fall out over issue X.",
      "All right? Which on a scale of 1 to 10 may be a 4. All right, two years later there's an issue on the scale of one to ten that's a ten! That we need to cooperate on but because we've fallen out on that four I can't stand his guts and he can't stay mine. And I don't trust him and he don't' trust me. And therefore we can't what? We can't work together all right?",
      "All right? And that was all due to the fact that we did not recognize the basis upon which we should have engaged that issue. All right, and ended up with he simply has a different assessment of it from me. I still think it's wrong. You follow what I'm saying? But it's just an assessment. It's not his level of religious commitment. He thinks that wall is white. I think it blue. That make me a better Muslim?",
      "All right? So this is a part of what we have to recognize as well in terms of being careful about our religion. Okay, I'm gonna do two, 234 and 235. I'll read them together. And the last one should mean something significant to you. The likeness of one who seeks knowledge while lacking insight",
      "is that of a hundred thousand blind persons stumbling along the path were there to appear among them, a single person with even a single eye people would all follow him and leave the 100,000 blind people. A scholar on the other hand who does not live by the knowledge",
      "is like a candle that leads the way for others by burning himself out. Even ignorance is better than knowledge shot through with heedlessness of God and one of the reasons for that is that ignorance is ignorance you can't do very much with it. Knowledge shot through",
      "of God puts me in a position where I can try to use that knowledge not for the pleasure of Allah but in order to serve my own interests and in that regard all right I come very close potentially falling into ishql asghar doing things",
      "all right and i have to be very very careful about that in another place in this book ibn atallah says do not think that it is knowledge that has escaped the people it is rather divine facilitation that has escape the people. It is tawfiq from Allah that has escapeth us, not knowledge cumulatively we have the knowledge within our community",
      "in our community, all right? But we don't have the kinds of circumstances that will enable us to take full advantage of the knowledge that we do have. And a major part of that is again the state of our hearts, the state out the pre-conscience okay because if I'm a scholar and I really just want",
      "I want you to look up to me and applaud me, and treat me with deference. Okay? Alright? Make no mistake about it that will inform and shape the way that I use my knowledge because my knowledge will always be used in such a way that seeks either to promote that or to maintain it. Alright? And in that, I can actually betray that knowledge by deploying it in ways",
      "not serve God but in ways that serves me right and this is one of you know what I seem to be the major major concerns all right that rests at the heart of the whole issue of the importance of refining the self and that's",
      "that you know this will come out into the Muslim public and if nothing else generate a conversation generating some generates something that well hopefully you know lift us to a higher level of recognition of what we have okay and how we can best make use of it and hopefully in such a way that along the way we acquire",
      "better Muslims. Muslims whose hearts are cleaner, Muslims who are less petty, Muslims that are less addicted to ego, Muslims are less insecure because much of our bickering is an affliction and expression of nothing more, nothing less than our own insecurity. I ask Allah to give us these things inshallah and protect us from those in ourselves",
      "between us and the achievement of that, insha'Allah ta'ala. I differentiate between power and authority. Power is the ability to force compliance. Authority is the abilitiy to enlist compliance on the belief that the authority figure has the right to be compliant with. And so if you exercise power to an appreciable enough degree it can",
      "it can evolve into authority. And I think that is the situation we find ourselves as Muslims in, in the world today. And particularly while much of the emphasis and focus falls upon what may be referred to as political power",
      "I think that for me, the biggest challenge confronting Muslims in the world today with regard to authority and ascending civilization is the absence of cultural authority on one hand and intellectual authority on the other. And by that I mean we live in a world today where the dominant Western civilization carries",
      "or however you might want to articulate that, as well as being intellectually the point of departure for any intelligent discussion in the world today. And that leaves the Muslims in a position where the whole enterprise is a validation. There goes that word again. Are such that it becomes very difficult to arrive at a spontaneous approach to life",
      "approach to life. And by spontaneous, I mean one in which we're not simply reacting to the cultural and intellectual authority that the dominant civilization wields. We are able to assess things on the basis of our own system of values and our own story tradition",
      "it speaks to the issue of the pre-rational realm of human consciousness that actually contributes directly to the kind of appetite, the polarity of appetite that one has for validation. And I think that if we as a Muslim community can find ways to refine ourselves",
      "we are no longer dependent upon the dominance of civilization for cultural and intellectual validation, then we will be able to engage in a more spontaneous reading of our own tradition. And come up with approaches to modernity that are far more reflective of our narrative and sense of values. This is not against the West or anyone else.",
      "And ideally, it is something that we see as being part of our contribution to the world. So the whole business of refinement of the self and disciplining the nafs has implications far beyond our individual lives. It speaks to something I think that really is at the center",
      "of any kind of chance that we have of bringing about the kind of change that many of us say that we really want to bring about. So this is not simply a purely pietistic enterprise, it has implications far, far beyond personal piety."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Sherman Jackson Supports the work of Muslimat Al N_e3J7gkuRkMQ&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750815048.opus",
    "text": [
      "There are a number of entities out there, Muslimatun Issa being one of them because it's involved in helping people who have essentially reached the point where they can't help themselves. And the Prophet himself said that",
      "attain God's aid and God's victory to the point that, or to the extent that you come to the aid of those who are in need. Those who are the weak and poor."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Short Powerful Message from Dr_ Sherman Jackson_VH3KqdETgAU&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750822325.opus",
    "text": [
      "I also want to offer a very heartfelt and deeply sincere note of gratitude to Sheikh Rami. Not simply for what you are doing, and what you have done but for affording me the opportunity to come and see what you're doing",
      "are doing because it has been my view for many years that the demographic that you are serving is one of the most critical to the future of Islam in this country. I've been around for a while and I know one thing about the Muslim community, in general",
      "We have a hard time really appreciating the gravity of the words that I said just a few minutes ago. We have had a hard times appreciating how people who are ex-felons, and some of them even felons, how somebody like Dr. Jackson can stand up here with a straight face",
      "what these people can contribute to the future of Islam in America. One of the strengths that we saw in Brother Amin was the courage that he had, to be honest about his contribution to his own situation. I wish we have more Muslims like that and one of the greatest tragedies that has been falling on us as a Muslim community in the modern world",
      "in the modern world that we have been robbed of the ability to believe in ourselves with what we can do for our brothers and sisters who are incarcerated or who were formerly incarcerated. And we have to start thinking about what they can do",
      "we see the writing of that check not simply as a charitable act but it's as a terrible investment. We have to stop thinking that if it's not doable in my lifetime then it's worthy of investment.We have to think like that right? As a wise man once said anything that's worth my committing",
      "achievable in a single lifetime. The Prophet Muhammad would not have been able to succeed, not only in carrying out his mission but laying the foundation for the way of life that is our way of",
      "the aid of his clan of Bani Hashim. Wait, wait, why are we so hesitant? See you know one of the reasons why because they think Dr. Jackson up here doing a black thing Wallahi no! No! Any more than the Prophet was doing a Bani",
      "have a vested interest in protecting our relationship and the integrity of that role that that Benny Hashem can play for Islam in America. This ain't no black thing, it got nothing to do with that. This is what I learned from studying the life of my teacher Muhammad ibn Abdullah,",
      "This is what he taught me. And we don't have leaders who will model the character and the virtues to help us heal those wounds. In fact, our leadership conducts itself in a way that was deepened those wounds that would make us less likely to be able to come together. America now is beginning",
      "to pay a price for many of the wrongs that have been committed in this country, for many, many generations. Some of it is coming home to roost now as Malcolm would say. You tell me if you got caught with what was it? Less than 18 grams. Yeah, if you've got caught",
      "And yeah, you plan to do a little bit of business with it. But if it's 18 grams, how can you tell me that warrants triple life? How can you go to prison for 18 grams under a sentence of triple life",
      "and come out not wanting to kill the whole world. You hear what I'm talking about? That is the virtue of forgiveness. We learn something about that from our prophet. The demographic of felons and ex-felons who have seen the power of Islam in their lives",
      "There's a brother sitting in this hallway today. 38 years in the penitentiary. You hear what I said? And can still love. You know what I'm talking about? See, that's the power of Islam. We need these brothers to model",
      "really represents what Islam really is and part of our problem today somebody else owns the narrative about Islam they don't know about these people all that terrorism bombing women this that they don' t know what Islam has really done in the lives of human beings it is this demographic this demographic more effectively than any other",
      "Because America is a popular culture, not high culture. If you want to go to the inner cities of America and that's where the future of Islam in America is. It ain't in the suburbs. If You want to those inner cities these are the people. You better have someone with you to go. We want we want to see... See you gotta understand something about converts. I'm a convert to Islam almost 40 years. I converted when I was 3",
      "And we need to understand their value in that regard. Okay? Because many of you, you can contribute many things but you can't go to Oakland and do this. You can't got the South Side of Chicago and do it. You cant go to Harlem and do that. You cannot go to North Philly and do all right? And the fact that you can should not disabuse you from the recognition",
      "the recognition of how important this is. Where would we be today without the legacies of the Muhammad Ali's, without the legacy of the Malcolm Xs? How many of those are we going to produce over the next generations? This is how we have to begin to think so when you think about supporting pa'iba",
      "and that's fine all right that's fun but we got to get out of this mentality where the only people would recognize as contributing something important are our shayukh they ain't I studied Islam my whole adult life they ain´t we need architects",
      "We need fashion designers. We need everything that makes up a civilization and some of these brothers if their talent and expertise is in non-shari'i issues then let us support them to be all they can be because all of that becomes a part of Islam as it's supposed to be lived I have a whole lot more that I wanted to say but my time has come to an end",
      "and the brothers being very patient, and kind with me. And I want to return the favor. I just want to end really by saying, Brothers and sisters please we are at a very critical point in our history of Islam in America. Okay? If this generation fails right what will the next generation have to work with?",
      "We have to capitalize on the gains that we have made so far and we must invest in this community. And invest in his community as a Muslim community, black, daisy, white, Arab it doesn't matter. This is the Muslim community. The Muslim community that is going to go on",
      "its contribution to what America really should be."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/Sunni Shiite Islam - Dr_ Sherman Jackson - Dr_ Abd_nFYtS397hFI&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750819308.opus",
    "text": [
      "Islam is divided into two main groups. There are the Sunnis and then there are the Shiites. The Sunnis constitute somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of the world's Muslims. The Shiites constitute about 10%, give or take 2-3 digits there. Now, in America the overwhelming majority of Muslims in America are Sunni so we can restrict our discussion here",
      "Now, Sunnism as a religion chose very early on not to establish a church and that the ultimate authority in the community would belong to the unanimous consensus of the scholars of Islamic law. That is to say that only that upon which the scholars",
      "agree. Not agree in the majority, but agree unanimously. Only that is binding upon every Muslim. That upon which they do not agree simply has to be left open to discussion and debate. Now, in the year 310 of the Muslim calendar, which translates into about 910 of",
      "all of the issues on which there was unanimous consensus by the Muslim jurists, scholars of Islamic law. And this book came out to be a tiny little thing of about 200 pages. All right? There are books on disagreement in Islam that number several volumes, 14 volumes, 20 volumes.",
      "Prophet Muhammad was here, he had an infallible understanding of the religion. If the prophet Muhammad was asked a question about the meaning of revelation, not about the Sheveh better than Ford but about the meanig of Revelation his answer was correct and God protected him from error in that regard. But once the prophet died,",
      "a perfect understanding of the religion okay that he can claim to be perfect in the face of others what that means is that if you and I have an excuse you and i are doctors of the religious law and we disagree on our interpretation of a particular law in the absence of the Prophet himself coming back and saying you are right professor Jackson",
      "Is this a point of departure from Shiism?",
      "who has an impeccable and fallible understanding of revelation. If you don't have that, the religion is subject to go astray. And she is quite frankly a sort of true inspiration for this position from the Quran itself which presents the whole problem with former communities being that at a certain point it became populated by people",
      "have the proper understanding of the religion as the community went astray. And so Shiism said we have to have somebody who has perfect understanding and that individual is the Imam. So for Shiism, the Imam holds the place of the Prophet although they do not consider him to be a prophet. They consider him an impeccable understanding of religion. Sunnism holds only the consensus of the community of scholars as impeccables in their understanding of it.",
      "They very clearly say that not all Imams were martyred, not all of them were assassinated. Some of them did natural death but it was good for the Shi'a identity to claim and try to prove to the masses that all Imam's were oppressed, they're under pressure so they were either assassinated or poisoned and so on and so forth. So this is again part of the mass history of Shiism",
      "and this stems from the psychology of minority identity. Now for me, as I see the problem, the main point of divide, the line of divide between Shi'i and Sunni is neither a historical event of successorship it's anyway over and we cannot discuss it anymore, it's not useful. And that is not really the case",
      "the case. The main line of divide is that according to the theory of Imamate in Shiism, the prophet being the last prophet is somehow mellowed and somehow diluted. This is how I see it if not disproved you know this is a very well known idea",
      "claims that he's a prophet, do not pay any attention to him. Do not follow him. He must be a false prophet anyway. So this is the normative content of Khatamiyah, the prophet being the seal of all prophets. Now what is prophethood? Let us go into the careful analysis of prophethood. Prophethood at least has got two major",
      "major pillars. The first pillar is revelation, receiving the revelation so this is the first pillar. The second is infallibility a prophet is an infallible person who receives revelation okay and then he actually transmits it to the masses so this",
      "by Shi'is for their Imams. What you know comes to my mind in matters of reform about Shiism is, of course we have to correct some of our behaviors such as stopping stop cursing the companions",
      "make some corrections about the idea of Shafa'ah and intercessions, the idea or corruption of the Quran which is fortunately now over. And I hope it will not come back again to reread the history of Shiism, not to make exceptions rule, not make rules exceptions so this is very important and most of all and",
      "The theory of imamah is a very faulty theory that should be revisited thoroughly because at the first Shiites constructed and suggested the idea of imama because they thought that the whole ummah needs a leader. And that leader should be the infallible imam but then it came to the 12th imam, he's now hidden so",
      "So they had to change the theory of imamah. The umma does not have any imam anymore nowadays, so they thought that perhaps the imam can lead the umma from behind a veil and even if he is not among the people it doesn't matter. So they changed the idea of the imama in order to fit their history of Shiism. And the theory",
      "it claims the infallibility for the Imams also had its own harmful dimensions, for the Shi'i creed. First of all, it made unnecessary enmity among Shi'is and Sunnis, and secondly stopped and prevented us from criticizing the Imam's and from finding our ways and not to following them blindly but rather with open eyes",
      "اینجا، تغییر در طور امامت، من فکر می کنم، سوال شما برای مقابلت آبادان را به قربه نظریه کرده است."
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/The Anwar Ibrahim Lecture Series _ Dr_ Sherman Jac_k4L_yhxSJ2w&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750822986.opus",
    "text": [
      "I'm Maria Daycake, interim director of the Abu Sulaiman Center for Global Islamic Studies. And on behalf of the center, I want to welcome you all for coming out on this beautiful afternoon to join us for the second annual Anwar Ibrahim Lecture with our esteemed guest and speaker Dr. Sherman Jackson. You can all hear me right?",
      "hear me right. So the Center for Global Islamic Studies has been an important part of the intellectual life of George Mason since 2009. Initially, the center bore the name of the Ali Burl Aqs Center in honor of our first major donor whose generous gift made the establishment of the center a possibility initially. The center was renamed in 2022 for the Saudi and international scholar",
      "in uh abdul hamid sorry uh abu suleiman in honor of the vision of another generous donation to the center. The Center has always been dedicated to the promotion of a sound and nuanced understanding of history, religion society, and culture and one that is based in rigorous interdisciplinary academic study it supports and develops research on Islam",
      "students in the broad interdisciplinary field of Islamic studies here on campus, while also hosting conferences, seminars and colloquia that engage the field beyond George Mason. The center has received numerous grants that have allowed it to develop research and pedagogical tools that advance the field. The Abu Sulaiman Center also takes as its mission responsibility to bring research in Islamic Studies",
      "public. Most of our lectures and conferences are open to the public, some of our projects have been specifically focused on developing open source material on Islam that can enhance both pedagogy and public understanding. Our flagship online publication platform May10 is aimed at elevating the discourse on Islam in Muslim communities through short written pieces",
      "that aims to be accessible both to specialist and non-specialist audiences. Somewhere at the back of the room, or maybe it's just outside the room there is a table with lots of information about the Center's activities things we've done this year our ongoing projects as well as information about our annual conference which we will have next week",
      "April 25th and 26 on Muslim women in religious and civic leadership. It is open to the public so please do join us if you are free. This annual lecture for which we are gathered today was inaugurated in November of 2022, and it's made possible by a separate donation from the International Institute of Islamic Thought here in Northern Virginia. The lecture is named in honor of Anwar Ibrahim one",
      "original co-founders of IIIT and a scholar reformer and politician with a long and storied career that culminated in his being named prime minister of Malaysia only a few weeks after the inaugural Anwar Ibrahim lecture was hosted on this campus in November of 2022. Anwar ibrahim became interested in political and social reform while still",
      "in the Malaysian government, serving as Minister of Education, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. His commitment to reform has often found him at odds with other powerful political figures in Malaysia which led to his removal from political positions and even imprisonment on two separate occasions. He has remained nonetheless committed to the promotion of political integrity economic growth religious tolerance",
      "universal human rights within Malaysia. He has been committed to education as the bedrock of his society's health and stability, and has served as the president of the International Islamic University of Malaysia, and held visiting academic positions at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown University. This afternoon we are honored to have with us as the featured speaker for this second Anwar Ibrahim lecture Dr. Sherman Jackson.",
      "Sherman Jackson, a scholar who has inspired many of us in this field through a wide variety of books and publications that are as original and independent in their approach to the study of Islam as they are rigorously researched and argued. His recently published book The Islamic Secular is similarly 10- uh published by Oxford I should say in 2024 um it's similarly intended",
      "a topic that has been vigorously debated, that is the relationship between Islam and secularity as commonly understood. And it's a topic central to both scholarly and public debates about Islam. Sherman Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, Distinguished Professor of Religion, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity",
      "and practice at the University of California, which makes me wonder how he can write anything let alone this very large tome that he has just completed. His previous book publications include On The Boundaries Of Theological Tolerance In Islam, Abu Hamid Al Ghazali's Faisal Al-Tafriqa, Islam And The Problem Of Black Suffering, Islam and the Black American Looking Toward The Third Resurrection,",
      "of political violence. He has been listed several times among the top 500 influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, several times as I said most recently just last year. He considers one of his proudest moments however to be his delivery of the eulogy at the funeral",
      "boxer Muhammad Ali in 2016. Dr. Jackson's work as a scholar is devoted to placing the classical Islamic intellectual, religious and spiritual tradition in conversation with the challenges and opportunities facing Muslims in the modern world. This afternoon he will be speaking to us on the topic of Sharia and the Islamic secular between political theology and political philosophy. Please join me in welcoming him to the podium.",
      "Well, first of all I'd like to thank you Maria for all the kindness and hospitality and for affording me this opportunity to come here and share my thoughts this afternoon. I also want to thank",
      "I have been mangling it for so long, so I appreciate that. This is the Anwar Ibrahim lecture and I must say that the last time I saw his excellency, I had a visit with him at home in Malaysia and we talked about lots of intellectual issues. And in fact, we had discussed preliminarily prospects",
      "discussing the situation in America, Malaysia and South Africa. But when I got back to the United States after visiting him at his home, I ended up on a hospitality list for the people who meet you at the airport. And for about three years after that I was treated to the royal treatment every time I came back into the country. So I'm just hoping that after this lecture I'll be able to get on the plane safely and land safely and nothing will happen.",
      "word sometimes I'm just going to jump into a jump into my lecture here and his thought-provoking book the stillborn God but no good intellectual historian Mark Lilla contrasts what he portrays as the great achievement of the modern West namely the separation of religion from law and politics with what it characterizes",
      "End of quote. Of course, Lilla is not and does not claim to be a scholar of Islamic law but he is representative of a class of erudite non-specialists whose distillations on Islam exerted far reaching impact on the general public as well as the perceptions of pundits, policy makers, and other influential persons and institutions in America and beyond.",
      "personalizes the experience and the experiment of the modern West, and assumes these to be normative for everyone. An assumption by the way that many Muslims share consciously or otherwise This is less a complaint than it is an observation And I only make it because it bears directly on my effort this evening As its title suggests My presentation revolves around such key modern concepts as secular and religious",
      "Almost as Adamus taught the names of all things primordial, however, it seems that the modern West has taught the world the names for all things modern. These Western meanings form the basis of our thinking about all of Modernity's major categories including secular and religious. Thus the West, for example or the East is judged to be good or bad because it is or",
      "between religion and politics. Yet this very relationship, and thus this judgment is itself grounded in understandings of secular and religious as these constructs developed in the early modern West. As part of my thesis this afternoon I shall be introducing and building upon",
      "somewhat opaquely entitled, the Islamic Sector. Despite the clear distinction I draw between this concept and the dominant understanding of secular in the West, I suspect that some of you will be unable to resist the temptation to process my words through a quiet running critique if not a passive rejection of the concept of the Islamic sector based on an inability or perhaps",
      "dominant meaning of secular in the West and imagine any alternatives to it. I would like to invite you, however, to restrain this impulse not as an attempt to turn you away from any commitments that you might otherwise have but simply for the purpose of gaining my argument a fair hearing. If I am successful in what I present—and I hope I am—many of your apprehensions may be assuaged by the emergence",
      "The Islamic secular is not simply the Western secular with Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rehman or in the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful attached to the front of it. Second non-Western as I professed the Islamic secular to be is not the same as anti-West. One does not have to argue that the Western concept of secular is wrong simply to argue",
      "that secular can have. My thesis, in other words, does not represent a zero-sum choice. One does not have to abandon one's attachment to the Western Secular in order to appreciate the Islamic sector and one does not need to reject this Latin sector simply because one feels compelled to reject the modern Western",
      "The key words I want to focus on in his statement are few, traditional and detailed. In relation to its reference to the availability of Islam as resources for establishing the independence of politics from detailed divine commands. Muslims according to this understanding, in good faith or bad might devise interpretations of Islam that limit the extent to which Sharia determines every detail of a political order.",
      "will not only be modern, but they will also be responses to a modernity that is widely conceived of as having been imposed upon Muslims from without. As such these interpretations are likely to be suspected of conveniently navigating their way around any number of Islam's divine commands in order to avoid their impact on the shape and texture of Muslim political thinking if we can speak of such. This raises",
      "about how reliable for Westerners and how Islamically authentic for Muslims such interpretations could be. This takes on additional significance in light of Lilla's larger point, namely that since the Enlightenment political theology according to which what God says is relevant to politics has given way to political philosophy which places politics entirely in human hands. Part of the problem with political theology",
      "according to this view, is that religious commitments are closed to those who do not share them which makes public discourse among religiously diverse populations virtually impossible. This is why the modern West decided to convert law and politics into entirely secular enterprises as reflected in the so-called separation between religion and state. Meanwhile given its reputation",
      "Questions persist about whether any normative expression of Islam could accept any distance, let alone separation between the concrete dictates of its Sharia and politics. Let me be clear. It is not my aim to apologize for political theology nor to replace it with political philosophy but the general consensus in the Western Academy",
      "Sharia is totalizing, all-encompassing and covers everything. And that therefore there's no room for deliberation over such things as law or politics outside the dictates of revelation is in my view far more stereotypical than it is accurate. At the same time proponents of totalizing notions of Sharia call to mind the situation in Europe prior to the Enlightenment",
      "of the Enlightenment response. In other words, as counterintuitive as it may seem, totalizing notions of Sharia actually promote rather than forestall secularization and this in the modern Western sense by exploring some of the implications of what I see as over inclusive understandings of Islamic law, I hope to uncover possibilities that have thus far been excluded from",
      "including the fact that even as part of the discourse on Islam as religion, discourses on law and politics need not be entirely based on divine commands. In fact, part of what I will be exploring in what I present this afternoon is the extent to which political theology and political philosophy are as mutually exclusive",
      "to think they are or should be, at least from the perspective of Islam. I shall begin by laying out the basic meaning and implications of the Islamic sect as well as the fact that it derives in substance not from the history experienced or influenced of a modern West but from a careful reading of Islam's pre-modern juristic tradition specifically Islamic jurisprudence or usul al-fatiha. From here",
      "to what Lillard characterizes as the major challenge of modern politics, namely how to avoid the tyranny of political theology or what many others refer to more simply as theocracy. I would direct particular attention to the notion that Sharia determines everything and that Muslims with strong attachments to Sharia pose an existential threat to public discourse since they can only participate in such discourses on the basis of closed divine commands",
      "commands. Finally, I will try to concretize some of my findings through a few examples of legal slash political debate involving Muslims in America on the one hand and in the Muslim world on the other. Again, my point in all of this will be to highlight the extent to which taking Islam and Sharia form their own terms introduces possibilities that otherwise escape us. This is particularly important",
      "the context of America, since America as I see it is not a mere extension of Europe. As such even as Westerners Americans need not see themselves as being exclusively bound to a European intellectual heritage and attempting to navigate their way through a social political reality that includes so many long-standing communities of non Europeans.",
      "So what is the Islamic secular? I begin with a brief discussion of two distinct modes of the secular as it developed in the modern West. The first mode, what I call the macro-secular mode, is what thinkers such as Max Weber, Charles Taylor, Peter Berger and others have in mind when they speak up the disenchantment of the world. According to this view, the world has been empty",
      "everyday spaces and prompt the human soul and psyche to seek protection from these, as well as search for their ultimate source in order to curry favor with that source and get on its good side. This enchanted world, in other words, was the origin and sustainer of religion. The rise of modern science, logical positivism, and enlightenment rationalism however basically neutralized these forces and left human beings at least",
      "universe that has inalterable physical laws and a natural order, but no God or Creator. And of course with no God there can be no divine commands to tell us how to live our lives. This is perhaps the most common understanding of secular today. It is also why many Muslims and non-Muslims will instinctively balk at the notion of an Islamic secular. But the macro secular is not the only mode of the secular even in",
      "The second mode, what I call the microsecular mode challenges neither the existence of God, the value of religion nor the general authority of God's divine commands. Rather, the microsecular simply bars the application of what God says from specific areas of human concern most notably politics economics and science.",
      "should be governed by an authority that is separate or differentiated from the authority of revelation, or what God says. Even if both God and Revelation retain their general authority in areas that have not been called off as sected. For example a private realm. This restricting the jurisdictional scope of God's revelation to a distinct and circumscribed area of human concern is what scholars of religion generally refer to as differentiation",
      "differentiation. The basic aim of differentiation, and again we are talking about concerns and developments in the early modern West was to liberate certain pursuits and disciplines from a concrete dictates and limitations of religion as Weber once put it each modern discipline for example law economics science politics constitutes its own sphere",
      "and its own metrics for measuring quality. This includes, by the way, religion whose particular sphere of value according to Kant at least was morality which he saw as the whole point of religion to begin with a view that remains quite influential to this day. On these developments even church authorities who rejected the macro secular and it's atheistic tendencies fully embraced the idea",
      "For instance, Professor Sheldon Warren summarized the view of Martin Luther who obviously did not want to get rid of religion. Quote, The world would be reduced to chaos if men tried to govern other gospels. End of quote. In other words, religion while maintaining its general authority in society at large should be kept out of politics and separate from the state. It is important that this juncture,",
      "It is important to note at this juncture, and this is crucial that the whole point of the secular as it emerged in the modern West was to mark a non-religious space. A space that was beyond God's divine commands and ultimately beyond God watchful gaze The Indian scholar Andre Battelle cuts through the heart of the matter when he writes the following quote",
      "is a conception of religion which demands that every aspect of every individual's life be brought under religious scrutiny and control.\" The critical question, he continues, is, I quote again, how much space will be allowed within society by doctrinary religion for the growth of secular ideas in institutions. Now my thesis is that Islamic sect",
      "represents what many in the West, as well as those who follow its lead would consider to be a contradiction in terms. Namely, a religious secular. A secular that is apart of a religious as opposed to non-religious space. This Islamic secular is differentiated from or beyond God's divine commands and this capacity it provides a space for the development of ideas and institutions that are not the dictates of revelation.",
      "Yet this secular space, or I should say this Islamic secular space remains within and not outside the watchful gaze of the God of Islam in which capacity it does not constitute a non-religious space where we can simply proceed as if God did not exist. In sum, the Islamic sector may be seen as a distant relative of what I have referred to as the micro-sector. Unlike the Western micro-secular however",
      "Microsecular however the Islamic secular neither constitutes nor aims at creating a non-religious space Now how do we arrive at this islamic so called religious secular? The common understanding of Islamic law builds on the well known fact that Sharia's so called five legal statuses or which range from forbidden to obligatory cover",
      "cover the whole of life, everything. This is why for most Muslims the idea of the secular which they generally understand to mean non-religious is so alien threatening or even offensive when paired with the word Islamic almost like talking about halal pork chops What is missing from this understanding however and what we gain from a more careful reading of classical Islamic jurisprudence",
      "to what he speaks to. Simply stated, Sharia provides only the legal ruling that governs human acts. By this I mean the status of a human actor before God for having performed or not performed a particular act based on God's concrete instructions to do or not do this act. The legal ruling does not provide however",
      "everything that a Muslim needs in order to instantiate Islam as praxis. For example, simply observing the divine command to avoid dhikr or interest does not translate into all of the concrete details needed for a successful economic policy. Yet, as every classical Muslim jurist would tell you, Muslims cannot do without",
      "beyond what Sharia's legal ruling can speak to concretely and authoritatively, yet within the attention of Islam as religion that I identify as the differentiated secular realm of the Islamic secular. In fact this may be a good place to introduce my Arabic translation of the",
      "or anything like these phrases, which are essentially just clunky translations of the Western macro-secular into Arabic. Rather, the Islamic secular translates into Arabic as, Islam of the region beyond the legal ruling, or alternatively,, Islam outside the legal rule.",
      "The wording of my translation implies something very important about my understanding of the relationship between Islam and Sharia, namely that Islam and sharia are not coterminous. Islam does not equal Sharia and Shariah does not equals Islam. We might describe Islam as the Muslims attempt to live life consciously under the watchful gaze of the God of Islam and within the parameters of this God's divine commands",
      "While God's watchful gaze is all-encompassing, totalizing and covers everything, God's divine command or Sharia as we have seen does not tell Muslims everything they need to know in order to live life Islamically. Again it is in this difference between what Islam speaks to in general and what Sharia speaks to concretely that I locate the differentiated secular space of the Islamic sector.",
      "This is the space in which Muslims are guided by the values, principles and virtues of Islam alongside their own individual or collective interests all under watchful gaze of a God of Islam. But it is also the space where Sharia will not and cannot tell Muslims how to actualize these principles, values, virtues or interests on the ground.",
      "traditional Islamic jurisprudence supports such a reading. To understand this, we must consider a few basic facts about Sharia. Shariah is essentially the sum total of legal rulings that govern the lives of Muslims. A single one of these legal rulins is called again a Hukm Shar'i.",
      "capacity, the legal ruling turns out to be the basic unit of Sharia. Accordingly, Sharia itself can extend only as far as the legal rule will take it. Any limits placed on the legal rules—any recognition of boundaries or restrictions on what it or its sources can address concretely and authoritatively are also limits",
      "My thesis grows out of a careful reading of juristic discussions of the legal ruling going back at least 1,000 years. What we find on such a reading is an explicit distinction between what Muslim jurists recognize as shari'i and what they identify as non-shari'it or rational which refers to that",
      "or even its personnel can tell us in concrete authoritative terms. In my book, I analyze the views of several leading jurists ultimately from all four Sunni schools of law all the way back to the 11th century coming all the up to the present. One such example will have to serve here and it's a typical example. And his three volume tone on jurisprudence",
      "who died in 1013 CE, defined Sharia as follows. Knowledge of the legal as distinct from rational assessments governing the actions of legally accountable persons which is arrived at through reasoned investigation of the sources of the law. I'll say that again.",
      "legally accountable persons which is arrived at through reasoned investigation of the sources of the law. Because this definition includes the word that is, that which constitutes or is derived from the source of Sharia, Al-Baqilani goes on to highlight",
      "and the distinction between it, and the non-shari'i. He notes that as a tactical term, shari' applies only to knowledge of the juristic assessments governing the actions of legally accountable persons. It does not apply to knowledge such things as grammar, medicine or philosophy all of which according to him are non-shaari', irrational. And Abaqanani knows further that those who know the assessments or rulings of Sharia",
      "rulings of Sharia do not necessarily know the assessments dictated by reason, and those who know the assessment dictated my reason do not necessary know the assesments of Shariah. In other words even as they may intertwine with each other, the Sha'iq and the non-Sha'i'i constitute two different jurisdictions that should not be confused with eachother. Again I trace this basic insight from al-Baqi Lani",
      "all the way into the modern period. For example, as part of his description of the legal ruling, the late Shafi'i jurist of Syria, Sheikh Wahba Zuhayri who died in 2015 gives the following explanation of the word shari'.",
      "based on sense perception, such as the sun is rising. As well as rational judgments, such one is half of two or the whole is greater than the part and other such matters, such medical, geometrical linguistic or empirical judgements for example Zaid is standing or not standing or the fact that the subject of a verb is in the nominative case.\"",
      "Again, the Shar'i and non-Shar'i constitute two distinct jurisdictions. And the upshot of all this is that the legal ruling, that is the Hukm Shar'iyah, and thus Sharia itself, is bounded in the sense that it has limits beyond which it does not and cannot speak concretely and authoritatively. Even if we assume as I emphatically do",
      "do, as I emphatically do that Sharia subsumes everything under one of its five juristic statuses obligatory recommended neutral discouraged or prohibited it does not follow that Shariah therefore determines the concrete substance of every act a Muslim needs to instantiate Islam as practice ultimately",
      "recognizes the need and propriety, assuming God conscious due diligence of going beyond the dictates of Sharia and God's divine commands in the very name and interest of translating Islam into a lived practical reality. A good example of what I'm trying to get at here is provided by an old friend of mine, the 13th century CE Manichae jurist, Shehab al-Din Al Qarafi.",
      "a discussion among the jurists of his time involving a certain report or hadith from the Prophet Muhammad in which it is said that the angel Gabriel came to the prophet and offered him the equal choice of drinking from a chalice of milk or a challice of wine. The Prophet chose the milk at which time Gabriel informed him that had he chosen the wine, his community would have gone astray. Here however",
      "as to how these two choices could have been equally permissible while the consequences of performing them differed so dramatically. Al-Qarabi explains that two acts may carry the exact same legal status, while carrying radically different consequences and while one may turn to Sharia to learn whether an act is permissible or not",
      "or not, Sharia will not necessarily tell one what the practical consequences of an act will be. Thus Al-Qanafi explains while it may be equally permissible to build this house for that marry this woman or that or men or buy this pack animal or that any one of these actions may bring more or less benefit or harm and in none",
      "tell one which choice to make. On the contrary, arriving at the right choice will rely far more on non-shari'i differentiating Islamic secular deliberation. For as al Qarafi insightfully points out and I quote, good as a category is broader than the legal ruling.",
      "In other words, whether the issue is economics, cultural creation, everyday decision making, interpersonal relationships or politics there's a difference between knowing that a thing is permissible according to God's divine commands and knowing whether and to what extent that thing will serve a particular personal or communal interest. Speaking of politics, there's another insight to be gleaned from all this.",
      "Muslims will come to understand what serves their concrete everyday interests, largely on the basis of non-shari'i secular or again Islamic secular reasoning. The logic and calculus underpinning their deliberations may be substantively indistinguishable from much of the rationale relied upon by non-Muslims pursuing similar aims. On this understanding regarding many issues in the public domain Islam as religion",
      "to Muslim engagement with non-Muslims that it is commonly suspected of being, even assuming Muslims' sincere attachment to Sharia or God's divine commands. This is not to argue that Sharia poses no challenges for public debate but no authority including constitutions, supreme courts, or a public reason that claims the right",
      "free of challenges in a pluralistic society. My point, then, is that given what I argue to be Sharia's bounded nature and the fact that it does not cover everything, mere attachment to Sharia does not categorically foreclose the possibility of reasoned non-scripture based debate and negotiation over the public order. Let me try to concretize",
      "of this insight and the wages of it being overlooked with an example from American legal history. In a 2014 Supreme Court case, Holt v. Hobbs, the plaintiff Gregory Holt also known as Abd al-Medic Mohammed brought suit against the Arkansas Department of Corrections for denying him the right to grow a full half inch beard, the farthest he was willing to compromise in his interpretation out of divine command to grow",
      "When speaking before the court, his attorney suggested that Holt was making a reasonable compromise and that he should not be penalized for being reasonable. The late Justice Antonin Scalia responded as follows.",
      "supposed to have a full beard.\" We have seen, however, that the actual act of translating divine commands into practice routinely takes Muslims beyond the command itself in search of the optimal way to observe it given the circumstances at hand. The command to construct a functional economy for example does not absolve Muslims of the need to determine rationally what would be",
      "which deliberation itself takes them beyond the command itself. Nor could Muslims today rely on the state of technological development in seventh century Arabia and seeking to fulfill the divine command, to prepare themselves militarily to meet their enemies in battle. Nor would Sharia tell them how to develop the weapons or other systems they need. But Justice Scalia's assumption seems to be",
      "what routinely comes to the mind of most Americans, including many Muslims when they hear the word Sharia namely that there are no Islamically legitimate forms of rationally engaging with God's commands and no need or justification for rationally moving beyond these commands in any way even as part of the effort to comply with these commands rather everything that a Muslim must or must not do",
      "or even can, or cannot do is explicitly, concretely and uncompromisingly dictated by Shalia. My point here is not to challenge Justice Scalia on the merits of Holt's claim. It is simply to suggest the possibility of a different relationship and a different set of assumptions about the relationship between reason, law, religion and politics from the perspective of Islam.",
      "attachments to Sharia. But it was not this attachment, but Justice Scalia's understanding of what a strong attachment to Shariah meant that moved out in his mind the possibility of recent negotiation. Otherwise, Holtz approach was little more than the Islamic secular at work and routine rational conversation with a divine command as part of an effort to find the best way to implement",
      "distance between religion, law and politics it does suggest that law and Politics in Islam as religion include more than just a black letter dictates of divine commands. This is among the most basic assumptions of Islamic sector. But Holtz was only one iteration of the workings of the Islamic sector another",
      "disciplines as falling outside Sharia's concrete coverage. The celebrated pre-modern Shaafi'i jurist, Abu Hamid al Ghazali who died in 1111 of the common era provides us with an example here. Al Ghazal complains about those he refers to as ignorant friends of Islam, Sadiqun l islami jaib, who condemned the natural sciences and other disciplines developed by non Muslims",
      "Their understanding is that Sharia provides not only the parameters within which acts or ideas must remain, but the actual concrete substance of every act or idea that is to be deemed Islamic. On this understanding everything of non-Muslim origin fell outside of Islam. Al Ghazali responds however that in terms of concrete substance the religious law does not address any number of practical or intellectual issues",
      "intellectual issues, including various aspects of the physical sciences or other disciplines developed by non-Muslims. As he put it and I quote, God's concrete dictates do not address these sciences in a manner that will either confirm nor negate them. Of course Al Ghazali is not arguing that Sharia cannot judge scientific theories only",
      "theories on the basis of a fundamental truths of Islam, perhaps even rejecting certain theories or technologies on religious or ethical grounds. He is arguing however that Sharia does not tell us that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit or whether light is a wave or a particle. Rather for these things we must go beyond the dictates of Sharia and rely once again on non-Shari'i differentiated secular modes",
      "We should note incidentally, and this too is part of my thesis that while such scientific knowledge may be secular in the sense of not relying directly on revelation for its concrete substance it would not be secular to the sense a falling outside the watchful gaze of the God of Islam. Nor will it be secular, in the senses of falling outside range of the religious energies that go along with a conscious recognition of that divine gaze",
      "divine gaze. In fact, assuming the right aims those whose calling is physics or astronomy or even finance other than fiqh and hadith and things like that may be seen and they see themselves as engaging in activity that is properly religious since from the perspective of the Islamic secular religion is not limited to what is shari' alone. Of course having said all this for non-Muslims",
      "and many Muslims who do not have concrete knowledge of Sharia but would like to engage with Muslims on the basis of what I have depicted as secular reasoning, there is the question of when exactly exit the area of Shariah and enter into the domain of Islamic sect. I have no definitive answer to this question. Certainly not one which all Muslims would agree. But it should suffice to know that there is such a boundary",
      "when Muslims claim that they are speaking outside the boundaries of what is Shari'ah, they should be granted a prima facie assumption of credence. This is important for many of the most pressing legal and political issues in America today. Immigration, gun control, minimum wage, affirmative action, foreign policy, health care, emissions standards, and the like all fall to a significant degree into the domain",
      "can debate these issues based on modes of reasoning that are not substantively different from those relied upon by non-Muslims, or even fellow Muslims of other orientations. Without the clue of the Islamic secular however such categories as religion, law, Islam and Sharia all remain immune to disaggregation into Shar'i and non-Shar'i elements",
      "Anytime Muslims speak on issues of public importance, there will be those who suspect them, silently or out loud, of trying to impose divine commands, impose Sharia, or impose what God says on the public order. And the end result will be two-fold. On one hand certain powers in America will want to ban Muslims who have any attachment to Sharia from participating in public debate at all as we heard from a former speaker",
      "who stated explicitly that Muslims who have any attachment to Sharia are not welcome in America. On the other hand, Muslims themselves will resort to self-censorship and ultimately secularization in the modern Western sense as they fail to recognize the difference between Shari'i and non-Sharie dimensions of Islam or Sharia and how these can be differentially brought to bear on public debate.",
      "Let me now move beyond America and try to shed additional light on my thesis with an example from the Muslim world. In his book, The Arab Winter, Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman describes a situation in Tunisia following the abdication of Zain al-Abidine bin Ali that marked the beginning of the so called Arab Spring in 2011. To make a long story short for the first time since",
      "from France in 1956, an Islamist party headed by Rashid al-Khanoushi won the majority of seats in parliament and became the largest of three groups that made up a committee to draft a new constitution. It goes without saying that a major goal of any Islamist movement would be to Islamicize government which for many men installed Sharia as the basis of the constitutional order. The mere proposal however",
      "to mention Sharia in the Constitution led to public outcry and the secularist members of the constitutional committee rejected Sharia's mentioned outright. But Al-Nagla had the votes to prevail, and insisted that Sharia must be explicitly mentioned in the constitution. The vote of a full committee confirmed their wishes but al-Ghanoushi wanted neither to clash with the secularists nor to risk further alienating Tunisian society at large so he",
      "So he insisted that the vote be retaken and threatened to resign from the committee if it came out the same way. A new vote was taken, and in March of 2012, it was announced that Sharia would not be mentioned in the Constitution. Talmud does not provide in detail the precise reasons behind these respective positions. In his own writings however, El-Ghanoushi makes two points",
      "the Islamic Seculars acquiring more explicit and broader recognition as a legitimate tool for disaggregating the Shari'i and non-Shari'it dimensions of Islam in a manner that avoids overshariatization among both proponents and opponents of Sharia, thereby reducing fears, misunderstandings, and unfounded recriminations on both sides. First,",
      "freedoms in an Islamic state, al-Hurriyatu Al-'Amma Fi Dawla Islamiya, al Ghannoushi alludes to the fact that the secularists and seemingly many others understood Sharia to be totalizing, on encompassing, and to cover everything. On this understanding they reasoned that if an on encompassant Sharia is to be the basis of state sovereignty, the jurist or ulama must be the ones who oversee",
      "and policy, since only they could be assumed to be qualified to deduce Sharia from its sources. On this popular understanding many Tunisians came to harbor precisely the kinds of fears about political theology that I cited from Lila in my opening statement. An unassailable, unquestionable revealed law that covers the whole and every detail",
      "Sharia threatened to annihilate that space, where secular ideas and institutions are allowed to grow. That is when the distinction between the shari'i and non-shari'is observed and where the difference for example between Sharia's economic parameters on one hand and the actual content of economic policy on the other is duly recognized and operationalized.",
      "that Sharia speaks concretely and authoritatively to everything. With this, he also called into question the all-encompassing authority of the ulema as Sharia's representatives. He noted for example that Shariah prescribes no concrete institutional form for a parliament or governing body. And even the notion of the caliphate leaves open many questions of detail. For example how many ministries there should be?",
      "jurisdictions they shall hunt, and how long their occupants shall serve. In a similar vein he insists that not every kind of legislation that is needed for example regulations regarding the economy foreign policy or education can be produced on the basis of the kinds of skills and knowledge traditionally mastered by the ulema. As al-Ghanoushi saw things over inclusive notions of sharia and thus the authority of its representatives but not only opposition",
      "opposition to mentioning Sharia in the Constitution, but also opposition to the very idea of any Islamist government exercising political power at all. These concerns are confirmed and further amplified by a second point Elaganoushi makes in an interview in March of 2013. There he states quote",
      "that Tunisians from across the political spectrum agree that Islam is the religion of the state. They are apprehensive, however when it comes to Sharia given how badly it has been implemented in modern times To point that large cross sections of women and the elite classes are simply afraid of them.\" There are three points to be noted about the difficulties al-Ghanoushi saw himself facing",
      "It was clear to his mind, rightly or wrongly that most Tunisians did not seek a secular society in the modern Western sense of laïcité. But widespread over-inclusive notions of Sharia tended to push many of them precisely in that direction. Sharia had come to be perceived by many as an omnivorous leviathan that could not be tamed but can only be put down.",
      "He clearly recognized that Sharia as a bounded entity that did not speak to everything. In essentially the same sense, the classical Muslim jurists recognize this very same fact. Absent the advantage of informal theories such as Islamic secular however, Adel Ganoushi could only articulate this recognition in vague under-theorized terms that could not overcome the deeply ingrained suspicions among secularism others about Sharia's totalitarian",
      "Sharia's totalitarian pretensions. Nor could he assuage, on the other hand, the misgivings among Islamists who thought that Sharia should be the concrete basis of absolutely everything. This landed Tunisian society between the proverbial rot of theocracy and the hard place of secularism. Further relatedly, reminiscent of Al-Ghazal, Ghannoushi recognized",
      "In a concrete substance, there are whole spheres and disciplines that are critical to Muslim society and Muslim statecraft but to which Sharia does not speak concretely. And again without a formal theory such as the Islamic secular it is difficult to grant these spheres and discipline their proper due without also implying the diminished relevance and authority of Islam or Sharia",
      "There is no contention in all of this that al-Ghanoushi was right or wrong in deciding to remove Sharia's mention from the constitution. To my mind, however, these events underscore the fundamental importance of the Islamic sector. Even if I am only half right about what actually transpired in Tunisia it seems clear to me that had al- Ghanoush enjoyed the benefit of widespread recognition",
      "and its implications, it would have been easier for him both to assuage Tunisian fears about Sharia and to be believed in his promise to give due consideration both to Sharia, and to the kinds of skills disciplines and personnel needed to develop a country. Many of these skills, disciplines, and personnel could be recognized as non-Sharia and thus not the dictates of divine commands nor the preserve of their ulama",
      "their ulama. At the same time, they could be seen as religious—that is, as falling within the purview of the divine gaze of the God of Islam and thus not necessarily representative of secularization in the modern Western sense. In other words, on the widespread recognition of the Islamic secular as an analytical and generative tool everyone would know for example that",
      "or emission standards would not be unilaterally set by their ulema. Yet everyone would also know that in going beyond Sharia on these unrelated matters, Tunisians would not necessarily be a contravention of Islam. In fact, a further advantage of recognizing the Islamic sector would be that because the bulk of these kinds of decisions would be non-Sharian in nature they could change with time and necessity",
      "necessity without relying on Sharia on the one hand and without offending Sharia or Islam on the other. Of course this analysis has relevance beyond Tunisia, it can be applied to Muslim societies across the board for example well I have not really followed the developments in His Excellencies Anwar Ibrahim's Malaysia when I read some of the back-and-forth between members",
      "over such questions as to whether Malaysia is a secular or an Islamic state, it seems clear to me that these exchanges could benefit much from the insights logic and provisions of the Islamic sector. For if nothing else, the Islamic sect introduces alternatives to the zero-sum conception of the secular and religious as mutually exclusive rivals.",
      "While there's obviously more that could be said about all of this, let me see if I can conclude here with a note or two about some of the takeaways of my presentation. First...I thought you'd be glad when I say conclude. First, I acknowledge that I have not solved Lilla's problem of how to transition fully from political theology",
      "political philosophy, where politics is placed entirely in human hands and what God has to say is reduced to irrelevance. Frankly I think that there are too many divine commands relative to politics that Muslims simply remain unwilling to give up. And yet I have also called into question the idea that politics for Muslims is entirely an expression of political theology,",
      "divine commands. This applies to both Muslim majority countries and to places where Muslims are a minority. Ultimately, while the Islamic sector does not negate the relationship between Sharia and politics it frustrates the assumption that the two are identical. That Sharia is politics for Muslims and that politics for muslims is nothing but Sharia",
      "Second, I hope that I have made it clear that the notion that Islam has few traditional resources for establishing the independence of politics from detailed divine commands calls for reconsideration. So too does the idea that religion and rationality are mutually exclusive or as Justice Scalia put it religious beliefs aren't reasonable certainly if he meant, as I think he did, that divine commands are impervious to legitimate rational negotiation",
      "especially for those with sincere religious commitments. If we extend this insight to lead us broader questions about political philosophy, I think there's a case to be made that Islam in the form of the Islamic sector can revert many of the problems of political theology and do much of the work of political philosophy without compromising Islam status as religion. In fact, Islam can engage with political philosophy not as a gesture",
      "not as a gesture towards Western secularization, but rather in the very name of Islam as religion. This brings me to my final point. Certainly regarding the Muslim world, the idea of a full transition from political theology to political philosophy may not be as categorically appealing as many in the West may think. This is not only because it implies",
      "vision of society, but also because many still see practical advantages to preserving political theology. In the West, the very mention of Sharia tends to conjure up disturbing images of stonings amputations and the subjugation of women. In Muslim world however as one non-Muslim Western scholar notes in his study of a modern Muslim state, Sharia is often viewed as the most reliable guarantor",
      "rights. In fact, this scholar notes that the influence and prestige of Sharia's traditional ulema operate as the most effective constitutional check on the ruler. In other words, the concept of God-given rights acts as a bulwark against dictatorial drift and the parallel erosion of rights. Even in",
      "then postmodernist thought, there is a growing sense that the notion of rights is under threat. The idea that all rights are based either on reason or convention rather than being grounded in nature or anything transcendent which Americans still collectively believe makes it difficult to anchor and sustain a reliable regime of rights. In this context though it may be far from an entirely problem-free construct many",
      "to locate this anchoring in a concept of God-given rights. Building on the insights and logic of the Islamic secular, however, while such commitment to political theology will imply that what God says remains relevant to politics it need not imply that only what God said is relevant to politic Conversely, with all due respect to Lillard from the perspective of the Islam secular",
      "secular it is not necessary it is NOT necessary to place politics entirely in human hands in order for what humans have to say about politics to remain relevant to how we go about constructing our political"
    ]
  },
  {
    "file": "herman_jackson/The Future of Violence In Islam_ Sherman Jackson_ _BYIflqnvMgI&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750837258.opus",
    "text": [
      "Good morning. It's my pleasure this morning to introduce to you Professor Sherman Jackson. He is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture, and professor of religion in American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.",
      "the Arthur F. Thurneau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. He taught at various American institutions before that, and before that he got his PhD in Islamic studies at the university of Pennsylvania. I first encountered professor Sherman's work in an article he wrote comparing American concepts",
      "Islamic concepts and laws regarding terrorism, and that's become a staple in my classes. But I believe he is probably more well known for his various books including Islamic Law in the State, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shahab al-Din al-Khlaafi from Brill at which point he changed allegiances to Oxford and everything seems to come from Oxford since then. So On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam Abu Hamid Al Ghazali's Faisal al Tawfriqa",
      "of Africa and then more recently Islam and the black American looking towards the third resurrection in 2005 at Islam and The Problem of Black Suffering in 2009. And most recently just last year Sufism for non-Sufis he has been recognized as one of the leading experts on Islam in America and in 2009 he was named among the 500 most influential Muslims",
      "Study Center of Amman, Jordan and the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. So I'm sure you agree with me we're really pleased to have him with us this morning and he will be speaking on My Body This Paper This Fire The Future of Violence in Islam. Please join me in welcoming Professor Sherman Jackson.",
      "Thank you very much, Heather for that kind and gracious introduction. I want to apologize beforehand for my voice. I moved to the Los Angeles area about a year and half ago and I've been much warmer since",
      "I'm not sure what to make of all that. I hope my voice holds up and I apologize in the interim for any inconveniences that might come out of that. Um, um...I'm going to jump into my paper directly but let me say beforehand that my area of specialization is primarily as Heather indicated Islamic studies and my focus has been primarily on Islamic law and theology both in the pre-modern and modern context.",
      "Anyone familiar with the writings of the late Michel Foucault will recognize the first part of my title as coming from an article he wrote in response to the late Jacques Derrida, and before him Descartes. Apparently over the role nature and authority of human reason I must confess that as a non philosopher and perhaps even more so as a Non-continental philosopher I understood precious little of this article",
      "eminent company in this regard. But every serious scholar of the Islamic religious sciences is also at least an amateur literateur, the pre-modern liberal arts trivium of grammar logic and rhetoric being fundamental to a classical Muslim education. On this connection not only was I moved by Foucault's allegorical associations his verbal naughtiness took me back",
      "graduate student and the many pre-Islamic, classical, and even contemporary friends I made from the ancient and classical Arab poets Al Aasha, Abu Nawaz, Abu Tumam, and of course Al Mutanabbi to such controversial moderns as Adonis. And me? I am the master of light but in order to touch the farthest reaches",
      "step outside my own footsteps and I crown myself king in the name of my light cast upon the darknesses. On more substantive grounds, that was Adonis by the way not Foucault. On most substantive grounds Foucalt had raised the question of the distinction between dreams on the one hand and madness on the other. Madness is of course a cognitive decoupling from reality whereby we indulge all kinds",
      "and associations that have no basis in the real world. The same is true, however, of dreams where we slay dragons climb tall buildings made of yogurt and have sex with people whose names and faces we can't seem to remember. To the extent that we all dream and dreaming is indelibly woven into the human condition Foucault seemed to be implying that badness or at least our exposure to something akin",
      "Even as healthy, rational beings we may be far more susceptible than we think to the perilous paradise of magical thinking. A quotidian consciousness routinely guided if not actually driven by an unconscious pre-rational indulgence of utter nonsense. Hyperbole aside part of what Foucault seems to be suggesting here is that the value and integrity of our words and understandings are significantly indebted",
      "of mind, or if you will the state of consciousness in which we produce or acquire them. This to my mind bears an important if not obvious significance for any attempt to discuss a matter such as the relationship between Islam and violence especially in this our post 9-11 world and even more especially perhaps across the various religious and civilizational boundaries that define",
      "invariably attempt to speak across any number of liminal spaces, that is between Islam and the West, between Christianity or Judaism and secular liberal democracy. Indeed, between our heartfelt desire for peace and fraternity and our quiet addiction to power and domination. All of this raises clear and unavoidable challenges not only for the accuracy",
      "also for the degree of credibility we might reasonably expect these to command. To a large extent, the future violence in Islam is very much a function of how not only Muslims but also non-Muslims understand and relate to their respective pasts. This is because the relationship between Islam on the West on one hand and modern Muslims and the classical legacy of Islam",
      "formed by umbilical ties to some or another construction of history. This is not just another way of repeating the notion that the Crusades explain everything, it does take seriously however the fact that what eventually became the West did so at least in part in response to Islam if nothing else the very discovery of America and the New World should stand as testimony",
      "group among them, continue to nurse pre-conscious cues and sensibilities from their European past. Modern Muslims remain locked in an epic conversation with a religious history bent on having a serious say in defining their identity in the modern world. Here one need look no farther than such designations as Salafi which is all about the news today, which highlight",
      "directing modern Muslims towards a proper understanding of the religion, a perspective incidentally by no means limited to those who explicitly identify as Salafis. In sum, historically informed pre-conscious commitments and instincts continue to bind animate and inform both sides of this difficult conversation, the Islamic as well as the Western. Unlike our dreams however we might,",
      "able consciously to alter some of the more problematic effects of this. Exactly what do our respective pasts and commitments contribute to the future of the relationship between Islam and violence? In an article entitled, Jihad in the Modern World which I wrote over a decade ago just after the tragedy of 9-11,",
      "of and justification for jihad in the pre-modern versus the modern world. I had been prompted to write this piece by a segment on NPR during which a woman called in and asked quite pointedly, and half exasperated why the institution of jihad existed in the first place? After all she intimated, had Islam not sanctioned the jihad to begin with we might be spared",
      "sensing apologies on the part of Muslims, Islam means peace. Islam is a religion of peace and the hijackers would have had a much more difficult time justifying their dastardly deeds to themselves or to anyone else. Of course tucked in the seams of all this was the insinuation that there was something sui generis about Islam as a religion because jihad was essentially",
      "that any stasis, let alone increase in the degree of religious commitment on the part of Muslims could only mean a continuation if not an increase in their degree of danger they pose to America and the West. Closely examined however one detects this way of thinking as subtle but significant element of projection. In fact one senses that jihad is not so much a problem because of its alleged connection",
      "because it is grounded in the Islamic religion. For this fact binds Muslims to a theology and psychology of militarized confrontation that makes them impervious to rational engagement or any other secular calculus, or process of negotiation. After all, religion at least according to that enlightenment narrative then informs the sensibilities of many if not most Americans today",
      "to things secular. To this one might add the fact that, as everyone knows, Muslims remain deadly serious about matters of faith even as the West continues in its fashionable move away from the quaint medieval obsession with religion. Returning to my anonymous interlocutor on NPR, my point of departure was the plain and simple fact",
      "sanctioned by the God of Islam. The question, however, of whether this placed it beyond rational critique and engagement was a separate matter altogether. In the Islamic legal tradition jihad falls under the classification of civil transactions, the so-called mu'ammalat in country distinction to religious observances or ibadat. Among the chief distinctions between these two categories is that while there",
      "underlying religious observances is fixed and basically impervious to social political change, civil transactions both in terms of their substance and their application are subject to constant recalibration based on the extent to which the reason for which they were instituted is likely to be served. Because the reason underlying religious observations is the extolment of God",
      "to carry out religious observances permanently lapsing. It is possible, on the other hand, even if not likely for murderers and rapists to disappear from the face of the earth at which time the aim behind the respective rules governing these actions would be realized and there will be nothing to which to apply them.\" In other words jihad could lapse. Of course the whole key",
      "underlying the rules governing civil transactions. And this raises perhaps, the fundamental question about jihad. Is it for the purpose of emptying the earth of non-Islam? Or is there some other raison d'etre behind this institution? It would be convenient but plainly misleading to say that there was or is a unanimous consensus on this issue in either pre-modern or modern Islam.",
      "however, a dominant thrust among the pre-modern doctors of Islamic law. And there is a similar trend growing among modern Muslim clerics and activists including many who might otherwise be classified as radicals. And yet the premodern jurists penchant for disguising rather than acknowledging change, a tendency shared by all legal traditions according to the legal historian Alan Watson has placed",
      "recognition of many Western critics as well as many modern Muslims, including both those who produce as well those who merely consume the latest Islamic currents and trends. In Jihad in the Modern World I pointed out relying on part on the work of modern western historians",
      "Muslims lived in a world that could be characterized as constituting a state of war. As one noted Western historian of Islam put it, and I quote,",
      "had been reached. Several Quranic verses confirmed this state of affairs, for example and I quote do they not see that we established a safe haven in the sacred mosque while people all around them were being snatched away? And similarly they say oh Muhammad if we follow the guidance along with you we shall be snatched",
      "Arabians in desperation to institute the so-called forbidden months, in an effort to enable them to sustain the annual Pan-Arabian pilgrimage. This innovation outlawed all acts of aggression initiated during the 11th 12th 1st and 7th months as the annual pilgrimage took place in the twelfth lunar month",
      "and from Mecca in peace. The Quran confirms the sanctity of the forbidden months, and in so doing underscores the persistence of the overall state of war well into the time of Muhammad's mission. Along with its emphatic monotheism, Muhammad's message introduced another entirely new element into the Arabian theater, namely a community known as Muslims. Coming as they did from all their local clans",
      "constituted for a time, a rather anomalous entity in a deeply conservative and deeply tribal society. In this context the situation would ultimately gravitate towards the reality that the only people Muhammad's followers could assume would allow them to thrive as Muslims would be other Muslims themselves. Thus while the Quranic injunction to wage jihad pit Muslims against non-Muslims religion was hardly the only element in this confrontation",
      "in this confrontation. As de Tocqueville wrote of 19th century France, and I quote, the unbelievers of Europe attacked the Christians as their political opponents rather than their religious adversaries. In a similar vein, speaking of the situation in the early United States, de Toccille cites the view of those who justified subjugating the Indians of the western frontier",
      "that the new territories should be religious in order that they may permit us to remain free.\" Of course, Muhammad and the Muslims after him would strive to bring as many of the infidels as possible into the true faith. The question however is whether this was with nothing short of conversion fulfilling its basic purpose.",
      "The period after Muhammad's death would witness the massive expansion of Islam, or perhaps one should say of Muslim power as the actual rate of conversion on the ground would not bring the conquered territories to a simple majority for at least a couple of centuries. Of course in theory non-Muslims were required to pay a special tax, the so called jizya, in exchange for security and the right to practice their religion. Still",
      "of war persisted, no less in the world of late antiquity than it had in Muhammad's Arabia. And jihad remained thus a priority for Muslims and yet that its purpose was widely understood to be the preservation of the physical integrity of the Muslim community rather than converting the entire world to Islam might be gleaned from such explicit articulations as those of the famous 12th of the Common Era century Spanish judge",
      "Spanish judge and jurist Ibn Rushd the Elder, a major authority in the history of Islamic law. And the grandfather incidentally of the celebrated Averroes of Western fame. Summing up a lengthy discussion of jihad in his highly influential manual called Al-Muqaddimat or First Things, Ibn Rusht writes the following, thus whenever we are placed beyond the reach of the enemy",
      "are secured and the gaps in their fortifications are filled, the obligation to wage jihad falls from all of the rest of the Muslims. Ibn Rushd clearly reflects here the sense that the basic aim of jihad is to provide for the physical integrity of the Muslim community in a world perceived as holding Muslims under constant threat. Just how deeply ingrained this perception was might be measured by",
      "himself issued fatwas in which he banned Muslims from taking up residence abroad, prohibited them from traveling to foreign parts to do business and required those who converted to Islam while living in non-Muslim territories to migrate to the lands of Islam. Such sensibilities might be difficult for us to understand today but we might be reminded that while Christian Jewish and even Zoroastrian communities",
      "of community in Muslim Iberia, Cairo or Shiraz. As Norman Daniel points out in his classic book Islam and the West Christian tolerance of Muslim communities in the pre-modern west was quite a mercurial affair. In the long run he writes and I quote it was only Islam that tolerated other religions within admittedly only with second class citizenship.",
      "question of why Islam sanctioned jihad to begin with was that the religion itself was born into a world where organized violence underwrote a community's ability to survive and sustain itself. Indeed, given the overall state of war prevailing both in Arabia and then the world into which Islam subsequently spread it would have been odd if not grotesque if such an institution or its functional equivalent had",
      "Rather than limit oneself then to Islamic scripture or religion, as my NPR interlocutors seem to have been prone to do, a more accurate understanding of jihad requires an appreciation of Muslim history. Indeed it would be more with history than with scripture that the jurists would remain in conversation as they went about the business of negotiating the contours and application of jihads as an institution.",
      "Of course, this understanding of the role and purpose of jihad was not and is not shared by all. As one influential Western scholar describes it in its classical guise, Jihad, here I quote again,",
      "existence is a cause for war and its aim is to incorporate the infidels in the abode of Islam, preferably as converts but alternatively as dhimmis until the whole world has been subdued. This view was actually confirmed by one of the four orthodox Sunni schools of law. The going opinion of the classical Shafi'i school",
      "of unbelievers, not their aggression was not only a justification but it bonafide legal cause obligating jihad against them. In essence if not precisely informed this is also the view of those modern Muslim radicals who hold it to be a communal obligation upon Muslims to wage perpetual war against the entire world until the whole globe embraces Islam or agrees",
      "it is not at all the case that only non-Muslim Western critics of those who simply have an adequate access to the sources and or tradition of Islam understand jihad as a fundamental contradiction of the principle of live and let live. And yet, the minority position of the Shafi'i school aside there is an extent to which Western alarmists and violent Muslim radicals seem",
      "historical consciousness. Western critics often appear to embrace a form of historic, historical determinism according to which Islam cannot in good conscience or with any integrity involve beyond what it was at some arbitrarily chosen point in the past except as an admission of inadequacy or dereliction and this sense",
      "Jewish and Christian traditions may be accepted as having evolved to the point that not every medieval interpretation is understood to constitute binding orthodoxy. But if Muslims signal a similar move, this is viewed as suspect, if not duplicitous, taqiyya, as many have branded it. Meanwhile, in their own way, violent Muslim radicals note a similar, if",
      "Islamic past continue to bind them to a singular reading of the Muslim present, divergence from which is condemned as an act of religious treason. But this was clearly not the approach of the pre-modern masters themselves, from whom the authority for this frozen historical consciousness is supposed to be derived. As we saw clearly in the case of Ibn Rushd and I could cite countless others, changes",
      "could warrant, and indeed necessarily warranted, substantive changes in the applicability of the obligation to wage jihad. In Jihad in the Modern World, I argued that such change had actually occurred in the form of modern notions such as territorial sovereignty and modern institutions such as the United Nations. This, I argue, effectively replaced the medieval state of war with a modern state of peace",
      "peace, at least in the sense that peace not war now constitutes the presumed norm. Recognition of this fact certainly given the example of the likes of Ibn Rushd and the classical tradition would seem to go a long way in reducing the role of violence in Islam as the preferred medium of exchange but a Western or a Muslim historical consciousness that freezes and shackles Islamic",
      "Islam and the world will only be able to look upon such changes agnostically, if not with a deep sense of resentment, if content. There are however signs that the wages of this frozen historical consciousness are increasingly being recognized and explicitly rejected by modern Muslims. And perhaps one could cite no better example than the highly influential Egyptian born cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi who was actually",
      "was actually born in 1926. In his most recent opus, his two-volume Fiqh al-Jihad or The Jurisprudence of Jihad, Shaykh Al Qaradawi sets out to privilege what he terms moderation or the middle way as the normative position for Muslims. Regarding jihad, he places this position between what he depicts as two extremes. On one end are those who would jettison jihad altogether",
      "together, limiting themselves to a spiritual struggle against the enemy within. On the other extreme are those who see organized violence as the only medium of exchange between them and their adversaries both Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Al Qaradawi dismisses both of these positions",
      "as he calls them, that form the primary focus of his attack. Al-Qaradawi's primary targets is the tendency to accept the historical reality and perspective of the ancients as the historical perspective of Islam, and from there to process the data of scripture on the basis thereof. On such an approach modern Muslims can hardly move beyond the conclusions of their pre-modern forebears for if the latter lived in a world",
      "as constituting a state of war and process the scriptural injunctions on jihad on that basis, modern Muslims who uncritically follow them will invariably be led to similar if not identical conclusions. But Al-Qaradawi is clear that pre-modern and modern Muslims are separated by distinct social political realities. As such, the textual interpretations",
      "any unassailable authority in the modern world. As he put it, and I'm going to quote here,",
      "is necessarily appropriate for another, and that everything that is appropriate to one place is necessarily appropriated to another. Especially given that the changes that have obtained in these modern times are so very substantial indeed.\" For Al-Qaradawi ignoring the space time differential between premodern and modern times leads to the problem of subsequent generations getting shackled",
      "in the name of a normative commitment to religious texts, and then laboring under the assumption that all juristic or religious meaning is independently dictated by the text themselves. On this understanding, the only way to challenge or revise a particular rule is to challenge the authority or authenticity of the text upon which it is based. Not only does al-Qaradawi dismiss",
      "flawed, he points out that it is not likely to go far with the majority of committed Muslims. As an alternative, al-Qaradawi insists that it's contemporary and not pre-modern reality that must serve as the basis for modern Muslim deliberations. And for him, contemporary reality is simply no longer the medieval state of war. While prejudice",
      "the case that all non-Muslims are simply lying in wait to pounce on Muslims militarily at the first opportunity. Nor is it the case, that Muslims cannot establish and sustain a sense of community in non-muslim lands. Nor given the advances in modern technology and communication can it be presumed that the powers and principalities that oppose Islam can prevent Muslims from spreading their religious message as they might have been able",
      "to be sure there are indeed hawks to be found among non-Muslims. And against these, Muslims insist al Qaradawi must remain ready to prosecute the jihad but this Al-Qaradaw intimates is the exception rather than the rule and in this light he declares boldly and explicitly that in these our modern times jihad is primarily a defensive mechanism directed",
      "who attack the persons, property, lands or religion of the Muslims in an attempt to undermine the latter or block the path to it. Or to those who oppress the weak among the Muslims or their allies.\" Of course we should not be so taken by the perceived novelty of al-Qaradawi's approach that we are led to misread him. Indeed, it is important to recognize",
      "frame of reference to be something that Muslims can either engender or sustain unilaterally. As an ontological reality in actual existence outside the Muslim mind, the modern state of peace as opposed to the pre-modern state of war is fundamentally informed if not instantiated by the actions of powerful Western nations especially the United States. Thus if the Muslim rereading",
      "is to enjoy any depth and permanence, non-Muslims according to Al Qaradawi will have to conduct themselves towards Muslims in a manner that does not represent an effect of return to the medieval state of war. Al Qaraadawi is of course a formally trained cleric as such his articulations might be looked upon as exceptional being limited to the most formally educated and those who follow their cue",
      "in the present context given the fact that violent Muslim radicalism has been virtually the exclusive preserve of non-clerical actors. Bin Laden, for example was an engineer. Amin al-Zawahiri is a medical doctor and the Taliban are known quite known for being quite juristically challenged I would like to end my presentation thus with what i hope will confirm my claim of",
      "consciousness that denies the primacy of violence as a normative medium of exchange between Islam and the other. Many of you are perhaps old enough to remember, or perhaps not, the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. This event along with others such as the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1979 takeover",
      "was among the major confirmations of the arrival of radical Islamic revivalism. The group that assassinated Sadat, Tonzim al-Jihad or the Jihad Organization, was actually an amalgamation of a number of groups, the largest and most influential of which being the so called Gamal Islamiyah. Following Sadat's murder, the Gamal ended up swelling Egyptian prisons",
      "that between 15 and 30,000 of its members languished in Egyptian jails. Throughout this period however their bloody confrontations with the Egyptian state and society continued to the tune of taking literally thousands of lives including Coptic Christians, secularists, foreign tourists and even high government officials not to mention innocent Muslim bystanders but on July 5th 1997",
      "leadership of the Gamaya Islamiyah stunned the nation. They announced a unilateral, unconditional end to all violent campaigns both within and outside of Egypt. This was the beginning of what they would come to refer to as the initiative to stop the violence. In 2002, the Gamayya leadership most of whom were still in prison issued",
      "in which they set out to correct the misunderstandings that had guided their actions in the past. Chief among these is the idea that jihad is a means and not an end, the normative end for Muslims being to guide, not coerce humanity into a proper relationship with God. Jihad might play a supportive role as for example when Muslims are prevented from calling others to the faith but this is obviously",
      "rate, jihad should never be executed at the expense of Islam's primary mission and it should never prosecuted under circumstances where it is not likely to serve its stated goal. This is what the Gamal leadership says it failed to understand in the past and this is why they proclaim that they were wrong to kill Anwar Sadat and wrong to declare war on Egyptian society. A major part of the Gamals self-critique however",
      "of the necessity of processing the data of scripture in light of the actual social political circumstances on the ground, as opposed to assuming that it is one's religious duty to pursue some changeless transcendent application of Scripture or that the circumstances of the past continue automatically into the present as the normative presumably Islamic basis of deliberation. To this end,",
      "In 2004, shortly after his release from prison, Karam Zuhdi, the uncontested leader of the Gamal stated explicitly, I quote, Islamic history is not an authoritative source of Sharia rules. End of quote. Rather it is contemporary reality as assessed by contemporary Muslims that must be looked to as the ground for concretizing the meaning of scripture. Indeed in the first installment",
      "of corrective manifestos, the Gamal leadership insists explicitly and I quote here",
      "must be based. Indeed, all rulings and all fatwas must recline upon two fundamental constituents. One reality on the ground in its implications and to Quran, the example of the Prophet and other recognized sources of Sharia. To this heightened sense of historical consciousness, the Gamar adds the value of religious practicality. In a word they conclude that their violent confrontations with",
      "with the Egyptian state and society ultimately served no purpose. And, ultimately, the reason it served no-purpose was that violence has simply lost much of its effectiveness in the modern world especially where the aim is to change hearts and minds. Again there may be circumstances where the duty to engage in jihad cannot be put aside but this should not seduce one into thinking that violence can serve as some kind of geopolitical panacea given the realities",
      "of the modern world as we have come to know it today. It is this insight that ultimately takes the Gamaa beyond Egypt, to a critique of contemporary jihadism in general and of Al-Qaeda in particular. This is exhaustively laid out in a book they published in 2004, Al Qaida's Bombings and Strategies... I'm sorry, Al-qaeda's Strategies and Bombings Mistakes and Dangers. Again their basic",
      "is that the latter misunderstands the rules and purpose of jihad while also ignoring or misapprehending contemporary reality. This leads Al-Qaeda to a misapplication of jihads, and to consequences that actually undermine rather than serve its basic purpose. Of course none of this is meant to suggest Gamal approval of America's negative or imperial role in the region. They repeatedly point to America's bias vis-a-vis",
      "the Arab-Israeli conflict, its hypocritical self serving promotion of democracy human rights and the protection of religious minorities as women. Not to mention United States economic exploits and ambitions in the region. In the face of all this the Gamal's message is emphatically not one of grin and bear it is simply to question the effectiveness from the standpoint of reality and the validity",
      "in violence and bellicosity advocated by Al-Qaeda. For if the overall aim of this jihadism is, as it must be from the standpoint of religious law to promote the interest of Islam not only has it not done this but it's gone so far as to turn the entire world not only against Al-qaeda but also against Islam as a whole. Space will not permit a full expose",
      "radical, and by some measure extremist group has abandoned the frozen historical consciousness that continues to underwrite the tendency to see Islam as being inextricably wedded to violence. Rather than overstate my case however I would like to close with a few observations comments perhaps maybe. First none of what I have said here should be taken to imply or suggest that the global Muslim community ceases",
      "their duty, in fact their religious duty to wage perpetual war against the West. I would suggest however that the efforts of formerly trained clerics such as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi and especially the interventions of groups such as the Gamay Islamiyah given their massive street credibility among radical groups have sparked a new conversation in Islam. While it would be naive to think",
      "extremist ideology, it is likely to go a long way in complicating the efforts of young radical jihadis to imply that only sellouts or hypocrites are those who are lukewarm in their commitment to Islam could possibly object to their understanding of Jihad as war against the world. Second, the articulations of Sheikh Yusuf's and the Gamal Islamiyahs are authentic",
      "Muslims, these advocates and all who identify with them should be taken at their word when they state that this is the Islam to which they are committed. Finally it may be time for the West to rethink the notion that only secularization or the manufacturing of moderate serious commitment to their religion will ultimately cure Muslims of their addiction to violence and therefore provide",
      "The critiques we have seen in this presentation are thoroughly grounded in Sharia, and the advocates thereof have done so out of the very deepest and most sincere sense of religious commitment. Thank you very much."
    ]
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    "file": "herman_jackson/The Islamic Secular-Dr_ Sherman Jackson_1xcVDV3xhXc&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750814632.opus",
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      "yeah so let's talk about the islamic secular i mean just a little bit you know you know people don't realize this man you know that book is over 500 pages long man yeah yeah i know that yeah when you when you write a book man um you know for the first year or two what me me uh well first year too it's like get that thing away from me you know",
      "I think it's relevant. I think is relevant to this conversation, at least in my interpretation of it. That's why I wrote it. Right, of course. Of course. That was why I write it. And of course similar to other terms like indigenization. Oh yeah, it's like misunderstood. Right? Yeah. So secular. Yeah let me break that down first. You see and here's where...I don't want to play the victim but sometimes I am victimized",
      "victimized all right because people mistake their understanding of something from my understanding right okay because they understand secular in a particular way i have to understand it enough even more egregious because they hand over the definition",
      "is to be the only meaning it can have. Right, and so when I use it, I have to be using it for that meaning. And we act as if Islam has nothing to say about that. Yeah well how about etymology? What does etymolgy have to say? About it etymologies almost irrelevant right okay etymologi is is almost is is",
      "history of his use itself now because it could seem to me that your use of secular is linguistically authentic yes well two things right yeah i don't want to get into too many details but i will say this one of the things we mistake about the west and we do this on several levels is that we assume that the west is a single thing no you have dominant voices in the west all right",
      "have dissenting voices, even among the majority. You follow what I mean by that? Yes, right. Not everybody subscribes to the normativity of secular as non-religious or separating religion from state, even in the West. That's number one. So when you say the way it's used, well we mean the way",
      "that's fine all right but that doesn't mean that there are no alternatives to that dominant use that's number one right number two the west whether you like it or not okay and and and i don't like it exercises an almost uh unstoppable hegemony epistemological how people think",
      "Right now, people have two choices in life. To be religious or to be secular. The West has succeeded in making the claim and I don't mean just an intellectual claim but even modeling the claim that",
      "That the road to success, the road dignity, the role to progress, to development and everything that human communities want. Okay? These two in fact begins with the secular. Where does that put religion? It puts it right where we see lots of Muslims. Secularizing in order to progress.",
      "My point is that if we look at Islam's tradition and allow it to speak in its own voice, we will find alternatives to this dichotomy between the religious and the secular. Right? The Islamic secular is a religious secular.",
      "there are no non-religious spaces in Islam. There's no place where I can go, Abdullah, where Ican escape the watchful gaze of the God of Islam. Everything I do is on record. Now this is what the Islamic secular comes in some of those things are a direct dictate or product",
      "product of God's revelation, Sharia. But some of those things Abdullah I don't get from Sharia even if I get the parameters of how I'm supposed to discharge them from Shariah the actual substance I don t get from shariah. Question is that still a part of Islam or not? It doesn't take its cue from concrete dictates",
      "concrete dictates of Allah's revelation, concrete. You follow what I mean by that? But it is still something that we do for the sake of Allah, for the sakes of advancing this deen. So it's Islamic on one hand but it is not the dictate of revelation, a concrete dictate of Revelation on the other.",
      "It is Islamic secular. Yeah, I'm still reading the book. I mean, I've read a bit of it. Do you understand the point? Yeah, yeah, totally. I totally get it. Look at the signatures of a Muslim society. How do you know you're in a Muslim Society, Abdel? Well... The majority of the population that didn't rise to Islam... No! You don't know any Arabic, you don't have any of that stuff. You just dropped off...",
      "you know it's whatever they don't recognize any culture i'll tell you what the symbols of a muslim society right yeah one of the main symbols is what the dimension yeah right all right you hear that then you see the domes you see them interact all right I remember I sat on one of",
      "shouldn't be but it can get controversial i sat on one of the boards uh and education city wanted to they were commissioning all these fancy architects um to build a new mosque for masjid, for education city. And we were presented with the plans all right?",
      "the latest architectural I mean you know wow new age stuff right and I remember one sheikh I'm not gonna say his name he looked at him and said that these plans they don't look like a masjid all right now what's the point that I make it all right were there domes in Medina in the time of the prophet no well there are these towering minarets in Medinan Ataman",
      "and the prophet how do these things become symbols of muslim society it is the cultural ingenuity and appropriation of the muslims that did that right allah did not tell there's no hadith that says have a have a don't worry yeah there's this is muslim ingenuity",
      "as a symbol in a sense right human communities need these yeah you follow what I'm saying right yeah and so what i'm saying is that's part of what you need for the instantiation of Islam as a lived living reality you cannot do Islam on the ground with ahkam shara'iya alone again again that's coming back to",
      "about it's kind of throughout all of your works, you know. It's about indigenization is about normalization of Islam and so the true value it seems to me that speaking about what we call Islamic secularity, what you're calling Islamic secular is the fact that it does sort of empowers the believer in a way that he or she has not been empowered prior to that. I mentioned this in the book, you may have read it because part of the problem",
      "have is that we have so much talent. And by the way, when I say talent, I don't mean just the talent of rocket scientists and all these college educated people. Right? I'm talking about blue collar talent. All right? Underclass talent. We have so",
      "craft a plausibility structure of Islam or for Islam in this country but the vast majority of our talent pool does not think that their talents are Islamic right or islamically relevant yeah you follow what I'm saying and so what happens all that Talent gets siphoned off to non-Muslim deployments",
      "You follow what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. But I guess that's the distinction between obedience and obeisance. That's right. Right. So I mentioned in the book, and this actually happened. I'm not going to say any names because people attack me. They don't want to attack them. I don't get anybody into trouble. But but but I was in Philly. It must have been 25 years or so ago. And they were showing me around a major economic development project that they had",
      "they had i'm talking about you know job training centers i mean with actual computers you know they were they were training people you know to get jobs in hotels so they had you know hotel rooms laid out so they trained people how to you know how to do the hotel rooms and all this stuff right they had housing projects education major major economic project right and so i was i was amazed so i asked one of the imams who was taking me around and showing me this",
      "showing me this i said so what do the muslims believe what did what did muslim think about this he tells me what ain't no dean in it that's not dean you follow what i'm saying yes yeah"
    ]
  },
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    "file": "herman_jackson/The Islamic Secular with Sherman Jackson_0hWPQncZ1LA&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750816795.opus",
    "text": [
      "Are you not positioning the Western secular against the Islamic secular in a way where you don't really end up moving away from the religious-secular dichotomy so much as shift the epistemic contours? Not at all. I'm not sure how you can say that if what I'm saying is that",
      "in the Islamic secular. So there is no dichotomy in that sense. But in the Western secular, the secular is not religious. That's the whole point. Hello and welcome to Perhodean View. I'm Riyad Al-Aryan, editor-in-chief of Muftah Magazine, and I'm joined for this episode by my co-host and Muftaz senior editor, Ahmed El-Binni. On December 27th we spoke with Sherman Jackson, a theorist of religion who works at the intersections",
      "law, and race. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 and is currently Distinguished Professor of Islamic Thought as well as Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University Southern California. He is the author of many works including his 2002 book On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam, his 2005 book Islam and the Black American, and his 2009 book Islam",
      "to discuss his new book, The Islamic Secular, published by Oxford University Press in February 2024. Jackson's central claim in the book is that Islam has its own version of the secular, distinct from other common understandings and applications in both Western scholarly and quotidian discourses. Some Western theorists of religion and the secular have claimed that secularity constitutes and manages what we often call religion. By contrast, however, Professor Jackson argues that the Islamic secular is, by definition, a religious secular",
      "religious secular insofar as a certain God consciousness always regulates it and anchors its manifestation. His book represents an attempt to theorize this form of the secular in conversation with a range of recent works in Islamic studies, philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, and political theory. Our conversation with Professor Jackson focused mostly on the theoretical foundation of his argument as we pushed him to explain the meaning, coherence,",
      "And we welcome your comments, feedback and suggestions at proteanviewatmuftah.org. If you like this episode and would like to support our work, please consider subscribing and donating. You can find more information by visiting us at muftah.com. Or by navigating to the donate and join links on our homepage. Thanks for listening. This is Protean View.",
      "Thanks very much for agreeing to the interview. I want to jump into some of the more technical details of your book, but I think for the sake of our listeners we should probably start with a broad overview. If you could, could you tell us a little bit about what The Islamic Secular is about? What's your main argument and is The Islamic secular in your view an entirely novel concept or",
      "Islamic tradition? Well, first of all, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to come and share with your intellectual capital on a book that as I mentioned in the book itself is intended to be at the beginning of a conversation not the end of one. I think that in broad outline and I think we have to keep in mind the book is over 500 pages long so",
      "outline means a very broad outline. But basically, I mean the modern world is essentially divided into two sort of spheres. There is the secular and there is the religious. And I think that dichotomy comes out of the history of Europe and the experience of religion in Europe and how the West decided to handle sort of the problem of religion namely by carving out spaces or spheres where religion would exercise no authority.",
      "And so you have certain spheres, I mean the big ones being economics, politics and science where basically religion is sort of sequestered or cordoned off. And that was for the purpose of freeing society from religion and being able to pursue matters in these areas unimpeded by the kinds of strictures and restrictions that religion might impose.",
      "as this comes to Islam through the agency of forces of the modern world, the assumption is that this can sort of unproblematically be superimposed. And when I say superimpose, I don't mean politically, I just mean ideologically even. In other words, that the same schema, the same interpretive prism through which we read and analyze and understand the West will",
      "As we all know, Muslims internalize all kinds of aspects of the interpretive prison that was sort of brought to them and applied to them by the West. And so you have potentially the same idea percolating in Islam, that there is a secular and then there is religious sphere. The Islamic secular is designed to challenge the notion that the secular and the religious are necessarily dichotomous,",
      "or religious, but one cannot be secular and religious at the same time. Or an issue can be either secular or religious but there's no way of bringing a sort of quote-unquote secular and a religious perspective to bear on that issue at the",
      "sort of going longer than I had hoped we would go. But it's not an entirely novel idea. Going back 30 years when I was writing my dissertation on Shihabdin al-Qarafi, one of the things that really jumped out at me was the fact that he was very comfortable. In fact, not only comfortable, he insisted on the necessity and the importance of maintaining",
      "tell us and what it could not. And basically, you might I mean, it's more sophisticated than this but you might want to divide it into issues of law versus issues of fact. And so for example, to give a very simple example, you know, what is the time for the noon prayer? Or how many times a day does a Muslim have to pray? What al-Khawafi would argue is that we know about the obligation",
      "from the Qur'an, from the sunnah. We know about the times to pray from the Sunnah of the Prophets ﷺ. So for example, the Prophet's teaching instructs us that when the sun declines from its meridian to a certain degree, that marks the beginning of the time for the noon prayer. What al-Qarafi would say is that a jurist can tell us what the time",
      "from its meridian to a certain degree, that is a question of fact. And one need not be trained in the law to be able to determine that fact. So what you have is a distinction between jurisdiction of law and jurisdiction of fact, and what al-Qarawfi is concerned about is these two jurisdictions being confused whereby those who are training in law sometimes will set themselves up",
      "which they are not trained. Now, of course the example of the sun in the sky is a very simple one. I mean anybody can look in the skye and see that but when you get to more sophisticated complicated issues economics science this than any other Al-Qur'anfi is very keen on maintaining the distinction between what can be gained from the interpretation of scripture or the sources of Sharia",
      "a matter of empirical observation, etc. And so that sort of alerted me to the idea of boundaries not in the sense of the secularization of Islam where religion is shrunk and limited to a particular sphere but in the",
      "the time of the noon prayer, and what it cannot. Where is the sun in the sky? All right? The second major indication for me was the juristic discussion on the shukum sharay. I mean, when you read usul fiqh books, there's this discussion on al-shukum, i.e., shukam sharay, and",
      "what they call the shari'i, and they're very quite clear on the fact that the sharia is that knowledge of which we gain from the sources of Sharia, Quran, Sunnah etc. And then you have the non-shari'in and with some will called the aqli which is not based on the Quran and Sunnah. And again, they insist that the two jurisdictions should not be confused. So grammar, philosophy, medicine these are",
      "non-shari'i pursuits, and we cannot rely on the sources of sharia to learn the details, the concrete substance of these disciplines. And so here we come to the third pillar which is a distinction even in the Western discussion of the secular between what I call in the book the macro-secular, which is you know what we generally understand the secular",
      "disenchantment of the world, whereby we simply lose our religious sensibilities and we are no longer connected to the transcendent. And so life is all imminent. That's one mode of the secular. The other mode is what they call differentiation. And here, the transcendant is still there, but certain areas of concern are differentiated in that even if we still believe in God in general,",
      "general, even if we still believe in the Bible in general. The Bible—and by the way, this is not the doing of other theologians per se. This was the architects of the modern secular narrative who decided certain issues would be cordoned off, certain issues will be issues to which the Bible would not be understood",
      "It does not apply to certain spheres. Now, for me, the theory of differentiation dovetails with the distinction that the jurists make between the sharia and the non-sharia, i.e., the shari'i being that we can learn from the sources of Sharia, the non shari', being that that we do not. The difference however is that in the West",
      "was a non-religious zone. It was a zone in which basically religion stayed out, all right? My thesis is that there is no such zone as that in Islam. And so the adjudicative gaze of the God of Islam, the watchful gaze of a God of",
      "Even when I'm operating in the non-shari'i realm, I'm still operating under the conscious awareness of the watchful gaze of the God of Islam. And in that sense, my quote unquote secular non-shaari differentiated what I call micro secular actions are still religious. And that's where we come up with the Islamic secular.",
      "law. But before I do that, I just want to quickly ask for clarification, just so that our audience understands your use of the term secular has nothing to do with secularism as we often use it in the Western context. Essentially what we're dealing with here is a homonym, correct? Well, if you want to call it a homonymous, okay. Yes, it has nothing",
      "Some people may want to ask, and I address this issue in the book, then why use the term at all? Right. Right? Then why use it at all right? Well because two reasons one first that there is this notion afoot that the Western secular is the only secular that the history of the West can be universalized and therefore applied to every other civilization such that the meanings that emerge out of the west are applicable everywhere",
      "everywhere. So what the secular means in the West, it means everywhere. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, as Muslims, we subscribe to the view that the watchful gaze of the God of Islam is ubiquitous, that there's nothing that I can do that is beyond the scope of God's gaze. And in that sense, religion is ubiquitious. It's totalizing.",
      "with regard to everything that I do. But here the question becomes, okay, if religion in that broad sense has a universal scope, does that mean therefore that everything that i do even in pursuit of the instantiation of Islam on the ground is everything I do derived directly from scripture? And here's where we go back",
      "jurists make between the shari'i, i.e., that which is derived from Scripture and the non-shari' or the aqli, which is not? So medicine, for example, at least aspects of medicine, and there are no sort of ironclad boundaries here. I don't mean to imply that. But aspects of medicines, medicine or physics or economics, certainly modern economics, financial planning, those would be issues in terms of the concrete substance,",
      "And in that way, Muslims are not divided between a quote-unquote religious and a secular existence as they are in the West. The whole idea of separating church from state was that",
      "was that, well if you don't then every aspect of the political realm will be determined on the basis of scripture. Well the Islamic secular says no not necessarily there may be aspects of the",
      "of offices that develop. They're clearly not coming from Scripture itself. Some of these offices even have non-Arabic names, Atabeg and all these kinds of things. And so if you think about an issue like—let's take a modern issue—term limits, on what basis would we decide term limits? Assuming the Muslims adopt a modern democratic order,",
      "And how would that be derived from scripture? And so you have a non-shari'i issue being deliberated on the basis of non-sharia'at. But an act that is still under the conscious awareness of the gaze of the God of Islam. It's a religious secular, as it may be. I have a longer question to ask about that, but I'm going to let Ahmed jump in. I think you have A brief requestion to ask and then I'll come back to mine. Right.",
      "Right. So, Professor Jackson, my question is what motivates your definition of the Islamic secular as a psycho-spiritual orientation characterized by specifically by taqwa, qurba, obeisance? I mean, obviously, the notions of taqva and qurbra, they're indigenous to the PMR and Islamic tradition. But you bringing them together in this context and theorizing them systematically as the key constituents of the notion of the",
      "What's your own innovation? No. To be honest with you, and I'm sure that there will be people... Some who agree and some who don't agree. Again, I see my work primarily as one of excavation in a sense. Yes, I'm the synthesizer. I will acknowledge that. But the individual tropes are coming from Islamic tradition itself.",
      "go, I think it's either in the introduction or in chapter one. I think there's a quote in there from none other than Ibn Taymiyyah. And by the way when I say none other then Ibn Tamiyyah all I mean by that is that you know Ibn Taimiyyah is known for you know a lot of things being soft on religion is not one. Being inclined toward secular in the modern Western sense is not",
      "explicitly that there is no way that the Qur'an could address or the Qurayn and Sunnah could address every single solitary action that you must engage in on a daily basis. And do that for everyone. It's going to lay down parameters, it's going impart values, it will impart virtues and sensibilities. And then in terms of the concrete circumstances with which you are confronted",
      "You have to decide how to act. And in so doing, Imitania says this is why we have been commanded to seek that guidance from God. Even where, in other words, from God directly, not from Scripture because Scripture's not going to tell me what to buy my wife for her birthday. What should I buy? All right? Scripture's",
      "the concept of obeisance. And the Islamic secular does not work without that, because then it simply becomes another sort of version of the Western secular where God disappears. Okay, this is a good point for me to ask the question I wanted to ask. So I understand how your notion of the Islamic Secular aims to move away from the dichotomy between the religious and the secular as it's formulated in Western discourses",
      "discourses, but I sometimes struggle to see how it's accomplished. For example, in the book you talk or you cite rather Talal al-Assad among others to claim that the folly of religious secular divide and Western discourse is that it obscures how the secular co-constitutes the religious by regulating it, or in other words, how the circular is sort of the central node of the Western secular. And by contrast,",
      "religious is its anchoring force. And in that sense, Islam's secular is still a religious secular. But I think in saying this, and I'd be curious to see how you might respond here, are you not positioning the Western secular against the Islamic secular in a way where you don't really end up moving away from the religious-secular dichotomy so much as shift the epistemic contours? Because the distinction between the",
      "here is now one between, still between the religious domain in the sense of the Islamic secular and the secular domain in a sense of Western secular. Not at all. I'm not sure how you can say that if what I am saying is that the religious encompasses the secular and Islamic secular. Okay so there's no dichotomy in that sense. There's a dichotony",
      "i.e., as that which can be derived directly from Scripture, or even by analogy, and then not in Sharia, which cannot? Right. But my question is when you think about those two divisions in the Islamic secular as opposed to the two divisions",
      "That's not of the Islamic secular. Now, if you're saying that, well, to have a secular-secular versus a religious-seccular, you're still dealing with a secular and there's no real distinction, there's",
      "are unable to transcend the incumbents of the Western secular as the touchstone. That's the point of departure of everyone, and everything else is compared with that, as opposed to saying, okay, the Western has its secular, and that operates out of its own history, its universal values and meanings, etc.,",
      "out of its own civilization. It comes out of it's own universe of values and meanings. The theorists on whom I draw are jurists, writers of Usul Fitr. These are not people who have any interest in sequestering religion. They're very explicit about some of these things as",
      "some of these things, as you'll see in the book. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to push this much longer. No, but I think that if I might be to read a little something into your question based on some conversations with others, I think",
      "as the touchstone, as the standard, as a model against which everything else has to be compared. All right? Right. And then if I may just quickly interject it's not just that. It's also that it seems to me difficult to conceptualize the Islamic secular even though I understand your point and in fact I agree with what you're saying about the need to think about language beyond",
      "our current discourses say the secular must mean. But at the same time, it seems to me very difficult if not impossible to conceive of the Islamic secular if not against the Western secular and in that regard it's almost indelibly tethered to it. No no I would disagree with let me go back to the point that I was just making first alright? I mean look I think there is this desire or you want to call it a desire obsession or something",
      "But, I mean, the idea that there is some Archimedean point for which anyone can speak. That we can somehow get out of, I don't know, the world and view things from a position of nowhere and everywhere. And from that position of no where and therefore everywhere craft an Islamic vision",
      "by any of the devolutions that come from the Western hegemony in the world. I don't understand that impulse, I don' t understand that obsession because it's not real. There is no Archimedean point and what we must understand is there is a difference between the West being an interlocutor and if you're living in a world where particular civilization has become dominant",
      "has become ascendant, just like Islam was prior to modernity. Then if you're speaking on the global stage then you are in conversation with that ascending civilization and yet that ascended civilization does not have to be the dictator of all that you think of all",
      "had to be in conversation with the pagan Arabians. Had to be. And yet, he was able to change some of the meanings, change some associations through some of same language. So he stays in con-conversation with that but that is not the dictator of the values and meanings that he promotes. And I think that if you're not in conversation then you run the risk",
      "staying on your Archimedean point or at your Archimeadean point. You're speaking from nowhere and everywhere, and therefore to no one. I think we're actually closer to agreement than disagreement here. What's our disagreement? Let me understand. What is our disagreement. I still think that the choice to articulate the Islamic secular in the way you did in the introduction of the book as against the Western secular is a testament to the fact-",
      "When you say against, am I trying to defeat the Western secular? No. Okay.",
      "non-Muslims, but my Muslims themselves. And so you have this situation where Muslims feel that they're only acting religiously when they're praying and fasting. And anytime they go into the lab, well, this is no longer religious. To whose advantage is that? Certainly not Islam's. So if you go back, like you said to the introduction, when somebody like Sinan al-Ma'amari,",
      "architect. When he's doing his craft, do we really think that the watchful gaze of the God of Islam is not informing what he's going? Although he's now calling on the Quran or the Sunnah for the technical details of his technique or his craft. That's not quite where my disagreement lies but I think we've pursued this as far",
      "turn it over to Ahmed for now. Well, Professor Jackson, I think there have been some other recent efforts to theorize something like an Islamic secular, most prominently, for example, with someone like Hoshana Abbasi. Could you tell us a little bit about how you see your approach differing from on the one hand,",
      "for the Islamization of knowledge. Well, okay. I think that for Professor Abbasi—and let me just say this. I mean, I think he's a really bright upcoming scholar. I don't think there are nothing but positive things to expect from his output moving forward. And so, I disagree with Professor Abbassi,",
      "from some perch that seeks to denigrate or devalue his work. I simply disagree with it, all right? And that's not to negate the possible value of it. What is the nature of your disagreement with him precisely? I think the disagreement, the fundamental disagreement that we have if I understand them correctly and I'm sure if I don't, I will be made to understand them later in January when I go up to Stanford and talk about the book.",
      "of the book, our fundamental disagreement is that he tends to hold the dunya, the secular as a non-religious space in Islam. I do not see dunya or secular, non-shari'i as a Non-Religious Space in Islam That is the fundamental disagreement that Professor Abdasi and I have With regard to the Islamization",
      "Islamization of knowledge. On some level, there is some overlap in as much as Islamization Of knowledge proponents would talk about things like Islamic culture for example. Well I will also insist on the importance of an quote unquote Islamic culture",
      "culture. All right? So there's that sort of overlap. I think where we fundamentally differ, however, is that my understanding of the Islamic may be what you might want to call a little more passive. I'm not sure that's the exact word I want to use, but let me try and explain what I mean by that. If I'm operating in the arena",
      "permissible within Islam, all right? And I'm doing so with obeisance, okay? Fully aware of the watchful gaze of the God of Islam. While I'm also trying to turn my efforts to some kind of benefit, all Right? Islamically speaking either for myself or from my community, allright? Then what...the result of that action will be Islamic.",
      "All right. The Islamization of knowledge proponents, on my understanding at least, seem to have a more active sense of the Islamic. In other words, they decide what the parameters of an Islamic is substantively speaking. All right? And then try to get everything to fit that.",
      "All right. And so and so they would have a preconceived understanding of what an Islamic X, Y or Z would be and try to ensure that everything conformed to that. On the Islamic secular, there's no preconceved. All right, something that is not Islamic today could be Islamic tomorrow, according to the Islamic",
      "Originally even, originally at least, it might not even come from Muslims. As many things in the past did not. Yes, and that's actually I think a perfect place for me to ask this question. So you place significant emphasis on intention as an Islamizing agent so to speak. Specifically on the Islamic eligibility of any action that's undertaken as a sincere expression of God consciousness.",
      "of God consciousness. Correct? But you're not saying that any Muslim's good faith attempt to seek divine pleasure is Islamic, right? You're careful to clarify that Islam is not just what observant Muslims do. That's right. So as I read you then, to avoid reducing Islam to this purely interiorized Protestant-like religiosity that overemphasizes individual conscience at the expense",
      "You introduce this idea of the community as a sort of normative guardrail. So I'm going to read here from the book, you give this example.",
      "It could produce many ideas or actions that are provisionally Islamic in terms of their intention. In terms of Their intention and their utility. And their utility, but quote, through a process of communal sifting debate, pactal consideration and collective mood they might eventually, quote, fail to gain communal acceptance as normative expressions of Islam. So my question there is how are you defining the community?",
      "the community here, right? Like what and where is this community that is going to undertake this process? Did you talk about the ummah? No, no. Well, no, I mean when I say are you serious because we know that well let me put it this way as far as I'm concerned as faras I know there are no what they would call definitions of community. I mean that will neither be over inclusive or under inclusive alright so if we're talking about",
      "you're asking me for a definition of community, all right? No. Well, specifically I'm... Okay, okay, okay. But how is this specific... Having said that much, so having said that I think quite frankly here we'd probably be better off operating on a sort of common sense understanding of community and rather than focusing on the definition focus on the function. So what I'm saying",
      "What I'm saying is that, and again, I hope you took that quote in the broader context because we're not talking about Islam as an abstract ideal. We're talking about differentiation of Islam on the ground. And what I'm",
      "Is the Black American contingent distinct from the Arab contingent? Is the Arab Contingent then distinct from South Asian contingent, all right. So we have community and they have sub-community and we have sub community, allright. And there will be entities that will work in some of those sub communities that they will reify and they will... what's the word I'm looking for... They were sanctioned as Islamic. This is the norm that we will follow in this community",
      "They will be viewed in a certain way. Outside that community, however, or that sub-community, you'd have a different norm but still there the community would be the ultimate arbiters. So practically you're referring to a great variety of culturally and historically situated Muslim communities each of which will establish their own norms. I think that... I mean look we...",
      "I mean, is spicy food an Islamic norm? You see, that's what I'm saying. So it is that community in that location that says we want our people to enjoy their meal. They like spicy food. All right. It is normative then Islamically to have spicy food here. Now, of course, we run into problems in that sometimes you don't recognize",
      "And there are other communities for whom that is not the case. All right? But even there, it is the community that is the ultimate sort of arbiter. Right. And so you're not invoking anything as formal as Ishmael, for example. No. I mean, how can you have... Yeah.",
      "for the sort of fuzzy feeling that these are, as the young people say, these are my peeps. I mean, you know, these other people with whom my sensibilities, my fears and my memories resonate. And I think that is certainly clear on one level. But on another level there are potential liabilities in communities. Communities can become overly authoritarian.",
      "They can become overly rigid. They can be they can become, you know, paranoid in terms of their willingness or ability to entertain new possibilities that may be just as effective as the old ones, but simply different. And so community is sort of like marriage. I mean, marriage is lovely, you",
      "with regard to community. And I think if I might just go off tangent for a minute here, and I think that one of the problems we have now is that somehow the civics that would enable us to engage in those kinds of deliberations have broken down to the point that we can't have those deliberations. And what we end up with is, you know, a lot of hurt feelings on",
      "part of what the Islamic secular part is meant to mediate, alright? Because oftentimes whether we have spicy food or not, alright, it's not a haqqam shara'i. Spicy food is halal. Non-spicy food is halaal. We're dealing with a non-shara'id, alright. Islamic secular if I can say that now preference, alright how do we deliberate",
      "that? Well, we certainly don't do so by saying that those people who want spicy food are violating some hukum shara'i. Or those people don't want spicy foods are violating hukam sharai. They're committing an offense against God. Which is the way that we usually try to manage these disputes. That's how we terminate the dispute. We determine who's a bad Muslim and who's",
      "Who's a good Muslim? The good Muslim wins. The bad Muslim, the bad Muslim loses. But there are no good Muslim, bad Muslim between spicy and non-spicy food. And the Islamic secular is designed to highlight the fact that this is a non-shari'i issue that we're debating here. The hukam shari'a is clear. Mubarak! Spicy, non-specy, mubarak. Now the question becomes which one of those best serve",
      "the immediate interest of the community before us. Right, and of course the stakes become higher as you move up to questions of governance for instance. Yeah, of course! Do you have a sense of what's... And this is going to be one of the major challenges and I think that traditionally the way we try to handle it is sort of push everything back into the shari'i realm where we can have very explicit ahkam that say who's right and who's wrong",
      "one, okay? Those solutions not working. All right? Because they're not sufficiently sort of contemplated on the basis upon which they should be contemplated. All Right? And number two, we have to worry about them ossifying. Okay? I mean, no arrangement that we come up with today in terms of particulars, I mean just like in your house, no arrangements that we've come up",
      "And if we've said that, no, this is the transcendent Sharia, then what do we do 50 years from now? The Islamic secular enables us to disaggregate these things into Shari'i and non-Sharia elements. Recognize that the transcendence of this and the negotiable nature of that whereby in 50 years we can make certain adjustments without either relying upon Sharia or offending Sharia",
      "offending Sharia. If I could just ask a follow-up question to that, and as you say the problem is that we don't have mechanisms for this sort of deliberation. And would you say it's sort of a meta problem where the mechanisms for deliberation are themselves in the realm of what you'd call the Islamic secular? That's right. And that's what's needed to negotiate the Islamic Secular. So in which case how do you... How would you go about establishing those mechanisms for",
      "I can't answer that question, but what I will say is that, I mean, I can be a contributor to the conversation that arrives at, you know, what we should do. All right? But again, the answer to that would not come from some verse in the Quran or, you And therefore it is one of those issues. It is one",
      "And I don't want to put too much of an emphasis on this, but part of what I hope one of the advantages of the Islamic secular is if we understand it as Islamic secular, is that it enables us to debate these issues without accusing each other of being more or less committed to what Allah and his messenger have said. Because that's where",
      "the depletion of trust between Muslims, you know, if every time you and I get into a dispute, I'm made to feel that you're questioning my religiosity, my commitment to what Allah and His Messenger have said. Well, it's not going to be very long before I simply drop out. And I think that that's what we have pretty much across the board in large segments of the Muslim community. Well in the course of our conversation just now",
      "conversation just now, a few minutes ago. The word normative came up and I did want to ask about that. So as I read you, as far as the Islamic secular is concerned, you reject the existence of any non-religious, non-normative realm, correct? How is that? Well, the Islamic",
      "Yeah, but you see again what do you mean by religious? Well, again conventionally understood. No, no, we can't go back to the convention on that if we're dealing with the Islamic secular. Look I don't see where I reject any non-normative Sorry, did I say non-religious? I'm sorry. There exists of any religious non- normative. Sorry, I misphrased that question. Right, not non- religious. Non-normatives",
      "Non-normative, right? You reject the Islamic secularism. I recognize a non-normativ realm that is outside the Islamic. No, no, no. That's not what the Islamic sector is doing. When you say non- normative, I mean look, the Mubash imposes no obligation. All right? So",
      "in terms of its being normative. All right? It is, I want to make up a word here, it is permissive. All Right? But normative, it does not say that this is preferred to that. In fact, it says there is no preference between this and that. Allright? What the Islamic sector is saying, however, is this, that although there may be no sharia preference, all right,",
      "All right. Between this particular investment strategy and that particular investment",
      "a determined which of these is a good investment strategy, a profitable investment strategy a sustainable investment strategy and which it's not. That's not an abandonment of anything normative. It's just saying that the normativity here does not come from Sharia. Right but it's",
      "of that investment strategy. And we have to be able to engage in those kinds of assessments in order to properly instantiate a slam on the ground. If all we're left with is this is permissible, well then there are thousands different permissible strategies. As a community how do we then say okay we have the permission alright? We have the commission for all of these now how do you deliberate in terms of what we should do? So yeah",
      "So yeah, I guess I'm just trying to understand how you're defying normative. Because it seems to me that in the book, you make clear again that for example, Islamic secular is not only concerned with truth or meaning. That's right. That seems to ultimately restrict Muslims to devotional acts by defining Islam in terms of meaning making through hermeneutical engagement. Or morality for that matter. Yeah. In that case though,",
      "case though, can you say that Muslims when acting non-normatively can be acting Islamically? Wait a minute. What do you mean non- normative? Precisely! I'm trying to understand what for you are the boundaries of normativity? If it's not just... No no no no. Okay okay okay. Ahmed these are excellent questions and I'm glad you're insisting on forcing me",
      "me try to reiterate the point that I'm trying to make. The Islamic secular recognizes two realms, all right? Of religiosity. A Shari'i and a non-Sharia realm. Yes. If you're speaking of normativity on the Sharia realm then that is what we should do or maybe perhaps must",
      "and his messenger have said. But if we're talking about still religious but non-shara'i, then different metrics of assessment come to bear. Then we're looking at efficiency. We're looking profitability. We are looking at aesthetics or things that do not come from the shara'is side. Yes. And the problem that many Muslims have had is that they have thought",
      "that this is guaranteed by this. I don't know if you can see my hands, I can't see them. Yeah, I see them, I hear them. But do you understand what I mean by that? Yes, yes. In other words, that as long as we are compliant, shut on, the policy is good. It may be a disastrous policy. Is it permissible for me to marry this woman? I give this example in the book because Colette gives the same example. Is",
      "And, you know, she's not related to me and she's in iddah or any of those kinds of things. Shara'an? Perfectly permissible. All right? Many Muslims sort of assume then that if it's permissible for me to marry her or him, then this person must be a good mate for me. But then there are other metrics that have to be brought to bear on those decision-making processes.",
      "And the Islamic secular emphasizes the necessity of this metric of assessment as part of the religion. Yes, so the point is that permissibility is not the same as normativity. That's what I'm trying to get at. Even when the Islamic Secular is concerned with what you would call practical or prudential concerns,",
      "secular is to make space for Muslims acting in the non-Shari realm, based on non-Shari considerations, to assist or contribute to the establishment of Islamic norms. Or Islamic normativity. That's what I mean. So in that case, Islamic secular... You know, slightly different. But yes. Yes. But you see, when you say Islamic norms though, I mean, the problem with that is that the tendency",
      "The norms in Nigeria are not going to be the same as the norms in Indonesia, as we can see today. I was in one Arab country once and I was chewing gum. A woman said to me, Kamala, you can't chew gum for a man. You can't choose them in public. Okay, that's the norm. Is it haram to chew gum in public? For men? But again, no culture",
      "Culture can survive without norms, and I think that this is one of the things that we've suffered from. We have assumed that we can have Sharia norms alone, and that will be enough to govern everything. But communities can't function like that because they have likes and dislikes, preferences and non-preferences. And those things go into the kind of centripetal force",
      "cultural force that a culture or exercise over its members. Either that force draws them all in, or you ignore all those preferences, you ignore the likes and dislikes, and you end up with centrifugal force that tends to spin everything out. Okay. Do you mind if we switch gears and talk about some of the thinkers that you engage with in the book? I know that you engaged deeply with Wael Hallaq, Andrew March, Abdullah Al-Na'im, and Shihab Ahmed.",
      "and Shihab Ahmed, among others. But these four thinkers in particular I mentioned because they seem, in my mind, to represent a theoretical turn in recent Islamic studies, right? And I don't know if you would agree with that, but I also think that in many ways they continue in an older tradition of what I sometimes call compatibilist inquiry",
      "or dominant idea, or framework. So first I want to ask why you think questions about Islam in the works of these thinkers among others are sort of persistently framed around compatibility? For example, the compatibility of Sharia with the state, compatibility of democracy with the Khilafah, the compatability of Islam's modernity with its pre-modernity. And then second, do you see this framing as limiting",
      "You say theoretical turn and you ask if I agree with that or not. I don't, I'm not sure I can agree with it because I'm no, I, I am not sure understand what you mean. What is the theoretical term? I think there's a lot of recent literature in Islamic studies, a lot recent writing trying to theorize Islam as such. And in that regard, I mean, there has been something of a theoretical turn. And I think it's been particularly evident over the past decade. Okay so, so,so, so there's",
      "Obviously, I agree with that approach. That's why I'm glad I asked you what you meant by that because in a sense my work has been not so much theorizing Islam but certainly bringing Islam as I understand it as a transgenerational to borrow the term of Talal Asad just a discursive tradition into conversation and to bear upon the realities confronting Muslims in the modern world.",
      "my work for quite some time, and not only on the level of things that, you know, sort of the macro level of like the Islamic secular, but even on the micro level, dealing with issues involving Islam in the Black American community. So I mean, that's been a part of my world for quite sometime. Now here's where it gets dicey. You asked why that is the case? And maybe what may be deemed to be the implicit indictment",
      "explicit indictment may be tempered somewhat by the fact that I would include myself among those scholars. So if I'm indicting them, I'm inditing me as well, all right? But I'm not really indicting because as I said before, let me put it to you this way. The Indian scholar Ashish Nandy, who I think I cite in a book, if I didn't cite him in his book somewhere else, has what I consider",
      "is a disaster. And it's a disaster because of the impact that it has on the souls of the vanquished to the point that they internalize the mode of thinking and being in the world of the Vanquisher, and then in turn end up in a position where they can only even resist the Vanquisher",
      "the vanquisher, on the vanquisher's own terms. And so in order to establish the stature of Islam in the modern world it has to appeal to the standards that have been set by the vanqueror, by the dominant civilization. That dominant civilization privileges what? Reason privileges",
      "You might say that, well, yeah, and that's unfortunate that that should be the case. But as I said before, you can ignore that dominant culture.",
      "civilizational interlocutor out there. And what scholars are doing is, I think, engaging that civilization in conversation. It makes a difference whether that civilization becomes a dictator or simply an interlocuter. That's why I think that some of the benchmarks you see Muslims constantly trying to compare Islam to, all right?",
      "them to. You don't hear anybody asking, well how does Sharia or how does Islam relate to dharma? Well how does islam relate to the concept of the living dead in traditional African religion? That's not a comparison that's being made. It could be made all right but those happen not to be the dominant ascending civilizations and what Muslims have to do",
      "find ways of both appropriating and undermining the authority of many aspects of that civilization. And the hope, from my perspective at least, is that the means to do that is not by reading one's own civilization through that but by somehow finding the means of getting back to one's",
      "on terms and then to be articulated on its own terms. And that's what I'm attempting to do in the Islamic secular. If you are fair to me, you'd have to acknowledge there is nothing in the West that approaches an Islamic secular It's not an attempt to align Islam with anything in the west. It's an attempt",
      "world, what other language are you going to use? When you say there's nothing in the Western world approaching the Islamic secular, you mean there's no analogous concept or do you mean like can we not locate something similar in Christian thought where for example somebody... Yeah. I mean, you could locate the concept of differentiation but nobody's calling it a Christian secular and nobody's articulating it and I don't think that they could in the same terms because",
      "we had enough time to jump into each and every one of those thinkers that I mentioned, Halak, March, Naeem, and Ahmed. I don't think we will have enough time, unfortunately. Let's see. But I do want to at least ask you about Halak and something in particular you said about HalAK on page 195 of your book. And I'll quote here, you say, One wonders if what Professor Halak is really describing",
      "but the impossible religion. Could you unpack that a little bit and say what you meant by those words? What I was saying is that essentially, Professor Halak argues that Sharia basically equals Islam, that Islam stands and falls on Sharia, and that it's impossible to establish a state based on Shariah in the modern world. If Sharia cannot be established in the",
      "and Islam is equal to Sharia, all right? Then by association, Islam cannot be established in the modern world. That was my critique of what Professor Halad put forward. If Islam is Sharia and Sharia has no place in the world, then Islam has no space in the model world. There's a diametric opposition here between your position and his. These are effectively irreconcilable positions. Again, again, the non-Sharia",
      "non-shara'i is still Islam. And that's what I hope that everybody who reads this book comes away with, that the non-sha'ra'i it's still Islam, it's simply not shara'a and all that saying is that I'm assessing this investment strategy on the basis of whether it is efficient, whether it",
      "determine the shari'i status of that investment strategy. So, that's done. The problem that we have is that if shari-e assessments are the only assessments that we can make as Muslims, then what kind of quality control do we have over our investments? Right. Yeah. And how? Where does that leave us? You're on the stage, the world stage of civilizations. Whether you want to or not, there is a competition.",
      "So that then is your disagreement with Halak. March and Naeem also deal with the state. What's your disagreement?",
      "If we consider the Islamic secular as a bona fide articulation of Islam, then these theses have to change. Because what Halak is saying, as I said, Sharia equals... Islam equals Sharia. Sharia has no place. Islam has no",
      "for a secular state. All right? And what does it mean by secular? All right, I mean so many... Let's we just had an election in this country did we not? Let's just take let's just don't worry you're not going to get political. Let's take what were the major issues that they were saying was going to determine who is gonna win? What are the major issue? Same ones that usually come up every election cycle. Which are? Immigration. Immigration! What else?",
      "What else? Abortion, health care, the economy. Immigration, health Care, the Economy, abortion. All right let's take those four. One of those is Sharia which is what? Abortions! I mean can you have an abortion or can you not? That's a question that Shadia contemplates all right and you have the schools of law who give their answers okay. What should he have to say about a healthcare plan?",
      "What does it have to say about an immigration policy? You follow what I mean by that? Yeah, yeah. When he says we need a secular state for what? To deal with immigration? We could deal with migration with an Islamic state on the basis of non-shari'i reason and still be perfectly Islamic. We could devise a health care policy on the bases of non shari' deliberation and still",
      "Islamic. So why do we need a secular state along the lines that Naeem describes in order to be able to function in the modern world? That's my thesis there. And again, if the Islamic sector had been taken as part of the discourse I think these theses would have come to slightly different conclusions. That's",
      "the Islamic secular into these discourses about the modern state. Here's a question in response to your point about Naim. So, the Islamic Secular as an alternative model, as one that you say can accommodate what Naim thinks the Western Secular State is required for... No, let me clarify something. I'm not saying",
      "that the Islamic secular completely replaces the kind of state that Naeem wants. I'm not saying that, what I'm saying is that if you're talking about a modern state, all right? Because part of Naeems problem it was with Sharia. He's saying that Sharia cannot be a part of the modern state. All right? And that's what he means by a secular state. Okay? All right. Now, what i'm saying",
      "Okay, we, myself and Professor Nain, okay, we will disagree on that point. And let's just set that disagreement aside. But beyond the law of Sharia, okay? You have issues of health care. You have issue of immigration. You'll have issues gun control etc., etc. Alright? Why do you need to separate Sharia from the state",
      "are from the state in order to be able to deal with these issues effectively. That's my point. Okay, let me just jump into this question then now that that's clear. What's to prevent the Islamic secular from in some capacity reflecting or reproducing certain features or elements of the Western secular? So for example modern capitalism we say",
      "We say, you know, does the Sharia say anything about health care? Does the Shia say anything About, you Know, traffic policy and the answer as was intimated earlier is no. But again, does The Sharia I say anything capitalism one might say as well No And with your claims earlier about intention in community as regulating factors in the production or regulation of what we might call the Islamic secular someone might say Western, you",
      "be reproduced under the umbrella of the Islamic secular. Okay, let me make something clear here and make myself a little bit unpopular, right? I think it is a categorical mistake to set up this Islam-West dichotomy that there is this mutual exclusivity between Islam",
      "If you end up with quote-unquote Western elements in Islam, then there are two criteria. One is a Shari'i criterion. Is this permissible according to Sharia or not? If it is on one level, who cares where it came from? We can have Western elements and we can have Arabian elements in the Islam but we get our pagan Arabian",
      "on the one hand. The second thing is, okay, this Western element comes. It's deemed permissible. Sharan. Then the question becomes what utility does it have for us? Should we adopt it? And that's an Islamic secular deliberation. So whether Islam ends up with this or that element of capitalism and by the way I think capitalism is a sharia issue but let's just take your perspective on that",
      "perspective on that. But whether Islam ends up with this or that element of capitalism or Western civilization, all right, will depend on a combination of Shadi deliberations in terms of can we and then non-Shadi deliberation in terms",
      "One exception, and it's in the book as well. I do think, and this goes back to something that you've been alluding to a lot, I think, Liat,",
      "the cultural authority of the dominant civilization. And once that happens, that cultural authority does all their thinking for them. In other words, in the West, this thing is culturally valued. Before we even start thinking about it in terms of should we? The fact that it's culturally valued in the East overtakes our thinking and we take it on.",
      "permissible coming from the West, but that threaten to reduce us to more cultural or intellectual subservience to the West on the basis of which perhaps we should reject. But again, that to me is an Islamic secular deliberation. I don't have to say it's haram to reject it. Let me give you one example and I'll get in some trouble for this, but manish.",
      "I used to go through this with my children. I was of the opinion, and still am, that Halloween is not haram. We don't have to get into all the details. And yet, I did not permit my children to go trick-or-treat. And they would, but Dad, you said it's not haraam. Yeah, it's no haraab. Then how come we can't go? And again, because I can explain to them in these terms,",
      "out there, which today is Halloween but which tomorrow may sweep you up in a torrent of cultural non-thinking. Does that make sense? It does. So I'm doing a non-shari'i Islamic sector deliberation in terms of not as what is permissible",
      "I want to say, just before I move on, to the point you made earlier about the distinction between the West and the non-West or the West in Islam being sort of untenable. I completely agree with that. I think that there's this porousness between these concepts now that makes it difficult to sustain a sort of hard and fast distinction between these two categories. Not just now, always.",
      "Yeah, always. A student of mine is writing a dissertation and one of the points that he makes in his dissertation is that we've gotten too used to thinking of Islam as a civilization in terms of its relationship with others. As one of a number of billiard balls. They're just smashed into each other on the table bounce off of each other where their constitution is completely unmodified. This is just nonsense.",
      "All right. Islam has always been porous, has always be affected by others, has alway affected others. Whether or not that effect has been permissible or not, that's a Shari'i question that the jurists have deliberated over. Whether it was good or not these are Islamic sect of deliberations some of which we're still in the context, are still in",
      "One sort of intellectual fallacy that I think we sometimes fall into is that, you know, this notion—I mean, you don't like capitalism. We don't a communism. You know? We have our issues with Christianity, all right? Fine! But we cannot imagine that getting rid of Christianity, getting rid",
      "It just means you got rid of communism. You got rid off capitalism. It does not mean that you've instantiated Islam, you got out Christianity. It doesn't mean you've been instantiating Islam. And this goes back to your earlier point, Leon. I think that this obsession with the West keeps us in that mode of thinking. What is Islam? Right? We're more into what's not Islam? It's not Christianity, it's not capitalism, it' s not communism. All right?",
      "we get rid of those, we have Islam. Just to clarify, when something is determined to be Islamic under the rubric of the Islamic secular, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the good or the right decision to make. It can be the wrong decision to but still Islamic under",
      "So in this case, you do not attach good and right to Islamic in the sense of Islamic secularism.",
      "Nobody's selling out. Nobody's doing anything that they shouldn't be doing. You know, they honestly try to come up with the five-year plan that's going to work and it doesn't work. Right. So, first off, you've established very well that the Islamic secular and considerations that fall under the rubric of the Islamic circular, again, not necessarily concerned with permissibility or morality or any such thing, right? What do you mean by any such",
      "Because the only gaze of a God of Islam is always there. Yes, sure. But morality is not the only thing that's there. Yeah, yes. I mean, you know, just look at the world today. I think it would be nice if those Muslims who are suffering and the bombs falling on them right now had some surface-to-air missiles. That's Islamic secular. Sharia has not produced those missiles.",
      "Islamic secular because I think you put it this way several times in the book. It's contributing or it's helping to contribute to an overall normals or plausibility structure. Okay, so my question is if there's an act or an idea that is not doing that, that again is permissible according to the Sharia but it's not contributing to the normals",
      "Where would you locate that? What do you mean, where I locate it? Like, you know, would you still say that can be considered an Islamic act?",
      "All right. Because these are things that have to be negotiated on the ground. Let's say we establish the norm and we say, go back to this, you know, the sort of trite example that I gave earlier between spicy and non-spicy food. And we say yeah, we want to have spicy. I mean most of these people here love spicy food. We're going to have Spicy. All right? And I say no, we don't...I don't want to",
      "could not say that my dissent is haram. But again, I do think that if we're thinking in terms of the effective instantiation of Islam communally on the ground, then my point of view could be marginalized in the interest of the collective. Remembering what",
      "be effectively managed because they can become autocratic and problematic in all kinds of ways. All right? And yet we all, you know, we value our individual identity but we also value our collective identity. So there is this dialectical relationship between our individuality and our broader belonging to a collective whatever that might be. Yeah. And, you",
      "would obviously not approve of all of Abu Nawaz's work, he almost certainly appreciated its contribution to the linguistic sensibilities of the Muslims as well as to the development of a Muslim aesthetic, Muslim cultural literacy and Muslim cultural self-reliance with all that this implies for the plausibility structure of Islam. And so I was curious about this which is what if his poetry did not do any of those things? Then what value would it have then? So then yeah,",
      "So then, yeah. So then in your view, there's no reason to bring that into the fold if you will of the Islamic. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Forget Islam. If Ebn al-Waz's poetry didn't appeal to anybody we wouldn't know who Ebn Al-Wa'iz was. Of course, well, yes. There were plenty of poets in his time who just didn't make the cut. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question. No, no, no. That's more or less it.",
      "And this is what I was trying to understand with the question about, you know, the Islamic secular and its relationship with norms. Yeah. One of the things that I'm trying to establish in this book, and I think that if we just reflect on our reality, all right? I don't think that Muslims, quite frankly—and I'm using religion here in the standard Western sense, all Right? Not Islamic secular. Just bear with me.",
      "the world. You know, that Christian theology does, oh we just can't, oh my God it's just so, you know, it just overwhelms us, all right? And we just cant find our footing in the face of this Christian theology or we can't find our funding in the faces of Jewish theology but culturally speaking intellectually speaking that's where Muslims feel the most overwhelmed and that's what we're dealing with issues of cultural production technology development okay plausibility structure",
      "And these, again, are predominantly Islamic secular non-shari'i endeavors. Right. And on the question of plausibility structure, which is an important concept for you, in your view, is the ultimate goal of an Islamic plausibility",
      "such that Islam, as both an orientation and a practice, transcends or comes to transcend the thinkable? As in it's not necessarily a question of conscious assent or intention but just becomes almost like an automatic mode of being in the world. Is that in your mind sort of the endgame of the possibility structure? Yes, yes, yes with qualifications because yes",
      "is a big yes, all right? Because most people on a daily basis do not encounter religion through the books of scholars or even the Quran and Sunnah. Let's just be honest and blunt about that. They encounter it through the carrier culture",
      "that carrier culture, all right, has been denigrated, has be weakened. And therefore the ability for people to feel Islam in a sense on a daily basis has also weakened. All right? Plausibility structure enables people then to see the truth and reality of Islam as just normal. I don't have to think about whether it's cold outside or it's hot outside",
      "outside. When I go outside, I know cold hot. All right? That's what plausibility structure does. At the same time, however, plausibility culture taken too far can result in a sort of cultural Islam that loses its capacity to domesticate its own impulses. You see what I'm saying?",
      "You see what I'm saying? In other words, it lacks any higher authority on the basis of which it can judge itself. It becomes its own self-authenticating judge. So plausibility structure is important but it too must ultimately be managed. And the source of that management in your mind is... It's a combination. Probably primarily Sharia",
      "But you see, even when you have the Sharia, I mean, let's take something like Dawah. You would think that Dawah is almost a 100% Sharia endeavor because you're trying to convey to people basically what Allah and His Messenger have said. And yet, the mode of communication is going to have to be deliberated on the basis of considerations that are not necessarily coming from Qur'an and Sunnah.",
      "If this makes sense to you. I mean, you're not going to give dawah to everybody in the same way. Yeah. You're going to adjust that based on your consideration of who they are, where they are what their background is how they're likely to see you, etc and all kinds of other things. All kinds of calculations Islamic secular non-shari'i calculations that you have to make in order to be effective even in dawah.",
      "And to what extent do you think that the possibility structure can be established and maintained outside of, say, the apparatus of the state or just any sort of political power? Well, I know we got to go now. This is a big issue. Let me try to say something here that may assist you in understanding part of my perspective.",
      "for me, what appears to be the case oftentimes is that when Muslims in an academic setting or in a quasi-academic setting like this, when we think about the state, we tend to think about Europe. Now I happen to be a member of a broader community. I'm talking about the Black American community.",
      "as a sort of a counterpublic. The state has never been able to determine that culture in the ways that we tend to assume that states determine cultures. So my sense of this, I don't have the same sense of the state as being as almighty, all right? As some others may think it is.",
      "changed the state's language. I mean, I'd say the dominant cultures. They've influenced the language. They influence the cuisine. They influenced the music and all of this despite the fact they were living in a very powerful state. So I think that community... And by the way, this is one of the functions of communities to push back on the state as the home of their own identity formation",
      "Right. I think that, uh, I tend to think that's much more possible coming out of a black experience than many others think it is. I don't know. Okay. We're going to have to leave it there because we're out of time, but thank you very much, Professor Jackson for joining us for this conversation. It was for me at least very enjoyable and very stimulating. Yeah. Likewise.",
      "Likewise. Thank you very much. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us. Please do share your feedback and recommendations and do support the podcast. Whether you're tuning in on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, we'd appreciate a five star review or a like. And if you're inclined, leave us a comment too. This helps spread the visibility of the show. With your support, we can keep Protean View running and gradually improve it. Visit us at muftah.org slash protean-view and follow us on our socials using the handle at protean view.",
      "at Protean View, including on Patreon where you can become a paid patron and receive behind-the-scenes content in the future. Until next time."
    ]
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    "text": [
      "That's where we come from, but that's a part of what we've lost. We have to begin again to understand that we have a concept in Islam. It's called the concept of khilaf. It is justifiable disagreement. It' not disagreement just because I'm disagreeable. It it justifiable disagreements",
      "disagreement and the important takeaway from this is the following because this is what makes our conversation so difficult if I go into the conversation understanding that there is the possibility of multiple justifiable points of view then the point of a conversation",
      "and to separate those from those points of view that are not justifiable. Does everybody understand my point about that? But if I don't have that mentality, then I go into the conversation on the understanding that there is one right view. And I listen to everybody in terms of what? Are you saying that which will confirm my view? If you are, then",
      "then I will accept you. If you're not, I gotta kill you. I have to destroy your point of view. Why? Because that's the only way mine can stand. And you can see what this does to us as a community. I can't even listen to you. Because if you even sound like you're going in a direction that threatens the point of",
      "Alright? I'm gonna shut you down. Either by shouting you down or by psychologically blocking your mind. Y'all don't know what I'm talking about, right? Right? I mean it's like...I hate to say this but you get into an argument with your wife or your husband. You ain't listening tonight! You pretend to listen.",
      "I'm looking for the holes. I ain't trying to understand nothing. Because I got a position that I want to defend and I'm breaking out the gaps, and as soon she's done what? Whoo! And the whole time she's speaking or the whole he's speaking you ain't got enough of defense mechanisms. This is what we have to get away from brothers and sisters",
      "And this is why it's so important for us on the very fundamental level to get back to a basic religious literacy in our community. There are many things, as I said that there's no discussion on but look at all of the issues that have been raised in this conference What is the best way? To create wealth in our communities. There's going to be one point of view about that and",
      "because at some point we've got to make a decision. How are we going to arrive at that? We're going to have to have the kinds of discussions that will enable us to come up top with the very best point of view, and that means a willingness to listen and give and take."
    ]
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    "file": "herman_jackson/_The Need For Real Pluralism_-Dr_ Sherman Jackson_-ywr1zi9X2w&pp=ygUVU2hlcm1hbiBKYWNrc29uIGlzbGFt_1750814721.opus",
    "text": [
      "I want to start off first of all by both thanking Sheikh Abdullah and congratulating him again for what has proven",
      "proven to be the beginning of hopefully something that will benefit us as a community for many generations to come. I also want to thank all of the people behind the scenes, I'm gonna thank Sheikh Ismail, Ibrahim where is he? Oh you left him? Okay, I wanna thank them for sort of keeping us all on the throughout the conference.",
      "I also want to say that just listening to that last",
      "that last panel, it reminded me of something. I just want to take a moment sort of to reflect on this out loud. One of the things that it reminded be with the whole business of finance and getting our personal finances in check et cetera is that as a community both collectively and individually we have to remain connected to the value of discipline",
      "And there can be no control over personal finances without discipline. And in that regard, I want to make a plug for us coming to a broader understanding and a deeper appreciation for the institution of Salat. And I'm not talking about Salat in terms of...I'm not",
      "Why do I have to look at my watch? Because I gotta know how much time I got outside. Should I make salat now or should, do I not have time to do it when I get back home? Right? I'm gonna take a nap. I'm real sleepy man. What I gotta do? Okay, okay, do i have time? No, I better do it now. What i'm trying to say, Salat is one of those technologies of the self and if we are regular with our salat",
      "What we will find is that we will have greater discipline in our lives and it will creep up on us as just one of those parts of our character now. We think about everything that we do, we become natural planners alright? And this is a part of the whole package of Islam. Allah's not joking around when he says this is mercy to us because this in some ways",
      "brings us a discipline that we might not otherwise have. And that's just a lie. That doesn't even count in Ramadan. It doesn't count as okay. So I just wanted to put that out there because the state of our souls, the state ourselves will be the ultimate determiner of what we are able to do both individually and collectively.",
      "We need to develop a plan of attack in order to try and resolve some of these issues. We have issues of money, we have issues culture, we've got issues of gender, we had issues of race, we'd have issues marriage, we all kinds of issues that confront us as a community. And as we have seen over the course of this conference sometimes an attempting",
      "and attempting to negotiate those issues, the terrain can be quite rocky. It can be often difficult for us to talk about these issues. And one of the things that I think has come out of some of our conversations is that there's a lot of healing that we need to find a way to bring to our community.",
      "in our community there is disappointment there is misunderstanding there is the sense of betrayal then all of these things are very painful for us and it's very difficult for us to come together and to talk about these things without exacerbating the very pain that brought us to the discussion to begin with",
      "these things we must. So how do we as a community go about the process of bringing some healing into our midst? The honest answer to this question, for me anyway is that I don't know.",
      "how we as a community are going to do that. I know there are those probably here in the audience who would say, well, the answer is easy all we have to do is go back to the Quran and the Sunnah and the teachings of Islam and all our problems will be resolved. And that's our problem. We're not holding by the Quran or the Sunna",
      "I want to submit to you, however that I don't think anybody who comes here to represent a particular position thinks that their position is not based on Quran and Sunnah. Everybody thinks their position",
      "Quran and Sunnah says that. I don't care what it says, it's my position. Nobody says that! Everybody thinks their position is right. It's based on Quran and sunnah. And so what we have to learn how to do is we have learned how to talk about these things.",
      "There are some issues that are clear cut in Islam. Not everything is a matter of discussion. We have things in Islam on which there is unanimous consensus, always has been for over a millennium and they're just not open for discussion. I'm not having a conversation with you about a ham sandwich. I am not going to do it. We're not discussing that. That's one of those...we're not talking about Zina, we're not talk about what you can get high on. We've not had any of those kinds of conversations.",
      "beyond those things upon which there is this unanimous consensus, there are many issues that are still open to discussion and exchange. Some of those issues weren't even around at the time these unanimous consensuses were reached. And so we have much to discuss among us as a community. Our challenge is how do we find ways of discussing these issues such that those discussions",
      "are more likely to bring healing to our community rather than tear our community apart. We want people to come into a hall like this and discuss these issues, and discuss them robustly and honestly and courageously but we don't want people that go out of this building saying I ain't going back there no more. That's what we don' t want. So how do we get there?",
      "I think it is critical that we learn not simply how to talk to each other.",
      "what the purpose of talking to each other is. What is the ultimate goal of talking with each other? Because if we're not clear about this point, then talking to one another can actually make the situation worse. So I want to spend a little time that I have",
      "people are expecting me to go overtime but I'm not. I want to try to resurrect an aspect of the traditional civilization of Islam that made that civilization great and great as a religious",
      "Part of what made Islam great as a religious civilization was that Islam, among all the religious civilizations found a way to accommodate genuine pluralism. You follow what I'm talking about?",
      "a Catholic and he taught the students in class one day. He said this was the civilization of Islam you could be a Maniki or a Shafi'i we're talking about Sunnis in here, we can get to the others later well another time. You could be Hanbali, you could",
      "as being equally orthodox, equally authoritarian. He said you didn't have this in any other religious civilization. Why did you have the wars of religion in the West? It's because they could not accommodate a religious pluralism and he said the West was not able to establish a pluralism until they marginalized religion. Islam was",
      "the center of its civilization. That's where we come from, but that's a part of what we've lost. We have to begin again to understand that we have a concept in Islam it is called the concept of khilaf. It is justifiable disagreement.",
      "It is justifiable disagreement. And the important takeaway from this is the following, because this is what makes our conversation so difficult. If I go into the conversation understanding that there is the possibility of multiple justifiable points of view, then the point of the conversation",
      "those justifiable points of view are and to separate those from those points of you that are not justified. Does everybody understand my point about that? But if I don't have that mentality, then I go into the conversation on the understanding that there is one right view. And I listen to everybody in terms of what? Are you saying that which will confirm my view?",
      "If you are, then I will accept you. If you're not, I gotta kill you. I have to destroy your point of view. Why? Because that's the only way mine can stand. And you can see what this does to us as a community. I can't even listen to you.",
      "That I'm inclined towards. Alright? I'm gonna shut you down, either by shouting you down or by psychologically blocking your life. Y'all know what I'm talking about right? Right? I mean it's like...I hate to say this but you get into an argument with your wife or your husband. You ain't listening tonight! You pretend to listen.",
      "I'm looking for the holes. I ain't trying to understand nothing. If I got a position, I want to defend and I'm breaking out the cats And as soon she's done what? Who? And the whole time she speaking or the whole he's speaking you ain't got enough of defense mechanisms This is what we have to get away from brothers and sisters",
      "to get away from brothers and sisters. And this is why it's so important for us on the very fundamental level, to get back to a basic religious literacy in our community. There are many things as I said that there's no discussion on but look at all of the issues that have been raised in this conference. What is the best way to create wealth in our",
      "And even if there is one point of view, because at some point we've got to make a decision. How are we going to arrive at that? We're going to have to have the kinds of discussions that will enable us to come up top with the very best point of views and that means a willingness to listen and give and take. We have to this otherwise my fear is that we will become our own worst enemies",
      "And that whole business I talked about of finding Muslims that you like as well as that you love, that will become much less likely because you can't even talk to them. You can't ever talk to him. When we have this kind of literacy it's so nice. Many of you might not realize this but I prayed Salatul Ghorin today",
      "And I noticed, I think you remember what the person named Daud he's gone now? Yeah. Yeah. Daud led the Salah and they said to him, he prayed two rak'as, Qasim. And they said that okay come and lead the prayer for Asif. So Daud told them no",
      "No, no, no. You guys go ahead. Alright? And so the brother came up and led us a lot for Asa. I prayed Asa with them. Now Daoud didn't pray Asa With them because that's the Maniky school. That's the dominant view in the Maniki school. Do you know what I'm saying so far? Alright? They don't join.",
      "And this is so loud! They might follow what I'm talking about. This is so LOUD! Alright? We can't come in and discuss gender, we can't comes in and discussed race, we cant come in a discuss culture not if the very mentality is...",
      "I'm not joking about this, this is serious. This is serious because what we don't realize... Let me share a little something with you. You know, I've been a Muslim like over 40 years.",
      "I was five years old when I... My girl. So, you know, I watch movies like... I'm always sitting by the slime, you-you know what I mean? I went to Terminator 2. Oh that's right, Miles is gonna watch movies. I'm sorry. But I went with Terminator two. I was sitting up in a movie theater, Terminator Two. You know what that movie was, right?",
      "This is an action movie. I'm sitting up in the movie crying. I am looking at this woman, right? She knows what's coming. They don't know. She's trying to save them. And I'm saying, What? That's him! There he is! You know who I'm talking about. That's Him! No really, I started crying.",
      "and they're able to care about themselves, then they reject you. Right? But that's not the movie I want to talk about now. There are other movies. I just wanted to let you know how I watch movies so you don't think I'm up here tripping. There's a movie called Jimmy Hoffa. You know that movie? There's scene in that movie man it really taught me something. Jimmy Hoffer he was this labor leader. And back at that time things had to be done in secret",
      "secret so there was one dude that was working with them they didn't really trust him right so the dude and then we're having a secret meeting so the do ask Jimmy Hoffa where's the meeting gonna be and Jimmy Hopper tells me whether he's gonna be right to see me sorrow Danny DeVito who is Jimmy hop the sidekick after the new turns around leaves",
      "Right? Jimmy Alpha says to him this, and this is relevant to what we're talking about here. He says, listen to me. Ordinary disagreements can be resolved. Conflicts of interest can be solved because if people are really honest they understand that he just wants his interests just like I want mine.",
      "But an imaginary head, a perceived slight and some violent put down that motor smacker will hate your guts to the day he dies. Do you understand what I'm talking about? That's what we're constantly doing to each other. Do understand what i'm talking abut? And because of that we got all this internal bleeding",
      "is worse than external wounds. Why? Because you can't see it! You can't SEE IT! And the only cure for this, and I'm not saying this as some...you know...this is not just pragmatics! This is Islam! THIS IS ISLAM! It goes all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad himself, sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam.",
      "story the time in the Bible. Omar heard one of his Sahaba reciting Quran and Omar said, would you talk about this? It wasn't a recitation as Omar had learned it so he took the man",
      "misreciting Quran and the prophet said okay recite what he recited Allah, Allah recited it. Okay now you recite it and he recites it just like he recitated before the prophet both of these are correct. It's a different recitation some of you don't know if some of in this hall right now heard some of the brothers recite some words you might say the same thing",
      "more than one recitation of the Quran more then one recitation of what? no,no,no of what and we can't talk about gender? and we cant talk about race? we can differ on gender? we cant differ on race?we cant differ culture? and I'm not talking about any wild crazy opinions",
      "Justifiable disagreement. You understand what I mean by that? And it's because I like, cause I feel. It's justifiable agreement. Alright? Disagreement, I'm sorry. And so there is such a thing as disagreement in Islam and that's a part of who we are as Muslims. That's our legacy. Alright, and right now if the world especially our country needs anything",
      "The only thing is to learn how to be a genuinely pluralistic society. Not a fake pluralism, what's a fake pluralism? A fake pluralist is yes you have the right to be like me. And so they're really multiple expressions of me. You follow what I mean by that?",
      "That's a fake pluralism. What we need is a genuine pluralism, alright? And there are many aspects that I could go into but people start getting nervous and they think I'm gonna go on so I'mma cut this short So I want us as a community to understand this",
      "of our disagreements because there's one that more than one form of disagreeing sometimes the disagreement is over an interpretation of scripture you think the ayah or hadith means this I think the Ayat or Hadith means that all right and we have to present",
      "As to why my interpretation of the AI is a plausibly justifiable interpretation. And you do the same thing. And it's like magic, when people are not trying to force something on you, you find yourself a lot more open to what they have to say. You see what I'm saying? When we start off with our conversation is about plausible disagreement then I'm open to",
      "actually would be over or I might win you over but we have to be careful about not just smushing all disagreement together because the disagreement might not have anything to do with our interpretation of Cortana and Suna. The disagreement may be over the interpretation of factual reality. Do y'all understand what I mean by that? Let me give you, cause everybody's falling asleep let me wake them up",
      "Let me give you a concrete example of what I'm talking about. And by the way, this is just an example. This is what? No, no it's got to work. This just as an example, alright? This for educational purposes. Pedagogical interest here.",
      "If the question comes up, can you vote for Trump? What's the answer? See, we got some good students here. Because students always change the fact pattern. I said what? Can you vote",
      "Is it permissible to vote for him or not? I'm not hearing. That issue that comes up in the community, you see what I'm saying? And that's fine! No no no. This is what I am trying to get at. If I say no, what do I mean by that? Do I mean that Allah and His Messenger said no? Or do I",
      "matter that is going to be so harmful to the Muslims that you should not vote for him. You understand what I mean by that? But that second one, that's a matter of your assessment. Do you understand what i mean about that? I might have a different assessment of that. Does it mean that I don't accept Quran and Zundukh? Ain't got nothing to do with that! So why do you understand me talking about? I said this is pedagogical so relax everybody. No but I'm very serious",
      "that tears us apart because we go away, man, Ken ain't got no mind. He ain't a real Muslim. It's got nothing to do with rejecting Quran or Sunnah. Nothing at all! It's a matter of okay there are some factual realities here that we as Muslims must consider and based on that consideration we should not vote for them. Or someone else may have another point",
      "But you understand the difference between the two. Does everybody understand what I'm talking about? We have to be very careful about that because if he differs with me or she differs with on the second one, why does that say about their level of commitment to her and themselves? Huh? If he disagrees or she disagrees with me",
      "What does it have to say about the level of commitment to Quran and Sunnah? Nothing. What binds us as Muslims? Our commitment to the Quran and sunnah. So even though he disagrees with me, or disagrees on this second one I still must acknowledge him and her as my brother and sister. Do you understand what I'm talking about? We have to learn how to accommodate these differences",
      "He can't come in here listening to people speak and expecting to find only the opinion that we want to hear, and everything else has to go. That's not why Allah put all of the talent and all of experience and all the expertise and all genius in this community. He put it there so that we could harness it. So that we can harness it in order to pursue His pleasure.",
      "This is something that has occurred to me time and time again throughout this conference. And now I want to say something else because healing, you see it's hard for healing to take place where some in our community feel like they're not even being heard. But when we have the zero sum mentality",
      "How can you hear anybody? You understand what I mean about that? Right? And this is part of why we have to come back to an Islamic civics. We've adopted the civics of a dominant culture around us. Don't believe me? I heard Charles Barkley once say, they asked him, because Charles Barkly's very popular in the popular era.",
      "I'm sorry? Wait, but I'm from Philadelphia. You ain't tell me nothing! No no he's very popular in the pop culture. Someone asked him in an interview once would you ever think about running for political office? He said no because they were saying that you could very easily win. He said",
      "He said, listen man. I could probably sit with the leader of the KKK and find something in common. In Washington D.C. today you can't find anything in common everything is zero sum. Everything is my way or the highway. And we as Muslims have adopted the same culture",
      "culture you see it all the time there's never any allowance that there might be more than one plausible disagreement on this issue so and so is always absolutely right or absolutely wrong we've got to get away from this because that mentality will stifle us in our attempts",
      "How can we talk about gender? How can be talk about race? What, I'm gonna impose my view on y'all? You're going to impose yours on me? How could we talk culture? This is what we have to get. This is want we have back to. And I think that one of the things that concerns me very deeply is that those of religious knowledge have to be aware of this as well",
      "as well and they have to be aware of the distinction between two things that I talked about one is a matter scriptural interpretation the others are reading of reality and with regard to the meaning of reality there may be many people in this room just like the people who are talking about finance who know much more than religious God",
      "authority that their expertise confers upon them. And the religious scholars cannot attempt to shut that conversation down. Their job is to establish the parameters and when that conversation bumps up on this parameter, the religious scholar says what? You bumping up. Bumps on that? You're bumpin' up. But within this, what does a religious scholar have to say? Do your thing",
      "for the best for the community. If this distinction is not observed, I'm not saying this to try to pander to those who are not religious scholars. In fact, I am saying this in defense of religious scholarship because one of my fears and I see it afoot already is that if this distinction",
      "people would come to resent religious scholarship and when that happens they will start seeking other foundations upon which to base their lives even as Muslims. That will happen, and it's already begun happening and that is a disaster! It's a disaster so I hope that we will be able",
      "to establish a Muslim civics that enables us to come in and discuss our issues in a successful manner. Now this is a tall order, I just got two short things to say and I'm done, I'm out of here. I'm actually still on the time but anyway. This is a part order you know whenever these kinds of things come up people are like how do they do that?",
      "How do we do that? I mean the answer is again, the honest answers. I don't know And that's not a cop out That's like asking me How do you stay married who would even tell me how to stay married Wait a minute y'all ain't married This is a room full of bachelors bachelorettes",
      "No, no, yeah, I mean yes. Wait wait wait wait, I can't tell you that, I don't know. No, you understand what I mean by that? It's like when Michael joins the ball he doesn't even know what to do with it. Does he? Oh, strong crowd y'all know who...",
      "If you- Nah, hold up. Mic is off. Alright, just Doc. Doc at the bar. I'm not done with that one. If he right now comes out and says, alright, Doc, how do you even do this? You think he can map it out for you? No! How does he do it? He gets in motion. And then two things take over. Right? His training and his instincts. You understand what I'm talking about?",
      "I'm talking about. Our training is our literacy as Muslims. Our instincts are those things that come to us as a function of our prayer, our fasting and especially reading Quran. Do you understand what I'm",
      "Alright? Listen to me brothers and sisters. Alright? Two things. If you keep reading Quran, your understanding will increase. But even more important than that, the Quran will always be speaking to more than just your mind. You understand that? It's speaking to your soul, your very being. And when it gets there, it will calibrate",
      "in conformity with those boundaries. This is why you know some Muslims in the community, they're not... how can I say this? They are not the most highly educated, they are not",
      "I'm serious. Right? That's the instinct. That's instincts and then when our instincts are off, we fall removed from Quran. The Quran is going to do some stuff. Alright? See y'all don't even believe me. Y'all would not believe before I was a Muslim",
      "I could not imagine what do people do on the weekend if they ain't throwing down. I couldn't imagine it. Six months after I bust them, I'm sitting there holding me to my right hand man.",
      "No, I'm serious. I'm very serious. Alright? We have to get back to Quran. And I know why some of y'all don't read Quran. Honestly. Been there, done that. Some of y´all are like... Who was it? St. Augustine, I think it was. He said what? Lord! Make me pure!",
      "Not yet. Let me wait until I'm done. 65, send the house to our re-corrent. No! No! We gotta be very careful about that. So if we have our basic literacy as a Muslim and our instincts are in place",
      "Instincts are in place that we can get emotion and we can make it happen We don't have to master my own plan the black the grand plan comes in motion But we got to have the instincts we've got to happen literacy All right, one of the things that we do just like this emotion right now. I saw another commercial Just next to left",
      "The white dude is sitting in the office and there's a Hispanic dude in front of him. And he's giving the Hispanic dude an interview for a job, right? So after the interview is over, you may have seen this, the Hispanic dudes gets up and goes out into the office, right. And so another white dude comes to the office says, so how did the interview go?",
      "he grabs the Hispanic dude's CV, his resume and balls it up and throws it in the trash and says I think we have enough color around here already. The first white guy who is behind a desk gets up goes into the trash basket takes the resume out slams it back on the desk and straightens it out and says to him I think you've lost something. You follow what I'm talking about?",
      "Individual acts like that can be the beginning of our communities reform and each and every one of us could do that individual act. You understand what I'm talking about? We see brothers and sisters attack each other on these false bases all the time. Individual acts of checking them can spread and gain a multiplier effect,",
      "to being able to accommodate each other in our midst. The last thing I want to say about this is the following, is that we cannot allow our situation as particularly black American Muslims in America to blind us to the fact that we are the heirs of a mission and",
      "heal our own community but it is to go beyond the Muslim community. There's healing that needs to be brought to the broader black American community, there's healing and that means to be bought to the broad American society at large we have a responsibility in that regard and here we just need",
      "want to bring about the change that we want. Men and women who have vested interests will not simply give up those interests because you point out to them how wrong they are. When people who have power do what they do to pursue their interest, they will only be dissuaded if you raise power against them. And by the way,",
      "Power, and this is not a cop out. This is reality. I'll tell you what. Power is not synonymous with violence. You don't believe me? It's not synonmous with violence Not long ago, two years ago, you had a sitting United States Senator who took some stupid picture",
      "some stupid pictures of his emails. As a result of which, what happened? He was booted out of office. Women's movements had gained enough power to unseat the United States Senate. You hear what I'm talking about? Right?",
      "We have to acquire power as well, but we will never have any power until we have some unity. We will never ever have any powers until we do. And part of what I've been trying to establish here is that unity is not the same as uniformity. That's what so many of us keep trying to do. Unity is not",
      "So in closing, I ask Allah to guide us and strengthen us. To be able to carry the mantle of our beloved Prophet. And to remember all that those people who came before us sacrificed so this religion could live.",
      "about how hard they worked and to think of ourselves as the heirs to that legacy. May Allah bless us to be able to carry this legacy in such a way that we hand on to posterity something with which they will be able build, that they will then pass onto posterity so when we meet Allah",
      "We can stand tall and at least say, at least said, Wallahi Allah I did my best. At least say that because at the end of the day we're not responsible for the success. We are responsible for effort. So I ask Allah to bless us to be able to make that effort to heal our hearts, to remove the rancor from within our midst",
      "in our midst, to remove the misunderstanding that we may have of each other. To strengthen us to be able to listen to each other and actually hear one another. And to understand, to understand that this Islam is big enough for us all."
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    "text": [
      "and to share with you some of my, what I hope will amount to intellectual capital. And also the opportunity to benefit from yours. I think it's very important especially in this day and age in which we live that we as particularly a Muslim community learn to recognize",
      "of talent and insights and experiences that we have in our community. And, in turn, try to find ways to mutually benefit from that. The second thing I want to say, just sort of caveats that I think it would be remiss for me not to get out there in order to empower you to properly process and contextualize what I'm about to say.",
      "of these is that while I have come here at the invitation of Islamic Circles and Amizan, I am here to share with you my own perspective. And I say that because I don't know about the degree to which what I will say will overlap with or even contradict",
      "But I want to assure you that whatever degree of overlap or conflict that exists between what I'm going to say and what the organization represents is purely coincidental. Because I'm here simply to try to share with you my perspective on the meaning, and hopefully the whole function and role of this book. The second thing that I wanna say",
      "I think it's probably obvious from my accent that I'm not British. And what that means is for me, that I don't pretend to be able to speak in any way effectively to British reality and one of the things that I've tried to do",
      "of Muslims to speak in general terms without taking the specific and concrete realities about whom they are speaking seriously. My perspective is the perspective of an American Muslim, and I don't have any apologies about that but I do want to put that out there front and center and invite you to edit whatever I might have to say",
      "meaningful to a British context. So I just wanted to get those two things out there to begin with. And so, I've been asked to come and sort of talk about this latest book of mine, Sufism for Non-Sufis, Ibn Alta'allah's Taj al-'Aroos. And the first thing that I want to invite you to do is if you look at the title of the book",
      "of the book, I think that thing is perhaps most readily missed by many is the question mark that comes after the title. And what I want to say here is that the question marks are not accidental. It's quite intentional and it's meant",
      "function is to communicate that this effort is not so much, in fact it's not at all any kind of advocacy of full-blown Sufism in any of its developed and ideologically deployed forms. Nor is",
      "relationship between the idea of Sufism and the possibility of non-Sufis getting anything out of it. So I'm not suggesting either of these, I'm no suggesting that what we want is a sort of whole scale migration into Sufim nor am I suggesting that it's ridiculous to suggest that Sufis has anything to say to non-sufi",
      "non-Sufis who happen to be Muslims. Rather, the whole point of this question mark is really and honestly to invite a conversation, a discussion even a debate within the Muslim community as to what benefit Sufism may be in the context",
      "in the context of the modern realities and the modern condition that confront Muslims, and most particularly Muslims residing in the West. Now this question has both an academic and a practical valence to it. I need to say Sufis or non-Sufis well there's a practical dimension to that but there is also an academic one.",
      "to ask the question, is Ibn Ata'allah as a Sufi himself in this book attempting to get the Sufi tradition to speak to realities? The lived experience. The quotidian challenges that confront Muslims in their everyday lives. Common Muslims who for any number of reasons may not have",
      "have any formal affiliation with Sufism? Is that part of what he's trying to do? That's one question. The second question is, is this particular genre of writing particularly about Sufisim along with the concrete obsessions and concerns that it reflects",
      "Is there anything in this that may be urgently needed or perhaps urgently beneficial to modern Muslims and the modern predicament? Now my own response to both of these questions is obviously yes. I think that Ibn Atta'allah, who in his own right was a very prominent Sufi",
      "He died in the year 709, 1309 of the common era. He was born in Alexandria but died in Egypt, I'm sorry, in Cairo. He is a major figure in the Shadhali order. He's the disciple of Abbas al-Mursi whom himself was the disciple",
      "Shadri wrote no real doctrinal treatises on the Shadr doctrine. Neither did Al-Mursi to any real degree and thus, the whole task of defining Shadiri doctrine fell upon Ibn Atta'Allah. And following the death of his two masters he became",
      "most articulate representatives and so he in a sense is sort of the beginning of formal articulations of Shazari doctrine. And in that regard, he was involved in some of the many controversies surrounding Sufism at",
      "But in this particular work, he is not doing that at all. In a sense, he seems to be saying, at least this is the use that I'm trying to put him to and we can debate the validity of that as we go on. And I don't know how some, Mizan said it's gonna be what kind of? Explosive.",
      "explosive day. I don't know how, how explosive it's going to be. I hope not unless somebody is getting married or something like that there's a wedding celebration or something but there were and we'll talk about these in some substance in just a bit but obviously there were controversies surrounding Sufism and Ibn al-Ta'ala was involved",
      "In fact, he and Ibn Taymiyyah. Of course, Ibn Temiyyah died in 728 so we can see that they were near contemporaries and their lives actually overlapped each other. And so there were these issues that he sought to sort of negotiate with regard to Sufism.",
      "was actually defensible or not, in this particular work he appears to step away from all of that. And virtually all of the issues that become problematic, become a source of controversy about Sufism are essentially stripped clean from this particular articulation and what he seems",
      "is that beyond all of the things that have become controversial about Sufism whether he himself believes that those who oppose him regarding these controversy issues are right or wrong, that belief aside he seems to be saying that there is something important in the Sufi tradition that could",
      "and that heritage is being sacrificed to all the controversy that has been generated around Sufism itself. And so what he wants to do is sort of bracket the controversy, and afford the everyday common Muslim access to those dimensions and aspects of Sufisim that are themselves non-controversial at least much less controversial in an effort",
      "the everyday common Muslim to be able to engage in the enterprise of doing Mujahadat al-Nafs, all right? Of taking aim against the ravages of the unrefined and the undisciplined self. The ego, the seat of our undisciplinary passions. Now I really do want you to take seriously the question mark",
      "question mark that's in the title. Otherwise, and this has been the response of some people who have I won't even say read the book because some of them haven't. The title has elicited even some reaction let us call it from some on both sides of the divide and I'll talk about the divide in just a little bit.",
      "But some people think that what I'm trying to do here is again promote a mass migration into Sufism. For those who are critical of Sufisim and who hold it to be a sort of theological, even religious virus that the Muslim community should be protected from they have read the title",
      "you know, Dr. Jackson is promoting a wholesale migration into Sufism, all right? That's not what I'm doing at all and we'll talk about that in just a bit. Others who again sort of ignore the question mark, and I'm speaking here about the proponents of Sufisim see this particular effort as",
      "as a sort of illegitimate or unauthorized encroachment upon the authority of Sufi groups and leaders to define and control the diffusion of Sufis thought and practice. In other words, for them if there is going to be anyone who's going to speaking about",
      "it should be those who are formally attached to Sufi orders themselves. And that this should be the way in which the definition and the diffusion of Sufism is controlled in a manner that assures a degree of quality control, all right? And I think that there are number of considerations",
      "could go into a response to this, but let me just say the following. As we'll see in my remarks that are to follow, my primary concern is this Muslim Ummah and beyond that particularly those who have not had access",
      "access to the kind of edifying educational sources and instruction that can actually enable them to make the best out of a Muslim existence in the modern world. And if for example, just to take them as an example are remiss",
      "to speak effectively to the everyday realities of everyday Muslims, then the fukaha should not blame others who step into the vacuum that is left behind. And I would argue the same for Sufism. In fact, one in the United States, I don't know about again and I'll probably mention this a number of times because I just want to be clear about that but",
      "There is an extent to which in the United States there has been a better job done ingratiating non-Muslims with Sufism than there has with ingratiatng non-Sufi Muslims with Suifism. In other words, there have been articulations that have gone to the end of inspiring non-muslims",
      "what the Sufi heritage has to offer, and yet Muslims who are not Sufis, I mean they have sort of... And I don't want to put too sharp a point on this because I'm not here to point these kinds of really bad fingers. But if we just step back and look at the overall effect, alright? Muslims who were not Sufs have largely been left to sort of make their own way, alright.",
      "And I have not seen any real efforts to ingratiate them with those aspects of Sufism, with which they would not have any difficulty and which would be very self-edifying for them. So this is part of what I try to do in this particular effort. Now why this particular book? And why this effort?",
      "There are a number of different ways, I'm sorry. Could I get some hot tea? My throat is getting out of control a little bit. There are number of ways that I could explain this. I think though that perhaps the most meaningful and in some ways hopefully honest would be for me to sort of share with you my own",
      "my own evolution as a Muslim scholar and thinker. To give you a sense of how I arrived at recognizing the importance of a work like this, my first book... And let me just say this,",
      "where you're able to hopefully hear my words and process them in ways that are close to what I at least mean by the words themselves. I became a Muslim, I embraced Islam back in the late 1970s. And shortly thereafter I went to the Muslim world and I studied et cetera, came back",
      "and ended up going to college, well finishing college and going on to graduate school and getting my PhD in Islamic studies. My first book was published in 1996 and this was a study of Shihabuddin al Qarafi I don't know if any of you have heard of Al Qarafif you're North African you probably have. Shihabadin al Qarafi",
      "a very famous Maniche scholar in Egypt, very prominent. One of the most, in my estimation, accomplished and brilliant legal theoreticians that Islamic legal tradition has produced. And I wrote my PhD thesis on him and this was followed by my first book which was entitled Islamic Law and the State, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shehabatina al-Qarafi.",
      "I mean, that was part of my sort of strict academic training. But I also learned an awful lot from Shihabuddin al-Qarafi and one of the things that I learned from Qarafi was the fact that one can be a very highly trained",
      "elite scholar or intellectual and that in and of itself does not preempt engaged involvement with the community of which one is a part. In an article I wrote about al-Qarafi, it's called Tips to the Juris Council he talks about all kinds of realities that a jurist has to be aware of",
      "aware of before he can give a fetwa that will be really reflective of divine intent. And that means being aware of the realities of the common everyday Muslim because they will come to you asking you questions that reflect these realities. If you don't understand their reality, you're more likely to respond to them based purely on",
      "may not be reflective of the actual reality that they're living. And therefore your response is likely to be misleading.\" And so for al-Qarafi, I mean he actually insisted on getting out into society and learning the ways of the people, the realities that inform their lives, so that one will find oneself in a position to be able to respond in a way that is sensitive to those realities. Let me give you",
      "one just briefly controversial. Do I want to go controversial? No, no. I'm just joking. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. In his treatment of the issue of hashish, hashish was a",
      "a substance that didn't come into the Muslim world until around the 10th or 11th century. Franz Rosenthal has written an entire book about this and a lot of the details are there, but when it came into Muslim society, it generated obviously controversy and there were all kinds of fatwas issued about the legal status of hashish",
      "all right now of course there is a very real extent to which one would think that by analogy the status of hashish will be a pretty slam-dunk case right I mean we simply analogize it to wine and",
      "on hashish. But again, for al-Qarafi and by the way Qarafi is not one of those tangential what might be called today in this very highly charged atmosphere which we live today you know some sort of ultra liberal kind of jurist he was quite mainstream but this was consistent with",
      "all right he had no problem with determining hashish to be haram all right but other issues connected with it such as for example if you prayed under the influence of it was your prayer valid or invalid does everybody understand what I mean by that alright so",
      "care of. Everybody follow what I mean by that? You don't look so sure, huh? Look at it this way, maybe we can relax some people. Most hold that if men wear silk, it's not permissible for men to do what? To wear silk. Is that... you with me on that? Okay?",
      "What if I have a silk necktie on, alright? That you deem to be what? Haram. Okay? If I pray in that silk neck tie is my solat valid or invalid? That's a separate question from what? Is wearing silk haram or halal? Anybody follow that? Okay? Alright? So the question is not for al-qarafi haram",
      "What happens now if you pray under the influence of it? Okay. Is everybody following that? For him, I cannot sit back in my library and answer that question. And so what does he do? This is right there in his al-furuq. What does he go? He goes down to this segment of the city where people were known to smoke hashish.",
      "and does what? And observes them to see the impact of this substance on them. As opposed to simply assuming that it would have the same effect as wine drinking. And out of this observation, he concludes that it does not have the",
      "their prayer is invalid even though this stuff is haram and they should receive ta'zeer. Is everybody following that? Okay, so I'm not going to go back to America and look online and find out where I said that hashish is halal right? That's not gonna happen right? But I raised that point to give you a real sense of how again involvement with the community all",
      "We were talking about Quentin Skinner and the whole issue of why do writers write? I mean, if Al-Qarafi is writing this multivolume work on X, Y or Z, why does he write it? He has children. He has a wife.",
      "He has hobbies, you follow what I mean by that? Why does he write this book? Because there's something that he wants to effect in society. And he is very engaged in that regard. So out of this experience with al-Qadhafi, this was one of the sensibilities that I acquired quite early in my academic career",
      "Coming out of the publication of my first book, which was in 1996. Shortly after that I was awarded tenure and tenure gave me the ability to begin to define my own scholarly agenda. And from that time on, my attempt has included it has not been this exclusively but it has included",
      "The attempt to study Muslim tradition with the full rigors and standards, and even expectations that go along with the Western tradition of scholarship. I've attempted to study our tradition",
      "always keep an eye to how to get this tradition to speak effectively, honestly, functionally. To the realities that define modern Muslim existence and for me especially in America right? Now for me part of my",
      "profile in this regard emerges out of the following insight and maybe this is something that we can discuss a debate later on in the day for me persecution is not the greatest threat to religion as sad and as unfortunate",
      "survive persecution. In fact, it may even thrive under conditions of persecution. I was having this conversation with a Jewish colleague of mine once and she said exactly that. Not only is religion not the greatest threat to religion, but religion can actually thrive under persecution. For me among the greatest threats to religion",
      "Is apathy born of irrelevance? Apathy born up irrelevant Where religion reaches a point where it cannot dress effectively meaningfully the realities that find define people's lives in ways that inspire them in Ways, that give them a vision a hope and aspiration for the future. That is infused",
      "that is infused with religious sensibility, to the extent that religion fails to do that. All right? Religion then becomes irrelevant and the attitude towards religion becomes not one of contempt but rather one of apathy.",
      "context it is not what the enemies of religion are doing to religion that will determine the day, but rather the followers of that religion itself. Because when they fail to find in the religion that which makes it relevant",
      "to dying a quiet death. Now, all of this for me takes shape in the context of the history of Islam in America and I'm gonna beg your indulgence here for just a few moments to sort of put you in the universe of realities that goes along with Islam in American because that's reality out which I am operating. Is that okay?",
      "Is that okay? All right. I mean, I have to ask because you may be just interested in British Islam versus American stuff, you know. I don't want to be the ugly American here in England. But let me say this much. I'll try to be very brief and you have to understand this to try to understand what it is that I'm trying to do in this book. And trust me, inshallah, I'm going to get",
      "But the history of Islam in America is quite unique. And, in many ways it follows a pattern that some scholars have suggested is not uncommon when it comes to the spread of religion. And one feature of this is that heresy leads the way. There are scholars who have",
      "who have suggested that heresies are much more effective in spreading religion than orthodoxy. And that is certainly true in the case of Islam in America, and don't anybody leave now because I don't want you to go away with a wrong impression here so lock the door Mizan.",
      "Now, why do heresies have this sort of marginal advantage? Well perhaps one of the reasons is that heresie tend to present target communities with a much more elastic if not empty vessel into which",
      "and pour the contents of their own religious imagination. In other words, the target community can actually more effectively find itself in the very elastic and less full vessel of heretical articulations of religion. And this is a very important step en route to",
      "appropriation of the religion as their own. And let me try and just say a sentence or two to reinforce the point that I'm trying to make here. If you look at the development of Islam in America, and Islam in American as an indigenous phenomenon is rooted in the black American community.",
      "And the first movements within that community were actually what one might call proto-Islamic movements. They were movements that had a certain vocabulary, a certain elan to them, a sort of vague familiarity with some of the fundamentals of Islam.",
      "of the religion didn't go beyond that. And so what you had, as I said is a fairly empty vessel. Everybody follow what I mean by that? All right and that empty vessel became the means through which that black community was able to find itself in Islam to the point that it appropriated Islam for itself because Islam in that moment",
      "was not this completely sort of full glass up to the brim, all right? Or the rim. All right? In which the proposition would be what? Take it or what? Or leave it. Allright? And many instances you'd find that the target community would what? Would leave it because there is no",
      "because there is no space in there for them to find themselves. Now, this was clearly the case with movements like the Moral Science Temple or The Nation of Islam. And in case you might be wondering I was never a member of either of these movements. No, if I was I wouldn't be embarrassed.",
      "So I mean, I don't say that as some shameful disavowal. That's not my road to Islam but having said that this moment was extremely important in the development of Islam",
      "Because what it did was that it enabled black Americans to indigenize Islam in such a way that every sense of contradiction between being black American and being Muslim was completely obliterated.",
      "there was no contradiction between being black and being Muslim following the efforts of groups like the Nation of Islam to sort of find themselves in this half empty vessel called Islam. All right? And this is a very important moment in the indigenization of Islam in America, all right?",
      "So what that means is white Americans to this day still confront the reality of in some quarters, I don't want to speak for all white American's experience because that's not my experience but I do know some white American Muslims quite intimately and this is often shared with me. White American Muslims are... Are there any white British Muslims here?",
      "So maybe, well tell me if this sounds familiar. White American Muslims are often looked upon as sort of racial slash cultural apostates. People who have left their own group and joined them. That what are you doing?",
      "sort of attitude. Whereas in the black community, because of this process, I understand what I mean by that, alright? That is not the case. It is quite normal to be a Muslim and to be black. And that, by the way was the importance of that moment. Okay? If we understand it in historical context. Traditionally Muslims have not understood",
      "because we've been too busy reacting on theological grounds. The whole question is, well was the Nation of Islam real Muslims or not? I mean a legitimate question in and of itself but it does not tell us all there is to know and to value in terms of the meaning of Islamization in any society.",
      "So that's part of the story, the narrative of Islam in America. In terms of native born and I use this word for lack of any better term if anyone has one I'm more than willing to consider it but sort of native-born indigenous Americans not the immigrant community which would happen a bit later on we'll talk about",
      "But this was an important moment in the establishment of Islam in America. Let me give you just an idea of Just how serious this is And then this may put you in a position to appreciate What I recognize as being some of the dislocations that later set in Shortly after 9-11 there was a big meeting",
      "of black intellectuals and political leaders, thought leaders and cultural leaders around the country. This included Cornel West and all kinds of people. The mayor of Detroit and all kind of people was I think sponsored by Tavis Smiley, I think it was called the State of Black America. This meeting, this particular meeting was held in a church in Philadelphia. And at one point, now you gotta remember",
      "But remember, this is after 9-11. A very tense time in America. At one point the moderator poses a question to the panel and it's a panel of all black leaders. And the question was what can we do to make Muslims feel more apart of us in America?",
      "And almost before he could get the question fully out, the Reverend Al Sharpton sort of interjected and said the following. Whoa, wait a minute, wait minute. Let's not misread the situation here because there is not a person in this church who does not have",
      "an uncle, a mother, a cousin, a close family friend who's not a Muslim. And therefore they are already a part of us. Okay? And again this is coming out of this moment. Now the vessel cannot stay half empty forever as the target community proceeds to find itself",
      "to find itself in the new religion through the pouring or outpouring of their own religious imagination. Eventually, religious imagination has to give way to religious thought because once we are already established as Muslims then the question becomes what is Islam and what is non-Islam? And here",
      "the premium of orthodoxy comes front and center. Orthodoxy itself, particularly in Islam almost automatically implies tradition because orthodox if nothing else in order for it to be credible has to carry the implication that",
      "with the understanding of the original carriers of the religion along with their heirs. And so tradition and orthodoxy come to form this sort of nexus in terms of how Muslims come, I'm talking about a newly converted convert community, come to recognize their place in Islam. Now,",
      "Once black American Muslims succeed in appropriating the religion for themselves, they would ultimately have to end up yielding to the interpretive authority of those who could only be assumed to be more knowledgeable if not most knowledgeable of orthodoxy and tradition.",
      "And as we move through the 20th century, this takes us into the second half of the 20s century in which we begin to get the mass immigration of Muslims from the Muslim world. Alright? Prior to 1965 in America, the immigration quotas from the",
      "critical mass of Muslims from the Muslim world. In 1965, the Johnson administration got rid of those quotas and the floodgates to immigration from the muslim world proceeded. And so now what you have are Muslims coming to America from the",
      "the new fermentation of Islam in the Muslim world. All right? I mean, this is the era of Islamic revivalism. All of this is now coming to America and the carriers of this orthodoxy. And again here, I hope that I can articulate this in such a manner that does not communicate any kind of blame game here.",
      "in a blame game. What I'm interested in is historical consciousness that empowers us to avoid these kinds of mistakes, okay? The carriers of what could only be presumed to be orthodoxy and tradition were quite removed emotionally, psychologically, existentially",
      "from the kinds of realities of America that had defined Muslims lives. They knew very little about America and this is not their fault. Muslim communities who come from the Muslim world to America were quite educated, in fact,",
      "creme de la creme, all right? Highly educated. Very quickly began to generate surplus income which very quickly empowered them to build and establish institutions with themselves would carry the imprint of their understanding and sensibilities about Islam. All right? And here we begin to see a certain amount",
      "set in you know today it's very common to hear words like muscle ha no macaw sit now these words not familiar right for those who are even more fancy and also the tachycal monoth and things like that those kinds of words may be very common today they were",
      "and therefore the idea of adjusting to the particular realities of America. This was not really in the cards, okay? And as a result of that we begin to get this sort of dislocation in the way that Muslims are able to practice Islam and to get Islam to speak effectively to their realities",
      "to their realities. This whole situation in a sense can be summed up by an accusation that is reported on the authority of Louis Farrakhan, anybody know who? All right and of course there has long been you know tensions between Louis Farrikhan and the Nation of Islam and black American Sunni Muslims",
      "that these Sunni Muslims have done nothing but get off of the back of the bus to get on the back up a camel. In other words, they have exchanged dependency upon the dominant community of whites for a dependency intellectually, ideologically perhaps even emotionally on Arabs and Indo-Pakistanis.",
      "This is the degree of dislocation that begins to set in. Now, I had suspected for some time that much of the problem here lay in Yuz' era of Muslim tradition not in the tradition itself. That Islamic tradition was not the problem and not the cause",
      "these misreadings, misdiagnoses and misapplications. Rather it was a problematic understanding of Islamic tradition. And so what I tried to do is I set out to try to address this dislocation as I sensed that Muslims and particularly those who ended up in positions of influence, I did not feel that they really understood the full ramifications",
      "what was going on. Because if Islam in black America died, in America there would be very little complicating the attempt on the part of many to argue that Islam and America was a completely foreign alien implant imposed on America from without. You better understand that's one of the differences between America and Europe alright?",
      "In America, the first major sort of critical mass of Muslims are actually native born black Americans who themselves have a very special and I'm relaxed everyone. I don't mean any kind of biological racism here. No no but put it this way. No politician in America can use the N word and stay in office. Does everybody understand what I mean by that?",
      "You understand what I mean by that? That's what I meant by a very special sort of place in the American narrative. So if indigenous people with a very space, all right growing and arguing that Islam is our religion and it belongs here as much as we belong here and you cannot tell us go home. Does everybody follow that? If that dies, what happens?",
      "Go home. I didn't feel that people were really getting this. This is massive implications, okay? Not just for black American Muslims and this is something that you know Allah knows so I'm not that worried about it, okay. I believe in dealing with the concrete realities of specific communities all right but I'm a part of an ummah too. Do you ever follow what I mean by that?",
      "I mean, just because I talk about black American Muslims doesn't mean that I don't care about Indo-Pakistanis or Arabs. It doesn't means that. It means I have to address those concrete issues and there are ways in which why should I expect you to know about that? Does everybody follow what I mean by that? And so I set out to try to address some of this.",
      "I started in the late 90s. I don't think I've ever told this story in public, maybe I have anyway. I started out in the lat 90's writing that book Islam and The Black American. And in Islam and the Black American one of the points that I was trying to make was that the understanding of Islam",
      "that was grounded in realities and sensitivities that were not American. Alright? But rather than sort of devolve into some kind of Muslim-American nationalism, these issues had to be negotiated through our common subscription to Muslim tradition. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? I can't come on the scene and say no, no, we do it this way.",
      "it this way, it's a black thing. No! I have to be able...no that's not the way we're doing it, we don't have to do it that way. And we all have to gain proficiency in that in order to be",
      "through writing, you probably don't know this. Through writing Islam and the Black American I got scared. And I stopped. And that scared because I knew I was challenging some very deeply ingrained sensibilities, ideas part of the status quo. And i knew that this would elicit or",
      "a very strong reaction. So I stopped and I went back, and I wrote on the boundaries of theological intolerance in Islam. Right? I put Islam and the Black American aside. I went back and I write Ghazali's book because what I wanted to do is basically establish a principle",
      "There may be many people in the Muslim community who disagree fundamentally with what I'm saying here, who think it is unfair, who thinks it is hurtful, who things it is biased. Many people think that's great too as well. But what I wanted to establish was",
      "I'm 100% wrong, okay? Wrong does not equal kufr. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? So we do not get into these Takfiri wars simply because I've written something that does not meet the expectation or the vision of certain authoritative people in our communities. And it wasn't just my being afraid for myself",
      "for myself, I don't want this for the Muslim community. I don' t want this stuff. And you know, I try to avoid it. I'm not always successful but I was telling someone the other day, I think Mizani and these guys, to me after the Islamophobes some of the biggest enemies for me are those Muslims who poison our discourse",
      "in our discourse, who make it impossible for us to have a civil discourse in which we can agree or disagree but hopefully come up top with the right stuff. This is not in our interest. We have to stop this. Colossians, okay I'm wrong or you disagree? Or maybe we just agreed to disagree. But talk about what I did in third grade and you know",
      "All these kinds of things, all right? I didn't want that. So I wrote on the boundaries of theological tolerance in Islam to ensure that this would not result in these Takfiri wars, okay? So that was in 2002 that that book came out. Went back to Islam and the Black American, allright? And that came out in 2005, allight? Now for me,",
      "you know, one of the biggest challenges to religion is relevance. I mean apathy is like loneliness it's not a joke. It is not a jok. And so for me Islam in America and I would argue Islam in the West as a whole has to understand that it is in the west now",
      "It is in America now. And whether we like it or not, the problems of American society become our problems. I don't mean in the details, you understand what I mean by that? But I mean the mega issues, all right, in the society just like the mega-issues of Medina become whose problem? Whose?",
      "It becomes a prophet's problem. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? You have wars racking Medina, the Prophet comes to Medina and does what? I have to address this. I don't get it. Well, that's you pagan wars. I ain't got nothing to do with that. No! I'm here now. All right? This is one of the mega issues of the society. All Right? And if I'm supposed to be representing a moral authority",
      "authority, generating moral capital. I have to say something about this. To me in America there are three fundamental intellectual issues that Muslims theologically will have to address if they're going to be really effective in these societies. One, the issue of epistemology.",
      "Modern Western epistemology makes belief in God very, very difficult if not an oxymoron. How can we know? Is reason the only way to know? One. Two. The issue of theodicy. Theodicy... T-H... I'm sorry.",
      "Theodicy. Oh, theodicy! The issue of how do we explain all the evil and tragedy in the world if God is all powerful and all good? Right? And you might not... I mean because we're Muslims, we don't necessarily have full and complete access to",
      "to all these sensibilities, alright? But these sensibility permeate American society and I would argue permeate Western society. And if you're a child in a public school in the West, you are likely to be directly or indirectly internalizing these very sensibilities. Alright? And bad inadequate theological responses to these kinds of questions put religion on the defensive. That's reality, alright.",
      "The third issue is the issue of the fate of others. Now, I think personally that this has a lot to do with the storied evolution of the modern state and part of that evolution is contained in the fact that the modern State in the West emerges out of an attempt to avoid religious strife in society.",
      "I mean, this is sort of Hobbes' move from the behemoth to Leviathan. We have to take all of that power and give it to a single authority in order to get rid of all of this religious strife and conflict in society. Now what this, in my estimation will tend to promote",
      "promote is this sense that if religion is going to have an established existence in modern society, under the modern state it has got to prove that it knows how to behave. Because we're not going back there. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? Alright now when you start talking about although",
      "All those people, they're going to hell. Whoa! Does everybody follow what I mean by that? That is the... Don't get me wrong. No no no don't misunderstand me. I'm not taking a position. I am just saying this is an issue. I' m not saying Muslims have to say oh no they are all going to heaven. No I'm saying that at all. But you understand this is and issue because those who say others are going to",
      "And this is one of the hidden pressures that will tend to domesticate religion in modern societies. Okay? So for me, one of these issues was the theodicy issue and there's a long standing issue in the black community given the reality of American slavery. All right? So again, an attempt to get our tradition, all right? And I'm not trying to just come up with my own theological position on these kinds of things.",
      "things all right I'm trying to model both for Muslims and non-Muslims alright the value and efficacy of Muslim tradition that it has something meaningful to say about these issues okay and this was a whole point of Islam and the problem of black suffering all right that was the point there",
      "what you will find is not just about blacks at all. It's about how do we access sources of Muslim tradition to bring them to bear, to speak effectively on our modern realities? So this was all a part of trying to do what I said with al-Qarafi. Engage our tradition seriously",
      "seriously on an academic level and then try to get it to speak effectively, to real live issues in society. Now having done that, I'll take one minute and stop. Having done that these are all very highly sophisticated and quite heady kinds of works",
      "I do think that they were important. They addressed important issues. They still didn't seem to me somehow, to address a certain imbalance. From my perspective we still as a Muslim community suffer from a certain imbalance",
      "live spontaneously in the world. We're constantly reacting, particularly against or for the West. Can everybody follow? It's very difficult for us to live spontaneously. And this is my estimation is one of the signatures of modernity for Islam because this is an unprecedented situation.",
      "All right? So much of what we consider to be bona fide Islamic civilization today was not there in Mecca or Medina with the Prophet. All right, are artifacts ways of doing things that were appropriated from predominantly non-Muslim societies. Right? But they could do this with a degree of what?",
      "What? Spontaneity. Does everybody follow what I mean by that, all right? I mean just think about this. Richard Bullitt, a professor at Columbia has a book entitled Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period and one of the points he makes there is that the central lands of Islam were not even simple majority, that means 51%. And I'm talking about Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, we're not even 51% for about 250 years.",
      "All right? So that meant that for 250 years, Muslims basically lived as what? As a numerical minority. Okay? All right. Now if Muslims become a numerical majority, a simple majority let's say in the year 250 okay, let me ask you this when did Abu Hanifa die?",
      "150. When did Malik die? 179, they're different now. 179 or 198 whichever. When does Shafi'i die? 204. Even Ja'far al-Sadiq died before Malik. When is Ibn Hanbal die? 241. Look at this.",
      "Look at this. Operating in what? Societies where there are numerically, what? Does everybody follow what I mean by that? And the issues of that society become the issues we have to come up with, and that in a sense becomes our institutionalized fiqh. Now, I want to make it very clear, I am dead absolutely against the domestication of religion.",
      "but as a responsible modern citizen. And what I mean by domestication of religion, I mean that I don't believe it is the role of religion to do nothing but applaud the nation state and the dominant culture. I don' t believe that. At the same time, I don''t believe it's the role",
      "that we have accepted the claim of ownership by this ascending civilization in the world. Everybody understand what I mean by that? Such that, we have now internalized the sense that we can only partake of certain things by surrendering to an authority that they have. The early Muslims didn't have that. That the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Bilal got up there and said",
      "and said that, have a dome? Huh? How about big minaret? Where'd that come from? So we go into these societies and we see them. We say hmm, hmm, mishpatal. We want that. And we appropriate it. And re-inscribe it with what? Islamicity. Alright? Okay?",
      "Okay, that's when we are able to live spontaneously. By far what I mean by that. All right? We've lost that ability and that imbalance is there. So I'm trying to figure out where's the imbalance. And I'll stop here but just say this. That... And by the way, the imbalance goes both ways. All Right? You know, we overreact against or we over react for.",
      "four does everybody follow what i mean by that all right and it's not a matter of one or the other it's a matter o f what is the motivation okay behind this or that particular rendering of islam and here i went back to an insight that i got from el gazali but i'll save that for the next session and then we'll start there inshallah um so i'm gonna pick up insha'Allah where I left off",
      "with the whole issue of where I think the source of the imbalance and the dislocation resides. And this goes back to an insight that was made by El Ghazali, and others for that matter,",
      "Western scholars have confirmed this insight and in many ways, which I think that it might be legitimately argued that postmodernism is in fact grounded on this very insight. Be that as it may the inside itself is that while reason is a very central enterprise",
      "in the human project. That is to say that we navigate and negotiate our way through life with reason playing what is seemingly a leading central role. The point that Al-Ghazali makes is that reason essentially functions, and they employ",
      "of the pre-rational that reason may direct us towards how to realize the aims and objectives that we want to realize, how to avoid the liabilities",
      "those aims and objectives themselves, those goals themselves. They are essentially pre-rational. In other words it is not the mind, and this is exactly what Al Ghazali says, reason is but a guide while impulses and motives issue from the self. That is to say that",
      "I can be a very accomplished jurist but if i am a juror whose internal constitution happens to be that of one who is a very angry then that will reflect itself in the way that reason guides me to whatever conclusions ultimately come to similarly",
      "then that cowardice will push my rational faculties in directions that actually reflect the animus of cowardice as the motivating factor behind what I'm doing. And so, the real point to be made here is this,",
      "as being purely one of reason and how we reason our way out of the predicament that we are in, to some degree misses the boat. Because one of the major challenges, if not the major challenge confronting not only Muslims I would argue but anybody who happens",
      "ascending civilization in the world is that we tend to be validated or invalidated by the way in which we relate to the criteria that are owned by that ascending civilisation. And it is not a matter of reason,",
      "of that appetite with which we seek that validation or through which we see that validation. All right? And so part of the solution to the issue becomes how to find ways to penetrate not the rational but the pre-rational dimension of us as human beings. Does this make sense?",
      "Does everybody follow? All right. In other words, I mean, you know, if I'm a coward, if i'm a very scary person, all right, I can study, you now, treatises on courage and bravery. You know, I could study all that stuff until the cows come home as they say. That will not necessarily make me a more courageous person.",
      "In fact, I'm probably more likely to become courageous not by reading things on courage but by actually engaging in death-defying activities that inform the pre-rational dimension of who I am. And with that, I become a more courageous individual.",
      "And so what we're dealing with is not how we think our way through. In fact, in fact, our ability to think all right may be part of the problem okay because we're animated to think always to a single goal and The issue is how do we change the goal itself? Right, how do alter what want to be alright",
      "All right? Okay. Not how do we find more effective ways of being it. Okay? How do we alter what we want to be? And here, clearly, Sufism has always been at the center",
      "to refine that dimension of ourselves as human beings, that is actually pre-rational. That self, that nefs. Okay? Alright? And here in my estimation was where much the solution lied. This is where we can begin perhaps",
      "address our inner realities in such a way that by reforming and refining our nefs, we become less susceptible to the regimes of validation. That are out there that push us in one direction or another. And by the way I want to be very clear about something.",
      "Those regimes of validation are both external and internal. I'll say that again, those regimes of validations are both externaal and internal by which I mean there are ways in which the dominant ascending civilization in the world seeks to hold out the criteria for validation",
      "that demands certain things of us, perhaps capitulations may be the best word to use in that regard. And then there are also regimes of validation within our Muslim community. That in some ways also hold out regimes of validations or demand things from us",
      "that make our social reality a very problematic one. And so the question becomes, you know how do I inoculate myself or how do we inoculated ourselves individually as well as collectively all right from the ravages of a self that is susceptible to these various and sundry regimes of validation? Okay.",
      "it was clear that Sufism, or at least the dimension of it, was always very keen on addressing precisely this reality. And so that's where I began to see some promise in that dimension of Sufisim",
      "But of course, there was also a challenge in that regard. And things were problematic because of the very problematic status of Sufism among modern Muslim communities and that status was such that oftentimes Muslims would themselves be",
      "be very reticent about being involved with anything associated with Sufism, lest they themselves be subjected to either very harsh criticism or being inducted into modes of being and thinking that can take them",
      "that they really suspect they don't want to go. All right? And so here's where it became necessary to try and lay out in the introduction to this work what I hoped would serve the function of relieving some of the stress, tension, confusion",
      "and diffidence about this whole enterprise of Sufism. Remembering what I said going back to the very beginning that, I am not, and I'm still not advocating some kind of mass migration into Sufisim okay? Because part, and we'll see, we're getting into some detail in just a minute because part of what, part of why I'm saying here is this. If",
      "If at the end of my presentation or perhaps even by now you are convinced that Sufism does have valuable things to offer the everyday Muslim, okay? Would it then be also appropriate",
      "want this dimension of Sufism, become a Sufi? What if he doesn't want to become a sufi? And you might ask well why would he not want to be come a Sufis I mean if he recognizes that there are these positive dimensions to Sufim why then would he",
      "What if in the very constitution of his or her background, he's a Protestant? I mean that very seriously. That's not a joke. I don't mean a Protestant with a capital P but with a small p as distinct from some sort of Catholics.",
      "where religious hierarchies and all these kinds of things are just not something with which his religious sensibilities will allow him or her to get comfortable with. And yet, and yet, these dimensions of Sufism remain something from what he would or she would benefit. Do we say",
      "go away until you decide to be a Sufi? Or do we see it as important enough for the community as a whole to afford people access to these meaningful and functional dimensions of Sufism? All right. Now, my opinion is the latter. All right? And that's what this is in a sense an attempt to do.",
      "Okay? But first of all, I think I need to make it clear that for me part of the problem with Sufism or let me and let me be very clear about this. In fact what you will find in this book is important a fact not and I might even say emphatically not",
      "not a history of Sufism, but rather what you will find is an expose that is grounded in modern Muslim perceptions of Suafism. And in that regard I'm in a sense proceeding on the basis",
      "is more important than reality because that is what will affect the extent to which people will or will not avail themselves of a particular thing. So, what is the problem that's racking this perception business? First of all, Sufism has been very controversial in that it",
      "and that it has produced proponents and opponents, both of whom tend to emphasize what is either deemed to be problematic or not about Sufism. And what happens is that we use the phrase Sufisim",
      "And if I'm an opponent, all right? If I'm opposed to Sufism, the connotation of the phrase is to all those things that are problematic about Sufisim. All right? In other words, you know, I take... The term itself to be far more connotative than the person who's using it might mean it. Okay?",
      "If I'm a proponent of Sufism, then I pretend in a sense that there are none and have never been any problematic aspects of Suafism as practiced or advocated or taught by any Sufis. And the average Jew Muslim is sort of caught in the middle.",
      "has traditionally and I'm going to be a certain amount of compression that I want to engage in here just to keep it very long story sort of short, has traditionally entailed at least in its full-blown form not one but two distinct dimensions. One is the dimension",
      "to penetrate the whole business of how we refine that nafs. How do we get to the pre-rational, to bring it in conformity with the will of God? How do",
      "God, all right? And a host of other issues. How do we go about putting our passions on a diet? How do overcome those passions that want to push us in the direction of disobedience to God? How",
      "overcome that all right. That is a part of certainly what became part of the Sufi tradition and I think that it's really important to make that point because there may be some question even as to whether some of their early proponents",
      "purely about how to refine the self and to bring it into conformity with divine will if you go back and read people like Hakeem al-Tirmidhi not your Tirmidhiyah another Tirmidy you know and he has a number of works all right Seeratul Awliya for example",
      "you know, the responses to the people of Sarkhas, responses to people of Ray. You know it has that book on the difference between. I mean what we tend to find there is precisely that how to get our pre-rational self disciplined. Disciplined.",
      "How to discipline it to the point that it is able to establish and maintain this psychodynamic relationship with God. With God, alright? You see put it this way It is one thing to know Ahkam of Salah It is another thing to want to get up for Fajr",
      "Knowing Ahkam of Salah will not get me up for Fajr. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? Alright, so reason and rationality alone are not the full answer. Don't get me wrong they're important it's important to know Ahkam As-Salaah as it is to know ahkam of many many other things alright but knowing that Zina is Haram",
      "Haram is not necessarily going to keep me from doing zina. That is not here, but rather what? Here. And Sufism has always included this dimension of dealing with us as human beings virtually from the beginning.",
      "are precisely revolting against some of the materialism and licentiousness that characterized the early community under Umayyads. And they're looking for ways of extracting themselves from that, and reestablishing and sustaining and deepening that relationship between this inner reality and God. There is on the other hand however",
      "However, what may be characterized as a mystical dimension of Sufism. In fact today the most common translation of Suphism is what? Mysticism. Mysticism in some ways is a problematic and multivalent term.",
      "And I don't want to give the impression that all mysticism is problematic or of a nature that it should be avoided. I don' t wanna give the, give the impressions that mysticism in and of itself is bad and",
      "If the fundamental premise behind mysticism, I mean when you look up definitions of mysticism all of them tend to entail some notion of union with God.",
      "can even be ontological. Does everybody understand? Ontological in the sense of an actual sort of physical, for lack of a better word, physical ontological coming together between human beings and God. Alright? Okay? Now that",
      "is the problematic dimension of mysticism. And it has gone by a number of different names, the most commonly used one or two is usually pantheism. Pantheism sometimes it's also referred to as monism. These terms actually don't precisely mean",
      "but they're often used interchangeably. The main idea, however, is essentially this. The notion of God being transcendent fundamentally implies a very strict bifurcation and boundary",
      "God as creator and the rest of the universe as created all right don't mind my ishara here knowledge but if we could imagine that there",
      "right that separates God as creator hmm from the rest of the universe from the universe not the rest up the universe, from the Universe as creation all right. As something that comes into existence by a willful act of creation",
      "as some kind of overflowing of divine essence. Do you understand what I mean by that? Right, I mean for me to pick up this book or ball up this paper, do you follow what I'm saying? That is a direct and willful act. Alright, that paper used to look like that now it looks like that. That's a direct an willful at okay.",
      "If you were close to me, however, you would feel the temperature of my body. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? All right? That is not a willful act. That is what? That's involuntary. All right. That simply flows from me by virtue of the fact that I am human. Does everyone follow what i mean by it? And in that regard, it's not a sort",
      "creation in the same way that what yes I mean this is but I hope you get the point that I'm trying to make all right there's a difference between the universe being the function of a willfully created act of God alright completely separate and distinct from him hmm",
      "involuntary overflowing of divine essence or being. Okay? Alright? What some forms of mysticism, particularly those that are commonly referred to as pantheism or mysticism tend to imply is that boundary between God as creator and the universe as created",
      "is either perforated, punch a hole or obliterate it. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? This form of mysticism often known as pantheism those other terms not withstanding has been the problematic dimension of Sufism par excellence.",
      "Okay, the fundamental problem. Okay? Because that is a problem that connotes what? If there is no difference between God and creation, hmm? All right? Then that connoted what from a Muslim perspective? All Right then everything comes to be essentially divine So we attribute divine attributes not only to God but",
      "to God, but to other than God. Now I want to try and be fair to both sides here. And you realize that this is incredibly dangerous territory. To the extent that when you start talking about these kinds of things it's very difficult",
      "controversial and how toxic an issue this has become. But that notwithstanding, let me try to say the following. The issue even might be said not simply to be the issue of mysticism because not all forms of mysticism are pantheistic.",
      "theistic do i understand what i mean by that all right in fact one could even argue that there are mystical vignettes in quran that there",
      "relationship with God. Does everybody follow what I mean by the difference between conceptual and experiential? Theology is largely what? It's largely conceptual. Does anybody follow what i mean by that? And theology is important for reasons",
      "talked about earlier but there is a difference between the menu and the meal no i'm very serious about it i'm not being funny there's a difference in knowing that god is rahman conceptually and knowing that experientially",
      "There's a difference between knowing that he is ghafoor, al-wadud and all these other things. And muntaqim, shageedul iqab. There's the difference between those things conceptually and knowing them experientially. You follow what I mean by that?",
      "about as the day progresses. But to me, one of the problems that we have in a sense with theology, modern Muslim theology is that it somehow never gets to the experiential dimension. As a result of which Muslims remain scared to death of God. Don't get me wrong.",
      "Taqwa is fear. Don't you understand what I mean by that? But if I understand God to be only he who punishes. Everybody follow what I'm saying about that? Only he who punished, then I'm paralyzed. You follow what i mean by this? And we read that He is Ra'uf, He is Rahim.",
      "All right? And we can come into the masajid and we can exchange on that conceptual level. You follow what I mean by that? All right, but somehow that doesn't reach down to here. And this is very much manifest even in some of the questions that you hear asked. You following what I'm saying about that? I mean well doesn't God know that you were",
      "doesn't he know you tried your best but that's not good enough really is everybody fuck this is a this is it this is the problem and I don't don't get me wrong I'm not I'm saying that then we'll get into some of this in them and I thought a lot later on I'm",
      "Alright? But to just know God conceptually. Alright? And not sort of psychodynamically. Do you understand what I mean by that? How can I really then rely on Allah? Does everybody follow what I meant by that? How can i really, I mean really rely on allah? Okay? How could I really repent to Allah?",
      "to Allah. This is a problem, alright? Mysticism and let's call it its... I don't know how to put this. If the pantheistic extreme is over here, mysticism, let's say from here because it's a range.",
      "engagement of God. God says about Abraham in the Quran that he takes him as his what? Khalil. Khalil, close confidant friend. Alright? There is a psychodynamic relationship between the two. That God actually loves Ibrahim and God does love. Love!",
      "Love, you understand love? Love. And Ibrahim loves God. Now the problem with that is this because God is not a person for many of us that whole enterprise becomes a very problematic enterprise. You follow what I mean by that? It's like my saying I love this wall. No I'm not joking, I'm no joking. Are you out of your mind?",
      "Right? It's an inanimate thing. It's not a human thing. it's not even probably sentient like I love my dog, alright? Okay? Many of us have a problem with things like loving God for real. Hmm? Relying on Allah for real okay? Wanting to please Allah for",
      "Not wanting, quote unquote, to disappoint Allah. For real. Alright? As a psychodynamic relationship. Okay? And this is part of what Sufism from the early period has tried to cultivate. Alright? And this mystical sort on this end of the spectrum. Okay? Having nothing to do with that. Is that by far what I mean by that?",
      "And as I said, part of this we find even in Quran. We found it in the Sunnah as well. Very famous hadith. All of you I'm sure know it. Where the Prophet says that",
      "to draw near to me through until what what does the hadith say i become his wife with which he sees his ears with which she hears all right his hands with which you go forth all right now clearly the prophet is not talking about collapsing the distinction between what creator and created",
      "created all right, but there is a mystical dimension here in as much as He is referring to the fact that our senses are Actually capable of a lot lot more. All right than our mundane existence would would imply Okay and through a refinement of the self and a particular relationship with God",
      "We can know things. We can acquire supersensory knowledge. Does anybody understand what I mean by supersensary? All right, we can acquire super sensory knowledge that is directly based on our relationship with God and the purification of that self. That is a part of mysticism as well",
      "However, in the history of Islam, and here's where you come to the really problematic dimension, the really problematic nature of Sufism that we tend oftentimes to take some part as the whole. And that's whether you're for or against Sufisim. Let me quote a few quotes for you. They are in the book as well.",
      "One early Sufi by the name of Bostami was quoted as saying, there is nothing in this cloak but God.",
      "this statement of Al-Halaj. And by the way, there are scholars who doubt whether or not Halaj actually said that but whether he actually said it or not is certainly attributed to him. All right? This says Wahdut al Wujud is attributed to Ibn Arabi. All Right? Halaj said what? Well, I am the truth. Right? Essentially, I'm God.",
      "Right? Now, those kinds of articulations have been routinely the source of a very wrenching conflict within Islam about Sufism. Okay? So much so that that dimension of mysticism comes to be taken",
      "to be taken, to be representative of mysticism as a whole. And indeed, of Sufism as a hold. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? All right and this is part of what makes the whole enterprise of even approaching Sufisim for modern Muslims so problematic. Is Sufisms shirk?",
      "Shirk you see what I mean all right was it just a said if I want to mean by that and these questions have been answered you know differently by proponents or opponents and in the middle lies all these everyday Muslims scared conflicted confused",
      "And then you want to try and present something, Sufism? That's enough to deny them access. Now... I'm not... Of course, I am opposed",
      "As I think any conscientious Muslim would be to anything that connotes, not to mention that actually constitutes pantheism. Right? I don't think there's any question that is a proscribed form of religiosity from the perspective of Islam.",
      "from the perspective of Islam. The question becomes, all right? You know, the legitimacy of interpreting certain Sufi doctrines statements and the legacies of certain Sufis in a way that renders them constitutive of pantheism. Does that make? Okay? Now I'm not here to solve that question today",
      "I'm not here to solve that question today. But what I am here to try to convey to you is that while these sensibilities are there, and there are those who condemn all Sufism because they understand it to connote what? Right? Okay? All right?",
      "and the personal refinement side gets thrown out with a bathwater. You get the other side, however, who wants to deny that any Sufi has ever said perhaps not that far but who generally wants to",
      "That Sufism is just no, it's just refinement of the self. And both of these tendencies I think misrepresent the reality. There have been those dimensions in Sufisim and there has been this dimension in Sufiism. In the history of Islamic thought that have been",
      "All right? And I want to read very quickly a quote by someone who is routinely taken to be the arch enemy of Sufism in pre-modern Islam. And this is none other than, whom do you think?",
      "Ibn Taymiyyah. This is what Ibn Temiyyah has to say about the whole business of Sufism. He says,",
      "together on page 23 root and branch such that those who veer from the proper course in this regard fall into two groups one a group that accepts both what is true and what is false of",
      "what is false of the Sufi way, such as many groups of theologians and jurists. And the correct right position is simply to accept of this way that which is, as well as any other way, that which",
      "any other way, that which violates the book and the sunnah. And so what we have here is not a denial that Sufism can potentially include these problematic dimensions but a denial of that is the whole of Sufisim and on that basis the entirety of Sufiism should be rejected.",
      "All right? And so what I'm finding as valuable in what Imam Al-Ta'ala has to say is the fact that he's dealing with this dimension of mysticism, if that. All right and primarily with the issue of how we control discipline and refine ourselves. Okay now beyond the issue",
      "of pantheism there are other dimensions I mean virtually all of these sort of quote-unquote problematic dimensions of Sufism even a talk Allah also alright and it's out of this work so for example another problematic institution associated with Sufis would be something like a to us soon",
      "none of this appears in taj al-Aroos Sufism has also been associated with sometimes certain almost cult like relationships between the master and the disciple which can be susceptible to abuse Ibn Atta'allah recognizes",
      "the potential benefit of having a sheikh and he does not deny that at all but he nowhere says that you must have one the by following I mean by that alright um you know certain Sufi practices all right such as a weird all right or our particular regime ascetic",
      "that these are things that will assist you in this whole enterprise of refining the self. But they are not things he imposes as a particular mode of doing Sufism. And finally, he mentions al-Shadili and al-Mursi but does not imply it is absolutely necessary to be",
      "to be a member of a Sufi Tariqa. Alright? These are the things that I found valuable about this work because here is a work by a master Sufi, that is not pantheistic primarily not even mystical and that speaks",
      "of how Muslims are going to undertake the enterprise of refining that self, putting it on a diet. Alright? This is the promise of Sufism for Muslims in the modern West. The challenge is of course all those things that I've laid out.",
      "you know we're going to have to manage this challenge if we're gonna be able to gain and maintain access to the promise. Alright? Now I wanna say one last thing before I move on to one other topic. Sufism has been",
      "the richest, I think repository of the kind of practical instruction for refining the self in the history of Islamic thought. Having said that, I don't want to and I should not imply that Sufis were the only ones who made contributions",
      "There are thinkers who may not have considered themselves to be Sufis, all right? Even if the later Sufi tradition sort of adopts them as Sufies. All right? Who made major contributions in this regard. My point is that I don't want to give the impression that only Sufism has something meaningful and valuable to say about refinement of the self.",
      "If you go back to people like At-Tirmidhi, there are those who would argue that there's some question as to whether At-tirmidh was actually a Sufi. And yet his works are replete with masterful instructions about how to go about and maintain the importance of refinement of the self.",
      "And, you know, people can differ with me in this regard. But look at it this way. If you read works like those of let's say or even, all right? What you'll find there is that the primary focus is on how to develop, maintain and enhance taqwa.",
      "Taqwa. Taqwah, that is their obsession. Alright? And in fact the Tirmidhi would even say things like The Awliyat, the Wali, is simply the one who has taqwah Not the one necessarily has super-sensory almost supernatural powers or anything like that. The wali is simply someone who has takwha.",
      "all right we find a similar obsession even in people like muhasibi his focus is on the development of taqwa as a means of moving that nafs into conformity with the divine will later sufi works tend to be sort of focused not on but on cash",
      "on removing the veil between us and God. And that often will imply a whole other cosmology, you know, that's the beginning of many of the problems. Now if I sound like I'm being just a little bit diffident",
      "The reason for that is that I am. And the reason for this is that, I don't want these age-old debates from centuries ago in other parts of the world to cripple modern Muslims, deny or impede their access",
      "which I deem to be extraordinarily important for them. You know, oftentimes we are more bent on sort of defending people who lived a thousand years ago than we are concerned about the realities of Muslims sitting right in front of us. I'm not interested in doing that and I'm",
      "in you know sustaining these ongoing bouts this jadal all right I think that's one of our problems okay as one Sheikh said in the introduction to Muhasabi work you know sort of a play on one of the hadiths of the Prophet no community alright whose sole goal is",
      "goal is argumentation will prosper. So I'm not interested in that and I really want to bracket that so we can gain access to this dimension. Now why Ibn Atta'allah? There are other works by those who are either Sufis or their Sufism per se may be of a different",
      "maybe of some question but there are other works out there that could have served this function. Muhasabi's for example is one example of that. The problem with it is that too long, Muslims don't read it and in some ways you can say the same thing with some of these works alright? And others, they're too long. Muslims won't read them alright?",
      "All right, this all right is a short brief concise to the point work and For lack of any better term and it's entertaining in word and If I like it's it's entertainment There's a sweetness to it. It's not all drudgery Okay, and so this is what nominated this work for me? Okay",
      "To understand Ibn Atta'Allah, however, we have to problematize a term that has indeed become quite common and is widely diffused not only in Muslim communities but in religious communities per se. And that is the whole notion of spirituality",
      "whole notion of spirituality. Spirituality is in some ways a very problematic term in modern times, and it's problematic in the following sense. Since the rise of modern empiricism, positivism",
      "there has developed a dichotomy between a materialistic vision of the world and life juxtaposed in opposition to a spiritual one. In other words, those who say the only realities that exist are physical, material realities",
      "that spiritual thing is all in your mind. And that's sort of the anti-religious vision of life. The other side, which is the religious contingent, sees spirituality in opposition to materialism as being necessarily good.",
      "And so when we use the word spirituality, all right? As religious people, we use it in an almost categorically positive sense. Okay? But Ibn al-Ta'ala and Islam in general recognizes that there is such a thing as good spirituality and potentially bad spirituality. Spirituality as a whole is not necessarily good.",
      "necessarily good. Right? I mean this is one of the traps, you shouldn't call it a trap but this is on of the habits of mind that we fall into and impregnates the language as a function of our living in the modern world. Okay? And what Ibn Ta'ala wants to be very clear about, and this was part of Islam's struggle from the very beginning okay? The pagan Arabs were they spiritual?",
      "I wonder how many of you would have answered yes if I hadn't said this before. If I had just asked, were the pagan Arabs spiritual? Would we have said yes? All right. And the reality is yes they were all right and Islam's entire critique of that is that that is a bad spirituality. All right those means are trying to extract service from nature are bad or illegitimate.",
      "God is the only source of what you're looking for. And that is what Ibn Al-Ta'ala is trying to promote in this work. So, I don't want us to get into the trap of using spirituality as this over inclusive term. His spirituality is about refining the self and bringing it into a monotheistic heteronomous relationship with God. That is the goal.",
      "When we come back this afternoon, what I want to try and do is look at some of the concrete prescriptions that he proposes. Read some sections from Ibn al-Ta'ala's work to give us a sense of exactly what the value of this could be. So what I wanna do now",
      "What I want to do now is move into the actual text of ibn al-Ta'ala unless there are any outstanding questions that people want to ask based on what's been said so far. And I think as a prelude to doing that, one of the things that I want point out is... well couple of things that i want to point out. One is that ibn Al-Taalas work here is not a theoretical text.",
      "It is not a text that debates or seeks to sort of lay down Sufi theory, or if you don't like that term, Sufi, lay down theory about the refinement of the self with all these fine distinctions and categories, et cetera. But it is a work that is about practicality with regard to the whole enterprise of refining the self.",
      "that is fundamentally grounded in spiritual labor. It's not simply a contemplative text, but it is a text that seeks to inspire habits, practices and modes of being that contribute to the whole enterprise of refining the self. That's the first thing. The second thing I want to say is that Ibn Atta Allah's work is an aphoristic text",
      "text. By that I mean this is not a linear discussion where he seeks to lay out arguments in sort of expanded notation, presenting theses and proofs and all these kinds of things. On the contrary his entire work is basically a work of aphorisms.",
      "statements that are designed not simply to appeal to our rational faculties, but rather in addition to our religious imagination. And in some ways you might say that he wants both to animate and in a sense liberate the religious imagination, all right? But to do so in a way...",
      "problems with Sufism in that it has contributed to the flourishing of the religious imagination. And one of the controversies around it is over the issue of how do we find the proper boundaries of religious imagination? I personally think that, you know... We have a tendency, I think, and many aspects",
      "of modern Islam and that is we want final and ultimate solutions for everything. And if there's not a final, open, a final and an ultimate solution for it well just get rid of it. Just get rid the problem. Stamp it out. There's no attempt to sort of...just manage it.",
      "Sort of like raising teenagers. You know, you can just more or less successfully manage them over time. All right? No, no, I'd stamp it out. Get rid of it. Pretend that the problem doesn't exist or it's not as complicated as it is. Religious imagination is a problem but it's also a problem not to have religious imagination",
      "And in some ways, a part of what you were talking about, religiosity does in I think some very fundamental ways involve religious imagination. What we imagine God to be and our relationship",
      "and our relationship with him. So we're dealing with an aphoristic work that very thoroughly engages in religious imagination, okay? So he starts out by giving the first step towards the whole business of refinement of the self",
      "first point that he makes reads as follows. Ibn al-Ta'ala says that the first step toward refinement of the self is none other than repentance and without repentance this whole enterprise",
      "cannot be successful. And to that end, he says the following. O servant, seek from God at all times the inspiration and power to repent. Indeed, God has invited you to this saying, and repent to God. All of you, O believers, perhaps you might succeed. And he said, verily, God loves those who constantly repent",
      "Now if you want to achieve repentance, at no time during your life should you be devoid of reflection. Reflect upon what you have done during the day. If you find that you have been obedient to God, thank God for this.",
      "for this if you find that you have been disobedient rebuke yourself ask for forgiveness and turn to him in repentance indeed there is no audience with God more beneficial than one in which you are critical of yourself but do not rebu ke yourself in a state",
      "openly scowling with a heavy heart, crestfallen and humiliated. If you do this, God will replace your sadness with happiness and your humiliation with dignity and the darkness that engulfs you with light and the veil that obstructs your vision with disclosure.",
      "When a person commits a sin, this is accompanied by darkness. Indeed disobedience is like fire and darkness is its smoke. It is like someone kindling a fire in a room for 70 years. Do you not think that the roof of that room will be blackened?",
      "One more excerpt on repentance.",
      "This is number 13, by the way. A person who engages in sinful behavior is like a brand new pot beneath which a flame is lit for a duration as a result of which its bottom blackens. If you hasten to wash it this blackness will be washed away but if you leave it and cook",
      "This blackness will settle into it to the point that it crests and washing it will be of no use. Repentance is what washes away the soot of the heart such that deeds emerge carrying the scent of being accepted by God. So constantly ask God for repentance, and if you obtain this your time will be well spent",
      "Now, one of the things that is very important about this and is also very problematic about it",
      "Allah's emphasis time and again on the fact that God loves repentance. That God what? God loves",
      "You know our theology will have something to do with this but I think that as Muslims we would be very well served To remember that God actually loves repentance Hmm that repentance is a good deed All right many of us Our focus is all off",
      "We think repentance is only something that you do when you are absolutely sure what? Huh? Not only that. No, not only that you're wrong. Oh, we know we're wrong and we did it. Say it again.",
      "only something that we do when we are certain that we won't go back. And for that reason, we do what? Huh? Nothing. Right? And what Ibn At-Tah'Allah is telling us, no, no,no, no. That is the wrong approach. That",
      "all right the sweetness indeed the soot of that disobedience to settle in our hearts all right when we repent okay when we not only are we acknowledging our servitude to god we are also doing something that God loves this is a good deed all right and here",
      "Here we come to another insight that often escapes us as human beings. If God loves repentance, a superficial reading of all this would also imply that God loves what? Does God love sin? Why are you guys so diffident?",
      "It's like, you're not sure? Does God love sin? Sinners? God loves sinners? I guess it depends on what kind of sinners. The point that I'm making is this, is that God made us prone to sin.",
      "The prophet told us, all human beings are prone to sin. We're going to do that. We are in the grip of our passions. We racked by insecurities and many of our sins actually emerge from a place of insecurity. Much of what we do in the way",
      "of sin, you know has a lot to do with that quest for validation in the social space. All right? And that's what draws us into sin many issues but that's who we are as human beings. I mean even the prophet himself said the most truthful of names for a human being is what? What? No. The most truthful names are",
      "We are constantly toiling. That's who we are as human beings. Boredom is a real problem for us as human being and we are constantly anxious, worried about our status in the world. And because of that we are prone to these sins. God does not love sin",
      "but what he loves is for our commitment to him, to lead to a struggle against these tendencies on our part. And this is precisely part of the meaning of ibadah. Precisely part of that meaning of Ibadah and I think that again to recognize that Tawbah",
      "is not only something that will assist us, all right? In overcoming that which is the source of our sin. All right? It is also a deed that God loves and I keep repeating that but I'm gonna repeat... I don't think we get it. All Right? You know many of us are sort of you know like Saint Augustine said",
      "Justin said, Lord make me pure. But not yet. Right? We don't even want to repent because we're still stuck in the throes of that which we've done. This is a mismanagement of our religiosity. And part of the whole enterprise of refining the self begins with repentance.",
      "repentance. Repent to Allah and he quotes the Prophet himself who says what? I repent to Allah, what? 70 times a day in other riwayat 100 times a Day alright and it's important for us to understand this is a part of ibadah This is worship alright repentance is worship okay",
      "more ascends so we can do more repentance. That's a really childish approach to the whole enterprise, okay? But it is important because you know, the most difficult... It's just like sometimes we don't even want to read Quran, right? Don't answer that question.",
      "that question but sometimes we don't know, we don' t even want to read the Quran. Right? Why? Because it's going to sting. I mean it's gonna inspire yes but it's also what? That's me! You follow what I mean by that? It's gonna bring me to a level of accountability alright that's gonna make",
      "heedless, all right? As I've been up to that point. And I'm not really prepared, okay? To give up that heedlessness because I'm very much engrossed in what that allows me to do, okay?\" Ibn Atta'Allah is saying that is a mistake because one of the things you're overlooking is what awaits on the other side, alright? What happens when Allah takes you into His mercy",
      "mercy. Okay? What happens when he begins to shower down upon you, all those subtle invisible gifts. Okay. And let me just state here I don't like these cameras but I'll say it anyway because they get you in trouble people don't Anyway as a convert I can see that alright why because you know when I first came into Islam",
      "I mean, there were things I just could not imagine. How do people live without them? I'm talking about certain kinds of activities and I won't say anything other than that. I mean you work all week and the weekend comes what do you do?",
      "I couldn't imagine it. You follow what I mean by that? I'm very serious about that, all right? And Allah enabled me step-by-step through repentance, through sincerity. Didn't always get it right, but this is a... You see, it's coming down! We don't see it and we have difficulty trusting it.",
      "all right repent to allah he will help you with these things all right all right and even at all says many of us don't repent because we know we're not ready okay and he says do not do not be like the person who says i will not commit to curing my illness until i find the definitive cure",
      "definitive cure. Because it will be said to you, you will not find the definitive cure until you commit to curing your illness. There is no sweetness in jihad. There are but the jagged edges of swords. So prosecute the jihad against yourself. That is the greatest jihad!",
      "jihad. Toba is a jihad, and it's the first step towards refining the self, putting that self on a diet. Don't be afraid to do it. Don' t tell yourself it's not working. Every time I make Toba, the sweetness of what I do gets a little less sweet because conscience comes between",
      "comes between the sweetness and the thing itself you can't enjoy a thing fully if your constantly tell you telling yourself I gotta stop doing this all right I gotta start doing this okay this is the first step towards self refinement alright and nothing else matters even though Allah says",
      "Okay? And one of the things that we have to get out of is, you know, you-know where you are. Allah knows where you're at. I mean oftentimes one of those things that preempts this whole Tawbah business is that, you now, we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people. Alright? Constantly comparing ourselves with other people, alright? Well look, my fitna ain't your fitna. I don't know what your fitnah is. I know what my fitnah it. Alright and if you have an easier time, alhamdulillah, I have a more difficult time.",
      "is the best that I can do sincerely honestly humbly to Allah and the last thing that I'm going to do is try to fake the funk all right pretend it be something that I am not okay and what we really need is you know communities because this is another part of the problem that we have our communities won't let us repent sometime by following I mean by",
      "to be somebody who's known for doing this and then, you know, you're on the straight and narrow. You know? Even community members will look at you askance. You what I mean? I'm very serious about it. This is real. This a serious business. All right? And we supposed to be a community. We suppose to be community that mutually enjoying one another. All Right? In truth and in steadfastness. Allright? Don't worry about that.",
      "worry about that. Repent to Allah and constantly repent if that's the only good deed you have, you have what? You have that. Alright so that's first step I want to read you one last point about what he says about repentance though so that nobody leaves here with",
      "and asks for forgiveness is like one who continually drinks poison, and follows it up with the antidote. It should be said to this person, you may not make it to the antidot one day, and death may overtake you before you are able to administer it.\" So this is a blessing, this is bounty, this gift that Allah holds out to us. I mean just imagine he could have said,",
      "no repentance. You do it, it's on your record and you're just going to have to deal with it when you meet me. That's it. He could have said that. He gave us what? This is a gift. Don't abuse the gift. All right? Because as he said, you know, and what he's implying here, you",
      "one of the insights that non-Muslims just don't get about Islam. And maybe it has to do with the way we're living it, because you know we tend to be so focused on social control right? We tend to",
      "clearly many of its rules wouldn't be what they are. Right? I mean, Islam is about human beings controlling their behavior based on a relationship they have with God. Do you understand that? All right? I could fornicate every day for the rest of my life and never have to worry about what? Being punished or being stoned.",
      "being stoned. How would I be stoned? You have what? If you get caught with what? One witness, two, three, four, four. Clearly Allah wants to inculcate what?",
      "He wants to inculcate, and it has largely worked in Muslim communities. People who avoid, in some ways this most natural of activities based solely on their relationship with Allah. Based solely on the relationship with allah I want to please my lord And i do not want the rope between me and my Lord to snap To break",
      "This is a part of who we are as Muslims. We don't want to play with the gifts that Allah has given us and Tawbah is a mighty one among them.",
      "the first step being in and of itself a repentance or toba, he moves on from there to talk about the importance of following the example of the prophet. And there are some very I think important things that you know he has to say in that regard. So for those of you who have the book number six is advice upon the prophet",
      "advice about following the Prophet and it says Neglect will find no way to you except through your own negligence, your own negligeance in following the example of the Prophet And you will not be elevated in the sight of God Except by following the examples of the prophet Now following his example takes two forms outward",
      "outward and inward. The outward form is in such matters as prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimage, jihad, and the like. The inward form is that your prayer be characterized by a connection with God and your recitation of Quran by reflection upon him. So when you perform an act of obedience",
      "and find neither connection nor reflection, know that you are afflicted with some inner disease. Be it arrogance, conceit or some similar malady. Indeed God says I will turn away from my signs those who unjustifiably proceed with arrogance in the land.",
      "resemble a person who is wracked with fever and whose mouth sugar acquires a bitter taste. But even in this context, disobedience in a state of humiliation and recognizing one's need for guidance is better than obedience in a",
      "saying here is that following the example of the Prophet is not simply following his outward manifestations. Following the example, the prophet also includes following his religious character, following him and being humble, following Him and being sincere, following",
      "And when he talked about prayer and reading Quran, especially prayer, because this is something that many of us are often afflicted with. I remember the first time that I read this a number of years ago, and I was a bit confused when I first read it. He said, you know, when you make prayer and you don't find connection or reflection, this is know that you are afflicted",
      "inner disease, be it arrogance, conceit or some similar malady. And upon my initial reflection I thought that was perhaps maybe an oversight of sorts but then I began to really reflect on it and it came to me that you know, I can see ways in which he's absolutely right because the reality is",
      "distracts most from our prayer is that we are not fully there. And part of the reason that we're not there, is that really do think or feel which is worse than think. We really do feel in that pre-conscious or pre rational side of us that our time would be better spent doing something else.",
      "That I'm only hanging out. But in point of fact that our time would really be spent better someplace else. This is the height of arrogance, all right? And this is why he's saying that when you find this and I'll soften it just a little bit we should perhaps reflect on is this a manifestation of arrogance on our part?",
      "Do we really think that we're too good to take this 10 minutes and devote it to our Lord who has created us and given us all that we have? Are we really too good? To be there doing that act of devotion, all of us? I mean, we're thinking about what we just left to be there or we're",
      "of a disconnection between us and Allah. And this is something that again, as a part of you know, you talk about the sweetness of that disobedience, connection with God is part of what mutes that. And we can't seem to get there because we're so attached to all those things that appeal",
      "of again refinement of the self. And I just want to reiterate something here, you know, to bring us back to what the whole point of this is supposed to be. In the introduction to this book, I lay out a number of issues and again, Imam Atta'Allah",
      "recognizing that our self is in a sense, that nefs in a sens you might think of it as a natural adversary. Something that we have to take arms against at every waking moment",
      "state of nature all right in other words with no society even in a state of Nature if I'm on an island all by myself alright my nuts will continue to be a natural adversary which i have to be careful and not allowing to colonize me as an individual",
      "we do not live in a state of nature. We live in the state of society, alright? And it's in that context, alright, that the nafs really becomes a problem, alright because the kind of validation, alright that comes from the social circumstances in which we live okay and they can be either through appeals to",
      "or appeals through the sort of, the cultural orthodoxies that we set up as Muslims. That's about what I mean by that. If I got my beard and I know the right jargon and maybe you know the rigth gear, I can navigate my way to that community unmolested and I'm just cool. And never have to address what?",
      "to address what? Any of those inner issues that I have as an individual. You know, it's all, salam alaikum, mashallah, hamdulillah, da'awakum, gone. Right? And the amount of validation that I get from that can seduce me into thinking that that is the end-all... That's all my religion is all about!",
      "If the Muslims are pleased with me, I'm what? I'm a good Muslim. I'm fine. If I can go into those public spaces and get the kind of validation that I'm looking for, that can blind me to all of my own individual flaws. And I never address them. And as a result of that 20-30 years, I don't grow an inch.",
      "grow an inch. I'm no better a Muslim today than I was 20 years ago because I have not addressed any of those issues that are really my issues, all right? And this is a part of what we have to be very careful about as well, all Right? You know taking the public order okay as being the end-all to what it means to be a good Muslim, all",
      "a good Muslim, okay? Because there are things about me that you can't possibly know. You should not know. Do you follow what I mean by that? I have flaws and none of your business, right? And I should not be displaying them in the public domain, all right? We don't have confession here as Muslims, you know? Hey, I got a wine drinking problem. Hey, look, we don't want... You should",
      "not be seduced or beguiled into thinking that because you don't know it ceases to be an issue. Because you don�t know, it's not an issue! It is an issue alright? Because I care about my relationship with Allah and I want to refine this to the point where I can have the best relationship that I can",
      "And this is again going back, again to what he's talking about in terms of the importance of following the example of the Prophet. And also notice he says something very bold here. Very bold! Why do you think he says that but even in this context disobedience and a state of humiliation and recognizing one's need for guidance is better than obedience in a state",
      "All right? He's saying that precisely because that disobedience in a state of humiliation, recognizing that I'm wrong. All right. That will be an opening for Tobah and a resolve to address my issues. All Right? But obedience in a State of Vaingloriousness. Yes!",
      "You follow what I'm saying? Okay, right. And I'm blinded to the fact that I was backbiting people before that and I'll probably be backbite in people after that. It blinds me you know to a level of self-awareness of my own state all right. That's what that sort of religious arrogance can often lead to okay. So one has to be very careful about that.",
      "I don't know if you know the basketball player Mahmoud Abdul Raouf. It's an American thing, all right? Anyway he has Tourette syndrome, allright and one of things he said in an interview, you know, one of the blessings of my Tourettes is that it has been a constant reminder to me, allight, that I'm flawed. A constant reminder too.",
      "overly enamored of myself because my Tourette's constantly brings me back to a recognition that I'm flawed. And this is part of what Imam Al-Ta'ala is referring to by, you know if I'm disobedient but I'm broken by it because Ali is at the Govich",
      "heard of him he was the former president of Yugoslavia wrote a very to me profound book it's in fact it's not an academic book but it's a very serious book and it's one of my favorite books on Islam in English it's called is Islam between East and West no Islam between east and west",
      "in this book is that a person is as good as they want to be. A person is good as the want to me. Now, we don't wanna put too sharp of point on that. That's not to say that I will be able",
      "No, but what he's saying is that what really animates a person, what really informs the texture of their lives are their aspirations for who they want to be. All right? So even when I'm not completely able to live the life that I want to live, all right, as long as I want",
      "And Islam is a process, okay? And perhaps this is why the prophet could say he loves Allah and he loves his messenger. Okay? And I can't tell you the number of sincerity. You'd be surprised. Sincerity is an atom bomb man in the positive sense if there's such a thing as a positive atom bomb.",
      "I think it's a positive, that's a bad metaphor. Never mind. But sincerity is a very powerful thing. A very powerful things. All right? I know people who have been led to Islam by people who were known not to be what they should be but their sincerity, all right?",
      "and was able to inspire the person. I mean, people will say things like, all right look, look, I'm not where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm practicing on a level that I'm suppose to be practicing on. All right? You shouldn't be doing X Y and Z and I'm still working with that okay but you can go down there to this message and there are people who can explain",
      "what Islam really is, all right? And you'd be surprised the very fact that they could admit I'm not where I'm supposed to be. That's what actually inspires that person because what they want is to know that if I come into this thing will I be permitted to struggle as well or will I held to a standard of absolute perfection",
      "and the very sincerity with which this is communicated, it's infectious. And as one of their earlier men said that there is no power greater in terms of guiding people to Islam or guiding Muslims themselves to a straighter path than sithqa an ikhlas.",
      "there is no more powerful tool, no more power weapon. When people see you are sincere trust me that has an infectious effect to it alright and people oftentimes are far more listening to your heart than they are to your words. Far more listening",
      "And one of the benefits, you know, of this self-refinement that we're talking about. This is one of reasons why it was so important for me. You know, we really need to get some of this into our community because one of their benefits of it is that when my heart is sound and I'm not saying that I'm a saint but my heart",
      "in a position where you can trust my heart. You understand what I mean by that? And when you can't trust my hear, I can tell you anything because you trust my heard. I mean it's amazing some of the things that the prophet was able to tell people to their face, to their faith.",
      "You are a person that has some weakness. You should not be pursuing political office. Can you imagine you saying that to me? Can you image you saying it to somebody? What would the likely outcome be?",
      "Why could the prophet say this? Why could he say this, huh? Because he trusted his heart. I know this is not coming from a place of pettiness. I Know this is Not Coming From A Place Of Jealousy. I KNOW This Is Not Coming from A Place of Meanness And Mean-spiritedness. He's Telling me this because i need to know this",
      "And I trust his heart. And that's why I can tell him, that's what he can tell me that. Now one of the things that I've noticed especially among young people and I don't know if this is a case in Britain, I suspect that it is. Young you can't tell them anything. No no wait wait wait no no. I'm not talking about hardheadedness. That's not what I'm talking about. I wish we could just go back to the days of just hardheadednes all right?",
      "Young Muslims have become so averse to the standards of Islam that anytime you tell them anything, they're saying what? Don't judge me. Is that a phenomenon in Britain as well? Nobody wants to be judged. What is this a reflection of? How can I not be judged?",
      "I mean, can I sit here and you know eat a pork chop? And then say nobody can say anything to me because you can't judge me. Right? Of course you can judge me but what I suspect is happening is this. Is that I don't trust your heart. And everything you say to me therefore feels like a condemnation.",
      "Everything you say to me feels like what it feels like a condemnation Hmm, and that's how we then have to try negotiate community standards Well, no one can say anything to anyone All right without them being offended Right. And this is why I say You know This self refinement is not just something that is meaningful for us as individuals. This has communal ramifications",
      "Okay, because we need to uplift our community as a whole and we all need to be dedicated To the uplifment of our community As a whole All right. Let me move on to another thing that he says about following the example of the Prophet I'm number eight and nine God has gathered the whole of goodness in a house",
      "and made its key following the example of the Prophet ﷺ. So follow him by being satisfied with what God has provided you, by eschewing and limiting your take of the pleasures of this world, and by leaving that which does not concern you, of words as well as deeds.",
      "the example of the prophet is opened this will be an indication of god's love for indeed god said say o muhammad if you love god then follow me god will love you and forgive your sins",
      "they would all hasten to God. But they are impeded from doing this, like a debtor whose movement is restricted by fear of debt collectors. And I think this goes a long way in some ways describing our social reality.",
      "to others being able to find their way to God. I mean, how come so many people avoid our misogyny? I hate to say this, that's why I don't like those cameras but it's a reality, is it not? Is it? Why? Why and he's saying people feel like you know there's a debt collector after me so I'm not going to go there because that debt collector",
      "is likely to be there, all right? And we end up sort of in the minds of many fulfilling the role of debt collector. All right? As if they owe us something every time they come to the masjid. You know, they owe was to live a... All right as if we're gonna cut with collecting",
      "in that capacity, all right? You know, they move away. They move away and so what he's saying is that you know if we are to follow the example of the prophet, allright? We have to avoid injustice to the people because we then become a reason for them moving away from God. For their not making",
      "And this is not consistent with the business of following the example of the Prophet. Alright? And again, you know I want to be very clear here. I mean...I think that the issue of Islamophobia is an important issue.",
      "But I also think that the internal dynamics of our own community is also an important issue. And I think we have to recognize that we ourselves, we Muslims are responsible for our social order and we have",
      "social orders that are utterly unlivable for the majority of Muslims. We have to be very careful about that and we have to understand that we are the ones who exercise agency in this regard, all right? We might not be able to do anything direct and immediate about Palestine, you know? Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that's not a priority and that's",
      "but we may not be able to do anything. We might not have, you know, the agency with which to affect that issue in a way that we might want to, all right? And the same goes for Afghanistan perhaps or Iraq or any other number of places, all Right? But what controls the social cultural reality that we as Muslims live as a Muslim community? Who controls that?",
      "Who controls that? We do. That's us, that's our watch, that is our territory. That is us. Alright and as we go forward in recognition of this fact another aspect to following the example of the Prophet is that we have to be patient",
      "We have to be patient. I mean, some of us think that the only important thing is to be right and if I'm right, that's it. I'm wrong you're simply have to accept it and that's",
      "of us who want to be people, who want try to change the reality of our communities, uplift our communities. We have to be willing to recognize that this is going to take time. I've heard some comments about the uncles. I think they call them Uncle G or something like that? What does that mean, Uncle G? Yes? Uncle yes? Huh?. Oh! OK. That's a term of endearment. But G means.",
      "Yes. Yeah, and again you know without trying to assign or exonerate of responsibility we're going to have to recognize that following the example of the Prophet,",
      "more sensitive to the psychological realities that inform the positions of those people with whom we're speaking. And if we're talking about how come, I'm just gonna speak frankly now, all right? How come you guys can't let go of some of these old world back home habits of mind and points",
      "and points of view. How come you just can't let that stuff go? All right? I think that to be fair in this regard, and this is something that I think we've not always fully understood, and when I articulate this don't understand me to be saying that, you know, I like this reality.",
      "like it and that reality is this what Uncle G has is exactly what we are thriving for here as Muslims in the West all right and what",
      "is a cultural expression of Islam. Huh? That by proxy carries the values and sentiments of our religion in such a way that we don't even have to think about them. A cultural expression, a culture of Islam that normalizes the values",
      "what I mean by that. That's essentially what we are striving for as a community in this part of the world, right? You want to get married, you follow me? We have a way to get marry, right. Got a dispute, we have other ways to resolve disputes. Wedding, huh, right, we had a cultural matrix that has enabled us to normalize our way",
      "our way of life. Okay? What we are essentially asking them, and in that context once that first generation establishes that the next generation comes to understand that as being Islam. That's what they understand. And what we are",
      "Let that go, hmm? Without something comparable to grab onto in its place. Does everybody follow what I mean by that? It's like when you're going, is it monkey bars or something? You know, you're on this bar, you can let it go if you can what? You can grab onto that one, you could let that one go, right? This is a part of what we are asking.",
      "And we're going to have to understand that this is going to be a very difficult task, all right? And I think that it's going to a task that calls not only for all the right answers. All right? But for some trustworthy hearts. For some trustworthy heart. You know they have to able to see us as people who really",
      "who really and honestly have the best interest of Islam in this Muslim community at heart. All right? And that's going to take time, and I say this only because if we don't recognize the extent to which it takes time, then we have to exercise patience, all right? We, in our overzealousness to bring about the change you want",
      "want to see may end up doing more harm than good all right just remember this so I know I know this is not very popular stuff but what did the Prophet tell Aisha about the Kaaba hmm she said he said if your people meaning home the Meccans Quraysh if",
      "I would tear this Kaaba down and reestablish it on the foundations of Abraham. But your people will go berserk. But you're people were what? Your people will be berserk now he could have said what listen up Rasool Allah talking here huh knock that stuff off",
      "and shoot, what y'all think of Jahiliyyah? No really. If he's recognizing the sentiments that they have coming out of Jahilliyyah we have to recognize it. And please brothers and sisters I'm not this is not some you know accommodationist let's just accept the status quo that's not what I'm saying but we want healthy communities going forward. We want healthy community's going forward you know and this demands of those",
      "to be agents of that change, you know, that we recognize. This is going to take time and it's going to patience. There are going to be setbacks, right? Which is why it's gonna be supremely important that we get our commitment straight. And my commitment is not to my ideal. You understand what I mean by that because sometimes this becomes a matter of me. Oh they rejected, oh they rejected my idea, oh no it's on.",
      "You know, and I get addicted to that. And become blinded to the fact there may be even better ways than my idea. Well maybe not. I'm joking guys, might lighten up. There may be better ways of doing it. Alright? Okay. Number 177 in which he's talking about dutifulness to God.",
      "How protective you are of your body, but how cheap your religion is to you. Where it's said to you this food is poisoned, you would refuse to eat it. Where someone then to swear to you on pain of divorcing his wife.",
      "If I'm lying, my wife is divorced. If someone were then to swear to you on pain of divorcing his wife that this food was actually not poisoned, you would still balk at it. In fact, were you yourself to wash the dish in which this food contained several times, you will continue to shun it. Why are you not this way with your religion?",
      "In other words, he's saying that the same caution that we exercise in trying to preserve our bodies. This should remind us of how cautious and how much scrupulousness we need to have when it comes to our religion.",
      "We don't take even small chances with our bodies. Even if you took the very glass or the bowl that that poisoned food was in and you washed it yourself, you still do what? Maybe tomorrow. It dries out a little bit. Stick it out in the sun. Although you yourself washed it. Now this is a... How much time we have?",
      "How much time we have? Not very much, because this is going to be a controversial topic. What did Mizen say we're gonna have what? Explosive... Scrupulousness regarding our religion is very important",
      "as the Prophet himself is reported to have said, دع ما يريبك لما لا يري بك Leave that about which you have doubt for that about what you have no doubt. And this scrupulousness is a fundamental value of religiosity in Islam. Having said that much",
      "We have to be careful that erring on the side of caution does not reduce us to what amounts, for all intents and purposes, to a sort of Islam 101. Whereby",
      "whereby exercising caution becomes an excuse for not engaging the world of reality in which Islamically authentic benefits and harms intermingle with each other. And, in the face of which",
      "Rather than say simply, well no let's just err on the side of caution. We need to engage to the point that we can seek to maximize the benefit and minimize the harm. And this we do in pursuit of the pleasure of God. This is carefulness about our religion because outside",
      "Because outside of the ibadat, outside of what? The ibadats. The ulema all agree that the values, the principles, even the rules of Islam have all been given to us for the purpose of enhancing benefits to society",
      "to society and minimizing harms. What does the Quran say about wine, drinking and gambling? What does it say precisely? What else does it says? That they ask you about.",
      "وَمَنَافِعُ لِلَّذِّينَ In them is great harm. Along with benefits for people. But the harm outweighs the benefits. Is everybody following that? Why then is wine drinking and gambling made haram?",
      "Because Allah says that the harm contained in those things are greater than the benefits. Alright? And when that's the case, He wants to eliminate that greater harm. Alright? Even at the expense of the benefits that might be in there. Do you follow what I mean by that?",
      "Quran okay and now we in 21st century Britain or America all right you know will find ourselves let me give you an example this is gonna be controversial this is just for me Zen because he's been waiting",
      "Right after 9-11, there was a sort of ceremony at one of the big stadiums in New York. Because 9- 11 happened where? In New York and it was a big almost memorial type thing",
      "memorial type thing. All kinds of people got up and gave little talks, and commiserated the occasion, et cetera. And at one point there was a Muslim sister who was called upon to represent the Muslims. So she got up",
      "Her talk five ten minutes and after she was done Rudy Giuliani who's Rudy Giulianni Not only is he the mayor of New York This is what Vice President Joe Biden said about him Rudy Giuliano. He knows three things now verb and 9-11",
      "He's the hero of 9-11. So after this Muslim sister gave her presentation, Rudy Giuliani sort of came onto the stage and signaled that he was about to give her a political hug. It's on national TV. What should she have done?",
      "Why? What? Why? Huh? The benefits outweigh the good. No, no, no. See this is what I'm talking about and see look... I don't want to take a position on this issue alright.",
      "What I really want to do is deal with the principle on the basis of which we would negotiate it. Because here, we have a direct injunction that all Muslims understand. I shouldn't even be touching someone of the opposite sex although many are allowed and some don't. Handshakes, just relax, Muslims.",
      "Okay? But we have, you know, rules here. We have a rule here. All right? And now we have a situation. It's 9-11. It happened. All Right? The whole country is in an uproar. People are getting killed. Allright? Because they even look like Muslims. They don't even happen to be Muslims.",
      "All right? If she doesn't, what? National TV. What's wrong with these Muslims? All right, okay? If",
      "becomes do you have the purpose of that rule itself in any way being violated? In other words, do we have any sense that Rudy Giuliani might try some moves? Yes or no? Probably not. So the maslaha,",
      "anybody to say, Dr. Jackson said she should have hugged him. That's not the issue. This is the issue that I want to get to. When we are negotiating this issue, debating this issue you follow what I mean by that? Alright? The issue becomes how you and I understand the relative benefits and the relative harms. Not he's being it and I'm not.",
      "Do you understand what I mean by that? Alright. And it's not, oh, I'm scared so I hugged... No! You follow what I meant about that? How do we as a Muslim community especially us in the West who are going to be consistently confronted with realities that violate formal reality. It is gonna be reality as it is not as it should be. Okay?",
      "arrive at a point where we can collectively negotiate these issues without them resulting in schism. And this is precisely, precisely part of what our tradition as Muslims, as Muslims provides us with the ability to do. And again my point is I want to be really clear about this because this is also carefulness about the religion",
      "Carefulness about the religion. All right? And how what I do may be a means of turning someone else away from it. All Right? This is something that if we don't master it as a community, all right,",
      "representative of the path of least resistance. And rarely is that going to be the thing, that maximizes the benefit and minimizes the harm. It's gonna be the think that oh I'm safe. Mansoor can't criticize me. Right? Cumulatively however what does that lead to?",
      "We can't address issues. We're dysfunctional. We can address issues, is that right following what I'm trying to get at here? All right and we have to have principles on the basis of which we negotiate this. Let me give you one example so that people maybe feel a little less, you know, what are you talking about Dr. Jackson? You know there's a report story related",
      "on the authority of Ibn Taymiyyah that one day he was walking with a group of disciples and they saw some newly converted Mongols drinking wine. And his disciples saw these Mongols and said,, and they set out to stop them from drinking.",
      "to have said, no leave them alone. Don't bother them and so they turned to him with these looks of incredulity on their faces and they said what is this? And Ibn Taymiyyah said to them this listen to me Allah forbade wine drinking because it takes people away from remembrance",
      "These people, when they drink, they're going to get drunk, fall out and go to sleep. And it's gonna take them away from rape, pillage and murder. Leave them alone. Now this can be a very scary principle especially for those who are not",
      "Especially for us now. And this is the whole point that this whole book is trying to get to, okay? Because we are going to be faced with these kinds of circumstances, all right? If our nafs is not in a healthy state, hmm? We will always be given to do that, not which is most pleasing to Allah, hmm, but which",
      "in terms of the public validation we're likely to get. Either for Muslims or non-Muslims. Does everybody understand what I mean by that? Right, we're not gonna be able to undertake this with weak constitutions as Muslims from inside and we have to be able alright, to withstand you know, I take them, hmmm, masha'Allah, mash'Allah",
      "MashaAllah, mashaAllah. Is that necessarily the best thing? In the interest of the community? Perhaps not. Alright? And the most important thing is we have to have the means by which we negotiate this. Does everybody understand what I'm trying to say? In other words, again Mansur it's not that Mansour is staqfullah you know Islam-like",
      "you know, Islam-like. No. Mansur has a different factual assessment from my own. He believes that hugging him will minimize greater harm than the benefit of not. I don't believe that. You follow what I mean by that? Does that make me a stronger Muslim than him? Make me a better Muslim than",
      "What does that make me? Just somebody has a different assessment. And when we understand this, Mansour and I can differ without giving Shaitan the ability to come between us. You follow what I mean by that? This is part of what we have to do, especially those of us in the West because we control much less",
      "the social political reality than Muslims in other parts of the world. We control much less, so we're gonna have to navigate and negotiate our way through these things. And this requires two things. One, a greater diffusion of religious literacy among us. And two, a stronger constitution for all",
      "from within so that we can do this in a spirit of God consciousness and due diligence to God. Why did Ibn Taymiyyah say this? Because he's scared of the Mongols, right? Why did he say this because this is what I believe God would have wanted they're gonna drink anyway and I'd rather see them drinking than murdering and raping and I believe that that's what God would want",
      "Now again, this is dangerous because we now in the world, let's face it. We face a very difficult social political reality and the tendency is always understandably to want to release that pressure by not doing things that would in any way shape or form",
      "in any way, shape or form offend the dominant culture. But that's something we're gonna have to resist as well. Alright? But always doing it in light of this calculus and this is the calculus of Islam. This is the Calculus of Islam alright? And so when it comes to being careful about our religion let us not understand that",
      "and they're being careful about our religion, okay? Only in the sense of being strict into the letter. All right? And either unwilling or incapable of going beyond that to assessing the relative harms and benefits that are likely to accrue to any particular situation. Does everybody follow that? And this takes strong constitutions. This is one of the reasons why it's so important for this whole business",
      "this whole business of refinement of the self to be at the center of what we're doing. And sometimes, you know, we have to resist the overtures of the dominant non-Muslim community and sometimes we have resist the overages within our own communities. All right? And at the very least, we may not get our way but the way in which we negotiate will leave us with a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood because see what happens oftentimes is",
      "is this, you know Montour and I we fall out over issue X. All right? Which on a scale of one to ten may be a four. All Right? Two years later there's an issue on the scale of 1-10 that's a 10! That we need to cooperate on but because we've fallen out on that 4 I can't stand his guts",
      "And I don't trust him and he don't' trust me. And therefore we can what? We can work together, all right? And that was all due to the fact that we did not recognize the basis upon which we should have engaged that issue, allright? And ended up with he simply has a different assessment of it from me. I still think is wrong. You follow what I'm saying? But it's just an assessment. It's not his level of religious commitment.",
      "It's like he thinks that wall is white, I think it's blue. That make me a better Muslim? All right so this is the part of what we have to recognize as well in terms of being careful about our religion. Okay I'm going to do two, 234 and 235. I'll read them together. And the last one should mean something significant to you.",
      "The likeness of one who seeks knowledge while lacking insight is that of a hundred thousand blind persons stumbling along a path. Were there to appear among them, a single person with even a single eye people would all follow him and leave the hundred thousand",
      "A scholar, on the other hand, who does not live by the knowledge that he has is like a candle. That leads the way for others by burning himself out. Even ignorance is better than knowledge shot through with heedlessness of God. And one of the reasons for that is that",
      "is ignorance. You can't do very much with it. Knowledge shot through with heedlessness of God puts me in a position where I can try to use that knowledge not for the pleasure of Allah but in order to serve my own interests and in that regard alright, I come very close potentially falling into",
      "doing things to be seen among men in the name of worshiping god all right and i have to be very very careful about that and another place in this book ibn atallah says do not think that it is knowledge that has escaped the people",
      "from Allah that has escaped us, not knowledge. Cumulatively we have the knowledge within our community, all right? But we don't have the kinds of circumstances that will in it... We haven't produced the kinds",
      "Because if I'm a scholar and I really just want to be seen among men, I really want you to look up to me and applaud me and treat me with deference. Make no mistake about it that will inform and shape the way that I use my knowledge because my knowledge will always be used in such a way that seeks either to promote that or maintain it.",
      "And in that, I can actually betray that knowledge by deploying it in ways that does not serve God but in ways serves me. Right? This is one of what I see to be the major, major concerns that rest at the heart of the whole issue of the importance of refining the self.",
      "And that's what this book is trying to make a contribution to and it is my hope that you know This will come out into the Muslim public, and if nothing else generate a conversation Generating some generates something that well hopefully you know lift us to a higher level of recognition of what we have Okay, and how we can best make use of it and hopefully in such a way that",
      "in such a way that along the way we acquire some of the lessons that it's trying to impart. And we become, you know, better Muslims. Muslims whose hearts are cleaner. Muslims who are less petty. Muslims were less addicted to ego. Muslims are less insecure, all right? Because much of our bickering is an affliction and expression of nothing more, nothing less than our own insecurity, allright? I mean, I ask Allah to give us these things",
      "us these things inshallah and to protect us from those and ourselves in those aspects of ourselves that will become between us and the achievement of that insha'Allah taala I differentiate between power and authority. Power is the ability to force compliance, Authority is the",
      "And so if you exercise power to an appreciable enough degree, it can evolve into authority. I think that is the situation we find ourselves as Muslims in today.",
      "what may be referred to as sort of political power and political authority, I think that for me the biggest challenge confronting the Muslims in the world today with regard to authority in this ending civilization is the absence of cultural authority on one hand and intellectual authority on the other. And by that I mean that we live in a world today where",
      "the dominant Western civilization carries a presumption of being culturally more advanced or proper, however you might want to articulate that as well as being intellectually the point of departure for any intelligent discussion in the world today. And that leaves the Muslims in a position where the whole enterprises of validation there goes that word again are such that",
      "it becomes very difficult to arrive at a spontaneous approach to life. And by spontaneous, I mean one in which we're not simply reacting to the cultural and intellectual authority that the dominant civilization wields. We are able to assess things on the basis of our own system",
      "tradition in terms of how values are negotiated. This book to me is important in as much as it speaks to the issue of the pre-rational realm of human consciousness that actually contributes directly to the kind of appetite,",
      "if we as a Muslim community can find ways to refine ourselves, to the extent that we are no longer dependent upon the dominance of civilization for cultural and intellectual validation then we will be able to engage in a more spontaneous reading of our own tradition",
      "in our own sense of values. And this is not against the West, it's not against anyone else. In fact if anything ideally and it is something that we see as being part of our contribution to the world. And so the whole business of refinement of the self and disciplining the nafs has implications far beyond our individual lives and it speaks to something",
      "that really is at the center of any kind of chance"
    ]
  }
]