Abdullah Sattar | Saussure, Soul-searching & Syed Bulleh Shah | MindTrap#69 | Mufti Abu Layth

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guys we have another amazing episode for you guys too take some benefit from to endure to enjoy to indulge Allah let me bring a profile before you of our esteemed guest tonight we have as you can see there the Dapper oh we have Abdullah sattar from Alberta Canada a young man who at a very young age has uh has really got a grasp of a

deep impassioned Pursuit for Islamic philosophy so with that people let me bring on assalamu alaikum how are you I'm good for joining us Abdullah thank you for having me it's an absolute pleasure on Placer uh just checking I was just checking that your sound is going through fine you know we've had a bit of a break since these mine traps and every time I come back I have to revisit upon myself all

the I.T world of chats involved with it with that let's people from Alberta Canada you speaking of it you buy profession or software engineer uh who then goes on to uh really find his passion is flame for Islam for the Islamic uh journey of of spiritual knowledge and researching spiritualism um mysticism within Islam and you're looking to embark on a masters uh

pursuing that research as well but a bit from you Abdullah your journey here software engineer that's software engineer too spiritual engineer yeah what is going on thank you so much for having me on the podcast uh it's an absolute pleasure and honor um I I suppose like my journey began when I was very young I as I mentioned to you before I grew up in a household I was uh very much influenced by Sufism so I saw that around me um the practices and the beliefs and it it made a place in my heart as I grew up

and then when I moved to Canada from a university went to a bit of a crisis existential crisis you can call it you can call it a crisis of Faith but it really made me look it made me look and and figure out the solutions to the problems that I have in my life um the problems of the self you know problems of meaning purpose what's the point of anything why am I doing what I'm doing why am I doing this degree why am I studying why am I eating um and through that I started studying in depth some of the works of the great sufis in particular I started studying The Works of Imam gazali I remember the first book

I read which really had a major impact on me was the book The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam guzalo and the way he talked about the soul in that book and the dimensions of the soul and how the human being is supposed to live a life of Sada Felicity it had a deep impact on me and it started a journey where I started studying more about more of these Mystics and philosophers and metaphysicians the works of Rumi and then eventually I got into the works of and you know that was such a huge event in my life because it felt as if my

entire life got flipped upside down and then I realized that wait this was the right side up I was just looking at it the wrong way um and then with that I started getting more into it I started taking some courses when I was in University in the department of religious studies in philosophy and that's when I started dipping my toes into Academia this was a few years ago and then since then I was lucky alhamdulillah to be able to have mentors who you know were giants in the field and who were my colleagues as well my people around me my peers who were able to have an influence on me and I studied with them and eventually I started getting more and more into

Academia I started writing about these topics um they published a couple of online papers and online journals and yeah since then also started like a small project for a podcast where I interview academics in Islamic metaphysics and Islamic Studies so since then I've just been in Academia and I'm trying to increase my knowledge I mean I still consider myself a student I don't know anything but alhamdulillah you know amazing out of a young age of just 28 yes yes young man and people look at

this I see when after a lot when I said have you got a profile picture and he forwarded that picture I was like yeah party it's like in a Wall Street kind of one of those high-flying patching young man I like it I like it so right all right quite a um it's amazing that you see the Divine algorithm at play one could say that you you know here you are software engineering you know this this

is your thing the whole um but yet these there is a pull yeah this this this this um this kind of this gravitating towards a spiritual consciousness and trying to understand what's gravitating towards it from an intellectual academic perspective as well that's something and you have some uh you have some um uh uh I mean you've written academically as well haven't you've got

some academic papers and and one of them on uh what was it on sadness or what was the yes what what was that yeah so it's it was for an online Journal um it was a semi-academic semi op-ed piece and it was on the metaphysics of sadness and that was again because um a bit about that paper when I was studying Imam ghazali back in 2016.

one of the things that really struck with me was how Imam ghazali defined melancholy find how sadness could have a purpose in the grand scheme of things right because oftentimes what happened when we're sad over depressed not to use the clinical term but let's say when we're struck with um we oftentimes just feel very bad about feeling bad so it's it's counter-intuitive because we're like why are we sad but yeah the way he described it he said well sadness could be a means for you to get close to God and he gave deep analogies for that so I wanted to explore that topic so I

studied um this in a bit of a depth to see if the other Mystics receives have talked about sadness and it seemed like they had you know people like Imam kosheri had a whole section in israela on sadness even nadabi talked about sadness Imam guzali all of these figures they talked about Melancholy and sadness and they talked about the merits of it as well in in the spiritual path so I wrote that paper in an attempt to not to glorify sadness but also if somebody is struggling with sadness to not be afraid of sadness as well either it to not get yeah yeah no yeah you know something that just struck me as you were saying

that is uh this matter sadness that you see you see people there is some people are sad but then they become sad that they're sad exactly so it's this meta sadness that you are sad over beings so people and that's I think that's a fascinating point because growing on you said not to glorify sadness no but to repurpose sadness to take ownership of melancholy

I've you know I've often been intrigued that how the the classics especially within the Poetics uh scheme of things or within poetry they really seem to Champion Ram even in Urdu isn't it it's seen as like a a trophy like yeah you know you know if I had then yeah I would I'd be loving it and it's you you we we don't even have the words to explain that narrative today because today there is this such like it's a different like it comes

to this thing people are sad but then they're being reminded oh my God you're sad you are a depressed person you are a you know you need to be pigeonholed into this thing and then now you're sad that you're sad so it's it's crazy so when you were saying that a that that you know metaphysical approach to hosen to sadness yeah wow and and what what and the fact that this is maybe it's a path by which God

draws his people close to him yep yeah yeah exactly says in the Alchemy of happiness that if somebody is struck with Melancholy and if that person was to go to the astrologer or the astronomer the astronomer would say that it's because your stars are not aligned or uh if the person was dead to go to a physician The Physician might say well that's because of some imbalance in your body but Imam gazali says what these people don't tell you is that why are your stars out of line why is there an imbalance it's because the one who is doing all of this and remember Imam

gazali believes in occasionalism right this the fact that it's only Allah doing the actions so just the fact that this is happening to you because the one who holds all the keys and all the strings wants this to happen because he momentarily he wants you to detach from the Dunya and come close to him and that's the thing when we're happy when we're content with everything around us I mean it's a great state to be in but if you were to be very honest in our self-reflection maybe our spirituality takes a hit you know maybe when we're praying we pray really quickly and we get it done or when we're doing or when we're contemplating right but when

you're sad you know you have a sincere Dua you're crying and you're such that you're sitting and looking out in the grass and you're seeing God everywhere or the signs of God you know this is why yeah I was just going to say that that reminded me what you were saying there of somebody saying that uh that a normal good like a healthy happy person has 10 million wishes and desires but an ill person just has one Allah yeah you know it just reminded me as you were saying that that about about the but yeah do um carry on that is you we've got this

see sadness you see it's interesting because it is such a um I mean this is such a topic that people have commodified as well yeah this whole thing of you know the self-help uh I mean self-help can be great but it's also you know uh commoditized sorry this whole thing of um you know of sadness and but ironically you see it's weird because language empowers you know so when

you and by defining something you bring it into a discourse and now you can discuss it yeah but there's an irony in that that it also can empower the the opposite effect because you've created now a language for it so like taking depression as an example not to be sidelined so much on this but that this phenomenon appears linguistically that we create this name for it we give it this condition so as to empower people that they can identify it and they can now recognize it and try

to steer away or or heal themselves yeah but by creating the very words yeah you've also empowered the very Beast that you're trying to eliminate because you've now given it you build it up you've yeah you've rolled it into existence by by giving it you know I don't know maybe this comes back to that Allah

I mean I mean look I agree with you wholeheartedly of course I mean not to trivialize you know the pathology of depression of course because it's a serious thing and I I'm not a mental professional to comment on that but generally speaking I do agree with you that discourses shape are realities the way we talk about stuff the way we communicate do we be Define our own reality becomes a reality right that's why you know when you grow up like as this concept of as kids you're taught to speak a good word don't say bad words don't say certain things because words become who you are eventually in my from what I see so I I do agree with you on that and I think there's another element

where um who decided that certain emotions are good and certain emotions are bad for example right I mean yeah there's this concept that we've built for us ourselves in the modern world that's very profound man I I you know it's so simple but so profound who decided that for us I if you study if you study like Buddhism for example mindfulness in Buddhism this concept of accepting things as they are right you look at the modern world today and I I'm speaking from personal experience because when I was struggling through some of these problems myself a few years ago I noticed that it was almost

as if I was answerable to somebody that I had to be happy if I was sad I was making myself feel bad for being sad it wasn't that I was it almost felt like look I'm supposed to be happy why I'm supposed to be happy I don't know but I'm I know I'm supposed to be happy and because I'm not happy there is something wrong with me I I refuse to allow myself to sit with my sadness whereas I feel like if I had back then allowed myself to kind of sit with my sadness a bit right not dwell on it but just sit with it for a bit and just um you know really like understand the impact that sadness can have on my

self-development for example and maybe there's things in the sadness is trying to teach me which my state of bliss might not teach me I do think it's a huge learning opportunity and of course I do feel like it's it could be a spiritual gift yeah because yeah now this thing you said about Buddhism that the you see because they call uh belief the foundation the Bedrock being really dukkha that this whole thing of Duke this suffering and that the world is in essence suffering so if you just accept that then everything beyond that is a bonus and uh

and in many ways that this this reflections of this kind of uh spirit in many Islamic teachings in several verses highlighting that look Allah created uh you know from the zulamat he brings about from night he brings about daylight from that there is this understanding that the Earth it's that that things by default that there is darkness and God brings the light there's many several verses um reflecting that which show that a default state may be a state of

um a struggle that you see the example and there's many examples in the Quran about giving about crops or do they not see the Earth as we send down rain do they not see this do they not have to you know toil for effort and then the you know they yield results that this in many ways like similarly on this discussion you could say well uh growing crops this whole thing it's not the default position like a person has to agriculturally be involved and invested but yet getting rid of unwanted uh weeds

and these kind of uh bad grows of things that is the default position a person has to root out weed and not that kind of weed in case people are getting weeds right they have to root them out but if they want something of produce it has to grow you know they they have to put it doesn't just you know it's not like you're just gonna have Gardens and Gardens of you know orchids and different uh but yeah so sorry carry on back to um it is fascinating that you have made this observation on sadness given the

day and age that we're in and linking it back to Imam hazali um on his spiritual journey so yeah and you've got and so developing from Imam razali you moving you know you've got in light following on another great inspirational figure of um he is somebody you know you've really been drawn to as well so what what's obviously many people have heard of you know uh ibrah this is not the Maliki

audiobook but the the great Mystic Sufi mahitin what is it that stands out about him to you personally yeah I think even Arabi I mean the more you say about him is it's less it's we can't possibly do justice to his his intellectual promise but for me on a personal level I think um IBN Arabi gives you a holistic system of ontology cosmology epistemology I mean you know all these ologies he basically builds a world view for you which is so cohesive and coherent that

it can survive um the I don't want to say attacks but maybe the the challenges of the modern world or from modernity of modern intellectual trends for example because IBN Arabi he emphasizes on this concept of Allah of God as he not he so this concept that if I was to give an analogy for this imagine you have a white light which strikes a prism and it becomes a rainbow so could one say that the rainbow exists in a way it does because we see it we experience it but the rainbow is nothing but a refraction of the light of the

white light so in a way the rainbow is nothing but a manifestation of the white light and it goes through the prism and it becomes the rainbow and that's IBN arabi's philosophy of existence which is that all that exists is a manifestation of the names of Allah and therefore all that exists is allows us the ability to understand it understand its Essence is Mahia and understand God through it but at the same time you have a dialectic tension in the study of fibonacity for example because you have on the one hand you're able to build a rational world view from this it's very intuitive and you start seeing the world like this it becomes makes a

lot of sense that all is connected there is a universal connectivity right this Cartesian split that Descartes introduced or the West content induced in the west it doesn't exist in the philosophy of it is at the same time IBN Arabic acknowledges the fact that you your intellect is not the only tool you have in the Arsenal of knowing in fact the highest tool or one of the higher tools is modifa is zok is experiential knowledge and that's the knowledge that Allah will give you once you get on the path and how do you get on the path you follow the Sharia you follow the Insane In this case the

prophet peace be upon him right so when you follow the prophetic path you're able to actualize things within yourself which helps you understand God so why ibinary was influential for me was because I feel like he answered everything on the one hand he understood the importance of building a rational worldview which can stand up to attacks on its rationality and on the other hand he also acknowledged the limitations of rationality and understood that there are things which were Beyond rationality they're not irrational they're beyond the scope of personality you know that's it's a trans-rational kind of or super rational yeah absolutely super rational

is the word perfect word to describe it it's almost as if now you reach a state where the uncle has to drown the Sea of Ishq the Sea of Love right and once it drowns it understands that it was nothing to begin with so that change in phenomenology that change in a first appearance exp first person experience I think that is also very important today because today the world that we live in a lot of emphasis is placed on our experiences as human beings right what we believe what we see so if another piece philosophy actually has room for that too I've been able to be acknowledging that your your subject subjective experiences you know they're

not entirely invalid um at the same time you have to transcend and essentially go beyond because I I totally agree with you that we you know we're in a world where we now it's it's fascinating that they there is this um you know we've gone from this era of hard science this kind of like almost this uh mechanical materialism yeah to now especially in the last few decades but becoming ever so clearer or becoming

more uh Salient in this last decade at least an entire decade but it's been going on since a few decades but now more Salient this this kind of questioning of all of that in light of Consciousness this is in the West in general so people now are like well wait a minute you know there's there's all this hard line you know mechanical materialism that is there that people are but they're not you know they're not catering for or dealing with this this

hard question of consciousness and because to return to Consciousness because consciousness I I use the term Consciousness I translate it synonymously as a rule but um and you know people may or may not choose to do that but it is so it is the realm of that spiritual it is this evasive realm because you don't know where to begin it comes back to this same thing because when you try to define consciousness people end up with you know there is a scope whether it's awareness or so on

but they will say it is the thing by which we become aware of something or we experience something we experience the world but incidentally it is the thing that is experiencing the world yeah and it is also the thing that is allowing us to know that we are experiencing the world absolutely so it it becomes like right so what on Earth is this thing and the reason I was saying that when you're saying about ignou Arabi and this whole the manifestation of reality

uh ultimately as you there is ultimately in a true I I don't know Hardline dichotomy or binary of just pure sheer existence there is only God that ever existed our existence in comparison might as well be non-existent exactly you know in that kind of a dichotomy so when you see that and then you see that the the manifestation through the asthma of Allah the Jalal or the Jamal of of God yeah it's interesting because you've got now also

physics looking and exploring these things of wait a minute is the universe you know maybe it's not how we've pictured it maybe it's actually 2D and it's being projected it's a hologram the holographic kind of maybe it's something else maybe there's now with quantum mechanics and you know the uncertainty of things everything's being shaken and I feel in a way where heading back to you know where the journey first began I mean we're not there but we're going you know we're diverging from this hard materialism yeah like to you know

there seems to be a lot more yeah 100 if you read The Works of uh Wolfgang Smith he's a physicist um and he was also a bit of a philosopher often if I'm not mistaken and he he's written books in exactly this topic how the quantum realm has opened the sub back to this possibility of a pre-modern mystical worldview right because think about what that's implying like if you look at the wave particle duality experiment right this concept that the Observer determines the state of the Observer and it's so wild thing or even if one is not to even if one is

to take a softer approach it it has a relationship an impactful relationship on reality yeah yeah it is it is influencing in a real time wow your reality is shaping the very Fabric or your observance observation is shaping the very fabric of reality basically right which is the opposite of this mechanic mechanical Newtonian concept that we had which is that the world is out there and we're bringing it in now it seems like that the world is in here which

you're projecting outside right and I find a lot of these uh chronic verses as well so fascinating you know the Quran talks about you can quote this much better than I can but the world being the life of this world being a delusion or an illusion right so what does that imply right what does that mean and then there's sayings of the sages as well I believe it's it's a saying of Imam Ali I could be wrong but that uh people are asleep and they're alive and when they die they wake up right so I so you were going to say there's a poem attributed to said na Ali as well about

that you make a claim that you are a small entity and the mystics often quoted that the greater World resides within you yeah as opposed to you residing in it yeah yeah and IBN Arabi talks about this that uh Universe the cosmos is insane al-kabir and insan is so the cosmos is a giant man and the man is a small Universe because they're both made of the same fabric and the way you look at it is if you say that all that exists is a manifestation of God's names right but then the Quran says that God

thought at God taught Adam the names so it's almost as if all those names were with the funnel concentrated in man so therefore the names which are spread out in the cosmos are concentrated in man but man is an exact replica of the universe in a way right it's just that it's a smaller picture it's a it's a microscopic picture of what's out there because yeah because well the universe you see we are the only as far as We Know the only conscious creatures of of this Cosmic existence to our awareness yeah and

if that be so then the universe to a great extent observes itself through us yeah that it it sees itself through a sea and it hears itself through us and through our consciousness of it it becomes conscious of itself because we are we are we are a just a part of the we're not separate from it's not like there's the universe and we are some alien to the universe we are a part you know a minuscule

infinitesimally small part of that Universe uh there's a Sufi saying as well and it's attributed to the prophet peace be upon him but I don't know if the authenticity of it you can speak to it better but this concept of Hadith could see that I was a hidden treasure and I loved to and therefore I created creation and so Dr chiric the way he describes that he says that it's almost as if fibonacci's describing the cosmos as is self-manifestation of god like God through God is is observing himself in a way right like you said right that the universe is observing himself because if

all that exists is is God ultimately and everything is a manifestation of God then the manifestation is manifesting itself in a way so it's it's self-reflection right um and if you look at this idea of Consciousness what defines cautiousness is this ability to self-reflect I mean when we say that we're different from a fish for example or from a cat right the cat is also able to take in sensory data and process things with it but is the cat able to self-reflect and know that it's aware the way we are the way we're talking about the Consciousness and Cosmos and everything right is the cat able to be self-reflective and I think

that is what distinguishes a human being from other animals or any other living cells and and it's interesting this journey of uh of the world uh finding itself making even against its wishes some return a return point to this to this Mystique to the the mystical to the the ideas that were there and commonplace in pre-maternity um yeah it's fascinating you know on that just as a as a as a point I remember uh Dr Rupert sheldrake and

he's he's amazing in this field of work a psychologist who has a fantastic journey of his of his own and he's written many books and uh the science delusion and other things but and he is a scientist he's not anti-science but he makes this really fascinating point where he says well and with it you see the collapse of this what is mechanical materialism that he said well you see uh he's speaking about there's a point where he he's put out a challenge not a challenge he's put out an offer to have a dialogue with any of these uh you know Dan tenet or any of

these hard-line militant atheists um and they've declined and he's speaking about this in in a lecture saying they refuse to you know I've said I'll I'll have a dialogue with any and they refuse to do it and it's interesting because he mentions this just a fundamental point that you see he says let's just take Consciousness and how does Consciousness emerge and they're and people and people will say well it's through the brain so he says well okay the brain is material yeah so fundamentally what you're saying

is material gives rise to consciousness which okay if taken as a premise what's to say that the sun is not conscious exactly so because the sun is material and many philosophies and he's not necessarily trying to push that the sun is conscious but he's trying to say well how do we know then that other things the moment I even posit that you he says you ridiculed it and find it absurd but why because if brain which is just Mata gooey Mata can give rise to Consciousness why can the sun with its plasma and

life-breathing energy which is Mata ultimately you know helium hydrogen uh why can it not uh also be conscious and the fact that this is sad and ridiculed imminently rather than refuted but you can't refute it because you can't refuse anything with any equation with Consciousness in it just collapses yeah I mean this kind of uh brings opens up the world of pan psychism right which is this concept that everything that exists has done Consciousness a stone has a Consciousness albeit that the consciousness of a stone might not be as sophisticated as that is of a human

being but it's interesting yeah because if you get I was going to say you have some Islamic uh rhetoric that in some way mirrors this kind of thing because if what we're saying in essence is that the universe just as just as we will say life on Earth had a common point of origin you know hey that this this this kind of uh primordial soup or fluid from which all life emerges as the Quran speaks of an

evolution speaks of but uh similarly the cosmos and the universe had a point of origin where everything that was to be at some point in its potential was United yeah in in energy and so so now you see so everything that was to at any point of a manifest in these Cosmos in its unpressed in its kind of uh deep uh origin uh or source of origin was connected so with with that in mind that

this thing that things matter or or just being whatever it is all Taps into this fabric of Consciousness albeit at different levels or different capacities so you find like certain verses and I'm I'm just saying this is interesting that you find certain verses Allah says that everything glorifies the Lord

I was just going to bring this verse up because what and it even says if I'm not mistaken that you don't understand how they do it yeah you just don't get it you just don't get it so for all we know the the blades on the lever for graphs are have Consciousness it's just that that Consciousness is beyond our pay grade to understand maybe right all that we are on a different level of Consciousness that is like if you take these things as frequencies like let's say you take manifestations as almost radio waves or different frequencies not everybody there's different we are obviously at a

very you know it's a privilege Our Kind Of Consciousness to be able to self-reflect to be able to clarify in our Consciousness Allah and just creation and observe and do things and and really um maybe act out what is or instantiate uh or typify the power of God on Earth in his creation because we like look at us here we are this um I mean if you take a zoomed out picture of the of the universe okay not the universe of the galaxies or as far

as we can get let's say now Earth is is invisible but let's say you get to a point you zoom in to a point we get to a point where we can see Earth as just a speck and you can see amongst you know these other galaxies in in the background and you can see things and this tiny spec tiny Speck on this huge picture that jet I mean within that spec is you know which is just this Sun grain floating in this Sunbeam invisible but on it has occurred every known action

every reflection every thought every emotion affectation love history accomplishment the glory the achievements everything has just lived and died on that space yeah and this reminds you of something which I wanted to bring up earlier but we changed the topics you know Iqbal talks about the creation of Adam right and he says that there's a couplet called and that translates to that the soul of the earth welcomes Adam so you know how

we we look up the adamic fall in a way right that's more of a Christian narrative but igbala kind of flips it upside down and he says that it's almost as if Adam was welcomed on the earth and the lines of that poet poem are so beautiful I'll just quote a couple lines and then I'll connect it to what we're saying he says you know the Earth says to Adam like open your eyes look at the sky look at the winds look at this the sun rising from the East all of this was made for you and the last couplet in that poem is

that all of this world is looking towards you to will it into existence to will what you will out of it because all of the this that that exists the only being that God created that we know of that is able to self-reflect and do something about it is the human being and that's when God says God taught Adam the names right God made in a way God made the human being as a Khalifa on the earth a a representative on Earth that's why a human being should never ever undervalue his his being his potential a lot of people you know when they struggle with self-esteem issues what we don't realize is that Allah chose the human being

to give this this Consciousness to this gift to and the entire Cosmos is then basically at your disposal in a way right you you make what you want out of it you study it you will understand it and you get close to God so true that you know Amana this thing that was so weight is you know so weighty and burdensome upon the cosmos of the creation you know they could not they they tariff they were terrified

oh wow this tiny creature which is just a face value an extension of a primate doesn't look so different this creature just on Earth that that you know four four since its primordial existence human before this uh receiving this Consciousness it just doesn't seem very different from animals when you look at a human fundamentally yeah it's just an animal ultimately you know we are also animals you know hey one or nothing we're different type of animals so foreign

poem where he says uh he says he says jobar Subway you know the version this the weight of something that was so uh unbearable his feeble creature just picked it up and brought it along yeah said oh here it is this actually I know this is a different topic but it connects to this the environmental crisis today right

like the human being what did we do with this with this responsibility right we destroyed our world and Dr Nasser you know doctor says he talks about how environmentalism and modernism modernity are very closely linked because in pre-modern times if I look at a tree I don't just see wood that's going to fire up my fireplace I look at something sacred right if you look at uh Native American traditions for example right they to them trees are sacred in our tradition in Islam you're not allowed to cut down a green tree even in the form in the case of a war in Hinduism in Buddhism in every religion and tradition

nature was considered sacred one just on that was you know mentioning the trees are in prostration subhanallah so to us when the pre-month man looked at nature the pre-modern man looked at an extension of himself he thought that these things out there are not different from me they're intimately connected to who I am and my existence the modern man when we look at the tree the tree is now supposed to be cut down and used as production so to us you know Dr Nasser he uses a very funny example he says that you would never see in the pre-modern times or something

a ship name something like Challenger or Explorer like who are you challenging right this there's there's this uh overconfidence in the modern man that I am at the center I am at the top God has now been displaced by man and therefore with that came the loss of sacred Duty and that losing of sacrality I think is causing a lot of problems we have today like including the environmental crisis because we forgot that our primordial Duty like you said this Amana right it's a manner of Consciousness we are responsible to protect not just ourselves but the animals around us

right the plants around us like do am I watering the plants in my backyard or not right I'd probably be questioned for that too everything that I have power over what am I doing with that power and I think this is what Muslims need to realize that we ultimately our purpose is the highest purpose on Earth which is is basically like you said Amana for everything else that exists and we have to connect it to sacredness we can't just look at the world as a means to an end as a as good Rene Ganon would put it the reign of quantity right as just numbers and figures and you know um this much money or this many

resources so and so so wow no that's yeah I loved that that you know that reminder seriously of uh how we view the lens by which we view the world today as modernity has given us these filled not filters but these lens these frames without us even knowing you're right we see these things but we see them with a disconnect um unbeknownst to us because we're just so use accustomed to seeing them in that

way we see things as resources and I know you have a bit of a discussion on things like this and a research interest on how our language has also been um affected and even maybe taken away from us due to modernity and colonialism yeah so yeah what's yeah share some of that with us for sure absolutely that's something that recently I've just been kind of reading into um and looking into this from a decolonial perspective I mean if you look at let's take the example of the Indian subcontinent right uh before the stream we were talking about this

concept that in our part of the world in pre-modern times we had this concept of Storytelling last time going and uh language and words were used to create an imaginative faculty which help build an entire world view so when when you would have a village and in the center of their Village when the old folk would sit around and they would tell stories even if there were folk stories even if they were with mythology it everybody listening to that story it built a narrative in their mind a discourse and it they had a very rich imaginative capacity and that's where the Sufi Mystics as well let's say from Punjab

they were able to construct poetry which related to the normal person because the normal person already had a very strong imaginative capacity as well as a sense of identity as in who they were where they belonged to what language they spoke right um and itself of a sense of self-worth as well that came with it now what colonization did was it it made those languages in a way defunct for the common man right not to say that the languages were killed right but the way those languages were used before they were no longer used in the same way and so that was a direct hit at the Alam al-hayal of the of all the people who

were colonized and what that resulted I think in is this is this Conformity where okay we must conform to what the colonizers are teaching us or what they've taught us or what they have the power they colonized us what they're teaching us what they're saying the way they're speaking the way they're dressing it has to be better than what we have already and that made us lose this self-sense of as purpose and identity and I I wouldn't say that Islam was immune to that right Islam in the colonized lands and even in our psyche today to this day has been impacted by that because sorry I was just going to say how you

know you said well this thing of they robbed us of um our ability by taking away certain words or taking away um how would you feel so like is there an example to typify that because one could say well what words have they taken away or what concepts have they made inaccessible by um you know what what how would you reply to that what would you say yeah for sure so let's go let's take a look at what Iqbal says about this right so Iqbal iqbal's criticism of colonization from the perspective of Education was

that look you had a system of Education in the East right let's say to take the data center for example and that system was not just a system of Education it was also a system of terbia it was a system or it was a holistic system where you had the students and then the disciples the disciples and the teachers they were building character as they were being taught their tarabia was happening um they were going through this knowledge of the self right because what they were taught was that look you as a human being are not just a body the body is just a part of you there's more to you there is a soul there is enough and

they were taught the soul right they went inside so to Iqbal when that system was replaced by let's take the Western system of education for example it it took away the knowledge of the self and it replaced it with a uniformity and that uniformity also took away this concept of terpea because if you have a modern um system coming out of Europe which doesn't acknowledge the existence of a soul hypothetically right if it doesn't even acknowledge the existence of a soul it will never teach you about the soul it would never teach you the different faculties you can tap into so you mentioned the word for example right

how would you translate the word zok or Marfa right how would you translate this right if you call it intuitive knowledge somebody can come to you and say well no you can't believe in your intuition because can't refuted intuition but that can't knew exactly what we were talking about when you were talking about intuition because we're not coming from the same framework as him we come from a framework where us for us the modicum of knowledge that we have is not just rational it's also super irrational it's experiential so how would you how does that translate over right um it doesn't translate over so what ends up happening is it gets dropped

because it gets dropped for uh sources of knowledge such as gets dropped in the because just so we can follow that thought because people would say well your language and your discourse wherever you're having so whether we're like let's say in Arabic in order where they're using ma arifa although or these words um or even ilham this kind of divine intuition um this kind of experiential uh awareness consciousness of knowledge you still have those words but you're

saying that they become drop gradually more and more in an attempt for people to assimilate to the other disc schools because that's more fashionable not fashionable it's more preponderant in the world economically yeah powerful like for example if I uh speak Persian today if I'm fluent in Persian but I don't speak English what am I standing in the in the world right economically what are my prospects do I am I able to get a job I would argue that even in countries that are majority Muslim countries you need to know English for example and not just know English but you need to be proficient to get a good job so when you take away economic

propensity from a language right people and you're essentially creating a sphere where you're basically saying that look um if you do this this is much better for you versus if you study that so naturally people start inclining away from it and then eventually what happens is the and this is I I don't know who said this I feel like France Fanon said this but I could be wrong about this that oh no wait what am I saying sorry he said that yeah it's just my mind is foreign [Laughter]

defeated always imitate the defeat oh yes yes yes he says they're drawn towards the the kind of the conquerors of new always that not just the conquerors but the established the establishment of not establishment nowadays has different connotations but yeah the the kind of established rulers ruling the class of a people yeah and so I mean that that happened in our country in our lands right that it in fact one could argue that even the creation of nation states all of that was out of modernity these were of course it was none of the pre-modern concepts so everything that we're living sorry go ahead no I was gonna say that

yeah that it's so fascinating because language language in and of itself is such a uh bewildering phenomenon yeah that we take for you know we take it for granted and we don't realize the Mystique element of it so you see people like uh lakhan he he speaks quite a bit about this because he says that the unconscious mind so part of Consciousness that is unconscious is structured like a language so if you could have some uh familiarity with language you would

grasp in some way how the unconscious uh some familiarity with it and he builds on the works of people like Ferdinand uh socio de socio who who really highlights these fascinating things that you see language is much more complex than people thought it's you have the person that's speaking and I'm speaking to you let's say but none of us are determining language and we and neither is any specific person that is speaking English determining the English language

and it's and at the same time we're all kind of tapped into it almost like a collective uh Consciousness like a collective Wi-Fi of this language that we all tap into and it's not just words so prior to him you had the logical positivists and people who said the correspondence theory that look a cup oh cup is cup okay and so we just called it cup and it corresponds to a cup but he'd highlighted society and this is in you know so Syrian kind of uh analysis of it that you see the word cup

it may be arbitrary but it's not a standalone we recognize also a cup in relation to other words that it is not a mug that it is not a glass that is not a dish that language it is intricately bound in even the nouns of things by what they are not and then it is bound into other structures and La can more on this of metaphors and uh and and things like this but also rituals so so for example

like I will if if I meet you now and I say oh so uh hey how you doing you're right yeah we will now there will be an exchange of language now in our Exchange we will actually follow a ritual like I may first say how are you I may then begin with trivial talk and following and when I ask you may so I say hey go hey what's up yeah oh good now even this the word itself hey or

what's up or how are you or it doesn't in and of itself teach the other person the accurate reply to it necessarily I mean I suppose with how are you could say I'm good but some of them like if I say eight morning say morning good morning morning it's not it doesn't teach the other person the other person just knows but also not just the response he knows the rituals of the language without actually ever being being taught them yeah you just know them you tap into a system this kind of like Wi-Fi this Collective this localized Collective

consciousness of that language you tap into so it it's so strange that where does it reside who determines these things we all just we as we're kind of born into a language our our minds are malleable but then they start to receive the language that we're hearing and and we just tap into it yeah we're now a part of it and then some languages if this is a world a software it's like a software I mean you're a software engineer that we are now part and parcel of yeah it really is some softwares they are better uh

designed or apt more apt for certain Concepts in their times so coming back to the thing you're saying so a good example is like right now the English-speaking world and the discussion of consciousness this this there is a Renaissance for uh Consciousness in the English-speaking World in of of late you know in modern recent times and it's had with it it's not just a Renaissance of word and thought but it's had a lot of input a lot of research has gone into

this a lot of discussions dialogues dialectics which has then fed this Collective Wi-Fi that we have this kind of software so when we speak of Consciousness we can speak of it in a way that let's say we change language we start in Urdu or we start in Arabic it doesn't like we will struggle to have the same even with the words the translations it doesn't like if you take Urdu now I don't know how people would I'm assuming they would use the word like

to use it yeah yeah but this it's weird because it's almost it it's almost to do with like an awareness of something yeah but when we use the Consciousness in uh in English it's so much more freighted and and Laden with ideas that that it just doesn't when I say like even when you use the word in Urdu or classically the poets um it seemed to have something that ties in with modern this kind of collective

consciousness of losing yourself into this other yeah um what is it that uh Mir says and that there is this you lose yourself but into this non-yourself self foreign

[Music] Allah that it isn't this when you lose yourself into this other kind of meta-consciousness this it's not just nothing it's a veil for something um so so I feel that wow like when you when you were saying this that look when a colonial uh group um or some kind of ruling power

um but they don't cancel another language but they just increase the value of that their language their software that people now even though they retain their own software so to speak but they want to be a part of that it's a faster Network that they want to be a part of because the global Network so let's be a part of that software and Wi-Fi of English but with it you have a different set of ideas and different sets of and sometimes you then you're in this limbo State you can't carry across both discussions

I mean this um you know like an example for this you the wife analogy was so perfect because let's suppose that somebody reads Shakespeare right and I mean good art is good art regardless of what language it's in and Shakespeare is a masterpiece but could a person from rural gujrawala reading Shakespeare could they relate to Shakespeare as much as they would relate to bullisha I don't think it would be possible because the the collective Consciousness that bullish is speaking from is this person's lived reality even if the person doesn't agree with it or not right it's it part is inherent in his DNA it it's what his ancestors grew up

in it's what he grew up with the analogies that bullish would use apply directly to him versus what Shakespeare would use so when you have an external entity taking that away from you naturally that's going to create a vacuum inside of you to find your identity and a lot of the times that identity is then imitation so you think that listen I because I lost my own identity maybe I should just follow what this person is doing or what that person is doing and maybe I should adopt their vocabulary and maybe I should have taught their Collective Consciousness but the problem with that with adopting somebody else's Collective Consciousness is that you not only lose words or your

language but you also lose your ability to know things the way you knew them before so in the pre-modern times let's say if I came to you and if I talk to you about ilham or inspiration right you and I would both consider that as a valid source of knowledge we won't just laugh it off right whereas in modernity it might be left off even though even just sorry just to hold hold that thought just what the viewers ilham an inspiration even in English as we say inspiration it doesn't carry off the same way ilham carries off because inspiration now is often just used for

like hey Be Inspired get to the gym maybe inspired you know get up go to work be inspired wake up at 5am but ilham doesn't have that kind of meaning at all it's it's like something so viscerally deep within a kind of intuition that a person gets isn't it and so it's just saying wow even though in root in root Inspire is this from the word Spirit Inspire yeah it is it has some sorry I mean even the English language itself has evolved as per modernity like maybe inspiration 200 years ago might have meant a

different thing but you know even let's take another example let's take the word Dua one of my favorite words in of any line right like could you say that um the poet says that is you know one dot but this fly that just landed on has made a dot it turned the word maharam somebody dear of yours and intimately close to you into mujrim is it turned the heart into a gene

we were saying we're sending you Dua could anybody say who knows let's say or do Arabic English and they know the connotations of these words could somebody say that the word prayer is a correct translation of the word Dua right it would even if we say linguistically maybe right but prayer has a whole different connotation it has a whole world view right words are not just neutral and stagnant worlds have worlds words have

worlds with them so it's the word prayer has a completely different Dunya associated associated with it versus the word Dua because when you say the word Dua it's it's something it feels much more intimate to us maybe as Muslims maybe evoke some a collective Consciousness inside of us that connects us to the spirituality of Islam whereas prayer might not have that same effect right um so I I find that this is another example where when we don't own up to our own languages our indigenous languages what we're not realizing is that we're not just dropping a language it's not just about a language it's

about the imagination that comes with that language and then that imagination in my opinion has a direct impact on things such as your worship because you know if an Arabic would say that the your imagination is very important for you to know God right because we can't we don't see God right but we can imagine Allah in a way right not a picture of Allah but we can imagine the existence of God we can connect to it through our imaginary faculty so if we have the tools if we have the words the vocabulary the collective Wi-Fi to be able to do that of course it's going to impact our worship and right yeah and it

brings with it a whole history tying back to or anchoring on that point you made of somebody in Pakistan reading Shakespeare in Gujarat or in Punjab reading Shakespeare you see there is because literature or concepts or ideas this Collective Wi-Fi let's say of language of English this repertoire that we have of narratives they the person reading let's say in India or in Pakistan reading Shakespeare or reading even it doesn't have to be so

archaic it could be something more modern there are narrative Frameworks that exist in the mind of that Wi-Fi user exactly that will differ they come from their backdrop there's a narrative backdrop that you have so let's say born and raised in the west there will be certain things born and raised in a different part of the world they will have their own these narratives this narrative kind of backdrop to the to them where when you mentioned or this history of characters or whether they will have their own hiranja and

these other things and which are so commonplace that they've heard this all the time this certain uh societal um Concepts that psychosocial constructs that are there like let's say uh kinship or Duty or even this um this kind of Brotherhood in society let's say or fraternity like people the fact that let's say you stop a stranger and you you may say uh you know or somebody may say bhaijan or you know yeah

like that Brotherhood extending that is it's part of a framework that you tap into in that language in English it would be really weird if it would just stopped somebody and said brother unless they happen to be like okay Muslims have this within our psychosocial kind of construct but if if the person wasn't Muslim yeah and okay in in America the black community have that this kind of brother sister kind of a psychosocial uh construct but the broader Society doesn't if you just stopped somebody said brother it would it would be like

what otherwise this guy calling me a brother okay maybe people might say well bro now bro a bit informally is does cover certain things but so it's interesting this language and the stories it carries and just to build on what you're saying there as well Abdullah it's not that you know when you're saying people lose leaving their language it's not if it's not that they are leaving it uh necessarily out of it some maybe but out of a disdain or like oh I hate my language it's just that they're going

with with the global value is it's like if we if we continue with that Wi-Fi example it's like do you you're connected to this network but it's it's really slow um and you've got another Network that's really fast yeah and you naturally will want to connect to a more powerful Broadband because it's it's just more operational for what you want to do it's not that you have a disdain necessarily to the local group but it's just the power of that is drawing you to it you're thinking God I want to be a part of English because everybody speaks

English and true like if if we wherever somebody lives you would want to be a part it's not that you think well Urdu doesn't have value but you can't it's almost eclipsing that value in your eyes because people around you are not and I feel there's no harm in being able to have both of course in in a way but people don't promote as I mean there are people that promote it but not as much the value of this richness yeah I mean I I feel like if you look at the pre-modern Times uh let's take the example of Punjab for example even the Sikh Empire in Punjab the language

officially of the second part was Persian even though they spoke Punjabi right so it's not to say that we're demonizing people learning multiple languages and not to even demonize English language of course right but what we're talking about everything it is an amazing language English yeah there's beautiful work's been done in English but you know there's this concept of an imposition right because because colonization didn't just tell us that it it wasn't a very for lack of better we're very friendly happy-go-lucky type of environment where oh how about we learn these languages it was imposed right anytime something yeah anytime when something is imposed on you it's coming at the cost of something

else right so it's not necessarily what was imposed just to because like for example when we talk about our language being Stripped Away oh right so like the the colonial language let's say the colonizing language yeah but is this like a soft imposition like IBN is saying uh or are you saying that they were saying not everybody better speak or we're gonna you know we're gonna otherwise punish you if you're speaking another I don't think the English went around saying we're gonna punish you if you don't speak English but it's definitely more of a soft yeah like as in it just becomes so they make it appear so with so much

glory and Grandeur that if you don't do it you're losing out yeah like for example if if uh one of the things the British did it was if they took away Persian as a language of Education in India for example right as Administration They removed yeah yeah so you know that was a huge blow because people who were on high bureaucratic positions for people who were fluent in prison now their Persian was of no use to them from that perspective right so now if you're overnight like it's like I mean not literally but almost it's very if that's your thing that you know the

proverb as well you know the famous that that what's the full one that they they had this uh his Prophet that if somebody knew Farsi then what's the point of like obviously are they because if you're asking can is somebody educated the fact that they know Farsi it's so obvious and yeah um that the uh you know the heart can then the bangle and the RC was you know to digress slightly is it uh it's an interesting brief little tale that it

was this kind of thumb mirror or this hand mirror that people had in Ancient India and there's this story that I mean oh there's this this this myth about it that apparently with the sensitized heightened sensitization of all the taboo around you know not mixing and all this stuff that in the olden days they would give the bride apparently in in ancient In classical India in that kind of time of all extra other and extra higher and all this uh on the she hadn't seen the groom and they hadn't seen each other so they would uh when they take them into the

room for the first time ever and seat them that she would be given this uh this kind of uh uh thumb hand mirror kind of thing and apparently the one of the purpose of it was uh that that she could use it to see him you're sitting next to her but the but the point in a way was well she's already sitting next to him now so it's kind of a bit like it's like that that that the heart King the whole point as well that even if a person if he knows Farsi of course he's educated but this is then stripped like

you're saying in almost what could be said like an overnight process yeah yeah yeah absolutely and I mean with that right so if I have a child growing up in British India I will not teach my child Farsi or do Arabic I'll teach my child English I will not dress up my child in a turban in pajama I'll dress him up in in a code or a suit right uh in an attempt for them to get ignored I mean you do look dapper so yeah we gotta try now having these young look at these these kind of uh people on the podcast see this is it we gotta sit here we've

gotta in our Collective Consciousness we've got to be uh we gotta we gotta try try man try yeah because it took away the economic uh Prosperity associated with that language and potential and opportunities naturally those languages started to vein right and also the fact that the darshana zombie system started getting dismantled so now you had the main system of Education which was an Islamic system started getting replaced by a more secular system of Education in British India and so again another way that through which the language was promulgated started getting taken away right um and obviously it's not an overnight

process when the language starts disappearing from public mainstream discourse it takes a while I mean to this day Farsi is part of our discourse as Pakistani israelians but it's not the same obviously right and with it comes this waning of the imaginative faculty right and I keep using this word imaginary faculty it's because that is yeah I like it I like it because that's how we construct not our only our own identities but also our spirituality and our purpose what are we doing what we're doing what's the point of life how do we connect to God all of those things are intertwined with their

ability to imagine right and um that that's why like poetry and art are so important calligraphy right Islamic architecture if you look at the subtle illusions at a mosque like how they're they've built the Dome and they're kind of pointed everything to a center it's through these subconscious illusions that we're getting to this understanding of God right that's why poetry it's subtle but it helps build the imaginative capacity it leaves a lot to imagination right and because it leads a lot to imagination you're able to work on that and connect to God the Quran itself when it tells us to you know think and reflect and Ponder I think

it's also tapping into your imaginative faculty even when the Quran describes Jannah right if you don't see a physical picture of Jannah in the Quran right we see a description and that description is always oh it is like this it is like this so when it Associates something with something else it's tapping into your imaginative faculty and it's telling you to be imaginative right so one of the things is Muslims is really need to like start having a better imagination like kids honestly that's not so well said I was going to say this whole thing of um that you're saying that this um language this imaginary realm almost it reminded

me briefly of La Khan again he uses the term other and sometimes the words Jacques lacan uses there are bits they appear simple so they can be misleading but it's actually very profound his idea he speaks of the symbolic other or the uh the big other but what he means by this uh has has been better said he's speaking of whenever we're speaking whenever we're using language it's as if there is this big other that is involved this same soft way but this this realm

that is involved is sometimes called a hovering interlocutor it's as if there is somebody else and a a better term that gives more explanation is a field a field of intelligibility yeah we are a part of like this is why people when they speak on their own even if if somebody speaks out aloud thinks aloud to themselves or says some they don't deem it weird because it's as if there is a field of intelligibility that surrounds them but building on this and what you were saying and just

um tapping back into this one the the kind of social narratives that exist and poetry but also figures mystical figures and you mentioned uh you see there are Concepts that these people have um I'm not saying they introduced but they into the discourse but they definitely were proponents of uh that still live on to be part and parcel of our you know this this this Collective Wi-Fi of our Islamic indoor

park at least uh language uh one that this the concepts of or elements of mysticism that they have brought forward one is of uh which I which is a you know I find it amazing and I'm sure you share that interest of this iconoclassm but uh and this um yeah this whole thing of not finding like removing the value of Institutions and these powers and just

refocusing on God so people like bullesha and these other people who are very uh critical sometimes of um elements saying that people have lost themselves in these elements people have lost themselves in ritual people have lost themselves in just going to the Messi you know the Masjid they've lost themselves they've they've forgotten the true mucks that is God now if I said that in the in the Desi kind of construct or when they kind of collective consciousness they can whether they agree with it or

not but it still fits a framework that they're familiar with whereas in some Frameworks that's not even there so yeah I mean your thoughts on this because these people were huge people like uh uh bullisha who um is you know unquestionably a man of God somebody who emerges he spends his life almost in this nomadic sense um speaking a radical love but this kind of almost like this Malang culture this you know I'm this disheveled but this uh breaking the

shackles of Institutions but also rituals like saying well you know rich it's complicated because when you explain it somebody may think well are you belittling is he belittling rituals is he what he share some thoughts with us on this yeah this is a very good question and I think it it again this we were chatting about this before the the live as well um when we look at historical figures right when we look at Saints and we look at Olia and we look at poets um it's very important that we don't anachronize them and we need to again and we're all guilty of it because the lens that we're looking at the world is

a modern lens and we will to some extent we will support impose that on anything we study even if we try to objectify it um but you know somebody like bullisha you read him and you need to unders again we look at him in the context of this the state that he was in right like I mean the caste system for example has been an issue in the subcontinent for a while and uh Muslims were not necessarily immune to it right so for bullish is they kind of appropriated it was kind of interjected into them I mean they took the the Hindu caste system but then they repurposed it into you know

professions and different things whereas in fact Islam is one of the one well I wouldn't say it's the only religion maybe but it's one of the religions that really emphasizes on an anti-castism right this concept of an egalitarianism an inequality of human beings except for when it comes to piety right yeah so and piety is something that's in your control you can work on that even if you're doesn't matter where you were born in doesn't matter what the color of your skin is but unfortunately it did become part of the discourse of the subcontinent and so bullish as somebody who's you know his murshid his his guide is Sheikh with somebody who

belonged to a cast that was not as high quote unquote as his cast right according to the system that they had so people love is his um like you know it there's a there's a couple that goes that yeah that is the ladies in his family they came to him and tried to explain to him that listen you are from the family of the prophet and the line of Ali you know uh radialan and why are you becoming a murid to somebody who's of a lower caste and militia says that uh

[Music] that the one I wish that the one who considers me as Orion goes to heaven and the one who thinks of me as a say it goes to hell that's what my DUIs you know because he's so fed up with these these uh labels and stuff right and he he wants to get to the meat of it he wants to get to modifa right so I mean I would say that yes a lot of these sufis were iconoclastic when it comes to things like this at the same time we also can't label them entirely as such because I mean bullish is also known to have said Sharia is my mother and tariqat is my foster mother so to him he said bullisha like he wasn't some he was

a Muslim at the end of the day I would say he was an orthodox Muslim um but he still was iconoclastic in some ways and uh it's not that they were against the Sharia or against they weren't at all I mean they obviously true I I would say were an embodiment of the deeper values of Islam and they valued the outcome the laws the Sharia dearly but I feel that they were more against these structures that they found in society that were structures of power structures

of corruption and greed that may have uh managed to embed themselves within an Islamic um you know within within an is an Islamic reality so they've so you've got even these things may be now Islamic so you've got madrasas you've got these are Islamic schools you've got masjids which masjids are placed for prayers but there may be politics involved in the mosque you know that like we have today countless you know the Committees of masks or always politics going on so it's at one hand

yes a Masjid is a place to pray but it's now become infested with this power play and the madrasas the mulvies the qazi the judge the local judge the local Mufti the local uh and the controlled the the like you mentioned the castism um and for me and maybe a momentary if we could say momentary Amnesia that Islam is meant to be about love I mean grace and about inclusivity because these people felt that you've

forgotten like somehow we don't seem to why do we not seem to why are we all suffering from this momentary Amnesia because there's outcasts in society in his time the low costs who were outcasted the people who would sometimes sing and dance and beat the drums nobody would you know they would consider them outcasts and and people who you have in that part of the world the kind of um the generally like I don't know whether they would be translated as just transsexuals but people in India Pakistan that are very familiar with the Hijra kind of presence or the entity

there that is uh the the technical now the more formal term is so uh these people who were deemed as the kind of intersex people are often um seen as the kind of even though they are part of that society and remain to be a part of that Society but they're kind of like an outcast within that Society yeah as in people don't harass them or persecute them necessarily they don't but at the same time they're not assimilated into the broader Society so people like that or other outcasts or

people of low cost people where we've got bullisha he was often with these people he would hang out with them he would be often found with them and he was a Sayed you know so he's from this the utmost from the family of the Prophet this dignified class of people often sitting with the outcasts you know and and facing this condemnation and then he he would stand up to it he would write poetry against this institutionalized power or religionized you know religious power that has been you know it's got this veneer of religion on it but it's

forgetting the message of love from God uh yeah so this this is such a beautiful point because you know like you look at somebody like bullisha right and like you said these people they really strove to not limit the mercy of God and and that's ultimately what the prophet Allah taught us right I mean the Quran calls him the mercy for all of existence in a way right I mean this concept of empathy is so lost in us as Muslims when it comes to people that we might look down upon and militia he was

very famously quoted to have said you know that um you have become a lover of God and there's a huge outcry of people and if they call you kafir kafir tell them yes I am yes I am because what he's implying he's not saying is an actual Cafe he's saying that if you if you are going to give me a certificate of Iman and kofor I don't need it keep it to yourself you know I I will show empathy and love to these people because that's what Allah sent me for in the world is the first part of that uh couple it

is something like that I don't know the exact words but the translation is that it was for love that man was created because if for worship the Angels were enough but it's it's and one could argue the love is one of the highest modicums of worship right because when you love somebody for the sake of Allah you and you see how you connect with that person you're showing empathy to that person so that's what these movies did I mean these sufis and that that's why Islam spread so much in the subcontinent right Islam spread like wildfire not necessarily because of conquests and you know it doesn't spread because

yeah it spread because the the message that these people take somebody like these people set up the system of a Langer in the subcontinent like it was an open homeless shelter anybody can come and get food right and so this is amongst the first Mystics to to introduce to start the longer and to this day like uh this is

interesting because he was before the time of islamadinolia and he even uh you know this this concept like people in the sick Faith they've adopted right like they have the longer is such an amazing uh concept honestly and and you're right the seeks later on have this is part and parcel of the thing and I think it's such an amazing I wish Muslims did have it just as a can you imagine what it would do just for people who didn't have food of course if everyone just had a homeless shelter and like a food food maybe not even you know okay maybe small masjids

no residential masks no no but at least the central masks yeah the main masks ought to have a longer thing don't you think so like they if the if the Sikhs can run it on a 24-hour basis the central mosque I'd like even if one Masjid in a city which is the main mosque just had that I don't mean the small I get it the small house kind of masks not them they're just for Salah and stuff exactly it would do so much for because it would be the truth because the Hadith is that if you fed

the poor person the Hadith you would have found me with them Allah you know you were looking for me all along yeah and and Allah says but I asked you to feed me and you didn't feed me and the person says how could I feed you your Allah he says what are you talking about when the person was starving had you fed him you would have found me that was it I I to share a bit of a personal anecdote with you um because this topic always makes me emotional so my my maternal grandfather's grandfather so my grand grandfather he was the Sufi Sheikh in Gujarat in Pakistan Punjab and he's

buried there and at his um at his Shrine so to speak at his at a grave site there is a longer that's been going on for 100 years and to this day it's just an open spot somebody comes in sacrifices a goat feeds somebody else the next stage some random other person and it's been going on like that for a hundred years it's an open longer every day about 100 people they eat from it right and it's tools somebody somebody will come in and make some Dal and then somebody else will serve it and nobody knows who's serving it nobody knows who's getting it right but this is the concept of this this idea of service for Humanity right the

sofa freely brings out that element and it's it is kind of sad that we don't emphasize that a lot in the modern world in as Muslims this concept of service but I find even the subwoof today you know the the suit because I find that really you know some of the the shiniest uh or the brightest light of Islam comes from these Mystics within Islam in the historic tradition but I find and they are of they are found within the greater backdrop of sufis but not

sufis do not necessarily necessarily reflect that same light like I find many uh sufis also today are just they've unfortunately Fallen to institutionalization Fallen to just their power structures fall into okay they're about a kind of like uh yeah it's about thicker in that sense of spirituality of let's say Allah's name but but it's like the same thing that bullish is saying that you guys seem to have forgotten the but the truth thing was about love and it was about Grace and it was about that radical love and people there's so many Masjid

projects that go on and people build spectacular you know so beautiful on the eye masjids in the UK you'll see millions and millions of pounds go into that yeah and there'll be new projects saying oh we want to build a new mask you know we want in it uh we it should have a new interactive library and it should have this and and truth is really if they just return to these simple things of like saying well just to serve people I mean I guess an interactive Library fine but but at a human level at a very

deep human you know the the basic needs of humans like somebody is hungry he could just go eat without any question no what sect are you from not even and the language shouldn't be just for Muslims yeah it should be open that this that is a section that maybe a part of is is connected to the house of God that people just come in if they're hungry and they are fed you know by the in the remembrance of God they offer and what a message that would be you know it's just so so simple as a thing I honestly think of this sometimes because I think I think like we like how is it that

something so simple people are so unwilling to even move that way but they might say let's have a you know let's have some Modern feature of something and you know well that's not gonna as nice as it sounds it's not gonna really work and people are like well let's have this and these simple things there's a saying attributed to him I don't know if it's in the Muslim view or not but I it I read it somewhere that somebody asked him what sound is Haram and he said yeah and he said that the sound of the that the spoon makes on an empty plate of a poor person that's the

sound of her outfit so there's this concept that that is so beautiful I shared that on my uh my Instagram there's a there was a video saying in narrating it and I shared it was so powerful yeah yeah truly because again it's we've we've lost a forest through the woods so to speak right we are so caught up in the Nitty Nitty degree of things and that is again it's not to minimize or negate the importance of exoteric Islam or Sharia what the of course but like we've we've and again as a byproduct of modernity we've just lost

that soul in a way right these these Traditions that we had right why isn't there a Revival of these traditions in the Muslim communities in the west like you said right like this tradition of feeding the homeless taking care of the Widow right uh helping the most marginalized people of society truly helping them out right not just helping them to get brownie points just helping them out just because God builds it and God likes it and this empathy and love and you know like children laughing in a mosque for example these small things like that these things that make us human beings that God loves the most about his creation right and it doesn't have to mean that it doesn't have to

mean that this is happening in all the like there's obviously a prayer room nobody's negating the sanctity of a prayer room and that is there but they could be different parts of a Masjid especially one large spectacular Masjid of a city you mentioned this thing of children I had once said that look a simple idea of uh just of the Masjid just allowing or facility not allowing facilitating a kind of uh an area where people could bring children almost like like a kind of like a crash uh almost to say just

because one of the problems you find in in areas is that especially Muslim areas that in this age now many Muslim women that have children struggle with to do things where they in a neighbor in a community where they need to do something but they also need to be they've got very dependent children they need to be doing things it's amazing that these very simple features which will actually cost that you know they wouldn't cost as much money as organizing as a great chandelier wood um you know people they may you know buy

a great chandelier for 25 to 50 000 pounds in certain places but and a simple thing of just a need that imagine like let's say there was something as very simple as that like imagine there was a facilitation where you had uh obviously framed supervising uh supervisors that would be there let's say and people could bring their children now let's say there was a player this is a this is not the praying part of the Masjid it's a simple area where there could be let's say a kind of play area and women could come now one

thing that would do is that would because it's a need you can imagine so many women would go there because it's trusted it's a Masjid it's safe uh you know at the same time not indoctrination but there's just maybe nice occasional things being said like uh you know the speech being taught to Children maybe occasionally say oh they might pick up an Islamic word they're doing something it's it's it's such a blessed environment and then on top of that it's increasing the frequency of these women attending this Masjid because they're going you know

it's creating a bond isn't it within a community or men like maybe men as well obviously it could be men with children they it's just a need or or we've said earlier on about the lunger thing I think sometimes that wow that there are there are so many things that are so basic you know it's like a back to these things but that's uh yeah yeah I mean like if you you mentioned that the sufis were iconoclastic at least when you read their works right one one way that they were counterclastic was maybe by this right because they catered to those of

society that were ignored generally uh if somebody just said here the word that the daycare center kind of thing Day Care Facilities yeah sorry that was for lack of a better word that was it like a daycare facility which wouldn't actually be so a rocket science to to provide within the Masjid it would be so simple actually you know if you think think about it and yeah but sorry to interrupt you no no I mean it's basically just a room and I mean to to give credit there are mosques that do it like one thing that I appreciate for example there's a there was a mosque in in Canada oh are they Masjid you know masjids that do that okay I I I believe so and then also what I

was going to mention was uh because it's really cold in Canada it hits minus 40. there's some mosques that opened up their doors for for people they were like if you need to place to sleep you can come sleep at the mosque anybody so you know that's that that's what we're talking about is is and that's what the subwoof at the end of the day is it's this o'clock right it's the prophetic ethics I mean this book by Imam guzali I'm just gonna pull it up one of my favorite books it's the uh the book of prophetic ethics right it's the kitab um

this is one of the most beautiful books I've read on the prophet peace be upon him because he really Imam gazali picked and picked an attack he picked a virtue attack like let's say modesty or generosity and it mentioned all of the Hadith associated with that and how the prophet was generous and the prophet loved orphans and children and and how he cared for widows and how he cared for his friends and how he when he would talk to somebody he would fully turn to them right he wouldn't he would give them their full attention and when you study the prophet peace be upon him as a moral Exemplar a you fall in love with him it's very hard to not fall in love with the man and B you really understand where we're lacking as

Yuma person like if I was to speak for myself I'm not lecturing anybody but what is that is it that I could be doing versus what I'm actually doing that would make the prophet proud right um that's again what Sufism like all sufis every single Sufi considers like a true Sufi would consider the prophet peace of the appointments that's another emblem of the of these of Sufism generally and the mystics especially this radical love for the prophets yeah no truly because again in Sufi cosmology

this is a bit of a side tangent but if you want we can talk about that you know in in Sufi cosmology or the structure of the cosmos there is this concept of the hakika muhammadiya right so there's this concept that that's quite a loose elusive for people they can't quite sometimes grasp what yeah so yeah yeah the way it was explained to me by some of my teachers and some of my mentors was you know I mentioned the example of the prism and the rainbow and the white light at the start right so think of the hakika muhammadiya as almost a prism so the white light hits the prism and becomes the rainbow so through the hakika muhammadiya it's

it's all that that's created isn't sustained essentially basically so it's when when we talk about the prophet peace be upon him and in the Quran calls him his reality his hakika as the sufis would put it is that all his reality is the mother of the mercy of Allah and the love of Allah in a way and that's why it's so important for us to understand his not only his spiritual metaphysical role as the hakika which says that which is part of the fabric of sustaining the cosmos but also as a moral Exemplar for people to follow and understand because sorry

yeah yeah and I mean just to finish the point to that the sufis also people like IBN Arabi would emphasize the role of the Prophet Allah the perfect man is the person who is perfectly able to manifest and reflect all of these attributes of God that we talked about right so or or accept the the person that the insane is that such self um actualized entity that's the closest to God essentially in a way uh existentially speaking right because we're all on a different rung of existence right like where all of us have wijudanas but we're at different

levels of ajud and the insane requirement is at the highest level of closest level overdue to God so it when you inhabit the properties and you try to imitate The Profit peace be upon him and you try to follow the prophetic path not only are you basically fulfilling your religious obligations but what that's doing for your soul is that your soul is now on a spiritual elevator and it's Gonna Keep transcending and transcending into and it's going to keep going higher and higher and higher right that's that's basically what uh this concept of modified right you transcend the the latter basically

would you like would you understand that in the sense that because the kind of primordial uh almost this light or energy that comes into existence uh at the before what kind of precedes all it governs or it precipitates the rest of creation from it or something or it proceeds because they put it right at the at at the essence isn't it and then in its kind of um

and and then it manifests uh in the embodiment of the Prophet as a person is that so so so almost as the final messenger but this primordial um primary light that God creates from which um which kind of then precipitates uh the rest of energy to kind of flow out of it and from energy comes Mata and then you've got obviously the forces and then creation and but this light then being once again towards the end uh

manifesting um and in in the person as an example amongst people that this is somehow how I've been understanding this is this yeah right okay yeah this is that's how I understand it as well um from what I've studied it and just try to understand it um of course there's sayings of the Prophet salaam as well right there is a there's a Hadith the first thing God created was my light and of course it's like you know there

is debate on the authenticity of the Hadith right but some Scholars have accepted it there's also a Hadith that I was a prophet when Adam was between the loins so there's just a lot of the people like would take these statements and then that's what they use as basis to construct this metaphysical system where you have the primordial reality of the Prophet peace be upon him and through that reality everything else is then created in a hierarchical fashion basically and then that reality is then manifested in the person of the Prophet

is at the end of the day a human being who we're supposed to follow right and that comes with the law and the law is important because when we talk about the names of Allah we talk about the manifestations of Allah right we don't know what to do with those names unless we have the Sharia the Sharia tells us what to do with those names so to give you an example if I had a line running after me I can't yeah a lion or like a tiger if I stop and start worshiping the Tiger I'm basically not only am I committing shirk but the reason one reason I'm committing is because I'm not giving the

name it's due because the name that lion or that tiger at that moment is reflecting one of the names of God that are jalali from which I'm supposed to flee right whereas it a mother when it when the mother loves a child at that moment the mother is reflecting the names of Jamal Rahman you know Allah's mercy so this is just for people to to kind of cross this as well this is the dialectic that many of the mystics have that uh that Allah his uh his interaction with creation or I don't

know if interaction is the right word but his governing of creation um is through it's it's through this dichotomy or this dualism uh I don't know yeah I guess the dichotomy of dualism of Jalal and Jamal and his his governing is and you could say is through his his names is is an example of how he's governing but they are in these two categories one is of splin Jamal Splendor and beauty and the other Jalal this of almost like Terror like terrifying uh which also

ties into the you know mysterium tremendum that that which terrifies the but not terrifies in the sense but of all this kind of yeah uh terrifying all so what we see as existence is ultimately a manifestation of either the kind of um tremendum attributes the Jalal attributes or the Splendor attributes uh this is just for people yeah so you're saying like I mentioned uh look at the yin yang logo right the the logo which has the green and the white and then there is the

white in the sorry the the white and the black and then there is the White and the black and the black and the white just like that you know you have this dialectic between the Jalal and the Jamal but even within the Jalal there is Jamal and even within the Jamal there is jalad like like you said when something's tremendous it has a beauty to it right as potato would put it and when something's beautiful it has a Majesty to it so it's all interconnected and if you look at an example like what sometimes I say out in my in my backyard and I see that the I look at the tiny Blades of leaves moving around in the wind just subtly reminds me of the name of Allah the subtle one right but then

you look at the same wind blowing the clouds which are so heavy and those Cloud they're moving right it's the same wind it's the same wind which is gently moving the the blades of the leaves and it's the same wind which is pushing those clouds away right so that is the Jamal and or the Jalal and this is the Jamal and it's just it's beautiful because you see that all around you right and it's interesting you read one of the verses the Quran starts with that right I think Suraj which is a by the winds God God takes the the wind as a swears by the wind essentially right so you understand that maybe God wants us to pay attention to the wind right and

maybe see what the wind does and what names can extract from the wind essentially but the in in this entire scope of things without the prophetic path without Sharia without the Exemplar of the insane we don't know what to do we don't have a lens it's almost as if you're in a world of color but we're blind but when we have the the prophetic path we open our eyes to it and we know and it's also that you have an example because we spoke earlier on of the other and the symbolic other the bigger the this lacan lacanian kind of thought

that and he obviously Khan also puts the concept of God with that as well or you could have like ideas like Freedom or these things but you see people they they can have a bond with that but they don't like people can have a bond with God or with ideas or with but they don't identify with this and this was the thing lakhan and lakenian thing picked up on as well that you can't identify with that like nobody identifies with God they just they have a bond but then as humans we do have a deep visceral

need to identify with as well and this here because that then fulfills that that that need that you have the manifestation of the Prophet salallahu for that as a and his character and really you see nobody obviously the akam in Islam they are there they are functionary they're there to kind of preserve Law and Order and to not allow people to uh usurp the rights of others so it's more a very functional

um kind of characteristic that they carry but when you look at the Quran out of its let's say 6200 plus verses only arguably anything between 130 something to 500 verses are to do with akka that the majority of the Quran and the life of the Prophet one could say because the prophet was described as the walking talking Quran is that he said

that this thing of good character this is to perfect it to seal it this is really my mission like in them this is really what about was is all about yeah subhanallah and and two points to this as well it's such a beautiful way that you've put it you know I'd like to mention something that Plato talks about um you know Plato mentions Beauty um and Plato he mentions Beauty as a as a proof for the existence of God so the way he does it he says that if you look at a beautiful sunset or if you look at a beautiful flower or if you look at a beautiful person anything anything beautiful

it evokes something inside of you which is oh what are you okay yeah so it evokes something inside of the Soul which is which can't be explained in normal terms like you see somebody you see a beautiful human being sometimes right and you're like mashallah like this person is beautiful or you see a beautiful sunset you know I I live close to the mountains and sometimes if you go to the mountains it's incredibly beautiful like you are just awestruck by it so Plato says that okay if you have a beautiful smile and a beautiful flower and a beautiful mountain there's something in common amongst all of these and that's Beauty

so he's like okay now pick Beauty and put Beauty to the side and see that there's other virtues in existence that cause the same Wonder in us like truth Justice honesty so he's like okay that means that all of these virtues they also must have something in common so he's building a hierarchy and he says that what these virtues have in common is called the good which we call God so it's like it's like a reverse engineering so to speak right when we see things outside in the world when we see Jamal when we see Jalal we're able to trace an existence of a higher higher being to it right and then when you see

the portrait in a way of you know the insane through the Hadith compendium that we have through the Quran we studied the prophet peace be upon him and our imaginative faculty is able to relate to him that's another indication or our mother for the existence of God right because we start relating to his his Beauty and excellence and that invokes something in us which actually connects us to God so you know sometimes I used to think that I was a child that why did God send prophets why couldn't God have just sent those words in our heart directly like everybody just grew up knowing the Quran or other Revelations and as I've grown older and I've gone through human

relationships and experiences and and the losses and the loves and everything right I've realized the importance of that human connection so when the prophet peace be upon Him sat with an orphan or if he put his hand on top of an orphan in that moment to that orphan that is the highest manifestation of the existence of God because that's a manifestation of the mercy of God right at that moment you can tell that child a lesson uh on philosophy or anything but that action by the prophet Islam is stronger than anything else or how he forgive the people of Taif right these it's these incidents that actually and that's why Iqbal said that you can deny

God or you can try denying God because you can't see him but how would you deny the prophet peace be upon how would you deny the historical reality of a man who was an Exemplar of a human being who was the best Statesman General Diplomat father husband friend a graceful even very graceful and loving to his enemies how would you describe his magnificence and mercy that in the middle of battle he's stopping battle to make sure that the birds and their mothers are you know the birds and mothers are reunited or that no animals are harmed or that you know the trees aren't cut down they're not supposed to be cut down like how do

you describe that empathy that empathy in US is witness and testament to the existence of God more than other proofs I think that's why Sufism is something that attracts attracts me because because of the centrality of the Prophet peace be upon him and how love is at that Center of that like not not anger not rat not all of those things but love and mercy and empathy that's that's amazing wow seriously what you said Allah bless you I mean that's really something and they their soul

piercing words to reflect on and hopefully to to kind of uh interject as a reality I mean you know honestly may Allah grant us all this love and may he really allow us to see that uh see that love everywhere in his creation and to just see the you know the majesty and that the exemplary zero of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi as it truly was not as it's been distorted by people for an agenda or for power or

for worldly corrupt needs and wherever there is wherever there is going to be some form of Glory in Estonia there will be people um that will always try to refract that same light so they can use it for some power along the way it's just that's just creation you know that's just and and sometimes along the way what happens is uh you know because of these Deeds um people may try to throw dirt and by extension onto the character and

the personality of the prophet sallallahu alaihi and really it is it is these people that are misconstruing a a picture before it's reached them that's all that's all it often is people misusing people religion people hammering uh under the alleged Banner of the the hand of God on people people imposing onto other people against their Wills you know and using justifying it by this is the decree of God God has will this and thereby

you know as a reaction feeding a kind of hatred against Allah his messenger and this theme honestly otherwise there is so much love and compassion and I think that the the beauty of a person could just take certain verses of the Quran amongst them that that things like there is no ever posing anybody against their will taking the these verses like

this is really all it sums up Islam that Allah is simply instructing you for or for justice why Justice because one of the most important things first is people's rights should not be taken away from them they shouldn't feel like they've been done onto and then Essa compassion kindness and then as a sealing verse that when you see to be able to identify with it and as an exemplary role model that that the prophet sallallahu has been sent

I think these things so beautifully sum up the entire Message of Islam and in it there is a tranquil silence not the noise of the this tranquil Cyrus there is a there's a I'd like to add a couple of Pokeball Iqbal is what a summary that would be yeah he says one this is one of my favorite competition I remember I went to I went from last year alhamdulillah and I was sitting at in Medina at the mosque of the prophet and I recited this right in front of the the mosque of the prophet

and it was such a surreal feeling and the couplet is so he says that you know in my in my Consciousness this age-old battle between Ishq and akalid Rose and I realized that is that Muhammad Ishq foreign

I mean and not to so as not to demonize the intellect but the misuse of it which it's used to deprive people disempower people and I love the you know speaking of the kind of parable or the this that is given the another one in parallel to that where the the story uh where the Hadith sorry the is of the Mirage but then it is explained because you have this example of the prophet in the company of jibril uh in this uh night Journey uh but reaching the farthest

point but then jibril in the Hadith saying that look you you know proceed because if I go forward I will be set of flame but you can go forth but what I loved was this being explained by some Mystics as this is symbolic in many ways like one symbolism from it is the Journey of Faith and reason that they go hand in hand and they reach everywhere but there may be a point where reason will help you get there but buy

it you will know it but then you must experience it through a different modality the reality of of faith it is experiential that this this kind of intuitive experiences though that they're not they're not against each other that through reason you reach there but then faith is something about the sacred which is about devotion so I thought that's such a a beautiful kind of uh parallel and and depiction of it and it's been honestly it's been amazing honestly I've really thoroughly loved this conversation uh going from starting

from just your journey into um going from software engineering into Islamic from philosophy into why you were drawn to people like this this concept of uh of understanding uh a kind of strict binary of existence and non-existence and thereby only the true existence could only be God's existence and the prism example that you give of light refraction and a rainbow right down to uh language and the collective Consciousness that we have

almost this wi-fi concept of local Regional languages being this kind of software we tap into and how depriving certain uh Concepts leaves us disempowered and why certain languages were drawn to them like a stronger Wi-Fi connection and right into the the history of the Desi Mystics like bullesha and iconoclasm and this iconoclastic kind of movements of returning to a radical love and the muhammadiya what does this mean such a complex concept right down to just this human connection I mean we we

discuss so many honestly amazing things on a journey of a dialogue yeah it's been wonderful so I really want to I want to thank you for taking the time out today and sharing that with us if there's any words you'd like to share before we sign off and also I'd like to ask you if people want to reach out to you where is a a kind of platform that you might want to plug that so yeah yeah for sure yeah if I mean first of all of this up I can't thank you enough alhamdulillah I've been listening to your videos and watching your videos for a long time and your channel has helped me on my own faith Journey as well um and just you know Miller bless you

for the work that you do and it's just been an absolute honor I I wish we could keep on speaking for another 10 hours I you know I just love it I love talking to you and uh yeah alhamdulillah I appreciate the opportunity and the only thing I'll say is you know may Allah allow us both to become better lovers on the path of God inshallah and um people saying may allow us both to become better lovers on them now this now this could be taken out of context Scandal yeah

spiritually [Laughter] all right so if any like I have Instagram it's just Abdullah at Abdullah that's where I post my articles podcast everything else I'll share a link to your Instagram page on the description of the YouTube video right so people it's been amazing shukran for really sharing you know your time watching being a part of this discussion tonight it's been really uh something may Allah bless you all Wherever You Are

spread love man spread love be loversion we love us they are in the word of Abdullah if he lovers on the path the guys take very good care of yourselves have an awesome night and Allah