Recordings › Lupe Fiasco | Stardom, Semiotics & Soul-searching | MindTrap#56 | Mufti Abu Layth al-Maliki MALM · 26 Apr 2021 › Segment 8 of 27
What does Lupe Fiasco think the soul is?
jumu'ah juma jumma jumah salat al-jumuah friday prayer masjid masjed masaajid masajid deen al-din ad-deen ad-dinThe guest on the soul: born Muslim, many faiths, still searching
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This segment36:27 to 42:17 · 5 min 50 sA view quoted in order to be discussed, not a position held
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenThe guest says exposure to many faiths has left him still searching, and that he thinks of the soul as a name for many functions of the body, holding his 'I don't know' comfortably.
In more detail
The guest says he was born Muslim but not raised Muslim, attending a family friend's church as well as Friday prayers in mosques with different communities, and watching a Chicago mosque change over the years, once displaying a picture of Elijah Muhammad and later growing stricter. He says Zen Buddhism through martial arts, Christian and Jewish friends and travel showed him many interpretations, which did not make him abandon Islam but showed him the potential for variation, as do teachers such as Suhaib Webb. He says he is still floating and has not landed, and that his mind tells him the soul is a title for an accumulation of functions in the body, with relationships to radiation, vibration and quantum processes, before concluding that he is comfortable with 'I don't know'.
Position stated
This segment presents a view in order to discuss or respond to it. It is recorded as quoted, never as held, and no position is attributed from it.
Kind: a view quoted in order to be discussed, not a position held Speakers: host and guest; guest speech is labelled and excluded from positionsTranscript
machine36:27 to 42:17 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
A guest speaks in this segment. Guest speech is labelled and is excluded from the positions layer.
This segment states a view in order to discuss it. It is recorded as a quoted view, not as a position held.
suddenly some kind of anxiety and they feel that something's wrong and they feel you know and and these kind of things are above probability they're not just you know to be just simple coincidences and and i felt that that is the you know the connection it may be a weak connection but of the arah of the rule of the the kind of soul and this what you're saying that you know in a moment there is this kind of um this kind of i don't know this kind of locking in of these minds that's um it does it ties into i don't know i don't know if your thoughts on things like on the soul and
what are your thoughts on the soul talk oh man oh man we delve into the religious nuts and well not the religious nature but just it's kind of my outlook right now so you know we were born muslim right but we weren't raised muslim you know and it's it's it's very interesting um and i've come into uh muslims of all calibers right throughout my life um and more so with the advent of technology and youtube and all these things you can virtually meet different cultures and stuff like that um so it's a great time to have a study of any particular there's always a like they do that like i just found out about
like chechen dick vicar like like two ramadans ago and now i'm like fascinating i'm like what i want to do that you know um just different cultural practices down the rabbit hole um but you know not being not being raised right or maybe there was that period of time where it's like you don't have to take it seriously until you're 13. right and in that in that time period i'm being introduced we used to go to church so my father's friend had a church that we would go to and you know go to sun not all the time but you know i was in church you know and like what's going on in here right and then at juvon it's like what's going on in here but then i'm at
a jumar where's nothing but like palestinians and it's like oh okay what's going on in here then a jummah with a bunch of black people and then a jumaa with a bunch of indians and then like just different like okay all right all right each with a different level of you know and then i watched the the the mosque there's a mosque in chicago on 47th and woodlawn um i kind of on the southeast side of the city um and it went through kind of like a uh like multiple transformations in terms of not necessarily the i don't know if it's as cute as like a meth hab like they went like shift completely different methods but there was
definitely like at one point i remember like a picture of elijah muhammad in the mosque right i was like oh okay all right but we're going like all right i don't know all right fine then then kind of like that picture is gone okay and then i was just kind of like okay okay casual normal all right cool then it's like the bathrooms are outside now it's like oh okay okay all right and you just see it get more and more kind of like strict you know now now i think it was like babies aren't allowed oh wow because they wear a pamper and stuff like this they've not been they've not
been baptized i think i think it was because they wear like pampers yeah yeah they wear pampers they might take a poop in the mosque and you can't have that but it was just like to see the building kind of retain itself but then the software of the building will change over time um i say all that to say that i was introduced on top of that i'm zen buddhism and studying the martial arts and all these different things and all these different interpretations and points of view and then friends who are like super christian and it's just kind of like okay talk to my friends the super christians friends that are like super jews then sins then friends who are like kind of like jews but still eat pork jews and i'm like okay
like oh how does that work and then you travel the world and you see you know just different incarnations and different interpretations of people's uh uh interface with the spiritual whether it be a religion or be just a practice or whatever intensity level and it it it it changed me you know if it if it didn't um cause me to kind of like totally abandoned it definitely brought into context the potential um for variation and theme variations of understanding and i even see it more so when i study
you know brothers like yourself uh brothers like suhab webb who's kind of like one of my one of my homeboys yeah i'm sorry but it's doing it it's the man right yeah and just like being around these different folks but also you know like seeing that there's different even within islam there's different sensitivities in different relationships certain things more rational stuff more irrational things stuff like that and i'm still kind of like floating you know i still don't feel like i've landed you know i still feel like that that i'm still in the pursuit of trying to contextualize certain aspects so when you bring up something like the soul yeah right
and it's like you know my mind tells me that you know the soul is a title for an accumulation of different functions within the body right um and is there connectivity to things outside of the world of course do we have a relationship to radiation yes do we have a relation relationship to vibration yes do we have a relationship to quantum mechanics yes do we have these relationships that at scale we can't really not necessarily be aware of but it's at such a scale where it doesn't have an effect on us right but when we when this body starts to deteriorate in the grave right it are quantum things taking place within us that we'll have a relationship too
absolutely we'll be we'll be able to see them probably not because we don't have we won't have eyes like the worms have been oh a long time so but is there other sensory parts and aspects of us that once we reach certain scales or reach certain certain points of view um you know will will the the circumstance and the context change and we'll be allowed to be to purview certain things and other things close down so with all that said um i don't know you know like i'm comfortable in my i don't know but behind my i don't know is a whole bunch of
Paragraphs overlapping 36:27 to 42:17. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-04-26-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/8/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, April 26). What does Lupe Fiasco think the soul is? [Video, segment 2021-04-26-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/8/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "What does Lupe Fiasco think the soul is?" Video, segment 2021-04-26-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 26, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/8/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-04-26-S08, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{What does Lupe Fiasco think the soul is?}}, year = {2021}, month = {4}, date = {2021-04-26}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/8/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/oyiipehuiha/s/8/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-04-26-S08, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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