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Philosophy and ideas
36 segments in 18 recordings · 2016 to 2021 · 0 verified · 18 checked positions · arts/philosophy-and-ideas · Feed
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Click a year to jump to itLatest answer · 26 Apr 2021
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
LatestDid Lupe Fiasco's way with words come naturally?
The guest says words did not come naturally: he trained himself by copying words from magazine covers into raps until metaphors and images came easily.
machine6 min 23 s19:40on YouTube
Earlier answers · 35 · newest first
2021 · 15
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Do we think in words or in images?
The guest argues that shapes are more fundamental than words or pictures; Mufti Abu Layth says words are also reductive, forcing profound things into limited form.
machine7 min 48 s26:43on YouTube
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
LatestIs the soul the same thing as consciousness?
The guest describes storytelling as a syncing of minds; Mufti Abu Layth says he feels consciousness is synonymous with the ruh and links people weakly at a distance.
machine3 min 14 s35:08on YouTube
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
LatestWhat inspired the story of Lupe Fiasco's album The Cool?
Mufti Abu Layth describes a classical tale of a poet's journey through paradise; the guest explains the resurrection story behind his album The Cool and the slave-ship myth of Drogas Wave.
machine7 min 47 s1:17:52on YouTube
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is humanity becoming more or less moral?
The guest says morality is remade daily, with no overall rise or fall and no consistent definition; Mufti Abu Layth says he agrees.
machine5 min 13 s1:24:22on YouTube
26 Apr 2021MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is life just a dream in the mind of God?
The guest says life is real and material, the unseen is part of nature, and ordinary people do not need the supernatural.
machine3 min 15 s2:02:07on YouTube
13 Apr 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
What did Ibn Rushd mean by the 'double truth' of religion and philosophy?
Mufti Abu Layth says it is not 'double truth', but he agrees fully with Ibn Rushd that the sharia is built for ordinary people while the gifted can find its deeper meanings.
machine6 min 31 s2:35:57on YouTube
13 Apr 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
LatestHow can I be sure my reason is not wrong?
Mufti Abu Layth says al-Ghazali answered his doubt by relying on God; today, he says, the very existence of a consciousness that can doubt is itself the sign of God.
machine5 min 13 s2:52:58on YouTube
16 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Who is the Mufti's favourite Western philosopher?
Mufti Abu Layth names no single favourite but likes Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Diogenes, and feels Muslims have been left out of philosophy in recent centuries.
machine1 min 45 s1:23:18on YouTube
9 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Why does every spiritual awakening story have a time of withdrawal?
Mufti Abu Layth agrees that the ascetic phase in awakening stories is an archetype, like Tolstoy's two plots.
machine1 min 20 s2:04:12on YouTube
2 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Why names intrigue Mufti Abu Layth: a name that sounds rude in Urdu
Mufti Abu Layth jokes about a name that sounds rude in Urdu and says he finds names intriguing.
machine3 min 01 s2:45:28on YouTube
26 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Could the hadith tradition evolve like a living organism?
As food for thought, he suggests that the hadith system, like other belief systems, behaves like an evolving organism that drives people to standardise and preserve it.
machine10 min 28 s2:12:03on YouTube
19 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Who was Ibn Rushd (Averroes)?
Mufti Abu Layth presents Ibn Rushd as a Maliki judge, physician and the great commentator on Aristotle, honoured in Europe but exiled and neglected by Muslims.
machine12 min 46 s1:56:13on YouTube
19 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
How did Ibn Rushd answer al-Ghazali's attack on the philosophers?
Mufti Abu Layth explains that Ibn Rushd answered al-Ghazali by showing that what he refuted was mostly neoplatonism, not Aristotle.
machine3 min 52 s2:16:37on YouTube
19 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
What did Ibn Rushd say about women's abilities?
Mufti Abu Layth highlights Ibn Rushd's argument, 900 years ago, that women equal men in ability and that confining them to the home impoverished his cities.
machine6 min 55 s2:20:29on YouTube
12 Jan 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Is process theology compatible with the Quran?
No: he says its idea that God depends on creation as creation depends on God is not the Quranic worldview.
machine2 min 31 s2:49:23on YouTube
2020 · 11
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Why don't madrasas teach the Islamic philosophers and the Mu'tazila?
The guest says traditionalists value only a narrow sliver of Islam's diverse intellectual heritage, ignoring the philosophers, the early Qadariyya and Mu'tazila, Shia thinkers and modernists, and that he found answers on religion and science in Ibn Rushd.
machine3 min 58 s15:30on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Isn't reason subjective, and is something good only because God commands it?
The guest says the Ash'ari voluntarist view of ethics is the real relativism and argues for universal moral values grounded in God's nature; Mufti Abu Layth calls the Ash'ari denial of inherent good and bad nonsense.
machine4 min 16 s29:42on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Where does morality come from if not from God?
The guest says a theist can ground moral realism in God while an atheist who relies on evolution alone cannot, and that traditionalist debaters exploit opponents who know little philosophy.
machine5 min 49 s34:45on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is morality an instinct God put in us?
Mufti Abu Layth holds that the fitrah is a hardwired moral instinct of recognising harm and feeling empathy, built on by environment and a collective consciousness; the guest adds that morality can be confidently grounded in God.
machine3 min 30 s39:47on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
If morality is universal, why was slavery accepted for so long?
The guest says moral ideals exist in God and humans approximate them; past acceptance of slavery came from not recognising others' full humanity, and ritual laws such as the pork prohibition differ from universal moral law.
machine4 min 24 s43:17on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Does God's morality change over time?
The guest says universal morality does not change, only ritual law: the Quran corrects the biblical conquest narrative by implying the Israelites inherited Egypt rather than slaughtering another people.
machine2 min 11 s47:41on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Do animals have morality, and does that mean morality just evolved?
Mufti Abu Layth sees a sense of justice in primates as evidence of a raw moral fitrah that humans develop further; the guest warns this can suggest morality is merely evolved and says rooting it in God is the necessary step.
machine4 min 06 s49:52on YouTube
11 Dec 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
If we all recognise harm, why do people still do terrible things?
Mufti Abu Layth says empathy can be overridden by instincts such as power, and that a shared consciousness shapes the moral feel of an age; he notes the Quran commands justice without defining it, which the guest links to the Mu'tazila.
machine4 min 26 s53:58on YouTube
24 Aug 2020Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth
Are psychedelics like DMT haram in Islam?
Mufti Abu Layth does not consider psychedelics such as DMT haram or intoxicants, and advocates them as entheogens for spiritual discovery rather than recreation.
machine9 min 54 s30:58on YouTube
26 Jun 2020MindTrap with Mufti Abu Layth
Is consciousness in the brain, or is the brain a receiver for the soul?
Mufti Abu Layth holds that consciousness is non-local and the brain a receiver like a radio; the guest disagrees, describing a human as matter plus information that is backed up in God's record and restored to a new body at the resurrection.
machine7 min 51 s2:53:05on YouTube
28 Apr 2020From the Mind of a Mufti
Why did Islam not abolish slavery outright?
Islam did not abolish slavery outright because the collective consciousness of the age could not yet see it as wrong, but it encouraged emancipation as a route to that change. Slavery was always wrong, and Mufti Abu Layth says Jonathan Brown's three axioms rest on a shallow analysis.
machine9 min 23 s11:48on YouTube
2019 · 4
4 Aug 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
What is liberalism, and do liberals have to follow John Locke?
Liberalism is essentially a stance against authoritarianism, not allegiance to historical philosophers. Agreeing with Locke on one point does not make anyone a Christian or bind them to his whole philosophy.
machine6 min 19 s6:24on YouTube
4 Aug 2019From the Mind of a Mufti
Ethics evolve: slavery, human agency and the genetic fallacy
Mufti Abu Layth argues that if ethics do not develop over time and only seventh-century ethics count, one would have to say slavery is fine, since the Quran acknowledged its ubiquity without abolishing it at the time, which he calls ridiculous. He says people hold liberal attitudes without having read Locke or Rousseau, being capable agents, not automatons. By the lecture's logic, he says, everything in Islam first championed by others would belong to them, as Socrates and Plato spoke of God and the soul first, which he calls an infantilising theory. He gives his own opposition to capital punishment, shared by most people in Europe, as an example of a view held without allegiance to Rousseau, Locke, Bentham or Bertrand Russell.
machine5 min 06 s24:46on YouTube
8 Jan 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
How should Muslims read the stories in the Quran?
Quranic stories can be read as narrative and for lessons, but where they suggest the supernatural we must ask how to read them, unlike myths we never take as real.
machine9 min 32 s1:57on YouTube
8 Jan 2019Ponderings on the Holy Quran
What does the Quran say about kings in the story of Sheba?
The Queen's saying that kings ruin the towns they enter raises the question of what gives anyone the right to rule others.
machine2 min 34 s24:54on YouTube
2018 · 1
15 Apr 2018Debunking Myths On: Jinns, Magic, the Evil Eye, and Superstitions
How do we know mental illness is not really jinn possession?
Mufti Abu Layth answers that an explanation which fits everything, like a child told that cyborgs cause all events, is not thereby true; the jinn have become the Muslim catch-all. Such belief is what Basil Mitchell's parable of the partisan describes, a faith no evidence can shake.
machine5 min 14 s28:46on YouTube
2017 · 3
19 Oct 2017video
How was the economy of the Prophet's time different from today's?
The Quranic prohibition came in an economy of finite gold, where wealth could only grow by taking it from others. Money, which Mufti Abu Layth calls humanity's greatest invented story, was later dematerialised into paper, changing everything.
machine7 min 14 s29:45on YouTube
19 Oct 2017video
How did Adam Smith and industrialisation change attitudes to greed and lending?
Adam Smith's idea of the pursuit of self-interest and the industrial-era promise of a better tomorrow changed a mindset in which greed was simply evil and nobody would lend. These are ingredients of the modern economy the Quran did not address.
machine4 min 40 s36:59on YouTube
20 Sep 2017Debunking Myths On: Jinns, Magic, the Evil Eye, and Superstitions
How do we know mental illnesses are not really jinn possessions?
A theory that explains everything, like a child's cyborg conspiracy, is not thereby true, and 'the jinn' is such a theory for Muslims. Like Basil Mitchell's partisan who rationalises everything the stranger does, this is non-propositional faith that no evidence can reach.
machine5 min 18 s1:19:28on YouTube
2016 · 1
15 Mar 2016video
Is morality innate? Language acquisition, divine command, and insecurity in faith
The speakers hold that the Quran treats humans as having an innate moral sense, compared to an innate capacity for language, and say faith should not depend on silencing those who question it.
machine6 min 32 s17:23on YouTube