The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 255. What We Can All Learn From Islam & The Quran | Hamza Yusuf

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

This episode was recorded on December 28th, 2021.In this episode, Hamza Yusuf and I discuss the core beliefs of Islam, Hamza’s conversion, the importance of bridging religions, and the problem with our culture now.Hamza Yusuf is an American neo-traditionalist Islamic scholar, co-founder of Zaytuna College, and the author of seven books, including Purification of Heart: Signs, Symptoms, and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart, Agenda to Change our Condition, and The Marvels of the Heart: Science of the Spirit.—Links—Follow Hamza on Instagram: https://instagram.com/shaykh_hamzayusufTwitter: https://twitter.com/sh_hamzayusufYouTube channel: https://youtube.com/user/SandalaMediaCenterEvery other Hamza link: https://linktr.ee/HamzaYusuf—Chapters—0:00 — Intro1:01 — Religious upbringing5:09 — Community & freethinking7:03 — The glue that holds things together9:59 — The problem with our culture 10:01 — Arabic word for disbeliever 13:00 — Gratitude despite suffering17:02 — Jacques Lusseyran 20:53 — Repentance I30:11 — Cleanliness, prayer, discernment32:48 — Repentance II 33:55 — Hamza's conversion & near-death experience40:24 — Preparing to die45:38 — What drew Hamza to Islam48:30 — Obedience to God—practically & conceptually 50:29 — Islam vs. collectivist philosophies53:20 — Differentiating religious beliefs54:48 — Aurel Kolnai 57:23 — The idea of evil1:00:49 — Religiosity, atheism, values1:07:04 — Creation, evolution, consciousness1:09:26 — Islam in practice1:16:44 — Importance of bridging religions1:18:57 — Summary of Islam’s core beliefs 1:22:20 — Commonalities among religions#Islam #Atheism #Values #Gratitude #Religion

Welcome to episode 255 of the JPP Podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. In this episode, Dad spoke with Hamza Yusuf about Islam, world religions, and different perspectives on sin. Hamza is an Islamic scholar, the co-founder of Zatuna College, and the author of seven books, including The Marvels of the Heart, Science of the Spirit. More specifically, they discussed the core beliefs of Islam, Homs' conversion and near-death experience, collectivist philosophy, the importance of bridging between religions, repentance, and what they consider the most salient underlying problems in today's culture. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello everyone. Today I'm going to continue my discussions with Islamic thinkers or thinkers about Islam.

I've had previous guests in the past, and I've been very excited to see them. I'm very excited to see them. Hello everyone. Today I'm going to continue my discussions with Islamic thinkers or thinkers about Islam. I've had previous guests included, Ayyan Herzele, Mustafa Akul and Muhammad Hizab. I'm pleased to be speaking today with Hamza Yusuf Hansen, who serves as President of Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California. He's a strong advocate of liberal education in the classical sense. He was raised in a religiously eclectic family,

attended Orthodox Christian services and Catholic parochial boarding schools. At the age of 18, after studying the major religions of the world, he converted to Islam. He's served as translator for the chief Mufti of the UAE and Mauritania, Sheikh Abdullah bin Bio. I'm very pleased today to be talking to Hamza, Yusuf Hansen. Welcome. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me today. Yeah, thank you. So you had a eclectic upbringing as your bioindicated. You went to Orthodox Christian services where your family Orthodox Christian. So you had a eclectic upbringing as your bioindicated,

you went to Orthodox Christian services where your family, Orthodox Christian? I have two sides of the family, one where Irish Catholics, and then my mother was half Irish, half Greek. So my Greek grandfather, who was an Archon in the Greek Orthodox Church, he actually had that influence on us.

So we were actually raised in his church. But my mother was, she was actually, would have considered herself a Buddhist, most of my upbringing. And her mother, who was an Irish woman and her brother, my great uncle, were from Georgia and they actually were interested in Buddhism in the 1920s and moved out to San Francisco. And my great uncle, George Fields, Open Fields bookstore, which was the first metaphysical bookstore on the West Coast.

And it specialized just in a lot of different ways. He actually was the first publisher of Gurgif's works, the fourth way works in the US. And it's actually still, it's an online bookstore now, Fields bookstore. So it's getting more metaphysical all the time. It was once a building, and now it's virtual. Yeah, it's a bad joke. So you were exposed to a lot of different religious ideas by the sounds of things when you grew up. Right. And how much did you learn about orthodox Christianity? Well, I had, my grandfather had a Greek lessons. I went to Greece. I went to a Greek Orthodox camp when I was 12 years old, in Greece.

I served the altar in the Orthodox church. So I was reasonably involved. And then I went to Catholic school. So the Orthodox tradition, the Catholic tradition aren't that different, even though they split in 11th century over a diphthong as Gibbon points out. So when you were a kid and you were going to services, do you, can you remember well enough

to characterize your beliefs at that time? I mean, I started having trouble with the ideas in Christianity, I guess when I was probably around 12. So I'm wondering what your reaction was as a thinker, that young. And then I really loved the Greek service. I love the frank incense. They had great these chants that were quite beautiful.

And it was very ritualistic. And I enjoyed it. I had no problem going to church. I think like many kids at that age, especially growing up in California during that period because my formative years were the late 60s and early 70s. So there was a lot of, we're a transitional generation. There were a lot of radical changes happening in California was kind of at the heart of a lot of those things. But my mother did expose us to a lot of different faith traditions.

She actually took me, we went to synagogues, we went to Buddhist song guys, we went to different Christian iterations. She also took me to a mosque when I was 12 years old in Redwood City. And she was of the belief that that much of religion is a it's this interesting where you're born and where you're brought up and that's going to determine and color the way you view the world. And so she had this idea that religions, that it's very dangerous to assume just because

you were born into something, that that's the end all of truth. And so she was eclectic in that way. Yeah, so your mother was of the opinion that I guess correct me if I'm wrong. There's a couple of aspects to religious thinking that are interesting and relevant given what you said. I mean, one is to think of it as a set of philosophies and beliefs that you might hold like you would hold a set of philosophical or even academic beliefs. And another is to become a member of a community, a community of belief. And I guess the argument you might make for the latter point is that there's something, there has to be something that unites all of us in order for us to be a community. And so that proposition is hard to reconcile with the first one, which is that you

should be free to choose your beliefs as you would a philosophy. If everybody chooses different beliefs, then we have a hell of a time living together. And that can be a problem. Well, I think that's one of the real problems in California. I mean, that's a very much problems in California. I mean, that's a very much this liberal idea that everything we're free to choose and be whatever we want. And what do you think of that idea? So now you're much older than you were when your mother was taking you from place of worship to place of worship. I mean, how would you address the problem of, let's say, the conflict between freedom of choice and religion as philosophical belief and religion as a cultural centerpiece

that unites people? Well, I think that I raised my children, Muslim, and I hope that they remain in the Muslim faith, but I have to acknowledge the possibility that that might not in the Muslim faith, but I have to acknowledge the possibility that that might not be the case given where we live and the environment. So I'm very committed to the Islamic tradition and I believe it to be true. And I think, you know, I feel like I've acquired clear and compelling evidence for myself of

its truth. But I understand the importance of religion as a glue that holds things together. And I think when you lose that glue in any culture, you're going to have great problems that emerge out of that. Yeah, well, the question starts to become very rapidly. If there's no shared ground that's sacred, let's say, to unite people, then what in the world are they supposed to unite around?

And because if they don't unite, then they exist in conflict. And so that seems, and in confusion, and in anxiety. And that seems to be a very meddlesome or what, not meddlesome, very, a very difficult problem. Well, I think part of the problem with, you know, modernity is grappling with the fact that a lot of these grand narratives have broken down largely in the 20th century. I mean, the beginnings were happening already in the 17th, 18th century, but by the 20th century, they're amongst the intelligentsia. There's a huge century, but by the 20th century, there amongst the intelligentsia,

there's a huge problem particularly in the West, but not only in the West, I think even within the Muslim ethos, you already had these ideas that were going to massively impact the culture. So it's something we're all grappling with. It's an interesting time in that people do have certain abilities to look at things in ways that perhaps growing up in an environment that really dictated to people what they would

believe. Norms, for instance, just cultural norms. I mean, a lot of religion ends up being cultural. And it's a practice, it's a cultural practice. And a lot of people don't ever really have to deal with this. In fact, I think James Charles Taylor has a very interesting book revisiting James the varieties of religious experience.

And he talks about this idea that James looks at people who have religion in the sanguine sense. They simply accept their religion that they're born into. And then they just live and practice that. And very often they have very solid lives in that environment. But then he talks about, and he calls those healthy people, then he talks about the sick people who actually have to grapple with these different phases. He looks at melancholy, religious melancholy, this idea of being in a melancholic state about the the alienation of the world, about the trials of the world, the uncanniness of the world, the strangeness of it. And then I think the second he looks at the problem of evil,

the grappling with this problem of evil. And the third one is the sense of wrongdoing, right? That a lot of people feel sinful. Yeah, that's a terrible one right now. I mean, I think part of the reason why our culture is driven apart by political trouble at the moment is because issues that should be discussed at the level of the sacred have started to be discussed at the level of the political. And so there's a pervasive

accusation against, let's say, Western culture in particular coming from the more radical side of the left claiming that Our culture or the Western culture is a tyrannical patriarchy and an oppressive colonial enterprise and of course all cultures are contaminated with catastrophe and atrocity as well and We actually need to know what to do about that. You know the Christian doctrine of original sin is some help in that because it makes the fact of

The legacy of human evil. Let's say something personal but also trans personal at the same time, right? It's part of the human condition and it looks to me like without that container It's part of the human condition and it looks to me like without that container The guilt we have about the arbitrariness of life and the arbitrariness of our privileges Can start to become overwhelming and then it can also become weaponized which has certainly happened at our at the present At the present time and to a dangerous degree so you can go after people for their privilege, let's say. And they do feel guilty because advantages and disadvantages are sort of parsed out to some degree arbitrarily. And then they collapse in the face of that onslaught and apologize and retreat. And it just doesn't look

to me like that's a good thing at all. Well, it's not a good thing if you don't have a religious worldview that gives meaning to those situations. For instance, I mean, one of the most important aspects of the Quran, I think, is that it really gives answers to these inequities in the world, but some of the mystery of inequity. And the Quran, one of the hallmarks of a believer is gratefulness, gratitude. In fact, the word in Arabic for disbeliever means ungrateful and in great. And so gratitude for blessings

and then patience for trials and tribulations. And so there's many verses in the Quran that talk about that we have raised some of you over others in privilege as a test to show who will be the best in action. What are you going to do with those privileges? How are you gonna respond to those tribulations? So if you have a world view that actually

incorporates all of the problems in the world and gives them meaning, then it enables people to look at them in a very different way. Whereas if you remove that, you're stuck with just Marxist resentment and anger. Yeah, yeah. So all right, let's, I'm going to go back to your conversion because I want to understand how that happened, but I'm happy about the direction this discussion is taking. So it seems to me that when you realize that you're, let's say, arbitrarily blessed by a certain set of advantages, now everyone is cursed with a certain set of disadvantages too, so we can take that into account. So you're grateful for your privileges, let's say you regard them as a gift or maybe you regard them as something akin to grace.

And then it seems to me that the appropriate thing to do is attempt to atone for them, which is that you try to make your advantages work for you and for everyone else to the best of your possible ability. And then in some sense, you pay for having them that way. You're given a gift and then you do what you can with it. You do the best you can with it and share it with people. And don't try to take narrow advantage of it. You said that there's Islamic commentary on that kind of idea,

and so maybe you could walk me through that a bit. Gratitude, that's a very interesting one, because it does seem to me that it's certainly easier on people psychologically if they're grateful for what they have, rather than resentful and bitter about what they don't have. And why is that associated with belief, per se, let's say, in Islam? Well, first of all, the gift of being itself. I'm just the participation in being is a great gift. And in fact, the German word for guilt is actually a sense of debt. And the word in Arabic for religion is debt. It means debt. So we have this sense of indebtedness because we've been given so much.

Just the gift of life itself is just such an extraordinary gift. And so religion, in the Islamic understanding, it's an act of gratitude. It's your showing gratitude for all that you've been given. And in fact, when you get reached the highest levels of our tradition, even the tribulations are seen as gifts, because there are actually ways in which we learn. There's an unveiling that happens. And great knowledge comes out of suffering, great knowledge comes out of trials and tribulations. And so in our tradition, the highest people are those who actually are grateful in trials and tribulations as well as in blessings and gifts.

Because they see it all as a gift. I always think of Nietzsche's comment on it when that sort of idea comes up, which is whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger because the reverse of that is whatever doesn't make you stronger kills you. And the problem I think that people face when they're trying to be grateful sorry for tribulations is that you can learn from them, but they can also just grind you into the ground and destroy you. And they do. I mean, people do die. We suffer and die.

And so in the final analysis, in some sense, we're defeated by our mortal vulnerability. And go ahead. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Oh, well, when it visits you, when it catastrophe visits you, sometimes you recover and you think, well, I learned a lot, but I don't know if it's, I don't know how salutary it is in general to make that a general case. You know what I mean, given that people suffer so much and sometimes it seems so pointless. I know what you mean psychologically, you know, if you're suffering with something catastrophic and you become resentful, that certainly makes

it far worse. There's no doubt about that and it makes you a danger to people around you. So it's not helpful, but it's sure understandable. Well, there's a very interesting, do you know Jacques Lesoron, that he wrote a book called, and there was Light? He was a French resistance fighter. And he wrote this very interesting autobiography. But one of the things that happened to him when he was eight years old, he was in school. And some kid accidentally bumped into him, and he fell onto the desk, and he ended up losing both his eyes

in that event. One of the things that he said that really struck me when I read that was he said that he was very grateful to God that that happened to him as a child. And then he gave two reasons. The first reason was he said the child's body is still supple and they're still coming into their body. So to lose his sight at that time was was very useful because somebody who's older if they lose their their sight, it's very difficult for them to readjust to the world. That was the first reason for his gratitude, but the second reason was he said, a child does not question injustice of events. It doesn't think that events are unjust. It can see injustice from people, but events just happen to children.

And they don't really put that valence on it as something why did God do this to me. And as somebody who worked in pediatrics for a period as a registered nurse, it always struck me, you know, the parents were always devastated, but the children were in these quite extraordinary states. And as Soron says that it's only when parents actually give the child that idea of that something's wrong here. Well, they do that, but normally children just simply accept that. And I think that has a lot to do with what Christ said,

that the way you come to God is like children. And I think that's at the heart of it. It's just accepting because the sense of entitlement that human beings have is overwhelming. This idea that we're all entitled to health, that we're entitled to wealth, that we're entitled to for things to work out. It's not the way life is designed. It never was.

And it's something that the ancients really understood. And I think modern people have a really difficult time grappling with this because they're not well spiritually. And pre-modern people, I think, generally, were much healthier spiritually. And certainly, all of these pre-modern civilizations understood that life was trial and tribulation, first and foremost. I mean, the Quran actually says that it's

God who created death and life to try to show, to reveal who is the best of you in actions. And so accepting that is a really great gift and if anything, I mean, that's the gift of grace. One of the great scholars of art tradition said that he was so burdened. His name was Ibn Al-Pahelai, he was in Egyptian, but he said he was so burdened with his self.

And he went to this teacher of Abbas and Mercy. And when he came in, he said to him, all of the world is just four conditions. And each of those conditions has a response. The first condition is blessing and the response is gratitude. The second condition is tribulation, and the response is patience. The third condition is obedience,

and the response is humility, is to see the grace in that obedience. And the fourth circumstance is sinfulness and the response is repentance. So that's a taxonomy for life itself. So repentance, that's an interesting one, because one of the things our culture seems to have a difficult time with too, is One of the things our culture seems to have a difficult time with too is allowing people to repent in this social media in particular seems to have put a lot of advantage in the hands of accusers and attackers. And so people are mobbed or canceled or so forth. And it

it's a rare person who doesn't have something in their past, let's say, that might make them the target of such treatment. But, and that means that's a universal problem as well. And it isn't obvious that we have a mechanism for repentance and reintegration that's nearly as powerful as the mechanisms we've developed for accusation and exclusion. exclusion. I guess I'm spoiled. I guess I should throw a question on to the end of that. No, no, that's fine. I thought I looked like you were still thinking about it. So I didn't want to

interrupt your thought. I'm just, I guess what I'm wondering is what, how would you characterize the Islamic view of repentance? And people talk a lot about the necessity to forgive. Hey, and I've thought that through fairly Thirley as a clinical psychologist because forgiveness isn't in my estimation isn't just a simple act of letting something go because

If something's bothering you, it's not that easy to let it go if you have a problem with someone If something's bothering you, it's not that easy to let it go. If you have a problem with someone There's a gospel story about that. You're not supposed to go pray in the church if you have a fight with pending with your brother an unresolved fight with your brother You straighten that out first My experience as a clinician has been that For forgiveness to take place generally speaking there has to be a discussion between the parties involved or at least a very lengthy Session of thought by the person who's aggravated and offended to take apart the offense to detail out its characteristics to separate the wheat from the chaff to separate the wheat from the chaff to understand exactly what went wrong to negotiate an agreement moving forward that such things won't happen. Like there's

there seems to be this continual interplay between judgment and forgiveness in something that's that really is akin to forgiveness and for you to repent about about something that you've done. It seems to me that the same process of discrimination has to take place is, well, I did something wrong. Well, exactly what did you do wrong? And exactly why did you do it? And why do you think it was wrong? And what do you think that you should have done better? And how are you going to conduct yourself in the future? And two questions, then, one is that in keeping with your understanding of what constitutes repentance. And second, what are the, how would you characterize Islamic

thought on that particular matter? Well, the Islamic tradition, like the Jewish and the Christian before, have this idea of repentance. The Greek New Testament word, Metanoia is a beautiful word because it's really, you know, the idea of transforming the mind, changing the mind. In Arabic, it's the idea of turning. And so there's this idea that the heart turns towards disobedience and then it has to turn back towards obedience. And so that turning, the one in the names of God is to web, in Arabic, which means the off-turning,

the one who turns back when you turn to God, God turns to you. And so this idea of turning back to God is very important. And the Prophet Muhammad is a lot, he taught us actually to do this at least 70 times a day. So Muslims as a practice actually ask forgiveness, preferably at least 70 times a day, just saying a stuff that a lot. It's something that we do as a spiritual practice. And part of the reason why we pray five times a day, the Prophet's law is said was once asked about a man who lives next to a river and he goes

into it and he washes five times a day. He said, do you think that you would see any filth on him? And they said no. And he said, that's what prayer is. It's like washing, it's like bathing in a river five times a day. I mean, one of the reasons we do lustration with water is a ritual purification. So we wash our face, we purify our eyes and our tongue. We actually rinse our mouth with water before we pray.

And then we wash our limbs and then our feet. And the idea is about really turning back to God, because these gifts that we've given, these seven limbs that we've had been given, are gifts from God that should be used in good. And so the idea, it's interesting that in Old English, in New Testament, Greek, and Hebrew, and Arabic, the word for sin is an archery term, which means to miss the mark.

Yes, the mark. Yes, absolutely. And so this idea, you know, this this great basketball player was once asked what he thought about when he missed a shot. He said too far, too short, too much to the left, too much to the right, that that's what sin is. It's it's basically with there's omission or commission. We did too much of something, too little of something, to deviate to the left or the right. And so it's finding that sweet spot of obedience and being in a state of ritual purity.

And then we have conditions. So in order for a repentance to be sound, it has to be sincere. The person actually has to have a sincere repentance. It has to be done like if you're actually engaged. And sincere, sincere means to recognize the wrongdoing and to strive not to do it again with that definition of sincerity. Yeah, sincerity, the Arabic word for sincerity is related to the word for purity and untainted. And so it's done without ulterior motives because sometimes people will will ask forgiveness and they just don't want to be cut out of the will. Right. So that's an instrumental forgiveness, right?

Right. So that's an instrumental forgiveness, right? Exactly. Okay. So you you talked that this is quite interesting. So you wandered through territory there that linked up physical, disgust and contamination with psychological and spiritual disgust and contamination. And it's my experience with people that a good number of them feel guilty and out of sorts and alienated a good amount of the time. And you say, well, that sin means to miss the mark. And the reason they feel alienated at least in principle is because they're missing the mark.

And of course, then the question is, well, what exactly is the mark? And it seems to me that you drew a parallel between prayer and washing, and both of them are to remove disgusting contaminants, let's say. And one of the signs that someone has a conscience, although conscience can be overactive and that can be a problem is that they are laboring under a burden of self-disgust and self-contempt. And they do feel their moral transgressions as something contemptuous and beneath them and base. And so this prayer upward, let's say, to a higher aim and a reminder of that, which in your tradition, you're

doing at least five, you're doing five times a day. That's a constant attempt to set yourself on the right track so that your aim can be true. It's a reorientation. It's a reorientation. Yeah, and do you think even physiologically speaking, it seems likely that there's a reorientation. It's a reorientation. Yeah, and do you think even physiologically speaking, it seems likely that there's a relationship between the idea of decontaminating yourself by becoming clean and spiritually decontaminating yourself

with reference to something to a higher aim? Well, I think people do, like you said, and I'm sure you've seen us a lot in clinical practice, people do feel unwell and they feel sick. And modern psychology attempts to give them, you know, the antichristic formulas to say, unlike Christ who said, go and sin no more. You know, the antichristic formula is to say, go and there's no more sin. So I'm just going to remove that bag of bricks that you're carrying around. You can't you absolutely can't

do that as a therapist. You know, it's not it's not even technically possible. I don't believe because sometimes you might see somebody who has an overactive super ego, you know, if you want to speak in a Freudian sense, and there are people who punish themselves extremely harshly. And then you might say their sin is excessive use of force on their self in relationship to their transgressions. And that's, and then maybe you help, once you understand that with them, you help them understand how it might be possible to use the lightest touch possible that still serves the purpose, which is a good limit law tradition. It's a good psychological tradition. But as a therapist, certainly can't alleviate people's guilt arbitrarily by telling them,

you know, well, there's nothing really there to worry about. They have to do all that thinking through that themselves. And this very interested in this relationship between disgust, physical, the physical sense of disgust, and the psychological sense of disgust, and the notion that, I mean, there's one form of prayer, you might say, in Christianity, is baptism, that'd be in some ways, the most fundamental form of prayer. It's rebirth in the Christian tradition, and it involves, obviously, it involves the use of water sometimes a full-body emersment and so there's a notion of purification there. It seems to me that in the modern world people don't know what to do with the sense they have that they're bad, right? It implies that there's a good because you wouldn't feel bad if there wasn't a good but it isn't obvious what

the good is that should be aimed at. Well, that's the difference between real and apparent goods. And so, I mean, one of the most important things about any true religious tradition is it has to distinguish between real and apparent goods, because the reason they use that archery term is that people are always looking for a good. It's just, if you don't have the discernment to distinguish between a real and a parent good, and so discernment is very important.

What the Quran calls for Khan, in fact, the Quran itself is it terms itself as a for Khan, a discernment, a standard by a criteria, a criterion that you can judge actions. We have a great book in virtue ethics called Mizana Lama, the standard or the criterion of action, which uses definitely some of the motifs that are in the Nikamaki ethics,

but it's this interesting amalgam between that Hellenistic tradition and then infused with the Quranic theological virtues. You know, I wanted to just add, I forgot to mention the other two necessary conditions for a sound repentance. One of them was that you made a firm intention not to go back to that action. And then the fourth one is that if it involved a wrong of another person, then you had to ask them forgiveness.

You had to go. And you had to, like, if you stole, then you had to actually give the money back. If you could, if you didn't know who you stole it from, you actually give it in charity in that person's name. Right. So that's part of discharging that debt. If you didn't know who you stole it from, you actually give it in charity in that person's name. Right, so that's part of discharging that debt. The debt, exactly. Right, and it's certainly the case that people seem to feel innately, I would say,

something akin to a psychological debt. And that, while we discussed already the fact that that can be weaponized, you know, by accusations of arbitrary privilege and so forth. And so it isn't easy to know what to do with that. So let's go back just for a moment to your religious upbringing. Tell me what led up to your conversion, if you would, and why did you move away from Christianity or Buddhism or all the things that you were exposed to? When you were, I was in a head-on collision and survived a car accident that the California Highway Patrol said I shouldn't have survived. And I had what they call a near death experience.

I got very interested in what happens after you die. I realized that I could have very easily transitioned. And so I was very interested in what happens after death. I actually went and met with Dr. Raymond Moody, who wrote the books on life after life. And he did a lot of the work with near death people that had had. Can I ask you what happened in your near death experience? I think it was pretty classic. people that can I ask you what happened in your near death experience? I think it was pretty classic.

You know, I definitely saw my, I went into a very different spatial temporal state where I just everything went into a kind of slow motion. And I just, it was as if the glass was just suspended in air from the crash. And it was, and then I just saw like my inception all the way up to that moment. And I just saw my whole life literally.

And it was, it was just this, as if I lived my life a second time, but in a moment, that was the experience. And so I- What did that do for you, that experience? What- Well, one, it made me, you know, at the time I was a senior in high school,

my probably biggest interest were baseball and other things. But music was certainly a big interest. My family, I come from a family of musicians. So I think what it did is it made me really think about death in a very deep way. And if you've ever seen, there's a film about a man who's in a plane crash. And then he survives the plane crash. And it's a man who had a lot of fears, but he comes out of it. Jeff Bridges is the person.

And he's like looking at his hands and am I alive or am I dead? I was in that state for about two weeks. It was a very strange state to be in. And that got me interested in what religions say about after death. And so I decided to study all the world religions just from that perspective. And the one that really, really resonated and struck me as having a very, very powerful description was the Islamic tradition. And I actually ended up ironically, I ended up writing in the study of Quran, which was published by Harper. I ended up writing the essay on death in the Quran, which is how I actually became Muslim.

So it was a very interesting serendipitous evolution. So walk me through that. So, okay, so you just about died. How old were you? 17. Yeah, so I've, I've, there have been studies showing, for example, that if you have someone, I remember this study, if you have someone jump off a bungee cord watching a digital clock, the clock goes slower for them subjectively. So,

if you subject people to a tremendous amount of stress, then time slows down. And I suspect the neurophysiological reason for that is that when you're in a tremendous crisis, your body floods itself with the hormones and neurochemicals, probably mostly dopamine that are necessary for you to act extraordinarily quickly. And it's extremely energy intensive to do that. So you can't do it all the time. But maybe we can snap ourselves into a psychophysiological state where we're a hundred times faster than we would normally be for some very finite amount of time. I'm not trying to, what would you say, reduce this to a physiological effect? Well, that's a very common reductionist approach to an experience that, I mean, you

can look at the hard drive aspect of it, but the software is the mystery. Yeah, I'm definitely not trying to remove the phenomenological significance, you know, because that would be foolish. And even those explanations are only attempts at understanding phenomenon that we really don't have access to, because cause and effect is a very difficult thing to nail down. It certainly is, yeah. And that kind of explanation doesn't account for all the near death experience phenomena, either.

But I mean, you asked me how, you know, that got me thinking a lot about death. Right. You're respectful, whatever the neurochemical phenomena that were happening within my body, that experience, that phenomenal logical experience had a existential of right on right that was very powerful and and I decided that I really wanted to know if I could have died in that moment which was very possible. I wanted to know what, what if anything happens and if something happens, how do you prepare for that? Like what, you know, if we're,

if we're genuinely on the doors of infinity, then we should take this time that we have very seriously to prepare to go through that door. And that's what, ex-astentially, that's what happened to me. I wanted to know, if I can go through that door at any moment as a 17-year-old, I could have done it. Now, as a 64-year-old,

it's possible that I could do it today or tomorrow, the next day. What type of preparation do I need? Why did you why do you think that you derived the conclusion that it was something that you needed to be prepared for? Well, I think that yeah, I just think that's a kind of I just think it's common sense, you know, like, I mean, preparing for death. Well, it's interesting. When I worked in critical care, what became very clear to me, some people seem to be ready

for death and other people are definitely not ready for death. And I can see the difference. I saw the difference. I saw the difference. You know, both my parents died. I was with both my parents. And I could see, you know, I mean, my mother had an incredible transition. And I think my mother was fully ready to go into the next world.

I don't think a lot of people are ready. I think a lot of people are very afraid of death. And I think that's something that one of the gifts of religion is it does remove that fear, not necessarily of the act of dying because obviously that's a very intense experience, especially for those of us who have seen that in people who die. But the transition into the next world is something, the Quran says, it's something to be looked forward to. It's not something to fear, but it's also, Islam is not a death cult. The Prophet's alive said, I said, I'm said, don't desire to die, but ask God for a long life.

And he said that none of you should ever desire death. You should desire to have a long life, because you have more time to do more good. And the more good you do, the more you accrue in terms of preparation for that transition. And what do you think it means to be prepared versus not prepared to die? a crew in terms of preparation for that transition. And what do you think it means to be prepared versus not prepared to die? To be in a good state, I think, to be like if you're in a state of repentance, if whatever you've done in the past, if you've really repented for any of the wrongs that you've done, and there's major wrongs, there's minor wrongs, there's the peccadillos, and then there's those mortal sins that are recognized

for what they are, things that literally will cause death to the soul, the wages of sin is death. So I think being in a good state, being prepared, being ready to make that transition is very important. And I think in many ways a lot of the practices that we do in our tradition are in preparation for death. In fact, if you look at just the five prayers, the very first prayer that we do, when we wake up, the provostalism gave us a prayer that I did this morning when I first came into consciousness, which says, praise be to the one who brought me back to life, because death in the Quran is asleep, and the Quran is seen as a little death. And so it's every morning we have a resurrection that's to remind us of the resurrection on the day of judgment. And then the very first thing that we do is we wash

and then we pray. That's the first thing that Muslims do when they wake at dawn when the sun, before the sun comes up. And then before we go to bed, that's the last thing that we do. We make a prayer, oh God, if you take my soul in my sleep, have mercy on it. And if you let me live another day, then make me amongst the righteous and protect me. These are all prayers that our provocatism did every single day. And then on Friday, we have a communal prayer, which is the day of gathering, which is related to the day of judgment,

where you all stand before God. And then also in Ramadan, we fast. So we were giving up the pleasures of life during the daylight hours for a month. And then the end of it is a celebration of making it through that month, hopefully, with as little sin as possible. And then we have the the the prayer, the poor tax, which is to do good to others from the good that you've been given. And then we have the poor tax, which is to do good to others, from the good that you've been given. And then we have the Hatch, which is really a preparation for debt, because you're making this pilgrimage,

you get into white clothes, which is to symbolize the shroud. And then you stand on the plane of out of fat, like the day of judgment, which symbolizes that all of humanity is going to stand in a non-spatial, non-typural sense is going to stand before their creator and be judged for what they did. So we believe in a day of judgment. So when you were 16 or 17, how old were you when you had a 17? 17. And so then you became interested in the issue of death and the meaning of death and the

idea of preparation for death. And you read widely throughout the world's religions and you said that Islam in particular struck your fancy. When did you convert? How old were you? 18. Okay. Nancy, when did you convert? How old were you? 18. Okay, so that's, that's, that's, was that a radical move as far as your family was concerned?

You know, my dad, the first thing he did, he went to Gibbon and reread the section on the rise of his long. My dad was a professor of philosophy. So, you know, he was a lapsed Catholic. I probably the most well-read person I've ever met in the Western canon. I think he was intrigued. He didn't really understand it. My mom was fine with it. She thought, great. You know, you found a path. That's how she viewed it. But both my parents ended up making the declaration of faith before they died. So my father read Ghazali and ended up becoming Muslim.

So what was it about specifically about the Islamic treatment of death in the afterlife compared to say the Christian or Jewish treatment. Well, one that attracted you. One, the Quran, is the scent of death is on every page of the Quran. So it's definitely a very, very, it's a death reminder. And not in a negative way. There's this tension release that happens in the Quran. I was once in a hotel and in London.

And there was a guy across from me reading the Quran, English translation, and drinking a Heineken beer, which was very interesting. And so I was dressing Western clothes and I just asked him, how are you finding that book? He said, this book is very interesting. And I said in what way? And he said, you know, it's just asked him, how are you finding that book? He says, book is very interesting. And I said, in what way? And he said, you know, it's just tension release,

tension release. And I said, wow, you got that on the first reading. That's very impressive. Because it'll tell you about all the wages of sin, but then it'll tell you about the blessings of obedience and turning to God and repenting and answering the call of the prophets, that perennial call that the prophets to shun false idols, including the idol of the self, to turn away from the vanities of life, the vain appetites

that are of no use for you in this world. You knew earlier you talked about apparent and real goods, and so you're referring to that in a sense here again and making the presumption that there is a hierarchy of values and that something should be pursued in preference to others, and this is something that the modern West has great difficulty formalizing and accepting, although people suffer for it, regardless of their understanding of it. When you are thinking about turning your eyes, heavenward, or getting your aim straight, or obedience to God, what do you think? What does that mean to you conceptually and what does it mean practically in your life? Well, I mean practically it means

staying within the what we call the Hadoor, the Quran calls the limits that God is set on us. So we have certain limits that are set on us and those limits are to protect us. So everything in the Islamic tradition, according to our al-Hazali and others, everything in our tradition is to protect one of six things. To protect religion itself, to protect human intellect, reason, so like the prohibition of alcohol is to protect human reason. To protect life, sorry, life is the nextition of alcohol is to protect human reason. To protect life, sorry, life is the next to protect life, to protect human reason, to protect property, which is really what Richard Weaver called the last metaphysical right standing, you know,

the right to property, and then to protect family, and then to protect human dignity. So those six things, there's no ruling in Islam that isn't addressing one of those six preservation. And so everything that we do is for the, that's the way in which we try to live our lives. So family being good to family, taking care of those in need around you first and foremost, charity begins at home, and then extending to those closest to you. So Islam is antagonistic to socialism.

It's antagonistic to any kind of collectivist philosophy, but it does recognize that each one of us should be giving something back to... Okay, so I'm going to let you go through that again, but you said something there that's very interesting to me. You said that Islam is antagonistic to a collectivist philosophy. Can you tell me why, why, either why that's true or why you believe it to be true? Well, first and foremost, the Quran itself, because the Quran, if you look at it, it's a book of individuals going against groups

that are insane. I mean, every single story in the Quran is an individual who goes up against a group and the group says, burn him, throw him in the fire, stone him. So, you know, it's pretty clear from the Quran that the group is not necessarily a good thing. And the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, master yourselves so that you don't become yes people,

that when people do good, you do good and when they do bad, you do bad. But be so that when people do good, you're with them and when they do bad, you refrain from their evil. So it's very important for, you know, and one of the tragedies, obviously, is that any group goes into group think. I mean, you know, this is an area you're much more familiar with than I am, but group think is a huge problem. And I think the Quran addresses that problem constantly by showing that you have to stand up against the group, because the group, as Nietzsche pointed out, that insanity or madness is unusual amongst individuals, but it seems to be the norm amongst

groups. I mean, I think that the Quran said, Kirkigard said that the group was untruth. Said, even if a truth, an actual truth is claimed by a group instantly, it was untruth. So even if a truth, a natural truth is claimed by a group, instantly it becomes untruth merely because the group has acclaimed it. Because truth for him was individual in the same sense that you're describing. Do you think that's akin to the Jewish emphasis on the prophetic tradition?

Absolutely. But I also think that the Islamic tradition does emphasize the importance of community and the importance of sociability. You know, this idea that we are gregarious human beings that we're people that we need a society to fully realize ourselves. And it's the rare individual that can be the anchorite. As Aristotle said, it's either a beast or a god that can live alone, but it's a very difficult thing.

There are people that can do it. And I've known a few people like that. And we do have a tradition, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that towards the latter days, it's better to avoid all the groups. And that's in a sound tradition because he said the groups would be astray. Okay, so let me ask you a question that's always put to people who are religious. How do you differentiate religious belief from How do you differentiate religious belief from idolatry, from ideological belief? I don't personally, I don't think they're the same by the way, but I'm curious about, you

know, because it's pretty easy for someone just to say, well, you talk about standing up against the collective, but you Christians, you Jews, you Islamic types, you're part of a mob just like everybody else, and why does your particular mob view reign supreme in your view? Why isn't that just another idol in the desert just like the rest of them? What makes it different, do you think? Well, I think that you can, you know, as the Bard said to his idol, to make the service greater than the God. It's very easy to turn a religion into an idol. And I think there are many people. I think that's what the new atheist subject to, right, is that the fact that religious belief

can be, maybe it can be hijacked for instrumental and dogmatic purposes. Yeah, as if ideology isn't, as if anything can't go wrong. Well, there is that, yes. Yeah, and so I mean, I don't know, like, I think, you know, these great, the 20th century is a largely religious century in the Western hemisphere and just look what these non-religious ideologies. This point has been pointed out by many people.

One of the things about, are you familiar with Arrow Colnoy, K-L-N-A-I? No, I'm not. K-L-N-I-A. Yeah, N-A-I. So he was a Hungarian Jew who converted to Catholicism, but he wrote a very interesting paper in 1951 called The Three Writers of the Apocalypse.

He also wrote a book about Nazi Germany in 1938 and really, I think, really understood. What does it tell me his name again? Errol Colnoi, K-O-L-A-I. Errol, A-U-R-E-L. Yeah. Anyway, A-U-R-A-U-R-A-U-R-L. A-U-R-E-L. Colnoi, K-O-R-A-U-R-A-U-R-L? A-U-R-L.

Colnoid, K-L-L. So anyway, he wrote a essay called The Three Writers of the Apocalypse. And he identified three totalitarian ideologies. He said the first two fascism and communism were easy to recognize. But he said the real danger, dangerous one was progressive liberalism

because the seeds of totalitarianism were not seen very easily. It was something that could be missed. So I think about this. I think, if I had to choose, let's say, if I had to choose the leader of a country, let's say an arbitrarily powerful leader, it seems to me that it would be a better choice for me to select someone who believes that he's beholden to something above and beyond himself,

than to choose someone who doesn't have that belief at all. And that seems to me, regardless of what you might say philosophically or even scientifically about the utility of religious belief or the validity of religious belief, the notion that you could be the leader of a powerful country and not be serving something that wasn't only you seems to be a real problem with, let's say, a stringently atheistic philosophy, because why wouldn't you just serve you in a position like that? Well, and you would need, generally, it's the religious traditions that understand service is

for not just the self. I mean, we obviously have to serve ourselves just to live, but service to others. And that's why political leaders in the pre-modern world, it was always understood that they had the greatest burden of self-discipline, that they had a greater burden of self-discipline than everybody else for the very greater power, and greater temptation. And so the religious traditions, I mean, the pre-modern world understood very well in whatever civilization you were in.

They understood very well that the central problem that human beings are confronted with is their self. The modern world has completely lost that idea that you had to master yourself. Hence, you know, one of the things that Confucius said is that, you know, that study without study is dangerous, right? And so if you don't study those things that will equip you to deal with the self, and that's why in our tradition, and in all the great traditions, but in the Islamic tradition,

the study of the self, psychology, and when Nuff's, it's termed in Arabic, it was central to our tradition, to understanding the nature of the self, psychology, everyone else, it's termed in Arabic, it was central to our tradition, to understanding the nature of the self, to understanding the machinations of the self, the tricks of the self, how to step, and to understand those things so that you could, you could learn to discipline them. I mean, this gets back to, you know, Imam Mahbazadi uses the idea of the sage, the dog, and the pig, which obviously Plato would have said the charioteer and the two horses, it's the same idea.

But the pig is the concupacent soul, the dog is the irassable soul, and then the sage is the rational soul. If the sage is in charge, then things will turn out well. But if you allow the pig and the sage is in charge, then things will turn out well. But if you allow the pig or the dog to take over, in our culture, you know, the pig has definitely, the pig seems to really be having a field day, right? The pig is doing very well. The dog is not doing too bad either.

Well, it's interesting because, exactly, and I think the world is split, you know, Ville Bront back in the 70s saw this North South problem of, I mean, he didn't term it like this, but I see it as the pig and the dog. You know, I mean, if you have affluence on one spectrum and you have real, just diminution of goods, just of human goods on the other. You're going to create a lot of resentment. And so that's a huge problem that we have. So this idea, you know, Frost talked about fire and ice, some say the world will end in fire,

some say in ice. He was talking about this, the dog in the pig, from what I've tasted of desire. I hold with those who favor fire. Right. In other words, the world's end will come from the pig just freaking havoc. And, but then he said, but if it had to perish twice, I think of, you know, that for destruction. yeah, ice is right. Yeah. No, sorry, please finish that ice is yeah, yeah, that hate is also great and will suffice, you know, that the Erassable can do it as well. It's one or the other. It's either going to be fire or ice. But that's in the absence, that's in the absence of the, you know, the the sage that's in the absence of wisdom and wisdom is a word that's not

often heard. Yes, well, I've had a lot of discussions with people who regard themselves as explicitly atheistic, and it seems to me that a lot of the discussion about religious belief and atheism misses the mark. Let's put it that way. I tend to think of God, if I'm thinking about the idea of God psychologically. I tend to think about something akin to a hierarchy of values. And that's very much similar to the proposition that you're putting forward with the metaphor of the pagan, the dog, and the sage,

that there are some values that are higher than others. And so I would say, I think that psychologically true that there are some values higher than others. I mean, we tend to put our families before ourselves, for example, and we tend to put our families before ourselves, for example. And we tend to have a sense that we would we would like to be good people. I use this illustration of the relationship between values. Imagine that you're making a meal. You might ask yourself,

well, what are you doing? Say you're cutting up vegetables. Okay, so you're moving your hand back and forth. That's not abstract at all. That's where the mind meets the body. You're moving your hand back and forth to cut the vegetables, to put them in the pot, to cook a good dinner, to be a good father, to be a good husband, to be a good citizen, to be a good husband, to be a good citizen, to be a good person. So you're doing all those things at the same time, right? And each of the more particular things nests in the broader

value. And the broader of value is the more other values depend on it. And also maybe the broader of value is the more other people can be united within it. And so I think you can come to a technical understanding of something like depth of value. And then it seems to me that the religious proposition is that there is an ultimate value that's either at the pinnacle or at the base, depending on how you conceptualize the metaphor. And that that ultimate value is expressed in religious terminal terminology as the absolute, the ineffable absolute, as the God that's supposed to be served. And in some sense, it has to remain ineffable and beyond comprehension, because otherwise it turns into an idol. And so what you do in a religious sense is posit an ultimate ideal, subordinate, subordinate yourself to it, regarded as something that you

can only ever approximate to even in principle and organize all the other virtues and defeat the faults in relationship to that highest order of value. And that's more like, I think, part of the reason that religious traditions insist upon faith isn't, it's not faith, it's not the faith that the scientists, the scientists types criticize, which is sort of like an empirical statement about the structure of objective reality. It's more like the notion that there is a hierarchy of values and that there's something that has to be absolute, ineffable and ultimately uniting at the apex that we should be subservient to, that we should consider all our behaviors in relationship to.

And so that's, you know, there's not a metaphysics there in some sense because I'm not saying anything about the final nature of that absolute value, right? That's an ontological question. I don't feel qualified to answer it. But I can't see how there can be an absence of an absolute unifying value that's superordinate to all other values without society degenerating into conflict, without people becoming anxious and confused and aimless, without the consequences being that we all miss the mark. So I guess I'd like your comments about that idea.

Yeah, I don't think God's something that we posit. I think, and I also certainly don't think God is a value. I think that God, that we respond to God and that God makes a call and that call is through these intermediaries. And the prophets, the Quran says in the chapter called the B, that there is no nation that hasn't been given warners that say shun idols and worship God. And so... Well, I wasn't trying to, I wasn't trying to, what would you say, reduce God to a

human value? But a lot of people do. I mean, that's scary. I know. But a lot of people do. I know. I know. I understand that. Of you and God. Yeah. And so that's why I insisted upon the ineffability.

Well, yeah, however you want to state that, I mean, I for for for us, for Abrahamic people in particular God that we respond to God. God makes a call, and that calls through the prophets. And the prophets are surprisingly consistent, unlike philosophers, who the student invariably rejects the master, you know, Plato is a friend, but the truth is a greater friend, whereas the prophets are extraordinarily consistent in their messaging, that there is a God, that God demands that you live within the limits that God has set as your creator. I mean, one of the things that atheists, to me,

the atheist, there's a definition of health, which looks at the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual. George Vithokos, a great health practitioner from Greece, said that atheism is really one of the most serious signs of ill health because it's a denial of your creativeness and that you have to really be unhealthy to do that. So he saw it as a deep spiritual sickness

to deny your creator. Whether that creator is a personal creator is the next stage that you're going to have to ask yourself. But to deny your createdness is something quite extraordinary. By saying there's no creator. So how do you deal with the challenges, the hypothetical challenges presented to the notion of created human beings, the conflict between now and modern evolutionary theory as a modern thinker. I mean, the Catholics have accepted evolutionary theory, but that's my understanding of this.

Yeah, guided evolution, guided evolution, not this idea of randomness. I mean, the best response to that is, I think Robert Frost poem called, Accidentally On Purpose, that would be my answer. Somebody can, if they're interested, can Google it and look at it.

But this idea that randomness that created this, I just, I won't buy that. And if they want to say it's because I don't understand evolution, that's fine. I'll accept that. Well, I talked to Sam Harrison, Richard Dawkins recently. I'm going to release the discussion I had with Dawkins. And the randomness arguments and interesting one because it's the variability between people that's in some sense random. But sexual selection plays an awfully powerful force in evolutionary biology and sexual selection is anything but random.

And so to me, I see the action of consciousness in perhaps in the ultimate sense, operating not least through the mechanism of sexual selection. So the selection mechanisms aren't random, even if the variation might be generated in part randomly. It seems to me that there's something there that would reconcile the relationship in modern biology between the spirit and the matter, spirit and matter, let's say. So, because consciousness calls matter into being in some real sense. So... Well, consciousness also for us is a spiritual phenomenon. It's not a material phenomenon. And the ancient said that the one who

denies the soul that you'd have to determine him and idiots, they really saw it as a kind of absurdity to deny the existence of a soul. Because it's so clear if anybody's ever seen a corpse if anybody's ever seen a corpse that something's very profoundly missing. So what, let's go back to practicalities with regards to Islam. And also I'd be interested in you said that you chose, so I want to know what following the Islamic faith has done for your life personally, how has it helped you put yourself together? And also, I'm interested in, again, why you found the Islamic tradition preferable, let's say, to the Orthodox tradition that you did, you did enjoy the rituals that were part of that at least. So let's deal with practical issues first. So, you just, yeah.

In terms of why I chose Islam, I mean, I'm not completely convinced that I chose Islam. I mean, in some ways, Islam chose me as well. So, it's, you know, guidance is a very strange thing for people. Like, I saw an inevitability when I looked back on what happened. I saw an inevitability of my embracing Islam. I had some very interesting experiences that could be termed mystical or however you want to determine them, but the tradition itself, what struck me was one, I got to keep all of the prophets

that I believed in already, and I added in addition what we consider to be the final prophet. And just as very often Christians marvel at how Jews miss Jesus, Muslims also marvel at how Christians and Jews miss Muhammad. Although to be fair to the Jews, they do acknowledge the prophet as a providential force. And they do acknowledge him as a noahidic messenger preparing the way for the coming of the Messiah.

So they do recognize that he was a providential force, at least the great, to read George Coler's book on Jewish theology as a chapter on Judaism in Islam. And certainly the great father of Orientalism, the Iconaz Golds at her, he actually said that he felt that Islam was the only religion that somebody of a philosophical bent could actually accept. And he wanted to really bring in the gift of philosophy into Judaism that had been that the Muslims had so richly participated. In fact, you know, there's an argument that just as Judaism paired the way for Christianity, it was Islam that prepared the way for a philosophical Western Christian though, because if you look at the transmission of all of that knowledge that comes into Europe,

it's quite extraordinary. I mean, St. Thomas Aquinas, who's 13th century, he dies in 1274, and yet he's the doctor of the church. Just look at the number of times he quotes Muslims. I mean, he calls the Verwee is the commentator. So I think Islam, one of the beauties of the religion to me is that you'll find whatever you're looking for in it. I mean, Islam, it has a very simple theology

that anybody can understand in sort of the Echloss, the chapter that says, say, God is unique. God is completely independent. God neither gives birth nor was God born. And there's nothing like God. So it gives you a very simple theology that anybody can understand. And yet, embedded in that simplicity

is an extraordinary complexity that actually created a metaphysical tradition that Western scholars have spent their lifetime studying, people like Enrique Corvallin or somebody, it's like Maxine Rodin's and not Maxine Rodin's, but but the great Catholic theologian and a metaphysician, Jacques Meritain, you know, recognize the genius of people like Al-Hallage and things. So within the Islamic tradition, there's just an extraordinary spectrum. You can spend your entire life and have a satisfying life.

And I know people that have done this, just mastering the recensions of the Quran and the Quran, the actual oral expression of the Quran through the rules of Tejwi. You can spend your life studying exegesis, you can spend your life studying prophetic tradition, you can spend your life studying the great mystics of Islam. We have the best poets in the world. We also have the best architecture. I mean, there's nothing like the Taj Mahal or the Alhamdra palace.

And even Western architecture, if you read stealing from the serenessons, she shows how some of the finest Western architecture was basically taken from the Islamic civilization, including No Tadam in Paris. So you can find incredible. I know people that just came to Islam through music. I mean, I know some really professional musicians

that fell in love with Arabic music, which led them into Muslim culture, people that love just, I mean, one of the most interesting things about Islam is it is a truly universal religion in that you can go from Indonesia to California and find all of these different expressions of the same central truths of Islam with their own local colorings. So the West African Muslims are not like the Middle Eastern Muslims, the Middle Eastern Muslims are not like the Indian Muslims. And you have people like, you know,

one of the great impressionist painters of Sweden. I think he's actually considered a national treasure in Sweden, but his painting's timing in the museum there. He became Muslim in jail for actually, he shot a Matador because he was raised by his father was a veterinarian and he shot a Matador because he was so horrified that they were bringing bullfighting into France. And there was such an uproar that they actually released him. But when he was in jail, he befriended an Algerian who used to recite Quran all the time. And he ended up becoming Muslim and then studying in Egypt and then going back to his native

and he died in Spain, but extraordinary individuals. So you have people like that. You have people that anybody can find what they're looking for. And that is the power of the faith, I think, is that it is truly a universal faith. And I think one of the things that Western people tend to do, one they don't recognize that it's a Western faith because it is. It's part of the Abrahamic faith. It was in Spain for centuries. It's been in Eastern Europe for centuries. And even Istanbul, which is the great capital of Islam for centuries, is half in Europe and half in the East. And that's why it really bridges these two worlds.

And so there's so much, I mean, why all of this? And this is part of the reason why I think it makes sense for religious people, Christians, Jews, and Islamic alike to focus on their commonalities in the face of the things that are disintegrating our cultures. We could start by trying to make some peace between us if we're going to consort ourselves reasonably as religious individuals. Right. And I commend you for trying to do some bridge building

because, you know, arguably, there's been so much negativity around this faith and around its adherence that there's an almost instantaneous association with the most negative aspects of humanity with the religion. And it's quite tragic. And so just as an exercise, a kind of bracketing for a second and try to try to think about things of a mentor of mine and a friend of mine. Dr. Thomas Cleary wrote a book called Zen Colons. He also translated the Quran. He's one of the brilliant translators of the of of our lifetime. But he wrote a book called Zen Colons and in the introduction of that book, he actually says that the purpose of a colon is to snap people out of of of

sloppy. I read that book. Yeah. But he says in there, but you don't need a colon to do that. Just ask an educated Western person what they think about Islam. And they'll start expressing all of these prejudices. And if you ask them, have you ever read the Quran? No. Do you know anything about the Prophet Muhammad? No. other than maybe something they read in a newspaper article or in time or newsweek or the Atlantic monthly something like that. Yeah, well, it's not it's not an easy thing to try to get a toehold in a different tradition Especially not that hard. Have a toehold in your own. Yeah, I it's not that hard especially for an educated person You're obviously a highly educated person. It's not that hard. Islam one of the things given said is the Islam spread because it's not that hard, especially for an educated person. You're obviously a highly educated person. It's not that hard. Islam, one of the things given said is that Islam spread

because it was a very easy religion to understand. So this idea that I can't understand it, I can't, I'm having a hard time. It's not that hard to understand. I mean, Islam is actually a very straightforward. Okay, then give me a, give me a five-minute summary of the core beliefs. I don't want to put you on the spot. It's not a question. No, that's not hard at all. So lay it out. That would be very helpful.

So we have a famous hadith in which we're told that the the angel Gabriel came in the form of a man and asked the prophet, tell me about faith. And the prophet Muhammad said faith is to believe that there's only one God and that Muhammad, which includes all the previous messengers, is a messenger of God, to believe in angels, to believe in the books that God has revealed, to believe in the last day, the day of judgment, and to believe in the measuring out of good and evil, that good and evil is part of life. And then he said, tell me about Islam.

And he said, Islam is that you make the testimony of faith that you pray five times a day, that you fast, Ramadan, that you pay the testimony of faith that you pray five times a day, that you fast-romaton, that you pay Zakat, the 2.5% of your standing wealth at the end, not your income tax, but your standing wealth at the end of the year, that's a whole year. 2.140th is given to poor people. There's eight categories that are given in the Quran.

And that you, if you're able to, you make a pilgrimage once in your lifetime to Mecca. And then he said, tell me about Ihsan, which is the third dimension of Islam. And he said, and this is the dimension of virtuous being, like being a person of erity, of excellence in the world. And he said, Ihan is to worship God as if you see God. And if you and if you don't see him at these, you know that he sees you. So you have an awareness of that, that you're that there is a divine presence. And you should be in a state of awareness in your behavior.

I mean, one of the things about, you know, if you're driving and everybody's speeding and then somebody sees a cop, they all suddenly slow down. You know, I have a friend want to just zoom past the cop when everybody slowed down and he pulled him over and he said, why didn't you slow down? He said, I felt like a hypocrite. So they can't let them go. But you know, that's people when they're in the presence of authority, they tend to behave well, unless they're in utter rebel. I mean, there are those people. I'm trying to figure out how to be a Jew and a Christian and a Muslim at the same time. But become Muslim.

That's the best way because the beauty of Islam is you get the old testament, the new testament, the last testament. I mean, that really is. For me, even the Jews acknowledge this. Because Islam in many ways is a universalized Judaism. It's Judaism for the Gentiles. We have the Nikva, they do Hussal, we have Hussal. I mean, which is the ritual, the baptism,

a total immersion in water, ritual to purify yourself, which is done at least once a week. And, in case you let me ask you, maybe I'll ask you, because we're going to run out of time, I want to ask you a final question, then you can maybe help me in my aim. I've been trying to understand

the Christian doctrine of the Word and its relationship to the Jewish prophetic tradition for a long time, and I know that Christ is a central figure in Islam as well. The Christians make the claim that Christ is the Son of God, right? He's the Messiah Himself, and it's very difficult if you're going to be a Christian, not to accept that claim. And I think I understand the claim in some sense, psychologically. I think the notion that the free word, the free truthful word is the fundamental redeeming force. I believe that's true. I think it's true literally and I think it's true metaphorically.

And I suspect it might be true religiously, although I'm not exactly sure what that means. And I think part of the stumbling block for me in relationship to Islam can understand Christianity in relationship to Judaism, but I can't understand Islam in relationship to Christ. Because I understand the Christian idea that Christ was a transcendent consequence of the prophetic tradition, and the Christian insistence that his life is associated with the divinity of the word and that that is in some sense a final statement and so I don't understand how Islam moves beyond that and still places Christ in a place of centrality. Well, I mean the Jews don't accept Christ at all like the the best of the Jews will say he was a rabbi but many of the rabbis considered him to be a charlatan,

a magician, and Jesus and the Talmud is, which was printed by Princeton University Press, makes that argument that the Talmudic views of Christ, which they he argues in that book that it was understandable given that the Jews were so persecuted by the Christians. But the Muslim theology is a, I think it's a radical monotheism

that even I think it transcends the monotheism of Judaism, which has some anthropomorphic elements in it that the Muslims would not accept. But generally, the Jews and the Christians agree on the theology. The rabbis, I've had many talks with rabbis, and they see Islam. In fact, Kolar says that Muslims were all seen as full proselytites of the Noah headache laws, whereas Christians were not because of the Trinity. So the Trinity is, you know, the principle of the triad is, you know, in Plato and the Tameis that talks about that. So the principle of the triad is very powerful principle

and there are many, many, Trinity's in the world that we see. So it is a- Yes, I don't understand exactly why that constitutes such a stumbling block. I mean, again, I'm trying to speak at least to some degree psychologically. Well, if you, if you read, uh-huh. Well, it, it seems to me that the idea of the Holy Ghost is allied with the idea of conscience. You know, that voice that speaks from within. And then the idea of the sun element of the Trinity, that's the fact that divinity can reveal

itself within a personality. Well, I think that's true. And then the idea of God, it's himself, the God the Father, that seems to me to be the idea that's most tightly associated with the Jewish idea of the absolute and the Islamic idea of Allah. Well, I don't think so, because if you read Master Eckhart or even a quietness on Trinity, but Eckhart, the Godhead is infinite, cannot be embodied, is simple, there's no parts. So I think if you get into deep Catholic theology, you'll find that in the end it is a type of unity. So the

personas and they aren't called personas in Latin means mask in Latin. It's a mask, right? And so for Muslims, Christ is a central figure, and Muslims do believe in a second coming of Christ, born of the Virgin birth, but Christ is not divine, Christ is human. And you'll find that in the dual nature, not in the monophysic or the diophysic traditions of Christianity that you find like in Coptic Christianity and some of the monophysites that believed in that Christ was purely divine, but in this idea that Christ is of a dual nature. So the logos in here's and that's a mystery. But I don't, I, this idea, I Catholics never call like evangelicals. They don't call on Christ

as, you know, when they pray, they call on God, the father through an intercession of Christ, which is, I think, very different from worshiping Christ as the Godhead. And I think it becomes very confusing, even for a long time. Well, I think it is confusing. And the fact that it is one of the stumbling blocks to something approximating a union of the great Abrahamic traditions is quite a problem. And well, we can agree on a lot of things.

I mean, we certainly agree that there is a God that he created us. We agree that the prophets were sent to warn people and to give them good news. And we agree that there's a day of judgment and people are going to be resurrected. I mean And we agree that there's a day of judgment and people are gonna be resurrected. I mean, we have, those are some pretty strong things to base a sense of shared concern on.

We certainly agree on family. We agree on the importance of raising children healthy. We all share the liberal arts tradition. Most of them's Christians and Jews all share the tradition of the liberal arts, which is very important. Maybe we could start in our efforts to move forward by concentrating on those things that unite us. Well also, virtue, like virtue ethics. I mean, all three of our religions share virtue ethics, all three.

And we all really acknowledge and really have benefited greatly from the NICOMAQian ethics. All three traditions recognize the NICOMAQian ethics and its importance. And that's why our ethical traditions, our great altidices, reflect many of the truths that Aristotle articulated in the NICOMAQian ethics. truths that Aristotle articulated in the nekomachian ethics? Well, I think we should probably call that a day. I would like to keep talking to you. I think it's very useful to outline, I think it was very useful to outline the central tenets of Islamic faith. I think it's very useful to begin a reconceptualization in some sense in the intellectual sphere that it might be useful for all the people of the Abrahamic traditions to recognize their

similarities moving forward rather than concentrating on their differences. I mean, we could, we could start by assuming that perhaps our differences are in some sense apparent and a consequence of our ignorance. You know what I mean? It's not like any of us can claim to be omniscient interpreters, even of our own faith tradition. And so we could say, well, there's a lot of confusion that reigns and not disunites us and we'll be a little careful about making any authoritative claims on behalf of our own faith. And see see because we need to figure out how to tolerate each other and to appreciate each other. And I also think the disunion between

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is also one of the sicknesses that besets the West. The fact that that that disunity exists makes it more difficult for people who are searching for something akin to a tradition to believe that there's something solid there because even those who are staunch adherents of their own traditions don't seem to be able to get along with those who are staunch traditions holders of others. So anyways, discussions like this are some markers on the pathway to peace, let's say. There's that we have an important tradition from our prophet that says, woe unto those who irrigate to themselves the judgment of God.

Yeah, that's for sure. And he was asked, how do they do that? And he said, by saying these people are in hell and these people are in paradise. So that's something no Muslim has permitted to death. Like I could never say you're going to hell. I mean, some people do that, but it's absolutely prohibited in the Islamic tradition to do that.

Yeah, well, the problem with making a judgment like that is it's pretty easily turned upon yourself. Well, exactly. Yeah. It was really good of you to talk to me today. I appreciate it very much. All right. I have a message here.

My camera person who set this up, just put a little message he wanted me to mention the Hadith of the Prophet, in which he said, none of you will enter paradise by your actions, but by the grace of God alone. So we need deeds, but in the end, we're justified through grace. Thank you very much.

I hope we get a chance to speak again. Where are you located? I'm in Berkeley, ground zero for the dissolution of the Western civilization. Yeah, I'm coming to California in very soon. Maybe I'll see if you'd like to. Well, if you do, yes, sure, and come visit the college. You know, we have a small liberal arts college and we're trying to revive a tradition that's fallen on a hard times in both the West and the East, but it's an important tradition. And it's the greatest bulwark against a lot of the things that we're up against because

it really does teach people to discern between real and apparent goods. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, good luck in that endeavor. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Take care, Dr. Paul. All right. you