Haz on Islam's Modernity, Universalism, and AWAKENING (PART 3) - Infrared Show Clip 🚀 Infrared Content Catalog

but

you know to me um

here really is the kicker that's really

tough for me to understand

yeah

how is it speaking now right

how is it that the islamic civilization

which i do believe exists

muslims around the world how can we

integrate

because look i think islam is already

the story of

what they call the rene descartes is in

the quran the quran does describe a

figure who is basically rene descartes

and this figure is iblis

so

iblis

during if i'm pronouncing correctly he

please

please sorry yeah

sorry i'm an american

but

he he

was commanded by god completely

arbitrarily defying any

human conceivable reason

bow before adam ah bliss is a

rationalist he's just a rationalist he

went wait

if i rub my if i use my reason right

fire is higher than clay i

are higher than men on the spiritual

hierarchy we are more spiritual we're

more heavenly

why the hell would i bow before adam

right

yeah iblis basically was a cartesian

because for him

he said i think therefore i am the whole

of being the whole of divine being

so far as at least was concerned

was reducible to the extent to which he

could think about it

and to which he could right therefore

rationalize it right iblis did not

at least committed the error because he

did not unconditionally obey the command

of god and therefore give himself to the

true material

antecedents before him is what i like to

call it the true material being already

set before him which does not obey the

terms of his thinking and his own

rationality iblis

made the arrogant assumption that he

knows the essence

of god

he knows it is

now if

this but

but descartes

did the same thing right but

is it not that deco

this cartesian gesture was responsible

for the greatness

uh or the

revolution so to speak that is western

modernity that has changed the modern

world so how can muslims

uh come to peace with this

apocalypse of modernity without falling

into the fundamental arrogance of

ableist do we not require

this pressure

coming from the west or coming from

america that really is testing that's

going to test our boundaries and force

us

to um

respond to this dialectic of you know

like the cartesian demon so to speak

this devil's advocate of what if

everything we know is wrong this you

know force of kind of nihilism do we

need that to wake us up and

shock us into

the modern world or is there a way we

can

distill the wisdom of the western

modernity and

somehow discover it

within islam

that's really my struggle and my

personal biggest issue

that's really

fascinating right because the question

of iblees bowing to adam is one of the

greatest theological arguments

of all islamic history now i i would

like to make a point

iblis is the cartesian subject beholding

the eternal material right

and

because if you read the quran for

example it's written that adam

and jesus and moses and all men were

already a pre-existing essence did you

know that they were already a

pre-existing essence now i heard that

from islamic philosophy the idea that

muhammad uh

he said

i was already a prophet when adam was

between

water and clay

expression

i have heard it and by the way if you

want to correspond that to some

christian literature in john it's

written jesus says before abraham was i

am so

the idea that both of these quotations

are expressing us there's this eternal

material substance that's existed

uh since the beginning okay it's just

pure reality it's just pure existence

it's just pure essence right cure

iblis is this cartesian

self he's a cartesian subject

beholding this eternal essential

you know what is what is essence

and so he he rejects it because

well he thinks that his own his own

comprehension his own mind you know

possesses some sort of

superiority to it now of course that's

sort of a western arrogance i think you

would agree with me of course but um but

i think the interesting point to make

here is that ultimately iblees directly

leads to

the development of the prophets so when

you're saying hey do we need this

westernizing force to wake up islam yes

we do i'll i'll give you an example from

this hadith this very very interesting

hadith maybe you should switch up it's

fascinating all right

moses is met by the angel of death all

right

the angel of death comes to moses and

says musa musa he says oh ya musa

uh you

must die your time to die has come we

have decided that now is your time to

die

moses does not give him a response moses

does not speak back to him

moses punches him in the face

pushing him outside of corporal reality

when the angel of death who is just

punched in the face

goes back to allah

he says to allah

excuse me o god your heavenly messenger

punched me in the face he denied

he denied my

my

demand for his death

and god says

well moses is just purely living right

so we will not kill him his time has not

come because

moses is existence

still is and still will be so the point

i'm trying to make here is

before i that is absolutely fascinating

i have never heard that story before

yeah that is absolutely uh

something else i have i did not know

that well it's fascinating isn't it

yes it's

that i had i did not know that i didn't

so islam really does account for this

kind of

threshold of human contingency

yes exactly of course because we the

humans are not simply these you know uh

the idea here is that

we have this pure existence

and it doesn't matter really

what

the subject begs of us okay the angel of

death begs of moses to die but moses is

pure existence

does not die right he exists

he exists purely as this effect of pure

reality

weighs down harder on what should be

or what is demanded of or what we ought

to do or what we think to do

just the pure existence of moses living

over triumphs over

the uh

limited

sense of uh

kind of like

divine necessity or divine will

exactly exactly and really if you if you

read it more god's divine manifestation

is never

a suggestion

right this is an example

of the western perversion

and i agree with you that the west will

wake up the east in the same way the

moses was woken up by the angel of death

and punched him in the face because the

west will demand of us what they impose

upon us will demand of us what they

impose upon us from their ideal

forms and this will wake us up

to just the pure

present

material truth if if

if that makes any sense

no it makes sense to me

it really does make sense to me i have

to ask you what what background are you

coming from like um

intellectually are you just kind of a

independent thinker or

is there a school you're associated with

or anything like that

oh in terms of islam

no no just in general like maybe

philosophy or

oh yeah

yeah i

well

i generally enjoy continental philosophy

uh you know i i don't call myself an

expert or anything but uh i enjoy

continental philosophy you know i like

laka

i like zuzak i like high digger you know

i like um i like hagel a lot you know me

too yeah me too

um these thinkers are the ones who have

helped me really rediscover

islam when i completely you know

discarded and

abandoned they're the ones who kind of

led me right back

to having a new appreciation

no i 100 agree with you when i read

hagel and heidiger and i still have to

read a lot of high degree by the way i

still have to read a lot of high tech oh

i i think um i think the consensus that

i know from the muslim world is that

either is like our guy

like i know he was a nazi and all that

bad stuff but in a way that he didn't

know like he himself was too stupid to

understand like

he

is the key to bridging the west and the

east you know you know what's what's so

sad is to me it's like

almost every conversation i have and

every debate i have is completely

useless to me

like i just don't i'm not there i don't

feel like this has any pressing

significance or meaning or it's just

[ __ ] right when i talk to you i

really do feel like i'm actually having

a conversation that matters

you know where like i'm actually talking

about something i'm really interested in

you know

yeah

i think is like not resolved or we

really are here and we're trying to

think about this and

resolve this issue whereas like i think

when i argue with other people or talk

even talk to other people sometimes it's

like

yeah but this issue has been resolved so

we're just treading over

oh you know it doesn't matter you know

all this marxist or whatever i talk to

it's like

this is not the good stuff this is not

the stuff that like matters this is not

the pressing stuff that's important

right now what i'm interested personally

is

how can we revive or

awaken this inevitable islamic

enlightenment which is needing to happen

i'm also fascinated and by the way i

think it's inevitable i think

it

will eventually there will eventually be

a point where the eastern forces will be

like moses and just wake up and unleash

their unlimited

um

the prowess right you know one of the

biggest issue i have is

most of the muslims i talk to are not

open-minded you know you can't talk to

them like this because they're very

dogmatic and very dismissive and they

can't you can't

you can't like uh add any perspective of

nuance to it you know they just speak

from authority and and that's it

and oh and i i hate that because if you

if you read the quran

the quran is not a text which

actually superimposes upon you moral law

yeah that's what i said too i said

you're ignoring what makes islam unique

the reason islam is a unique religion is

it's the only religion which is like

that too it's the only religion that's

uh truly revelatory you know islam

uh

what islam does right

is um

it leaves open its wisdom for the

believer it doesn't tell you

oh we will force upon you this form you

must just simply conform to this and

everything you do must conform to the

single

form that we have created precisely yeah

you know it makes me so sad now because

you know when i started going live i've

i had this issue of this view of islam

to me for years but after i went live

and i started talking to other muslims

they almost made me convinced that oh

maybe i had it confused with something

else you know i was wrong when i talk to

you it makes me realize no i mean

this sense of islam that i have had of

what makes it unique and so on wasn't

something i made up or something i like

was wrong it's like you you seem to

really understand it you know

where i'm coming from with that

well but wait i'm coming entirely just

from the quran yeah yes that's that's

what i was doing too but it's like as

soon as i started talking to other

muslims

they made me think that i was like

fabricating everything and i was just

you know i was coming from a completely

you know

perspective outside of islam you know

and to me that's just

i don't know

it kind of really disillusioned me a lot

you know i'm used to that i'm very used

to that when i speak to usual muslims

they just i mean they just roll over

they have no

and it's so sad because i came to the

conclusion where it's almost like islam

was really all i cared about at a point

was like yes marxism marxism feminism

all these things for me personally i'm

not saying this is for everyone just for

me personally this is a part of what

islam is right it's it's um it's a

different way of expressing the same

thing

but ultimately there's so much beauty

and truth and wisdom contained in

islam that to me it became like oxygen

like without this i can't even breathe

if i can't remind myself of this

like i'm so fundamentally lost

in life

it makes everything come together and

everything makes sense if that makes

sense you know

yeah yeah and uh i generally i generally

favor you know i admire marxist leninism

i've thought about it a lot

i think it's brilliant and i think it

completely triumphs the idealists and it

completely triumphs over people like

carnap you know and

those ridiculous

western analytic philosophers

yeah to me um

i have always considered marxism

leninism just

a part of the eastern enlightenment

right and marxism as well as

is the bridge between the west and the

east that started from within the west

um you have to understand the context of

germany as a kind of more peripheral

country in relation but it's about

modernity and right to me that's what it

was always about

but

you know for me i i really

i i've also con i've also really

considered the national significance of

islam and also understanding islam and

china understanding islam and russia to

me i've come to the conclusion that a

real muslim

islam does not prescribe a

specific nation if that makes sense set

apart from the nation islam is almost

the cherry on top of nations so to me

muslims can exist

as chinese people for example they're

just chinese people they're fully

chinese they're part of the chinese

nation part of the chinese civilization

part of the chinese culture but

they just

add islam on top as a way to kind of

fill

a hole that's still there if that makes

sense to make sense of it all right as a

force of kind of like

moral autonomy if this kind of makes

sense

yeah yeah i i understand what you're

saying right yeah and uh

interestingly enough like something i

really love about islam is like i've

always seen it as

nationally amorphous it can be many

civilizations and many different nations

and that islamic unity does not take the

form of like isis

islamic state where we all just become

one big

uh s you know homogeneous mass

but it really can coexist with the

unique wealth of differences between

peoples in the world

yeah like do you know the you know the

ummah of course you know the islamic

ummah right yeah what well what does

ummah mean okay has a very very simple

meaning it

submits the entire islamic world it

submits the entire islamic civilization

every nation right every country that is

islamic however the meaning of ummah is

very simple it just means community

all these nations

form in ummah they just simply form a

community they're not bound

to an islamic nation they're bound to

the ummah the community of all islamic

nations right and

that sort of thinking by the way is why

i think

islam in the end will develop fast

faster

than the west because the west

are completely com like hyper cartesian

like hyper separate separated from

community

right

and islam the basis of islamic tradition

faith

is that all these nations form the ummah

the community

and there's this sort of communal space

you can still be a chinese citizen you

can still be a proud chinese citizen

you can still be a proud iranian citizen

right you can still be a proud pakistani

but you still ultimately come into this

form of the ummah and to me this is the

kind of more authentic universalism to

me than a kind of western more false

universalism of kind of

imposing one's cultural values upon

others and looking down upon others

and this from this arrogant perspective

is of of superiority to me

the islamic unity is the way of um

find having unity through difference

rather than at its expense

yeah i mean a good example would be like

western universalism is

imagine at the site of uh at the site of

culture there's a king and the king

enforces upon every one of the subjects

his opinion

of what

a day should look like

but islamic unity islamic ummahs

the the whole community of believers all

come together

and they they leave out their

particularizations

they still follow their

particularizations

but they come together for this moment

of unity in faith and in tradition

it doesn't atomize them they don't

become

hyper individualized they don't lose

their nation they don't lose their

culture they only gain

right

where whereas in western universalism

you either

conform to this ideal system

or to the other there is no

uh there is always a negation

yeah

precisely okay i uh i don't mean to cut

it short i have to go get dinner but um

really it was i'm really grateful for

this

conversation because like i said this is

a conversation i just i actually was

planning on just cutting the string way

earlier like a few hours ago but i

genuinely enjoyed this and um i thought

it was yeah i wish honestly

uh i wish there was more muslims like

you because i always thought like maybe

i was the only muslim who thought like

this you know there's

there's no one else who's like maybe you

know maybe i'm just an american guy

who's just

you know developed the wrong view or

wrong ideas but i really appreciate that

you came from a perspective that i could

really relate to and you know understand

and i appreciate that you you know took

some time to talk to me i really like

your stuff i think you're really really

intelligent and you've absolutely you

have crushed every single person in

debate that you have ever confronted so

i have a lot of good words to say about

you i'm just i'm just glad that we were

able to talk

yeah thank you man thank you so much i

appreciate you

all right bye see you later

bye

oh man guys

i'm really tired