Qur'anic Psychological Decolonisation | Episode 7

Well, the way we think about religion and the way we the way we understand religion, the way we understand morality is of paramount importance to our lives, to our approach to our lives, our approach to society, our approach to interpersonal relations, and so on. It's crucial for our own mental and emotional well-being, and it's crucial for what sort of a civilization we're gonna have because this determines everything. Your understanding of morality, your values, and so on, this determines everything. And this goes back also to what I've talked about earlier in the earlier sessions on psychological decolonization. And that is what is at the core of the West's complete failure as a civilization, and in my opinion, at the core of what is their failure as a civilization is the basis upon which they assign value.

Because they assign value according to a strictly materialistic criteria, therefore morality, ethics, principles, and religion itself are not matters of any practical importance to them. They have not given, as a civilization, so called, any priority to evolving morally, to developing any sort of practical morality that can govern their lives. What they have are as I said, vague idealistic sort of Utopian platitudes. And that goes for both the religious fears and for the secular fears. Whether you're talking about, you know, Christian love your enemies type of a a belief system or a free speech belief system.

These are completely empty unrealistic values. They're obtuse and abstract and absolutist, which means that they are not functional in real life. And that doesn't matter to them, that's fine. Because for them, morality, ethics, principles and religion are basically just decorative. So when they say that religion exists to make you a good person, it's meaningless.

Both both things are meaningless. Goodness is meaningless and religion is meaningless in that sort of a sentiment, a sentence in that sort of a sentiment. Neither one has any clear or exact definition. This allows them to be any kind of way they want to be. There it allows them to do whatever it is that they want to do and still regard themselves as good and moral and decent people regardless of their behavior.

So it's just it's just like someone with body dysmorphia, you know, where they look in the mirror, when you're talking about morally, they look in the mirror and they see a good worthwhile looking back at them no matter how immoral or amoral or sinful or wicked they may actually be in terms of their conduct and their behavior and their beliefs. Because again they have, they they've made goodness and they've made morality unobtainable by equating it with perfection. They've given goodness no practical definition in real life, therefore, even if they sin they're sinless, and even if they're wrong they're blameless, and even in their evil they're good. And so, of course, they are desperately confused as individuals and as a so called civilization because they have not understood, as I said last week, what religion is. Because they have reduced religion to just a sort of self help self improvement manual and nothing more.

And then they erased from religion, any sort of law, or any sort of, specific code of behavior. And by doing that, they've rendered it completely useless even as a self improvement manual. And so every individual decides for himself or for herself. He decides for himself or herself what is moral or upright behavior. There's no standard.

Even if they're religious. Every individual can decide for himself or herself, which means again, do as thou wilt, which is famously the single solitary commandment of Satanism. So when they say, for example, follow your heart, it means do as thou wilt. And when they say life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, it means do as thou wilt. And when they say do what feels right, it means do as thou wilt.

This runs through their entire so called civilization Because morality is perfection in their mind, in their mentality. Morality is perfection and perfection is unobtainable and that makes morality unrealistic and impractical in the real world and that's how they behave. That's their relationship with morality, you know. So don't bother trying to be moral, be selfish and guilt free. And by selfish here what I mean is driven by yourself, your nefs, what yourself feels, what yourself wants, what gives your yourself comfort and ease and satisfaction.

You know, maybe just try not to hurt anyone, but if you do hurt someone, as long as it wasn't your intention to hurt them, then it's fine. As as long as your intention was just pure selfishness, then it's fine. You can be excused for the inevitable collateral damage that comes from acting selfishly. But if you if you if you did actually intend to hurt them, well then they probably just deserved it. See, this is the usefulness of accepting that morality is not practical in the world.

You can shape it any way you want to, and you can use it to justify anything that you want to. But in Islam of course, as I said, we understand what religion actually is. We understand that religion is our creator explaining existence to us, explaining ourselves to us, and explaining what our role is, what our relationship is to him, and understanding how to navigate the dunya. That's what religion gives us, provides for us, the guidance. This moment that we spend in the dunya, it teaches us how to navigate that by practical implementation of this knowledge that we receive from the revelation of Allah So that we can hopefully pass through this life with our souls intact and return to Allah having sincerely tried to act in accordance with what he told us.

Having applied as best we could the knowledge that he gave us about existence. And so in Islam, morality is not utopian, it's not idealistic, and it's not absolutist. You know, Allah talks again and again about what is better and what is worse. Instructing the believers to strive to do what is better and to avoid doing what is worse. These are not absolutes.

Allah is is is acknowledging the scale that exists. These are practical guiding standards. It's not about trying to achieve perfection. These are tips for human beings from the creator of human beings who knows our nature, who created our nature, and who directs us through our tenure in this dunya to help us navigate not only the world, but navigate and manage our own flaws and our own shortcomings and our own desires and how to utilize the talents and the gifts and the capabilities that he gave us. All of this in a way that is that that will make us ultimately successful when we are brought back to him.

So for example, when Allah says, repel evil with what is better than evil. Because even a lesser evil is better than a worse evil, and thus it has more goodness in it. You know, a simplistic western mindset might say that this means repelling evil with evil, which is seems to be a paradox or a contradiction. But that's because they have no sense of nuance. They have no understanding about the the scale of good and evil, the degrees of good and evil, of better and worse.

But for us, we understand that a greater evil can be restrained or can be repelled by a lesser evil. And that doesn't mean that we advocate the lesser evil as being goodness in and of itself, it simply means that among the practical realistic choices that may be available in any given situation, in any given scenario, we choose what is better over what is worse. Very simple. And the goodness here is in making that choice, is in making that decision. That's where the goodness is.

The outcome of that decision is not pure absolute goodness. It's not the ideal outcome. It's not a utopian outcome. It's not a perfect outcome. It's a better outcome.

And that's the practical application of morality. The goodness is not in the outcome per se, but in the pursuit of what is better, sincerely. It's in the conduct of the individual. Like a judge, as told us, a judge receiving a reward simply for genuinely, sincerely trying to reach a just verdict even if his verdict turns out to be wrong. He tried to be just and therefore deserves to be rewarded for that.

And this is why, for instance, we are warned against transgressing the limits when we ourselves have been wronged. Transgressing the limits in terms of our right of retaliation because an injustice may have been done to us. And so we could respond by doing an injustice to our opponent. But that's not doing what's better because justice is better than injustice. So a just and a fair and a balanced and a proportional, retaliation is responding to injustice with justice.

And that is repelling evil with what is better than evil. Even if, what is done in retaliation would itself be evil in some other context. Like if it were not done in retaliation but in aggression, then it would be evil. The context is what makes it the better course of action. Now all of this may sound obvious.

The Kufar, the Westerners, have the concept of choosing the lesser of two evils. So how is our way, the the Muslim way, any different from their way? Well, for one thing, choosing the lesser of two evils in the West is portrayed as essentially damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's still portrayed as some kind of a failure or disappointment. And they see it as a kind of a proof that morality is actually impractical.

Because no matter what you do, a lesser evil is still an evil, and you have therefore not achieved absolute good. In other words, it's fundamentally still a loss and a failure and basically futile. Essentially, they see the pursuit of good as a losing proposition. It's it's like one step forward two steps back sort of scenario. That's the way they see it.

You can never make any real headway because they have this utopian ideal that they think is supposed to be. That that's supposed to be the point of pursuing goodness, pursuing right. Well, that's not the way we see it. Better is better. Simple.

And you deal with what is right in front of you. What moral decision you have to make right now, and if you choose what is better than what is worse, then that's a win. That's the way we see it. You have now applied your moral sense successfully. And it's also important, the difference in our thinking.

The difference in our thinking is important because our approach, without deluding ourselves into thinking that a decision must result in some kind of an absolute pure perfect moral outcome, our approach allows us to deal with moral issues realistically, not idealistically. We deal with moral issues realistically, not idealistically, which fuels the whole creative intellectual process of through which we can address reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. And by approaching matters in this way, we can actually move towards that should be by means of the can be. You know, I've given the example before about when the Fukaha suggested imposing a taxation on prostitution because prostitution existed. It existed.

And their realistic assessment of the authorities at that time was that it would not be possible, realistically possible to eradicate it, to get rid of it completely. So the idea was that taxation, would act as a kind of a deterrent and a restriction, a limiting force on prostitution. So the ideal would be for this not to exist in the society. That's the ideal. But that was not achievable.

So the Fukaha proposed a practical measure to try to minimize the evil, to limit the evil because then that would at least be better and as we say nearer to righteousness. But again, if we were to adopt the western attitude about morality, then the fukaha would be blamed for this. They'd be blamed for this position and this suggestion. They're supposed to insist on the complete eradication of prostitution, whether that's actually achievable or not. And if they do otherwise, then that would be regarded as a as a a half measure or as a capitulation with evil or even as an advocacy of evil, of prostitution.

And we do have many Muslims who have adopted this way of thinking unfortunately. This insistence upon an unobtainable ideal, and a rejection of any sort of compromise or suboptimal solution that does not completely remove any evil from society as if taking steps to minimize wrongdoing without obliterating wrongdoing entirely is somehow watering Islam down. Even though insisting on an on an unachievable ideal results in neither the eradication nor even the minimization of wrongdoing. You see how this idealistic absolutist view of morality of right and wrong and good and bad instead of the practical view of better and worse. You can see how this view actually just, actually allows evil to flourish.

It actually obstructs any sort of incremental gradual measures from restricting and limiting and decreasing evil. Because it pretends that the only solution must be a total solution, and therefore if you can't have a total solution then don't bother doing anything. And by viewing these things as having degrees of better and worse, we're also able to be moderate in our judgment about people's choices. In other words, we don't take a puritanical absolutist stance regarding what someone does characterizing that person or that decision as entirely good or entirely evil or seeing that person as completely good or completely bad, seeing that that they're just a saint or they're a sinner or they're they're they're a devil. But simply that they're someone who who who made a choice, that perhaps could have been a better choice, but it also could have been a worse choice.

And in this way we're able to emphasize the good in people. We're able to emphasize the good and we keep the path open for improvement without condemning a person for their decisions. You know, despite how many westerners like to depict Islam as being very rigid and being very strict and so forth, with a kind of black and white attitude about right and wrong, the reality is that Muslims approach these issues with a deeply human understanding, with compassion, with forgiveness, and with the knowledge that all any of us are trying to do in this life is to just be better. We're trying not only to repel the evil of others with what's better, or the evil of a situation with what's with what's better, but we're also trying to repel our own evil with what's better than our own evil. Just be a little bit better than we were yesterday, which doesn't necessarily result in us being the best that we can possibly be, but hopefully it also result it does result in us not being the worst that we could be.

Now, as I said, this moderate approach, this stance of sort of, carries over into all other areas of life, all other areas of judgment. You know, the extremist puritanical absolutist stance. Similarly also carries over to all other areas of life and judgment. If you're if you're going to be that way, if you're going be moderate it carries over, and if you're going be extreme it carries over into everything. Because when we become practiced in taking a more precise and realistic approach to the application of our values, then we build that discipline, we build that skill set, and it's an analytical skill set, it's a problem solving skill set.

And that's essentially how Muslims approach moral issues, as problems to be solved. I e how we can apply what Allah has taught us about reality, about what he expects from us, what he requires from us in any given situation. How can we apply the core principles of trying to make a situation better in this situation? This is an extremely useful and beneficial approach to life in all areas of life. And taking this approach does require the development of several other qualities and habits.

Good habits, good qualities, such as gathering relevant information before making a judgment, striving to understand any and all contributing factors, limiting factors, you know, the the prevailing conditions and so on in any scenario that we have to make a judgment about. So that we can properly identify the realistic available options in any given scenario. And that will also include making an objective assessment of the character, of the maturity, and the intelligence, and the the the relative power, and so forth of the of all individuals or all actors who are involved in a situation. Being truly moral requires being truly analytical. It requires being truly realistic and truly practical.

You can consider for example the story in Surat Saud about Nabi Dawud delivering a judgment before hearing the sides from both parties. Now, he realized that this was an error and he sought forgiveness for that, but that teaches us something. That teaches us about what is actually required. The meticulousness that is required before making a fair judgment. If you want that judgment to be fair.

The conscientiousness, the diligence, and this is supposed to apply to our opinions as well. This diligence and this conscientiousness, this sort of circumspection. And this runs through everything in Islam. Taking the time and making the effort, the effort that is required if you want to be just, if you want to be fair. And this is something that the western approach doesn't do.

They don't do that. And when I see Muslims expressing online, for example, knee jerk opinions, uninformed judgments, condemnations, and so on, I see psychological colonization because you're acting like a westerner. You're not you're not acting like someone who takes morality seriously even though you're pretending that you're motivated by morality. That's so characteristically western. Because again, morality, right and wrong, good and bad, are feelings based for the West.

The good thing is what makes them feel good about themselves. The right thing is whatever satisfies their emotions. That's the way they operate, but that's not our way. For Muslims, morality, acting morally, is essentially an intellectual undertaking, not an emotional undertaking. In order for us to do the right thing, we have to take several steps, we have to go through a whole process of information gathering and evaluation of that information and cross reference that information against Islamic guidance, against Quran and Sunnah, against Fiqh, and then against our own rational comprehension of all the factors that are at play in any given scenario.

This again is not a nefs driven process for us, while it is for the West. In fact, for us, it's quite the opposite. We have to suppress our We have to remove our feelings from the calculation. Because for example, we know from Allah in the Quran, we know that we may love something that's bad for us, And we may hate something that's good for us, and we were taught to not let our dislike or our hatred or our enmity. We're not supposed to let that get in the way of us being just, honest, being truthful.

So Allah informed us that subjectivity interferes with justice. It interferes with acting morally. We have to discipline our minds to be objective in order for us to determine, any sort of a moral decision properly. In order to determine the moral course of action, the course of action that actually constitutes repelling evil with what's better.