Entering The Prophetic Path: Developing A Particular Faculty Of Perception

Bismi-Llah, Al-Rahmani, Al-Rahim. Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammad wa Aali Muhammad. As-salamu alaykum to anyone who may be tuning into this short video, and hello and welcome also to anyone who might be passing by.

In this short video, I am going to be discussing some of the thoughts that I have put into this book, Shi'i Spirituality For The 21st Century, which is a compilation of lectures that I have given over the last 15 or so years, plus a couple of academic articles as well.

In these lectures, I always reflect upon the situation in which we are living today, and how the teachings of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him and his progeny, who explicated his teachings, how we may understand, how to apply those in the situation in which we find ourselves today, which is changing very rapidly at the moment, as I am sure everyone will agree and be feeling the same.

I am just going to reflect upon one of the chapters that I have put in here, which is called In Search of a Deeper Islam. Entering the Prophetic Path. As you may have seen from my previous lectures and videos that I have uploaded on here, I was raised in a very secular environment, pretty typical post-war, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s environment where the emphasis was upon material achievement, achievement in this world. So in a culture where there was not really any particular philosophy of life, no real discussion of what we are doing here, what is a human being, what is our purpose, and very much a situation where the Divine, or God, or the Creator, was not discussed and not thought about.

And in general, from a background like many people in the West, and particularly in Northern Europe, people who are of a Protestant descent, in an environment where it was considered that "religion", in inverted commas, is irrelevant. And that the Bible, for an example, was on the shelf, not being read because it is just considered to be some old stories about some very strict people, lots of Hellfire and damnation. And therefore, old fashioned and nothing that I can particularly relate to.

That was the general environment that I was raised in. And it wasn't until ironically, after I converted to Islam, and I started to dip into the Bible as well, that I discovered some secrets in there that people are not told about. It is actually a treasure trove of secrets. And, of course, the Prophetic Path laid out by Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his progeny, is a continuation of the Prophetic Path that has been laid out by all the previous prophets.

So my coming into Islam was a return to the Prophetic Path. And, of course, then that leads us to reflect upon what is the Prophetic Path. And so I just put some lines in here where I say that: what the Prophetic Path teaches us then is not only what is necessary for being a servant of Allah, Subhana wa Ta'ala, but it also teaches us how to develop a certain faculty of perception, which becomes the foundation of our entire being. A certain faculty of perception that becomes the foundation of our entire being.

And this has been something that I have reflected upon for 25 years, if not more, 30 years, or maybe even since I was a child. How we see things and whether what we see is really what we have just been taught to see, or how we see is how we have been taught to see by our own environment. Like I said, from a child, I was interested in classical Japanese culture or traditional Japanese culture, and went on to study Japanese literature and language. And by studying Japanese literature, and language, and poetry, I also learned about a different way of viewing reality, a different sensibility, a different even idea of what literature is meant to be, and what the aims of literature are meant to be.

And so I guess I have always been interested and curious about other perceptions, other ways of seeing things, and haven't really taken for granted the worldview that I was raised in. So, many of us just accept the worldview that we are given, and we consider that as the norm. And we don't really reflect upon how other nations and other cultures view existence and view reality. And in actual fact, my attitude to other cultures has always been that they have something to teach me, that it is interesting to investigate and that people have a knowledge that I don't, and that I don't want to be ignorant. I don't want to behave like an ignorant person in the world, walking around oblivious and blind to how other people around me are seeing the world and how other people around me are seeing me.

And this is my view or my thoughts on how a lot of Western youth go out into the world because, of course, they have got the financial benefits to be able to go on their year out or to be able to travel to different countries. And they may visit somewhere like Cambodia or Thailand and or somewhere in Africa, maybe to do some charity work, and then that is considered as their year out. And then they come back to the UK. I have mentioned this before in previous videos, but they come back to the West and just then slot into how everything is here.

And it's like, so what did you learn in your year out? If it hasn't actually got you to question yourself, and question the foundations of how you see things, and if it hasn't actually fundamentally changed you as a person, to the extent that you are critiquing your own culture when you return back, then what was the purpose of that year out? Was it just like an extended holiday, maybe? And also, are we really reflecting upon how we are viewed when we go out into the world?

There is a lot of unconsciousness there, which I almost feel is embarrassing. It is embarrassing to go out and tramp around different countries, tramp around other people's cultures, and tramp around their streets, and not realise that people are politely tolerating you, or they are politely humouring you, because you don't realise how unconscious you are of the world. You don't realise how unconscious you are of how things are operating out there.

And I think one thing that I have always inherently had is a questioning of the way we see things, but also maybe another way of seeing things which has not matched up with the culture in which I have been raised. And so that has prompted me to go out to find where I can find an environment that makes sense with how I see things. And that's what I found in Islam and with the Islamic worldview, so to speak.

And so I have always been very concerned with perception. And as I have said here, Islam teaches us how to develop a certain faculty of perception, which becomes the foundation of our entire being.

So that faculty of perception is or includes an insight into what lies beyond the immediate and apparent reality that we find ourselves in. I think that owing to colonialism and then following up with that, owing to secularism and corporatism, we now find ourselves, or this has been going on for the last hundred years, but I have noticed that ex-colonized nations are still very much on the receiving end of propaganda coming up from the Western zone.

And this is changing people's culture. It's deracinating them. It's making them feel that their roots and their culture is inferior and irrelevant, that they need to catch up, that they need to change, and that they need to aspire to this hedonistic Western entertainment culture, which by the way, is fake. So we now have the whole world aspiring to something that is just manufactured and fake.

And so because of the the world literally being uprooted from their traditions, this is leading to a lot of pain and confusion about what are we meant to be? Who are we meant to be? Where are we meant to be going? I was just looking at a video yesterday about K-Pop, Korean pop music, just for a few minutes looking at how the whole thing is just manufactured. And it is just crazy. You have got these girls who are, of course, dressed according to Western norms of cuteness. It is a bit like 1960s maybe, 1960s pop group, how the girls used to have to dress and act in formation then. And so, of course, they are all dressed according to Western norms of how girls in a pop group should dress. And then they have got these screaming fans, thousands of them all going crazy. Over what? Over just some girls who are quite normal human beings who can dance in formation. And then you have got these whole football stadiums that are going hysterical over this.

And who's behind this? These kind-of semi-mavia men that look like they have got criminal links or links to the criminal underground. The whole thing is artificial. The whole thing is like a mass production of a culture, an artificial culture that is bewitching South Korean youth and ripping them away from their roots. I mean, by the time this youth have become so bewitched by this illusion, their kids and their kids, I mean, their understanding of their roots and their culture and their heritage is just going to be lost. And everyone is revolving around in this, swimming around in this cauldron of fake mass-produced entertainment culture.

This started back in the United States around the 1920s, and it has now become this monster that has engulfed the whole world. We have all got caught up in it. We have all been bewitched by it. And it has caused us to lose our lives. It has caused us to lose years of what could have been years of studying wisdom, years of connecting to our spiritual ancestors, years of training how to be in this world as a normal, balanced human being. But instead, we have just been left and led, left, right and center so everyone is just confused about who they are. And this is actually leading to suicide.

I mean, these kids from these K-Pop groups are committing suicide. Kids, you don't have to do that. It is really not necessary. Get out of there. This is something totally artificial. It has been manufactured by some businessman, and you are committing suicide over it?

This is why we need to get real, because this mass-produced entertainment industry and this illusion that is being woven for us all to chase after is leading to death in more ways than one. People cannot cope with the fame, so they turn to drink and drugs, and they die from that. You died because you were devoted to a fake culture. You committed suicide because you were part of a fake culture that doesn't actually mean anything at the end of the day.

This is what is happening. So this is why we need to take a stand against it. And of course, it is depicted in the media when we look at it, in terms of how Islam is viewed. Islam is viewed as the oppressive force and the backward force and the force that wants to stop all this from happening, and that wants to clamp down on this. And that is the party pooper and the spoil sport because Islam doesn't support this culture.

But actually, Islamic has already, you know, Prophetic teachings have already seen that this false materialistic culture is what leads us down to the road of self-destruction.

This is what it ultimately leads you towards. Either destruction in terms of losing years of your life to chasing after the fake glamour of a fake culture instead of gaining wisdom and passing that on to the next generation. Either through that, or else through actually being an active part of that fake culture and signing up to that and perpetuating it, of course, making money out of it, that is the, I suppose, the temptation to make money out of the entertainment industry.