Does The Prophetic Path Exist Today? 1/2 - Searching For Its Traces

Bismi-Llah, Al-Rahmani, Al-Rahim. Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammadon wa Aali Muhammad. Assalamu alaykum to anyone who may be tuning in to this short video, and hello as well to anyone who may be passing through to listen to some more reflections on our situation in the world today and how we can maintain the prophetic path, how we can practice it, and what is it exactly.

Of course, we are living in a world that has had a lot of stereotypical propaganda about Islam being spread for the last thousand years or so. And it could even be argued that today we are living in a world of what is called Neo-orientalism, so a new type of Orientalism, putting out Orientalist stereotypes has also emerged in the last few years. Although I do think that the Neo-orientalist movement has been taken over by the turmoil in which we find ourselves today.

And so I'm going to be referring to some lines from the book that I brought out last year, "Shi'i Spirituality for the 21st Century", which is a collection of lectures that I've given over the last 10 years in different communities, both in United States and Europe, reflecting upon our situation and how we can uncover what the prophetic path is and how we can put it into practice in this very, very corrupt world, which seems to be getting more corrupt by the second.

So this is a chapter in the book called "In Search of a Deeper Islam Entering the Prophetic Path". I talked about that in the last video. And I just wanted to highlight a line that I mentioned here, which is that: "An increasingly commercialized world causes distress to the one who is seeking the way back to a pure, authentic way of being". So I've said before in previous videos that the Islamic way of being is a different way of being from a secular way of being.

I have also argued that due to intensive funding through movies, advertising, media, technology, advancements, magazines, although people don't really read magazines so much today, that we, as human beings, are literally being reshaped. Our minds are being reshaped. Our culture is being taken away from us and replaced with what I have called muck modernity, meaning a cheap, fast-food, low-nutrition version of modernity. And this muck modernity is what is delivered to Muslim-majority countries in Africa, Middle East, and Asia.

So I will say right from the get-go to people who, in those countries, are aspiring to be Westernized, let's say, secular Westernized, in that sense, not the traditional Westernized, but the secularized Westernized, aspiring for that and desperate to reach that and wanting to drop your own culture, and you feel embarrassed about your own culture because you've been told so many times that your own culture is inferior somehow, that what you are being sold is a fake Mirage or a Mirage on top of that, a fake Mirage as well.

You're being sold a false image. And Insha Allah, I really hope to find the time to go out in London where I live, some other the time, and show you the real situation of the city here. I have gone out in Oxford Street, and that is a very well-known center of the city. It's a wealthy area of the city, but we have many poor areas of the city as well. We have a lot of homelessness, not like the United States, but we have a lot of people living on the streets. We have a lot of violence, such as stabbings, because it's not easy to get guns here because it's not legal to get guns. People, instead, they use knives. We have stabbings here instead.

And in general, we have young people who are lost because that traditional, I don't really like the word traditional in the way that is used in many cases, but let's just say that a certain ethics that used to be passed on from generation to generation has been lost. And so when you realize that the world that you are living in is an artificial construction that is absurd and that you just cannot live in that artificial construction. You got to get out.

And the way leading out of the artificial construction is a path to authenticity, which is the prophetic path as laid out by all of the Orophets. Then the question becomes, how can I find what that path is? How can I enter that path? And how can I increase in knowledge on that path? And what I've said in this book is that that path barely exists today. It's even changed in Muslim-majority countries, where even 20 years ago, you could still really feel the impact of Islamic ethics, and spirituality, and morality, and also community, very, very importantly, there were still the traces of a different way of being a human being. A much closer way of connecting, a much greater sensitivity towards others around you, pride in serving others, obviously, I don't mean of arrogance, but a sense of dignity and liking to give to others. And I have spoken to people from the majority countries who are saying that this is disappearing.

As I have also spoken to colleagues who are from Eastern Europe, they say also that Eastern Europe used to have quite strong values based upon Catholicism, and very strong family values, and also a integrated spirituality, but that as well is being undermined. And this has been going on again for about the last 100 years or so.

So people will be persuaded to undergo some kind of brain transplant, and change who they are, and remould who they are to fit with the new criteria that they have been told that they have to meet. And what do they get in return?

They get a poorly-produced, cheap version of what it is they are aspiring for. This is what I see when I travel to Muslim-majority countries, is that people are leaving, dropping their traditions, dropping their families, and running towards this dream that is being put out there through TV and media and so on, and thinking that that's what they have to reach and that's what they want to reach. Not realising the extent to which the odds are stacked against them, because the people who are manufacturing this false image that we all have to aspire towards, have no interest in people reaching that world or reaching that image that they are putting out there.

It is simply there to make money. This selling of a type of a lifestyle and a type of a way of being, and a way of interacting, and communicating, this lifestyle that has being delivered rolled out on a global scale, and that gaslights global communities into doubting themselves and their own classical culture, and making people feel that they have to literally totally change who they are as a person.

That whole culture is just there to make some corporations some money. That's it.

And so how I see it, is that these countries are just being milked for all they have got and given back nothing. I mean, I can only say, given back nothing. Maybe some trashy music, maybe some trashy food that has been produced by one company that dominates the world, beginning with M that I am not going to mention, and some trashy, cheaply-produced clothes by all those poor women in those factories in places like Bangladesh. And that's pretty much it. Oh, yeah. And the trashy TV shows and the trashy movies. I mean, it's pretty much like 95 % trash.

This is what people are being gaslighted into glorifying today. In they are being trained to glorify vacuous trash.

So if you want to get out of that, you have to get out of that because this is like a crazy, nonsensical world that is being manufactured for us to live in. And you are seeking a way back to a path of beauty, a path of knowledge, a path of classical ethics. You have to grab the traces that exist and are rapidly disappearing.

So as I say here, the pathway back to that authenticity becomes a battle zone of aggressive distractions, relentlessly dragging the attention away from its state of contemplation. The delineations of the prophetic path become obscured by a world that seeks to substitute authenticity with false values, images, messages, and expectations.

So we are being taught to have false expectations of this world, and this naturally leads to a massive state of discontentment and anxiety. And this culture that is being deployed through the media, through the movies, through the magazines, through the music, through the through the cafes, through the restaurants, the fast-food chains, and so on, is being driven by the Nafs, and what I mean by that is that when you look at the root of this hyper-materialistic, fake culture, at the root of it are a group of people who, like I said, want to make money, but who are also appealing to the lowest desires of the human being.

It's a Naffs-driven culture. It's an Ego-driven culture. And we don't know where it's going to end except to say that it is literally destroying whole countries. It is destroying people. It is destroying families. It is destroying communities. It os destroying souls and minds.

That is what is more important, is that this gaslighting, this brainwashing that is going on and confusing people in Muslim-majority countries, who think that they have to reinvent themselves or take themselves apart and put themselves back together.

Is creating a world of uprooted people, uprooted populations who don't know who they are anymore.

Most people, probably even watching this video, will feel that they don't know who they are, or who they are meant to be. Who am I meant to be in this world? I have got different messages telling me that I am supposed to be different ways. I am supposed to be this way. I am supposed to be that way. And I don't know how I am meant to be and what I am meant to be.

So then once you lose the knowledge of how to come to know yourself, once you lose the path.