https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=s4Y8IqgStZY
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 paintings hang 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 land. He died in Spain but extraordinary individual. 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 did all 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 think about things, a mentor of mine and a friend of mine, Dr. Thomas Cleary wrote a book called Zen Koans. He also translated the Quran, he’s one of the brilliant translators of our lifetime, but he wrote a book called Zen Koans and in the introduction of that book he actually says that the purpose of a koan is to snap people out of sloppy thinking. I think I read that book, yeah. But he says in there, but you don’t need a koan 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 an easy thing to try to get a toehold in a different tradition, especially if you don’t even have a toehold in your own. Yeah, 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 Gibbon said is that Islam spread because it was a very easy religion to understand, so this idea that I can’t understand it, I’m having a hard time, it’s not that hard to understand. I mean Islam is actually very straightforward. Okay, then 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, 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 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 zakat, that 2.5 percent 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, 2.1 fortieth 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 heresy, of excellence in the world, and he said Ihsan is to worship God as if you see God, and if you don’t see him, at least you know that he sees you, so you have an awareness of that, 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 once who just zoomed 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 the guy, he let him go, but you know, that’s people when they’re in the presence of authority, they tend to behave well, unless they’re an utter rebel, I mean there are those people. When you go to the restroom, you always close the door behind you, right? You don’t want a random passerby looking in on you, so why would you let people look in on you when you go online? Your online privacy is important, that’s why I use ExpressVPN, and you should too. Using the internet without a VPN is like going to the restroom without closing the door. How is that? Well, your internet service provider knows every single website you visit. They can sell this information to ad companies and tech giants who then use your data to target you. ExpressVPN creates a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet, so your online activity can’t be seen by anyone. It works on phones, laptops, even routers, so everyone who shares your wi-fi is protected, and all you have to do is just fire up the ExpressVPN app and click one button. It’s as easy as closing the bathroom door. Get an extra three months of ExpressVPN free by going to expressvpn.com slash jordanyt. That’s expressvpn.com slash jordanyt for an extra three months free. Expressvpn.com slash jordanyt. 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, and 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 Nikvah, you know, they do Rosal, we have Rosal, which is the ritual, the baptism, a total immersion in water ritually to purify yourself, which is done at least once a week. Okay, so 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. I mean, 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, you 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, what would you say, 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 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 in the Talmud, which was printed by Princeton University Press, makes that argument that the Talmudic views of Christ, which he argues in that book that it was understandable given that the Jews were so persecuted by the Christians. But the Muslim theology is, 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. I’ve had many talks with rabbis and they see Islam. In fact, Kohler says that Muslims were always seen as full proselytites of the Noahitic laws, whereas Christians were not because of the Trinity. So the Trinity is, the principle of the triad is, in Plato and the Timaeus that talks about that. So the principle of the triad is a very powerful principle, and there are many many trinities in the world that we see. So I guess 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, 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- And then the idea of God 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 Meister Eckhart or even Aquinas on Trinity, you know, but Eckhart, the Godhead, you know, 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 are 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 die-physic 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, and that’s a mystery. But I don’t, this idea, Catholics never set 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 worshipping Christ as the Godhead. And I think it becomes very confusing, even for a lot of Christians. Well, I think it is. 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. Well, we can agree on a lot of things. I mean, we certainly agree on, we 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, 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. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all share the tradition of the liberal arts, which is very, very important. Maybe we could start in our efforts to move forward by concentrating on those things that unite us. you