CULTURE OF ISLAM

069 Our Special Faculties! (How Should They Be Used, How Should They Not Be Used)
Imtiaz Muhsin 09-Mar-12

The main objective of these talks (and therefore the scripts of these talks), is to stimulate thinking. Sensible, rational and logical thinking. So, my message, think, think & think! Be sensible, be rational and be logical.

069 Our Special Faculties!

Please Note
1. I have had the great privilege, (since Aug 2010), of presenting talks on the weekly Radio Program Culture of Islam [Every Friday 8 to 8.30 pm, Radio Sri Lanka - FM 97.4] 2. Since these are Radio Talks, I refer to, or address the audience as listeners 3. I am well aware that the audience to these talks would consist of people belonging to a variety of faiths. So as to make people of all faiths feel included, I very often use words and names that are common to all religions. 4. For these reasons, I use the name GOD, as well as Abraham, Moses, Jesus etc as well as the names Allah, Ibrahim (Alaihis Salaam), Moosa (Alaihis Salaam), Easa (Alaihis Salaam) etc 5. Muslims by habit usually say Sallallahu Alaihiwasallam, when the name of Prophet Muhammad is mentioned, and Alaihis Salaam' when the name of a Prophet is mentioned. However, in these series of talks I have reduced the use of these prayers & sayings to the bare minimum. 6. Muslims, also by habit, use a number of Arabic prayers or sayings, such as Alhamdulillah, Insha Allah and so on. Again, I have reduced the use of these prayers or sayings to the bare minimum. 7. Sometimes I have to write Arabic words in the English script. I have devised my own way of writing Arabic in English, as follows;

th TH

s Ss SW

DHL DHZ

H h

Gh GH

Information on these talks along with all download links can be found on my on my Blog (http://imtiazm.wordpress.com/) The dates or the schedules of these talks can be viewed on the Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/ImtiazMuhsin786) The Scripts of these talks can be downloaded from www.ScribD.com (www.ScribD.com Author Imtiaz Muhsin) The audio files of these talks can be downloaded from YouTube (YouTube Channel Imtiaz Muhsin) The YouTube Link to this talk is at

All Praise and Thanks is due to Allah and Allah alone Alhamdulillah! P.S. The picture on the cover is that of the Dhanakawewa Jummah Mosque in a remote village in the Anuradhapura District in Sri Lanka

069 Our Special Faculties!

069 Our Special Faculties!

Dear Friends, I greet you all with Assalamu Alaikum!

(How Should They Be Used, How Should They Not Be Used)

Alhamdulillah, it has given me great pleasure to present these talks. I have been talking on a number of topics on the theme Knowing God or Knowing Allah I prefer to refer to God as Allah Taaalah or Allah the most exalted. Whilst choosing topics for this theme I began a new subseries Is this what we are created for Now, this sub series had a number of sequential topics today we are covering the 7th such topic titled Our special faculties, how should they be used, how should they not be used? Now, to discuss what these special faculties and to point them out or describe them in context, it becomes necessary that I describe to you, very briefly the earlier six topics as I had presented them , because they were in sequence, leading up to todays topic. So let me first read out the six earlier topics in this sub series Is this, what we are created for? and then point out the main points of each discourse 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. What do we see, on Earth? Talk No 61 Who are we? Where do we fit in? Talk No 62 Our Special Benefits, on Earth Talk No 63 What makes us stand out? What makes us special? Talk No 66 Who is really in charge? Talk No 67 What does God or Allah tell us about Himself? Talk No 68

Firstly, What do we see on Earth here we are on this wonderful planet Planet Earth Now what do we see? We see the Earth, its systems, its beauty, its purity. We notice - it is very, very obvious to all of us, we cannot miss it - everything is meticulous, everything is meticulously planned designed and programmed. I spoke on how the Quran Aayath points this out to us, draws our attention to them, motivates us to look at them to contemplate on them, to view them in new dimensions and I mentioned just one of these Aayaths Aayath No 190 form Surah Aal E Imran

069 Our Special Faculties!

We are introduced to a new dimension, to study the workings of this Earth by studying the interplay of these 4 factors; 1. The manner in which the Universe has been created, 2. The manner in which the Earth has been created and 3 & 4 The alternation of the Night and the Day I then spoke on the rotation of the Earth on an imaginary axis and its revolution around the sun, and gave you the astonishing figures that we are standing on a huge globe this planet Earth which is rotating at over 1,000 miles per hour and zooming round the sun at a speed of over 66,000 miles per hour simply amazing! I then described how provisions appear on this Earth and compared it to a super Market I called the Earth a Super Super Market because how much of provisions are taken out or consumed from the Earth, a system is in place whereby these provisions are regularly replaced. No fuss! No bother! I then described the food chain, and my observation that we are not part of that food chain, we are neither hunters or the hunted, predator or prey we are above all that we farm, we herd! I then described the amazing way the food chain works, even animals like the Polar Bear and the Arctic Fox are provided food, their food, the seals and birds, migrating from far away geographical locations and providing food to these animals, at the correct time in the correct place simply amazing! And I ended that talk with the statement and the question; Somebody has planned it, designed it, created it and is sustaining it. Who? Why? What for? Now to briefly describe the second talk the title was, Who are we? Where do we fit in? Every living Organism has evolved We have not evolved we have arrived! I briefly discussed the evidence for evolution as well as the fact that there is no evidence covering important links in the theory that Man evolved from the Apes or the Primates. I quoted the following 2 Aayaths from the Holy Quran;

(002:030)

069 Our Special Faculties!

So we see that Allah Taaalah informs us that He created the Bashar (human beings) and placed him on Earth as His Khaleefah or Vicegerent. I then spoke on the behavior of everything from the Heavens, the Earth and everything in between and explained that everything demonstrated programmed knowledge, whilst the Human Beings displayed learnt knowledge. This leads to a big question Would we or would you put an intelligent animal without any knowledge in a very special environment that is fully fully programmed?? I then ended this talk with my assumption or supposition We are Aliens, our space ship is our bodies, our destination is Jannath or Jahannam, Heaven or Hell We are transit visitors being tested! Now to briefly describe the third talk the title was, Our Special Benefits, on Earth It appears that this Earth is for all the creatures whilst, all the creatures as well as all the elements on Earth, the serve us. There are many Aayaths in the Holy Quran that points out these amazing features and facilities. The day serves us, the night serves us, the Sun, the Moon the Stars serve us, as do all creatures on Earth, in very subtle ways. The energies, the powers, the forces that are found in the atmosphere serve us. We even possess the ability to train animals to serve us Good examples are the Dog, Horses, Mules, Donkeys, the Camel, Llama, the Cow, the Bull, and the Elephant amongst Sea Creatures we have been able to train Dolphins and amongst birds we use the Eagle to hunt and Pigeons for carrying messages. Anyone who has watched the daily Elephant Dance at the Dehiwala Zoo, would be amazed at our ability to make Elephants even stand on their heads, with their legs up in the air! We are able to detect and make use of energies such as electricity, Radio Waves, Microwaves, Xrays and Gamma Rays serve us in a variety of ways. Every animal is created for a particular environment. However it becomes obvious that we are not made for any particular environment or ecosystem, we can adapt to almost every environment or eco system on Earth, and now we are even learning to establish human stations in the far reaches of the sea as well as in space amazing! No animal would even go near fire, but we are able to manage fire, and we use to for innumerable purposes. It is because of our management of fire that we can live in cold environments and we can process foods to make food or to cook food so that unpalatable and indigestible foods become both palatable and easily digestible. And as I have mentioned earlier, every animal has its place its niche in the food chain, but humans are not in the food chain, we are above that, we do not hunt we are not the hunted. We farm! We herd! Should not all these be described as our special benefits, on Earth?

069 Our Special Faculties!

Now to briefly describe the fourth talk the title was, What makes us stand out? What makes us special? In this talk I spoke about what is it that we are endowed with that make us special, that makes us stand out on Earth? On observing our bodies, our physiology and our bio-mechanics, along with reading the Aayaths or the Signs in the Holy Quran, we begin to realize that 2 special factors that we are endowed with are our minds, or should I say our brain & minds and our hands. All other vertebrates have 4 legs (no hands), fins or wings only the primates have hands but their use is very limited, whilst we have hands that can be used for a variety of purposes and through the use of our minds and hands we can create machines to do things that we cannot do with our bare hands. The Brain or the Brain along with the mind is an amazing feature. A special gift from God, to us human beings. The Quran gives it many features, described as the seeing or the process of seeing, the hearing or the process of hearing, the Qalb or the Heart, the SWudhoor or the heart, Afidha or the feelings and Aql or the intelligence. Are not all these amazing features and the best part of it all, God has given us an added gift we get what we think! I know that this might sound farfetched, but in my talk I have gone to great lengths to substantiate this observation through the research of a Professor of Psychology Dr Erantha De Mel and quoting from his book Optimizing of the Infinite mind All the processes of thinking that is described by science fits in to the Aayaths of the Quran that describes the special features of our thinking and our brain. So we ask the question, who made us special, who made us stand out? Now to briefly describe the fifth talk the title was, Who is really in charge? In this talk, I just elaborated on two phenomena the rainfall in Colombo and the study and the arrangement of celestial bodies and it becomes obvious that these phenomena are huge, majestic, precise and mighty and obviously precise, mathematical precision and controlled so who is in charge ? And then last week, I spoke on the sixth topic What does God or Allah tell us about Himself? God or Allah Taaala is indescribable that is He just cannot be described through the use of our intellect and our senses He is beyond all that. But then we do have the ability to look around and realize that there must be this mighty majestic supreme power that is controlling everything not just controlling but it is obvious that this same power has to have been the planner, designer, the creator, the sustainer, the controller or the manager, and it is only human to want to know more about Him. The Holy Quran is the book that describes Him in language that describes His Signs and when we read about these signs and then see the world through this description then we realize the wonderment of God or of Allah Taaalah. Allah Taaalah describes Himself through His attributes and the Holy Quran describes only 100 of them and these 100 are known as the Asma Ul Husna.

069 Our Special Faculties!

So Allah Taaalah points out to us that He is The attribute Ar Rahmaan, or the benevolent The attribute of Ar Raheem, or the Merciful The attribute of Al Malik, or the King The attribute al Quddus or the Holy or the pure The attribute of As Salaam, the peace or the source of peace and safety, and so on. He points out His attributes so many times in the Holy quran these numbers should impress anyone as to the lengths Allah taaalah has gone to describe Himself in the form of His Signs, in the Holy Quran; The Holy Quran contains many thousands of Aayaths or Signs of Allah Taaalah and they are complied in to a little more than 6200 verses. The noun ilah (meaning God) appears 147 times The proper noun Allah appears 2699 times The form of address, Allahumma appears 5 times The noun Rabb appears 975 times The noun Rahmat appears 114 times The nominal Raheem appears 116 times The sentence Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem In the name of Allah the very benevolent the very Merciful, appears 114 times The other names or attributes appear thousands of times in many forms right through the Holy Quran. So now we come to todays topic namely Our special faculties how should they be used, how should they not be used? Firstly what are our special faculties? I went through quite a lot of pain to point out to you that our special faculties cover many fields many dimensions and this should convince us that we are very special. The 6 topics I have discussed thus far are worded in a number of questions let me list out the many questions and provide with you my observations. By observing the World and by reading the Aayath or the Signs in the Holy Quran that point out or give us focus to our observations; Q1 What do we see, on Earth? We see special, processes; special systems and we see they are all working for our benefit Q2 Who are we? We are a very special creation on Earth enjoying a place, a status above all other creatures on Earth Q3 Where do we fit in? In this set up on Earth all animals have a niche, a place in a glorious system. We, human beings on the other hand are above that system; we do not occupy a niche in the system the whole system works for us. The system itself is for our benefit. Q4 Our special benefits, on Earth Everything serves us, everything is subjugated for us

069 Our Special Faculties!

Q5 What makes us stand out? What makes us special? The special features that we are equipped with are the brain, or better described as the brain and the mind along with our hands Q6 Who is really in charge? It becomes very obvious that some great majestic, mighty supreme power is in charge and who could that be but God, as Muslims refer to Him as Allah, Allah Taaalah And the final Q, Q7 What does God or Allah tell us about Himself? Allah Taaalah describes many of His attributes in the Holy Quran and we realize that all these great wonders are His creation and He has created it for a great purpose, we have a role in that purpose, and in our life time we are given every opportunity to seek that [purpose and to fulfill it Insha Allah! So, again, the title of todays topic? Our special faculties how should they be used, how should they not be used? First let us see what could we do then maybe we could work out, what we should not do. One way of looking at the World is, to look at it as a place of opportunity. We do realize that we are special, we do realize that we have a wonderful brain, we do realize that not only do we have hands that can accomplish a variety of tasks, but we could also learn the know how what we call the technology to attend to tasks that we cannot perform with our bare hands. We can communicate, we can command, we can adapt, we can learn. So we embark on this great journey of building our world a virtual world on Earth. We join society, seeking out our niche in this virtual world we call it our vocation and we use every facility we call it every resource, to earn, to grow rich, to become powerful, to become influential and the more we succeed the more we think that God is with us. This is a World of creating and then fulfilling our desires. We call it a rat race in fact if we were to study it closely we find that we associate almost all the undesirable qualities of animals in this race to become richer and more powerful. Everyone starts out with good intentions and good honest practices, but then with growing involvements and stresses, honesty and fair play is almost impossible to maintain. We pride ourselves on being professional when we ruthlessly eliminate all those whom we sense as weak. Is this how we should use our faculties? Now there is another way it may sound strange to us it is the way of Prophets and great thinkers, those that thought about God and the purpose of the world and its creation. They did realize that the world had every appearance or had a sort of a magnetic urge, an appeal that we should take some time and sit and meditate. We feel this strange urge in almost every un-spoilt environment. When we look at a clear and dark night sky, when we sit beside an unpolluted beach, when we sit beside a flowing river, when we watch a waterfall or an un-spoilt mountainous landscape and so on, there is this urge deep within us that we should take some time and spend it whilst meditating in this environment. Wise religious leaders did this.

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They looked at the way all life both animals and plant derive their nourishment, and thought out that the livelihood of all these creatures have already been arranged, and arranged in marvelous ways, so why should not we believe that our livelihood has also been taken care of, and taken care in marvelous ways? When we go through the teachings and lifestyles of great religious leaders, especially that of Prophet Muhammad (Sal), we would realize that all of them demonstrated, (through great conviction) that they had a purpose in life. Even seeking out that purpose itself was a way of meeting or even fulfilling that mission. And whilst trying to seek out this purpose every obstacle or difficulty that would come in their way was treated with both wisdom and patience, almost as if to say that these obstacles and difficulties are in fact landmarks that would line the way of this noble mission. Should we too not try to use our faculties to discover this path and to live that life the life of fulfilling our great and noble purpose? Should we not use the gift of brain and mind the faculties associated with it, namely the seeing, the hearing, the Qalb or the heart, the SWudhoor or the chest, the Aql or the intelligence and the Afidha or our feelings to detect and to follow the great attributes of Allah Taaalah to see how he keeps this great Universe, Earth and the space in between functioning the systems and the processes? So, it is our choice. Our special faculties how should they be used, how should they not be used? Let me now quote a few Aayaths from the Holy Quran that would give us a clear indication of the how we should use our faculties and how we should not use our faculties. Firstly to describe how we should not use our faculties I like to read to you the Aayaths of the Holy Quran which appear in Surah Nisa Surah No 119 & 120 which describes how Shaithaan says he will mislead us Shaithaan obviously wants to corrupt our minds

069 Our Special Faculties!

(004:120)

I would now like to read to you two Aayaths from the Holy Quran that describes how we should use our faculties and how this could make us wise persons, or the Oolul Albaab

(003:191)

And now finally some beautiful words of advice from Allah Taaalah, again from the Holy Quran it is how we should use our faculties to face whatever situations Allah Taaalah may subject us to, so that we could achieve our objectives of realizing the purpose of creation.

So, Alhamdulillah, during the last few weeks I have been able to deliver a sequence of talks on the subject Is this what we are created for

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069 Our Special Faculties!

Insha Allah I hope to deliver the talk on the final episode, namely; The Two Paths I hope that all you listeners have enjoyed listening to these talks as much as I have enjoyed doing research in to these subjects and then presenting them to you. I sincerely pray and hope that all of you benefit from these talks as much as I have benefitted from doing research from the Quran and then preparing and presenting these talks to you. May Allah Taaalah guide us all and accept us all. Jazza Kalla Khairan. Assalamu Alaikum

Imtiaz Muhsin Colombo Sri Lanka crescent786@hotmail.com

You Tube Channel - HaneefanMusliman

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069 Our Special Faculties!

Series 2 The Talks numbered 054 to 071 is under a series titled Knowing Allah Taaalah or Knowing GOD The details of the scripts of these 16 Episodes (Talks) are as follows;
Talk No Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Talk Number & Title 054 Ilm Knowing Allah 055 Rationality - The Foundation of Islam 056 Is Man Special? 057 Ar Rahmaan - The Beneficent 058 Nature or GOD? 059 Our Relationship with GOD! Sub Series: 060 Is this what we are created for? (Is this what we are created for? Part 1) Sub Series: 061 What do we see on Earth (Is this what we are created for? Part 2) Sub Series: 062 Who are WE? Where do we fit in? (Is this what we are created for? Part 3) Sub Series: 063 Our benefits on Earth (Is this what we are created for? Part 4) Sub Series: 066 What makes us 'Stand Out'? What makes us 'Special'? (Is this what we are created for? Part 5) Sub Series: 067 Who is in charge? (Is this what we are created for? Part 6) Sub Series: 068 What ALLAH Teaches Us, About Himself (Is this what we are created for? Part 7) Sub Series: 069 Our Special Faculties How they should be used, How they should not be used! (Is this what we are created for? Part 8) Sub Series: 070 The TWO Paths 071 Is this what we are created for? A review of Parts 1 to 8 from the Sub Series Is this what we are created for? Date Broadcast Dec 9th 2011 Dec 16h 2011 Dec 23th 2011 Dec 30th 2011 Jan 6th 2012 Jan 13th 2012 Jan 20th 2012 Jan 27th 2012 Feb 3rd 2012 Feb 10th 2012 Feb 17th 2012 Feb 24th 2012 Mar 2nd 2012 Details of Picture on Cover Wellawatte Jummah Mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka Parasangaswewa Mosque (a remote village) in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka Mutwal Jummah Mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka The Akbar Mosque in Slave Island, Colombo, Sri Lanka Mosque in Matara, from the Southern Province of Sri Lanka Beach Mosque at Kalmunaikudi in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka A Mosque in the Kurnegala District, Sri Lanka Maradana Jummah Mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka Colpetty Jummah Mosque, in Colombo, Sri Lanka The Jummah Mosque at Natpidimunnai, in the Ampara District, Sri Lanka The Devatagaha Mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka A Mosque in a rural village in the Ampara District, in Sri Lanka The Jummah Mosque in Oluvil a village in the Ampara District, Sri Lanka The Dhanakawewa Jummah Mosque in a remote village in the Anuradhapura District in Sri Lanka Mosque at Madhavakulam in the Puttlam District, Sri Lanka A Mosque by a river in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka

Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10

Episode 11

Episode 12

Episode 13

Episode 14

Mar 9th 2012 Mar 16th 2012 Mar 23rd 2012

Episode 15 Episode 16

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069 Our Special Faculties!