Full transcript of “The Battle Within: Understanding and Taming the Nafs - Dr.Umar Faruq Abd Allah”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 So, we talk about getting things in order, putting the house in order, getting everything where it ought to be. And it's important, I think, to note that we begin in the best of positions because human beings are put together properly. Human beings come into this world in a saintly state. Children are saints. Whether they are Muslim children, Christian Jewish Hindu Buddhist children, whatever they may be, they are born as saints and they are born intact and they have natural capacities that are extremely beneficial. In fact, we can learn a great deal about children.
0:46 We can learn a great deal about the way that they deal with sickness and the way they deal with the problems that confront them. Um you know so Allah created us good he created us wholesome he created us well we don't believe in anything that is similar to a doctrine of original sin uh the doctrine of original sin by the way is not a universal Christian doctrine just as a matter for the record. Uh original sin is a one of those mi several teachings in Christianity that develops over a long
1:35 period and original sin doesn't really become a dogma of the western church which is the one that adopts it until the 400s until the fifth century. And the person who is fundamental in instilling the doctrine of original sin is Augustinine. And Augustine who's often called the father of the western world which is an exaggeration but he's very important. Augustine came from what country? >> Tunisia, Algeria, North Africa which was part of the Latin world. the whole Latin church which will become the Roman
2:20 Catholic Church and also the Protestant churches uh it's rooted in North Africa which is an important point. It's a sideline but it's very important to know that Christianity uh as it emerges in history and then as it changes in history and changes itself in history. uh Sheikh Abdul Hakim Winter noted to you for example that the doctrine of trinity which is pretty much today a standard Christian doctrine it has nothing to do with the Bible whatsoever and it was a foreign teaching to Christians in the first and the second century and in fact it develops over more than 300 years and it goes through five very distinct
3:05 stages that it goes through. So original sin is also one of these much later developments and it becomes the crux of western Christianity meaning by that the Roman Catholic Church and most of the Protestant churches. The Lutheran church for example which is one of the leading churches in the Protestant Reformation based itself almost completely on the doctrine of original sin. So we don't believe in that. And the doctrine of original sin holds that human beings are born in this world corrupted and that they cannot escape this corruption unless they uh they have a
3:51 savior who saves them from it and intervenes. We don't believe that. We believe that human beings are basically whole and sound and good and the heart therefore is installed in us in the way that it ought to be. But the tests and the troubles of life, family, society, history, they often upset the order and often we get out of order. uh this is one of the reasons why in rational medicine medicine the healer wants to know about your life and they want to know about the traumas in your life and that's because of the fact that even the nervous system in
4:36 responding to trauma uh often it gets a response which is adequate for the time but it's not adequate for the long run and this is the reason why also So to get health often uh in terms of a lot of rational theories of medicine you know you have to help the nervous system to get back into the proper order especially if there's been trauma because it will block thing it will shut things down in order to get beyond the trauma but often it doesn't get things right again. So the things that happen to us they can definitely cause disorder. Um in speaking about the order of the nefs uh one of the things that we'll
5:22 focus about in this particular session is uh the most problematic part of our identity and that is the irrational soul. What we call in Arabic the nefs, the lower self, the ego. Uh sometimes we call it the self or we call it the soul. I think irrational soul is one of the best ways to speak about it in its beginning phase again it will become rational. So the nef uh is not in any way faded to be our enemy or to be incapable of reform and advancement. Not at all. Very much to the contrary. But
6:09 the nef as it begins in us as it first appears is very problematic. And the intellect can be that way too. Some of the questions that people have asked after class is about the way that intelligence is abused. Um and the nef then because it contains the lower passions of anger and appetite. It is the bedrock upon which we build and it is that aspect that appears very clearly and very strongly in children. And we define it in Arabic as and
6:58 that the irrational soul or thes is the unifying reality or we might say the unifying principle that brings together our powers or capacities. ities for anger and appetite. Anger and appetite. Okay. So therefore to talk about the nefs then it's also good to say a little bit about appetite and a little bit about anger. And we've done this before so there'll be some repetition here. But appetite shahua again it is not evil and uh it is not satanic. uh it is not flawed by a fall or
7:44 original sin. Appetite is something that is basically very very good and we call it uh in Islamic sciences the instinctive quality, the inward quality that is created in us to guide us toward the fulfillment of all bodily and psychological needs so that we can live and be healthy and strong. Okay, let me go through that again. So, it is an instinctive or inward quality that God created in us to guide us toward the fulfillment of our bodily and
8:31 psychological needs so that we can live and be healthy and strong. So the baby when he or she is born wants to nurse and the baby wants to be taken care of and the baby wants to be cleaned and so forth. These are all appetites but they are absolutely essential to its life and its psychological well-being. And the same thing in all of us. We want to eat, we want to drink, we want to be warm, we want to uh be protected. We have all of these appetites and they are an essential part of us. Nothing wrong with them at all.
9:16 Anger on the other hand is a different type of passion and it is not evil in itself but like appetite it fulfills a different function. So it is an instinctive quality, an inward quality that God created in us to guide us towards repelling, turning away, diverting, repelling bodily harms and psychological harms that threaten our lives, our health and our strength. Right? So you got that. So anger is an instinctive quality or inward quality that God
10:04 created in us to guide us towards repelling, turning away bodily and psychological harms that threaten our lives and our health and our strength. So anger is basically a very proper quality and appetite is also and in fact as we will see in a moment out of appetite as it develops under the guidance of knowledge and of intellect we get the power to understand benefit universal benefit. what we call in Arabic muslah muslah those things those ways of life
10:51 of eating and drinking and living with each other that give us salah they give us well-being the place where you find well-being and anger on the other hand when properly developed under knowledge prophetic guidance with intellect in the heart. It enables us to discover Mephs, those things which are causes of harm. Method, the things that have that entail in them facad, corruption, decay. Okay, so that's really amazing. And again, look at the continuum. You see
11:38 that all the many of our scholars say our great scholars say that the whole essence of Islamic law is to bring musla to bring benefit and to ward off messed and in fact the very capacity that you have to do this is rooted in appetite and in anger and for that reason also Imazali may Allah be pleased with him. He regards appetite and anger to be soldiers of the heart, armies of the heart. The soldier can destroy the kingdom that he or she is supposed to protect. But
12:26 nevertheless, these are meant to be soldiers of the heart. And that means as we've said several times that we are not concerned with mortifying our appetite although we have to discipline it and sometimes in order to discipline it we have to discipline it very severely but the people in Islamic history who do that they will ultimately come back to it but in a very wholesome and healthy way. Um so these are also soldiers of the heart and um these soldiers of the heart though have to be under central command. They are not generals. They're soldiers
13:13 and uh they cannot think and they don't have any idea of strategy whatsoever.
