Ihsan: Making The World A Beautiful Place

Bismi-Llah, Al-Rahmani, Al-Rahim. Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammadin wa Aali Muhammad. Assalamu aleykum to anyone who might be listening in to this short video and anyone else who might be passing by, hello and welcome to this short video where we discuss spirituality, society, politics, matters of the heart, matters of the mind.What are we doing in this world today and what is happening to humanity today.

And particularly from an Islamic perspective and from the teachings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad and his family. What can we do to combat the destructive and disturbing powers that we are seeing being enforced in the world today?

You may notice behind me some bookshelves. For some reason, many people who read books, or who are academics, or who study, or who are scholars, like to have books on display, when they are talking to a camera and they are doing podcasts or videos. So I thought I would join in the trend and have some books on display behind me. I'm not sure whether it is to demonstrate to viewers that you do actually really read books. Anyway, I thought it might make a little bit of an aesthetic difference from the usual white background.

So I'm just going to be referring to a couple of lines in a book I brought out called "Shi'i Spirituality for the 21st Century". I will have a video on what is meant by Shi'i for those who are passing by and who don't know what that means. But for now, I'm just going to take a couple of thoughts or a couple of lines from this tradition for us to reflect on. And this is in chapter two of the book "Entering the Prophetic Path".

There was a woman the other day who was from an atheist background from Scandinavia, and she said that one of the reasons that she is interested in Islam is because of the Islamic conception of God, the Islamic conception of the Divine. And when you do go more deeply into the teachings about the Islamic conception of God, it does make a lot of sense. It's a very logical conception of the Divine.

But just for now, I'm going to take this line, which is attributed to Holy Prophet Muhammad's, peace be upon him, cousin and successor, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, peace be upon him, where he calls the Divine a Being, but not through the phenomenon of being, a being, but not through the phenomenon of being.

Some scholars have said that the Islamic conception of God, especially these speeches attributed to Ali Ibn Abi Talib, peace be upon him, are a form of apophatism par excellence. So they are a form of what is called 'negative theology', where God's transcendence, the Divine's transcendence is expressed by saying what the Divine is not. Because it is not possible to say what the Divine is, because then there is the idea that you are going to limit the parameters of the Divine, we are going to limit the conception of the Divine, then it is more appropriate or effective to describe the Divine by saying what it isn't. And often the style in which the Divine is described is by making an affirmation, but that is followed up with something that also negates, or a negation of any misunderstanding that the human being might have.

So here we have Allah, which Allah just means the deity, literally. Allah, the word for deity is "Ilah" in Arabic. Allah means the deity. So Allah is not a personal name for God, it just means God. And God is being described here as an entity that is above and beyond material existence. Obviously above and beyond material existence, above and beyond having been created, but above and beyond also the phenomenon of being.

Obviously, we are in a material world that consists of the phenomenon of being. In fact, as many people may be aware, a whole philosophy arose in the early 20th century called phenomenology, which was looking at the actual substance of being itself, the actual thing of being itself, what being is. Although Martin Heidegger, who was one of the specialists in this area. He never actually defined what he meant by being.

And there are a lot of discussions between Muslim philosophers and European philosophers on trying to perceive the Divine, trying to conceive of the Divine, or trying to find the truth through the phenomenon of being. When you do look at Martin Heidegger's conception of being, it does tend to come across more as material idea of being as in the physical world. But Heidegger was also accused of being too metaphysical. So it could be said that perhaps his conception of being is somewhere in between the metaphysical and the physical. And obviously, he deliberately refrained from defining it, in one way or the other.

So we have what is called the phenomenon of being, the material world. And in the Islamic conception of reality, where you have different levels of existence, or higher levels of existence that are ever more subtle, they are also included under this category of the phenomenon of being, the thing of being.

But Allah, the Deity, is above and beyond this phenomenon, because Allah, the Deity, is the one that has brought this phenomenon of being into existence. So they cannot be compared.

In the Islamic conception of the Divine, Allah, the Deity, God, is above and beyond all conception of the human mind. Above and beyond all definition, above and beyond all words that can be used to describe the Deity. And so the being of the Deity is also above and beyond any conception that can be had in the human mind.

So, therefore, when we look at the phenomenon of being around us, and we even try to conceive of, or sometimes there are people who experience the higher levels of existence, the more subtle levels of existence, the more spiritual levels of existence, even when we conceive of those or we perceive them or we experience them, still Allah, the Deity, is above and beyond even that, above and beyond the more subtle levels of being.

So that's just a small note on a statement that was attributed to Imam Ali, peace be upon him. Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who is the cousin of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his successor. And this can be found in various books of Hadith, various books of narrations in the Islamic tradition.

Secondly, I was just going to talk a little bit about the word 'Ihsan'. I'm sure a lot about this can be found on YouTube. But in this particular chapter, chapter two of the book, I also touch upon 'Ihsan', which is an important component - component sounds very intellectual - an important aspect or an important dimension of being in this world. It is a very important aspect of what it is to be a human being.

Essentially, it has been described by some scholars as doing what is beautiful. And Ihsan, in a sense, is going above and beyond just fulfilling the laws of the Qur'an or the laws of the Shari'ah. A lot of people can end up, maybe not deliberately, but end up with a tick box mentality in terms of doing the right thing, in terms of the laws that we find in Islamic tradition. But Ihsan, doing the beautiful, again, is something very, very deep. It's very, very vast, because it is about actively making this world a beautiful place.

And unfortunately, when you see what has happened to the world, with the emergence of modernity and post-modernity, we see that beauty has somehow been lost in many ways.

Beauty in the way that people behave, beauty in the consciousness that people have as a human being in the society, beauty in architecture, that has definitely been lost. It is quite horrific what has happened across the globe with the explosion of cities where there just has been no consideration of what it is to be a human being. No trees, no space. I don't know what it costs just to maybe not have gray concrete buildings. What does it cost just to have buildings that are not square cubes.

And this isn't just a Middle East countries where we have had or say, South Asia, where we have had population explosions and a very quick mass expansion of blocks and projects and estates. Also in the United States. When I have gone to the United States, I have been a bit baffled at the architecture, or lack of it. And what I see around me in the few cities I have gone to, apart from Chicago, I know there are other cities as well that do have some beautiful architecture, but mainly from cities that I have been in and even slightly outside those cities. I have seen mainly concrete blocks. I mean, it is very, very featureless.

The same in Canada as well, that I have just been baffled as to like, these are the wealthiest countries in the world. These are the supposed to be the most advanced countries in the world. So why couldn't they find architects to build anything aside from a queue, aside from a grey queue? And I have been told by people that live in Canada, particularly in the winter, I mean, winter is depressing, can be depressing for many people. But I have heard from people living in Canada that it can get very depressing, and people do get depressed, partly because of the environment.

If you have an environment that has a dead aesthetics, that is featureless, that doesn't speak to you, that doesn't reflect your inner life, of course, you are going to start to feel depressed.

So these are just a few thoughts on Ihsan and the necessity in Islam for doing the beautiful, for doing beautiful acts, for doing beautiful deeds, for saying beautiful words, as long as they are sincere and authentic, for making the world a beautiful place. That is what we are supposed to be doing here. And of course, given the media over the last 10-20 years, people might be quite surprised to find that this is an idea that exists in Islam, but it actually is a very important aspect of it. Trying to make this world a beautiful place, which, of course, then means that you have to have some conception of what ugliness is as well.

So having a sense of aesthetics in Islam, spiritual aesthetics, what enhances the world for the human being, what gives the human being a sense of well-being and harmony, and which enables the human being to grow, spiritually, and emotionally, and psychologically. This is a part of the Islamic teachings.

And this is one of the things that attracted me to Islam many years ago. And this is what I have tried to practise, may not have succeeded very well because we are all flawed human beings. But next time anyone sees some kind ugly deed in the media, or ugly deed in the news, committed by people claiming to be Muslim, you can remind them that actually doing beautiful deeds is what we are meant to be doing.

And that goes for any human being. All human beings are meant to be working together to make this world a beautiful place. And it is not happening right now. So let's try and think of ways that we can do that. Thanks for listening. And inshaAllah I'll see you in the next video. As-salam alaykum.