Dogma Disrupted
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Why Idolatry Is the Greatest Evil
Shirk (idolatry) is widely known as the greatest sin a person can commit. What makes it worse than murder, oppression, and destruction? It ultimately leads back to the connection between faith and morality.
Imam Tom Facchine invites Dr. Zohair Abdul Rahman to break down the consequences of shirk within popular moral frameworks, and the places where morality fails without faith.
For more on this topic:
Why Is Shirk the Greatest Sin of All?
Want to listen on the go? Check out Dogma Disrupted on your favorite podcast platform.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. The one that is so intimately connected to you and your existence, how could you betray this being? How could you betray God? The Prophet ﷺ described it when he was asked about what's the worst evil. And he said that you make a long side, a nid, a rival alongside Allah. Wa huwa khalaqa. Yeah. He created you. Yeah. Like this idea of you betrayed your creator. Salamualaikum and welcome back to Dogma Disrupted. Today we're going to be talking about why shirk is the greatest sin. And to help us with this conversation, we have our esteemed guest, Dr. Zuhair Abdur-Rahman, who's originally from Toronto, but currently based in Australia. And the second guest we've had in a row that has firm footing both in the medical sciences and in the Islamic sciences. Welcome to the program, Dr. Zuhair. Jazakumullahu khair, Imam Tom. Pleasure to be here. Now, let's cut right into it. You make, and we'll link to the paper below. It's a very, very important paper. And I think one of the important and maybe unconventional assertions that you make in the paper is that being a good person is the most important thing. And why this is sort of unconventional, or I think a lot of people would raise eyebrows about it, is because if you're asked the average person on the street in the cultural West, whether it's North America or Western Europe or Australia, New Zealand, what's the most important thing in life? They would not come to this conclusion. They would not say being a good person is the most important thing in life. It is maybe pursuing your happiness, doing what makes you happy, following your heart. So why is being a good person the most important thing? So I think that it's very important for us when we are asked this question about what's the most important thing. I mean, that's a value question. Ultimately, the answer to this question will rest on a person's answer to another question, which is what is the purpose of your existence? What is the purpose of life?
Whatever answer that a person gives to this question, it will then determine what it means to live a good life and what the point of life is to begin with. And so when a person answers about pursuing happiness, or even you could say some people would say, oh yeah, it's just about being a good person, even though they have no religious commitments. They actually often would have failed to really answer that base, more fundamental question, which is what's the purpose of life? Because when you say what is good, what is bad, or living the good life, these are relative terms. Good and bad are relative terms to an agreed upon purpose or an objective. Like if we use these terms in a non-moral setting, and I think I give this example in the paper. If we use these terms good and bad in a non-moral setting, which we often do, like with games or with sports, chess or basketball, whatever it may be. We'll say, oh yeah, that's a good player. Or, oh, that's a good move, that's a bad move. The only reason we could use those terms is because there's an agreed upon unified objective of the game. And so whatever move or action a person did to facilitate the objective of the game, so in the case of basketball, because you're from New York, right? So basketball has been in New York, also in Toronto as well. A person does a good move, it means that they've facilitated that team to be able to get more points, and accumulate more points, and to defeat the other team or in defense. And so imagine if there was a game with no point and purpose, no point system at all. It just literally had a group of people around a circle, and they're just throwing a ball around. You wouldn't be able to say, oh, it was a good move. Why? Because there's no objective and there's no purpose. And so these terms are only, a person's only qualified to be able to use these terms about what is good and what is bad, if they've answered that question and have a coherent understanding of what is the purpose in life.
And so people are almost putting the cart before the horse. Or we can say that maybe they have latent implicit understandings of what goodness is, or what the purpose of life is, that they're not necessarily even aware of, let alone disclosing. But yet it's sort of their answer, whatever their answer is, is going to necessarily rest upon those beliefs. A hundred percent. Most people will go through life with, as you said, implicit understandings of, you know, what is their purpose, even if they don't articulate a purpose in their mind, they might not even admit that there is a purpose. But the way in which we can derive or do a bit of Istanbul from their actions, that's the way we derive it. You look at their actions and the actions will tell you what they implicitly will believe or what even a person, and this could apply to Muslims as well, by the way, what a person actually truly internalized as their purpose in this world, it can be derived from their actions, because a person doesn't act unless they believe that that action, there's value in that action and it's going to bring them towards some better end. And so if you look at the sum total of a person's actions, because a person's day is made up of a series of actions, and a person's month is made up of a series of days, and a person's year is made up of a series of months, a person's life is made up of a series of years. So fundamentally, their life goes down to their actions. And if you look at what are they aiming at with those actions from day to day, from month to month, then that will indicate to you what is their real or internalized purpose of life, a purpose of existence, even if they articulate something different, or if they say that there's no purpose at all. And that's fascinating, because what we're saying, or one of the consequences of what we're saying, is that it's not so important as to how you identify yourself or you identify your purpose,
rather that everybody's purpose is identifiable through things that are beyond your mere words and claims. Talk is cheap, like we say here. So you can say and have all the trappings of a religious belief, and you can look the part, yet the priorities that you have internally are going to manifest themselves with the decisions that you make, especially when maybe two competing imperatives run into each other. So maybe it would be useful—let's play out, because there's a lot of people— it's a mantra, I think, in our era to downplay the significance of beliefs, and to say that it doesn't really matter what you believe in as long as you're a good person. But we're saying something very, very different. We're saying that the things that you actually believe matter everything, and have far-reaching consequences for your understandings of a good person, for your understandings of what good is at all, for the purpose that you have in life. So let's tease out some consequences, maybe with some examples. What can we think of as various, very, very divergent aims, or two very divergent understandings of what good is, and how that's going to close down or open up different possibilities for action and lifestyle and things like that? You touch on a really good point here, when you talk about this idea that people often think beliefs are amoral. Not immoral, amoral, meaning it doesn't have any moral content. Especially in the West, because we're brought up and taught freedom of expression, freedom of belief. You can believe whatever you want to believe, I can believe whatever I want to believe, and there's no consequence. And it doesn't really make much of a difference. And this kind of dismissal of religious commitments, or belief systems, or any kind of metaphysical commitments, and this kind of idea that they're all the same, this tasawi, like, oh, everything's all equal, and they're all equally valid, and these sorts of things.
And part of that comes with—and I was actually just checking out your podcast, Dogma Disruptor, with Dr. Nazer. I think that was the last one. And he mentioned this point as well, which is that sometimes when we as Muslims also reduce our belief system to conclusions at the end of a syllogistic argument, then it almost lends itself to this notion that, oh, beliefs are amoral. It's like, basically, a math question on an exam sheet. You wouldn't say that a person who did very poorly in math and got a D or E, and doesn't know that the Earth—I was going to say is round, but I don't want to cause any issues there. But anyways, like, the Earth is round, or that it revolves around the sun, or that the moon revolves around the Earth, and these sorts of questions, and they just get it wrong. This does not possess any moral content. And so a lot of people equate religious belief with these sorts of facts or empirical observations, you can say. But the reality is that the types of beliefs we're talking about are not just moral. They're the epitome of what morality means, and they have very strong consequences. And we understand this. I mean, when people carry racist beliefs, or they believe that one race is superior to another race, white supremacy, or these sorts of things, people call people out for that type of belief, actually. And they might have not done anything. They might have actually discriminated, or said, you know, within the law we can't do this, but this is what I believe. People say, you're a horrible person. For what? For believing that. And are willing to sever relationships, whether we can't be friends anymore, or even with family. Honestly, this happened in the wake of George Floyd and protests in the United States, where racial issues became much more front and center and much more talked about in an explicit way. Even family, split families apart.
People not willing to continue relationships with people. And obviously, you know, we don't condone that in a sense. Islamically, you have a certain duty to maintain your relationships with your family. But just to go to show that people do care about this, but they care about it selectively. When it comes to something that's understood or culturally appropriate, then beliefs are, okay, we're going to give them full status as mattering a lot. But other beliefs are not read or not legible as significant in that sort of way. That's kind of what we're saying. That's an excellent point you bring up, and it leads me to that other aspect here. So, what you're describing, you know, in the Islamic moral system, you can say, there's kind of layers, and they're based upon haqoq, right? That's what, when we talk about good and bad, and we talk about the rights of others and the responsibilities of others, it's this Arabic term, haqoq, and it's a similar term of haq. Haq is truth, of course. And haq is a beautiful Arabic term, because haq is something that can apply to, quote-unquote, for lack of a better term, intellectual truth. But it can also refer to moral truth as well. And that's when we say, the haq of this person, alaik, upon you. Or, al-khalaq al-samawati wal-ardha bil-haq. Allah created the heavens and the earth bil-haq. It's often translated as in truth, but really in English, that doesn't make much sense, per se, to say you've created something in truth. But if you look into the, you know, the code of tafsir, Allah says this is lil-ghaya, for a purpose. That's what the term haq here is. So it's so beautiful, because the term haq actually refers to intellectual truth, like haq and batil, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is a reality, the ultimate reality. Haq is also this idea of teleology, which is like purpose. So you have ontology, teleology. But then you also have this idea of morality as well, that the haq between us and I have to fulfill your haq. And so the term haq is very interesting in the Islamic tradition, because it encompasses all of this. And this is the point. It's not selective, as you said.
In the West, when we talk about good and bad, it's purely in regards to the huqooq al-ibad, this fear of huqooq al-ibad. But it's not complete, because we also have huqooq to the unseen, to the ghayb, and to the things that we don't necessarily empirically witness, but no doubt exist, and their existence is even more important, you can say, for our essence and for our ruh, than these kind of material things. This is just the body, but the actual things that fill our consciousness, our spirit, if you don't like the term spirit, if you don't believe in these sorts of things, then surely everyone experiences their consciousness at every moment of their life, that subjectivity. What's more important to that, as we know, is meaning in this world. And that's not something that can be seen. That's something that is of the unseen. And those commitments are even more important in terms of our beliefs about that. And so we understand readily, as you said, huqooq al-ibad, how beliefs actually can be moral. They can have moral content. You mentioned about when it comes to the race issues. Before that, we don't have to look very far. The whole issue in World War II with Nazi Germany, that was a belief system. And a person might think, oh, well, these belief systems, you know, it's just a belief. No, your beliefs have an impact on your actions. That belief system, look at what it led to in terms of consequence, the destruction that it led to. Now, we will say the same thing. When it comes to beliefs about the metaphysical world, or beliefs about the ghayb, then they also carry consequences on a spiritual level. And as we're going to come to as well, I'm sure, there are other consequences beyond this, because your beliefs and metaphysical commitments, which, by the way, you can also reduce things like national socialism and Nazism and all these sorts of things. You can reduce those as well to certain metaphysical assumptions about the world as well.
But generally speaking, those actually are the most fundamental, and they will ultimately determine a person's spiritual well-being, but also as well how relate to others in society as well. So, it is of the utmost and most important, the beliefs that surround our relationship with the ghayb, and particularly, of course, our relationship with God and the divine. And that is the source of our meaning and purpose in this life. And this is extremely significant because it hits back and it undermines a different sort of account for, let's again go to the Nazi example or the racist example, in a purely materialistic account, which is common these days, they would say that, well, it wasn't necessarily these beliefs, but these were legitimating discourses or these were excuses for what was really just about resources and a power grab and etc., etc. But this thing that we're saying is much more, I think, intuitive, and also much more historical and borne out by common sense, as we're showing, I think, with the more contemporary examples with racism, that no, your beliefs do have moral content. That doesn't necessarily mean, and we can talk about this later perhaps, some people might be overly sensitive, right? Not every single difference of belief is going to have the amount of consequences that believing in racism or believing in white supremacy is going to have. Some beliefs or some differences in beliefs might be less consequential than others, but it would be a logical error to then conclude that, therefore, there is no significance or very minimal significance to these sorts of beliefs. Another thing that occurs to me when we're talking about how do we get this way, and I think in a bit we'll talk more about the selectivity and upon what grounds people are choosing, or if that's a good word or not, they're choosing to care about some beliefs
and they're choosing to not care about other beliefs. It always reminds me, of course, of my favorite sort of thing to rail against, which is secularism, because secularism has brought us, I think, to a point where, as you said, the rights that exist among the material creation seem much more primary to us and much more visceral at this stage in history than a potential sort of transgression against something that is unseen, something that's metaphysical, whether it's an entire metaphysical order, whether it's a deity, a creator, or something like that. So we also can't, I think especially for the listener, can't lose track of how these sensibilities have shifted over time. There is a historical dimension to this entire thing. Just because the fact that you think that racism is the worst evil right now or patriarchy is the worst evil or any sort of political oppression or occupation is the worst thing right now, your sense of what's the most evil thing is not just inherently self-evident. We can extend it back into history throughout all time. Your sense of what has the most significance is rather contextualized historically and has a historical dimension to it. I think maybe I'm getting ahead of ourselves here, but I think it'll set us up for some really important discussion later on. No, I think so. And I think the point that you're getting here about the selectivity and why certain people find, at least from an emotional point of view, that they feel that sense of moral outrage, that emotion of a moral outrage, a lot more with certain things, certain beliefs, certain actions, more than others. And I think one of the things that you mentioned as well about the idea that just because something maybe has more consequence doesn't necessarily mean that it's more of an issue than something else. And that touches on, I think, an important, and I think I mentioned this in the paper,
which is that there are various different ways that a person can conceptualize morality. I mean, consequentialism is a school or a madhhab, you can say, a moral philosophy that essentially states that the determination of good and bad is based upon the consequences. But there are other madhhab, you can say, you know, deontology, this idea of, you know, it looks at the intentions behind the action, and this is something that was very popularized by Kant, and the idea of the categorical imperative, this idea that if you act in a particular way, as if it is a universal principle, that everyone acts. And so it doesn't necessarily look at the consequences as much as the action and the intention behind it. And then you have virtue ethics, of course, as well, which isn't looking at the consequences either, but is looking at this action, what quality can it be derived from? And so the idea of developing virtue as being the most important thing. And so many different ways in terms of conceptualizing this, and this is at least within the Western philosophical kind of schools. And it's interesting because you can find, and at the end of the day, none of these completely kind of, you can say, surmise what morality is, especially from an Islamic point of view. And that's because, as you said, everything is focused on the حقوق العباد, and nothing in the more fundamental layer, which is necessary, and we mentioned this at the beginning of this podcast, necessary in order for there to be حقوق العباد. You have to have answers to the question of what's the purpose in life? Why are there حقوق of the عباد to begin with? What gave sanctity to these bags of atoms and molecules and particles, stardust just arranged into different areas and places? If you are a philosophical naturalist, there are no حقوق العباد. You're making it all up in your mind. And then you go on and then you say that this is the way that,
this is human rights and this is the good and whatnot, completely disregarding and neglecting and doing إعراب of the deeper and most important question in a person's life, which is, well, what gave humanity and human beings this sanctity? And it's so interesting that they speak about these things with such sanctity and such value and sacredness, and they've denied the actual sacredness in this world and the source of that sacredness. They are trying to achieve justice, but they've completely denied and ignored the most just المقصد. They state that there's beauty in this world, but they've completely denied الجميل, the most beautiful. They talk about kindness and compassion, and they've completely denied الرحمن. Not only is Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى God, the actual possesses these qualities in the most highest divine sense, but Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى and God and the divine reality is the only way in which we can even conceptualize these things as existing. And so failing to do that is deeply problematic on an intellectual point of view. And as well, as we argue in the paper, this is the greatest evil. And this is a very intellectual kind of way of describing shirk, of course. Shirk is idolatry. But in essence, it's the idea of giving the rights of Allah to other than Allah. And so you have given the rights of Allah to other than Allah, and this is one of the modern manifestations, you can say, of shirk or of idolatry in this regard of neglecting God.
That's tremendously significant and very well articulated. I think what we're saying, or maybe a consequence of what we're saying, is that every other sort of moral framework can simply be denied at face value. You say that, hey, you're a human, I'm a human, that means we should treat each other nice. I can just say, no, it doesn't. It doesn't mean that. That's not what it means to be a human. What significance does it mean that you and I are human? It's contested territory. And so you have somebody who, you know, is some sort of, you know, maybe they're a liberal humanist, and they'll say, well, it does mean this. And then you'll have someone who's, you know, more evolutionary skewed. It's like, no, we're enemies, we're rivals, we're competing for resources, right? So there is no guarantor of meaning. There is no agreed upon language or agreed upon anything through which we can arbitrate and separate out between what is good, what is a human being, what is it? What's the implication of being a human being? You know, this is a curveball I threw to Dr. Nasr, and I'd like to hear your response to it too. And I think it will bring us into the idea of ultimate truth and evil and why shirk is the ultimate evil, you know, much more beyond anything else. To what extent, to what extent are these false beliefs, are they simply intellectual failings? Or to what extent are they moral failings? Sometimes we think of false beliefs in an evidentiary sort of sense. Oh, the person didn't get the right amount of proof. I'm going to present them with proof. And then once they see the proof, they'll believe.
Unfortunately, it never really works like that, or at least seldom, a lot less frequent than we want. We find that there's this moral dimension of somebody has a moral inclination or disposition that lets the truth stick or results in the truth just rolling off the person's back without being taken seriously. So to what extent is a false belief intellectual? And to what extent is it perhaps moral? What a profound question. And I think this question is so important to really shift our understanding, or I guess you can say our paradigm of truth itself, and beliefs as well. We aren't chat GPT, we aren't artificial intelligence, we aren't AI. There isn't an algorithmic process that our brains utilize in order to generate its beliefs, its feelings, its ideas about the world. And it's something you see in the Quran. When you look in the Quran, it's so fascinating. The psychological dissection of humanity is absolutely incredible in the Quran. And just gone to the point before I go to my second point with this, but how many of the serial killers that you interviewed their neighbors, and what did the neighbors say about this? So I'm assuming so nice, I couldn't believe he did something like this. There was a very interesting and this is the idea oftentimes, we also don't know a person's real moral worth until they're driven into a situation where they face resistance, and then you see who they really are. There's this really interesting social experiment that was done many years ago. I can't find that clip anymore. But basically, it was this pop psychologist that basically said, I'm going to convince
a random person off the street, a totally normal person to commit murder in just three hours. And he did it with four people. And basically, he created this whole scenario and these sorts of things and manipulated all this stuff. But these are just four normal people. Essentially, he made it seem like he was going for a job interview, and this, that and the other thing happened. Out of those four people, and basically, there was there, there were top of a 13 story building. And they said, Look, if you don't push this old man off the, you know, the building, then this is going to happen. Three out of the four people push this innocent, old man off a 13 story building. Now, obviously, he didn't die. It was like there was a string attached and whatnot. And they were just totally shocked as to what they were capable of within three hours. They were three hours away from that. And I hope to think that a Muslim that's gone through, you know, the tradition and submitted within that situation, not because that's the true goodness that's in the heart. Just this kind of, like you said, the polite society and stuff. It's a society because obviously, things are comfortable. You know, it's very easy to just continue on with this. And it's not necessarily indication of any goodness, but it's an indication of the person's wanting to maintain the status quo. So that's number one. The second point from this is that it's important to understand, when we talk about these things, in an ideal sense that, you know, atheism, or not belief in God or rejection of the summer or not not means XYZ, it means it's an immoral choice. It's this is this, we have to also understand
that it's quite possible that there are one or bears for a particular person in a different situation. You know, other than jahil, and these sorts of things, like excuse for ignorance and whatnot. But this is not something that me and you get into, this is something that we leave to Allah. And so we don't need to then think about, you know, what we said, and then think, Oh, well, I don't know if it's a moral choice, because this person is this No, number one, you don't know, don't judge, as we say, don't judge. And that means that absolutely both the both ways. And number two, we leave that decision to Allah in terms of their judgment and their fate in the next life. And in this regard, you're you're trying to kind of go into and whatnot, I'm not going to get into salvation and these sorts of things. This stage, I believe there's, there's, there might be a paper, I think, I'm not sure about this issue. But the point is that, you know, these are things that, you know, are red herrings, that we kind of popular minds with this exception of that exception, don't get confused with these little exceptions that your mind can conjure up. But focus on the actual principles that we mentioned. And I think you summarized it greatly, or you summarized it very accurately there at the end. Yeah, no, very, very well done. Because I think one thing that happens, and we see this a lot in the West, where people react emotionally, to, to Christianity, right, and, and Christianity, either a very real wrong that was done, or even a theological wrong, right, a theological mistake. And then they make a category error, and they sort of assume that this represents all religion. And so they emotionally react to it, you know, become an atheist or style themselves as an atheist. And so it's not really as simple as we're talking, we're talking in, as you said, highly idealized ways, just to distill certain really important principles. And there's a Hadith in Sahih Muslim, where, you know, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam talks about a man who, he tells his children to, to basically cremate him and spread his ashes, right. And then he is, he's, he's brought, he's everything, everything is brought back together upon resurrection.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, you know, questions him about his, his, his doings. And he only did it because he was tremendously fearful, like he was just trying to avoid. And so many teachers that I had, and also, you know, classical urdu mat, they point to this Hadith and say, look at how this person, you know, they, they committed kufr, they doubted in the Ba'ath, right, they doubted in the, the, the resurrection and all these other things. But exactly, yeah, the ability of Allah to bring them back together, but they were forgiven, right. And the end of the Hadith is that they're forgiven because of the spirit that animated, the intention that animated that thing. It was actually in a sort of confused way, right, their, their fear of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and their ignorance that was kind of being mixed and muddled together that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knew best. So that's a very important corrective. And thank you for, for bringing that in. Okay, well, let's, let's get to shirk then. So, so what makes shirk then in the backdrop of all that we're discussing here? How can we claim that shirk is the is the greatest evil? So I think the short answer to that is when you conceptualize what is the purpose of life and what is the reality of existence, then the thing that is most contrary to that necessarily is, of course, the ultimate evil. So within the paradigm of Islam, no doubt. And that's the point. This question is nested within the theology of Islam, within the worldview of Islam. When someone asked this question, why shirk the greatest evil, it's nested within all the other commitments of Islam. And it makes sense within that paradigm of Islam. If you try to answer this question, you know, as a secularist, or without that commitment, then you're not going to be able to do that. Because as we said, these are relative terms. And so it has to be based on something in terms of what you see as the overall objective and purpose of existence, which is number one, is if you don't have an Islamic paradigm,
you might be exposed. If you come to a conclusion that's, you know, that's opposite, you could claim be a claimant to a Muslim identity. And you might reject the idea that shirk is the greatest sin, because you might actually harbor within you another paradigm, whether it's secular humanism, whether it's whatever it is, but I think we'll probably get there. Exactly. No, no, that's a very good point, right? In Islam, we have that concept of implicit beliefs. You know, we have a concept of shirk al-khafi or shirk al-asghar. We have a concept of as well, nifaq, that is asghar. We have a concept of the minor hypocrisy as well, right? And this idea that you can say you believe something, but internally, what's really clear with your actions, with your emotional reactions, is that actually, you're quite attached to something else, rather than Allah ﷻ. But yeah, so to answer that question about why shirk is the greatest evil, simply, of course, our purpose in life is, وَمَا خَلَقْتُ الْجِنَّ وَالْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونَ that we haven't created sentient beings, beings that have consciousness, beings that have some level of a will. We haven't created this category of creation, except for one purpose, and that is to engage in ibadah, to Allah alone, to God alone, to the one divine reality. That is the purpose of existence, and that is the purpose of our life, is to draw closer to God through this act of ibadah that is only possible with the sentience that human beings possess. And if that's the purpose in life, then when we talk about good and bad, and the degrees of good and bad, and the spectrum of good and bad, then the greatest of good are that which most greatly facilitates this purpose in life, and the greatest of evil are those that create
the greatest barrier or contradiction to this purpose in life. It's literally running the other way. And if you're meant to worship Allah alone, and that's the idea, and the testification of faith is لا إله إلا الله, there's nothing إله ولا لا معبود بحق إلا الله, that a person doesn't, there's nothing worthy of worship except Allah, and that's the idea. And if you violate that, if you violate that in its most raw sense, then that's obviously the ultimate evil, and that's what shirk is. Shirk, what is shirk? Shirk is, of course, in English, idolatry. From a technical sense, it's giving the rights of Allah to other than Allah, or setting up a niddu, or setting up a rival alongside Allah. And what it means to set up a rival alongside Allah is that beliefs that are meant to be for Allah, you're transferring it to another being or entity, and actions that are only actions of the heart and actions of the limbs that are meant to only be due to Allah, you're also giving that to other than Allah. This is, in essence, what shirk is, and this is violating, of course, our purpose in life. Okay, so I'm going to put you on the spot here, and I'm going to ask you some provocative questions, okay? And I only want a yes or no answer, and then you'll get to say why, okay? Let's go. Okay. Is shirk worse than white supremacy? Yes. Is shirk worse than patriarchy and misogyny? Yes. Is shirk worse than economic inequality? Yes. Why? Those are very easy. So I was just waiting to think, was this a gotcha moment or something like this? I was like, no, no, those are very easy questions, because of course, if it's the ultimate evil, it's worse than everything. So all those things that you mentioned, the patriarchy, quote-unquote patriarchy, the, you know, racism, white supremacy, and the economic disparity, and those things, I mean, especially things like, you know, racism,
and especially things like, you know, economic disparity, these are serious issues. And, you know, no one is doubting there's a problem. And obviously, as well, people kind of oppressing women and, you know, harassment towards women, this is also a serious issue as well. So this all has to do with huqooq al-ibad, right? And within your society, these can be the most important things possibly to you within your society, within this realm of huqooq al-ibad, per se, from your own kind of subjectivities, from your own context, this could be something that's very, very palpable to you. And we're not disregarding that, or saying that, oh, it's not important, or this is all, you know, no, we're not saying that at all. But rather, what we're saying is that realize this, how strong you feel about that, that is an indication, actually, a proof as well, honestly, for the existence of God and the Creator. Because you feel so strongly about that, you really believe that in that moral ethic, you believe in that moral quality, well, then you have to believe in the one who possesses those qualities, that makes those qualities real. That's the point there. So the thing that the hatred for injustice and that love for justice, you got to believe in justice, then that it exists. And the only way justice exists, is with al-muqsib, the most just. And many people, they make this mistake. You know, I was actually interested, I was a Muslim, that I got into this kind of semi-debate with, back in uni days, he had taken some psychology courses and whatnot. And, you know, this is one of the things, people in psychology undergraduate programs, they think they know everything about the world. And they just take a course in this, then they're like, Oh, yeah, I understand how everything works. And so, this person had clearly just taken something about evolutionary psychology, which, by the way, is a very disputed field,
even within, you know, academia, people call it pseudoscience. It's not falsifiable. It's very much everything is ad hoc. And evolutionary psychology is basically trying to say that the various kind of behavioral temperaments, the ways our society is structured, the ways human beings think, all these sorts of things, our reason, our rationality, our emotions, is attempting to say, basically, this is all part of evolution as well. And the only reason they came about is because they all evolved within us. And it confers some sort of advantage of survival or advantage to be able to pass our genes on to the next generation. So basically, it looks at features that we have, and then an ad hoc back projects and says, Oh, this exists because of evolution, because it confers a survival advantage. And so they will reduce everything like marriage and love and all these things to Oh, yeah, that's just, you know, evolution. And so people will try to say, Oh, morality is just evolution is evolved, so that society, we can just kind of get along with each other. And that's better for society and whatnot. But you have to realize, if you say that, then you've effectively denied that morality exists. Yes, yes, just a brief aside, or not even an aside, there will be a future episode, where we investigate red pill ideology and how it is complicit with evolutionary biology, or rests upon, significantly rests upon evolutionary biology. And I'm so happy you said that. I'm so happy you said that. I'm so happy that you guys are going to discuss that, because that was the first thing that came to mind when I was looking at the set of ideas. This is literally like, buys into that same picture. Anyways, so the point is going back to your original question. And from this, about, you know, economic disparity and whatnot, shirk is, is worse than, you know, all these things. Because, firstly, I mean, from an intellectual point of view, none of those things are wrong. If yes, the base in the bottom is the disbelief in Allah, which is, you know, it can be conceptualized as a type of shirk,
but even those that then, you know, believe, profess that you can believe in multiple gods, because then, of course, you can believe in many different things and gods and whatnot, that can justify whatever practice that you want to engage in. And so morality becomes meaningless with shirk. And so, of course, it is a higher level of evil and a higher level of dhulm, and oppression and injustice. And that's not to at all kind of devalue, of course, you know, how horrific a lot of the violations of haqooq ul-ibad is, but fundamentally, those things are not wrong, right at all, if there's shirk underneath it, those things only become wrong, in the most real sense. And by the way, it even confirms a greater sense of urgency and a greater sense of morality and value with tawhid at its bedrock. How can you do that to another servant of God? How can you do that to the creation of God, when it comes to the, you know, God created, I mean, when you think about racism, when it's squared with tawhid, that's a very abhorrent belief in relative to tawhid. You know, Allah has created, right? He has diversified our tongues, and our colors, and you're gonna say that this is now deficient somehow, that God made, you know, some deficiencies and this, that or the other, without any authority from him anyways. Yeah, no, that's that's extremely well articulated. And I'm just going to repackage it in a second here. I think that, like, what you're saying, or what we're saying, is that shirk is a meta-evil, right? If there are evils such as racism, and white supremacy, and inequality, and these sorts of things, that shirk is a meta-evil. It's an entirely different category of evil, that the sort of fight against the other evils is not even possible in a framework where shirk exists. The allowing of shirk to exist undermines any ability to call, or condemn, or push back, or fight against any other
evil. Which is why every single question, and I, you know, apologize for being provocative, but you know, any provocative question we can throw out, the answer is always shirk is worse. Shirk is worse, because if you don't take care of that, then you don't have any grounds to say that anything else is evil, if you don't take care of the tawheed shirk sort of binary here. So that's well established, mashallah, very well, very good. Are there any, we want to also, you know, some people, they have a doubt, maybe it's like, okay, well, shirk is very abstract, okay? Like, what's sort of the punishments, right? Or the negative consequences, right? That are going to happen, you know, for the existence of shirk, or the practice of shirk. And so most people, they think about the afterlife. We've talked in a sort of abstract way about, you know, this life, about some sort of consequences that can happen when it comes to undermining the ability to call anything else wrong, or immoral. Are there any other sort of palpable, tangible, because in Surah Luqman, Allah says that shirk is zulm, it's oppression, zulm al-azim, it's great oppression. And for a lot of people, moderns, you know, when they hear that language, it's very jarring and counterintuitive. How is shirk, like, such an oppression? They're used to looking at it as just a belief or a cultural practice or something. Is there any other sort of palpable circumstances or examples where we can show people how shirk is, in fact, the greatest oppression, and shirk actually has not just after-you-die effects, that it has effects right here and right now? Excellent question. So in the paper, actually, I outline the various harms that can come about from shirk, and I categorize them into different kinds of types of harm, you can say. And so obviously, there's afterlife harm, which we'll go into. But from a social point of view,
sorry, from a social point of view, you find that actually, you can see historically, and even arguably up to this day as well, that you can see that idolatrous societies and idolatrous nations and idolatrous cultures, the rituals that emanated from it, the social injustice that was embedded into its structure, was only driven and fueled because of the idolatry. And the Qur'an references this, about how Shaytan made beautiful for these societies, قتل أولادهم, killing their children, and it's referencing the idea of child sacrifices and these sorts of things, that only became justified with idolatry. And in some ways, that's worse than someone just kind of, this kind of secular humanism thing, because when it comes to idolatry, you're, you're, you're completely making irrational gods kind of, and rivaling up with, with, you know, the Creator, these sorts of things, and you're putting what and justifying whatever you want to do, by saying, Oh, this is from this God, there's no scripture, there's no book, and that's why the Qur'an will mention this many times, there's no وَلَا هُدَى وَلَا كِتَابٍ مُنِيَرٍ like, no guidance, no book, you're just making stuff up and attributing it to whatever you've created. And that is so dangerous for society. Think about that. Imagine a society that is able to do something like that. And it still exists in some form today, like when you talk about secular humanism and whatnot, you can justify anything, even with secular humanism, how many millions of people lost their lives and were killed because of quote unquote, foreign policies, right, that were then twisted in a certain way. There's no God, there's no scripture, there's no we need to make sure that from a fiqh point of view, is this valid? Or we need to look at the masalah, look to those who know, you can make up and invent whatever you want. Yeah, I look at the
look no further than Hiroshima and Nagasaki and World War Two, right, the absolutely unspeakable sort of war crime, national interest, that's basically just, you know, everything's national interest and quite case closed. Exactly. And the idol of the state, essentially, and I saw a few of your episodes on blogging theology on the impossible state, that incredible book by Wal Halak. And in that book, he really talks about the idea of the state essentially replaces the idea of religion and these sorts of things that everyone's general allegiance, ultimate allegiance is to this concept of a state. And in some ways, it can be understood as an idol itself as well. He says murder of God by the state, that's Halak's phrase. Exactly. And so, but people can commit murder as offerings for the state. I mean, not child sacrifices anymore, but their drone strikes. Yeah. That for what reason? For the interests of the state. And they truly are interests of the state, aren't they? And you're serving now, this idol that you've carved, this we're talking modern now, right, we're talking a bit more modern, this, the same conceptual idea of a shirk or an idol that we're creating this idea of a state, and we're serving it and its interests, as if it's a separate entity. But when you go into the ancient world as well, and you look at idolatry, it's the same thing, they create these idols. And then everything that they do in their culture, they justify by saying it's based on this idol, that's a very dangerous society, because the most evil aspects of the human nafs can collectively become basically part of the fabric of the society with zero checks and balances at all. It's basically turning a person into God or giving him the powers, we should say, the legislative powers of God, because at the end of the day, if we know that in an objective sense, the idol doesn't speak, that means someone has to speak for the idol. And then who's going to speak for the idol? This is such a beautiful point. And
actually, it's very profound. And it made me think about the Quran really emphasized Ibrahim Al-Islam's story, especially very emphasizes this point about the idol doesn't speak, they don't speak, this attribute of speech of being able to communicate to human beings. That is so important. If you take that away, then you are the one that you've created, you've turned yourself into the God in reality, because the idol is not speaking, there's no guidance coming from the idol, you are the one that's coming up with a beautiful point there. So one of the things that I found really, really important about your article is kind of pivoting, was your very, very quick breakdown of different ethical paradigms in the West. And you kind of use that, I think we can use that also to look at that even from these different paradigms, you can assess or identify negative consequences of shirk, both in the afterlife and in this life. And I've come across other folks who write about Islamic ethics, and honestly, I was dissatisfied, because usually they'll pick one and not others. And I really appreciated how sensitive you were to sort of the almost, we could we say interdisciplinary sort of, you know, method of Islamic ethics that is, yeah, there's consequentialism is in there a little bit and deontology is in there a little bit and virtue ethics is in there a little bit, yet it's neither, it's none of either of them purely. So maybe to bring us home here, we can run through, and you already did a little bit, but to run us through, run the viewer through a quick breakdown of these three sort of paradigms, and how when we're looking at the consequences of shirk, sort of what would, as lenses, what would those paradigms be able to reveal about the consequences of shirk to us? Very good. So when it comes to the three kind of ethical, main ethical paradigms,
if you take any ethics class, or you look into the Western ways of looking at things, they'll usually use these kind of three different schools or madhhab. And so deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics are kind of the three main ones. So when it comes to deontology, as I was mentioning, it refers to basically less on the consequences, like consequentialism is looking at the consequences of the action that tells you whether it's good or bad. If it leads to harm, then it's bad. If it leads to benefit, then it's good, or like maslaha nafsada. When it comes to deontology, the worst evil, and he said that you make alongside and did arrival alongside Allah. He created you. Yeah, like this idea of you betrayed your creator. Even in English, before it was politicized, we had the term infidel, right? And that was accurate in the senses that we're talking about. It's fidelity versus infidelity to not believe or to choose to reject probably better language is an act of infidelity and ingratitude of the highest order. SubhanAllah, I know you mentioned this point as well with Shaykhna Tahir Wyatt, Dr. Tahir Wyatt as well. This idea of fidelity, and it was a very beautiful point that was mentioned there, because you can really surmise this idea of being loyal to something. And that's the idea. You've betrayed that loyalty. And so when you look at any relationship, betrayal is always the worst thing that you can do in that relationship. We just talked about adultery. If you ask any married couple, right? Like Brutus, Caesar and Brutus and everything. Exactly. There you go. You're Italian descent, aren't you? Yes, that's right. There you go. And so what did he say? What was the... You too, Brutus. You too, Brutus. Remember in elementary school, we had to act that out in grade three or something
like that. You too, Brutus. Anyways, so with regards to this, any relationship, the worst evil within any relationship, embedded relationship, is betrayal. That is any evil that's happening. You're betraying something. And the worst is when you betray the relationship altogether. By what? What is adultery? The worst thing, arguably the worst thing that a spouse can do to another spouse is actually adultery, is actually betrayal in this regard, where you basically take another lover or whatnot, in this regard, and there's no marriage, there's nothing, and you essentially betray that relationship. All the expectations, all the understandings, all the trust, everything is betrayed. Exactly. And of course, Allah belongs to the highest example. But now when you talk about the paradigm of your relationship with Allah, you are now betraying that relationship by bringing in another God and by making a rival with God. And so I spoke about in the paper that you can look at the magnitude of the betrayal based on two things. Number one, the one that you're betraying, so the magnitude of the one you're betraying, and the magnitude of what has been given to you as a trust. Right. And not, and I think it's important to notice here, not just because somebody is jealous, right? So we have this misunderstanding that, oh, and this comes, I think, as a consequence of Christianity, that people are like, well, you know, God is a jealous God, and he's almost like comes across as someone who's needy because he doesn't want you to worship anything else than him. And there's the complete opposite of the reality. It's actually a condemnation of you and what's inside of you that you would betray, you know, an entity of such a high magnitude who's given you so much, has nothing to do with jealousy on his part. It has something
to do with the rottenness in your own soul that you would even consider doing such a thing. Beautifully said, beautifully said. And Sheikh Muhammad Shinawi, actually, he has a beautiful paper on what does God ask us to worship him. And he really emphasizes this point, that God doesn't need anything, right? And this is a very fundamental point in Islamic theology, that God is Al Ghani, he doesn't need anything, he doesn't need our worship, but rather worship is prescribed for us, because it's beneficial to us. And same thing, when it comes to shirk, it's not that it harms God in any way, our betrayal, but it harms ourself. And this is so beautiful. Then the question is, well, you know, people ask, well, why does God care so much about shirk and mention these things that, you know, it's just between him, can he just forgive it, let it go, right? The point is that we need to understand, this isn't some like, you know, choose your own adventure type of thing, like, oh, yeah, you know, this person, yeah, he did some bad things, but that's okay. No, life is serious. Life is serious. And the choices that we make are serious. It's not a joke. And that's what Allah says in the Quran. He didn't create the heavens and the earth, and just play and amusement. This is a serious matters. There is a reason behind it all. There's an Amanah, there's a trust here. And so part of God's names and attributes are this aspect that he is the just and he is the one that avenges against evil against this is part of who he is, this is who God is. And so there's going to be consequences if you engage in actions that are objectively unjust, objectively oppressive, even if they're not harming God, per se, the point is that it's based on the values that you're showing. And the fact that God is warning us and, and pouring the human being to essentially submit to him and to avail themselves from the punishment that's an indication of God's pure love for us. Because he doesn't need to, there's no harm that's going to come to him. It doesn't detract from him. Exactly at all. Why should he care? He cares
because of because he loves us. Exactly. And that's the beautiful thing. Those descriptions of how far you see in the Quran. And those vivid descriptions are an indication of God's love for us, that he doesn't want us to fall into that. And that's incredible when you think about it, because every other type of love in this world that you've experienced is, is mixed in with self interest, because there's benefit and harm. In regards to that, there's benefit that you bring to the relationship, and there's harm that could come if anything happens. And so there's necessarily self interest there. Imagine a being that has a greater level of love than your own mother, and there's zero consequence to benefit or harm that level of love, in any case, so magnitude. So going back to the point that when we talk about betrayal, magnitude of the one that you're betraying and magnitude of the trust that was the actual thing that was given to you. So when it comes to and that's why, by the way, when you look at the worst form of zina, it is with your neighbor, neighbor, right? Because there was expectation, there was expectation of trust. Exactly. You've not just violated a trust, but you violated this trust that is essential to society's functioning, which is the idea of a neighbor is not going to steal your property. And very particular thing is not going to then steal your woman, right? This is a very important aspect of trust there. So it's a huge aspect of trust that was violated there. That's why it's the worst. So when it comes to shirk as a betrayal, when you dissect and look at it, magnitude of the one that you are betraying, there's no greater magnitude than Allah. So from there already, that's the highest level. And magnitude of the thing that you're betraying is your purpose in life, what can be greater trust than that. And so from that point of view, from a virtue ethics point of view, this is the greatest vice that is essentially manifested from shirk and from idolatry. So that's basically those three, deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics. That's excellent. Very, very, you know, articulate exposition of everything here.
And I think perhaps we should wrap it up and finish on this. I think that one of the things that came across in this discussion that we've had today is how the things that you say can sometimes be incongruous with the things that are on your inside. And you put it really well when you were talking about consequentialism, about the need to minimize that gap, right? We have a telos, we have an aspiration that this gives us. And it is an aspiration in Islam of conformity, but it's not merely the conformity of the limbs, which many of us have down, alhamdulillah. It's an inward conformity. It's a comportment, right, of our moral compass with the moral compass that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is commanding us and, you know, out of his own love for us, you know, out of his goodwill and beneficence towards us. So you should take these things as sort of diagnostic markers. If you find yourself having sort of a moral reaction or a reaction to something that is not maybe completely in sync with how Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la would have it, either you put too much moral energy or emphasis on one thing or not enough on another thing. If it's shirk, for example, that you, just like everybody else, you have a little bit of work to do when it comes to trying to minimize this gap and work on yourself to bring your will in line with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la's wish for you and for the creation. Do you think that's a fair thing to end on, Dr. Zaheer? I think that's definitely a fair thing to end on and I'll just say as a caveat as well that sometimes we can't control our feelings. Traumatic things have happened to us, so of course our feelings are going to be maybe a little bit, you know, discongruent. It may not necessarily be realistic to make everything exactly the same in terms of our gut feelings. However, the point that you mentioned there is that work. The more and more we do that, the more and more we really feel
this idea of recognizing, kind of having that basira, to recognize the evil of shirk and idolatry despite our kind of backgrounds and our context. So jazakum khayran. It was honestly a pleasure. I really enjoyed this conversation and really being able to kind of get these ideas forward and jazakum khayran honestly for Dogma Disrupted. Incredible name, by the way. I don't know who came up with the name, but that's a banger of a name, masha'Allah. I can't remember who came up with it, but we have a team of people helping, so may Allah reward all of them. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, you're not going to take credit. You're humble, masha'Allah. But incredible work and service that you're doing for the ummah. Many people have come to me actually and said, oh, have you seen this new series, Dogma Disrupted? And they're really benefiting and enjoying the way in which you dissect these ideas in ways that everyone can really understand and see them for what they are. So jazakum khayran, barakallah fiki imam ta'ala. Ameen. Well, may Allah accept it from us and thank you for being a part of it. And we look forward to having you back, Dr. Zaheer, as a continuous part of it, insha'Allah ta'ala. Jazakum khayran, barakallah fiki imam ta'ala. Ameen wa yaa aqsapanak Allahumma wa bihamdika ash-sharwan la ilaha illa anta astaghfirullah wa atubu ilayk. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.
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