Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Navigating the question — 0:02
um my question was how do you navigate the waters when someone asks what does islam say about the lgbqt people m that's a very uh good question unfortunately there's no quick easy 20-second sound bite that will do the job because the person asking the question generally speaking has already made up his or her mind for them it is a matter of certainty almost that same sex and desires are something that are completely morally permissible and perhaps the reason they're asking you frankly is simply to find a 20-second sound bite from you that they can use against you so i would say honestly that you take a step back you should take a step back and say that you know for us islam is indeed a package deal and we believe that our lord has told us what is good for us and what is not good for us and the question i have for you is do you believe in god and if you if you do believe in god that would you not accept the morality that comes with belief in god so i think me personally i would always ask them to take a step back now obviously if you know your history of ethics and philosophy if you know a little bit more about this type of stuff you can get to the very uh the very early question that plato himself asked um in his uh famous treaties is it uh times or forever got the treaties but plato himself asked is that what exactly is good and what exactly is evil who gets to decide what is good and evil so you can begin from that political philosophy philosophical premise as well who defines good and who defines evil where does the notion of good and evil come from because for us good and evil is something that we cannot decide on our own because we ourselves are biased it's like we're choosing for us what's good and evil and there's this this circular notion how can i choose what's good and evil for me when i'm the one benefiting or being harmed by my own decisions so we firmly believe that social conditioning that's another key phrase you can use plays a huge role in deciding what is good and what is evil if an entire society is doing a particular customer habit it's almost impossible for them to think that it is evil and the classic example is slavery that for all of human history and especially here in america nobody even thought slavery was wrong another example is is racial discrimination that for 400 years people argued intelligent people the founding fathers of this country abraham lincoln as you should all be aware did not believe that blacks and whites were equal not at all he firmly believed that his race was superior morally and intellectually than the other race and he was abraham lincoln why because of social conditioning so we firmly believe that we need a source of ethics and laws that transcends the human experience we firmly believe that there has to be a higher power and that's what the quran says isn't the one who created you isn't he more knowledgeable for you than anyone else the one who created is the one who has the right to tell us so we can go down this philosophical tangent but as if you've already seen there's no 20-second clip and in reality we have to just take this step back and we say i believe certain things are good because my lord told me so and i believe other things are not good because my lord told me so do you want to know why i believe that allah is my lord that the quran is my book that the process is my prophet then you change the conversation from lgbt and morality to belief in god to the quran to the prophet salallahu that's our fortress we can fight and defend far more easier our notions of god in the quran and the seerah that's where we will win our battles as for the lgbt the person coming to you 99.9 of the times they have already reached certainty in their minds if they don't believe in god they're not going to come to the conclusion that certain you know lifestyle preferences are not morally correct so we take them to the bigger question of life and the purpose of life and the existence of god and the revelation of the quran and we argue from there and then once we win that argument then we can proceed to talk about morality and ethics and allah knows best my