The Purpose of Life - Jeffrey Lang

Salamu alaykum. Uh, my, uh, I've come from the University of Kansas. We're playing in the Final Four this very instant. So, I want to let you know that you've asked a lot of me today. No, I'm just joking. All right.

I want, very briefly, I, I just want to talk a little bit about, uh, what the Quran has to say about the purpose of life. Uh, I think this is an extremely important subject, especially for Muslims living in America, because we're, uh, sort of a minority, new religion here, and many people are interested in what we believe. And I think the primary question that people want answered when they first consider another religion is how that religion views, it's how that religion views the purpose of life, the purpose of human, of our existence here.

And so, um, I'm going to begin, though, uh, talking about the, an atheist point of view, because I want to talk about what sort of, uh, answers the Quran might have for an atheist. So, to begin this, I need to talk for about five or ten minutes about, you know, what made me, what I believe contributed to my becoming an atheist. Because I grew up in a Christian family. And then I'll talk for about forty-five minutes or so about, uh, what I experienced in the Quran and how that sort of changed my perception.

So, it's very simple, but my wife always says I should summarize what I'm going to do before I talk, because it's easy to get lost in my speeches. And, you know, my wife doesn't have a lot of confidence in my speaking ability. Okay.

So, uh, let me start out by, uh, mentioning that my mother certainly played no role in my becoming an atheist. My mother was a wonderful woman, uh, a beautiful lady. She had tremendous dignity and class. She, uh, uh, the neighbors loved her. She was a, a registered nurse, and she put in many extra hours at the hospital. Her, she worked in the, uh, that dealt with dying patients. And when I would come and pick her up late from work at night, all the patients would, not all the patients, but many of the patients would drag me over and talk to me and tell me what a wonderful woman my mother was. When she died, her funeral was packed, and person after person that came up to me had a story to tell about my mother and her goodness. Time and time again, people described her as, "Jeff, you know, your mother is a true saint." She was a deeply religious woman, a great mother, a great teacher, a gentle person. She never cursed. I never heard her curse, you know, swore, ever in her whole life. Never heard her speak to anybody rudely or speak about anyone rudely. She was a tremendous example of a, of a truly religious person. And she didn't wear it on her sleeve. It was just slowly but surely, you could see it just in her day-to-day interactions with people.

Uh, my father, on the other hand, was a difficult man. Um, my father, for some strange reason, had this tremendous rage inside him. I don't know where he got it. Uh, he had this terrible violence inside him. And every night, he would try to quell that violence with hard, hard drinking. And his drinking, though, only made him all the more volatile. Because my father could be laughing and joking one minute, and he could fly into an angry rampage the next, for some unexpected reason. You never know what would trigger it. And once he flew into that angry rampage, it would take, you know, he would just go wild in the house. The house would be in havoc, and he would rage on and on and on. And it would take an awful lot of liquor and several hours before he would finally go to sleep. And this would happen night after night after night.

And so, my four brothers and I, I was the fourth in line, my four brothers and I lived a frightening and precarious childhood. But I'd have to say the worst of it was watching my father regularly taunt and threaten and abuse my mother. And it would happen day in, day in, day in, day out. Night, night in, night out. And it was an ever, never-ending nightmare.

You see, it's really not so bad when you're the target of your father's violence. You might think it's bad when a child is the target of their father's violence, but it's really not all that bad. Uh, at the moment of attack, you're really not thinking about anything except your own survival. When he's firing punches at you or kicking you on the ground or chasing you throughout the house, or when he's threatening you, "I'm going to hurt you, bad boy," you're not thinking about anything at that moment except escape. While all that's going on, you're not thinking about the aftermath or consequences, the psychological repercussions, or anything like that. And when it's all over, you might even excuse the onslaught because you figure maybe you somehow deserved it. If not for what you did this time, maybe for something you did in the past. You could always put the blame on yourself.

But a far worse fear is the terror that overcomes you when you watch your father go after your mother. Because she's the only source of warmth and kindness, of love and protection that you know. And if he were to take that away, from a little boy's standpoint, then you've lost everything. But far worse than the fear is the guilt. And it comes over you from several directions. First of all, there's the guilt that comes at you, upon you, from the growing antipathy you have towards your father. Because we're taught to love and respect our parents, and we are born with this natural bonding attachment to them. But when you watch something like this happen night after night after night, and you, this rage is growing inside you, you're being pulled in opposite directions.

Then there's also, of course, the guilt that comes when you think that you might be the cause of this night's violence. Maybe something you said or did that you didn't even realize triggered it. Maybe just your father's dislike of you triggered an argument between your mom and him that is now raging on downstairs. But the worst guilt of all, and it is by far the very worst, is knowing that you did nothing to stop your father from hurting your mother. Because while he raged on against your mother downstairs, you hid in your bed and you trembled underneath the covers. Maybe you whimpered and you cried, and you put the pillow on your head. And thus, you traded personal respect for personal safety. And with each such incident, you come to realize with ever greater and greater clarity, you come to realize your own weakness, your own impotence, your own incompetence, your own worthlessness, your own cowardice. And the hate grows and festers inside you, not only for the man that you call father, but for yourself as well. It is a terrible, terrible thing to make a young boy choose between his mother and himself. It is extremely unfair.

I noticed that tomorrow, there's going to be a, a lecture about, tomorrow morning, a lecture about spousal abuse, uh, given by Dr. Shaheen, um, Rzan. I hope you all attend it. I think it's a very important subject.

When I was little, I used to daydream about life without my father. I just wanted the violence to go away. I wanted not to be afraid anymore. I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream, and there was no way out. And so I prayed to God again and again and again to take, to remove my father from our lives. But he was always there. And very soon, I began to wonder if God really was. I could not fathom why God would subject my mom to such lifelong punishment. Could not imagine what great sin she must have committed, or that we, her children, must have committed to deserve my father. I didn't have the maturity to sort out such questions, but I had enough fear and anger to provoke them. I was too young to see the wisdom in allowing my father to, I mean, my mom to suffer the violence and abuse of my father. I was too young to understand why God would let innocent children tremble night after night after night in their beds, fearing that they might not see their mother the next morning. I was too young to see how the mercy and, of God could even extend to my father with all his terrible failings. All I could see in my world was chaos and violence and fear. And so it became easy for me to question the existence of God. And I began to do that at a very early age.

I think I'll even say that the turmoil of the sixties and seventies, that's the age when I was a teenager, and you know, late sixties, early seventies, only, uh, reinforced my skepticism. When John and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, or Martin Luther King was gunned down, when Vice President Agnew was kicked out of office and Richard Nixon soon after him, when the race riots erupted in city streets like mine, and gang fights erupted in our cities, many of those which I was involved in, when I saw the bizarre and senseless carnage of Vietnam, they all confirmed the lesson that was already ingrained in me, and that my father had taught me so well, that the world is dominated by random, consuming, undiscriminating violence.

And very soon, I began to ask, why? Why would God make it that way? Why wouldn't he just pop us into heaven from the first and spare all this suffering? Why does he let little children in Vietnam get napalmed and run down a street naked on fire when they had done nothing to deserve it? You know, why does he let the race riots go on? Why does he let the leaders be assassinated? Why does he just let the violence go on and on and on for people who had nothing to do with it? It wasn't of their own making. Why didn't he just make us angels and pop us into heaven if he could make us angels, which I was always thought he could? Why did he make us so susceptible to sin? Why didn't he make us impervious to it like he made the angels? Is this the best world he could create? I thought. Is this the most perfect world he could create for our existence, for our beginning? I just couldn't figure it. And all the explanations I received from priests and doctors and lawyers, you know, from whoever, you know, spoke to me or taught me, they just didn't make sense to me in any case.

So I became an atheist when I was sixteen, even though I was going to Catholic school at the time. Declared myself an atheist in one class. It was a confrontation between me and a priest. We were talking about God and the purpose of life, and I expressed my views. And he said, "Well, then you don't believe in God." I said, "Well, I guess I don't." And then, through my junior, a junior and senior year of high school, I got an F in religion, even though I continued to do very well in the tests.

In any case, when I was twenty-eight, to make a long story short, some friends of mine gave me a copy of the Quran. And one night, I was sitting in Diamond Heights, my apartment in Diamond Heights in San Francisco. I was working at that time at the University of San Francisco. I was twenty-seven, twenty-eight at that time, I can't remember. And I ran out of stuff to read, and I took this gift that my friends gave me, and I began to read it. And I came to the first verse. Well, I opened the Quran, read the first page, then the second. And then very quickly, in the second Surah, about thirty-seven verses into the Quran, I came upon the story of mankind.

And, uh, I have to admit, I read through it very quickly. It was about nine, ten verses long, the story of the first man and woman. And I recognized some of the details. It was similar to what I had learned when I was a child. But I noticed that there was something wrong. It was apparent to me that whoever authored this Quran, of course, I wasn't a Muslim at the time, so I didn't have any idea who that was, whoever authored this Quran clearly did not understand the real meaning of the story. Because they had obviously gotten the details confused. They even didn't even understand the whole purpose of the story. And so, uh, I just read through it once, and then I read through it again, just to try to see what kind of point the author was making. And then I read through it a third time, and a fourth. And then I realized, this is something strange going on here. I'm going to read this much more carefully. I'm going to need to go through this story line by line, verse by verse, because it's obvious that the author is trying to bring out another point. And I wasn't quite sure what it was, but definitely he packs a lot of meaning into almost every word. And I thought, the writer at least seems to have a great measure of brilliance. And so I'll try, sort of, take you through what my experience was as quickly as I can.

So I came to the second, the thirtieth verse of the second Surah, Surah Al-Baqarah, and it began like this. It said, "Behold, your Lord said to the angels, 'I am going to place a vicant on Earth.'" The Arabic word is *Khalifa*. It means a representative or an emissary of mine. "I am going to place a vicant on Earth." And they said, the angels said, "Will you place therein one who will spread corruption and shed blood, while we celebrate your praises and glorify your Holiness?" When God said, he said, "Truly, I know what you do not know." See, that's the verse that hooked me. That's the verse that caught my attention. That's the one that kept on making me read the story again and again and again. Because listen to the way it begins. "Behold, your Lord said to the angels, 'I'm going to place a representative of mine on Earth, a vicant of mine, an emissary, one who acts on my behalf.'" I thought, that's not the way it goes. You're not supposed to be placing man on the earth in some positive role, some elective office. You place man as a, on Earth as a punishment for his sin. Clearly, I knew the author didn't quite get the point. But still, it was an amazing line.

But then I come to the next line, and it says, "And the angels say, 'Will you place therein one who will spread corruption and shed blood, while we celebrate your praises and glorify you?'" I looked at it again. I couldn't believe the question. They said, "Will you place therein one who will spread corruption and shed blood, while we, the angels, celebrate your praises and glorify you?" I looked at that and I said, "Exactly. That would be my question. Why would you create this being supposedly for some positive role when he's capable of doing tremendous wrongdoing? When he could spread corruption and shed much blood? Why would you create this violent and pernicious creature when you could create angels?" As the angels clearly say, "Well, we, while we, the angels, celebrate your praises and glorify you." They were asking one of the most fundamental questions in the entire history of religion. Why create you, man, this utterly fallible creature, this creature who could rebel against God? Will, who could do such tremendous wrongdoing, who could wreak havoc like no other creature on earth, when you can make them angels? And look where the question is being asked. It's being asked in heaven. It's almost like saying, "Look, why don't you just make them angels and be up here in heaven with us? You know, why don't you just make them angels, pop them into heaven? He's fine. Why would you put him on Earth where he could feel distant from you, where we could work out his worse criminal tendencies, act them out, feeling somehow independent and apart from you and free to do whatever he wants, when you could just make them angels and put them into heaven and make them perfectly submissive to your will?"

I looked at that question and said, "That's my question." I'm not, I'm not even a single verse into the story of mankind, and there before me, I see my question. That whole question, everything that I ever thought, everything that I ever experienced, everything that I ever knew, was in that question. Was if the author took my life and wanted to pick out exactly the right question to humiliate me, to provoke me, to anger me. Why create man, this most destructive and violent creature, when you can make him angels? And then look at the answer. And he said, "Truly, I know what you do not know." You know, in modern parlance, we would say, "I know exactly what I'm doing." I read that and said, "What? You know what you do not know? You know exactly what you're doing? Well, please inform me. Tell me what you're doing, 'cause, you know, I'm twenty-eight years old and I haven't figured it out yet. And I have a lot of issues that I'm still dealing with that's connected to this question. You can't just get off that easy. You can't just tell me, you know, exactly what you're doing, not after what I've been through, not after you made me this way."

And then I realized, of course, I was arguing with a God I didn't even believe in. And that would happen several times as I read through the Quran. And sometimes I would just get so agitated by what I read, I'd start arguing with this voice that's, that's that I'm reading before me, that's calling to me.

So we turn to the next verse. It turns out that the Quran just doesn't dismiss the question and starts to answer it a little bit. And in the next verse, it says, "And He taught Adam the names of all things." And then He placed them before the angels and said, "Tell me their names, if you are right." So this verse is clearly referring to the previous one. But notice what it says now. I, I, from my own background, I remember Adam naming things, but it wasn't connected to any answer to any philosophical question. But here, notice what it says. "And He taught Adam the names of all things." And I realized already, just from the first verse, you've got to read these verses very carefully because they're packed with a lot of symbolism and meaning. And He taught Adam the names of all things. So here we see Adam is not only just a creature who knows how to name things, who's acquiring the gift of language, but he's also a learning creature. God is teaching him. And right here, right in this verse, and it'll come even clearer in the subsequent verses, that the very first thing that, that the Quran is going to emphasize here is man's intellect. He is a learning creature. He is taught. And what is he taught? What is the, what is one of the great intellectual gifts he's given in response to the angels' question? The gift of language. Because through language, mankind could not only learn, but he could learn things not only through his own experience, but he could learn things that other people have experienced of times and places that are hundreds, thousands of years and miles separated from him. And so that all our knowledge becomes cumulative. Every generation learning from the generation before it. I'm learning today from authors I read from other sides of the world that may have existed two thousand years ago. And so we all contribute to our collective learning and knowledge.

And so I'll see later in the Quran when the Quran will emphasize this again and again and again. Like in one verse, it says, "Read in the name of your Lord who created. Created man out of a tiny creature that clings. Read it. Command the reader, for your Lord is most Bountiful. Why is He most Bountiful? What great gift did He give you? For He taught man the use of the pen, and through it taught him what he otherwise could not know." And time and time and time again, the Quran will call upon man to use his intellectual faculties, and swear by his intellectual faculties, and to, and to use them correctly, as a, because they play a fundamental role in guiding him to truth. I never came upon a scripture that puts so much emphasis on the correct use of our intellectual faculties, on the harnessing of reason in helping us attain to faith.

"And He taught Adam the names of all things, and then He placed them before the angels and said, 'Tell me their names, if you are right.'" Okay, you have this objection to you, you have this natural question about this creation of mankind here. This mankind is a, this human being, this human creature is a learning creature. He has many intellectual gifts. Here, I'm going to place these things before you. Tell me their names, if you are right about man.

And what did the angels say in the next verse? They say, "Glory, glory to You. We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. In truth, it is You who are Knowing, the Wise." They say, "This is, this task, this intellectual test that's put before them, is beyond their grasp." Notice what they emphasize. "We have no knowledge." This would take knowledge. This would take an intellect that they don't possess. "In truth, it is You who are Knowing, the Wise." You've got it. It's easy for you. You have, you're the knowing, the wise. You have knowledge, you have wisdom. But this would take knowledge and wisdom that is beyond us.

And so in the next verse, we read, "And He said, 'Oh Adam, tell them their names.' And when he had told them their names," notice how it's just like it's nothing for him, for mankind. He has this phenomenal ability. "And when he had told them their names," as if it's just a triviality for man, he names them. "Oh Adam, tell them their names. And when he had told them their names, God said, 'Did I not tell you that I know what is unseen in the heavens and the Earth, and I know what you reveal and conceal?'" Clearly, going back to the angels' question, "Yes, you have these natural concerns about the creation of mankind. Yes, he could do these evil things, but look at this tremendous intellect he has. This is something you have overlooked, that you haven't considered." And that's clearly the point of these verses. Even though I under, I felt that the author didn't quite, you know, it was as if I, I realized that he didn't just misunderstand the story. He was taking one of the great stories in the history of humankind, one of the fundamental greatest stories in the history of mankind, and molding it and using it as a vehicle for an entirely original message.

"And God said, 'Did I not tell you that I know what is unseen in the heavens and the Earth, and I know what you reveal and what you conceal?'" In other words, didn't I tell you I know exactly what I'm doing? And then in the next, "And didn't I not tell you what I, that I know what you reveal and conceal?" I looked at that. What question did there? I mean, what did they reveal and what did they conceal? What did their question reveal and conceal? I thought about it for a minute. Oh, it's obvious. What did their question reveal? Just go back and look at the question. It revealed the sinful and sin, sinister propensities of man. I mean, it's obvious, right? Why are you all looking at me like that? You're starting to scare me. You're all looking very serious. Am I losing you? Wow. Okay. So they revealed the sinister and evil propensities of man. But what did, did their question conceal? And all you have to do is think about it for a minute. Human beings, yes, they could do evil. Yes, they could do wrong. Yes, they could create misery. But they could also do exactly the opposite. They could choose to do evil. They could choose to do tremendous good. They could choose to do tremendous violence. They could choose to show tremendous compassion. They could choose to be, you know, to live by falsehood. They could choose to live by the, the greatest truths. They could be terribly ugly. They could be terribly beautiful. And I, up until that point in my life, like the angels, only saw one half, one side of the coin. For the first time when I read that verse, believe it or not, it was an eye opener for me. I had always been obsessed with the evil potentials of human beings. When I read that verse, I realized that, and I had a great example right in front of me with my own mom. I realized that I had been blinded by only one side of human nature.

So we go on to the next verse. "And behold, We said to the angels, 'Bow down to Adam,' and they bowed down, but not so Iblis. Iblis is like the father of Satan, satanic beings, forces, creatures, existences. He refused and was arrogant. He was of those who reject faith." An interesting statement. "And behold, We said to the angels, 'Bow down to Adam,' and they bowed down." Bowing down could symbolize two things. Bowing down could symbolize the superiority of, superiority or potential superiority of one being over another. And so they bow down to them. Bowing down could also mean that they serve that creature in some respect. Of course, the Quran says that all beings serve God, all created beings serve God. But this verse seems to be indicating, and the rest of the Quran will make it clear, that these angelic beings, these angelic, uh, uh, entities will serve the development of mankind. We'll even see later that the satanic beings serve the development of mankind. Both forces, angelic and satanic, will serve the development of mankind because one will present man with a choice to do the most altruistic things. The other will simultaneously try to influence man in the opposite direction. And so human, human beings will be moral creatures, and I'll have to make moral decisions. And it's in those moral decisions that they will grow spiritually and morally as human beings. And they'll take that into the next life. And the angelic and satanic forces will be catalysts for those moral choices that they make. They will heighten the human being's awareness of the rightfulness and the wrongfulness of the choice he's about to make. And the self, the soul, the *nafs*, as they say in Arabic, will have to make the ultimate choice between good and evil. And that choice, that test, will come again and again and again as human beings either grow or decline. And those tests will come again and again and again to try to help him towards his spiritual evolution, to bring him back. But that choice is ultimately ours.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. And so, "We said to the angels, 'Bow down to Adam,' and they bowed down, but not so Iblis." This rebellious force, this evil prompter, the one who whispers into the human heart, he comes into being. And with the introduction of Satan, we have the introduction of evil, that evil influences on human beings. And notice why Iblis does not bow down. He refuses because he was arrogant. You know, we often hear, what's the root of all evil in the West? It's always money, greed, etc. Here, the Quran says that seems to be saying that the root of all evil is not always material wants. It's not always money. It's not always greed. At the heart of evil is arrogance, putting yourself above all others, of assigning to yourself special priority and neglecting the rights of others, of, of pride and arrogance and envy, the source of evil. He was of those who reject faith.

I looked at that verse and I said, "Okay, I mean, I get why you would create angels to sort of influence man in a positive direction. But why in the story now are you introducing Satan? What sort of role was Satan play?" And then, of course, you just think about it for a minute and you say, "Yes, the story is telling us that on one hand, we have these magnanimous urgings come from one direction. On the other hand, we have these satanic urgings coming from another direction." In other words, the Quran is telling us that man is not only a learning creature, but he's a moral creature. He has understanding of right and wrong. And God infuses those, allows those influences to come to him. Man is not only an intelligent being, but a moral being. And so, you know, the Quran is not all that difficult to understand. You just sort of read it, I found, and you just sort of follow your nose through it and see what it's saying. I'm sure, as most of you in this audience know.

Okay, so we see that man is not only a learning creature, but he is a, a moral being as well. There's another verse in the Quran. It says, "By the soul and that which whispers into it, or which breathes into it." It's morality, it's immorality, and it's God consciousness. Both of these, we, we are under the influence of. And God allows us to be under the influence of us. He creates us to, to be exposed to both influences. And then the verse says, "Truly he is successful who causes it to grow, causes his soul, his self, his real self, to grow. And truly he is lost who stunts it, who disallows, who, who destroys his personal growth." So mankind is not only an intellectual being, but a moral being.

"And We said, 'Oh Adam, dwell you and your spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof what you wish. And eat freely thereof what you wish, but come not near this tree, for then you will be among the wrongdoers.'" I looked at this verse and I was, you know, starting to wonder if the author was drifting back to the old story again. I was confused. "And We said, 'Oh Adam, dwell you and your spouse in a garden and eat freely thereof what you wish, but come not near this tree, for you will be among the wrongdoers.'" Thought it was drifting back to the old story. Man sins, man's punished for his sins with earthly life. Maybe the author is drifting. He had a good idea, now he's drifting back to the sort of traditional story. Maybe he couldn't, man, make his mind up what story he wanted. Except for a couple of things about this verse, and this happened with almost every verse as I read through it, is that, uh, the whole tenor of the passage is sort of out, not the, what you would expect. I noticed that the Quran, in this story, has a tremendous pension for understating things. Things, because it says, "And said to Adam, 'Dwell you and your spouse in a garden and eat freely thereof what you wish,' to Adam and his spouse, 'but come not near this tree, for you will be among the wrongdoers.'" I mean, there's no sense of God being threatened by the possibility of man eating from the tree in this story. We don't see that. You know, in this verse, we don't see that God is nervous at the prospect, that he's threatened by the prospect, that he's anxious about it. The tree that he picks, he picks, it seems like he's just picking out any tree. Nothing special about the tree. "Go not near, uh, this tree, for you will be among the wrongdoers." Satan will later come to him and tell him it's a tree of eternal life, of a kingdom that never decays. Turns out to be a complete faucet in his part. Nothing special about the tree. It's just a tree. God's not nervous at the prospect at all. You know, in the tradition that I came from, God is threatened by the prospect. He has to put an angel with a fiery sword, sword by, to protect the tree so that mankind never goes next to it again. I'm not putting it down, I'm just pointing out the difference. The story, they're both beautifully told. But they said, you know, "has to guard the tree." Why? Because if they eat from it, they'll become gods like us. This man, he's already has a rebellious nature. Can you imagine if he eats from this tree? You know, can't let him get near that tree. But here, just, you know, says, "You know, but if you do, you will be among the wrongdoers." God is not worried about himself. It's just warning man, making it clear that if you do this, you've committed a wrongful deed. Again, the, the whole tenor of the P, all these verses that I read through it, is God knows exactly what he's doing.

Okay, next verse. "But Satan caused them to slip and expelled them from the state in which they were. And We said, 'Go you all down, some of you being the enemies of others. And on Earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time.'" What I said, I mean, you know, I was expecting now the rage, the anger, the violence, the jealousy. That's what I was expecting. Okay, they eat from the tree. Where's the rage? The violence? "I'm going to punish you now. You're going to sweat on Earth, and you're going to suffer, and you're going to stub your toe, and you're going to work, and you're going to labor, and you're going to die there for what you did." And where is the woman, right? And the woman, all right, she's the one who's going to suffer the most, right? She'll have to suffer labor pains and monthly cycles, right? And bleeding and crying out when her children come into the world. She'll scream out. And worst of all, the greatest humiliation, the man will rule over her when he's obviously her intellectual inferior, because she and the angel seduced, she and she and Satan seduced him. He just bumbled along and did commit a real, you know, wrong deed. Well, I don't mean to make light of it, but the story is obviously different, though. You know, no, no threat here. As a matter of fact, look at the way it says, "Oh Adam, dwell you and your spouse in the garden and eat freely thereof what you wish, but come not this near this tree, for you will be among wrongdoers." Then they make the mistake. "But Satan caused them to slip and expelled them from the state in which they were. And We said, 'Go all you down, some of you being the enemies of others, will be adversaries of others, some of you will be adversaries of each other. And on Earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time.'" This is not a deity losing it. If you look at it, I mean, "On Earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time." Those are not the words of a, of a God that has got lost, you know, that is really extremely upset. "On Earth will be your dwelling place and provision for a time." When I walked into the hotel today, and they said, uh, and it's this nice one up here, I don't know the name, I can't remember the name of it, but it's a continental breakfast, and they said, "Your room will be room 111, and there's a continental breakfast in the morning." I didn't say, you know, I didn't think they were mad at me, you know, because they said, you know, "You're going to sleep here, and this is going to be your provision in the morning." You, "Oh, thank you."

But notice something else about this verse. I mean, when you read these verses for the first time, I don't know, maybe I'm nuts, and many people think I am, but when you read these verses for the first time, I mean, this is just so much that catches your attention. "But Satan caused them to slip." I remember, I, I couldn't get that verse out of that, those words out of my head. "Satan caused them to slip." To slip. The greatest sin in the history of the human race, and it's called a slip. You know, in my culture, "slip" means, you know, you just momentarily, for a fraction of a second, you lose your focus. It's not a big deal. My Uncle Bob used to always say to me, "Jeff, I'm sorry I'm five minutes late, I slipped up." You know, it's the understanding is it's no big deal. It's just a slip. You, that's what we say, "Make a minor mistake. I slipped up. Don't worry about it. Never happened again." A slip. I said, "Momentary loss of focus. The greatest sin in the history of humanity? Why we're all here? Why we're all suffering? Why we experience death?" A slip. I didn't believe it. I went to my Arabian friends at that time. I didn't know any Arabic. That came to this verse. We went through it line by line. I said, "Now, don't change any words. Just read them one at a time." "But Satan made them." And I said, "Okay, this one, this one right here, what does it mean? Tell me what that means." They looked at it. It says, "slip, slip." "And expelled them from the state in which they were." A slip. I thought, but then maybe I was trying to force the traditional understanding, the traditional interpretation. Maybe it was just a slip. I mean, after all, they didn't commit murder, they didn't commit robbery, rape, pillaging, assault. They, they, they, a couple of pieces of fruit. It's not the greatest sin in the history of humanity by any means.

And then the next verse says, "And then they were expelled from the state in which they were." What state were they? Let's see now. We let's go back from where we started. First, mankind is being taught. We see he's an intellectual being. Then we show he's a moral being. Moral being means he's a being that's going to have to make choices. And then God gives him this choice. It's not a huge deal. It's not the grave of sin in the history of humanity by any means. It's minor by any standards. They make it, though. We see that God originally intended to put man on Earth as his vicant. We see a period of preparation where he's being prepared intellectually, where he's growing intellectually, where he's growing as a moral creature. When does God finally put him on Earth? What signals that he's ready to begin? He makes his first independent choice. It's not the worst deed in the history of humanity. It's minor on anybody's scale. But it shows that mankind is ready to act on his own, to be his own, to make his own choices. That God has empowered him to make choices, and he's ready to make them and carry them out and see them, most often, to their expected ends, if God wills. And that seems to be the only real significance of it.

But I thought, maybe I'm getting this wrong. Maybe God just blows off into an angry rampage. The next verse. So I look at the next one. And it says, "And then Adam received words from his Lord, and He turned, and God turned to him mercifully, for He is Oft-Returning, Ever Merciful." Well, if I had any doubts up till now that God is not enraged by what this has happened, that God hasn't prepared mankind for this choice, for what was eventually going to happen, that all this was preparation for, for mankind to begin his earthly sojourn in this famous allegory, if I had any doubts before now, I had them. Certainly didn't have them after reading this verse. This is a verse that is entirely consoling, reaching, and merciful, reaching out to mankind in mercy. Mankind goes to Earth. He's obviously afraid. He's obviously feels remorse. He's in an unfamiliar environment. And what does God do? He turns to him. He turns to him. In Arabic, the word is like, has the meaning of like a father turning toward, towards an infant or a child or somebody, or a parent, a mother turning towards her child. And He turns to him mercifully. And He, for God is Oft-Returning, Ever Merciful. And Adam receives words from his Lord. What kind of words? Probably words of consolation, words of hope, words to tell him, not, not to be scared.

And in the next verse, we see those are exactly the type of words that Adam receives. He says, "Go down, Adam, and his spouse. Go down from the state, all of you together." Repeating that again, just so that we know that this is not a punishment here. "Go down from the state, all of you together. And truly, there will come to you guidance from Me. And whoever follows My guidance has nothing to fear, nor shall they grieve." It is a, it is an emotional picture. This couple, young couple, is here, you know, in, in fear and in shame, feeling remorse. And God reaches out to them and turns towards them and tells them, "You have nothing to fear, nor shall you grieve." I know this is tough for you, but you've been prepared for it up, up till now, through your entire existence. It had to happen. This is a necessary stage in your development, in your growth. But just hang in there. Follow My guidance. Be true to Me, and I'll be true to you. I'll guide you. I'll help you. I'll do whatever you need. Just follow My guidance, and you have nothing to fear, nor shall you grieve.

Okay, so I was impressed. You know, I thought this author, whom I didn't know, I thought was extremely brilliant because the story is entirely coherent, but it's bringing out entirely new meaning. And it's stressing some things in the human equation that I would never have normally thought of. Actually, I thought these sort of things argued against the existence of God. Here the author was using them to say, "Look at these, these a fundamental role in the purpose of life." What intellect human beings have? Intellect, right? In response to the angels' question. They are moral creatures, and they are subjected to evil and angelic promptings, and they have to choose between them again and again and again throughout their existence. And their growth, which the Quran talks about frequently, is going to depend on that. We're here to grow, as we will see. But it emphasizes choice. Human beings are creatures of choice. It also emphasizes suffering. Suffering. That's pretty nice writing. It also emphasizes suffering. Human beings are going to suffer here on Earth. That's the first thing that the story mentions. "Spread corruption and shed blood." Havoc, suffering, pain. Yes, these three things play an essential role, somehow, the story is saying, in our development on Earth, in our very purpose of our development. These are the three things we've always had the most trouble grappling with. All theologies have, "Why give us intellect if it leads us often to challenge in our minds the existence of God? If we can't reconcile the existence of God with our minds, with our reason? Why give us choice if we could choose to do wrong? Just make us angels. Why let us suffer? So on Earth, just pop us into heaven." And here the Quran is telling that these play essential roles in our, and our attaining of faith. Not only these, of course, it also mentions guidance, God's forgiveness, revelation, etc. Angelic forces, satanic temptation, and mentions all these other things as well. But these three, essentially, really caught my attention. I never expected that these three things would be emphasized.

And so, as I read through the Quran, I looked anytime I saw anything that seemed to relate to this, I would write down notes and underline it, you know. And I would walk up and down in San Francisco with my pen as I'm walking because I like to walk about seven miles every day. And I'd be underlining. My friends would always say, "Jeff, what book are you reading?" And I would lie to them. I'd tell them, "Oh, it's a great novel or something." You know, I didn't want them to know that I was reading the Quran. I think they thought I was going nuts. But in any case.

So, very quickly, I was wondering, does the Quran really emphasize reason? Does it really emphasize choice? Does it really emphasize suffering? How much more time do I have? Uh, Madam Speaker, thirty-five, two, twenty-five. Okay, I'll do the best I can. So let me just try to indicate to you as I read through the Quran, and I'll try to get through this quickly because you guys look tired, and I know you're interested in finding out how that basketball game is turning out. Uh, let's see. Does the Quran really emphasize reason as essential to human growth, that this experience we're having on Earth, to our very purpose? And the answer is definitely yes. So much so that even Western orientalists, people who wrote against the Quran and said that this is a major feature of the Quran, a feature that you cannot miss. H.A.R. Gibb, writing in the early part of this century, the f, one of the famous orientalists, you know, who wrote very much against Muslims, hoping to unseat them from their religious belief, he wrote, "The Quran is not far from considering unbelief as an infirmity of the human mind." Unbelief, he thought, and he was saying it mockingly, it's like, you know, you can't think straight, you're not using your mind right. As my father used to say. Um, Maxime Rodinson wrote at length about the, the rationalistic approach of the Quran to faith.

This rational tone of the Quran is one of its most salient features, beyond doubt. I'll just give you a few quotations.

Is the one of its fundamental themes is that people ignore or reject God's signs and corrupt religion precisely because they do not use their reason. The Quran will say that again and again and again. The Quran says about the disbelievers, "They refuse to reason," and there are people who do not reason. I have seven such quotes in the Quran. The, uh, the Quran will say, "Will you not reason?" It mentions that 14 times to the reader. God reveals signs and lessons and admonition so that, and this a quote from the Quran, "Perhaps, perhaps you will finally use your reason." There are eight such statements in the Quran.

From the Quran's viewpoint, reason and faith are allies, just as illogic and false belief are allies. And it clearly sets the conflict along these lines. It says, "The right way has henceforth become clear from error." Those who benefit most from the Quran are persons of insight, 16 such statements in the Quran, firmly rooted in knowledge, eight such statements, used to reason, 10 such statements, stand on clear evidence and proof, seven such statements. Those who oppose this Revelation are diluted, nine such statements, in manifest error, 28 statements, ignorant, 15, foolish, three, have no understanding, nine, only follow surmise and conjecture, nine, and blindly adhere to tradition, multiple, multiple times.

States that in an almost Socratic style, the Quran repeatedly quizzes the reader and calls into question his or her assumptions again and again. It asks us, "What do you think?" 18 such statements. "Have you considered this or that?" 13. "Did you suppose?" Seven. Sounds like a math teacher. "Do they not ponder?" Two such statements. "Do you think? Do you even think?" 18 such statements. The message is clear: to gain truer faith, we need to free ourselves from inherited notions and examine our beliefs rationally.

Learning plays a key role in human development. "Read," the Quran exhorts the reader, "for God taught us to use of the pen and taught humankind what it otherwise could not know." In life, nature, and history, in the Quran, there are signs and lessons for those who are wise, there are 21 such statements. The Quran states over 100 times that it has been revealed to make things clear. I thought the author of this Quran must have had strong mathematical insight, you know, a natural mathematician. All throughout when I was reading, I was trying to imagine what he must have been like. God teaches humanity both directly and indirectly, and sometimes so subtly that we are unaware of his instruction. Thus, he tests us in multifarious ways.

Of course, I just want to make it clear, Muslims believe the God himself is the author of the Quran. You know, sometimes I give this speech and people come away and ask me, "Jeff, who is the author of the Quran, anyway?" Um, but, you know, I didn't know, so I was just trying to make figure it out.

Repetition is indicative of the importance given to certain ideas. It should be observed that the Arabic word for knowledge in the Quran, "ilm," appears 854 times in the text in its various forms. It's one of the most frequently occurring words. So the Quran really does put great emphasis on reason in our spiritual quest. Does it put great emphasis on choice? Well, here's what it has to say: "Let there be no compulsion in religion. The right way is henceforth clear from error." It's a choice, and it must be freely made. And it's a choice between correctness and error, between right and error, between reason and falsity.

"Had God willed, He could have indeed guided you all," it says in the Quran. I, why not? I thought, why not just guide us all? Why let some of us choose to go this way and that way? The Quran was constantly provoking me as I read it. "Do not the unbelievers know that had God willed, He could have guided all mankind? Oh, do not the believers know that had God willed, He could have guided all mankind?" Okay, I'm an unbeliever, I thought. Tell me, why didn't you guide all mankind? If you want us to be in, you know, conformity of your will, just make us that way. "And if We had so willed, We could have given every soul its guidance." Why did you let us be creatures of choice? Just program us to do the right thing, never make a wrong choice. "Had God willed, He could have made us all one community. He could have made us clones of one another, but He didn't." Wasn't part of His plan.

"Enlightenment has come from your Lord. He who sees does so to his own good. He who is blind is so to his own hurt. It's your choice." Says it again and again in the Quran. Remember when I was reading this, I was a disbeliever, you know, and this scripture is constantly reminding me, "It's your choice, Jeff. It's no compulsion in this. It's your choice. It's up to you." You know, you don't, you know, you're not my, you're probably not reasoning correctly here. Think a little harder. Come on, try a few more steps. "And whoever is guided is only to his own gain, and whoever is stray, I am only a Warner. It's your choice." "We reveal to you the Book with the truth for mankind. Who, who lets himself be guided, does so is for his own good. He who goes astray, it's his own, to his own hurt. It's his choice." There are many, many such references. I'll stop there, but you get the point.

Quran clearly emphasizes that choice plays a key role in our development. But what about suffering? I mean, you know, suffering is the biggie, right? Me, that's the real major question. What does the Quran have to say about suffering? You know, because every religion deals with suffering in a different way. You know, it's either something you have to be saved from, and so some religions stress salvation, or it's something that you have to sort of transcend through meditation and training so you can sort of not feel it so much, get above it and beyond it. Some religions see it as primarily punishment. Some see it as, some of the more ancient religions see it as the result of the precarious and whimsical, you know, control of many gods working against each other, playing with human beings. Different religions have dealt with it in different ways, but almost all of them, I would indeed say all of them, have sort of seen it as something not so good. But let's see what the Quran has to say about it. Something to be avoided, to be transcended, to be saved from.

The Quran says just the opposite. You are going to experience it. You will suffer in this life, and it plays a fundamental role in your development and your growth and in what you are to become. This scripture didn't just say you're going to experience it. It said you should embrace it. You should struggle through it. Your good life should be a struggle. It says it should be a Jihad. Yeah, right. But that's, that's what it says. Jihad means struggle. When the Quran most says Jihad, it's very seldom. It's most often not in the context of fighting. Qital is the Arabic word for fighting. But, you know, it says even in the Mecca verses, long before Muslims had to defend themselves against oppressors, mentions that you have to struggle in the path of God with the Quran. It even says struggle in the path of God with this Quran. Life is a struggle.

It says in one verse, "Most assuredly, We will try you with something of danger and hunger and the loss of worldly goods, with the loss of your lives and the fruits of your labor. Most assuredly, We will try you." It's not just talking about evil people, good people. But give the good news, the glad tidings. "Be happy for those who are patient in adversity and suffering." Good news, I thought. Doesn't the author understand the terrible effects of suffering? "Give the good news to those who are patient through adversity, who, when calamity befalls them, say, 'Truly unto God we belong, and truly unto Him we shall return.'" In other words, that this could benefit them. What a remarkable statement.

Here's another one. "Do you think that you could enter Paradise without having the like of those who passed away before you?" And the next verses start to explain these people were good people who suffered terribly. "Do you think that you could enter Paradise without having going through this, without going through the same?" Why, I thought, why do you have, why do we have to suffer in life? Misfortune and hardship befell them, and so shaken were they that the Apostle and the believers with them would exclaim, "When will God's help come?" These are good people. "When will God's help come? Oh, truly, God's help is always near." "You will certainly be tried in your possessions and yourselves." The Quran tells the reader, "You're going to have face hardship. It's guaranteed." "Every soul must taste of death. And We try you with calamity and prosperity both as a means of trial, and to Us you are returned." You are going to have hardship here. There is going to be no, no heaven on Earth. This environment is made to be an environment of adversity. It is made to be an environment where you have to work, where you have to struggle, where you have to strive, and it plays a key role.

"Oh man, truly you've been toiling to your Lord and painful toil, but you shall meet Him." You're toiling, yes, but you shall meet Him. "We certainly created man to face distress." What? I thought, "We certainly have created man to face distress." You made us to face distress. "Does he think that no one has power over him?" Sometimes people get, you know, so, so down, they just think, "Oh, this, no one's, this can't be a God. I'm, look how I'm suffering." "He will say, 'I have wasted much wealth.'" Some people just become totally devoted to worldly aims. "Does he think that no one sees him?" "Have We not given him two eyes to see with, a tongue and two lips to communicate with, to learn from by communicating? Can he see around him? Can he tell from communication with other people? Haven't We pointed out to him the two conspicuous ways?" What are the two conspicuous ways? "But he attempts not the uphill climb." One of them is the uphill climb, and it says this is the way you should be pursuing. And what will make you comprehend the uphill climb? "It is to free a slave, or to feed in a day of hunger an orphan nearly related, or the poor one lying in the dust. Then he or she is of those who believe and exhorts one another to patience and exhorts one another to mercy." "You have not attained the faith until you struggle." The uphill climb. It's telling us you should pursue the uphill climb. What is the uphill climb? Reaching out to your fellow man who's in, who suffers, to feed the poor one, but help the poor soul that's lying in the dust. And all over the world, there are people in that state, and we watch the news as if it's just entertainment. And the Quran tells us this is something you should involve yourself. Is that the road that you should travel? It describes a successful life as an uphill climb.

Well, I can see I'm running out of time, so I'm going to have to tie this up in about 15 minutes, I guess. But definitely, the Quran emphasizes these three elements in human drama. But as I read through it, I couldn't see how it all fit together. I mean, why didn't God just, why, why, why do we have to experience these? What purpose do they play? Just pop us in a, beam us up, I thought. One thing, like I mentioned before, the Quran will repeatedly, uh, emphasize that we're here to grow and to learn. And some, just, I'll give you four or five quick verses because I know you're tired. It says, "Our Lord, and raise up in their midst a messenger from among them who shall recite unto them Your signs and shall teach them the Book and the Wisdom, and who shall cause them to grow." We should, we have to learn to learn wisdom in the Book and revelation in particular, and who shall cause us to grow. "And We have sent among you of your elves a messenger to recite Our signs to you and to cause you to grow." Truly God was gracious to the believers. This is in the third Surah, when He raised up from among them a messenger from themselves to recite His signs to them and to cause them to grow. "It is He who has sent among you the, the, who has sent among the unlettered people a messenger from among them to recite His signs and to cause them to grow." These are all distinct references. Just two more. There are many more. "And the soul and that which breathed into it its immortality and its God-consciousness, he is indeed successful who causes it to grow, and he is indeed a failure who stunts it." And in verse in 92nd Surah, Surah Al, it says, "Far removed from it will be the righteous, who give his wealth that he may grow." So the purpose, somehow, is to grow. We're in a growing, learning, developing experience. We weren't just created when we came into the world. This is actually a stage of our creation, just as our development in the womb was a stage in our creation, our essential stage in our physical creation. This is an essential stage in our personality creation, in the creation of our real being, that which we take into the next life, our essential selves. We've gone from the physical creation in the womb, primarily physical, now to the human creation, the personality creation in this stage.

I thought, maybe I'm, you know, projecting my own neuroses into the scripture. Maybe it doesn't really emphasize that life has a purpose. But time and time again, I would find it does. For example, just quickly, it says, "Those who remember God standing and sitting and lying down, and reflect upon the creations of the Heaven and Earth and say, 'Our Lord, You did not create all this in vain. You did not create all this in purpose.'" Just when I was starting to think maybe the Quran really doesn't state a purpose or life, maybe it really doesn't mean there's a real purpose of life, maybe I'm reading into it something that is there, I would come upon verses like that that would force me to just read a little further, make me think, "Oh, maybe it's just around the corner." "We have not created the Heaven and the Earth and whatever is between them in play. If We wished to take a sport, We could have done it by Ourselves." If we were to do that at all, God doesn't create the satisfies whims or fancies or entertain Himself. "Do you think that We created you purposely and that you will not be returned to Us?" It says in the 23rd Surah. "The true Sovereign is too exalted above that." In the 44th Surah, "We did not create the heavens and earth and all that is between them in play." That serves a purpose. Now, what sort of purpose can possibly serve?

So I tried to, you know, apparently the Quran speaks about believers and those who are the rejectors. You have the believers on the one hand, the rejectors on the other. Now apparently God has created us to be believers. So I tried to study what the has to say about the believers. And it's a natural thing to do to see how, what he, it wants us to become, if it has anything to do with these essential elements that it's stated. I mean, it's a natural way to approach it. I think you agree. Do you agree? Somebody nod your head. That's what I say to my math students, you know. Just one head nod is enough for a mathematician. Get one head going. Okay, I did my job. Okay.

So how does the Quran describe the believers? What are they supposed to attain to? What is their ultimate thing that they're supposed to get? What are they ultimately supposed to achieve? And it's very clear when you read the, the Quran, that what they will achieve in this life and will experience to so much greater degree in the next is they will experience a relationship of love with God. They will turn to God in love, and God will turn to them in love. In the Quran, God's mercy, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, beneficence, warmth, generosity, all the things we normally think associated with God are freely given to all mankind. But when God, Quran speaks of God's love, we would normally think of that as God's love. But when the Quran speaks about God's love, it's talking about something very special. Love is always presented as a relationship, a relationship between two. Without, if we do not turn to God in love, then we just receive His mercy, forgiveness, kindness, beneficence, warmth, generosity, all those wonderful nurturing things, His nurturing, and we reject it. And so we never really experience that love because we never really turn to it and open ourselves up to it. It is always there for us, but unless we enter into that relationship, that love, that give and take, that relationship of love is never develops. We reject it. And that's what the word "kafir" means. It means to, to reject, to turn your back, to ignore, to throw something, a gift that someone gives you, behind your back. And so the Quran tells us that the believers will experience this sublime relationship of love.

It says, "Yet there are men who take others besides God as equal, loving them as they should love God. But those who believe love God more ardently. Say, 'If you love God, follow me, and God will love you and forgive you your faults, for God is the forgiving, the merciful.'" "Oh, you believe, if any from among you should turn back from his faith, then God will assuredly bring a people He loves and who loves Him." And throughout the Quran, I'll mention time and time again that God loves this, the believer. God loves this type of person. God loves that type of person, and so forth, and so on. So it's quite, and I'm trying to pick to speed up here, so you'll have to excuse me for that. But it is apparent from the Quran that one of the purposes of creation, maybe the essential purpose of the creation, is to produce from this subset of humanity, this subset of humanity that will freely enter a relationship of love with God. They will not only experience the beauty of other relationships in their lives, but this love that they will experience with God is the sublime experience that they will enjoy not only in this life but infinitely greater in the next, when all the distractions, all the masks are stripped away.

Okay, I thought, you created us to love you, for us to turn to you in love, and to experience your love, to receive and experience your love. But why do you need these? Just pop us into heaven, love us, you know, and make us love you, program us to love you. You know, you make my dog love me, you know, do the same sort of thing. I kept on coming back to the same issue. Just do it. You know. Okay, still couldn't see it. And I was almost through the Quran, and I thought, either I'm dumb, or this scripture just never really got to it. Okay, so I didn't give up. I thought, okay, what's the next natural thing to do? Okay, so the P, so we're here to develop this relationship of love with God. The Quran tells us that, you know, if we are believers and we do good, we'll experience great joy and peace in this life, not only through our relationship with God, but through complimentary relationships with all the people around us in this world. It will be one for us of peace and serenity, even though we have to struggle and survive and suffer. But I couldn't see, you know, how this all tied in with this suffering business and why it couldn't just put us into heaven.

So what's the next natural thing to say? Okay, so we're created to have this relationship of love to with God, to enter this relationship, to experience and receive all that He has to offer us. So the natural thing to do is to study the two partners in that relationship. What does the Quran have to say about us, the believer? What does it ask of him and her? What does it require of them? And then, what does the Quran tell us about God? And then, is there some essential nexus, some essential connection between them? And doesn't have anything to do with these? Because if the Quran doesn't show that, then the, the essential link that links all this together, that pieces it all together, is missing. And as I thought to myself, whoever this author is, and by now I knew he had fantastic genius, even though he came from the primitive confines of the most backward, most uncivilized sector of humanity, of people that had no literary history really to speak of, no great works of literature, no scriptures that preceded him, even though he came from the desert of culture, even though this came out of that environment, and the mind behind it had to be tremendously and gen, phenomenally genius to come out of that surrounding and produce something like this. If that essential link was missing, I knew that, you know, he was great, but, you know, and extremely great, but, you know, he's, you know, what do you expect? How could anybody answer those questions? Nobody in the history of humanity has been able to ask, answer them.

Okay, so I thought, first I'll see what the Quran has to say about the believers. What does it require of them? Then what has to say about God, and see if there's some essential link. Are you following me? You're giving me the note. Get off the stage. Okay, I'll do my best. It's a deep subject. We're almost done. Bear with me a few more minutes. I'm sorry, really.

And know, s. Rajash, when he gives these sort of speeches, he always says, "Okay, I'm finishing up now," and then 10 minutes later says, "You thought I was telling you to..." I won't say that, but just give me a few more minutes. Bear with me, okay? Quickly, what does the Quran ask of the believers? From the Quran's many exhortations and his descriptions of acts and types of individuals loved by God, it is not difficult to compose a partial of things that the Quran wants us to do, which it calls good deeds. Time and time again: to believe in God, to have faith in God, to have a relationship with God, and to do good. So what does it describe as these good deeds? Well, as I read through the Quran, it says that, can I take this away? Remember intellect, choice, suffering. It says we should show compassion. Show compassion. We should be merciful. I have the references here, but just excuse me, I'm not going to list them all. Running out of time. We should be forgiving. Forgive others. We should be just. We should protect the weak and defend the oppressed. Defend the oppressed. We should be seek knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge, wisdom. Bear with me, ladies and gentlemen. We should be generous, truthful, and we should love. Oh, be peaceful, and we should love our fellow man. Love others. I'll just give you one verse because I know we're running out of time. Madam Speaker, "Truly those who believe and do good, the Most Merciful will endow with love." And to this end, we have made this scripture easy to understand in your own tongue, so that you might convey a glad tiding to the God-conscious and warn those given to contention. To this end, we have made this easy to understand so that we'll learn to love others. Okay, that's all I'll say about that. I would like to say a lot more, but I don't have time now.

What does the Quran tell us about God? You have to realize, I'm just about through with the Quran here in my first time reading it. And now I was really caught. I searched my head. What does the Quran tell us about God? Tells us nothing could be compared to Him. That is out, anything. He's outside anything that we may compare to. That our definitions do not encompass Him. That our reason cannot comprehend it. That He is transcendent, and we are finite. That He is immortal, we are mortal. He is uncorporeal, we are corporeal. That we have no way of comparing ourselves to Him. Nothing could be compared to Him. I thought, "Oh my God, I'm so close and yet so far, because I'll never understand the essential link between us and God and why these three things fit into place." Because the Quran tells us that we will, could never really quite understand God, or at least that's the way I thought. And so I put down the Quran when I had finished it. And much to my dismay, I was honestly disappointed because I thought, "I'm just, the author made a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant try, but he never quite made it." And so I was sitting in front of, about three, four weeks later, I was sitting in Diamond Heights in my apartment watching a football game, I think it was. And, you know, sometimes just things just slip into your minds when you least expect them. And I'm sitting there watching it, and all of a sudden into my mind came a thought, and I said, "Wait a minute. The Quran does tell us so much about God. Tells us again and again and again, but somehow I just missed it. Just skimmed over it every single time." Because if you turn to almost any page, if you turn to the beginning of any Surah, you could see time and time again, essential information about God that I just thought was sort of a literary device, something to make it just sound more beautiful. Because if you turn to the beginning of any Surah, you'll see the words, "In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate." If you read almost any passage, long passage, when you come to the end, end of it, it's punctuated by dual attributive statements like, "God is the merciful, the compassionate. God is the forgiving, the gentle. God is the kind, the Protector. God is the generous, the truthful." And so forth and so on. There are tens of thousands of such references in the statements in the Quran. What the Quran defines as God's most beautiful names, His attributes of perfection, repeated again and again and again on almost every page. And as I sat there, sitting by the television, I started to jot them down in my, you know, on my little piece of notebook there, same notebook I used to jot these down before. And I began to list from my own mind the attributes of perfection as I remembered them. And they were: We should be, God is the compassionate, God is the merciful, God is the forgiving, God is the just, the protector, the defender of the oppressed and the weak, the knowing, the wise, the generous, the kind, the truthful, the loving, the peaceful, the source of all peace, the truth, and so forth and so on. Every item I had listed in my list for the qualities that we human beings are supposed to develop, the Quran was telling me, had its infinite source and perfection in Allah, in God. And then all of a sudden, all the pieces fell together. Then I suddenly saw it, as I see most of you probably see as well, that now, I mean, suddenly it all began to make sense to me. In what way do I say that? Well, it was now obvious why we had to develop these qualities. It was no, it was now obvious how these things on the floor here fell into place. And I'll just say clearly, we're here to develop a relationship with God, to become closer to God. But how can you become closer to God when He's transcendent and you're finite? When He's immortal and you're immortal? Um, when you're, vice versa, when He's immortal and you're mortal, when He's unbound, fettered by time and space, and you are, and so forth and so on. How can you become close to that one? If I want to become close to you, I need to have something to share with you, something that we have in common. So, for example, if I want to come close to this young man here physically, I'll approach him because we both have bodies, and I can position my body closer to him. Physical presence, bodily presence, is something we both share. If I want to become closer to that gentleman back there, if I want to become closer to him intellectually, I'll reason with him, so we will have a convergence of minds because we both possess reason. If I want to become closer to one of my sisters on this side emotionally, I'll try to appeal to their sentiments because we both share feelings and similar types of experiences that generate those feelings. But how does one become closer to God? What do we share with Him? We share with Him what exactly? What He gave us, because the Quran tells us that when we were came into this life, He breathed into our spirit something of His spirit, and that we come into this world with the seed of these very qualities within us, and we could either kill them, stunt them, as the Quran says, or cause them to grow. And when we grow in these, we grow in our ability not just to experience tremendous beauty in life through all this, but we grow in our ability to receive and experience the infinite beauty, the infinite peace, the infinite truth, the infinite compassion, the infinite mercy, the infinite, etc., all, all the way down the list, that only comes from the infinite, perfect source of all these. The more we grow in mercy, the more we grow in our ability to receive and experience, in this life and in the next, to an infinitely greater degree, the mercy of God. The more we grow in compassion, the more we grow in our ability to receive and experience God's compassion in this life, through prayer and through ritual, through contemplation, and through other experience of others, and, and of course, in more in the next life, the compassion of God. The more we grow in our truthfulness, the more we grow in our ability to experience God, the truth, because all truth comes from God. The more we grow in these things, the more we grow in our ability to receive and experience God's attributes of perfection. The more we grow in our ability to receive and experience His being, and that sort of nearness, we are growing to Him, is tied to our essential nature and to His. It's more, more than just physical nearness. It's more than just a convergence of ideas. It's more than just a convergence of feelings. It's a convergence of essential beings. It's the closest type of nearness two can feel, two can experience.

I'll just give you a quick analogy because this helped my children. Let's pretend I have a cat, a goldfish, a dog, and three children, three daughters, let's say. And I do have three daughters. No matter how much of my love, compassion, forgiveness, caring I pour upon that goldfish, it could only experience it to a tiny degree. It might not even really be aware of it, because it's a very primitive creature. But my dog, on the other hand, when I show it all my kindness, all my love, all my compassion, all of what is essentially me, it could experience it to a much higher degree than my goldfish. And through its interaction with me, through its own trying to give its own self to me, we could experience a quite wonderful relationship. But my children, as especially as they grow older and go through their own experience and their own development, could receive and experience all the love and the compassion and the forgiveness and the caring and the generosity and the protection, everything I have to offer. They could experience my being to a much higher degree than my dog ever can. And we could have a relationship of beauty that I could never have with my dog, as much as I love animals. Having had three daughters, I know that the relationship with that you have with three beautiful daughters can never even come close. No other relationship could approximate that. Of course, my relationship with my wife is also extremely beautiful, and she might hear this, and she's a wonderful woman, really. I mean, she's the source of so much beauty. But, okay, Madam Chairman, I am ready.

So that seems to bring it all together. So now I thought, wait a minute, that doesn't explain this. Why the intellect? Why the choice? Why the suffering? I said, you almost had me. This Quran, you almost duped me, you almost tricked me, seduced me into accepting this philosophy. But wait a minute, what about intellect, choice, suffering? Why do we have to experience these? Why couldn't you just programmed us to be merciful, compassionate, forgiving, etc.? Why do we have to go through all this? And then, of course, the answer came to me as quickly as I thought of it. So we are creatures, and we grow, and we become. And yes, and you could make us anything you want, but you can't contain any of those attributes I listed without these three things. In mathematics, we try, you know, three premises that go into, you know, proving a theorem. We try to see if we could take one of them away, and if it's essential. And all three of these are definitely essential. For example, you could program a computer never to make an incorrect statement, but it doesn't become a truthful computer. Never heard anybody say to me, "Jeff, this Macintosh is the true, most truthful computer I ever saw." You, if it's programmed, it's not truth. You could program a CAT scan to help the sick, but it doesn't become compassionate. Never heard a doctor say, "Jeff, if you want to see a compassionate CAT scan, you come right over here." Because all those things, compassion, forgiveness, truth, caring, love, all are born out of choice, suffering, and reason. In order to do a compassionate deed, when we consider reaching out to someone in compassion, that person, first of all, that's inconceivable without the presence of suffering, an environment where there's suffering. And when we decide to help them or not, we reason in our minds, "What is this going to require of me?" It's going to require some suffering on my part, some my giving of myself. And without that mental process, it doesn't become a compassionate deed. And if it isn't by choice, it's not a compassionate deed. It's that choice that makes it compassionate. Same thing with truth. Truth is a choice between telling the truth or not telling the truth. Often times we tell that when we're at risk to our own personal loss. The more suffering that might come out of that choice, the greater is the truth behind it, the greater an act of truthfulness. And all the time we have to weigh the consequences of that. If I tell the truth here, my teacher's going to give me an F. If I don't tell the truth, I might get an A. You know, we weigh it in our mind. Last example, the famous wedding vow. "Do you take this woman to be your wife, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do you part?" What are they asking us? Do you knowingly make this choice, understanding full well what's at stake here, that it might involve richness, but poverty, health or sickness, that suffering is going to be involved until death? Once a young lady told me, "You know, you never really loved me because when the growing got tough, when things got hard, when we hit rock bottom, when my life fell apart, you just got up and left." And she was right. And she understood full well that that's what love is all about. About it is through giving and suffering together and hanging in there with each other and not bailing out and persevering through suffering, making that choice, and knowing what you're doing. All those three things are essential. So it's very easy to see why the Quran stresses these. For because for in order for us to grow in these, I've dropped it, we have to have these. And that's why it's very easy to see, ladies and gentlemen, why the Quran, 30 seconds, Madam Chairman, why the Quran talks about sin as self-destruction. The Quran says when we sin, we commit the Arabic word is "athm" or "dhulm," however dialect you have, against ourselves. We oppress, we destroy ourselves. Because when we don't grow in these, when we grow in the very opposite of these, we are literally destroying ourselves. When we grow into things that are antithetical to these, we are destroying our natures and we'll not allow ourselves to receive and experience the beauty that could be in store for us, this life and the next. It's like coming into this world and developing in the womb, none of the physical things you need to experience comfort and joy and peace and happiness on a physical level in this life. It's as if you're coming into this life and you've destroyed yourself physically somehow in the womb, and you came into it and you had nothing to protect you from the cold, from the heat, from the harshness of the elements, from germs, from disease, nothing to protect you, nothing to satisfy, give you the ability to satisfy your thirst or your hunger, nothing for you to feel, experience any physical comfort. This is all that matters when we go into the next life. If we don't develop these through our relationship with God, our very purpose of our being, then we will experience terrible suffering in this life, worse than if we came into this life in a physical state that didn't avail us of any of the comfort of this life. And so it'll be worse than fire. It'll be worse than endless fire. It'll be worse than the hell, the worst hell we could possibly imagine. So the Quran tells us, you know, that yes, you know, when it talks about heaven and hell, it's used very powerful symbolic language. But what essentially is telling us is, imagine the greatest joy and wonder and peace and serenity you could ever experience, and that's what's open to you on the one end. But on the other end, imagine the most terrible suffering that you could possibly bring on yourself, and you could also do that to yourself as well. It'll be worse than anything you could have ever imagined. So, and it's the Quran tells us that God says, "On the day of judgment, I did not harm you in the least. You destroyed yourselves." And it could say that in total objective truth. And that's why the Quran, well, I think I'll leave it at that because Madam Speaker is about to shoot me. I still have other things to talk about, but I want to find out how that basketball game is going. So, uh, thank you so, so much for listening to me for so long. And may the peace and mercy of Allah be upon you all. I didn't mean to try to scare anybody at the end. That wasn't my goal. I was just trying to make a point. May the peace and mercy of God be upon you all. Thank you so much. Salamu alaykum.

[Applause]

All right, we'd like to thank Dr. Lang for that very heartfelt, very long presentation. I have a few things to say before you all leave, so just be patient with me for a second.