Experiential Knowledge of Allah

You can study Islam for years, memorize rulings, and still feel anxious, reactive, or spiritually “stuck.” We’re going after the uncomfortable question behind that experience: what if the problem isn’t a lack of Islamic information, but a lack of embodied change? I break down the difference between fiqh as a necessary map and the lived journey of becoming the kind of person who can consistently walk that map with a steady heart.

We talk about why behavior rarely shifts just because we know something is haram or wajib, and how fear, shame, resentment, and insecurity can overpower our best intentions. I share the story of Al Razi and the old woman to highlight the gap between intellectual certainty and existential certainty, and why “simple faith” often looks like calm, resilience, and trust that has settled into the nervous system.

Then we get practical. I introduce my C-NEAR formula (Circumstance, Nervous System Thoughts, Emotions, Actions, Results) to show how interpretation shapes emotional experience, habits, and outcomes. Two Muslim women can know the same verses and still live completely different internal realities, depending on the meanings their minds add. If you’ve struggled with perfectionism, people pleasing, or turning worship into performance, this will help you see the hidden commentary you can finally challenge.

If this helps you, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a quick review so more people can close the gap between knowing and becoming.

I invite you to join The Ummi Collective. It is a weekly coaching program for Muslim mothers raising children on the autism spectrum.

Inside, you learn how to support your child’s development in a way that builds independence, confidence, and long-term success... without losing yourself in the process.

Apply for a Commitment Rate today

https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/offers/RRn2EBEC/chec

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Gamal Abdar.

SPEAKER_01 (00:15):
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Today we're going to be talkingabout having experiential
knowledge of Allah subhanahu wata'ala.
Fiqh is a worldly science andthis is jurisprudence.
It has everything to do with theunderstanding of the religion.
At the same time, it has verylittle to do with experiencing
your lived reality as a humanbeing.

(00:37):
And this is a powerfuldistinction because it separates
knowledge about Islam from thetransformation that Islam is
meant to produce.
So for a Muslim woman strugglingwith anxiety, shame,
perfectionism, people pleasing,or the after effects of trauma,
this distinction isrevolutionary because you might

(00:59):
have spent years accumulatingIslamic information while
remaining emotionally unchanged.
And this has nothing to do withme putting down information.
Information is vital.
It just means that informationand transformation are not the
same thing.
Fik tells you what Allah hascommanded, but it does not

(01:21):
automatically teach you the how,how to become the kind of person
who can consistently live thosecommands.
So you might know the rulingsand the fiqh of lowering your
gaze, you might know how tocontrol your tongue or what
maintaining family ties is allabout.
You know that you're supposed toavoid backbiting.

(01:41):
And yet maybe you repeatedlyfind yourself failing at any of
these because the obstacle isnot the ignorance of the ruling.
The obstacle is fear, anger,insecurity, resentment.
All of these deeply practicedemotional patterns.
Fik identifies your destination.
The mental and the spiritualdevelopment, the Tessaw, helps

(02:03):
remove the obstacles on theroad.
Jurisperance or Fik answers thequestion what is permissible?
And mental health asks why do Ikeep doing what I know I
shouldn't?
And these are completelydifferent questions.
You know that gossip is haram,but you gossip anyways because
it temporarily relieves theloneliness or it gives you a

(02:24):
sense of belonging.
You know how much arrogance iscondemned, but you continue to
seek superiority in subconsciousways because the sense of
inadequacy that your lower brainoffers has become unbearable, so
arrogance feels like a relieffrom that.
Your chronic anxiety takes youaway from the wakkul, so the
fiqh can correctly diagnose theexternal behavior, and

(02:47):
psychological and spiritual workremains on you.
And I do have to emphasize howmany Muslims, men and women
alike, confuse religiouseducation with inner
purification, while the Quranrepeatedly calls people to
reflect, remember, and purifythemselves, to soften your
hearts.
The destination has always beentransformation, not just correct

(03:09):
information.
Describing reality is differentthan changing it.
Reading about patience does notmake you more patient.
More than reading a surgicaltextbook makes you a surgeon,
competence of patience developsthrough repeated practice,
emotional regulation, humility,gratitude, courage, forgiveness,

(03:30):
and trust in Allah.
All of these can develop yourpatience and they're done
through repeated experiences,awareness, and exercises.
All of this requires intentionalpractice.
So before you become a proudcollector of Islamic
information, I want you to justnotice if you're remaining
behind on development of yourIslamic character.

(03:51):
This is the difference betweenthe map and the territory as NLP
would put it.
Fiqh is an extraordinarilydetailed map of the path to
Allah.
This map is indispensablebecause it tells you where to go
and where not to go.
But having the map is not thesame as walking the journey.
Walking itself requiresendurance, courage, resilience,

(04:13):
perseverance.
So as a metaphor, what you'redoing is collecting more maps
and confusing that with makingprogress.
So I'm challenging the modernassumption that just because
something is Islamic, it mustautomatically address every
dimension of the human being.
Quran itself distinguishesbetween the people who know

(04:33):
intellectually and people whosehearts have changed.
Even Iblis possessed immenseknowledge about Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, and his downfall wasnot intellectual deficiency.
It was the disease of the heart,it was arrogance.
The coaching work that I do doesnot compete with the fiqh
teachings.
It just serves those teachings.

(04:53):
The fiqh and the Islamicrecommendations might tell you
that you should take the highroad and forgive, and coaching
will help you identify theresentment that keeps
forgiveness impossible.
Fiqh teaches you tawakul,believe in Allah.
Coaching exposes yourcatastrophic thinking that
prevents that trust, thatprevents that tawakul.

(05:15):
If Islamic teachings are callingyou towards gratitude and you
have knowledge about that,coaching will help you reveal
the practiced attention towardslack instead of abundance.
Fiqhi teachings will commandjustice and coaching will help
you uncover the fear that causesyou to abandon your own
boundaries and anything thatcauses you to abandon justice

(05:38):
towards yourself.
Coaching is the bridge betweenknowing Allah's commands and
becoming psychologically andspiritually capable of living
them.
Religion can be studied as anacademic discipline without ever
becoming the operating system ofthe heart, because the intellect
is what memorizes the rulingsand ego is what continues to

(05:59):
rule the personality.
The miracle of Islam is notproducing scholars, it's
producing human beings whosecharacter becomes so transformed
that the religion begins to livethrough you.
Al Razi was one of the greatestintellectual in Islamic history
and his intellectual rigorserved Ummah immensely.
When al Razi was surrounded by acrowd and celebrating his

(06:22):
intellectual achievements andhis thousand proofs of God's
existence, an old woman askedwho he was.
She was told of his thousandproofs of Allah.
She laughed and remarked that hemust have thousand doubts to
need these proofs.
And struck by her pureunshakable faith, Arazi
reportedly prayed, O Allah,grant me faith like that of the

(06:45):
old woman.
And keeping in mind as I unfoldthis story is that I'm not
presenting it as an attack onintellectuals or an attack of
scholarship.
I'm presenting this as anexample where this story tells
you that intellectual certaintyand existential certainty are
not the same thing.
The old woman did not have onethousand philosophical arguments

(07:06):
of Allah's existence because shedid not need them.
This phrase the religion of oldwomen is attributed in Islamic
tradition as the expression ofsimple, sincere faith, and it's
not necessarily celebratingignorance which I originally
mistook it as.
It recognizes that there is akind of certainty that comes

(07:26):
from lifetime of living withAllah.
The old woman who cannot explainthe classifications of the
Wakul, the stations of the nafs,still sleeps peacefully because
she knows that Allah will takeher through every hardship.
Her knowledge is embodied.
It has become the part of hernervous system.
Now contrast this with someonewho has studied the science of

(07:48):
the Zgiya and has studied Fikextensively.
This woman can provide you allof the definitions of Sabur,
Shukar, Iglas, Murakaba, Rida,and she can know the names of
these stations and the diseasesof the heart.
Yet when her husband criticizesher, her body goes into shame
and collapses, and this hasprofound implications for the

(08:10):
well being of you as a Muslimwoman, because you might have
unconsciously equatedaccumulating Islamic knowledge
with spiritual growth.
And the irony that I'm trying topoint out is that the elderly
woman with simple faith hasgreater psychological well being
than the highly educated studentof Islamic sciences because this

(08:31):
old woman has spent her lifepracticing resilience, not just
studying it.
And this is where coachingnaturally fits.
My work is not to teach you moreIslamic rulings, it's to help
you embody the beliefs that youalready know that you should
have.
Coaching is to help you withyour belief, your yachin, and

(08:52):
for it to become a tool orregulation of your nervous
system rather than a silentsuppression.
So in this sense, yourpsychological well being is not
a separate path from yourspiritual well being.
It is the evidence that therealities of faith have finally
moved from information intotransformation.

(09:13):
The religion of that old womanis not the absence of knowledge,
it's the knowledge that hasdisappeared only to become
character.
So once you become a woman who'sexperienced poverty and still
found abundance and provision,you have found the religion of
the old woman.
If you have watched doors closewhen Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala

(09:34):
open other ones that you neverimagined, you have found her
religion.
If you've found a way to createease out of every hardship, then
your heart and mind has becometransformational, then you have
learned the skill of alchemizingand becoming skillful at
changing hardships into ease.
So please, at any level do notreduce mental well being to

(09:58):
knowing more.
Your mental well being is fromyour repeated living the
realities that your intellectalready accepts.
Tawakul becomes a learned andlived reality every time you
tolerate uncertainty withouttrying to control the outcome.
Sabur is learned every time youremain regulated during
hardship, and this applies evenif you feel intense emotions.

(10:22):
Your faith is built every timeyou look back and you recognize
that you're in Allah's mercy.
So the religion of this oldwoman is not anti intellectual.
It is the completion of theintellectual knowledge.
This is what happens whentheology and knowledge descends
into the heart, into the nervoussystem, and it comes out into

(10:42):
your habits, into yourperception of the world, and
eventually it becomes the lensthrough which you experience
life itself.
No amount of knowledge is goingto guarantee how you will
actually experience peace.
Although you might be gettingindirectly coached through books
and knowledge, but you have toremember that that's because of

(11:02):
your perception of the writtenmaterial or the learned
material, that is not strictlyfrom the knowledge itself.
So I'm a big proponent ofknowing the fiqh rulings and
having the knowledge, but I'meven a bigger proponent of
making this into a livedreality.
When your Islam becomesembodied, the knowledge has

(11:24):
travelled from intellect toperception, and that translates
into behavior which thentransforms your character.
And this is where my C dash nearformula comes so very handy C
for circumstance, N for nervoussystem thoughts, E for emotions,
A for actions, and R forresults.

(11:45):
Every circumstance in your lifeis filtered through your
interpretation of it.
So what you think a Quranicverse means or what you think
Allah's decree means, thoseinterpretations will create your
emotional experience, and thisis basically the response of
your nervous system, which willshape your actions and
ultimately produce the life thatyou're currently living.

(12:08):
So the religion you practice isnot simply the religion you
know, it is the religion thatexists in your thinking.
It exists from your perceptions.
Two Muslim women can possess theexact same knowledge about Islam
and experience it entirelydifferently because of the
meaning they attach to that sameknowledge.

(12:28):
Both will know that Allah isalways, and one interprets it as
the invitation to releasecontrol, she eases into
tolerance of the uncertainty.
The other one believes she muststill anticipate every possible
disaster and has to behypervigilant.
Both know the same ruling andcan quote the same verses, yet

(12:51):
one lives with peace and theother one lives with chronic
anxiety.
All of this is because of thegap between knowledge and the
practice of that knowledge.
This is why internal work isabsolutely indispensable.
Every one of us carries biases,blind spots, inherited
assumptions.
We are functioning from fearsthat we don't even know exist.

(13:14):
If you're a woman who secretlybelieves that your worth depends
on your performance, then youmay turn every religious
obligation into anotheropportunity to prove yourself,
which becomes very exhausting.
If you're a woman who believesmistakes make you unworthy, you
may experience repentance ashumiliation rather than mercy.

(13:36):
This is extremely tolling onyour nervous system.
If you're a woman who fearsrejection, you might interpret
obedience as an attempt to earnAllah's love instead of
responding to Allah's love thatalready exists abundantly.
When you work with me throughthe C Dash Near algorithm in
coaching, your thoughts aboutall of these situations become

(13:58):
visible.
You begin to notice not onlywhat Allah has said, but what
your mind is adding to whatAllah has said.
You discover the commentary thathas been running alongside your
knowledge of Islam.
And this awareness gives you theopportunity to question your
assumptions.
You get to challenge your blindspots and replace your believed

(14:19):
narratives with meanings thatare more useful to you, more
expansive, more consistent withAllah's attributes.
And this is where genuineinternal change begins.
So in this sense, this tool,this algorithm, becomes a bridge
from Fik to Tas.

(14:39):
Fik teaches you what Allah asksyou, and when you question your
narratives, it helps you examinethe meanings you've attached to
those teachings.
And then you get to choose themeaning that are more aligned
with the reality you want tolive, the emotional experience
you want to have in this world.
This way your behavior changes,your relationships change, and

(15:02):
your outcomes change.
The knowledge that was once inyour mind starts to become more
embodied.
The goal is to become the kindof woman whose relationship with
Allah has become so deeplyembodied that it shapes the way
you interpret everycircumstance, and you come to it
with a regulated nervous system.
Maybe this is what the religionof the old woman ultimately

(15:25):
represents.
It's not to highlight theabsence of scholarship, rather
it's the completion of it.
And this is the journey everyMuslim woman is invited to take.
With that I pray to Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala, O Allah,
make your religion more thanknowledge upon my tongue.
Let it become the certainty inmy heart and wisdom in my mind.

(15:45):
Ya Allah, purify all of ourthoughts from every bias and
fear.
Make our knowledge a means oftransformation and our
transformation a means ofnearness to you.
Amin Ya Rabul Adamin.
Please keep me in your draws.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.