The Iliad - Authenticity and Being True to Yourself

In this first episode, Abdallah talks to Mujeeb Gallagher, a Lawyer and Classicist based in London, to understand the importance of Homer's ancient song The Iliad. 

From it emerges the need to recover the authentic self, being to oneself and nurturing a spontaneity that is a propulsion towards action and much more. 

Buy Martin Hammond's translation of The Iliad here

Timecode Guide

00:00 The first lines of The Iliad recited by Aminah Folli in Ancient Greek

01:38 The Iliad as the source of European civilisation

02:19 A song that remolds the human psyche

02:56 A brief synopsis of the Iliad, the theme of Achilles’ rage and the fall of Troy

05:38 Rage and understanding man and manhood. Homer takes a hard look right into the soul of man

08:29 Modern man is scared of man. What makes Achilles better is that he submits to himself and his destiny better that anyone else

09:23 Submitting to one’s destiny and tawba 

10:05 "You can’t make tawba for a broken psyche"

12:19 "Say: I have Iman in Allah and then go straight" 

13:38 Quoting Ibn Atailla who said “the whole of the cosmos is inside the human heart.” And how the heroes in the Iliad who accept their destiny are ennobled, transformed and elevated. 

15:00 Alexander Pope’s description of the Iliad as ‘The Wild Paradise’

16:23 The theme of war and the battlefield in the Iliad as a crucible of life

18:03 Exploring the idea of our modern crisis of being

19:28 Illness, tawhid and how warfare has been outlawed nowadays. Instead we have drones, surveillance and war as a computer game.

22:35 Exploring spontaneity and the propulsion towards action

27:15 The Shield of Achilles

30:13 Assabiyya (esprit de corps) among men and the relationship between Achilles and Patroklus as the highest bond between men

31:47 How the Iliad teaches recovering the Authentic Self

32:48 The modern misrepresentations of Achilles and the incompatibility of his character within the constructs of modernity

35:53 How Muslims are the only group nowadays able to access and truly understand the Iliad

37:16 An anecdote from Hajj 

39:03 What would Homer say about the lockdown? As he looks down on those who avoid confronting their enemies out of fear? And the relationship between courage and authenticity.

40:53 What is fear? An anecdote about Rumi

41:55 Comparing how modern society looks forwards into an ideal future when all previous traditions looked back at a bygone era. And how as Muslims we have the Sahaba as our guiding lights. 

44:48 Goethe on the Iliad, European history and christianity

45:13 The end of the Homeric Spirit with the World Wars

47:23 The Rivers of Blood Speech, Enoch Powell, the legacy of Babur, the Mughal empire and the future of Islam in the West

52:25 How christianity opposed Greek values and the continued tension between the two.    

Music by Ian Cattanach