Notes:

1) The word “murābiṭ” originally denotes one who is stationed as a guard at a military outpost. The word “ribāṭ” (i.e., to keep watch as a sentinel) is used in the hadith of the Holy Prophet ﷺ where he said: “ribāṭ for a day in the path of God is better than the entire world and what it contains.” He also said in another narration: “ribāṭ for a day and a night is better than fasting and performing night prayers for a month”. There are other narrations where the word “murābiṭ” is used, such as: “whoever dies as a murābiṭ in the path of God, he will continue to receive rewards for the good deeds that he has committed”. These terms then also evolved to denote concepts within Sufism, where “ribāṭ” means to keep vigilance against the whispers of Satan and one’s desires. Though the term used by Taha denotes a kind of intellectual vigilance, both the physical and spiritual meanings of the words are implicit in them, as they are both embodied in the Gazan murābiṭ. It should not be lost on the viewer that Taha also hails from a city in Morocco named Rabat.
2) Most of the concepts mentioned here, such as the kinds of harm that Israel commits against Man—to their fiṭra, memory, values, etc—the concept of sanctity, the concept of sentinelship in Palestine, etc are discussed in depth in the first chapter of Taha’s work, ‘Thughūr Murābaṭa’.
3) Kant’s concept of ‘Radical Evil’ can be further read about in the first two chapters of his ‘Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason’. He asserts that humans have an innate propensity to evil, citing the numerous instances of horrific deeds committed by humans as an informal proof. Taha’s argument that Kant borrowed ethical concepts from religion can be read further in his work, ‘Su’āl al-Akhlāq’.
4) Arendt’s concept of ‘Banality of Evil’ was first used to describe the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, in particular, based on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. This is seen in her work ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil’. Arendt’s analysis of the nature of totalitarian leaders is found in her other work, ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’.
5) For a metaphysical analysis on the concept of the Covenant (mīthāq), the viewer will find it helpful to peruse Syed Naquib al-Attas’ ‘Islam: The Covenants Fulfilled’. This will make clear the relation between the Covenant and the World of Perfection, as well as rigorously connecting it with the exclusivity of the religion of Islām that Taha alludes to.
6) Taha’s usage of the term ‘Perfect Man’ [insān kāmil] to describe the Gazan Sentinel is obviously drawing from the technical sense of the word as used by the muḥaqqiqūn, particularly al-Jillī, as one who embodies the Muḥammadan Reality through his ascended ethical state. al-Shaykh al-Akbar ibn ʿArabī in his ‘Futuḥāt’ describes the state of the Perfect Man as—he quotes a narration attributed to Imām ʿAlī —: “I do not gaze upon anything except that I see God within it”, which parallels Taha’s statement that the Gazan Sentinel sees the Lordship and the Oneness of God in everything.
7) Taha’s claim that Gazans are the teachers of the world is obviously drawn from Ṣūfī works that discuss the refinement of one’s internal reality in events of great calamities. See in particular ibn ʿAjība’s commentary of the Qur’ān, on 2: 214, where he says regarding those who are tested and suffer in this world: “When [...] their merits become perfected, God spreads their virtue to His servants, so they acknowledge them to [...] guide the servants towards God, after then clothing them in the attire of Beauty and Majesty. With the attire of Beauty, affection and sympathy for them occur, and with the attire of Majesty, obedience to their command and listening to their speech occur.”
8) The reason that is higher than denuded reason [ʿaql mujarrad] that Taha refers to as being connected to values derived from Divine Perfections is enhanced reason [ʿaql mu’ayyad] whose domain is the domain of ethics and praxis. For more details on the levels of reasons, see Taha’s work ‘al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī’.
9) Taha’s reference to what he calls “technical unrestraint” [tasayyub tiqnī] is connected to his critique of the technological mind, drawing from Ellul. For a more in depth critique, see Taha’s other lecture ‘How do we develop an original Islamic philosophy’.
10) I, as the translator, have taken the liberty to coin neologisms to illustrate the dynamic nature of Arabic morphology by conjugating English words into non-standard words, following Taha’s tradition of doing the same in Arabic to denote new concepts. Examples include: sentinelship, covenantery, frontieral, modelity, etc.
11) 48:13 is in reference to US Congress' standing ovation for Netanyahu that occured just three days before this lecture.

And God and His Emissary ﷺ knows best.

Lecture delivered by Prof. Dr. Taha Abderrahmane in Istanbul, July 28 2024.
Full video originally uploaded by Islâm Düşünce Enstitüsü [IDE].