Every human being, at some point in their life, confronts a question so vast that no amount of wealth, status, or distraction can permanently silence it: Why am I here? In a landmark lecture delivered at Islam Dewsbury in March 2013, international Islamic speaker and philosopher Hamza Andreas Tzortzis offers a profound, intellectually rigorous exploration of this most human of questions. Drawing on Islamic theology, Western philosophy, and the lived realities of modern society, Tzortzis builds a compelling case that without a Divine purpose anchoring our existence, life collapses into meaninglessness — and that the Islam we sometimes take for granted holds the only answer capable of truly liberating the human soul.
A Purposeless Existence: The Crisis at the Heart of Secular Life
Tzortzis opens by challenging the dominant secular and atheist assumption that human beings must simply “make up” their purpose as they go. Without a Divine anchor, he argues, we become what he calls “cosmic orphans” — thrown into existence with no choice over our parents, our DNA, our gender, our culture, or the historical moment we inhabit. Western philosophers called this condition “thrownness,” acknowledging that we arrive in the world already shaped by forces entirely beyond our will. And yet, instead of pausing to ask the three fundamental questions — How did I get here? What am I supposed to do? Where am I going? — most people simply wake up and start working in the factory of life, mindlessly conforming to whatever their environment demands. Beyond biological and cultural conditioning, Tzortzis identifies a deeper enslavement: to the nafs — the carnal, animalistic drives that, when left unchecked, reduce a person to something indistinguishable from the creatures around them. Al-Ghazali, the great 11th-century Islamic scholar, captured this in his Alchemy of Happiness: the one who merely eats when hungry, fights when angered, and follows every passion knows only the surface of themselves, not the deeper inward reality that constitutes true humanity.
- Without Divine purpose, life becomes entirely subjective — everyone invents their own meaning, and the moral distinction between living virtuously and living wickedly loses all ultimate weight.
- The philosophical concept of “thrownness” acknowledges that humans arrive in existence with no choice over their race, gender, parents, DNA, or socioeconomic circumstances.
- Three forms of enslavement trap the human soul: enslavement to inherited biology and circumstance, enslavement to the nafs (carnal desires), and enslavement to social norms and cultural pressure.
- Secularism without God reduces moral life to personal preference — if there is no Divine accountability, the distinction between piety and wickedness ultimately makes no difference.
- The Quran’s repeated invitation to reflect, observe, and question is itself Islam’s antidote to blindly following the crowd — the intellect (‘aql) is a gift to be refined by revelation, not suppressed by conformity.
“Without purpose of life, without a Divine Purpose for our life, we don’t really have any meaning to our lives in the first place. If you take Divine Purpose outside of your life, then it’s all your subjective opinions — subject to your own thoughts, so it’s all relative. And if you take Divine Purpose out of the window, you’re left with someone who is a cosmic orphan.” — Hamza Tzortzis
True Liberation: How Servanthood to Allah Sets the Soul Free
The lecture’s most counter-intuitive — and most powerful — insight is this: the only path to genuine freedom is voluntary servanthood to Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala). Tzortzis draws on the 14th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who taught that ‘ubudiyyah — worship and servanthood to Allah — is not a constraint on human freedom but its very source. The Arabic words for serenity and liberty share a linguistic root with the word for worship, pointing to a reality embedded in the language of the Quran itself: the soul that submits to its Creator is the only soul that is truly free. Allah, who created us and knows us more intimately than we know ourselves — as Tzortzis puts it, “Allah knows Fatima better than Fatima knows Fatima” — has prescribed a purpose through which every human instinct and aspiration can be properly ordered. This purpose is declared in the Quranic verse that mankind and jinn were created for nothing other than the worship of Allah, and worship in Islam is comprehensive: it encompasses obedience, love, acknowledgment of Allah’s supreme authority, and the constant pursuit of knowledge of Him. The Sahaba, the companions of the Prophet ﷺ, demonstrated this truth with their lives — possessing no advanced technology, no military superiority, and no political infrastructure, they transformed the entire known world because they truly knew Allah, and because they understood that nothing happens except by His will and power.
“The only way to escape from this slavery is to become a slave of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. That is the real liberation — because Allah transcends you. He knows you better than you know yourself, and having that enslavement to Allah frees you and elevates you from the dunya, from enslaving yourself to your conditioning, your nafs, your ego, and the things you had no choice over.” — Hamza Tzortzis
What Hamza Tzortzis offers in this lecture is not abstract theology detached from daily life — it is a precise diagnosis of the spiritual crisis at the centre of modern existence, and a prescription rooted in the Quran, the Sunnah, and the deepest insights of the Islamic intellectual tradition. The Fitra, the innate disposition with which Allah created every human being, already holds an orientation toward its Creator; the noise of secular culture, social pressure, tribal loyalty, and unchecked desire merely drowns it out. To rediscover one’s purpose is not to acquire something new — it is to return to what was always there, to answer the questions that life itself keeps quietly asking. Whether you are a Muslim seeking to deepen your understanding, or someone still searching for solid ground, this talk is an invitation to think seriously, to question the assumptions society has handed you, and to consider whether the guidance of Islam — a faith of profound intellectual and spiritual depth — holds within it a wisdom capable of answering the oldest question any human being has ever asked.
