 What does the Qur'an ask of me here? What does the Prophet, a.s., ask of me here? Is there something Islamic that I can derive from this? I thought about Ibn Khaldun, really the first sociologist of Islam from present-day Morocco. I was actually just in his hometown in Morocco about a week ago. And Ibn Khaldun wrote a book called the Muqaddimah. But people think the book is called the Muqaddimah. That's wrong. His book is called Kitab al-A'ibah. Ibn al-A'ibah comes from the word Ibra in Urdu, it's Ibra. And the same word comes in the last page of Surah Yusuf in the 13 Juzab of the Qur'an. When Allah SWT says, لقد كان في قساسهم عبراته اللي قل الالباب That Allah SWT creates ethical lessons in the stories of the people who have preceded you. Right? And then the same vein in Surah Muhammad Allah says, قل سيروا في الارض فنظرو كيف كان عقبة المكذبين That literally travel throughout the word سيرا. سار يسيروا سيرا فهو السائر. Right? The same Arabic root word. Travel throughout the world, the entire span, the entire surface of the earth. فنظرو كيف كان عقبة المكذبين See Allah SWT design with people. Because what is Allah SWT? You will never find a change in the design, in the system, in the order, in the tanzim of Allah SWT. So how does Allah SWT treat the mughals of India? Right? And for me obviously you can't just, you know, if you know Urdu or Arabic, those languages are useless to the mughals because they knew neither. They only knew Farsi and Turkish. So to study the mughals you have to know Farsi. None of the Mughal kings knew Urdu besides the last one. Right? All of these kings only knew Farsi. Some of them knew Arabic like Aurangzeb and Shah Jahan. Right? And so that language is Farsi. Right? There are more Farsi poets produced just in the city of Hyderabad than all of Iran for 800 years, which is absurd. Just the city of Hyderabad produced more Farsi poets than the entire country of Iran for 800 years. Abdul Qadir B. Dil, Mirza Ghalib. Right? All of these great Indian poets were, Farsi was their first language. Right? In fact we had a different dialect of Farsi. Mirta Qaymir, the great 18th century poet. He was sitting in a bazaar in Lahore and an Iranian poet comes and they sort of have their different accents. We say Osman. They say Osman. Right? And Mirta Qaymir is like, why is he speaking like this? Right? Because Indians, we sort of had our own dialect of Farsi, obviously that ended in 1832 when the British governor general said that the entire Indian Muslim contribution is zero and one shelf of English literature is worth more than an entire library of Indian Muslim literature. I mean you can see the racism and the chauvinism in that. I mean only the elder Muslims of our community will know the contributions of Muslim India to the world. Right? Thinking about Ahmed Siddhindi, the great Sufi, Shah Waliullah. Right? The great Mughal theologian. I mean Iqbal himself is sort of heir to that legacy, to that civilization. When Iqbal, the fact that Iqbal has produced more Farsi poetry in his lifetime than any poet from Iran or Afghanistan at the same time period. And he was someone who was born in Sialkot and died in Lahore. Iqbal says, the heavens have never seen such a sight. What sight is this? That even the heart of trustworthy Jibril, Ali Hassan, trembles. He says in India, what a wonderful civilization that has been built here. The belief the Indian Muslim worships and the non-Muslim carves idols. Surat na parastaman, butkhana shikastaman ansayle subuk sayram, harban gusastaman. Iqbal says that I don't worship the surah. Butkhana shikastaman and I break the idol house. Harban gusastaman and I exceed all bounds because to Iqbal Muslim India was a metaphor for all of Islam. That you had the Arabs, you had the Afghans, you had the Turks, you had the Iranians. You had black Muslims from East Africa. Malik Ambar was a great black Muslim king who ruled modern day Dakhun from Ethiopia. How did that happen? And so for India being that tapestry. And so how does India then produce a civilization and how do Muslims in India produce that civilization? And yet, and how does Allah SWT then take that power away was something that I sought to explore in Babur's hometown which is now located on the border of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China. So, you know, as someone who was born in Fremont, raised in Fremont and, you know, I'm there by myself. I, you know, I don't really speak Turkish, I speak Farsi. And, you know, in that area I wanted to reflect, right, that the civilization that gave us so many great people, right, that now from Peshawar to Dhaka there are about 600 million Muslims. How did that come to be? Who created those processes, right, that is Islamic history just Baghdad and Damascus, that Delhi and Hadrabadha have nothing to say, that we have not produced anything about, to speak on behalf of Islam, any contributions, right? I mean, this is the sort of, I would say, the postmodern development that is sort of a risen, a risen, right? Nobody thinks about that Muslim Indians are intellectuals or Muslim Indians have contributed, right, when Iqbal is weeping in Lahore. And he says, Right? And this is sort of reflecting again on what Babur brought to India, right, that interaction between Farsi, between Arabic, of Islamic values, and that's the most important thing, that because before Babur came to India, Muslims in India were about 45% Irfan Habib, who's a professor at Liga University actually has a book about the statistics of Muslims in India. So now, how do Muslims go from 5% to the time of partition? In 1947, the British Governor General, Cyrus Radcliffe and Lord Mounbat, and argued they were about 38%, this is undivided India from Peshawar to Dahaka and to Salah in modern day Bangladesh, right? 38% Muslims, about 100 million at that time, now about 600 million, right? Who brought that? Who let that happen, right? And now to convert people in that land, right, is that you have to prove Islam is the most intellectual and the most compelling form of set of beliefs. And in India, you don't have any type of people, you have the Hindu Brahmin intellectuals, who have a 5,000 year civilization, right? You're not going to come in and be like, convert to Islam and they'll convert. You have to prove why Islam is superior, and that's why Muhammad Jalaluddin Akbar started his translation projects between Sanskrit and Farsi, right? So that Muslim values can be translated into Sanskrit, right? And to show why Islamic values are superior, why we believe in Tawheed, that we don't believe in Islam because we were born into Islam, that we believe Islam is that Allah says that whoever follows a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them, and he will forever be a loser in the afterlife. Allah says that he has sent a holy prophet with a religion that it can be dominant over everything else. And if we as Muslims don't believe that Islam has the ability to be the most ethical, the most intellectual, the most academic force in the world, then who's going to believe that, right? And that's what the Mughals brought, right? That whether you go to Islam, you're not going to believe it. You're not going to believe it. The Mughals brought, right? That whether you go to northern India or southern India, you'll see their traces. I'll say this in Arabic and I ask Allah for forgiveness and mercy. Praise be to Allah. Peace be upon the Prophet, after his nation, after his nation, after his nation, after his nation. Iqbal says, I got a shayzada, a hindam. Farouk, a chashmi, a manas. Zakhaki, paki, Bukhara. And Kabul, and Tabrez. Iqbal says that even though he's the son of India because remember Pakistan had not been formed, he passed away in 1938. I got a shayzada, a hindam. Even though I am a son of India, Farouk, a chashmi, a manas. The splendor of my chasham, of my eyes. Zakhaki, paki, Bukhara. From the sacred dust of Bukhara. And Kabul, and Tabrez. Tabrez is in northern Iran, near the border of Azerbaijan, right? And so, remember Iqbal is born in 1880. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal king, and you can argue that there is a sort of trauma for Indian Muslims who are now living in the late 19th, early 20th century. Right, because now for after 800 years of Musal Sal, Musalmani hukumat, Laghatar, Pader Bay, Musalmani hukumat, it ended, right? From Mohammed bin Qasim to Mohammed Ghaznavi, to Mohammed Ghouri, to Shahabuddin Ghouri, to Mohammed bin Tughluq, Tughluq, to Babur, to Shah Jahan, to Shah Suri, to Khukul, to Khutab Shah, to all of these kings. And I could tell you 150 of them, but it wouldn't do anything, right? Because we don't like studying our history for whatever reason, or we don't think that Islamic history in India is even worth studying, right? Even though that 600 million Muslims now live in South Asia today, right? And even for those people who think, right, that the Mughals did not contribute to Islam, I asked them, what have you read about the Mughals? What do you know about the Mughals? Only 2% of the entire Mughal curriculum has been, or the entire Mughal corpus or library has been translated even into Urdu, let alone English. You can only read it in Farsi, so who reads Farsi to even know what they wrote, to even know what that civilization represented? The fact that Urdu as a language came about during the Mughals, I mean, Urdu is the most spoken and most recent language at the same time in the world, spoken by about 300 million people between Pakistan and India, right? And that, how do you produce a language? Only by ensuring there's beautiful, gorgeous, stunning interaction of cultures, but ensuring, and it wasn't just about culture, it was the most important thing is that they brought the the most important thing, because the most critical fact of any Muslim's life, beyond culture, beyond art, beyond music, beyond literature is recognizing the sovereignty of Allah SWT, right? And as soon we forget that, we forget everything, right? And for for those of us trying to understand where are we going, right? Where are we headed? Allah SWT tells us that only by understanding himself and how he treats previous aqwaam, or previous nations can we even learn. So when people say that, oh, Muslims are always stuck in the past. What does that even mean? I mean, how much jahlat is in that statement, right? Allah the whole Quran, most of the Quran is about the past, right? Most of the Quran, right? What does Allah say on the last page of Surahud وكل النقص عليك من أمباء الرسول ما نثبت به فعادك. Why do we tell you the past? Allah tells the holy prophet. ما نثبت به فعادك. So we can solidify, fortify your heart, right? So that you can reflect just like in any western university, whether you go to Harvard, Yale or Princeton, you spend two years studying Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, but Muslims are so quick to forget their past. Where do they come from? Who are you? Where, where, how can you know where, I mean, the prophets that that means that the most perfect generation is the prophet generation and then the generation after them and then the generation after them, right? So that means reflecting on what came before you. ربنا اختر لنا ولي اخوانينا الذين سبقونها بالإيمان. That oh Allah, forgive those who have preceded us. That Allah is constantly telling you remember, right? And that's what تقرآن is, I think a remembering. But not only of Allah ﷻ and the prophet but also of the people who came before you. How many Muslims today either from India or Pakistan can tell you about their grandparents or about their great-grandparents? What kind of lives they live? Even what their names are. I mean, three, four generations, most people can go. Say that, go 15, 25, 30 generations. We've lost that, right? Because we're always, we're saying nobody's saying don't focus on the future. I'm not saying that, I don't think anybody's saying that. But we're saying is that remember who you were. Not to get stuck on it, but to build something in the future based on that, right? Because if you don't look towards your own paths, then you just take the dominant culture and replicate that which is what we're seeing across the Muslim world. Why do cities in Morocco look like Europe? Rabat and Qasablanqa I was just there. Where is Pakistan? Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkhand, these all look like fake copies of Moscow and St. Petersburg. How did that happen? Right, do we not have any confidence to build based on our own ideas and our cultures? Allahumma inna ka'afu wa nkareem Tuhabbu la'afu wa fa'afu anna Wahdina wa aafina wa razaqna ya kareem Allahumma inna nasaluka min khayri Maa sallakka min hunabiyyuka Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Wa na'udubika min sharri musta'ada min hunabiyyuka Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Antal musta'an wa alayka al palaq Wa la hawla wa la quwwatilla Billahi l-Ali l-Azim Inna Allahiyyakum bila'adri wa l-i'ahsad Wa ita'idil qurba Wa yanha'ali al fahshai Wa l-munkari wa l-baghih Ya'idukum la'alakum tadakkarun Wa dhikr Allahi adhkurukum Wa dhu'uhu yastajib lakum Wa la dhikr Allahi ta'ala Wa awla wa azu wa ajallu Wa ahmmu wa atammu wa akbab Wa Allahu ya'lum ma tasna'un Aqeemu s-salat