 As-salaamu alaikum, I'm going to go around and ask you why you're here, so that I know why you're here, in case somebody else. Anyway, basically the question I want to ask you, feel free to answer on the volunteer basis. What do you expect from this workshop? Anyone? Yes? I think I'm loud enough. I think what I'm hoping to get from this is strategies of taking and teaching a curriculum that already exists to Muslim children through a Muslim framework in mindset. So I think what I've seen is a lot of times we have curriculum that is already out there and we take that and we try to teach it to our children and try to give a Muslim or Islamic framework to that without really knowing how to go about doing it. And I think strategies of implementing a Muslim curriculum framework into whatever already exists is the goal that I'm hoping to accomplish. Good. Anyone else? We affirm a lot of the 21st century practices in education because I sense and I feel and there's a gut feeling that a lot of them are in line with the Islamic practices of teaching and education. But I would like to get a lot of that reaffirmed by what are the best practices that are similar to Islamic teachings. Because a lot of us seems very intuitive and a lot of the conversations today seem like they're very much in line with that. Anyone else? We need a lot of numbers. Yeah, David. I mean I think anything that you share with the beneficial side, I don't want to over bias it but I didn't come with a preconceived agenda or notion. But one thing that I feel is a problem in educating and I'm coming from the perspective of a homeschooling parent. My wife does the bulk of it of course but I'm somewhat involved. Is that I find it difficult even finding good sources for people at all kinds of children at all stages. So for example, they want to learn about World War I right now in history. They have a million books from Fremont Library that they get from World War I. They're all very British, very Australian, very New Zealand, you know, focused experience which is fine. I'm happy for them to learn that but hundreds of thousands of Ottomans, Arabs, Turks, Indians who fought for the British. I mean tons of Muslims died in that war and where's their voice? And so I feel like there's a huge gap in terms of sources and that's something that I think Muslim educators need to work on. And so I think understanding almost a paradigm of education could be helpful for anyone interested in writing in this area where they can try to fill some of those gaps. What I'm going to do in Shalom is hopefully provide suggestions. We want to say the word fatwa but suggestions as to how perhaps we may want to think or rethink the philosophy of Islamic education. So every system of education needs a philosophy which then devotes into a paradigm and perhaps a theory. But I think we should try and see the big picture. Usually most parents when they're homeschooling or teachers when they're teaching they want to go into the details without necessarily seeing the big picture. So it's like you know when you want to understand the symptoms of an illness then you go to the doctor, the doctor will give you a prescription or a pill. But the doctor may not give you the big picture of what's happening in the body unless you ask and when you ask the doctor may give you some insight. Even then you won't know as a lay person how the human body is working, acting, reacting. And you know in the grand scheme of things what is the analysis that needs to be there for the diagnosis and the prognosis and so on. So I want to take a step back or perhaps two or three steps back to investigate perhaps the philosophy of what is a Muslim education. And we distinguish first and foremost between what is Muslim and what is Islamic. What is Muslim is a Muslim's contribution to a field independent of an Islamic agenda. And Islamic understanding will be what is based on the Quran Sunnah and what is Wahi based. So the Islamic word, the word Islamic would have to include a Wahi based discussion, a theory that comes out from Wahi based content. And a Muslim's contribution may or may not be based on Wahi based knowledge. So you don't have to make the distinction there. So there are many educationists who are Muslim but they may not have necessarily Islamic paradigm or Islamic philosophy or theory behind what they do. So first and foremost in this session, the sessions may run much later than advertised. It won't be at any time will be divided equally in all four sessions. We don't do that. The skeleton I gave you was for you, not for me. So it runs more than one hour each or 45 minutes each. Just him and me because if we get into the flow of discussion that's more valuable to you than it is to continue talking without some kind of interaction. So if there are questions in between, feel free to ask if there are comments or other ideas or suggestions. Feel free to participate hopefully in this discussion. The first thing I want to address today is epistemology. Epistemology as all of you know is how do we know what are the sources of knowledge? How do we know and what are the sources of knowledge whereby we can say we know through this means or these tools or these avenues of epistemology. It's a huge field in academia and the science of epistemology will go along with whatever it is your philosophy. So in Islam we have epistemology. Muslim scholars they dealt with this issue from the very very beginning. What are our sources of knowledge? You're talking about the pre-dark ages. You're talking about the 7th, 8th century. When you know perhaps was nonexistent. They didn't even know anything. Never mind. Discuss epistemology. Excuse the pardon but anyway. Muslim scholars understood that in order for us to engage in academia and the field of knowledge we need to know how we learn and what are the sources of our knowledge. And they are able to articulate this in a very ingenious way. So we see that these are the tools of learning as mentioned in this diagram. So first and foremost you have the five senses. You see the five senses there. You're hearing and you're seeing and you're touching and you're smelling and you're tasting. So the five senses are definitely the tools of knowing and the tools of knowledge that we all acquire through these five senses. The knowledge we acquire from these five senses is real. Although it's based on experience but definitely it's real. You're not something that is relative. What do you think? The knowledge of being gained from five senses is real? Absolutely. It's relative. Is sugar sweet to everybody? When you taste and you get a sensation of sweetness and that sweetness is now processed by your mind. And say this, I know that sugar is sweet. So how do you know sugar is sweet? Because you taste it. Is that right? So you see the color red. Now you're seeing tells you that this is red with a bit of blue in it. So your mind tells you. Is that knowledge concrete? Is that absolute? Is it relative? How so? So you're saying that someone may perceive this red to be another color? They may feel it differently as well. They will? Everybody agree? I'm asking you this. I'm not going to issue a fatwa against anybody to say what they actually think or believe in. I'm fine with that. It is very open. So feel free to express your views. When you hear a sound and that sound is of a bell, is that the knowledge that this sound is the sound of a bell, is that real? Or is that something else? Is it real? It's real. We'll let go of that. And we'll discuss it more. The basic question is what is knowing and what is knowledge? So you have two issues. One is the infinitive to know. In grammar you have this infinitive. To know ways is infinite. And the other is knowledge. Now, when you have knowledge, is it in one moment that you acquire the knowledge or is it through a process that you keep on learning? These are discussions that are very integral to the standard of learning. And the early Muslim scholars, they dwelled into these ideas and questions because they wanted to make sense on knowledge. As it came from the Prophet ﷺ and it came from Allah ﷺ, these are questions they raise and define knowledge first. What is knowledge? Is it a perception? An idea? Is it an image in your mind that is decoded? Or is it an experience? What is knowledge? So I'm going to leave you with these questions. I want to answer them because I don't know. We're still learning. We have some knowledge from the Quran. Some of you should tell us this is knowledge. And I think we should really engage in these types of discussions. And the five senses forms the basis of your empirical knowledge. So when you want to say empiricism, empiricism is about collecting data from your five senses that you're going to observe. So you have a scientific approach or you have a hypothesis and you're going to conduct an experiment and the experiment will be through your seeing, through your hearing, through your touching and tasting and all of that. So your five senses play an immense role in how you eventually deduce and conclude which leads us to the second, which is the mind and the intellect. The mind and intellect is huge. We do so many things through the mind, through the intellect and our ability to rationalize. And we have cognitive ideas and we have ideas of the memory in the mind and we have ideas of perception and the ideas of deduction and induction and the ideas of intuition. We just have so many processes that we use through the mind and we add and we subtract and we divide and we multiply. That's all through the mind. So the mind allows you to process and allows you to come to a decision where you say we have knowledge through the mind. So the mind is a tool by which we know. Now the knowledge we gain from the mind, now that's subject to a much larger debate than the knowledge we acquire from the five senses. The knowledge we acquire from the five senses is not much debate, there is a debate. But the knowledge we acquire from our mind and intellect is totally, absolutely relative. It's never going to be concrete unless it is factual. Now who decides whether this is a fact or not? Who decides 1 plus 1 equals 2? It's a given, right? But who decides it's a given? No? Some of the mathematicians here. The Bertrand Russell spent 200 pages trying to prove 1 plus 1 equals 2. He tried to prove it. In 200 pages of writing, 1 plus 1 equals 2 logically and mathematically because of the... Obviously now you're going to presuppose it in magazines. The magazines are subjective. When you presuppose something, I suppose 1 is a number and 1 plus 2, 1 plus 1 equals 2, I'm supposing that based on my supposition I'm going to say this is factual knowledge. So now, the universe works according to Newtonian laws of physics and the mechanical approach to understanding science and that's functional. But then came Einstein and said, there's something called the theory of relativity which doesn't necessarily give too much credence to. The mechanical universe, but without the mechanical universe you can't function. In order for you to function, you need values to be objectified through subjectivity. You need to say this is a yard. You need to say this is a mile. Or you need to say this is a kilometer or this is a centimeter. Whichever, you know, index or user, whichever convention you use, you're going to say I'm going to assume that this is real. When you assume this is real then you can function. So you have a functional knowledge and you have knowledge which is outside of the function where you are going to discuss other theories and say this knowledge now of the function is relative to the system that uses this function. So when you discuss the knowledge gained through the mind then you're opening a whole universe of knowledge and that is where we unfortunately as human beings suffer because we can't make up our minds what is real and what is not real. What is absolute and what is relative. So when you discuss the sources of knowledge and you say the first source of knowledge in your five senses we can almost universally agree to that. Except for the few people who are stubborn and they are selfish and they really don't believe that there's anything called real pain. The Muslims encountered this philosophy through the Greeks and there was a group of Greek philosophers who said that even pain is relative and it's not objective either the five senses don't give you enough credence to say you have concrete knowledge. So anyway the Olimar said let's throw him into the fire and ask him whether the fire is real or not. Not as fun but as a person has said. Take this and see whether it's real. Now in the mind we disagree so much and the mind will yield many conclusive facts which is wonderful. At the same time the mind is open to interpretation. Interpretation then is subjective. Interpretation is not absolute as you will see perhaps in the theories of education that we have. You have so many theories of education. One says this and the other says this. Now how do you know which one is real, which one is true, which one is false and which one is the most versatile. It depends on your point of reference. Which philosophy is going to be best suited for you for your child and for your school. That's why this discussion is of great importance to us as to what is the nature of knowledge that we receive or perceive through the mind, through the internet. So this is one place where I think the Muslim scholars very early on in the 8th century, 9th century they sat down and they discussed and they argued and they bickered and they called each other names which is what we do as human beings. He must remove the fantasy that when Muslims discuss they're angels, they're not angels when they discuss they're human beings and they shout at each other and they call each other names and they do everything. That every human race does basically. They're part of the human race like we're Muslims. On that note the angels also argue the Quran tells us the angels argue and they debate. They have a sense of argumentation, they love. There's a group of angels, the only thing they do is they argue. For those of you who know Arabic, you can debate, it means argue. So you have a whole group of angels out there in somewhere in the heavens who sit down and they debate the Amr of Allah. They debate the command of Allah. How should this command be executed as it comes down in time and space and that now their proposal is then given to a lower ranking angels who govern, who execute the affair and the Amr and so on. So even angels have this great ability to debate. So we're not averse to debating and we should never be averse to debating at the same time in theories that are not wahi based. We should not make or don't a conclusion that this is the absolute truth because there's no such thing as an absolute truth when it comes to none wahi based issues. Those issues remain subject to discussion, subject to interpretation and they may be utilitarian at one point and then as you know the utility wears away or the utility is subjective to a certain environment or a certain time and then you move on and you come up with new ideas and new theories to understand how your child or children should be educated. The way you're going to educate somebody in Nigeria definitely is not the way you're going to educate the same type of person in Indonesia and the way you're going to educate that one in Indonesia is no idea how you're going to educate that one in California here, right? I mean the circumstances change, the environment changes, the ideas changes, the idiosyncrasies change, everything changes so you have to accommodate for the changing to say how are you going to impart knowledge now obviously and there are certain skill sets and certain sciences or disciplines that are universal and that's how you develop your sense of how are you going to educate people. So the mind, the mind is unique, the philosophers in Islam who were primarily, they were really sunni such but they were great philosophers people like Al-Farabi, Kindi and Ibn Isina they have this huge discussion on the human mind and they say the most perfect mind is the mind of a prophet so they go much further than what others do whether they say that the standard mind is the mind of a Nabi of a prophet, alaihi s-salam so this is the intellect of the mind and everything else that we do through the mind thirdly you have, although it's written wahi based more of wahi based knowledge it's not wahi that's safe because wahi only came to the prophet s-salam and after the prophet s-salam we don't have access to knowledge of wahi we have what is wahi based based in wahi meaning what the Sahaba reported as wahi and what the Tamiun reported as wahi until it came to us so this is wahi based report what is a report from the prophet s-salam this is the third source of knowledge and that gives us the advantage of a Muslim we're going to be discussing wahi insha'Allah in detail but I want to bring to the forefront is the Muslim advantage when a Muslim comes to the table of knowledge how many sources of knowledge is he acknowledging? three and when another Muslim comes to the table how many sources is he or she acknowledging? two because if they acknowledge wahi then they might want to be Muslim right? so just by being a Muslim you have an advantage over others because you have opened yourself to knowing what a Nabi knows and that's huge that is so huge to this immediate advantage of everybody else in the world that our source of knowledge is not limited to two we have a third where the pride of a Muslim should be so wahi based knowledge is knowledge of a sound report that has been narrated from the prophet s-salam either in the Quran which is recited wahi or either in the sunnah which is non-recited wahi so now a Muslim when he or she is coming to 12 in 2 the knowledge based on wahi they'll use the internet, the mind and the five senses not just to procure but also to execute and our civilization is based on this these are so many great examples of how our civilization is based on wahi based inspirations and so on you see the great architecture that Muslims were privy to and what they developed through the architecture and through the calligraphy and through the wonderful fountains and ponds that they had in front of their massage in their homes where do you think that came from why did we have this great system of fountains and ponds outside the masjid so is wudu wahi based or is it through the internet wudu is wahi based so the wahi based knowledge that a Muslim used to make wudu meant that the engineers had to find a way where you're going to facilitate the performance of wudu when you go to the masjid before you go to the masjid and they got the internet into it they managed to understand rules of derogation and plumbing and they managed to give it some ihsan beauty through the five senses you get beauty beauty is in the eye behold of it they have a lot of beauty right the system of hygiene hygiene is based on what is based on is wahi based definitely nobody else does tahara the way we do is that true we won't go into that discussion you go into that discussion then you shouldn't be anywhere on the planet nobody has hygiene the way we do but tahara is wahi based and because we believed in tahara we wanted to make sure we facilitated tahara and hygiene wherever we went in the world and we had as I said we had the engineering we had the plumbing and we had these wonderful ways to keep clean and hygiene and pure not just our values and our clothing but also our homes and places of prayer and so on so we made those buildings magnificent out of ihsan and ihsan is saaf is wahi based concept when you say so yeah in allah kadalli ihsan if you could appreciate allah has prescribed ihsan and everything excellence in everything so the muslims took on this hadith and said let's make this beautiful magnificent and you go and you say you stand in the blue muslim and you say subhanAllah why am I in America that's the only thing that comes to you what am I doing and I'm in the wrong part of the world I'm living in the wrong part in this respect subhanAllah and the thing about the turks don't even like the blue musk the turks like the salimaniya masjid for reasons which people get into but anyway so this wahi based inspiration allowed the muslim to use the mind to use the internet to come up with ideas and solutions for the human race and then they engineered and built through the five senses so this is the advantage of a muslim the advantage of a muslim is that a muslim has immediate access to wahi based knowledge and this is where the discussion of wahi comes in so what is now the scope of wahi the scope of wahi is immense in order for us to appreciate the scope of wahi we must appreciate the five phases of human existence is that the right time so what does it do when we discuss Islam then we discuss Islam holistically comprehensively because our knowledge our knowledge of man is based on wahi and the knowledge we gain from wahi is more concrete than the knowledge we gain from the internet and the mind why because of the scope of nabua the scope of a nabi's knowledge far exceeds the scope of the mind and the internet a nabi is able to tell you what's going to happen to you after you die is there any intellect or mind in the world that tells you this no they can speculate that we won't exist or there's no hereafter or we'll be reincarnated whatever there's no concrete knowledge the concrete knowledge of what's going to happen to you after you die comes from nabua comes from prophethood comes from wahi which came through prophet sallallahu sallam to us this how we know that we are going to be in our graves and we'll be questioned and we'll live there until the judgment that's how we know do we know this yes, why? because that's your aqida if you say you don't know this then you're not a Muslim your aqida hinges on the idea that this knowledge is concrete aqida is concrete knowledge it is certain knowledge the meaning of aqida is concrete and absolute knowledge it's not relative or speculative that's the meaning of aqida so when your aqida is correct you've already accessed knowledge of the nabi by saying I know now that after I die I'm going to be going into the barzakh into my grave and this is going to happen and I'll be there until the day of judgment now you have an added source of knowledge which others don't likewise a nabi will tell you through wahi where you were before you came to this world right? we all know that we were in our mother's womb but do we know that we did not enter our Ruh did not enter the mother's womb until the fourth month how do we know this through wahi the prophet says that the angels come they carry the Ruh and then they insert the Ruh into the fetus after the fourth month this is called the prince of insolment and that's how we know that now our Ruh came from somewhere else another place of existence that gives us our primordial existence and that is where we came from it became from the world of the souls the alam of the arwah that is mentioned in the Quran and also mentioned hadith now this zaqeela this wahi bait knowledge this concrete and this yaqeela that we were somewhere before we came into our mother's womb how do you know this? a nabi told us how do we know this? what he tells us right? so now when you consider that a man a human being's existence precedes his existence in this world then others will speculate philosophers will speculate scientists will speculate and there will be those or atheists who will say we don't need to speculate we don't believe in anything but what is the advantage of a Muslim? now Muslims mind will be open because of a zaqeela let me investigate how we were in the world of the arwah and the spirits before he came and is there any other knowledge from the Quran that tells us something more about this space this real primordial existence then you delve into the source 95 more knowledge and so on what I am saying is that the wahi tells you all the phases of human existence which the internet and the mind doesn't have access to the internet and the mind doesn't have access to anything beyond time and space is that true? the mind can't perceive anything beyond time it's not possible logically it's not possible so now a Nabi's knowledge extends beyond time into the grave into the day of judgement into jannah and into jahannam so the Nabi knows through wahi through Allah SWT that this is what is going to happen and the Muslim by definition will have access to this knowledge by reading the Quran and the sunnah so now as you are going to develop an Islamic ideology or philosophy in your education you must appreciate that we are now going to have to incorporate these five phases of human existence as we develop a curriculum and a philosophy to address these five phases of existence now this becomes Islamic what do you think? any questions? sir what are the five phases of existence? I just told you you weren't using your mind I only counted three I'm sorry the other you can deduce through your mind the first one is primordial now you can ask as many questions as you want Masha'Allah Ishnaq is one of my favorite students by the way sir we are very good I can talk to him anyway welcome so what I'm saying is that the first one is the world of the arwah spirit our primordial existence as Allah SWT took from us the covenant of Allah SWT and we all said yes that's in the Qur'an so this is primordial the existence this comes into play later on in the discussion of evil good and evil everything will be related as we discussed throughout the day the second is your mother's womb that's the second phase which the Qur'an also discusses the embryo and the fetus and so on then is this world and then there is the world of the grave the barzakh and then there is the mahshar which is the day of judgment and then there after there is eternity jannah so those are five broad realms of existence for the the human being this is not based on speculation this is based on wahi and a muslim must know all of these phases in order to say that he or she is a muslim we must believe that's upon to al qida so that wahi gives us this scope and this on the the horizontal wahi also gives us a vertical ontology the vertical ontology is even more amazing than this one we have something called the world of bodies so we have the world of bodies which is here the aarj is seen as a body Allah SWT's aarj is seen as a body by muslim metaphysicists and muslim theologians underneath the aarj you have the kursi and then you have the seven heavens and you have this heaven the kursi, the planets the service system then this earth and right in the bottom right so in the world of bodies we have behind that a world which is called the world of imagination or similitudes in arabic is called mithal that is a plane from which you will dream you dream from that plane the world of imagination that exists with you in your mind it co-exist with you it is not outside of you, it is within you that is also mentioned in the Quran that you have these symbols right so when you see something in your dream your dream will see a symbol and that symbol comes from somewhere within your mind and that is called the plane of imagination or the plane of similitudes and symbols and then they need to be interpreted in order for you to get to the symbol interpretive through the interpretation of dreams behind that there is what you call the the world of arwah arwah and spirits where the angels live that is outside of you that is not inside of you that is outside of you so now this is how we see the ontology of the human being and the human being because in this plane of bodies this is how he goes up and down vertically so now you have to incorporate this also in your philosophy of education how are you going to do all that right so what I am saying is that when we discuss Islamic ideology philosophy is going to be based on aqida this is the aqida of everybody who came to the table of Islamic theology and Muslims dealt with theology from day one from the time of Ali Rodiyallahu when he sent out to fight and debate with the colleges and from there we have this great history of Islamic theology which has come into us now now we discuss all of this to the Muslim advantage basically the Muslims understanding of reality is far greater than the perception of reality of a non-Muslim would that be a fair statement what do you think everybody agree anyone disagree hopefully not again I am not going to pass judgement I am not here to give you photographs I am just saying this is the way it is to incorporate wahi-based knowledge if you decide not to incorporate wahi-based knowledge you are at a severe disadvantage because Allah SWT gave all the prophets immense knowledge Allah is the one who creates and the creator giving knowledge to human beings he is an immense virtue and immense Fatiha and Merit and so on alright any questions on this we will get to the next slide discussions yes aren't senses I feel like maybe this isn't the place for this question but so it's fine I don't feel like it's the place but I feel like especially maybe in some strains of the soul there is kind of a suspicion of the senses I mean the Imam of Azadi existential crisis and I think one could argue that part of the conclusion he came to that those are the only way to know senses are even senses when you have kattu-kiru-na'i can I really trust and see and touch I don't know the comment you might have on is there a limit to how much we can trust the senses if there is some kind of criteria how much can we trust what do you say is though no is it I mean that's my understanding of what Azadi came to the conclusion of how can you trust his though I am I am reporting I think about you I mean advocate for the come on you're going frankly I'm not sure I mean how though is to me more difficult to define it's a higher level of experience no more Imam of Azadi does not deny the functional knowledge that the five senses give you he never denied that he is saying that sometimes you need to go beyond the functional level and try to understand knowledge from a higher plane and that's what he is calling towards leave your five senses and then move that towards a higher plane of learning that would be the understanding we have from you know Tasaw right will that be okay you have a question no I was just saying I understand such utterances is like a matter of cosmology cosmological ability in our tradition yes that's right when we say we enter the world of dreams and imagination but do we enter the world of spirits as well we can it's theoretically possible whether we do or not it may be one in a billion does the dream change would the dream change if we went to the Orwa yeah theoretically it would oh yeah definitely it's a different plane altogether it's a one in a billion if you're lucky after the Sahabah the Sahabah they live there basically but we may occasionally visit in our dreams in that plane but that's no longer it is accessible theoretically somebody does go there and comes back and says I don't know if I'm okay just keep it to yourself just got one more question with imagination and dreams and symbols you can interpret certain information was it known to be able to interpret real life events was that the same philosophy? yeah that's because he wasn't interpreting from the world of imagination he was interpreting from the world of spirits that's he was one of those who lived there okay this session this part of the session is good and evil we all know about that in California if it feels good it's good you're all into the green factor here sunny California weed in Chicago too is accessible good and evil wonderful discussion discussion we've had since the birth of the fit and the trials and tribulations that were created through theology and so on we always value this discussion and it's an important discussion when it comes to education that in your school or philosophy of education hopefully you're going to be promoting good and you're going to be prohibiting evil but then you have to define what is good and what is evil is good absolute and is evil absolute it came from the Greek philosophers and Harry's title he had the virtue of ethics and so on and it came down into Islam and post-Sahama we had many many discussions on good and evil do you have any ideas who says good is absolute raise your hand no one you do yes if every context is mapped out what do you really when your analysis is good is good good because it's good I feel like we have an absolute sense of metric of it you do very good how does one define good and evil yes again you can bring in your five senses your mind, your internet and then obviously why in between there's something called society right it's an added factor here in this societal values of models and ethics and behavior which obviously at best is subjective and it's based on experience and utility and so on but anyway so as you can see when you want to discuss fundamentally whether or not good is absolute or good is evil or evil is absolute then you're going to be learning from your five senses and also from your mind and then obviously through what he what he based knowledge can tell you but even in what he based knowledge there's a difference opinion which is what concerns us society you know as I said it depends which frame or reference you're coming from what is your philosophy of government right that usually dictates a nation's understanding of good and evil so if you're in the capitalist mode then free enterprise is good and if you're in another mode then it's not good that makes sense yeah then now your politics will determine your understanding of good and evil so that's how society tells you what is good and what's evil policy will also tell you that we now want a lot about our president at the moment that the previous president had this agenda of saying that we want to accommodate everybody in the world so now good and evil is relative to the individual and they made a policy that schools must now open themselves up to understanding the individual likes and dislikes of the student and that's how they constructed their curriculum developers to write their curriculum where you're engaging the student according to the student's individual like and dislike there was a policy so your policy is now telling the students and the teachers that this is good or there's evil meaning there's no absolute good and there's no absolute evil then there's not society does so there's this caption of the society I don't know what that picture says where poor cook coordinates with society which city is that by the way anyway if you tell me the city I'll tell you whether it's good or bad whatever so that society will tell you that this is how you must behave in order for you to get an A on your test and society will tell you this is how you must score or this is how you must conduct yourself in an interview if you want to land the job and this is how you must write your resume so that your resume looks good we use the word good in a very loose way where we're not in the functional good is an absolute so if you wrote a lie in your resume is that good is good because it gave you the job but it's not good because it's lie but how do you justify that in society so society will say that's industry practice to lie in your resume which everybody does right but the purists will say this is wrong that's why there's no place for the purists anywhere in the world might as well hibernate the issue of good and evil is so to our existence that it controls who we are and what we are that's why now you have the advantage of wahi now you see the advantage of wahi so wahi should tell you this is good or this is evil should is the operative word there but even there we have a discussion the beauty of Islam and Islamic scholarship in academia that we were open to discussion we didn't condemn anybody for raising the question I have a state country we would have never killed Galilee Muslims didn't need to kill ex-Galilee who cares where the earth goes where the earth goes doesn't impact your salvation there will be who wants to be and if he wants to prove it's great we'll use his knowledge if it's beneficial and if it's not beneficial we're not going to make this an Aqida issue which is what the Christians did they made an Aqida issue and they killed him so we're not in the persecution of academics because they say something which is out of the ordinary so on so now you have wahi your 5 cents is definitely we'll say that if you have a pungent smell a bad odor then you say this is bad unless you're really a Khabib and you really want to live that way that you were dirty and filthy and you say this is good there's something wrong with you hopefully most human beings would agree with that or you say that something looks good and looks beautiful and so on feels good and so on military the senses cannot get you so far then the mind will come and tell you that I believe this is good and so on and so on and so on so there the discussion is is good because it's good or is good because it is appropriate for the community and society so three Muslim schools in the discussion of good and evil we have three approaches that have been given to us through the theologians the study of theology is of immense importance and especially classical theology nowadays people say we don't need classical Islamic scholarship we say then you don't have Islam Islam is on the back of classical scholarship definitely not on the back of modern scholarship because modern Islamic scholarship first of all doesn't exist and number two it knows deeply squat about the issues that are pertinent to Islam you know there's some good individual scholars in the world that not as a community not as a society of academics and so on so you have three Muslim schools in classical Islam who have discussed this issue the first group are those that have been dubbed as rationalist they're anything but rational they're called the Murtazilite so the Murtazili school is a school of thought in Muslim theology and their basic premise is that the mind contextualizes that's what they believe in so there was a group of Muslims who actually believed this that you may contextualize the Quran through the mind and the internet will tell you the meaning of this ayah or the meaning of this word so they see the mind and the internet as a referee and they will call the Murtazili so it seems that they're rational but in behavior they're very very militant who imposed the Inquisition on Ima Ahmad Ima Ahmad went through an Inquisition where the first religious Inquisition was enacted by this group of Muslims these Murtazilites were the ones who now persecuted Ima Ahmad for holding the true belief that the Quran is uncreated so in practice the Murtazilite were fanatics they were purists and they were very very militant but their theory was rational like I said they're dubbed as rationalist they just want you to believe so you mustn't believe anything the Orienters say they don't know anything and they have a very different agenda anyway Murtazilite believe that the mind is able to determine good and evil as absolute that was their position so as a Muslim you must know lying is wrong cheating is wrong good and all the other values of morality the mind must appreciate and come to terms with they didn't give you the luxury of wahi this is never my way pre-wahi the mind is capable of determining whether this is good or this is evil so they placed the primacy of the mind intellect above everything else into their theology yes if they placed the mind above wahi what was the role of wahi in their philosophy like he just gave the particulars wahi was then to guide you in matters of ritual worship and general moral value and behavior and also societal values and so on but they said good and evil is absolute the mind is able the sound mind you have to have that caveat there that's why they are puritans they are purists the sound mind is able to determine good and evil before wahi independent of wahi it is very unique but it's impossible to achieve because first of all you don't have a sound mind nobody except the prophet has a sound mind anyway any question on this? I don't know if this is outside of the scope of the but then what how did that make them like militant or how did that philosophy turn them into like give them that fanatic militant like world view I just want to relate it to what's happening that's a good question but that is because of other factors they said that the human being is responsible for his own salvation through the mind so if the human being doesn't behave appropriately then the human being has to be conditioned or disciplined and obviously that's through force so later on some of them, meaning the because of the carriages they were an option to the carriages we'll talk about the carriages now but the carriages believed that a sinner is a non-muslim right? that's what they believed the Mordesli came and said no they're not non-muslim but they're not Muslim either they're not welcome in the community but we won't say they're non-muslim right? they're non-muslim they're in-between the two which obviously makes them puritan and very fanatical that if you're not going to pray on time we're going to punish you and they would take people off the streets for committing sins and imprison them even appeal them and so on so in that sense it's very very militant and so on but that's their history the Sunnis the Sunnis did not declare these people as carvers the Mordesli that's the accommodation that the Sunnis broke to the table right? but here, now if you're going to say that these were rationalists then people will say the Mordesli premises that we have supremacy of the mind and primaries of the mind we don't need Wahi and that was not their position they said we need Wahi for these issues nowadays people jump on to the bandwagon of saying their Mordesli without knowing what the Mordesli believed in you understand what I'm saying so they say in this country we can use the mind intellect and whatever the mind intellect tells us it's going to be good or bad that was not their position their position was that morality is already defined in the primordial existence of human beings the mind is there to uncover that and therefore you cannot promote any evil in any society the second approach not the man to be the Yashri the one at the bottom the Yashri approach is the second position we have from Allah Hasan Yashri Rahimullah came in the third century the founder of the Yashri school of thought in theology a wonderful human being and a great pioneer in discussing scholastics and dialectics and polemics and all the rules of engagement in theology he was previously a Mordesli and then he shifted camp and he became an advocate of the Sunni positions in Qalam and then he spent the rest of his life basically trying to disprove the Mordesli position on everything anyway, so Abul Hasan Yashri and his father they say about good and evil that good and evil are subject to wahi wahi is what's going to tell you this is good or this is evil meaning that he says the mind is not capable of ascertaining whether or not a specific ant is good or evil wahi comes and tells you that it is good or it is evil at that time so he says that it is wahi based absolutely that's for instance lying so he says I'm not going to appropriate any value to lying I would say that if there's an occasion where the Sharia says lying here is okay then I will say it's okay and most occasions the Sharia will say it's not okay so on most occasions I will say it's not okay is that what I'm saying meaning that Ibrahim when he lied he cried some lie three times doesn't have any reason to call it he lied three times now tell your son in school and the students it's good to lie because he cried some lie I'm just kidding it's supposed to be a joke but Ibrahim he cried some lie why did he lie so there the Sharia came and said it's okay for Ibrahim to lie so there he's not evil or he's not absolute so it is conditional and that was the point of Ibrahim that the Fiqh will come in and tell you that this is okay or this is not okay and that is going to be wahi based and therefore he said the mind is not capable of ascertaining the absoluteness of good or evil so that is now the second position which is the Ashari position the third position is that of the Maaduridi slash Hanafi the Maaduridi position is that there is an absolute value to morals but the determination of whether an act has sin or reward that comes from wahi so it's nuanced it takes on some of the Maaduridi angle and it takes on some of the Ashari angle it's very nuanced it's very organized and made disparate so they say that in principle lying is bad it is evil but sometimes if the Sharia says that in this case there is no sin in lying then the element of sin is determined by wahi the element of sin is determined by wahi and likewise the element of reward is determined by wahi which is quite amazing because what he has done obviously this came from wuhani by himself in some way form that the mind doesn't have access to what happens in the Akhira as I said in the beginning the mind doesn't have access to what happens in the Akhira only wahi can tell you what happens in the Akhira so he appropriated what was valuable in the dunya through the mind and he also appropriated what was valuable in the Akhira through wahi so his position is much more nuanced than the others so you have this now understanding whether good or evil is absolutely relative this is fundamentally crucial in order for us to understand the philosophy of a Muslim system of education because you are going to be saying what do we teach if we are going to teach morality then which morality are we teaching is it that of the Maudazali is it that of the Akhira or is it that of the Maduridi which one are you going to go with you can't cross over and say we are going to take from all three because that doesn't work there will be short views it will explode it doesn't work so you are going to have to pick one of these in order for you to say that this is the position we take whichever one it is then you must stick with it all the way throughout the curriculum you can't change it halfway in high school we will go with the Akhira or we will go with the Maudazali but in middle school and elementary we will go with the Akhira or whatever you can't do that you have to be consistent throughout the whole schooling system then there is the approach that you need to take in order to say that this is good or this is bad so now obviously that comes down into the different issues in fiqh those are details on the sharia but these are the principles upon which the sharia is going to be based you see where I am going with this you understand why this discussion is a step before the discussion of the curriculum which I warned you about in the beginning any questions are you okay with this yes sir to connect that to curriculum one aspect of the importance of something like this is just when we are trying to teach that kids or students you kind of have to be clear about which approach you are doing so I can understand that but in it has got to have an effect outside of just morals no it does so how can you give us some examples like if I am teaching physics is there a matuidi nuance that comes into physics I am just throwing out of a thousand examples physics how would this be on me just teaching the morals and how they should approach moral questions how would this affect other both and I am not doubting that it does I am just trying to see what that can the issue is as I tried to explain the matuidi position is based on the fact that the mind is not able to access anything beyond time and space if you have that rubric and you bring it to physics right then you will not be discussing the issues of the akhira in terms of time and space in a certain way if there is something that is going to happen in the akhira you can't bring the akhira discussion into the world of discussion discussion of the world so your world view is your world view but your view of the akhira is going to be significantly different from your world view and this is where the mordesri obviously made the conclusion that we are totally on Islam so what would be a mordesri I understand your matuidi division the mordesri division would be for instance one group of the mordesri said there is no physical resurrection because the mind doesn't reason with that there is no need for physical resurrection right so we say we say but the Quran says there is a physical resurrection so we won't allow the mind to trunk that right so that's why you would discuss the physics of the akhira that in the physics of the akhira is there room and space for a physical resurrection which ibn Asin also denied right so we say that we can't evaluate the akhira in terms of the dunya, in terms of time and space it's a different plane of existence all together the references are very different so that's where you might want to find father if I stick to law they pertain to law right and when you're trying a case I'm not sure if this is good or if it's evil we aren't going to those legal ethics just yet but yeah there is application everywhere as to how you're going to ascertain it comes in biathics in biathics if there's a physical resurrection and you want to donate you're going to somebody else a legal brother which human being will be resurrected in the donor or the one who has been donated if you donate something to somebody post mortem and your body part of organ ends up with somebody else on the day of judgment you don't have that organ or the other person has the organ theoretically there's a question we don't make too much of it but if you want to understand theory then theoretically that's the question that we ask in biathics all the time and based on that some people will say all the donation is no good it will be resurrected on the day of judgment without one of my organs maybe that's the fatwa people give maybe I'm not discussing I'm saying the theory in academia is this that is premised on this discussion is the mind able to ascertain things that are going to happen in the Akhirah meaning if organ transplant is it good or evil that's the question so that you're going to go through these three in Islamic legal philosophy you're going to take one of these three positions to ascertain the fatwa and whatever it is that makes sense so now you've included law now into this discussion anything else yes this is a small question about Ashraic do they believe a sound mind can ascertain morality? no they don't for the question with the donor for example that you gave one what would be the distance what would the donor say what would the actualist say what would the meditator say with the Maaturi the question they would ask is there something in what that tells us this is wrong in order for the Maaturi in order for it to be sinful and for the Ashrais in order for it to be good or not so good so if you find a hadith or something then you will be you know you will be asked to follow the evidence so it will be evidentiary evidentious basically so you follow the evidence and based on the evidence you say this Wahi tells us that it is good or evil the Maaturi will say you have to ascertain it through your mind anyway whatever you conclude will be good right so they may have a more relaxed position but then the mind is relative because someone's mind may say it's good and another person's mind will say it's not good so who's going to be the judge between the two minds a third mind so this will come it comes back to this vicious circle that everybody's mind is judging everybody else's mind which is what happened with the Greeks they became splinter groups and this will happen with Maatuzzi there are some splinter groups within their system of thinking any other question yes one way you articulated the Maatuzzi position was contextualizing Wahi you say you're not here to give fatwas but it's clear that the Maatuzzi are to be rejected the way you presented it I'm not here to defend their position either but I'm just trying to understand better I mean isn't there some validity to the idea that Wahi needs to be contextualized to pick out of a thousand examples just a simple social hot button type issue slavery for example Parcellaris and then outlaw slavery I think it's a reasonable argument to say that it was too radical of a thing in Arabia at the time for him to outright outline so there was a concession made as long as slaves were treated and so on and so forth but due to a lot of humans suffering that has resulted from slavery and I think the Muslim world has come to a consensus due to colonialism that slavery is bad or else we should accept that the British overruled half the Muslim world at some point so isn't there some legitimacy to some context and historical experience based notions what is right and what is wrong while recognizing that it's not absolute because it's not Wahi based or because the prophet was willing to give a social concession to slavery if we interpret the way he dealt with it that way therefore at all times we must be willing to make a social concession to slavery and you know it's perfectly fine for ISIS to have sex slaves and so on and so forth Well I don't know about the last statement Well it's inherent I think if we must always be open to the possibility in society a certain society wants to force it to re-resurrect the dead social practice then I must be open to the fact that that's okay I mean isn't it inherent? Well I'd be more concerned about what you're writing in your history books about Muslim history and slavery which is obviously totally distorted in the way Americans write chapters on Islamic history so from that point from the educational point of view that point is valid I can see that in our textbook that we have slavery is mentioned as part of Muslim society and Muslim history and how do we validate that and justify that so from that point of view the discussion is valid to bring it down to the workshop here so there is that but that your position will be okay if that's what the mortars really believed but the mortars really didn't believe that they believed slavery was good Sure sure but I'm just saying the idea that Wahi can be contextualized sometimes maybe is not a valid thing or is not inherently invalid Yeah no no okay let's go back to the beginning when the mortars really say that the mind contextualizes Wahi it's in matters other than law it's in theological matters right in law they were Hanafis the mortars really right if you look into the history of all the mortars in 95% all the mortars really they were Hanafis in law and they conceded that the only law they could follow was the law of Abu Hanifa because the law of Abu Hanifa actualizes the role of the the intent and the mind and the rationale when it comes to determination of law so that philosophy is there in the mortars but when it came to theology or theism they said the mind is going to contextualize issues of theism and theology and that's where we disagree you can't use the mind what it is and how it is and so on that is based on your iman and your khidah it's not based on your akha so that's the distinction we make there now to answer your point there definitely is room to say that in certain matters of law you may be privy to contextualization if you follow the rules there has to be a system by which you're going to say this rule may be contextualized and this rule may not be contextualized then you're going in a discussion of postmodernism which you don't not yet if the philosophy conclusions were not accurate why is this rule still valid in the process that we're using or is it it comes up in academic discussions that's why this is all academic it may not come into your discussion but in another conference or seminar people will be kind of bombarding you with a more deservedly position and you should be aware of that as educators what is a more deservedly position that's why as I said we've taken a step back understand the philosophy behind the philosophy and so on any other questions? no? in this session how do these theories apply how do we bring them all together I think we've had samples of that question and answer but there you go the discussion on first of all the epistemology and secondly the role of the mind and why he vis-a-vis the determination of good knee and how we as a group of Muslim educators are going to come to the table and say in our philosophy of instruction are we going to use the absolute rule of good and evil are we going to use the relative rule of good and evil as we impart or we write the textbooks for the curriculum because that is going to determine how you write your philosophy is going to determine how you're going to present good and evil will be something independent of society so when Islam says that drinking is wrong because it's a sin how are you going to present that in terms of American law or the American society and the civilisation so there you go to find yourself somewhat of a handicap you don't know how to write this and everything else that's wrong in the society here and then also everything else that's right in the society how are you going to present that there's something right in this civilisation and this is good then how are you going to present that how are you going to present it from the Maturidi or the Asheri or the Montessori that all helps you hopefully evaluate your methodology of instruction and also the philosophy I'm sorry just to clarify for the Maturidi musician you mentioned that the good and evil is sort of what we we don't know in the sense that the minds have access to the Afra but were you saying that for example something is in principle evil so that means that the minds can arrive at the general principle that something is evil that's the maturidi position so that's accessible to the mind which was like slavery maybe that well maybe minds change I guess there's general things that many minds can agree on and there's others that well that would be the issue owning a slave is that sinful so that can change so that won't change that's what discussion is but the Maturidi position and the Asheri position were very clear on that is it sinful now the idea is in your legal philosophy that you do want to make sure that human beings are given the nobility of their respect and as a community and as a society through the institution of Ijma'a we may be able to say we have no abolished slavery that's fine because that's a process through the legal system of Islam that you're going to say you're going to recognize slavery through Ijma'a that's one way you would do it so you would almost go through like oppression or what it's leading to or meaning in law you would look at sort of just the results of something like slavery isn't sinful but maybe in certain contexts this goes with the utilitarian approach that what is the utility of slavery is there any utility to save you or not then you're going to go into the societal anthropological discussions of why slavery existed in the first place so there you can make a case that the way we treat slaves is no idea how these people were treated in the US it is a universe of a difference in Muslim slaves in Muslim countries that want to remain slaves because of the privileges they received so that's that discussion which is anthropology then there's a legal issue the legal issue that as a community as an ummah if we want to and we can and we should decide through the consensus of allama a process known as Ijma'a that we no longer recognize slavery as being sinful we can do that there has to be no answer you can't make something a moral issue if it's legal it's the same in this country the question there is is everything legal or moral you pay taxes right is that moral? we gain independence because of taxes we're still paying taxes no? so what morality and legality don't necessarily go hand in hand that's the issue that's why you debate in the legislature and that's how you debate in the theory of utility and so on so we're discussing morality here that in morality is that absolute or is that evil so there you can discuss according to three positions so the two are often conflated in the current context and that's why there's okay there's an awful lot here take a break is it break time? what time is it? it's 11.35 we'll take a break we'll see in this session we're going to be doing something probably more of your alley as they say and even more personal to you than to me since you are educators in the field of education in this country I thought it was a good idea to have a summary of the types of schools we do have available to us in the US so you know basically what these schools are and that they arrange in terms of their funding I would assume so here you have public schools Charter schools and Magnetic schools which are basically free and the difference is you know Magnetic schools will focus on a certain type of discipline emphasize one specialization and they're regulated by the local boards and they're usually free Charter school you can apply and the state will give you funding for the Charter schools and public schools are public schools as you know so the source of funding will also dictate what you teach and also how you teach if you go with the state and the state will have its benchmarks and you will be mandated to make sure the students reach those benchmarks and the teachers will be mandated to teach in the way the school or the state wants you to teach according to the state policy so that's how you get the Charter schools have some more freedom autonomy as to Magnetic schools but basically all three are usually free public schools definitely Charter schools are free Magnetic schools are the whole they're free although they may be some fees assessed for certain programs extracurricular activity and so on the second type is a parochial snatch furniture school the story is when there's a religious school which is funded by a higher authority institution Catholic schools are parochialed they're funded by the archdiocese and so on religious schools are private that you're going to be funded by your private donors or the fees the students will pay for some of the expenses and there you do have the freedom of choosing your religion imparting knowledge that is religious based and that's why they're important because people want to make sure that the children are given a moral understanding through the religion and not through the state because our discussion of morality just now brings light to the classification of schools we have private schools, boarding schools etc. boarding schools they've been concentrated on more extracurricular activities and the details of life they want to raise the child as a wholesome child everything that the child will need in order to become full-fledged adult in private schools as you know they're funded by private donors and they have tremendous diversity in what they teach and so on boarding schools as you know focuses on the abilities of the child I'm sure most of you are aware of that language immersion schools where you're going to take a secondary language and then concentrate on teaching the secondary language as a medium of instruction so as we have the certain schools you do have Arabic immersion schools in the country somewhere on the east coast there's one famous one the name is not coming to me but there's a language school just for Arabic they all talk and immerse themselves in Arabic which is now going to be based on speaking the language usually there for diplomats or therefore people who want to get into the field of Arabic for commercial reasons or for diplomatic reasons and so on they do work and they have a certain expertise that's required and so on but in that curriculum is going to be almost autonomous special education schools some of them are private some of them are public and the school is going to focus on those children that are handicapped they don't have the required skill sets or the attention that's needed in order to function as a normal regular quote unquote excuse the terminology it's offensive that kind of public school, regular public school students so you have special education schools and they're very specialized it's an art, it's a skill set to be able to teach these types of children it's a great service to those who are disabled and handicapped and so on I put into other schools which are of entry, especially the Maldorf the Emilia school says that basically the child has a thousand languages and it can develop into anything you want the child to develop into a philosophy the world of philosophy is intriguing that philosophy says the first seven years of a child is supposed to be where he's just enjoying life that resonates somewhere that ring the bell in the prophetic hadith of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam instruct your children for salat when they reach which age they'll regulate them now there's much on everybody wants their child to be up to college, you know as soon as they're born which is a myth you can't hope that and you should not expect let's be just outrageous it's a dhun meaning the first seven years the child should enjoy childhood that's their philosophy it's intriguing I put that there as an independent type of school to show you that people do think this way and even in Sina's philosophy of childhood instruction he says the same thing primary based on hadith of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he said that you should not teach the child anything until the child is seven years old I'm not suggesting to you that you do this I'm just saying that theory is there if you want to benefit from it and maybe think about it where you're not going to bring in certain rules of good education or strict academics until the child knows how to be a child so I do have some reservations about how are parents school their children from a very early age and those are my opinions I keep them to myself yeah the next section any questions sorry you probably know most of this this was about you probably have other types of schools depending on the funding but these are the broader classifications, categorizations of schools based on funding different philosophies this is very interesting as I said every school needs a philosophy unfortunately my experience I have found that Muslim schools don't have a philosophy all right I'm going to talk to principals and directors and boards what's your philosophy of education what's that what's the philosophy of education our philosophy is that we want to give Muslims an environment in which they will not be seen as second class citizens it's very reactionary it's not the way you educate people you have a safe environment in that they'll be able to do the Salat al-Dur Masha'Allah in time and they'll understand that there will be a Muslim ethos in the school and so on which is it's fine it's a byproduct of you being Muslim it's not the reason why your school exists hopefully as a Muslim you're going to have this and as a Muslim you're going to pray hopefully as a Muslim you're going to eat halal as a Muslim you're going to stay away from halal hopefully so that's just the byproduct of being Muslim it's not your philosophy of education your philosophy of education is how you go to school the child schooling as opposed to educating there's a certain difference there in the terminology schooling means that you are going to help the child there's some comprehensive child and also an adult with a very holistic approach to his or her life that's what schooling is school education is important knowledge there's some information here in math and science and English and history those are now portals of information you're not necessarily schooling the child so these are some questions those for teachers why am I doing this what is life who am I what is my purpose what is really good to do these are basically essential questions might be questions you may want to ask yourself why all of you in education anyone want to discuss another idea as to why you're in education why you're teaching those of you in homeschooling I know why you're doing what you're doing some of the thing about evaluating yourself is necessary you must be able to evaluate yourself there must be some introspect in every phase of your life to say okay what am I doing I'm not saying you don't do you continue doing what you're doing but you must evaluate that is known as muhasabah in our culture in our culture we have the theory of muhasabah that you're making why am I doing what I'm doing am I sincere in what I'm doing am I doing this out of altruism love, compassion am I doing this for money or for career development which is fine you can do this for career development but be honest about it there's nothing wrong with that you're doing this because it's a second job but be honest about it it's fine there's nothing wrong with it introspect is necessary because that's going to motivate you to perform better hopefully what is reality and good stuff now these issues I'm just going to very quickly browse through those you can look them up, you can discuss those later on these are some of the basic philosophies of education that people have nowadays as you can see they're not really whaty based but they're kind of intriguing the essentialism where you want to make sure that the student has command over the core subjects in the curriculum and you teach them to become masters of the field and so on throughout your 12 years or 13 years of schooling or education progressivism is where you're going to help the child develop and adapt and appreciate change in life and it's kind of making sure that you don't dictate of the students any moral values in Obama's time this was the norm the progressive system I don't know what's the law and Mr. Trump doesn't seem to have the norm pure realism where the basic understanding of philosophy is that all human beings have common core essential values and it's all about the teacher controlling the classroom and the students and that's how they appropriate their philosophy and so on existentialism is where it's on the experience of the child and then the child must experience what is life and so on and behaviorism is about the behavior of the child you develop the child and these are very broad ideas that are brought to the table now I want to proceed into the third session so that we can get a head start into the third session it's probably the most important session of all any questions before go ahead may I share my philosophy of why I'm in education sure you can critique it as you're prone to for me a wise person once said that imagine you had all the money in the world you get it and then what happens next what you want is the money what happens is once you attain all that you feel despondent so what gives you that satisfaction in life is service and then he detailed that there are three types of services of the greatest services the first one is service to humanity reforming people they did not have that kind of to be able to form people and the second one he said was to be able to heal people and I couldn't heal people because I'm not a doctor then he said teach me from an academic and that's why I became a teacher very good well I'll give you about a kind of literature maybe successful I just had a question about these to the extent to engage it but if we're out of time that's fine on each of these I mean could you briefly say from your personal opinion or slash from your Islamic world view would be what's something negative and if there is anything positive about each of these what they would be yeah we do have a sense of you know essentialism and behaviorism we do have that but you know in the theory of education there was you know a Latin American philosopher of education who complained in the 50s I think the Brazilian guy he wrote about education in general and he said the nature of education nowadays in the world is that you treat every student like a bank deposit box and that you enter the deposit the information into the the box of the student's mind and then at the time of test you withdraw it there's a very stagnant very mechanical robotic approach to education which is where you know people who are against standardized testing say that you don't want them to become robots there's obviously benefit in standardized testing we're not against them but the idea that you're not training the student's mind to think and to be creative inside the box or outside the box and you're not training the student to behave and act and react in certain different environments or you know situations and obviously that's where team sports build character right so the idea of team sports although unfortunately in the US it becomes kind of fanatical team sports is their life basically you want to be on a basketball team you want to be on a football team you understand this so team sports if it's taken out of context you get the USA basically but team sports if it's to build character and understand team work and understand that sometimes you're going to lose sometimes you're going to win it teaches you life and sometimes you know the coach is going to shout at you and sometimes the coach is going to be pleased with you and so on because that builds character so now that's a lot of schooling and schooling then he makes sports part of your schooling as part of the learning curve and so on so we have some elements but that's what the next discussion is about you're going to preempt it the next discussion islamism so islamism what is our philosophy of education so the first question obviously is there such a thing as an islamicism you know here we have to be very careful before we go out want to live in the same that we want to standardize muslim curricula everywhere in the world and we want to make sure that everything is monolithic and everywhere is on the same platform unified and so on we have to first of all identify you know the real meaning of islam what is islam and what are the grades of islam and the levels of islam both at a functional level and also at a theological level and then how to accommodate to different schools of thought and different schools of fiqh basically if there's going to be a monolithic curriculum so it's a big discussion huge discussion and I think we should be clever and not emotional about the issue now in your heart sciences in your mind and to a certain extent maybe new also sometimes in history you're going to have a standard which is going to be somewhat universal what do I mean if you study math in India you can work here in the silicon valley what does that tell you the math they learned is universal understood they're applying the same math they learned there here that's where they get jobs here 100 but you can't say that about necessary philosophy you can't say that about English no obviously your standard is your degree you have a bachelor's level master's PhD and so on that might get you a job it might land you an interview and so on but the curriculum is going to be very diverse and so on so in certain fields you're going to have a universal standard where that standard will be applied everywhere in the world and there are going to be other subjects where the standard is not universal is going to be appropriated according to the country and the place and the industries of that particular country so if you go to Britain or most places in Europe they don't require you to have a bachelor's degree in order to work at a very high level you just have your A-levels and you get a very good job if you have a bachelor's that's wonderful and if you have a master's then they say you know just continue studying brother they don't care really the industry is not set up that way that you've regulated the schools according to your industry they don't necessarily reflect each other whereas in the US it seems that way that the industry reflects the degrees that's what it seems to me from the outside so now in a Muslim educational system or Muslim Islamic studies and other studies curricula are you going to have a universal standardised benchmark for each grade and each subject or are you going to make this diverse or you know pertinent to the people of that particular country that's one question in order to understand and perhaps answer this question we must ask that are there levels of education in Islamic studies that we need to appreciate so you have alright everybody knows that you have a basic level of Islamic education which is called every Muslim must know this for his or her salvation and for her performance of Islam the five figures are there and the basic guide are there and the issues from the basic information of Seerah are there and you need to know what the Quran says in general and so on that should not be part of your high school curriculum right that's something you do by the age of seven that should be in the air that should be part of your home culture environment you don't need to spend so much time on that that should take care of that ideally ideally the further aim is coming from the parents and that is the meaning of the Prophet ﷺ saying instruct your children for Salat when they reach the age of seven meaning by the age of seven they should know this at least by the age of 10 they should know the further aim that's what the hadith actually means so in that way you already have set the bar in Islamic studies and you know that in your Islamic studies you're going to be including a recitation of the Quran and you're going to be including some applications of Fiqh and obviously your basic Aqida and so on but there is another level which is now academic and it is this academic level which now brings us to the core content so in Islamic studies we talk about Islamic studies specifically in Islamic studies there is a core content knowledge that needs to be instructed which is we have elements of essentialism this is essential to the students to know this level of education grade by grade level by level so before we go there let's ask these questions what is the purpose of knowing Islam so the primary purpose of knowing Islam is your Salvation your Najat that you want to meet Allah with the hope that Allah will allow you to enter Jannah and save you from the fire hell and that is the main purpose of knowing the further aim that's why he spoke the aim but there is also another purpose of knowing Islam and knowing about Islam and that is based on the idea of increasing one's knowledge which is Wahi based and that is recommended by the Quran is recommended by the Sunnah of the Prophet SAW and that you engage in knowledge because of your Felicity Imam Ghazali mentioned this in Zaheem al-Muddin that to this high level of knowledge is to not only increase the chances of Salvation but increase your ranks in Jannah and your level of Felicity and happiness and bliss in the Iraq time to live a good life pure life or something like that in this world so that you have this purpose of knowing the more you know the better it will be for you to practice and adapt to the Islamic way and the Islamic teaching so there now you are going to be engaged with each other and you will be engaged with the community engage with the society and you will be engaged with the government and all of that so now you go into different levels of society and then you see four phases according to Shah Raleel which is I think a very obvious classification of the four phases of you know the human civilization as a society the first is your domestic phase that in the domestic phase you need to know what you need to know in order to live in a household out of the Muslim that is there except for Zakat Zakat may or may not be included but sometimes it is as Ismail As-Salaam was instructed to instruct his family members regarding Salat and Zakat that's what Quran is this phase is where your basic environment of the home will teach you how to be and behave as a Muslim in the domestic phase so you have some interaction with each other brothers and sisters siblings, parents and grandparents and cousins so you need to know all of that in this phase and how you develop in your curriculum some important issues pertaining to this phase of the Muslim's life as he or she progresses in the community and society that's what it's about when we write a curriculum we're going to be writing about these issues the second phase is I have paraphrased as being the local just to give you a better understanding with the terminology it's like a different from Sha'a Waliullah's terminology but I turned as a local phase in that in your local community what do you need to do in order to exist as a local Muslim community so there you might have some rules of trade and commerce and some rules of police some rules of basic court rulings or something like that the rules of Jama'a the rules of distribution of wealth and zakat this is this phase where now you're going to accommodate and entertain the ITR in your local community so you have a local Masjid in the local Masjid you need an Imam you need teachers you need builders you need plumbers and engineers and all of that whatever a local community needs in order to exist now you will say that you can't have a local community if you don't have a national community but there may be places in the world where people only live in villages independent of the state so that's not necessarily an absolute statement there are many villages in Africa and in Asia where they only have their own local system of life tribal, or be it communal or be it there you need that knowledge of Islam which allows you to behave as a local Muslim community where the rules of engagement with each other are very necessary there is no harm in that you're dealing with each other so you develop a new system in your curriculum where you're going to now progress into the local phase of a Muslim's life and there's just so much to learn Imam Qasali and others before him and after him have said that whatever is needed in order to maintain a local community is Faltik Faya so if in your community you don't have a doctor then the whole community will be sinful and if in your community you don't have an alim then the whole community will be sinful and if in your community you don't have other facilities or facilitators then the whole community will be sinful I think it's a wonderful way to express how Muslims engage first of all with each other and secondly with the communities where the community thrives and prospers and this is the way we developed our communities in the Muslim Commonwealth in our civilization just how we were and this is what made us Muslim so there are all of those rules and applications which by the way is all Wahi based you'll be amazed as to how much knowledge there is in the books of Fiqh people don't like Fiqh for some hard reason but the amount of knowledge and wealth and treasure there is in the books of Fiqh is mind-boggling it's a miracle of Islam that they actually wrote articulated, defined and they address all the issues of a community or beauty, global community so now that is how we gauge our Muslim civilization from over from Spain to China we had one big whole Commonwealth which brings us to the third phase which is almost like your national although the nation state is kind of new invention by human beings but for the sake of terminology you'll call it the national phase the country phase now you can imagine how much knowledge you need in order to understand how the national phase works your judiciary your police, your admin your governance your education and you know how the madrasas and the masajid, how they work and operate in order for you to engage at this national level deep in everything on the sun basically and you need to appropriate all the knowledge that is needed in order for the country to run next let's take for instance two hadith of the Prophet ﷺ since we are emphasizing the idea that all of this comes from Wahi based knowledge the Prophet ﷺ mentioned now two hadith one hadith is seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim and the other hadith is earning halal there's an obligation after the obligation of salat two hadith these two hadith will give us everything we need to do in order to create your local system of living so as we are talking about seeking knowledge which knowledge is for the knowledge which gives you the chanaat and salvation how does that one facilitate this is an hadith how are you going to act on this hadith as a community, as a local community how are you going to implement this how are you going to execute this hadith and make it easy for Muslims to practice this hadith which is the rule and the role of a government the role of a Muslim government is to facilitate for its citizens that's the role of a Muslim government basically in a nutshell so how does now a local community facilitate this so you will say that you need to find people who can teach people which means that you need to find a college or university or an institution where you are going to prepare such people who can do this right they're not going to come from the heavens the angels aren't going to come and teach you the fault there it's going to be human beings who are going to teach you where they want to learn all this where you provide their education is that true so now when you look at this and you understand how are you going to practice your fault there in order for that to happen you need to build a masjid and who's going to build the masjid it's not the imam who's going to build that masjid you're going to have your engineers your plumbers your electricians and your mechanics and everything else and where will you get those from Google no, you will need to build a college where these professions are taught they're building blocks in order to practice execute one hadith of the Prophet you need this local community and if God forbid there's a resolution that needs to be passed they need a court system and God forbid if there's a crime they need a police system this is what the olamah meant when they said that in order for you to exist you need everything that helps the community exist and facilitate those services which is 455 which means that in a local Muslim community you will have everything that you need in order to take care of yourself and survive basically so you need to teach all those skills and so on as you can see now you project this onto the national level then you're talking about a civilization you're talking about colleges universities, governance you're talking about courtrooms you're talking about the police you're talking about everything culture you're talking about commerce and businesses how you regulate the businesses in order for you to connect Zakat for instance you need people who are skilled in understanding how business works and how the accountants work and how you're going to distribute the the produce and how Zakat you're going to connect and that's the whole feeling itself and where will these people be trained in the masjid that's what the masjid was never the place where these people were trained it's just a myth in the minds of many Muslims unfortunately that everything happened in the masjid nothing happened in the masjid at Salat and teaching Islam that was the only rule of the masjid the masjid did not entertain schools, colleges hospitals, administrators that was all outside the masjid what I'm asking you to do is think why we existed as a global civilization for millennium how do we do that if we were not organized if we were not sophisticated if we were not cohesive coordinated despite all the internal wars right despite those wars that we had internally we survived as a global civilization from Spain all the way to China for millennium how do we do that there must be something there in terms of academic support or some kind of world view that you could buy something in Spain and pay for it in China right how is that commonwealth system how do we do this so, you know in the theory of economics you start with Adam Smith when you study economics, when you start with Adam Smith is a British guy 17th century, 18th century when was he but you discarded a thousand years of global civilization which was built on Muslim economics and you don't give credit to those thousand years and somehow you go all the way back to the Romans and all the way back to the Greeks to study economics there is no economics in this time when the Muslims rule the world it is pathetically dishonest and it is deplorable scholarship that you've chosen to ignore the best of the best when it comes to understanding the economic system which is based on value ethics on business ethics on trust on forgiveness and on altruism these are business ethics so we must re-explore and then re-discover the heritage that we had just about 100 years ago, 150 years ago and see if we can bring those details into the discussion of these three phases the domestic phase your local phase and your national phase and if you develop that through your sciences, through your history through your English literature and through your Islamic studies and your world studies, whatever then you will see that you will be reintroducing the tradition of Islam and the fiqh aside, we'll talk about the fiqh in a minute but this is something that in your social studies you must highlight without necessarily having it on your shoulder and say we're going to prove that the Muslims were better we were better that's not the reason why you teach to show your superiority you want to teach the facts these are the facts of a Muslim civilization which was global and which led the world in living and how did we do that if we didn't have these wonderful institutions and these organizations and these guilds and these universities and these hospitals and if we didn't have the infrastructure in which and within which Muslims moved and they moved quite a bit everybody traveled at least they traveled to Makkah and Medina and how did they travel if there was no infrastructure so we have to appreciate that whatever people say nowadays about Islam and they want to distort Islam and they want to say that Muslims are backwards yeah okay let's bring the facts to the table these are the facts so it is one hadith in which we say we can develop the whole empire we can develop the whole empire everything from one hadith the second hadith is even more intriguing Qasbal Halal that burning halal is now an obligation after the obligation of Salat and that is now how are you going to facilitate as a Muslim local government or Muslim national government how are you going to facilitate the means of halal burning for the citizens you are going to have to create those industries you are going to have to provide for the schools that teach those industries you are going to have to take care of the agriculture you are going to have to take care of the economy you are going to have to provide means by which the citizen is able to earn halal that's how we did it that's how we developed this global economy over a thousand years because we entertain the idea as rulers we have to facilitate the earning of halal so that people don't resort to halal and they don't steal and loot and plunder and so on so these were the organizations based on Wahi Qasb al-Halal so the rulers saw that their role was to facilitate the earning of halal for all the citizens so although we are well-financed there was the Bait al-Mal but the Bait al-Mal was rarely used for those who were unemployed Muslims always developed a sense of self-independence in the minds of Muslims and Muslims weren't beggars until the British made them beggars right as the Brits would cause all problems I am from England as you perhaps love I don't care about that until the Brits came we were a very sophisticated society a very organized people we never stole we didn't know what stealing was we wanted to silence we didn't know what dishonesty was and so on anyway that's just a historical anecdote if you want to call it that but Muslims in general they understood that the Prophet ﷺ that you must earn halal and if the country in which you live is not giving you the ability to earn halal then you have to make sure and go to another country that's the rule which they never did because the country did afford everybody the ability to earn halal and halal seen in so many ways obviously in commerce, business and agriculture and in barter and trade and anything else the professions, artisans and craftsmen and all of the good stuff and if you want to read an account of this of Ibn Battuta Ibn Battuta is so valuable that he gives us an insight view of this global Muslim civilization all the way from Tangiers to China including India and he says on many occasions that he survived purely on the hospitality of Muslims wherever he went he didn't need American expression wherever he went people just hosted him and they fed him and then as he left them they also gave him gifts which civilization has this tradition that you're giving your guest gifts today we say goodbye don't come back we don't even entertain guests unless we are ready for the three days in advance or three weeks in advance or a year in advance sometimes how this is community this civilization survived if this community was not pro-life for life and for the benefit and welfare of all mankind and so on but what I'm saying is that the Rehla provides you an insight into the nature of society and the issue of slaves he talks about Ibn Battuta that he was in Damascus and he was observing how people were and once he saw that there was a young man and he had a broken his hand and he was rushing towards somewhere Ibn Battuta says I followed him and I wanted to see where he was going with this broken cup why are you rushing with a broken cup throw it away so he goes he follows him and he says he went into an office in an alleyway and then came back with an unbroken cup very similar to the broken cup he's scratching his head what's he doing here so he went into the office and he said what do you do here this is for slaves who have for some reason done something wrong in their homes so this guy came and he said I broke my cup don't tell my master then I'll be okay and my master knows that I can come to you and get this cup replaced for the insurance right so I gave him a similar cup so that he can go to his master and say although I broke that one I can't show you another one amazing the level of altruism and generosity that existed in this civilization because we follow the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in his generosity it was a wahi based code why did we behave this way we behave this way because we're following the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam not because of some humanitarian you know jargon but it's simply because this is who we are and this is what we are and this system affords us this type of living and this level when Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as follow came on this sunnah it lasted quite a long while for a thousand years a millennium plus alhamdulillah hopefully one day we'll revive that and come back to that inshaAllah one day but what I'm saying in terms of education when you appreciate that these are these three phases phases are the best words of a muslims existence in the community and society in the domestic and the communal or the local and the national where you have these civilizational values and codes they all come together and you appropriate an isab or a curriculum that's going to reflect all of these three phases this is one way you may suggest Islamism if there is Islamism based on education this will be one way there may be other ways that I haven't heard of or you may think of later on but this is one way so the way you want to set up is to say that what do we want the student to know in this level in this stage and phase of his existence and in this phase and in this phase and you come to terms with that and you just it's a long project as we will discuss later on inshaAllah the last issue here is this intriguing question this is all fine and dandy this is a muslim civilization but how do you do this kind of education in a non muslim land which is our focus since we are in a non muslim land which we must appreciate we are not in a muslim land and we are not obligated to establish a club here either so now what do we do so how do you develop a curriculum that's going to teach Islam in a non muslim land and these are going to be country specific and this is where although the fault is able to be moralistic and standardised the content of what you teach about Islam will be country specific where you are going to go into the country and see these are some of the academic issues and these are some of the cultural issues and these are some of the financial issues economic issues and you evolve into that and you see how you can perhaps come up with a curriculum that's going to hopefully say God the muslims email and faith and practice through the core content subjects and at the same time it's going to help develop within the student the ability to represent muslims and islam in a non muslim country so it's two fold so in a non muslim country there are two things one is the preservation of islamic knowledge which is core content islamic knowledge and the second is the ability to propagate and promote represent and re-present islamic information and knowledge in that non muslim country so that we become engaged with the mainstream narrative and we engage with the community and society and we are not left behind others but that requires a lot of talent and a lot of time you may want to think of educational facilitators like the tribune in your liberal arts to incorporate some of that into your methodology maybe not philosophy I don't think it's a philosophy it's a methodology that you teach as you are teaching the islamic core content subjects and the other sciences and at the same time you are going to be seeing that our responsibility is to give through our existence in this country but at different levels the different levels of da'a one is that you exist as a muslim and you pray five times a day where your neighbour knows that you pray that's da'a in yourself which is enough for your salvation if your neighbour knows you fast in Ramadan then you are okay because they already know you are muslim that amount of da'a is enough for muslim salvation I would hope to see you in Islam at other levels of da'a engaging in maybe perhaps some form of whatever they call it interfaith whatever it is they call it interfaith that you are going to have lunch or something with non-muslims and you are going to show them who you are, what you are and you have a good relationship with them and you have an active relationship with your neighbour that's a different level of da'a and the third level is academic where you write papers or you write articles or you write books about Islam that's going to inform others about what Islam is with the knee of da'a not with the knee of education the knee of da'a will go along with that I'm writing this book so that I may explain this issue about Islam to the muslims which is necessary as a community's nest every individual every individual must jump on to the bandwagon and start writing articles about Islam but it doesn't work that way not every individual is obligated to do that one or two people from the community should be doing this and that is enough to fulfill the obligation of al-Qaeda some people should be engaging in some form of interfaith or being kind to everybody we have social events but not everybody should be on the bandwagon the problem with muslim activists is that whenever there's a cause they want everybody to be on the same bandwagon you can't do that that is ridiculous you want everybody in the masjid to be on this platform give me a break you can't do that that's not how things are done in this country he has a society everybody needs to participate it's something that islamic but everybody doesn't need to participate in everything so that's how we see the participation of the community in advancing the cause of Islam through masjid and in good manners and behaviour maybe serving food or going to soup kitchens or having a platform to speak with other people but that's a small section of the community and then people may engage if they want to politics if they want I don't really care about that but if they do that's fine but there are so many other initiatives that we can take with mainstream in order to show that we do have something called an amr-ul-ma'roof and an ahya al-munkar this should be incorporated in our curriculum that when we teach our children especially at the high school level that we should encourage them to be part of the mainstream narrative that when you're part of the mainstream narrative that doesn't mean that you're going to concede to the mainstream position because after all there's still a free country in academics you can still disagree with most people academically against a position academically in the Supreme Court when there's a dissent the judge has to write a dissent paper in which he says I disagree with this decision based on this so this country still affords the freedom of disagreeing Muslims are afraid that if they enter mainstream narrative they think that they will be conceding to the narrative no you don't concede to the narrative you hold your position and you say this is my position on this which is called I've been joining the good and I'm forbidding the evil now this is where the maturi the asheri and mortals the positions help you identify which route to take in mainstream discussions and conversations at a social level and also at an academic level maybe at a political level politicians are usually not smart so as I said I really don't care for them but if somebody does concoil politics with a Muslim agenda then they may entertain such ideas also alright so now in that conversation where in your curriculum if you have a subject called debate right which most schools have I assume it should be incorporated in your material that you have a a class or course on debate in English you do it's usually done through the English courses that you have this thing called debate and in those debates you're going to be addressing issues that are mainstream concern abortion or the rights of gays or whatever is the current trend and you're going to prepare the students to debate for gays and that should then you bring in your wahi-based position and then you train them to defend the wahi-based position that's your contribution to the mainstream narrative and how you're going to engage in writing, articulating in speaking and also in writing books and journals eventually this is at the high school level you may have this kind of discussion now then obviously the Muslim student will need to know first of all the English grammar logic and rhetoric then he'll need to know how to debate and then he'll need to know how to represent Islam so it's much more of an ordeal for the Muslim student it's much more work right then that's what you're here for you're here to work or Allah says in Islam man will only receive anything if he works for it so the Quran says has a symbolizational value you have a question? I don't know if you're still going to get to it or if you said it and I missed it but you were mentioning Amr bin Maruf and that the the three schools the Muartiz and the Muatari the Ashari would relate to this Amr bin Maruf and I didn't quite catch how that link so the Maruf what is the definition of Maruf that's what the question is is Maruf which means a known moral value which is good and munkar it's something that is denied and rejected as a moral value is that wahi based or is it akal based? that's the question so now you have three positions the Muartiz will say is what? it's purely akal based discussions where you're going to bring the akal into the discussion the Ashari will say is now wahi based so they will argue in favor of the wahi based position and bring their articulation to that and the Maltoolini will have there's no ins approach as far as mentioning there's a sin then that is definitely wahi based but we may participate in any mainstream discussion because the mind does have a role to play in identifying the good and evil of how legislation works right? in legislation you discuss the utility of the bill the pros and cons and so on that's the theory at least interest groups and other people come and dissuade people or persuade people one or the other way when we talked about Maltese before you mentioned that their contextualization of wahi was about the mind understanding Allah swt and his attributes independent of wahi but when it came to law that they were Hanafis but at the same time the homo artesini approach also recognizes that the akal can understand what is good and what is evil so is there potentially a tension no this is the role of metaphysics and you know ethics metaphysics and ethics both above law there is ethics of metaphysics and underneath theology there is metaphysics and ethics so that's where they operate from this is the role of the akal they're not talking about the role of law fiqh which precedes fiqh in their mind but by preceding fiqh doesn't fiqh get influenced by the conclusions of the akal I know ethics doesn't equal law and law equals ethics but neither are they so disconnected you're right why I'm saying is that when let us take a case which we will do in the next session after lunch the case studies you take a case now the mainstream community wants to discuss the legalization of marijuana as an example so now how the mortals approach this the mortals will say independent of law Islamic law I'm going to prove that it is wrong alright according to Islamic law and according to Wahi it is wrong so I'm going to prove it wrong and the mortals will say that we can go both ways we can say it's wrong because of natural law which are the Christians have the Catholics the thing called the natural theory and the natural law where the natural law should reflect the law of the church or you can go the other way and say based on Wahi you know it's wrong so we're going to defend Wahi so the natural theory has a better position I think more room to operate than the others but that will be an example as to how the mortals will say the independent of Wahi now when I go to these people right the legislator where does that happen here? Sacramento I'm going to go to Sacramento the mortals is not going to present Wahi he's going to present what? Aqal because he says my Aqal has already told me this is wrong so from the point of view of rationalizing the evil in legislating marijuana I'm going to prove my point which allows him to enter the field whereas the ashrim might be at a slight handicap and disability because he's going to say based on the Quran Sunnah I believe it's wrong and I'm going to prove the Quran Sunnah so he has an extra step right so that's where the difference will come if it's done now as I said politicians don't care I was giving an example this is how it will be done theoretically if you wanted to engage in mainstream activities the Islamic paradigm gives you plenty of evidence to do so as opposed to those who say we can't engage with mainstream because it's all cover with the point of view societal changes would impact their concepts of thought or new research would also impact so if they're rationalizing something that's revelation based based on Aqal if for example new research comes out on the benefits of something versus the harms of it would they then approach that or would they still stay with the concept of revelation let's say in terms of marijuana or substances like that let's say at this point the research indicates that it's harmful but at a certain point if it comes out where research says that there are benefits to it could they then defend or position despite the fact that it might be something that's revealed as which would eventually alter the concept of Wahi and revelation event like or water it down eventually that's a good point so here's the thing the Muadazzili will always claim that he knows through his Aqal whether this is right or wrong now he may reach that position through research or through the the theory of utility the benefits of the harms but that's still Aqal based right so he won't have any problem saying that there is no sin in this if he sees that his Aqal has told him is good he won't have a problem with that despite the fact that it might be revealed that it's that it's haram unless it was strictly explicit in the Qur'an so these are issues where the Qur'an are not explicit where in the Qur'an it's slightly vague it does not address the issue but if it's explicitly wrong like pork then he won't go there actually he'll follow the wahi in his law anyway there's so much more to cover the next slide or the next session we'll pray for Allah we'll see you all soon any questions why you were digesting your food did you digest anything you didn't digest anything I said there was a lot of information for me just open it period you can before we get into this I was maybe it's related to Islamic studies curriculum but when you think about literature and art are there it seems to me the idea of good and evil and sort of these three schools would spill over aesthetics and ideas of beauty and in fact some of the debate about good and evil is between Hussam and Qubah and the Arabic phraseology so is there are there some principles or does some of that spill over into notions of aesthetics what's beautiful and what not in terms of feeling good but just even aesthetically to the eyes we were talking about the five senses or to the mind in terms of literature or ideas or philosophy can we say there's certainly many Muslim aestheticies that historically default but then is there a Islamic quote-unquote or a Wahi based or a Wahi influenced or a Wahi inspired notions of aesthetics yeah there are some rules principles of basic aesthetics where the aesthetics shouldn't go against the Aqidah obviously the major principles of Fiqh in the demonstration of our beauty and art and so on so as you know culture will incorporate architecture fashion styles of dress and also cuisine so these are basically the core principles that Muslims excelled in all three the essence of architecture is there in the colours the symmetry and the idea of the circle and the square and going around a square in a circle of the Dawaaf around the garbane you know Muslims drew a lot from their rituals and they took their theories based on that and the different forms of calligraphy and they attest them to the creativity the Muslims brought in to the field of calligraphy and writing and so on and then obviously the different types of dress that was accommodated throughout the Muslim Commonwealth where somebody in China Indonesia, Malaysia is going to be addressed significantly from somebody in Morocco or in Uganda or in the African country and the Balkans and also the Arab world so that shows the diversity with which it's accommodated through the principle of Sattar where Islamic fashion is guided by the principle of Sattar not nudity or exposure and that's reflected in the art and reflected in everything else that we do and the various thousands of types of cuisine that Muslim Ummah brought to the forefront and literally to the kitchen table this is amazing amazing creativity that we were able to bring for the human race I think so there are some overarching principles that the Muslim Muslim fashion clothing designer and also the Muslim chef they will follow it's all based in the Sunnah and then later on you always had as part of art poetry right using your creativity your imagination to represent ideals and realities and then you have the Sufis who brought in one of they brought in through an institution of Islam spiritually and also physically and so on so you do have that there's a whole genre of literature that's out there if you want to research that and it's available I won't be able to give you names of books but I know it's there in the libraries and in documents and but then it brings us to this this slide here in that is there a single philosophy that drives everything that is Muslim so this endeavor that hopefully we should embark on won't have an overnight it may take years if not a decade or so in order to materialize you have to be patient and we do have to do this though as part of our exercises educators and trainers and organizers and teachers and so on it's a beginning not necessarily the end but what is there something that we can do which overages and say you know is there a Muslim slash Islamic philosophy which includes all the good points of every other philosophy and then incorporates and then generates its own life theology and so on so I'm sure there is one we can go over some of the basic precepts the precepts are obviously Tawheed Resala Naboor and then the Akhirah all of these three must be incorporated in anything and everything we do so that we remain Muslim at least in theory so I'm going to go through some insha'Allah points I know some of you were probably expecting answers to questions you may have but I was putting more Islamic teaching those are the details that I did warn you that we're going to be doing the philosophy behind the philosophy insha'Allah maybe the next thing around we can have some more insha'Allah tangible explanations and even products how to get into first of all the overarching curriculum of a Muslim school and then an endeavor which includes most people through their talents to write textbook school each grade as an organized cohesive effort to bring about this insha'Allah work so that's what we hope to do that it's not a one man kind of endeavor I require 40 scholars 20 Muslim scholars who excel in Islamic studies and 20 most of you guys so if anyone's interested you may contact me and hopefully get the ball rolling sometime 20 people who have the knowledge of the other sciences you bring them to one table and start writing basically that's the proposal from this so we're trying to go around various places in the country and at least open the doors of conversation it won't be done overnight but what I want to do is highlight some of the main features of this proposal curriculum is that you understand where we're coming from is there a single philosophy that's going to drive us insha'Allah some examples maybe I've given these examples before maybe I haven't if you want to now discuss evolution in your curriculum as a chapter in biology or whatever then you must bring into view into evolution through a cohesive theory not something that's haphazard that will be your cohesive theory now and you're going to say what is the wahi-based knowledge and explanation on the theory of evolution and is there something that the Quran says or the hadith says almost some scholars in the past have said that relates to evolution or perhaps evolution it's fascinating stuff so anyway when we study everything's there in front of me if you want to look at the Nusus meaning the scripture whether it's Quran or something everything is already there but you'll only find it if you're looking for it if your intention is to look for the solution you'll find it because the Quran speaks here it speaks to you as you're reading it because you will find answers if you have the right Nia and obviously the ability to look which requires that you as a teacher you must have some Arabic and some Aqida some Fiqh before you start doing all this stuff so maybe work somewhere you can entertain the idea of developing these skills as yourselves might be in order we all believe in professional development in corporate America everyone talks about professional development developing the individual and professional life wise in education you want to develop the teacher public schools and other schools have this program where they're developing the teacher so this is partly your development if you don't know Arabic then maybe you should learn and if you don't know Aqida maybe you should learn if you don't know basic Fiqh through the Arabic then maybe you should learn and there are people who can teach you Insha'Allah the Al-Qasim has some kind of chapter here it's barely fun I'm sure if you're interested we can have people teach you Insha'Allah but that's something you should think of as a Muslim educator that you must raise your bar participating in the Islamic discussion if you don't raise your bar then you will be a teacher by career or maybe by because it's a needed necessity if you're homeschooling you won't be the teacher that you want to be Insha'Allah so now let's take evolution as an example how are you going to teach evolution in a Muslim course or as part of your curriculum or be it it may not necessarily be Muslim it may be secular any ideas? one or two points in evolution that you will weigh against the Quran Sunnah or you will bring out the Muslim position of the evolution it should be in your brain what do you think? and what is that? where we come from is human being we came from we came from a human being how will you start the discussion if a student came and said that the position of scientists is that maybe we didn't come from human being or maybe we may have evolved from something else and where do you like so that has to be that foundation and you incorporate the primordial life into your equation where you existed in the rule but then they would say that that rule could have come in later on or maybe something else or even those people who were pre-human they also had the rule can you say that maybe monkeys came from humans monkeys came from humans that's devolution that's one theory I guess I will say if they base their evolution in all of their theories on a scientific process or method the scientific process method is anything you can test you can have a hypothesis and every single time it should be able to come out positive so it shows me a real life right now example of something that proves evolution not a changing of like feces not a change of like kind of a change of feces prove that to me now but that's not it that's one approach anything else anyone else what did you say human beings well the idea is that we believe that we went from monkeys to humans because of the links between them but we assume the direction of because you become more intelligent you become doing better but you couldn't make the argument the opposite as well because the evidence shows that they're linked together by correlation not necessarily their direction so the direction is a gas based on opium tracer no I mean that's plausible maybe there is one theory then that certain human beings were turned into apes according to the Quran right that proved evolution that they were turned into apes which didn't survive then they were turned into apes as a punishment and the punishment only lasts for that period it will not be transferred into the next generation so they didn't survive so that's one theory anyway what I would like to say is that the Quran tells us as to you know first of all the locale and the place where Adam was created it would appear that he was not created here on earth where was he created in the heavens so that then although he was created from the terrestrial sources for the earth and so on but he was not created here on earth he was created somewhere else and then he was placed somewhere else which is not on earth and this is what the Quran would say is allowed to enter gender using that evolution on earth didn't happen if you say that islamically Adam was not created here he was created somewhere else that one approach through the lens of a qida where you can say this and so on and the other issue is that Adam was in gender before he came to earth and so disqualifies the whole idea of evolution basically evolution through the process of mutation but what I am saying is that it is there in the Quran these are facts you can easily extract from the Quran you don't need to be a genius to do this you just have to look and that question goes on further and then we see that in the in muslim scholarship there is a reference to the devolution in this species but there obviously you have to look much harder and you have to be in that mode of research before you stumble upon it the classical example is that of Ibn Sireen Rahimullah in his interpretation of dreams used the theories of devolution in animals to explain the natures of certain animals where he cursed certain animals for not coming on board for not coming on board quick enough not complying with his command and so on so his theory is that certain reptiles are pretty devolved and he bases his interpretation on this theory so that's there in muslim scholarship where the reptiles and the species and other types of animals they went from one good state to a superior state to an inferior state and that's when they were forced to crawl on the earth otherwise they weren't made to crawl on the earth now this is in muslim scholarship in the city of Zatabi very early on in the first century and he proposed this theory in his words so you can see that even before anyone in the west ever thought of evolution or devolution muslim scholars came up with this idea albeit in the real mob interpretation of dreams to be something that we should honor that whether that happened or not or whether the theory is actually good or plausible that's a different issue but you do find that it works very well in dreaming interpretation of theory now here this is something that you can prove and say let's prove this anyway so what I'm telling you is that when you go into islamic academics when you start researching you'll find so many ideas are out there where muslims developed certain abilities and they also wrote on and spoke on the idea of the suffering of animals and the psychology of animals and all of that centuries ago basically so there you see that there is an islamic angle almost an angle to understanding in your social sciences the way you're going to present Adam is not as a caveman right Adam was not a caveman he was the first human being was a caveman and he was not in a cave he was in jannah straight from the Qur'an Allah placed him in jannah in the face of living existence and there's no way he was in a cave right he was dressed he was not undressed and when he committed whatever he committed he was undressed right so that shows that sattar for the human being as part of the human instinct and when he became undressed instinctively he started to cover himself even before he made doba he covered himself so now that's in your instinct this primordial instinct which is known as the fitrah needs to be discussed I think that's part of the curriculum and part of the course where the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned certain values are instinctive and part of the human fitrah so that you come to this conclusion that Allah has created man with certain instincts that are normative and they should not change according to context and climate and society and all of that which then will spill over into your fashion Islamic fashion is based on sattar you can't evolve or develop Islamic fashion where there is no sattar is that correct? Islamic fashion is something else you can design clothes and that's all free country can do what you want they won't be sattar so now you see how all of this comes together when you start applying the rules of Islam onto these issues the basic normative instincts of human being should be part of your core content curriculum in Muslim schools that you find these values these core content instincts are they normative because they are good intrinsically or is it because what he tells you they are good intrinsically and this is somewhere where perhaps the Asharis might feel slightly handing out this is the Fawwahi I am instinctively did a few things as a human being not necessarily as a Nabi and so on and so on the maturidic position on fitrah serves maybe as a guide for understanding how human beings should be and how they should behave oral hygiene for instance Prophet ﷺ said his instinctive is his part of the fitrah hygiene in general is part of the fitrah and he is not mentioning hadith the hadith of fitrah so on and then also within the fitrah there is the issue of tawheed the tawheed is instinctive in every human being because Allah took a pact with us in the alamee arwah which I spoke of in the world of the spirits and the souls and we all said yes you are our lord so this shows that tawheed is what? primordial and instinctive and based on that Abu Harifa says that it is necessary for a human being to come to terms with tawheed in order to be eligible for najat and salvation not to be sad about just the tawheed part that he must determine ascertain somewhere in his life and whichever language it is he must say at least to himself that and the creator of this universe as well that is necessary for every human being because Abu Harifa says the akal has this ability that he makes akal now primary and he says you don't need a nabi to come and tell you that God is one that should be instinctive so this discussion is there very early on in the first century of the muslim era and you can see how the muslim scholars actually thought about this it was very energizing and very perceptive for them to make this conclusion that is in the discussion of najat and salvation who is eligible for najat and salvation and the Ashari's obviously have a different position to that Abu Harifa's position is very clear which is a majority position and that is in order for someone to be eligible for salvation they must come to terms once in their lives with tawheed right and that is based on this idea that the tawheed is primordial it is part of the human fitra and there is no way you can escape this fitra somewhere in your life anyway so you apply this and you make fitra now a topic on discussion in your school and you start teaching what is fitra maybe the sixth grade level and you start discussing the issues of fitra and then you may want to bring in conversations as to now how society has distorted this fitra without necessarily mentioning the word distorted you can say it in different ways but there has to be that that your student must engage in this philosophy and this reality that not everything that society does is necessarily going to be good not everything that your force to do through peer pressure is good and not everything that the politics dictate is going to be good so these academic discussions need to take place and you should make the discussion of fitra and the distortion of fitra part of your curriculum and part of your conversation with your students it is very important boys and girls both they must realize this and maybe one place where we can start writing on this issue inshallah so this is one overarching principle that needs to be taught needs to be discussed and you know then you take it to the the akhira basically and you say that in the akhira this will be manifested in whether or not you have Najat or salvation because Islam without the discussion of akhira is not Islam it is secular if you remove the akhira from many discussions of Islam then that discussion becomes secular it is limited to this world from secular means but if you insert and include the akhira then that is what makes it Islamic the inclusion of sin and reward is what makes every discussion Islamic that's the rule this is the philosophy or this is the principle that whatever you do now invariably there will be subjects that are not discussed in terms of yathum and thawab and you know punishment and reward in the akhira they are just mundane you can disclose that and you will discuss those issues as mundane issues not necessarily something that is Islamic per se can you give examples anyone know mundane issues that you teach in school they build character you said sports is the issue right that's part of the curriculum if you get enough in sports you fail isn't that so you get grades for sports right your participation and your lack of participation you will get a grade and if you fail in sports you probably fail beyond your transcript so sports maybe a mundane issue we don't necessarily attach too much Islamic importance to that and so on there are going to be other subjects in the world most of it is mundane most of the world has to do with this world we really don't have a position as to whether it's sinful or whatever except when it comes to morality that if you discuss the morality behind the events in history then it may become history in general is a mundane subject geography unless you include the Quranic understanding of how the universe was created in 6 days and the earth was created in 4 days and the heavens were created in 2 days and all of that then you can bring that angle and says about the earth those ayaat are there in the Quran as a Nirmah the laws of Allah made the earth a Nirmah and how the Quran depicts the earth the moon, the sun, the stars all of that discussion becomes Islamic only if you include the ayaat of the Quran it is but if you don't include the ayaat of the Quran it remains one day I'm not saying you shouldn't but that might be a subject in yourself where you're even going to have a Quranic studies course ok so we can talk about the Islamic studies program in any Muslim school we must include the Quran obviously it must include the Hadith and the Sunnah it must include the Sunfil and obviously the Aqida so these are your 4 core content the most important things that must be taught ok all the way from maybe grade 1 or 3 until the end of high school alright so there are many I think books out there that will help you teach these core content subjects you can pick and choose from them or you can develop your own and then text books on how to teach the Quran as a subject perhaps without Arabic and without Arabic so you can have a general introduction to the major themes of the Quran presumably at 6th grade or 7th grade don't start too early because the concepts of the Quran are very international and the child needs to be developed intellectually before the child is thrown into those discussions and Muslim parents usually want and then it needs to be thrown into the discussions of the Quran at kindergarten that's not what the Quran is about the Quran is a supremely rich intellectual book of guidance and it requires a little bit of maturity and somewhat of an intellect and the students don't develop that until much later so you do have to be careful that it's not introduced prematurely it must be on par with some of the other complex issues that you have in social studies or in your legal theory or in your history so you gauge the level of discussion based on the other sciences you can use that as a reference as an index when you want to introduce Arabic grammar into the curriculum then you're going to use your standard of English grammar as an index to compare that when you introduce grammar in English that's when you know you will be able to introduce Arabic grammar you can't introduce Arabic grammar before you've introduced English grammar that's how you're going to teach them so there has to be that evaluation in the mind of the teacher person usually again one of the primary mistakes all Muslim homeschoolers make and all Muslim schools make is that they first grade grammar they don't need the meaning of the word subject noun give them a break let them live a bit it's okay throw them some words in Arabic and entertain them through pictures and drawings that's fine use the process of immersion in the first one or two or three grades just immerse them into the language without any structured grammar you can't introduce those complex ideas before their time so that's how you're going to likewise with the complex issues of Quran the Quran speaks about destiny and pre what's it called what's it called? it's pre-destiny, right? yeah so the Quran speaks about Fatalism, the Quran speaks about you know, human will and the participation of the human being and the Quran speaks about Allah's potency Allah creates actions and all of these very complicated, complex ideas cannot be introduced before the child is mature enough to understand those concepts just because you want your child to be Muslim all of a sudden now you can introduce points of fiqh the do's and don'ts, that's fine there's no harm in that you can introduce many points of the seerah but even in the seerah be careful that you don't necessarily bring out ideas in your seerah too early where they don't understand politics in general and you're talking to them about why Surah Udebiya occurred and it was a victory they have to tally so what they do in their secular studies must tally with what they do in Islamic studies so now, if they don't have the understanding of how politics work in general then you can't discuss the Treaty of Udebiya in your seerah you can just imagine there was this treaty in which Muslims agreed to this without discussing the fiqh of that event so you have to be careful be very very careful that you don't start teaching prematurely because they will miss the boat and that will be on you not on them so I have really cautioned people that until the 6th grade or 7th grade and perhaps even the 8th grade do not engage in two complex issues from the Quran Sunnah and other people who want to introduce usul in high school but you need Arabic before you understand usul and which Arabic the Arabic of the classical writers not this Arabic which is spoken Arabic my advice is be very careful don't do things there is plenty of time in high school for you to do all of these inshaAllah bring these discussions to the table high school is fine post 9th grade they should be mature enough to handle any discussion any issue hopefully so with the Quranics that is the objective that if it's not through Arabic then the objective is to highlight the major themes of the Quran so that you can do you may inshaAllah bring about 20-25 major themes of the Quran and once you do that then you go through those themes methodically not necessarily in any order but you bring the idea bring the idea of Risaleh and Naboor bring the idea of Akhir bring the idea of the angels bring the idea of destiny in the free will bring the idea of Sharia in the daqlif human responsibility all of that bring the idea of your resurrection and many of the ideas that the Quran brings about so there are about 20-25 major themes of Quran that I believe the high school student must be aware of before they graduate that's if you look without the Arabic if you look with the Arabic there's a different course altogether which we don't have time to but if you need instruction on that you may call me email me whatever we can give you that curriculum if it's through the Arabic but without the Arabic the major objective obviously you want to introduce them to another grade to the stories of the Quran that's why you can do that because there's a lot of morals in there and a lot of zero the ambience there that's why there's a lot of complex issues the mind that the Quran now builds it's supposed to be a universal mind it's supposed to be a thinking mind it's supposed to be a creative mind which in respects though we need the last and that's how you can develop your Quranic studies the way you're going to do hadith studies is going to be somewhat similar that if it's without Arabic there's one course one course so you're going to introduce them basic books of hadith the history of collection of hadith the documentation of hadith books on that and you can then go into the science of hadith and what are the major books on hadith that we know this and everything else and then you may want to see how you categorize the books of hadith and the works of hadith and bring out the luminaries of muslim scholars and how they dealt throughout their lives by writing, recording and so on so this is how you're going to be doing hadith studies and so on with the sunnah then along with that you're going to help them understand how law is now generated from the Quran hadith, from the Quran and that's the course itself so that's a higher level fiqh lower level fiqh comes you do's and don'ts, you watch by that the five pillars and all of that good stuff you can cover by the end of middle school and hopefully in high school you're going to be bringing in more complex, sophisticated discussions on first of all the relevance of law and fiqh and then how law and fiqh is premised on the Quran hadith and then the rules of the khleed, the rishnihad and all of these wonderful discussions on high school level that must be done so you can do that of course just for that and see then do a seerah of all the full imams and other people of fiqh before them and after them and show them the rich treasures of fiqh and how fiqh was then implemented through the courts and through the ruler and then you discuss between what we call qadar which is the judgeship and giving a verdict based on qaloon and law and then fatwa which is given a verdict which is non-binding through the mufti so what the courts design in Islamic countries is qaloon it is law and what the mufti recommends is ifta and ifta usually is non-binding where as the qadar is binding and you make that extension and you show through historical ways how this was done in Muslim countries and how we rule and govern based on fiqh and that's how we rule and we govern we always have fiqh as part of our communities as part of our civilization so these complex issues you can also take into consideration then obviously you have akida the primary level will be through a book al qida tahawiyah you can introduce that book as 6th grade or 7th grade that's easy the translation should be available and accessible to you that's not too difficult hopefully to teach and to articulate then more complex ideas and the history of al qida and how the history of qalam how it developed and so that can be introduced at the later time and then you may want to get into this level of qalami issues the asharim al qida and then what does it mean eventually in your junior year or perhaps in your senior year then what you are going to do is in your senior year if you advise the student to write a thesis on something that is islamic then they will be able to bring all of their reading understanding of the four core content into the thesis and be able to articulate a position that they take in their thesis paper I believe certain high schools do require that the senior has a thesis I believe that's the case but even if that's not the case you should have it that your senior must be able to write a thesis on something that is islamic because you are part of the Muslim school and you are supposed to be able to articulate something that is uniquely distinctive and you know it's yours you are bringing this to the table a new idea obviously you need the core content but you also need creativity you need articulation you need your trivia your logic, your grammar your script that comes into action and play here so you can do that too as part of the grand finale yeah so this in brief is how we propose you do your islamic studies part of the curriculum as far as engaging the islamic philosophy into the other disciplines that's a conversation perhaps another day inshallah but just very briefly what we can say is that make sure that whatever idea is presented in those disciplines and doesn't conflict Tauheed doesn't conflict Risale Nabua and does not conflict Liyakhil as long as you have those three premises covered inshallah you should be okay on the whole against fiqh we really are too bothered about that here at this point eventually we will be bothered that must fall into one of the four madaheeb of fiqh your position we can take it from there but initially it must be a qida friendly right so whatever you just discussed especially in high school any idea, any philosophy proposition must be in line with your Tauheed must be in line with the whole scope of Nabua Nabua prophethood must be in line with the primary issues of the Akhira then you know that you are truly trying to infuse a muslim philosophy into the school so the muslim philosophy is going to be built on these three okay what we call a theistic prerequisite to islamic studies they're theistic because they're built on theism especially the Tauheed and Risala and then it's based on theology meaning the Akhira is part of your theology although it may not be theism per se so these prerequisites before you come to the table of discussing islamic science, academics etc you must have Tauheed you must believe in the Risala the khatmin Nabua of the prophet when I say Risala I mean this, I mean the finality of prophethood in Muhammad that's what I mean when I say Risala not that not just that he was a Nabi but he is the last Nabi that's very important and there are just so many repercussions if you don't believe that he is the last Nabi and some of our unfortunate practices in the community today they kind of echo this sentiment and the process it's not the last Nabi although people will say that explicitly that's how they behave and the Akhira and that's you believe in Jannah and you believe in Jannah so this will be a beginning and we shall introduction to one islamic theory which helps you infuse all of this philosophy into all the subjects and brings all the sciences, disciplines together hopefully on one platform okay, so we'll stop here no questions comments yes the idea of a senior thesis I sensed from your comments about that originality is a positive thing there but I feel like there would be a certain level of tension between originality and various maybe I'm being too rigid but you know I think other than making a book report more than a thesis of what other scholars have said in the past I think most Muslims are very uncomfortable with a senior even a graduate of a college even at this until someone's a PhD or sheikh of Islam to make any definitive propose any definitive or it's not definitive but even propose an idea and so I don't know if I'm not asking a question or whatever you might be surprised how creative students are you're surprised and it doesn't always necessarily have to be Islamic Islamic made mundane but they're bringing maybe some angle into this question that's all you want you want to encourage them to think within the box never outside the box at least think within the box you're here in Silicon Valley right so I'm sure there are so many things you can talk about in a Silicon Valley there's no lack of ideas here so many issues you can write about, talk about, think about make them I don't become the next who's this guy Musk does his thing does his thing right Elon Musk you never know they're very creative you'd be surprised how creative students can be if you assign them the task how do you prepare them psychologically from 9th grade and 10th grade so that they go into that mood and moment and I have to do this but if you don't prepare them psychologically then obviously they'll be stuck so what is your right from one point of view that they may be stuck so that they don't say anything against the orthodoxy on the other front the orthodoxy itself is so creative we are assuming that orthodoxy is equal to stagnancy that's not the case we were never stagnant even within our orthodoxy we were very creative in our academics and rewrote books and titles on issues that are mind boggling we're not there to read them anymore but the orthodoxy is so huge you have so much material there that you can think of within the orthodoxy the field of psychology is wide open the field of neuroscience is wide open and the field of ethics and law is wide open there's so much that you can discuss but you will be surprised given a short yes in terms of all these core sciences are there any books that you can recommend for even teachers to read for themselves or first to encourage your students to read hopefully we can give you a reading list we can assign somebody to get that list for you we have people at Darfhausen who will give you the list at Darfhausen National hopefully we can do that for you yes I have to say how critical this aspect of your thesis is because they're already thinking that way they're already living their life having to interact with what they learn about their dean and what society so they're starving in our community and not having the opportunity to actually go through that type of process with someone they can trust and give them a sense of knowledge and can bounce off ideas and help them shape what they're thinking in a way that is positive and meaningful and it's very critical to that second the twofold concept that you mentioned the ability to propagate there's no way for them to be able to go into society and propagate their students if they're not practicing with it they have to have spaces and opportunities to get through that sure I'm not sure no do you have examples of things students have written on that you know about but you think would be good for students to write about as thesis well I don't know anybody who's a senior who's been forced to write a thesis in any Muslim school I'm just saying in mainstream you do have schools that mandate that the student rights of thesis I know that that does exist in mainstream but I haven't heard of anybody you know if you haven't then find why I haven't heard yet they're getting there slowly some Muslim schools they're thinking about it it's a work in progress first it was the idea of lumping Muslim kids together in one school where they have a curriculum or not that's gone now they're actually worried about the curriculum and they're worried about the academics that's phase 2 and phase 3 they're worried about the Islamic studies they mentioned you'll get there what I meant was that as a teacher what would you if you were teaching seniors what would be some ideas you would throw out that students could possibly write from an Islamic perspective it will be according to the interest of the students what type of interest they bring to the table there are some boring ideas I would have let's talk about abortion in this country for instance let's talk about the key issues or let's talk about the idea of debt in society meaning the financial instruments where you can be creative and remove everybody from debt or something because I'm more prone to think legally I'm going to be advising that way but a science teacher might bring something right and somebody else who's a different teacher, math teacher may bring something else so it's really up to the interest of the student and I think the students are very creative if you give them the opportunity to be creative as long as they have the poor content they should be okay with that but to answer your question these might be some suggestions I have so as a school we've gone through an accreditation process and have worked on defining our philosophy and kind of what we are and what we represent and what we hope our graduates to possess by the time they leave our school at this point we're re-evaluating our Islamic program and what exactly we're teaching and trying to bind together a more cohesive program we've kind of veered away for many years now from like the busy books where you're just filling in the blanks and reading certain things and have been trying to teach children from a more classical approach both in Islamic subjects and secular subjects this year is the first year that we're really looking at at redefining that where would you recommend that we start from in terms of if you're starting from a blank slate in that department kind of recreating and establishing where I mean I know you've given a lot for us to think about right now but in a practical aspect knowing where the state of we're 3 years old to 8th grade 14 we're up to middle school yeah if you re-evaluate and that's always good the introspect is always good and try to align your thoughts with what I've said today your mission statement should be in line with your purpose of existence your articles of incorporation your bylaws must reflect that and who's ever on the board they must have the same idea as you do the problem comes with people having different ideas on the board of education one says this the other says this so you have to make sure that everybody who's part of the board or the school the principal downwards they all share the same philosophy without that one single philosophy some people don't like the word that should be across the board they must subscribe to your philosophy as a being part of the school now they may disagree with it but when they're teaching they have to make sure they adhere to it so that should be there so whatever it is you do just make sure that everybody's on board and everybody's on the same page otherwise it won't work unfortunately for some reason everybody seems to feel they have a right to discuss it sounds like this which is quite ridiculous if I go to a meeting with math teachers I have no right to open my mouth and say I believe this is the way you should teach but somehow a math teacher comes to our meetings and says I believe we should be teaching Islam this way Subhan Allah the problem is the young man everybody owns Islam which is true they own their own Islam but they don't own academic Islam academic Islam is a different board game just one other thing if you do know of programs so one of the biggest concerns I'm a principal at an Islamic school one of the biggest concerns that we have when we hire teachers who teach Islam or Islamic subjects is that they are very knowledgeable in terms of the content and what they need to teach however working with students and practices of childhood development and strategies, classroom strategies working with multiple students there are areas that are lacking are there programs or in this program that you're kind of facilitating where teachers also learn the art of teaching in addition to the Islamic knowledge you have to put that on their development their personal development make it mandatory for them to take causes on that and if they don't hire them period they have to take these courses there's no other way to teach if you don't have to teach then it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have you won't be doing your jobs I think my recommendation is that you make a mandatory as part of their you know your HR personal development program that I want you to take these courses and then you will be able to teach but I don't think you should allow them to teach if they don't know classroom management lesson planning organization which would be a rep prerequisite for your certification as a teacher right? I think the concern is that we are not necessarily a certification program there are limited resources within the community in terms of people who are knowledgeable and who are able to teach then you make sure that you have workshops for them you have seminars for them you will be facilitating that for them so that you at least at the same level methodology but that's a common complaint that I hear everywhere unfortunately there you go, yes so also just kind of off of the if you were right now we're trying to come up with like 5 to 7 topics where it can be the same as our every grade let's talk about theta in kindergarten or second grade it's different than theta in eighth grade or first grade it's different what would be your advice if you were to pick up 5 to 7 main topics that should make up in the summer cities curriculum that can be received every year that are broad enough and that are important so I think we're trying to establish programs that are scaffolded so in kindergarten students learn these concepts about how HEAD and then in second grade if it's reiterated again they build on those concepts would you recommend teaching it from that perspective till HEAD was one that I remember must be taught theta and other you can go through some of the major points of theta maybe well through 10 and just teach them with a sense of indoctrination rather than analytical approach which you do in high school so those are there you can sit through those contents which is available for that it's up to the it must be appropriate for the grade that's all you don't want to do something prematurely but I've mentioned a few I've mentioned the Quran studies Hadith studies and then you can throw in your regular du'as memorizing the Quran and all of that initially the first KG first grade is just keeping me busy basically babysitting I don't think you should expect too much from those two grades your education might start second grade you have to be cognizant of this otherwise you won't get the job done our early program is very play based it's very hands on so second grade I mentioned those you can talk stories from the Quran as part of your Quranic studies you can talk about me the Seerah process some du'as basic adab of living social manners all of that good stuff so he's a Quran including stories Hadiths and then living like a social Muslim life anything else that's more than enough what are you going to do to them we're going to mold them we're going to mold them yes kind of a quick mundane question obviously if you were starting off with a blank slate and you're going to create a curriculum it's one thing but I think a lot of schools and a lot of families are in the middle of educating the children however they have been for so long so up until what age or at what point would you say you have room to kind of fix these errors that we've made in our own teaching by when should we expect certain things you can correct yourself until the senior year all the way through something is better than nothing but even the senior year you can correct yourself very quickly it's not that difficult you just have to give them a different paradigm I have a second question to follow up on this I've also heard the whole issue with should we even expose our children to things that are controversial or both opinion-based controversies as well as things that are just inappropriate that's a good question definitely in junior and senior year we should prepare them to talk about it if not handle them otherwise we're not preparing them for life and for college basically in college they're going to be bombarded with these kind of postmodernist ideas of reality and all of that so if you don't prepare them in junior and high school in senior then we won't be doing our job but I don't think you should avoid controversy because it's controversial you should have met the dollars and understand the core content understanding all those controversies this is where you are either going to be and hopefully you can do that but you mustn't share away from controversy because then at least give them a opinion so that when they go to college they will say okay I know an Islamic opinion about this and I'm going to contrast that with this but if you don't give them an Islamic opinion then they will see that the default position is what the college tells them it's just a major issue we must prepare our children for college life if we want them to go to college if we don't want them to go to college then there's definition you have to prepare them for life in general anyway yeah it goes back maybe related to aesthetics and even maybe piggybacks a little bit about controversy what role do you feel that literature plays a role in education I think a lot of literature is not always the most most hadad person in the world novels or stories and so probably some Muslims might have a reaction to not want to expose their children to certain kinds of literature but should they be exposed and if they're exposed how do we explain to them and what is the value of studying something you know for example just to throw an example out there someone were to be studying early Muslim Muslim in quotation marks literature you would be remiss it's not to include Omar Khayyam for example like especially at high school level but there's plenty of un-Islamic things in there glorifying wine and things like this or should that be not seen as valuable literature for children or young people adults growing up to be exposed to novels and all these classics some of which are problematic and I understand the most vulgar sort of those probably should be shunned but there's probably some gray area where you know there are two issues one is that as a parent you want to insulate your child as a parent and you don't want your child exposed to any nonsense or anything that's wrong technically as a parent that's fine but as a school that's not fine as a school you must open up the child's ability and potential I would say to the maximum it's kind of very outlandish to say that there you go I don't think you should be shy to expose them to any kind of novel and make reading one or two of these novels mandatory in the course so that they're exposed because without reading those novelists you won't understand the American culture you won't understand the American psyche you won't understand the American history and all three are necessary to prepare the child for college so trying to say I want to I want to preserve and protect my child from maybe reading something in Hemingway's books because they're usually quite innocuous anyway they're not that bad Hemingway is not although okay but as a parent who's very concerned they're going to be exposed to that language anyway so let's not have it both ways you can be hypocrite they're going to be exposed if they're not already exposed I'm sure most kids find it 8 or 6th grade they know everything if not earlier so I don't think you should be that hypocritical in saying I don't want my child exposed but you live in America you're already exposed doesn't matter how you slice the cake your child is exposed period even if they don't tell you they know everything that's going on right so I don't think you can afford to insulate them if it's part of a school program you may choose to insulate them as parents at home which is fine that's your promise if you want to do that but in school you're training them to be able to go to college and if they don't know some of the basic concepts of this culture the psyche of this culture and the history of this culture they will be at a tremendous loss tremendous disadvantage so novel reading is part of that so in each grade 9th grade onwards there should be some novels now obviously novel is right but then that's with the caveat that they understand what novel writing is about they must understand the philosophy behind the novelist why is the novelist writing this way there are some wonderful books there in American literature that bring about tremendous discussion of racism and inequality and the system and so on there's so many books out there the classics that you read in public schools so I don't think you should really be that concerned I would be concerned if you didn't have those books right but ok what's going to happen the parents will come knocking down on to the principal's door and say you have this book in your curriculum this anislamic is haram which is unfounded so even in Muslim literature as you were saying there are going to be many issues that are way way way more controversial than anything that these novelists have written at a high level classical Arabic what we do in madad is that we expose every kind of literature and poetry and some of it is mashallah very colorful to say the least very colorful alright we study the salamu alaqat of the previous jahini at shu'ara and they are extremely explicit in the way they discuss human beings but we are taught to study that because that gives you a background to the shu'ara of the time of the prophet salamu alaqat it's a background it's a backdrop I think you have to separate the sentiments of the parents and the philosophy of your school if the philosophy of your school is to hopefully train people to go into college and articulate a Muslim position they will need to know something about the culture and the history there's no two ways about it yes so could additionally to that or to what extent additionally to that is there value in and perhaps this could be part of the way a Muslim school could sort of give them a world view where they can understand that you know Allah Subh'anaHu gave human beings language and that's one of the things that human beings are distinct over other species and even when a particular novelist chooses to use that gift from Allah Subh'anaHu maybe to articulate even if it's something haram there is a beauty in that human ability to articulate and appreciate is that a valid and so the human language itself is beautiful and you know you don't have to be vulgar to express yourself sure not absolutely I understand but what I need to say is that you know even if some people may choose to use that gift from Allah Subh'anaHu to express something vulgar and that in and of itself might not be beautiful other aspects of that same novel just the beautiful way someone described a certain scene or a certain situation and is there value in seeing some of that in the language itself or is it really curative there is that there's going to be obviously in every art there's going to be a certain amount of beauty that the artist brings in and that's why we you know we resort to poetry for that reason so there is definitely there what you are saying but that should not be the reason why you approve or disapprove I think the reason why you approve disapprove is for this reason that you are preparing them for a much bigger challenge much bigger challenge just a note on that I mean good literature is kind of a catalyst in terms of opening up discussions that go into you know talk or development of the self or you know I think it's through stories that children see themselves and so when they do read stories and you are familiar with those stories and it gives you an opening to talk about why did this character make this choice and what led them to this and what is our viewpoint on that and so you know sometimes to just give a lecture about something to a child or to just you know bring up a topic kind of randomly is a little jarring to them but if they can associate it through this character that was positive and this character that made these mistakes or this character that kind of came out especially from classical literature there is so many morals and lessons and you know historical viewpoints things like that that can come out from it that have a positive impact not only just language acquisition but also just as a as a way to open up discussions and see themselves in these different kinds of characters and I know I grew up reading a lot of Persian literature and being exposed to a lot of Persian Afghani and Iranian literature and it definitely not everything there was a positive message but sometimes even in those negative messages you do see an aspect of this person made a mistake and how do they learn from that mistake and how do they grow from that and it's kind of a moment to teach children it can become a positive thing but I definitely agree in terms of insulating them from some of the just junk that's out there and differentiating between what is good literature and what's not and I found that when children are exposed to good literature early on in terms of language and content they have an appreciation for it at a different level and so when they grow older they're not really interested in that the kind of the floof stories or you know diary if it would be kid and would not type of stories which are not even classified as literature I know but still okay we'll stop here we'll have a lot of time for coming we'll hopefully see all of you soon we'll see you soon