 Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you. I am happy to welcome you all to this session after Hajj. And while I was at Hajj, I made Dua to Allah that I am 67 years old. Maybe there's not much time left, useful time in my life. So how should I spend it? Allah doesn't want to see average performance. He wants to see the best that we can do. So I wanted to know what is the best I can do? What is the maximum that I can do in order to help the ummah? Out of its current difficulties. So Alhamdulillah Allah put many ideas into my head. And I will be sharing some of them with you today. And some others I have already started to work on. So let me start the presentation. Oh yes, I have to select that. Alright, so I'm going to share the screen. Okay, so Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. So today I'm going to talk about the complete and perfect guidance from God. So some preliminaries, some 1450 years ago, Allah revealed the Quran to our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And this message changes the course of his human history. And if you want to understand, because this is actually something that is not taught in our schools and it needs to be taught, what was the condition of the world before the coming of our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? And what was the condition after he left? What was the effect of this message? So there is a very important lesson that this message was very powerful. The final message of Allah to mankind changed the course of history. So just from this simple fact, it leads to many questions. What was this knowledge which created this revolution? This question arises because today Muslims around the globe are once again ignorant and backwards. So how is it that they have this powerful and revolutionary message and yet they are still ignorant and backwards? And then the question is, does this knowledge which Allah ta'ala gave to man, allama linsanam malam yalam, does it still have the same revolutionary power which it did 14 centuries ago? Well, obviously anybody who is a Muslim and a believer will say that yes, the Quran is complete and perfect and cannot change. So, but then this leads to another question. If this knowledge has this power, then how come the Muslims are not using it to change their current condition? So to make this a little bit more concrete, the Islamic civilization led the world in the production of knowledge for more than a thousand years. And this is also the period which is called the Dark Ages of Europe where there was no knowledge in Europe. So why did the Islamic civilization lead the world in knowledge? Because Allah ta'ala has given us a unique message unlike any other. And it starts by the word ikra and it mentions allama linsanam malam yalam and it challenges us human beings to search for knowledge. Allah ta'ala describes how Allah ta'ala taught Adam alayhi salam the names and then he made the angels make sajda. So it was in the honor of the knowledge given to Adam alayhi salam that he was made sajda too. But today, if we look around us, the situation seems reversed. The so-called enlightenment of Europe ended the Dark Ages of Europe and led to the production of massive amounts of knowledge. And around the same time, the Islamic civilization went into our own Dark Ages in which we are filled with ignorance and superstition all around the globe. And this is contrary to what Allah ta'ala says that Allah ta'ala will lead the believers out of darkness into light and he will lead those who disbelieve out of light into darkness. So this situation for the last few centuries seems like it is in conflict with the Quran. So for the Muslim leadership and actually Allah ta'ala has made all of us leaders of them. He has given us all individually responsibility. Every single person Allah ta'ala says is more valuable than the entire planet full of lives. So every single Muslim is very important. So we have to think, why did the Muslims decline? How come they were producers of knowledge, leaders of the world for a thousand years? And how come we are at the bottom today? And how can we fix this problem? And now the vast majority of the Ummah believes today that the cause for our backwardness is that we are behind the West in knowledge. And the West has made amazing strides. And so the solution is simple. We need to acquire Western knowledge. So we need to learn about research, learn robotics, AI, chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, computer sciences, etc. So this is the diagnosis which is being pursued throughout the Ummah. But there are several problems with this diagnosis. First of all, the West is active and leading the world in production of this knowledge. And every day they are adding more and we are far behind and moving slowly. So it seems like it will take centuries to catch up to the West. So is it that we can't do anything about this decline for centuries? There is another problem that Western knowledge says that the West is the most advanced civilization and that the knowledge we have produced is the most important knowledge. This is in conflict with Islam because Islam teaches us that the Quran is the most important knowledge revealed to mankind. And that the civilization created by the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is the most advanced civilization on the planet. So there is a conflict and a contradiction between saying that the West has superior knowledge or whether the Quran is superior knowledge. So one of the solutions to this problem that has been proposed is called the Islamization of knowledge. So we take out the problems and the conflicts between Western knowledge and Islam and we make it Islamic. So we take the poison out and then we educate the Ummah. But this solution which was actually implemented in the International Islamic University Islamabad and Malaysia, it still faces a problem. Basically it's still saying that we need Western knowledge to make progress but Western knowledge is poisonous so we need to remove the poison. So it still does not say that we need the Quran for guidance today. So this leads us to what we can think of as an impossible dilemma. On the one hand we can choose to believe that the Quran offers us complete and perfect guidance until the last day. Or we can believe that Western knowledge acquired by Europeans over past three to four centuries is essential for Muslims to make progress today. So these two things are in conflict with each other. It cannot be true that the Quran is complete and perfect if Western knowledge which is not mentioned at all in the Quran is essential for us, is most important. Then if Western knowledge is essential then the Quran is not complete guidance because today we need more guidance than is available in the Quran. Now today most of us believe in both of these things. But belief in one is only a token belief because we are as Muslims we are committed to the Quran. So we say this as a matter of faith but when it comes to our intelligence and our actions we cannot deny item two because Western knowledge is everywhere. It affects us from minute to minute. We have the phones in our pocket and we are communicating and the room we live in and the air conditioning around us. Everything in our life is touched and affected by Western knowledge so it seems impossible to deny the central importance of Western knowledge in our lives today. But if we accept to that Western knowledge is essential, then we cannot accept one. So this is why this is an impossible dilemma. So of course the standard resolution of this conflict is that Islam requires us to pursue knowledge. Allah Ta'ala has many verses in the Quran and many hadiths which say that we should seek knowledge from our cradle to the grave. So basically then this says that seeking Western knowledge is part of Islam. I am going to abandon this. This is what 99% of the Ummah believes. But I am going to reject this idea and we pursue the other branch. And we take as axiomatic and given that the Quran is actually complete and perfect and it's actually sufficient for our guidance today. Even though it seems almost impossible because it seems that today we need to acquire Western knowledge and without it we can't make any progress. But let's just accept something which is impossible, which seems impossible. Remember that the prophets were called madmen by their peers. All of the prophets were told or said that they are magicians or madmen. So when we accept, we say that the Quran is complete and perfect guidance for us today. People will call us madmen because it seems mad. So let us try to be mad for a little while and this is what this lecture is about. So we assume that the Quran is true and we have no doubts about this. The Mautzala in the early times said that we use our reason to understand the Quran. Even the Quran, you see, we have, when we look at the words of the Quran, What does it mean? We have some means of methodology of understanding in our minds. And so our reason is primary and the Quran is secondary. And so they said that things we learn by reason are just as valid as things we learned from the Quran. But then they use this to argue that Greek philosophy was equivalent to the Quran. But the thing is that everything that the Greek philosophers taught nearly everything has been proven wrong. So fortunately, Allah made the ummah reject the Mautzala. And so otherwise the Mautzala was in a position to contaminate Islamic teachings with Greek philosophy. But today we are faced with the problem of the modern Mautzala. Most Muslims believe that Western knowledge is like objective facts and reason. So we have to accept it. And it is on par with the Quran. It is just as certain, just as sure, even though actually there are lots of defects and errors in it. But just like Greek philosophy. But today the vast majority of the Muslims, because they see the power of this knowledge, they see it in the mobile in our pocket and they see it all around us. So they say it must be true. So the fact is that knowledge can be false, but it can lead to products which are powerful. So today as madmen, Allah Ta'ala says, do the zikr of Allah so much that people call you mad. And so today we will take that approach. The standard approach is that if we have reason and empirical evidence and this is in conflict with the Quran, then we should reinterpret the Quran to make it conform to our reason. But instead what we are going to say is that we will accept the Quran and if our reason and empirical evidence is in conflict, then we will change our own reasoning and we will reject the empirical evidence. So we take the Quran as the definition of the truth and we take it as axiomatic. Everything else can change, but the Quran cannot be changed. So we start from ground zero, reject all our past ideas and our past knowledge. We start with a blank. I know nothing at all. And I start with the Quran. And so the Quran starts with Alif, Lam, Meen, Valikal, Kitab, Ulare, Bafi, Odalil, Mutteqeen. So this is the Surah Baqarah after Surah Fatiha. And the standard explanation of this is that the Fatiha is a prayer for guidance. In it we ask, Edina Surat al-Mustaqeem. And so all of the Quran is the answer to this prayer. It provides the guidance that we have asked for from Allah. And this is how the Surah Baqarah starts, that there is no doubt about this book. So we can be sure, we can trust what Allah is telling us. And we can be 100% sure that there is no doubt in it. And what does this book contain? It contains guidance. But it doesn't contain guidance for everybody. It contains guidance for those who have taqwa. So this is translated as those who are conscious of Allah. But we can say those who have perfect and complete belief in Allah. This is also a possible translation of taqwa. So if we believe in Allah completely, then this book will provide us with complete and perfect guidance. So this is where we start from. We started from zero, we know nothing. And now this is the first thing that God has told us. That you can trust me, I will give you guidance provided that you have faith in me. So Allah in the Quran in various places says that this book has a clear explanation of everything. It has a guidance and it has good news for those who submit and surrender. So again, Allah is putting a condition here that if we want guidance, we have to submit to Allah. And then another, shall I seek a judge other than Allah? It is he who has revealed to us this book which has fully detailed. Again, this is a little bit of a surprise. Allah is saying that he has given every detail. And then again, he says that Allah has perfected this deen for us and he has completed his favor and he has chosen Islam. So if you look at it, Allah has given us complete and perfect guidance. Everything that we need. We don't need anything else. In particular, we don't need Western knowledge. So this is very strange. So very strange because it conflicts with what our eyes show us and what our logic tells us. So today we will reject what our eyes shows us, which show us the power of the West and the glory of the knowledge created by the West. And we will reject our logic, which says that if we want to progress, we need to acquire technology and science and other things. Say that we will ask for guidance only from Allah. So again, we come back to the central question of this talk. So does the Quran offer complete guidance? Allah just said in these ayat that it does offer complete guidance, but it seems to us that we need a lot of knowledge of Western sciences, which are not mentioned in the Quran. Even more interesting, Allah has asked about the moon in the Quran and Allah could have explained that this comes from the shadow of the earth falling upon it. It's not very difficult to say, but he doesn't say that Allah sidesteps this question. He doesn't give the scientific answer. He gives an answer that it is good for the determination of the times and so on. Some other benefits of the creation of Allah, but it does not provide the scientific solution, but forget about science. The Quran doesn't even give us detailed instructions about how to make salat. If you search the Quran, you can get a clear answer to how many prayers there are. We know that there are five prayers that are first. And we cannot discover the time for Zuhar and Asr from the Quran. So what does this mean? It means that since we are taking the Quran as the standard, that what Allah means by complete guidance is very different from what I and you think complete guidance means. We think, you and I, that complete guidance means the Quran should tell us everything we need to do. So now I need to go here, then I need to go there. This is what I need to do. I need to be studying biology today and I need to study chemistry tomorrow, everything step by step. This is what we think, but there's complete guidance. If the Quran doesn't tell us about what we need to do, then we think it's not complete. But the Quran says it is complete, but it doesn't tell us how to make salat, at what time to make salat. So what Allah means by complete guidance is something different. So we need to ask what does Allah mean by this guidance? These are not step by step instructions on how to achieve success. Not even in this world and not even in the Akhira. We are not given step by step instructions, not even for the success of the Akhira. But Allah says that guidance is complete and he also says that it is detailed. So these words are being used in the Quran, but the sense of these words is not the sense that we are used to. So what we need to do, we abandon what we think these words mean and we try to learn what Allah means by these words. I will take a second to plug in my laptop. So what does Allah mean by guidance? We have to reconfigure our understandings. So basically we can think of it, this is a temporary definition, later we will get a more clearer answer. But we can think of guidance is that telling us what is the goal? Where do we need to go? Not step by step details for the journey. So for example, when you go for Hajj, we are told that we must get to Arafat on 9th Zul Hajjah. You are not given step by step instructions on how to get there. Because you see there are 7 billion people on this planet, every one of them would need different instructions. So if somebody is in Pakistan, how to get there is step by step is different and somebody is in America, somebody is in Malaysia, they all have different instructions. And then of course these instructions vary if it's in the 19th century, if it's in the 18th century, the timing is different. Sometimes you must use camels, sometimes you can go by ship, etc. So anyway, if Allah wanted to, he could give us all, these could be built into our biology here. So Allah is all powerful, he could have given us this, but he did not. And so the guidance, so one thing we understand is that step by step instructions are not part of complete guidance. What is guidance is to know what the goal is. But it is left up to us to find the path to this goal. This is very important to understand because this is the critical step. The goal is told to us how to get to the goal is left up to us. And Allah clarifies this in this ayat. So when we start to try to achieve the goal, then the process of struggle, the knowledge will be generated. So this knowledge is what we call experiential knowledge. It comes from making the struggle. So experiential knowledge, you see, if you want to learn how to swim, I cannot write down that, okay, touch your hand like this and move the legs like this. When you jump into the water, then you will understand what is needed. Similarly, see if somebody is teaching us Kung Fu Karate. So he will teach us some maneuvers and he might give us a very excellent and expert training. But when you go into the ring with another fighter, you will not have step by step instructions that he will do this, then you have got to do that. You have a training and then you use that training to handle the situation. So the Quran gives us complete and perfect guidance in how we need to struggle in a way that will generate guidance. That is when we are making the struggle, then the knowledge will be given to us of what we need to do. If we don't struggle, we say, Allah tell me what to do, but we don't move our hands, then we will not be told what to do. Allah has told us in rough details what we need to do. So if we start doing these things, then we will get the knowledge of what additional we need to do. So this actually leads to a radical change in perspective. We have to focus on the struggle, not on the outcome. We have to focus on what I need to do now, not on what will happen as a result of this struggle, whether I will win or whether I will lose. Winning or losing the outcome is not the concern of Allah. Allah wants us to be in the battle and not all kinds of methods of struggling are right. In fact, there is a very specialized way in which we have to struggle for the cause of Allah. If we struggle for our nafs, if we struggle to make money, if we struggle for other causes, if we struggle so that people will call us grave and honorable and courageous. These are all failures. These kinds of struggles will not lead to guidance. So in particular, it's very important to understand guidance is not victory and guidance is not more wealth and guidance is not having better technology than others. There's a very interesting prophecy in the Bible about our Prophet that, I have much more to say to you, Isa A.S. says, to his Hawareen, more than you can bear. So what the message is very powerful, it is so powerful that they cannot even bear the, they don't have. But when he, the Spirit of Truth, that is the Prophet Muhammad, he will guide us into all truth and he will speak what he has told by Allah. And he will tell you what is to come. So the truth that the Prophet Muhammad brought to us is very deep and difficult and radical. It is more than most people can bear to hear. And this truth was revealed to the Ummah by our Prophet. And this truth is just as powerful, just as revolutionary today as it was when it was first revealed. So some of the lessons that are critical in understanding this message is that the, what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion. So Allah says that this life of this world is just a delusion. And he says that you prefer the worldly life even though Al-Akhiratul Khairun Wa Abqa. So he is telling us that this is a silly thing to do. World will last for only a moment and the pleasure of this world are small and the pain of this world are small. But the Akhira is forever and the pleasures there are far greater than anything that anyone can experience in this world. And also the pain there is much, much harsher than anything that anyone can have in this world. So we need to change our preferences. Instead of this worldly life, we need to worry about the hereafter. So in the Surah Taba, Allah Ta'ala teaches us that this is an extension of the same message but in greater detail. That if you love your parents and children and siblings and spouses and family and wealth and trade and homes and everything of this worldly place that we love, if these are more beloved than Allah Ta'ala and his Prophet, and struggling in his way, this is very important. The third thing that we must love is the struggle for the deen. Then Allah Ta'ala, these three loves have to be prioritized over the love of dunya. Remember that these are the three questions of the grave. If we love these things, then we will be able to answer that who is your Rabb, we will say Allah. If we love Allah above all things and if we are asked who is the messenger, we will recognize the Prophet if we have struggled for his cause, above all other causes. And if we have struggled to spread the deen, then we will understand what the deen is. But if we love our parents and children and siblings and spouses and this is the worldly love which are built into our hearts, then we will be not able to answer these questions. Similarly, Allah Ta'ala will take out what is in our hearts and examine it. So this is what will be in our hearts. It will be either the love of Allah and his messenger or the struggle for the deen or it will be the love of dunya. So those who die with the love of Allah foremost in their hearts, they are the ones who will have success. Allah Ta'ala tells us that real success is on the day of judgment. Allah Ta'ala has promised the Jannah to the believers and Allah's pleasure which is far superior to the Jannah and that is the supreme success. So this is the critical message that success is not getting power in this world. Because we are not getting wealth and pleasure of this dunya, success is on the day of judgment. So how can we get the supreme success? That is guidance. And so once we understand what success means, then we can understand that the Quran offers us complete and perfect guidance on how we can get the supreme success. Western knowledge offers us ways to get an illusion of success and this illusion is like dust. Even when you have it, it turns to dust in your mouth and in the long run it is just meaningless. So the final message of God to mankind is just as revolutionary today as it was 1400 years ago. But now the question is why does the ummah fail to recognize this message as being revolutionary? We are instead of looking to the message for guidance on what we need to do today, we are looking to the west. And of course we are not implementing the ideas which the Quran tells us that this is what you need to do. Well, first of all, we don't recognize it, but then those who are looking to the Quran are not implementing what the Quran teaches us to do. So why is this failure? When we have the complete and perfect guidance, then we should not be in this position. So one of the answers is that colonization occurred in the 17th century, 18th century. And by the start of the 20th century, most of the homelands of the Islamic civilizations were colonized. And now you have to understand that colonization, this is something very important. Colonization is actually conquest of minds. You cannot have a small handful of people who rule hundreds of thousands without conquering their minds. If the people don't believe in the power of the west, then the west cannot have power over them because hundreds of thousands of people cannot be governed by a handful of people. So how is this conquest of minds achieved? It is achieved by education. Colonization destroyed the indigenous educational systems deliberately. These were capable of producing the thought leaders for a revolution. And it replaced these systems by a western educational system which was designed to produce admiration and awe of the west and contempt and hated for Islamic heritage and civilization. There is a famous Macaulay's Minute on Education which was enacted in India. And there are two points to note. Macaulay said that a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature. All of the thousand years of production of knowledge in Islam was just meaningless, just nothing. It was just garbage. Today what the western have produced, that is real knowledge, according to Macaulay. And then he said, what is the purpose of education? Purpose of education is to create people who will understand the west and will take western ideas and give them to the millions who are being governed. A class of people who are Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes and opinions and in morals and in intellect. So this is the purpose of education. And today the purpose of western education remains exactly the same. It produces people who have English tastes, western tastes, western opinions, western intellect. And they see of their job as being to convey these benefits of western education to those people who are ignorant and superstitious in the millions of the Ummah. So they think that the western knowledge is powerful and the reason for the failure of the Ummah today is because they don't have it. And so they see their job as to educate the ignorant people who are just studying the Quran and their madrasahs and have no real knowledge. So when we go through western education, we are trained to believe that western civilization is the most advanced civilization on the planet. The knowledge produced by the west is the most valuable knowledge produced by mankind. And our own intellectual heritage is of zero value in the modern world. And also the Quran does not provide us with guidance for our modern world because we study for four years, no mention of the Quran. So the west tells us that all the problems we are facing today, the solutions lie in the western intellectual heritage. So to counter this toxic effect, this poison which western education puts into our minds, we have the Ghazali project. This requires three steps. We must strengthen our faith, remove doubts about Islam, remove doubts about the Quran. And the second step is the Hafatul Falasimah, which is to understand that western wisdom is really very foolish. There are many, many fundamental flaws and errors in the structure of knowledge created by the west. And once we understand that western knowledge is flawed, we don't need to Islamize it, we can just throw it away. Then we need to rebuild the stock of human knowledge on Islamic foundations. So you have to start from zero, start from the foundations of the Quran and then rebuild the entire stock of knowledge. So there are two aspects of this project. One is the individual level, creating, understanding a revolution within our own selves inside my spirit and heart and mind. And the second level is institutional, to create this change on a mass level throughout the Islamic world. So this stock is at the individual level. It is addressed to my audience, individuals. But we are working in parallel on creating textbooks and on inviting teachers to participate in this project and to start replacing western courses by Islamic courses. And to understand that economics is really a religion, it is not a science. This religion is necessary to sustain the capitalist economic system and it is currently being taught throughout the world to Muslims. And we need to replace this at the institutional level. And we are doing various projects to try to do this. And those teachers who are interested in participating should contact me. So we come back again to the central question. Does the Quran offer us complete and perfect guidance for today, not for last century, for our modern lives? Yes, it tells us how we can lead our modern lives so that we can get the supreme success. This doesn't really make us very happy because we say that, okay, maybe if we live a miserable life in this world today, we can be very happy in the Akhira. But I don't have the strength, I don't have the energy, I don't have the power to just go in a jungle and seclude myself and make Salat and just lead this life with nothing and then have success on the day of the Akhira. So we want something which will actually help us today in our modern lives. So we can ask, will the Quran help us in our current daily lives on an individual basis? And can it help us at the group level? Can it help our families and our communities and our nations? And can we improve the condition of the Ummah without focusing on Western education? So the answer to all of these questions is also yes, even though it seems like it might be no. So this part is a little bit difficult and I have addressed it in detail in many other lectures. So I'm not going to go through it in detail, but the critical, the central, the foundation of Western knowledge is their epistemology. It says that knowledge comes from observations and evidence. That is what a university education teaches us to believe. Empirical evidence and logic, reason, nationality. But Allah tells us that guidance is for those who believe in the unseen. So right away we have a problem in epistemology. The Quran teaches us that we have to believe in the unseen. We have to believe in God. We have to believe in the revelation. But the West tells us that no, don't believe in anything which you cannot see. So the West, because they rejected the intuition and the heart, so they rejected the knowledge which is in the hearts. But Allah tells us that the most important knowledge is that in our hearts. And so there is this ayat in the Quran which tells us that all of this was created before the creation. And we were given consciousness and reasoning, abilities that we would have later. And Allah asked us, am I not your Rabb? And we said that, yes, of course, Balash Hidna. So what does this mean? One person, I said, he said that I don't remember this, so it doesn't apply to me. So the thing is that this oath is not inside our head, it is printed on our hearts. That is why our hearts recognize God. And this is true for every human being, whether they are atheist or whether they are Christian. They all have this oath printed in their hearts. So we know of so many stories where in their moment of distress, it is called out to God for help. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us also that the heart is a very important part of our body. And so Quran tells us that it is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts that are blind. So the entire stock of Western knowledge has been built by people who have blind hearts. And this is why it is so deadly. That's why we need to rebuild this entire stock, but on the pharaonic foundations. Faith is really a noor in the heart. It does not come from logic and arguments. And those people who have blind hearts, they are making today the most ridiculous arguments for atheism. They say that we can prove that God doesn't exist, but they agree that the universe is created. They agree that there is a big bang. So there was a time when the universe was not. And then it came to be. So that leads to the obvious question. How was it created? Who created the universe? They have no answers to this. And they cannot have answers to this because there is no empirical evidence possible. According to the laws of physics, we cannot observe something which is outside our universe. So obviously whoever was the creator, however it was created, this was outside the universe because it was happened before the universe existed. So according to the Western epistemology itself, the West cannot have any knowledge about the creator. So to say that there is no creator is ridiculous. It's illogical because all they can say is we don't know. So all of this so far, we have not discussed what the message of the, what is the guidance. We have just discussed why we Muslims are not looking at the guidance. We don't trust the message. We don't use the message. Instead, today whenever we have economic problem, we ask the Harvard experts. And so the problem, why we are not looking at the Quran for guidance is the Western education which teaches us that it has toxic hidden messages. It says there is no God. There's no life after death. There's no judgment. Man is just a type of animal. The goal of life is pursuit of pleasure and power. And the morality is just the survival of the fittest. And all of this is back into the word rationality because it is rational to believe in the unseen and everything that everything else follows from this idea of rationality, which does not agree with what we Muslims call rationality. So now I'm going to stop the critique of the West. This is my writing. They're full of that. And instead I'm going to ask, what are the critical elements of the message? What is the complete and perfect guidance from God? So the first thing is that in the first step in the Ghazali project is to build our trust in God. We have to trust that God can lead us out of our darkness, not Western knowledge can lead us out of darkness. And so this requires connecting our hearts to God. And so this can be done by making dua from the heart. Also if we get up in the nights in the darkness and talk to Allah, when everything is silent and there's nothing, no distraction, this is a powerful way to build our connection to Allah. And of course going out in the path of Allah, which I did in Tabligh, it is a practical method for struggling in the cause of Allah. And if we struggle in the cause of Allah, Allah Ta'ala will guide us to his pathways. There are also some conversion stories which touch our hearts and are powerful. So I have given a link to one of them that I thought was very impressive. So one way to the second step was to reject Western fallacies. And one way to do that is to just compare, match what our philosophers have said and what the West has said. And there are many places where there are contradictions. And today, unfortunately, what we are doing is when we see Western philosophers say something, we say, oh, that is right. And our own tradition is wrong. We have to go the opposite way. If we see a contradiction between the Quran and the West, we assert Quran is true and we say that the West is wrong. And once you start doing this, then it is easy to see where the West has gone wrong. They have made some really fundamental errors. So I have made a big list of this elsewhere. But here, let me just mention that the concept of probability is tied to the Raib. It relates to what might have happened, but what might have happened cannot be seen. So when the West rejected God, he also rejected everything that cannot be seen. And so they also rejected probability. And so the standard definition of probability in the textbook is the frequency theory, which says you just flip the coin over and over again. That's not probability because probability refers to just one flip. But why the West rejected this one flip idea that, okay, it came up heads, but it could have come up tails. They rejected this because it refers to the unseen. So I'm just saying this as one simple trivial example that even very, very basic concepts cannot be understood by the West because of their wrong epistemology. But today, the problem with the Muslims is that we don't have confidence and trust in our message. So we're not able to say, yes, everybody has been saying this for 100 years, but they're all wrong because we don't have the confidence in our God and our message. So we need to rebuild human knowledge. And this has to be done at three levels for us as individuals collectively in our communities in our families in our neighborhoods. And institutionally we have to and that's the critical focus of the Ghazali project that we need to change the courses which are being taught in the university. The eventual goal is to replace the entire Western syllabus by courses built on Islamic foundations. And then also the methodology of teaching classes, grading degrees, replace this by Islamic methodology. This has to be done in steps and we are starting to take the first steps. So I'm coming to the end of this lecture and we are going to go some revolutionary insights from the guidance. And one of them is the Malikul Mool. Allah Ta'ala is all-powerful. He gives honor to those he wants and he takes away the honor and all good belongs only to Allah and he is all-powerful. So all the others that we think are powerful. If we think that the USA has power to harm us, if within the atom bombs have power, they don't have any power. Not even more Allah Ta'ala says they don't have power like the skin of a date seed. So critical to understand that all benefits to us can come only from Allah and all harm can only come only from Allah. So the practical implication of this is that when the Prophet ﷺ was sleeping and he had hung up his sword, one kafir came up and he took the sword and he said to the Prophet, Who can save you from me? So the Prophet ﷺ woke up from his sleep and he said Allah. So you see, the thing to do is to imagine this situation that if somebody is holding a sword and he is threatening to kill you, then the faith that Allah Ta'ala is all-powerful means that you must believe that this sword has no power to hurt you. The power belongs only to Allah. So if it is the will of Allah, then this sword will hurt you. So once you understand this, and this is easy to say with the mouth, but easy to believe with the heart. If your heart is pounding that maybe this man will harm me, then you have not understood la ilaha illallah. Because the arm is not in the sword, it is in the will of Allah only. Once we understand this, then only one thing matters. Since Allah Ta'ala is all-powerful, nothing can help, nothing can hurt. So only one thing matters is how to build our relationship with Allah. So guidance is what we need to do to earn the pleasure of Allah. And now when we understand this, then we understand that the Quran provides complete and perfect guidance. How do we build our relationship with Allah? This is the only thing we need to do. And once we understand this, then we understand that the Quran provides complete and perfect guidance. All of the western knowledge that we think is very powerful is just a distraction. It creates doubt in our faith and in our trust in Allah. So again, the question arises that shaitan comes in and waswas. He tells us, is this really all? Don't we need to worry about our worldly affairs separately from our connection with Allah? So actually in many different places, Allah Ta'ala says that if you worry about me, I will worry about everything else. So specifically there is a saying in the hadith that if I worry about Allah, Allah Ta'ala will take care of all my other concerns. And in the Quran it says that we have only responsibility for ourselves. If we follow the guidance, then nobody else can cause us any harm. So basically we have to worry about our good deeds. So some events which are mentioned, which explain this further, is the Hanayn where the Muslims were large in number for the first time and facing an enemy which was smaller. So instead of trusting in Allah, some people said that now we will win because we have more in numbers. So Allah Ta'ala caused the defeat of the Muslims and most of them went back and then a small number remained with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihissalam and he called to them and then Allah Ta'ala gave victory to this small number to show that we must trust in Allah alone, not in our numbers and not in material causes. Remember Musa Alaihissalam and the Yahudis were slaves and Allah Ta'ala did not tell them that you need to acquire material power. He said that you build your connection to Allah and when they had done so then Musa Alaihissalam was given the order. Now they have done what they were needed. They have done istaghfar and now you leave them out and Allah Ta'ala drowned the armies of the Firaun. The Ashabul of Dood mentioned in the Quran they were all burned to death. They did not achieve worldly success but they are supremely successful in the Akhirah. In Afghanistan we have the example of the world's greatest power spent trillions of dollars and 20 years but a small handful of ragged people with practically nothing. They were given the success and the victory for Allah. So there is only one thing which matters. Learning how to build our connection with Allah and that requires good deeds. So this is true at the individual level and the collective level. If we ask how can the Muslim Ummah progress, people say we need to build schools, we need to build an organization etc. Technology, science do this, that and the other. There is only one thing which matters between today and tomorrow. Allah Ta'ala is looking at how many good deeds are being done in the Ummah. So if the Ummah made more good deeds today, we are getting closer to Allah and we have succeeded today. If the number of deeds is less, if the number of good deeds is less or they are less valuable in the eyes of Allah, then we have slid backwards. Now the good deeds that we do do not depend on whether we have money or power, technology, whether we are slaves or whether we are kings. It depends on our recognizing what Allah Ta'ala wants us to do and then doing it. So this is almost the last slide. So we have to switch to process thinking. This is very different from outcome thinking which we have been taught to do in the West. Are we going to succeed when we launch a revolution? Will this succeed? No. Right now, am I doing what Allah Ta'ala wants me to do? If so, I have achieved the supreme success at this moment. It doesn't matter what happens next. So everyone can achieve complete success at every moment by paying attention to Allah Ta'ala wants and then doing it. It doesn't matter whether we become Shaheed or whether we become Ghazi or whether our projects succeed in worldly sense or whether we are all killed by being thrown in the fire. So this is a very different way of thinking from what the West teaches us. But this is the way that this is the revolutionary message of the Quran. So we can conclude this lecture by Subhanaka Allahumma. Subhanaka Allahumma. Subhanaka Rabbi. All right. So now we can open this for comments and questions. So I see that. Ang has hand up. So let me ask him to unmute and ask the question. Yes, Swad, can you ask a question? I see a comment saying Western knowledge is wrong. This is a little bit more complicated than that. Western knowledge is built on the wrong foundations and used for the wrong purposes. It is used to acquire power and pleasure and so and it is used for the wrong purposes. So that is why we need to rebuild this knowledge. So I cannot get far too unmute. So let me ask Ambrine Sultan. Yes. I congratulate you for performing Hajj. And secondly, my question is related to there are two approaches that are usually mentioned. That is a modification approach or non modification approach to Islam is the knowledge. So in the modification approach, you just take the Western knowledge and modify it. But even in that now Islamization knowledge is criticized heavily. So there is integration of knowledge and integration of knowledge. And when I attended a couple of lectures, I get to know that it is at the two level horizontal and vertical integration. One is like integrating the worldview of Islam to the human acquired knowledge and also integration of interdisciplinary knowledge like economics cannot be studied in isolation. It should be integrated with other subjects. So I see that this integration of knowledge has more value and it's not marginalizing the Islamic knowledge and starting the Western knowledge as a point of reference and then Islamizing it. And second, the modification approach, non modification approach says that you rely on completely on the Quran guidance. And then do you agree that we have multiple level of existence? So at material level, we will be relying on sense perception and then marathable loom and marathable like there are multiple level of existence, multiple level of epistemology corresponding to each other. So if I see from this perspective, if Muslims make progress in the material level, then isn't it, we will also come up with the same Western knowledge, but it is based with ethical values. Like all the development that take place, isn't it that Muslims are left behind, they didn't do anything. Otherwise, if they would be progressing and if Islamic like the rich heritage of knowledge development was not stagnant for a long period of time, we would also be come up with throughout the Islamic history, there were civilization who thrived, who progressed in terms of so many things. So this is a confusion that I see. For example, if we neglect all the Western knowledge, then today the technological advancement that is allowing us to communicate with each other that would not be possible. So I've got your question. Now, what you're referring to is the approach of Rajab Shantar, which is quite correct. And I have referred to it. And in fact, on my website, there is a sequence of lectures on decolonization of the social sciences. And what I am saying, when I say reject knowledge, I am saying that the modern Western knowledge is built on the wrong foundations. It is built on ontological and epistemological assumptions which are in conflict with the Quran. So what we need to do is knock it all down, start all over again, build on the foundations of the Quran. And when we rebuild, we will come up with the same things for the most part, not everywhere. At the moment, because Muslims are overly impressed with the West, they accept as true many things which are not actually true. Because the West believes them to be. For example, the law of gravity. Everybody believes this is true, but actually, even in the West, and actually in the West, they moved beyond that. So one of the critical things that has occurred in development in philosophy of science is that science cannot lead you to truth. This is the basic understanding of the scientific revolutions that at all times, all theories are just hypotheses about what might be happening. And we know that all of these hypotheses are wrong because they all omit the role of the creator of the universe. In fact, there is a famous French astronomer who presented his books, Mathematician. What is his name? Very famous. I've forgotten the name right now. But anyway, he presented his book on astronomy on the planets and the movement of the planets to Napoleon. And Napoleon said, Monsieur, in this book, you have not made any mention of God. So he said, Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis. So this is the thing that when you are building a stock of knowledge which makes no mention of God, then it is wrong. So now you have to start from the foundations of the Quran. And then anything that the West has learned that is useful, we will rebuild that, we will relearn that, we will reacquire that, and we will make use of that, but on the foundations of the Quran. So this is not saying we reject Western knowledge, take the mobile out of your pocket and throw it away because it's a product of the West. My position is more sophisticated and complex, it has to do with the knowledge base that is being taught when we are taught chemistry in our university courses. No mention is made of God. So this is wrong because the pattern and the motion of the molecule is something which has been created by Allah and the beautiful symmetry and the laws which are satisfied, these are all creations of Allah. So unless we say Subhan Allah, we are not studying this correct. So there are many different ways to express this insight, but the problem is that because we are overly, it is better to think of, because we are overly impressed, because we have colonized minds, it is dangerous to say, okay, let's take the Western knowledge in Islam. What happens in practice, as I have seen, is that people accept too much of it uncritically. So it's better to say, okay, throw everything out, start building from zero, and once build on Islamic foundations and then examine, if you find a piece of Western knowledge which fits, you can accept it. There is no harm. Islam allows us to take knowledge from other civilizations. But if we build on foundations of Samuelson, we will surely go astray. All right, so let me see if Fawad Masood can come back and unmute himself. Yes. Hello, Assalamualaikum. Waalaikum Assalam. Thank you, Prof. In your point, you just wrote about the central concept of statistics and econometric upper probability and causality. It's strong in your opinion and your point. Rejecting Western policies. And I think we need more discussion in this subject, because as social scientists who learn economics and also organization, I think it's difficult to reject causality and probability in economics. So I think the future, I mean, like me think we should discuss this in one session or two sessions, because I think it's important how to reject the causality and probability in economics. Yes, I think in my lectures, I've said in other lectures that social science is a religion. It is not a science. So all of that has to be changed, as well as all of statistics and econometrics. So basically, once we start doubting what the West teaches us, we find that a lot of it, which we accept without question, is just wrong. That's why we need to rebuild from zero. All right, I think let me go to Wasim Arshad. Yes, Wasim Arshad, can you unmute? As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. Sir, congratulations to you for performing the Hajj. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you very much for giving such a fruitful lecture. My question to you is that if you look at the Holy Quran, it is instructed to the Muslim. You have to follow the path of the Holy Prophet. But if you look deeply, the seerah of the Holy Prophet, the Holy Prophet changed all the society by changing, by attaining the power from the, from the Arabs, those who were capturing all the system of economics, as well as politics, as well as the system of the society, the Holy Prophet changed it at all and then implemented all what you are saying. So, don't you think that it would be the right step to just effort to establish a deen? In other technical word, we call it calafa, establish the world of calafa. And then we will do all that that we want to do, because when we, when we have political power, it would be very easy for us to implement what we want to see and what we want to think that this is actually the right. Well, you see, as I said in this lecture, the critical question is how to connect my heart to Allah. And for that, I don't need political power. And actually, using political power, you cannot connect the heart of anybody to Allah. You can, you can force them to make salat, but you cannot change their hearts. So, political power is irrelevant to our essential, central concerns. If our hearts are connected to Allah, Allah will give us all that we need. If we need political power, he will give it to us. If we don't need it, he will not. I mean, it's up to Allah. All we need is to build our relationship to Allah and everything else, all our other concerns, he will take care of it. So, next, I see Osama Waqeel. What's your opinion on the Western knowledge that is built on the foundational work made by Muslim scholars? And one more opinion on this. I'm an example of that. I already quoted that, Hadith, in the last part of my lecture. And the problem that exists is that social science is a religion. It is not a dean. It is not a science. And this is the deception of Western knowledge. So, social science is just like saying Christianity, you see. Within Christianity, there are lots of good things, but because it comes from the right origins, but we reject Christianity completely because it's the foundation of Christianity is the belief that Isa' Allah is God. So, everything else, just, and even if they say good things, we cannot accept them because the foundation is wrong. And even though we have a lot of things in common with Christianity because Christianity, after all, comes from a revealed religion. It is a distortion. So, just like this, the Western knowledge is the dean of the West and we cannot accept their dean because it's built on the wrong foundations, even though there are useful things within that and there are things which match. So, when we say knowledge, knowledge means knowledge. That is fine, but what is being taught in the Western university is a religion. And that religion we cannot accept. All right. So, Nighat. Professor, can you hear me? Yes. I have just a comment or you may take it as a question that don't you think that there should be maybe a group of people or many people like you maybe in the field of mathematics and physics to think like this way that we have to sort of rebuild this, the basis of mathematics, because whenever these days we learn about finance or the other subjects, we saw the basic theories of whatever, I mean, the West is teaching us. So, even if, I mean, whatever you are telling us or sharing us. So, do you think other people in the field of mathematics or physics, they are also aware of the importance of that or agreeing with your idea? Because one day we have to restart this thing. And just like the West, they have built their education or their system over the period of time. So, it may take the Muslims to, I mean, where maybe it may take several sort of decades. So, we at this stage, maybe those who have already crossed 40 or 50, how should they sort of think because it is a time sort of consuming thing. And I think what you have mentioned about faith, the most powerful sort of the capturing the mind, somebody's mind, I mean, it's the faith, whether somebody is educated or not educated. From that perspective, if we trust our faith in Allah, obviously, we will be very, very close to him and we will seek his Hidayah. So, my question is at the ground reality, other people in other fields, are they with you? Are there some sort of forums where people are exploring this idea? Thank you and thank you very much for this long question. Okay. So, I have a lot of students all over the world and I'm working with them to introduce my ideas into universities. As far as mathematics is concerned, yes, western mathematics which I study, I took my bachelor's in mathematics from MIT. It's terrible, what they teach in mathematics is highly inefficient, highly useless. There are ways to teach much better, much more efficiently, much more powerful mathematics today and people are working on them. There are people who are working on these methods, but yes, the problem is that as you said about decades, this is looking at the outcomes. All we need to do is to make sure that at this moment, I do what is needed for now and that is success. As a hadith that it says if qiyamat is coming and you see the signs and you are planting a plant seed, go ahead and plant it. See, you don't when you're planting the seed. The object of the planting of the seed is that the plant will grow into a tree and will bear fruit or will produce flowers, but the qiyamat is already coming, so this will never happen. But we are doing the planting because it is the order of Allah because we think that this will make Allah happy. So we do it, we don't look at the outcome. So what will happen in one decade or two decade is no concern of ours. That is what Allah will do. What is the concern of ours is that right now at this minute, I do what Allah wants me to do. Okay, so Hassan Ghaffar or Hassan? Yes. Hassan, what is it Hassan? Sir, my name is Hassan. Yes. And my question is, as you know, many Islamic institutions in Pakistan and all over the world, they are actually taking interest in robotics, AI. So do you think that that is because of the colonized minds or the Muslims institutions and students taking interest in technological changes and developments? Okay, so artificial intelligence is all the rage and there is a lot of hype about it and there are lots of real things it can do and there are also lots of real things that it cannot do, it cannot ever do them. Unfortunately, the distinction between what can be done and what cannot be done is absent from the minds of most people. They don't know the difference and because of this, it's very dangerous because people can, if you understand the limitations, then you can do it for, you can use it for things for which it is useful but you should not use it for what it is not useful. But people think, for example, that it could give us fatwa but it cannot give us fatwa. Why? That is important to understand because fatwa depend on human being's abilities, their sensibilities and this is something which the AI knows words which have been used but it does not know the feelings behind the words. So it cannot interpret them properly. Anyway, this is a complex subject and the problem is again colonization of minds. We are overly impressed so we accept a lot of things on face value instead of being able to question and to criticize and to understand that this is a powerful tool but it has its limitations. What are the limitations? If you understand the tool and its limitations, then you can use it correctly. If you don't understand it, then you will use it in the wrong places and you will generate huge problems and errors without being aware of this. So I think this is a 3.30 so we should stop. I see one more question so let that be the last one. Firstly, I want to begin by saying a heartiest Hajj Mahburu to you. May Allah accept your struggles that went into his path. My question relates to when you mentioned about production of knowledge when you said like when knowledge is produced from my limited understanding and reading around this subject. As I understand it, humans cannot really produce knowledge. Can we produce knowledge? As I conceptualize it, knowledge already exists, knowledge is existent. We might not be aware of it due to our limited intellectual abilities but it is existent. What we as humans can do is just strive in order to be granted that knowledge and unware, so to speak, that El, that already exists in the A'alam. El exists only in the mind of God and he gives it to whoever he wants. Allah has all knowledge of everything which in the past and in the future and he gives that knowledge to whosoever he pleases. So when we build our connection with Allah, Allah will give us the knowledge that we need. It is impossible for us to get all knowledge because it's not within human capabilities. So we will get a limited and temporary and small amount of knowledge that we need for our purposes. So I think I will stop here and next session will be one month from now on the last Sunday, inshallah. Again, this was a topic which was not directly related to economics. Next time we will talk more about money and its role and value and also we will discuss, well not in the lecture but how we can move on this project of replacing economics in the Islamic world by Islamic economics, by courses, so changing the courses because the course of economics as it currently is teaches people that the goal of life is the pursuit of pleasure and this is very toxic messaging, very much in conflict with Islam. So that is all for today. We can end the recording now.