 الحمد لله نحمده و نستعين به و نستخفره و نتوبه إليه وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأشهد أن محمدا عبده و رسوله أرسله بالهدى و دين الحق ليغيره على الدين كله ولو كريه المشركون من يهدي إله فهو المهتد و من يُضل فلاً تجد له وليًّ مُرشدًا الحمد لله على نعمة الإسلام الحمد لله على نعمة الإيمان الحمد لله على نعمة الإحسام الحمد لله على نعمة حبيبنا وسيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم خاتم الأنبياء والمرسلين الحمد لله على نعمة القرآن الحمد لله على نعمه كلها غاهلها و باطيها الحمد لله على يوم الجمعة يوم يتلاق فيه المسلمون و يتلاق فيه المؤمنون و يتبادلون السلام السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته أمّا وعا لقد أخبرت كثيراً في الماضي about education and its centrality in the Islamic tradition و today I want to continue with the focus on education because our tradition is a tradition based on education because Allah SWT in the last revelation that is to mankind and that's our understanding of the Quran and our belief that it's the last measures from Allah SWT to mankind and also our messengers صلى الله عليه وسلم if you look at both the first word that Allah revealed in the book القرآن is إطلاق and that is an imperative verb repeated twice in the first five verses that revealed to the Prophet SAW had there been any other topic of importance and significance to have the last revelation beginning with it it would have been something else but Allah by saying إطلاق we recite started the last revelation with education and not only that we also see in the first few verses that Allah SWT also referred to the second إقرأ بسم ربك الذي خلق خلق الإنسان من علق إقرأ و ربك الأكرم الذي علم بالقلم علم الإنسان ما لم يعلم the first revelation is all about knowledge and it's acquisition and the characteristics that is given to Allah SWT is being described as a معلم as a teacher علم الإنسان ما لم يعلم that he taught man that which he knows not so our tradition is centered on education just like a tent is held with a center hole that holds the tent and then you build around it our tradition is built on education on knowledge and if you think of the multiplicity of references in the Quran to knowledge acquisition of knowledge pursuit of knowledge it is monumental the Prophet SAW described himself as a معلم إِنَّا مَا بُعِكْتُوا مُعَلِّمًا barely I was sent but as a teacher and therefore his message being إقرأ read recite being a book and then he himself being a teacher gives us a signification of education for our tradition and our profit and our last message now I want to speak to you a little bit about two individuals in relations to knowledge from our past one we often refer to إبن خلدون but the other we often don't really pay as much attention to him even though he is very well known and I will begin with the second person which is أول جاحل a name that does not really resonate with us we don't know much about him even though there's debates about his عقيدة every day today everybody debates about somebody's عقيدة but his contribution in terms of knowledge was monumental أل جاحل wrote close to 200 works and you know now today in circles if you write one book nobody can talk to you if you write two you have to have an appointment if you write three then you actually have to go through stages just to reach to talk to the person أل جاحل contribution is 200 words that he authored on a variety of topics but one of the areas of his major contribution is the science of zoology which is the science of study of animals now the interesting part is the science of zoology that he wrote about because Muslims were very prominent in trade and depending on animals for agriculture and animal husbandry in general so it was a natural development of having an interest in animals and trying to see how to address their needs and that's where you would say that knowledge production is organically formed from the life and the processes that are around you so Muslims paid attention to animals because they saw their relationship to the animal as a co-dependent relationship I know in the modern day we talk about taking attention attending to animals and so on because there's a co-dependency that co-dependency Muslims understood it at such an earlier time and that's where the whole science of zoology developed to try to see how to attend to the animals now أل جاحل can be said to be one of the founders of the science of zoology so it could be defined as one of the individuals who that field of zoology he can be really spoken of as one of its founders one of his most famous works is the book called The Animal, الحيوان now the interesting part of his book is that he authored a book that part of it is observation of animal, part of it is proverbs part of it looking at the Quran and what the Quran had about the animals part of it is looking at the Hadith and what the Hadith speaks about the animals some of it looking at poetry and the similarities and the use of animals and some of it constructing speech where the animals are speaking many of us are familiar with the book Animal Farm actually if you go back to الحيوان it was the work of أل جاحل that inspired some of the works later on on using the animals as speaking object to engage in political social commentary on the contemporary without it being apparent that the person is critiquing the social political situation so a very innovative way of making the animals critique by their voice without the human being there so really أل جاحل should be credited with that genre of writing and developing a development relative to his work another part another work of his is أل بخلاف, The Mises which is also a social political economic commentary on people and he did it in such a way that is so humorous I know many people today watch TV and look at John Steward and all the night we show to get some commentary if you went really to see some profound commentary on the conditions of man and human being you look at أل بخلاف and see what أل جاحل was writing commenting on the condition of people relative to miserliness and his book has been translated translated English you could access it as well and so that's another form or another area of his contribution but also in his book we actually worked on detailed observation in a medical way on animals and actually his books have medical descriptions for animals and how to treat the animals as well as what medicines could be driven from various parts of the animals that could be used for the human being now I'm pointing to some of these contributions because at a certain point مسلمين were inspired by the command of Allah to read, to learn, to think, to contemplate to open the many vistas of knowledge that a human being can pursue and in this context thinking of the period that these developments occur it all comes out during the period of Baghdad House of Wisdom in Baghdad but House of Wisdom was one of the centers you had another center that developed in Cairo you had another center that developed in Tunisia another center that developed in Qurtuba in Spain then you had another center that developed in Samarkand you had another center that developed in Bukhara and I was so excited about it that different cities and municipalities were competing to see how they could actually form and develop scientific as well as scholarly development in their own cities so it was actually a positive competition positive competition between the Egyptian and the Iraqis the Muslims in Spain, the Muslims in Bukhara and Samarkand so there was a competition to do the best and to see how you could lift higher the tradition that was handed to you from generation to generation so when we think about this energy it's always centered and focused on taking the commands from Allah SWT and trying to see what can we learn from this Sunan that Allah SWT have placed on this earth now there is a critique that often is placed that the Muslims' mind was closed at a certain point this critique that often is good that the debate between the rationalists or the scholars that were rationalists versus those who were literalists it's constituted that to say Al Ghazali closed the doors on rationality that's just a completely orientalist demented approach to understanding what took place in Islamic history the debate that took place between Al Ghazali and Abu Rushad Al Ghazali and the Mu'tazilat had nothing to do with the utilization of rationality and logic was on matter of theological issues it was not on matters of practical issues relative to the society and Al Ghazali himself utilized rational discourse and logic in his debate and in his argumentation what he is trying to posit and this is where you see some of the orientalist logic is that the basis of Muslim decline is basically that they have abandoned their rational mind and that resulted in the steady decline of the Muslim Muslim states, Muslim countries and this often is used as a single causality anybody that gives you a single causality for anything you should actually run them out the door because it's never a single causality that results in whether it's decline or a slowdown the reason for slowdown and changes were multiple but one of the key elements was corruption corruption took place in Muslim countries and we should not be surprised why because we're human, we're not divine so corruption took place in our fighting so different municipalities instead of competing to have the best scholar come into the city and author and give them a resource began to compete who could have a larger palace it sounds familiar today so competition between the various municipalities turned into the focus and attention unneeded and extended combat and fighting with one another resulted in taking out all of the resources as this taking place the Muslim Dominion became fragmented and that fragmentation results in a lack of concentration of resources and then people from outside begins to look an opportunity to actually come and eat from your plate that is then it is you collectively that made it possible for this to take place in general four principles that could bring about development and progress in society and this is what we see happening in Baghdad one is that you have to have enlightened leadership you have to have enlightened leadership a leadership that is able to give us the vision to do because if you can't envision, if you can't dream you're only looking at your own feet and if you're only looking at your feet you're always going to stumble the enlightened leadership is a leadership that can help inspire a society and look in a visionary way that then can get all of us collectively to do the best that we can do and then collectively we could build so that's one of the conditions second there has to be stability there has to be stability political stability safety and security because you cannot think if you have bullets or swords or flying over your head you're trying to duck either to get the glass of water before somebody shoots you or to try to get some food to feed your family so safety and security and stability are a prerequisite for such a change to take place and such an elevation of knowledge and knowledge production and be able to give the work like Awjahab and others have produced for us third, be resources there has to be resources the Sultan, the Khulafa, the Umrah, the elite and the Muslims set up the endowments set up the resources that a scholar does not have to worry about anything students did not have to worry about anything other than being eating the knowledge and eating the information it was said that the Khalifa advisor said to the Khalifa when he was giving scholars the weight of their books in gold as a reward he started writing in larger print and having larger pieces of paper in order to weigh the book more so that the gold amount would be higher the Khalifa said, responded to his advisor had they known what they're giving us compared to what they are receiving for us they will be asking for more they value the book much more valuable than the gold because the gold comes and goes while the book essentially becomes part and parcel of generational transformation so resources are amongst and the Muslims at a certain juncture during the 9th century up to the 13th century the resources were all directed at elevating the Muslim knowledge production and that Muslim knowledge project became really what we today still are leading on for many of the fields and we built upon it the last point is that you have to have scholars you have to have scholars individuals that actually dedicate themselves to try to research and understand and work on the multiplicity of materials that are there so if these four conditions can materialize then really the heavens are the limits in terms of what a society can pursue now shifting to Ibn Khaldun shifting to Ibn Khaldun don't understand the magnanimity of a person like Ibn Khaldun let me tell you what the historian Arnold Kahn he said about the work of Ibn Khaldun he said the following the historian Arnold told he said of the Muqaddima which is the introduction to history Ibn Khaldun wrote the history and then he had a Muqaddima an introduction to history begins he says the Muqaddima that is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place this is a historian from the 20th century 1950s right wrote a multi volume, 12 volume history and in his mind looking at the Muqaddima an introduction to history the greatest work that a human mind has produced in history so he is not talking about 20th century he is not talking about he Einstein was there Da Vinci was there Rousseau he knew all of the western scientists of the canon Aristotle played in his mind that the work that Ibn Khaldun produced the greatest work in terms of human production now if you look at Ibn Khaldun's work the Muqaddima it's a book about sociology he is known to be the father of the field of sociology Ibn Khaldun is the father of the field of sociology it is also his work the Muqaddima is a work on economic theory people that compares Ibn Khaldun's economic theory with Adam Smith economic theory as it pertains to the excess labor in the market and how it's dealt with as well as how the market is regulated his work actually is far more authoritative and not far more powerful than Adam Smith but so far for many Muslims they will celebrate Adam Smith with his hidden hand in the market which is more often the bankers and we have no notions about what is Islamic economics and the theory of economics that comes out from Ibn Khaldun and others it is also his work is on political theory and state formation his work is the proto-nationalist formation because he identified how states formation takes place and specifically how nationalist sentiments he attributed to tribal solidarity but in that our understanding is the proto type of nationalist understanding so he actually offered or gave us a whole political theory and then it's a work in history so what I'm trying to present to you to understand that when Allah سبحانه وتعالى said to us we just completely ate whatever was available in the world we never shied away from any or any area of knowledge because we understood if Allah plays the knowledge on earth then it's up to us to go and get it we always focus our gaze at the horizons and people used to look at Muslims in envy to say how are they able to do this because we were studying and getting education accessing books writing for no other reason other than knowledge itself because we understood that a command from Allah to us we never thought of knowledge and knowledge production as a utilitarian function we never put one book equals $1,000 two books equals $10,000 three books mean I get to be an assistant to a CEO we never in our history in the past thought of that way if we get a job that's Allah سبحانه وتعالى your risk is decreed to you from birth and it's not it's the source of your risk that's the whole delusional where we think it's because we have a Harvard or a Berkeley or any type of piece of paper that gives you the meaning of who you are you are a great person because Allah سبحانه وتعالى created you and placed you and accorded you all your provisions all what you need is to go and kiss with dignity, with honor and it's not the piece of paper so knowledge for us was of a divine purpose we are trying to understand Allah soon and in this world we are trying to understand the patterns of Allah in this world whereas in sociology economics, history political science in any field including understanding the human being our psychology was willing to understand what is this human being what is our disease of the heart what are the things that cause to go this way or this way how did for us to actually consolidate ourselves all that was for us to discover the sunnah of Allah that's what Allah said what we enforceicum in your own self so as we reflect everything that we undertake we undertake with trying to understand Allah's creation and as such that's what made the difference in our pursuit relative knowledge and knowledge production now I want to end with the following just not to take a lot of time what we are lacking today is we are lacking an ability to envision because if you cannot dream vision of what you want to do you cannot actualize anything the first act is actually to think to dream if you could dream of where you gonna be then you at least can begin to take the steps that are needed to change your condition of where you are but if you are incapable of envisioning and contemplate the possibilities then you're always going to be where you are when you envision and begin to take action failure is part of success so don't worry about failure because if you don't fail you're never going to learn the meaning of success the person that failed time and time again at least they're trying the person says I am afraid from trying or I don't want to try because there is a possibility of failure failure is about learning it's actually part of the scientific method because you try to do an experiment in science as well as anything you actually try time and time again and a lot of a sudden after maybe the 50th try in the lab it hits in your hand you discover something that you were not actually thinking about it in the initial part of the experiment many many experiments and discoveries as a result of just being in the lab doing the work and then getting a discovery that you were not even thinking about you were thinking about A and all of a sudden you get a C and C begins to be the thing that is marketed and you're not even thinking about it but at the root of it is actually being tenacious and audacious to think about the possibility that you are able to accomplish it the last part is don't allow people to tell you what you cannot do you should be a person that knows exactly who you are and you set yourself to do what you set yourself to do often Muslims and this is something I write about have developed double consciousness which is similar to the experience of African American from the work of Du Bois that we think we look at ourselves by means of others looking at ourselves and we begin to act and conduct ourselves according to how others are looking at us so you're never looking and acting as yourself you're acting and looking and interacting in your mind through the lens of someone else that's trying to define you and in doing so you lose the sense of the purpose of who you are as a Muslim that's a real problem of double consciousness that Muslims have raised that level and that we need to begin to say that we are able to be self-conscious and haven't solved purpose grounded in our tradition and be to accomplish any goal that we set our mind to أقول قولي هذا وستف الله الحمد لله نحمده ونستعين به ونستكره ونتوب إليه وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأشهد أن محمدا عبده ورسوله أرسله بالهداة ودين الحق ليضهراه على الدين كله ولو كريه المشكون هذه الأخيرة أريد أن أبدأ لنا to think different possibilities different possibilities أخيرا أن أعتقد that the Muslims in this country are in a very good position to do tremendous and extraordinary things لدينا one of the most educated cluster of people that the world knows in the Muslim world as a class if you think about the Muslims or about six or seven million it's basically the cream of the crop in the Muslim world from the beginning of the immigration to here to the 1965 immigration reform to the Silicon Rush to the business community we have one of the most educated cluster of people in the world second we have in my estimation we have also a high concentration collectively not individually collectively of wealth we have tremendous talents in all fields maybe I would say we need more in the social science of humanities than we have across the spectrum here's what we're lacking we have not been able to translate our individual talent and our individual financial well-being and our individual creativity to a collective effort to carry all of us together all of us are attempting to create our own small boat to sail in the San Francisco Bay while trying to fix the small holes that are there and none of us are attempting to build a whole ship that could bring all of us together similar to the NOAA park that needs to be built and therefore the creativity for us I don't have the answer I have the vision that we are able to do tremendous things if we are able to unlock a way collectively for us to dream of how to constitute a community in here for my sense that we could make the ideal Muslim community we could implement every aspect of our tradition the only thing that you cannot implement is the حدود everything other than حدود it could be implemented in our own community without reference to any legal authority whatsoever the question is that why we are unable to do that I know you asked me wait for anyone else the person you're waiting for is you get up and you need to begin work I would say we need to think of financial institutions collectively in the Bay Area we have 250,000 Muslims we could create credit unions that could be the place where we deposit our money and through that relationship we could actually buy our real estate cash across the Bay Area we have 84 masks just collectively just estimated that if you take all their money we have almost on a monthly basis thousands and thousands of dollars that could actually empower this credit union so that's if somebody wants to dream and somebody wants to do that let them look at how to set up a credit union for Muslims in the Bay Area that becomes a source of strength and then we could loan people outside without interest because that's how Islam entered many parts of the world because they looked at us that we're trustworthy we're acting in a very open way and we don't cheat people nor we want to take their money because they feel they are incapable or they need a loan so that's a charge second how about us to create businesses I know there's a lot of people in the tech industry where are our startups where are our innovation collective why is it that some people can go and do Facebook and that for us we can't come together and do these types of initiatives collectively that's another charge if you want to dream I want you to be the owner of Microsoft I want you to be the owner of Facebook I want you to be the owner of these companies and I want you to start them up yourself I want to see a Muhammad a Khalid a Khadija that says Assalamu Alaikum I own this company and it's part of the Muslim community that's what it means to dream and to look big and have really elevated the community the community collectively so that's another charge third I know we have a university college a college like tuna college I want people to dream about opening many colleges Santa Maria's College has about 110 chapters college across this country the Catholic when they started their colleges there were 1.5% of population the same number that we are today they were able to create that infrastructure not only that people rush they had a waiting list not from Catholics from anyone else because they actually created one of the best institutions that people were envious about and similarly their schools as well that's what we need to do I don't like to complain about what other other people do or why they're better than us or why they're angry against Muslim I do all the work on Islamophobia but when it comes to work it's just work they're human, I'm human they have their talent we have our talent and it's about time for us just to get up and do the work and collectively change our community that's where we need to dream and that for me is really the meaning of itra and that's the meaning of us looking at the sunnah in this world and partaking in building a new community similar to the community that was building back then and that's where it came from I'll say a few words to this one and I'll leave go إن الله و ملاكط يصلون على النبي يا يولدين آملوا صلوا عليه وسلموا تسليموا الله صلِّ على سيدنا محمد وعلى آل سيدنا محمد كما صلِّكت على سيدنا راهيم وعلى آل سيدنا راهيم في العالمين إنك حميد المجيد اللهم إني داعن فأمنوا اللهم اهدنا في من هديت وعافنا في من عافيت وتول دا نافي من توليت وبارك لنا فيما عافيت ورقنا وصرف حلنا بالخير شكرا مнутضيت فإنك ت Abdulaku Al-Khayri و لا يدع عليك وإنه لا يدلما كمان واريت طابر Turner ربنا وتعالي ربنا ردنا إلى الإسلان ردى جميلة ربنا ردنا إلى إسلان ردى جميلة ربنا ردنا إلى الإسلان ردى جميلة اللهم أهلّ فبداة بيننا يا رب العالمين اللهم أهل الّبداة بيننا يا رب العالمين اللهم الّب دائت بيننا يا رب العالمين اللهم يام قدّب القلوب ثبّن قلوبنا على طاعتك اللهم ارحم المسلمين والمسلمان الاحياء منهم والأهمات يا رب العالمين اللهم أرن الحق حقا ورزقنا اتباعا وارن الباطلة باطلا ورزقنا اشتناب يا رب العالمين اللهم كفف عن اخوان المسلمين في كل مكان و لا خصهم يا ربنا في سورية و في فلسطين و في كشمير و في باكستان و سوماليا و في كل مكان يمطهدون يا رب العالمين اللهم مطفف عنهم اللهم مطفف عنهم اللهم مطفف عنهم و يقل دعوانا الحمد لله أقل العالمين و أقن الصلاة إن الصلاة تنهن الشاي والهم