 Okay, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. I would like to say that today I have a lot of things to cover and I'm actually developing, going to give some new ideas and new materials which have been shaping up for a long time but finally I've got some clarity on what we need to do. So because this is going to be fairly long, I will start right away and hope I can cover everything in one hour and then there will be 30 minutes for questions and answers. So I'm going to share the screen. But I'm sorry you're still in mute. Okay, so I hope that you can hear me now. Yes, we can hear you now. Good and is screen sharing still on? Yes. You can see my slide. Okay, good. All right, so before we start just some, the slides have been uploaded to SlideShare and are available from this link given here. So you can get them. I have made a few modifications. One or two slides will not be there. Then there is a weekly mailing list that you can join and that's available for anybody. I have noticed that a lot of people on the mailing list don't get my emails because it is marked as spam. So something that you need to do is to go into your box and get, retrieve one of these emails and sort of you have to put it on a white list so that you can receive these emails. I have created a new website which has all the course materials and this course is also available on the Al-Nafi platform where you can go through it in sequence and step by step. So these are some of the links that are useful for later use. Now let me start this lecture by Ayat of the Qur'an. I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the accursed. So this Ayat in the Qur'an says that the corruption in the land and sea occurs by the reason of our amal and Allah gives us a little bit of a taste of what we have done, the consequences of what we have done and this is not as punishment on this earth. On the earth we are given this taste so that we can return to Allah Ta'ala and correct our deeds because if we didn't see the consequences of our deeds then we can continue to make more and greater mistakes. So the key solution then, see the problems are caused by our amal. They are not caused by external circumstances. So the solution is to change ourselves. Allah Ta'ala will not change our external conditions until we change what is inside us. So Allah Ta'ala has given us the complete and perfect theme and he says that this is the greatest gift of Allah Ta'ala for mankind. So it often happens that what we think conflicts with what the Qur'an says and today it is common for us to adjust the Qur'an instead of our thoughts because that is easier. We reinterpret the Qur'an to make it in line with the way we think. So it is much harder to do the opposite but that is what we need. We need to adjust our ways of thinking. We have to take the Qur'an as given that this is the truth and if my thinking is not aligned with that then I have to change my way of thinking. I shouldn't change the Qur'an. So this is very difficult to do because changing our thoughts requires changing our actions. Our thoughts are tied to the way we act so they are designed to justify how we act to ourselves. So to change our thinking, we have to change our actions. So the Qur'an was complete and perfect guidance and it started with the command to read and Allah Ta'ala gave knowledge. Allah Ta'ala will, Allah Ta'ala will Allah Ta'ala will give knowledge to mankind which they did not have. This knowledge had tremendous impact on the world. It took the backward Bedouin and made them world leaders and it created a civilization which was the world leader in knowledge for more than a thousand years. So this knowledge is very powerful. So the question is what was this knowledge that Allah Ta'ala gave to the early Muslims and do we still have this knowledge? If we had this knowledge then we wouldn't be in the bad condition that the Muslims are today and then the question is does this knowledge still have the same revolutionary power that it did 1400 years ago? So it seems as if it does not because we have this knowledge and we are not launching a revolution but if we accept what the Qur'an says is true and change what our thoughts are telling us then we have to realize that it must be the case that we don't have this knowledge because if we did then this knowledge would teach us how to change the world. So this is the critical question. What does the Qur'an teach us about how to change the world today? So some of the lessons that I've already given that the Qur'an tells us that you have to change yourselves if you want to change the world. So one of the reasons that we are unable to see the treasure of the Qur'an is because we are following blindly the Christians as reported in Hadith that there will come a time when we will follow the ways of the Jews and the Christians. There is a prophecy that Islam came as a stranger and it will become a stranger. So blessed are the strangers. So we have to become strange if we will follow Islam we will appear to be very strange to our fellows. So instead of seeking guidance from the Jews and the Christians instead of asking a Harvard professor to solve our economic problems we should turn to the Qur'an. So today the problem is that we are very impressed by the West. So every Muslim student around the world will know the name of Einstein and there is a book about Einstein and how he made a great blender which has been put out recently by the great flaws in Einstein's personality but he is thought of as one of the most intelligent men in the world and not just by non-Muslims but also by Muslims. As opposed to this one of the great Mashaikh of Islam recently died in 2018, five years ago nobody knows his name. So the most important questions that face us is the answer to why was this universe created who created it, for what purpose why were we created what is the purpose of my life what can I do to fulfill this purpose what kind of knowledge do I need to lead the best possible life that I can on this planet. So the question is who had this knowledge Einstein or Sheikh Murabat al-Hajj if Einstein did not have this knowledge and we know that he did not then how come we think he is the very wise man and how come we have no knowledge of Sheikh Murabat al-Hajj. This is just to demonstrate that what we think of as knowledge and what we think of as wisdom has been conditioned by our education it is a wrong education it teaches us to value things which are not valuable and it teaches us to ignore the things which are important. So the answers to the critical questions Allah tells us that the universe was created as a testing ground for us it is a temporary place where we will stay for a short while Western education says that the universe was created in an accident just it happened all by itself and Allah ta'ala teaches us that there is a purpose of our life we have a very short life and in this life Allah ta'ala He created life and death to see who will do the best deeds that is the purpose of our life to do the best deeds Western education teaches us that our lives are meaningless we will all die and we will become dust and nothing happens after that so how do we do the best deeds Allah ta'ala teaches us that the sharia has been given to us the law of Islam and this is the path to success the sharia actually means the road or the path and so we follow the sharia we can reach just how to live our lives so that we can reach success on the day of judgment as opposed to this Western education says that man is an animal we are all in a jungle this is cutthroat competition there is only one rule, survival of the fittest you either kill or you are killed so your job is to kill everybody and become the survivor so these are the answers which Western education provides us so again there is the question of knowledge what kind of knowledge should we seek so Islam teaches us that we need to learn that the real success is on the day of judgment so how do we succeed how to do the best deeds what is a good deed, what is a bad deed what is the knowledge which will allow us to do the good deeds and succeed in the West there is no Akhira, there is no God, there is no judgment there is no afterlife so the only thing is how to succeed in this world success means power, pleasure, profits all the benefits of this dunya survival of the fittest is the only moral law and that is why the West started global colonization and conquest and that is the best way to maximize wealth and power and knowledge of building bombs and weapons and organizing economic power to dominate that is useful knowledge knowledge of how to succeed in the day of judgment that is useless knowledge according to the West so they don't teach any of that, they only teach how to get power, how to get pleasure, how to get profits so when this kind of lecture is given, Muslims immediately ask the following question, well if we start focusing on success of the Akhira theoretically we will lose our focus on this dunya so we will become failures in this dunya Allah Ta'ala reassures us that wa laa ta'hanu wa laa ta'zanu antumu laa laa incantum muminin so if you believe and follow Allah then you will also be given worldly success and if you look at the rise of Islam you will see that the Muslims are pursuing the pleasure of Allah and they created the greatest empire that mankind has seen with the help of Allah and they did something which has never before been seen they took two advanced civilization which have been in existence for hundreds of years and they destroyed both of them just a handful of Muslims so the worldly power was given to the Muslims because they pursued the success of the Akhira so it's not that we will become failures in dunya if we focus on pleasing Allah Ta'ala and success of the Akhira so we have just reviewed that the Quran says that corruption occurs on the land and sea bad things happening today we are seeing lots of bad things why because of our evil deeds and Allah Ta'ala will not change our condition until we change ourselves so how do we change society by changing ourselves so today the majority of the efforts that we are making are telling other people that you should be doing this and you should be doing that and the leaders should be doing that and the USA should be doing that and Belgium should be doing this and Africa should be doing this but nobody talks about what I should be doing and that's the only thing which matters if you want to change the world I am the only one I can change and I am the world so we have to recognize our colonized minds because one simple sign is that we know who Einstein is we don't know who Sheikh Murabat al-Hajwas and that's a sign of colonization we know what is the who are the heroes of the west we don't know who are the heroes of Islam so we have been taught that by our education that the purpose of our life is to maximize pleasure this is what economics teaches and then of course useful knowledge is that which will help us achieve this goal this is about producing goods and consuming goods there is no concept of spiritual progress because we are just another kind of animal animals don't have spiritual progress so first thing we do is to remember the message of the Quran that whoever saves one life it is as if he has saved the entire mankind so in the eyes of Allah Ta'ala one life is just as precious all of my kind so saving one life just my own life is like saving all of mankind so Hadith says that don't consider any good deed as small even smiling on the face of your brother so we are thinking that who am I I am a little person and what can I do I can do only little things so in the eyes of Allah if I can change my life this is as if we have changed the whole world all of humanity and if I can do one small good deed that can be as valuable as huge deeds and we will see so the key to the revolution to make a big change in the world we have to start by making small changes within ourselves now it seems very paradoxical so does it mean that we should go and retire into a cave and do zikr of Allah and if we do that and maybe we do that that will make us bring us close to Allah then but the world will not change so it doesn't make any sense as I said when you take the Quran as your gold standard and you say that ok if it doesn't make sense it's because my thinking is wrong I have to change my thinking then you can understand the solution to this problem the solution is that the how do we make change in ourselves by trying to change the world and Allah has told us how to struggle with the world so this is a very subtle point you have to think about it and one example which makes it clear is the isometric exercise so I say in an isometric exercise I use the wall and I use both of my hands and I push the wall as hard as I can now this seems like a silly thing to do because the wall is not going to move but the goal is not to move the wall the goal is to build strength of my muscles so just like that you see when you see somebody jogging and you say oh he's going very fast he's trying to get to some place and you offer him a ride and he'll take you there very quickly so he says no no I'm not trying to get to any place the jogging itself is building my strength so we struggle against the world not because we want to change the world but because we want to build our spiritual progress so when you make a mistake lots of people are working on trying to create Islamic government trying to bring out the calafa and basically changing the whole world and then they are very disappointed oh we have been working for decades and no Islamic government in sight no calafa in sight we have been working on trying to eliminate biga but there is no reduction it's increasing so as long as when you're looking at the external world for results then you will be disappointed the wall did not move but if you make the intention of changing yourself you will see that if you try to implement the orders of Allah in our lives in the society you will sense your own spiritual progress and you can sense it from day to day from the morning to the night you will see a change in yourself and that is the revolution the revolution starts inside us so how do we create an Islamic society that is the problem that is in front of us and so we have a three dimensional approach which I have outlined in other places but it's very simple we describe where do we stand right now and we are all living in a market society created for and required by a capitalist economic system and this is very far from the ideal so what is an ideal society of Islam well a capitalist society is built on greed, competition and individualism and hedonism pursuit of pleasure in this dunya an Islamic society is built on generosity, cooperation on social responsibility taking care of those who are poor and needy and powerless and on striving for success in the Akhira so obviously in every dimension we are living in a society which is the opposite of what is desirable so then the question is the third dimension is transformative so we describe where we are where we want to go now what is the path which will lead us from where we are to where we want to go how can we get from a market society to an Islamic society so that is the goal of this lecture so as I said the first step is to have a clear idea of where we stand so since we live in a capitalist society we will look at the capitalist ideas about that society so this is a sensible definition of what is a society and this is very important to understand what is a society it is a network of social relationships so we have roles and responsibilities within that society I expect that you know when I buy good from the store I expect that the store owner has provided me with good quality of goods and the store owner expects that I am giving him correct currency not fake currency and so on so there are many things I am supposed to be working at a job to provide money for my family and many things so that's general what is a society now what is a market society so this is something that we need to understand because this is not contained in your regular economic textbooks and not even in your Islamic economic textbooks so the central characteristic of a market society is that it is based on massive overproduction it produces much much much much much more than what is necessary for lives of people so to think of this let's divide the goods into two categories there are needs and there are wants so now we define needs broadly in Islamic style I will get to that later but outside of the needs there is a huge amount of production of W W is both wants and W also stands for wasteful so basically the key to understand a market society is that W type production and consumption is much much much larger than what is necessary so we produce a lot of waste and we consume a lot of waste so to understand what is necessary Allah Ta'ala specifies it very clearly that we can eat and drink and enjoy comfort and even beautify our life but we should not do israf and we should not do tabseer do not spend more than what is needed do not waste and do not spend money on that which is haram and prohibited so this is a standard classification that what is allowed is necessities what we need for ourselves comforts anything which makes us more comfortable and beautification you can decorate your house you can make your clothing more beautiful but the fourth thing is excess which is there are many categories which fall into excess and haram for example having a huge wedding celebration and spending money on music and lights and things like that which are unnecessary and which are done very commonly because why because the society expects it from us so things like that are israf or tabseer so very contrary to the teaching of Islam Allah Ta'ala says that you are welcome to follow your needs do enjoy this world take comfort beautify life but do not follow idol desires so as opposed to normal economics normal economics encourages wasteful production and wasteful consumption because market society depends on creation of waste but the Quran prohibits wasteful production and wasteful production it says that do not follow your desires because they will lead you astray it says that do not prefer the life of the do not enjoy any do not prefer the life of this world and so if you fear your Allah and we restrain your souls from acting according to the desires so we have a lot of desires we want to do a lot of wasteful things but we have to prevent this is exactly the opposite of economic theory it says that you have to pursue all of your desires fulfill your desires but Islam teachers know you can fulfill your jai's desires your permissible desires but you have to stop your soul from following the wrong desires so now in a market society you need to produce W goods wasteful goods which nobody wants and so how are you going to do that well the solution is marketing you have to convert wants into needs you have to make people say that for social status you have to have a car and you have to have these things otherwise you will not have any standing in society so this creates a cycle people want the W goods and then they have to labor to earn wages but when they labor in order to buy these W goods and when they labor they produce the W goods also so this leads to what says law that if you create the goods suppose you start producing the goods then you will pay wages to the laborers the laborers will have the wages which they will use to buy the goods so it's sort of a cycle but the key thing for us to understand here is that capitalism manufactures the goods but it also manufactures the desire for wasteful goods and this is contrary to Islam we need to this is the front at which modern economics collides with Islamic economics because modern economics says that yes you should pursue your wasteful goods desires because that's needed to run the economy if you stop following your wasteful desires then you will stop producing wasteful goods and the economy will collapse, aggregate demand will collapse so but Islam says that desire for wasteful goods is wrong and not permissible so economists believe in this theory of consumer sovereignty and that whatever the desire you have to fulfil it, it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad, whether it's haram or halal whether it's wasteful or necessary the goal of life is to maximise the pleasure from consumption of goods and services this statement is written in all economic textbooks we have to understand that this is not science, this is a religion this is something which is a mistake which many people have made, they think of economic as a science but this idea that our goal of life is to maximise the pleasure from consumption of goods, this is a religion this religion is identified in the Quran as the worship of the nafs and so economic theory is actually worship of the nafs, it's also identified as nafs-e-ammara we have to do whatever the nafs commands you to do but we are not permitted to, nafs-e-ammara is the lowest spiritual state which we are not allowed to have so how can we change this well, we are taught, we are trained to think of ourselves as labour and we do the labour and we produce wasteful goods and we create for ourselves wage income but we provide more profits to the capitalists in the process of labouring so what the capitalists do with these profits, they have already produced the goods but they also have to produce the demand for the goods and so they use this profits to advertise to create in us the desire for buying these wasteful goods and so we earned this income and then we buy producing wasteful goods and we spend this income by buying wasteful goods so it's a self sustaining system on the one hand we labour to earn wages and produce wasteful goods and these wages allows to buy wasteful goods so we have to break out of this cycle and we can't make revolutionary changes in one step so we just make small changes one step at a time reduce the purchase of wasteful goods and reduce our labour when we don't need to buy so much waste then we don't need to work as hard to earn as much income and so this will free us both on the mental side we don't need to buy those things and on the labour side we don't need to work to buy those sides and how do we do that? That was covered in the first lesson if we learn to be content with what we have then we will not desire more goods if we give shukr to Allah for what we have Allah Taala will increase our blessings and this can be in the form of more goods or just more happiness with what we already have and if we trust in Allah that when we make these changes to move one step towards Allah then Allah Taala will take ten steps towards us he will not abandon us because you the shaitan makes us fear that if we step out of the system if we reduce our engagement we will become poor so one of the things that we should do in order to reduce our desire for wasteful goods is to spend on the needs of others instead of our own wants in our neighbourhood there will be people who don't have enough for their basic needs there are people who can't buy their own medicine there are people who can't buy food so instead of spending money in luxury restaurants and in in getting the finest and best goods we should prioritize the needs of other over our own luxuries and this is actually built into our hearts and Hadith says that you should spend time with the poor this will soften our hearts and it will appeal to us to it will make us realize that our problems are very small and it will motivate us to help so what will happen if we start this strategy well we will have lower standards of living we will have simpler lives and this action of changing our behavior will change our beliefs so it will break us out of the capitalist system says that you have to pursue more and more goods you have to pursue more and more income when we start breaking out we will see that we don't need more and more income and we don't need more and more goods and we can trust in Allah to fulfill our needs so so so the idea that shaitan will say that if you stop earning or if you reduce your earnings then you will become faqir no because Allah has promised his and his his bounty so he will he will give whatever you lose by dropping out of capitalism and pursuing Islamic society so once we have saved our time and effort and energy what should we do with this so remember that a society is defined by social networks so one part is to reduce our engagement with the capitalist social networks the capitalist system defines us as you are a laborer you are a consumer you are a producer you are a boss you are an employee etc there are many different roles in a capitalist society so in these roles we have to change the roles from market roles which are for money to social roles so this means reimagining the market but more importantly we have to build the social networks of an Islamic society and prioritize them so the first thing is to build myself means that I should pursue excellence in conduct and that is prophet Muhammad was the most excellent role model for us in terms of conduct then we go to strong family this is the key unit of a Islamic society so we have to build our families we have to build communities and Allah tells us about the Kinfolk and so much emphasis is placed on and also a lot of emphasis on our neighbors so the neighborhood community so with this effort we have to build these social relationships and serve our neighborhood and Kinfolk so the first step of this is self transformation change my own life so remember that one life is as precious as all of humanity what does this mean how can one equal one equal six and a half billion this doesn't make sense mathematically and this is in terms of potential just like a seed has the potential to become a tree and the tree can produce thousands of seeds which can produce millions of trees and so one seed is equal to one million or one billion seeds if it develops its potential just like that if we develop our potential we can be we can change the world and how do we develop this potential by struggling to change the world not with the idea of changing the world but with the idea of changing ourselves but as a side effect of this effort on the external world the external world will actually change by the will of Allah so what is the so how do we struggle with the world well there are lots of movements in Islam and they are all doing right you have to understand that we have to be united as an ummah this is one of the orders of Allah so we should not say that you are doing wrong and you are doing wrong so there are people who are working for khilafa, there are people who are working on jihad people working on tibliq, people working on government there are people who are saying that we need to return to the salaf, people who are working on Islamization of knowledge, there are people who are working on Sufi Tariqats and our spiritual development people who work on many other methodologies for revival of Islam so there are 72 branches of faith and all of them are important, we don't deny we don't denigrate, we don't minimize we don't belittle our brothers who are working in any dimension of the faith because there is so much work to do there are so many battles to be fought that we cannot fight all of them so we are happy that somebody is fighting on the front which we cannot take care of all of these branches have a place in the Islamic revival but remember that this message of Allah Taala starts with iqra and says that so we know that knowledge the right kind of knowledge is at the root of an Islamic revival but what kind of knowledge is that so among the many kinds of efforts it is the community which is the core because the community is the driver of social change, one man by himself cannot change the world but he can build a community and that community can change the world and this is exactly what the prophet said and this is signaled in the ayat that Allah Taala united their hearts when the muhajireen came to Medina then Allah Taala united the hearts of the muhajireen and the Ansar and says that this is such a precious gift that if you had spent all of the wealth on the earth you could not have done this so the unity of the hearts is a bigger treasure on this planet so instead of pursuing GDP per capita the Quran tells us to pursue love so how do we start so the family is the building block of the community so we need to strengthen our relationships by parents with our spouse, with our children and with our extended family and how do we do that? well by prioritizing family over our career basically you can say that what defines capitalism is that you prize your career over your family because your career is your role in the capitalist economy so if that is more important than your family that means you are a capitalist so if your family is more important than your career then that means that you are trying to build so if you take nothing else from this lecture this is the central take away work on building your family by investing time in your relationships with your family and this is also mentioned in the Quran and Hadith and how do we do that? well the families break up because people think that he is doing me harm so Allah Taala says in the Quran that if somebody does you harm, you should return that by doing something good and that will change the hearts of the people and the same thing is mentioned in the Hadith that Allah Taala said that what is sila rami? it is not to return a good deed for a good deed it is when your relatives do bad to you and then you respond by doing good to them whatever it takes to strengthen our family ties because actually what is critical today is that the family is under attack the family has already broken up it is completely shattered in the west more than 50% of children are being born outside of marriage to single mothers and these same pressures are applying to the Islamic world today and families are breaking up in the Islamic world so this is the most critical front on which we must fight and unfortunately Muslims are not even aware that this is a front they are battling on all other fronts they are talking about trade and exports and dollar but they are not talking about what we need to do to strengthen our families the families are the building block of the Islamic society so how do we strengthen the family? well both hadith and the Quran mention the importance of love there is a hadith that believers a believer loves and he is loved and there is no khair in someone who is not loved by his neighbors so there are two hadiths about you will not enter paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love one another and you should spread salam in order to achieve this love but spreading salam is not just words when we say salam, alaikum we should say it with our hearts and what does it mean to say it with our hearts? means that we are concerned about you your condition and we hope that you have peace think troubling you, we will help you find that peace another hadith which is that we are merciful and kind to each other and we love each other and we are like one body so that if any part of the body feels pain, we should also feel that pain so service to is the key to communion, how do we build relations? we build by instead of you know, what capitalism teaches us is to obey the nuffs, follow your idle desire so today whenever we have a free moment we say okay, what would I like to do? I want to watch a movie I want to play a game, I want to go for something which will make me happy so instead of that, think about what can I do to make somebody else happy and that is the instead of thinking about your own happiness there is a very interesting experiment one person gathered 1000 people and he had each person fill up a balloon and put in their name inside that balloon in writing then all of the 1000 balloons were mixed up and people were said go and find your own balloon so at the end of half an hour very few people had their own balloons, there were so many balloons you couldn't find nobody could find their own balloon so then he said okay let's do this in another way you go and pick up one balloon and look at the name on that balloon and give that balloon to the person with that name on it so in five minutes everybody had their own balloon so what do we learn from this? if you think about the happiness of others everyone in the society will be happy but when you're thinking about your own happiness nobody will be happy so some practical strategies on how to create change, there is a nice verse by Allah that if we focus on just one thing then we will be protected from 1000 problems so a very practical strategy is that I have a limited amount of energy don't stop, don't fight all the battles don't fight for your worldly goals, don't fight there's a curtain of darkness which is following your desires and trying to achieve worldly goals but there's also Nurani per day curtains of light these are Islamic battles which seem like they are good things to do like pursuing some ends which might have beneficial Islamic outcome the thing is that you should be doing things where you can be effective as I say, lose 1000 battles in order to win one fight, put all your effort into winning one battle now if you are a politician if you are placed in a government then you should be working on fixing that but if I'm living in Pakistan I shouldn't be worrying about American foreign policy I have nothing I can do about that unfortunately we are worrying about what's happening in Brazil and what's happening in Japan and not worrying about what's happening in my home so focus your energies on fighting one battle and win that, put everything into winning that one battle how do we win that one battle? well take a big battle and like building networks which I will discuss in greater detail this is going to take a year, 10 years, 100 years maybe so what you do then you become discouraged so divide that into a small, ok there's a big battle but divide it into very small steps and then take one take one step on one day take a goal for one day and fulfill that goal and then feel happy that I have taken one step towards a goal which is a thousand miles distant and thank Allah if you give thanks to Allah that I was able to do this one little thing Allah Taala will enable to do you a lot more because those who make shukr Allah Taala increases their blessings so what is the task we want to build an Islamic community it's actually a hugely difficult task you shouldn't take it easy, you shouldn't think that this is easy we have to build relationships, every relationship requires time and effort and energy so there is a neighborhood community there is a work community there is a family community and today we have virtual communities so if you think about building all these communities in your life to do that so what should you do if you don't have time to build all of those relationships you work on one thing you won't be able to work on another so choose the path of least resistance choose the easiest tasks don't choose the hard tasks but remember that our spiritual growth depends on choosing the level of challenge if you choose something which is too easy there is no growth if you choose something that is too hard then you will be discouraged and abandoned effort so you have to choose a medium level which needs some work but it can be done and you can do it and when you succeed you feel happy and this requires working your muscles at a level which will create change put your muscles into something too hard they will tear and they will be wasted if you do some exercise that is too easy you will not change but if you do the exercise at the right level you will achieve spiritual growth so only you can judge what is the right level for you so we can start by rebuilding our work relationships so we are working in a firm so we should try to change how the firm works instead of thinking of firm as maximizer of profits we should think of our firm our workplace as provider of services we should build this spirit in ourselves we should encourage our fellow workers to also think about providing service to the public as the goal instead of making money instead of earning wage from labour and think of the firm as a family with social connections and take small steps do what is easy for example build one non-market relationship find someone in your firm whom you can make friends and say that we are working for money but actually we should be working for providing service and we should not spend so much time on our work that it takes away from our family and so on find someone who is sympathetic who has similar ideas who is easy target so do one step towards these revolutionary goals and there is one common problem that arises when we start to do revolutionary change so they say that nothing can be done unless we have the government so we wait until we have the government in our hands and then we will do things so that's two-step thinking another way is to say let's first unite the Ummah at the level of Pakistan then we will worry about the Ummah so again this doesn't work two-step thinking is ok let me work on myself and once I am a perfect person then I will give some answers and one of the problems that will arise in this ok first let me build a community let me make friends and let me make sure that there are lots of people once we have a community then we will create change no do both things together build a small community take one two three people and then say ok let's work on a problem so work on a problem the large community would do work on it on a small scale because actually that work creates the community when you say two or three ok let's take care of all the hungry people in our neighborhood ok so it's a task which is big and large let's try to educate those people who don't have literacy in our neighborhood alright so this task requires building a school no I can take one person and teach and if there are two people in the community then we can work together by focusing on a task this is the way to create community ok this is a job to be done are you willing to participate so doing jobs creates community building community gives us the power to do jobs so do both together so how do we build a community we have to identify the needs interests and the capabilities of the community so we talk to people to find out what their interests are and we find our common goals and we try to discover the strengths and capabilities of the members try to create consensus on what are the problems we face what are the challenges which are facing the community and try to identify opportunities which will be created if we work together we can actually solve this problem by the way this idea of community was lost in the west in the it's a complicated thing and I am running out of time so I won't discuss it but basically in the west the only way of creating collective action is at the government level everyone has their own religion in a secular society so they can't work together for common goals so the only way to create collective action is the government and some Muslims have been deceived by this into thinking that for collective action we need the government but that is the that is wrong actually for collective action we need to build a community so building community is hard work very hard work so we need to motivate and I have two books listed here one is mun taqib ahadis in fazail amal and all of these describe the virtues given in the ahadis and they provide motivation to Muslims to do the hard work required for building a community how do you build social relationships that's something that today in a virtual world we are used to texting and building virtual relationships so we have forgotten how to build social relationships so start small work on easy people like rasool Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam first got the message he went to his nearest people he went to abubakar and he went to Ali he went to his wife khadija and so that's how you start when you start you start with your wife or you start with your husband and look for people with common interests and who already have good community with you and then there are certain skills that you need to listen to what the other people are saying and for example free information that is given and one of the things that is very important is that learn to spot and admire small good deeds if somebody does something very small but good identify it and admire it and praise it and encourage it because when you encourage one small step people will be taking bigger steps and of course hadith tells us that tell people that you love them for the sake of Allah and this is also very important communicate your praise and your admiration in your love and suppress do not look at their faults even if you see that even if you see them just blame your heart for looking at the faults of your brother instead of telling him about it there are many things we can do in terms of social events like having a weekly meeting with a few people don't have big parties because then you don't have that doesn't create the social connection and discuss the Quran or something else some common and have some tea and have some biscuits so work together for common goals there are many methodologies for building community one of the use mashwara and astaghara for progress this is very important because mashwara also builds community and astaghara gives brings you the help from Allah to guide you in the directions and there is one strategy from the belief which is that on first you try to reach a thousand people on a small scale with a little message and then you look at who responds to this message and with those people who respond you work harder so basically this is how we should when we try to build community reach out to a larger people with a number of people with a small amount of effort and then focus your efforts on the few people who will respond and that will give you the ground roots as soon as we start building community we faced with a critical question how should we any men and women especially the mixed parties etc not not permitted intermingling is but one thing that is for sure is that females are much much much better at building community than males they are naturally better at this this is what they have been built to do and males and females have worked together from the earliest times and there are many different standards prevailing in different places like in some areas in KPK in Pakistan women and men are just very strongly isolated but if you are living in a university women and girls and boys are just studying together in very mixed environments so there is a lot of different norms when you arrange your meeting you shouldn't go to extremes you should just try to do one step better than what is dominant so if there is women and men are studying together in the university you can have meetings with both women and men but just make sure that they keep separate do a little bit better than common but don't go to extremes otherwise if you change the social norms too much then the people in that social arena will not come to you there is a unique strength of Islam that we have diversity and tolerance we allow for many different shades of meaning many different types of ways to follow Islam and we tolerate each other there are four different mosaic there are many Sufi traditions there are many different ideas but they say we are all Muslims and we accept the Maliki doesn't say that Shafi is out of Islam we all say you can follow Shafi you can follow Hanifi all of them are good so just like that if you think of the Hajj so many different groups from so many different countries so there is Islam in Nigeria, Islam in Malaysia that is part of Islam the difference of opinion is a mercy because different people have different temperaments and so we allow for different types of communities according to different we are not going to impose one fixed pattern that this is how it should be done you devise your community according to your local social norms now communities are local but we need action at the level of the Ummah so we have to link communities and Islam provides us with a natural model it says your daily prayers are at your local masjid but the Juma prayer is at a big masjid which gathers multiple communities so we have that infrastructure already so what we should do is when we have multiple communities in your community in your neighbourhood then there are all the communities in your different neighbourhoods so get them together on Juma and send representatives from each community to discuss every week about common problems then the Eid al-Fitr gathers the whole gathers the whole city so you can discuss it at a larger scale and Eid al-Adha gathers the whole Ummah and the whole way in which the rituals of Islam show connections at higher and higher levels and so this is a way we can this is a pattern we can follow one of the things we need to do is to share experiences I am building communities it's a very hard task and I am facing this problem so you have any suggestions for me so for example Lisa has been working on a Bali project in Indonesia for more than a year so she can share her experiences and anybody else who is trying to start a group like that they can share their experiences we also have a lot of existing models people have built communities in Turkey there are lots of different communities based organisations and they have their own methodologies and their experiences but what is the key we have to delink from the market society it is the market society which has conditioned us to think in terms of prices and wages and purchases and everything is in the market and even you know to just give one example the teacher-student relationship in Islam is a very precious relationship the student has respect and admiration for the teacher the teacher has love for the student and they want the student to be the best possible but in a market relation the teacher pays the student the student pays the teacher a fees and then he hires the teacher to provide him with education this is a very different conceptualisation and this one is becoming more and more dominant it has already taken over in the capitalist world but it is also becoming prevalent in the ummah so this is I think the last slide and the end and I have gone a little bit over an hour and I thought that it would but still we have some time for question and answer so basically to conclude a society is a network of social relationships market societies are defined by labourers, consumers, producers, advertisers and people who spread the philosophy of markets a natural social communities are bad for capitalism because they attach us to our community and history capitalism wants anonymous people, people have no connection to anyone else so they can be used as interchangeable parts as human resources so we have to prevent ourselves from becoming a human resource and become a human being when even when we interact with somebody in a dukkhaan in a store we should greet them, we should ask them about their family, ask them if they are doing well and so on so basically we have to replace market relationships with Islamic relationships and we must build these connections and strengthen these connections and these are all recommended by the teachings of Islam so I will stop here and we can start our question and answer period ok so that is all from me and now we can take questions from the audience so Usman Mustafa, yes can you unmute yourself? Hello, are you listening my voice? Yes I can hear you I 100% agree that there is a wasteful consumption and wasteful production that's not only have a socio-economic but also have environmental degradation which is no well documented in the most of the creatures so it's creating problem for the whole society is wasteful production 100% right, capitalism works by exploiting people and the planet so that's what they make profits for by cutting down trees and destroying the environment Yes, thank you very much for the session and we really appreciate that Thank you very much Anybody else? There are so many messages in the chat that I'm not sure about where to good where to begin Anybody yes Asif Shammas? Peace be upon you Sir, my question is we just spoke about the filth of capitalism but what is the major problem with muslim scholarship or leadership these days my question is about a contemporary issue of muslims these days in Pakistan I'm saying scholar differentiating between deen and dunyabi knowledge my observation could be wrong but I observed that the knowledge of science is from Islam so what is your view point about this? You see the lecture I was saying that Allah has created this entire world everybody else in this planet is here for my test only so how they are, what they are doing whether they are bad, whether they are good it is of no concern to me because Allah will not ask me what the ulama were doing and what the scholars were doing and what the government was doing Allah the Allah is saying what were you doing so all of that is external environment so the question is what can I do this is the only question which matters if I can do, if I can identify what is the order of Allah for me and fulfill it then I am successful, it doesn't matter if the whole world is going to waste how research in fundamental science or pure math if somebody is interested in this kind of stuff how can we how can that work in this sort of like Islamic model because the way it works in capitalism the way funding is gathered how can somebody who is interested in this that's a very good question one which I have been working on in my own life because I am a professor so basically the way we teach these subjects is that you will learn this in order to be able to earn a living for yourself statistics or econometrics, economics so that you will get a job as an economist but suppose that the teacher thinks about how we can use this knowledge to provide service to mankind this completely changes things, so I have economics, statistics, econometrics all of these subjects change completely the nature of the subject what you teach and what you how you teach it everything changes when you start thinking about how we can use this knowledge to serve humanity if I may ask a follow up question if you would allow so in terms of fundamental science for example theoretical physics or something like that learn something more about particle physics or something like that how can we think of this as a way to help so can this be a way to increase people's Iman in a law a person who is not very practically oriented but very much into theoretical can that person think in this way in this model if you already have those skills like for example we can teach biology, physics, all is showing the miracles the miraculous powers of Allah Ta'ala the wonders of the creation it is so fantastic what Allah Ta'ala has done even in the physics the precision the fine tuning of the universe to the trillions decimal place if the one of the powers of the one of the one of the planks is off by one decimal place in the thousand places the whole universe would collapse so it's like a really precision tuned machine which Allah Ta'ala has created so all of these there are opportunities to come here Allah Ta'ala says in the Quran when he talks about the creation how beautiful the creation is so this is one way to yes convert but another way is that you start from the end you start by saying that I want to serve mankind so what kind of technology do I need in order to do that so instead of saying that okay I have this hammer so instead to help you say what are the tools that I need to help the ummah so that's a different approach and it's much more useful thank you very much sir alright Lubna Shahnaz yes can you unmute Assalamu alaikum can you listen me yes I can hear you okay okay okay okay then I will talk in English the main as you told here that how to use this knowledge to serve humanity is important so this is the main so my point is who is talking about this in the society I mean the people themselves have no training to discuss this thing so how they can inculcate to the the students in the society are you getting my point yes you are right about this that very few people have so we start where we are we I mean we recognize that people don't have training so we start giving that training yes we take step one step yes we have the Quran and we have the example of the prophets and how he trained the Sahaba from Jahlia to leaders of the world so our people are not as bad as the Jahlia no I would say that I mean I would say that this our nation is the best but the main issue is that there is no one who give them the knowledge of this thing that how you have to practically I mean all this is it was exactly the same situation there was no one who was there to give them the knowledge of Islam so he started with zero so we start with zero we follow his pattern how he did it we follow the same okay let me move to Sohail Ameen thank you so much sir I have two questions first is that you have given us the way forward to form communities and focusing self and family but could you identify some values to focus on where to start allow me the second question also yes the second question is yes we can go ahead and start forming the communities we can start working but the onslaught of media and the values being promoted in education institutions how effective could our communities could be in while in their presence thank you well when Allah was creating mankind then the angels said that why are you doing this there will be fitna and facade and corruption here and live in peace and harmony so this world was created as testing ground for us if everything was peaceful and nice and easy then there would be no test so this fitna facade all of the big problems this is a part of our test and what should we do this is a very important question as to when we build the community what should we do with this community this is a very important question but there is no specific fixed answer because it will be local you look at your own situations and you look at your community you look at their capabilities you look at the environment you look at what it is possible to do to proceed and then you do what is needed according to mashwara ask Allah for his help and guidance in terms of what needs to be done Assalamu alaikum sir I want to discuss regarding your over production slide one has the capacity and resources to produce excess goods and services to fulfill the needs of others from those earnings what is your take on it because it is very difficult to fulfill the needs of others then this is not wasteful this is very useful if you produce bread to feed the hungry that is not wasteful that is you produce thousand breads it is very useful so if you anything that is being done according to the needs okay shadman zafar Assalamu alaikum first of all I am very much thankful to you for having this session and providing very useful insight I want to ask a question for the sake of argument if I say that the entire development that took place in the world and that are the outcome of capitalistic system be it Europe even in India after the reforms and south Asian economies when towards capitalist system the development is more pronounced how would you answer such questions well you see the greatest development took place when Europe looted the entire world and became rich in the process so should we then start on a mission to colonize and exploit the planet so that we can also become wealthy these are the wrong goals to pursue yes umar javed Assalamu alaikum nice to see you here I am not very good at English that's why I have two questions first we are going to study this is my level 7 in hospitality and tourism management Dr. Saleem said to learn from this to learn from this what do you say that's correct I think that going outside to study to earn money is not a good idea and it has caused I don't generally advise people to go abroad for study for a number of reasons but this is a very specific question you can ask me separately let me ask this iPad no name yes iPad can you unmute and ask me your question Assalamu alaikum I am Muhammad Ashraf sir indeed it was a very good lecture and a lot of learning out of it I am very grateful may Allah bless you at most my question is sir as an individual what tools and capability which one god has gifted to any individual and if he polishes from within to promote Islamic social concept or counter market strategy I didn't understand can you say that again what I want to say that Allah has given capabilities and tools within an individual yes what should he promote more to enhance Islamic social strategy and counter capitalism I have said that capitalism works by creating a network of social relationships we should weaken those build Islamic style relationships and ask Allah for his guidance thank you sir for giving me a chance sir even if we understood well about the flaws in the capitalistic system but I think so there is no exit even if we go to any Muslim countries or living in a Muslim country you are west everywhere but there is no exit at all we have to enter into labour force we have to be a consumer at all fronts yes I am not asking that you should exit as I am saying reduce your engagement put the family over the career put social relationships over market relationships that's all prioritise one over the other no exit let me ask Noha because I haven't seen her for a long time can you ask me a question Salam alaikum professor okay yes it's so nice catching up to you finally and I wish you and all the people blessed Ramadan thank you for this very useful as usual lecture and lightning and my question is there was this slide on curtains of light and do you mention that no un-Islamic means to reach an Islamic goal so can you please clarify it and maybe if it's a big topic I would mean something more personal for me then maybe I email you but can you just give me a brief I took from the Sufi paths that they have said that in order in the paths to Allah there are curtains of darkness and after that after you get through them then there are curtains of light things which appear to be from the Nur but actually they are obstacles to the Nur of Allah so that's roughly it and getting more detail would be difficult and there are things which appear to be very pious and religious for example suppose that you are told that okay there are so many blessings in reading the Quran so you had spent all day and nights reading the Quran and you do that well then you get deprived of doing the much bigger good which is necessary and urgent and like there is this famous hadith about the woman who people said that she prays all day, all night and she is fast all day so the Prophet said who does her house work so she said all the neighbours help so Prophet said they are better off they are better because they are doing the work that is needed so that's what I mean thank you so much you're welcome my question is that in the market economy there is price of everything and value of nothing so for jobs like teaching and for jobs like the judge who have to be in difference to make decision and they can make or create or destroy the society so how to define how to make the incentive structure for them to do their job best in the interest of the society and not in the interest of like earning money and the second question arises because of this question that was asked by a brother that going out of the country for study I want to ask that is it necessary to create community in your country or something because I find it more easy more enabling environment outside the country to work on such things and I have other role models like triple IT I have the chance to meet the founders of them they work in America to create a triple IT because the country from where they were coming was not allowing them to do such things so what do you say in this regard like everyone is in a different place and I said follow the path of least resistance wherever Allah guides you and wherever is easy so for some people it will be easy to build local community for some people it will be easier to go elsewhere to build so do whatever whatever comes easiest to you do mashwara and istikhara Daniel can you hear me yes I can in the beginning you told us that the western epistemic framework is faulty and you absolutely right the way it conceives man and the kind of purposes it gives us the thing is and then you also told us that we should move away from wants to needs but what I reckon from it is this that it's a matter of how we conceive and think but then I think it's a matter of how we feel as well absolutely it means that it is not possible without ahsan so I would like to have your comment on that secondly I was reading this book by Ibn Khaldun the Mukadima few months back I guess so there are two models revolutionary and revolutionary and obviously you were encouraging that evolutionary model and I am inclined towards that as well you bring change in ourselves and then ultimately the society would change so he wrote in that book a line that line a little bit shattered this idea but made me a little confused he said that the religion of the average man is on the religion of the elites for the powerful so I mean how do you know make sense of this statement within that framework of evolution so these are just two aspects I would like to have your comment on thank you very much sir I don't really know as far as the asan is concerned I have given a link for that lecture of mine on asan and as far as this is concerned this is a entangled proposition that is the leaders are chosen from us so what they follow is what will we will what values we develop will be the values that our leaders follow also so Muhammad I think this has to be the last question we are already over the time limit hello professor I'm from the UK so my name is my first name is Muhammad there so I'm an economist by profession I'm at university of Manchester I've been following your lectures and I'm quite intrigued about your thought and thank you for the excellent presentation today and I love your idea of say moving towards the social relationship prioritizing on social relationship about market relationship my comments and I've got just two comments and I want your take on it one is actually from your presentation you're saying that we need to try to earn money this is what I could understand not only for myself but also for others so for myself and for others I don't recognize that basically in order to move away from the capitalistic greedy profit maximization idea if you work on say for example for yourself you look for maybe basic needs or how do I say like decent living but at the same time maybe you could try and money for helping others oh no I said if you have money then basically instead of capitalism encourages us to spend this on our own desires instead of spending around desires we should spend on needs of others this is just a substitution that we should do that will help us to get away from this mentality of pursuing the desire of the NUS which is created by capitalism and it is essential to the survival of capitalism that everyone should pursue their ideal desires yes so if somebody keeps that objective in his mind when he is pursuing at the worldly level maybe that could help himself and also the society if you think about successful people financially say multi millionaires billionaires in the western society you will see that say if I just give an example of Warren Buffett or maybe Bill Gates why do they after building big empire of the billionaire empire you know why do they go for charity creating foundations they spend that money themselves yes there is a sense of feeling there when somebody becomes successful they cannot spend their money on themselves only so that's why they have to reach out to the other people so I think that's the point what is your thought on it that's a very complicated discussion and next lecture I will be saying about that the other issue is about you know from your lecture I was just thinking Allah has taught us to make goa by doing so basically he is asking us to pursue both dunya with hasana and akhira with hasana together this should be complimentary worldly pursuit with hasana should be complimentary to the pursuit for akhira so but our burabis and you know the elders they tend to advise us if you want to pursue the islamic life you should just only focus on akhira so that's why we are losing out in this world you know all the what I have suggested is not to retire into caves and pursue the akhira I've said that we build community we provide service to our family and neighbors so where is the this is all worldly stuff so there is no retirement no danger of abandoning the world and it is actually this is the hasanat of this world is loving others and being loved and this is something which is absent from capitalism which is just built on market relationships not social relationships the hasanat of this world are not the goods of this world they are the social relationships being loved and loving okay I think we have gone way over time so I think we should stop now thank you everybody thank you everybody thank you everyone