Abdal Hakim Murad – An Academy of Servants Alumni &
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses their experience as a student in Cambridge as a student and how their decision to pursue education led to confidence. They also talk about their experiences with interfaith work and mental health, including mental health and the impact of pandemic on their personal and professional lives. They emphasize the importance of learning about the natural environment and finding creative solutions, as well as the challenges of studying in the face of extreme weather conditions. They also discuss the impact of Islam on society, including its impact on society and the generation of young people.
AI: Summary ©
Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah.
salat wa salam ala Rasulillah. My bad.
It's a great honor and privilege actually to be here with you today
Solly Hill
and missing Solihull is quite different from the rest of
Birmingham.
Sophie only visited Solihull it's not a true reflection. But
alhamdulillah.
I, I was very privileged actually to be born in a family whose
father was an imam. So from a young childhood, the idea of
pursuing education was something that my father had pushed us to
towards. And when I had returned from us her university after
spending a good few years abroad,
I was very disorientated, in terms of what to do when I've come back
to the community that really feel I belong here anymore and spend a
lot of time abroad.
I didn't feel as if I was part of the community. So naturally, I
thought, perhaps academia will kind of quench my thirst. So I
decided to do a master's.
And after finishing the in disappointed, I then applied for
the diploma at Cambridge, in college.
I think the diploma for me came at a very important part in my life,
I had just got married, so my wife was still training. So I had these
few years to really kind of explore my further education,
avenues. And I humbled I applied for the college. And it's perhaps
one of the most pivotal moments of my year, which enabled me to
understand and give me some sort of direction actually, where to
go.
It gave me the confidence.
Confidence in the sense when we studied the Western intellectual
tradition, which was one of the modules allowed me to understand
the complexities of being part of wider European society.
also gave me confidence in the sense, one of the modules we had
studied was British and European history of Islam and Muslims. So
this idea that I am not here alone, or you know, not from the
first bunch of Muslims or living in Europe, the presence of Islam
and Muslims for over a millennia here in Europe. So there's
confidence that Muslims have lived here before, and there's ways that
we can navigate. Also the mode, the diploma gave me confidence,
firstly, because of the people who I met, and first and foremost,
spending time with Sheikh Abdul Hakeem and listening to him. But
in general, the quality of teachers that had come to
teachers,
the CMC staff, my fellow colleagues, who I spend a lot of
time getting to know. And someone from the subcontinent comes with a
lot of
baggage when it comes to religion,
from my own community is particularly divided. So that
helped me to spend a lot of time with Imams who are from other
traditions and kind of stay with them and understand their
perspectives and point of view. So I thought that was actually a very
important
couple of things I enjoyed about the college.
One was this aspect of interfaith work, I found that very important.
Spending time at the college and learning through modules,
importance of interfaith work allowed me to deeply engage with
Scottish community at large, very fortunate the last few years even
to meet Prince Charles at one of these police, Scottish police
Memorial events. And he came up to me and I thought to myself, What
am I going to say to him, and then I remembered that we had very
fortunately met Sister Emma Clark, in Cambridge Muslim College. This
is an amazing lady who designs Islamic gardens, and I believe she
is the one who designed the garden for the Cambridge mosque. And she
had designed a garden for the Prince Charles. So I spoke about
Mr. Clark, and he was so delighted that I knew Mr. Clark and about
that project. And also the fight. Prince Charles has received an
honorary PhD from Al Azhar.
So I think those were lasting memories because when the prince
came again, he actually mentioned me by my name and asked how the
community projects were going.
It also made me feel
comfortable in interfaith circles. Sometimes the Muslim Muslim will
get perhaps challenged or sucked in to this idea of accepting
everything that's been said in interfaith without challenging
people. So I think that was important. Over the last two
years, we have seen the pandemic rip through UK and the entire
world. I was very fortunate to sit on some of the senior panels of
the Scottish Government to advise them on religious policy. And I
think all of that confidence really came from some of the
modules we actually had study in Cambridge Muslim College.
An important Hadith Sheikh Abdul Hakim often mentions in his
Coronavirus is that God is with the brokenhearted and returning by
to Glasgow after finishing another Master's of
which generally the trend with CMC students who just go and do
masters after CMC,
this one was in philosophy. But after I'd finished, I really got
into mental health training, actually.
And I was reflected in the studies that Shaco talked about what does
it mean to be brokenhearted in the west and in our own communities.
privilege to work with a very important charity in Glasgow that
deal with domestic abuse in the BME community. And one of the
projects we're sharing on the helpline, so once a month, I would
listen to a lot of these very challenging calls, and really
challenged me greatly, I felt I was living in a bubble.
And not understanding the real underbelly of the community and
some of the challenges they go through. And that started my
journey off to counseling and training. And I very fondly
remember our counseling Islamic counseling module in, in the
diploma at the college, I think, was one of the most important
modules undertook and opened the doors for me for, for mental
health.
So reflecting back, I think it was one of the most beautiful years
I've studied in Cambridge.
Give me confidence, give me direction. And just like to finish
off with, I run a youth project. So we take young youngsters from
the age of 11. And we do a series of Islamic Studies program with
them. A young guy last week, our final class that kind of finished,
most of them have gone to university, one young guy had gone
to Glasgow, uni for aeronautical engineering, and just kind of came
up to me and hugged me and was just sokola shake, you know,
really miss our weekly classes.
And that, you know, since that moment, felt so special.
The idea of trying to have a positive image of Islam and carry
that on to our next generation. For many of the young people,
Islam, when you talk to him on slum, the real focus is the local
mosque as experience of Islam.
So it's very beautiful. And I said to him, you know, keep in contact,
and I'll do the full circle. So when you grow up and get married,
I'll conduct your Anita. And then when you have marriage problems,
you can come back to me as a marriage counselor, and then so on
and so forth. So Alhamdulillah, I would just like to finish off by
firstly, thanking the college for giving me the opportunity to study
there not only give me the opportunity, but given me a
scholarship and the stipend actually, to study at college. And
as a part of my life that Alhamdulillah I was I remember
fondly and I shared with family and friends, which is just a lot
more.
So
it's an absolute pleasure to be here and very grateful to be
having this conversation. As nerve. as nervous as I was about
speaking on this panel, I was looking back and I was thinking,
it's such a privilege to be able to look back on 10 years, 10 years
of work and 10 years of growth in the Muslim community. We've come
so far, in 10 years, 10 years ago, I had just graduated from my old
Mac was and I was like deep into work in the community. And the UK,
Muslims were in a very different place. 10 years ago, 10 years ago,
I remember feeling resistance and backlash from putting up YouTube
videos on Islamic reminders.
Now, looking at that, and looking at the resistance we received back
then comparison to now where anyone can, anybody who wants
wishes to share Islamic knowledge can jump onto Instagram, and
nearly always find an audience that wants to hear it. Right. So
we've come a very long way and I think that reflects how we've
adapted to absorbing knowledge seeking knowledge. We've adapted
our and our approach and our attitude towards female teachers.
And this idea of using social
Should media as as a tool
over the past 10 years, we've come very far in terms of mental
health, right? In terms of our awareness of mental health, as a
community, we're more aware, we're more willing to have that
conversation. When it comes to living more consciously eating
more consciously, we want to parent more consciously, we want
to show up in our relationships, more self aware and more present.
So that's, that's a lot of growth over the past 10 years, in my
specific line of work, which is intimacy and iridology. In Islam,
we're still in early stages, we're still learning to accept out loud
that we need help. But it was CMC that instilled that confidence in
me to pursue a subject that I actually wasn't taught in the
madrasa and to pursue it in the context of my Islamic education.
So when we first came to CMC, and we came from the diploma, we were
introduced to this wide range of different topics that some of us
had never had any access to. So we're introduced to these topics.
And then we were encouraged to build the connection and make the
link between these topics, and our Islamic education. So we left CMC,
we left CMC with the tools and the confidence to be able to pursue a
subject of passion, and use our Islamic knowledge to create a more
deeper, more meaningful project that is of service to people.
And I think for me, that was a huge catalyst that was a catalyst
for me, especially in the field that I work in. There's not many
people, there's not many women, there's not many men, not many
scholars teaching in this field, it was a huge catalyst to have
that confidence to, to be able to research to be able to design and
to deliver courses on intimacy. And I think moving forward from
here,
there are a few areas that I feel like we could work on as a
community. And one of them. I know it sounds very
theory based, but I think, I think this idea of desensitization is
intruding into our lives like desensitization of, of a food,
desensitization of entertainment, you know, over stimulation in so
many different areas of our lives. It's stealing away joy. And I see
this, I see this, when I speak to people I see this, when I teach I,
I see that we're so hyper stimulated, that we can't feel
anymore. And we so desperately want to feel. And I think the
solution is to simplify, to step back, and to simplify what we eat,
simplify what we consume, you know, Detox our visual diet.
I found that when we when we go back to basics, it's a lot easier
to find joy, as opposed to try and fit in joy in this very busy
world. And this busy mind and these busy hearts that we you
know, we've we're carrying, so simplifying it emptying. Yeah, we
don't need more, we need less. There was an advertisement, you
probably seen it for a food company that delivers food to your
door. And they give you all the ingredients and the words they
were using for the advertisement, they were saying, You deserve
better. You deserve more variety, you deserve more taste, you
deserve more ease. And I was thinking, No, we don't. What we
need is less, we need less, less variety may be less, less noise,
less chaos, we just need to step back and sit in the silence for a
bit. And I see think when I'm teaching people about intimacy, I
see the link of appreciation for very small, simple things can can
make us appreciate great things like a human being that's in front
of us. And then ultimately, God. So sitting and enjoying
as as basic as it sounds, sitting and understanding the magnificence
of an orange that you're eating can help you reconnect and really
enjoy the intimate experience of a human that you're with and the
relationship that you're in. And then ultimately the relationship
with God. Thank you very much. First I want to come
on I'm delighted to be in your company here tonight. Does love
love hate affair taking up time and supporting CMC goodness by
being here tonight. That's what you're all doing. sha Allah smells
Panther. I'll give you the greatest rewards for sacrificing
your time.
I'm just really privileged to be a part of this community. And I
think once everybody in this room and everybody in the UK really
appreciate what this college is
is doing, not just for its students, but for the British
context are large, you will have a profound appreciation for the
college for the chef vision. And actually all these
in the background who are doing so much work to even just put an
event on, like the event that we have on today. So from the depths
of my heart, because I cannot cater to everyone, for your
efforts.
It's so wonderful to be able to take stock wherever you are in
your life. And whenever the CMC have an event like this, where
they ask the alumni to speak, it's nice to be invited to do exactly
that, to take stock, to pause, to reflect, to see what's working,
and to see where there's work to do, what improvements we can make.
And there's always room for improvement. But the difference
is, is that once you take him the diploma, a traditional stream of
knowledge, taking a contextual Islamic Studies diploma, and one
that really helps you understand leadership in its various senses
and forms.
You always want to improve, You're never satisfied with where you're
at. So instead of talking about everything that I'm doing, I
thought I just give you a few snippets and insights into some of
the website.
To give you an example of how much the college has transformed my
work. I was already in the community before I enrolled onto
the diploma. I'd been taught teaching in the community for
about four or five years. I felt by that time that I was drowning.
Initially, I was so excited that I had completed this early media. In
my community, we were the first batch of female students who have
completed this as in 2007. So people were so thirsty for the
Islamic sciences, and especially from a female, I thought at 17, I
could conquer the world. And then after five years, I was drowning,
the community were really happy with the work that I was doing,
because they weren't females doing that work. But I was drowning, I
was starting to see my limitations. And I just wasn't
happy with what I was offering the community.
And this is where CMC was, honestly, the diploma was a newly
created program. I waited a few years, I got married, and I
decided to take my husband along with me. And it was one of the
most important decisions that we made in our marriage, to take the
course together because we grew in ways together that we wouldn't
have had not taken the course. And our vision for the work that we
were doing grew in such creative ways.
That I'm forever grateful, forever grateful for everybody at the
college, and essentially grateful to our last pantalla for this
opportunity. At the moment, I spent a lot of my time doing bath
work, especially with the BA MD community and more specifically,
predominantly the Muslim community.
So to give you an example, we do a module at the CMC, we complete a
module. That's all based around art and architecture. I remember
thinking at the time, yeah, we go to lovely buildings when we're on
holiday. And we really enjoy that. But to be in a module for a whole
town. And to understand the spirituality in art and
architecture, it left a profound impact on my heart. And actually,
when you see these beautiful buildings, and I'm sure many of
you have visited the Cambridge central mosque, and to see the
impact that it's having, not just on Muslims, but society at large,
you start to see that actually Islam can impact hearts in
different ways. And it doesn't have to be a lecture in a mosque.
It can be a piece of art, it could be singing, it could be
storytelling, Islam is for everybody. And it can really
appeal to hearts in different ways. And we need to as leaders of
the community, as people that serve the community, find more
creative ways to approach every strand of society. So in my birth
work, I thought the first thing I need to do is to create a logo
that actually has a deeper meaning, rather than just having
the name of the work that I'm doing. So I called
my course spiritual birth. And I use that as an opportunity to
reconnect with my teacher at the CMC. And he was really helpful. We
had spoken about different concepts, and then we finalized
our thoughts. And we decided that we would use an eight point star
to represent my birth work, and you might think what's an eight
point star and you'll see at
To the eight point stars in some of these designs at the top of the
room. And this is actually known as the nexus of Rockman. And if
you look at that this actually is taken from a description that even
Adobe wrote about Allah subhanho, to Allah creating the universe by
articulating words through His merciful breath. And for those of
us that have had children, we know that birth, a lot of it is about
breathing. So it was very, it connected very well with my work.
So just by seeing the logo, it immediately had a connection with
all things about. And then all of my work has this lovely
background, whether it's the affirmation cards that you get, or
the slides that you're, you're visualizing.
And it has a tessellation of this eight point star. And what that
signifies is this, this pattern is actually a
it's a metaphorical representation of compression, and expansion. And
in labor, a woman is going through exactly that compression, and
expansion. And when I go through this in my course, and I'm
teaching couples, it's having such a profound impact on them, because
they're actually seeing that when they are pregnant, when they're
going through labor, there is a direct link between what they
think is just, you know, a process of life. But actually, it's a
spiritual experience. And Allah is a part of every experience in our
life, whether it's the birth, whether we're a shopkeeper,
whether we're
a nursery teacher, whether we're a bus driver, Islam is it can be in
our secular spaces. And I think this is the biggest issue of our
time, people feel like you have one identity in Muslim spaces, and
another identity in in non Muslim spaces. And I feel like the CMC
really helped us as students understand that actually, we can
blur the lines, because we are Muslims, wherever we are, we can
take that with us wherever we are. So just through my best work, I
really appreciated the fact that just through visuals, we can give
so much more Islam, but without imposing it with too many words.
And I think that's, that's just spectacular, I wouldn't have been
able to do something like that, had I not gone to the CMC, I
wouldn't have been able to research that deeply. Had I not
gone to the CMC. And I think it's just being that bit more creative.
And sometimes people think that when you go to an institution like
the CMC as a traditional student, you've,
you've moved away from the tradition. But I'd like to
actually argue the other way, going to the CMC actually helped
me go deeper into the tradition, it helped. It helped me learn how
to research better to be able to know exactly how much is out
there, our our tradition is actually an ocean. And if we
really tap into our tradition, there are so many solutions. But
we need to know our context today. We need to know the British
context, as well as the modern day issues. And that's exactly what
the CMC does. You've got this traditional text based grounding
that you've got from your traditional seminaries, that the
CMC is also an equally part of that journey as students, where we
learn how to contextualize we learn what this British context
is, because, quite frankly, when you're just studying the tradition
with your scholars, who are amazing people, may Allah reward
them, we wouldn't be where we are without them. We need that
grounding. But it's impossible to do that at the same time as trying
to really grapple with, you know, the many issues that are coming
up. And we know these issues, we have gender issues, identity
issues. We have many issues in relation to consumerism,
addictions. Some of these things were really heightened during the
pandemic, because we were in our homes, these things were so
already readily accessible. But 100, I think that through
knowledge, and this is what people do want, there's a thirst for it.
People are starting to see that we can move away from these problems
that we have in our community. And there are people that are coming
up with creative solutions. But I honestly believe as a community,
we just need a little bit more patience. We've had so much
patience up until now. And we need to continue to have a bit more
patience, because I feel like
everybody at the CMC that studies is being trained to be some sort
of an engineer for this boat that we have. And we did have an engine
in the past and it did serve us for the purpose that it was
therefore, but right now we're just sailing forward with what's
in the reserve tank. So to really go forward for the problems and
the challenges that we will continue to face. We need a
stronger engine and to
allow us to create the engine, the engineers at the CMC, you just
need that time. And we need the support from people like you and
the whole of, of the community in the UK and the strongest support
is your drivers. So every time you do make dua, please make dua that
CMC can be an institution that is a part of the future, not one that
just fizzles out with time. So to start from, okay, then we're gonna
do that, what I do consider
there's one thing that I think CMC did give that I probably did not
expect,
was it was a sort of family might sound a bit cringe, but it's true.
And sad. Hamdulillah I see as as an older brother, and it was there
at the back of Alhamdulillah.
And I remember my first journey coming up to up to Cambridge, I
actually sat in in their car, and they took me on the way. And I
remember, as well, one thing, I was actually gonna say this, but I
think it's useful for people to to know,
I remember when I first came to CMC, and I was very nervous about
the Arabic element, very, very nervous. And I thought that that's
going to be a real challenge for me. And I remember the first set
of reading readings that we got from CMC was about six or seven
articles about very writing of topics. And the way in English, I
remember one was by the chef. And I remember thinking, I should have
been more worried about the English than Arabic. Because I was
thinking to myself, I have not got a clue what is going on here, but
hamdulillah with some support from the family members, it did get
easier.
But no, I think before I was going to speak, I was told to talk to
you guys about my thought journey.
And how that kind of changed when I went to CMC or how it affected
it. And I think one good way to simply summarize is that it really
rocks your world in a big way.
Especially my because I liked the other guys, I did the BA as I'd
mentioned. So I came to CMC without any kind of Islamic
knowledge.
I studied history and politics first. And I had this real, you
know, yearning yearning to study the deen.
So a close friend of mine at that time, Sheikh Nasir, he said to me,
you should study study at CMC, he also did the diploma. So he
recommended it to me so I thought I knew know know better, and I
trusted him at all. Let's go for it. handleless best thing I ever
did.
And I think before I went to CMC, I was pretty sure about life. You
know, I was very sure about what I believed about what was right and
what was wrong.
You know, I remember and I'm not really I think it's a good, good
thing to say that I was born up as a brain. And for me is that you
know, the Obon these were like the archenemy. And and Deobandi could
never be a Sufi could never have a recall. And I remember firstly
with the CMC and one of my good friends and yeah, who was in
Turkey. He said to me that, you know, I'm a Deobandi chesty. And I
was like, maybe that's not the case. He was like, no, no, I have
yet to convince me of that. And now hamdulillah I'm actually
working in a Deobandi madrasah so completely come
the full 360 degrees. So it just shows really this rocky world
because suddenly all those certainties me. You guys probably
don't any all those certainties I felt that I had as a 2524 year
old, completely changed. And now I think the most I can say is I
don't know, no, I don't know very much.
And I think that's, that's a good place to be.
I think, you know, when you say in front of real masters of the
sciences,
like you know, the teachers we had infecting Callum and also
excetera, etc.
You just really realize how little you know, I remember once, I had a
question about something that we learnt in Colombians. And another
beautiful thing about the colleges is that it's not just lesson time,
you know, you have a lesson from two o'clock to four o'clock, let's
say and then you go home. It's not that you eat with your teachers,
you can go to the office after you can speak to them about whatever
the topic was, they're more than happy to clarify
is more than just lesson time. And that that is almost when the
learning happens. But in this on this occasion, I went on the
teacher's office, and I repeated back what another teacher had said
to me, and I got completely grilled for misquoting the
teacher. And then the other teacher came and they both agreed
upon me. But I think the reason the reason for that the reason for
that was I was still at that stage, but I thought I knew
something. And I thought I could you know really I was sure of this
and he was like look, you have no idea we're talking about always
start from from first premises. So hamdulillah does, and I think if
if you're ready for that experience, then the college is
amazing place. But you know, and even if you're not ready for it is
still an amazing place. hamdulillah is that kind of
process was probably the most benefit that I received from the
college. But just to kind of track back. So initially I did history
and politics
And I felt like that's what that was a really what interested me.
But after the degree, I felt that there was too much assurity not
knowing the way things were and what I could practically do with
it in terms of for my own self in terms of for my own self growth,
as opposed to helping others, I felt that I needed to really
improve myself first.
So I felt that CMC was standing dean would be where I would get.
And again, this idea of thinking I knew a lot, and then, you know,
realizing that's not the case. One of the subjects that I felt I
would least interact with was was fake. I thought that, you know, as
a teenager, I was really good with rules. And that was someone saying
to me that, oh, this is what you have to do. This is a list of
rules at all, that's not for me. But then when when I sat with at
the time she exhale, and he taught fake in a way teaching us about
principles and about our soul. And one of those school was
the focal hub, the center, so what that means is the, the Sahaba, at
the time, those Sahaba that were spent most time with the prophets
of Allah, Allah, salam, and were considered for kaha amongst them,
so for keys, scholars of law amongst them, what they
understanding of the law was, give them precedence over perhaps
others at that time.
And that was something that resonated with me, this idea about
a tradition taken from people, to people, about people.
And then explaining the five pillars of Islam as completely
about people. So the Salah as, as about the unity of people and what
it means to be an ummah and a collective. Same with the Zakat,
you know, knowing in your communities who are the Focolare,
who are the poor people who are the Moroccan Who are these people
that, that deserve this, this, this money or the support, same
about the Hajj. And you know, all of the pillars are under this
umbrella of community. And for me, I felt that looking back on the
one of my teachers mentioned, just this was a pastor I think was in
Morrison's or something, one of the teachers mentioned to me,
people need people, they don't need institutions.
And what he meant by that isn't the institutions are redundant.
But ultimately, institutions are only as good as the people inside
them. And Hamdulillah, CMC back then, and today still has those
people that are incredible, incredible minds, and incredible
in more involved in that as well.
But for me, that resonated so well, so much that people, the
people because I felt that everything that's ever connected
with me, whether it's a love of history, or whether it was a love
of faith, or any other subject, it was because it had that people
element in it. And that was whether it was a service to
people, whether it was making those long lasting connections,
relationships with people.
And so funnily enough, even though it changed a lot in terms of made
me think that, you know, in terms of in terms of my intellectual
growth, in terms of just
making me unsure about things that I knew, I went back, essentially
to the same profession that I started with. So I went back to
teaching when I started in teaching in mainstream schools,
but is it Islamic school, but still teaching.
So for me, the reason why, but now I kind of had an understanding as
to why that was something I wanted to do. And it was because in that
environment, I felt I could make those connections with people,
meaningful, lasting relationships, and connections or connections
with students.
And, for example, one of those things that we do in the school is
there's a lot of school is in small, late, and the school I work
before that was in Austin, and the school before worked in those
kinks first. And in all of these schools, these areas are there's a
lot of different social deprivation. The lot of challenges
include, including broken families and gang culture in these things.
And we've had incidents in all the schools of you know, children
bringing in weapons into school, because of like affiliate
affiliation with gang culture, children who are at home caring
for their parents. And not many people know about it, until
suddenly, you know, the child has a breakdown, and then the teacher
becomes aware of it and the staff become aware of it.
Students also recently, students struggling with
being part of so the parent separating and they don't really
know how to deal with the many, many of these things. And I think
that really one way to try to remedy a lot of these things, is
simply by really nurturing those relationships in whatever area
you're you're in, or I mean, whether it's teaching, whether
it's being a doctor, whatever it is, try to really nurture these
relationships in our families in our community.
And kind of the best way to to nurture those relationships is
initially to nurture our relation with the property. So one thing
that we're doing in the school is making sure that all the children
are kind of pledging to read 300 kilowatts a day.
Because Allah must say that the current Salawat should be
numerous. And the minimum of that is like 300. So I think if all of
us inshallah try to initially make those connections with our
families and our communities but also tie that connection with the
prophecy learn by trying to commit ourselves to doing this 300 Salah
today
these
encounters always
helpful for me, but also challenging because you realize
the enormous
long term implications of what happens when you become a servant
to seek Sacred Knowledge sometimes, you know, we think in
terms of Holy Prophet alayhi salatu salam is amped up to not
the absolute slave
and the Allamah, or the hood, Devil art, the servants of the
slave,
then those who kind of facilitate things for them, other hood them,
put them up to I had a scholar speaking of it in these terms. So
these young people are on feel some kind of standing on one's
shoulders moving ahead, moving forward, but in directions that
you can never really forecast but Alhamdulillah one of the things
that we have been heartened by in the CMC journey, which is now 1112
years old, and counting is that there's tremendous capacity in our
Muslim community that is massively underused, underrated,
unsuspected, in many cases,
treated as a kind of special case, something with special needs
something that needs all kinds of various government integration and
economic initiatives. And sometimes those can be helpful.
But that
what I've learned in that CMC journey,
is that
the traditional norm, the traditional curriculum, although
to be traditional doesn't mean that you just copy something from
the past. I prefer to copying. The manuals have a tradition for
Mamluk Egypt, for instance, tradition is something that is
constantly evolving new HD heads, new considerations, new
commentaries, it's not a static thing is that it seems to be
providing a better class of young person, for the service of the
community and for the building of bridges of integration and
cohesion than anything that has actually been accomplished by
various reformist or liberalizing forms of Islam. A
lot of people find that counterintuitive. One of the big
claims that has been made about Islam in the last 100 years, 200
years since the impact with Western modernity is you need a
reformation, whereas the Martin Luther, when you're going to
modernize when you're going to catch up,
but if you look at people like Muhammad Abdul Rashid RIDOT, said,
Achmed, Han molvi Chirag, Ali, a lot of people who in the 19th 20th
century thought that they needed to do that.
What is the actual impact of that been both on Muslim thought, in
the quality of the masjid, in terms of these commendable young
people who are at the coalface helping actual communities, what
is the baraka that has come from their attempts to bring Islam up
to speed to create a modern Islam, one doesn't really see it or hear
it or a lot of people want it to succeed, but it seems to be
it has fallen on barren ground.
So we're doing what the rest of the world really including a lot
of Muslims thinks is just kind of impossible, squaring the circle,
that you're actually going to go into these classical Islamic texts
in Al Kalam, the fifth commentaries, the mother, hip, the
or soul, each mouth vs the different types of everything, and
find a solution there. For the incredible postmodern appending of
everything that the modern world represents. That's impossible that
too far apart, you will just produce a generation of young
people who are trained in skills that are too remote from the
realities of the modern world and the solutions that it's crying out
for.
So perhaps the greatest thing that I've learned personally, well,
I've learned a lot until I'm a student at CMC, you would say I'm
trying to figure out what's going on and how we can make the most of
our resources is that
the tradition as understood correctly or soul as well as
furore, why are the rules the way they are, rather than just let's
learn a collection of factoids. deeper understandings of the text
is the way forward and I think one of the things
knows that some sections save the data along community, traditional
madrasa communities some overseas universities have not sufficiently
grasped is that simply equipping young people to be functionaries
in mosques, knowing the right factors knowing how to do the Cavs
and Jeunesses. And the rules of kappa
is not really enough.
It's not 5% of what's enough, they have to understand why those rules
about how the Allamah have derived them. Why the Allah met, were
thinking in a particular timeframe,
against the backdrop of 17th century India, or 10th century
Baghdad, or whatever it was. This is the armors ongoing conversation
with itself. And that's what we mean by traditional. We don't mean
a time machine or time capsule, we mean being the latest generation,
the latest link in that chain, which the majoritarian Atlas and
the module that I have that connects them back to the abt the
chosen slave sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and whenever that chain is
kind of damaged or breaks, disasters result, whether they be
fundamentalist disasters, whose victims are almost always mainly
Muslims, or whether it be various forms of trying to dilute Islam
and to change it, or to turn it into something that is compatible
with modernity, that doesn't work, either you think of the famous
story in Rumi,
where the chicken farmer finds an eagle.
He spent his life dealing with chickens and hens and funds an
economy thinks, Well, this is a very strange kind of bird. And so
he takes it home and he and his wife get out scissors and they cut
it and they snip it and then try and change it. And he puts it on
the ground and says no look a bit more like a chicken.
That's what a lot of people are trying to do with Islam nowadays,
because they think it has to be something that in its integrity,
it isn't.
So we're kind of in love with the eagle and producing eagles who
will saw insha Allah but we don't know where they will saw one of
the frustrations and excitements of higher education. As you know,
young people have tremendous potential. And you know that Allah
subhanaw taala, and his generosity is going to open exciting doors
for them. But you don't know where those doors will be to either like
going into the masjid. And it's time for prayer. And if there's a
space in front of you step into it.
But you don't know if there'll be a space there, or maybe it's down
there, the other guy will get it. That's the world of work. And in
short, a lot. If you're attentive, you get to be in the software a
while, the first the first room. But you can't sort of determine
where a student is going to go.
The Ottoman sometimes used to compare training all on that to
making an arrow spent a lot of time making sure it's straight
from the best would you choose only the best word. And then you
get the feathers, usually goose feathers for the
tail of the arrow, and you make sure they had a kind of sacred art
of archery under the point and the whole thing. And then at the end
of this when you spent maybe weeks making the error, you just shoot
it into the fog.
Garden, you don't know where it's gonna go.
That's what it is really to train students, you don't know where
they'll end up under here we have four who have been guided by the
hand of Providence into good positions of service. You never
really know. But yeah, this has been something that I think we
have been able to share at quite a deep level with our students, that
the tradition is still full of light and full of life, and that
it is the solution for the Ummah, even though the outside world
thinks that it's our problem. It's the solution, the problems come
from not doing it, or misunderstanding it, or studying
it incorrectly. Or studying it with a soul that's full of various
turbulences that are going to pick from it things that aren't
mainstream and representative, and appropriate. So it's a kind of
laboratory.
We have here four guinea pigs, who probably bear some of the scars,
as well as some of the nourishment that CMC dishes out. But that has
been I think, the great discovery Well, let me say this two
discoveries has been a bit desperate to discover is, first of
all, the discovery of the tremendous human potential that
exists in our communities. And you can see that a young person when
given a context which is Islamically, meaningful, but
academically viable, and can lead to a career they got like rockets,
in many cases, girls as well as boys. It's an underestimated
community. But secondly, the capacity of the core of our
tradition, as represented and lovingly handed down by this
generally
shins have servants of the abd down the years, how many
generations of all on that? We don't know countless, so many now
most of them resting beneath the earth that we have now received.
This is the relay race race and we're holding the baton now. We're
gonna hand it on to others. And that's a big responsibility to be
able to drop it. We don't want to damage it, we don't want to play
with it, just hand it off.
And the result is that 100 Allah despite the million and one
problems of the Ummah, in Britain and around the world, it is being
handed on.
There's maybe 10 million mosques in the world. I reckon it's about
10 million. How many of them represent some kind of really
invalid prayer. So you go into that mosque and what they're doing
is wrong. According to the methods, maybe none. I mean, maybe
one or two, maybe the Imam is drunk or you hear stories, but
this is an amazing achievement.
An amazing achievement. So 100 in that yesterday, I was at a service
where they wanted interfaith representation. And I was feeling
quite happy though. And I thought, Well, I'm not happy because of
this statue and incense and stuff. Then I realized my ego is happy
because I was actually the youngest person there.
That was kind of nice.
doesn't often happen. But yeah, but here we have young people and
the mosques continue around the world to be full, but it's
absolutely our responsibility as Kadem to make sure that that
continues, and that however messed up we may be. The treasure that
we're handing on is intact. This treasure which is the Sunnah,
sunnah, which is not just a checklist of do's and don'ts.
But the Sunnah, which is an art of life,
a way of retaining
access to the sacred, and to human normality, in an age that seems to
be going mad.
So you find that this treasure, even though it's so old,
14 and a half centuries, is actually more precious now than
ever before. Because you see people completely crushed by the
craziness of modernity. And you see here is a form of life, which
is the fullness of wisdom and compassion, and discipline and
rightness about neighbors about relationships, about marriage,
about gender, about children about dealing with old people about
dealing with Allah Subhan Allah to Allah, perfect form of prayer
fasting, it's there 100 In this this intact thing. This um,
blemished diamond, which the whole damn the servants have handed
down, which were carrying, and insha Allah handing on to the next
generation. Yeah, it's intact, and the reason why the mosques are
always overcrowded or not full of a few well meaning old ladies, is
precisely because of the beauty of the Sunnah. So that's really what
we are. We're kind of Academy of servants and we trained servants
and we're there to know, religion is there to help people Holy
Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam came because he wanted to help
people. Why did he come back from the Mirage Subhan Allah in the
presence of Baba calcein Do you believe the highest angels?
Perfection comes back? Well, because he loved to serve. He
wanted to help his people
in the economy, when they persecuted him, along with the
economy that he normally Alamo he could have called on the divine
punishment on them, but he wanted to serve and to help them to bring
them into something better.
So yeah, with this the servants Academy, but we're still small.
You could probably fit our main buildings surface area into this
room Hamdulillah.
But we do need supporters. We do need people who faithfully give us
10 pounds a month. We do need people who can make connections
because there are sections of our community that are quite well
heeled now.
I sometimes think moralizing thoughts when I walked through the
mosque a carpark.
And I've said there is there are resources in our community. And I
think that the best thing that we can do is to train the servants so
that they can
in the way of the traditional Shetty, eScholar find the beauty
of the texts, the love of the love of it's a very intoxicating and
beautiful thing. So to give them that pleasure, but also to give
them the possibility of
Helping people sorting them out in prisons and wherever they might be
women who are going into labor people with issues with
relationships. Yeah, there's a lot of work to do, to call faces a big
cold face, but that family law, so it's been an optimistic experience
for me. When I started, I had no idea whether it could work. The
texts still work. Young people are still amazing, which gives me a
lot of hope for the future in sha Allah, whatever may or may not be
the future of CMC. I think that in 50 years time, this community will
really be shining and an exemplary community, visibly as well as
invisibly hide all mud in Oak Ridge ugliness
and your hotpot over
but you I hope you get the sense that I am inspired by others
generosity and keeping us going despite certain arguments with the
accountant and the auditor. Sometimes we keep going, yep, it's
a bit hand to mouth. And they're young people who realize when they
get into the text, the beauty of this tradition, and the honor of
being able to serve in this tradition, there's nothing nobler
have the little island carriers of sacred knowledge. What is better
than that? Standing in the footsteps of the Holy Prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam standing on his minbar
what I thought will NBM the inheritors of the prophets. So
hamdulillah said, at the very least in sha Allah, we asked you
to make a dua for us and for the students, for us to get the best
students in future and in sha Allah for us to continue this,
this work of witnessing, showing the world what this tradition is
still capable of Inshallah, thank you for your patience and Mr. Lego