Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Advanced Islamic Theology Program at Whitethread Institute
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This is the course I'm very excited about.
This is the Postgraduate Diploma in Islamic theology.
reason I'm excited about this is because this stuff you don't
generally deal with in a lot of depth in the modalities as well,
thick you do, but this one you don't. So for a lot of people,
this is a brand new area, but very important area, because there are
a huge number of large number of people that are losing their
faith.
So essentially, the whole idea of it is to understand the dunya from
the perspective of the divine authority of Allah subhanaw taala
proofs of his existence. Why are we here, specifically detailing
those kinds of things? This course has two modules. So if if we say
that it's a nine hour week, because this is going to take
place three days a week as well, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, in the
evenings, from inshAllah 530 to 830. It does require some of you
to give up mucked up for it, right? There was somebody who came
to me that I was discussing with and said, I want to teach Makhdum
or should I take this course, then it's up to you. But this is a one
year course. And what this will give you, right? You may not
teach, you know, for you may not teach them, but that's fine. There
are so many other people who are teaching McTell. This is only one
year program. So there's two modules in this out of the nine
hours a week, three hours a day, in the evening. One and a half of
those days will be spent on module one, which is the Islamic
theological beliefs and Creed's. And the second part, which will be
the Western intellectual tradition,
right, so that deals with the philosophy the theology and the
history of it.
Basically, the the first one Islamic theological beliefs
aspect, we're going to be doing two guitars, two books, one an
Azure AD text, and one a multi the text.
These are the two main schools of the of we believe is that I
understand what Gemma along with an authority
a pure authority would you call it paradigm as well. But anyway, what
these two are is
the first one is a super commentary of aqidah to hear so
that's going to be the majority the text. And a second one is the
shuttle hurried el Bahia, which is a really nice, kind of concise
Shaadi text, so you get both styles. And that way you get a
decent understanding. So that's why we're not calling this aid the
hostels in Aqeedah, because this is not for the horses. This is not
a specialization program. This is just an advanced course where
these two books are taught along with a number of other
supplementary issues related to the Western system. So the module
two them these two books, the module module two is something
that I'm going to leave to one of our teachers who's going to be
inshallah helping us with that. I'm going to let him come and
explain that inshallah.
So this is our star Imran. Your surname was again, a cabal, so
we'll start Imran Cabal, you can read his bio on the white thread
Institute's
website, he's gonna inshallah discuss this aspect of the
program. So go for the second module, which basically, inshallah
is going to provide a strong basis in Western philosophy. We've
called it in western intellectual tradition. If anyone who reads
philosophy, they know that the Islamic tradition is part of the
Western tradition, in the sense that we took from the Western
tradition, which is the Greek philosophers such as Plato,
Aristotle, but moreover, we provided the impetus for the
Renaissance, the enlightenment, so on and so forth. A lot of the
West, Western ideas now have much root in Islamic philosophy. So
what we want to do is take the approach of I look at certain
thinkers, look at certain themes that these thinkers talked about,
and look at certain tools as well. So in reality, sometimes very hard
to engage in module one texts, like the economic texts, because
we don't have the tools, we don't have the concepts and we don't
have the ideas are derived. So through something like Akela
Sofia, the first thing that Mr. McDuffie discusses after the
surface is what is in and he says, is occur. His and
what is he talking about? He's not starting by saying Allah is One is
going into the whole issue of what has been, and how one acquires in
and how one establishes in a what is the definition of in and once
we understand what elements then you can start making arguments and
proofs for the existence of Allah subhanaw taala. And then you can
start getting proofs and arguments for the existence of prophecy and
the need for revelation. But this is all the tools that underlie so
the Module two is about acquiring all the tool sets in order to
appreciate our tradition in more detail. And moreover, as Mr.
Saunders said, and later on appreciate contemporary concerns
and problems
So for example, it's just what is feminism? How do we feel logical
sense of the concept of feminism and tackle it? What is it your
relativity? In terms of knowledge? Everyone says, well, you're
entitled to your view, you're entitled to your view, what does
relativity mean? And how does what accountability beauty and so on
and so forth. So looking at post modernity, and so on. So they, it
has an aspect of looking at fingers, themes, tools, looking at
from a historical perspective, trying to apply it to our scholars
to see how they acquired it, and they understood it, and they
imparted it, and then subsequently to empower us in terms of a modern
sense. So it has diachronic, Alaska has a whole historical
aspect to it. So it takes on a dissolving Imam Ahmad. Allah Tala
is the half the philosopher 20 points he discusses, of which he
makes three. And he says three of those points are good for them. 17
of them agree that while these points is the philosophy points
that came before, and then went forward as No, so if your customer
Descartes, Racing's Western philosopher regarded as being the
founder of modern thought, they got a call to many, many Western
scholars seems to have, you know, had the same kind of ideas around
dissolving. Maybe you can't say that he took in terms of it's not
as long as it but many of the ideas were a precursor by design
itself, so sufficient all of these kind of fundamental concepts in
order to understand without asking them to do better, to be able to
apply it better, and so on and so forth. So each other in terms of
the other aspects we'll look at, in terms of case studies later on.
So in the beginning of semester starts to look at issue of
philosophy, religion, arguments for religion arguments, I guess,
in terms of major issues nowadays, all people I have dealt with is,
people have doubts, in terms of their beliefs, and so on and so
forth. And people that have doubts are not just people that we think
will have doubts. It's those people that will say, to never
have doubts, what are these doubts? What are these arguments
that are being posed by the issue of you know, exists of evil? How
do you reconcile evil with beliefs? How do you reconcile
science and so on? So when someone like Richard Dawkins is saying,
well, evolution is true, and I can't disprove the existence of
God, like I can't disprove the existence of leprechauns and
fairies? How does one entertain those issues, and they're looking
at other aspects, in terms of gender fluidity is another one,
our school teacher, so one of the major issues now coming in schools
about gender fluidity, that we shouldn't be referring to people
as he or she, male or female, we should be calling them Z.
Z.
So there's no point given gender ideas, because gender is something
that's from society, right? It's a imposing patriarchal systems, a
male order systems, therefore, it leads to feminism, or feministic,
arguments against and so on, and so forth. Right, we should have
psychological aspects of goals. This last section is basically
applying what we have learned in the past, to you know,
contemporary issues, I've tried to provide resolutions and solutions
that we can and the solution, we tend to include all these areas
are very, you know, very new areas, and it's this other said,
and you need thinkers, Inshallah, to determine, you know, who could
provide a decent cogent answers and strong officers justice issue.
So if you look at these topics in a bit more detail, and if we're
challenged to discuss this,
many of us, myself included, will be very hard pressed to try to
even start with this. I mean, even if you take one of those topics,
morality seems like such a simple issue. But just look at the
Wikipedia entry to morality. And you'll see how complex the idea is
in terms of the various different opinions. And then what our
position is within that framing opposition within that, you know,
we understand what I call higher omega Lima, we understand that
concept. How do you provide that in a mainstream to a mainstream
congregation now you have to remember one thing
when I was in America,
many of the people I was demeaning the Muslims, even from an Indian,
Pakistani Arab background. They knew more about this stuff than
they knew about Islam. Because the assimilation in America is huge.
So this was the discussion that what they were talking about in
England, it's not there yet, but it's going in the next 10 years.
That's what it's going to be because more and more of our
young in university. And this is the kind of discussion. I mean,
just think about anybody who's doing English literature, and the
kind of literature they have to read
about
homosexuality, lesbianism
and gender fluidity and all the rest of it. I remember very for my
son, he bought it article home once from school. And it was about
this young guy, this team who had written this article about
was he a boy or a girl
and his whole experience with that
And the culmination the conclusion was that does it matter?
Does it matter?
Now, how do you even start dealing with that?
And how do you even start dealing with that? That's why I'm very
excited about this course because
and then because this is the paradigm that they're dealing
with, when they see Allah ma who is a big shake with Hadith even,
they have no respect. If you can't frame your beyond your lecture in
those terms, and show even an awareness, give you an example.
Cell phone masjid, Masjid Abu Bakr, it's a massive Masjid it's
like six floors. And it was a holiday time when I went there for
Juma football job.
I think they get about two or 3000 people there.
And I don't know I was talking about something and I just
mentioned the CERN reactor, the Hadron Collider in Switzerland,
and how they're bashing these because I was reading a book on
science of
these molecules together try to find the Higgs boson and, and all
the rest of it, as mentioned that in the passing.
Some young guys came to me after and said, This is the first time
that we've seen somebody make it relevant. I just mentioned this.
Instead, we woke us up. One of the other members they says is the
first time we've seen somebody bring the natural world and the
spiritual together.
It's otherwise they just think we're irrelevant.
They just think they just know a bit. They just know how to read
the Quran. There are more result. Just a massive problem we have
like that. This is the kind of stuff as early we'll be dealing
with the manga, this is the kind of stuff you would have been
dealing with. That's what he went out to do and he's left an
indelible mark. That's why I'm so excited about this program
Inshallah, that would be of that benefit.