Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Advanced Islamic Theology Program at Whitethread Institute

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.