Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Courses Islamic Theology Program 2018 19 Whitethread Institute
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The course on theology is designed to provide critical understanding of religion, religion, and science, including the "medianist philosophy" and "medianist concepts." The course is designed to provide a critical understanding of these topics, including religion, religion, and science, and is designed to optimize understanding of the various topics covered, including religion, religion, and science. The course is designed to provide practical exposure to various topics such as transgenderism, women's clothing, and women's sexuality, and is designed to optimize understanding of Islam and provide practical exposure to various topics.
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So if we move over Inshallah, to our theology program,
we had, I think we had about just less than 30 students 27 or
something students in that, again, they were probably less that used
to come on site than those who used to mashallah very diligently.
There's a number of students who
were on track that listen to the entire
program, over the course of, you know, the eight to nine months
that we were doing it. Now the theology program was split into
two, which I detail last year, which we detail as it is actually
two aspects to it. So half of it, the full theology program, which
was nine hours, this year, it's going to be two and a half times
three, which means seven and a half hours, approximately last
year, it was actually 369 hours. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
evenings.
So what we had in here is that half of it dealt with the
classical sources. So we dealt with, we took two texts, one was
Charlotte Aqeedah, at the Hawaii of Madani and Hamdulillah that was
covered. So you've got the maturity, the understanding, then
we took the shuttle hurried el Bahia. And that was quite
interesting text, because initially it starts off as being
very terse, very refined, very particular, the Arabic is very
challenging, and then after it becomes very, very easy after
about 20% of the book, but it gives you an understanding of the
shady side of things, when you have the two together, you It
complements each other because the order is not the same. So when you
studied the SIFAT in here, then you get to refine them in the in
the other text. And then another discussion would come before in
the other text, and you then take it in the herida. Then after that,
once the sherlocky that the habia of Madani was completed then we
started looking at Coronavirus commentary. So we did several
selections of that we weren't able to cover the whole commentary,
because that wasn't intended either. So that was the Arabic
part of it. The other aspect of it
is were primarily starving Milan and Dr. Sephora, they dealt with
that. And I'm going to leave it to start Imran to explain what we did
last year in in overall, and what we're going to how we're going to
maybe adjust that for next year. But that was a very, very
ambitious program. And the reason for it is that we covered several
different things in there starting from, you can say Plato and
Aristotle because a lot of the we live in the West, much of the
Western philosophy, Western understanding of the world, about
life, about the brain about
about the heart, if I mean, I don't think that's a big
discussion of the heart, but about the hereafter whether there is a
hereafter. And a lot of that is comes primarily through Aristotle
and Plato and it goes on it filters, changes, adjusts, gets
replaced, grits critique critiqued, so the major thinkers
that we dealt with, I mean, what this course gave me I mean,
because I was listening, when I wasn't teaching the other part of
it, I was listening. One of the greatest benefits of this is that
you then begin to understand what feminism is actually all about.
Where does the whole issue about religion and science? Where does
it converge? And where does it go wrong? Right? Where does, for
example, a lot of the lot of what you read in the media, and a lot
of the onslaught against Islam, a lot of the post modernist ideas,
right, that are basically based in founded in existentialism, and
hermeneutics the way they look at texts and so on. It just gives you
an understanding for any alum, really, this understanding is so
important, because this is the kind of thought process the
mentality the the ideas that we're dealing with on a day to day
basis. And we just get caught up in that. And we don't know how to
respond because we don't know where it's coming from on what
foundations is it based when you understand you can immediately
tell that okay, this is coming from an empirical perspective,
this is coming from an existential issue. Now, the that was mashallah
diligently taught and the amount of hours and subjects that were
covered in the, one of the our, you can say, our supporters, right
where I mentioned him earlier, we actually took the course as well,
is Prince Ghazi, who is a philosophy in his own right,
because he studied all of Plato's books. He's actually got two PhDs
on filosofi philosophies, subjects. He took the whole course
and I was surprised that he he was on it was always on time. He
didn't like behind too much. Within two weeks, he would have
you know, you would never have more than probably two
are three lessons outstanding was on the ball. And we wanted to
change the course like he says, No, you're not going to change the
course, this is probably the most unique course that you have. And
it basically is so unique. He reckons that nobody else no other
university forget Islamic University in non US Muslim
University is not even providing the scope that we're providing.
Because we're dealing with lots of stuff in there, right evolution,
gender, fluidity, artificial intelligence, there's just so much
that's been dealt with in the, that it's quite unique. So if
somebody really wants to understand, I think anybody who's
really wants to
become aware of how to deal with a lot of the common questions and
contemporary challenges, this course is very, very important, it
can sound a bit daunting, some aspects of it are done. But look,
if you don't understand the whole thing, that's fine. Right, at
least you can take back a lot and get an understanding of where
things are coming from. So I'm gonna let him run. Unfortunately,
Dr. Spock was supposed to be here, he was unable to come today, he
had to pull out the last yesterday. But to start him run,
he'll do his part. And, again, if you have any questions about these
things, we're going to take them later, could just
just to elaborate and add to what multitap said, in terms of the
cost structure we had, you know, we had
innumerable aims and objectives and sections to do. And hamdullah,
we, we managed to do a lot of them, but we weren't able to do
many of them, simply due to the fact that we ran out of time in
some areas, but because we covered topics in a lot of detail, it just
time ran out as such, but I try numerate in terms of what we
actually did and in terms of what topics inshallah we're gonna carry
on with. So areas that we explored, were arguments for God.
So we looked at, you know, the cosmological argument, the
ontological argument, the design argument, we look at the whole
notion of the concept of God. So what does it mean the word God?
Where is the concept behind that? How do we equate? Or how do we
resolve the issue of omnipotence, God's power, with reference to,
for example, paradoxes? Can God create a stone that He cannot lift
himself? You've heard of that part of 70? Or, for example, how do we
reconcile the issue of, you know, God's in God's knowledge with the
issue of freewill, and so on and so forth. So, we looked at the
arguments for God's existence, we looked at arguments against God's
existence. So you know, atheists have argument against God's
existence, they give all these arguments, it is divine
hiddenness, if there is God, and God is all loving, how come? Most
people don't recognize God or they can't find God? Why is God hidden
in such a way? If there is God and He is all powerful and all loving,
then why is there evil in the in the universe as such, right, why
is it so much even so? So so we looked at arguments for, we looked
at argument against and the benefit of looking at those
particular areas and those themes was primarily fed into Mufti sobs
theology section, because in the theology texts that you look at
arguments for God's existence, you look at God's attributes and so
forth. And we looked at this in terms of a broader sense from, you
know, from a philosophy perspective, so much of those
discussion about God's existence, the concept, the attributes, a lot
of this stuff, if you go to university, it will be, you know,
a full module in terms of a BA or an MA course, but we, we started
with that, in order to provide a foundation for multisoft course.
And then subsequently, after that, we went to other areas related to
science and religion. We looked at the whole issue of philosophy of
science, what is science? looked at the whole issue of methodology
of science, induction deduction, we looked at all these are
paradoxes. Then we looked at into the case studies. Okay, so what's
the reconciliation of religion and science? What are the different
paradigms? I know, everyone's probably heard of Richard Dawkins
in this room, and our home and we know Richard Dawkins is a very
famous proponent of the position that science and religion are in
conflict. They call it the warfare paradigm. But there are other
patterns as always, if you look at article limin, they had an
integrationist paradigm with science and religion. So we
explore different patterns of in terms of science and how can
understand science and religion. We looked at case studies, we
looked at evolution, a lot of detail Subhanallah, we got about
at least nine hours on just evolution in terms of exploring
where evolution was intelligent design, looking at it from, you
know, the issue of problems within it within the evidence is, so we
had two guest speakers with regards to Asian Madonna, you
know, with man Ali, who basically is doing loads of YouTube videos,
he put me on YouTube. He he actually did about six hours and
again with Dr. mudra man who came in and did you know, a whole
theological rejoinder. So we, we put a lot of emphasis in terms of
those areas. We looked at quantum mechanics. And then after that, we
looked at some areas which you don't necessarily really explore
much at university, areas of sociology, so how does socio
generally interact? How does psychology and religion interact?
So everyone should be heard of, you know, Freud? And everyone's
probably heard of, you know, some of his psychological
psychoanalysis theory, but it has a massive bearing on religion.
People don't appreciate that much of the modern realm is based on
Freud's understanding of religion as being a trauma. Yeah as being a
suffering that given
beings go through like a neurosis or an illusion. We looked at the
whole issue of politics, as we looked at Karl Marx, we looked at
the issue of ethics. So the utilitarian principles, and so on
and so forth. So I'm chuckling a lot of keywords here to you, but
we actually went through it very systematically over a period of at
least 30 Odd weeks, until we broke it down to different modules. So
what we've done this year, inshallah we're hoping to
modularize everything in a more succinct way. So that it provides
people the opportunity to come in and do different types of modules,
like God's existence, God, concept, science, religion, the
issue of, you know, sociology and psychology. So that's mostly
subset, what's the point of this? One is that we all have to go out
and did a day. I know many people who have, you know, advanced
degrees in Islamic studies, but there are always going to be
doubts until today, and this is probably mine anyway to have
doubts. So it's for personal satisfaction in terms of being
able to provide a rational answer to yourself to the best that you
can do. And we know in our tradition, not all answers are
rational. Sometimes we leave it to the realms of the gap where we
don't know. But not all questions are lifted again. So God's
existence is not a question that is, well Hamdulillah. We leave it
to Allah, I believe in Allah because Allah said, so is this how
our scholars argue this,
find maybe some questions about God's attributes or questions of
the gap. But there are many questions that we can give
evidence for. So one is personal satisfaction, personal
satisfaction of the beliefs that we hold that and actually, I
forgot to mention, we actually had this whole section on Islam as
well, in terms of, you know, looking at miracles, what is the
miracle of Islam? Why is Islam true and not Christianity, or, for
example, Judaism, and we'll start off Roku is an expert in terms of,
you know, Arabic Bulava. He went through the whole issue of the
Arabic language looked into the issue of you know, the Quranic
miracle, the linguistic miracle miracle that that aspect, I think,
was this upset, you are going to touch on it to see course. That's
something that's not discussed very often, you get discussions of
Quran and science, Quran and in terms of prophecies are very
rarely do you get the Quranic miracle as Allah has articulated
himself, which is the linguistic miracle, Allah is challenged,
doesn't it? And we talked about that as well in terms of those
miracle aspects. So personal satisfaction is one issue. But
then obviously, as all Amma, as you know, in a move to so and so
forth, people come. Obviously, we're you know, people are in
charge of flux and communities. And there are people who are going
to come and they want solutions and answers. And if they can't
find solution and answer from the Allama, then end of the day, it
somehow brings shuba heart into them in terms of the whole
religion. Because an alum animosity is a representation of
religion. That's what he is, or she is, they can't provide a
cogent answer than that somehow. And this is incorrect. It's
fallacious fallacious reasoning, but somehow, you know, for that
individuals who asked that question, know what the answer, it
really breaks down that religion. You think to yourself this
religion has no answers if this is what these people have, so as to
provide our community who are suffering now. So many people out
there have some issue had so many Shabbat, they have so many doubts.
There's so many issues only yesterday, I was watching a video
about transgenderism and so on and so forth. How do we deal with that
in terms of Islam? gender fluidity, most schools are now
going to be happening. You know how having unisex toilets was
Islamic perspective on that, how do you irrational Arthur Robinson?
In a blasphemy, Allah Allahu Akbar, or something's, you know,
silly that is equated to Islam? How do you get a rational cogent
answer which Islam gives? So hamdulillah those kind of areas,
we discuss some of them inocula. The terminology can be difficult,
but Hamdulillah this is something that we're going to be working on
this year to make sure that we start at a very basic level build
you up.
We have Google classroom as well, in terms of the FFC program, we
had loads of stuff on that, we'll start off rook was answering lots
of questions. So we have a lot of interaction as well in terms of
those issues. So you're not basically coming to lectures and
you're left to your own devices. There's a lot of interaction in
terms of if you want to know answers you want explore things
further. There's a lot of resources we provide. So we did it
last year, it went okay, I would say we're trying to optimize it
inshallah make it better. But as much as I say, it's very useful
course, in those issues in terms of personal as well as data
purposes in terms of positive Dawa, where we can possibly go out
and give dower and negative data in terms of negating those things
about the range of Islam, those kind of controversial things also
have to be things that aren't necessarily, you know, not always
dealt with, or just not Bucha. But yeah, later, you know, that's, and
that's sometimes the other right lever sometimes, yeah, but not
everything can be left, sometimes, there are many things that
shouldn't be left, and if they're left, and they cause major doubts,
so a positive activities abishola, just like we're not here for that.
So the half, which is related to more the philosophical aspects,
not not the classical Arabic text. But what was starting runs on
that. That was also you could just take that separately, which is
called a faith foundation. That's what it was called the faith
foundations course. And again, we're going to make it into
module. So if you can't take the whole course for the whole year,
you could take one module, the science module or the the theology
module, you know, it'll be it'll be on the site very soon if you
don't want to take the whole course.
I just want to mention, I mean, what we'll start
Uh, Imran mentioned he mentioned a number of names, you know whether
that be Karl Marx Popper, Freud, Kant, right? These are the Western
prophets, basically. I mean, Europe hasn't had a profit, right?
I don't think there's any profit. I mean,
there's no profit that was sent to Europe, God knows best Allah knows
best, really, but there's no history of them. So they've
imported Jesus peace be upon him.
And then there's the Judeo, and then there's the Muslims have come
in. But
in terms of the so called modern prophets, right, in that sense,
then you've got these famous thinkers. Now, the average person
on the street, or the person who's writing the article, or the person
who's giving the interview, was critiquing Islam, or, or trying to
push a certain
agenda or a certain idea of feminism or whatever, they're
never going to say that this is a feminist idea, or that this is
empiricism, or this is science, oh, well, science in my use, but
or they may never call it
hermeneutics or whatever, these, they may never even have to quote
Freud, or Kant, or Marx, or anybody else, you know, if it's an
issue of sociology, they will just provide the idea. It's actually
it's ingrained, right? It's, it's like the way Muslims will speak
about Islamic issues, without necessarily quoting, because it's
so common, it's become common nomenclature, right, it's become
common terminology, common ideas. So they won't even know that this
actually comes from Freud, or that this comes from Kant, or this is,
you know, an idea that's based in whether you call it
existentialism, or whatever the case is, but they this is what the
Western idea is based on. And if we don't know what it's based on,
then it's very difficult to try to attack it. Because what we're
doing here in this course, is you take the idea, and then we show
the criticisms against it, both from a Western perspective, and
from an Islamic perspective, and that's very interesting. All of
these ideas, they've actually been critiqued by Westerners
themselves, right, other scientists, I mean, other
thinkers, so we're showing how they're critiqued. And then we can
we can say okay, this is the maybe the Muslim were the Islamic way of
looking at it.
So don't get put off by the big names and the big ideas on all
that because we have to we have to understand them and then be able
to inshallah deal with what's going on outside.
I want to move on to the last course