Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Courses Islamic Theology Program 2018 19 Whitethread Institute

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