The Way Forward – Because it’s our turn now

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.

Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu, salam ala Rasulillah.

The title of my short presentation is the way forward.

Why should we think about this? Because it's our turn now, why our time, because we are the people in the moment

all change

is given into the hands of people in the moment to bring it about those people are us, you and I.

Why should we be concerned, because this concerns all of humanity,

irrespective of where you live, irrespective of your religion, irrespective of your political

preferences, irrespective of your gender is irrespective of everything. What I have to say concerns, everyone.

So please think about it in that context.

We are like people who are caught in a storm.

Imagine you're on a beautiful river sailing ship.

But you're caught in a storm. On the one hand, you have to deal with,

there were waves and tides,

and storm force winds. And on the other side, you have rocks which are waiting for you to wreck the ship on it

when you are in this situation. And that's the situation that all of us face today,

we have to be able to do two paradoxical things simultaneously into the wealth.

The first one is to be aware of our surroundings, all that is happening to us, we cannot ignore that. Because if we ignore that, we will sink. And simultaneously,

we have to take ourselves out of that. And stay focused on the goal, which is to navigate the ship to a safe harbor.

To paradoxical things.

If you allow the forces around you to distract you, they will sink you.

And ignore those forces completely to the sense that you don't even know what is going on, then you will never reach your goal because they will sink you.

There are three critical conditions to success.

Number one, get prepared for the long haul. Because this is about forging a new generation.

A generation that has completely new

goals, completely new ideals, completely new framework of thinking.

goals and ideals and framework of thinking which is based on ethics and morals, and compassion and justice, not on the single minded pursuit of money at any cost.

Number two, get prepared for pushback from traditional leaders in every field.

Number three, get prepared to work with diverse people.

People from different races and religions and cultures and nationalities and genders everything. Be prepared and get prepared to work with people, diverse people and to live with and deal with a high level of ambiguity.

They will not be any clearer answers for a long time into our struggle.

And therefore I quote Marcus Aurelius, he said, be happy with the smallest progress.

Be happy with this one of progress. And the final point I want to leave with you is

be prepared to become rocks in the foundation

in the construction of any building,

no matter how magnificent the structure is intended to be. It begins with a hole in the ground, called the foundation and into that hole in the ground go rocks.

Now every rock says that I want to be part of this project, but I want to be on the face of it. I want to be on top I want to be the cladding which people will look at a marvel at and they look at the reflection on the faces of the shining stone then this building will never stand.

There have to be there must be some rocks, which say to themselves

As the I want to be a part of this project so much and so deeply and so intensely and so fundamentally, that I'm prepared to go into the ground to be a foundation for this project to stand on my shoulders, never to be seen, again, unknown to everyone except the maker, the builder.

That is what we are looking at today.

We need to be prepared to become Grox in the foundation of the structure which will stand on our shoulders, inshallah.

There are three fundamental problems that

I want to talk to you about.

And I'm going to focus a little bit on Muslim societies. The first one is education.

Our education, over the past almost 300 years, has become fractured.

We teach about the book of Allah.

We teach about the Creator as if there is no creation. And we teach about the creation as if there is no creator,

completely fractured.

It is secretaria.

We teach about our particular mother and our particular sector.

And our education is utilitarian only

focus on education, how to make money, that's it.

We do not teach philosophy we do not teach humanities we will not teach ethics values models.

Not as a subject, we do not teach manners at all.

Number two, our leadership

which is Feudal and sectarian and very short sighted.

It's futile because we have zero tolerance for dissent.

We see

able, potential able

assistance and

people do successes, potential successes, we see them as a fundamental threat to ourselves.

Our leadership in our organizations is for life.

Our leaders and organizations have no retirement age.

This is how Kingsville dictators rule. Sudan's rule, and that is how we rule.

So our leadership has flooded into sectarian

she has what neither is that we're not

Salafi. Hanafi Shafi

Burrell, we

we will not even pray behind each other

and very, very, very short sighted.

And number three, Muslim society is disunited, we are blamers net exporters of blame. Whatever happens to us is always somebody else's fault. And we have got a stage which which I call learned helplessness.

We do nothing to change ourselves, we will not invest time and money. We will not invest energy.

We always want someone else to do something to do things for us, you want someone else to bleed for us.

And therefore my

submission to you is that to continue like this or to change is our choice. And this will be our legacy.

Therefore we need to focus on three things. Number one is unity.

I'm talking about a complete Mogens

unity to force a common identity based on the caliber

later held a lot more homogenous.

The asanas are celeea Salah who is a Muslim. He's the one who says the Kalama who prays in the direction of the Kaaba and who eats what we slaughter. That's it.

We have to get ourselves back on that. Live

a few the issues to individuals.

Whatever they practice according to whatever the leaves they have, leave it to them. That is not your problem. They're not worshipping you. They're worshipping Allah. Leave it between them and Allah.

Jana does not belong to you, John and does not belong to you. Neither does it belong to me. We are nobody to send somebody to Jana, Jana. Let's look at ourselves. Will I get to Jana? Or will I end up and Jana? That's what we need to think about.

So focus on unity. Focus on common problems. It doesn't matter which way you pray and what you actually do and so on so forth. Those differences can be there.

But we still have

On problems, we still have problems or unemployment, we still have problems on drug addiction, we still have problems of children going astray in schools, we still have problems of social security and safety. We still have problems of a very negative and bad image globally.

Those problems are common to everyone.

Let's focus on those problems. Number two, remember that there is no need to agree on theological issues. It's quite okay for people to have different theologies, we can still live together very harmoniously, loving each other as brothers and sisters helping each other.

Even if somebody is praise in one way, or we pray in some other way, we're no problems. And number three, learn to disagree without being disagreeable. That is a very, very important, tell us the etiquette of disagreement

and courage, dissent, and teach people and learn for ourselves how to disagree.

Number two, for this, we need to create an ummah Council.

I suggest this is done in each city in each town, whichever way in whichever country you live in, whatever is the is the way to structure this. Go ahead. You're free to do that.

elect leaders based on character and demonstrated commitment.

don't elect somebody because he was he had this position in government are the don't elect someone because of this law, based on character, and demonstrated commitment number two

structures to promote to promote healthy dissent and collaborative decision making. In the OMA Council, we need to create these structures, how will you deal with conflict? How will you deal with encouraging dissent? Helping people look at the other side of everything I come from I'm a corporate consultant in leadership. And we do this constantly in our corporate board meetings, and also down cascade down the line in our operational meetings. We call this worst case scenario planning.

What will you do if everything fails? A standard question I asked almost all of my corporate clients,

what is it that will kill you in three years?

We need to do that promote structures to promote healthy dissent.

And we must have this OMA Council as I said for each city or whatever division you want to do it.

This will create for us an independent, but collaborative structure with dispersed power we are not talking about one king of the world no

dispersed power across

countries across the world. But people who will collaborate for the common good.

Second thing is you need money because you need money. For things to move. We have the cat, but the cat is very strictly regulated according to the Quran, which we have, we don't have authority to change that. So we need to create a central font. Again central for not as a global central font, but general font for each city and so on which they can again collaborate to put together.

Very simple.

The fundamental structure of the font is for each person to contribute a small amount, which won't hurt a small amount which is possible for every man woman in chat.

So every person must contribute. Because I'm talking from an American perspective, I save $5 a day which is the cost of one coffee and Dunkin Donuts, one America no coffee, no cream, no sugar, small donors $5.

So contribute $5 per day every man woman and child

different countries, make your own.

Do your own numbers.

You will be surprised how much money you will collect. And individually. Each person gives $5 doesn't hurt anybody that $5 That person is spending anyway.

On this or that they will now spend that for the sake of the OMA for the sake of for the pleasure of Allah subhanaw taala and may Allah

this federal fund must be used only for collective Ummah projects.

This is not to give financial aid to somebody this is not to help someone out by giving them school fields of No. This is for collective OMA projects only. And the local Roma Council will decide on those projects.

And remember,

we are answerable to Allah subhanaw taala from whom nothing is hidden

Third thing is education. We need to completely and totally revamp and change our education system

and create a holistic, integrated teaching methodology, combining theology and science, with a strong emphasis on Aflac on matters.

Education is not only to earn a living, education is for life, not only for living,

then we need to bring that in

the details of how to do that, I have done lectures on this, I will send you the links on this in the description of this please take a look for is education we need the highest quality teachers, highest quality facilities and technology, whatever can be afforded. And that's the reason why we need to central what

I'm talking about top quality education, not just somebody who has nothing to do at home when we go in teaching them aka one of the mothers or no.

You're talking about people who know how to teach, who are qualified to teach, who understand that psychology

and who are completely and totally dedicated to teaching and providing the best possible education that they can provide.

And in the whole of this process to have strong processes to develop leadership. Again, that's a specialization.

That is my specialty. And of course there are many people like me who are specialized in leadership development. Get one of them to do that. These are specifically what just happen.

Because remember, we are talking about a new generation will wire differently, think differently, decide differently, who moves differently

because I don't know this is our time.

And what we do here

will decide how we will be remembered.

So I want to leave you with this one line.

How would you like to be remembered? Or what would you like to be remembered for?

Zach Aloha salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah.