Numan Attique – Desecularizing Education

AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the secularization of Islam and the need for history and definition of suffering to teach spirituality. They also emphasize the importance of teaching mathematics to alleviate poverty and invest community resources. The conversation touches on the challenges of the digital age and the moral and operational implications of the current climate, as well as the negative impact of media consumption on children and their potential for harm. The speakers emphasize the need for more focused teaching and embracing the future struggle.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, peace and blessings
be upon the Messenger of Allah and after
him Peace and blessings be upon you, Shaykh
Thank you so much for giving us your
time tonight May Allah reward you, elevate your
status Make you sincere, accept it from you
And use you for his sake and never
replace you, insha'Allah So Shaykh, one of
the questions that, you know, throughout our conversations
we've been having That comes to mind as
at the center of this issue is How
do you approach de-secularized education At a
level that's not simply isolated case by case
But at a systemic level where you can
apply like ISO standards, international standards of education
How do you approach it at that level
where then you can, you know Propagate that
across the world within the Muslim countries Let
alone just within our diasporic western communities In
the name of Allah, peace and blessings be
upon the Messenger of Allah So it's a
big question and there's a lot of dimensions
to the answer One of the things is
to realize the patterns upon which Islam has
been secularized as something to be taught And
there are two prominent, at least two prominent
Consequences or outcomes of the secularization of Islamic
knowledge And one has been what I've dubbed
the theology of suffering And the other is
what I've dubbed the theology of the state
Okay, so the theology of suffering is sort
of a quietest position When it comes to
everything that happens to the Muslim world All
we have to have is a fatalistic sort
of relationship to it We have to submit
and if we are to resist it in
any way, shape or form Then this is
actually expressing displeasure with Allah's decree And the
other would be the theology of the state
Which is to say that you have to
obey the ruler no matter what And that
you don't have any room to critique So
the secularization of Islam has been a paring
down of Islam To fit within four walls
of a masjid and five pillars It's the
privatization of Islam It's the Protestant Reformation type
of Islam So there's a couple avenues through
which to reclaim The full holistic nature of
Islam when we teach it And then take
it beyond that to talk about knowledge in
general And one of them is to talk
about the farood kifayah To what are the
collective obligations that we have And what are
the avenues of influence that Islam not only
can but should Exert upon the societies in
which we find ourselves These kind of mandates
Some people talk about the cultural mandate While
Islam also has a political mandate That defies
this sort of secularization Another thing to do
is to teach the history of ideas The
intellectual history of the West Which then parochializes
this sort of type of accounting for history
And what Islam is And makes seem small
the type of secularized, privatized faith And shows
us that the origin of the word religion
Is the same as the meaning of deen
Which is that it's based on an obligation
Religio means the duty that is rendered unto
your lord Before it meant something that was
a jins A category of human experience in
the Blakean sense Or the sense of the
deists That now we could say that one
species of this genus is Islam And another
species is Christianity That's a very modern way
of understanding it So recovering these things Or
at least mapping out conceptually How these concepts
have changed over time And also the intellectual
history of Islam itself To show that just
very very Obviously has escaped these types of
categories Articulating conceptual categories is very very important
Because you can't out think something That you
can't formulate language for So language being the
vessel of these ideas We have to make
sure that we Sometimes we're going to need
to coin new terminology In order to describe
the reality that has happened Or to figure
our way out of a reality that's been
created By the shifts in terminology and language
and conceptions that have happened That takes us
only down one part So I'm sure you
got some follow-up questions for that No
definitely So JazakAllah khair for that That's really
good at a higher level In terms of
say for instance We could teach sociology like
this We could teach history like this That's
all good But how do you do ihyaa
al-uloob How do you resurrect, revive the
sciences in general When I mean sciences I
just don't mean the Islamic sciences How do
you teach math, biology, chemistry, physics To grade
school, middle school In a way that is
resuscitating it With the theory that we're talking
about here Absolutely So that's where the reintroduction
of the moral dimension Is the first step
and maybe the most significant step Because right
now these things are purely instrumentalized In the
sense that they become ends in and of
themselves You do math just to do math
And you develop disciplines You develop sort of
theory And it's just about pushing the cutting
edge and expanding And it's a very expansionist
and positivist endeavor Where you think that everything
that could be known We will one day
find it And we just are the march
of human knowledge going forth And that's a
very atheistic and naturalistic And materialistic way in
which to view knowledge So we have to
understand that all of these sciences Are meant
to serve other than Well even the Quran
and the Sunnah, right Sometimes we have the
bifurcation of Uloom Al-Ala, right Or Uloom
Al-Ala versus Imam Al-Mutloob or these
things But even those things You would just
say that they are tools to get to
paradise They are tools of salvation But I
think that within an Islamic metaphysics Every single
intellectual discipline has to serve a moral end,
right And I think that that's the key
correction Where that leads you is a kind
of interesting place Because then it's like mathematics
There's moral mathematics There's immoral mathematics And no
seriously Then you have to tie You have
to tether your mathematics to moral outcomes and
pursuits And the same with sciences And the
same with humanities And the same with And
then you can actually uncover new disciplines That
further those pursuits Which is actually how disciplines
in the Islamic world and civilization Used to
come about, right So realizing that there are
things that we have not invented yet That
can't Because invention is not the problem The
problem is along what lines are things being
invented That to come up with the most
barbaric way of torturing Or even more barbaric
ways of killing each other Is an atheist
materialist sort of endeavor Whereas to continue to
innovate On the means of delivering public goods
and services And solving needs of people And
to respond to the intellectual challenges of our
time With new disciplines that need to be
articulated Like from an Islamic frame Like that
is something that absolutely that we need to
be doing Right so we have the ihya
Okay who's going to write the ihya of
our time And what would it be And
what would it address And what would it
correct And what would it invent that's going
to displace The things that have hegemony currently
That makes a lot of sense again Maybe
if you could give some examples As to
what moral math would take forward And that
might be too particular But in general how
would it look like in discovering new fields
So for example like if you look at
mathematics Mathematics is tied to economics okay inherently
We live in an era in which commodification
is not just rampant But it's accelerating and
it's unhinged So we are finding more and
more things to sell Things that were unsellable
before Okay now this is a moral and
existential threat to us Because certain things shouldn't
be sellable And actually even if in a
strict juz'i Like 50 cents maybe is
permissible The overall erosion that it does to
Islamic values And to Islamic civilization is significant
Okay so take the principle of economics Okay
like what's the basic that I teach you
in econ 101 micro I teach you that
it's the allocation of scarce resources Or the
most efficient allocation of scarce resources And it's
founded on assumptions such as competition And such
rational interests or selfishness You know all of
these things So maybe what we need is
we need to look at applied mathematics And
econ as like an applied mathematics field To
envision what it would take to flip and
reverse this Like those are very metaphysical assumptions
Like what if we start with the assumption
of bounty What if we start with the
assumption of duty What if we start with
the assumption of ta'awun Of mutual aid
We start with the assumption of you are
not a believer If you go to bed
satiated and your neighbor is hungry And you
know about it All the things that we
have in our deen And then we instrumentalize
the mathematics In order to discover the most
godly You know pardon the colloquial phrase But
the most sacred or holy or praiseworthy religiously
Way to allocate Allah's abundance Right or the
most impactful way to alleviate poverty Or the
most impactful way to invest community resources To
produce the most scholars Right these are all
mathematical ends Okay and there's opportunity cost to
everything that is pursued So for every useless
sort of mathematical theory That comes out that
is you know Taking up time from and
energy and resources From doing this other this
other type of work That's beautiful masha'Allah
All right let me make it even a
little bit more challenging Grade five I'm being
introduced to algebra Introduced to the sciences How
do you desecularize them at that level How
do you teach it at that level It's
easier with the younger people Because they have
fitra you know More so than when you
get older So actually this is a really
great challenge I still teach middle schoolers And
I think that people need to teach middle
schoolers Just to keep their feet on the
ground So they don't get run away with
their jargon And things of that nature That
you can really capitalize on a lot of
intuition And intuitive moral logic that Allah creates
us with Because the intuition that we have
in the fitra Is like an intuition for
morality It's really fascinating That takes programming to
wipe out of people Yeah so so yeah
I mean you can totally You can totally
capitalize that when it comes to When it
comes to science class and those sorts of
things Let's take science class What do you
learn in science as a fifth grader I
mean you learn about atoms And you learn
about it's a very material okay Juicy mechanistic
It's very mechanistic okay Children are very idealistic
naturally You know how many times has a
young child Passed by a homeless person on
the street And wondered you know mama papa
Why can't we bring them into our home
right They don't have the same They haven't
been trained yet to realize That that's not
socially acceptable And it could be risky and
it could be dangerous right So they have
a certain idealism That actually should be harnessed
at that age And so if you are
a child And you can or if you're
teaching children And you're able to say okay
well Here's the world that we've inherited Here
are the problems we've got you know Medications
pharmaceuticals in our water And we've got pollution
over here And our food is getting less
nutritious every year And we've got food deserts
and we've got this You know you can
have interesting conversations About what a science would
look like That is predicated upon doing God's
work on earth Sort of a khalafatullah sort
of thing right Um and then you can
reverse engineer it To get into the mechanisms
that would help you get that But the
thing is that if you skip over the
the aghrab If you skip over the the
purposes for which that Why do you think
that people most kids Unless you go to
a really good school Not the one I
went to You go to average public school
in the west You get out of you're
in eighth grade And you can't remember what
you studied in elementary You can't remember anything
That shows the failure of that type of
education That children have an amazing amount of
solidarity And compassion to them That they can
you know write letters And appeal to you
know politicians Or appeal to to other people
They have a moral voice They have a
moral clarity that sometimes we we lack So
even the the whole you know Why are
we teaching them let's imagine this So we
take a fifth grader And we're teaching them
algebra Let's take the math track okay So
you're going to teach them arithmetic Until a
certain point And then you're going to teach
them geometry And you're going to teach them
you know trigonometry And pre-calc and calculus
And there's a sort of seerah that you
go through That is sort of laid out
ahead of you But what's the purpose of
it right What is it designed to solve
And that's what we have to question It's
like like what would a mathematics curriculum Look
like that was tied to divine commands And
and to obedience of Allah Is is that
seerah going to change Do we just teach
skills Without teaching the moral wielding of those
skills Do we delay why do What's the
number one complaint about math In any public
school I don't get the point of this
Why am I saying this what's the point
right Do we bypass that and tell them
Well if you can stick with it Until
you can get a good paying job You
can blow bits off of kids across the
world With your math skills And then you'll
you'll have a safe career Which is really
what happens now Versus intervening at that level
And saying we're going to get it down
from the beginning That everything that we do
has a purpose And that purpose is moral
And that purpose is going to actually serve
your salvation By doing something that pleases your
lord Whether it's arithmetic Whether it's geometry Whether
it's algebra Whether it's whatever And that I
think clarifies and focuses Like what we're supposed
to be doing It's beautiful masha'allah So
if we were to put it in a
way You're trying to give gravity and centrality
To the purpose of knowledge here itself Even
at that level So if you can make
it Allah-centric Dawheed-centric If you can
put the purposes first You'll be able to
make sense of the math That doesn't make
sense to kids in school Some kind of
a fantom So then if like are there
efforts out there That are trying to work
on such Types of visionings of knowledge?
Well there's been efforts Such as the islamicization
of knowledge movement That comes out of Malaysia
and other similar efforts They move like Islamic
political movements move There's a wave And the
initial wave is maybe preliminary And somewhat immature
And then it's sort of refined And then
there's a second wave And it gets more
refined and sophisticated And so we're still coming
with those waves We haven't cracked the nut
yet But there's a lot of people who
are passionate about this And there I think
are a lot of good people out there
So we haven't solved it or figured it
out In such a way where we're ready
to apply it But I think that people
are starting to realize How superficial some attempts
in the past have been To islamicize knowledge
Where they still are predicated upon Secular understandings
of what islam is The secular bifurcation of
deen and dunya In the sense that islam
is a waste bin category Or islamiyat are
a waste bin category And the real subjects
are math and science And these sorts of
things Like we understand People are starting to
normalize the idea of that Everything is islam,
right?
Your math is your islam Your science is
your islam And taking that seriously at a
fundamental level We haven't yet seen the results
of that But we're getting to a point
of high motivation I think on those fronts
Because usually one of the the cop-outs
For this type of thinking or pushing forward
Is you're taking away from science What makes
it science Which is it's pushed towards progress
And material success By replacing it with scaffolding
And barriers to hold it back From true
ingenuity and progress Yeah I mean there is
no such thing as progress Like you know
there's only progress Towards the afterlife and towards
jannah So I mean that's the thing I
mean this sort of conversation Makes us choose
whether we want to think like atheists Or
think like muslims And it's scary for certain
people Especially who have been indoctrinated with The
theology of progress And you know material comfort
material success But that's not what we're going
for And that's not what Allah wants from
us I think that we are starting to
Thankfully shed the very superficial cop-outs That
we have come up with to escape this
problem Where we say oh well Allah wants
us to have ihsan and everything And therefore
I should go be a nuclear physicist That
can blow up children across the world Or
I can work for Lockheed Martin or Boeing
I think that most people are not satisfied
With such pathetic superficial Sloganeering anymore So you
know rather than tokenize islam And use islam
as sort of a legitimizing talisman To just
give a rubber stamp To our otherwise materialistic
ends I think that at least people in
the education sphere Always kind of keep a
finger or two On what's going on in
the education sphere People are starting to realize
That we need to treat this much more
systematically And at a much more core level
Than just hoping that everybody succeeds In math
and science And pretend we're doing islam along
the way I do apologize for being devil's
advocate for a little bit But you know
it needs to be done right Okay last
piece of advice For the youth out there
in university In high school who feel this
constant tug of war This battle of ideals
and vision within life Where they're battling on
one side On the other the hidden curriculum
indoctrination What would you say to them When
it comes to trying yourself To educate yourself
in a manner That's instructive in this path
of Allah Yeah we're all like that Bollywood
movie With Aamir Khan Where he wakes up
and he doesn't know He doesn't have any
memory So he has all the...
And I'm aware that was based off of
a Hollywood movie as well I can't remember
the names of any of these movies But
I use that often as an illustration For
our coming into the world Because you enter
into the world At a certain point in
a conversation And it's a philosophical conversation It's
an ideological conversation It's a historical conversation So
everybody has a certain duty To figure out
where we're at in that conversation And to
infer what has already been said And then
to meaningfully intervene in that conversation Through your
life And the decisions that you make That
you can be just a chump That continues
along the path of least resistance That's very
easy It's very comfortable to do that But
you will have neglected your duty If you
did that To be something more To be
someone who is a transformative contributor And a
real sort of khalifa Somebody who is doing
Allah's work on earth As he would like
it to be done So everybody has to
accept that struggle And not run away from
that struggle I think a lot of the
internal cognitive dissonance That a lot of people
fight with or run away from Is trying
to avoid that struggle I think that we
should embrace struggle in that sense That life
is essentially this good versus evil Tugging the
purpose versus purposelessness Tugging like, you know, it's
red pill, blue pill You know, it's the
matrix You can go along with the matrix
Or you can step outside of the matrix
And Muslims, we have a mandate to step
outside of the matrix