Numan Attique – Desecularizing Education

Numan Attique
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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 ©

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