Salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa
barakatu welcome everybody is menorah
non Rahim sorrow to a ceremony I say the
Mohammed Maya any wasabi was said him to
see me kathira what handle I have a
bride I mean first of all welcome new
students and our existing students to EW
no colleges our convocation which is
really to open up the school year
particularly for the master students but
we certainly are welcoming the incoming
class small but potent of our freshmen
and the returning students hundred we
this this year is for us an exciting
year for a number of reasons one we have
a really beautiful campus that's in
essence been gifted to us and it's very
important to study in a beautiful place
because what you're studying is really
about Beauty truth goodness and beauty
these are the great virtues of the
ancient world and they were virtues that
the Muslims certainly not only
cultivated but excelled at they always
made their mattresses beautiful and even
the most simple of schools we could
imagine the Prophet sallallaahu Simms
mosque where which was really his
University it was his madrasah but for
anybody who's ever been in very simple
places I lived in a place called ghetto
in West Africa and it was a very simple
mud adobe village but it was really one
of the most beautiful places I've ever
lived so even the utter simplicity of
the beauty of nature imagine having a
Masjid that's basically built from the
natural world around you the roof is
made out of date fibers and the pillars
were made out of the date palm tree and
and very simple but beautiful
straw mat carp carpets that grace the
place so it must have been a stunningly
beautiful place to study for that early
community but the Muslims excelled at
building beautiful institutions because
the perpetuity of a tradition is
strongest when it has institutions that
can transmit it to future generations so
just like we're all links in a chain
those of us who are teachers now and
still students all of us remain students
but those of us who have been up to Dena
the Tatton team with the tribulation of
teaching because it is a tribulation
with the tribulation of teaching we're
links in a chain of a tradition that
goes back 1,400 years and one of the
aspects of that tradition is advice you
know while SIA
giving advice the prophets all I said if
you look at the final Hajj the last
message to his oma was all advice take
care of your women folk stall so be nice
at Yahara you know take care of your
women folk avoid racism avoid
manipulating nature those were all his
final advice even on his deathbed the
last thing he gave was advice take care
of your servants take care of your women
the prayer the prayer guard your prayer
so this is one of the aspects of the
tradition which is advice allah subhana
wa ta'ala gave the best advice when he
said we give you the advice that we gave
the previous pupils before you that you
should be awfully aware of God you know
awful in the original sense of that word
filled with all you know that an a
temple law when I was saying Aladeen
America become well yeah come any type
of law that you should have you know we
gave advice to the previous people and
to you that you should have this awful
awareness of God so in the spirit of
advice I want to give you students a few
these pieces of advice and because we're
attempting to do something I think is
really unusual and that is to grapple
with two traditions it's hard enough to
grapple with one tradition and very few
people ever master one tradition very
few people ever master even one segment
of one tradition if you look at our
tradition for instance the period of the
Quran there's ten variants of the Quran
that are considered acceptable those
take now for most people that master
them they take a good life time to learn
calligraphy alone is a lifetime study
now so many aspects of the tradition
really do take a lifetime there's a
young 22 year old Arab boy who has
memorized all nine collections of the
hadith he was tested recently in the
Haram and it was really stunning to
watch the the testing by mahadji Thoon
they would only give him the first part
of the hadith and he would finish it and
then tell which book it was in and it
was it was really quite a masterful
performance but the point is he was
gifted with a photographic memory
obviously and our OMA has had many
people like that I've met a few myself
that that's a great gift memories a
great gift and it's it's really a almost
it is a prerequisite to to to studying
tradition to have a retentive memory at
least it's not a condition for HT HOD
that you have rote memorization but you
have to know where to find the things in
the books at least so in the spirit of
that I'll look from two traditions let
me give you some fatherly advice to our
younger students the one comes from
Amanda and Joe aney who said he wasa in
rewire lenten and Elma in Lobby citizen
you will not acquire knowledge except
with six things some Becca bit of Syria
and by and by Annie I will give you in
detail what those six things are and
then the first one he said that cotton
which is intelligence you have to have
some level of intelligence to grapple
with this
one of the things about our tradition is
that we actually believe in what's
called a fete and one of the names of
God is El Fattah the the opener the one
who opens and gives you openings
I saw a fella at one Shetty see that
really struck me as interesting it was a
photo about a student in Fez who was not
very smart and but he was really
struggling and and and they asked
whether or not he should be kicked out
and his stipend taken away from him and
then the the photo is give him ten years
and if the foot that doesn't come to him
by then get rid of it so that was quite
good there's a motor tanyon story just
about because it's important because
some of you all of us feel that our
intelligence is is not what we would
like it to be hence we've got a whole
industry of AI trying to work out how we
can just insert chips into our brain and
become super computers but all of us
feel that you know we're not really
worthy or intelligent enough to grapple
with some of these ideas so just two
quick stories one there was a more
tanyon who studied the motor sort of
Hadiya and and it takes a few years to
study this book it's a book of really
riddles and he had a very difficult time
with it and he just wasn't making sense
to him and he had studied it 10 times
and he still really couldn't understand
it and he decide he was going to give up
and he went and he was sitting by an
anthill and then one of the things that
more teens love to do is watch insects
and bugs they're incredibly they're like
oh it's like a culture of entomologists
because in the desert there's not a lot
to watch and so you get like I really
got used to watching like lizards and
dung beetles are fascinating to watch
carrying their dung around I've got a
whole culture of dung beetles now but we
he watched this ant trying to get a
piece of couscous up the anthill and and
it kept rolling down as like Sisyphus
and and the aunt did it 10 times and on
the 11th time it got in with this piece
of couscous and he said to himself I
can't let a aunt have greater aspiration
than me I'm gonna do it one more time
and he had his opening so that's a
famous story another story is is a
famous story of imam @f Dasani who was
noted to be not very bright and he had
an incredible spiritual experience and
after that he was noted for his
incredible ability to grapple with the
most difficult metaphysical concepts
with incredible dexterity so there is
hope for us we should always aspire ya
fattah ya Ali Mustafa tank arriba was a
traditional do I know I was taught that
by a habib lamin my children had that as
a dua for study you call on the Fatah
the opener and the newer so that car is
something that we know now with
neuroplasticity that it actually does
increase as you study so that and and
they used to think that it closed at
about adolescence but it actually
continues on throughout your life so the
more you study actually the bigger into
that gets and say now Omar said tydomin
Autopia Finnerty's IDO philopon learn
Arabic because it will increase your
intelligence and we know this now to be
true that if you learn a subject it will
actually increase the the
neuroplasticity of your brain will adopt
to the new things there will be more
dendritic connections and you'll be
smarter and brighter so you should see
that as you study and the harder you
study the brighter you get like the
golfer who made an incredible putt and
somebody said to him that was so lucky
he said the more I practice the luckier
I get the same is true for studying the
more you study the more intelligent
you'll get so and then he said the count
and Wahid o son you know being covetous
for knowledge like really being covetous
Hedison your wanting to know and this is
one of the things Aristotle begins his
great book on metaphysics which even
seen I read 50 times before he
understood it
he begins it by saying that all people
want to know that it's part of our
nature that's why little children ask
why why then they're the little children
are the they're the meta physicians of
the world because their great question
is always why it's not how they want to
know why they want to know causation and
so health is really important to have an
intense desire for knowledge and then
there's 2dy one says it's the bottom
which is patience and that's certainly
true is butyl wasabi it'll be patient
but also enjoin each other to patience
to also been happy with awhile soba soba
they advised each other to the truth but
also to be patient because study is
incremental you scaffold in your
studying it's an incremental you you
have plateaus and learning goes it goes
initially you might have a lot of
insights and then you plateau and those
plateaus are very difficult because you
get bored and so it's very important and
and boredom is the great enemy this is
the the great that the the one of the
seven deadly sins it's called acedia
which they called it the the noonday
devil because it was the one that
afflicted monks more than anything
because they they were supposed to
meditate in their cells and they would
get bored and so boredom
they caught now you know a type of
laziness but it's really it's a it's
really a nun way that sets in this type
of boredom and one of the things that
the great philosopher Kierkegaard said
is that the people who remove God from
their lives they become afflicted with a
deep boredom they they become very bored
with life and he said always
accompanying that boredom is a type of
cynicism and so they're always looking
to be stimulated because they're just
bored with everything whereas people
that have gone in their lives are in a
constant state of wonder because God is
just so extraordinary and so amazing and
so bewildering one of the meanings of
Allah in Arabic is the one that
bewilders and it creates high era in you
so that's very important is to learn how
to
alone with yourself right it's very
difficult for a lot of people so it's
debar own and in another rewire HT had
on to really struggle and give a lot of
effort and then and then he said well
below cartoon below ha in Arabic is what
will get you somewhere it's like the
provision you need to complete a task
Bella is from Bella ah you know to reach
something so Bulova is what enables you
to reach something so the beluga is I
mean people here you've been given a
great gift which is leisure time it's
time where you don't have to worry about
the cost of things Imam Shafi he said lo
could live to shira Abbas or attend
surah abasa Ratan madam to Masada if I
if I was forced to worry about how much
the price of onions were I would have
never learned in other words having to
think about worldly affairs all the time
really prevents you from that type of
stress-free environment as stress-free
as up as possible dunya is stressful by
nature and and then he said and then
there's another rewire horrible which is
being in a place where you're not from
because when you're in a place where
you're from you've got all your friends
and all your distractions but by going
moving away to another place
that's why Retta was so important in the
Islamic tradition for study was actually
to take a journey to learn to get away
from your environs that were distracting
all your friends and all your companions
and and then and then he said what tell
Pina was seven and then to learn from a
teacher tell Pina loose Taven it's very
important traditionally it was said that
the the knowledge was in the breasts of
men and and women obviously because
there are many great women scholars
especially in that early period the even
sad is filled with women and
historically about 15 percent of notable
scholars in any generation were women
this has clearly been proven by the
thought literature the biographical
literature of scholars that between ten
and fifteen percent in any generation of
notable scholars were women so we did
have
many many great female scholars they
tended not to write out of modesty and
humility because writing was considered
very dangerous that's why the there's so
few tough seers
despite the fact we had so many great
scholars they just didn't want to write
about the Book of Allah and that's why
we have so many toys we'd books and
grammar books because they weren't
worried about getting those wrong and
then he said the and the T and then he
said what lose our money and having time
that knowledge really takes a lot of
time so you have to you have to have the
time to learn and when you when you
graduate from the BA this is really the
beginning of the journey and then the
Masters traditionally the Masters was
our highest degree in the West the PhD
was a research degree that came later
but the original masters was the highest
degree because it was a license to teach
which still in our culture it's a
license to teach that what it's saying
is that you've studied enough to be able
to transmit what you studied to other
people so you have to work to become
masters as best to your ability because
when you get that degree you can go to a
college you can go to a high school and
you can get a job as a teacher and so
it's very important that it not be you
know in our tuition we have what's
called shahadat Azure which is false
testimony and she Mohammed Amina Shin
clearly was asked once what what the
best definition for false testimony was
and the word in Arabic for testimony and
for diploma are the same and he said
it's these diplomas that you get when
you graduate from from this institution
he was teaching in Medina so you don't
want your Shahada to be Shahada to Zoar
you want it to be really to be
meaningful so and then how do boubakr
also gave advice he said that that you
he said that you have to have
humility there's a verse in the Quran
that says surah and ayat Allah Dini
attica Beruna but I will remove my signs
from those who have arrogance in the
earth behavior hack without any warrant
for that because only Allah is
mutakabbir only Allah can declare his
greatness and so that's very important
humility that without humility you will
not be able to learn and arrogant people
can have information but they will never
have wisdom it's just they're mutually
exclusive and so that's a very important
then he said also to have humility
before the subject there's you know a
charitable reading of things you should
always read things first charitably
before you read them judgmentally to