Transcription Start
Moderator>
<Greetings in Arabic>
<Basmallah in
Arabic>
<Salaat un Nabi in Arabic>I feel
inordinately honored, to introduce to you tonight, my teacher, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.
I think, for most of you, Shaykh HAMZA
YUSUF needs really no introduction, but for a few of us, who need such an
intro, I’ll go ahead and say a few things about him.
SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF was born in Wala-Wala in
He was raised in the Greek Catholic
tradition…and at the age, in his late teens, he reverted to Islam.
In his pursuit of his passion for,
classical Islamic thought, SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF traveled widely in the heartland
of Islam.
And he studied in
SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF is presently the Imam of
Masjid ul Noor in
And he’s fast becoming one of the most sought
after speakers. not only in the
We’re very happy to have him here and we’re
pleased to pay attention to what he has to say to us tonight, regarding the
subject of education and our children.
Thank you very much, Asalamualaikum.
SHAYKH HAMZA Yusuf>:
Asalamualaikum Warahmatullah.
<Basmallah in
Arabic>
<Salaat un Nabi in Arabic>
I bear witness that there is no God but
Allah, and that Muhammad, Salallawalasalam is his
last and final messenger.
What I’d initially like to start out is
just to say what I would like to do, and also to indicate that really, my talk
is a, a prelude to Muhammad Shareef’s talk, which
will focus essentially on the West African intellectual tradition.
Which is an extremely important
tradition, in terms of education and understanding the relevancy of that
tradition in terms of modern. In the light of modern education and what it
has done to our children.
What I would like to say for people, and I
know the vast majority of people here, follow the Islamic tradition, I would
like to say, I think that the topic that I’m talking about …ah..is…concerns individuals
irrespective of their tradition, and it certainly concerns anyone who has
children, and who has a concern about children.
Which I hope that is the vast majority of people in
this country and around the world.
Ah, the topic itself is titled “Lambs to
the Slaughter”, and the reason that I chose that topic, is because, in many
ways, I feel that children truly are, in a sense, lambs headed for a wretched
massacre of the light that resides in them.
Ah…it is, a…divine light, and I believe
whole heartedly that the child is a, uh, receptacle of this divine light, the
purity and the innocence that resides in children is something ah..to be really, awe inspiring if
one reflects on the nature, or our children and yet we become acutely aware of
transformations that occur.
In other words, what is it that takes a
child from such an early age, of..bright,
full of life in love, and ah,… can end up in such a tragic condition.
And what we’re noticing increasingly, in in modern civilization, is the age of the, what I would
term the race of innocence, is increasingly being lowered.
In other words, year by year, we’re seeing
a type of degradation that’s occurring, concerning our children, and and they’re losing their innocence much earlier, then at
previous historical periods.
And that is certainly true in the Islamic
world, ah, that children traditionally were ah…, protected and guarded. And seen literally as, in what is termed in
the Quran, an Amana, or a trust, that is given to the
uh… Parents, and to the society as a whole.
Ah…, my talk, uh…, the reason that I put
this up, was to create a mood. Because I feel in many ways, unlike an intellect
filled with knowledge and light, this is basically, ah…, what the modern
creation, ah…, this monster, that ah…television and modern education have so
successfully created, is basically a…, something that is filled with pop tunes,
with pop culture, with, ah…, slogans, and ah, … they’re increasingly perfecting
their techniques at how to anchor those slogans in the subconscious of human
beings, and this is what this ad is.
This actually comes out of a magazine, that is
not for popular consumption, uh…you cannot actually buy it from a local store,
ah, you could probably get it at a good library, but it’s actually a magazine
that is done for people working directly in the advertising community. And if you’ll note that basically the pitch is,
if you use country music, which is the fastest growing genre of music in the
US, ah, for your jingles, then this a way of anchoring brand names, anchoring
commercial slogans into the subconscious of the individuals that happen to be
exposed to those jingles.
And It's been
noted that between the ages of 3 and 18, children will witness over 500K
commercials. 500k commercials…this is
basically, really the, the values that are being transmitted to the youth, are
being transmitted through the commercials.
And the commercials actually have been analyzed wonderfully by brilliant
uhmm…ah, analysts, that are very clever in their
dissection of the meanings and encodings and the signifying aspects of all of
this madness. And most of them are
actually quite frightened by it, and that’s why they got into the field that
they did. And, The interesting thing about one of the
books that I read on advertising, is that it actually said, uhmm…that
in the end, the consumer…becomes the consumed.
And this is exactly what this ad
indicates. Because,
what is being sold here, is human beings. What is being sold
here, is the minds of individuals, All over the country. This is the product, this is the commodity
that this magazine is selling. It is
selling a way to invade…the human brain, and anchor a product in the brain so
that that individual, when they’re walking in a store, somehow will purchase
one type of product as opposed to another, in the cornucopia of products that
we have in the
And many other, the fascinating reading, if
someone wants to read this, I would recommend it, because really, you will you
will be taken into the minds of these people, which in many ways, is actually,
for me, the reading, I interpret it to be quite sinister. Because these people are very clearly
attempting to socially engineer the marketability of their products.
This…, schema here is basically, the theme of my talk , uhmm… and it’s taken from a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad which is a tradition…sacred tradition from the Prophet Muhammad, which is not the Quran, but his oral tradition, and it says that every child is born on fitra, fitra in the Arab