Now there are two ways this is done. There is preventative or if the action is
committed, then it will renew its state of purity through an act which is
termed ‘Taubah’ in the Islamic tradition. Which is similar to the
Christian idea of repentance. That one literally turns away from this this
blemish, and renews ones ah, spiritual wholeness. And it’s done in most religious traditions
through ritualized forms. In Islam its its quite simple, asking, saying “Astigfirullah”
<ARABIC> and asking for the covering or the veiling of God over ones
wrong action. It also entails, if there
was harm done, that the harm be, be dealt with.
Now, … ah From from, the ah…, Plato’s tradition,
comes a student of his , who’s name is Aristotle. And Aristotle basically moves away from the
metaphysical speculations of Plato, into a more ah, empiricist traditional or
pragmatic tradition, his his concern was more with
experiential knowledge rather then ah…intuitive knowledge. And this begins a split in western tradition
that will have profound implications and is directly related to modern society,
and modern education. And this is the split between the rational and the
empiricist tradition.
What happens is the advent of Christianity,
in Western civilization, brings a new tradition. And that is that western civilization is
infused with the Semitic ideas of the the
Hebrews. The Jewish
tradition. But it also is
synthesized with the Hellenistic ideas.
So you have on the one hand, the ah, …the the Hellenistic tradition, the pagan tradition. Which is
formidable, and it can’t simply be thrust aside. And you have on the other hand a a movement that actually began as a reformist messianic
movement of the Jewish people, and it suddenly universalized through a
brilliant polemicist, and orator named Paul, or Saul of Tarsis.
And Saul of Tarsis
was from uh, an interesting town, Tarsis, which is in
Asia Minor and this was the center of a Roman tradition which was known as
Mithraism, and it was a basically a Babylonian mistri
cult, that had been Romanized, and they believed, they believed in a God that
was born on Dec 25th, he was the sole invictis or the
unconquerable Sun God, who was also seen to be the Son of God. And actually died for the
sins of human beings through self-immolation. In the form of a Bull. And his Blood and his Flesh were, were taken
in, imbibed and eaten, as a way of redemption.
And this is all historically documented,
the whole tradition of Mithraism. In
fact,
In other words, when they were confronted
with the similarities between Christianity and Mithraism, this is how they
dealt with it, as ‘This is from the Devil trying to shake our faith’, which is
a really interesting
psychological mechanism that believers uh, tend to resort to uh,
when they are confronted with something quite frightening.
And uhmm…in the Quran, there’s many examples of this resorting to a kind of
irrational argument when Ibrahim the great
iconoclast, Abraham, ah challenges his people ‘what are these idols, what are
these images that you are assiduously worshipping?’ and and
and uh, you know, ultimately when he says, ‘they
can’t talk, they can’t do anything’, they they, it
says literally, they returned to themselves <Quranic
Verse> they returned to themselves and they realized he’s got a point. And at that point its
very frightening, because belief has suddenly been undermined. And what their response of these people was,
is really the final refuge of the rogue in the Quran,
which is, ‘this is what we found our fathers doing.‘
Now, human beings are really fascinating in
that aspect. It’s been said that rats, uhmm, will if if you have four
doors and you put cheese on the fourth door, and then you open these doors, and
let the rats go down .
They will go down one, they’ll smell the cheese, go down one, if its say the third door, they’ll keep going, they’ll go down
it a few times, and they’ll go down maybe, number 2 door. When they finally get to the fourth door,
then they eat the cheese, again cheese is put in the fourth door, and this is
reinforced several times.
And so finally, when they, this funny
scientist takes the cheese out and doesn’t put it down the fourth door, puts it
down the second door. The rat will go down the 4th door several
times, but at a certain point he will stop.
He’ll realize that this is futile and he’ll go down that second or first
door and find the cheese. Now, the
interesting thing about human beings, unlike the rats, is that they will tend
to keep going down the fourth door. And
never really go to the other door. And
the reason for that is this extraordinary capacity that we uniquely hold and
that is to believe.
The rat does not believe that there is
cheese at the end of the... He’s just
interested in the cheese, because he is a creature that has a very limited uhh…brain, which is not like the human brain, a triune
brain, but a singular brain that doesn’t
have a little uh..reptilian
brain, or core brain.
Now the Christians, interestingly enough,
begin to Hellenize their tradition and the Gospels originally articulated
according to most of the Scholars, in the Aramaic tradition, are written in a
Cornier Greek, which was the vernacular of the people at that time. And transmitted through the
Greek language. In fact, the the Gospel is a Greek word, “Yaamadell”
which is the good news and which uh, the gospel, which is the good news. Which is termed Ingeel in the Arabic language.
And what happens within the Christian
tradition the the there is an interesting focus on
Platonic thought , unlike the Aristotelian thought, and particularly
neo-Platonic thought and that of a famous philosopher known as Polotinus.
And, you have a brilliant ahh…, articulator in the church known as Augustine. Who is
actually from North-Africa. And Augustine,
also begins to formulate ideas about education, and his basic idea is that
education is to create conversion and constant repentance in the individual. Now, Augustine like many of the priestic fathers of the Christian church, uh,
he really disdained the body. And the
man was really in a very difficult position.
He visited, by his own confession, the prostitutes of his city, as a
young man. And he used to say, “Oh God,
give me faith, but not yet”.
In other words, he wasn’t ready to give up,
uhm, the the quote unquote,
‘the temporal pleasures of this world’. But when he finally did in his conversion in the garden. Uh,
he renounced completely the body. And he
began to write things about the body. Uhmm…as has been
written by Jerome and other church fathers. Really interesting aesthetics go off into the
In other words, they did this thing, and
then they didn’t really fulfill what they were attempting to because of its very unnatural aspects…which is to deny the body
itself. Because we are
dual natured. We have this high
angelic self, but we also have the body that cannot be ignored. And the Islamic tradition is a tradition that
literally synthesizes the two, and recognizes that each has its qualities and
characteristics and has its aspects that are to be enjoyed. And what the Islamic tradition does, is it simply puts uh … boundaries on each of the two.
In fact the idea of monasticism is
something the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
actually rejected. And
said that there is no monasticism in my tradition.
He said, My
tradition is the way of family and marriage, and whoever turns away from my
tradition is not from me. And he said
beware of excess in your religion. So he
neither liked excess in the spiritual pursuits, nor did he like excess In the worldly pursuits, but saw that the human being should
be this balanced, uh, man and woman, walking between these two aspects, taking
from both, but within the generous boundaries of the Quran
itself.
And so, Augustine then basically sets out
an ideal, an educational ideal that becomes in many ways, the ideal of the Chris…of
the European tradition, and that is the ideal of the liberal arts.
And the liberal arts were not really new
they were kind of a reformulation of also the platonic, uh,…
tradition and the Aristotelian tradition, and the liberal arts were that that oo, that at the elementary level there should be certain
tools mastered in order to free one, from the bad habits of thought. And these were called the liberal arts. And liberal comes from the idea of freeing or
freedom.
And Aristotle actually points out that the
liberal arts are in contradistinction to the illiberal arts. And the idea is that the liberal arts are for
the free man, and the illiberal arts are for the slave.
In other words, the slave is to learn
things, in order to provide a purpose and a function to his,
or her master. And not as an end onto
itself, Like
the free man who learns, simply, for the sake of learning, and to free his
mind. So, the interesting thing about
this is that, servile classes in any culture will ultimately be subjected to
illiberal arts, and in many ways, in modern society, the educational system is
a system which is teaching the servile classes, functional works, that they can
perform, for an elite group of people.
You see, this is really what modern education is about. Its not about
freeing peoples minds.
And if you think it’s about freeing peoples
mind. You’ve really been enslaved. You’re that character that I put up there,
the first <laughing> the first picture…really…if ..if
you think, that the goal of education, is to free your mind, then they’ve
really done a number on you. And to
break that is is really difficult.
Now, The liberal
arts themselves are basically that you learn grammar, rhetoric, and logic, Or
dialectic, and and the platonic view. These in a sense were to enable you to speak
to read, and to articulate, and to understand clearly. So they were the language skills that one
needed to understand what he read and to ah, write, what he understood or, his
own production. And to
be able to speak clearly.
Now, Augustine says about his his own self. Which in a sense is a tribute to the education that he had.
He said, and he was a teacher of rhetoric,
he said he never saw anything that I couldn’t read and understand. Nor that I couldn’t ..uh,
write. Nor that I heard and couldn’t
understand. Nor that I understood and
couldn’t articulate it.
In other words he was able to speak and to
read and to write. Ahh, at a very high level. And the proof is obviously in his own, in his own works.
Now, that’s called the Trivium,
and then you have this Quadriviam which is learning
the quantifiable sciences of of mathematics, uhmm, which uh, arithmetic, geometry, music and
astronomy. And the interesting thing ‘Musticate’, in the, in the Greek tradition was actually the
ancient word for education. Ah, which
meant music, and really this has to do not with what we know today as music,
but more rhythmic ah, oral chanting. And
much of the oral tradition was was transmitted like
that. And I want to talk on that in a
few minutes.
Now, What happens
basically in Western civilization is that the the
Catholic church, literally put all their eggs in the Aristotelian basket. But what happens is that Aristotle’s world
view becomes uh, it begins to be assaulted and attacked. And the idea of transinstantiation
which is the idea of the change of the bread and the wine into the blood and
the body of Christ, which was a ah medieval concept
which was connected to the metaphysics of Aristotle.
Ah, its challenged, and and
then you have the ascendancy of uhmm, the the learning that takes place in the scholastic tradition,
after many years of what are termed the dark ages, where really all you learned
were as a priest or a monk, you did not learn as a common person. Common people did not read or write it was
strictly oral tradition in
But the scholastic tradition opens them up
to Philosophy and philosophy is a dangerous door to open, as the Muslims
themselves discover. And, before long
you have, heretics. And these heretics
begin to proliferate all over. And the
Catholic church begins to attempt to control
this. And before long, you have this
move into what’s called the Renaissance.
And this is very simplistic history but,
just, the renaissance is a move from the super lunary
world, which is the world above the heavens, to the sub-lunary
world, which is the world below the heavens and the idea in the medieval
persons mind uh, the world was a very terrible place. The body was bad, sex was bad, enjoyment was
bad, all of these
things were bad. Really
the goal of life was to prepare for this angelic realm, which is never really
described in the Christian tradition, interestingly enough. Christians really do not understand much
about paradise, if you actually ask them for a description of paradise. In the Islamic tradition it is rich in its
descriptions. And we certainly share the
idea of a beatific vision or vision of God.
But other then that, its its very, you’ll get anywhere from …you know people
will think it’s a Golf Course up in the sky, to it’s a place where we all meet
and have turkey dinners or something like that.
I mean, it’s a broad range of this is what
the Quran calls “Imani”, or
wishful thinking. Uhmm,
so so the renaissance is a move. Now there is a monk from
Now, Luther introduces A
very interesting concept, which is state schooling. That people should be schooled by the state,
and educated, and his intention for that was an indoctrination
into the Protestant teaching. And this
is important that it
comes from
And then you have the council of
And
interestingly enough, one of the key elements of the whole thing is Calvin’s uhmm, fatwa, the Muslims would
call it a fatwa, but a religious judgment that allows for usury. And prior to that the Catholic church condemned usury as a crime against nature.
And its interesting, that uhh…Dante
and the Divine comedy, places the usurers with the Homosexuals in the same area
in the, in the ring of hell, because he saw both of them as crimes against
nature. One if God provided women, why
should you go to men, and the other, is that God has made money so bounteous,
why should you exploit people with it.
And and this is similar to the Islamic
understanding about why usury is prohibited because time, and the Catholics
understood this, time is not a commodity that can be bought or
sold. But the enlightenment brings in
the idea that time is money. And this is
a wretched equation, that Muslims should never be heard uttering. Time is not money. In fact the tradition that we have is ‘time
is God’.
So, time is reduced to a commodity, and
this begins the the commodification
of the world. And you have a common’s
movement, in in in , which was the, literally the encapsulating of commons,
where peasants were no longer allowed to
enjoy the common land.
So, landed gentry began to spread, uh
begins to dissolve in
Now, with the enlightenment period, you
have these really important philosophers that begin to bring in these ideas on
education. Certainly, I think probably,
One of the most important is Locke, who begins uh, radical empiricism, in which
nothing can be known other then through sensory perception that metaphysics is
hogwash. That the idea of another world
is all pure speculation, that we shouldn’t even bother ourselves with it.
He’s very clever, uh, very clever.
And interestingly enough a lot of his
observations are in agreement with the traditional theologians of Islam, about
the whole idea of cause and effect…that that’s a whole other thing.
So uh, from from
this you have educationlized ideas being expounded,
that really, religion is a thing for the common people. Its really not a
thing for the elite. And uhmm, this this idea begins to
gain increasing momentum in in western societies, and
really by the 19th century you have a radical departure from the
idea of religious education in you begin really intensely the secularization of
education, uhmm, John Stewart mills, whose
utilitarianism uh, has a serious educational, philosophical implication whereby
people are educated for the good of society. There’s no idea of the other world, there’s no
idea , so this is what’s happening in the west. There’s a deep, uh, rending of their
tradition, from their uh, their uh, emerging world view or perception.
Now what happens basically, and this is
what in the abolutionof man, CS Lewis says, ‘once you
reject tradition, a part of tradition.
You have itsofacto rejected the entire
tradition. Because upon which authority
do you pick and choose.’ You see once
you reject Christianity’s one part, and this is in the Quran,
<Quranic recitation>, “Do you believe in a
portion of the book, and don’t believe in in other
parts of the book?“
How can you do that? Because the
logical uh, this is a just a basic logical reasoning. Once a portion of a thing Is
undermined, the whole thing is undermined.
And this is what happens in Christianity
and in modern society. Is that the
education is is the religious idea of education, is
completely undermined.
Now the people that were unwilling to give up, were the Catholics.
And that’s why, just a little bit of how education came to be what it is
in the
In the 1830’s the Catholics, uh,….because
there were a lot of Catholics coming over to the US, they began to build, quite
brilliant schools and they’ve always been great educators, mainly focusing on
these liberal arts and teaching people how to think and reason and producing
several, very brilliant individuals.
The Protestants and the Unitarians, in the
Eastern Seaboard, began to be really worried about the effects these Catholic
schools were having. And they were not
run by the state, there was no subsidization.
They were literally communities that wanted their children trained in
the Catechism and these reading, writing, arithmetic, what were called the
three R’s. And these types of schools
produced people like ah, Henry David Thoreau, who is famous for his “Walden’s
Pond” and Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and uh, very brilliant writers and
thinkers as well.
So, what happens is, the Massatessets enacts an act, for public, mandatory public
school. Now the interesting thing about
this, this is happening in 1850, is that 80% of the population rebelled against
this idea. And the final, I think Barnes
Noble or there’s a place on
So really, the Americans, because they were
individualistic, did not want the state interfering in how they were to raise
their children. Because they thought…as in roads into elimination of some basic
freedoms, like how you raise your children.
And and that should be a given, that a human
being can raise their children how they see fit. And what happens is, during the 1840’s, also
Communism, and the spread of specter of communism, Karl Marx, there is a
specter haunting Europe, which is communism, and there capitalist interests in
this country were also worried about that, and they saw public school as a way
to raise good Republicans. And so they also wanted state indoctrination. Now the interesting thing, they go to
Ahh…you know, Adolf Hitler and all these people,
imagine how they were raised. We know
that Saddam Hussein uh, who’s uncle Hassan al-Qattab, Hassan the liar, apparently used to beat him every day with
a metal pipe.
Now, that in no way, absolves him of his
crimes against humanity, but it certainly is an interesting thing to note, in
terms of, the type of child rearing produces, the type of individual he is, if
we can call him an individual, because individuality implies
consciousness.
Now, the uh, … the
the idea of public education then, spreads thought
the
The interesting thing, Elite, the word
itself, comes out of a word, that we get, also, literacy derives from it.
And so the idea is, really, in the end of the
day. Literate people are still the
Elite. So schooling, public schooling
was not designed to create truly literate people. It is an illiberal education designed to
create functionally literate people, because service to society. This is particularly important with the onset
of Industrialization. Because once
industrialization begins, you need people that are slaborers, that can learn,
not as an apprentice who learns over several years a trade. But learn how to work machines, and learn how
to function in the factory.
And, so, this begins the dissent really,
serious descent really, a serious descent of modern education, into the arena
of creating these functionally literate people in the State of NY, Garbage
Collectors need 12 years of education, in order to get the job, which enables
them to pick up and take garbage from homes.
Now this is in no way belittling garbage
collectors, if there are any garbage collectors here, because Islam actually
honors labor.
And The Prophet Muhammad said (PBUH), the
best food that a man can eat, is from the labor of his own hands. And the Prophet David used to eat from the
labor of his own hands. So labor is
honored in Islam, what is called “Halal Work”, or
work that is in the realms of permissibility, Now, to
look at this this thing here. You basically have in the Islamic tradition, a child is born in the fitra
state. This is what these arrows
indicate there is a natural growth which is healthy, which will grow into a
child, aware of its origin, which is back to the divine creator, and its
purpose in life, which is an ethical, both ethical , ethical moral dimensions
as well as spiritual dimensions. The
moral ethical dimensions are known as Islam, and the spiritual dimensions are
known as iman and ihsan.
Now, what happens here basically,
is in the ideal situation, you have the family that is nurturing the child in
its own fitra state.
And the society as well. And this is the ideal situation, and this
will create a healthy individual who is according to the Prophet Muhammad,
PBUH, is somebody who is safe to the society, in terms of his hand, and his
tongue. In other words, a Muslim is one
who is neither a threat with his hand or his tongue. That is the Muslim.
Now the Mumin,
the believer, is the one who people are safe from him, you see. So basically the idea is to create a ethical, moral spiritual being, that is multi dimensional
and really has a direction that is positive and healthy.
Now the next state is,
which is what I think people in this room might find themselves in, to a
certain extent. Is when, their child is
in a fitra state, their trying to nurture that fitra state, but the society is against that state.
So, the Society is literally
counterproductive to the work you’re trying to do. And this creates confusion, in a child’s
mind, because on one hand in the house…and this is one of the greatest
tragedy’s of modern education, not just for Muslims, but for Christian parents,
for uhm, Jewish parents, for anybody of any
tradition, in which they would like to see their child, basically in a you
know, a believing individual, that this is, is very difficult situation,
because, uhh,
the child is in a type of schizophrenic environment, in which the house has one
way of doing something, and outside the house, has another.
Then the next stage, is where the parents,
might be in a society that is in this healthy state, but the parents are
against this this state. And this is another form of confusion, which
is more severe then the first the second form there.
Now the final one, is really now, where we
are today, in the
And, its
interesting that the ancient Greeks considered ethics really good habits morals
and ethics were good habits.
So this is basically where many people find
themselves in. Now…, the results of this …I think, …is is, I think, is great deal this. And that is, which is that the fastest
growing segment of the criminal population, is are
children, juveniles. Growing at an incredible rate. We’re taking about very serious crimes. Not like the 1940’s where we were talking
about stealing some gum from the store.
Now, we’re talking about armed robbery, murder, many children at early
ages are exposed to, especially in the inner cities, where its very..uh,, horrific.
And the worst part about it is, is, again,
this display of the society, we have a society where by the ruling elite is
involved, quite literally involved, in the importation of drugs, into our
communities. And this is not conspirital theory, this is 60 minutes. This is stuff you can watch on
television. That we have people at the
highest levels in in Governmental institutions, have
been involved in bringing in during the
During the 1980’s when the wars were
basically in central America, and south America, Cocaine becomes the drug of
choice because that’s were a lot of the covert operations were taking
place. And these covert operations were
funded by serious drug money that is derived out of the local communities.
Now what I find it very interesting that
what our culture has done is, culture is done, is basically, Karl Marx declared
religion to be the opiate of the masses, so the culture got rid of this opiate, and
replaced it with real opium.
You see. Which is…which
is, really, very interesting.
Because religion has limited
commercial…ha-ha…only the church can make money from religion, right? But
anybody can make money out of drugs. If they’re foul and vile enough.
Now, just to get into… just to get into a little bit of the Pharonic educational system, which is the idea, of what’s called higher education. Right,