Lambs to the Slaughter with Muhammad Shareef

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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 Europe during the dark ages. 

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 Germany who goes to Rome, and sees what’s happening.  And Nietze says literally uh, you know that he just can’t take it, and he rushes back and the reformation begins, which is Luther who decides that the Catholic church is despicable. that they’ve gone just to far, and we have to make a break. 

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 Germany,  Because this will again return several times in the history of schooling. 

And then you have the council of Trent.  The counter reformation, the Jesuits emerge to kind of deal with this, and a lot of bloodshed, and then you get just religious wars, that are terrible, and lots of people die, and people get a little tired and burnt out of the idea of religion, and you move into the enlightenment period.  And It’s interesting that its called the enlightenment and not like suddenly they woke up one morning and said, it’s the enlightenment, we’re all enlightened now,  This is something you know, was called later by people, who saw it as a freeing of the human mind, from the chains of the, or the yoke of this traditionalism of the Catholic Church.

  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 Germany, and England and all these other places.  There’s really this kind of free for all because the the the Lutherans could not formulate uh canon law in the same way the Christians had, and you have Henry the 8^th, doing basically whatever he wants .  And taking all the monasteries in England, They were Catholic Monestaries, and he begins to loan money like interest, and you begin to see this really transformation in ideals. 

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 19^th 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 United States. 

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 Cape Cod, it was the last village in the 1880’s that literally at gunpoint, their children were taken to the public school by the militia. 

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 Germany for a model, because Germany was really already manifesting Fasicistic tendencies at that time.  The Prussian schools were based on rigid authoritarianism, and punitive measures, that were really in retrospect, barbaric to the children.  And , uhmm, this indoctrination, the Nazi’s in in way are a direct result of child rearing techniques that were being used in the 1880’s, in Germany . 

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 US.  Really public education is for the masses, it is not for the elite.  Because the elite continue to be educated in elite schools.

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 United States and most of the world.  And that is where the child comes into a world in which not only the parents are detrimental to its wholesome growth, but the society itself .  So school becomes as John Taylor Gatto said, a place in which really bad habits are learned.

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 Vietnam, heroin was the drug of choice because, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia were fertile areas for Heroine. 

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, And you find that people, might many people enter into the first, second third, fourth, fifth grade.  It begins to diminish as the grades go up, I mean, this is all over, in all cultures.  Many people in ah, in Muslim countries will never get past 3^rd or 4^th grade, which is probably a good thing for them.  They don’t really realize it, but I think, actually, its probably a blessing in disguise.  Because the higher up you go, the more indoctrinated you get.  You see, And then you get into the arcane secrets of the temple.  When you get to the top.  

Things like there is no God, and uh…this is what you’ll learn in in the university, higher education, that that uhhm religion are basically methodological traditions, allegories, to be studied and looked at, as interesting milestones in the history of human civilization. 

And, now up at the top, I think it’s a whole separate little pyramid unto themselves.  Which is the ruling priesthood, who are called PhD’s, and Masters Degrees people.  And I’m not talking about people with master’s degree from The University of California of like San Jose state or or you know, Irvine or whatever.  I’m talking about Harvard, uhmm, Stanford, where where the ruling elite and their think tanks are supplied by disembodied brains from these institutions.  That will do things like, create the best way to kill Arabs, and leave the oilfields intact.  You see, these types of people that have studied sometimes 20 years, 25 years, in order to develop Bombs, that will kill human beings, but leave the buildings and structures intact so that their their the the Satanic forces of which they are minions to, can move in and do their further exploitation.

So, we have this really interesting situation and really it should be remembered that people like Henry Kissinger, who is a mass murderer, and quite literally, a massed murderer, is given the Nobel Peace Prize, you see,  and has honorary PhD’s from several universities.  So the more evil you are the more honored you are in this tradition.

And really, the more innocent you are, the more impossible it is for you to continue on. 

And I would use Bilal Hide, my friend who is at Berkeley, is a good example of that.  He’s somebody who after several years trying to get his PhD, and realizing that he was losing his soul, chose to keep his soul, and give up the PhD, and that is the unfortunate experience of several people.  And I have personally uhm,, many people that are in PhD programs, that have come to me for counseling because they are so distraught about their human condition.  And I’m not joking.  That’s a very real statement. 

So, this is really what this society produces at its highest levels.  People that are, are literally in a tragic uhm.  Now, what I would like to is quickly, because I realize that I’ve been going on a long time.  And, This should actually be a two part lecture , I might end up doing that, Because there is a lot of areas that I didn’t cover, that I wanted to cover.  But I’ve been going on for quite some time. 

So, what I would like to do  is just mention a few things of which I think are absolutely disastrous, in terms of the children, and what’s happening to our children. 

The first thing, Is the whole grading system, that, you’re in first, second, third, fourth, fifth grade.  The idea that you put children into a class with their peers. Of which they do not experience the richness and the diversity of age.  And this is something I can only attest to.  Because I was in a traditional Islamic School, where the oldest student was well into his 60’s, and the youngest student was 5 years old. 

And that was in one school, and the 60, the one who was in his 60’s, was memorizing the Quran at the time, and had memorized half the Quran after the age of 60, with my teacher, who not only taught him, but also taught the 5 year olds, the 6 year olds that were memorizing the Quran.  And he lived in in the student dormitory, which was basically a, a,  hut made out of burlap sacks, sacks, uhmm… he lived with a few students who were In their teens.

Now this, historically in America, the schools that produced the richest and most intelligent people that this society has produced,  came out of schools, often time,  that had, several different ages, they were one room classrooms where they had, anywhere from 6 to 15 years of age.  And they were learning individually, and this really is an organic ah, way of teaching children, and allows for not only the richness of experience.  But it also breaks down part of the bullying effect that takes place.  Where one grade bullies the grade lower then them. 

It’s like the, in the Patani system, where each tribe complains about the tribe upstream that dumps all their gar…rubbish into the stream, right, so as the stream flows down, the tribe gets the the the waste of the tribe upstream.   And this is what happens in this system. 

That that I think is really sad. And this is a completely arbitrary, it is not from any traditional system of education.  Neither in the Islamic world, nor the European world. This is something that is part of the modern system.

The Next thing that I think is absolutely disgusting, is the neurotic way in which people are qualified through numbers.  You are an A student, which means that you are anywhere from 90 to a 100.  And you are a B student which is 80-100, and this is again  arbitrary, because some schools its 84 to 94 is a B student.

So – in one school you may be a B student, in another school you are a C student.  So much for objective quantification of where you’re at. 

Now what this does, first of all it attaches valence, products, you see the child is reduced to a commodity, of which they are literally given a numerical value.  In the same way that we give numerical value to products in stores.  And so a child who might be working to its full capacity and potential and yet is determined a C, or an average student, one of the things this does not allow for, what the Muslims believe is part of education, which is literally a divine opening, that happens during education.  Because ultimately, Muslims believe, that the true teacher, is God himself, that that is where we learn from, that that is our source of knowledge.  <QURAN> that God taught man.  And so this is really does not allow them.  So you find that children are pigeon holed, and they’ll really see themselves as average students. 

Now its really interesting, as Neil Postman points out, if you go to a Doctor, he will also give you grade.  Like, He’ll say for instance, ‘well, you’re doing ok’. Which that basically, he gave you a C…right?

And then he, said, ‘You’re actually doing pretty well’.  Now he’s given you a B.  Or he’ll say, ‘You are really doing fantastic, in fact, you’re 40 years old, but you’ve got the heart of a 20 year old.’  So he’s given you an A plus.

Now, if he gives you a B or a C, you’re not going to give him his money. You’re going to say, ‘how do I get better’, …right?  ‘How do I improve?’

Well they never tell you that, when they give you these letter grades…right.  Work, try harder, right.  Not working up to his potential.  Things like that.  So the child is literally reduced, I mean, its really horrific what happens to the children in grading.  And grades are literally a 17^th century product of Cambridge, in England.

Prior to that, the greatest intellects of both the western and Islamic tradition, and Chinese tradition were not graded.  Shakespeare did not get grades in school…right.

And like, Einstein, right…someone wrote an article that said, had Shakespeare gone into English departments in this country, he probably would have flunked out, Right. 

In the same way that Einstein flunked out some basic math courses.  So because genius is not desired in this culture, believe you me, they don’t want intelligent people.  They want functionally literate people. they don’t want, if you think to much, you’re  literally, the educational system is designed to put that out.  And This is the saddest thing of all, because a child, literally from its early ages is this bursting, with this…divine impulse, to know one thing, …’why?’

That’s what the child wants to know, that’s what they want to know…“WHY”.  And That’s why, if you have children, you know this is true, they will continuasly ask why, not “How”.  Which is what they teach you in this culture, “HOW”.

But they want to know ‘why’.

“Why is it like that”.  That’s what my son, “Why, But Why?” .  Now where does that come from?  Who gave him that question.  Why doesn’t he ask, “How doesn’t that work”...Right?

He wants to know ‘Why?’

“Why aren’t you coming home tonight.”

“Why can’t I have that toy.” …Right.

But the point is that, why, is literally, that is the great question, that ultimately, if it is nourished and nurtured, the great resounding answer that comes back is, ‘Allah’…  You see.

That is the great resounding answer that comes back.  ‘Why’. That is the ‘Why’ to every question.

Which does not mean we simplistically tell the child, you know, ‘Why is the sky blue’, ‘Because God made it so’.  Which is a perfectly valid answer.

And the child actually will accept that answer, interestingly enough.  And Children are, designed to believe.  They believe.

They’re incredibly gullible.  They’re believers.  By their nature.  You tell them anything, they’ll believe you.  Just try it on a 4 year old, they’ll believe you.  And and, what what’s what’s done to them in our school system, is they lose the desire for knowledge.  They go in bursting with this desire to know, and after 12 years of that  nonsense, they don’t want to see another book.  And if they do, they want to see another book for only one reason, ECONOMIC GAIN.

Lively hood.

They go to school to earn a livelihood.  To be…to become servants, in a culture of slaves and serfs.  So – the the idea of grading, which should really be completely thrown out, and uh, and people say, ‘how do you stimulate the children.’

Well, I lived in a, in a place, in west Africa, and Muhammad Shareef is going to talk about this.  I lived in a place, where children were literally competing with each other in the most beautiful ways, to outdo the next one.  And children, don’t need grades to know where they’re at.  You see.  You don’t need to tell a child that you’re doing well, or you’re not doing well…right? 

A child knows where they’re at.  They do. They know if they’re pathetic, they know if they’re lazy. They know if their working hard, they know if they don’t understand something, they know if they do understand something. 

Now – the next thing, which is the Bill Gates nightmare, and that is this whole , the the, uh, the technolization of our school systems, in other words, a computer in every classroom. Which really, probably that is going to be the last straw.  I mean that’s the the straw that will break the uneducationable Childs back.  And what’s interesting to note, is that what computers are, they’re really, they’re, machines that are brilliantly designed to inculcate the idea of totalitarism.

You see, because if you work on any word processing program, you learn quite quickly the limitations of the program.

In other words, you have to submit to the constraints of the program itself, and the logic of the program.

There’s no creative room for you, its very limited.  And the other thing, computer games, coupled with these Nintendo type games, that they are literally designed to, and people think its good for their reactions.  Actually children, the worst thing they need to do, is become these kind of neurotic, uhm, hyperactive, reactive children. In fact what they need to be taught is deliberation.  That’s actually one of the lessons that children need to learn, how to sit down, and reason something out quietly.  They don’t need this quick you know, and most of its all about killing.

If you look at these toys, its all killing people, that’s what their doing, and the one that kills the most, wins the game. 

I mean who designed these things?

You know, really sick sick people with PhD’s and stuff like this.  From the same people that gave you the Vietnam war.  It’s the same type of of intellect, so really this is what’s happened, you know, and computers, and the other thing about it is, Is that, one of the things that we failed to recognize, is that children, are literally, they already have an agenda, and it’s a divine agenda.

If you look at this, the Brain is seen as, its its called a triune brain.  And this is really interesting, because the ancients worked this out as well.

Augustine saw that human being was divided into thought, feelings and will. And Aristotle saw it as knowledge, feeling, and will, also.  And this this, our brains are literally ah, they have 3 aspects, the action or reptilian system, that is the system that is developed by Nintendo Games.

The reptilian brain, and interestingly enough, its shared by lizards and rats, and snakes and rodents.  So when children start becoming, quote unquote ‘pests’, in society, we should really wonder, if we’ve over developed their reptilian brains, to the neglect of their higher brains.  Right?

Now, the feeling brain, which is the mid brain, is the brain that deals with emotion.  And this is the brain, that is literally nurtured by the alma-mater, the mother.  Right, this is a gift that a mother gives her child in the first seven years.  And if you look here, the R-System is developing between the ages of 1 to 7, the limbic system , through the ages 1-7, and that point, literally it stops. 

So basically, our children, during the first seven years, these are the years that literally, these two brains, are really, all the neurological connections are being created, and the brain is a remarkable thing, in that…Massive damage can occur at this point, through accidents and trauma, and probably through the use of Computers and television, because these are new technologies, and very little is known about them, but we can see a very serious decline in society through statistics and other means.

Since the introduction of Television into the culture, and certainly since the introduction of computers now, and these games.  And its only getting worse.

And so, now this is the tradition, from the Islamic tradition, that says <QURAN> which is, play with your children for seven years.  Now all cognitive theory has basically confirmed the wisdom of that approach.

Children are literally emerged in the subconscious realm during the first 7 years.  They are not in the they’re not in the same world we’re in.  They’re in a beautiful world.  It’s a beautiful world, and that world needs to be nurtured through play.  Play is the work, like Pieage the Swiss psychology said, That play is the work of the infant.  That is their work.  They are meant to be doing all that wonderful work. 

Now, putting a child in front of a TV, destroys that activity.  It puts them into a passive receptive mode.  Which is exactly what this culture wants to be in.

Because they want to fill you head with all those name brands.  And if you’re in passive – receptive mode, they can be anchored very well.  This is why the Ford Foundation in 1957 wrote a policy paper, which was a demand that television be introduced into education in a very big way.  And they attacked any criticism of this idea, despite the fact that television was incredibly novel technology at that time. 

So, what I want to do is quickly, read a few things from this book, which I really recommend everybody read, it’s called ‘Evolutions end’ by Joseph Chilton Pierce, it has something’s that you can take or leave.  But his argument is really extraordinary in it.  He says, “All the infant child, and the adult as well, want to do is what nature intended.” Now they call God – Nature, which is just semantics here.  “Learn, build those structures of knowledge.  And all that is needed for this is an appropriate environment.  Being surrounded by a mature, intelligent, intellect, open to minds, possibilities and tempered by hearts wisdom, recognizing that to the human all may be possible, but always asking, is it appropriate. “

Beautiful.

And this, there’s an Islamic tradition in Bayhaqi, that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that,   (PBUH), that Adam asked God, to give him ‘Isma’, which is infallibility.  And God told, him , that he only gave that to his angels.  In other words, his offspring would have it.

So then, God, promised him that he would give his offspring the ability to do all things, with the exception of putting off death.

And the so the human, potential, is really unlimited.  But the question, is it appropriate.  But, “Is it appropriate”, can only be answered by a human being that has been nurtured and educated in a way in which the moral, ethical, and spiritual being of that person has been enhanced, and not stunted.

<Quran>

“He has had success, the one who has purified his soul, and he is destroyed, the one who has polluted his soul.”

Now,.. I think, people probably need a break at this time. I really, … I just didn’t get to where I wanted to get , uhmm, But I know most of you, so we can talk about it.  Other times.

Uhmm, yeah, I think, we need to take a break.  We’re going to take a break, Why don’t we make it, we’ll start at Quarter after 8, so please be back in the auditorium quarter after 8, for, Muhammad Sharif’s talk.  

The final thing I will say, is simply, to sum all of this up.  I think that it is absolutely imperative for us as individuals to recognize that the state has failed, in providing a narrative, for our children to be taught within the context of.

And because they don’t have a narrative, of which we do, and our narrative, I’m talking about the Muslim narrative, not the only vibrant, it is unchallenged, it is unchallenged, despite the fact that most other narratives have fallen by the wayside, Islam is as vibrant now, in terms of its its universal message, as it was when it was first articulated by our blessed Prophet.  And what I will say, is that interestingly enough arrived yesterday in the mail, which was a letter from the superintendent of Santa Clara school district.

And I was wondering if he was sending me a message, that, not to talk bad about him or something.  What I will say, he says here that the “world our students will grow up in will be entirely different from the world we knew.  Change occurs at such a rapid rate, that we can no longer avoid the impacts it is having on our schools.The amount of info available doubles every 2 years .  How are we going to teach our children to cope with all this information, and acquire the skills required to process it.”

What a ridiculous statement.  I mean, ‘teach to process?’  That’s what they are, data processors..Isn’t that what computers were invented to do, to process data?

Is that really what we want human beings to be doing, processing data? To become consumers of knowledge, as if it was a commodity, and then to go out and market yourself, which is what one of the things they teach you in school , how to market yourself.