Qur'anic Remedies for Not Succumbing to Pride | Prime Minister Imran Khan and Hamza Yusuf

ource of this is actually is arrogance and because it's it's the idea that the
human being somehow uh has only responsibility to himself
that he's not responsible to to anything above himself so he he in essence makes
himself like a god and and and that gets to how do we
um just in terms of as a community how do we
get out of the conditions that that we find ourselves in because i think a lot of muslims
you know have looked at the muslim world for some time and seen the type of rulers that that exist in the muslim
world and i think there's there's so much animosity unfortunately so instead of like praying for people because one
of the things that traditionally like in the imam fahawi's creed he says that we have to pray for our
leaders that there's this idea that as you are so are the people put over
you so that if the people themselves are corrupt they very often get that type of
leadership so how do we get out of that situation i mean i know that the trials
and tribulations that go with leadership like i said i i run a very small
college and and the headaches that i have just from that um the lack of sleep the the
difficulties that come with that and so i i can't imagine the type of burden that somebody like yourself would have
on your shoulders so how what you know what's the light at the end of the tunnel that's not an
oncoming train you know you know when i started politics i only came into politics if i
did not have iman of faith i would never have come into politics because i had everything
i mean i i was already a big name in my country a sports star and i had
you know respect and i had um you know the money i wanted for my life
i had enough money so you know for me to spend 22 years of my life
struggling to you know become a prime minister
you know it made no sense why would someone like me who had everything so the only reason was i believed
that i had a responsibility to my society because i was given more than others
you know the whole test of a human being according to uh i think all religions
is that if god gives it he will test you according to what he's given you in life
the hereafter test the test when we when we meet our uh
when we meet our god he will test us what did we do with all the
benefits and privileges and you know uh
his blessings he gave us so i figured out and i had already had
faith before i came into politics and i came into politics because i had
faith and because i faith i realized that i was so blessed that i had a responsibility to the
society so i wanted to make pakistan an islamic welfare state
based on the concept of the state of madina by a prophet peace be upon him
and i also you know looked at his struggle you know he's
the almighty made him struggle for 13 years so i figured out that you know
uh if if he could make his uh you know the person he loved the
most to struggle then and we were told to follow his way his sunnah
so so i that's how i did it because i did not think
that i was going to make any you know any personal gains or
some benefits of power i came in because i thought we should make pakistan
make the state on the principles of the state of madina and i always believe one thing that you
know despite all the difficulties and adversaries
and disappointments i believe that you know we human beings only have
god has only given us the power to struggle whether we succeed or not is not in our
hands as was shown by you know the life of our prophet because for 13 years
he struggled and they were a very tough struggle and then when he
did the hijra to madina he didn't know that it would be the beginning of his rise and even then in
madina for first five years it was a real struggle so therefore you know for me it was just
a struggle and i uh and i have this ideal that we want to have this country based
on two principles one is it should be a welfare state a humane state
which takes care of its bottom uh uh start of the society and secondly rule
of law the fundamental [Music] uh principle of a civilized society
is where you bring the powerful under the law and which is the biggest problem in the developing countries because we don't
have rule of law powerful have one law and the and the weak are judged by another law
so the jails are all filled by the poor people the rich crooks never get into jails so
so these two concepts are the basis of what my struggle is about for pakistan i
don't think that's just a problem in the developing countries unfortunately uh a lot of people that should be in jail in
in the uh in europe and america are not in jail so i think that that seems to be a a major
problem i you know in just in coming to uh uh winding it down i
you know i think it seems to me that you've taken on an incredible challenge
and uh it's very inspiring and i think a lot of muslims i know a lot of muslims here
are inspired by it the one of the most successful communities in uh in the united states
is the pakistani community in diaspora and in fact the college that i'm running
in right now that i'm in is largely here because of of pakistani immigrants to
america i mean we've we've had the the real backbone of our support has been from south asians from
largely pakistani but also indian and arab and and other groups and it's the
pakistani community here is is a very successful community and there's a very interesting book it
was it was somewhat controversial when it came out but i actually found it very uh
eye-opening and it was a book by these two harvard researchers it was called the triple package i don't know if you
ever saw the book but it looked at the it looked at the most successful
communities in the united states and one of them was the pakistani community that they looked at and they identified three
qualities of their success that's what they called the triple package
and the first one was they had a sense of superiority which which i thought was very
interesting and it wasn't so much in an arrogant type of way but they really saw themselves somehow as exceptional and
they said that that view could be a religious exceptionalism like the jewish community
like a chosenness or it could be ethnic or national
and but the second quality that they identified was a sense of insecurity
that they had something really to prove and that it created a kind of tension
that forced them to really work harder than the other people because they wanted to show that they
were worthy of that exceptional status and then the third quality that they identified was delayed gratification
that they were able to put off and and that gets back to what you were talking about about discipline because certainly
i i know that anybody that becomes a world-class athlete delays gratification they have to
because of of the of the type of discipline and effort it takes and so
those were the three but what struck me about that is i really felt that the quran in some ways
was a triple package book because on the one hand it says things like you know that kuntum
you're the best community that's come forth for humanity and then on the other hand it says
things like you were created from a vile fluid you know that uh the human being is is
is of earth you know the prophet saw isaiah said kulukum all of you are from adam and adam is
from dust he said i was commanded to be humble so that nobody could show arrogance towards
another person and then the third thing was this delayed gratification
which the quran in so many verses tells us to put off
for for what's uh coming you know that that not to to take things now so i feel
those three things the restoration of that um in in your country i think
it seems to me that you yourself display those qualities and and how we
can restore that in the greater community seems to be the challenge that we face you see
i feel that in pakistan this country has tremendous potential
people are immensely talented they're quite diverse we have a very diverse mix of
ethnic groups in pakistan very talented problem is you know we haven't you know
if i look back why we haven't achieved our potential it's one you know one sentence rule of law
we have you know we have had elite capture so a society where a certain elite just
captures the resources and deprives the majority of proper education
healthcare justice and so
you know if i had to put my finger on it it's a lack of rule of law is the reason why we
haven't achieved our potential and i i actually am convinced that no society
no society can ever achieve its potential if there is not rule of law because
merit is also associated with rule of law and if you do not have meritocracy in a
society you have this elite which is which which is spoiled
which is rich which has captured the resources which doesn't struggle and strive they sit on the main positions
they decay so countries uh disintegrate because of a decadent elite
people don't decay it's the elite that decays and what our prophet showed
in in madina was that you know he brought in a very a selfless
an elite which looked upon him as a role model all of them became leaders and they just lifted the
character of the entire nation and and the and the potential unleash the potential because all of us have
tremendous potential but we we have imposed chains on us
which stops us from achieving the potential our great poet iqbal
he was you know our greatest poet of this last century
you know he or he came up with the concept of the shaheen the eagle that eagle
flies soars above the rest because it breaks the shackles which
keeps others grounded and and all these shackles of materialism these false gods
of power and you know all these things that keep us grounded and
basically that's what happened when the when the prophet uh set up the state of madina he unleashed the potential of
these people who were nothing before and all became you know the leaders of the world
so i believe pakistan is in the same situation we have this
people have great potential they go outside pakistan they have a level playing field they excel
but in this country it's a a system does not allow them as i said this elite
capture whether whether education quality education is only for a small
maybe one percent one and a half percent the rest do not have access to it and similarly you know they don't have
opportunities uh don't have level playing field so
what i feel is that by two things by by and this is the struggle going on
right now in pakistan but winning the struggle will unleash the potential of this country and secondly
to lift the people out of poverty so we've in our in in the country's history we've
we've uh started the greatest welfare plans uh programs ever in our history we
we are spending most money on on the bottom people to sort of raise their levels so this is basically my ambition
and i feel that if i can just uh do these two things
lift people out of poverty um create wealth so that you know you can spread it around and
break the monopoly of this elite there's these mafias i feel this country
you know i i i always believed it had great potential it's a great vision and
i really uh pray that uh that you have toffee
in in that in realizing that i i there's a novel that was
um that was written here and i think they made a film out of it called the reluctant fundamentalist about a
pakistani who had a bad experience in america and when and when he he go he ends up going back to pakistan and being
a teacher but one of the things that he said in in in a class to his students that in america they have this thing
called the american dream and then he asked the question of what's the pakistani dream and i think
you've articulated a very powerful pakistani dream that inshallah i really
hope that it's realized in your lifetime that you see the fruit of the labor and it seems to me to be a
struggle against arrogance and haughtiness um because people that see themselves as
above the law are arrogant people um yeah and so i think pride is definitely
uh that negative guru is is what we're up against and what we have to fight in ourselves and then in
in in the soc