to introduce Shia Hamza which I consider
to be a student of his as I was doing my
PhD so please welcome Sheikh Hamza miss
Miller Rehema salat wa salam o Allah
Sayyidina Muhammad banir animal Sam you
sent him to steamer what I heard over up
word I've never had a lien of a mandala
I want to welcome also share have been
muffled who was here at really the
inception also and worked tirelessly
during that time and he is the son of
our chef and teacher abdullah bin bata
who's really been an inspiration for me
and many others and is finally being
recognized for the extraordinary scholar
that he is i want to say a few words
about education and what it means to be
educated my father who had a major
influence on me in terms of my
understanding of education was a student
of a great educator whose name was mark
van Doorn he actually named me after him
and at Columbia University they give
every year the Van Doren excellence in
Teaching Award he was a teacher from the
1920s until the late 50s at Columbia and
he wrote an extraordinary text on
liberal education and what that means
Van Doren was in a tradition in America
which is known as the great books
tradition the idea of studying the
foundational texts of Western
civilization and that that really is the
the the grounding for understanding
where we are how we got here
knowing the roots will help you
understand the fruit whether it's bitter
or sweet healthy or unhealthy you will
know why the fruit you are producing is
as it is if you look at the educational
archaeology if you just look back and
see where you've come from but my father
said to me recently in fact last year he
said my education is finally over
and he's 85 years old now he's somebody
who spent his life reading over and over
and over again the same books that he
studied in the three years that he was
with Van Doren in his class and he
actually took permission to sit in those
classes after Van Dorn studied from the
Bible all the way up to Sigmund Freud
and some of the 20th century writers but
he literally went through the entire
corpus of Western intellectual tradition
and in some ways what Zaytuna is for me
anyway it is about the same thing in
terms of our own Islamic tradition and
we tend to forget in the West that
Islamic tradition is part of Western
tradition it's something that has been
denied for a long time there are some
people like George Makdissi that had the
courage the intellectual academic
courage to admit that but it's evident
in our mathematics although some tried
to say Indian numerals these are Arabic
numerals and they will remain Arabic
it's evident in our names that we give
the stars like Altair from a fire and a
double Ron from a de Baron and it but
Joseph which we call Betelgeuse because
they couldn't pronounce it but Joseph so
it's called Betelgeuse right so the even
when we look up in the in the heavens
we're looking at the influence of the
Islamic civilization on the west when we
look at our numbers when we crunch
numbers we are looking at the influence
of Islamic civilization on the West this
is undeniable and so what we're doing
really here is reestablishing part of
the Western tradition we are
reestablishing it where it belongs right
here because it is part of the story of
the West and to deny that part is to
deny a member of your family that you're
either ashamed of or you don't know
anything about you're ignorant of like
the long-lost uncle that shows up
I didn't know I had you by Jane Ayers
inheritance from her uncle that she
doesn't know that she has so it's
important for us to ask that question
what is education because in the West we
are in a crises and to deny that crises
is TuneIn and I what is so obvious in
front of us because all you have to do
is walk outside and go down the road and
look at these frat houses when the
college is the university is opening up
and you look at the type of behavior
that's going on in adults not children
these are 18 19 20 21 some of them close
to their 30s that are behaving not like
infants I don't know what what
adjectives to use but for me it's very
tragic to see a loss of dignity because
this is central to what education is
about education is about learning to
carry yourself what used to be called in
this culture comportment we don't even
use that word in English anymore but on
my great-grandmother's report card from
1882 in a high school in Wichita in
Wisconsin the very first thing that she
was graded on was comportment
which comes from a Latin word how you
carry yourself we call that in the
Islamic tradition a dub a dub the edebe
is the one who is disciplined in himself
and somebody who speaks with discipline
he knows how to put words in its proper
place a thing for every place and a
place for everything so what is
education in Arabic we say Tavia with a
lean car becomes from the same root word
that Lord comes from rub Allah is the
Mura be the one that nurtures the one
that causes to grow Pat Oklahomans Aqaba
to nurture a student to watch them grow
intellectually spiritually morally
Colleen is from a word which means to
make an impression ulema means to
impress on
something ulema is Mark the Shanaya form
writing was by pushing into the clay and
creating an impression and that is a
mark so he makes his mark on society we
used the same term in English that is
what Tottenham is about it is about
impressions that impact students that
have an effect that taken effect if we
look at what the root word in Latin of
Educare edge educate Educare a which
means to lead out of in other words to
draw out what is already in there the
idea that you cannot really teach
anybody anything you can only make them
remember what they already know and
that's why the quran is called a dhikr
because it is a reminder of what we
already know it has to be Arabic own
ballet Shahid nough am I not your Lord
we all know that we need to be reminded
of that truth education is about
remembering making whole when you look
at the boredom that exists in modern
American education you look at the
boredom of the students you look at the
the faces that they carry to school you
look at them and I've been in classes
I've taught I've lectured all over the
United States and universities all over
the United States you look at their
faces and you look at the board of one
because they're wondering why am i
studying this what is this for what's
the purpose of this the smart ones check
out early on like Bill Gates who never
got a degree from Harvard because he
dropped out that's what happens to the
Spartans meet Steve Jobs dropped out all
of these billionaires they dropped out
because they learned early on I want to
make money and this is not the way to
make money so if you go to college to
earn a livelihood
you're wasting your time you're even now
being encouraged to drop out by some of
the leading buy some of the leading CEOs
in America encouraging students to drop
out Oh open sourcing because most of
what these students are learning in
school
will not apply to anything it's not
going to give them some kind of
vocational training this is the reality
there is a strong argument that college
now is obsolete and this is being put
forward much of what students are
learning why are they studying geometry
geometry makes absolutely no sense
anymore Lord Alfred Whitehead one of the
greatest mathematicians of the 19th and
20th century said that the single most
important form of mathematics in the
modern world is statistics and they
don't even teach that in high school and
yet a junior high school student could
master it it's not a difficult subject
statistics is determining so much of
what is around us they're using
statistics constantly and yet students
are not taught statistics until they
take a course in college they might have
a little bit in college in in high
school but it's it's not much why are
they studying geometry why study algebra
they're what they're sitting there
wondering what does this mean why am I
doing this
why do I care what 2x plus 3x equals I
don't care because there is no
overarching meaning to all of these
things there is no real educational
philosophy behind these things if you
look historically the all of these
things had meaning and I'll just give
you a quick example we call these the
liberal arts all of us I think on this
panel have a BA does anybody have a BS
all right
yeah I won't hold it against you a BA is
a Bachelor of Arts if you ask anybody
that has a Bachelor of Arts what is the
arts that you're a Bachelor in they will
not be able to tell you they won't even
know that arts comes from a word which
means tool tool armor army is is from
the same route arithmetic is the same
route arithmetic is ours metric ax the
tool to measure by so the
liberal arts are liberating tools
they're tools that free your mind from
the the inherit prejudices of the mind
now the liberal arts was distinguished
from the servile arts vocational
training where you go to college to
learn how to do something as a vocation
and these were the servile arts because
they were simply things that you learned
and then you could go out and earn a
livelihood through those things this is
largely what the college and the
university has become in the West it is
no longer a place to pursue truth it's a
place to pursue money and because those
making the most money are those who are
most adept at cheating cheating has
become widespread in our schools and
universities this is a major problem
when I found out from my son that
cheating was widespread in one of the
best high schools in the state of
California I was very distraught by it
because I went to a school where our
teacher purposely walked out of the
classroom during the test in high school
and said you are on your honor boys
there was no monitoring at the high
school I went to as a Catholic high
school no monitor you are on Your Honor
boys when I was mentioning this to a
student at Stanford in medical school he
said oh that's no big deal I cheated my
whole way through high school and I said
to him are you cheating your way through
Medical School now because that's very
disturbing to me because I seriously
when I was in high school I didn't think
of cheating and the people that I was in
school with I'm sure one or two people
might have done that but I was not with
people that did that as a practice
because I was taught by my mother you
don't cheat not because you're going to
go to hell but because honesty is the
best policy it wasn't related to
religion it was simply related to being
a human being a mensch
so the liberal arts were there to train
people to use their intellect so they
could pursue the truth for the rest of
their lives
Mohammed Amin Hassan said our tradition
is a tradition of learning from the
cradle to the grave if you're not
prepared to commit yourself from the
cradle to the grave then don't bother
trying to learn our
tradition so when my father said at the
age of 84 that his education was done he
was talking about a tradition within the
west of the liberal arts murmur Adler
who was one of my teachers and one of
his teachers and a close friend of Van
Doren said that it takes at least 60
years to become educated you don't get
an education from high school you don't
get an education from University you're
not going to get an education from
Zaytuna but if Zaytuna does its job you
will get the tools to become educated
and those tools will last you because
this is what learning is about now just
to give you an example of what our
tradition is about when I was 23 years
old in the Sahara Desert I was with a
teacher of mine who's a Bedouin he grew
up moving they had about three or four
places that they moved to and he had
what's called a Madras a Mouton Aquila a
college a mobile college there were
times when there were over a thousand
students if you went there at 2:00 in
the morning from 2:00 till fudger
all you would hear is the tation the
students around fire that they had made
literally and I'm now I'm not making
this up when I was sitting I was
studying a text in a PDF but there was
somebody ahead of me who was studying a
text in advance al Qaeda and he was
studying the section on Al Joey Herald
font which are the particles that make
up existence because in our tradition he
mama de Baca Lonnie and others which
comes out of the Montes elight initially
but amanda Palani formulated an atomic
theory of the world in fact in in the
history of the atom a book written by a
Cambridge professor of physics in the
history of the atom he argues that the
Islamic atomic theory is a unique theory
in which they cannot find the historical
precedents for it the atomic theory that
came out of Islamic civilization the
Joanna and thought are not atoms that we
know today that can be split they are
the particle
make up existence they are the quanta of
existence when this young Bedouin was
asking him what does that mean what up
the Haj picked up sand and he threw it
up in the air and he said this if we
could see how the vales removed we would
see that everything that we can see
touch and feel is like these particles
of dust in the air this is what our
Islamic teaching was doing to Bedouins
so what was what was it doing to the
scholars of allocate oen the scholars of
al-azhar of the nizamiah if that's what
what it gave the Bedouins a concept of
the atomic world what was it doing in
other places we believe that education
is rooted in the sacred if you cut it
off from the sacred you destroy
education it has no meaning this is what
our students all over this country know
in their heart of hearts they cannot
articulate it but they know it I am
studying something that does not have
meaning because you have not told me why
I am studying this it can't simply to
make me to make money because there are
much more intelligent things to study if
you want to make money than algebra or
geometry so if those liberal arts of
grammar rhetoric and logic would which
were the foundation of the Islamic
tradition we are a language based
tradition signs and the two signs that
we speak humans speak we have two types
of signs we have language signs and
number signs and we call these the
language arts and the arts of
mathematics this was traditionally what
was education in the West and in the
Muslim world
these were the tools of Education in the
Christian West it was to understand
ultimately God's revelation through the
Bible in the Muslim East and
best it was to understand God's
revelation through the poor on that's
what we're committed to we ask Allah
subhana WA Ta'ala to give us no fee in
the end I would just ask you all to read
this book if you want to understand what
has happened in this country why our
students are increasingly incapable of
thinking why they can't reason why we
have some of the worst test scores all
over the world even though I'm totally
against the testing but even by the
metrics of their own system their system
is failing so weapons of mass
instruction a school teachers journey
through the dark world of compulsory
schooling I don't know how many of you
know about the Tuskegee syphilis study
which was where physicians in this
country injected syphilis into African
Americans to see the effects over time
so well-known study but only recently we
found out not only that were they doing
it in Mississippi they were also doing
it in Guatemala in 1947 they were
injecting people down in Central America
with syphilis gonorrhea and other
diseases to see the effects of these
diseases on these people these were
scientists that were produced by the
best colleges in the United States of
America the same colleges that produce
the people that robbed all of you who
own own homes in this country robbed you
of your equity the same people these are
the products of American universities
and until we deal with the fact that
without teaching people meaning without
teaching people purpose you create
monsters you create the disease known as
civilization this is what happens when
you divorce education from the sacred
people talk about sacrificing and they
don't even know the root meaning of that
sacrifice array to make
make sacred when you sacrifice in your
life you are doing it for the sacred we
can't get out of these meanings because
they're embedded in the very language
that we speak and that's what's lacking
and until we reach the true roots of
learning and knowledge and why we're
learning and what is the purpose of
knowledge we will see it get worse and
worse and worse
Muslims have an incredible opportunity
right now because we are a people that
still in spite of ourselves because of
our prophet sallallaahu sin M because
when he said one of the signs at the end
of time is that people will study for
other than the sake of God they will go
to school for other than the sake of God
because every civilization Hindu
Buddhist Confucian esteem
Jewish and Muslim all of them understood
that learning was to make a better human
being learning was not to make more
money it was to make a better human
being not for learnings sake for the
sake of Allah subhanAllah down to Santa
Monica
gazecki moolah head like to conclude the
program with adore from in OMSI and
we're going to be praying mother if so I
wanted to wait until we finish the door
and do the closing for the method of
Prayer we'll have two groups playing
once we finish you could go in the back
there would be a group that will go
downstairs to pray in the back and then
another group will be praying in the
back part of the stage so after the dry
and opposing inshallah we'll pray mother
the prayer in mom's it's been the number
him and hamdulillah
Orellana me all praises due to Almighty
God the Lord of all the worlds also that
was salam and blessings and peace ala
sayidina upon our exemplary leader
muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sent them
Shahla we will pray first of all we pray
Allah whom Elena food to Allah - Allah
Almighty God opened our hearts and the
way that you opened the hearts of those
who experienced your reality in their
life and we pray that the fruits of
education are belong to all of us and as
a result we become enlightened people
and our prophet sallallahu alayhi
wasallam
or before that one of our great Imams
who mentioned this earlier in a couplet
of poetry that's attributed to him a
machete or him who la invention shall
call to allah waliyan su a heavy for
Arshad anniela torque in Marathi for
Bahraini BNL Illman word nor
he led you her dad in ah see that I
complained to my teacher what here that
my memory is dulling a little bit and
all of these great Imams and leaders and
scholars had photographic memories he
instructed me to leave off all sin and
we discussed this earlier how character
morality and the pursuit of knowledge as
Sheikh Hamza just mentioned cannot be
separated from each other
waha Bahraini BNL in manure he told me
that knowledge is a light Noor rule LA
he led a little ah see the light of
Almighty God that he doesn't give to a
sinner
so the moral quest and the intellectual
quest are a are inseparable our prophet
sallallahu alayhi wasallam
- almost identical hadith there's only
one word differing between them in the
man with whom were only men I've been
sent only as a teacher in the lab earth
to you tell me mama Karim Allah Allah
okay there are a few more words
differing I've only been sent to perfect
good character and these are not
contradictory if we say in them as a
limiting particle they're not
contradictory because one is inseparable
from the other so that nor that light
that Imam Shafi mentioned we pray for
that light and the words of our prophet
muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam may
the blessings and peace of Almighty God
be upon him allah imagined he who Lubin
a new aura
Allah Almighty God placed light in our
hearts for fear of sorry nan wah and
placed light in our vision or CS Mayer
in an aura and placed light in our
hearing when a man in an aura and to our
right light
Mishima Alena Nora and to our left light
Robina
Adina Nora and plays light before us
women Halfin and wara and place light
behind us women Falconer
Nora and plays light above us women
patina Nora and plays light beneath us
allahumma Jelena jamia Nora o Allah make
for all of us a light with which we walk
through the enveloping darkness of this
world
well al kharid I wanna in the last of
our prayers and hamdulillah your table
and a mean is our praise is for Almighty
God the Lord of all the worlds was so
long love Allah Sayyidina Muhammad while
at any he was so happy he was sending
testament kathira al fatiha
thank you all for joining us jazakallah
khair we look forward to your continued
engagement with Zaytuna College
it's your college and with your dua
inshallah we will be successful
jazakallah khair assalamu alaikum wa
rahmatullah wa barakato
you