“Be More & Achieve More!”

Hi,

I’d like to share with you a couple of writings/speeches made by the Conservative Peer Lord Sheikh:

Prevent Strategy

30th November 2011, House of Lords

My Lords, this coalition Government spent over a year reviewing the Prevent strategy and produced a clear, focused strategy on tackling extremism, as well as focusing resources on key institutions like universities, prisons, schools and colleges. This strategy looks at countering the ideology rather than just the violent action of extremists. This is the fundamental difference between the previous Government and this one.

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Hi,

I know its been a while since I posted an article here on the Ark2Ark Blog site, and not nearly as regularly as pre-2011, but hey, ‘better there’s some than none’, just as we like to say ‘better late than never,’ unless you’ve been invited to the Queen’s birthday party!

As in one of my current roles I serve as the Secretary of the Inter Faith Relations Committee (IFRC) for the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), I thought it worthwhile to share with you some insights into it, particularly in terms of definition and understanding. Most of the following has been drafted by Imam Abdul Jalil Sajid, Vice Chair of IFRC, with some editions by Dr Ramzy, the Treasurer of IFRC.

To begin, the present definition of Inter Faith dialogue according to Wikipedia is:

“The terms interfaith or interfaith dialogue refer to cooperative and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions (i.e., “faiths”) and spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional level with the aim of deriving a common ground in belief through a concentration on similarities between faiths, understanding of values, and commitment to the world. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.”

There are those on the peripheries of every faith who lay claim to the instigation of the interfaith movement, as well as those on the other end of the spectrum who argue that interfaith activities are inadvisable as they promote the dilution of cardinal principles in an attempt to reach amicable compromises. Each group often cites verses from their scripture in an attempt to support their relative stances. Between these two positions, however lies the fertile ground for the evolving nature of the interfaith movement, which works to promote a better understanding and mutual respect between those of different faiths, encouraging a desire to work alongside each other for the common good.

Interfaith is a relatively new movement. There is no single agreed definition or direction of this movement. It is still in its evolutionary stages. To some it means exchange of ideas, to others it means working together on some of the common issues. Still, others define it as an attempt in cultural exchange. How should we Muslim define it and why should we get involved in it? These are some of the pertinent questions that many Muslims are faced with in their daily dealings with those of other faiths, given that Muslims hold their religion to be the Divine Truth.

Interfaith activities are founded on a fundamental human reality that humans have often ignored. “Don’t judge others based on assumptions - learn about others directly from the original sources”. It may sound simple, but assumptions have been the major source of misinformation about others throughout the human history and caused discord and dissent.

Interfaith activities enable people of all faiths to know about each other directly from the practitioners and experts of each faith. It provides them the basic uncontaminated information about the other. It helps them to overcome some of the assumptions they have held without verification. Moreover, it opens up the channels of communications among practitioners of different faith on issues of common concerns.

Faith is a matter of personal choice. It can neither be imposed nor dictated upon others. It has to be acquired through one’s own efforts. Thus, interfaith is not and cannot be an attempt to force others to accept the truth as perceived by each faith traditions. It is also not an exercise in proving one’s superiority over the other.

Islam, via the Holy Qur’an and Prophetic tradition, as well as throughout its growth and historical development, has offered ample evidence to support the practice of acquiring knowledge concerning all aspects of life, including the faiths and traditions of others. Islam acknowledges the diversity of faiths and practices the world over, and demands from its followers a belief in the principle that throughout history, mankind has received guidance from the Creator. The Qur’an states that God sent a prophet with His guidance to every nation, speaking to the people in their language (Qur’an 14:4). Islam holds that the last of these revelations from Almighty God was through His last prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The purpose of this final revelation was to verify and clarify all that had come before it, and reinforce the commandment of belief in One God, reaffirming the original message of all previous prophets and scriptures.

There is another dimension of the interfaith related activities. People belonging to different faith traditions share the same planet and same resources. Due to the mismanagement of these resources and defective distributional systems, people often find themselves deprived of God’s resources. God does not discriminate among people when it comes to his justice and his bounties. He does not close the doors of his bounties on anyone. Hence, inter- faith activities give people an opportunity to ensure that God’s bounties are restored to people regardless of what they believe in.

There is one other aspect of interfaith is to ensure that opinions and perspectives do not lead people to condemn each other or to resort to violence to settle them. It enables them to understand other’s perspective so that people can live with diversity of opinion without passing judgment on each other’s level of understanding. Islam promotes the idea that no one carries the burden of others and each is responsible for one’s action. Hence, interfaith offers Muslims to practice this maxim in their relations with others.

In the United Kingdom, as in the US, people from different faith and ethnic backgrounds have found a unique opportunity to understand each other and learn from each other. There is no forum other than interfaith related activities that opens the door for this learning. Thus, interfaith activities are useful for those who understand their faith properly and are confident about its authenticity. Those who have superficial knowledge of their faith can certainly not contribute to the interfaith related activities. They may add to the confusion that already exists among faith circles.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) Committee for Interfaith Relations is an effort to prepare Muslims to participate fully in the emerging interfaith movement. It invites Muslims to join its ranks so that they may become part of this effort for peace, harmony, and mutual understanding at their levels of interfaith activities. The previous IFRC’s have in the past agreed to the following:

1.Interfaith is rooted in Islamic traditions.

2. Interfaith work does not mean giving legitimacy to all ideas. Rather, it means the acknowledgement of the existence of all.

3. Interfaith from an Islamic traditions means that everyone deserves the respect and the right to express one’s viewpoint without any fear.

4. Interfaith does not mean that Muslims are negating the foundation of their faith.

5. A distinction must be maintained between interfaith work and interfaith dialogue.

6. Interfaith dialogue is more an intellectual exercise to understand the divergence that exists among people of faiths, while interfaith work means devoting the resources for the betterment of the condition of people of all faiths.

7. Those involved in interfaith must have knowledge of their own faith traditions.

8. The interfaith practitioners must follow the Quranic methodology to practice it.

9. Interfaith dialogue or work does not mean that people should have a unified approach.

Imam Sajid also asserts “There is no alternative to Inter Faith Dialogue”:

In my humble opinion, Faith brings joy and hope to millions of people in the world. Religion is a social force that can be harnessed to build bridges or manipulated to erect walls. Living and working together in today’s multicultural, multi-religious and multi-faith society is not always easy. Faith communities have huge human and financial recourses. Faith motivates its followers for doing good deeds such as raising funds for good causes, helping elderly and needy people in our communities and motivating their followers to tackle many social issues in our society. Religion harnesses deep emotions, which can sometimes take destructive forms. Where this happens, we must draw on our faith to bring about reconciliation and understanding. The truest fruits of our faith are healing the wounds of the past and being positive to construct trust and fellowship between different people. We have a great deal to learn from one another, which enriches us without undermining our own identities. Together, listening and responding with openness and respect, we can move forward to work in ways that acknowledge genuine differences but build on shared hopes and values.

In my faith tradition the Holy Qur’an commands believers for interfaith co-operation “to come to common grounds” (3:64). As a Muslim I have been ordered to build good relations with all people of the world (49:13 & (16:40); work for peace everywhere and whenever possible with others (2:208) & 8:61); cooperate with others in furthering virtue and God–consciousness (5:2); seek and secure human welfare, promote justice and peace (4:114); do good to others (28:77) and not to break promises made to others (16:91). The Holy Qur’an tells believers that those who do good deeds and help others are the best creation (98:6). The Holy Prophet of Islam made it clear that “Religion is man’s treatment of other fellow-beings” (Bukhari & Muslim); and “the best among you is he who does good deeds in serving other people” (Ahmad & Tabrani).

The noble Prophet of Islam (May the peace and Blessings of God Almighty be upon him) practiced this ideal for interfaith dialogue himself while talking to Jews, Christians and other faith traditions, as well as people with no faith on issues concerning life, death and relevant matters. The Prophet of Islam confirmed this in writing explicitly in the Charter of Medina in 622 CE. The Holy Qur’an not only recognized religious pluralism as accepting other groups as legitimate socio-religious communities but also accepting their spirituality. The preservation of the sanctity of the places of worship of other faiths is paramount in Islamic tradition (22:40).

The Holy Qur’an says: “And abuse not those whom they call upon besides Allah, lest exceeding the limits, they abuse Allah through ignorance. Thus to every people have We made their deeds fair-seeming; then to their Lord is their return so he will inform them of what they did” (6:109). It also instructs: “Allah loves the doer of good (to others)” (3: 133)

In 628 C.E. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) granted a Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mount Sinai. It consisted of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war. I do not have ready references of these letters but in Dr Muhammed Hadidullah’s excellent book “Wasaiq of Muhammad” these are mentioned in Arabic. An English translation of that document is presented here:

Letter to the Monks of St. Catherine Monastery

“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.

Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them. No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate. No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”

As ever, for Success and Contentment,

Asad Khan

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Dear Reader,

Much has been said with respect to Islam by those who are ardently opposed to it, without any real analysis or deep thought may I add. Yet there are others who are able to see its principles and teachings and weigh them against the (r)evolutionary course of human nature, as well as the continuous challenges of the context that we live in and the environment that surrounds us all. From this worldview, it becomes crystal clear that Islam as a “Way of Life” is suited to the inherent nature and yearning of man: to adopt higher principles of living and relating, to gain nearness to purity and piety in both thought and conduct, and to honour timeless values of justice, peace, fairness and neighbourliness. With the fullnes of time, these aspects will become further clear in the West, where champions of this call and its better practice will emerge more-so. Prince Charles is one such sensible champion, but there are many others..

Here is the trasncipt of this delivery by Prince Charles,

A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales titled Islam and the Environment, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
9th June 2010

Vice Chancellor,
Your Royal Highnesses,
Director,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a very great pleasure for me to be here today to help you celebrate the Oxford Centre’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Whereas bits of your Patron are dropping off after the past quarter of a century, I find quite a few bits of the Centre still being added! However, I cannot tell you how encouraged I am that in addition to the Prince of Wales Fellowship, the number of fellowships you now offer continues to grow and also that this Summer you will welcome the fifth group of young people on your Young Muslim Leadership programme which is run in association with my charities. This is a vital contribution to the process of boosting the self-esteem of young Muslims – about whom I care deeply.

It has been a great concern of mine to affirm and encourage those groups and faith communities that are in the minority in this country. Indeed, over the last twenty-five years, I have tried to find as many ways as possible to help integrate them into British society and to build good relationships between our faith communities. I happen to believe this is best achieved by emphasizing unity through diversity. Only in this way can we ensure fairness and build mutual respect in our country. And if we get it right here then perhaps we might be able to offer an example in the wider world.

I am slightly alarmed that it is now seventeen years since I came here to the Sheldonian to deliver a lecture for the Centre that tried to do just this. I called it “Islam and the West” and, from what I can tell, it clearly struck a chord, and not just here in the U.K. I am still reminded of what I said, particularly when I travel in the Islamic world – in fact, because it was printed, believe it or not, it is the only speech I have ever made which continues to produce a small return!

I wanted to give that lecture to address the dangers of the ignorance and misunderstanding that I felt were growing between the Islamic world and the West in the aftermath of the Cold War. Since then, the situation has both improved and worsened, depending on where you look. Certainly the sorts of advances made by the Oxford Centre have helped to build confidence and understanding, but we all know only too well how some of the things I warned of in that lecture have since come to pass, both here and elsewhere in the world. So it is tremendously important that we continue to work to heal the differences and overcome the misconceptions that still exist. I remain confident that this is possible because there are many values we all share that have the powerful capacity to bind us, rather than what happens when those values are forgotten – or purposefully ignored.

Healing division is also my theme today, but this time it is not the divisions between cultures I want to explore. It is the division that poses a much more fundamental threat to the health and well-being of us all. It is the widening division we are seeing in so many ways between humanity and Nature.

Many of Nature’s vital, life-support systems are now struggling to cope under the strain of global industrialization. How they will manage if millions more people are to achieve Western levels of consumption is highly disturbing to contemplate. The problems are only going to get much worse. And they are very real. Whatever you might have read in the newspapers, particularly about climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen conference last year, we face many related and very serious problems that are a matter of accurate, scientific record.

The actual facts are that over the last half century, for instance, we have destroyed at least thirty per cent of the world’s tropical rainforests and if we continue to chop them down at the present rate, by 2050 we will end up with a very disturbing situation. In fact, in the three years since I started my Rainforest Project to try and help find an innovative solution to tropical deforestation, over 30 million hectares have been lost, and with them this planet has lost about 80,000 species. When you consider that a given area of equatorial trees evaporates eight times as much rainwater as an equivalent patch of ocean, you quickly start to see how their disappearance will affect the productivity of the Earth. They produce billions of tonnes of water every day and without that rainfall the world’s food security will become very unstable.

But there are other facts too. In the last fifty years our industrialized approach to farming has degraded a third of the Earth’s top soil. That is a fact. We have also fished the oceans so extensively that if we continue at the same rate for much longer we are likely to see the collapse of global fisheries in forty years from now. Another fact. Then there are the colossal amounts of waste that pollute the Earth – the many dead zones where nothing can live in many major river estuaries and various parts of the oceans, or those immense rafts of plastic that now float about in the Pacific. Would you believe that one of them, off the coast of California, is made up of 100 million tonnes of plastic and it has doubled in size in just the last decade. It is now at least six times the size of the United Kingdom. And we call ourselves civilized!

These are all very real problems and they are facts – all of them, the obvious results of the comprehensive industrialization of life. But what is less obvious is the attitude and general outlook which perpetuate this dangerously destructive approach. It is an approach that acts contrary to the teachings of each and every one of the world’s sacred traditions, including Islam.

What surprises me, I have to say, is that, quite apart from whether or not we value the sacred traditions as much as we should, the blunt economic facts make the predominant approach increasingly irrational. I imagine that few of you are familiar with the interim report of the United Nations study called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Study which came out in 2008. It painted a salutary picture of what we lose in straightforward financial terms by our destruction of natural systems and the absence of their services to the world. In the first place they calculated that we destroy around 50 billion dollars worth of a system that produces these services every year. By mapping the loss of those services over a forty year period, their estimate is that, in financial terms, the global economy incurs an annual loss of between 2 and 4.5 trillion dollars – every single year.

To put that figure into some sort of perspective, the recent crash in the world’s banking system caused a one-off loss of just 2 trillion dollars. I wonder why the bigger annual loss does not attract the same kind of Media frenzy as the banking crisis did?

This should demonstrate the flaw in the sum that does not need an Oxbridge mathematician to understand – that Nature’s finite resources, divided by our ever-more rapacious desire for continuous economic growth, does not work out. We are clearly living beyond our means, already consuming the Earth’s capital resources faster than she can replenish them.

Over the years, I have pointed out again and again that our environmental problems cannot be solved simply by applying yet more and more of our brilliant green technology – important though it is. It is no good just fixing the pump and not the well.

When I say this, everybody nods sagely, but I get the impression that many are often unwilling to embrace what I am really referring to, perhaps because the missing element sits outside the parameters of the prevailing secular view. It is this “missing element” that I would like to examine today.

In short, when we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.

So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen.

In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so.

I must say, I find this rather baffling. If this is so, why is it that their sense of the sacred has so little bearing on the way science is employed to exploit the natural world in so many damaging ways?

I suppose it must be to do with who pays the fiddler. Over the last two centuries, science has become ever more firmly yoked to the ambitions of commerce. Because there are such big economic benefits from such a union, society has been persuaded that there is nothing wrong here. And so, a great deal of empirical research is now driven by the imperative that its findings must be employed to maximum, financial effect, whatever the impact this may have on the Earth’s long-term capacity to endure.

This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo’s assertion that there is nothing in Nature but quantity and motion. This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works and how we fit within the scheme of things. As a result, Nature has been completely objectified – “She” has become an “it” – and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.

Understanding the world from a mechanical point of view and then employing that knowledge has, of course, always been part of the development of human civilization, but as our technology has become ever more sophisticated and our industrialized methods so much more powerful, so the level of destruction is now potentially all the more widespread and un-containable, especially if you add into this mix the emphasis we have on consumerism.

It was that great scientist, Goethe, who saw life as the masculine principle striving endlessly to reach the “eternal feminine” – what the Greeks called “Sophia,” or wisdom. It is a striving, he said, fired by the force of love. I am not sure that this is quite the way things happen today. Our striving in the industrialized world is certainly not fired by a love of wisdom. It is far more focussed on the desire for the greatest possible financial profit.

This ignores the spiritual teachings of traditions like Islam, which recognize that it is not our animal needs that are absolute; it is our spiritual essence, an essence made for the infinite. But with consumerism now such a key element in our economic model, our natural, spiritual desire for the infinite is constantly being reflected towards the finite. Our spiritual perspective has been flattened and made earthbound and we are persuaded to channel all of our natural, never-ending desire for what Islamic poets called “the Beloved” towards nothing but more and more material commodities. Unfortunately we forget that our spiritual desire can never be completely satisfied. It is rightly a never-ending desire. But when that desire is focussed only on the earthly, it becomes potentially disastrous. The hunger for yet more and more things creates an alarming vacuum and, as we are now realizing, this does great harm to the Earth and creates a never ending unhappiness for many, many people.

I hope you can just begin to see my point. The utter dominance of the mechanistic approach of science over everything else, including religion, has “de-souled” the dominant world view, and that includes our perception of Nature. As soul is elbowed out of the picture, our deeper link with the natural world is severed. Our sense of the spiritual relationship between humanity, the Earth and her great diversity of life has become dim. The entire emphasis is all on the mechanical process of increasing growth in the economy, of making every process more “efficient” and achieving as much convenience as possible. None of which could be said to be an ambition of God. And so, unfashionable though it is to suggest it, I am keen to stress here the need to heal this divide within ourselves. How else can we heal the divide between East and West unless we reconcile the East and West within ourselves? Everything in Nature is a paradox and seems to carry within itself the paradox of opposites. Curiously, this maintains the essential balance. Only human beings seem to introduce imbalance. The task is surely to reconnect ourselves with the wisdom found in Nature which is stressed by each of the sacred traditions in their own way.

My understanding of Islam is that it warns that to deny the reality of our inner being leads to an inner darkness which can quickly extend outwards into the world of Nature. If we ignore the calling of the soul, then we destroy Nature. To understand this we have to remember that we are Nature, not inanimate objects like stones; we reflect the universal patterns of Nature. And in this way, we are not a part that can somehow disengage itself and take a purely objective view.

From what I know of the Qu’ran, again and again it describes the natural world as the handiwork of a unitary benevolent power. It very explicitly describes Nature as possessing an “intelligibility” and that there is no separation between Man and Nature, precisely because there is no separation between the natural world and God. It offers a completely integrated view of the Universe where religion and science, mind and matter are all part of one living, conscious whole. We are, therefore, finite beings contained by an infinitude, and each of us is a microcosm of the whole. This suggests to me that Nature is a knowing partner, never a mindless slave to humanity, and we are Her tenants; God’s guests for all too short a time.

If I may quote the Qu’ran, “Have you considered: if your water were to disappear into the Earth, who then could bring you gushing water?” This is the Divine hospitality that offers us our provisions and our dwelling places, our clothing, tools and transport. The Earth is robust and prolific, but also delicate, subtle, complex and diverse and so our mark must always be gentle – or the water will disappear, as it is doing in places like the Punjab in India. Industrialized farming methods there rely upon the use of high-yielding seeds and chemical fertilizers, both of which need a lot more energy and a lot more water as well. As a consequence the water table has dropped dramatically – I have been there, I have seen it – so far, by three feet a year. Punjabi farmers are now having to dig expensive bore holes over 200 feet deep to get at what remains of the water and, as a result, their debts become ever deeper and the salt rises to the surface contaminating the soil.

This is not a sustainable way of growing food and maintaining the well-being of communities. It does not respect Divine hospitality. The costs it incurs will have to be borne by those who will inherit what is fast becoming the ruined and frayed fabric of life. So for their sake, we have to acknowledge that the immediate, short-term financial benefits of our predominant, mechanistic approach are too expensive to continue to dominate our way of life.

This happens when traditional principles and practices are abandoned – and with them, all sense of reverence for the Earth which is an inseparable element in an integrated and spiritually grounded tradition like Islam – just as it was once firmly embedded in the philosophical heritage of Western thought. The Stoics of Ancient Greece, for instance, held that “right knowledge,” as they called it, is gained by living in agreement with Nature, where there is a correspondence or a sympathy between the truth of things, thought and action. They saw it as our duty to achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the Cosmos.

This incidentally is also the teaching of Judaism. The Book of Genesis says that God placed Mankind in the garden “to tend it and take care of it,” to serve and conserve it for the sake of future generations. “Adamah” in Hebrew means “the one hewn from the Earth,” so Adam is a child of the Earth. In my own tradition of Christianity, the immanence of God is made explicit by the incarnation of Christ. But let us also not forget that throughout the Christian New Testament, Christ often refers to Himself as “the Son of Man” which, in Hebrew, is “Ben Adam.” He, too, is a “son of the Earth,” surely making the same explicit connection between human nature and the whole of Nature.

Even the apocryphal Gnostic texts are imbued with the same principle. The fragments of one of the oldest, ascribed to Mary Magdalene, instructs us that “Attachment to matter gives rise to passion against Nature. Thus, trouble arises in the whole body; this is why I tell you; be in harmony.” In all cases the message is clear. Our specific purpose is to “earth” Heaven. So, to separate ourselves within an inner darkness, leads to what the Irish poet, WB Yeats, warned of at the start of the Twentieth Century. “The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” he wrote, “things fall apart and the centre cannot hold.”

The traditional way of life within Islam is very clear about the “centre” that holds the relationship together. From what I know of its core teachings and commentaries, the important principle we must keep in mind is that there are limits to the abundance of Nature. These are not arbitrary limits, they are the limits imposed by God and, as such, if my understanding of the Qu’ran is correct, Muslims are commanded not to transgress them.

Such instruction is hard to square if all you do is found your understanding of the world on empirical terms alone. Four hundred years of relying on trying and testing the facts scientifically has established the view that spirituality and religious faith are outdated expressions of superstitious belief. After all, empiricism has proved how the world fits together and it is nothing to do with a “Supreme Being.” There is no empirical evidence for the existence of God so, therefore, Q.E.D, God does not exist. It is a very reasonable, rational argument, and I presume it can be applied to “thought” too. After all, no brain scanner has ever managed to photograph a thought, nor a piece of love, and it never will. So, Q.E.D., that must mean “thought” and “love” do not exist either!

Clearly there is a point beyond which empiricism cannot make complete sense of the world. It works by establishing facts through testing them by the scientific process. It is one kind of language and a very fine one, but it is a language not able to fathom experiences like faith or the meaning of things – it is not able to articulate matters of the soul. This is why it consistently elbows soul out of the picture.

But we do have other kinds of “language,” as Islam well knows, and they are much better at dealing with the realm of the soul and matters of meaning. Each is a different aspect of our language, in fact. Each deals with different aspects of the truth and if you put empiricism, philosophy and the spiritual perception of life together, just as the Islamic tradition at its best and richest has always done, then they tend to complement each other rather well.

Take the difference this made in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, as an example, during the so-called “Golden Age of Islam.” It was a period which gave rise to a spectacular flowering of scientific advancement, but all of it was underpinned by an age-old philosophical understanding of reality and grounded in a profound spirituality, which included a deep reverence for the Natural world. Theirs was an integrated vision of the world, reflecting the timeless truth that all life is rooted in the unity of the Creator. This is the testimony of faith, is it not, embodied in the contemplative implication of the formless essence of the Qur’an’s haqîqa? It is the notion of Tawhîd, the oneness of all things within the embrace of the Divine unity.

Islamic writers express it so well. Ibn Khaldûn, for instance, who taught that “all creatures are subject to a regular and orderly system. Causes are linked to effects where each is connected with the other.” Or the great Shabistâri in Fourteenth Century Persia, who talked of the world being “a mirror from head to foot, in every atom a hundred blazing suns where a world dwells in the heart of a millet seed.” Words that resonate, don’t you think, with William Blake’s famous lines, “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower.”

Other Western poets have captured this truth too. William Wordsworth, perhaps one of the greatest of all our Nature poets, describes “a sense sublime of something far more inter-fused… a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of thought and rolls through all things.” I quote the poets because they help us identify this “sense sublime” and inspire reverence for the created world.

Reverence is not science-based knowledge. It is an experience always mediated by love, sometimes induced by it; and love comes from relationship. If you take away reverence and reduce our spiritual relationship with life, then you open yourself up to the idea that we can be little more than a chance group of isolated, self-obsessed individuals, disconnected from life’s innate presence and un-anchored by any sense of duty to the rest of the world. We are free to act without responsibility. Thus we turn a blind eye to those islands of plastic in the sea, or to the treatment meted out to animals in factory farms. And it is why the so-called “precautionary principle” is so often thrown out of the window.

This is the principle that would make us think twice if, say, we were to climb into a vehicle that happens to have a ninety per cent chance of crashing. Instead, because the danger is not proven beyond doubt, we think it is safe to embark upon the journey. This is how we proceed in many significant fields – in matters like genetic modification or climate change. We go on denying that there may be side-effects, even if our intuition warns us to be cautious, or even if there is some related evidence. Recently, for instance, the news emerged that, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of honey bee colonies in the United States failed to survive the Winter. More than three million colonies in the U.S. and billions of honeybees worldwide have died. Scientists say they are no nearer to knowing what is causing this catastrophic collapse, but there is plenty of evidence that modern pesticides have played their part. Given that bees, like nearly every other bug, are insects, I would have thought it was rather obvious. And yet we carry on with a narrow-minded, mechanistic approach to industrialized farming with all its focus on high yields at whatever price. So we lace the fields with pesticides that kill insects. It is quite bizarre how we continue to entrust our food security to the very substances that are destroying the harmonic cycle which produces our food. It really is a form of collective hubris and I often wonder if those who practise such well-exercised scepticism in these matters will ever see that “the Emperor is wearing no clothes?”

This, then, is why the wisdom and learning offered by a sacred tradition like Islam matters – and, if I may say so, why those who hold and strive to preserve their sacred traditions in different parts of the world have every reason to become more confident of their ground. The Islamic world is the custodian of one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity. It is both Islam’s noble heritage and a priceless gift to the rest of the world. And yet, so often, that wisdom is now obscured by the dominant drive towards Western materialism – the feeling that to be truly “modern” you have to ape the West.

To counter that tendency I have done what I can with my School of Traditional Arts to nurture and support traditional and sacred craft skills – not least those of Islam – because they keep alive a perspective that we sorely need, even though short-term fashion deems them to be irrelevant. The geometry and patterning that are taught at the School are the basis of the many crafts that have been all but abandoned in many parts of the world, including the Islamic world. It is a tragedy of monumental proportions that they are being forgotten because they reflect the spiritual mathematics found everywhere in Nature. As Islam teaches very specifically, it is a patterning that reflects the very ground of our being. It is the Divine imagination, so to speak; the ineffable presence that is the sacred breath of life. As the Seventeenth Century mystic, Ibn Âshir, puts it, by the practice of these arts you “see the One who manifests in the form, not the form by itself.”

For many in the modern world this is hard to understand because the view of God has become so distorted. “God” is seen as being, somehow, outside “His” creation, rather than part of its unfolding – what the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Being the principle that underlines the Cosmos, the Cosmos is the result of God knowing it and of it knowing the uncreated God. Notice the emphasis there on “un”-created. It is of profound importance. The basis of all existence is in this relationship.

I suspect the reason why this is such an unfashionable view is that the deep-seated experience of participation in the living, creative presence of God is offered to us in all traditions not by empiricism, but by revelation. This is a rare and precious gift and only given to those whose supreme humanity and capacity for great humility achieves a mastery over the ego. It comes at the moment when “the knower and the known” become one – the moment when the mind of Man comes into union with the mind of God.

This, of course, is not deemed possible from an empirical point of view, but revelation is a very different kind of knowing from scientific, evidence-based knowledge, and I cannot stress the point strongly enough; by dismissing such a process and discarding what it offers to humankind, we throw away a very important lifeline for the future.

I must say, once you do blend the different languages – the empirical and the spiritual together as I am suggesting, and as I have been trying to say for so long – then you do begin to wonder why the sceptics think the desire to work in harmony with Nature is so unscientific. Why is it deemed so worthwhile to abandon our true relationship with the “beingness” of all things; to limit ourselves to the science of manipulation, rather than immerse ourselves in the wider science of understanding? They seem such spurious arguments, because, as Islam clearly understands, it is actually impossible to divorce human beings from Nature’s patterns and processes. The Qur’an is considered to be the “last Revelation” but it clearly acknowledges which book is the first. That book is the great book of creation, of Nature herself, which has been taken too much for granted in our modern world and needs to be restored to its original position.

So, with all this in mind, I would like to set you a challenge, if I may; a challenge that I hope will be conveyed beyond this audience today. It is the challenge to mobilize Islamic scholars, poets and artists, as well as those craftsmen, engineers and scientists who work with and within the Islamic tradition, to identify the general ideas, the teachings and the practical techniques within the tradition which encourage us to work with the grain of Nature rather than against it. I would urge you to consider whether we can learn anything from the Islamic culture’s profound understanding of the natural world to help us all in the fearsome challenges we face. Are there, for instance, any that could help preserve our precious marine eco-systems and fisheries? Are there any traditional methods of avoiding damage to all of Nature’s systems that revive the principle of sustainability within Islam?

To give you an idea of what I mean, let me offer a few examples drawn from the work done by my School of Traditional Arts, where project workers have shown that re-introducing traditional craft skills brings a coherence to peoples’ daily lives, perhaps because they fuse the spiritual with the practical.

Since I founded it, the School has helped restore these skills in places as far afield as Jordan and Nigeria. It also helps to build bridges within communities in this country which have suffered the worst fractures. In Burnley in Lancashire, for instance, project workers have been teaching children from many backgrounds an integrated view of the world using the patterns of Islamic sacred geometry. This has not just inspired the imagination of the children taking part, but their teachers too. They tell me they have discovered a much more integrated approach to education, where maths and art are not alien to one another, but are seen as two sides of the same coin and directly rooted in Nature’s patterns and processes.

In Afghanistan, I have only recently managed to see the work being done under the umbrella of what we have called “the Turquoise Mountain Foundation” – an initiative I launched some four years ago – which is running similar education programmes and craft training courses. It is also helping with the urban regeneration of the old historic quarter of the city by guiding people to start businesses using the craft skills they have learned.

For example, in the building of schools, people are being shown how to use mud-bricks which are a quarter of the price of the concrete blocks used by other agencies. They are also resistant to earthquakes, whereas concrete is not. And they cope much better with extremes of temperature – mud-brick buildings are cooler in the Summer and warmer in the Winter. What is more, they use local labour and local, natural materials. So these schools are a good example of how traditional wisdom blends with modern needs. After all, you can still use computers and other modern technology in a mud-brick building! And more comfortably, too, given it is more suited to local conditions.

When I finally did manage to reach Kabul earlier this year – after several years of trying – what I saw was truly remarkable. It proved to me that teaching and employing traditional crafts is an effective way of re-introducing the kinds of techniques that are benign to the natural environment. They are also capable of restoring a cultural balance in peoples’ minds. By encouraging a wider celebration of the traditional, ancient culture of Afghanistan, these skills help in a very practical way to counteract the oppressive effects of extremism in all its forms, both religious and secular. This is how traditional wisdom works. It is not a theory or a science written down. Its wisdom is discovered through practice and in action.

These are schemes that are close to my heart, but the Oxford Centre keeps me informed of many others. Working in Muslim countries, the World Wildlife Fund has found that trying to convey the importance of conservation is much easier if it is transmitted by religious leaders whose reference is Qur’anic teaching. In Zanzibar, they had little success trying to reduce spear-fishing and the use of dragnets, which were destroying the coral reefs. But when the guidance came from the Qur’an, there was a notable change in behaviour. Or in Indonesia and in Malaysia, where former poachers are being deterred in the same way from destroying the last remaining tigers.

And it is not just such interventions that are important. It is mystifying, for instance, that the modern world completely ignores the time-honoured feats of engineering in the ancient world. The Qanats of Iran, for example, that still provide water for thousands of people in what would otherwise be desert conditions. These underground canals – unbelievably 170,000 miles of them – keep the water from the mountains moving down the tunnels using gravity alone. And the water in every village is then kept fresh by the way the storage towers keep the air flowing freely, moved by the wind.

In Spain, the irrigation systems constructed 1200 years ago also still work perfectly, as does the way in which the water is managed by the local population – a way of operating devised before the Muslim rule in Spain disintegrated. The same sorts of Islamic management schemes operate in other parts of the world too, like the “hima” zones in Saudi Arabia which set aside land for use as pasture. These are all examples of how prophetic teaching, in this case framed by the guidance of the Qu’ran, maintains a long term view of things and keeps the danger of a self-interested form of short-term economics at bay.

I am sure that if an organization like the Oxford Centre could help to establish a global forum on “Islam and the Environment” many more very practical, traditional approaches like these could become more widely applied. They may range from science and technology to agriculture, healthcare, architecture and education. Think what could be achieved if mothers and fathers, the teachers in madrassas and Imams, all sought to demonstrate to children how to translate Islamic teachings into practical action – how to blend traditional knowledge and awareness of Nature’s needs with the best of what we know now.

This is certainly something I feel we have to do in the one final issue I have to mention as I close. Perhaps a few facts and figures might demonstrate why.

When I was born in 1948, a city like Lagos in Nigeria had a population of just three hundred thousand. Today, just over sixty years later, it is home to twenty million. Thirty-five thousand people live in every square mile of the city, and its population increases by another six hundred thousand every year.

I choose Lagos as an example. I could have chosen Mumbai, Cairo or Mexico City; wherever you look, the world’s population is increasing fast. It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8 billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within fifty years. In the Arab world, sixty per cent of the population is now under the age of thirty. That will mean, in some way or other, 100 million new jobs will have to be created in that region alone over the next ten to fifteen years.

I am well aware that the very long term prediction is that population may go down. 150 years from now the trends suggest there may be as few as four billion people, maybe even just two billion, but there is no getting away from the fact that in the short term, in the next fifty years, we face monumental problems as the figures rocket. No mega-city can ever hope to catch up with the present expansion in their numbers to provide adequate healthcare, education, transport, food and shelter for so many. Nor can the Earth herself sustain us all, when the demands and pressures on her bounty worldwide are becoming so intense.

I know it is a complicated issue. The experts suggest that, in theory, the Earth could support 9 billion people, but not if a vast proportion is consuming the world’s resources at present Western levels. So the changes have to be essentially two-fold. It would certainly help if the acceleration slowed down, but it would also help if the world reduced its desire to consume.

I have been following carefully the findings of my British Asian Trust in India which has been helping to run a women’s education project in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra called Satara. They have noticed that a real difference can be made when women are able to become more involved in the running of the community. This is also the experience in Bangladesh. I have long been fascinated by Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. It operates micro-credit schemes that offer loans to the poorest communities through a bank which is now ninety per cent owned by the rural poor. Interestingly, where the loans are managed by the women of the community, the birth rate has gone down. The impact of these sorts of schemes, of education and the provision of family planning services, has been widespread. Whereas in the 1980s, the average family in Bangladesh had six children, now the average figure is three. But with mega-cities growing as they are, I fear there is little chance these sorts of schemes can help the plight of many millions of people unless we all face up to the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural.

It raises some very difficult moral questions, I know, but do we not each one of us carry the same responsibility towards the Earth? It is surely time to ask if we can come to a view that balances the traditional attitude to the sacred nature of life on the one hand with, on the other, those teachings within each of the sacred traditions that urge humankind to keep within the limits of Nature’s benevolence and bounty.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have endured all this with patience and fortitude. You have also given a very good impression of listening to my own personal thoughts on the perspective opened up by Islamic teaching. I have wanted to convey them to you because it always moves me to be reminded that, from the perspective of traditional Islamic teaching, the destruction of the Earth is represented as the destruction of a prayerful being.

Whichever faith tradition we come from, the fact at the heart of the matter is the same. Our inheritance from our Creator is at stake. It will be no good at the end of the day as we sit amidst the wreckage, trying to console ourselves that it was all done for the best possible reasons of development and the betterment of Mankind. The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason – and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with Creation.

The Modernist ideology that has dominated the Western outlook for a century implies that “tradition” is backward looking. What I have tried to explain today is that this is far from true. Tradition is the accumulation of the knowledge and wisdom that we should be offering to the next generation. It is, therefore, visionary – it looks forward.

Turning to the traditional teachings, like those found in Islam that define our relationship with the natural world, does not mean locking us into some sort of cultural and technological immobility. As the English writer G.K. Chesterton put it, “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” I would also remind you of the words of Oxford’s very own C.S. Lewis, who pointed out that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” – that there is nothing “progressive” about being stubborn and refusing to acknowledge that we have taken the wrong road. If we realize that we are travelling in the wrong direction, the only sensible thing to do is to admit it and retrace our steps back to where we first went wrong. As Lewis put it, “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.” It is the most progressive thing we could do.

All of the mounting evidence is telling us that we are, indeed, on the wrong road, so you might think it would be wise to draw on the timeless guidance that comes from our intuitive sense of the origin of all things to which we are rooted. Nature’s rhythms, her cycles and her processes, are our guides to this uncreated, originating voice. They are our greatest teachers because they are expressions of Divine Unity. Which is why there is a profound truth in that seemingly simple, old saying of the nomads – that “the best of all Mosques is Nature herself.”

So as I have maintained, any person would be much better off by developing an Eye of Veneration, so that the essence of all organic things is sensed for what it acutally is: transitory and purposeful; inter-dependent and sublime.

For Continued ‘Correct’ Success and ‘True’ Contentment,

Asad R Khan

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An exclusive Tete-a-tete with Mohammad Yousuf, formerly Yousuf Youhana. Pakistani Cricketer and Revert to Islam. The following is the translation of the interview, which took place recently in Karachi and is courtesy of The True Call.

The True Call: Assalamu Alaikum Brother Yousuf.

Yousuf: Wa’alaikum Asalaam

The True Call: Can you tell us about your childhood, how and where you spent it?

Yousuf: I spent my Childhood in Railway Colony and have been playing cricket since then, and even now I am doing the same. This is how I spent my childhood

The True Call: What was the importance of Religion during your early days? Where did you gain your religious education?

Yousuf: There was no such thing as Religious education. I used to go to Church on some Sundays but not regularly. But later with understanding I started going every Sunday.

The True Call: How did it all start? What drew you to Islam ?

Yousuf: Since childhood all my friends were Muslims, The place where we stayed was a Muslim locality. Just as you said in the beginning, in this world there is a lot of misunderstanding about Islam. its not the fault of Non - Muslims, we Muslims are not obeying the rules of Allah or following the footsteps of our Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) this is the reason we are being let down all over the world. Its all our fault.

During my early days, I used to stay with some Muslims, there was no such thing in them that a person can change by looking at them. The things they used to do, even I did the same.

The True Call: What brought about this sudden change?

Yousuf: It was not all of a sudden. Most of the changes in me have come over the period of last Seven to Eight months. When i was in touch with Missionaries, these people who are fulfilling Allah’s will and the Sunnah (method) of the Prophet (PBUH). This is the work of Prophets. They are doing such work. I have converted seeing them. They never asked me to convert and become a Muslim. They practice Islam, seeing them many people accept Islam. That time i had gone to play one day cricket, I met a jew who had accepted islam in 1970 / 75 This missionary congregation had gone to California, America. That person converted seeing thier practises.

The True Call: Despite the bad propaganda against Islam. People are still accepting Islam

Yousuf: It is not their fault. It is all our fault. The fault of the Muslims. This is not their fault it is our fault. This is an Islamic country but a person coming from outside he cannot distinguish it as an Islamic country. It is our fault, if we follow Prophet’s Sunnah then I feel, that nobody would need to point a finger at the Muslims and say that they are like this or like that.

The True Call: What did you find special about Islam, what appealed you to take this big decision?

Yousuf: I am still new to Islam and learning things. But those people who have inspired me, made me realise that Islam is a complete way of life. It teaches peace, wishing good for everyone we meet, ethics, code of conduct, being good to others, caring for others all the time.

The Missionaries spend their money, their time; they leave their household and travel to invite others to the way of Allah.

This has been the work of prophets. As Muhammad (PBUH) is the last prophet and there is no other prophet to come, so its our job, we Muslims have to call others to the way of Allah. But we sit back at homes. We do not believe in Allah completely, we follow our own way, we decide for ourselves and think we can make things happen, but the fact being that nothing happens without the will of Allah.

The True Call: In the light of recent chaos where there are strikes and protests happening, what according to you should be the stand of Muslims in this scenario?

Yousuf: We have to maintain peace. Protests are necessary, but protests should be carried out peacefully. But we need to rectify ourselves first. Are we leading the lives of true Muslims? Are we leading lives in accordance with the rules set by Allah and the ways taught by Muhammad (PBUH)? We first need to evaluate these. Until we rectify ourselves, others will surely make fun of us.

The True Call: How difficult was the decision? What was the family’s reaction to it?

Yousuf: Well, family did react, they were against my reversion. I was speculative that my family members would be angry with me. But the broader thought was, that this world is not our main goal. Success in this world is not the true success, and the failure in this world is not the true failure. Since everyone has to leave the world. The biggest truth in this world is death, and the biggest deception is life.

The True Call: What was your wife’s initial reaction when you broke the news of your reversion?

Yousuf: I did not tell her that I have become a Muslim, rather I told her that I am doing a couple of things which in turn are giving me peace and am feeling nice about it. I asked her to go the place where Islamic education is held, and told her if you find anything that is good in it, you can embrace it. Because, there is no compulsion in Islam. Islam has not spread by violence, Islam has spread by love and affection. It has spread for the betterment of humankind. It helps in purifying the thoughts of people so that they get close to Allah.

The True Call: Who deserves the credit of helping you realise this truth? Who played this important role?

Yousuf: I think the people fulfilling Allah’s will and following Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), I have come seeing them like Saeed Anwar and many others who are practicing this.

The True Call: Masha’Allah! Pakistani team seems inclined towards Islam as well, what brought about this change?

Yousuf: For this very reason… since 8 years I am in Pakistani team but I did not see….

The True Call: What brought about this change?

Yousuf: For this very reason.. for this very reason.. Because of their concern, these people not only in Pakistan but worldwide spread the message so that people come towards Allah’s path. They never said come to us or join our community. They only say whenever you get time call people towards Allah’s path. In this way not only you correct yourself but also provide a better understanding to the people. Like I have also gone to places with them to spread the message, there are many people who are ignorant and know nothing like me who knows not much but I go for learning to get a better understanding of Islam i.e. How to lead life? etc.

The True Call: What suggestions do you want to give to people, who want to learn the Truth about Islam, but due to some pressures they are afraid. What message do you want to give to them. Is it really a difficult decision?

Yousuf: Actually I have also felt this fact that and also the wise agree that instead of making a Non Muslim a Muslim it is better to make the Muslims Muslim, because making a Non Muslim a Muslim is not difficult. Because in other religions you do not find this much Peace. Because I have come from another faith, where you do not find this much of peace. So it was easy for me to enter this faith. Because of the family there were a few obstacles. But if you see the reality, Islam is the truth and Islam is the true religion.

It is not difficult for a Non Muslim to enter the fold of Islam but to make a Muslim a Muslim, now this is a difficult task.

The message from me to my brothers is: Obey the orders of Allah and adhere to the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It is not difficult to convince a Non Muslim to become a Muslim.

The True Call: When you were a Christian, What impression did you have of the Muslims?

Yousuf: Seeing the true Muslims one would realise that, Yes! this is a religion. True Muslims; seeing whom I became a Muslim. Who obey the orders of Allah and adhere to the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
From them it appeared to me that this is a religion. That this is the true religion. And this is from Allah.

It is not at all a difficult task. It is we who have made it difficult for ourselves. We just have to correct ourselves. If this thought appears that “We have to correct ourselves”. I personally feel everything will be fine on its own. When I am correct then I will find you good. If I myself am not correct then I will not find you good. We should correct ourselves.

The True Call: What are your future plans? Where do you see yourself Ten years from now

Yousuf: If you are talking with respect to Islam then nobody knows about his future. I would like to see myself in Islam. How much life Allah has granted me I will make an effort to spend it in the way of Allah.

The True Call: Thank you very much for taking time out of your hectic schedule to speak to us.

Yousuf: JazakAllahu Khair

For Success & Contentment,

Asad

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Hi,

Yesterday we saw the European Elections results revealed, with a disappointing result for my home area, the Northwest of England, where the British National Party gained 1 seat, and 2 seats nationally. This only happened due to the terrible results of Labour, as the BNP did not gain much ground beyond their 2004 election results. Now Nick Griffin is an MEP even though he won fewer than he did 5 years ago: the slump in Labour support meant its share of the vote increased.

This is an interesting feature: a party that does not allow black members has become part of the European Parliament. The Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman described the BNP result as “terrible”.

But I think that this is another wake-up call for the rest of us peace-seeking citizens who believe in plurality, multi-culturism and co-existence. Remember how George W Bush and his cronies did their best to smear the hardworking citizens of many countries and attempted to curtail many civilian rights and freedoms that were enshrined in the First Amendment, The Geneva Convention and the like? But it didn’t last so long, did it? Despite Tony Blair, the then British Prime Minister saying that “we are in this for the long haul”. Forgive me for sounding dismissive of such tripe, but times change frequently, however the absolute truth is unerring and must always prevail: this is what it means to be principled and to stick to true, lasting and higher values.

We are surrounded by contradictions in our societies and the world-over so it is important to have knowledge and self-understanding to help steer through the difficult times. Most around the world marvelled at the victory of the black President Barack Hussein Obama: of black and white descent, of Muslim values and Christian belief systems, and of Eastern and Western heritage. He continues to bridge the gulf between various conflicting parties both in his homeland as well as overseas. Let’s see some of his recent remarks in the Cairo speech:

“We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world — tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim—majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. “

“So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.”

“I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

“There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That is what I will try to do today — to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities — it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.“

“In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library”

“So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

“Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum — “Out of many, one.”

“So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations — to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity.“

“Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.”

“For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.”

“And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes — and, yes, religions — subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared.“

And on it goes, covering off thoughts, directions and plans on the following 7 aspects:

1.    “The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
2.    The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.
3.    The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.
4.    The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.
5.    The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom.
6.    The sixth issue that I want to address is women’s rights.
7.    Finally, I want to discuss economic development and opportunity.”

“It’s easier to start wars than to end them. It’s easier to blame others than to look inward. It’s easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There’s one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today”

“We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.”

The Holy Quran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”

The Holy Bible tells us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

“The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

We all await to see if these words are mere sentiments or an honest call for earnest action. I think that we all need to see that higher purpose and values can manifest through well-meaning people, otherwise we have nothing to solid to hold onto, except assured belief. But Belief without purposeful action is insufficient to meet the needs of people. And so the struggle continues, as it has always been intended by the Creator, for each and every one of us to rise-up to the challenges of the day and fulfill our duties and inherent potential. To give back to others as we have taken, and add a little more to the stock of good hope and collective well-being.

This is how the racist and fascists in our societies will be defeated. We all need to understand ourselves and each other much better. Through such common fraternity we can take bold decisions that re-maps our world. And through selfless service - sharing with others the best of what we have - we can help people make insightful distinctions on aspects of higher value, values and issues pertaining to:

Right / Wrong : Good / Evil : Hope / Despair : Prosperity / Poverty : Progress / Regress

Life is about struggle it always has been and will always remain as such, for this is within the Grand Master Scheme of the Great Architect of the Universe. There must be constant and continuous improvement as this will surely help - help make sense and decrease the contradictions that exist in our world. The clock is ticking, so how are you deciding to contribute…?

For Success and Contentment,

Asad Khan

PS Last night we also witnessed the last episode of this years BBC’s series of The Apprentice . Interestingly, Sir Alan said it was the “Toughest decision ever made in this boardroom” (that he was faced with) / “Between the best I’ve ever had here” (2 distinguished ladies, Jasmina and Kate). Get the MPPPL workbook and help yourself to shift further.

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