Qualities of a friend of Knowledge

I heard a scholar, Mr. Khalid Zaheer, enumerating qualities of an ilm dost, friend of knowledge:

• He is Truthful and doesn't fail to accept truth
• He is not prideful/proudly of his knowledge, nor does he consider others worthless
• He is very Honest. He fully acknowledges contributions of others.
• He is not prejudiced, nor is he sentimental when it comes to understanding nature of things.
• But, when it comes to action, he is emotional in acting upon his knowledge.
• He does not hoard knowledge; rather is keen in spreading it.
• He is balanced and maintains balance/'itidal.
• He is not snobbish.
• He prays five times prayers.
• He reads Qur'an daily.
• He is polite.

A letter by a teenager clerk: Year 1846

Following is a letter discovered in 1988 of a teenager clerk in Edinburgh, UK. It was published in an article in "Accounting Historians Journal," Dec 2008 v35 i2 p43(27): A letter from a teenage accounting clerk in 1846: a hidden voice in a micro-history of modern public accountancy, by Thomas A. Lee. (Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Academy of Accounting Historians.) I only wish to reproduce the letter here:

Edinburgh, 1 George Street

December 24th 1846

My dear Papa,

Your kind letter I got yesterday along with one from

Glasgow which enclosed another note from you to

Mama for my perusal. I was perfectly surprised to find

the Phaeton did not go into Glasgow till Saturday. After

all you see you might just have done as I wished you to

do, and not left here till the Friday night. I am now very

vexed you have been the worse of your trip though, but

I trust you will soon be perfectly recovered.

I will attend to all your instructions with respect to

the almanacs etc. In Mama's letter she says something

about extract of malt. Do you wish me to send a jar to

Montrose Street along with them? I have made up my

mind to give Marianne Cairns some little thing just now

also, for I wish her to see that I feel their kindness to

me a little. I am thinking some Saturday in the beginning

of the year to take a 4th class drive to Glasgow in

the morning if it won't put them about at all, and if

they could give me a bed, stay till the Monday. If not,

return on the Saturday evening. But I don't wish you

to mention this because in the first place I may not do

so at all, and in the second if I do, it will be a nice thing

to surprise Mama by popping in to breakfast some fine

morning. I was sorry to find Aunty and Frederick poor

Manny had been ill, but I am glad they are well again.

I am very glad indeed that Mr Peddie's report of your

humble servant pleased them all in Glasgow, but oh I

am thankful that it has been an almighty Father that

has been on my right hand and on my left for the last

year. The more good accounts I hear of myself it makes

me the more so, for I feel convinced that without Him I

could have done nothing. You may perhaps my dearest

Father be surprised to hear such a statement from me.

I perhaps never said so much about my own feelings

to any one before, but I think it right to tell, that these

feelings in regard to God's Providence, I never had till I

got my first quarter's salary. Vanity was and is still too

much I fear my besetting sin. I ought to say rather self

conceit--but that day I felt it was not my own cleverness

nor anything I can do that made Mr Peddle think

I should get 5 [pounds sterling] instead of 3.15 [pounds

sterling]/- and ever since then I

have felt more and more that 'without me you can do

nothing.' I must now draw near a close, though I am

already too late for this evening's Post. I forgot to bring

up the Pict. Times tonight too, so you won't get it till

Saturday. I won't be able to get Mama written to till the

beginning of the week either. You may say when you

write. Miss Low would get a parcel from Mrs Murray

which she sent up to me to take charge of when I am

going west, but as I was not, she was to send it herself.

I think Dr Minto will come round a bit now; there has

been a regular quarrel between him and Archy at last

and he, the latter, is unseated from the foot of the table

(!). The Plaid is a delightful thing. I got out a Ticket

for the lectures from Mr Peddie. Many thanks for your

leave to take a few lessons on dancing. I go to the

Cresct. tomorrow you know; on Tuesday to the Messers

and on New Year evening to the Millers. These are

the invitations I have on hand at present but there will

likely be more next week.

Now dear Papa I must stop. Love to all, large and small.

Your ever affectionate son

Alexander Niven

PS

I wish you could devise any possible excuse for leaving

the Tron Church. I go there Sabbath after Sabbath, and

I must tell you distinctly I come out vexed and uncomfortable,

because I never get any good, and I feel quite

vexed almost, when Sunday returns for I feel convinced

that every time I enter the church I am just about to

waste two hours of the Holy Sabbath. Please to think

this seriously over and let me know what you think I

ought to do. I could write many things more but I must

stop.

ATN

10 of Thursday pm

Trouble with Umer: A mentor-psychiatrist's analysis

His voice was full of certainty, affection, love and care. He was giving as if warnings to me of the deep, subtle problems (as we'd see), and proposed cure. He communicates the idea keeping his audience in his full grip. He knows you more than you do, yet with very limited knowledge. After all, he's a highly-qualified psychiatrist with a scholarly bent of mind. He said to me, commenting on my mental state in the context of my learning behavior:

• Your priorities need overhaul and re-fixing, especially in what you study
• Avoid intellectual distractions: You do multiple things at time ... get involved in varying disciplines, and this can make you utterly confused, as I have observed it, sometimes.
• Look, brain is just like a child ... Like a child it slowly develops, it grows as a human being, it eats somethings and then it disgusts, finally reproducing (using that energy). Your problem is indigestion.
• You have more than sufficient knowledge, but it's not systematized.
• Complex things are built on simple, concrete ideas. Make your foundations strong by immersing in the thing in hand.

Making Global Islamic Guidelines for Education

Assalamualaekum!

I quote:

The Global Guidelines for Early Childhood Education and Care in the 21st Century were developed as a collaborative project between the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) and the World Organization for Early Childhood (OMEP). The project's intent was to provide guidance concerning the fundamental elements that are necessary to create high-quality environments for early care and education. In 1999, an international symposium was co-sponsored by OMEP and ACEI in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. More than 80 professionals from 27 countries and every continent except Antarctica attended the symposium. The result of this meeting was the creation of the Global Guidelines (Wortham, 2001, 2003). An international work group articulated five premises that form the foundation for the Global Guidelines:

* Global Guidelines Premise #1: Children are both the present and the future of every nation. Children have needs, rights, and intrinsic worth that must be recognized and supported.

* Global Guidelines Premise #2: Every child should have the opportunity to grow up in a setting that values children, provides conditions for a safe and secure environment, and respects diversity.

* Global Guidelines Premise #3: Knowledge about human development is more substantial than at any other time in history. The new century offers opportunities to consolidate recent gains and to respond to new challenges that lie ahead.

* Global Guidelines Premise #4: Children must receive appropriate nurture and education within and outside their families from birth onward, if they are to develop optimally.

* Global Guidelines Premise #5: Paying attention to the health, nutrition, education, and psycho-social development of children during their early years is essential for the future well-being of nations and the global community.

These are the guidelines by those outside the abode of Islam. Those who do not know that their life's purpose is to worship Allah, spend maximum time and energies and utilize the engine of education optimally, we, the Ummah of Prophet Muhammad on whom Allah revealed His final Book, who purified people and taught them the Book and Wisdom, cannot come up with an educational model which be the Mercy for whole humanity!

Request: You can take 2-3 weeks, contact scholars and ulema; read Quran and other books, and then try coming up/developing 5-6 premises from the knowledge you gain on the Global Islamic Guidelines for Education (GIGE) that can be applied to a school I am working on.

Would you not reflect!

An interview question

"How many ping-pong balls can you fit into 747?"

Islamic Art

I commented on a post, "Islamic Art", presumably by a non-Muslim foreginer, about the topic- I'm sharing it as I don't know how accurate my description may be:

Love for abstraction, love of unity of God, deep contemplation, purity of soul, recitation of Quran, fear of God and day of judgement, craft, imagination, creativity, infinity = Islamic art :)

Of a Negative Spending

Mr. President of Pakistan used to boast on the so-called "development" of telecom industry in Pakistan, which as a whole, from economics' point-of-view, is not much constructive, but negative, to say the least. In Pakistan, billions are being spent on mobiles and stuff. Each we buy a cellphone sim, as per my professor, a phone set is imported, as Pakistan ain't any phone producing country, in dollars. Let's (loosely speaking) deconstruct our 'spending-pattern' on mobiles and see its "glory" to show that total spending on importing mobiles is "negative" in economic terms:

• It is a consumer good that only lasts a year or two
• There are no returns from mobiles
• Only some people get jobs, others just keep paying to Teleco companies
• Balance of payment of our country is negative
• Foreign exchange reserves are damaged
• Overall, it is a bad investment, as we're not investing in textiles, industries, R&D, infrastructure, etc.

Conclusion: Our spending on mobiles and stuff - IT IS A TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY!

What is missing in science teaching in Pakistan

In short, according to a head of department of electrical engineering of a Pakistani university, people highly proficient in physics and math (at its implementation level), what is missing in science teaching at secondary and higher secondary level, is VISUALIZATION of concepts. "Pupils get into under-grad program and yet can't explain what integration is all about. It is because they don't an understanding of it for they were not explained things graphically/visually," he added. It is an up-hill task to make sure everything delivered in class is easily visualized in the mind of pupil(s).

Competitive re-branding

We have this tendency of over-praising our products and services. And the limited extent to which you can do that is absent in books by marketers (originally of West and their copy-cats in east). I's listening to a lecture on Ethics of Trade in Islam, in which Abdal-Hakim Murad was telling that Allah on the day of judgement would look upon a man who took oaths while buying and selling. That's a little bit complex to understand. Applied to bragging we do on our trade, it fits the paradigm. Billions are spent by Coca-Cola on "re-branding", they talk about "brand loyalty" and brand this and brand that . . .  Human and natural resources are slaughtered blindly in this mania of over-advertising. How despicable and ugly the practices of moderns who are cut off from revelation . . .

Innovation & Technology

My friend holds: "Innovation has no upper limit." I agree and suggest: No technological innovation be adopted without knowing its consequences.

Meeting Minutes: School-think

Today, I had another successful meeting with a young and yet very energetic, motivated and dynamic medical student, who was schooled back in Saudi Arabia, on school I am building these days. He showed great enthusiasm in this project, the aim of which is to provide an Islamic educational model as an alternative to some of the best educational institutions / models / systems /experience in the whole world. He has even agreed to prepare a manual for Biology department to revolutionize or at least overhaul the way teaching is done and the way books are written. He wants to see our school as the best Islamic school for the community of my city.

The best part was the way schooling is done in Saudi A. It's fascinating to know how conceptual, activity-based and highly-biased-towards-developing-thinking-skills it is. So we benchmarking it: We need the books taught there and the it's taught, and all co-curricular activities are done. (Need to make database of all benchmarks.)

Here, I'd like to discuss some random points that he shared informally with me:

• The Think-Tank teachers are given permanent job.
• The books we write on INDUCTION based, i.e., make students interpret and derive results from the data, rather than making knowledge narrow through the use of deduction.
• Moral Training in Morning (MTM): Back in his school, every morning students would prepare speeches/skits/any other way of presenting lessons based on Quran + Hadith + Discussion(-based); powered by a student affairs, or something, committee (consisting of a few teachers + students) who prepare the program. SO instead of having teachers give boring sermons on stage, students enact situations to teach moral lessons from Islam and hadith that is very interesting for pupils*.
• Encouraging salah/prayers: We can encourage pupils to pray, apart from making Zuhar prayer compulsory for 10/10+ pupils, by asking teachers to motivate students to prayer two rakah prayer during mid-day break in school-mosque.
• NO WRITTEN HOMEWORK that makes children dull. Rather we make students do work (activity based) in the classroom. And all homework we give is like task-work or like puzzles, for which there are no ZERO marks; every answer is appreciated, but the right answer is more appreciated.
• Islamic studies taught in Saudi A. is not a single subject but many subjects: During 3 years (at some level) they teach us whole Quran 10 surahs/year for which there's a proper exam; Tafseer of 3 paras of Quran; Memorization of 100 hadith/fiqh points.

Do an experiment

Do an experiment with Qur'aan. I have experienced that if I have a metaphysical or philosophical problem or issue disturbing my head, and I randomly open a page of Qur'aan & look at any random verse, and I have experienced it so many times that that very first verse cleared my doubts and gave solution with certitude to my problem.

ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS AND AN ONTOLOGICAL COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LIFE OF TWO WORLDS IN THE LIGHT OF QURAN

Allah says in Quran, Surah Kahf (18):

103: Say: "Shall we tell you of those who lose most in respect of their deeds?-
104: "Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life, while they thought that they were acquiring good by their works?"
105: They are those who deny the Signs of their Lord and the fact of their having to meet Him (in the Hereafter): vain will be their works, nor shall We, on the Day of Judgment, give them any weight.
106: That is their reward, Hell, because they rejected Faith, and took My Signs and My Messengers by way of jest.
107: As to those who believe and work righteous deeds, they have, for their entertainment, the Gardens of Paradise,
108: Wherein they shall dwell (for aye): no change will they wish for from them.

These ayats tell us about the elements of success and failure in human life. People today criticize religious people in Muslim community as rahibs, without knowing the proper meaning of the term; just for the fact that they believe in Allah and not in the false idols create by West (like, nationalism, materialism, and a whole array of ideological, philosophical idols), pay little or no attention to this world while its time to pray preferring akhirah over this life;for the fact that they don't amass wealth, but make provision for akhirah. The condition of this ummah has been degraded to such an extent that "when the name of God comes, speak it not loud"; the universities in the heart of this ummah teach to seek any sensical or non-sensical paradigm, "but not to open Qur'an."

These ayahs remind man 'of careful ears' to know the worth of this world and describes the 'rules of game' to be played in this world. Again, it is a clear, concrete mind-opening reminder to those indulged and embedded in dunya for them to rethink what they deem to be 'good', but has no real value in the 'sight of God'. Real goodness and real happiness can only come from the worship of God and serving his creation (and Prophet Muhammad was most successful and happiest person because he worshiped God greater than anyone and served humanity greater than anyone from his beginning till his end,s.a.w.). Frithjof Schuon remarks in his book Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts:

The Negro peoples have doubtless not produced a Dante or the builder of a Taj Mahal, but they have produced Saints,and that is what counts in the sight of God.

This is a thoughtful passage to be contemplated over and over again by those who are obsessed with the ideas of (indefinite) "progress" and "development" because what they do in this world concerns and has direct effect on their Eternal Life!

The Philosophy of Priorities

This takes us down to the question: What is the philosophy of Priorities in Islam, in context of life in both world? As we know, Islam is a religion not only of Day of Judgement but of this world as well, encompassing all spheres of human life, from worship of Allah to the ethics of trade. Qur'an is very, very clear about it. Our success or failure depends on which life we prefer, and I would like to end it by quoting two set of verses from Qur'an:

37 Then, for such as had transgressed all bounds,
38 And had preferred the life of this world,
39 The Abode will be Hell-Fire;
40 And for such as had entertained the fear of standing before their Lord's (tribunal) and had restrained (their) soul from lower desires
41 Their abode will be the Garden.

Surah Naziat

In another place in Qur'an, Allah says:

16 Nay (behold), ye prefer the life of this world;
17 But the Hereafter is better and more enduring.

Surah Al-Ala

Much Islam, not Allah?

I was moved by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's criticism on Muslims that these days they talk much about Islam this, Islam that, but there is little remembrance of Allah Himself... Meditate on it, and compare the behaviour of those before...

Courtesies of Trade in Islam

Ah! How ignorant are Muslims of the Gems in Hadith, ready to guide us with utmost comprehension, compactness and simplicity as Golden Rules, in all walks of life that concern us most (of course, Prophet was not sent to tell us how to manufacture products, etc.). As a student of business, business strategy and game, and industrial management, little do we care about implications of/by the teachings of our deen. I realized this after listening to the following by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad, Cambridge Univ. on the Ethics of Trade: Click here.

You notice one thing throughout the lecture, whether your believe or not - the relevance of principles of Islam in any age, because, as Sheikh says in the khutba, Islam is not only for the Day of Judgement but for this dunya or world as well.

School Policy Questions

1. Do you appreciate the idea of making school teacher do publishable, applicable research to bring innovation and quality to school education?

2. Do you think there should an educational advisor who is the key hidden person in the evaluation of teachers and students, program setter, synthesizer of all parts of a school system who does not reside in the school and is physically not a part of the running system?

Are you ready...?

A Talk on Motivation

One day in near future a very dynamic department in Pak govt is going to arrange a workshop for various university students on the topic of Motivation. Never underestimate this topic as novel and impractical. It can be very practical. It unleash hidden potentials of many dormant souls, recharge their innovation cells, finish the clouds of vagueness about the direction they seek wherein to invest their energies. It can revive the spirituality of work in them. And we know the fruits of fanaticism, whether spiritual or related to work.

Critical Quality Checks for new Islamic Schools in Pakistan

I met an Islamic scholar who teaches at various leading universities of Pakistan. He is not an educationists in the strict sense of the term, as he doesn't relate himself with formally initiating educational programs, like school, etc. Nonetheless, he provided us with critical remarks on the dilemmas a new Islamic school maker may face and contingencies/solutions to the issues. I's impressed by the far-sightedness of the scholar. And with pessimism I hope to innovate, grow and do things people deny as possibilities. List of quality-checks which sort of contain the ways to tackle the issues:

• You cannot impose Islamic teachings by ignoring other sciences outside religious studies at school level, because in doing so, you'd be a long-term failure. (A school is best when it serves the Ideals of the system that produces institutions. Producing
• A faculty lacking spiritual qualities would fail to inculcate Islamic values
• Without a long-term investment of a few crores, it would not produce sustainable quality
• Don't make it a business at least for a few years, as a contingency to the challenges of this field
• You cannot have a bias towards East or West which is outside abode of Islam - if it is of high-quality, benchmark it. Truth is that West has created standards today
• There are parent reservations, because religious studies are not in these days
• Feed-back from these who are serving in this field
• Don't think of starting it unless you've a whole team of teachers, who are spiritually steadfast and professionally proficient.

Save children from the demons of acadmeic work

Till 6-7 age, children are in imaginary world. They have little, in fact no, powers of discernment. Our sunnah advises us to let our children play in that age. 'Dumb them down' with formal academic education and you destroy the flow. Here's a great article that sheds light on these issues, with developed arguments and research for support on stand-by: When Play is Work. Written by the founder of a home-school program institution in America, Nabila Hanson.