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Bismillāh ar-Raḥmān ar-Raḥīm, Alhamdulillāhi Rabbil ‘Alameen, wa salātu wa salamu ‘alā ashrafī al-anbiyā’ wal mursaleen, Muḥammadur Rasūlullāh ﷺ wa ‘alā ālihi wa sahbihi tashfeeman kaseeran kaseera.
I’m sitting in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and on my balcony and all around me I see big beautiful trees. There is a tamarind tree right in front of me with tamarind on it. Next to that is a mango tree. And next to that is a pomegranate tree with, I can count maybe seven or eight on this side, big red pomegranates. And then there are a whole lot of other kinds of trees. And as you can probably hear in this Fada’i reminder, I can hear bulbul. There seems to be an absolute abundance of bulbuls, yellow-vented, mostly I’ve seen, but others are here. And it’s so beautiful to listen to the sounds of these birds. Even though I’m in the center of the city, there is, I don’t hear any sound of traffic. It does get congested if you go during peak hours. So I’m not saying that there is no traffic, there is traffic, but then it gets congested. But, but, it’s, it reminds me of Hyderabad when I was growing up, which is big gardens, lots of greenery, lots of trees, lots of birds, absolute variety of birds. And the variety of birds here is absolutely amazing. So,
it’s really, the air is so pure, so pure, it’s beautiful.
No smoke, no snow, no smoke, very little dust, even though we are at the peak of summer here, in the southern hemisphere.
And temperatures get up to about, in the worst of the peak, it even goes up to 45 Celsius, which is like what happens to Hyderabad. Right now today, I think it’s yesterday it was 35, today it’s promising to be a little bit cooler, so we’re hoping to be, you know, 30 or under 35.
And that’s where I am. Now sitting here, I’m reflecting on one very important thing, which is education. As most of you know, education has always been a major interest of mine. I have myself been an educator now for 40 years. And, I’ve taught literally hundreds of thousands of people. My core focus is always leadership education. How to become leaders, responsible, noble leaders. Noble not as in nobility bestowed upon you by some king, but noble as in moral values, ethics, integrity. Taking the, to paraphrase from another wonderful author, favorite author of mine, take the high road, take the road less traveled.
That has always been my focus. And this is what I try to practice. I hope in my life as well as to teach. And that is the meaning of education. In the Arabic language, there is a wonderful word called *Musaqqaf*.
And from this word, is derived, you know, what today in Urdu we use to merely mean reading and writing.
But the word *Musaqqaf* itself means somebody who is of noble character. Somebody who is not known for, for just by memorizing stuff.
Socrates, let me begin with what he said. And we are not talking about over 2000 years ago. Socrates,
he saw education not as, like you called pouring information into an empty container. And not as, you know, a bunch of kids, with the assumption about them being that they are all ignorant. And one teacher, assumption being made that he or she is knowledgeable. And this teacher talks to those kids, because, as if they know nothing, because that’s the belief of the teacher.
Socrates says this is not education. He said education is not pouring information into an empty vessel, but education is igniting a spark of curiosity to help learners discover the truth from within. Now, this is a very important thing to think about. I have written an article which became quite famous, called “O Teacher, Stop Teaching.” O Teacher, Stop Teaching.
So therefore, the Socratic method of teaching was through relentless, disciplined questioning, and not lecturing. He would ask questions to lead the students,
not even necessarily in the direction of what he believed in, but to encourage them and to support them, opening and peeling, you know, the petals of a closed flower bud, until it becomes a flower. It’s, you know, it gets that connection. Um,
he used to say that teachers are a guide to help students bring forth latent ideas, already inside their own minds. This is like, I’ll give you an example. This is like,
ushering children into an enormous encyclopedical library, where, the role of the teacher, is not to just pick a book from the shelf, and read aloud to the children. The children know how to read. What the teacher’s role really is, is to lead this group of students along a corridor, and open a door, uh, show them, give them a peek inside, and say, oh, this door is all books of philosophy. Um, and then shut the door, and give them the key to that door. And this teacher now goes through this entire library, doing exactly the same thing, which is, door to door to door, uh, open the door, show them what’s inside, excite their curiosity, now then they would really want to get in there, and sit there, and see what all there is, and learn on their own.
The teacher then, uh, you might say, well if that’s all the teacher is supposed to do, then what is the role of the teacher? The teacher’s role is then to interact with the students, to walk around, uh, to look and see what they are doing, to look and see the conclusions that they are drawing from whatever information, in whichever form, uh, that they are encountering. And, uh,
then lead them back by asking questions, rather than by forcing his or her point of view on them.
So, did you think about this? Did you measure that? Uh, did you calculate that? What is the cost of this? That’s the kind of questioning. Um, Socrates talked about the importance of virtue and knowledge, equating moral goodness with deep understanding. Asserting that knowing the good naturally leads to doing the good. Now, this is a clear assumption to make, that if somebody knows something is right, then the internal fitra, the internal nature of the person, will lead them to doing that thing which they know to be right, rather than its opposite, uh, which by definition is wrong. So, but that happens only if they have that understanding and knowledge of right and wrong.
Uh, the purpose of education is to teach the students the meaning of right and wrong. To show them what is right, what is wrong. Now, you might say, well, you know, this is self-evident. Yes, it is self-evident. But, uh, we have thousands of years of history of people who should have known better, including those in leadership positions today, uh, in the vast majority of leadership positions today, who should have known better, but they didn’t. And so, they take decisions which are extremely harmful. Uh, they may satisfy them, uh, but harmful for everyone. And, you know, wars are a clear example of that. But things like global warming, things like climate change, uh, things like species extinction, um, deforestation, uh, you know, all of these things are really, uh, if you think about that, the decisions to go on this route are taken by people who know it’s the wrong thing. Uh, they’re not doing it by mistake. Uh, we are in a very strange and tragic paradox in the world today, where we know everything. Um, there is no, you know, knowledge is a vast ocean without boundaries. But, uh, in given our personal context of where we live and what we do, uh, we are not suffering from a lack of knowledge. We are suffering from the lack of ability to act upon that knowledge. Uh, and that’s what is causing all the problems that we face.
So, he equates moral goodness with deep understanding, asserting that knowing the good now naturally leads to doing the good. And then he prioritizes, and quite rightly gives character precedence over accumulation of information. So, he says, he defines an educated person by their self-regulation, by their bravery and their honest behavior, rather than memorized facts. Um,
this is the meaning of, or really the foundation, and the absolute reason for education, which is to teach boundaries. Now, today we seem to have totally lost this, uh, totally lost the whole concept of boundaries. And, uh, we live and act as if we live in a world where we are not bound by boundaries, and where we don’t have to worry about them. And that’s the, that is a very mistaken concept. And because we seem to raise children who have no understanding and concept of boundaries, uh, then we face the kind of world that we face. So teaching boundaries is extremely important. And this is what education must do.
Uh, today, sadly, we have confused education with schooling. Uh, two completely different things. Schooling started, education has been there and will be there as long as human beings exist on the face of the earth. It has always been there, uh, and it will always be there. But schooling is a different thing. Schooling, uh, started in the 1740s when the industrial revolution came into being. And, uh, people, uh, the owners of capital, uh, they needed workers. So first, the men went to work. The women stayed home and, uh, you know, kept house and home. And, uh, taught their children, their own children. But, uh, when factories ran short of workers, uh, they also wanted the women in the factories, which led to among other things, a change in women’s fashion. Uh, think about that. It has nothing to do with, uh, with looking good. Uh, it has nothing to do with mod, being modern or being old fashioned. It has everything to do with being safe near a machine in a factory. And so, uh, flowing robes, veils, um, loose clothing all went out of fashion. And tight clothing, uh, came into fashion. Uh, and one of the outcomes of that also was, now what do you do with the children? Uh, the solution was, uh, put them all into one room with one teacher. And, uh, the job of the teacher is to keep them silent. To make sure they don’t fight each other. And to give them some useful information. Uh, you know, at not because it is actually useful, not because somebody consulted with children, not because, um, it was really beneficial or divine in any way, but just because this was thought that this is what they should learn. And then this, that’s what, that’s what was given to them. Um, that is our school.
Uh, and Socrates says, do not confuse schooling. Um, and Socrates didn’t say that. I’m saying, but basically that’s what it means. Don’t confuse schooling with education. I’m not saying take the children out of school, but change the school, change the way education is imparted. Say, change the way we treat knowledge. Uh, uh, because you really want to have educated, truly educated citizens who are morally responsible, uh, who have a conscience, who are compassionate, who are kind, uh, who have a sense of responsibility, uh, especially the one with the resources. Sense of responsibility towards Allah’s Qur’an. To whom they are accountable. And the others who don’t have those resources also have a sense of accountability to Allah, to whom they are accountable, uh, of how they deal with and live through their life, which does not have the resources that other people have. So no matter which state of life you might be in, I might be in, uh, the question, the key thing being, uh, can I lead this life in a way which is beneficial for everyone around me? And which becomes a source of deliverance for me when I meet Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la. I ask Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la to help us to be educated and to educate others, uh, in this way, inshaAllah. Wa sallallahu ‘alā nabiyyil kareem wa ‘alā ālihi wa sahbihi al-mahim bi rahmatillāhi wa barakatuh.