Why Modern Schools and Madrassas are Failing -Mufti Abu Layth

and I want to say something here people had asked me as well about the madrasa system and about the I want to extend this integer the general schooling system as a whole people we our schooling system today has failed and it is failing us okay and I mean by that this broader the secular the general system of Education we have today is not going to take us through on being honest with this because what I'm trying to say

is the system that got us here is not going to be enough to get us there where we need to go let me explain myself and the madrasah system is definitely a part of this it's a weaker part in fact of this whole secular of educate of the educational system as a whole you see our educational system is constructed its premise on the idea of offloading a huge amount of information

right to the students now you've got to understand why the kind of theory behind this okay the theory behind this is this educational system is over a century old now when you go back to let's say we're looking a hundred years ago right or early 1900s information was so scarce you couldn't find information like you do today in fact let me let me just just think about these people I want you to

think about something bear with me think of this let's go back 100 200 years right if you today you're a person who is reading let's say let's say who reads the newspapers whether it's online or the actual papers let's say you are somebody that does that so you read newspapers and you are reasonably active on social media so you read things Facebook you know you see all these adverts and things and news and so you're somebody who does this

let's say let's go with that hypothesis you will if you read newspapers today or you go through that kind of information in a newspaper on a daily basis and more on social media you will have perhaps potentially being through more information in a week yeah then somebody one to two hundred years ago that would go through in their entire lifetime like as in being exposed to exposed to honey right so just think about that that you would be exposed to

more information if you're going through like a News poll newspaper not just a pathetic newspaper an actual newspaper a day for a week or that equivalent online if you're reading certain subscriptions and you're reading certain things and going through social media and see this incident and that news and BBC and CNN and all this and YouTube's suggestions and you will have been exposed to more potentially more information then somebody let's say one or two centuries ago throughout their entire lives now

that is something Wow now imagine living in their age information was unavailable so what schools did was they they they were built on this notion of let's just flood as much information as we can into these young people because books were not available and they were censorship even public speaking in many parts of the world was prohibited now so and people where else would they get this information from so they would get it

from school so they go to school and they've been told this this isn't robbery this Mass this is literature this is this this this this because that's the only place they could get it I mean outside they could only probably access religious information now you see now we live in 2080 now let's fast-forward we live in a totally different world people information there is an overload we are drowning in information we are in the Information

Age there is too much information so flooding kids with information at school is useless because a child or a young person or any person has more access to information here then any human being could possess in front of him so you can bring me the most intelligent person and I have access to more information in the palm of my hand then a dozen of those people put

together I mean they may have expertise and skills but I can outdo them with information what we need people we need the shift to change from information deliverance to critical thinking we need the focus to be on critical thought how do we teach children or young people to reason to refine we are in an age people we are in an age of fake news there is

so much information that is fake this has been unprecedented human beings have I mean human beings have been exposed to propaganda but there has never been this much fake information if readily available ever how do you filter through how do you sift through fake legit how do you come to conclusions how do we evaluate how do i synthesize between different research or ideas and bring them together how do i

co-create these new a new perspective so this is what we need and this is a great need for education as a whole them I think secular education is massively failing on this and I'm gonna be honest I think this is my I think education that is in schools and institutions in all honesty is unfortunately a waste of time I don't think it really provides people it doesn't provide them you know true I mean it's it's but I understand the fact it's better than not having but it's so much time is invested and money

that it doesn't pay off it's not a fair trade-off so it doesn't provide them the jobs that they that they deserve a leaves them with just an undue debt and I'm like I believe in oppressive debt it leaves them just really having a master certain amount of information and knowing how to write let's say essays and things like this week in real life isn't what life is about I mean unless you're gonna become an academic and write journals you're not gonna really be writing essays and doing these things throughout your lives so this is just

quite irrelevant I mean I understand this importance to this but what I'm trying to say is holistically doesn't it's not a fair trade-off I'm not against I'm not anti essayists or anti but what I'm trying to say is this isn't the trade-off ain't worth it whereas if the information is reduced but our skills to extrapolate are increased our critical the resources are refined and retuned then we're onto something people that is the way forward

so now now that I've said that the Islamic thing so that's the secular system is is is struggling okay so the secular system is in a drought mode people drought okay because and that's people with some of the greatest thinkers but they really need to start thinking right we need to change this down educational system right because it's failing so the the secular free thinking societies that are not bound by

certain restrictions necessarily are in drought that education system I mean the motherís and the religious educational system is in famine mode there it's not in a drought mode this is centuries behind that this is still operating at the maybe the Middle Ages the medieval times this is still operating on that a same thing a same approach sorry lets us flood them with loads of information in a particular book that is

irrelevant to life altogether worse still is no because this is easy is asking is that being sarcastic no it's not because you see in the madrasa system they're teaching all these books okay in the secular system they're giving an overload of information which is highly irrelevant and information is not the need anymore so they need to start assessing re-evaluating the needs of our society the needs are the way to re-tune the way we think and critical thinking but these institutions are not averse to critical

thinking they do promote critical thinking but they don't it's not the primary focus these institutions are averse or ante critical thought so they actually condemn these are what we call these are confessional modes of teaching this is dogmatism right so in general now now what they do even if they teach you critical thinking they teach it dogmatically and confession aliso confessional teaching is when you teach like the seminaries and churches teach people they teach people but it's they

teach them just dogma dogmatically so for example imagine I'm now to teach you a imagine I'm to teach you a debate so let's say I say to you look people Allah says in the Quran you know it I've come to me love salah Fox Allah would you have come my idea criminal mafia that wants to succumb that now let's say here let's take this verse as an example yeah so so just to just to show you what I

mean by teaching by by by this by a pipe so here you have different scholars have taken a look at this verse that that from sorrow pero se come ok now this verse wipe over you your heads okay from Siberia Lucy come now here there is a word be that wipe over with or what does this be mean it's it's a transitive kind of particle but what is it doing so wipe over so here some people have said like

the Shaffer in math lab so I'm teaching you critical thought this is how it's true in a mother Esther so they will say look let's say the Maliki said no you need to wipe over all your head ok because that's what because Allah says in another verse that folks are will be would you become what ad of Camille Elmer avec wants to do it to your mom and this and they you wipe the whole face so here you wipe the whole head now the chef here will say well be here means a portion of so as long as you wipe any part of your head you're here so that could what's the least number of here to make it plural is three

generally in the Arabic language because they have dual as well so three is the least number of chloral literally speaking so as long as you wiped three here then your masa has been done the Hanafi have said well now as long as you wipe a significant portion why don't we take that to mean like a this whole a portion about that with which they call the Nasir which may cover between 1/3 to 1/4 of your head so that's fine as long as you've done that so this is diverse thought so in the mothers that they will teach you this diverse the word so they will say the Maliki said these the surface of this the Hanafi said this learned that now you can they will then

tell you ok where hanafis this is how we do it now you can question that why did they say this they'll say well Maliki said this because of the TM mum they said this because of this but you're not allowed to take this further in anyway so for example let's say you said ah Bashar I think I think that this bar that is used like this and imagine you came out with a different view let's just say like you said I believe that this really ought to cover 2/3 of the head this is my understanding because

looking at all of this I'm just giving an example you will be either mocked if the teachers in a good mood or you'd be reprimanded now who do you think you are like how dare you contribute to this discourse you are not here to contribute to this discourse you are here to do memorize what these people have said you can ask why they said it that's fine but what you can't do I mean you can ask to clarify and to learn better why they've said it but what you can't do is introduce a new way

of looking things that is categorically Haram in most I mean what they won't you actually they might even use the word Haram but others won't but it's forbidden so mattresses are massively averse to free thinking the reason and critical thought the reason they like is because one they massively insecure but two religious institutions tend to do that because they don't because in order to keep the authority they feel that people can't be too critical because if you start to question things you'll eventually question them but in

all honesty you wouldn't really the institution but they have a fear that it would and hence there's such a tradition for a thousand years of you know just dogmatism dogmatism dogmatism so yeah so this is we really need to be thinking so out of the box honestly the world today just think about we we've got two people we we've got two I answered in last week's show about is this somebody asked me do you think we're living in a simulation and I said that I feel it's very plausible now we are living in a simulation I feel

that that is plausible that I would tell me give it a slightly a subtitle that the mind of God that is it really simply are we simply in existence in the mind of God is that what reality is in a very sophisticated and complex way that we can't fathom just as if you look into a a computer game I mean the the way these games are becoming more and more complex and 3d and very virtual and realistic and the characters are doing all these things and they're moving around and yet

I could have a tiny chip the size of I don't know I can have a tiny chip something like this size yeah and this is where the game is this is where everybody is you see everybody is on on that and you think well where are they but that's where they I'd and they could be a 3d and they could now imagine these characters somehow gained consciousness just imagine and they gained consciousness for a moment roll with it

now they would assume that everything they're doing is of their choice but little do they know that they are actually being controlled but I'm just saying it's if they became conscious they would think that everything they're doing is them I mean these are just fascinating so but I think that look if I'm not saying what this is a computer game but I'm saying you know in a complicated way it could be in a very complicated way it could be I don't see that in any way anti-islamic I think if anything it actually answers a lot of

Islamic questions in terms of like predestination in terms of evil and suffering in terms of all of these things seem to give a they seem to become a lot more explicable in that simulation dynamic but if we only let's say reality is a simulation or whether realism how do we learn about reality religion like the folk of religious folk are not interested in this like they just like well hmm this like basically if you speak to dogmatists they view is there's nothing new

there's nothing to learn about this this this cosmos there's nothing and anything we do learn is just simply information like that's a deep sense of arrogance that we think that we know it all why and this is why atheists really hate on people of of Dogma like that who hailed from religions because they have this view that oh well there's nothing huh I don't want to know that there's nothing to learn about this cosmos or about reality or about matter and if we if we do discover something it's like oh this

is not the attitude of the early Muslims the early Muslims if you look at the great scientists the physicians that the philosophers that the Muslim on my heart they were very curious they weren't about Oh well we know we all came from God so there's no point learning about it but that was not their attitude like look people check this out like it takes a certain amount of what because what I'm trying to say is it's through critical

thought that we're going to refine our thinking process and discover stuff we don't know like just think about that I mean people it took Einstein Einstein here's a person who was a nobody and he reconciled what people for hundreds of years couldn't understand that why why okay before Newton people were still struggling with the element of gravity as a concept but Newton kind of comes up with his you know harmonizing that gravity's out there and in here and harmonizing between the heavens and the

earth but even Newton says look I I've explained gravity but I don't know why is gravity D I don't know why it's the eye I explained these kind of laws of motion and things like this but along comes I in stein and you know he he's not even a part of that discourse and then he discovers what what goes on to be called the law of general relativity and space-time that actually there's like a fabric the space-time is an actual fabric and it's within this fabric of space that mass creates a kind

of bent which around it the other body's kind of revolve and this is why you have that gravitational kind of pull and revolution and this nature now he changes everything and speaking of the speed of light and speaking of relativity and now it's like people thought of these things and then they they had these shifts it's today people are thinking like let me tell you something today there's this whole understanding of how many degrees of reality can we get into and people

generally say in that there's 11 degrees of reality that they've kind of got into that work mathematically and I think if they try beyond that he starts to collapse and goes into mayhem now what is that even talking about I just think about that because you see what they're trying to do is unify all these different forces because you had Einstein come up with this explanation of what he did with with gravity and then you had people like Theodor Kaluza and other other people who who thought well maybe I can do the same thing with

electromagnetism and they they they come up with a theory that unifies these things and then there's other forces the nuclear force and the strong force the weak force and people in physics are trying to unify these and now we've got quantum mechanics because we've got this world in the quantum world and is there a way of unifying these now the unfortunate thing is that Muslims are not a part of this discourse at all when by and large because I mean by that from a religious perspective we almost think like mmm this is irrelevant but why is

it relevant because if anything if we are going to discover reality it's going to be through this this is what reality is about not just to let me just share with you this this thing on the dimension just think about this for example they see people thought what if these dimensions are curled up within like so tiny that we can't actually see

we can't actually I mean we could it's so difficult to fire them but they're right there in front of us now just think about this not because this had me mind on when I was trying to fathom this that what on earth is that on about how do you get other dimensions how do they even get get it like wow and how do we think about that so let me let me take you on a mental trip people imagine we are 2d objects yeah so we're 2d objects so here we are this

this is really bright so I don't know if that's showing up very well but if that's not Hitler people that's not you that's a bad example to tea right so let's say here's a book right so imagine we are 2d objects that's us we are like this this little text that's all we are right now imagine that's our world like all we can see is up-down left-right like that I mean just that's it really just these we can move about like that that's our world in how we can see it

now imagine somebody put a finger like I put my finger over there now you see from the perspective of these 2d characters these people they're these letters imagine these letters are all people from their perspective what do you think they will see I'll tell you what they'll see they'll see a circle that circle is my fingertip being kind of pressed against they will just see that circle so this whole thing the hand and all of that they will not be able to

see they will only see that circle moving around as I move my finger because that's the only way they can see yeah I mean sorry I'm saying circle but you understand what I mean like they'll just see that the fingertip the thing actual pressing there's the flat shape moving around because from the perspective that's the world as it is it's like in our perspective we can only see the world in 3d if we if there are things entire things connected to these

forces that are outside of our dimension we will not be able to see them do you understand now but what we can do is through things like the sciences of physics and mathematics and we can try to discover if these forces do exist and one example is like dark matter dark energy these things exist Dark Matter exists what is it what if it is something hovering above like another like what I'm trying to say is we wouldn't be able to fathom it because it's not part of this dimension I mean

sorry not fathom we wouldn't be able to see it because it's not part of this dimension I'm sorry to kind of I know this may sound a bit wacko me saying all these things but what my purpose for saying this stuff is that we need to start rekindling that curiosity for discovery to learn to once again become curious with nature we need to stop like like if we don't know something like look like I've said this stuff is this is very complicated stuff you can go into YouTube you can watch very

simplified videos but we we need to stop rekindling this this flame within the younger generation and within Muslims especially because we are so like it's we are cognitively I'm from a legacy perspective we are handicapped I don't mean to kind of put it like across but we are like on the on the global scale you know it's like people say you know well how many universities do does the entire Muslim world have compared to and how many Nobel Prizes have they won and

how many you know like what's the contribution being in the last hundred and fifty years where as our contribution was huge as a Muslim Ummah because we were incredibly curious so right so that's I think that's some words I think I don't know if I got carried away with some of those exams I find this stuff so deeply fascinating and and I find it a what I find the kind of attitude belligerent and arrogant when I come up of this look we know it all like oh like what is they to know about reality oh

that's just and we'll just give him an Islamic term Oh quantum oh it's just the world of the gene huh that's not how this works me you gotta kind of that's what I'm talking about right so I hope that made some sense people what are some questions let's take some questions man let's take some questions people as our lips would say baccarat hard you know make your couch couch couch honest MJ Kodaka Rika we it say that what nonsense

am I just blabbering on in my insanity God willing that you know nobody's understood a word of what I've said right so what's going on people