Talk at MAJU on 21 Feb 2023 - A Western education creates a Eurocentric worldview, which teaches us that all valuable knowledge was created by the West in the past three centuries. Further, the Quran and Hadeeth, and the Islamic intellectual tradition has nothing of importance to contribute to the modern world. These ideas are deadly wrong, and directly in conflict with the message of Islam, which teaches us that the final message of God to mankind is the most valuable knowledge given to humanity. To resolve this problem, we need to recognized the defects in Eurocentric epistemology, and rebuild the entire stock of Western knowledge on Islamic foundations. In particular, it is essential to build an Islamic alternative to Western education.

1. Creating Alternatives to
Western Education
Dr. Asad Zaman
Download these slides from: http://bit.ly/SSmaju23

2. My thinking – as it evolved – through life
experiences
For a more detailed description – see Life Journey: http://bit.ly/rsraCH1
My youth, from my current perspective:
My education and reading created my worldview.
We believe the world is build of mountains, lands, rivers, and oceans.
BUT, we live in a world created by our ideas.
These ideas are planted in our minds by our education.
Our education is based on Western models, which creates a very
Eurocentric perspective.

3. Some Central Eurocentric Ideas:
• Knowledge of greatest value was created by Western Intellectuals
over the past three centuries.
• Islamic teaching ONCE UPON A TIME led ignorant and backward
Bedouin to world leadership and created a magnificent civilization,
which enlightened the world for a thousand years.
• BUT these teachings are of marginal importance today. The path to
progress lies in learning to be like the West.
• Our societies are in bad shape – to improve them, we need to learn
and implement economics, politics, and social theories of the West.

4. My youth
• Unthinking following of the West.
• Hippie Lifestyle: Do whatever you want, without social constraints.
• Results were OPPOSITE of those expected
• Selfish pursuit of pleasure led to loneliness and unhappiness.
• Reflections and search for alternative philosophies of life.
• Return to faith via Tableegh
Brief Autobiography: http://bit.ly/AZbiog

5. Faith creates a DEEP DILEMMA!
Sahih International: Allah is the ally of those who believe. He
brings them out from darknesses into the light. And those who
disbelieve - their allies are Taghut. They take them out of the light
into darknesses. Those are the companions of the Fire; they will
abide eternally therein.
Belief should lead to NOOR of knowledge. Rejection of guidance
from God should lead to darkness. BUT, this does not SEEM to be
true!

6. More Of the Same Message
Today, I have perfected your religion for you,
and have completed My blessing upon you, and chosen Islam as
Dīn (religion and a way of life) for you.
Say, “With the grace of Allah and with His mercy (this book has
been revealed). So they should rejoice in it. It is much better than
that (wealth) which they accumulate.

7. Deep Dilemma
Strong Conflict between Head and Heart
HEART: The Message of the Quran contains complete and perfect
guidance. The final message of God to mankind MUST be infinitely
superior to any knowledge that man can possibly invent.
HEAD: The world today is SWAMPED with the fruits of Western
knowledge – our lives are shaped by Western inventions, which are in
our daily use and INDISPENSABLE. Clearly superior to Quran!

8. Fundamental Insight:
The Message of the Quran is just as revolutionary today as it was 14
centuries ago!
Tableeghi Training: Faith in the UNSEEN – When the message of God
contradicts what your eyes and experience and observation show to be
true AFFIRM the truth of God and DENY your own senses and logic.
LOTS of DUA for guidance to the NOOR promised to the believers

9. Journey of 30+ Years
4 months in Tableegh in Summer 1991  Early 2023
Step-by-Step Unravelling of the Illusions of Western Knowledge
Step-by-Step Deepening of the understanding of the powerful message
of the Quran – which is in conflict with all our ordinary beliefs.

10. Burning Questions – resolved over 30 years!
Why is the knowledge of Quran – which seems routine and well-known
– superior to all of the knowledge created by mankind without this
basis?
If Quranic knowledge is superior, why don’t MUSLIMS believe in its
superiority? (examples from Islamic Economics, and from daily life)
How can we DEMONSTRATE the superiority of the knowledge given to
us by the Quran?
How can we use the knowledge of the Quran to launch a revolution
today, like the one launched 14 centuries ago?

11. Why does Quran provide superior
knowledge?
ANSWER: The Quran teaches us about who created us, and how to lead
our lives to achieve success. It provides us with guidance on how to live
on a moment-by-moment basis.
Such guidance cannot be found anywhere within the books of the
West.
What is this guidance? And are we following this guidance?
Prophecy: Islam came as a stranger, and it will become a stranger.
Prophecy: You will follow the ways of the Jews and Christians, to the
extent of crawling into snakeholes after them.

12. One Example (from among a thousand)
Economics textbooks teach: RATIONAL behavior is to maximize utility
obtained from consumption of goods and services.
Muslims all over the globe are teaching and learning these theories. Many
articles and scholars explain how utility maximization is actually Islamic!
The Quran says that those who pursue their idle desires will go to Jahannam.
Those who restrain themselves (do not fulfill their desires) will go to Jannat.
We cannot reach to the state of GOODNESS unless we give away what we
LOVE!

13. What is going on? Why do Muslims FAIL to
recognize the DIRECT conflict?
Shock-and-Awe of Western Knowledge

14. How is this Shock-and-Awe created?

15. Western Education creates Colonized Minds!
• By teaching only Western Knowledge, superiority of West is proven.
• Western education teaches a LOT of lies about history, philosophy,
science, economics.
• Our students absorb these lies and become unable to understand the
message of the Quran.
• See: The Deadliest Weapon: Fabricated History:
http://bit.ly/AZDeadly

16. This has happened once before!
The Ancient Mu’tazila were super-impressed by Greek Philosophy
They argued the REASON (Greek Philosophy) was on par with the
Quran. Because we USE reason to understand the Quran.
The Modern Mu’tazila argue that Western knowledge is on par with, or
superior to, the Quran.
See: http://bit.ly/AZtmm

17. Imam AL-Ghazali’s Solution: Three Steps
1. Deliverance from Doubt:
2. Incoherence of the Philosophers:
3. Revival of the Religious Sciences:
For details, see: How to Launch an Islamic Revival? http://bit.ly/azlir
A sequence of ten lectures which spells out the steps.

18. Summary and Recap
The key problem: We have lost on the battleground of KNOWLEDGE.
Those who have inherited the final message of God CANNOT afford to
lose on the battleground of knowledge.
The only solution is to rebuild the entire stock of knowledge built by
the West over the past three centuries on Islamic Foundations.
See: Rebuilding Social Sciences on Islamic Foundations:
http://bit.ly/AZrss1 and http://bit.ly/AZrss2 (parts 1 and 2)

19. Specifics
• Major strides have been made in Islamic Psychology.
• Deeper understanding of human beings (heart, soul, Nafs (desires),
and Mind) furnishes basis for all social sciences.
• Recep Senturk’s efforts to Decolonize the Social Sciences are based on
the Multiplexity Framework – a deep and sophisticated approach
rooted in classical Uloom of Islam.
• My efforts have led to a sketch of Uloom-ul-Umran – a completely
different way to approach the social sciences based on Ibn-e-Khaldun.
See: http://bit.ly/AZUUU

20. Islamic Psychology:
Sat 25th Feb, 2023
• ISIP-International Students of Islamic Psychology in
recognition of the second year anniversary of the
passing of the father of Islamic Psychology in the
modern age, ISIP is honoured to host a Tribute to
Professor Dr. Malik Badri, RahimullahSpeakers:
• Free Lecture: ZOOM link will be provided to
registrants:
• https://tinyurl.com/ISIP-Reg-AA-AR-QB

21. A New Approach to Islamic Economics
Register for free online course via Google Form: http://bit.ly/AZIEML
Watch first Video Lecture: http://bit.ly/YTnaie1
Next LIVE lecture on Sunday March 5th, 2023 via ZOOM. For details,
links, see: http://bit.ly/na2ie
First Lecture: Gratitude, Contentment, and Trust in God – These are the
Islamic foundations of RATIONAL behavior.
What Western Economics calls rational is very foolish – highly irrational.
Western Economics deals with Nafs-e-Ammara, Islamic Economics
deals with the JOURNEY from Ammara to Lawwama to Mutma’inna

22. Real Statistics: An Islamic Approach
Ronald Fisher built statistics around reduction of data. This involves
making FALSE assumptions about the data to permit reduction.
This methodology is no longer necessary because of computers.
Rejection of the unseen (God) led to rejection of unobservables.
Probability is fundamentally unobservable
Causality is fundamentally unobservable.
Western philosophers have been debating these concepts, central to
statistics, for more than a century, without resolution,

23. In ALL areas of knowledge, radical
reconstruction is needed.
Julie Reuben: Making of the Modern University, Intellectual
Transformation and Marginalization of Morality. http://bit.ly/AZmme
We need to rebuild Islamic educational processes, placing character
building at the center of the curriculum.
Islamic intellectual tradition provides enormous amounts of guidance
on this matter.
We must STOP imitating Western pedagogy and syllabus, distinguish
between USEFUL and USELESS knowledge, and strive to teach only
useful knowledge

24. Action Plan
• Stop imitating Western Pedagogical Methods, which are highly
inefficient, and create HUGE obstacles to learning in students.
• Instead of teaching abstract bodies of theories, teach ONLY
knowledge which is of practical value in solving problems facing us in
our lives – individual and collective.
• DO NOT teach those things which are USELESS in helping us to solve
concrete real-world problems.
• INTERMEDIATE STEP: Teach Western Knowledge as an OUTSIDER –
explain that these are the theories which shape Western minds. We
need to understand them, to understand the West.

25. Centralize Character & Conduct
• Our Prophet SAW was the paradigm of excellence in conduct
• This must be the CORE of an Islamic Education.
• See: Lessons MIT did not Teach me: http://bit.ly/mit4az
• My education failed to provide me with knowledge I desperately
needed as a teenager: How to live, What to aim for as a goal of life.
• WORSE – it educated me into wrong ways of thinking about these
larger questions. The harms cause to me took decades to overcome.

26. Economics
Everything I was taught during Ph.D. Econ at Stanford was wrong. See
“The Education of an Economist” http://bit.ly/AZeduc
This theory of economics is created to justify capitalism. It explains that
wealth goes to those who deserve it, in accordance with their
contribution to global production.
This is a MORAL theory, and it is completely false, and easy to disprove.
This theory has caused IMMENSE HARM to the world. Massive and
increasing inequality, as well as a climate catastrophe.

27. Business
• Conventional MBA material creates deadly mindsets – pursuit of
profits above all else.
• Short term pursuit of profits with complete disregard of social costs,
and power created by corporate structures has caused immense harm
to the planet. The climate crisis is caused by corporate behavior.
• Islam provides us with a radically different paradigm for business.
• The goal of a firm or corporation is to provide service to humanity,
while making profits is an intermediate goal

28. Politics
• Machiavellian Political Theory says there are no moral in pursuit of
power. This is directly in conflict with message of the Quran.
• This politics has led to continuous wars, and the deadliest century in
history of mankind.
• It has led to the harnessing of science in pursuit of power politics,
creating a deadly combination.
• We have a well developed and sophisticated alternative political
theory

29. Mathematics
• The Axiomatic Method used to develop mathematics is
fundamentally wrong.
• Today it is possible to teach intuitively very advanced mathematics to
all students, if we abandon Western approaches, and use alternative
intuitive methods.
• Mathematics is the key to rapid advances in science and technology. If
we can improve the efficiency with which we teach this subject, we
can overcome our deficiencies in this area.
• Our ancestors made many discoveries of central importance in these
areas.

30. Urgent Need: Create an Alternative to
Western Education – Course by Course
• Psychology
• Economics
• Statistics
• Econometrics
• Sociology
• Business
• Mathematics
Efforts are underway in all directions. More speed is needed.

31. My Talk Later this
Afternoon
Topic: Fatima Sajjad's Zoom Meeting
Time: Feb 22, 2023 02:15 PM Islamabad,
Karachi, Tashkent
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/96026826632?pwd=cWZBMU
dJajhWdkFBakFOT1l2Qkp4UT09
Meeting ID: 960 2682 6632
Passcode: 144568

32. Download Slides From:
Slides for this
talk:Creating
Alternatives to
Western Education
http://bit.ly/SSmaju23
Slides for talk on:
Rethinking Social
Science Education (in
Pakistan)
http://bit.ly/SSrsse23