Conference: Muslims facing education, a hope for this time; Muhammad Mujtar Medinilla

Muslims and education, a hope for the times

Muhammad Mujtar Medinilla

V ANDALUSIAN MEETINGS March 18, 2022

Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim

I thank my son, Idris, for this recitation of the Quran and Hayy Khalid for his kind introduction. Thank you all for your assistance.

These verses we have just heard belong to the beginning of the Surah of the Merciful, Ar-Rahman, and the translation of the first nine recited verses is this:

In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate

1. The Merciful
2. has taught in the Koran,
3. created man,
4. has taught him to speak.
5. The sun and the moon travel in two precise orbits,
6. and the star and the tree prostrate themselves;
7. has lifted the sky and set the scales
8. so that you would not abuse your
9. and you will fulfill the weight with equity, without detriment.

Because Allah has taught us to speak, al-bayān, i.e., the names of all created beings, the ability to express ourselves through language and discernment and reflection, human beings can understand the universe and explain it as an ordered whole that obeys precise laws. Thanks also to this faculty, we can distinguish the lawful from the unlawful, the guide from the misguided.

And when we talk about teaching, about teaching, we are talking about education, because all teaching should be, by definition, education, tarbiyah, which is a concept that encompasses the upbringing and training of a person throughout his life, the complete education, because an integral and permanent training is the essential characteristic of Muslims. The pursuit of knowledge from the cradle to the grave. And this is a sign that hope always nests in the heart of the believer.

The purpose of the whole teaching of Islam, based on the Qur’an, the uncreated word of Allah, and the Sunna, the body of teachings, sayings and example of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), is personal health and to facilitate the conditions for each individual, each one of us, to be close to His Lord.

The enormous importance of the family and then the community, as pillars of education, with all the processes of individualization and socialization, developing in ever-widening circles: parents, siblings, uncles, grandparents, relatives, neighbors, the school, the community, until reaching a universal dimension, with the responsibility of exercising the khalifate of Allah, Allah’s representative, ruling the Earth, all this is to ensure that you can dedicate yourself to Allah, be in relationship with Him, worship Him as He should be worshipped.

Because Islamic education is nothing other than preserving our fitra, our original nature, the natural form, that order of being in which man recognizes himself. And every human being tends towards it, because this primordial nature, this we could say “original mark”, that which denominates us, always inclines towards its Creator, towards Allah. Therefore, we say that this natural form of the human being, the fitra, is the same as Islam. And it is founded on tawhid, which means that there is nothing and no one that can be associated, added, to Allah.

Education, tarbiyah, consists in preserving the fitra, this natural form of being, in harmony and throughout the different stages of our life, in a process of gradual improvement, attracting what benefits us and keeping away what harms us, until we reach its fullness: knowing-returning to its Lord, and I associate these two terms: returning and knowing, because it is like a return to your age of birth and upbringing, when this form was intrinsic, connatural, to your being; but now, with the intellect, the capacity to understand existence through discernment and reflection.

When I worked with the children at school, especially the younger ones, and we would talk about Allah, I was amazed and moved to see how clear they were: “Of course Allah is One; He has always been and will always be there; how can He have children and parents? They instinctively recognized all that Allah says about Himself. “Every child is born in a state of fitra.”

We must protect the heart of the children so that there cannot be two hearts in the same chest, so that it does not break, so that there is no division, no rupture between the inner and the outer of their developing personality; so that their original spontaneity can manifest itself and thus have the possibility of attaining the highest qualities in the future.

For this we educate, because this is the fundamental organ, the core of the human being, the place where the fitra resides. The hadith qudsi (a saying, words, of our beloved Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), but in which the meaning belongs to Allah) says: “Neither the Heavens nor the Earth encompass me, but the heart of the human being that opens towards me”. This presence, this perception of Allah’s nearness, which impels to action, to transform your life towards the highest, is what has to take root in the hearts of children.

Said the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him: “I have been sent to ennoble good character,” as the hadith is commonly translated:

Innamâ bu’iztu li’utammîma makârima-l-‘ajlâq.

This well-known hadith, which has been for many years the motto of our schools and other educational projects, could also be translated: “I have been sent to ennoble the human form”, to continue with this notion of returning to the natural, living form of the character of the human creature. The word ‘form’ is very well here, to keep us away from the error of conferring on the term ‘character’ a fixed, immovable sense; for the Muslim is someone who, in the process of his life, is improving all the time, all the time. It is this protean, ever-changing character that provides Muslims with the capacity for civilization, to progress in the sciences to the extent appropriate to serve men, and the willingness and competence to exercise their khalifate on Earth: to rule as Allah’s representatives to preserve the natural order and health of the planet, from the preservation of ecosystems to the establishment of justice.

This process is taking place since the time of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, in the city of Medina, non-stop until today, and this continuous effort, this transforming your life, this self-transformation, is what confers on you the nobility, which we Muslims call futuwwa.

This continuous process of improvement, in every man, in every woman, is carried out by advancing every day, even if only a little, in five aspects, which serve as a guide:

• in the intellect, starting with its protection from all kinds of garbage, which circulates, mainly, through the media, and cultivating your intellectual and artistic qualities.
• in health, with its care and also with physical vigor, in order to be able to perform acts of worship, and for the defense of your family and your community…
• in the ‘ibādah, worship, with the five pillars of Islam, the study of the Qur’an and other aspects of the din (the way, the way of being in this world, better than ‘religion’) of Islam, not forgetting the knowledge of the mu’amalat, the commercial and social relations within the sharī’ah, Islamic law.
• in the adab, with politeness and good behavior, being attentive to the needs of others…
• and courage to overcome your own difficulties and to face the difficult circumstances that surround you.

To all this, I would add that every person, so that his well does not dry up, should do something that fills him up, even if nobody understands why he does it or what sense it makes: writing poetry, dancing, collecting coins, I don’t know, everyone knows. The importance of this is that you cannot pour on others, give yourself, give yourself, if you are not being filled in your turn, and this is a good way to achieve it.

If you want to understand Islamic education, you have to know that the only Islamic issue is your own life, to seek a way to deal with life, freely; to return to that natural way, fitra, one of whose qualities is not to be constrained within yourself.

In this vital process, the Muslims of this land, and in this land, we represent, and this is the thesis of this talk, a hope in our effort to recover the two teaching traditions of which we are a part. By Allah, we are privileged to find ourselves at the point where our Islamic tradition and our European tradition touch. Moreover, we are convinced that it is possible to convey the meaning of Islam in the language of this land, of our European tradition; because, without doubt, Islam is its consummation. Islam is what Europe has always been looking for as its culmination, the final process and its pinnacle.

In a way, this already happened in history, but, with some exceptions, Europeans, who over time sought their roots in ancient Greece, in an unconscious but liberating attempt to “skip” the ballast of centuries of Christianity, forgot about Al-Andalus. If the Muslims of Al-Andalus transmitted the legacy of knowledge of ancient Greece to Europe, today, the Muslims of Europe and in Europe face the recovery of the deepest sense of paideia through the spiritual, political, economic, social and behavioral parameters of the din of Islam. But this cannot be done without reconciliation between Muslims who were born here and those who have come from other lands.

If Allah wills it, the Seville Mosque Foundation intends to establish, in the future, periodic Educational Conferences where we will develop this thesis extensively, in addition to other essential issues related to education.

Goethe, perhaps the most enlightened European figure of all time, recognized the clear and timeless core of all genuine Islamic teaching and the doctrine of Oneness, tawhid. He recognized that only in the encounter with Islam can a person achieve real recognition of the spiritual level he himself has attained.

Two traditions, but only one teaching. Nietzsche said: “Some people do not find their hearts until they lose their heads”. And Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi (may Allah’s mercy be upon him) said, “When we prostrate, our heart is above our head.”

In both, we find a transforming energy, with vitality, with unity, with an integral vision of man. Both recognize in the human being that faculty that allows a knowledge that is not reasoning, that is not a logical operation or an operation of language, but a perceptive experience; both traditions coincide in the search for a more abundant, noble and sublime way of being, a qualitatively and dimensionally different life.

And, despite the current abandonment by the West of the roots of its cultural tradition, figures such as Giorgio Agamben, possibly the greatest philosopher of our time, are still alive today, struggling to make this old continent understand that the human being is much more than what they have wanted to reduce us to in the last two years, a mere biological existence.

Being a Muslim does not mean abandoning your culture. On the contrary, an important part of our mission is to achieve an expression of Islam that transcends and transforms our European tradition. And everything we need for that is within our own tradition.

Because Islam is not a culture, it is a filter of cultures, a sieve that lets through, that gets rid of everything that is not natural and collects all the good and healthy of a culture. For example, we can use European mythology, Greek, Scandinavian, Celtic…, because in them we will find great values of that fitra we have been talking about, of that natural state of the human being, for our young people.

For our young people to be able to decipher the world in which they live, it is essential to return to the genuine European cultural tradition, and most especially to the roots of the Greek world, and, with this, coupled with this understanding, to regain the vigor and strength that underlies it, because the greatest damage being produced in them by the current educational system is not so much the lack of unity and coherence in teaching, but the degree of weakening that infiltrates them.

We identify with his educational model, the paideia, whose purpose was for the individual to become virtuous, to attain areté, nobility, and to incorporate an ethical dimension in his relations with others, to learn to live together; it directed the human being towards a radical transformation of his being and included all the ideal, bodily and spiritual requirements, in other words, a fully conscious spiritual formation. The true paideia captures and transforms the soul itself to make it fit for this perception of things as they are. Only when he possessed the paideia, the individual was part of the community, only through it was he capable of political life, because the paideia brought, in addition to a living and active spiritual vision, a community of destiny.

The superior strength of the Greek spirit depended on this deep root in the life of the community. A paideia worthy of its name could only be developed as a project, a commitment, in fact, among all the interlocutors of a society….

Because nobility cannot be achieved in a school institution; nobility is the fruit of a clean society; clean in the streets, clean in commercial transactions, in social relations, in all senses. Therefore, in order for quality human beings to emerge, in addition to an educational group, a social bond is also needed.

This is why the recovery of the traditional Islamic form of teaching, the Muslim paideia, based on a firm and pure tawhid, is linked to the recovery of the Islamic form of government: the emirate (an authority arising from the people, based on being the one who serves the most, advised by the people of knowledge). So it is very difficult to talk about education if we only do it in “pedagogical” terms. When the Islamic form of government was abolished, the understanding of tawhid (the recognition of the oneness of Allah, that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah, alone and without associates, the first part of the shahada, or declaration of faith: ASSHADU AN LA ILAHA ILLA ALLAH, ‘I declare that there is no god but Allah’), which was the element that maintained, not only the totality of the din of Islam in society, but was the basis of Islamic teaching, disappeared. This element is the differentiating factor that must be present at the heart of any educational project that we Muslims undertake.

When this tawhid permeates a collectivity, beginning with the cellular nucleus of social life which is the family, the community educates.

It is not an intellectual matter: if it is not reflected, if it is not in the behavior, there is no tawhid. “Qul amantu billahi, zumma-staqim”, ‘Say I believe in Allah; then be upright’ (hadith, saying, of the prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, which brings us to the second part of the shahada: WA ASSHADU ANNA MUHAMMADAN RASULLULLAH, ‘and I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah). This teaching of which we speak is based on an understanding of tawhid which contains, at the same time, that adab, that behavior, without which it cannot be achieved. If you establish justice, it is the proof that you have knowledge. Let us recall the Qur’anic verses from the beginning:

He (Allah) has raised up the heavens and set the scales so that you may not abuse the weighing
and that you may do the weighing with equity and without loss.

Our model of education is meticulous, based for centuries and centuries on detail. What educates is every little gesture, full of adab, of wise courtesy, from an elder, from a companion, from your wife…. This was what first attracted me to the din of Islam: the care, the adab with which things were done. I was already very close to Islam, my heart was “tamed”, surrendered to Allah; intellectually, I was also very attracted, but it was in Granada, sharing several meals with Muslims, when I decided to make the shahada, to enter Islam: the courtesy and the care with which they treated each other and the guests, despite the sobriety of the food, the behavior of the children, attentive to the conversation and always ready to serve…. I learned a lot at that moment and I understood that it takes a whole community united and strong, healthy, so that a small gesture becomes a teaching.

It is very important that children learn to be attentive to others. This being attentive, aware of the other, is the adab, which does not consist of mere formulas of urbanity and superficial courtesy, but in a deep attention, which goes beyond greetings and giving one’s place, which of course must also be the case, but to be able to recognize each other, to give each one the place that corresponds to him. In this way, every man, every woman, every young person will be able to play his or her true role in the community.

“To educate a child it takes the whole tribe”. This well-known African proverb illustrates it perfectly. The best way for the realization of the ‘I’, of the person, is to establish a good society. And, for this, intergenerational harmony is essential, because the key to social cohesion lies in avoiding an existential void between one generation and another, and I would say even more, that harmony, that concord, can only be complete when three generations coexist: grandparents, parents and children.

When I was a child, in my neighborhood, in Bellavista, somehow I could perceive some of this: it is true that there was poverty, that we were still living in the Franco regime, that there was a low cultural level in general lines; but, above all this, there remained something of that social bond that made that any older person would call you to order if you did any mischief, and even if it was at the last end of the neighborhood, if he said to you: “I’m going to tell your father when I see him”, then you would start to tremble, because you knew he was going to believe her and punish you; I remember that the doors of the houses on my street were always open and there was a very great interrelation between families, assisting and helping each other when necessary; my house was one of the few that had a telephone and, on many occasions, my parents would make me go out to warn any neighbor on the block because his brother-in-law was calling him from Barcelona, for example… It was not an idyllic world, far from it, but we respected and listened to our elders, especially the elderly.

We Muslims can become, Allah willing, a new social glue, a model of unity and mutual support… in this land, which we love and wish to favor, trying to correct and improve it as far as we can… Because we Muslims have two very clear goals: to achieve the Garden and to rule the Earth. We are representatives, Khalifahs, of Allah in this world and we cannot shirk our obligation to take care of it and to establish justice in it.

And for both of these objectives, we need education; a permanent and comprehensive education, in all aspects, as we mentioned at the beginning; taking into account that the most important is the education of the din of Islam, the education of the imān (belief) and the education of the ruh (the spirit, the soul) because this is the quintessence of education, where the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) are centered.

It is necessary to become aware that cultivating oneself has to do with developing all your talents, with unfolding all those faculties that Allah has placed in you; it is closely related to growing in the Din. We will know our own culture better and we will make of it a vehicle of truly human expression to the extent that we are able to put into practice the din of Islam. I am talking about cultivating oneself, which is something deep, which comes from within you; not about culturizing oneself, which is incorporating something that comes from outside, something superficial. We live in a time in which culture has died, just as education has died – and I am not saying this, but Heidegger, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century and an important reference for Muslims today -, and this is part of our task: to recover that concept of culture which, as Nietzsche said, “begins precisely from the moment in which one knows how to treat what is alive as something alive”.

Said Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: “Be generous to your children and perfect their education. They are a gift from Allah to you”. In the first place, generosity, in all aspects, but, above the material, equity and mercy, in addition to benevolence, kindness and indulgence; and, as for the second, perfecting their education, we mean to offer them the most perfect education that at every time and place circumstances permit,

We must make an effort to educate our children as well as possible, at the highest level. And it is inescapable for Muslims, to the best of their ability, to take the issue of education into their own hands.

And we do this because it represents:

• first and foremost, a measure of survival;
• secondly, to establish/facilitate a path of improvement and elevation;
• and, finally, the training of generations for leadership.

The world has changed a lot, and the growth of children and a proper education for them needs great attention on our part. Because, in these times of human weakness, of submission to the global political-financial system and of impotence before the transcendental issues that affect them, generating, educating new generations of strong, educated and joyful young people requires a great effort, a struggle, a struggle of re-education, of radical transformation (essential and root, not extremist, I clarify) that concerns us all, young people and adults, starting with families, since what happens in the home is decisive. No one can believe that they can achieve a transformation of themselves if this does not include the responsibility of transforming their children; more than an intellectual matter, it is a new way of connecting the vital energies of feeling and love. And when I say love, I am not referring to that love of which D. H. Lawrence spoke when he said, “If you want your children to survive, stop loving them,” that blinding, emasculating love that prevents their emergence, but to a higher love that establishes a bridge to the imān, to belief. There is an indeclinable relationship between the yearning of the young man to transform himself and reach the highest of himself and the love received in his early years and deep attention, because without this love, he will hardly be able to achieve it.Throughout three natural stages (hadith of our prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, is very clear: “Play with them seven, teach them seven and accompany them seven”, which coincides with the three stages of the Waldorf school: until seven, the age of goodness; until 14, the age of beauty; and until 21, the age of justice (and I hope to analyze this convergence on another occasion);

As I say, throughout three natural stages, the growth of the young person is based on a spiral development, expanding in concentric circles ever larger, in a natural process of gradual socialization, from home, through parents, brothers, uncles, grandparents, relatives, neighbors and the local community to the universal, always with the same center, the pure meaning of tawhid. Because growth is not linear and progressive in quality, being very small at the beginning and very high at the end, but it is precisely the early years that are the most important and where the bulk of what you will be as an adult is formed, so that tawhid is being protected, in its essence, in those early years, to be consolidated, with the intervention of all other human faculties, throughout the other stages of growth.

In this first stage, up to the age of seven, the mother is the mothering mother, the child’s school; and not because she teaches him things, but because of the special and profound attention she pays to her child. And here is the basis of sanity…. In her gaze, the child begins to “know” that he is a separate being. This look is the beginning of his education and what will make possible a complete human being.

If I had to say what it is that should be recovered most urgently in education, I would say: that women should recover the natural wisdom of nurturing, which goes hand in hand with the recovery of knowledge about their own nature.

Herein lies one of our greatest problems at this time. I remember a text about Heidegger in which he showed “his indignation at the “warehouses” for children and old people built in Germany, in order to “get them out of the way””. He argued that “just as children should be brought up in the family environment, and not in “nurseries”, so should the elderly remain at home, for their life was worthy of veneration, and their experience should be used by the young” (Heinrich Wiegand Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues with Heidegger). And if this was in his time, today we have reached the peak of this nonsense with respect to these two key stages of life.

It is known that the time in life when we are closest to the unseen is in the first years of our life; somehow, the child compensates his mother for all the efforts she makes for him (because this is a law of Allah: reciprocity in giving) by sharing that proximity with the unseen. However, most families take their little ones to kindergartens and nursery schools, their mothers missing this wonderful opportunity.

In kindergarten, developmental processes are forced: especially in terms of sphincter control and in the socialization process, with this obsession for children to be integrated into groups before their maturity.

In Finland, an educational model for the rest of the world, children start school at the age of seven and the percentage of children in kindergartens is much lower than in Spain. Introducing children early to formal education is counterproductive.

Women could get together and form parenting groups, as there are already experiences, and “be” with their children; I don’t say “work”, not to make a little school…. Talking to the child in a language appropriate to his age and intellect, praising his intelligence and aptitudes, and, very important, being very attentive to his inclinations and interests (not his whims), encouraging him, reinforcing him and feeding him with materials and conversations on those subjects that fascinate and captivate him.

Said the Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, “Whoever has a child in his care, let him adapt himself to it.” And he was completely congruent with his words: at a time when children were treated harshly and brought up with sticks, he corresponded to their needs and was enormously loving and sympathetic to the little ones; he adjusted himself to each personality, offered them his time and attention. It was not uncommon to see him carrying on his saddle some little child or playing in the street with any group of kids; with his grandchildren, may Allah have mercy on both of them, whom he loved in the deepest way, he showed himself as a grandfather always accommodating and very tolerant of their mischief. How many times they would climb on his back when he was praying and he would have to hold them as best he could so that they would not fall on the ground while he was finishing his prayer!

And how many times he sat next to a crying child and shared his feelings! He always left, at the end, on each of those faces, a beautiful smile, a clear reflection of his smile, that smile that healed from sadness and healed those who looked at him.

The hadith does not say to adapt yourself to your child, but to a child, to any child you are related to for some reason.

And when the child reaches school age, the obsessions continue: the obsession for self-expression, when what is appropriate for this age is the imitation of classical models; the obsession to decompose everything, when the child of this age has to perceive the whole phenomenon; the obsession to qualify numerically from a very young age, when, at the earliest, this is something that should not be done, and very carefully, until the third cycle of primary school…. Let’s leave it there.

There is no tawhid because you work on all aspects of the person and think you are doing holistic education. That’s all very well, and that’s our goal too, but it’s not the bottom line. It also has nothing to do with filling all the children’s time with extracurricular activities. We will help them better if we allow them time to digest what they do, for play, moments of boredom, even. When parents of my students would ask me, “What activities can I take my child to? What’s best?”, I would answer, “Take a walk with him.” Walks with a parent, chatting, contemplating the scenery, learning things, are invaluable. In this intimacy, you can share with your son, in addition, the love for Allah and his noble Messenger, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: the Din of Islam is for you; the Prophet Muhammad loves you and intercedes for you; you are not Muslim because you were born in a Muslim family, it is because Allah wants it so…. All this is for you, no matter what conditions you have in your life, no matter how difficult they may seem to you to overcome. Allah listens to your heart, put in it the best, and Allah will give it to you, because the heart is the most powerful magnet that exists and attracts to it whatever you put in it….

This school age is the best age to accept rules, to follow a model, to learn the basic rules of coexistence, the adab required for each situation. The best time to instill in them the understanding of self-discipline and also respect for authority, and there is nothing better for a child, especially at the delicate age of 9/10 years, when the wall of fantasy that protected him until this moment falls naturally and he begins to meet the world as it is, and begins to detect the defects of his parents and his teacher, who until now were perfect in his eyes, than to discover authority over authority, that is to say, that his parents follow a model of life, which they share with him, and that they are all in the same process of learning and improvement.

It is also very important to take care of a correct spatiotemporal orientation: the way we understand time and space.

It is necessary to consolidate the celebrations, not subject to the solar cycle or any other reference, of the feasts and events of the Muslims: the two feasts, the two ‘Ids, the ‘Id of Ramadan and the ‘Id al-Kabir; the day of ‘Ashura, with gifts for the children; the Maulid, which commemorates the birth of the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. These are to be their time references, and it is essential to organize festive activities especially for the children. Of course they should share the festivities with everyone, but it is especially important to organize, in addition, playful events specifically for them.

We have seen many Muslim children celebrating Halloween, Christmas and other festivals that have their origin in pagan festivities: of the harvest, of the cycles of the sun and the seasons…. On these days I do not recommend putting children in a bubble, but to take the opportunity, without participating in it, to understand the world in which they live and to discern about these events and find answers in the light of the Koran.

Allah says in the Qur’an, “Firmly rooted in the earth.” And the question we should ask ourselves is: where are our children really taking root? If these streets no longer allow to transmit a proper social interaction, with its natural moral limits, it is necessary to find spaces for the youngest: mountain outings, camps, coexistence, sports, theater, cultural excursions around the city, etc. We should be encouraged to set up associations and foundations for these purposes.

On some occasions, I have been told that why do we Muslims have to create these entities if you can find them in the city: the Boy Scouts, for example? It would be great for our children and young people to participate in activities in everything interesting in the city, but it would be even better for them to do so with adults and other Muslim children, so that they can interact with men and women who transmit their passion for what they do and serve as role models (I remember that we had a man at school who came from England: Sidi Tariq Wilkinson; he asked me: “What can I do? What does the school need: mathematics, English…”. And I would answer him, “What are you passionate about?”. “Well, I come from Turkey, from learning with a calligraphy teacher, which I’m passionate about.” “So, that’s what I would ask you to do.” The school was at that time in the countryside. I would go out in the afternoon and I was amazed that the children were not climbing trees, playing soccer or in their Athenian vs. Spartan fights….. They were all, children and grown-ups, boys and girls, in Sidi Tariq’s room doing calligraphy…. It is not that they would all end up being calligraphers, it is that contact with a passionate person can awaken in them their own passions, their own talents: this is paideia, thaumazein, ‘to marvel’, and mimesis, ‘to imitate’); – as I was saying – that they do it with Muslims so that they create from childhood a strong bond of brotherhood; so that they learn to share and reinforce the adab, the proper behavior with food and cleanliness, for these are two elementary aspects. It could be said that in this learning, which begins at home, of separating poop from food, when children are ready to understand it, of course, lies discernment, the basis of a society.

How important family meals are! In the light, relaxed conversations of these moments, an enormous transmission takes place. Within the circumstances of each family, they should value the benefits of this family gathering. I doubt very much that children can learn anything from the adab, from the behavior at the table in school dining rooms.

Children have to get to know the landscapes, walk the paths, climb the mountains, learn the names of the trees, plants and animals of the area where they live. They have to put down roots in the earth. And they have to know the processes of the earth, of the atmosphere, of the seasons (but not as textbook subjects) and they have to recognize it in the descriptions of the Qur’an. The ability to read existence is our educational goal. For this leads us to tawhid, to the proclamation of the Oneness of Allah, may He be glorified and exalted.

Respect for creation, for all things in the world, the cleanliness of the air, the plants and animals is based on assuming to be Khalifahs of Allah on Earth, on the recognition that sovereignty belongs to Allah; not on rationalism or critical analysis, with exploration of the world as if it is yours and you can do what you want with it.

It is an anthropological question, it is a way of being in the world. It is not something rational. It’s about how we experience existence, life. Children have to know about the breeding of animals, the growth of plants and how they come to us for our food and shelter; that the cow that gave the milk they drink and the cotton and wool from which their clothes are made were put there by Allah many years ago for them, for you. All this is of utmost importance. And the correct understanding of the creation and the function of the elements that make up the cosmos; the awareness of Who makes it all happen, of Who is really the one who makes it germinate.

And this rooting, this grounding, can only be realized entirely with language fully integrated into this discovery, because this is the tool for it. “It has taught him to speak.” The care of language, the good word, is essential now. And the stories, the legends, the poetry…. The transmission of the din of Islam is through the word. It is taken through the ear, not from a screen.

And it is essential to work with them on self-control, containment and patience, which have as a consequence something very important: hope.

It is curious that the current educational system, increasingly focused on neuroscience, on the brain, on the head, is in turn so emotional, but that exacerbated, unbalanced and uncontainable emotionality that we can observe at every moment. They play with their heads, they play with their emotions; but they don’t really take care of their hearts. While our system, centered in the heart, as the vital organ of the human being, entails furqān, the capacity for discernment and self-control.

And this is so, so important…! Because one of the worst things that is happening to young people is the inability to be patient, to know. We live in a world where everything is prepared to get things without waiting, “I want it now!”, when children have to learn to wait, to be patient, because if they learn this, they will know when they have to act. And they must also learn that all learning, all knowledge requires time; it is not instantaneous as in the technological media.

Thanks to Allah, we are honored to have among us children and grandchildren who are hafiz, which is the name given to those who have memorized the Qur’an (hafiz, singular). And all Muslims want the Qur’an to be taught in our mosques and homes. Memorizing and reciting the Qur’an, the words of Allah, has an effect on the heart, even if you do not understand them, because they are imprinted on it. They connect you to the Revelation, in a way. Alhamdulillah! Praise be to Allah, and parents, all of us, should encourage and support children to memorize it. But they must be educated in the Quran, from the Quran, not just with the Quran, so that they can savor its meanings. And in my opinion, it is better a little, with meaning, than a lot but without it, and that is how we have done it in our schools, considering that it is better a little Quran and try to put it in your life than a lot without applying it.

It is also paramount to be very attentive to the behavior, to the adab, of the child in these classes, with his teachers, with the place, especially if it is done in a mosque. A child should not leave home for Quran classes as if he were going to a karate or piano lesson.

But, if you detect that your son has a great inclination for the Qur’an and the sciences derived from it, then send him to the best Qur’anic madrasah you can.

All talents must be enhanced and satisfied from the moment they are recognized, and those who love the Qur’an and memorize it are the first, but we must flee from the “religious” tendency to believe that all young people must go to the Qur’anic madrasahs. Already in his time, Imam Al-Ghazali lamented that he arrived in a village and found ten ulema (scholars and scholars of the sciences derived from the Koran and the sciences derived from it, among other disciplines) for only one doctor, when the proportion should be the opposite.

I would add to all that has been said, something that is in our hands: to show children and young people the beauty of the Din of Islam, with the utmost gentleness, rather than emphasizing rules and prohibitions.

Those parents who will see to it, with all their efforts, as far as their circumstances permit, that their children live to the full the mother’s school and the purity of early childhood; and then, at school age, to provide them with the best training they can, especially in the choice of their teachers, enjoying the fullness of a happy growth, will find, Allah willing, the best foundation for the beginning of the third stage of growth, where their children will embark on the crucial journey of discovery of man, on the part of the boy, and of woman, on the part of the girl, with the awakening of their natural puberty, a delicate adolescence and a youth full of experiences. And their children will have the necessary support to become free men and women.

Finally, I would like to make a reference to the school, to the possibility of establishing schools for Muslim children. I hope, insha Allah, that initiatives in this sense will arise in all the places where Muslims reside in this country; especially here in Seville. It is worth it, it is worth it! I have participated in a school in Granada that was functioning intermittently for more than thirty years. We had to deal with many difficulties, but it has been a real gift, a gift from Allah. This is what has remained with me from it, the joy, and the conviction, of having lived a gift from Allah…. When you set out to build a school, like any project that is established to last, so that generations and generations of children and young people will pass and make use of it, you are concerned about its maintenance over time; but, over the years, I have realized that this was not in our hands, no matter how much we fought for it, that this is something that belongs to Allah, glorified and exalted be He. And I have also been able to verify that what took place there, all the wonderful things we were fortunate to experience, both teachers and students, live on not only in us and them, but also in their own children, who did not get to know it.

Let these words serve to encourage us to take on this noble task, to strive to do:

schools that return to the vision of existence based on Divine Revelation; a school with unity, in which its elements do not contradict each other, but everything occupies its place in balance, in its right measure, and coherently in its contents and meanings;

schools that return to the foundation of traditional education: direct, face-to-face transmission between teacher and student, establishing a personal relationship of trust, respect and love;

schools whose main objective is the formation of character, the invigoration of the individual and the development of a sense of honor and chivalry;

schools that never give up in the face of adverse conditioning of their students, but always maintain the hope of improvement and treat young people not as they are, but as the best they can be;

schools that are aware of forming a new generation, ready to play its role in history; united by strong bonds of brotherhood, with high aspirations and sharing the highest expectations; proud to be Muslim;

schools that experience an integral experience of the Din, based on learning without compulsion of the basic pillars (Islam); in the confidence and assumption without conflict of authority (Imān), and excellence in being and doing (Ihsān). And in which the coherence between the teaching of the Qur’an and the various contents that are worked on is absolute;

schools that recover literature, narrative, art and western philosophy, philosophy as education of the spirit: the education of the prince.

It should be noted that throughout all these years we have tried to achieve the best balance between the two aspects that define education, and which are normally presented as incompatible, separated in a false dialectic between the traditional school, educare, ‘what comes from the teacher, from the guide’, and the new or modern school, educere, ‘what has to come from the student himself’. What we have experienced is that these two processes unify and reinforce each other. We define our teaching as a teacher’s teaching, but what is produced is a meeting point between that to which we are called by our guide and that which wants to emerge from ourselves, as is well reflected in Lao-Tse’s sentence: “To educate does not consist in filling a void, but in kindling a latent fire”.

In general terms, the main characteristics of our school’s methodology were as follows:

• An integral education, and by this I mean, the joint work home-school-community to promote a complete growth; advancing every day in the five aspects mentioned at the beginning of this talk: the intellectual (cultivation of rational faculties, reflection and discernment), the physical (health and physical vigor), the spiritual (ibada), behavior (adab) and courage (bravery).
• Personalized education, attending to each child’s vital development. Great importance of tutoring, both at a pedagogical level as well as at a personal and family level.
• For life. Teaching must be education, and education cannot be irrelevant.
• Flexibility of the groups. Small groups made up of different ages, and the possibility of establishing all types of groupings depending on common interests, levels, etc.
• Active school. Work through centers of interest (based on Decroly, but adapted in a very particular way to our system) that are developed as long as the children maintain their interest in them. Centers of interest (and projects) that combine in a globalized way (Primary) all the school work; starting from the lived experience and direct contact with nature.
• The importance given to the development of language, in all its manifestations. Use of an integral method of reading and writing.
• The school as a place of expression, in all fields: plastic, dramatic, literary, etc.).
• The recovery of the natural rhythms of growth, and not forcing them.
• The value placed on establishing a good spatiotemporal orientation.
• Stimulation of the child’s natural interest and curiosity.
• The satisfaction of the needs and desires of children, who learn through pleasure, with joy (education with happiness, not only for happiness).
• The empowerment of one’s talents; encouraging and collaborating with families to support them.
• Great freedom in terms of the way of working and the diversity of possibilities offered.
• No use of textbooks; each student composes his or her own books.

Our method and our educational project is available to those who wish to take up the challenge of making a school…; although, in the hands of Muslims, any pedagogical method, be it Waldorf or Montessori, or any other method, can be put into practice to great advantage. In the hands of Muslims, all pedagogical utopias find the right measure of application in the real world. Any instrument sounds like angels when it has the perfect score, but we never added the adjective “Islamic” to our school. It was a school for being in the world, where we tried to make each child, each youngster, find himself in his element, like a fish in water…. At the end of the course, if throughout the course there had been respect and trust; if the grown-ups had taken care of the little ones; if there had been harmony between one another, between boys and girls, between adults and young people; if no one had felt inhibited to act and to express themselves; if we had created and strengthened our bond of union; if mutual help and preference were a reality among us, wishing the best for your companion rather than for yourself; if we had worked hard and learned, with great interest, and enjoyed ourselves…, then the school had succeeded in achieving the goal of “Islam”…. then the school had succeeded in becoming Islamic; but it ceased to be so the moment the course in question was over and we were already preparing for the next one, ready, with Allah’s help, to make it “Islamic” again.

We Muslims will be useful to this land to the extent that we are able to establish Islam. And, as one of my teachers said, may Allah’s mercy be upon him: “Islam is yet to be made; the opening is enormous. The future is wide open. The Islam that has to come to Europe will surprise us”.

I am very grateful for the presence of all of you; I thank you for your patience and for your listening. We are all here in search of useful knowledge, and useful is all knowledge through which the Face of Allah is sought.

Assalamu alaykum