You Need to Read (Islamic Lectures Collection)

To be human is to be humble

Quranic ayah>>"To be human is to be weak". We are essentially weak people. Secular humanism brings this delusion to human that human is strong. I am not against science and technology. But there is a certain arrogance in a human when he thinks of himself as super accomplished. All advances and science, technology, everything is there, but we are still weak, we have this big nafs upon me, I still can't control my lust, my anger, I make mistakes, wrong decisions. These two things go together. As long as you realise you're weak, you will turn to Allah. Allah is Strong and dynamically self sufficient and robust. The secular humanist disconnects Allah from creation. Human being looks at himself relative to creation, he says, I dominate lions and elephants, I am superior to them. Quranic humanism says to understand yourself relative to Allah. We are zaeef, we are weak. It humbles us.

You won't find any verse like that which says O believers, you're weak. It says O humans, you are weak.

Do not think I am any way against progress. People say "maulvi log" (maulvi comes from Arabic and means "Allah wala", person of Allah) people say maulvi people want to take you 1400 years ago. That means there won't be any electricity, projector, speaker. In this world we don't want to take people 1400 years ago. We say we want to go forward in 2016. But in deen, the characteristics of deen, you can have the technology of year 2500, but you must have the characteristics of 1400 years ago, of Nabi s.a.w. You understand the difference? You are a maulvi, you should have travelled via camel. No. We will go via car, but we will guard our gaze properly in deeni way.

After Nabi s.a.w, nobody got the characteristics he had. These characteristics belonging to him were 1400 years ago. 

["Identity, Faith and Quranic Humanism", one-day workshop by Shaykh Kamaluddin Ahmed on 27.2.2016]