Craft Your Own Curriculum

Chapter 8

Muslim Edx
Aug 9, 2017 · 11 min read

You’re free to learn, apply and build whatever you want.

They say ignorance is bliss. Now that might work for some folks but for Muslims, that is one epic FAIL of a belief. It’s mind-blowing that someone can put 20 years of experience into a book — and by reading that book, you can download decades of wisdom in just days. As Mark Twain said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

People are being faced with greater responsibility to direct their own lives. The goal here is not to elucidate genius; but to nurture imagination in everyone and inspire individuals to take charge of their own development.

Invest in Yourself

The old phrase “knowledge is power” is not one to be ignored. Once people lose their desire to learn new things, the battle is as good as lost. Nations grow based on their people’s development.

Thanks mainly to the internet and to global TV channels we are in an information overload age. We don’t suffer from lack of information but from a surfeit of it — easily available at the click of a mouse.

What is missing is the ability to discern, to sift, to pick the nuggets. What is missing is the ability to know what to do with what we read or see. What is missing is the ability to connect the dots to complete the picture. What is missing is the ability to recognise the reality and to put things in perspective so that we can differentiate between useful information from the useless.

There’s more information available to more people than ever before in human history. But if you’re not thirsty to learn and you’re not aware of what you need to know, it does you no good at all. A person can spend their spare time getting smarter or entertain himself into a stupor. The same devices deliver either or both from the online ether.

Assume Responsibility

Take responsibility for your freedom to work on things that matter. The freedom to choose something better and even more important.

Take up causes and show others, through your own behaviour, how to fight for our communities. How many people feel empowered to take on the biggest challenges of our time and find a way to contribute?

Individuals too readily allow responsibility for the solutions to fall on larger entities like governments and organisations, rather than themselves. The inaction of the leaders puts the requirement on the lay to act; each according to their means.

The best way to contribute to a community or an organisation isn’t by complaining.

It’s by making things better.

Stop waiting around for people to get better and complaining about how are you treated. Instead, learn the skills and build the things that will permit you to create the environment in which you want to live.

Take responsibility (without authority) and start creating a positive cycle of generous action. Lead by example. Find a small corner where you can make a difference–and then make a difference.

Prepare to take on causes that could make the world a better place and then optimise yourself for impact towards these missions.

Story of Soichiro

A young boy named Soichiro spent his early childhood helping his father with his bicycle repair business.

[On seeing his first automobile at the age of eight — a Ford passing through his village spewing oil from its crankcase] he said “I was enchanted by the smell of that oil. I leaned over a spot of oil on the ground and put my nose right up to it, and rubbed my hands in the residue. From that moment on, I only had one fixed idea, and that was to be involved with engines, to invent machines, and to get greasy with machine oil and lubricant.”

Soichiro Honda was not interested in traditional education.[On going to university but having no desire of getting a diploma or doing any exams] he said “The only thing that interested me was acquiring knowledge that I lacked as quickly as possible.” and “ I don’t give a damn for the diploma. What I want is the knowledge.”

He went on to establish Honda Motor Co in 1948 and sell more than a 100 million Super Cub motorbikes, making it the most produced motor vehicle in history and diversified into cars, planes, lawn mowers, generators and other industrial engines.

The clean air act of 1970 demanded all car manufacturers comply with the new strict regulations on vehicle emissions. The three major US auto manufacturers testified to congress that these rules were impossible to achieve. But to the shock of everyone, a representative from Honda said — it could be done.

“Most of the other automobile makers licensed the new engine design from Honda, conceding that their own engineers would not be able to produce a similar motor by the time the new rules would be in place. Notably, although General Motors was also unable to design a sufficiently clean-burning motor, its management was contemptuous of the (Honda) CVCC engine. The company’s chairman, Richard Gerstenberg, said in 1973: “Well, I have looked at this design, and while it might work on some little toy motorcycle engine, I see no potential for it on one of our GM car engines.”

Soichiro Honda took this dismissal as a dare. He bought a 1973 V8 Chevrolet Impala, air-freighted it to Japan, designed a set of CVCC heads to fit the automobile, and flew the car back to the Environmental Protection Agency’s facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for further pollution testing. The car easily passed the stringent 1975 requirements. Which prompted Honda to say in an interview: “When Congress passes new emission standards, we hire 50 more engineers and GM hires 50 more lawyers.”

Excerpt From: Rothfeder, Jeffrey. “Driving Honda.”

Honda displayed great enthusiasm for research and development “Actually, all researchers worth their salt know that in the lab, 99 percent of the people are working on lost causes. The modest percentage of success, nevertheless, serves to compensate for all the rest of the effort. Finally, I don’t regret the thousands of times I came home empty-handed, having lost all my ammunition and bait. When the days get as gloomy as that, then you know you will soon find the treasure. And the flash of light, the sudden soaring hope, makes you forget all the difficult hours.”

Believe in Your God Given Ability to Figure Things Out

Most people can learn to be good at something, if they only choose to be, if they choose to make the leap and put in the effort and deal with the failure and the frustration and the grind. But most people don’t want to commit until after they’ve discovered that they can be good at something. One may be surprised to learn that a person can become very good at something in a short amount of time.

Short Case Studies

Algorithms are increasingly driving everything — from medicine, to the legal profession and even journalism, everyone wants a piece of code that will help them do their job better.

A young brother with no prior app programming knowledge recently won a national engineering award in the UK for designing an app to help railway engineers. He wrote “I only share my experience in the hope that it might be of some benefit and motivation for the one who reads it and that it might ignite a spark in you to become a person who is a beacon of light in the path of improving society.”

Writing further he said “The project brief was to design a tool for improving the compatibility of electrification design of Network Rail’s High Output Plant System (HOPS), which is used to install overhead line structures on the Great Western Railway.

I learnt the necessary programming languages to design and build an App for this purpose and the solution has allowed designers to instantly calculate whether a planned installation is compatible with HOPS. The finished app has the potential to ensure that work can be delivered safely and efficiently saving significant time and money.”

Take Away: A lot of us overestimate how long it takes for us to get good at something. The initial aim is to get past the baseline efficiency and then suddenly you realise that things aren’t so bad. Research just enough to eliminate barriers to practice and make it easier on yourself to do want you want to achieve. In general, pre-committing around 20 hours helps you to push through that early frustration.

An Indian teenager built what is thought could be the world’s lightest satellite. The 18-year-old says its main purpose was to demonstrate the performance of 3-D printed carbon fibre. “We designed it completely from scratch,” he said. “It will have a new kind of on-board computer and eight indigenous built-in sensors to measure acceleration, rotation and the magnetosphere of the earth.” The satellite has been named KalamSat after former Indian president Abdul Kalam, a pioneer for the country’s aeronautical science ambitions.

Another teenager created a pancreatic cancer test that is 168 times faster and considerably cheaper than the gold standard in the field using information from free online research papers. He was able to synthesise different pieces of information to come up with a novel solution.

Repetition is one of the cornerstones of internalisation. They say, ما تكرر تقرر , “what is repeated is established.” Perhaps this is the secret why we repeat al-Fātiha no fewer than 17 times a day; it is a Sūrah that renews our allegiance to Allāh, to our goal in life, and to the believers as well.

When you’re pushing yourself you NEVER have all the answers, you never know what to do, everything is the first time, everything is trial and error.

Step Up and Produce Work That is Befitting of Our Flawless Religion

People all over the world are learning more deeply, transforming their expectations and changing their role and contribution.

Life is brimming with possibility. Everywhere there’s a problem to be solved, someone or some group to support and champion. Position yourself to benefit from the opportunities provided by Allah and go beyond being a just store of information and aim to process knowledge and make it useful.

You Just Need to Know Where to Push

There’s a common safe place: Being busy.

We’re supposed to give you a pass because you were full on, all day. Frantically moving from one thing to the other, never pausing to catch your breath, and now you’re exhausted.

No points for busy.

Points for successful prioritisation. Points for worship, sincerity, efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters.

No points for busy.

Here is an old, probably not true, but nevertheless good story: This engineer is called in because a machine broke down. He looks at it, makes a mark with chalk on some machine part and says ‘replace this part’. He charges £50,000. The manager is out-raged and requests an itemised bill to justify the cost. The engineer replies: Chalk — £1, knowing where to make the mark £49,999.

Acquiring knowledge is important, but knowing what to learn and where to make an effort in your life makes all the difference.

With the Internet, it is now relatively easy for a reasonably diligent person to quickly become knowledgeable in virtually any field of his or her choosing. But having a hammer and knowing how to use it are two entirely different propositions. A hammer is amoral. Whether it is used for good or ill depends entirely on the wielder. Like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user.

Wisdom is knowing when, how and where to use it. So whilst choosing to master something is good to do, one must not cut themselves off from learning other things. One sign of creativity is being able to make connections between seemingly disparate concepts. You may find that after a while, fragmented pieces of knowledge begin to connect and that then becomes wisdom and understanding.

The ways of earning a lawful income and making an impact are many, but the matter may need some research and effort. When choosing a speciality, you may want to pay attention to a number of points:

Your sweet spot. This is where what you love, what you’re good at, and what society values intersect. A fish out of water, can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t breathe, is clumsy and flops on the earth. But put it in the water and it darts away like a flash, the epitome of speed and grace. Everyone has something important to do. Don’t underestimate any good you are capable of. Find your place. Explore your skill set, develop new competencies, find what excites you and get to work.

Your personal abilities: Identify and cultivate your natural abilities. Do not choose a speciality that does not suit you, lest you fail. Some people have the natural capacity to excel in certain areas. It is not wise for a person to leave that which he does well and excels at for something in which his achievements will be like those of anyone else, or less, and in which he will not excel. Do what you’re good at, or… get really good at what you do. If something is important to you, you can do the hard work to get good at it. You might not have the specific skills or expertise at the moment but may have the raw brain power to acquire it.

Your own inclinations: People have an immense capacity for concentration and hard work when they are passionate about what they are doing. If a person has the inclination and desire to learn, along with the ability to do so, it is very seldom that they will not succeed. A natural interest in anything will ease the process. Pursuing your own interests sharpens your hunger for knowledge.

Real learning happens when you insist on acquiring a skill in order to accomplish a goal. People who are engaged in projects they care about get addicted to learning on a regular basis. Once people want to learn, there are more self-directed avenues open than ever before. The only barrier to learning for most young adults in the developed world is now merely the decision to learn.

The need of the Muslims for this speciality: So that you can try to fill a gap in the Muslim Community. Get good at something that makes the world a better place. It is especially important to pursue things that can empower Muslims and help the Ummah in discharging its responsibility. The reward for this increases greatly in accordance to the need. So each person should see what kind of work is suitable and is best at, and strive to benefit themselves and the Muslims through this work.

Worlds Most Excellent Sheep

We ought to hold ourselves to a much higher standard and reallocate talent on problems that matter. There are still many solutions in the hands of those who are not occupying the positions that they should.

Many Muslims have the raw mental horsepower that can deal with complexity. But too often they are applying their extraordinary talents in ordinary ways by playing it safe, never making waves, accepting the defaults and becoming the worlds most excellent sheep. There’s also an opportunity cost to this i.e. time not spent doing things that are more worthy of your time and talent.

A top data scientist once infamously said “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks.”

Talent is important, but how one nurtures it and applies it is what counts.

The Takeaway: If you’re not proud of what you actually do, perhaps you can explore doing something else instead. If you think your scarce skills could be better used elsewhere, be bold and make the move.

Determining those priorities is going to require deliberation and consulting people who have knowledge, wisdom, and experience. Consider the strategic value in pursuing particular courses that allow you to play a decisive role in the future of those respective fields.

The challenge is to be ambitious and go after the things you care about while placing Allah at the heart of everything you do. Reach out and discover new frontiers using alternate channels whilst seeking the help of Allah to make the right choice.

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