Salam brothers and sisters :)
Alhamdullilah, a few Bruneians brothers and sisters had the rezeki to attend the talk on Thursday. MasyaAllah, all of the speakers talked beautifully and indeed, had a very inspiring effect on me. I know that a lot of the members actually wanted to come but could not make it but insyaAllah in the consecutive paragraphs i will aim to summarise the main points discussed in the conference.
The first talk was made by Myriam Francois Cerrah (University of Oxford) who gave us an insight to the correlation between human legal rights and moral laws. The emphasis was placed upon the need to retain our self-discipline in the strive to a better justice legal system. "Allah does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves." (13:11) Our moral responsibility and the consequent divine origin of it will drive us to become better muslims, setting good examples and become ambassadors of muslim youths. If we are to think about moral laws as just legal laws, it would have no such effect on the justice we so believe to be fair. For example, the speaker talks about the current slave trade (sex slaves in Europe and India more specifically) that we perceived to have been "banned" legally and thus ended with the introduction of such legislation.But what we do not realise is that its ideology continues to be upheld and prominent in colonial countries. "Slavery is not just a system but a mindset" and up to this day remains a manifested system despite the world ban and punishment. So how do we utilise the legal system to maintain justice if a majority of the people fail to change their mentality and morality? The speaker emphasises on the perfecting of the soul, first and foremost, to successfully render a society coherent with justice. "An amelioration of one's ethics and self-control' should form the basis for the successful application of justice in the wider outer realm. And who shall we take examples of these characters from? To answer your question is look at the title ;)
The second speaker, Kristiane Backer (author of the book "From MTV to Mecca") discussed about issues from an environmental, animal rights perspective. She gave much evidence from the Quran and Hadith entailing the importance of human beings to see themselves as only ONE among other of Allah's creations. This is not our world, we just live in it. "God is the all encompassing." But we are created by Allah with a higher capacity to think for ourselves, to suppress or encourage actions based on our will, because of that, we have the moral responsibility to protect all creations. it is said that every creature, every plant, every animal is always in constant zikir to glorify Allah, the almighty Creator. but when you destroy even the tiniest of creature, how would you face Allah knowing that you stopped a creature from doing zikir? the Prophet s.a.w. said that "the earth was created for me as a mosque". Our earth is a place for worship so why destroy what Allah made for us?
The third speaker was a substitute for the original planned speaker but made an inspiring talk on how to deal with the perceived "oppression" of muslims in today's society. He maintained that we need to stop recognising ourselves as victims of oppression but actively seek to improve our conditions by truly embracing Islam as a way of life, as our deen. By internalising Islamic virtues, we can not only be able to remove ourselves from the conception of contemporary victimisation but also, strenghten our perseverance, sabar in facing these challenges. "If Allah loves a person, He faces them with challenges." But one must not assume that by "fighting" oppression one must turn to violence. On the contrary, Islam does not condone violence of any kind as a solution. The answer lies within the notion of "fighting oppression with compassion". Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. is a prime example of this conception. His perseverance in overcoming obstacles of verbal and physical abuse clearly shows what all muslims should internalise.
I hope this short summary of all the different talks will help to guide us to becoming better Muslims. InsyaAllah. May Allah guide us to the straight path and have mercy upon us on the Day of Judgement. Amin
Salam!
Kind Regards, Dina.
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