Yesterday Alhamdulillah was a great day for me. I had volunteered to be the driver of one of the cars for the whole day, for the Convivencia team’s tour of Pakistan.
I left home at about 9 in the morning and we went to Defense to a brother’s home to get the car that I was going to drive. Then we went to Beaconhouse National University; we had a really hard time finding it. Finally when we reached there we saw that it was almost the end of the talks of the speakers there.
There I had a discussion with Saad Mehmood (Masters in Astrophysics from UK) regarding Convivencia. He said that a lot of work needs to be done regarding tarbiyyah and Youth Club is doing a great job in that. But his field is purely intellectual and since no one in Pakistan is currently tackling this front, they have started an initiative to produce intellectuals; intellectuals who can be experts in their fields and then be like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, but promoting Islam instead of Atheism and exposing their false and shallow arguments.
He did some campus Da’wah at BNU and found out that many students had Atheistic tendencies but they keep them hidden because they believe no one is intellectual enough to discuss these issues with them. When he started asking intellectual questions from a sister who said that her purpose of life was “to serve humanity” and “be good,” she became quiet and confused because she probably never thought someone would ask her those questions. Those questions included, who defines what is good? What does serving humanity mean? What if according to one person (for example) good is to help someone cross the road and for the other person good is to help people get hit by cars on the road. Who will define good? 🙂
We then went to the Engineering Department of Shareef Medical College. Here brother John Fontain spoke on why we need to spread the message of Islam and brother Saad spoke on the topic of
Can Science Answer All Our Questions?
After the talk I met a guy who apparently did indirect takfeer of Zakir Naik lol Apparantly according to him Zakir Naik has strayed from the “Ahle Sunnah wal Jamah” and his Aqeedah is not right. I was like OK.
On our way back I was with Saad bhai and since I’m so good with the roads of Lahore, instead of coming to Lahore from Raiwind Road, I ended up at the entrance of Bahria Town 🙂 Then we came all the way back to Thokar Niaz Baig, then to Garden Town and finally Youth Club Lahore’s Community Center. Surprisingly, even though I thought we were late, we were the first to be there from the 3 cars that had the speakers. So brother Saad then gave a talk on the topic of
Can We Be Good Without God?
In this he discussed the argument for the existence of God based on morality, the contentions given to this argument, and how to give a reply to them.
After that brother Adnan Rashid came and discussed how we have become a book-less people. He reminded us of our great past and how we built great libraries and contributed greatly to almost every field of education. Now we have forgotten the Quran and have lost interest in building libraries, studying books, or collecting them. We have empty heads and therefore we are an empty nation. The talk was very inspirational.
Then the last talk was by Dr. Uthman Lateef, who made us all have tears by talking about the Humor of the Prophet PBUH which ended in discussing the compassion and the mercy of the Prophet PBUH. I have never heard anyone explain the topic so sincerely and with such humbleness.
Lastly, brother Adnan had to go to a bookstore at Mall Road which he discovered the day before yesterday. When I asked him how he discovered this bookstore, he thought for a while and couldn’t remember. Then he said, the best explanation to this is that a drug addict can find drugs even if you leave him in the middle of the ocean. When I go somewhere, the first thing I try to look for is a bookstore!
Here’s the card if anyone wants to visit! I highly recommend it! You can find great gems here if you have the eye to look for them!
I found three books at that time last night and when the time came to pay for them, brother Adnan asked me if I was going to read them? I said yes in shaa Allaah!
He said then you don’t need to pay. Just read them and you know where to use them then 🙂 So Alhamdulillah I got a gift of these awesome books as well!!
Some books at this store were really expensive as they were really rare!
May Allah bless all the brothers who helped in anyway, and those who left their homes to come and spark an intellectual revolution in Pakistan!
Until later, assalam u alaikum warahmatullaahi wabarakaatuh.
Omer Shahid 