Nuh

In the name of Allah the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful. Thanks be to Allah, creator of all creatures; prayers and peace be upon Allah’s Messenger, Prophet Muhammad (SAWS).[1]

Welcome to our program Life Makers. During the last episode we spoke about a national project that we need to have for our countries. We all confirmed our willingness to contribute to such a project in order to encourage our youth to start small projects, to get moving and to produce. The starting point that we need for the success of the youth is the help that we will get from the whole world. We aim to get this help through the survey that we are gathering. We need to know whether the youth will be ready for the small projects or if they will merely wait for a job. We aim to have at least two to five million replies to this survey so that we can carry your voice to the whole world. We aim to tell the whole world that our youth are ready for work, that they are not as passive as others think, and that they aim to transform the whole world for the better, but that they need to have help.

Five or six days have passed since we filmed the last episode and so far we have gathered 350,000 surveys! Yes, they came to us over the internet, by phone, by fax, by mail, etc. The survey is still available on the website for the coming two or three weeks, so that we can reach our destined target of one million or more, with the help of Allah (SWT). I am very optimistic due to the number we have gathered so far. It means that our youth have finally decided to end their silence and declare their own ideas.

I would like to tell you now about many positive things that took place during this past week, by the youth of Life Makers and others, throughout the whole world:

We have many examples; some handed out the survey on the tram, some over the internet, some in clubs, some via SMS and some at gas stations.

The number itself is not important. Someone could gather 16,000 surveys and another could gather only 50, the important thing is to contribute in any way.

I was happy to know about all these achievements and to learn that the youth have finally moved and ended their silence.

After this short introduction about the 350,000 surveys that have been gathered so far, I would like to tell you that we still need to exert more effort. The survey is still open for the coming two weeks, but first let me ask you this: do you know the way in which nations or peoples change? How can the world be transformed? How can a collapsing nation change to be a nation of welfare? How can change be effected in a collapsing nation living in a state of loss, intellectual and moral perversity, carelessness and negligence, corruption and bribery, lack of moralities, laxity, illiteracy, backwardness, unemployment and total loss in each and every area (politically, socially, health-wise, intellectually, sports-wise and culturally), where the rich are getting extremely rich and the poor are getting poorer? With all these signs of loss and collapse the words of Allah (SWT) become apparent in what can be translated as, “And when We will to cause a town to perish, We command its (people) luxurious (life), then they committed immorality therein; so the Word came true against it, (and) then We destroyed it an utter destruction.” (TMQ, 17:16)[2]. This is the first scene, so what will happen after that? Destruction will befall the nation; why? Corruption can be found everywhere (in morals, in manners, in the apparent perversity, unemployment, bribery etc). Why? The earth should not be a place for corruption, because this earth belongs to our Creator. Thus, we could be on the brink of destruction, yet Allah (SWT) will give us a chance and the earth will not be destroyed. Do you know why? The Prophet (SAWS) told us in the following Hadith Qudsi, “On the authority of Abu-Hurairah (RA), the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) said, “When Allah decreed the Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him, ‘My mercy prevails over my wrath.’”[3] Therefore the earth deserves destruction yet Allah (SWT) will protect it and have mercy on it.

How will Allah (SWT) have mercy on it? Allah (SWT) will send reformers who will help to reform it. Most of them will be youth and women. They will reform the earth by driving away injustice, corruption, moral perversity, unemployment, backwardness and illiteracy. They will reform both the religious and worldly aspects of life. In them the words of Allah (SWT) will come true, in what can be translated as, “And had it not been for the repelling by Allah of mankind, some by means of others, (Literally: by means of some) the earth would indeed have corrupted; but Allah is The Owner of Grace over the worlds.” (TMQ, 2:251). Therefore, this is the second scene; nations will be on the brink of destruction yet Allah (SWT) will send the reformers to drive away this destruction. Hence, Allah (SWT) will erase the destruction and the reformers will take the lead, making the words of Allah (SWT) true, in what can be translated as, “And in no way would your Lord indeed cause towns to perish with injustice (while) their population are righteous-doers.” (TMQ, 11:117).

Therefore, destruction was befalling this nation had the reformers not driven away injustice and corruption, making Allah (SWT) lift His punishment. What we are doing now in our project of Life Makers is a form of driving destruction away. This is one of the historical links for preserving the earth from destruction.

Let me now ask you this: today and in our present status, are we going to be one of the historical links? Who will win? Whose turn is approaching next within the coming years? Corruption or reformation? I would say reformation. What makes me so confident is that corruption has taken its full time and had its impact on us. It is time now for this leaf to be turned over for this part of the world. It is time now for the reformers and Life Makers to be one of the historical links. What is even more pleasing is that this reformation will occur on the hands of simple people; you and me, a common woman, a common young man; not supernatural people, but why do they have to be just common people?

The reason is that their experience has to be attainable and suitable for repetition. If they were above average people, not many will be able to replicate their experience and no reformation will take place. These people will not make phenomenal achievements, but very modest and small ones. Like this lady who handed over fifty surveys. The smaller and simpler our achievements, the more we will need them, because they will be copied more easily.

I discussed with you some examples that we have come across in the past few months, all carried out by common people. We announced certain projects through Life Makers, so please let me tell you about these common reformers and their achievements:

Sisters and brothers, there are many blessings coming our way. All these experiments are small yet achievable and easy to be copied. When I see you, I realize that by the will of Allah (SWT) we will all succeed. When I look at you I see great hope; I see that the cycle of reform is about to begin and that we are leaving this era. The old leaf is about to be turned over and a new one is about to begin. We just need the people to wake-up and start moving hand in hand.

Do you remember the project of planting the rooftops? By Allah (SWT), I never expected this call to be taken so seriously or to go so far. I was confident that good will come out of it but never to this extent.

We all know the extent of the catastrophe. The governments know, the people know and the media knows. Everybody knows that we are living in a crisis and that this crisis is growing day by day. They know that the flood of unemployment is rising high above our heads, yet everybody prefers silence with the excuse that we should not talk about it for as long as we do not know how to solve it. Silence will not do us any good because this ebbing flood will drown us.

In Life Makers, we took the lead by bearing the responsibility of this project on our shoulders. We want to shake the whole world from its slumber. We want to ask them to save the youth of this region before they become a sweeping flood. The whole world will lose if our youth remain idle and unemployed. That is why we are sounding this alarm, screaming at the top of our lungs and saying that if we do not have a national project we will never be able to overcome our crisis.

Official figures tell us that we have 16 million unemployed citizens, and maybe more. All these millions are jobless. They are just hanging around at their homes. Some of them are in their early twenties, some are in their early thirties and some are in their mid-forties sitting next to their wives at home doing nothing. This crisis is worsening and the issue is not a new one. The newspapers have been handling this issue on a daily basis. Look at one of the headlines of al-Ahram newspaper, “Eighty Million citizens to be added to the unemployment toll by the year 2013.”

We are actually approaching 80 million unemployed citizens! Do you know how much that is compared to our overall census in the Arab world? Our overall census is roughly 280 million, so calculate it yourselves. What will happen? What was the heaviest catastrophe ever to befall the nation of Islam throughout its history? Do you remember the Mongols? What have the Mongols got to do with our topic? I just want to remind you that the heaviest catastrophe ever to befall our nation was that of unemployment. When the Mongols conquered Baghdad they killed three million Muslims. Nowadays, we do not just have three million dead Muslims, we will have eighty million of them. They could die if we keep doing nothing about it. The Mongols killed 3 million, by some accounts 2 million and in others just one million. It is said that Baghdad was completely covered with corpses that were left in the streets to rot until the air reeked of their stench. Unemployment will change the smell of our air too. It will change our social and moral values. The same catastrophe that has befallen Baghdad will befall us but in their case they had a quick death, whereas in our case it will be slow.

If we want to exemplify unemployment we can exemplify it with plague. If we want to exemplify it with an incident we can exemplify it with the Tsunami waves that took the souls of many citizens in Asia. These victims watched the waves coming towards them; can you imagine the horrifying sight? They watched it coming towards them until it drowned them and took their souls. Unemployment is the same but its manner of death is slow. Its death comes socially, not as a phenomenon; and still the eventual result is the same: death. That is why I am saying that there has to be a way out of all this, but what could it be?

We have to produce. We are not producing anything and hence we are not working. We must have small projects for all the youth. Two or three can work in each project. A commercial project, an economic project, a project for services or an industrial project. It is not just limited to industry or small industries, but any small business that can accommodate a number of workers. We are not just idle; we are living as parasites leeching on the blessings of Allah (SWT). We are not making anything from these blessings; we are just consuming them in order to eat. In other words we are living on our oil, whether directly, like in the Gulf area, or indirectly, in all the other Arab countries, but what will happen to us when we run out of oil? Will it run out? Yes, of course it will. Research is proceeding and we are on the brink of discovering new energy sources: solar energy, wind energy, etc. The 18^th and 19^th centuries were the centuries of coal. Wars were waged to acquire it. Then the use of coal subsided and oil took the lead. If we subtract the profits we make out of oil from the budgets of the Arab countries we will be worse than the poor countries of Africa that are living in famine.

Save the Muslims. Our only hope is the youth and they must invest in small businesses and projects, but what is a small business or project?

There is no harm in repeating it again. A small project means having two or three of the youth start a project whereby they can employ five or six persons with them, or even work on their own. One project can produce a small product, one can give a service and one can do something commercial. These projects will start increasing in number. They will start spreading in our countries until we manage to be producers and stand back on our feed. There is no hope without that. The bounties that we have will dry out, so we must take the initiative. We even want very small projects, such as a small blacksmith shop, a small carpenter’s workshop, and for people with vocations and craftsmen to have their own small projects.

There was a companion whose name was Abdullah Dhul-Bijadain. I told his story once before but today I want to approach it from a different angle. This man loved Islam so dearly and his faith was so strong that he left his home (where he was rich and among the nobles) for the sake of the Prophet (SAWS). He migrated in torn clothes because when his father learned that he became a Muslim, he disowned him. This companion then went to the Prophet (SAWS). See how dearly he loved Islam?

When the Prophet (SAWS) saw his loyalty, he taught him a craft. He had to learn something to be able to work. Dhul-Bijadain worked next to the Prophet (SAWS), after he left his home, and he started perfecting his new craft. He became successful to the extent that the Prophet (SAWS) took him when he was going for the Battle of Tabuk, not to fight, but to serve the army using his craft. Dhul-Bijadain did not settle for that because he wanted to fight with the rest of the companions. However, the Prophet (SAWS) still saw that he would be more useful to the Muslims using his craft than fighting. Dhul-Bijadain used to walk next to the Prophet (SAWS) saying, “O Prophet of Allah, invoke Allah that I die a martyr today.” The Prophet (SAWS) said, “O Dhul-Bijadain, Abdullah, there are servants of Allah who leave their homes for the sake of Allah, then catch a fever or fall off their horses and die. They are thus considered martyrs.”

It was like saying to him that the day he left with the army, he left for the sake of Allah (SWT). I wish the youth would understand this meaning. This man will save a whole nation with just a simple craft. A martyr is not just the one who dies by the sword or the spear. You could be a martyr just because you employed ten or so in a small project. That way you are serving the revival of a whole nation.

Dhul-Bijadain heard the Prophet (SAWS) and did not comment. The army went to fight and Dhul-Bijadain kept to his craft serving the army. Ibn-Masoud narrates, “One very unpleasantly cold night I looked at the Prophet’s bed but I could not find him. It was so cold and dark and the Prophet was not in his bed. I looked at the bed of Abu-Bakr, but I could not find him. I looked at the bed of Omar Ibnul-Khattab but I could not find him either. I heard the sound of digging outside the tent. I went out and saw the Prophet digging while Omar and Abu-Bakr were carrying a lantern for him.”

He used to undertake small and simple tasks. You must contemplate the extent of this devoted worker’s love for the Prophet (SAWS). I am dedicating this story to all university youth, to those who have had vocational training, and to everyone who loves Islam and to women.

Ibn-Masoud said, “I looked at the Prophet and his eyes were overflowing with tears as he said, “Your brother Dhul-Bijadain has died.” I then asked Abu-Bakr and Omar, “Will you just stand there while the Prophet (SAWS) does all the digging?” They replied, “The Prophet refused to let anyone else dig the grave because he wanted to do it himself.” The Prophet then climbed into the grave and sat in it and then held up his hands to Abu-Bakr and Omar and said, “Build for your brother.” He then hugged Dhul-Bijadain’s body and placed him into the grave. I then saw the tears of the Prophet fall upon the grave, and then he raised his eyes to the skies and said, “O Allah I hereby bear witness that I am pleased with Dhul-Bijadain, and I ask You to be pleased with him.” Are you able to contemplate this topic from this angle? I implore you to repeat this to all workers and those who have had vocational training. We will not stand on our feet without these small tasks and there is no hope without them. There are no other solutions since our countries are unable to undertake massive national projects that will use all these existing energies from our youths. Many of the big projects that our countries undertook have failed and the money spent on them has been lost. At the same time education is no longer providing the experience required to the market and therefore the result is that the gap between the two is continuously growing. The solution therefore lies in small businesses. Let our intentions be that whatever we undertake to do will be solely for the sake of Allah (SWT).

Let us look at the West. How did they succeed? The large fashion company Chanel began with a single woman who did all the sewing. Can you believe that Johnson & Johnson started off with a man in a chemical laboratory working on an experiment that would cleanse injuries? Can you believe that Cadbury started as a patisserie making chocolates? Recently, I watched a film entitled, “The Students’ Conquest.” The film talks about a group of university students who graduated but could not find any jobs, and so they met up in a garage, and started purchasing some hardware to start what would become one of the biggest computer companies in the world from there, Apple Macintosh. They are men and so are we. They have minds and so do we. Will we suffer forever from the psychological effects of failure and being youth? When will we rid ourselves of all that? We will not rid ourselves of that unless we produce men and women who are truly determined to work, produce and succeed. Come on youth, we must move.

Our government’s responsibility is to provide us with relative advantages, and this is the only way to overtake the world. If we have ideas for products that have relative advantages then we will produce them at lower prices and will consequently be able to market them appropriately. We will be in need of the necessary financial resources and training, and we will need the government to help us ensure that taxes and customs duties are in the interest of the youths rather than being in the interest of large investors. The main reason that our small businesses fail is that we lack these five main aspects.

How can we achieve these five main aspects? We provide you with this survey to reach out to the entire world and help us provide these five aspects. They are our solution and our hope. We need a massive institution or institutions that will provide the youths with everything they need, and provide them with these five aspects so that they can excel. Before we accuse our Arab youths of carelessness we must ask ourselves whether we have made these five aspects available.

How can we come up with ideas in which we have a relative advantage? Searching for these ideas must be a national plan in all our countries. Does the manufacture of furniture have a relative advantage in Egypt? What relative advantages are present in Morocco or Bahrain? How can we find the ideas where we have a relative advantage? We want to transform this into a national project that combines funding, expertise, training and marketing mechanisms. We must achieve all this; without it there will be no solution to unemployment.

I feel as if I can see this dream coming to life before my eyes: I see throughout the Arab world youths who are starting their own small businesses. I see in the cities experts that train our youths in the aspects where we have a relative advantage. I see the media, songs and video clips pushing the youths towards these ideas. I see schools too teaching their students these aspects. Did I not tell you that this is a national project? I see the cities too filled with hundreds of thousands of factories and work floors. I see that our output is all being exported. Can you all see it with me?

How can we move the entire world? Are we capable of doing that in Life Makers? Of course we need massive financial resources, and I assure you that these institutions that we are talking about have to be non-profitable institutions (national institutions) that help youths to work and not to profit from them. In this way we can move the entire world. Of course we will not be able to do all of this by ourselves; however we will be able to rock the whole world with this survey.

Everyone imagines that the youth are careless and do not want to work. Everyone keeps telling me to look at the youths in the streets and in the coffee shops, and I am sure that this is not true. I am also sure that the 350,000 surveys so far are the first sign that we will succeed and hopefully they will exceed one million as well. This is a culmination of all of your efforts; this survey is the first sign of alert to the world telling them, “Wake up before the youths in this area become a source of power that overtakes the world.”

What is required here is to transform this into a national issue whereby we tell the whole world that we are in need of institutions for the youth so that they are able to come up with small businesses. In total honesty, all our countries are in dire need of national projects. Do you remember Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s former president? At the time that he was president of Russia, I read an article in the newspaper that said that he was asking the Russian people to come up with any national project that would save Russia. He did not shy away from asking the people to come up with a national project. This is not wrong at all.

Solaiman al-Faresy[4] presented a national project to the Prophet (SAWS) to save Madinah - this project was digging the trench. Of course the Prophet did not refuse the project just because it was not his own. Furthermore the Prophet (SAWS) never attributed this project to himself. He agreed to this project and carried it out. After it was completed the companions argued over which group Solaiman al-Faresy belonged to. The Muhajireen (the emigrants) said he was one of them; the Ansar on the other hand refuted them and said that he was of them. The Prophet (SAWS) concluded this argument by saying, “Solaiman is from us, the people of the house.”

The national project that we offer to our countries now consists of small projects that we can put all our efforts into, and we can start our efforts with this survey that will be submitted by 3 million of us. After our voices used to be scattered, we can now all unite our voices as one. A very powerful voice will rock the whole world and this is the role of this survey.

Do you remember the project of building the Aswan High Dam? Our national project in Egypt? I want to transform our small businesses, and solving our problem of unemployment and this survey into a national project like that of building the Aswan High Dam. Do you remember the building of the dam? We announced that we were going to build it and it concerned the whole of Egypt, but how did we finance it? The World Bank refused to loan us the amount and so we nationalized the Suez Canal. This led to the war of 1956 whereby England, France and Israel came to war with Egypt and we defeated them and completed our project and the Aswan High Dam was built. It was a great challenge, but it was achieved.

Japan decided to become a superpower with its small businesses over 40 years ago, after it had been learning from Egypt. They were able to succeed in their challenge and transform the whole country (their law, education, media, and government) to aid the small businesses until they became a superpower.

Will we remain as we are? I want to tell you something, but do not be upset; we need to live a challenge such as that of the world of ants. This is not a joke. I will relate to you a story that is taught to children in India. This story was written by an expert in the science of insects. I am sorry to have to ask you to be like ants but this is the truth. Awaken, and let us collect millions of copies of this survey.

This true story tells us that ants have a characteristic in their behavior that makes them unable to live without a challenge. It involves a large food factory in India which had a warehouse that contained stocks of food worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ants began to build a fortress next to that warehouse, and then started their attack on these food products. All forms of elimination failed to get rid of these ants. They then went to an expert in insects and asked him, “Will you destroy their fortress?” He said, “No, if I do that they will rebuild it, since they have a strong sense of challenge.” He then came with a large pile of sugar and placed it in the middle of the factory and left it. The next day the sugar pile had disappeared. He then repeated this method and every time he would place a sugar pile that was bigger than the previous one. A day then came where the ants had left a little sugar behind, and on the following days they began to leave more and more sugar until the day came when all the sugar was untouched and there was not a single ant in the warehouse. The expert then said, “Now if you go to their fortress, you will not find a single ant.” Why? Because the ants had eaten until they were satisfied and they filled up their stocks. They then needed to move on to find another challenge since they cannot live without a challenge.

I am asking you: what is better, to live in a world of challenge or to live in a world of relaxation and luxury? I promise you that living in this world of challenge is better. I will remind you that the world of ants is similar to ours since they face a continual explosion in population growth. If they do not live in difficulty, the result will be that they will begin to eat each other as a result of the size of their population. Do you now know why Allah (SWT) named the Surah, which mostly talks about the components of growth and revival, the Surah of the Ants? This comes despite the fact that this Surah talks about the Kingdom of Prophet Solaiman (AS), which is the largest Kingdom in history, whereas the ants are from the smallest creatures. This Surah was still named after the ants. This sense of challenge is what will spark this growth. I am really embarrassed to ask you to be like these ants, but you must realize that it is an issue of accepting a challenge, so do you accept?

This challenge is your contribution to this growth and that you want to take part in it with your small project. This contribution could be the one to save you on the Day of Judgment. This survey is not only for the youths, but also for the experts, businessmen, mothers and fathers. It is not necessary to answer all questions. Everyone just answers the questions that are relevant to them even if they answer just one or two questions from each survey.

Imagine with me this beautiful dream: a million youths from Egypt, and a million from Algeria, and a million from Saudi Arabia and a million from Yemen and a quarter of a million from Lebanon; then we create these institutions to fund and train them and open up markets for them. Then each one of those creates a business where ten other people work. Imagine therefore ten million working in Egypt and similarly in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Lebanon. Even if half of them fail it would not be a problem. It is enough that 5 million will be working and moving the rest of the country. This is the idea. I am not saying something impossible, since this is very feasible. Of course the countries’ resources will be of service to these millions and they will provide them with help. I am not saying it is an easy manner since I understand the extent of the difficulty and I know that I am talking of a national project that will spur our growth. The Prophet (SAWS) says, “He who walks in the needs of his brother, Allah will walk in his need.”

I would like to read to you some of the questions of this survey once again quickly.

They are sixteen questions all of which are available on www.amrkhaled.net. Please log on to fill it and spread it to the largest number of people possible. Here I would like to thank all the Life Makers youths for everything they have done, and I would like to announce that over the next three weeks there will be a competition between all Life Makers clubs, and between all people, youths and organizations to collect as many surveys as they can (and to report them on the site) and the prize will be a surprise and I will personally hand it to the winners in any country in the world. All the surveys you collect can be input at once, or send them by fax or post. I would like to remind you of this saying, “A right with a seeker behind it was never lost.” This is our right and we will take it by any means. Our Ummah (nation) is now under close scrutiny by the entire world, and what we would like is for the whole world to bow with respect to our youths. I ask you to complete this survey and we will carry your voice to the world by means of it. We will all meet up with Abdullah Dhul-Bijadain in heaven Allah (SWT) willing, and we will please our Prophet (SAWS) with what we have done and meet up with Solaiman al-Faresy to inform him of our national project.

[1] Sala-llahu Alaihi Wa-Sallam = All Prayers and Peace of Allah be upon him.

[2] TMQ=Translation of the Meaning of the Qur'an. This translation is for the realized meaning, so far, of the stated (Surah:Ayah) of the Qur'an. Reading the translated meaning of the Qur'an can never replace reading it in Arabic, the language in which it was revealed.

[3] It was related by Muslim (also by al-Bukhari, an-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah).

[4] Al-Faresy is a surname that means “The Persian”.

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Episode 43: Solving the Problem of Unemployment using the Survey