SEEK KNOWLEDGE

"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave."
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION
"Whoever seeks a way for pursuing knowledge, Allah will facilitate his admission to the Garden."
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

"One who sets out from his home seeking knowledge, pursues the way in the cause of Allah."
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

"The angels spread their wings for a student."
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

TRIBUTE TO MUSLIM SCIENTISTS

'It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West : Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khawarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, al-Kashi, ibn al-Haitham, 'Ali ibn Isa al-Ghazzali, al-Zarqab, Omar Khayyam. A magnificent array of names which wuld not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flurished within a short period, 750 AD to 1100AD.
George Sarton

"It is important to gain knowledge. Grasp of the Intelligibles determines the fate of the Rational Soul in the Hereafter, and therefore is crucial to Human Activity."
Ibn Sina

"Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today."
Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)

EXCELLENCE

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
Aristotle

MATHEMATICS

" ....and even the dull, if they had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become quicker than they would otherwise have been. Arithmetic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and dull and makes him quick to learn, retentive and shrewd. He make progress quite beyond his powers..."
Plato

" Mathematics in the Islamic perspective is regarded as the gateway leading from the sensible to the intelligible world, the ladder between the world of change and the heaven of archetypes."
Seyyed Hossein Nasr

" All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innatein us. . . . This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon."
Roger Bacon

" Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence."
Ibn Khaldun

Mathematics has beauties of its own -- a symmetry and proportion in its results, a lack of superfluity, an exact adaptation of means to ends, which is exceedingly remarkable and to be found only in the works of the greatest beauty When this subject is properly ... presented, the mental emotion should be that of enjoyment of beauty, not that of repulsion from the ugly and the unpleasant.
Young, J. W. and H. Eves

MENTAL DISCIPLINE

"....it is not a question of learning, or geography or geometry: it is a question of leaning to work; of learning the wearniness of concentrating one's attention on the matter in hand..."
John Locke

THE KEY ROLE OF PARENTS

" A parent who is reluctant to impart to his children the meaning of existence impoverishes their lives, not only by certain content, values and motivation, but by denying them the very faculty and need to search and even construct for themselves the meanings of their lives and their activities. In the absence of these meanings, any subsitute, no matter how noxious, comes to fill up the void and becomes acceptable even if it is self-destructive"
Reuven Feuerstein

ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

"….and this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption.

Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration. Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others. While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world…."
Carly Fiorina

THE NEED FOR IDEAS AND CREATIVITY

" We should now rather say that growing civilizaion differ from static primitive societies in virtue of the dynamic movement, in their bodies social, of creative individual personalities."
Arnold Toynbee

THE NEED FOR CHANGE AND ADAPTATION

" The conditions, customs and sects of the world and nations do not continue according to any specific pattern or stable program. there is always change from time to time and from one condition to another. In as much as this applies to persons, times and provinces, it applies to countries, ages and states. Such is God's order among His creatures "
Ibn Khaldun

"..legal intepretations should change witn the change in times, places, conditions, intentions and customs. Ignorance of this fact has resulted grievous injustices for the shar'iah, and has caused many difficulties, hardships and sheer impossibilities, although it is known that the noble shar'iah which serves the highest interests of mankind, would not sanction such results... "
Ibn Qayyim an-Jawziyah

THE NEVER-ENDING QUEST

" I have walked a long road to freedom. But I have discovered that after climbing a great hill, there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back at the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended."
Nelson Mandela

HARD WORK

" If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all."
Michelangelo

THE NEED TO EXERCISE THE MIND

" Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigours of the mind."
Leonardo Da Vinci

INQUISITIVENESS

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
Naguib Mahfouz

THE VISION OF THE COMMUNITY OF EXCELLENCE

" The community does not face the sort of abject and debilitating poverty seen in some other countries. We have made significant gains over the last 20 years of development. The vision of a Community Of Excellence is for all of us to make into a reality. Every individual, every family, every student, every worker and every organisation in our community must start to make that extra effort, on their own to move up the value chain of excellence. Everyone of us must put in place a culture of excellence in everything that we do. We must begin to adopt a progressive philosophy of life"
Dr Yaacob Ibrahim

AGAINST THOSE WHO ROMANTICIZE THE PAST

" ....in its preoccupation with the apology of the past , the culture takes on a character of archaeology where the intellectual effort is directed not forward but backwards. This retrograde tendency imprints on the entire teaching a retrospective character, incompatible with the exigencies of the present and the future.."
Malek Bennabi