Young people here are doing their degrees. They’re doing medicine,
they’re doing engineering, they’re doing accounting and one student says,
“I’m gonna study history!” And their parents say, “What? What are you
going to do with history? Who’s going to give you a job? Where will you
get employed? History doesn’t pay the bills. Don’t study history.”
So we took our smartest kids, our smartest men and women and we made
them doctors, we made them engineers, we made them programmers, we
made them architects and we did not care to make them what; historians,
political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists. No. And
you know what? As a nation, we decided that an entire generation of
people should just be workers. We’re just workers. I mean, a doctor,
without all due respect to the doctors, is skilled labor. It’s labor. You’re a
laborer. You’re specialized but you’re still laboring. And that architect is
still a labor, working in a specialized field. Who’s doing the thinking on
behalf of this Ummah? Who’s restoring our identity as an Ummah? The
best of our minds are not being used. Because they are too busy doing
other things. “I want you to study this and that.” And the sad thing is that
if you ask why are you studying this, why are you in this career? You
know what the answer is most of the time? Number 1 answer, “My
parents told me.” Number 2 answer is “It’s a good job.” So the only
legacy we are leaving for our next generation is that the most important
thing in your life is looking for a good job. I am not against getting a
good job, by the way. Get a good job. I’m all for it. But you know what,
the world needs more than people who just make money in one or two
careers. I would argue, if I had it my way, historians and theologians and
people who are studying psychology and sociology, they would be the
highest paid professors. They would be the highest paid researchers, in
my opinion. Cause they’re the people who impact how society operates.
They give direction to society. And if they have an Islamic mindset, man,
they can bring a lot of good to the world. So, for the young people here,
while you are studying accounting, on the side, take as many history
courses as you can. Learn as much about other things as you can. Things
that actually make you a refined human being, a deeper thinker. Learn
sociology, it is an important subject. There is a lot of sociology in the
Quran, there is a lot of psychology in the Quran, there is a lot of political
science in the Quran. And if somebody says, “No, no, I want to be a
doctor cause there’s embryology in the Quran.” Yeah, in one or two ayat
there is some reference to it, but it isn’t at the heart of it. At the heart of it
is human engagement, so these humanities they are important and we
have to restore them from the Islamic perspective. This is a critical thing.
Of course, history is at the center of that.