In the Name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful and may all Prayers and Blessings of Allah be upon our master, the most noble Prophet Muhammad. 

I would like to welcome everyone for our fifth episode of the fourth phase of Life Makers. We are still filming from England and I would like to start off by announcing the winners of last week’s competition. We are  focusing on the fifty training workshops established on our website which run under the supervision of the five winners of last week’s competition. The competition was about selecting a certain book and summarizing it within each workshop in which 1542 people actively participated and 50,000 people took part.

The winners of the competition are:

1. Hanan Hemeida from Egypt

2. The ‘Seeker of Wisdom’ from Palestine

3. Lido 75 from Egypt

4. Elhamo from Jordan

5. Jameela from Morocco

Last week’s competition

It was required from the five winners above to run and organize ten workshops each and to select the topics of the books which they will focus on in order to summarize  and  submit these summaries. The evaluation of the summaries presented to select the winner is determined by the quality and genre of the books, the diversity of the books selected inside each workshop, the way the book is summarized and presented and the largest number of contributions and participations among themselves (which is the main purpose of this competition).

I was genuinely impressed by the diversity of topics covered and the books that were presented on these topics such as illiteracy and how to combat it, Gandhi’s history and books on righteousness. Other important books presented were ‘Do not be Sad’ by Sheikh ‘Aed Al-Karny, books by the Orientalist Dr. John Esposito and the researcher on Islam Dalia Mogahed book from the United States of America, and ‘How They Beat Despair’ by Salwa Al-‘Odaidan. 

The books summarized and presented in these workshops have contributed to our campaign titled ‘10,000 books’ and the summaries  were beyond excellent and all contributions were fruitful and appreciated. So  it was not easy at all to select a winner among them. Hanan Hemeida managed to successfully diversify the genres of the books in her workshop and she has excelled in presenting their work in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. The ‘Seeker of Wisdom’ from Palestine also dealt with a diversity of topics and did not suffice by summarizing a book on illiteracy but did her own research and presented statistical studies on illiteracy. Lido 75 was the first to hand in his work on time and reviewed a very interesting book titled ‘The Geography of Reason’ which presents ideas on how individuals and societies think and function and how this reflects on their daily lives.  He also presented the book titled ‘Faith and Life’ by Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi which discusses self-development by strengthening one’s faith and belief which is our objective. Elhamo from Jordan happens to be the youngest workshop leader, aged 19 years, and she has presented a book on Gandhi’s life and history as well as the book titled ‘Malek Ibn-Nabi’. In spite of being the youngest among the workshop leaders, but her workshops presented very intellectual and interesting books of substance. Finally, Jameela from Morocco also did an excellent job in presenting  quality summaries of the large number of books they have reviewed.

The winner

Selecting a winner was not easy; all workshops performed excellently and presented very interesting summaries on books from different genres. However, Hanan Hemeida and ‘The Seeker of Wisdom’ both seem to have done the most impressive work in terms of diversity of the topics covered and presentation. Yet, the largest number of contributions (3582 participations) in three days goes to ‘The Seeker of Wisdom’ from Palestine which qualifies her as the winner for this week.

Value of these workshops

These weekly competitions serve as practical training on teamwork and to develop   team spirit so that we may learn to function as a team and not as individuals. This is the main motivation for this phase of Life Makers: learning to blend in a team and developing the spirit of teamwork.

This week’s episode

Our episode this week will last for two weeks; we will not meet again next Saturday.  You are encouraged to participate in the workshops in any way you can and as much as possible during this  period; we aim to increase the contributions and participations to 5000. We will extend the competition for four more days till next Tuesday and work will resume in the workshops after the winner is announced.

This week’s competition

We want to brainstorm the reasons behind our societies' failure to enhance teamwork. Why do we succeed as individuals and fail as teams? And how can we remedy this shortcoming? You have plenty of time to brainstorm the problem, describe it and come up with effective and creative ideas to remedy this failure.

Individual work or teamwork?

The reform of a nation comes from within the nation itself and therefore if we expect any reform we must train our youth and empower them to lead such revival.

The beginning of our campaign of Life Makers in 2004 was marked with unparalleled enthusiasm and contributions from millions of people from all over the Muslim and Arab world. However, when the projects and teamwork began many of these millions began to fall apart and the numbers declined and the  active projects and activities that endured were very few indeed.

After speaking  with many  youth from all over the Arab and Muslim world, I have realized that our main and common failure is the absence of the spirit of teamwork. I recognize it as one of our major obstacles in our path to reform and we must  remedy it, for there is no reform without collective and group work. We must learn to blend in a group and function as a group and strive to achieve the goals of the group or organization we belong to, even if it is at the expense of our personal interests.

Our successes are individual

The Arab World has witnessed the promotion of many of its individuals in many fields of life; we have many geniuses, scientists, scholars, writers, and theologians who have excelled at the international level. We have our stars in sports, arts, culture, science, and literature, but they are all individual successes! We do not own a single company, organization or establishment of Arabic origin, and this has made me realize that we have done our youth injustice when we accused them for their inability to work in a team. The roots of the problem are in the culture of our nation ,unfortunately.

Description of the problem

We will describe the problem together but the practical analysis of the problem and the proposed reasons and solutions are for you to work on. Why have we fallen behind in teamwork despite the fact that our history of Islam is characterized by a lot of teamwork and collective action?! Moreover, our religion urges us to develop our team spirit and to work in groups. Verses in the Qur’an are always phrased in the plural context; Allah has always addressed us as a group and not as individuals. I will put forward a challenge for you and you must split up into work shops as usual and address this challenge in 48 hours.

Individual work and human statues

In front of us where we stand now in London we see a living human statue whom tourists are taking photos of and posing with. In reality, he is  a living human (as we know) who has painted himself in metallic color to appear as a statue and this is how he makes his living . I do not criticize or belittle it, but this is an example of individual work and he has mastered it.  InWhere is the reform or revival in this? How has it contributed to the society and its progress? When we work as individuals for too long we become more like this human statue; we make a living and  satisfy ourselves but we are far from developing or reforming. The truth is bitter to confront but confrontation is a must.a

Reasons for failure of teamwork in the Life Makers workshops

1-      Many of those who participated in Life Makers joined it believing it to be a club for socializing and forming strong friendships. They failed to see that the main mission of the campaign was a vision for reform and revival of our nation.

2-      Others were in pursuit for love in Allah and his Muslim brothers and sisters and then found themselves unintentionally working in project teams. What unites us as Muslim brothers and sisters then? It should be our mission to achieve reform. We strive to fulfill our objective through our small projects and awareness campaigns such as combating drugs, health and hygiene campaigns and others. What unites us is a collective goal and not individual achievements and interests.

3-      Another reason is the selfishness   of many of us. We all desire to be the leader and have our interests and goals first and foremost and that is a grave mistake.

4-      Improper breeding and instruction in our families and schools in which we are not taught democracy and freedom. We are expected to blindly follow the vision of the powerful leader without contributing or sharing.

This was a presentation of what I believe were some of the factors that led to the failure of teamwork and projects in Life Makers. This is a personal and un-researched opinion, but I want you this week to research teamwork and team spirit and the reasons they fail and I am sure you will come up with a better analysis and understanding of our problem  and resolving it.

I want you to categorize the reasons into two categories as follows:

1.      Internal and personal reasons that are to do with each individual so that instead of blaming the other we can first reform ourselves as Allah says what can be translated as “Verily! Allah will not change the good condition of a people as long as they do not change their state of goodness themselves” (TMQ[1], 13:11).

2.      External reasons which lie in the surrounding environment such as the nation, the state, the society and the organizations which are established to do social activities. Regarding the state, we must realize that we are not working into the void. We are members of the state and we are contributing with our work to the state. Hence, we cannot expand our work or activities to break the laws of the state or exceed its limits. We must adapt to the established systems of the state and work through them.  Allah says what can be translated as “He grants Hikmah to whom He pleases, and he, to whom Hikmah is granted, is indeed granted abundant good” (TMQ, 2:269). Regarding the organizations which play social roles that serve the state.  Wwe cannot work against them either. We are surrounded by them and they play certain roles in serving the state and impose their style on the society and hence we cannot decide to simply stand against them.

Conclusion

Today’s episode is short but bitterly true, but even if the truth is bitter we must bring it out in the open, so that we may investigate our problems with clarity and attempt to confront them. There will be no reform or revival in our nation if the successful and devoted ones remain to work in isolation and as individuals. They must get together and work as one.  We have to unite ourselves with one vision and one mission if we are to see any improvements in our current affairs. I urge all youth to participate with me through the forum and share your views, do your research and submit your contributions throughout the whole week.

Thank you and may peace and Allah's mercy and blessings be upon you.

Translated by: The English Convoy – Dar al-Tarjama

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