فهذا يجب أن يقوموا إلى قراءة كن ، قراءة جميلة ، كما يجب أن يقوموا إلى قراءة نيدي ، ويجب أن يكون هناك قراءة جميلة هذا سيكون best for those who see God's very pleasure and it is they who surely prosper الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على سيدنا وعظيمنا وحبيب قلوبنا وشفيع نفوسنا أب القاسم محمد وعلى أهل بيته الطيبين الطاهرين واصحابه الغر الميامين الحمد لله الذي جعلنا من المتمسكين بولاية سيد ومولاية علي بن أبي طالب الحمد لله الذي هدانا لهذا وما كنا لنحتدي لو لا أن هدانا الله أما بعد يقول الله في كتابه الكريم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم قل لا أسألكم عليه أجرن إلا المودة في القربة the first of the b'a'u w'alawth صلوات إنه رسول الله محمد صلى الله عليه و آله وسلم the second of the b'a'u w'amir المؤمنين علي بن أبي طالب the third of the b'a'u w'alawth's voices is in honor of the Imam of our time Imam صاحب العصر والزمان there is a request for the brothers to come as close to the front as possible صلى الله عليه و آله و آله محمد respected scholars brothers and sisters السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته the holy prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و آله وسلم was born in the year 570 known as the year of the elephant he occupies a prominent position within the religion of Islam as revered as the greatest personality within the religion a man whose life has to be examined in depth for there are many lessons to be learned and indeed many examples to be derived and indeed a man whose biography has been unfortunately very much undervalued and indeed very much underestimated therefore it is vital that we discuss his biography on the day that he was born until the day he died in order that we are able to number one take as many practical lessons from his life and apply them into our own lives and then number two remove any misconceptions that surround his biography for there was a period in medieval Europe when he was seen as being the devil incarnate or he was seen as being the false messiah or he was seen as being the anti Christ and therefore there is a need for us to dissect the biography in order that we present him in his true light as a mercy for mankind and a moral exemplar to everyone as we said he was born in the year 570 known as the year of the elephant the Arabs did not have a calendar dating system as such the Arabs what they used to do they used to look at what was the important event in that particular year and then give the name towards the year as in for example if there was a famous personality who died they would name the year after that personality or if there was a war that took place they would name for example the year after that war the year within which the prophet was born was called عام الفيل the year of the elephant because of an incident that took place involving an army of elephants because what you had at the time you had within Arabia people who used to go and visit the Ka'ba in Yemen there was a church which was built by an Ethiopian man by the name of أبراح mark the words Ethiopian because أبراح's نيس is بلال الحبشي's mother أبراح's نيس later on when she's caught as a prisoner she gets married within one of the Arabian tribes and she gives birth to a son by the name of بلال hence when بلال is known as the people of حبش it's because his mother's uncle was this أبراح who was an Ethiopian but was the governor of Yemen أبراح had always been envious of the fact that there were people who would go towards the Ka'ba but not come towards his church in Yemen he had tried to send emissaries and ambassadors to go towards the Ka'ba and to try and tell the Arabs that listen leave your place of worship because your place has been polluted originally you are people of أبراح but now you worship idols it's better that all of you come to my church in Yemen and make my church the main center of the area when he had sent one of his emissaries when he noticed that the emissaries were not successful the narrations tell us that he decided it's better for him to take his army and march into the Ka'ba and to take an army of elephants hence within the religion of Islam you have a chapter called صورة الفيل chapter 105 of the Quran and the chapter begins بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم ألم ترى كيف فعل ربك بأصحاب الفيل have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the people of the elephant because when أبراح came he came with elephants and there was only a few elephants that he bought but as we know elephants are of a size that there only needs to be a few for them to capture your attention when he came towards Arabia he came with these elephants and there were people who definitely were scared that's why the main person who counteracted him was who was عبد المطالب the grandfather of the Prophet عبد المطالب told the people number one go and hide in the desert hills so they went to hide in the desert hills then عبد المطالب was chosen by the people to go and meet أبراح notice from the beginning of the biography of the Prophet we see that the line of Abraham through إسماعيل is still looking after the birthplace of إسماعيل yesterday we said in Genesis chapter 17 verse 18 to 20 God promised Abraham that in the line of إسماعيل there will be 12 princes who are part of a fruitful generation عبد المطالب what did he do عبد المطالب at this moment came to Abraham he entered Abraham's tent Abraham was sitting down when he entered the tent Abraham looked at him he saw quite an imposing figure he then said to him sit down and he said to him what is it that you want he said I want my camels he said sorry he said I want my camels you took my camels I want my camels to return back to me he looked at him and he said you know when you entered my tent I had a lot of respect for you but now I've lost all that respect عبد المطالب said why he said when you entered my tent I thought this is a man who will want his black cube known as the Kaaba protected instead all you want is the camels he said that house has a lord for its own to protect it and I am the protector of my lot of camels I want my 200 camels being given back to me he said to him get out get out there's no agreement between us عبد المطالب came back a second time to try and persuade him again Abraham wouldn't agree Abraham decided he'll take his elephant and most of the narrations indicate another 6 or 7 elephants they marched towards the Kaaba they marched towards the Kaaba and the Quran put it quite beautifully and the Quran said لم ترى كيف فعل ربك بصحاب الفيل ألم يجعل كيدهم بتبغيل و أرسل عليهم طيرا أبابيل ترميهم you all see that what Allah سبحانه وتعالى what did he do he ensured that if you plan and I plan I'm the greatest of planners who are coming they were ready to bring their victory the narration stayed very clearly that some birds with these stones pelted them until the opposition army was defeated in other words رسول الله the year that he was born the Arabs hadn't begun the hijra calendar we know the hijra calendar begun after what the hijra calendar after the prophet migrated from Mecca to Medina then you had one AH, two AH three AH, four AH before that what did you have years according to incidents so the date of his birth is different on between the different schools in Islam our brothers in other schools celebrate his birth on the 12th of ربيع الأول we celebrate his birth on the 17th of ربيع الأول it is vital that this isn't a cause of friction between us why سيد الخماني من الله bless his soul used to stress on this week being a week of unity between Muslims because all of us are sharing a common denominator and that is the life of our prophet it should be a case where on the 12th of ربيع الأول our mosques go or our imams go to the mosques of our brothers and celebrate with them and on the 17th our brothers are welcomed into our mosques to celebrate with us there is a difference of opinion and in the historical research you'll find I think bar in خليني most of the others will say that he was born on the 17th of ربيع الأول it wasn't an easy first few years for him imagine in your first few years your father passes away according to some narrations only a few months into his life his father عبد الله passes away and therefore رسول الله has born an orphan hence the Quran saying ألم نجد كرياتي من فاوة when the Quran says ألم يجد كرياتي من فاوة what does it mean means did we not find you an orphan the prophet when he was born was born an orphan his mother آمينة was alive but his father عبد الله had passed away and his mother آمينة did what most Arabs do to their babies at the time if you were of the noble aristocracy of مكة what would you do to your baby after 8 days of the birth of your baby the Meccan aristocrats would take their babies to the desert so that their babies are suckled and breastfed by a wet nurse in the desert someone asks why as an آمينة is his mother why can't she suckle him why does she have to take him to the desert there were a number of reasons the Arabs would take their babies to the deserts and especially the aristocrats if you were poor it wasn't that easy but if you were an aristocrat you take your baby to the desert for a number of reasons and please understand these reasons because they have a major role in the upbringing and the psyche of the Prophet the first reason it allows you to grow up in an environment where you are independent and you are a free thinker for the first few years of your life what do we mean we mean in the desert there isn't buildings and there isn't all of these forests surrounding you and lots of humans and shops and markets and trade in the desert it's open you can sit there and look at the creation and reflect upon your own creation reflect upon your own meaning in life reflect upon your own role the Arabs who would send their babies to have their first 8 or 10 years in the desert would want that baby to be living in a world where they grow up as a child who is not told what to think but is rather shown how to think the first reason they take him there is that the second reason is because Mecca's climate wasn't a healthy climate for children both in terms of what they saw and what they breathed imagine you're a child growing up in a climate where you see baby girls being buried alive is that a good start to your life or you see people performing power of the Ka'bah the Ka'bah naked the Arabs used to go around the Ka'bah and the Ka'bah naked because they said God created us free so there's no need for clothes clothes are impure let's go and circumambulate his house like how he created us completely in the nude the Prophet, his mother Amna wanted him to be growing up where grow up in the desert so he doesn't see this because Mecca's wind and air as I said it was hot it was unhealthy there were pests and epidemics so his mother Amna did what she made sure that he was sent there the first lady to have breastfed him and their most narration say too the first one and both of them were chosen by who? by Abdul Muttalib's grandfather the first one to have breastfed him was Thwaiba the servant of his uncle Abu Lahab remember Abu Lahab before the Prophet announced his prophethood used to love the Prophet because he used to see him as his younger brother's son Abdullah his Abu Lahab's younger brother isn't he so he used to see him as his younger brother's son so first Amna asked Abdul Muttalib Abdul Muttalib said Thwaiba Thwaiba also suckled Hamza because Rasool Allah and Hamza's ages are very similar and that's why when Rasool Allah was one day told to marry Hamza's daughter he said we cannot because in Islamic law we suckled from the same wetness then number two Abdul Muttalib chose who? he chose Halima Sa'diyah Halima Sa'diyah was a pious God fearing lady Abdul Muttalib chose her as the one who would suckle the Prophet and she herself would say that I saw vast riches and goodness affect my life the moment I started to suckle the Prophet some narrations in Islamic history try and tell us that when the Prophet was with Halima as a two-year-old he remembered mark the words he remembered it's quite interesting as a two-year-old he remembered he was sitting down one day two men came opened his chest gave him a heart transplant because there was the black dot of shaitan on his heart then put a new heart in and that was the pure Muhammad after that day we of course differ with this idea as a number one if I have the dot of shaitan it's not on my physical heart the dot of shaitan is meant to be on my nefs so I don't need the heart change number two the Prophet was born with this purity he did not need people to come and open him up have an operation and then move on for the Quran would later say ألم نشرح لك صدرك we are the ones who expanded that breast which was able to take in knowledge therefore some narrations try to say Halima saw this in the Prophet we differ with this Halima twice went back to Amina the mother of the Prophet and said to him do you want to take him back in Mecca Amina twice replied back to her and Halima keep him there because I see diseases and epidemics which will affect him and therefore some people ask the question if God loves Muhammad so much why let him have such a difficult beginning as an orphan as in why doesn't God allow him to have a natural beginning like everybody else a father and a mother when the Imam was asked this question he replied God wanted to ensure nobody protected and brought up Muhammad but himself he wanted to oversee that the Prophet would not show obedience to anybody even from his early life except himself sometimes your parents may swear you one way or the other even though his parents were loyal believers in God's message the Imam said he wanted that God is the one who oversaw his development therefore you find from a young age his father dies then his mother dies then after that what after that his grandfather عبد المطالب looks after him his grandfather dies within a couple of years then he is brought up by his uncle Abu Talib his uncle Abu Talib عكس the backbone not only to him but to the message of the religion of Islam that that uncle Abu Talib preferred his nephew even above his sons and his wife فارط محمد أسد was exactly the same his wife فارط محمد أسد when the Prophet buried her he said this is my mother this is the lady who preferred me above her sons this is the lady who used to clothe me and wash me and look after me and she is the one who nourished me you notice that these were the two looked after him and that's why the Prophet from a young age there is a certain question that is asked what do we know about him before the age of 40 because in a few moments we'll look at him from after the age of 40 but before the age of 40 if you were to ask many Muslims tell us about your Prophet before the age of 40 many are unaware of his biography you notice that before the age of 40 when Abu Talib was bringing up Abu Talib the Prophet would latch on to him everywhere to the extent that Abu Talib himself narrates one day I was about to leave for Syria on a commercial expedition the young Muhammad was only 12 he latched on to me as I was leaving when he latched on to me it hurt me that this my nephew was an orphan let me take him with me the narration state that he took him towards Syria on the way towards Syria they walked past a monastery the monk when he sees these people coming they say to him we are coming here to reside for the night the monk looks at them what does he say the monk says to Abu Talib all of you can come and are welcome to eat what you want to eat but Abu Talib I want to ask you a question he said what is it he said you know that young man was walking alongside you bring him tomorrow with you as well Abu Talib said very well bring him tomorrow the next day when Abu Talib came he looked at him and he said to him where is the young man that young man who was walking alongside you he said my nephew he said yes he said he is just over there he said call him towards me at the age of 12 and this is one of our proofs within Islamic theology that from a young age he was already inspired with the knowledge of God and the knowledge of his mission at the age of 40 it's not that he became a prophet it's that he was now told to announce his prophethood before that he knew because when that monk comes and he sees him he says to him in the name of Allah as soon as the prophet heard this he said to him do not bring those names in front of me those are the most detested names to me they were the idols of Quraish then the monk said I want to give you some Sadaqa he said we do not accept Sadaqa then he said to him can I see the mark between your shoulders he allowed him to see the mark between the shoulders he looked at Abu Talib he said Abu Talib if you did not know already because Abu Talib is already knowing if you did not know already then know that this young man is what know that this young man is the prophet who Jesus spoke about and who Moses spoke about and beware of the enemies that he's going to face and he at that moment said to him Abu Talib said how did you know he said forget these signs when you were walking and Muhammad was next to you I saw every tree bound down after Muhammad left it therefore what do you have you have from a young age at the age of 12 but even after the age of 12 there is this innate love for justice and removal of oppression in which way one of the greatest incidents in his young age was at the age of 20 and years later he would always refer back to this at the age of 20 he refers to when he joined and formed a group called حلف الفضول حلف الفضول what was it in Arabia many people would come for the markets when they'd come from the markets they'd come from outside the market area when they'd come from outside the market area the narration state they'd come from outside the market area and they'd bring their goods and the people of Arabia would buy one of these people came from بنو زوبيد or some say بنو زبيد he came to sell some of his goods to العاس ابن وائل بفاضة عمر when he sold his goods he said to the فاضة عمر he said العاس give me my money he replied back to him by saying which money he said you've just taken my goods I want my money back he said there's no money for you and you're a stranger in our land you're not going to get your money back and I'm one of the aristocrats of Arabia so you might as well forget about it this person what did he do he was so enraged he went on one of the mountains in Arabia and he said all people of Arabia I have come as a stranger to your land and I have been involved in a business transaction and none of you have sought to help me when this man has taken my rights at least one of you speak up a 20 year old called محمد speaks up for him he gets up and he says it is unjust for us to be like this with a person who is a guest in our location and secondly in a business transaction how can we be unjust when the goods have been sold let us form a league which looks after the rights of business employees and let us form a league which protects transactions within the Arabian state how old was he remember he wasn't old he was 20 there is still no announcement of his prophethood but from that young age the first time people noticed of him a man who speaks out against injustice we in 2011 the first example we take of him how many of us speak out against injustice be it the injustice against Muslims or non Muslims our prophet didn't look at that man and say well that man is not a Muslim so I'm not going to speak up was right whenever we see any oppression anywhere in the world we must speak out against that oppression because our prophet from his young age thought us this this is number one number two not only at the age of 20 did he achieve this later on he achieved two attributes which the Arabs would honor him for they gave him the title أصادق and الأمين the truthful and the trustworthy noticed that the Arabs didn't know he was a prophet nor did they receive any book from him but they were concerned with his ethics as a human being when the Kaaba was affected by a flood the Kaaba was damaged they needed to put back حجر الأسود do you know the black stone in the Kaaba they needed to put back حجر الأسود into the Kaaba the Arabs had a fight with each other and unfortunately some of these Arabs were fighting a bit too easily the Arabs had a fight with each other and amongst the fights that they had was this one who puts حجر الأسود back in its position one tribe said we should put it back another says we should put it back a third says we should put it back a fourth says we they said okay let's do this the man who walks in next into this meeting he will be the one who chooses which tribe puts it back as soon as he walked in they didn't say محمد has walked in they said أصادق الأمين has walked in the focus wasn't on the name the focus was the man today in Islam there is too much focus on names and not morals when he began his mission before he began you can't just come out in front of people and say people I am a prophet follow me no you need to have attributes where for 40 years no one can find a black dot on you a human being has a funny way about themselves do you know what we do as humans if you give us a white piece of paper and there's a black dot in the middle and you ask us what's on that paper we'll say a black dot none of us will focus on the white will we we love to focus on the dot even if there is so much white about someone's character all we can remember is the black dot whereas the prophet did not allow them to point at one black dot صادق أمين when he therefore came to announce his prophethood he came to them and used this he said did you not call me a صادق did you not call me an ameen when Hajar was to be placed was I not the one who said oh four tribes why do you fight each other one of you hold one part of the cloth another holds a second a third holds a third a fourth holds a fourth carry Hajar all four of you and I'll pick it up from you and I'll place it when he announced his prophethood at the age of 40 the question arises what was the aim of his prophethood the aim was nothing more but allowing mankind to meditate and reflect on their existence in order that after meditation and reflection mankind not only had respect for themselves but they had respect for other creations of God as well that's it we made our prophets religion complicated whereas his mission from the beginning was a mission which was simple Arabians were in Jahlia if any society is stagnant it means it's a society which doesn't reflect and when the human doesn't reflect then he's the cause of a virus in his society when the prophet began his mission then he began by saying all of you pray now did he say all of you شعر مضان fast fast all of you keep a bed all of you he began first by saying mankind reflect on your existence have an hour of reflection it's greater than 70 years of dry worship today's Islam is too dogmatic it is too focused on حلال حرام حلال حرام حلال حرام واجب مقروع حلال حرام you're looking at them and you say this is what Muhammad bought no the prophet began his mission and the first part of the mission was what a true human is one who is reflecting on their role in this world the moment they reflect everything else will fall into place today's Muslims we focus on the jigsaw pieces we forgot on the puzzle notice مقداد what does he say he says those early days in Islam what were we doing he says in those early days in Islam I heard the prophet through for example one hadith saying I heard the prophet saying an hour of reflection is greater than a year of worship and then I heard Ibn Abbas say the prophet said an hour of reflection is greater than 7 years of worship then I heard another companion say an hour of reflection is greater than 70 years of worship so I said I'm going to go to the prophet and ask him how in one hadith are you telling the people an hour of reflection is greater than a year in a second you're saying an hour of reflection is greater than 7 years of worship in a third you're saying an hour of reflection is greater than 70 years of worship when he told the prophet the prophet said مقداد come with me let's ask the first person they ask the first person how do you reflect he said I look at the creations of the heavens and the earth and I think to myself these cannot have come by an accident the prophet said his one hour of reflection is greater than a year of worship then they went to the second they said to him how do you reflect he replied by saying what I think about the day of judgment and the questions I'm going to be asked about what I did in public but what I did in private as well رسول said his one hour of worship is greater than 7 years of worship his one hour is greater than 7 years of worship then he went to the third how do you reflect the third said I'm going to be very frank with you I think about hellfire and I get scared his one hour of reflection is greater than 70 years of worship because the moment you think about that it will make you change your ways quite quickly the origin of the religion was what the prophet began first by saying one hour of reflection in this religion is greater than 70 years of dry worship you can fast and pray and fast and pray and fast and pray but if you fast for 30 days in the year but the other 335 you're not reflecting on your life on your role on your meaning on your objectives then you haven't understood the true message of the religion of Islam then after that the moment you reflect on your creation that you were one day insignificant you weren't worth mentioning you came from something where if you look at it you are disgusted then you'll look around those around you and you'll say if I am so low then why am I so arrogant to those who are around me that's why when he began his mission first at the age of 40 he asked people to reflect on their existence then he said now that you've reflected the first area I want you to remove is the area of racism in your society why? because he knew when the human reflects there'll never be a racist human being because what am I? yes because I'm a certain color I'm better than another human no we were both sons of Adam created from dust you found that the first part of his biography was he spoke out against racism of any type as in how did Bilal come to Islam Bilal came to Islam when one day he saw Ammar ibn Yasir was captured when Ammar ibn Yasir was captured the early aristocrats of Quraish looked at Ammar and they said to Ammar or Ammar are you the one who's trying to come forward and you're trying to say that Muhammad's religion is the one we should follow Ammar said yes he said explain to me Muhammad's religion they replied by he replied by saying the prophet took of one God and that God is one who is merciful to his creation he is giving them free will and that that God has a day of judgment where we will judge us but he will not judge us on our race he'll judge us on our consciousness of his presence Bilal was standing there he was a slave at that moment Bilal one of the people said Bilal torture Ammar Bilal said no he said what? Bilal you black slave torture Ammar he said no how dare you Bilal we brought you up torture he said I have never heard of a message where there is a religion where a man with my skin complexion is protected where a man of my skin complexion is honored notice here that Bilal when he came towards Islam it's because number one there was the avenue of reflection by the prophet he allowed the religion to be intellectually spread not emotionally intellectually there was a spread when Bilal heard this Bilal would later on the prophet would destroy any area of racism how? he would come forward and say when he reached Madina later on the prophet would come forward and say that I want someone to call for prayer the people came forward and they said who is it that you're going to call? he said Bilal go up and recite the Adhan in one step he destroyed racism right from the beginning therefore number one racism رسول الله thought that that is to be destroyed from the beginning of his message number two not only do you respect people of different races learn to respect people of different religions because in the early years of his prophethood his companions were being tortured so the prophet came to Jaafar Ibn Abu Talib Jaafar the son of Abu Talib he said to him Jaafar go to Abyssinia leave with the companions Jaafar said to him where shall we go and why he said Jaafar go to Abyssinia because you will meet a christian priest notice the message on the first level he wants to remove racism you respect other humans then number two respect people of other religions if their principles are the same as ours then they are closer to us than people of our religion who are hypocrites with our principles Jaafar goes to Abyssinia and he meets the christian priest عمر ابن العاس is alongside Jaafar when Jaafar comes the Abyssinian priest says to عمر ابن العاس who are these people Jaafar replies by saying what he replies by saying we are people who believe in all the prophets and the final prophet of God who spoke about Jesus son of Mary when the priest heard this he said what does your book say about Jesus son of Mary he said our book says that Jesus son of Mary was born from a virgin birth and a chapter is named after his mother Maryan this Abyssinian priest the prophet could have easily said but he is a christian and they believe in crucifixion and we don't believe in crucifixion no he is a fellow believer in God and there is more in common between us than there are differences notice the attitude at the beginning of the religion it wasn't an attitude like some Muslims today where they don't look at another human being as a fellow member of humanity rather they look at them as disbelievers the early message was what number one no racism number two respect people of other religions because those people have principles which we preach and understand and that's why Jaafar because of this was allowed to stay in Abyssinia and build the early Muslim community in Africa that was number two number three in the early years in Mecca he noticed not only respect other humans not only respect other religions respect the other gender as human beings because these girls were being buried alive the prophet was noticing that these people had no morals they were taking the girls even someone like Omar ibn al-Khattab himself narrates Omar ibn al-Khattab narrates that in the days of Jaheliyah before Islam came we used to bury our daughters alive he says there are two things one of them makes me cry and one of them makes me laugh he said the one that makes me laugh is that we used to worship a God made out of dates they made an idol made out of dates you know dates what you mean and he says we used to worship it but when nobody is looking we take a date and we eat it by the end of worship that God was dead then he says that used to make me laugh then he says there was an area which made me cry when I used to bury my daughter alive says my daughter held on to my beard as I was burying her but I got the spade and I hit her and I buried her alive Rasoolallah the prophet would notice if I've come to this society I first told them to reflect they've begun to reflect first let them respect fellow nations and not be racist second let them be tolerant of other religions thirdly let them respect the role of the woman in society because if I give the rights to the woman then we'll have great nations notice what he does first the woman is not to be buried alive second the woman is to inherit and not be inherited in the past woman would be inherited the prophet comes and says she has the right of inheritance number three a dowry is to belong to the woman in the days of Arabian jahlia the dowry goes to the father of the girl not the girl when he came he said the dowry goes to the girl herself number four heaven lies underneath the feet of a woman lies underneath the feet of the mother when the prophet one day a Jewish young man becomes Muslim he comes to the prophet he says oh prophet of God my mother is Jewish but I'm a Muslim how do I treat her now that I've become a Muslim the prophet said you treat her better than you used to treat her before he went home he started doing all the chores his mother looked at him she said ever since you became a Muslim you behave like this why he said my prophet tells me heaven lies under your feet she said if this is what the prophet preaches then I want to join the religion of this prophet that was then number four then number five as part of his moral system even though his enemies would respect him in the idea that many of them would keep their trust with him on the night that he left Mecca 13 years he was in Mecca 10 years he was in Medina on the night that he left Mecca he left Ali ibn Abi Talib behind to sleep in his bed was that the only role of Ali ibn Abi Talib no Ali ibn Abi Talib in a second role or Ali after you have left my bed the next day return the trust of my enemies that they entrusted with me imagine the enemies of Quraish would say to the prophet Muhammad we don't believe in you we hate you we think you're crazy do you mind looking after our gold necklace for us because it was an ethical trait where even though the person is my enemy I as a prophet of God have not come to make enemies if I can show that I am trustworthy let my enemies deposit with me therefore after Mecca 13 years he moved on to Medina and the fifth important area when he left after 13 years at the age of 53 when he went to Medina when they fought him in his battles many people would come and say Muhammad spread his religion by the sword whereas the reality is those battles that occurred were defensive battles and they were not offensive if they were offensive then you could say that he spread the religion by the sword whereas on the country they were what they were defensive battles were they defensive battles to protect Muslims only no the Quran came forward in chapter 22 verse 39 to 40 saying what were it not for us telling our prophet to come out and protect himself there would not be a single church synagogue or mosque in existence in Arabia I ask you if this prophet came to spread his religion by the sword why is the Quran talking about churches and synagogues chapter 22 verse 39 to 40 were it not for our prophet defending himself there wouldn't be a single church synagogue or mosque the reason is Islam was trying to say when we are defending ourselves in Medina we are looking to defend every single area of worship which says there is only one God it's not just for us the Quran would come with a statement say oh people of the book قل يا أهل الكتاب تعالوا oh people of the book oh Jews or Christians come we don't want to fight you Muhammad's original message was we don't want to fight the people of the book oh people of the book come to a joint word between us and you chapter 3 verse 64 that we will only worship one God we will not put partners to God and we will not take law-givers besides God after those early battles you even notice a focus in his message on education that after the battle of bedev when he takes those prisoners some of his companions say to him quite recklessly let's kill them he says no let's treat them with the best of treatment and let's say to them something they say what is it he says we will ransom them if they teach 10 of our people how to read and write from the beginning it was a message in Medina on a focus on education seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave today's Muslims seek knowledge from the cradle to marriage after that become lazy seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave read until the final moments of your life the value of a believer is what? is there knowledge? is there wisdom? you notice what does he do? he doesn't want the prisoners tortured no if you can teach reading and writing then these are the basis of a great society then after that in establishing himself as the head of the state in Medina does he say the Jews should be kicked out or the Christians should be kicked out when he forms a constitution called the constitution of Medina the Jews will worship in their synagogues the Christians will worship in their churches and the Muslims will worship in their mosques there is nothing wrong with having a society of multi-religious dimensions and even after that in Medina when he is ordered by his lord to go to Mecca he hasn't returned to Mecca since he was expelled when he returns to Mecca his companions say let's go back and fight those Meccans he says no we will conduct a peace treaty with them his companions say to him what do you mean peace treaty? surely it is our chance to destroy these people's lives to finish them like they tortured us like they finished us they killed us the Prophet said no let's have a peace treaty with them and allow them to be opened up to the mercy of the religion of Islam and that's why do you know when the Prophet opened Mecca he taught us an ethical lesson like the ethics of removing racism like the ethics of respecting other religions like the ethics of respecting the other gender he taught us the ethical lesson by the name of forgiveness many Muslims find it hard to forgive today a person who wrongs me or a person I see committing wrong I find it hard to forgive them you tell them but the years have gone maybe the person changed maybe the person repented no I saw the person do this or the person said this and I'll never forgive them whereas their Prophet was the most forgiving of men when Mecca was opened there were two men who came towards him who he forgave who me and you would never forgive the first of them was Wahshi the man who mutilated the body of his uncle Hamza imagine your uncle who bought you up alongside Abu Talib you saw his body mutilated by this man to the extent do you know what Hind the mother of Muawiya did she cut so many pieces of Hamza's body she made a necklace for herself and this Wahshi ripped Hamza's chest apart when Mecca was opened Wahshi Abu Sufyan Hind people like Habbar ibn al-Aswad they thought to themselves we're never gonna get forgiven by Muhammad Muhammad's gonna enter Mecca and he's gonna execute us for what we did Wahshi and Habbar said but we're here Muhammad Zaman of Mercy and that his religion is merciful and forgiving he came to perfect the akhlaq of man I have come to perfect the morals of mankind so they said let us go and approach him Wahshi went to him when Wahshi came he said oh Prophet of God forgive me I was in the days of ignorance I didn't know about the message of Islam I heard rumors but it weren't true oh Prophet of God forgive me for what has happened and the reply was oh Wahshi you are forgiven now leave this area then Habbar ibn al-Aswad came do you know what Habbar ibn al-Aswad did the Prophet one of his daughters or in some narration step daughter Zainab she was pregnant she was meant to go towards Medina and Habbar wanted her to miscarry so on her way towards Medina he came and scared her in a way where she ended up miscarrying her child when the Prophet heard this he was saddened when he opened Mecca Habbar came and he said oh Prophet of God I am the cause of the miscarriage of your grandchild I scared your daughter in a way where I caused her to miscarry her child but I was ignorant they deceived me about your behavior and your character when I see you now I see a man of morals please allow me to be forgiven the Prophet if it was me and you and someone hurt us in this way would we forgive them ask them do we forgive them ask yourself as Muslims today how forgiving are we of our brothers our sisters our aunties our uncles our grandparents our cousins whereas our Prophet came and taught even this man who caused my daughter to miscarry he told him you are forgiven by Allah do not worry over what you have done and that's why his focus would also be that the basis of a great community is all of these ethics of tolerance and patience and forgiveness especially patience you think as Muslims today we have to be patient we take it from him some of us have to be patient in our marriages some of us have to be patient with our children you find he had to be patient with his marriages and with his children with his marriages would you believe he had married a lady by the name of Shamba this Shamba when she saw his son Ibrahim die we know he had Qasim Abdullah Bahir and Ibrahim you know when she saw his son Ibrahim die she was his wife she saw his son die she looked at him she said if you are really a prophet of God God would not have caused your son to die I am leaving you and she left do you know how many times she saw his son die she looked at him she said if you are really a prophet of God do you know how much patience you have to have when you are married to someone and they talk like that to you for you to tolerate but he was patient he had another wife by the name of Malika this Malika heard some people say your dad the cause of his death was Muhammad she said take all your possessions she left sometimes in our lives we say look what we face your prophet had to face more your own prophet had to face more but he used to say patience is to faith like the head is to the body there can be no body without a head and there can be no faith without patience even he had to see a loss of his children his son Ibrahim died his son Qasim died his son Abdullah died some of us today say how comes our children died how comes my friend's children died when we say Rasool Allah is an usw and examples because everything that we face the prophet faced in his life as well and that's why before he died he did what any great leader will do he made it clear to his people but even though I am dying I will first ensure that I leave behind guidance for you he left behind guidance on the day of Ghadir when he raised the hand of Ali and he made it clear to the people that I will never leave this world without ensuring that there is a guide for you who continues to protect the message in the way I gave you the message but his final act was a true act of charity his final act was in Islam causing a smile for a fellow human is an act of charity when his daughter Fatima came towards him when he was dying there is a narration which states that first she cried then she smiled in this one act the prophet was showing us that from the beginning of my life until the end ethics and morality was the message of my biography when Fatima turned around they said to Fatima you cried and you laughed she said I cried because he told me he is about to pass away but then I smiled because he told me I will be the first of his family to join him notice from the beginning until the end the man was a man who bought a smile into the life of humanity and left with a smile and that's why until today is a conclusion it's not only Islam that respects him but others Guru Nanak believed Muhammad was an agent of Brahman you find for example that somebody like the Christians the Latter Day Saints say although we do not believe in him as a prophet we say he was a moral exemplar to mankind and no better words than the words of Gandhi when he said it is impossible that millions are attracted to this man because of his sword no it's not his sword it was his pledges which he kept and his simplicity in his life and his devotion to his family and friends that made this man the man that he was Gandhi then said I was saddened when the second volume of his biography I finished reading because I wished I had learnt more about this man a man who there is none like a man like Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم let us raise our hands and pray to Allah to raise us with Muhammad to allow us to implement the lessons from his biography and to allow us to receive his intercession in this world and the hereafter إن شاء الله tomorrow we will continue with the biography of Imam Ali ابنابي طالب والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته


In this video I want to talk about the Q3 2019 earnings performance which just ended. So there were total of 16 trades between mid of October and some of the couple of the trades went on into middle of December as well. There were 12 winners, 3 losers and 1 breakeven. The winners totaled to 12,475 and the losers and breakeven was exactly negative 2000. So the net performance was 10,475 and this was all done on an average of about 10 contracts. And so the account size would be somewhere between a 25,000 to 30,000 dollar account. You can do for less as well, you don't have to do 10 contracts, you can do 2 contracts or 3 contracts and obviously you can do it with a lesser account size. But I'm just saying I was assuming about a 30,000 dollar account size and we went about 10 contracts. Now these trades don't generally last for very long because we put it either a few days before the earnings event and then once the earnings event is over we are most likely going to take it off. Now of course if the earnings report did not match the trade alignment and then we have to adjust the trades that will take the trades a little bit longer and we had a couple of those with Expedia and CRM and we were trying to come back to breakeven on those two trades we were not able to but most trades generally get over between I would say 5 to 10 days and so you're not using all your capital at one time. You're generally spacing out your capital because even the earnings announcements are not all together. Many stocks start at the beginning of the season and then it goes on for actually a good couple of months and so your capital is being used only on a limited level at any given time. These are all the actual trades that we took. We started with Netflix that was a great trade and it was over within a couple of days or so. We did about 1450, the next trade IBM went down and then of course we did trades on Chipotle, Mexican Grill, Visa, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Shopify, Qualcomm and actually we had a great winning streak right there and then Tesla was a tough trade, we brought it back to breakeven and Expedia and CRM were the two trades that we had to hold and adjust for quite a while and they still ended up as losers but the positions improved substantially from where it was. Expedia particularly was a problem because Expedia's expected move was plus or minus 8 or 9 points and Expedia got hammered by $35, it went down by $35 after the earnings event. So these kinds of extreme events also can happen. Earnings reports are generally a speculative event but when you look at it from the options standpoint you can strategize and you can create strategies simply out of time decay and the volatility explosion and the ensuing implosion or the volatility crush and so most of the trades that went well are all incorporating these strategies all of these are discussed in the earnings max product.


At UNICEF, we're pleased to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration provides the foundation for shared fundamental values and many international human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention is at the core of UNICEF's mandate. When it was adopted in 1989, the Convention enshrined for the very first time in international law the recognition of the full scope of children's civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. Since then, the Convention has become the most ratified international human rights treaty and delivered positive changes for children across the world.  In some cases, the very status of children as rights holders is misunderstood, disregarded, or even disputed, which risks undermining the integrity of international standards pertaining to children, including around gender, civil, and political rights. Children belonging to certain groups are at risk of being considered less worthy of protection and excluded from the exercise of their rights, such as minorities, indigenous populations, migrants, girls, and LGBTQI+. We simply cannot allow this to happen. UNICEF pledges to continuing its leadership for a strong child rights agenda at global, regional, and national levels. For us to play this role, we have identified a series of measures to give a boost to our rights-based identity and approaches, both in the way we operate internally and in our external advocacy and programming in over 190 countries and territories. This includes sharpened human rights-based approaches to programming and mobilizing UNICEF's full weight to implement these measures. We look forward to partnering with all of you in this process as we collectively fulfill our responsibility to make child rights an integral component for the protection of human rights for all.


Mae cydwyddi'n gwirionedd maen nhw'n ei wneud yn fawr yn eu ddyfodol ychydig ar y cael ei gwirionedd. Mae'n gwirionedd yma'r gweithio dros bod yn cydnod hynny'n dweud, i gyda'r Unedig. Wrth gyd, mae'n rhywb yn fawr yma. Mae'n gor altered eich bod yn eu ni alch chi nhw'n ddemolio'r eerol. Mae'n cyfaint am wneud o'r panlyst yma nhw. Mae'n cyfaint i'r gyda Gw personellent Gwana. Mae'r bod yn gallu'n cyrwngmodeg yn gyfrathio'n teimlo'n dryr. We're just to give a little bit of background where everyone's getting comfortable about today's session. As we know during the pandemics, there was an increase in ebooks, as students moved to studying away from campus. Soutainlyxie, as that pressed through the pandemic, we also had a price rise both here in the UK and elsewhere in the world in terms of accessing materials. As you're probably aware, I've been, uh, td cross, um and td campaigns, particularly in areas of the world which is North America have been a really keen kind of way in which OER has been mainstreamed. And here in the UK during the pandemic we had, what we do have campaigns such as e-book SOS were challenging publishers and bringing the issue to wider attention. ymddangos. Felly, mae gennych, rydyn ni wedi'i gweithio eich cerdd o antychol yn Antyni Sïnna. Mae wedi'u gweithio'n tuweddol o'r Association ReoPort 2021, yn fryd o'r rhan o'r proffit ar ydwun 14% o'r ymddangos y ymddangos. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar y ddweud o'r textbwys i'r Unedig. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar yr un o'r textbwys o ddydd ymddangos o'r Aquall yw'r cyflwynedd yma gan beth ch pawb ar ddyliadau yma, am ymweld ddod yn mi sgwrs fewn i'r bobl. Er byddai isbwynt yn bryd, cydw i am fydd ni wedi'i dda i gyntaf ar gyfer eich hubau o bobl o bobl aribau y gweinidol a goblio'r gweithfeydd.  Ac hynny'n i'w gwybod yn y bwysig yna bod y cyfnod yn ystod i'w ddweud o'r bwysig o'r unrhyw ym yn ystod i'w ddweud o'r bwysig o'r bwysig, ond rydyn ni'n gael eich profiad, dyma'n eu bwysig o'r bwysig i ddim yn ystod i'w ddweud o'r bwysig o'r bwysig, Llemon, yn ddod oes y dyfodol? Thank you for inviting me on today. My name is Arlyn Campbell and I'm an Education Technology team manager at the University of Edinburgh where I manage the University's Open Education Resources Service and I'm also a justine of alld in the UK. So in terms of open textbooks although Edwin has been sporting the creation of of open education resources of all different kinds for five or six years now. Open textbooks were not an area that we were too active in until last year when my senior colleague, Melissa Hampton, who many people would be familiar with, suggested that it might be interesting to try and repurpose some of our existing open education resources to create a new textbook. So that's what we did. We applied a very small grant, a tiny little student experience grant, and we took some content that was originally created for a MOOC, that had already been repurposed when all the grant was caught, and we repurposed it again to creating a new textbook. So that was really our first point into the creation of textbooks, but it's something that we're certainly very interested in seeing in the future. Hi there, so I'm going to work on this one. Hi there. I'm Gary. I'm the director of a library and library services at the University. So I guess for me, it's slightly different, obviously, given that it's an online delivery in that sense, but we have an awful long history, we have not an awful long history, we have a long history in relation to open learning and so forth, and we obviously provide some of those open resources as open textbooks, they're not published in that sense, but they're available in that sense. And we have an awful good practice, I'll stop saying that. We have a great, great, great practice in terms of our rights team within the university who are always looking at open educational resources to use within our courses. And that's something that we consciously do. But that's probably part and parcel of the fact that the way in which we deliver and write our courses is many courses slightly different in terms of the scaffolding and the support that surrounds our courses because of the open access option that the university provides. My name is Daryl Snowden and I am the textbook programme manager at UCL Press. I joined the press in the May of last year, so it's been almost a year. And my role is to develop and launch a new textbook programme, a free open access textbook programme, very much building on the presses. Existing portfolio of open access publications that we have published in the 200 research base. One of us is open access books, we publish a number of journals of open access as well. So this is a new foray into extending that into textbooks. My background is commercial academic publishing. So I've spent over 10 years working on the other side of the coins and my previous role is to build a US-based textbook publisher. So I'm coming that perspective into this new open access textbook space. Okay, hi everyone. I'm Jane Secker. I'm a senior lecturer at City University. I'm also chair of the Silicon Information Literacy Group. I'm co-chair of the OLD Copywriting Online Learning, a special interest group. So I think I'll be partly a bit about all the copyright and licensing, in the textbook discussions. I am a big advocate of open education. I teach on a master's in academic practice at City and teach a module on digital literacy and open practice. Say a bit more, as the panel goes on, there's probably quite a number of things I'd like to pick up on. Thank you so much, thanks, Jane, for a very long and that's fantastic. Just before we get started into the discussion, I just want to ask a quick question to the audience. It's around the cost of educational materials. Has this become more or less important to your university over the last two years? Is the cost of educational resources kind of increased and important? So if it has, you can just raise your hand. A few hands raised, that's great. About the same maybe? Or maybe not so much? Or not at all? Not at all. No worries, that's great. Thank you. That's great, so thank you. That's useful to know. Great, so to get back to our panel now, I just wondered, for all of the universities that are kind of represented, how many of the universities have made educational materials accessible during the pandemic and are kind of online with it? And do you have your role in that? So, Jane, would you like to go? Yeah, okay. So, did OEOR play a role? Yes, it did. I mean, actually, the first time we ran some workshops that were available for all academic staff on finding and using those educational resources, those workshops were based on material from the University of Edinburgh and adapted from a session I used to do in my module to various small numbers. So, yes, we were sort of trying to raise awareness about open educational resources, probably did more sessions as well about things like finding images and materials that you could reuse online because of the digital pivot. And we also licensed our educational technology guidance under Creative Commons as a kind of setting example for the first time during the pandemic too. Yes, I think so, but probably could have played a bigger role as well because I wouldn't say my institution, we haven't got an open educational policy, it's quite sort of a ground level sort of autonomous approach that's happening there. There's a lot of enthusiasm, but it's not coming from the bottom. Thanks so much, yeah. Will any of you have risen a real policy in a different kind of situation everywhere? Yeah, we already had a lot of open resources, but we weren't putting it anywhere anyway, so we did find that at the start of the pandemic we were able to make sure that people had access to them. So, for example, we have a collection of student-creatable medication resources on TET resources, which are designed for school teachers to use and are aligned to the Scottish curriculum for excellence. And when schools were going to walk down and so on immediate uptake of people accessing these resources, we also had probably one of the most high-profile projects that happened right at the beginning of the pandemic. Last April was the team behind the Master's in Critical Care. All these resources directly addressed with our address needs of healthcare workers were moving back into critical care as a result of COVID. So they need all these resources free and available with support computer and actually. So that was a really sort of high-profile and it stood to just get resources out to people who needed them. We also had equal things like we had technicians all over the university who were printing base finds and things like that. And we put the models up on the sketchbook so they could be downloaded and used by other people. And perhaps the other important example was we all were at Redhead and we are a policy under a lecture recording policy, which is available on the open licence. We also, at the start of the pandemic, created a new virtual classroom policy to address the recording of virtual classroom sessions and we also made that review as well on the open licence because we knew that there was a lot of other institutions grappling with the online pivot and getting all the teaching online first before our virtual classroom service, which are really small service, but didn't have a specific policy of it at all, but some of them all were teaching and learning and were pivoting to be online. We needed that policy to address some of the copyright and these protections. Thank you. It was a bit more of a deeper pivot for the UCL specifically to talk about textbook. Prior to 2020, UCL over services were still predominantly buying print editions of textbooks that were required and essential for more of our modules. Some departments and disciplines were doing things slightly differently, but predominantly we were still really still purchasing the print copies and they would be for students who couldn't purchase their print copies. So when the pandemic hit, we did have to pivot that and change our model and find new alternatives. That proved challenging. It meant that we had to grapple with a lot of different e-textbook aggregators to get the content that we needed to deliver our courses and meant that we needed to request more funding for that. So the budget for purchasing of e-textbooks was relatively small and had to pivot to almost £3 million to be able to facilitate all of that essential content that we hadn't been used to buying in print with a lot of our students not being able to assess it. So the reaction to that at UCL was very much that it was still quite a shock to pivot in that way and it made us think a bit more carefully about whether that is a system we were just intended to. It was very much the impetus for us to be thinking about open education and specifically open text books. UCL has a wonderful history of open access mostly in research with the education element being a little bit slower to develop and a little bit more on the priority list and that's really changed since 2020 and my role and programme itself is a new way of funding. So we did have some elements of OER that already existed. We have an OER repository that was developed mostly as a proof of concept. It's not fully developed but it's up there. We have a landing page with a list of resources for academics who want to find OER and create OER. But that was something that we created but not necessarily a huge amount of resources with him to prioritise it. So I think that's quite interesting here in the different sources. So you can imagine, don't you? We don't use a lot of text books actually generating our courses because the courses that we're producing are in a sense text books within themselves that are fully integrated with all our library resources related within the courses. And therefore the impact was less on us and I think it provided us with an opportunity or an able list to provide support into the sector in the way in which it's been done in terms of supporting the sector being able to make the pivot online. So within the library services for example we ran a session about how to deliver perhaps wide digital literacy skills within over a thousand four different continents. We have a thousand libraries tuning into that session where we're sort of supporting the sector. And I guess we can't over-learn it itself we can't, you know, it went from something like about nine million users or separate accounts to a peak in about fourteen million in the second year of the pandemic and past its hundredth millionth learner in that time. And obviously we're providing an awful lot there particularly within the different nations around skills development and digital development. But some of the things that sort of played out through that was obviously elements associated with digital property. It's all very well having all the materials there available online and available but it then sort of raised other kind of concerns. So it's been quite a different sort of journey for the early year in terms of its role and how it's supported the sector through the use of different sources of technologies and getting online. And I think it probably touched a little bit on this actually as we kind of worked through and heard a bit more about what's been happening in each institution. But I wonder what kind of changes you've been seeing in terms of education to the students during the pandemic. Do you think they've become more expensive on a value just mentioned that they're going to be less of an issue? And I just wonder what your response was to that and what you touched on aspects in that, but whether there was anything else? I think one of the things I just wanted to pick up was so in March 2020 I was conscious that everyone had shifted online and there might well be lots of questions about how's that going to work from a copyright perspective. And I'd written a book with Chris Morrison that's called Copyright Online Copyright and E-learning and we thought well let's see if we can actually just get that made act openly available as an open textbook and approached our publisher who is facet who is a library association publisher but they said unfortunately no you can't just split that book and open then let's make three chapters available and this is kind of where old stepped in and Mar and Martin said well you know we can support you to run a webinar because we thought well let's talk to the sector and tell them the stuff that's in the book if you can't actually just make a book available we'll bring the community together so since then we've run 50 webinars where we have had so many and it mainly library has come in and we can see a real crisis point where the British Library was shut many libraries could not get the books that they needed to students they couldn't buy them in digital format they couldn't get hold of them in print format if they wanted to scan them there was a lot of publishers who to start with made a lot of resources available for free on a temporary basis and the Copyright Licensing Agency extended their licence to let you scan two chapters but all of that finished by July 2020 it was like pandemic's over you've got to get hold of the so I would say the sector was really struggling we're trying to get access to content and starting to realise that a lot of the content that it thinks it owns it doesn't and I think that's what started real conversations about firstly being much more confident about saying we can use copyright exceptions to make material available for teaching but also a bigger conversation without authors who are academics to say actually they're not a better way to do this you know you want to write a book and you want it to be available for your students to read then maybe we'll start thinking about things working in a slightly different way which is where I think you know we're why we're having more of the discussions about opening to experts now so you're sorry follow-up first I completely agree but it has a bit power on how we see it so very much that Portaire's our code-based promise to funding services has spoken a lot about this even with Johanna and then the lead for the hashtag lead because the west campaign that there was very little regulation of how publishers, commercial publishers were pricing the e-text version of the PDF version of the print book that we were more nearby and that that could change at any time so really difficult to assess whether budgets could accommodate certain test books that teaching faculty needed to deliver their courses and really made us really think that reliance on commercial publishing and what we decided at UCL is to use the infrastructure that we already had within UCL press as a publishing output to also include the idea that we might want to publish our own open access textbooks so all of our books at the moment have access to all of those routes to market infrastructure to create books and that we would think about how we could use that to create some of our own that brings up a lot of different challenges writing textbooks are very different to writing research-based books and with them teaching faculty already really overloaded with teaching commitments so how do we encourage our academics to also be in open access textbook authors and what we realise quickly is that a lot of our academics are already producing different kinds of resources to help them either pivot the online teaching or engage with their students in different ways so they already have starting grades of what we would consider a homegrown textbook that they could use for their course so kind of using what our academics are really creating and helping them develop that into a fully open access textbook so really the pandemic could bring a huge catalyst for change for us and how we talk about that I mean I certainly identified with what's already been said and certainly within the we are service we did probably more digital skills workshops about copyright literacy specifically for hybrid online teaching of learning sort of filled back up at the same time in the library different bit of information services the university library have actually just set up an open press that's called Eichon Rail Diamond and this builds on the previous open journal service that the library has supported which is a very successful open journal service and it's intended for students to co-create their own open journals and they're producing fabulous stuff so they've now expanded that service to include e-books and it's a very very new service and the first e-book we have is the Fundamentals of Music Theory textbook that the little project created but I think the point that Diana made about a lot of academics are already creating content that looks quite similar to open textbooks so we already have a couple of open textbook type things on our service website which were created completely independently by academics using the top pages and that's where they put their effectively course hand books which they turned into get up pages books and the Fundamentals of Music Theory textbook the content that went into that like I said some of it was originally created for our MOOC but the text content was effectively our course handbook so I think there is a lot of mileage in re-purposing existing content that our academics have been creating I guess I'm sort of mad at the extension to that obviously notwithstanding that you're a slightly different model but I've been really interested to explore the conversation around how is that changing how is that changing it's already existing in terms of handbooks but how is the use of OER starting to change the pedagogical structures the way in which we're teaching or perhaps communities and other institutions are teaching because obviously at the early years it's very structured we have a learning design structure and framework in essence the handbooks that you're talking about they are the things that we're actually producing because they're co-created at the university so it's not just the academic involved the library is involved the learning design is involved the media the media assistants are involved in terms of the design of the interactive elements associated with that so that's a really interesting piece to think about the only other thing I'd sort of add is that there seems to be much more collaboration in terms of so within the library sector we have different communities whether they're the national communities Skirll Scotland or Wales there's much more I think collaboration going to happen across the groups in sharing and understanding and open press within Skirll but we are part of the video you we're starting to think about how we collaborate in war within the sector which I think is a consequence actually Thank you I think I'll put a little bit about in terms of the pandemic and UCL and about that sort of the movement of the textbook project at Edinburgh as well I wonder what kind of role do you see for opening responses to the kind of issues that we've been talking about so far and at that particular time is it an opening response being more impactful One of the most important things about opening responses to crisis is it's a basis the ability I think and I think that's one of the things that's why we saw in addition to the the recommendation on who we are they had the the name of it they had a a secondary document that basically supported the use of open education resources to address disruption of education that resulted from the pandemic but the quickest and the cheapest and easiest way and most effective way to do this is by providing more access to open education resources and I do think that's really important but we do have a new site of the fact that the best way to make education open and sustainable and accessible is through making our education resources more open I want to make a different point there to leave again to which which was actually about when we were talking about who we collaborated with I want to make a point about students as well so I did a piece of research doing the pandemic about students academic readings preferences building on some work that comes out of UCLA one of the library the Diamonds Racky's done a lot of work on students reading online and reading in print and we did a study which were just in the process of analysing the data between US and UK students is quite a strong from all the work that she's done previously students know what they don't like about ebooks and are not reading online and I feel that open textbooks is an opportunity to create something better than there might be around at the moment there's a lot of students complaining about if they've got to use the textbook and it's not in print because they want to take detailed notes they want to navigate around it and I think there's a lot of potential that many of the commercial ebook supplies promised us that we've never really had that we could do that hopefully with open textbooks make something better but really understand what it is and when our students might actually want print as well because it's not a very popular argument we've got rid of a lot of books on shelves and the pandemic suggested that online was the panacea and this was the great thing but many students want to read a book in print when they're studying it and they're taking notes so that's great the books need to be in print and I know I'm currently involved in a language course at King's in the evening on Monday and I want both the textbook and my lab jobs so I want both and I think a lot of the students feel like it's what they want to do so we're having to think about how we can facilitate that with an open textbook what does that mean we can include what level of interactivity does that allow us we want both options and then the thing that I've been thinking about as well in terms of the role of open textbooks and we have a lot of these discussions at UCL is whether the traditional textbook model works for everyone and what we're finding is that it doesn't necessarily and that there are some disciplines where a more alternative way of creating educational content is much better be that video content audio content, different kinds of non-textual content and how how do we think of that as a textbook as an open textbook what would that be like on the program so we're having to think very carefully about we want the program to respond and to be used for a lot of different disciplines and areas and so we'll have to think about each textbook differently which is again very different from a commercial publisher and taking that I'm coming from that commercial publishing background into now a completely open access environment and what we're thinking about in terms of the criteria what we need these textbooks to do is so different and where we'll see the impact we're not looking for it to sell or in those commercial terms thinking about how much we might make on it or how much it costs to produce what we're thinking about is what impact it will make on teaching and learning locally what impact it will make globally which of course is what we need to focus on to create textbooks for is that because the commercial divisions are very expensive and we think we can do better or where there is a gap in the commercial market so it's not it's not a very popular course around the world there's not enough of a market for a commercial publisher to a publisher textbook on it but if we produce something that could make much more impact in that particular field in teaching and learning so lots of different things we need to think about and then opening up what new access to textbook can be versus a commercial textbook Very briefly just to add to those things I've looked into things for me that I expect to kind of understand how accessible or how diverse the materials and textbooks that we're producing I wonder whether there's an opportunity to open up and make sure that everything is becoming more accessible or more diverse in terms of its reach in terms of the activity I think the other thing I wanted to add was the connection really between because I think the opportunity is there now between we've talked a little bit today in some of the sessions but open research, open scholarship and the connection there between open curriculum in relation to that and how those are connected we've talked a little bit about think data and other such things as well but there's real opportunity there I think to really kind of drive that connection and for that to be visible and connected and be able to kind of move both ways through that journey from briefing back now from the end of the scholarship activity into the research and vice versa so I think there's a great opportunity to come out of this situation right now Thanks so much Gareth I know we're talking to communities as well to connect different groups of academics, librarians people that may be concerned to kind of bring people together to take action around these issues so I'm conscious of the time it's been a fantastic talking with everyone I've got one final question that we're going to end on so what is your vision for open education in the UK HEI so my motivation just to and how can we get there as well so I just wanted to be a question no pressure just to hear your thoughts thanks I think that is good I think you're reticulous I think you're reticulous because you added in being I don't think I've got that in my mind I think for me the vision is about those open open frameworks open curriculum and being able to kind of go and use and pick and obviously that's discipline specific there will be different frameworks and different disciplines and just making sure that that's available I do think there's opportunities with AI I have to say with semi-automating open frameworks in terms of programmes and structures but then for us to be able to but he's actually personalised I have to say it's been targeted to the individual student to be able to understand that personalised that in an open way but there's something about that connection and connecting open curriculum with research and scholarship in a way which I've said but making that available and personalised in some sense so much more community driven it's more around the scaffold it's more around the frameworks and teaching that you have around it that's the kind of work and I have no idea how you get there that's not a question when thinking about the vision that we're open textbooks in the UK I find myself thinking about what's happening in North America where there were a little bit more advanced in an integration of open textbooks in particular there is some federal funding that's been set aside specifically for this because the onus is far more on the student to purchase the textbooks rather than the library and because of that we've seen a lot of really interesting creative responses to that there were more traditional looking open access textbooks for example OpenStacks is doing some work on that and then there were other kind of more creative responses and I think I would like to see again more of that here in the UK and in Europe these creative responses to challenges with traditional and current education resources and a full aid what that would look like in different contexts as it was open one size doesn't fit all one model doesn't fit for every institution and so I think we need a variety of options to reach for and as they become more mature we'll see kind of how they progress and what the challenges of those are what the opportunities might be so yeah just kind of more creativity in space I suppose I don't know if I'm going to answer but I think we need to get people at all levels in universities and in other education sectors to think about the economics of all what it is actually that universities are there for how money comes into universities how it goes out where it's spent and to start questioning whether that is how the way things are working at the moment is it doesn't have to stay like that that there is universities are hugely important in the economy we know that a lot of them are having to operate much more like a business but that doesn't mean everything we do has to be to maximise profit and about it's a community and it is about sharing and in many ways yes some universities are competing but many are not competing certainly within disciplines scholars work together in this collegiate way and that's what we want to see I suppose I think how we need to get there is to really a lot of the work I've often done is with early career research and I think if we can get people when they're at the point of finishing their PhD of understanding the benefits of open more broadly whether it's open access open education to ask big questions about what is it that they're trying to do at that point in their career then we'll bring about change you know on a kind of because I think it's really hard to many people at the vice chancellor level that you're not going to change a lot at that level now it feels you know we need to start with the younger researchers coming through and show them that there's another way of doing this and I think Covid gives us a reason to say this is you know why we should be working together and just to pick up on Jim's points I think perhaps the way that we really do embed openness across the sectors by thinking about how openness does actually support the business models kind of education on it in a very climatic way but beyond that as well I think in bigger terms about sustainability and particularly about the stable development goals of how you know we are all part of this world and we're all trying to work together in this sort of project of education and also bringing in the sort of the ethical and social justice issues and I think the alls ethical framework for learning technologies are really important step forward there so I think we do need to you know think very pragmatically at the local level but I think we need to really set your sights much further to the allies and so we are thinking really about knowledge equity and ethics and sustainability Thank you so much for your time I'll take one on the panel I think it's been an interesting discussion I think it's been kind of exciting looking forward as well in terms of the things that you mentioned about beauty and that kind of multi-classical way of approach to the things that are needed to do that so I want to say a really big thank you to the panel for all your support and sharing your thoughts Thank you so much


The study investigates whether deep convolutional neural networks, CNNs, can extract prognosticators directly from hematoxilineacin, he, stained tissue slides of colorectal cancer, CRC, patients. The authors hand-alineated single tissue regions in 86 CRC tissue slides and used these to train a CNN by transfer learning, achieving a nine-class accuracy of over 94% in an independent data set. They then performed automated tissue decomposition on representative multi-tissue. He images from 862 he slides in 500 stage 1 to 4 CRC patients into the cancer genome atlas TCGA cohort and calculated a deep stroma score based on the output neuron activations in the CNN. This score was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival cancer associated fibroblasts CAFs and relapse free survival in both the TCGA and Darmcrabbs, chancinderverhutungdursh screening, DACHS, cohorts. The study suggests that CNNs can assess the human tumor microenvironment and predict prognosis directly from histopathological images, which could potentially be implemented in clinical workflows with prospective validation. We are article.tv, links in the description below.