Muhammad ‘Ariefuddin bin Roslan

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Section 6

1. The concept of sovereignty is that when you have full control of yourself in three aspects;
ideology, desire, and consciousness of your own actions.

2. Yes, I believe that everything he said is true. Firstly, this is because all the things that
have been said by Shaykh Hamza are actually meeting the criteria of an epistemological
element which is the epistemology and public good. What it means by epistemology and public
good is that, it is not enough for us by only saying an opinion and stating a position without
giving and supporting those ideas with the rational evidences which can persuade others to
stand by our side. Shaykh Hamza is giving out his opinions during his talk about many things,
but his words are actually supported by the strong evidences given by him through out his
speech. Nevertheless, his words not only have been supported by the scientific proofs alone,
which all of us including the non-believers believe that these kind of proofs is strong enough
to support an argument because it was the result of the specialist studies. However, everything
that he had said also in line with what Allah SWT have said in Quran. We do believe that Quran
is the highest book of knowledge and it is the best reference of all the doubt. For example,
when he said “that the pollution happened now is the effect of human hands”, this phrase of
words said by him are supported by evidences from two perspective which both of them are in
line of what he said. Firstly, the term pollution itself as described by English dictionary is;
undesirable state of the natural environment being contaminated with harmful substances as a
consequence of human activities. Secondly, it can be proven by Quranic verses (30:41)
explaining about the word ‫ الفساد‬even though scholars like Ibn Abbas and Abu Jaafar are having
different understanding about the word but still it refers to the troubles as effect of human
activities. Thus, his statement of the mischiefs happened in the world are the result of human
activities is true and has no doubt. Therefore, these proofs are convincing enough for people to
believe and stand with the idea given by Shaykh Hamza in his speech.
Next, the way Shaykh Hamza conveys his messages in the speech emerges us to think
critically. Furthermore, the evidences that he gave to support his words making people to
interrogate themselves, eventually it sparks the point out of people’s mind that what have we
done in the past, what are we doing now, and in the future, are really beneficial to the
environment or we just making it worse by making those for the sake of our desire alone? This
is where the epistemology comes in matter to urge ourselves to think twice and trice, to think
critically of our doing on earth. Epistemology creates a systematic way to question our thinking
and our sense of what makes for a good reason. In his speech, Shaykh Hamza was telling us
that our overconsumption activities lead to destruction of the world. He stated that the medias
play the important role in influencing consumers to consume more and more. Moreover, he
showed a video of The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard, in the video, Annie claims that most
of the stuffs are intentionally be created to not have longer period of use. It means the producer
will keep designing their stuffs differently with one that they have created before with the
improvement of the technology and modern design, so the consumer will be more attracted.
Then he said about the result of overconsumption and one of it is diseases to ourselves like
obesity and diabetes. It makes us to understand the nature of the evidence and it contributes to
us to state our decision that we should revise our intention and the purpose of our existence.
Thus, I come to the conclusion to make the decision to have the same stand as Shaykh Hamza
as he convinced me with his valid and strong evidences.