Alfonso IV, after taking the city of Toledo, Spain from the ruling Muslim powers did the opposite of his peers; he preserved Islamic culture and heritage. He founded a translation center to bring the knowledge of the Muslims and Jews into Europe.

Once visited by a Muslim ambassador, he showed him an artifact that acted as a catalyst for his actions. Listen below to find out more:

Khutbah at the Islamic Da’wah Center on 02-15-2013

Joe Bradford at the Islamic Dawah Center from Islamic Dawah Center on Vimeo.

A lightning talk given at Rad Talks on 01-26-2013

This “lightning talk was delivered at Rad Talks in Houston, TX. I was thoroughly impressed with the setup, talks, and discussion. Not sure many of the attendees would say that about my talk

Knowing that much of the day would be filled with people stating absolutes and concrete concepts, I felt the ambiguity of this talk would bring some balance. How all the sci-fi fits in is another story, but I feel movies are a very powerful tool for messaging. The allegory embedded in this talk is multifaceted and I hope that it sparks numerous discussions beyond merely bewilderment. My vision is to do another about zombies, and then wrap it up with another cross-referencing the themes the undercurrents in both.

Enjoy.

Questions to ponder after viewing “The Savvy Muslim’s Guide to surviving the Robot Apocalypse”:

- What role should tools play in our lives?
- What effect does rule consequentialism have on the use of tools and how we view them?
- What role do our insecurities about technology play in our effort to promote technology?
- What relationship exists between the mind and heart?
- What are emotions? Are our physical reactions representative of our emotion? What effect does this have on morality?
- Are such programmatic responses our own, or are we merely mimicking what we ourselves have been taught?
- Do we ever really have our own dreams and aspirations?
- Do we ingrain our dreams and aspirations in others out of fear for our own morality?
- How does interpreting programmatic and reactionary responses have on our conceptualization of what is good, pure and absolute?
- Is negative the inverse of positive?
- But the question that we have to ask ourselves is the denial of emotion in and of itself.
- Are negatives the inverse of positives?
- Can someone with the inverse of a positive function in the same way as the person that has the positive?
- If intelligence (aql) is the process of our minds filtering the emotions exhibited by our hearts, what happens when a person is unable to form  emotions?
- What extent would such a person be willing to go to to obtain “good”, “purity” and “absolutism”.
- What effect does mimicing the creative process have? Is is always good?
- Can a deficient, imperfect being create the perfect or will that being as well be imperfect in some way?
- What will the outcome be of an imperfect being programmed for perfection? And who is responsible for their “dreams” and the consequences thereof?
- With all these questions, What will our own dreams tell us about how we are programmed and who we program?
- What does how we program others tell us about ourselves? And were we programmed to think that way?