Al-Mubdi'un (programme)

'Al-Mubdi'un' (The Creatives) is a programme by Tareq al-Suwaidan presenting the lives of great names from the history of Islamic civilisation — from the well-known like Ja'far al-Sadiq, al-Bukhari, Ibn Sina, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Razi, al-Ghazali and al-Farabi, to those whose very names the youth have not heard, like Yusuf ibn Tashfin, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, al-Fudayl ibn Iyad, Sufyan al-Thawri and al-Awza'i ^{1 2}.

He says his aim goes beyond entertaining tales to setting exemplars, changing convictions and reshaping interests through story — citing that the Qur'an is full of stories whose goal is change — so that if the individual changes, collective work follows and the ummah rises ^{3 4 5}.

In the opening he argues that the ummah led humanity for long then fell back for centuries; that imitating America, Europe or Japan will not restore glory — the imitator is a follower chewing over others' achievements — and that imported towers and factories produce a superficial 'urbanity' (madaniyya), not a civilisation with idea and spirit; greatness is made only by creatives who outstrip others and bring the new and unique, and though creativity today may be collective through institutions, institutions without creative individuals are worthless ^{6 7 8 9}.

The programme does not stop at biographies but analyses them on his methodology The quartets of making creatives — four stages of four elements — exploring a figure each episode ^{10 11}. He announced the first figure to be the imam Ja'far al-Sadiq ¹².