Sunday, April 20, 2008

Men, knowledge and...

I attended the Friday prayers at Ghufran last Friday. The main topic of the sermon circles around KNOWLEDGE.

The Khatib reminds us that knowledge must be seeked by all Muslims. From the time they are born till the last day of their lives. He further explains the advantages of knowledge includes:

1. Gaining a higher status in the view of Allah swt.
2. Staying relevant in all ages (ensuring the survivability of the Muslims).
3. Contribute to the society or community-at-large
4. Give benefit to the world by discovery of new knowledge and advancement in technology. Etc...
5. Returns Islam to its Golden Age.
6. Get us from the darkness to Light.
7. and many others...

I was going through these points in my mind way after the Khutbah ends and this is what my imperfect mind tells me.

1. In the past, people before us have made huge strides in the field of knowledge. For example: the building of pyramids (both egytians and aztecs), astronomy (aztecs) the preservation of the human body (eyptians), ability to fly and translocate through help of Jinn (proto-malays), created democracy (Romans), the making of homes and living spaces on steep mountains (People of Ad). But looked what happened to all of them. All the glory of these people were destroyed by the Wrath of Allah swt.

2. At present, the people who have the greatest amount of knowledge damages the Earth through global warming, affects world-wide politics, create and fuel wars that never end, raises oil prices, raises prices of food and tries to gain control of the fate of mankind. Some even become enemies of Allah swt.

What then is KNOWLEDGE that Allah s.w.t wants? Is knowledge corrupted? Are the people of knowledge corrupted? Is the overall system where knowledge is transfered corrupted?

Some people may argue that Muslims must increase in knowledge. However, without the proper total submission to Allah s.w.t and His Prophet s.a.w, we will end up just like the people of the past and the people who brings damage in the present.

I remind myself not to feel satisfied with a degree and just let my spiritual-self having only a PSLE level. I remind myself that Allah s.w.t looks at a persons Heart and not at the string of Certificates he has. Knowledge that brings benefit is knowledge that brings a person closer to Allah swt and His Prophet saw.

May Allah s.w.t shields us from knowledge of no benefit and May Allah s.w.t gave us the protection from Dajjal and his minions. Ameen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you. In fact, an ustadz once talked about the period when Muslims rule the world. One may jump to the conclusion that it is partly due to the knowledge they have, intelligence or military might and so forth. However, ustadz mentioned about them taking care of their solat. With this taqwa, Allah granted them success. Once they got too comfortable with their lives and indulged in prohibited things, that's when we were being made fun of and eventually, we fell. Spain is a good example. May Allah always grants us His taufiq and hidayah.