First thing first
For any success, the first thing must be done first. But what is the first thing
that needs to be done first? It is none but education. It is indeed the greatest
Sunnah of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la (SWT) that He did the first thing first to
help humans to attain the greatest success both here and in the hereafter. This
is why “iqra” (read) –becomes the first word in the Holy Qur’an. The decree for
five-time prayers, month-long fasting, zakat, haj and running the judiciary on
sharia came much later. The Holy Qur’an -revealed piece by piece as the teaching
materials, worked as the textbook in the educational curriculums. The result was
excellent and unprecedented. The people who were produced in those early years
of Islam proved to be the best in the whole human history. Allah SWT wants to
create such a class of people with the highest mortality in all ages through the
same Qur’anic textbook and through the same methodology.
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his companions also gave the highest
emphasis on education. The prophet (peace be upon him) declared education as the
life-long obligation for every man and woman. He also said, “Seek education from
the cradle to the grave”. In this life-long process of education, each day
should be used to earn new knowledge and a new skill. The prophet (peace be upon
him) said, “Woe to him who had consecutive two days but his treasure of
knowledge remained the same and didn’t increase”. In the war of Badr, the
Muslims could capture some war criminals. They could be killed or used as
hostages to get huge ransoms. But the prophet (peace be upon him) decided
otherwise; he preferred education to money. He promised them freedom if could
teach the illiterates how to read and write. The outcome of such a policy was
phenomenal. The Holy Qur’an was the first book in Arabic. Within a short period
of time, Muslims could build the largest treasure of knowledge in the whole
contemporary world.
Education decides the destiny
The quality of education decides the destiny -not only of a human but also of a
nation. Allah SWT revealed in the Holy Qur’an, “Those who know and those who
don’t know are not equal”. So, the qualitative difference between humans is not
based on skin colour, language, ethnicity or other physical attributes, but on
educational dissimilarities. This is why the educational depravity of today’s
Muslims make them so low and utterly dissimilar to the early Muslims. Allah SWT
has His Own principle of societal change. The principle is revealed in the Holy
Qur’an as follows: “Certainly, Allah doesn’t change the state of a people unless
they change their own state themselves”. Hence in making qualitative changes in
humans, the decisive role is not played by foods or drinks, nor by the climate.
It occurs through education. Therefore to have a proper estimate on the moral
and intellectual state of a people, it doesn’t require a door to door survey on
individuals. The education curriculum and the methodology of education reveal
the real situation with precise accuracy. This is why, those who want to build a
nation, must start with education. On the other hand, those who want to destroy
a nation need not engage in a genocidal war. Turning off or corrupting the
education system does the job perfectly. In fact, the external and the internal
enemies of Islam did that in the Muslim World for centuries to precipitate the
current downfall. This is why when the European colonialists occupied the Muslim
countries, they didn’t destroy the agricultural lands; rather dismantled the
educational institutions. In India, they disbanded Farsi –the language of
Muslims’ education and closed thousands of madrasas. As a result, Muslims
quickly become illiterate.
Education for the sake of education also proves disastrous. It must have a
higher moral objective. In all ages, the educational institutions were built as
human factories for mass-scale production of people with intended job
specifications, skills, and training. The evil rulers didn’t recruit their foot
soldiers from jungles. For that, they used the educational institutions as the
breeding and recruitment premises. Because of such institutions, the evil
ideologies like colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, fascism, racism could get
a huge number of foot soldiers and could run ethnic cleansing with catastrophic
dimensions. Because of such evil education, the most calamitous disasters in
history need not be caused by earthquakes, cyclones, epidemics or tsunamis.
These were caused by the evil humans –products of these evil institutions. More
than 75 million people are killed only in two World Wars. Millions are killed in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and the killing process still continues. It is an
irony that those who ran these genocidal killings are not illiterate; rather
claim to be educated.
The British colonialists established their own educational institutions in the
occupied countries to get obedient mercenaries in the civil and military
establishments to run brutal and exploitive hegemony. Because of them, the
British colonialists could prolong their rule for 190 years in South Asia. The
most prominent military icons of the Muslim countries like Pakistan, Egypt,
Sudan, Iraq, Syria, and many others are indeed the people who started their
career as the most obedient mercenary of the occupying forces. After completion
of their servile career in the colonial army, they turned against their own
people. They appeared as brutal autocrats and worked as a huge bulwark against
the practice of basic human rights in the newly independent Muslim countries.
Because of the secularisation of education, the colonists could recruit more
than 200 thousand Indian Muslims and more than a million Arab Muslims in the
First World War to kill Muslims and dismantle the Khilafah. Even today, the
secular educational factories operate in the Muslim countries to feed the
multinational projects of the imperialists –the modern version of East India
Company, with the incessant supply of the white-collar mercenaries. So the
education system has become the part of the pipeline to drain out brains from
the Muslim World –as they are draining out oil and gas.
The Muslims’ role & the educational need
The Muslims’ assigned role is altogether different from others. Hence, their
educational need is also different. Therefore, fixing the educational objective
that can help fulfill the Divine role is crucial. In fact, for the Muslims,
nothing is more important than setting the right educational objective and
staying constantly focussed on that. Otherwise, schools, colleges, and
universities in Muslim countries will be used by the evil forces to produce
mercenaries to serve their wicked intentions. Thus, the Muslims will be
producing their own enemies by investing their own resources. “Frying fish in
its own oil” is the old strategy of the imperialists; hence use not only the
Muslim men but also hundreds of billions of their petrodollars to kill the
Muslims and occupy their lands. The US-led war in the Arab countries gives ample
testimonies to that.
The objective of education depends on the objective of survival. Billions of
people live on the same planet, but they do not survive for the same purpose.
Most of the people live to maximize their worldly affluence and comfort. But the
Muslims need to live with a different purpose. And the purpose must match with
their religious belief and role. They need to plan not only for the worldly
success but also for the success in the eternal hereafter. They must plan to get
saved from the hellfire. Hence, their educational need must be different from
that of a non-believer.
For a Muslim, acquiring skills in reading and writing and specializing in
medicine, economics, science, technology, and others must not be the only
educational objectives. He must know the purpose of his own creation and his own
role in this world. Knowing the Vision of his Creator and how to fully align
with that are also the most important educational priorities. These are the most
crucial issues that each and every educational institution of the Muslim
countries must address. Otherwise, education will lead to catastrophic failures;
the students may excel as professionals but will cease to survive as true
Muslims. Then they will sleepwalk to turn perfect mercenaries to serve the known
enemies. Education thus works as a tool to earn the wrath of Allah SWT and leads
only to the hellfire.
The number of educational institutions in the Muslims World is huge. But the
failure of the students to grow up as true Muslims is also huge. As a result,
the Muslims stand divided, defeated and de-Islamised. Such failure doesn’t owe
to climate, geography or topography of the Muslim countries, but to the failure
of the educational institutions. Awfully, the Muslims are interested only to
open new educational institutions; but show little concern to have the correct
aim and objective of the education. This is indeed the root cause of all
educational failures. And such failures breed more failures.
The failed value-adding process
Agricultural or mineral goods get added values in the industries. The humans get
added values in the educational institutions. And the highest degree of value is
added to the moral premise of the man and the woman. Because of such a
value-adding process in educational institutions, even a common man or woman may
become an angel –as happened in the early days of Islam. As a result, the ruler
of the first Islamic state -about 10 times larger than Pakistan, could draw the
rope of the camel with the servant sitting on its back. Because of the people
with such a moral highness, the early Muslims could raise the finest
civilization on earth and emerge as the number one World Power. They didn’t need
oil, gas or huge manpower to attain such global esteem. But today, the Muslims
reveal another story. Instead of a value-adding process, the education system in
the Muslim countries indeed works as a highly corruptive process. Those who pass
through its process, turn morally corrupt and de-valued. Many of them become
maliciously devil. Because of that, the scale of corruption runs high in
so-called educated people in the government and non-government offices. No
amount of oil, gas or material affluence could cover up such moral failures.
The Holy Qur’an receives little space or attention in these so-called
educational institutions. Whereas the Holy Qur’an is the Divine key to add
higher value to humans. But rote reading or memorization of the Qur’an can’t do
the job. It needs the linguistic and intellectual skills to seek lessons from
this greatest gift of Allah SWT -the only roadmap for the paradise. And it is
the task of the educational institutions to generate such skills among the
students. Only this way the education system can add higher values to the
students –as happened in the golden days of Islam.
A human quickly succumbs to the physical death if the body’s immune system fails
to fight against millions of bugs present all the time on the body surfaces. The
HIV virus causes such deaths in AIDS. Similarly, the moral death of an
individual is unavoidable if he or she is deprived of moral immunity. And the
moral immunity doesn’t grow from good food, good house or wealth; but from the
Qur’anic knowledge. It comes from the constant fear of accountability in the
court of Allah SWT. Hence, deprivation of the Qur’anic knowledge -as caused by
the secularisation of education system, could cause the total collapse of moral
immunity. As a result, moral death in the Muslim World could get such an
epidemic proportion. So, the flood gates of corruption stand wide open in almost
all Muslim countries.
The best deed and the worst crime
As per Islamic faith, every Muslim is required to serve the assigned purpose in
life. He or she must work as the viceroy of Allah SWT –the sole purpose of his
or her existence here on earth. As the viceroy Allah SWT, he or she must take
“enjoining the right and eradicating the evil” as a life-long mission –as
prescribed in the Holy Qur’an. Therefore, a true Muslim eats, drinks and
survives not for the sake of mere survival; but to serve such a solemn mission.
The professional successes will bear the fruit in the hereafter only if his or
her professional role fully aligns with his or her Divine role as the true
viceroy of Allah SWT. Any non-alignment with the role only takes to the
hellfire. Education must promote such alignment in students’ life and save from
the deviation.
Living life in this world has its own holy connotation. It must add to the
journey towards paradise. For that, one must lead the life fully adherent to
siratul mustaqeem –the roadmap shown in the Holy Qur’an. Any deviation from it
takes only to the hellfire. And to avoid the deviation, one must learn to
understand the signals of “no go areas” –as mentioned in the Qur’an. For that,
one must know how to take lessons from the Holy Qur’an. Hence, acquiring
Qur’anic knowledge is not an option but an obligation. And it is the prime
responsibility of the education system to help students to know siratul
mustaqeem. It is indeed the most critical issue in life. This is why “ih’dinas
siratul mustaqeem” is the most important supplication. The real success in life
comes only with full adherence to the Qur’anic roadmap. Only such success takes
one to paradise.
Hence, the best deed in life is to show the Qur’anic roadmap to a man or a
woman. All the prophets were sent to do this job. In fact, this must be the job
of every teacher for his or her students. Every Muslim needs to engage in such a
job, too. Indeed, such a deed is much better than donating millions of dollars
to anyone. Millions of dollars can’t save one from hellfire but can be saved by
true guidance. And the worst crime on earth is to deviate a man or woman from
siratul mustaqeem. Such a crime takes one to the hellfire. It is indeed the
crime of a devil. But awfully, such a worst crime is being committed nowhere
else but in schools, colleges and universities in the Muslim World in the name
of education. The Muslim ummah can only be saved in this world and in the
hereafter if they are saved from this ongoing crime. 22.01.2020
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