An extraordinarily ordinary day...
I just returned home after a long, hectic day. I was not able to sleep last night since I had to complete an assignment which was due for submission today. So my day actually started at 11 p.m. yesterday! The first news I got was that of Hadhrat Khawaja Khan Muhammad Sahab's visaal. We had been listening his name since childhood for his khanqah is situated in a neighbouring village of my father's hometown. Hadhrat was 98 years old and was a shaykh in the Naqshbandi silsilah. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raaj'iuun. May Allah keep his spirit alive in his followers and may we continue to benefit from Shaykh's teachings. Aameen.
"ہم روح سفر ہیں ہمیں ناموں سے نہ پہچان
کل کسی اور نام سے آجاییں گے ہم لوگ"
Such people never die. They are the chosen ones whose stations remain elevated in both the worlds...
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Finally, it was time to set out for the university. I took my last class in the social work department, motivated (or at least tried to) my students to work hard for their exam and went to the research centre for revising the draft of the short paper I had written last night.
Class started at around 10.15 am, and it was AMAZING! So many ideas. So many thoughts. Such enrichment. May Allah SWT protect my teachers and give immense barakah in their lives. Today we were supposed to study the Romantic critic, Friedrich von Schiller. During the ten minutes break that we have during the three hour long class, we had a short discussion on the future of literary studies. Dr Iftikhar Shafi was as eloquent as ever, mashaAllah. However, what struck me during that conversation was the idea of Ilm, knowledge, and the way we perceive it nowadays. Dr Shafi said that we as literature students should not try to derive our values from the market. There should be at least some disciplines of study that should remain untainted by the market values and stay "relatively autonomous" institutions. Literature should be one of them. Things, however, seem to be going in a completely different direction nowadays. Anything that sells or earns us money is to be adopted and the rest are to be discarded. God forbid, if this continues we might have departments in universities in future that would not hesitate to produce people who'd be ready to sell anything. Yes, anything at all!
What has suffered most in this rat-race that we as a society have joined in? Our institutions of traditional learning. If someone is an aalim or and imam e masjid, people tend to denigrate them and their 'profession' just because true knowledge is not considered a 'profession' anymore! I remember having a conversation with someone sometime back, during which I expressed my desire to inculcate love of knowledge (if Allah wills) in my offspring. Why should not my son or daughter become an aalim and seek knowledge in the way it is to be sought. The ways told to us by the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wassallam. My interlocutor, in response to this, said that one should also let their children become doctors or engineers along with becoming ulama. The thought made me very sad and I immediately retorted with a plethora of arguments I had in my defense. Anyway, the point is that it is indeed a heart wrenching fact that our conception of acquiring knowledge in this world has not only changed but completely turned upside down. Dr. Shafi did say at the end of the discussion that we must think very seriously about these issues and try to at least keep ourselves away from such 'modern' and 'globalised' notions. He once again gave his oft-repeated advice that rizq lies with Allah SWT. We should sincerely try to acquire knowledge - be it the knowledge of some worldly discipline (in that case we should also make an effort to seek out for a proper rationale besides just that of earning money) or the knowledge of the Deen (world should be kept at bay while seeking religious knowledge too) - and Allah Himself will take care of our rizq, sustenance. InshaAllah. And in order to do so, one has to almost wage a jihad against the tide of materialism that has gripped us fiercely in the present day world. This would require one to be different from others in many ways and hence earn a lot of criticism and opposition from the society. The choice, in any case, is ours...
یہی کہا کہ میری آنکھ دیکھ سکتی ہے
تو مجھ پہ ٹوٹ پڑا سارا شہر نابینا
- فراز
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The second half of the class is still haunting me with the phrase - "wanton transgression against nature" - Schiller used in his work, and the way we discussed it in today's class. I will surely write about it as soon as possible. InshaAllah.
Comments
I totally agree with what you say about us not realizing the importance of true Ilm in our lives...I've experienced something similar. I know a family who decided to have their children become Huffaz e Quran, but they had to hear very harsh remarks from their own family members, to the extent of "Masjid key tukron pe daalengey ap?"
May Allah give us all knowledge and understanding, and the courage to say the right thing--after all, if people don't hesitate in saying wrong things, why should we hide the Truth?
Looking forward to reading about the second half of your class!
Subhan Allah!! Today those universities have more "perceived value" which have a strong market value...
And in order to do so, one has to almost wage a jihad against the tide of materialism that has gripped us fiercely. This would require one to be different from others in many ways and hence earn a lot of criticism and opposition from the society. The choice is ours.
How do you think we should be different? It is such an important remark you have made...
This is such a superlative blog. The mellowness extends light towards deep soul.
I shall begin reading previous contents soon. InshaAllah.
Miss Sadaf! :O Is that you? On my blog?! aap ko yahan ka pata kese maaloom hua? :) Delighted to see you here! :) Jazaakumullahu khairan katheera for the comment. I actually made a similar comment during that discussion. I too have hear many people saying, madaaris mein to ghareebon ke aur yateen bachhay parhte hain! All one can say in response to such things is Allahumma inni aa'uzubika an akuuna min al jaahiliin!
Umer Toor:
:) By 'different' I really didn't mean something strange or something incomprehensible. Just meant following the deen in all aspects of one's life - in social, personal, spiritual, etc. - when it has become extremely difficult to follow it...
Kashan:
Welcome to the blog and jazaakumullahu khairan for the kind comment.
I wrote this post in the state of being half asleep! Hope you all did not mind the errors I have made. Will revise the post nonetheless.
And I'd love to read more!
Anyway, Remember once we were done with our masters, someone advised us that we should market ourselves carefully by putting decent wrapping papers around ourselves and tying ribbons over us so that people can give us jobs (as most people believed that as we had done our masters in literature, we have no future!) Something that came to my mind when i was reading your post! And I still get raised eyebrows when they hear that I am not "working" anywhere even after getting a masters degree! lol.
And you're soo right, people go for BS or MS and later they do MBAs just because it provides them with better job opportunities and better salaries!
And the way our society treats those who are actually aalim-e-deen, as if they have wasted their lives doing nothing! Astaghfirullah!
An amazing post MAshAllah! and please do write about the second half of the class.. plz plz
For example, I could spend my entire life researching and teaching at a university, knowing everything about how socrates understood things, or how rousseau or hobbes explained them, or how derrida or lyotard or foucault challenged them and gave new ideas. But I would actually only know the assumptions these people made about real-life social systems, and perhaps have no (or very little) knowledge about the way they actually work.
Of the time, money and effort spent during the 20-22 years of formal 'education' at school and university, I perhaps could have learned more had I just travelled like Imam Ghazali(r) or Imam Ahmed(r). I would have at least been exposed do different cultures and societies.
Khair, I actually wanted to recommed a few books:
- Madrasah Life by Hazrat Maulana Mohd. Akram Nadwi, published by Turath Publishing and with a foreword by James Piscatori of Oxford University.
- Science, Hegemony and Violence, edited by Ashis Nandy. It brings a whole new dimension to postcolonial discourse.
- Hadith: Muhammed's (saw) Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, published by Oneworld, Oxford.
The first book introduces the madrasah to one who is not familiar with it, and shows why it continues to be one of the most beautiful educational traditions in the world today.
The second makes us question some of the core assumptions of our modern life, which if shaken, can result in the deconstruction of our entire dunya-centric worldview.
The third provides a glimpse into the extraordinary passion and the exceptionally systematized efforts that went into the creation/establishment of our traditional epistemology, and how those who belittle a system as monumental as Hadith have no real knowledge about its history.
Apologies for the long comment. :)
I agree with you said up there. I personally feel that people who are spending their lives in the universities - I, being one of them so far - must undertake the task of not only researching on the thoughts and ideas of those you mentioned, for example, but actually come up with our own viewpoint towards them. Just like Imam Ghazaali's approach towards 'research' which resulted in his famous tahaafutul filaasafa - The Incoherence of the Philosophers.
Just a point of view based on what I have learnt from my teachers who keep on telling their students of research that ilm indeed is not just what we study at the university... The true knowledge is that of the Deen
Jazaakumullahu khairan katheera for the long comment, and you need not apologise for that. Comments by serious readers are always precious. I will surely try to get my hands on the books you recommended. Thanks.