AND of His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colours. Indeed in that are signs for those who have knowledge. Quran 30:22 ‘The great Orientalist Franz Rosenthal wrote a book ‘Knowledge Triumphant’ in which he said, “I know of no other civilization in human history, which has put the acquisition, the development and transmission of knowledge at the very centre of their purpose.” This was the ethos of Islamic civilization. The very first word in Quran is ‘Iqra’ Read. The word knowledge is mentioned 800 times in Quran. The Prophet (PBUH) said, “Be a scholar, be a student of scholar, be a helper of the two, or be a lover of those. Abdul Aziz Ibn Umar added a fifth one, ‘Do not be a fifth one and perish.’
Rumi says, “Each moment contains a hundred messages from God. To every cry of, ‘Oh God.’ He answers a hundred times, ‘I am here.’” Do not ever think that because you cannot see God that He cannot see you. “Do not lose heart or grieve” (3:139), because even in the depths of your darkest nights your Lord is with you always, saying, “I am near.” (2:186). Allah is the origin and cause of love. Allah never stops loving you, because His love is eternal and has no beginning or end. Love is not something Allah does, love is something Allah is. You cannot separate love from God any more than you can separate water from the ocean. We can respond to Allah’s love by loving and worshiping Him, but our unwillingness to honour Allah does not affect His divine qualities, as Allah is entirely “independent of all creatures” (3:97). Whereas the human being can be kind, God is Kindness (Ar-Ra’uf); where we can be merciful, God is Mercy (Ar-Rahman). God is not just peaceful, He is Peace (As-Salam). God’s loving qualities do not change in response to our choices, because God is not reactive. He is the cause of everything in existence.
God is speaking to you when He says, “Do not be afraid, I am with you (20:46). God is speaking to you when He says, “I created you for Myself.” God didn’t promise you that path to goodness would always be easy, but the Quran did say, ”Allah is with those, who patiently persevere.(8:46). The Prophet (PBUH) said, “One of the signs of latter day is that people will learn other than for the sake of God.”
The learning/knowledge, which is emphasized in Islamic Tradition, is for the sake of Allah, not for a position or stature. Al-Ghazali highlights that knowledge is derived from two sources; the senses and the logic, but he considers both of these sources as weak sources, which will result in a man to know only the materialistic aspects of the world in which he lives. On the other hand, divine revelation enables him to learn more about the life after death, which he considers as eternal life. In Al-Ghazali’s view, true knowledge is the knowledge of God, His books, His prophets, His creation, including the kingdoms of earth and heavens. It also includes the knowledge of Shariah as revealed by His Prophet. He classifies disciplines such as arithmetic, medicine, etc, as techniques and believed that true knowledge can only be achieved if the self has been nurtured through the teachings of the Holy Qur’an. The more one comprehends such knowledge, the better he knows God and the closer he comes to Him.
“Imam Ghazali categorizes knowledge into four categories. First is knowledge of philosophers, which is a rational knowledge, second is knowledge of the theologians, which has a rational component and component of revelation. Third is knowledge of the esotericists (people who claimed that they had special knowledge that was inaccessible to other people and we just have to follow them). Last were the people of Tasawaf, who believed their knowledge was knowledge of taste and that real faith came from experience and not from set of logical prepositions, which your learn from a text book. Ghazali argued that all the first three types of knowledge could actually be dismantled, if you use the right tools to dismantle them. He does this with each group, but the only group, whose arguments he could not dismantle were the people of Tasawaf, because their arguments was not based on a rational argument, but an argument of experimental psychology.
The people of Tasawaf argue that this is the science of the self, which can dismantle the self and allows the self to perceive the reality of the self. Al- Ghazali argues it is a science, because it is the essence of science that you can replicate an experiment. Al- Ghazali tells us quoting these men and women, historically that if you do these things, with these preconditions, you will have the same journey as everybody else, who has undertaken this journey and it will lead to same certainty, which these previous people had. “Here is the map,” he argues, “that you need a guide though he himself didn’t have a guide. He tells us what you need for the journey and then you have to set out on the journey yourself.” What he says and that is the reason he is called, ‘Proof of Islam,’ “I took this journey and the destination is real.” This is not a fantasy place watwat in the story of Sindbad; a magical place in the east. This is a real place, a place of presence, of experience, of ecstasy. Here is the path, I have mapped it for you, set out on the journey and I assure you, you will arrive.”
—The writer is the author of various books based in Rawalpindi.
(muhammadtahir50@hotmail.com)
