FROM MAULANA’S DESK
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Bhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims . His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi.
RELIGIOUS BASE PLUS OBJECTIVE THINKING
AFTER the death of my father, there was no elder in the family. The elder in the extended family was my uncle, Sufi Abdul Majeed Khan, who was my father’s younger brother. He was a spiritual person. As everyone in the family was acquiring secular education, he wanted one of us to become a Maulvi or a religious scholar. Due to this obsession, my uncle got me enrolled in a madrasa, an Islamic seminary, and bore all the expenses. The credit of my seminary education goes to him.
At my madrasa, the Quran was considered the most important book. Hadith (teachings of the Prophet) was also taught and we had an Arab scholar who taught Arabic. This was the atmosphere of my madrasa. Madrasa education helped build my foundation. Had I not gone to a madrasa, I would not have formed a religious base.
In every person’s life there are many incidents of school days. There are many in mine too. I will share one of them, which had a great impact on my life. One day in class, we read a lesson from our textbook, which contained the following verse of the Quran: “Do they never reflect on the camels and how they were created?” (88: 17)
Our teacher then asked a question to our class of twenty-five students: “Are the hoofs of a camel like that of a horse or a buffalo?” No student could answer the question. He then told us something really important. He quoted an Arabic saying: To know that you do not know is half of knowledge. That is, when you know that you do not know something, you pay attention to it whenever you come face to face with it. He further explained that since all of us did not know that we did not know about a camel’s hoofs, we never paid attention even when camels went past us.
Later on, while studying science, I realized this is what we call the spirit of inquiry. Our teacher told us about the importance of the spirit of inquiry through an Arabic saying. Since then, I was filled with the spirit of inquiry and I continue to do it to this day. The spirit of inquiry therefore is an important part of my life. And this I learnt at my madrasa.
Make yourself free from arrogance, bias and hatred, only then will you become a person who can be described as a man of understanding.
After acquiring education at a madrasa I returned home and would often interact with a family friend, Ateeq Ahmad Ansari, who had a Master’s degree in English Literature from Lucknow’s La Martiniere College. His English was obviously very good, and so every time we conversed, I would feel lesser than him in some manner. Compared to his English expression I felt mine to be somewhat lacking. I realized that if I have to live in this world, I would have to study English and acquire modern knowledge.
This is how I started studying, and later on modern thought became my subject of study. I studied modern thought extensively and deeply. It was therefore the realization that madrasa education is not enough that took me back to studies. Post madrasa education, I read the Quran and Hadith again with a new perspective and studied English for several years. Then I moved to Delhi in 1967. Here began a new chapter of my life. In fact my life can be divided into two phases: the phase before 1967, which was a period of self-training. And the phase after 1967 became a period of the peace mission.
The greatest thing I acquired from studying modern thought was objective thinking. I had not learned this at the madrasa. As a result of my study, I grew acutely objective. I discovered that traditional knowledge and concepts would not appeal to the modern mind. To address the modern mind, we will have to speak in the modern idiom. Objective thinking is very important to understand things in the right perspective.
The mind should be disciplined to develop this skill. For doing this you need to think rising above immediate circumstances. You need to form opinions from an objective analysis of things. If you want to be a right thinker you have to train yourself and develop this quality. An objective thinker is a right thinker. One who is free of all kinds of bias and prejudice. You must have the ability to analyze things in a logical basis. You must know the difference between what is relevant and what is irrelevant.
Objective thinking is very important to understand things in the right perspective. The mind should be disciplined to develop this skill.
Make yourself a complex-free person and then you will be able to understand things without any difficulty. Make yourself free from arrogance, bias and hatred, only then will you become a person who can be described as a man of understanding. It is evident that people of understanding are not born; they are trained. Train yourself and you will become a man of understanding.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
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