INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Inner Purification
THE most desirable thing in Islam is the purification of the individual; in other words, the intellectual development of the individual in accordance with the creation plan of God.
The desirable attributes of a pious person are a result of this intellectual development. From the academic point of view, study, understanding and following of the Quran and Hadith are the means for intellectual development. The more one studies and reflects on these sources, the stronger one’s intellectual foundations become, and this is necessary for the inner purification.
But there is an additional concept that is required for purification or intellectual development. It can be termed as the ‘psychological aspect’ of purification. The scholars refer to this psychological aspect as a feeling of faith that is oscillating between hope and fear. In other words, the believer always lives in a state of uncertainty. Sometimes, he thinks of blessings of God upon him and experiences certainty. Sometimes, he thinks of his mistakes and shortcomings, and finds himself in a state of doubt. These feelings about the state of one’s faith are so common that even the Companions of the Prophet were not an exception in this regard.
God desires that man should discover the truth by his own contemplation on the realities of life.
Why does this happen? This happens because, according to the demands of nature, this is the only way through which man’s intellectual development can be carried on continuously. The state of doubt is a sort of intellectual shock, and the study of human psychology tells us that human intellectual development can only happen through shock treatment.
God desires that man should discover the truth by his own contemplation on the realities of life. And the only way to discover reality by oneself is for one’s thinking process to continue uninterruptedly.
In order to acquire higher knowledge and realization, one needs a mind-set that admits that one does not know, not a mind-set that insists that one knows.