PRACTICAL METHOD
Individuals ought to engage in intellectual awakening. When facing some challenging situations, one should be willing to adjust to a situation on pragmatic grounds as a matter of principle, not by compulsion.
Once, I happened to meet a madrasa student whose head was shaven. During our conversation, he related that the madrasa administrator had had all the students’ heads shaved off. The reason that the administrator cited was that he did not like long hair. I asked him if the students whose heads had been shaved off had protested against this action. He replied that they had not. Apparently, the students felt bad about the administrator’s action, but they remained silent because the madrasa would have expelled them if they protested.
Seen from the point of view of principles, strictly speaking, the administrator’s having the boys’ heads shaved off was for the students a provocative act. However, the students did not gauge this act in terms of the yardstick of principles or ideology. Instead, they agreed to accept on pragmatic grounds an action that on theoretical grounds or in terms of principles was unacceptable.
If one reflects on the matter, one will discover that most people behave in just the same way in their personal life. When they are faced with some challenging situations related to their personal life, they agree to accept and adjust to a situation on pragmatic grounds even though they may not fully agree with it on theoretical grounds or in terms of their principles. But these very same people often do not display the same sort of wise pragmatism when a challenging issue arises that relates to the community they identify themselves with. Instead of responding to the matter pragmatically and adjusting accordingly, they view it in ideological terms and react emotionally, which only worsens the situation. In their personal affairs, these people are pragmatic and agree to make suitable adjustments in order to protect their interests, but when it is an issue of the community they identify with, they often become impractical and refuse to make the same sort of pragmatic adjustment. The reason for this difference in behaviour is lack of intellectual awakening.
The biggest weakness of present-day Muslims is lack of intellectual awakening. No movement has emerged among them that could engage in promoting their intellectual nurturing in the light of the principles of the art of right thinking. The outcome of this is that present-day Muslims are deprived of intellectual development. Many people are simply living at the animalistic level, knowing nothing about intellectual growth and the process of positive thinking.
