Where ignorant armies clash by night

If one surfs Muslim forums, whether Sunni or otherwise, there is a startling reality: forgotten priorities.

We find armies of ignorant people clashing in the darkness of ignorance about matters they don’t understand, matters that the great imams of Islam differed upon with decorum.

Such argument and dispute is highly reprehensible. The Beloved Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said,

“No people went astray after having been given guidance except after they started argumentation.” [Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja, from Abu Umama (Allah be pleased with him)]

Imam Ghazali mentioned numerous harms in argument and disputation, at the level of individuals, relations between individuals, and at the level of community. The most fundamental problem is at the level of the human heart: it busies the heart with darkness, and fills it with blameworthy character traits such as arrogance, love of dispute, leaving sincere counsel for one’s fellow human, and anger.

The Qur’an and Sunna, on the other hand, express the centrality of the need to make one’s heart busy with nothing other than Allah, and our limbs busy only with that which is pleasing to Allah.

Wassalam,

Faraz Rabbani

[from: http://blog.masud.co.uk/faraz.htm]