The writer, Al-Hajj Khalil Champsi (Toronto, Canada) is a professional engineer, PMP certified, and a community volunteer.
The old African proverb “If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family (nation)”
Therefore, effort should be made to reach out to all segments of communities by empowering the boys and the girls by providing them with education and spread of knowledge to enable a balance growth and helps in eradication of ignorance and poverty.
Similarly, our institutions of Madressah ,Mimbar (pulpit) and Ma’raja ( jurists) play important parts in the spread of knowledge which helps our various communities .With the development of Internet and social media,the above institutions have a greater role to play especially in these days of dis-information and Google planted knowledge which might not be correct and can cause damage to the various communities.
In another advise ,Prophet Muhammad (say ) said, ‘’Whosoever follows a path to seek knowledge therein, God will make easy for him a path to paradise’’. Education is not only the right, but the duty of every Muslim, male or female. The best gift from a father to his child is education and upbringing. Knowledge cannot be acquired with sloth.
Seeking knowledge requires life time of perseverance, endurance and sacrifice . Prophet Muhammad (saw) has said ,’ “Seek knowledge from the Cradle to the Grave”.In ones life cycle ,everyone is either a student or a teacher and therefore learning and acquiring knowledge is a never ending process .The experience of acquiring knowledge can be wonderful journey and a joyous moment of discovery.
One can look at the following as explained by Allamah Tabatabai of comparison between knowledge verses material:
Knowledge is certainly non-material and abstract. It is not a physical and material thing, because the attributes and properties of matter are not found in it:—
1.All material things are divisible; knowledge per se, is not divisible.
2.Material things depend on space and time; knowledge, per se, is independent of space and time. An event happens in a certain place and time, but we may comprehend it in any place and at any time without any adverse effect on its comprehension.
3.The law of general movement and constant change admittedly governs material things. But knowledge, per se, does not change. Knowledge, as knowledge, is incompatible with change, as one may understand after a little meditation.
4.Suppose that knowledge, per se, is subject to constant change like matter and material things. Then one thing or event could not be comprehended with the same details, in exactly the same way, at two different times. Nor could a past event be remembered correctly later on. Because, as the materialists have said, “what a (material) thing was at a given instant is not the same in the next”
In conclusion : It is narrated from Miqdad (R) that he said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (S) say, “Verily, the angels spread out their wings for the seeker of knowledge out of their delight for him, so that he walks over them.
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