In response to mental muscle post

All praise is due to Allah for his favours and blessings; all clarity comes from Him, and all of creation’s sustenance.  Peace and blessings be upon his final messenger, the honoured, unlettered prophet, who is mentioned by the earlier prophets. With him lies the hope of his nation; all of them seek his intercession, except those who reject this through their own interpretations, although still the mercy of Allah surrounds every interpreter.  And may there be, upon his noble, pure family, continuous peace and blessings until the Day of Judgement.

I am writing in response to the letter from a sister in which she explains what concerns her about education and learning and how to spread the love of it in the hearts of the young, observing a confusion between about what academics from her country have mentioned about the principles on which education should be built [1], and about what her children and their peers need in order to benefit from all those efforts expended to produce great human beings[i][2]  She mentions a new theory of character building based around seven Cs: ’confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship.’

The writer was correct when she said that the principles which Professor Claxton mentioned are deficient. What is deficient about them is a very great and weighty matter, and that is morals.  Actually these seven principles mentioned by Claxton have nothing to do with virtue but amount to nothing more than descriptors of phenomena, as is the case with most of what this modern materialistic civilisation has produced. This is because it is oriented towards thoroughly describing observable phenomena, whilst totally bypassing what is behind that – unless it can be explained in purely material terms (or squeezed into some sort of material explanation).

It would certainly be very nice if all or at least most of our youth could acquire these positive characteristics, but  the question is – how?

Let me take my opinion from what the Qur’an says in its description of the good slaves (العباد الصالحين) to whom He is pleased to give trusteeship in the earth, and to endeavour to show those seven characteristics all have their parallels in the Qur’an, which is the constitution of every Muslim and their resort to which they always turn for guidance. 

What underlies these characteristics?

The seven Cs are problematic because they are limited to what is observable and are not connected to what is at the root of those things. So, if we were to ask , for example, about how one is to firmly establish a particular characteristic or trait over time, especially during times of crisis and trial, then we would not receive a useful answer.  The degree of strength of any characteristic relates to the internal capacity of a human being.  All of these characteristics are dependent upon patience.

Where is patience in the young boys and girls of today – could we describe them as patient? And how can anyone obtain success without patience and without putting up with difficulties? Patience cannot be acquired by purely materialist means, because it is a characteristic deeply routed in the character, and closely related to what is behind the material, the metaphysical.  It is not possible to get stronger without a reliance upon the metaphysical, which is belief in Allah.

Many modern people appear to have a high level of good manners and good character.  Their sense of fairness is undeniable.  However, whenever these good manners are tested by difficulties, (in other words, when their patience and good nature are tested), many of them lose their good manners, “except where your Lord has shown mercy on them” (i.e. except few).

Let us examine these principles in the Qur’an one by one:

Belief in Allah is the Qur’anic characteristic which contrasts with self-confidence.  We assert this because self-confidence is a synonym for self-belief, so we therefore link self-belief with belief in Allah. It should be clear to all believers that there is a vast difference between relying on oneself and relying on Allah. Belief in Allah is the source of every ability that the self can receive and attain, so that one can say: Self-Belief  is a function of believing in Allah.  This is the root and foundation of every virtue, for without this none of the other virtues can be established, because all are building upon it and emerging from it. 

And look around you and you will realise that it is a necessary condition for self confidence. For how might somebody who is not yet successful ever conceive that he will be given pre-eminence or raised in the ranks of his society without belief in a higher power.

If we remove belief from humans so that their only goal is material success in this life, and at the same time, they can only rely upon what they find in themselves  then no-one will have self-confidence unless someone who has been given much talent, and whoever has not been so endowed will continue to be locked into failure, pessimism and humiliation.  No wonder people get depressed and feel stressed!

It might be argued that any belief in an unseen power such as nature or destiny is permissible in order to acquire self-confidence (nature and destiny are mentioned in western literature, dating back to the Ancient Greeks).  This is answered by Allah in his Book:

‘Alif, Lam, Meem, That is the book in which there is no doubt, guidance for those who fear doing wrong, those who believe in the Unseen and establish regular worship and spend from what we have given them’

We see that Allah mentioned together “belief in Allah” and “belief in the Unseen” in many places in the Qur’an,  in order to make clear  that Allah cannot be identified or included with matter or nature so that He can be discovered, For he is the most hidden of all that is hidden yet his Glory is made manifest.

Curiosity: Curiosity is part of human nature and I think that includes intellectual curiosity. And in the Qur’an many verses call for researching and understanding and discovering and investigating the creation of Allah. We could sum up this Qur’an call in one word:  Challenge. There is also the mention of different worlds:  mulk and malakut and jabarut, and nations amongst the birds and animals and worlds amongst the jinn and others, briefly and eloquently indicating but leaving the scope free to people to study for themselves.  All of these are strong motivating factors promoting intellectual curiosity.

However, I would like to turn your attention to another matter which is one of the biggest trials that has beset the world (and also curiosity) in our material age, and that is what I identified in the table above as ‘reverence for knowledge for its own sake’.

Because in our time the idea of knowledge for the sake of material benefit is widespread together with knowledge to power or control and what does not relate to wealth or material science is rejected and not considered as knowledge. I think this obvious to anyone living in this age.  Yet the Qur’an, values knowledge and scholars as if knowledge is a jewel valued for its own sake.  Muslim scholars in the past developed classifications of knowledge according to whether they were theoretical or practical and classified them differentiating them into different subjects and and topics, considering the knowledge relating to Allah as the greatest form of knowledge.

Collaboration:  Collaboration is found in the Qur’an but always linked to noble and great goals.  This is because collaboration in itself is value neutral.  People can collaborate for many reasons, many being harmful and with no good intention behind them.  So the Qur’an says:

Collaborate for the good and fearing doing wrong and do not collaborate for wrongdoing and aggression. (Qur’an 5:2)

Caring and Kindness (in place of communication)

The goal of communication should also be linked to the achievement or kindness and helping each other.  Communication  can be used for many ends and many of those are to satisfy selfish aims and doubtful things.  And humans are not truly communicating if their communication is not for an elevated purpose which would produce ease and happiness within themselves.

There is no value in much of their conversation except whoever orders giving charity or doing the right thing or putting things right between people, and whoever does that seeking the pleasure of Allah, then he will meet a great reward. (Qur’an 4:114)

Creativity:

I suspect that creativity in Western schools is something which is strongly encouraged, as if originality and producing something different to what has gone before, is always desirable even though it might involve the destruction of long-held axioms of human thought and feeling: change for change’s sake.

As for what is in the Qur’an, although it condemns blind following of tradition with no basis in evidence, it does not require that each age should manifest a complete break and change from what had gone before.  Not everything that humanity has produced or discovered in ancient times should be abandoned just because it is old.  On the contrary, there are eternal truths, high goals and noble moral principles that do not change across the centuries. Amongst those things which do not change are the attributes of Allah the Most High. Muslims take those as reference when giving anything its real value).

Seeking to establish what is right -Al-Istiqaama – (is in place of commitment) 

Just as with collaboration and communication,  commitment must be directed to a noble goal and purpose.  Establishing what is right goes further than mere commitment by reason of the nobility of its goals and their universality, and is dependent upon patience, because patience’s value appears when  commitment is challenged by the absence of the swift results (the results of commitment)  So if  patience is there, then Istiqama is established, and if not, thousands of paths will appear to divert us from our commitments.  In this, as in all that we have mentioned so far  there is a strong link with the trust and belief in Allah , This is because all characteristics arise out of and depend upon this (Him).

Craftsmanship:

The Qur’an mentioned the craftsmanship of Noah and that he was a carpenter, and the craftsmanship of David and that he was an iron worker who manufactured chain mail, and in the same way mentioned Sulaiman who was given amazing powers and a great kingdom, and according to tradition, Idris, peace be upon him, was a tailor and there is no prophet who did not have an occupation as a craftsman.  And our blessed prophet was a shepherd of sheep.  And amongst the Arabs their knightliness was their craftsmanship and trading was their profession to earn a living, and in the world today there is a big scope for mastery of many trades ,occupations ,disciplines ,and sports.

Yet I fear to say, that a tyrannical over-reliance on technology which has emerged in countries like England and across the world, has opposed completely the development of manual skills.  Take the example of calligraphy and penmanship.  Until recently, beautiful handwriting was the most common skill mastered by people owing to its being frequently practiced and also personal to him.  Nowadays, you can scarcely find anyone who can write in a calligraphic style, because everyone uses computers for typing.  Technological solutions are replacing every type of thing formerly made by hand.

So what are the Muslims of our time thinking of?  Do they not have the divine guidebook? So why are they turning away from it and chasing after the guidance of ideas from an alien culture which through its secularism is largely divorced from a divine source.  From whom should we seek guidance? And who is better at guiding than Allah?

[1] Claxton had observed that academic results did not necessarily lead to success in life and he wanted to identify those characteristics which ought to be developed in children in order for them to thrive as students and people generally.

[2]  إنسان أفضل و أكرم  “Great human beings” is the way the translator chose to express Arabic which literally means “excellent and noblest humanity”.  The difficulty in translating classical Arabic phrases used to discuss character into language appropriate to discussing character in modern English really highlighted the change in the quality of the English language with its increasing secularisation in the last century.  Modern thought is uncomfortable with words like superior, virtuous or noble… perhaps because they involve value judgements in which many no longer believe… we would settle for far less than this, eg functioning human beings, caring citizens etc, well-rounded human beings.    The word great has been devalued enough, (like awesome), to become essentially meaningless and therefore acceptable as the reader can interpret it how he wills.