Seek Knowledge
Even if You Have to Go to China for It
By Mohammad Gill
US
The title of this paper is
a well-known Hadith. The use of the word “China”
can have at least two meaningful connotations,
if not more. In Arabia of the fourteen hundred
years ago, travel was mostly by means of animals
or on foot, and China was a country far, far away
from Arabia. Travel to China was thus not easy.
What this Hadith inculcates is the acquisition
of knowledge even when there are heavy odds against
it. Secondly, consider what kind of knowledge
could be acquired in China? It surely was not
the religious knowledge because Arabia itself
was the fountain- head for such knowledge for
Muslims. Why would anybody think of going to China
for this purpose? The implication therefore was
for acquiring knowledge of all other kinds.
It has become a common practice among orthodox
Muslims to accuse and denigrate Muslims who try
to promote the acquisition of knowledge of material
sciences as being ‘western’ or ‘influenced
by the West’. A label of the West or western
is the worst kind of curse in their view. I do
not quite understand where the line of demarcation
dividing a western-influenced scholar from a non-Western
scholar is actually drawn. Is reading English
proficiently and acquiring its competent knowledge,
part of education, which is slurred as western
education? If it is, all of those who curse others
as western are themselves western because they
curse others in spoken and written English. Is
any education, which does not draw from the western
sources, considered complete, adequate, or satisfactory?
One cannot acquire even a certificate of secondary
education without acquiring western knowledge
to some or quite some extent. Only school education
is neither adequate nor very respectable in our
society. What I am trying to emphasize is that
education is not complete or worthwhile if it
is not supplemented from the western sources.
If the Prophet enjoined upon the Muslims to acquire
knowledge from non-Muslim sources, e.g., from
China, why should it be so culpable to acquire
knowledge from the West? Whether we like it or
not, the western countries happen to be the custodians
of the knowledge of the material sciences. And
in order to comply with the Hadith of the Prophet,
if for no other reason or motivation, it should
be an Islamic act and duty to acquire western
knowledge.
When I was a student at the Lahore College of
Engineering and Technology, we faced extreme difficulties
in procuring the prescribed textbooks. All the
textbooks were written by the western professors
and scholars, and were not readily available in
Pakistan. They were very expensive too. I had
already acquired the western education when I
completed my first degree in civil engineering
because all the books that I read were written
in English and were authored by the westerners.
All the knowledge that they contained was developed
in the west. I was, in this sense, a western without
having gone to any western country.
Should anybody accuse me of acquiring knowledge
of civil engineering and doing well in it, to
some extent? If anybody does, I do not care. It
was personally satisfying to me because I worked
really hard in acquiring this education and for
serving my country directly using my knowledge
for as long as I lived there. I am serving my
ethnic country and the Muslim world (and the world
at large) even now in my own way.
Religion has imbued a certain degree of fear,
in our minds, of western knowledge. The fear is
that if we acquired the so-called western knowledge,
we would ‘go astray’ from our religion.
If the religion insists that we remain ignorant,
backward and trapped in the mindset, which is
fourteen hundred year old, the fear is justified.
Then it is a matter of individual choice to remain
stuck with superglue to such religion, or move
on. Otherwise, the fear is misplaced and should
not be a hindrance.
When I taught at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria,
Nigeria, a student of mine who was bright and
stood prominently above the rest of the class,
came to see me in my office, one day. He was Muslim.
He said that he wanted to go to the UK, the USA,
or one of the other European countries for higher
education. In those days, the academic scholarships
were ‘dime a dozen’ in Nigeria for
Nigerian students. They were indeed for the asking,
you didn’t have to spend even a dime. All
that was required was to fill an application.
So money could not be his problem. Having heard
him, I said, “So what?” He said his
parents were against his going overseas because
they feared he would ‘go astray’ under
the western influence. I suggested to him not
to listen to them and to go overseas in pursuit
of higher education. That would be good for him,
for his country including his village (village
was very important to Nigerians), and for his
parents also. They would realize it afterwards.
He stayed back in Nigeria.
What the orthodox parents do not realize is that
going overseas for education is not ‘all
fun’. Acquiring higher education is no joke.
And why should fun be denied to the Muslims?
I had published my first paper on a topic which
was quite popular in Pakistan. Since the paper
was published in a journal of American Society
of Civil Engineers, I had received a certain degree
of popularity and recognition, even in Pakistan.
While working in Nigeria, I happened to visit
to Pakistan during holidays. One day, I was sitting
in the office of a senior Irrigation Research
Officer in Lahore when he said, “Gill Sahib,
I regard research as part of my worship. Therefore,
I worship most of the time,” and forthwith
he started mumbling under breath and counting
his beads. I was stunned and felt sorry. He should
have devoted his time to research, if he truly
believed research was an act of worship. At least
in that way, he would have earned ‘halal’
livelihood. What he actually did, did not justify
for him to receive his pay from the government
because nobody gets paid for saying his prayers
all the time during work hours. That is the travesty
of our people; this is our national dilemma.
There is another psychological factor, I believe,
which is working against most of us. We are suffering
from a syndrome of “Pidram sultan bood (My
father was a king)” and “hum chuna’an
deegray neest (there is nobody like us)”.
Sooner we disabuse ourselves of such clichés,
the better for us. We are backward in education
but certainly we are not a ‘lost case’.
Even now, our society produces Abdus Salams and
Ahmed Zewails. If we work hard and avoid taking
unproductive short cuts, we can catch up and create
a respectable niche for the Muslim society in
the world. Our salvation is in acquiring knowledge
from wherever we can get, from the west, east,
north, or south, and use it for developmental
and creative purposes. Acquire this knowledge
and advance it to stay at the forefront. I am
not a pessimist; our present may be abysmal but
we can make our future, better, bright and enviable.
It is not ‘kufr’ to acquire knowledge;
in fact, it is sinful to stay ignorant and without
knowledge because the first verse that was revealed
to Prophet Muhammed, was, “Read; read in
the name of your Allah.” And read we must;
not parrot-like but intelligently and creatively.
“Tu cheh daani keh d’reen gard sawaray
bashad” (What do you know? There may be
a great rider hidden in this very ‘cloud
of dust’).” May Allah be with us.
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