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About the "grey" thing

"Beware the darkness in the grey areas."
-Abdul Hakim Murad

What I think this aphorism of Shaykh Abdul-Hakim Murad refers to really is what Islam is all about. According to a hadith, it's Islam to abandon things of doubtful nature (of which we have no certainty of its being either halal or haram). It, on another plane, may be a criticism on the general notion of the Muslims that many things lie in the "grey," implying ,as I have observed in my society, that all such things that lie in the grey area between clear Truth and clear Falsehood are things too much complicated to decode that easily, and hence should be left to the 'reason' to suggest the final answer. Practically, the obedience to reason here is by and large nothing but the obedience to our lower self/desires. I have generalized this mental attitude on the basis of observation of only a handful of the brightest people of my society, who are most literate of worldly and religious affairs, well only knowers of the later domain, and may not be the doers necessarily. 'Masses follow the brightest'. (That's a principle I a brilliant friend of mine told me, who is a president of a student organization called ESEF.) Therefore, when truth is obscure we should not tend to overlook that it is darkness that veils light from our sight, which is not a positive element in the equation.

2 did criticisms:

Anonymous said...

Oh rightly said that masses follow the brightest. because most of the people don't have interrst to develop thoughts of their own. so they just follow what brightest say. and this seems somewhat positive because it stops individualism. is it?

M. Umer Toor said...

Absolutely, the following of elite (not how americans understand it, which is of course a negative understanding) - i.e., the spiritual elite - stop us from giving absolute rights to the basest of men. Such individualism as you are pointing is in fact nothing but strictly "aristocratic" against which Westerners so much discourse.

But i would we should on the higher levels follow spiritual elites of our society than other elites.

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