He sat back in his comfortable chair and
started his speech by telling the following story. He said, “Nomads used to
come to the cities to sell their wool, cattle, dried milk, and other
commodities, such as rice and barley and carry them on their camel’s backs to
the desert.”
One day a Bedouin came to the city and sold the
goods that he had brought and bought his needs. He stayed the night and decided
to leave the next morning. He then put what he had bought on one side of the
camel’s saddlebag and to balance the weight he put a load of sand on the other
side.
Before he left, he met a man from the city who
asked him why he put all this load on the back of the camel and he explained he
did it every time and how he wanted to balance the weight on the camel’s back
so as to make it stable by putting a bag of sand on the other side.
The man said
to him what he had done was not correct and advised him to get rid of the sand
and transfer some goods he had purchased to the other side of the camel to make
the weight equal on the back of the poor camel.
The Bedouin in response praised his
intelligence. After he finished transferring the load equally on either side of
the camel’s back the bedouin asked the man about his work.
He said he was unemployed and he could hardly
earn his food. He asked him: How can you be unemployed although you are so
intelligent? Have you got an idea about the amount of my wealth? The man shook
his head in denial. The Bedouin said: “I own a number of camels despite the
fact that I am ignorant compared to you. Since you are living in these
miserable conditions and you are so intelligent, I am satisfied with my
conditions and you helped me to distribute the goods on either side to balance
the weight on the back of the camel and get rid of the sand which I was doing
over the years.”
I am not
concerned here with the truth of this
story, which is close to the fable than anything else, but I am more
concerned about its impact on the minds of those who were listening to that
preacher. They are mostly naïve and young adolescents who do not usually dare
to question the speaker or argue. If
they did like Khalid Sultan when he was in the presence of Abdurrahman, they would
be chided.
What the speaker has concluded, in a certain
language, is that reason, intelligence and proper thinking are meaningless in
life. Everyone’s fortune has been already decided. It is nonsense to think and
seek solutions for the troubles we suffer from. A poor man should be submissive
and satisfied with his share of life. A rich man should only keep on thanking
God.
Most of the television channels are open for
such type of hype from preachers who usually deliver their speeches while tens
of microphones are placed in front of them. They are always received on red
carpets and sit on velvet chairs. Young people are pushed to listen to them.
They have hours and hours of radio and
television broadcasting that destroys the minds of the young and destroys their
ability to think. Negative effect of such low level stories on the minds of the
young cannot be imagined. Sadly, this is the favorite kind of voice for
Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.
Then after all that we wonder: Why are we so
backward?
