*Help yourself first*
When you see a person is severely coughing, what do you do to help her/him?
- Do you get angry at her/him because s/he is coughing?
- Do you shut her/his mouth with your hand?
- Do you ask her/him not to cough?
-Do you give her/him medicine to stop coughing?
- Do you think that coughing is good because it is a symptom letting us know that some thing wrong going on in the body?
- Do you take her/him to a doctor to diagnose what is the reason for this person to cough?
Isn't the answer obvious? We should be happy that the symptom is there and act immediately: Take her/him to a specialist.
When you learn that the person has bronchitis, what do you do?
- Do you kick the person away?
- Do you get angry with the person?
- Do you cut his chest and get the lungs out and dump them away?
- Do you tell the person that there is medicine for this disease and give her/him a hope?
- Do you start the treatment by giving her/him all the medicine at once?
- Do you give her/him the medicine as prescribed by the specialist?
The answer is obvious again: Tell the person not to worry, just follow the prescription.
Now, let's apply the case to another context. You believe that the message of the Qur'an is true. You see a person drinking alcohol. What do you do to help this person?
- Do you get angry at her/him because she/he is drinking alcohol?
- Do you take the wine glass away from her/him?
- Do you tell her/him not to drink?
- Do you start reciting the relevant verse of the Qur'an which forbids drinking alcohol?
- Do you think it is a sign that this person is not really convinced that she/he should follow the message of the Qur'an?
- Do you speak to this person to find out how much s/he is aware of the message of the Qur'an?
Isn't the answer obvious? We should be happy that the symptom is there and act immediately: Take her/him to a specialist.
When you learn that the person is not aware of the message of the Qur'an, what do you do?
- Do you kick the person away?
- Do you get angry with the person?
- Do you declare that this person is an unbeliever and ask her/him to leave the "Muslim" land?
- Do you tell the person that there is a good reason that s/he should follow the Qur'an, and start a friendly relationship with her/him?
- Do you tell her/him that "We are Muslims, the Qur'an is our Sacred Book, we should practice our religious duties; otherwise we will be thrown into the Hell Fire in the hereafter?
- Do you give her/him the opportunity to let her/him know what this existence is for, what to be a human being means, the meaning of life, why we are here on earth, who God is really, even if God exists why He should bother to speak to us and send a messenger, what religion is really, what the message of the Qur'an has to offer us, why we should not drink alcohol etc.?
The answer is obvious again: Tell the person not to worry; there are answers to all of these kinds of questions.
The problem lies here: Do we ourselves have the answer to these questions? Or, do we only have to say: “In ‘our religion’ drinking alcohol is forbidden; obey God and His messenger, and then you will be saved”? Claims, claims, claims, nothing else, no evidence!
If you do not know the answers to these questions educate yourself with the teachings of the Qur'an and the Messenger and only then try to save the others. Save yourself first! Do not try to make any surgery on this person you will definitely kill him! Meanwhile, you can take the person to a specialist, but please make sure that the specialist has the answers.
Is not that time to study the Qur’an as a source of the answers to this kind of existential questions? Once you begin to pay attention to this aspect of the Qur’an you will find that 95% of the verses of the Qur’an deal with this kind of questions related to fundamental articles of belief.
ali
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The beauty of this analogy is also that one can only do so much, once you tell the patient (and we are all patients to varying degrees) what the prescription is, you can only encourage the person to take the prescription and not do any more than that. If it comes to the point, you and others can form patient support/therapy groups that try to find hope/therapy together only if these individuals willingly join such groups.
ReplyDeleteIt is very true that if we all try acting like doctors we will do one of the following:
A: Give out bad advice and harm the patient
B: Provide possible good short-term good (treat symptom but not cause) but not solve the underlying problem: that of belief, etc
C: Both of above
I am particularly interested in seeing for myself whether I truly know the answers to the questions (Do you give her/him the opportunity to let her/him know what this existence is for, what to be a human being means, the meaning of life, why we are here on earth, who God is really, even if God exists why He should bother to speak to us and send a messenger, what religion is really, what the message of the Qur'an has to offer us, why we should not drink alcohol etc.?)
Heidar