“Social Service” (Khidmat-e-Khalq)

 “Social Service” (Khidmat-e-Khalq)

Dr. Hafiz Muhammad Fazl ur Rahman Al-Ansari Al-Qadri

All religions of the world preach charity and social good because religion as on organized institution cannot but aim at the common good of the group which it brings into existence. The conception of social good may be different in different religions as far as the details are concerned and the scope may also be different in keeping with the norms and ideals of every particular religion. But the fact remains that social service must form and has always formed an integral part of the religious life.

So far as Islam is concerned, its point of view is that of society above self. Selfishness in all forms and self aggrandizement of every type from the very negation of Islam. This is so, because the Holy Qur’an has set the ideal of Muslim life in the following words : “Say verily my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are all for Allah, the Lord of the world who hath no partner.”

At another place we have been told in the Holy Qur'an: “Verily Allah has purchased from the Believers their lives and their wealth in lieu of paradise”.

This means that a Muslim is he who lives his life for God and God alone. A Muslim is he who submits his will and his desires to the will and pleasure of God. Whatever he owns in this world is a gift of God and when he sells -it away to God he retains it in his possession only as a sacred trust. He is consequently the trustee and not the owner and as such he has to pursue all the obligations towards God, towards himself and towards others with unstinted devotion.

Self-interest demands that a person should care for himself alone. But no one lives in a vacuum. indeed, every individual is born is a society and is sustained through that society. The society is therefore the very foundation of his existence, as also the source of life and light and survival. To serve the society therefore is, in the final analysis, to serve one’: own self. The healthier the society, the more the opportunity for the individual to lead a healthy life. The more godly the social order, the better will be the chances for leading a life of piety. On the other hand, if the society is corrupt and the social order falls into ruins, even the men of character are bound to suffer and the avalanche of social sins will crush the good and the bad without discrimination. Therefore, while Muslims have been enjoined to fulfill the obligations towards themselves, a much greater emphasis has been laid on rendering ‘service to others. The Holy Qur'an defines the character of a Muslim in this regard in the following words: “They suffer hardships for achieving the well-being of others, although such hardships may be extremely painful." The whole life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) is an illustrious demonstration and the glorious embodiment of this principle. When he married the wealthy widow Lady Khadija who was forty while he was a handsome young man of twenty-five, that was an act of sacrifice of the sensuous fantasies of the youth for the sake of providing companionship and solace to a noble old lady to whom no young man would like to have offered his hand in marriage. Lady Khadila placed all her wealth at his feet as a homage to his love. But although he was poor, he distributed most of that wealth to the needy and the destitute and that remained law of his life all through. Even when he was the master of all Arabia and wealth was pouring in from all quarters, he and his family would starve for days together. This most powerful and greatest man of human history lived in a mud-hut measuring 10 X 10 X l0 feet and he would, sleep on bare mattress made of palm leaves, while his hands continued to distribute gold and silver to thousands of human beings. If he had anything to eat and he found anyone who also was in need of food, he would give that food to him and he and his family remained hungry. If he had anything to wear and he found anyone who was in need of it, he went all the way to give that dress to him passing his own life in patched and scanty garments. It was the rule of his life not to keep any gold or silver or eatables in the house for the next day but to distribute them to the needy before sunset every day. When this great leader of mankind passed away from this earthly existence, Lady Ayesha had to borrow oil for the lamp from a neighbour. This life of selflessness on the one hand, and the profound devotion to social service, on the other, is the very meaning of Islam. The ideal of Islam in this connection is contained in the following Hadith: “The best among human-beings is he, who benefits human-beings most".

Cultivation of Knowledge (Talab-i-Ilm)

Among all the religions of the world, Islam stands alone when it lays down the law in the words of the hadith, "The cultivation of knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim man and Muslim women". It might be significant to point out here that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) was born in a country of illiterates among whom the urge for the cultivation of knowledge was virtually non-existent. The Arabs of those days were not only steeped in ignorance and barbarism but were actually proud of being so. They used to say that the highest pursuit was the pursuit of the sword and the pursuit of knowledge was meant only for the lower class of people. And this darkness and ignorance prevailed not only in Arabia but all over the world. The lights learning which the ancient civilizations of China, India, Greece and Rome had kindled in the past had been extinguished by the time Islam came. But it is noteworthy that in that age of universal darkness and in that country of illiterates the first message which the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) received from God for communication to humanity was the message which spoke of the light of knowledge and the power of the pen. The subsequent teachings in the Holy Qur'an concerning the cultivation of knowledge in general and investigation of the physical phenomena in particular form a land-mark in human history. These teachings of the Qur'an gave to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) the role of the inaugurator and founder of the modern scientific era and brought into being a comunitym which unearthed all the ancient wisdom from the debris of antiquity. The Holy Qur'an has laid down the principle that it is only the men of learning from amongst the Servants of God who can be genuinely godly and among all the praises of the cultivation of knowledge, there is perhaps no praise higher than the one contained in the following Prophetic Saying: “The ink of the scholar is holler than the blood of the martyr". Combined with this hadith there is another which runs as follows: “The superiority of the scholar over him who (merely) practices formal devotions to God is like any superiority over my humblest follower". One of the prayers which Muslims have been enjoined continuously to repeat is to be found in the Holy Qur'an in the following words, “Oh Lord! increase me in knowledge",

Education in Islam has been conceived not merely the specialized business of the few but as a universal pursuit and obligation, and consequently Islam has made it the duty of the state to institute free compulsory education for all and to promote through state aid and patronage the cause of the advancement of knowledge. And while the non-Islamic civilizations were one and all victims of narrow-mindedness and parochialism, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) laid down the law once for all: “All knowledge is the lost property of the believer. He should take hold of it wherever he finds it”. In another Hadith the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) has exhorted the Muslims to “seek knowledge even though it was to be found in China.” As we all know the Chinese wisdom of those days had not even the slightest trace of Islam. It was a purely non-Muslim heritage. The Holy Prophet's exhortations in this behalf brings into broad relief two vital principles:

1.     All knowledge should be considered the common heritage of humanity, which means that it is not correct to style knowledge as Arab, Indian or Chinese.

2.     A Muslim should be open-minded and large-hearted in the domain of knowledge. He should taste every piece of knowledge that comes in his way and accept the truth wherever he finds it without prejudice.

The emphasis which Islam has laid on the cultivation of knowledge been high-lighted in the following hadith, “Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave". This means that the Islamic concept of the cultivation of knowledge is not the same which the modern Muslim youth has generally adopted. They join the educational institutions mostly for obtaining degrees with a view to get material benefits and not for the sake of their intellectual culture and for advancing the cause of knowledge. In this they are committing a sin against humanity; and the consequence of all this is that in spite-of being the followers of Islam in the general sense, Muslim scholars of today have become barren in the sense that they are making little contribution to human knowledge.