SPIRIT OF ISLAM MAY 2O18

20 Spirit of Islam Issue 65 May 2018 THE SPIRIT OF LEARNING Realize Your Potential G OD created man with great potential and at the same time, He has given him complete freedom of choice. It is this freedom that divides people into two categories—those who misuse their freedom and the others who use it properly. The potential that man has is bestowed directly by the Creator, but it is the duty of man himself to turn this potential into a reality. Herein lies the destiny of man. People then, are necessarily of two categories: the failures and the successful ones. Being a failure or being successful is not a matter of destiny. It is in the hands of the individual. The crux of the divine scheme is that man should apply his reason and common sense, and follow his conscience; he should discover the laws of nature and study the divine scriptures revealed to the prophets. He should find out his purpose in life and God Almighty’s design regarding his creation. After taking into account all these facts, he should plan and build his future. The most important tool in the process of the application of reasoning, discovering laws of nature and finding out one’s purpose in life and in persevering in the goals, is learning. Learning begins with unlearning the wrong things in which he is conditioned by the social environment. It is a known fact that every human being gets conditioned by the society he belongs to. All that is wrong in that particular society becomes a part of the thinking of the person. It becomes a person’s duty to examine his mindset when he reaches maturity. They should discover the norms that are in accordance with the good nature they are created with. This process can be called the de-conditioning of conditioned minds. It is this de-conditioning from which one’s intellectual journey begins. Without undergoing the process of de- conditioning one is bound to live by one’s own suppositions. In our struggle to find the reality of life, education is of the greatest importance. The first message given by God to the Prophet was about learning. This guidance from the Quran revolutionized the minds of the Prophet and his Companions and they did their best to avail of every opportunity to acquire learning and education. In fact, learning is basic to all our hopes and aspirations; the greater the learning, the greater the progress in life. Learning begins with unlearning the wrong things in which he is conditioned by the social environment.