Knowledge and Ignorance

When harm is done to man, he prays to his Lord and turns to Him in repentance; yet no sooner does He bestow on him His favour than he forgets what he had prayed and sets up equals to Him, in order to lead men away from His path.

Say: ‘Enjoy your unbelief awhile; but you shall surely be consigned to Hell. Can he who passes his night in adoration, standing up or on his knees, who dreads the terrors of the life to come and hopes to earn the mercy of his Lord, (be compared to the unbeliever)? Are the wise and ignorant equal? ‘Truly, none will take heed but men of understanding.

(The Quran 39:8-9)

Everyone experiences moments of helplessness, when the things treated by him as props fail to help him. In moments of adversity, man then turns away from all material support and begins to invoke the Almighty. It is as if he has come to realize that there is no god but the one God. But no sooner he is clear of adversity than he reverts to his previous state. Worse still, he attributes his salvation to something other than God. Sometimes he attributes it to a miracle wrought by false gods, at other times to the ‘miracle’ of cause and effect.

Some people are distressed only by material loss. Others become restless at the remembrance of God. It is people such as the latter who are god fearing. Their belief in God is not the products of circumstances (that is, inherited by birth in a certain family) but is a conscious discovery on their part. They have found God as a Superior Being and all their hopes and fears are associated with that same Being. Their restlessness does not allow them to pass the night sleeping comfortably. Their solicitude is not that of ignorance but results from the remembrance of God.

The one who experiences great emotional stirring in remembering God is the truly knowledgeable person, while the one who is affected in this way only by material matters, who is aroused only by material shocks from his comfortable sleep, is the really ignorant person.