Prayer and education

I had been out of my homeland for almost 10 years at a stretch from 1959 to 1968 and missed large Eid congregations. I returned home a few days before Eid so I took the opportunity to join the large Eid prayer at Sylhet Idgah Maidan. It was a gathering of devotees estimated to be over 10,000 people. I enjoyed being able to pray there with the congregation, except for the long munazat which lasted almost half an hour. The Imam literally cried and wept during the munazat like a child, and asked for Allah's mercy and help for the people of Palestine, Kashmir and many other oppressed Muslim people of the world.

After 38 years, I still hear the same cry and munazat for Muslim Jahan in mosques. Allah has not yet showered his blessings on those suffering Muslims.

Prayer alone, without meaningful action, has not brought about an end to the suffering of these peoples. In the last 58 years since the creation of Israel, the Muslim Jahan kept praying without doing anything substantial. They continue to fight among themselves about who are Muslims and who are non-Muslims(Shia, Sunni etc.).

Oil was discovered in the Arab world and they sold billions of dollars worth of oil. The western world paid the oil prices by the left hand and took the money back by the right hand by selling them useless military hardware with which the Arabs could wage war against each other, but which were not powerful enough to be used against US allies like Israel. A screw-driver that sells for 99 cents in New York City was sold for $9.99 to wealthy Arab countries. An Arab prince can gamble and waste away $10 million in a casino in Las Vegas, but till today there is not a single world class university of science and technology in the entire Arab world. The days are over when a few dozen warriors could win a country with horses and swords.

This is the age of technology. Using inflammatory hateful rhetoric and waging small terrorist battles will not lead to peace or Muslim power. The Arabs with their wealth could have built dozens of world class universities, hired top professors from the west, and met their professed enemies on more equal ground by developing and attaining economic and technological power. The world's intellectual field is dominated by people of Jewish background scientists, doctors, engineers and social scientists. A disproportionate number of them are Jews and that is not a crime, they earned it. Given the right kind of research facilities and money, they would have likely shared their knowledge with Arab academics. And, by this time, the Arab world could have thousands of scientists and engineers. Today's power, economic and technological, is based on wealth of knowledge and the proper government and societal environment.

Millions of Lebanese, Palestinians and other Arabs will perish and Friday munazat alone will not help much, unless Muslims prepare themselves with the right weapon which is scientific and technical knowledge.

Confront your enemies with knowledge.