IGNORANCE LEADS TO ARROGANCE BY ASIF SULTAN MATTA.

Ignorance leads to Arrogance

                        By Asif Sultan Matta

Arrogance is the feeling of overbearing pride evidenced by a ‘superior’ manner toward ‘inferiors’. Most of the people have the fallacy that knowledge leads to pride and arrogance, but this is not true. The true knowledge is that which makes you humble and soft towards others. The true knowledge makes you recognize that the only superior being is the Almighty Allah, and then the whole of humanity are equal to each other. The real source of knowledge, the Quran has been revealed for the purpose of humbleness, justice and magnanimity and abstinence from the feelings of haughtiness, disdain and abrasiveness. As this fact has been elucidated by the last Prophet of Islam, Mohammed (peace be upon him), by saying, “Verily, Allah has revealed to me that you should adopt humility. So that no one may wrong another and no one may be disdainful and arrogant towards another”. (Narrated in Sahih Muslim).
So, the above mentioned hadith states that the purpose of revelation is to maintain humbleness and softness and not to be arrogant and swaggering.
Allah, the most high, says in Quran, “Do not turn your face away from people in contempt, nor go about in the land exulting overmuch; surely Allah does not love any arrogant boaster.  (Surah Luqman, Surah 31: Ayah 18). In this verse of Quran we are exhorted to be humble and mild with each other, not to be scornful towards others. Arrogants are the ones whom Allah dislikes.
The knowledge teaches us to be humble and tenderhearted towards others. Allah considers the most God-fearing people are those who are much knowledgeable. It means we can say knowledge breeds humbleness and ignorance leads to arrogance.
But, you might be confused by seeing so-called educated persons are much arrogant and disdainful, who just sham their knowledge, who don’t even want to talk to common people face-to-face. When such educated persons have to talk, they talk haughtily. Such behaviour of the so-called educated persons defaced the holiness of the knowledge and real education.
If we mull this situation over, we will come to know that these are the consequences of perverted and corrupted education by the whims and wrong desires which is devoid of sincerity towards God, the creator. These types of educated persons are worthy to be called as “IGNORANT EDUCATED”, who are ignorant of God and even they are nescient of themselves. Which Ignorance would be worse than to be Ignorant of Allah, the Creator, the Lord of the universe? They are ignorant of even what they are, though they feign to be superior. They don’t know that the only superior being is Allah. They are not concerned about that they will be buried alone one day under this earth on what they are walking with conceit and arrogance. They are ignorant to be resurrected on the Day of Judgment before Allah; still they are called educated, so pathetic and hapless! This depraved ignorance leads to arrogance. We must take it into consideration while making decisions in our day-today lives.
Arrogance is a curse, which leads to destruction and hell fire. As Prophet (pbuh) says in a hadith, “He who has, in his heart, an ant’s weight of arrogance will not enter Paradise.” - (Sahih Muslim).
In another hadith, mentioned in Sahih Bukhari, Prophet (pbuh) says, “Shall I not inform you about the inmates of Hell? It is every violent, impertinent and proud”. (Bukhari and Muslim).
May Allah show us good in order to follow it, and show us wrong in order to desist from it. Aameen…

                            Asif Sultan Matta  is a teacher at iis (international Islamic school) Peerbagh Kashmir.