The allotment of 224.02 acre of land for establishment of Aligarh Muslim University Centre at Kishanganj, Bihar, following such AMU Centres at Malappuram in Kerala and Murshidabad in West Bengal, has once again brought the importance of education to the fore. Such measures to ensure state-of-the-art quality education with world class facilities are welcome. For it is education that can yield solution to educational as well as economic backwardness of Muslims and other marginalised sections of society.
Education makes man man in the real sense. But the question is whether it happens so in our fast developing, so-called civilized society and that too in the Age of Information. A cursory glance on the society we live in gives us a very alarming picture. Look at the crime graph and you will find that the criminal acts, including scandals, murders and rapes are perpetrated more by the members of the elite society who happen to be well educated than by the poor illiterate. This is grim scenario indeed. Then, where does the rot lie? Is it that the wheels of education be brought to a dead stop – to contain crimes? Or, to put it in rather blunt words, is it education that breeds crimes? You will say absolutely not. Why? Because education is the time-tested, universally-acknowledged medium of development and advancement, civility and humanness.
Turn the pages of Islamic history to find that the very first word revealed to Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) was Iqra (Read!). This one single word laid the foundation of a revolution in the Arabian peninsula, the kind of which is not found in human history. This word taught the Bedouin, the illiterate people of the desert to behave, to live like human beings, in society and the battlefield, in bazaars and places of worship, and everywhere else. It taught those who used to bury alive their daughters to respect them, to rear them and teach them the best of manners without any gender distinction. It taught them to do justice to everyone no matter how high or how low, how close or how unknown the person concerned is. It also taught them to have a full realisation of limitations of man however educated and wealthy, and infinity of the Lord of the Universe. It was this comprehensive education that caused a bloodless revolution. But today we have advanced gadgets of learning, we do researches almost in every part of the world but the matter of concern is that this modern education has failed to make us man. It is high time we realised the need to mould the very education system on the anvil of ethics and morality that Islam has taught.