Fortunes Already Decided

He sat back in his comfortable chair and started his speech by telling the following story. He said, “Nomads used to come to the cities to sell their wool, cattle, dried milk, and other commodities, such as rice and barley and carry them on their camel’s backs to the desert.”
One day a Bedouin came to the city and sold the goods that he had brought and bought his needs. He stayed the night and decided to leave the next morning. He then put what he had bought on one side of the camel’s saddlebag and to balance the weight he put a load of sand on the other side.
Before he left, he met a man from the city who asked him why he put all this load on the back of the camel and he explained he did it every time and how he wanted to balance the weight on the camel’s back so as to make it stable by putting a bag of sand on the other side.
The man said to him what he had done was not correct and advised him to get rid of the sand and transfer some goods he had purchased to the other side of the camel to make the weight equal on the back of the poor camel.
The Bedouin in response praised his intelligence. After he finished transferring the load equally on either side of the camel’s back the bedouin asked the man about his work.
He said he was unemployed and he could hardly earn his food. He asked him: How can you be unemployed although you are so intelligent? Have you got an idea about the amount of my wealth? The man shook his head in denial. The Bedouin said: “I own a number of camels despite the fact that I am ignorant compared to you. Since you are living in these miserable conditions and you are so intelligent, I am satisfied with my conditions and you helped me to distribute the goods on either side to balance the weight on the back of the camel and get rid of the sand which I was doing over the years.”
I am not concerned here with the truth of this  story, which is close to the fable than anything else, but I am more concerned about its impact on the minds of those who were listening to that preacher. They are mostly naïve and young adolescents who do not usually dare to question the speaker or argue.  If they did like Khalid Sultan when he was in the presence of Abdurrahman, they would be chided.
What the speaker has concluded, in a certain language, is that reason, intelligence and proper thinking are meaningless in life. Everyone’s fortune has been already decided. It is nonsense to think and seek solutions for the troubles we suffer from. A poor man should be submissive and satisfied with his share of life. A rich man should only keep on thanking God. 
Most of the television channels are open for such type of hype from preachers who usually deliver their speeches while tens of microphones are placed in front of them. They are always received on red carpets and sit on velvet chairs. Young people are pushed to listen to them.
They have hours and hours of radio and television broadcasting that destroys the minds of the young and destroys their ability to think. Negative effect of such low level stories on the minds of the young cannot be imagined. Sadly, this is the favorite kind of voice for Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.

 

SOURCE : ARABTIMES

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