Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Prefer News Over Views

It means that we should believe whatever has been told to us by our beloved Prophet (PBUH) over what we see. This is a refrain in Jama'at. And this is a difficult thing for us to digest. Particularly people with modern education will react with revulsion to any suggestion of this kind. This is a tragedy because a very effective dictum gets neutralized because of our reflex. One has to be very alert about any dictum because if the benefits are great the harms are equally devastating. So what about the present dictum (Believe the Khabar not the Nazar)? Khabar is news and nazar is vision. Well we have only one argument in favour of this dictum. That is the existence of optical illusions. Get an initial training about them here and then see many more here-we hope you can appreciate the latter after spending some time on the former. Here is one example. Look at the following picture.




The thin strip in the middle looks shaded. On the left side it looks light shade of gray while on the right it appears to be a darker shade of gray. This is because of the shading present in the background above and below this thin strip. In reality the thin strip is has a uniform shade of gray. Here is the same strip after the top and bottom environment has been removed.
We have left the left and right shades intact in editing. It is indeed uniform shade of gray. If you are still unconvinced then cover, on your screen, the background above and below the thin strip and again see for yourself.
This is called an optical illusion. This one one of hundreds designed. Clearly views can be tricky. In this game of science called optical illusions it is a mundane kind of thing.

So what to believe and what not to believe. There are two answers to it. As far as science of optical illusion is concerned it is a developing thing and one can just navigate as other are doing. Of course one has to be alert always about every step-whether it is in the right direction or not. In the rest of matters believers are very fortunate to have the News-that is the Qur'an and Sunnah. Believe that-not your vision. Prefer the news over the views.