Beware: The Way Religion Is Taught Today Is Backwards

islamdanquran

4/3/20244 min read

The Prophet Muhammad received the first revelation in the Cave of Hira around 610 CE. From then on, he began carrying out his main duty as a prophet: telling the people of that era about the true God, Allah. That period is known as the age of ignorance (jahiliyah), when people worshipped idols. So naturally, the first thing the Prophet did was explain and introduce Allah to them. He could not possibly have ordered them to pray right away. They were not children but leaders of the Arabs, and there must have been many rounds of questions and answers between the Prophet and people who wanted to learn about Allah. This was only natural, because people in the age of ignorance no longer understood the true meaning of Allah, and even worshipped idols. Only after about 11 years of preaching and introducing Allah did the command to pray come down, around 621 CE. This means the Prophet Muhammad spent more than 11 years introducing Allah to the people before they were commanded to worship Him, that is, to pray. This learning process is what is known as the Prophet teaching tawhid.

This is the very order of religious education that has been reversed in our time. From childhood, those of us born into Muslim families are first taught the prayer recitations and movements, and only later, as adults, should we receive knowledge of tawhid, the knowledge of knowing Allah, since as children we were not yet ready to receive it.

This is what is meant by "backwards": the learning process runs in the opposite direction. In the Prophet's time, people were first introduced to the One they would worship, and only then were told to worship. Today, we are told to worship as children, and only as adults are we introduced to who it is we worship.

This reversed process has both a good side and a dangerous side. The good side is that from childhood we become accustomed and trained to pray at all five prayer times. But BE CAREFUL, because there is a danger too. If we or our parents forget to include the teaching of tawhid, or the knowledge of haqiqah, once we reach the age of maturity (baligh), then even into old age our prayer consists only of recitations and movements, while our knowledge of the One we worship goes no further than knowing the name Allah.

Another great challenge in our current religious education is how hard it is to bring this knowledge of tawhid, or haqiqah, to our teenage generation. Once they reach the age of reason and maturity, they are already dazzled by worldly knowledge and technology. They become reluctant to study religion, and some even consider it old-fashioned. Even more dangerous, many assume that the religious knowledge they practice now is already enough (this is the most common case today, and the most dangerous). They do not realize that they only know the outer part, the sharia part, while the haqiqah part of religious knowledge is still missing. This is shown by how many people today believe that the knowledge of haqiqah is unimportant, and most of them hold a negative view of it and are afraid to study it. As a result, most Muslims today pray with nothing but recitations and movements. May Allah protect us from this (na'udzubillah min dzalik)...

Worse still, many people today even accuse the knowledge of haqiqah of being deviant, which pushes the community even further from the knowledge of tawhid. In this matter, we cannot blame those who make such accusations 100%, because in reality there are indeed many deviant forms of haqiqah teaching. And since tawhid is also part of the knowledge of haqiqah, most people also refuse to study tawhid. That is why very few people today have any knowledge of tawhid. They think that knowing Allah is One and that He created the heavens and the earth means they already have the knowledge of tawhid. In fact, in the study of tawhid we learn in more detail about the true nature of Allah, just as our Prophet taught the earlier community, so that we can worship precisely the One named Allah, not merely the name Allah. So "knowing Allah" here does not mean being able to see Allah in some particular form. Not at all. It means studying and truly understanding everything about the nature of Allah, so that we do not worship wrongly or carelessly.

In fact, learning to know Allah is done in exactly the same way the Prophet Muhammad introduced Allah to the earlier community: by using the verses of the Quran, the same verses the Prophet used to introduce Allah.

If you do not yet know that religious knowledge in Islam consists of two groups, sharia and haqiqah, or what the knowledge of haqiqah is, please read the related articles on this website.

Click and read the related articles below:

What is the knowledge of haqiqah?
There are two kinds of religious knowledge
About us
Where can I study the knowledge of haqiqah?
Sample photos of tawhid study sessions
Are there people today who truly receive guidance from Allah?

Note:
We do not teach tawhid through the internet. All the religious articles on this website exist only to demonstrate and remind people how important knowledge of tawhid is. Learning tawhid is like attending any ordinary religious study session, such as at a prayer room (musholla) or a majelis taklim.

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