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When Knowledge Turns Into Arrogance
Sometimes I wonder, are we truly knowledgeable enough to call another scholar wrong?
Just scroll through social media and you will see people confidently claiming that even the four great Imams made mistakes. In this age, everyone with a few quotes and an audience feels qualified to correct centuries of scholarship.
Strangely, no one says Albert Einstein was wrong or that his theories are invalid, but a contemporary Muslim will dismiss the words of the most learned minds of Islam as outdated or “not authentic enough.”
Yes, the Quran and Sunnah are the foundations of faith, no doubt about that. But what happened to humility What happened to the idea that knowledge without wisdom breeds arrogance The great Imams built their opinions on depth, context, and mercy. Today, some quote a single hadith and declare entire traditions invalid, as if Islam began and ended with their YouTube video.
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Some even argue that doing anything not mentioned directly by the Prophet ﷺ is innovation, yet these same people go to malls, work in offices, use social media, travel overseas for vacation, and sit beside non-mahram colleagues on public transport or in offices.
The Prophet ﷺ once said, “The most beloved places to Allah are the mosques, and the most hated places are the markets.” (Muslim 671). Yet no one claims that visiting a market, or by today’s standard, a mall, is haram.
If everything not explicitly done in the Prophet’s time was forbidden, there would be no schools, no microphones, no cars, no universities, and no hospitals. Allah gave us intellect and circumstance. Both are part of His plan. The problem is not that we use the Quran and Sunnah. It is that we sometimes use them without understanding the wisdom behind them.
Faith was never meant to make life smaller. It was meant to make hearts larger to find Allah in every action, whether in the mosque or the marketplace.
The Religion of Rules
We have become really good at the technical parts of religion.
We can quote rulings, compare opinions, and debate how long the beard should be, which finger to raise, or how exactly to fold our hands in prayer. Mashallah, we are detailed.
But ask someone, “Which madhab guides your daily life” or “How do you love someone who prays differently from you,” and the silence becomes heavy.
It is like following Google Maps perfectly to reach a destination but forgetting to look up and enjoy the scenery along the way. You arrive but you do not remember the journey.
Discipline matters, of course. But when faith turns into a checklist, we start obeying Allah out of habit, not love. And that is when religion becomes a routine, not a relationship.
The Same Story Just Replayed
The Quran keeps reminding us about nations before us who knew their scriptures inside out yet still lost their way.
They memorised, debated, and preached, but somewhere along the line, their knowledge stopped shaping their hearts. They fell, not because they were ignorant, but because they were proud.
It sounds uncomfortably familiar.
We say, “At least we are following the Sunnah.”
But the Prophet ﷺ did not come just to teach procedures. He came to teach presence — mercy in action, patience in disagreement, balance in worship.
You cannot claim to follow him if you sound nothing like him.
He never mocked, never humiliated, never dismissed. He met people where they were and lifted them gently.
If our understanding of Sunnah makes us hard while his made him kind, maybe the problem is not with the Sunnah, it is with how we carry it.
When Dhikr Gets Replaced with Debate
I grew up hearing dhikr after Maghrib, selawat after prayers, and stories of people who wept in remembrance.
Now it feels rare.
Many gatherings that used to bring people closer to Allah are brushed off as “not necessary.” We trade circles of remembrance for circles of argument.
Less dhikr means less peace. And when peace fades, anger grows.
Ever wonder why people argue online about Islam like they are in a boxing match. It is the sound of hearts that forgot how to sit still.
The Trap of Being Right
Here is the dangerous part.
We are so busy proving who is right that we stopped asking, do I have that knowledge? Or I understood through a scholar or friend?
We wanted to protect Islam from distortion, a noble cause, but in the process, some of us became the very thing we feared, arrogant about truth.
The Prophet ﷺ was exact in his worship, yes. But his precision came with compassion.
Truth without mercy is like a sharp knife with no handle. You may hold it firmly, but someone is going to get cut.
When The Faith Loses Its Soul
Maybe Imam Mahdi’s appearance is not just a rescue mission.
Maybe it is a reset, a divine correction when the Ummah’s outer shell looks perfect but the inside has gone quiet.
Before a person loses wisdom, they lose wonder.
Before a community stops practising with heart, it stops feeling awe in remembrance. That is how the soul slips away, not in one night, but in quiet habits of neglect.
When dhikr fades, hearts grow noisy.
When selawat fades, love grows cold.
When gatherings fade, the world grows divided.
That is when the dominoes fall, one after another, quietly but completely.
What used to be a faith of belonging becomes a faith of performance.
And when that performance finally collapses, the Mahdi arrives.
Not to start a new show, but to restore sincerity.
He will bring people back to the simplest, softest acts that carried the soul of Islam, remembering Allah together, sending selawat upon the Prophet ﷺ, and sitting as one Ummah instead of many tribes.
Before Waiting Try Listening
I sometimes wonder if we are all waiting for him to fix what we could have started fixing already.
Do we make time for dhikr that heals the heart, or only debates that feed the ego
Do we still say selawat when no one is watching
Do we treat religion as something to live, or something to win
Maybe the decay of Islamic values before Imam Mahdi does not begin in headlines or politics. Maybe it begins in quiet hearts that stopped remembering softly.
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