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.
Great scholars deserve respect, but respect does not mean infallibility. The four Imams themselves differed with one another, corrected opinions and taught students to follow evidence. The real problem is not saying that a scholar can be mistaken. It is dismissing serious scholarship casually without understanding the evidence, method or context.
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.
Losing Wisdom in Modern Life
The classical discussion of bidah does not mean every object or activity that did not exist in the Prophet’s time is forbidden. Scholars distinguish religious innovations from ordinary worldly tools and customs. A microphone, university, car or mobile phone is not automatically an act of worship simply because Muslims use it.
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.
The meaningful debate is therefore not “old versus modern”. It is how the Quran, Sunnah, legal principles and inherited scholarship apply to new circumstances. That requires evidence, humility and method, not slogans from either side.
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.
The Prophet ﷺ combined mercy with clarity. He could correct firmly when necessary, but he did not make humiliation the normal method of teaching. Following the Sunnah therefore includes both accuracy and character.
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.
The Quran links remembrance of ALLAH with tranquillity of the heart. That does not mean every argumentative Muslim simply lacks dhikr. Online conflict can also come from ego, poor communication, tribalism, misinformation and the incentives of social media.
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.
What the Hadith Actually Says About Imam Mahdi
Authentic and accepted hadith describe Imam Mahdi as a man from the Prophet’s family who will appear near the end of time and establish justice after widespread oppression. Sunan Abi Dawud 4282 describes him filling the earth with equity and justice after it had been filled with oppression and tyranny.
Those reports do not tell us that reduced dhikr, fewer selawat gatherings, social media arguments or legalistic religious practice directly trigger his arrival. These may be useful subjects for self criticism, but they should not be presented as prophecy.
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
Rather than trying to decode every modern problem as a sign of Imam Mahdi, Muslims can work on what revelation already makes clear: sincerity, justice, knowledge, remembrance, humility and good character.
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