Page 29 - Deep Thinking

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here are many factors that hinder people from thinking. They
may detain a person from thinking and seeing the truth. In this
respect, it is necessary that everyone identify the factors that
affect them negatively, and rid themselves of these, otherwise,
one cannot see the real face of the life of this world, and that might bring
great loss in the Hereafter.
In the Qur'an, Allah tells us the situation of those people who are
accustomed to think superficially:
They know an outward aspect of the life of this world but are
heedless of the Hereafter. Have they not reflected within them-
selves? Allah did not create the heavens and the earth and
everything between them except with truth and for a fixed
term. Yet many people reject the meeting with their Lord.
(Surat ar-Rum: 7-8)

Following the Majority Causes Mental Numbness
One of the issues that mislead people most is their belief that what
the "majority" does is right. Man is usually inclined to accept what he is
taught by the people around him, rather than finding the truth by thinking
for himself. He sees that things that seem odd to him at first sight are most
of the time considered ordinary by people, and after a while, he too begins
to become accustomed to them.
For instance, if the majority of the people in a person’s social circle
do not acknowledge that they will die one day, if they avoid talking about
death, then the person looks around him and says, "Since everybody is like
that, there must be nothing wrong with my behaving the same way" and
begins to live without remembering death at all. If, however, the people
around him had acted with fear of Allah and struggled with due diligence
for the Hereafter, most probably this person too would have changed his
attitude.
As another example, hundreds of news items of disasters, unfairness,
injustice, oppression, suicide, homicide, theft and swindle are covered in
the media, and thousands of needy people are mentioned everyday. Yet