Page 74 - Quick Grasp of Faith 2

ders one from profound thinking.
Besides this, if a person does not have sufficient knowl-
edge about a subject, the results of his thinking can only go
so far. However, this need not represent a permanent obsta-
cle to profound thinking. So long as one knows where to
look and how one should go about it, one can always en-
hance one's knowledge if necessary.
Certainly one of the most significant barriers to proper
thinking is over-familiarity with things and looking at
things from a fixed perspective. A person who has con-
stantly seen certain things happening since the day he was
born will regard all these events as nothing unusual if he
does not reflect on them thoroughly. Since he is used to see-
ing them everyday, he will be unable to appreciate the ex-
ceptional signs of creation in living things. He will not think
about the ant, for instance, who easily carries 200-300 times
its own weight for many metres, which means that he will
never reflect on who has given the ant this physical mecha-
nism which enables it to perform such hard work. By the
same token, it will never dawn on him even for a single in-
stant, that he could never achieve a comparable feat of
strength. Another example might be the fine details in the
structure of a bird's wing. He does not realise that the wing
mechanism of the bird is an eminently unique work of cre-
ation. On the other hand, a person who is capable of think-
ing deeply can arrive at far reaching conclusions by taking
up and examining even a single feather. He may even dis-
cover many significant new details ranging from the order
in the feather, to the structure of the material that the feather
is made of. His examination of this single feather can reveal
to him the evidence of Allah's creation.

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