Teachers keep telling their pupils that there is no such thing as a bad question. Which is understandable considering their desire to eliminate in their charges any inhibitions about raising questions, should they find it difficult to understand something. Besides, an intelligent man learns by virtue of any question– even if it is the realization of what was wrong with his question in the first place. The flip side of all this encouragement is that many individuals struggle to realize the fact, long after the school years have ended, that questions are reflective of an individual’s intellect like few other things can ever be.
While asking almost any question is fine; what is problematic is getting stuck on it by refusing to understand how it could be flawed. A major reason why Muslims are generally in such a shabby state around the globe can be traced back to this failing on their part. By not recognizing faulty questions for what they are, they deprive themselves of much of the wisdom that the Quran has to offer. But there is much more to it than that.
For when somebody asks such questions of them, they either find themselves completely at a loss to answer, or respond foolishly, causing them to plunge further into doubts about their own beliefs. If the questioner happens to have an antagonistic mindset, he gets the satisfaction of having stumped the Muslim. If, on the other hand, he happens to have sincerely asked the question, the response he gets does him no good whatsoever. It can be shown that most of the questions/reservations on religion that keep doing the rounds can be classified as faulty, useless, irrelevant or outright silly. In what follows, let me briefly take up, one by one, each of these categories.
By faulty questions I mean those based on incorrect premises. For example, you would have doubtless heard this: ‘It makes no sense that a Muslim, even if he is a bad person, is worthier in Islam than a non-Muslim who is much better than him in his conduct and dealings.’ The person who voices this ‘observation’ typically looks at you with a triumphant air as if it is the cleverest thing that anybody has ever said. The answer to it, of course, is that nowhere does the Quran say anything remotely resembling the premise of the argument. The moral of this story, then, is that it is always a good idea to fact check the foundations of a question/objection before getting excited about how clever it is or (if somebody else has asked it) setting forth to passionately answer it.
The second category (useless questions) comprises those questions that cannot possibly be answered. For example: ‘How does a Transcendental God deal with a world firmly constrained in the space-time framework?’ ‘What is the mechanism by which God’s foreknowledge of everything is compatible with man’s free will?’ ‘What is God’s essence?’ ‘What was God doing before He created the universe?’ ‘What-dimensional world will be the afterlife?’
Which brings us to our last category: the outright silly question. Examples could be multiplied, indefinitely, but one would suffice. A ‘scholar’ on a religious TV program ‘raised’ this question: ‘Which animal will be the first to enter Paradise?’ Since none of the other panellists was up to the task of answering it, he was considerate enough to solve the riddle himself: ‘The dog of the Sleepers of the Cave.’ Then, to prevent any untoward thoughts on the part of the audience, he hastily added, ‘in human form.’ In fairness, questions of this class invariably have great entertainment value, which cannot be said of the other categories.
All such questions stem from man’s failure to recognize the limits of his knowledge. Just as a human foetus cannot possibly visualize before its birth the world that is awaiting it, there is no reason why man should be able to wrap his head around worlds that are completely beyond his experiences of the present life. But the inability to understand this makes him ask these questions. The long history of mystic streaks in all religions owes its existence to the speculation (read fairy tales) springing from the various efforts to answer these questions. These questions, useless that they are, can thus be extremely dangerous as well.
Irrelevant questions are those that (even if they could be answered) have nothing whatever to do with the questioner’s behaviour as it ought to be. For example, ‘Will Mother Teresa go to Paradise?’ Firstly, only God can answer it, so it is rather foolish to ask it of a fellow human being. Secondly, the answer to this question has zero bearing on the questioner’s own conduct. One such question was answered best by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan when a telephone caller in a live Q&A session asked him if it was permissible for Sania Mirza to wear a skirt while playing tennis
The Maulana told him that he would have gladly addressed the question had Sania Mirza ask it. But since she had not, the caller should mind his own business. Minding one’s own business, unfortunately, is easier said than done for folks who consider their own conduct so beyond debate that it is only the faults of others that ever interest them. If there is one hallmark of today’s Muslim, it is the perpetual concern for the others’ afterlife and for his own welfare in the present one.
Which brings us to our last category: the outright silly question. Examples could be multiplied, indefinitely, but one would suffice. A ‘scholar’ on a religious TV program ‘raised’ this question: ‘Which animal will be the first to enter Paradise?’ Since none of the other panellists was up to the task of answering it, he was considerate enough to solve the riddle himself: ‘The dog of the Sleepers of the Cave.’ Then, to prevent any untoward thoughts on the part of the audience, he hastily added, ‘in human form.’ In fairness, questions of this class invariably have great entertainment value, which cannot be said of the other categories.
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