Mistake of Generalisation

THE ART OFCLEAR THINKING positive themes as peace and humanity. Less than 1% of the verses of the Quran provide instructions for defence in case of open aggression by an opponent. In this context, asserting that a few verses represent the overall teachings of the Quran is entirely inaccurate and lacks scientific validity. This evil of making generalisations is very widespread in our society. Many people’s mentality is such that if there is someone they adore, they select some of his virtues and project them in a grossly exaggerated manner, using these few virtues to present a supposedly complete picture of the person. On the other hand, they ignore the virtues of someone they dislike, and, instead, search for and extract some of his faults. They express these faults in a very exaggerated fashion in order to create a misleading general impression about the person as a whole. Both these forms of generalisations are completely wrong. This method of forming an opinion about someone or something is not intellectually sound and is also unethical and unjust. In a society where many people engage in such generalisations, people will have wrong impressions of each other, impressions that have no basis in reality. I have experienced this sort of wrong generalisation in the course of the mission of inviting people to God. Some people, focusing on just one aspect of my writings, sought, on the basis of this, to create a misleading general impression about me and my views. Such a method, while not being academic, is also dishonest.