The Best News Ever
Al-Risala (English), September 1988, p. 14
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
The Best News Ever
1988 9 September 14-15 The Best News Ever (639) The human desire to communicate has always been strong, but in modern times, it has been imbued with an increasing sense of urgency that the old-fashioned letter or post card no longer satisfies it, and a whole array of ‘high-tech’ devices – telephone, telex, TV, fax, etc. – have had to be brought into existence in order to expand and accelerate communications, A kind of vicious circle has now been set up in which the more such gadgetry proliferates, the more we want to communicate, and the more we have to invent new and faster means of communication. No one seems very much concerned about the content or quality of the messages conveyed. It is enough to have a shiny new telephone at one’s elbow to feel inspired to ring up our friends – even if we have nothing very much to tell them.
Even if no means of communication are at hand, the urge to communicate is so strong, that people will walk miles just to convey a good, intriguing or disastrous piece of news. For example, I came home one day, after being out for the whole day, and was told that a friend had come not once but several times to see me. Just as I was wondering what the matter could be, there he was on the door-step again. “Your phone was dead,” he announced by way of explanation, “so I just had to come over to tell you the glad news. I’ve been promoted, to a higher scale and it means a difference of two hundred rupees a month to me.”
It is natural for friends to share their sense of jubilation over normal human satisfactions such as a step up in-life, the birth of a son, the acquisition of a new house or car, or a happy betrothal, etc. But what has happened to the keen desire, which the true believers of former times used to have, to convey the divine message of truth? What has happened to the urge to communicate the realities of the life of trial in this world, and the consequent rewards and punishments of the afterlife? The early Muslims used to be as eager to pass on the revelations that God had made to His Prophet as people are nowadays to trumpet their acquisition of purely material things like land, gold and other property.
In the early days of Islam, believers and those who were still in quest of the truth would travel long distances to hear the sayings of the Prophet, either directly from him, or from his Companions. They were then happy to travel many more miles to convey them to others. They had none of the means of communication – except for the letter – which we have at our command nowadays, but their burning desire to convey God’s message caused them to brave all hazards in reaching out to the uninitiated. In fact, they considered that their most important task in life was to make others aware of the eternal world which awaits all mankind.
If one knows that a volcano is about to erupt, or a tidal wave is about to inundate a whole coastal plain, one drops everything and sends out the news of impending disaster by the fastest means possible. Individuals will promptly convey the news by telephone, while government agencies will broadcast the news by radio and TV. It is regrettable that nowadays there is no parallel sense of urgency in spreading the news of an event which is much more apocalyptic in dimension – the coming of man before his Lord to be judged. Not only do present-day Muslims make no effort to spread the word of God on the subject of this awesome occasion, but they seem even to have forgotten that there will be such an event as the Last Day of Judgement.
