Today, if we want to uplift our nation and the wider Islamic world through education, we need to raise minds that investigate, that seek truth with an inexhaustible curiosity, and that think and question in order to distinguish gold from copper. To achieve this, our Minister of National Education must first identify and appoint leader-bureaucrats who understand decision-making techniques—people who think, produce, and question.
“We Muslims, as students of the Qur’an, follow proof; we enter the truths of faith with our reason, intellect, and heart. We do not abandon evidence in order to imitate clergy, as some individuals in other religions do. Therefore, in a future where reason, knowledge, and science prevail, the Qur’an—relying on rational proof and grounding its rulings in reason—will prevail.”
(Hutbe-i Şâmiye)
To abandon evidence by imitating clergy—or those who imitate clergy by following certain seemingly extraordinary figures—can never be reconciled with the realities of reason, thought, knowledge, and science.
In the Qur’an, commands and recommendations frequently repeated—such as “Afalā Ya‘qilūn” and “Afalā Yatafakkarūn”—emphasize the importance of using one’s intellect and thinking. The Qur’an contains approximately seventy-five verses related to reason, and in one hundred and thirty-seven places it invites people to reflect and think.
Even though these truths are explained openly and clearly in the Qur’an, why do Muslims choose to imitate others instead of using their intellect and thinking? In our view, the most important reason is this:
“Eighty percent of humankind are not people of investigation who can penetrate reality and recognize truth as truth. Rather, based on outward appearance and good opinion, they accept by imitation the matters they hear from accepted and trusted people. They may see a strong truth as weak in the hands of a weak person; and if they see a worthless matter in the hands of a valuable person, they consider it valuable.”
(Sikke-i Tasdiki Gaybi, p. 203)
In other words, most people are not naturally inclined toward investigation, questioning, and research. Since it cannot be expected that everyone will be an inquirer, people tend to imitate those around them.
In light of this, the most important change we should make in our education system from now on is to teach our children and youth how to think, how to question, and how to follow evidence—proof—rather than blind imitation. Thinking can be triggered by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and by many other striking prompts that make a person pause and reflect.
Asking questions, researching, looking around with curiosity and wonder, and striving to seek truth based on evidence are among the only remedies that can save younger generations from unquestioning imitation.
People who do not think, question, or investigate are vulnerable to every kind of danger. Malicious individuals, groups, and terrorist organizations never want a person who thinks and questions. What they need are imitative people who accept what they are told without objection.
Such imitative people become like filler material—statistical humans who merely fill gaps. Being reduced to numbers in statistics, they are personality types that every harmful structure depends on. From among those who believe in their leader, patron, “elder brother,” or sheikh without question—those who say, “Command me and I will do it”—it is not difficult to cultivate machines of crime and living suicide bombers.
Today, if we want to uplift our nation and the Islamic world through education, we need minds that investigate, that seek truth with inexhaustible curiosity, and that think and question to distinguish gold from
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