Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

“Why did you take physics?”

“Why haven’t you travelled Europe?”

“Why do you save so much money?”

“Why do you make things complicated?”

The purpose of life?

These sorts of questions are quite normal, I suppose. A lot of people are asked such questions and the answer will depend on the person who is doing the answering. The ‘why’ question usually inquires as to the reason of an action or incident, and the answer will be as we would expect it to be. And yet, I find it odd that reasoning aren’t always consistent, and in some cases, are so compartmentalized that it would simply seem rather odd to the ardent observer.

Allow me to elaborate, but in a Malaysian context, just to be concrete. Consider a simple question, one which I have been asked a lot of times before, “Why do you take Physics? The job prospect is not good for such a degree”. Now, the questioner presupposes something in asking that question; that the purpose of a degree is to get a job. Indeed, I haven’t heard people asking medics or engineers similar questions - everyone seem to implicitly agree that the career path that one will be taking will be in some respect within a certain range from his/her course in the university. This is not unreasonable, I agree. It is valid to assume that a student studying medicine will go to become a doctor in the future and an engineering student to become an engineer. But since there is no logical formal proof for this, this type of reasoning can only occur on a more empirical basis, which, in this case, is highly susceptible to social conditions. That is technical and I will not elaborate more, but what I am interested in is the underlying assumption of such a question.

If we assume that the primary purpose of getting a (good) degree is to get a good job, then one might extend this reasoning to include the whole of the education system, since it can be argued, though with some substantial exceptions, that the education system that exists in our country nowadays culminates in a tertiary education. If that is indeed the case, then there is a troubling issue at hand; that there is a probability that we value the job that a person will take more than that person’s personal development. Of course I am not suggesting that it is mutually exclusive; a good education should include everything, but the way that people seem to view it nowadays is that a degree that has no job market is rather useless. If that is the case, then one might extend it to say that in principle, then, the way we organize society is through markets. This might be a bit stretched, I agree, but if this is true, then what will happen when the market simply fail? If no one is willing to take up history because there is no market for historians in Malaysia, would it be okay for us if other people are writing our history? Or that we are so ignorant of our own history that we cannot preserve our own culture? Would that be an acceptable circumstance? Of course, there will always be people who will study these “undesirables” and they won’t die away, but I am troubled by this sort of mentality. Let me explain why.

Education. Picture by the British Council

To me, the primary purpose of education is to get educated, not to get a job. Educated does not necessarily mean that one have a degree in one’s hands, though that might be part of it. Education includes much more than that, and that morality is one of them is my belief. It is also my belief that education should serve a larger purpose, by which I mean the reason of something to be created, and that purpose should be one’s purpose of life. If the primary purpose of education is to get a good job, then it has to be extended to include one’s purpose in life, and that depends on what one believes in. As a Muslim, we have standard texts and sound bites to answer such questions and I will not elaborate it here. But the problem comes when we try to fit in all our inconsistencies into this larger framework.

For example, if the primary purpose of education is to get a good job, then one might argue that with a good job, one will be able to afford to help people in need, which is what God commands us to do. The problem then comes when one suddenly realizes that in the mosque, one will not even let more than RM5 out of one’s pocket even though the only time that one goes to the mosque are during the Jumaah prayers. And when one looks at one’s balance sheet, the amount of charity that has been done is slightly more than that of the minimum level. The remainder of one’s wealth is spent on other, unnecessary things. Since these accounts are inconsistent, an observer can only be skeptical as to the validity of the original reasoning, as there is no supporting evidence apart from rhetoric. So then, the entire framework is called into question, as the matter is not fully compatible with each other. Either one isn’t following one’s purpose of life properly, or that the reasoning for the “good job” argument is faulty. Either way it will reflect badly on oneself.

Employment

Of course, everyone does these things, so why should I be writing about this? Quite simply, as a reminder. It is interesting how people don’t think through everything that they are doing, and that includes me. I find it interesting, for example, as to how lax I can be with my expenses while part of my money is the right (haq) of another person. And yet I do that all the time. This brings me to my second point, does it make it okay if you simply just acknowledge the problem and do nothing about it? The obvious answer is no, and yet, we see humans do this all the time. Of course, one needs to acknowledge a problem before fixing it, but in a lot of instances, including those in which this writer is involved in, that is the extent to which we are willing to go. I have heard stories of how a person acknowledges to be a bad Muslim for drinking, and yet he still drinks. A response to that might be that change needs time, and that is a fair response. The problem is, who is judging?

Then, everything falls on the person who is doing the wrong. I think this captures part of the meaning of muhasabah, but I might be mistaken.

Wallahua’lam