The Fig, the Olive and the Peaceful Land: Stories from Cananga Tree (3)

"A science teacher asked one of his students, 'What is the difference between electricity and lightning?'
'We don’t have to pay for lightning,' the student replied."

"Sixteenth-century French philosopher René Descartes famously coined the phrase ‘dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum’ (‘I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am’). Descartes went through a mental process of doubting the existence of all things to prove the existence of them. Through his process of doubt, Descartes proved his existence in the world. To doubt something is a potent mental ability because we can doubt—we exist! But when it used to the extreme, skepticism is unproductive and produces uncritical thought," Cananga went on.

"A. R. Codling suggests that University is a crucial place to exercise and develop an inquisitive mind. A university is a higher educational learning institution that is granted degree-giving powers by the government. The word ‘university’ is derived from the Latin phrase universitas magistorum et scholarium (which means a ‘community of teachers and scholars’). In Europe, HE was established in the sixth century in Christian cathedral schools, where monks and nuns taught classes. The first universities in Europe were the University of Bologna (Italy, 1088), the University of Paris (France, 1150), and the University of Oxford (England, 1167). In England, after disputes between students and residents of Oxford in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge and later founded the University of Cambridge (1209); thus, Oxbridge was established.
The Academic approach is named after the first university founded by Plato. The primary means of instruction was the lecture, a one-sided affair in which professors verbally delivered elements of their expert knowledge to an entirely passive audience.

In modern Arabic, 'madrasah' or 'madrasa' [derives from the triconsonantal Semitic root د-ر-س D-R-S 'to learn, study', using the morphological form or template مفعل(ة); mafʻal(ah), meaning 'a place where something is done'. Thus, madrasah literally means 'a place where learning and studying take place' or 'place of study'] generically denotes any educational institution from preschool to high school, so every secular elementary, middle, or high school in a place like Cairo would be called a madrasa. The noun 'madrasa' can therefore also mean a modern school, college, or academy where lessons and lectures on various subjects are addressed to students.
In the early history of the Islamic period, teaching was generally carried out in mosques rather than in separate specialized institutions. Mosques were more than a place of worship as they were also utilized as an area to host community transactions of business. It was the center of most of a city's social and cultural life. Along with this came trades of information and teachings. As the mosque was a starting ground for religious discourse in the Islamic world, these madrasas became more common.
Although some major early mosques like the Great Mosque of Damascus or the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Cairo had separate rooms that were devoted to teaching, this distinction between 'mosque' and 'madrasa' was not very present. Notably, the al-Qarawiyyin (Jāmiʻat al-Qarawīyīn), established in 859 in the city of Fes, present-day Morocco, is considered the oldest university in the world by some scholars, though the application of the term "university" to institutions of the medieval Muslim world is disputed. According to tradition, the al-Qarawiyyin mosque was founded by Faṭimah al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy merchant named Muḥammad al-Fihri. This was later followed by the Fatimid establishment of al-Azhar Mosque in 969–970 in Cairo, initially as a center to promote Isma'ili teachings, which later became a Sunni institution under Ayyubid rule (today's Al-Azhar University). By the 900s AD, the Madrasa is noted to have become a successful higher education system.

In the medieval Islamic world, an elementary school (for children or for those learning to read) was known as a 'kuttāb' or maktab, they appear to have been already widespread in the early Abbasid period (8th-9th centuries). Ibn Sina wrote that children should be sent to a maktab school from the age of 6 and be taught primary education until they reach the age of 14. During which time, he wrote, they should be taught the Qur'an, Islamic metaphysics, Arabic, literature, Islamic ethics, and manual skills (which could refer to a variety of practical skills).
Ibn Sīnā refers to the secondary education stage of maktab schooling as a period of specialisation when pupils should begin to acquire manual skills, regardless of their social status. He writes that children after the age of 14 should be allowed to choose and specialise in subjects they have an interest in, whether it was reading, manual skills, literature, preaching, medicine, geometry, trade and commerce, craftsmanship, or any other subject or profession they would be interested in pursuing for a future career.
The ijāzat al-tadrīs wa-al-iftāʼ ('licence to teach and issue legal opinions') in the medieval Islamic legal education system had its origins in the ninth century after the formation of the madhāhib (schools of jurisprudence). George Makdisi considers the ijāzah to be the origin of the European doctorate. The Arabic term ijāzat al-tadrīs was awarded to Islamic scholars who were qualified to teach. According to Makdisi, the Latin title licentia docendi, 'licence to teach', in the European university may have been a translation of Arabic, but the underlying concept was very different. A significant difference between the ijāzat al-tadrīs and the licentia docendi was that the former was awarded by the individual scholar-teacher, while the latter was awarded by the chief official of the university, who represented the collective faculty, rather than the individual scholar-teacher.

In different Muslim cultures, says Ebrahim Moosa, in villages and towns in South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America, young children attend religious instruction at madrasas in order to learn how to read the Qur’an in Arabic and receive basic instruction on matters of faith. They may attend on a daily basis or only on select days of the week. Some students might also devote time to the memorization of the Qur’an on a full-time or part-time basis parallel to their pursuit of secular education.
Taqi ‘Usmani, a prominent figure in Pakistan’s madrasa hierarchy and a former Shari'a court judge, suggests that the purpose of a madrasa is a noble one. Education, he declares, is 'to change people’s way of thinking,' and it cannot be reduced to merely a means of guaranteeing that graduates are gainfully employed. Few people disagree with him. One of the many noble goals of education is to strengthen one’s identity, internalize excellent human qualities,and realize one’s potential. 'These virtues,' says ‘Usmani, make 'each individual serve not only their own countries and communities but ... the whole of humanity.'

Madrasas were largely centred on the study of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). Figuratively, fiqh means knowledge about Islamic legal rulings from their sources. Fiqh is often described as the human understanding and practices of the sharia, that is human understanding of the divine Islamic law as revealed in the Quran and the Sunnah. Fiqh expands and develops Shariah through interpretation (ijtihad) of the Quran and Sunnah by Islamic jurists (ulama) and is implemented by the rulings (fatwa) of jurists on questions presented to them. Thus, whereas sharia is considered immutable and infallible by Muslims, fiqh is considered fallible and changeable.

Law, in general, is the cement of society, says Glanville Williams. Its study at university enables you to explore how and why this is so. A common misunderstanding is that the study of law involves little more than the rote learning of legal rules. Closer acquaintance will show that it is far more complex and challenging than that. Law is a popular profession and subject to study at university. It is a subject which both shapes and reflects societal rules, norms and values. Lawyers are said to be the ‘gatekeeper[s] to legal institutions’ and are required to have an ability to explain complex issues to clients succinctly (in both written and oral form), to problem solve and work well as a team. Codling says that a law degree is a great asset to have for any profession and a varied and interesting topic to study at university (its subjects ranging from legal history to criminal law or space law, and recently the topic of Law and Economics. Economics has mathematically precise theories (price theory and game theory) and empirically sound methods (statistics and econometrics) for analyzing the effects of the implicit prices that laws attach to behavior).

According to Cadling, it is important to think critically in the legal context. we exist because we can think. A thought is ‘everything that comes to mind, that 'goes through our heads'. At a basic level, we arrange or order our thoughts to protect us from danger (for example, knowing that fire is hot and will burn us) or to get what we need to survive (such as finding food and water). Some people imagine their thoughts are like clouds in the sky; some are heavy, some are light, some are threatening but they all keep moving and changing. Sometimes we bring our attention to our thoughts to quieten them (through the practices of mindfulness or meditation, for example). Other times, we want to use our thoughts to ‘figure out some situation, solve some problem, answer some questions, resolve some issue’. Your thinking controls every part of your life, but do you control your thinking?
The ‘critical’ part of thinking signifies an ‘evaluative component’. For some, thinking critically has a negative connotation: it requires a critique to be provided. However, thinking critically about law should be distinguished from providing a ‘critique’, which generally refers to disapproval. Rather, critical thought requires analysing positive and negative attributes (or weighing up the pros and cons) of something, and reasons as to why this is the case should also be provided. Critical thinking gives you the tools to use scepticism and doubt constructively so that you can analyse what is before you’. In other words, thinking critically is a constructive way to consider things at a deeper level by posing questions such as: Why? How? Where? And so what? Critical thinking requires concentration.

Is critical thinking about thinking like a ‘sophist’? ‘Sophistry’ is the use of clever but false arguments with the intent of deception. Like a game, the objective of sophistic thinking is to win. Sophistic thinkers should be distinguished from critical thinkers because the sophist uses low-level skills of rhetoric, or argumentation, by which they make unreasonable thinking look reasonable and reasonable thinking look unreasonable. This form of thinking is evident in the arguments of unethical lawyers and politicians who are more concerned with winning than with being fair and use emotionalism and trickery in an intellectually skilled way.
Is thinking critically about ‘independent’ thought? Whether thinking critically is a process of developing independent thought is an interesting question to consider. On the one hand, is that it is ‘an intellectually disciplined process of thought whereby you develop your own informed legal opinion or argument(s) on a particular issue’. Karl Popper states that ‘non-critical’ thinking is problematic because if we are uncritical, we shall always find what we want: we shall look from and find confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. Accordingly, non-critical thinking is daydreaming, non-directed, automatic thinking, rote recall of information, or the failure to consider evidence that might support a conclusion that you do not like.

Law is described as a ‘big’ (fundamental or essential) question because it defines the nature of law or a legal system. The question: what is ‘law’? has been contemplated by scholars and philosophers for centuries. The ‘laws’ of physics and mathematics differ distinctly from those governing the ‘law of nature’ (or natural law) or ‘social ordering’ (the societal system of institutions that regulate human behaviour).
H.L.A. Hart writes that few questions concerning human society have been asked with such persistence and answered by serious thinkers in so many diverse, strange, and even paradoxical ways as the question 'What is law?' Even if we confine our attention to the legal theory of the last 150 years and neglect classical and medieval speculation about the 'nature' of law, we shall find a situation not paralleled in any other subject systematically studied as a separate academic discipline. No vast literature is dedicated to answering the questions 'What is chemistry?' or 'What is medicine?', as it is to the question 'What is law?' A few lines on the opening page of an elementary textbook are all that the student of these sciences is asked to consider, and the answers he is given are of a very different kind from those tendered to the student of law. No one has thought it illuminating or important to insist that medicine is 'what doctors do about illnesses', or 'a prediction of what doctors will do', or to declare that what is ordinarily recognized as a characteristic, central part of chemistry, say the study of acids, is not really part of chemistry at all. Yet, in the case of law, things which at first sight look as strange as these have often been said, and not only said but urged with eloquence and passion, as if they were revelations of truths about law, long obscured by gross misrepresentations of its essential nature.
Hart added that it cannot seriously be disputed that the development of law, at all times and places, has in fact been profoundly influenced both by the conventional morality and ideals of particular social groups and also by forms of enlightened moral criticism urged by individuals, whose moral horizon has transcended the morality currently accepted. But it is possible to take this truth illicitly, as a warrant for a different proposition: namely that a legal system must exhibit some specific conformity with morality or justice, or must rest on a widely diffused conviction that there is a moral obligation to obey it.

Margaret Davies provides the following definition: 'Law regulates human behaviour, and the relationships between members of society. Beyond this, it may attempt to enshrine certain ideals, such as equality, freedom, and justice.'
Jurisprudence is basically ‘the theoretical or philosophical study of law’. As a lawyer, you should study jurisprudence as a simple matter of intellectual self-respect, James E. Penner and Emmanuel Melissaris write. The phrase is used interchangeably with other terms such as ‘legal philosophy’ and ‘legal theory’. However, ‘jurisprudence’ focuses on theoretical analyses of law, whereas ‘legal philosophy’ is concerned with providing a philosophical argument, and ‘legal theory’ is often used to denote theoretical enquiries about law.

Cultivating an inquisitive mind (one that asks lots of questions) whilst studying law is an essential element to attain any professional career, says Cadling. It is also essential that people can think critically, as every generation is faced with its own set of challenges, from killing a woolly mammoth to banning the nuclear bomb and stopping global warming. These challenges are essentially the same (they all threaten human existence), but the particular situations and faces differ. Some of today’s main challenges include a rise in media and political propaganda, awareness of fake news stories, and the legal challenges to come following Brexit. Due to such challenges, there is a constant need for us to think creatively and self-reflectively about our modern-day legal challenges: to think critically about law.
Thinking critically about this law is part of contemplation. In Islamic contemplation, the contemplation of Allah’s creation is one of the greatest forms of worship in Islam. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Qur’anic verses encourage this activity and do so using various methods to appeal to every temperament and spiritual state. The aim is to divert people away from their dulled senses, bad habits, and monotonous familiarity, and encourage them to witness the signs of their Rabb in the universe with insight and impressionable hearts. True Islamic contemplation can only spring from a heart that believes in Allah and a mind that submits to Him and His Exalted Attributes. The Qur’an attempts to soften human hearts in many ways. One of these is by mentioning the grace and favors of God. Contemplation of these can generate a feeling of compassionate mercy and love.

Contemplation of the creation of the heavens and the earth and all that is included in them is a practice that cannot be impeded by changes in time, place, or the nature of things. It is a free, unrestrained form of worship. It is also a cognitive and emotional process that enlivens the heart and enlightens perception as the mind ascends from contemplating the signs of Allah in the universe to their Creator and Rabb. This is the real meaning of contemplation. It should be noted here that any other form of contemplation of the beauty and splendor of the heavens and the earth would be considered as shirk if the contemplator would not be recognizing, let alone praising and thanking the Creator.
Concerning the liberation of contemplation from the limits of time and place, the Qur’an encourages the practice of contemplation of the beginning of creation. Allah says,
قُلْ سِيْرُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِ فَانْظُرُوْا كَيْفَ بَدَاَ الْخَلْقَ ثُمَّ اللّٰهُ يُنْشِئُ النَّشْاَةَ الْاٰخِرَةَ ۗاِنَّ اللّٰهَ عَلٰى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيْرٌ
'Say, 'Travel throughout the land and see how He originated the creation, then Allah will bring it into being one more time. Surely Allah is Most Capable of everything.' [QS. Al-'Ankabut (29):20]
In addition to encouraging believers to contemplate the present, the Qur’an invites them to contemplate the destinies of extinct nations. Allah says,
اَوَلَمْ يَسِيْرُوْا فِى الْاَرْضِ فَيَنْظُرُوْا كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الَّذِيْنَ مِنْ قَبْلِهِمْۗ كَانُوْٓا اَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةً وَّاَثَارُوا الْاَرْضَ وَعَمَرُوْهَآ اَكْثَرَ مِمَّا عَمَرُوْهَا وَجَاۤءَتْهُمْ رُسُلُهُمْ بِالْبَيِّنٰتِۗ فَمَا كَانَ اللّٰهُ لِيَظْلِمَهُمْ وَلٰكِنْ كَانُوْٓا اَنْفُسَهُمْ يَظْلِمُوْنَۗ
'Have they not traveled through the earth and observed how was the end of those before them? They were greater than them in power, and they plowed [or excavated] the earth and built it up more than they [i.e., the Makkans] have built it up, and their messengers came to them with clear evidences. And Allah would not ever have wronged them, but they were wronging themselves.' [QS. Ar-Rum (30):9]
While ordering the believers to contemplate this world, the Qur’an also calls for meditation on the hereafter. This is because contemplation limited to the transient world is nothing but an incomplete image of the universe and a distorted concept of the reality of human existence. Allah says,
كَذٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ اللّٰهُ لَكُمُ الْاٰيٰتِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَفَكَّرُوْنَۙ فِى الدُّنْيَا وَالْاٰخِرَةِ ۗ
'... Thus Allah makes clear to you the verses [of revelation] that you might give thought to this world and the Hereafter ....' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):219-220]
Therefore, the believer is ordered to contemplate Allah’s creation from the beginning until the Day of Judgment.

From an Islamic perspective, some factors affect the depth of contemplation, and we'll discuss them in the next episode, bi 'idhnillah."

Cananga then sang,

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there *)