Ameer-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Allamah Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Qaadiri دَامَـتْ بَـرَكَـاتُـهُـمُ الْـعَـالِـيَـهْ has given us a mission that ‘I must strive to reform myself and people of the entire world, اِنْ شَــآءَالـلّٰـه عَزَّوَجَلَّ’. The first and necessary part of this mission is also that I must first reform myself. The main reason for this is that when every Muslim adopts the mindset that I must make efforts to reform myself, then the sinking ship of society will automatically begin to gain support. How can reforming oneself lead to the society being reformed? Let’s understand this through a parable.

Correct your picture

A person was busy studying and his child who was playing close by continuously disturbed him and thus, his study was being interrupted. The father told the child off several times but the child would only momentarily remain quiet, and as soon as a little time passed, he once again would engage in some naughty act. The father was very distressed due to the mischief of his child, to the extent that he got an headache.

Eventually, he thought of a plan. He took a map of a country which was nearby and ripped it into many pieces and whilst giving it to the child, he said: ‘Son! Go to the other room and put this map together and then come back’. The child left and he took a sigh of relief. In his heart, he thought that as long the child is busy putting the map together, I will study as it was very difficult to assemble the pieces of the map together and it could take the child a long time to do so.

The child left and the father began to study in peace. Only a short time had passed when the child came and said: ‘Dad! I have assembled the map.’ The father was astonished that how was a work which should have taken a few hours completed in only a few minutes? He looked at it and saw that the map was indeed properly assembled. The father asked: ‘Son! How did you assemble this map so quickly?’ The son replied: ‘O Father! When you tore the map, I saw that there was a picture of a man on the back of it. Hence, instead of assembling the map, I began to assemble the picture of the man due to which, the map got assembled itself. (Maqsad-e-Hayat, pp. 29, summarised)