Verify!
by Amalia
O Believers, if an unrighteous person comes to you with information, you should verify it or else you might inflict harm on a people in ignorance and then end up regretting what you have done.
Hai orang-orang yang beriman, jika datang kepadamu orang fasik membawa suatu berita, maka periksalah dengan teliti agar kamu tidak menimpakan suatu musibah kepada suatu kaum tanpa mengetahui keadaannya yang menyebabkan kamu menyesal atas perbuatanmu itu.
In this verse, Allah SWT ordered us to question and verify every information received to make sure it is reliable and authentic. This is a very interesting verse as it relates to our daily life and the thing that has been going on in Indonesia right now 🙂
Yes, the infotainment. The gossips of celebrities. And all those. Why are we — the Indonesians — are so obsessed with these useless information?! What’s so fun about it, really? A lecturer in Bandung told me that when he woke up everyday, he saw infotainment news. When he came back from work, he saw infotainment news. After dinner, another infotainment news. Oh for heaven sake, he thought! Weren’t there any useful news or TV shows that could be shown?? It’s really sad. We believe on those information and judge the people based on what we see on TV. Pathetic. Now, all we care about is the private life of other people who will never make a positive impact in our life in many ways! How about those people who are in hunger? How about those who still have no money to go to school? How about those who are mentally ill, being stranded in the streets? Do we care about them?! AT ALL??
Questioning the reliability of information does not only apply to the infotainment crap (coz I don’t want to call these gossip things as “news”). But it also applies to everything published on the media. We always need to be critical about them. We need to remember that some news are “created” to gain publicity, profits, or to make false information about other people in order to put them down.
This verse is also very much related to how the scholars of Hadith accept narrations. I was even told that Imam Bukhari traveled miles and miles away to meet this one narrator to prove his authenticity and reliability. At one point, the narrator called some birds as if he wanted to feed them. But it turned out he was just lying because he had no foods on his hands. Based on this behavior, his Hadith was rejected by Imam Bukhari. Can you imagine that?! This implies that the collections of our Hadith have been carefully compiled. Those narrators whose reliability is unknown are not accepted by the scholars of Hadith.
Well, the simplest thing I can say is: mind your own business 😀
* Today’s posting is based on the discussion in our weekly pengajian (Qur’an reading & study) 🙂
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