Forty Gems of Beauty — Page 74
74 as engenders in them feelings of dignity and self-respect and to attend to their education and training in particular, so that when they grow, they may observe, with due propriety, their duties to God and to His servants and become pioneers of national progress. The truth is that no nation can make any progress, nay, no nation can escape degeneration, if its members do not leave behind their children in circumstances better than their own. If every father was to see to it that he will leave his children better off than himself, both in knowledge and in practice, the nation must gain from strength to strength and will, by the grace of God, remain immune to the danger of decline. But it is a pity that most parents disregard this golden principle with the result that many children, far from being better off than their parents, are brought up in such a condition as to give the impression of a dead baby having been born to a live person. Such parents feed and dress their children well and to some extent also mind their secular education, as it provides them with means of economic well-being, but they generally disregard their moral discipline as if it were something unimportant. On the contrary, moral training or discipline is infinitely more important than secular education and certainly has a greater moral value and status. An educationally less-qualified but morally better-disciplined person endowed with qualities of industry, truthfulness, honesty, self-sacrifice and pleasing manners, is far superior to the man carrying the donkey- load of knowledge but totally bereft of qualities of moral excellence. In the Holy Quran, we read the injunction, “Slay not your children. ” 19 This verse hints at the truth that if you ignore inculcation of good moral qualities among your children and neglect their educational equipment, you will be virtually committing their murder. 19 The Holy Quran, Ch: 6 (Al-An‘ām), V: 152 and Ch: 17 (Al-Isrā’), V: 32