‘accepted’ – are simply not met! If the child’s peers and superiors
overwhelmingly adjust to this ‘herd mentality’, truth is subjected to the
corruption caused by conformity to public opinion wherein adab is commonly
degraded to hypocrisy and human denial of fitrah (common sense) wherein
politically correct thought becomes the norm.
As the hadith predicted, our Mosques are filled with herd-running hypocrites
bowing low in gilded decorum while deeds – the only thing we take to the
grave – become shorn of service to the ‘Cause of Allah’ in truth. In this
environment, what is politically correct is as far from truth and
understanding as is Mt. Everest’s peak from the ashes of Sodom in the Dead
Sea. Muhammad was the first Prophet to break this pattern for an entire
nation and generation, and, as a result, he established a polity enslaved to
truth to such a degree that for 700 years Islam gathered all known knowledge
and made it available to the world in the light of tawhid. Sadly, the polar
opposite is presently the status quo for many professing Muslims, especially
the leadership.
During the latent years, the well-adjusted child is a natural purist – i.e. he/she
seeks perfection and understanding in and of the natural order and when
confronted by imperfection is genuinely affronted and demands that the
disorder be corrected or placed within a cognitive ‘worldview’ that makes
sense in its congruence with fitrah. Almost every unspoiled child with a
sound mind is a budding scholar at this tender age. The thirst for as much
pure truth as can be handled by their immature, inexperienced mentality is
akin to an exhaustive mental marathon. However, and most unfortunately, if
their questions go unanswered, suppressed or confronted by impressive
ignorance, an acceptance for what is impure becomes normative. If this
period of enquiry is not soberly guided by forthright honesty, the child’s
capacity for morally imbued logic is either impaired or shackled by lies, liars
and ignorance, and the liability carries over to the emotionally charged period
of adolescence as rebellion against contradictions it once soberly confronted
during the innocence of latency. Children insulted before latency by
dysfunctional parents have an even greater burden of reactive formations, if
they survive.
Adolescent development is due to formative forces e now transferred to
accelerated growth and physical maturation, so that without the balanced