Randomness Thing

This is a story that I heard from my childhood when I still in my elementary school. I attended a quite religious school that time and everytime the Islam history session was on, they told a story about the prophets in Islam.

As you might know, Islam has 25 prophets to be remembered from Adam to Mohammed. Amongst them, Mohammed is the last prophet that nurture the Islam foundation since they believe all the teachings before him has already corrupted. Anyway, I’m getting a little zealous here so back to the topic.

The story that I want to tell you is the story about Musa or Moses in biblical term. There is this story about the meeting about Musa and another God messenger’s Al Khidir who one of his gifts is he is poured by unlimited knowledge by God.

Musa was interested in Al Khidir and he wanted to learn everything from him. When Musa met Al Khidir and told him his intention to Al Khidir, Al Khidir said “You won’t have the patience to follow me”. However, Musa keep insisting on following Al Khidir and so Al Khidir gave Musa a condition “As long as you keep silent and don’t question my actions, you can follow me. I’ll give you three chances”.

And so there goes two men on a journey to understand life. At the first village, they wanted to cross the river and they met with a fisherman and the fisherman offer a free ride to the other side. After they arrived at the other side, the fisherman went to somewehere else and after he is out of sight, Khidir pierced the boat and make a hole. Musa was shocked and cry, “Why did you make a hole in the boat?”. It was strike one and Musa had two more chance before he is expelled.

At the second stop, they met a kid and out of the blue, Khidir kill him out cold. Seeing such a horrendous event, Musa being a snobby pupil said “Why did you kill an innocent child?”. Strike two and one more till Musa got expelled. At the last stop, they encountered a house which is near collapse and suddenly Khidir fix the house. Musa decided to help him and started a chat “You know, we could get some gold for our reward fixing the house”. That’s strike three and Khidir had had it with Musa insolent behavious. He expelled him and Musa replied “Okay, I understand. But please explain me why did you do those things”.

So, Khidir explain that the reason for him to pierce the boat is to prevent a tyrannt from the other side taking the boat and rendering the village incapable to fish. Then, the reason of him killing the boy is because when the boy become an adult, he will betray his parent and become a tyrannt who will suffer many people. The third reason of why he fixed the house was there was a treasure belonging to an orphant under the house. If the villagers knew, they will take it and the orphan will let alone starving to death.

So, that is the story of Musa and Al Khidir. When I heard this story, my teacher told me that the lesson of this story is sometime you can’t comprehend a knowledge you haven’t learnt. You have to listen and obey what the people with greater knowledge told you just like what Koran said to its follower. No question or doubt whatsoever.

First of all? No question? What is this? If you want a person to learn, you have to answer his question and doubt with a reasonable explanation. Not telling them what the reason of such action will cause misinterpretation just like what the story tells us. Second, killing a child just because he will be a tyrannt someday and make people suffer? Is that a little contradiction? I thought God was letting His child to make choices in life and suddenly a guy name Khidir can unanimously judge that the kid will be a murderous tyrannt. If anything, Khidir was playing God by determining how long a human can live. Murder is a crime, especially with this particular reason.

Furthermore, is murdering the boy a solution to the problem? There’s two God’s messengger travelling and they can’t share their wisdom on the kid so the kid will become a better man someday? Frankly, those two are doing a lazy ass job by deciding that it is easier just to kill instead of giving advice. Perhaps it’s that ‘No Question’ attitude that made Khidir such an arrogant bastard.

Source: http://realisticbird.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-story-of-musa-moses-and-al-khidr-knowledge-and-learning/