There is a specific du’a that was of utmost importance that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ use to say
“اللَّهُمَّ أرِنِى حَقِيقَةَ الْاَشْيَآءَ كَمَا هِىَ”
“Oh my Allah! Show me the reality of all things as it (really) is..”
Some hadith maters said it is a marf’u hadith and some say this specific narration is not marf’u to the messenger ﷺ
It comes to us by various routes. Hafidh ibnul-Jawzi relates it in Sayyid al-khatir. It also comes to us via the famous explanation of mishkat al-masabih by Mullah Ali al-Qari titled “Marqat al-Mafatih sharh Mishkat al-Masabih. It also comes to us by way of ibn Shahin’s “sharh madhab ahlu-sunnah”
The version relayed by ibnul-jawzi
قد جاء في الأثر: اللهم! أرنا الأشياء كما هي! وهذا كلام حسن غاية، وأكثر الناس لا يرون الأشياء بعينها، فإنهم يرون الفاني كأنه باق، ولا يكادون يتخايلون زوال ما هم فيه، وإن علموا ذلك؛ إلا أن عين الحس مشغولة بالنظر إلى الحاضر، ألا ترى زوال اللذة، وبقاء إثمها؟! ولو رأى اللص قطع يده، هان عنده المسروق. اهـ
The version relayed by Mullah Ali al-Qari
“قال الشيخ أبو مدين المغربي: ينبغي للسالك أن يقول دائمًا – بعد امتثال الأوامر واجتناب النواهي – إلهي أرنا الأشياء كما هي، وأرنا الباطل باطلًا وارزقنا اجتنابه، وأرنا الحق حقًا, وارزقنا اتباعه وارتكابه”.
The version relayed by ibnu-Shahin
“ومن أدعية من تقدم: اللهم أرنا الحق حقًا وألهمنا اتباعه، وأرنا الباطل باطلًا، وألهمنا اجتنابه”.
However, there is a narration from Umar رضي الله عنه with a similar meaning that is marf’u to the Messenger of Allah
My commentary:
In this day in age, where we are suffering from 2 great epidemics, one is endemic of the compounded ignorance that has taken a toll in both muslim and non muslim populations. The other is the multi trillion dollar global propaganda system i.e. “public relations” institutions of various corporate, legal, and governmental structures that market your reality for you and form your opinions for you in such a way that you as an individual barely form your own views and opinions yourself. It is actually formed for you, and the trick of this deception is that you yourself think you formulated your own views on any given topic. In such a globalized and highly propagandized world we live in, this du’a of the Messenger is even more pertinent now than ever before, even moreso than when it was first revealed.
Most of the cultism suffered in the muslim world, at its base core is a result of, not really of ta’assub, but this very fact, that the person is UNABLE to actually see/understand or fathom what is actually going on.
Likewise, the institutions of power responsible for creating your matrix (reality) for you at the institutional level like your media, medical journals, science journals, education, marketing, agricultural industries etc, do not help in this situation but rather exacerbate this paradigm as it steers the public from ever understanding the true nature of much more sinister global criminal activities that have been taking place all under your noses.
A dumb and docile public is much more manageable than an informed public. That is why the castration of the media once called “the free press” has been castrated to such an extent that we simply don’t truly have a free press.
The power of language is such that words and meanings affect the brain and mismatching, omitting parts of whole stories, or simply not reporting a segment of matters while over reporting others can help facilitate false realities to many people. Nothing is more so oxymoronic than political language itself
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
This is exactly what media language is designed to do. Its designed to make
-murder RESPECTABLE
-lies SOUND truthful
And most importantly, this is where even the most nicest and rightly guided among ahlu-sunnah fall prey
-to give an appearence of “solidity” to pure wind
What is “solidity”? It is the quality of being substantial and/or reliable. It basically assigns “officiality” to otherwise criminal activity . In other words, the average well intentioned person is groomed from childhood to accept what they are given at face value as if those who are in authority over them are altruistic enough that they have no mal-intent at possibly trying to deceive them in their news or educational upbringing via schooling, or higher studies like universities etc.
Andrew Gavin Marshal explains the topic very succinctly, possibly better worded than any human could have structured.
“Political language functions through euphemism, by employing soft-sounding or simply meaningless words to describe otherwise monstrous and vicious policies and objectives. In the European debt crisis, political language employed by politicians, economists, technocrats and bankers is designed to make policies which create poverty and exploitation appear to be logical and reasonable. The language employed includes the words and phrases: fiscal austerity/consolidation, structural adjustment/reform, labour flexibility, competitiveness, and growth.
To understand political language, one must translate it. This is a four step process: first, you look at the rhetoric itself as inherently meaningless; second, you examine the policies that are taken; third, you look at the effects of such policies. Finally, if the effects do not match the rhetoric, yet the same policies are pursued time and time again, one must translate the effects as the true meaning of the rhetoric. Thus, the rhetoric has meaning, but not at face value.”
we have disgussed a correlating topic here The Ontology of Linguistic Minimalism: A Sociological Commentary on a Report by Hudhayfah ibnul-Yaman narrated in The Sunnan of Ibni-Majah
But the problem with most people is that these realities are too deep for their psyche to register and they really do not wish to realize the type of world that actually exist around them which is why they choose to be in a state of incredulity because accepting the reality as is and being able to see it as in this hadith guides us to ask Allah for such an ability would mean that we would have to react differently and possibly change aspects of our lives, and possibly think beyond the box of group think or “the people”.
Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his book “Between Two Ages” authored in the 70s, the following
“In addition it may be possible and tempting to exploit for strategic political purposes, the fruits of research on the brain, and on human behavior. J. F. MacDonald, a geophysicist specializing in problems of warfare, has written that timed artificially excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth…. In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period…. No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades”
Well there you have it folks. And if you still read this with the same ol incredulous mind “oh well they would never actually do that to the people”, then you are defacto lost.
The Boriqee Notes 