Dr. Fayez Al-Shehri
Al-Riyadh
When you hear how some people criticize the behavior of young men and women or the actions of senior officials, you would think that those people do not live in the real world. They are looking for a utopian society that does not exist. I have given many lectures on many topics and have always found that most people cannot differentiate between theory and practice. They keep asking the same question: why is reality different from what we read in books? I have also noticed that students tend to criticize their professors and political figures severely but never criticize themselves as if those professors and public figures were not supposed to make mistakes.
I always explain to them that people are different and some love to do their job perfectly. After all, no one is perfect. When I joined the university as a professor a few years ago, a student approached me and told me he saw a colleague of mine, who is also a professor and known for being very strict with students, in an Asian country around 2 a.m. in an inappropriate place where he was not supposed to be. “And what were you doing yourself at that place?” I asked the student, who was taken aback by the question.
Many of us demand perfection from others and do not hold ourselves responsible when we make the same mistakes. A manager who investigates a subordinate employee because the latter keeps showing up late for work should ask himself why employees do not show up on time. Reporters or TV hosts who highlight the mistakes of mosque imams or teachers should ask themselves whether they have made the same mistakes.
Being perfect is a good thing and we should always strive to be perfect in all the things we do. But we should not use the drive to be perfect as an excuse to be negligent because reality is very complicated and it does not allow us to be perfect.
Leveling criticism at people just to show their mistakes or to make them public is a distorted form of the quest for perfection and it is not appropriate for us as Muslims to do so. However, criticizing others in order to encourage them to be perfect is an elevated form of civilization.
