The Relationship Between Education and Questions

The Institution Where the Questioner Is Hunted
Dr Muhammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford
3 June 2026

The bond between learning and questioning is like that between a lamp and its light. If a lamp is present but gives no light, one suspects it has been placed merely for show. Likewise, when an educational institution has no questions, the heart fears that education there, too, has been reduced to buildings, certificates, and ceremonies.

Since my student days I have carried a troublesome habit: I ask questions. Because of it I have been deemed at times intelligent, at times naïve, at times insolent, and at times hopelessly idle. Yet wherever I set foot—whether in an Eastern madrasa or a Western university, an ancient seat of learning or a modern research center, a small college or a sprawling academic city—I noticed at least one constant: when a question was heard, people set about seeking an answer.

Sometimes the teacher supplied it, sometimes a book, sometimes a laboratory, a library, or decades of research. At times the answer appeared at once; at times generations passed while the question lived on. The entire journey of human civilization is, in truth, a long procession of questions.

A restless soul once asked: “What is this thing called fire that devours wood yet never grows fat?”
Another, worn down by illness, wondered: “What enmity do these creatures called germs hold against us?”
Someone, after staring at the night sky, inquired: “Do the stars merely glitter, or do they perform some task as well?”
Another, risking censure, asked outright: “Is the earth truly still, or are we forever traveling without knowing it?”

Such questions have never allowed humankind to sit idle. In pursuit of answers we have descended into laboratories, dived to the ocean floor, climbed mountain peaks—and at last set foot on the moon. Chasing questions, humanity has journeyed from the cave to the lab, and from the lab to the lunar surface. Science itself is but the autobiography of questions.

I long believed all institutions of learning shared at least one trait: when someone asks, people seek the answer. But whenever a human being mistakes his assumption for a universal law, Providence arranges his correction.

Once, therefore, I happened to visit an island in the Caucasus. The place seemed a permanent headquarters of beauty. The landscapes looked as if some painter had stolen scenes from Paradise and pinned them to the earth. Trees did not sway but rather pirouetted with delicacy; flowers did not merely diffuse fragrance but seemed to broadcast poetry.

The men were so handsome that mirrors adjusted their shine for them, and the women so enchanting that the moon felt compelled to revise its own beauty. I thought, “If beauty thrives here, what of knowledge?” So I made for the island’s most celebrated academy.

The building dazzled my eyes. It felt as though the architects of the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Alhambra, and Samarkand had conspired on a single project. The walls were so exquisitely carved one forgot scholarship and gazed only at ceilings; the domes so lofty that clouds seemed to bump into them and apologize. At the gate hung a marble plaque bearing the golden inscription: “Institute for the Attainment of Sublime Perfections.” The name alone overawed me.

Inside, the professors wore resplendent robes. Their turbans were so high that, on some short instructors, half their stature consisted of turban. Their beards carried such gravitas it seemed all wisdom had gathered within those hairs. I slipped into a class. At the teacher’s entrance, students straightened as though martial regulations had suddenly been imposed upon their bodies.

The lesson began.
The teacher spoke; the students listened.
The teacher spoke; the students listened.
The teacher spoke; the students listened.

So silent and obedient was the routine that for a moment I suspected I sat not in a classroom but in a factory whose product was nodding heads, not ideas.

At last the lecture ended. My old affliction stirred. I raised my hand politely and asked a question.

That was all it took.

It felt as though lightning had struck the room. One student, startled, dropped his pen. Another blurted “Astaghfirullah!” A third stared at me as if I were the envoy of some extinct species. The teacher’s eyes widened; his face assumed the expression of a man who opens a cupboard and finds a lion inside. A hush fell so deep that, had a needle dropped, disciplinary action might have ensued against it.

I whispered to the student beside me, “Is everything all right?” He glanced around in fear and replied, “You don’t seem to be from here.” “No,” I said. “That is why you dared to ask,” he muttered.

I asked in surprise, “So what?” He answered, “You don’t know? In this institution questioning is a crime.” I thought he was joking and laughed. He did not. I stopped.

“A crime?”
“Yes, a grave one.”
“But why?”
“Because questions breed doubts, doubts breed thinking, thinking breeds research, and research endangers old certainties. Therefore, here the question is arrested at birth.”

I said, “Yet everywhere else in the world people seek answers.”
“That,” he sighed, “is precisely this academy’s uniqueness. Elsewhere, when a question is asked, they look for an answer. Here, when a question is asked, they look for the questioner.”

“And then?” I pressed him.
He spoke in a trembling voice: “First they examine his intentions. Then his associations, his friends, his teachers, his old notebooks. If the question still survives, a committee is formed to investigate why it arose at all.”

“And the answer?”
He stared at me, bewildered. “The answer?” He pronounced the word as though I had named a mythical beast.

Just then uproar erupted outside. People were running; someone shouted, “The Director is coming! Find the questioner!” Instantly the entire institution sprang into motion. Those who moments ago seemed servants of learning now resembled a hunting party.

I looked out the window. A long procession advanced toward me: the registrar in front, assistants behind, guards following, and in their midst the Director—his face set with a determination one would expect not in pursuit of an answer but in pursuit of a dangerous criminal.

Only then did I realize: this was no citadel of knowledge but a fortress of fear. Books were present, but inquiry was absent; teachers were present, but dialogue was absent; buildings were present, but thought was absent. And when thought departs, schools slowly turn into museums where knowledge no longer lives—only its statues remain.

How I escaped thereafter remains a secret between me and the winds of the Caucasus. Yet I brought back one conclusion:

The greatness of civilizations is measured not by the height of their minarets but by their treatment of the one who asks.

Where questions are welcomed, knowledge is born.
Where questions are tolerated, research emerges.
Where questions are encouraged, science flourishes.
And where the questioner is hunted, only fear grows.

In the lap of fear, one may breed the obedient but not the inventive; the orator but not the thinker; buildings may rise, but civilizations will not.

For the entire history of knowledge begins with a question mark, and the institution that fears the question, in reality, fears knowledge itself.