It is said that we are now living in an age known as ‘post-truth’ age, where objective facts are becoming less and less important compared to appeals to emotion and personal beliefs. One of the key ingredient of post-truth culture is social media, where opinions worth more than the facts. With the rise of social media anyone can publish his opinion about anything, and all that is needed is a smartphone and an internet connection. And in a post-truth culture everything is relative, because there is no such thing as the truth, so stories and fake news are being made up all the time. Consequently a new political culture arises, i.e. one that does not rely on evidence but lies, because it seems nobody cares about evidence.
The truth is, truth has never been the main agenda of most people, so if a person stick to unalloyed reality very few people will follow him. One contender in the 1952 US presidential election was told by his supporter that every thinking person in America is going to vote for him, and he replied: “Great, but I need a majority! Yuval Noah Harari believes that human beings have always been a post-truth species because propaganda and disinformation are actually not new in human history and they even managed to conquer this planet due to the unique ability to invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of others to believe in them. And religion, according to Harari, is among the fictions created by man, so it ought not to be believed just like fake news. But he also believes that humans prefer power to truth, because they spend more time trying to control the world (through invented fictions like religions) instead of trying to understand it.
If there is no objective truth people will believe in whatever they want to believe as long as they feel it is right! And the world will ultimately descent into chaos and destruction. While it is true that people have been using half-truths, propaganda, brainwashing and misinformation throughout history in order to mislead and manipulate others it does not mean that truth does not exist or that it is not possible to know. Islam, on the contrary, holds that knowledge is always possible and it can be objectively verified. So, to a Muslim there is no such a thing as post-truth age because truth is always ‘there’ and human beings are bestowed with the capacity and means to know and verify it. To seek knowledge therefore is the first and foremost obligation in Islam, and in the presence of conflicting claims and opinions the right attitude is to check the evidence and to judge accordingly. Yes, knowledge means to be able to make correct judgement pertaining to the truth or falsity of a proposition. And in an era of lies and delusion we have to strive even more in pursuit of the truth instead of being led by just feelings. So today students have to be taught how to weight facts, consider different views, form an opinion and then articulate it. They must be trained to deconstruct claims they see in social media, to search for evidence and objectively evaluate it instead of choosing those that reinforce their own viewpoints or following popular opinions. In short they must be able to judge by themselves.
We live in an era characterized by extensive, easy and quick access to information, but constant barrage of information and opinions enabled by the internet is not only disorienting but also making it difficult to discern between what is true and untrue. So there is growing fear of the danger of modern information technology due to its ability to blur reality and massively manipulate people’s opinion. But technology is just a tool, and it is up to humans to use it for a good or an evil purpose. So our priority should be to ensure that our young generations are properly educated so that they become good, ethical human beings, and only then we can expect to see good outcome.