Ahmed and his friend Amer were watching the news bulletin on television and in one of the paragraphs of the bulletin presented a reporter of one of the news networks news talking about the accuracy of Patriot missiles and inferred the validity of the news with a picture of a white line of smoke emanating from the ground and then suddenly turns into a scattered white mass and accompanied by the sound of an explosion and the reporter stated that this is a picture of a Patriot missile intercepting a ballistic missile. Ahmed turned to Amer and said, “Do you see how accurate a Patriot missile is?” Amer replied: “What do we know that the picture we saw is of a Patriot missile intercepting another missile? Why can’t it just be a picture of a rocket exploding in the sky when we only saw a white line that ended in an explosion? Even if the picture is correct, it does not indicate the accuracy of the Patriot missiles because we do not know the ratio of missiles that the Patriot misses to the ratio of missiles that hit it.” What Amer has done is critical thinking, that is, the logical analysis of everything that a person reads, watches or hears. Critical thinking does not mean capturing the missteps of others and catching their mistakes as some think. It is thinking about the arguments presented by others and testing the reasonableness of these arguments as well as thinking about the validity of the decisions made by others or we take ourselves.Critical thinking is simply the realization of reason rather than disrupting it. Since reason is what distinguishes man from other creatures, the human being who practices critical thinking only exercises his humanity. When critical thinking is absent from the culture of the nation and its members get used to receiving and repeating without criticism or review, the nation enters the dark ages and lags behind. Human civilization. In schools, we teach our children to write, read and memorize, but we don’t teach them to think, because in the hundreds of classes that students receive in their school and university education, there is not a single class on thinking skills! When a student asked the teacher about the legal or logical evidence for one of the jurisprudential rulings, the teacher severely rebuked him, saying: “You are an imitator, not a mujtahid, and the imitator does not ask for evidence!”

Critical thinking is used in two main areas: First of all In evaluating the arguments that others give us and in casting our own arguments. Second, In evaluating the decisions made by others and in making our own decisions. Critical thinking is a skill that can be acquired like any other skill and by following the steps that I will mention below, a person can apply critical thinking to any topic, As skills are always, following these steps in the first period will be some difficulty and costly and one may overlook this or that step, But continuing to apply critical thinking will turn it into a character that one practices spontaneously.

First of all: Use critical thinking to evaluate the validity of arguments presented to us by others and in casting our own arguments.

• Determine cause and effect. The argument consists of cause and result and the first step in critical thinking is to determine both cause and effect. In the example we mentioned earlier, the reason was the image of the white line that ended in an explosion, and the result was that the Patriot missiles were accurate in hitting their targets.
• Determine the credibility of the cause. What makes us believe the truth of the reason? What makes us believe, for example, that the image shown on television is indeed of a Patriot missile intercepting another missile? Here we must pay attention to the fact that credibility is not the truth may be a news with high credibility and yet it turns out to be different from the truth, however, the investigation of credibility helps us in the correct judgment of things.
• Is there a logical link between cause and effect? For example, does the image of the white line that ended in an explosion mean that the Patriot missile is accurate in hitting its target?
• Is there other information that strengthens or weakens the argument? For example, are there any other credible reports or studies showing the accuracy of the Patriot missile in hitting its targets?
• Definition of interests and statements contained in the argument? We may hear or read the following phrase “globalization leads to rapprochement between peoples” or “mixing causes corruption of morals” The discussion of either of these two ideas should begin by defining what is meant by the term “globalization” or the term “mixing”.
• Show hidden assumptions and test their validity. The arguments put forward by others may carry hidden assumptions and these arguments may seem strong at first glance, but when we show the hidden assumptions underlying them and show the error of these assumptions, we find that they are flimsy arguments. Let’s take the following example: Adnan failed in mathematics and objected to the subject teacher, saying, “This exam is unfair, as I allocated thirty hours to study mathematics and I did not pass it” This argument is illogical because it is based on the hidden assumption that studying thirty hours of mathematics means that the student has mastered it and is qualified to succeed in it, which does not apply to all students.
• Check our feelings about the claim. Man tends to believe the things he likes to believe. If you hate a certain person, you will be tempted to believe the negative news about them. Being aware of this tendency helps him to investigate objectivity and neutralize his feelings while judging things.

Using the previous seven steps not only helps us to think critically about the arguments presented to us, but also helps us to cast the arguments that we present to others.

Secondly: Use critical thinking in evaluating decisions made by others and in making our own decisions.

Taking into account the following points helps us evaluate other people’s decisions and make the right ones:

1. Let the purpose of the decision be clear to you. When you want to choose a university to enroll in, the correctness of your decision depends on the goal of registration, whether it is to obtain a high-value certificate, graduate as soon as possible, or just register to postpone military service, and so on…
2. Make sure you consider other alternatives. A common mistake in decision-making is to adopt the first idea that comes to mind and not to think of other alternatives. This advice seems easy but most people don’t apply it. So some practice is needed to master this new habit.
3. Think about the possible consequences of different alternatives. It’s very common for people to say about a decision they made (I didn’t think about what could have happened). So it’s very important not to make this mistake and to think about the possible consequences – good and bad – of a decision. For example Suppose you are thinking about the university you want to study at, If you don’t review the courses of the candidate universities and if you don’t visit these universities, you may find yourself studying a course you don’t want, in a place you don’t like, or with people you don’t want to be with. Reviewing these potential consequences beforehand may avoid a lot of frustration, disappointment, and possibly failure.
4. Think about how likely these consequences are and how valuable they are. It is very common for people to tell you you must do such and such or such and such will happen to you. They are talking here about the possible consequence of doing an action, but they do not appreciate how likely and dangerous it is even though these two things are very important. Let’s take the decision to buy a lottery ticket, for example; it is absolutely true that if you buy a national lottery ticket, you can win and it can generate millions of liras, which is very desirable by most people. But what is your chance? How likely are you to win the lottery? If you buy one card, your chances of winning the national lottery are about 1 to 10,000,000 permissions, Yes you can win but it’s totally unlikely (statistically it’s much more likely to die in a car accident!) This example illustrates the difference between a potential consequence of an action being likely and valuable and the importance of differentiating between these two.
5. As much as which alternatives are best given the consequences of these alternatives. When you consider a reasonable number of options and determine the consequences of those choices – the likelihood of them happening and how valuable or desirable they are – then you can make the best decision.
6. Consider ethical obligations. Some may refuse to even think of the lottery card example because they consider gambling immoral. Sometimes we need to put a certain moral commitment ahead of another, for example, if your friend tells you that he is using drugs and asks you to keep it a secret between you and you find that telling someone will help him get rid of addiction, then keeping your friend’s safety comes first than keeping the secret he has entrusted to you, although both are morally binding.

Passing any decision through these six steps does not guarantee that it will be the right decision, but it will certainly be much better than the decision you will accept or the decision you will make without going through it.

Yasser Al-Aiti