Thanks to The Creator, The Sustainer Allah (SWT) Who guides people to the path of civilization. Prayers and Peace be upon the great teacher of the leading generation in the person of prophet Muhammad Peace and Allah’s Blessings Be Upon Him (PBUH). Prayers and Peace be upon those who strife to prevent the flag of Tawhid from falling. Prayers and peace be upon all men struggling in the cause of Allah too.
I briefly mentioned the duties of the leading generation in the previous issue and I will try to continue from where I left off.
It is the responsibility of the leading generation to train people for the salvation of this Ummah. This project cannot be prepared by people who are Islamic scholars only. In the same vein this project cannot be prepared by people who are just intellectuals. The two qualities had to be embodied in the same character for him to be able to guarantee the salvation of this Ummah. These two qualities are defects and is not enough individually and people with any of these defects cannot design a complete project. A perfect project can only be designed by a person who has both of these qualities.
It is not possible for someone who is just intellectual to get along well with someone who is just Islamic scholar.
An Islamic scholar may accuse the intellectual of basing his statements on logic and current affairs while the intellectual may also accuse the Islamic scholar for being naive about politics and current affairs. These two qualities must be possessed by the same person in order to get rid of this conflict between the Islamic scholar and the intellectual. Otherwise, the Islamic movement would be divided into two parts.
The truths envisaged by the intellectual may not be sacred and absolute. The intellectual may change his words at any time. This may let him fall prey to smart enemies. It is impossible for Muslims trained in the West to rid themselves completely of the effects of western civilisation. Their views and proposals may not reflect the facts and truths about Islam simply because they didn’t get the proper Islamic training. Being under the influence of the prevailing western laws and ideologies, there is a tendency for these intellectuals to try to reconcile Islamic values with the western values.
Without polishing his theology with science, technology and political science; the Islamic scholar may find it difficult to clearly understand the strategy and methods of action of the Holy Quran. He will be unable to offer anything to his generation and may easily be hunted down by the enemies of Islam. He may blindly reject some good acts that originated from the western world even if they are in line with Islamic laws and culture. As a result these acts will cause Muslims to be closed to the world.
To avert this situation, we need people who are inclined to Islamic theology and at the same time understand science, technology and politics. It is the responsibility of the Leading Generations to setup institutions that will train qualified youngsters to become smart in terms of theory and practice.
It is not part of the goal and responsibility of the Leading Generations to turn out scientist trained in the field of positive sciences, yet people of this calibre can be found among them. Leading Generations cannot focus their minds on training scientists or raising the economic standards of the people till Islam becomes the dominant in their countries. Training a scientist is not our utmost priority today, we need enlightened Islamic scholars that will struggle in the cause of Allah. All those who consider themselves to be part of the Leading Generations must ensure that they offer their most intelligent kids and relatives to be trained as enlightened Islamic scholars. Teachers of the Leading Generations must prepare their curriculum in such a way that, they turn out enlightened Islamic scholars and men with a cause.
Muslims who are only intellectuals cannot cause other Muslims to wake up to the call of Allah in masses. The intellectuals will normally speak for themselves and may not use the sacred books as their resources. For the Islamic scholar, all his speeches will be from the sacred resources and that is what makes his words effective. The intellectuals may not be able to direct the masses even if they succeeded in waking up them to the cause of Allah. Only Islamic scholars can guide the masses to the right path.
Instead of training Muslims to become intellectuals as well as Islamic scholars, many Islamic organisations and some hidden forces prefer training them to be scientist with good morals or focused on non-obligatory prayers and daily politics only. In this manner, the time, efforts and monies used in setting up these institutions for training the intellectual Islamic scholars had not been used in the proper way. It is high time we back out from these mistakes and tackle the most urgent issues of the moment.
Our mission is not to join other civilizations but to re-establish our own civilization. To be the caliph of Allah (SWT) on earth means to ensure that Allah’s judgement becomes dominant. In His book Allah (SWT) said that he sent Islam to dominate all other religions. “It is He who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion”1.
In his commentary of this verse of the Qur’an Imam Al-Shafi understood that, at the end of it all Islam will be the dominant religion. In the hadith, he further stated that Prophet Isa (Jesus) Allah’s Mercy Be Upon Him (AMBUH) will come back to the world to destroy both Christianity and Judaism. Islam will not align itself to any other defaced or false religions because it had been sent to dominate them all. True Muslims will never try to compromise Islam with other religions.
Beliefs give birth to civilization. As a consequence, different beliefs will setup different civilisations. It is impossible to put two different beliefs together because civilisations cannot be fully compatible with each other. History tells us that this assertion is true. The struggles between prophets and their people are nothing but clashes of civilisation.
In Islamic civilizations, accepting and obeying Allah’s authority (Tawhid) is the underlying principle. Authority and power are given to human beings as far as the other civilisations are concerned. In this vein, servants serve another servant and partners are associated to Allah (shirk). People cannot be considered to be honourable and dignified if servants are serving other beings aside Allah (J.J) in the civilised society they belong to. This doesn’t matter whether this civilisation has the best standards of living, the most advanced technology or is the wealthiest of all the civilisations.
A society cannot be considered civilized if race, common language, common benefits or a piece of land is what is binding them together. In order for a society to be considered civilised, their bond must take its roots from same belief and nothing else.
A society where material things are the yard stick for measuring human values is a retrogressive society. A civilised society is the one where human values are considered to be more valuable than material things. A society with almost equal divorce and marriage rate, unprotected families, relationship between males and females based on pure lust is a retrogressive society. Muslims of today are trailing as far as wealth and material things are concerned. They will turn to lose both in this world and the hereafter if they decide to join the band wagon of this wealthy uncivilized society. In order for Muslims to have the honour bestowed upon them by faith, Allah (SWT) said “So do not weaken and do not grieve, and you will be superior if you are [true] believers”2.
Our mission is to become Ummah one more time not the nation-state. The holy Qur’an gave us this glad tiding with the following verse “You had become the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind”3.
Allah (SWT) addresses Muslims in the holy Quran as “Oh Believers” but not as “Oh Turks” or “Oh Arabs”. The holy Quran does not value human races but rather emphasizes on beliefs. According to Ali ibn Talip (AMBUH) “one of the seven great sins is to go back to the nation-state after becoming Ummah by way of hijra to Madinah.
Some of the duties that Qur’an assigns to Muslims can be carried out as individuals, some as an Islamic community, some as a state or as Ummah. The duties assign to Ummah cannot be carried out unless there is Ummah.
For instance, the holy Quran showed us a target with the verse “And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah”4. The target for this duty is the whole world. A nation-state cannot accomplish this duty successfully. In our religion, duties of this nature are meant to save Muslims from valuing bonds like race and colour, and only give importance to the bond of faith. This will then force us to become Ummah. As Samuel Huntington confessed in his book entitled, “The Clashes of Civilisations”, the struggles in the western world were between the princes and the emperors. After the French revolution, nations started struggling with each other. After the first world war instead for struggles between nations, it became the struggle between ideologies. The final phase of this struggle in the modern world will be the struggle between civilizations” he added. Western civilization was only able to begin struggling in a very disorganised way for the cause of civilisation and lifestyle in recent days. This struggle took place towards the end of the cold war in the 1980s and was motivated by the sound of footsteps of the approaching Islamic civilisations from the Muslims world. They still haven’t reached the stage of struggling for faith. Because they don’t have a trustworthy faith worth fighting for. Europeans had now started gathering under the umbrella of EU in order to form something like Ummah. National borders had come down and passports had been abolished between member states, common EU currencies are in circulation, common emblem, common criteria and common values are in place but Islam taught us to be brothers in faith fourteen centuries ago. It also taught us to struggle in the cause of faith. After struggling for unnecessary things for centuries, the western civilisation that had little or no idea about what Ummah means had now realised the importance of becoming Ummah. Why then will Muslims not struggle to become Ummah again but rather prefer to become nation-states after living as Ummah for the past 13 centuries and attempt to use worthless things like race to bond us together rather put us in fragments?
Wishing to finish the topic in the next issue.
1-Al-Fath, 28
2-Al-î İmran, 139
3-Al-î İmran, 110
4-Al-Anfal, 39
