All praise is due to Allah, who disciplines His servants through the Books and the prophets He has sent; blessings and peace be upon Muḥammad, who strove day and night for our guidance and laid the foundations of a world-spanning state in a short time; and peace be upon all my brothers and sisters who are striving to revive the Ummah once again.
In previous issues I explained four of the causes that have dragged our Ummah backward and brought about its collapse, along with the remedies for escaping them, and we have reached the fifth cause. Let us continue from there:
5 – Educational Errors Committed During the Period of Decline and Collapse
A nation or an Ummah does not collapse unless it makes serious mistakes in education. As long as education is comprehensive—supplying every “vitamin” that must be provided, protecting people from a wrong lifestyle and erroneous ideas, and raising the nation to the level it must attain in every era—that nation will not fall into intellectual, scientific, or spiritual decline, nor collapse for these reasons.
Had Muslims ceased viewing the Qur’an merely as a book of worship and morals and instead regarded it as a divine source to be consulted in every matter, they would have taken their educational method and strategy from the Qur’an and would not have made educational mistakes.
The One who best knows what kind of being the human is, what the human soul (nafs), and the satanic whisperings of jinn and men tell him, and how they steer him toward misguidance, is of course the One who created him. It is likewise Allah [azza wa-jall] who best knows how to rescue someone who wants to ascend from these three downward “gravities”—the nafs, Satan, and environmental factors—and the educational principles that will lead him to the perfect human being.
Everything in the Qur’an exists to educate the human being and to color him with Allah’s color. All the principles concerning faith, worship, morals and jihād, and all rulings (ahkām) to which we must adhere in daily life, exist to educate the human, protect him from deviation, and bring him to perfection. Is not the meaning of “Rabb” precisely “the One who nurtures?” Allah azza wa-jall is our Lord because He disciplines His servants through the Book and the Messenger He has sent. Therefore, what must be taught in education should have been learned from Him. While this was indeed the case during the period of ascent, it was not so during the period of decline, and the following errors were committed:
1. Tawhīd was not taught in its true and comprehensive sense
Tawhīd was reduced to a mere belief in the existence and oneness of Allah. Many books that purported to explain tawhīd approached the subject solely in this manner and provided an education that rejected servitude to creation but failed to instill the understanding that “In Allah’s world, what Allah says must prevail.” Generations that did not grasp tawhīd accepted man-made ideologies and systems, and those systems corrupted us. Today many communities (jamāhahs) and orders (tarīqahs) continue to make the same mistake, teaching their members and adherents only the existence and oneness of Allah. Is there any need to preach this to Muslims?
Today Muslims are unaware of Allah’s attribute of Lawgiver; instead of desiring a Qur’anic civilization they chase after human systems, seeking solutions to the world’s problems in democracy—a mere deception. That Muslims have come to defend democracy, even though Allah’s command carries no weight in democracies and all prohibitions are permitted, is the Rasult of jamaats’ failure to discuss and teach tawhīd in their gatherings.
2. Education failed to free hearts from love of the world and fear of death
While the education given during the period of ascent could free people from worldly attachment and fear of death—raising individuals who could put the world in its proper place and who longed for martyrdom—the education of the period of decline and collapse could not achieve this quality and could not purge hearts of love for the world and fear of death. The same mistake continues today: rather than raising activists who love the hereafter, do not fear death, and speak the truth, many communities are producing people who love wealth, top positions, comfort, and food. It is obvious that nothing can be accomplished with such people; they are people of easy times, who, when faced with hardship, will behave like the Children of Israel who said, “You and your Lord go and fight—indeed, we will sit here.”¹
3. A shift from active to passive education
During the period of ascent, scholars undertook long journeys in quest of knowledge and education was investigative. In the period of decline, this gave way to passive education. The mistake began within families: parents made educational errors such as waking children late or doing their tasks themselves rather than assigning chores. In the madrasahs, students were not taught to think and research; instead a spoon-fed, memorization-based education produced laziness. Yes, memorization is necessary in education up to a point—indeed unavoidable—but only insofar as it does not kill the spirit of thinking and inquiry.
Furthermore, though the basic principle in education is that the teacher speaks and the student listens, the student must certainly be made to speak as well: drawn into the subject matter, they should come to love scholarly and intellectual topics, gain the ability to conduct scholarly debate, and be given opportunities to present what they have learned. This not only endears knowledge but also imbues the student with the spirit of conveying (tablīgh) the cause he has learned. Otherwise, a person who never speaks and only listens will soon grow bored and turn into a lazy, passive individual. Today this error continues in many madrasahs and communities; hence the spirit of tablīgh and struggle is weak, and scholarly and intellectual enthusiasm is low.
4. Education must instill both love and hatred in their rightful objects
Education should inculcate love for those who deserve love—Allah, His Messenger, the cause, and the Muslims—and hatred for those who deserve hatred—Satan, the unbelievers, and the oppressors. Faith consists of both love and hatred. Educational programs that impart only love or only hatred will produce defective generations. During the period of decline, neither love nor hatred was imparted as they should have been. Had they been, would people have distanced themselves from Allah and His order and drawn near to the unbelievers and their systems? Even today no lesson has been learned from this, and no curricula have been prepared to impart these two emotions to the extent required.
Some Muslims today, without understanding or loving Allah and His cause, claim to be on Allah’s side while only hating; other Muslims attempt to be more merciful and tolerant than Allah, deem hatred of unbelievers to be wrong, and interact with unbelievers more than with their Muslim brothers. While Muslims are slaughtered like sheep, their honor violated, and their countries burned and destroyed across the world, these Muslims—having over-indulged in “tolerance”—do not even deign to say “Oppressor!” to the tyrants committing these deeds, nor utter a single word against them. Movements that cannot be Islamic have turned into humanist movements.
When the Qur’an is read attentively, it will be seen that this divine Book has a “struggle,” that Allah azza wa-jall and His prophets are in conflict with the unbelievers, challenge them, hate them, punish them, and take vengeance upon them. Love and hatred are two driving forces that set a person in motion, and the Muslim needs both. Therefore these emotions must not be blunted by faulty educational programs. The feeling of hatred could move many Muslims to action and—by lawful means—enable them to undertake jihad and service for Allah azza wa-jall; yet these nonsensical, reality-denying humanist approaches deprive us of this drive.
We who have suffered so much injustice, sacrificed so many martyrs, had our honor violated and our wealth plundered—should we not be able to harness this hatred, convert it into kinetic energy, awaken people, and set them in motion? Failing to do so is to squander a great opportunity. The humanist discourse widespread in the Islamic world is, like democracy, a colossal lie and an enemy ruse.
Let it also be said that both love and hatred need a standard, and that standard is the Qur’an and the Sunnah. We will neither be more tolerant than Allah and His Messenger so as to delete hatred from our vocabulary, nor more hateful than Allah and His Messenger so as to erase tolerance and mercy from our books. Either error prevents the emergence of the generation we desire.
5. During the decline, education shrank to a bit of creed, a bit of worship, a bit of morals, and a few juridical issues
The spirit was lost, the cause of the religion forgotten, and when jihad was mentioned it came to signify only the struggle against the self. It was forgotten that this religion came to rule the earth and establish a civilization; a mystical understanding of religion spread, and the religion lost the dynamism Allah azza wa-jall had placed in it. As a Rasult, the Ummah became passive and collapsed. Yet Allah the Exalted says, “He is the One who sent His Messenger with guidance and the true religion so that He may make it prevail over all other religions, even though the polytheists detest it.”² This verse states that the religion was sent to prevail over all others and assume sovereignty. It is proof that Islam is a dynamic, not a mystical, faith. The Prophet likewise said, “I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no deity but Allah and that I am the servant and Messenger of Allah, establish the prayer, and give the zakāh.”³ He expressed the same reality.
How many there are today who persist in the same error and reduce the religion to worship and etiquette! These people have no “struggle,” and they take great pride in being worshipful and knowledgeable about etiquette! These Muslims—moderated, transformed, having accepted Western civilization, unwilling to bear the hardship of struggle, even deeming struggle erroneous—by means of the worship and etiquette they practice, produce the very type of person the unbeliever desires: a Muslim who performs his worship, is industrious and moral, yet lacks the spirit of struggle, does not oppose disbelief or oppression, and is easily manipulated.
6. Insufficient dissemination and duration of education
The failure to spread education widely, the fact that only a very small segment of society received education while the rest were deprived of it, and the short duration of education were important causes of the Ummah’s decline. Education must continue until the student reaches an age and level at which he can continue his own development independently; otherwise, learning will halt when education ends early. Education that is not widespread and is short in duration has prevented the formation of the society we desire and the training of the necessary number of people.
To be continued… May Allah keep you in His care.
1. Al‑Mā'idah, 24
2. Al‑Tawbah, 33
3. Al‑Bukhārī and Muslim
