Hasan Le Gai Eaton

Islam Today
Charles Gai Eaton
http://home.pix.za/mf/mfj1/eaton3.htm

It has been said of the Irish people that they are "utterly immune to reality." There have been times when I have wondered if this might not also be said of the Muslims today, at least in terms of politics and of the bitter realities of the contemporary world. One should, of course, add that, on a higher level, the Muslims are fully aware of reality, the true Reality, the supreme Reality of Allah (SWT). But many of our brothers do seem to have only a hazy perception of the nature of the world in which they are now awakening. Significantly, the Irish were for many centuries an oppressed people. This is true also of the Muslim Ummah. It is understandable that the experience of intolerable oppression should result in an unwillingness to face facts. Unfortunately, facts have to be faced.

There have always been Empires of one sort or another, but European imperialism had a unique quality. The only possible comparison would be with Roman imperialism, upon which it was modeled. It was based not only on superior worldly power, but also upon a claim to human superiority, that is to say, superiority in intelligence, morals, culture, and the general conduct of life. The Europeans did not simply say to their subjects, Asian or African: "We are stronger than you, so you must obey us." That would have been bearable. They said, in effect: "We are better than you, so you must learn from us as children learn from their teachers." Many of their subjects were persuaded to accept this assessment.

Pride and self-confidence might have been restored if the subject peoples had won independence entirely through their own efforts. Except in the cases of Algeria and Indonesia, this was not so. Elsewhere the colonial powers withdrew, on the one hand because they had lost the will to rule, on the other for economic reasons. You might ask me: What about India? I am sorry if this offends anyone, but in my view the independence struggle would not have succeeded if the British had not lost the will to rule and the ruthlessness which reflects this will. Imagine how the Nazis or, for that matter, the Soviets under Stalin, would have dealt with Gandhi and others like him. I do not think they would have lived for long.

I might add that I do have some knowledge of these matters. In the late 1950s, and early ‘60s, I was employed by the British Colonial Office at the very time when many of the colonies, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean, were being given their independence. I remember very well that we — I have to say "we," since I was involved! — were in such haste to rid ourselves of these encumbrances that we were deeply dismayed when some small colony begged to be allowed to retain its colonial status rather than be set adrift on dangerous waters.

It may be on account of the humiliation of the subject peoples on the moral and intellectual level that European colonialism was so destructive. Many years ago, as a student, I happened to read in a book of anthropology a quotation from an American Indian sage which greatly impressed me. It went something like this: "At the beginning of time, every people was given by the Great Spirit a cup from which to drink their lives. Our cup is broken. It can never be mended." This is true of the old cultures of Africa and of Polynesia as it is of the Amerindians. But this sage should have added that there is one way in which the cup may be replaced; that is by Revelation, which brings down a fresh, new cup from which the people drink their lives. This is why Islam was more resistant than other cultures to this destructive process.

I have sometimes thought of comparing the Muslim Ummah today to an individual knocked over and badly injured by a speeding motorcar. After a while his physical injuries heal, broken bones are mended, and he can no longer use ill health as an excuse for his failures. It is then that the hidden symptoms of trauma, both psychological and physical, make their appearance. He is not quite the man he was. Perhaps he limps, though his legs are as good as new; sometimes he suffers from mental aberrations and from outbursts of futile anger, and he is unwilling to face facts. It takes a long time to recover from such a trauma.

The case of the Muslims was different to all the others, for we had been, for roughly half the period between the Hijrah and today, the dominant power in the world, the dominant civilization. It is much more difficult for a master to tolerate a condition of slavery than it is for those who have never known power, authority, or independence. It is true that the Qur’an teaches us that, in the lives of peoples as in the lives of individuals, nothing endures and there is no certainty that those who are strong today will not be weak tomorrow: "Thou givest sovereignty to whom thou wilt and withdrawest sovereignty from whom thou wilt...." (Aal Imran 3:26). Nevertheless, human nature being what it is, we find the loss of power, and failure after success, particularly bitter. This is what makes it so difficult for us to consider our situation calmly, objectively, and in terms of factual reality.

Can we still offer this bitter experience as an excuse for our behavior in recent years? I have mentioned before the passion that Muslims today have for quarreling, fighting, killing each other in the name of "Islam" and to the disgrace of Islam. The unbelievers look on. They watch. They call us "barbarians," but on account of our behavior. Now it is customary in the liberal, tolerant West to excuse every crime on the grounds that the criminal could not help acting as he did; his upbringing and social conditions, his ill treatment as a child or his misfortunes, are thought to excuse his crimes. Are we to justify ourselves in this way? Shall we say that colonialism, foreign exploitation, injustice, give us a right to fall so far below the standards of behavior required of us as Muslims? That, I think, would be a poor excuse, and it is not one that is in accordance with the teachings of Qur’an and Sunnah.

Dr. Israr Ahmad has touched on these matters in his booklet on the Rise and Decline of the Muslim Ummah. Referring to the periods of chastisement suffered by the Jews and then by the Muslims, he points out that the period of deterioration and degradation has lasted much longer for the Muslims. He points out that the "majestic power structure of the Ummah" rotted from within. This, I think, forbids us to put all the blame on others. Those who invariably blame others for their own faults and failures are unlikely to make the necessary effort to correct these faults and redeem these failures. I mentioned in my first talk the loss of self-confidence which the Muslim Ummah has suffered and the need to re-establish self-confidence. I should, perhaps, amend that statement. We cannot, as Muslims, place full confidence in ourselves and in our own puny powers. We place our confidence in Allah (SWT). Having done so, we do not — or should not — sit down and go peacefully to sleep.

On the contrary, we have two firm obligations, while placing our confidence in our Creator. The first is to strive to merit the Nasrullah, Divine Help, by molding ourselves and our lives to the requirements of our Faith, and in this way hoping to please our Creator. Secondly, we have to do what little we can, always within the bounds of righteousness, always within the limits set down in the Shari‘ah. We cannot use our misfortunes as a justification for acting outrageously, unjustly, and without concern for the morality of our actions. If we do that, we have no right to complain if Divine Assistance does not always come to our aid.

Something further must be added to righteousness as such, and that is sobriety, combined with realism and common sense. It is characteristic of the weak and the feeble to threaten when they cannot carry out their threats. You may remember the occasion when, a few years ago, Kaddafi promised to turn the Mediterranean into a "sea of blood." I am sure you will recall Saddam’s threat to soak the desert sand in the blood of the Americans. We all know what happened. I am aware of the tradition in Arab tribal conflict, the tradition of issuing dreadful threats thereby asserting the pride of the tribe and hoping to frighten the enemy. Such threats evoke in the West nothing but contemptuous laughter. There is a basic rule in all hostile encounters: Never issue a threat that you cannot be sure of carrying out if necessary. To some extent, the threats which certain Muslim rulers make and, indeed, which young revolutionary Muslims make, are simply a substitute for action because they lack the power to act effectively; but, under such circumstances, quietness and modesty are more appropriate and may even be more successful, provided that they are rooted in true Iman.

If we consider the causes of our present weakness, we are obliged to look with sorrow and anxiety upon the political scene in the Muslim world. The first point I would like to draw to your attention is the prevalence of idolatry: the national leader as an idol. It is surely extraordinary that this should arise within the Dar-ul-Islam? We, of all people, should not be inclined to put a fellow human creature, fallible and imperfect as ourselves, upon a pedestal and bow down before him; and to become hysterical in shouting his praise is, for Muslims, a public disgrace. There is a hadith which seems to me of great significance in this context. As you will remember, a Companion (RAA) came to the Prophet (SAW) asking to be given the governorship of an area which had recently come within the fold of Islam. The reply he received was this: "Because you want it, you are not fit for it!" Where in today’s world shall we find a Head of Government who neither sought nor welcomed power?

Leaders and governments are necessary for our convenience, and in the Dar-ul-Islam they are — or should be — the servants of the servants of Allah (SWT). With very rare exceptions they are where they are because they thirsted for power, by whatever means they may have achieved it. It was said by the great historian Lord Acton that: "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." For their own good and, above all, for our good, our leaders need sometimes to be mocked so that they are not allowed to take themselves too seriously or to imagine that they are superior beings. This, I think, is one lesson that may be learned from the West. But, when megalomania sets in, as it has done with certain national leaders over the past few years, we must place some of the blame upon those who fed this man’s pride and vanity by rich flattery and adulation. We are weak, as the Qur’an frequently reminds us. Where is the man who can rise above the adulation of the people and remember that he is still no more than a poor servant? We should blame, not only the tyrant, but all those who encourage him in his tyranny.

I still remember the amazement I felt in 1967, after Abdul-Naser had led the Arabs into that utterly disastrous conflict which left all Palestine in the hands of the Zionists, on seeing him adored by the mob. I had thought it likely that he would be seized and hanged from a Cairo lamppost! I could hardly have been more mistaken. This illustrates what I mean by political "idolatry."

That brings me to the very difficult and sensitive question of "political Islam," that is to say Islam regarded primarily as a political ideology and often as a political slogan. Everyone says, everyone reminds me, that Islam is a total religion from which no aspect of human existence can be excluded, therefore politics is necessarily and rightly included within the orbit of the Faith. True. No one will disagree with this statement as it stands. But we have nonetheless to consider the context in which it is made. Islam is a religion, not an ideology. Ideologies, that is to say theories for the betterment of mankind and the creation of the perfect society, are the product of the Western mind and the Western history. As I see it, what we, as Muslims, should understand by "politics" is the disposition of the affairs of the community; the practical affairs, the governance and regulation of the community, the promotion of good in society and the suppression of evil. These things have nothing to do with Utopian theories.

Some of our young people think that they are speaking — I should say shouting — for the Faith when they are simply intoxicated with theories, often the sick political theories originating in Europe and painted green to "Islamicise" them. In my view there are many things of foreign origin that never can be Islamicised — or "Islamised," as they say. These things are too alien to our Faith and too discordant in relation to our culture to be absorbed. We used to hear a great deal about "Islamic Socialism." In that case, one is tempted to ask "Why not Islamic atheism?" Surely we have, in Qur’an and Sunnah and, indeed, in the wisdom of the great thinkers of earlier times, the basis from which to construct something better?

I mentioned in my last talk the young man in our mosque in London who, when reproached for the noise he and his friends were making when others wished to pray, responded with the words: "Go and pray somewhere else!" This suggests to me the substitution of a purely worldly, dunyawi, Islam for the Faith as it has been lived for the past fourteen centuries. It reminded me of something I was told a few years ago when I was in Tunisia. I was talking with an elderly university professor who said to me: "You know, forty years ago, all my students were Marxists. If a few of them were religious, they kept quiet about it for fear of being mocked. Today, all my students are enthusiastically Islamic. If a few of them are less enthusiastic, they keep quiet about it for fear of being beaten up." Does one immediately and without hesitation say: Alhamdulillah? I am not sure. It is not for us to judge what is in the hearts of these young people, but we may be permitted to wonder if, in the course of a few years, true Iman has entered into their very being. Is it possible that, having found that one political ideology — Marxist Socialism — has not led to success, Islam is now being used as an alternative ideology? What, then, if this too fails them?

I recall also a hadith of Sayyidina Isa (AS) in one of the Gospels which, if I remember correctly, goes like this: "Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all the rest shall be added to you." I take this to mean that, if we give priority to first things, then secondary things will fall into place. This is not simply an ideal. It is a practical plan of action. With regard to the Jama‘at-e-Islami, Dr. Israr Ahmad ascribes their failure to their misconceived notion of faith and the error of their view of Islam; in short, to attitudes based on the Western standpoint and showing a preference for material existence and worldly pursuits. This, surely, is a case in point.*

The correct balance between, on the one hand, spirituality and concern for the Hereafter, and, on the other, concern for the affairs of this world is difficult to achieve, but we have to make the attempt and we have, in the Messenger of Allah (SAW), a perfect example of this balance. We know that the Akhirah is "better and more lasting"; logic compels us to take note of this fact. Although our ultimate fate depends upon Allah (SWT), yet seen from our side of the barzakh, it depends also upon our conduct here and now.

This obliges us to pay adequate attention to the dunya, which, in any case, most of us must do for the sake of our livelihood. Of course the young think that life lasts forever. I have reached an age at which one is well aware of its brevity. To give exclusive attention to the dunya, even in the name of righteousness and in the cause of justice, is, to say the least, short-sighted. Moreover, there is another important consideration. There are two kinds of action in this world: the successful and the unsuccessful. Now unconsidered, hasty action, driven by passion rather than wisdom, tends to be unsuccessful, and the more emotionally involved one is in a particular action, the more likely one is to fail. To put this in its simplest terms, action must be rooted in contemplation. Contemplation in its turn demands detachment, that detachment which every Muslim should have at his disposal if he is fully aware of life’s brevity, aware of Divine Judgment, aware of the overwhelming presence of Allah (SWT). Here, it seems to me, virtue and practical necessity come together. The more we act as we should, the more likely we are to succeed.

What I have said regarding detachment is, I think, in accordance with what Dr. Absar Ahmad says in the introduction to one of his brother’s publications: "True faith entails ceaseless vigil on purity of motive and inner integrity." This is indeed a difficult task. My impression of the young enthusiasts — what some would call the "fundamentalists" — in Britain is that they have no capacity to see themselves objectively and make no attempt to do so. When — perhaps understandably — they are angry, bitter, filled with hate, as they often are, they cover these entirely personal feelings (this fever of the nafs) with the coverlet of Islam. They are, I fear, angry on their own behalf, but have persuaded themselves that they are angry on behalf of Allah (SWT). It is, I must admit, all too easy to say this. Self-deception seems to be a human characteristic that is almost inescapable, and who among us can swear that he never deceives himself as to his real motives? But this, precisely, is why "ceaseless vigil" is so necessary. True Iman demands of us a mighty effort to examine and purify our motives and intentions. If this sometimes prevents us from acting when the need for action seems urgent, it also saves us from many foolish or wicked actions. Allah (SWT) does not ask the impossible of us. He does demand that we do our best, and that we refrain from attributing noble, religious motives to a motivation that is, at root, self-interested.

No doubt I shall be accused by some of "quietism," a dreadful sin in the opinion of the activists. I rather wish that the English language included a corresponding term, "noise-ism"! Unfortunately it does not. But I am sure there are occasions when quiet is greatly preferable to noise, and may even be more efficacious in the long run. This reminds me of a little story I was told many years ago which I have retained in memory. Some young people came to an elderly Sheikh in Teheran and said to him: "It is such a beautiful day, we are going into the park to curse the memory of Abu Bakr and Umar." This, as I am sure you are aware, is the practice of certain extremist Shi‘ah sects. The old man answered very politely: "How kind of you to invite me. It is indeed a beautiful day. But, if you will excuse me, I think I will stay at home and curse my own nafs." There is surely a lesson in this. Beware of those who embark on violent action before they have purified and tamed the nafs!

This brings me, unavoidably, to the vexed question of the Islamic State. I must admit to you that I am in two minds when the subject is raised. In principle, I recognize the necessity for this. In practice I have reservations because of the ways in which it is proposed to bring this principle to realization. In considering this question, it seems to me that most of the activists think exclusively in terms of Law and in terms of a system. I tend to think in terms of people and of a community. For me, a truly Islamic State would be a community in which the vast majority of the people have true Iman in their hearts and are, in the full sense of the term, good Muslims by conviction. Then, surely, everything would come right? What worries me is the intentions of those who are more concerned with political systems than they are with the cultivation of Iman and who wish to impose what they believe to be an Islamic system upon the masses.

You cannot impose Iman by force. You cannot impose virtue by force. La ikraha fid-Deen! I am not impressed by those who seem to think that, in order to establish such a State, it is sufficient to cover up the women, pour whisky down the drains, and introduce severe punishments. It is my belief that the imposition of virtue by force leads, eventually, to a reaction in the opposite direction. We have a prime example of this is British history. Oliver Cromwell, as military Dictator in the 17th century, tried to do precisely this. The outcome, within a very few years, was the Restoration period, a time of the utmost license and moral laxity. Outside the domain of religion as such, we have a telling example in what has happened to the former Soviet Union. It is sometimes forgotten that Lenin’s intention was not to set up a perfect political system immediately but to create a new kind of human being, the "new Soviet man." I am sure he understood very well that the achievement of a communist society would be quite impossible unless human nature underwent a radical change. I believe history demonstrates to us that human nature cannot be radically changed. After 70 years of harsh rule and the murder by Stalin of all those whom he considered to be unregenerate, we see the Russians and other former subjects of the Soviet Empire just as greedy, just as selfish, just as inclined to immorality as any other people. All that pressure and indoctrination had no effect whatsoever.

Moreover, those who are most intent upon setting up a truly Islamic State overnight seem to forget that the Mercy of Allah (SWT) takes precedence over His wrath. In my view, which is not widely shared, the introduction of hadd punishments should be the final step in creating such a State, not the first step. Until we have a genuinely Islamic society, until there is the kind of social justice required by Islam, I am doubtful whether it is legitimate to impose the full rigor of the Law. We should proceed gently, and never in haste (which, according to a hadith, comes from the Shaytan!). We should proceed cautiously and humbly, not arrogantly and impulsively, and we should not attempt to break old habits — even if they are bad habits — overnight, for that involves breaking people. And we should never make the mistake of underestimating the problems.

The Prophet (SAW) pointed out that his was the best generation, with the clear implication that there would be an inevitable decline in spiritual quality thereafter. If the Muslims of the early centuries did not succeed in establishing the ideal Islamic State, then we should not assume so readily that we can do what better men than us could not do, unless there comes about a profound renewal of Iman and what I would dare to describe as a miraculous intervention on the part of Allah (SWT).

So what of the Shari‘ah? Does not every Muslim have the right to live under the Shari‘ah or under a government which acts in accordance with the Shari‘ah? Yes indeed, in principle. But I find among those who talk most about Shari‘ah a lack of definition. Some mean by this simply the general principles drawn from Qur’an and Sunnah. Others mean the full body of Law created, so far as we are concerned, by the four madhhahib and, for the Shi‘ah, Jaffari Law. We need to define this term when we use it. If we mean everything embodied in Islamic fiqh, then we must face some awkward issues. Many ordinary and, perhaps, uneducated Muslims are convinced that the Shari‘ah, understood in this sense, has answers to every possible questions. I see this exemplified almost every week at the London Mosque. A simple man comes to the Chief Imam (who was trained in fiqh at Al-Azhar) and says: "I am thinking of doing such-and-such. Is this halal or haram?" The Imam points out the difficulties in arriving at an infallible answer. Imam Malik (RA), he says took one view, Shafi‘i (RA) another; moreover, there is nothing in the Law books exactly corresponding to the man’s dilemma. His visitor is so furious at not receiving a clear answer that he starts shouting: "You’re not a Muslim. You’re a kafir!"

How can we expect the ancient laws we have inherited to solve every problem in this extraordinary world in which we live? Let me take one example: the question of organ transplants. Al-Azhar has given approval to this practice, and I think most authorities agree. Islam favors the preservation of human life when this is possible. On the other hand, Islam does not favor the mutilation of the dead body. Moreover, when any new technique is devised, one has to consider not only the situation as it is today, but also the situations to which it may lead. Is this what we call in England "the thin end of the wedge"? It is difficult, for example, to object to transplantation of the cornea. Who could object to giving sight to the blind? The question is where we draw the line and whether this line can in fact be drawn. I find myself imagining a situation in which human bodies are kept alive on machines while one organ, then another and then another is removed until nothing is left but a shell, which may then be buried. As a Muslim, I have an instinctive revulsion against this, but I cannot prove (from Qur’an or Sunnah) that I am right.

An even more difficult question is that of genetic engineering, which is already applied to domesticated animals. The genetic structure of a cow is altered so that it produces more milk. It was recently pointed out in a television program that it would be possible to design a cow without legs, which, because it would not be using any energy moving around, would produce even more milk. From this it is a short step to changing the genetic structure in human beings. Can we honestly say that the Shari‘ah has answers to such questions? I think not. But I would like to believe that answers may be found in the heart of the Muslim who possesses true Iman. To say this is to speak of the Muslim whose very substance has been penetrated by the Qur’an. The Lady Ayesha (RAA), questioned about the nature of her husband, said that his nature was the Qur’an. As Muslims we hate the word "incarnation," but I think it is legitimate to use this world in relation to such a man. Do I shock you if I suggest that the Qur’an was "incarnate" in the heart and the soul and the human substance of the Messenger of Allah (SAW)? The man — and such men are rare — of whom this is at least partially true may, perhaps, give spontaneous answers to questions with which the Law does not deal in accordance with Qur’an and Sunnah. If I am wrong about this, then where do we turn for answers that are in accordance with our Faith?

I spoke earlier of the Law. It seems to me that the application of this Law in modern times has to be flexible. Amongst the many radical differences between Islam and the contemporary Western world, the attitude to Law is particularly significant. In the West, laws are changed according to public opinion which changes, if not from one year to the next, then certainly from one decade to the next. What was "wrong" ten years ago is "right" today, and vice versa. Take the example of homosexuality. When I was young, such practices were punishable with a long term of imprisonment; now it is an offense to discriminate against homosexuals. I was recently asked to look at a Police Training Manual because there was a section in it dealing with the Muslim community. I glanced also at other parts of the manual and came across the statement that homosexuality is just as "normal" as heterosexuality. This is surely an indication of the way in which so-called "moral values" change in the course of a few years? On the other hand, these laws, so long as they remain on the statute book, are rigidly applied.

In Islam, because the basic laws are derived from an Eternal Source and not from constantly changing human opinions, these laws are, as such, unalterable. At the same time, allowance is made for circumstances and for the conditions of the time. The Prophet (SAW) after all advised us to "avert penalties by doubts," and you will recall that, in the face of special circumstances — a famine — Umar Ibn Al-Khattab (RAA) permitted the people to eat forbidden food. I suggested earlier that, as things are, the more severe laws of the Shari‘ah should be applied only with hesitation and while making allowances for circumstances. What matters, from our point of view, is to hold tight to the principles and make sure we do not lose sight of them, while acting in a merciful, humane, and sensible way.

I have expressed my opinions. They are only opinions, and I have a good reason for emphasizing this point. I spoke earlier of the necessity for Muslims to "agree to differ." Clearly, most of us have great difficulty in applying this principle, hence the bitter and angry divisions amongst our people. Why is this? I have a theory which I will submit to you in the hope that some may think it makes sense. I call this the theory of "leakage." Let me put it to you this way. Islam is based upon certainties, just as Christianity is based upon a person. We speak of faith but, so far as these self-evident certainties are concerned, we might equally well speak of "knowledge." We acknowledge that Allah (SWT) is One without partner, that Muhammad (SAW) is His final and conclusive Messenger, and that the Qur’an is His word, eternal and unalterable. Beyond this there are opinions of every kind, but no opinion is final, no opinion carries with it the seal of certainty. We shall know soon enough who was right and who was wrong, and that must suffice us in this world.

Since we are accustomed to being certain about the essentials, we tend very easily to lend this same quality of certainty to convictions, beliefs, and opinions which carry upon them the mark of human fallibility. In other words, the sense of certainty leaks out from its proper domain into the realm of relativity which is, almost by definition, the realm of uncertainty. We are not content to believe that our personal opinions are correct. We make them articles of the Faith, claim that they are infallibly based upon Qur’an and Sunnah, and condemn as kafirs all who do not share these opinions. That is what I would define as "fanaticism," and it is a source of weakness in the Ummah. What we most need, if we are to live at peace and to cooperate together for the general good, is a touch of humility concerning our opinions. If we cannot achieve this, then we are likely to face a bleak future.

In the situation in which we find ourselves at the end of the 20th century of the Christian era, we cannot afford disunity. We would do well to say: "He who is not our enemy is our friends"; a policy adopted by the Prophet (SAW) himself at certain critical times. There is a common English saying that those who do not "hang together" (in the sense of uniting and cooperating) are "sure to hang separately" (perhaps from the nearest tree). If we are not prepared to "hang together" for religious reasons, as we should, then let us at least do so for practical reasons. So far as the Muslim States are concerned, it may be said that they face a stark alternative. Either they must learn to make common cause in close cooperation, forming a powerful block with an effective voice in world affairs, or else they may continue to quarrel among themselves, in which case they will have to do as they are commanded by the West and bury, deep in the sand, any sense of pride they might have. We have seen all this before. Meditate for a moment on the story of Muslim Spain, defeated from within by disunity.

Human beings, if they have an atom of good sense or even of self-interest, will usually combine in the face of a danger that threatens them all. As you know, I was born in Switzerland, and it seems to me that, of all the countries in the world, the Swiss have found the most satisfactory solution to the political problem, the problem of living together peacefully in spite of differences. They do not even have a shared language, since they speak, according to the area in which they live, French, German, Italian, or Romansh. Yet no country could be more united. Why is this? Simply because, whether rightly or wrongly, they have always believed themselves to be under threat from their more powerful neighbors. Their unity is therefore a unity imposed by their geopolitical situation. We too are threatened by those more powerful than ourselves. Will that sense of shared danger ever persuade us to unite? I do not know.

But I do know that, if such unity is achieved, it must include real and practical concern for our fellow Muslims who do not have the benefit of living in the relative safety of a country such as Pakistan. I need not recite to you the list of Muslim communities who are persecuted and oppressed. I am sure you have this list in your heads and, I hope, in your hearts, the most recent case being that of the Burmese Muslims killed, tortured, and exiled. However much we may be concerned with our own problems, it is not permissible for a Muslim to ignore or even be unaware of the sufferings of his brothers and sisters who are persecuted and driven from their homes.

When, as a child, I was being foolish or lazy, I was told to "pull my socks up," no doubt a very English way of putting things. Let me say that it is time that we, as Muslims, "pulled our socks up"! But, if we are to do so, we must be true to our Faith, not only in outward behavior, but inwardly. All strength comes from Allah (SWT), which, in effect, means that it is rooted in Iman. Our Islam, in the sense of obeying the Divine commands blindly from hope for Paradise or fear of hell, is not enough. The power and the sweetness of Iman is essential, most of all when we are shaken and unmanned by the problems with which this world presents us today.

I ended my third talk by saying that it is quite impossible to make predictions about the future. Indeed it is. But there is one final point I would like to make before concluding. Everything in the dunya sooner or later declines and everything comes to an end. The life-span of a civilization or a culture is limited just as the life-span of the individual is limited. We tend to assume, or many of us assume when trying to come to terms with the modern world, that Western civilization will go on, if not for ever, at least for the foreseeable future. Yet, like every other civilization or culture, it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. There will be an end to it, as there is an end to everything under the sun. We shall be better placed, as Muslims, when that time comes if we have been true to our Faith, true to our traditions and true to ourselves. We may feel defenseless here and now. So perhaps we are, if we think of this only in worldly terms, but what we possess — in the Qur’an and in the Sunnah of our Prophet (SAW) — is incalculably more precious than anything that the West holds in its hands today.

We have reasons for anxiety. We have no excuse for despair. But if we allow ourselves to be too dazzled, too impressed by that worldly dominion, that worldly strength, which looms over us for the time being, then we shall indeed be the losers. Let us take the long view and live together in peace, doing what we can to purify our hearts and our intentions and trusting in Allah (SWT). We really have no practical alternative!

Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi

Book Of Secrets




Transmission of Islamic Engineering to the West
http://www.history-science-technology.com/Articles/articles%2071.htm

Our way of life and the Niqab

One of the most striking Friday sermon that I ever heard was made by an Imam over eight years ago. It was at a time in which Islam was facing much slander. Every media outlet possible were all talking about these ‘crazy mozlems’ who had the audacity to attack on their soil. This was, of course, referring to the events of 9/11.

Every detail about this religion was being examined and part of the vitriol that some politicians launched against Muslims is that they (Muslims) wanted to change their way of life. It seemed like a strange statement because many Muslims are living the ‘American way of life’ and more comfortable with that than than other ways.

Some politicians used this as part of their war mongering tactics, to incite emotions to go to war. That the Muslims wanted to change the way that Americans live. Statements such as; are these crazie guys trying to change our way of life! How could they when they are on the other side of the world?? So the appropriate action for those ‘sane’ guys was to invade a country and then force the American way of life over them! Hypocrisy anyone? Hypocrisy is a sign of oppression!

Going back to the Khutba he spoke about the above and he rightly pointed out that this was not a new ploy, this was an old one. Perhaps it’s part of the false claims of those who oppose Prophethood make.

This was the claim of the pagans against Islam in its early days; they opposed it as it went against what their forefathers had taught them and they claimed that their religion was being insulted. Religion was a way of life to them and particularly trade. Islam cannot be separated into boxes then neatly filed away as it governs every part of our lives and if we abandon it then we are not using the clear path shown to us.

We live our lives separated from the reality that we are intertwined and inseparable. We all, like it or not, are interdependent on each other and this is not as simple as it seems. No one has the right to force a way of life upon anyone and nor should they yet we have many wrongs in our societies now.

Bill hicks (the famous deceased comedian) once said, “You are free to do as we tell you. You are free to do as we tell you!”

We are not free in these societies because we are influenced by everything around us to make certain lifestyle choices that are in line with our passions. Thus we are being controlled into making decisions based on debasing ourselves as human beings.


So what is our way of life now?

We are not looking up to the heavens we are looking down on the ground! We service our egos and we service our base passions until they we are exhausted then we try again and again. Some of us are really lost. We are controlled by the adverts we see and we buy products that we have no need for constantly ‘bogof –ing’ in the supermarket. We dine without realising the misery that others are in.


Changes

During my short life time I have seen some bizarre changes many have been beneficial and many have been harmful. We have seen a type of person develop who is only interested in what they can take and not in what they can give. In fact do they even know that they can give? Do they know the joys of giving? Do we?

So in this western liberal society, in which women are encouraged to display their wares for all to see, comes the veiled woman. Not just her hair but her face as well! How can this be? This bucks all our trends!

The Niqab is seen as something extremely negative in the west and it has not been portrayed by us, the Muslims, correctly.


Portrayal

We often see women who wear Niqab as oppressed by their men folk. I used to think this was a fallacy but there are some animals who claim they are men who do force their women to cover up. And there are also different types of animals who force their women not to wear the Hijab. Both of these types of men are different types of the same animal and both should be caged up so we don’t have to deal with the damage they cause.


Reasons for wearing the Niqab

Firstly, the decision was something very common for righteous women to cover their faces in the presence of strangers. Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) was known to cover her face when answering the door. One of the main reasons for this was to dispel tribulation that could occur if a male saw an attractive female. So this was seen as an act done in order to protect women, similar to the Hijab. However the male as always has the responsibility to lower their gaze.

The rulings differ from place to place especially if there is a danger that a woman may be attacked then it would be necessary for her to wear it. It is by no means obligatory, in normal circumstances, but if a woman is in a place where the majority of women are wearing it, then one would be advisable to wear it. So depending on the place the rulings can change, especially if there is danger that a woman could face.

Some scholars say that this Niqab should be avoided in the west because its negativity cannot be overcome.

There are women who feel nervous because they cannot understand why women wear black from head to toe. Black is seen as a colour that does not attract men so that is why black is worn by many. Although again black is associated in the West with death and other negative aspects so there is a clear clash here.

The Niqab was also something women in the Arabian Peninsula used to wear when they travelled from one place to the other. This prevented them from being harassed or even attacked by robbers. Also note that men would also cover their faces when travelling to avoid getting sand into their mouths. And in some cases they would cover their faces in battle.

There are many other reasons why a woman may decide to wear the Niqab and as long as she has decided to do, without any force, then I support their decision. The Niqab is like an extension of the Hijab in many respects and this could be a reason why a woman is wearing it.

I have worked with women who wore the Niqab and they did not seem oppressed by their men in fact them seemed to be similar to those without. They were confident and they communicated clearly.

So if you work with a woman who wears a Niqab then know she is most likely not oppressed but that wearing the Niqab is her choice and that you should not treat her like she is oppressed.



Our problem

In our country that we cannot understand why a woman would decide not to wear revealing clothes and instead chose to cover herself up. This is a sign of decency and should not be seen in a negatively. If we respect the right for some to dress indecently then we should accept the opposite if we claim to be just. Banning the Niqab is a sign that decency means nothing anymore. It is a sign that the rights of other religions mean nothing anymore.

It is a true sign that fascism is alive and well because we all have to fit into a certain box so we can be packaged and sold. To force others into wearing or not wearing certain clothes is a sign that the freedoms of these countries are being eroded. We have a right to worship as we see fit and this includes the right of a woman to wear the Niqab.



See previous article on Hijab
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2009/10/hijab-in-modern-context.html

Sheikh Muhammad Al -Yaqoubi,

The Arabic Language is sacred

Opportunity knocks

Opportunity knocks was an old television show which showcased new talent, all these acts were then put up for a public vote. The public would send in post cards and the decision was made a week later. This show gave a chance for those unheard individuals a platform to show what they could do.

Many went on to careers in ‘show business’ and this enabled many people to reach heights that may have not been possible otherwise. This amazing opportunity was a golden chance for people to show what they could do. Some did not make the most of this chance and others made the most of it. You either take the opportunity or the opportinutiy is taken from you. Someone cannot pay a bill at midnight at his local post office because it’s not open at that time.

Similarly, this month has arrived in which the greatest opportunity has arrived. This is the opportunity to change our patterns, change our hearts and break our bad habits. We blame our bad deeds on satan but in this month he is not here and you no longer have that excuse.

The month of Ramadan comes but once a year and if we only knew its value we would want it to be Ramadan all year around. I remember a Qasida that the Yemenis sometimes sing, “Welcome, O’ Month of Ramadan, Welcome, O’ month of Ramadan, Welcome, O’ month of Ramadan, Welcome, O’ month of worship.” Different times have different values and different times allow you to do certain things.

This is a month in which you can flex your religious muscles and show that true potential that you have for worship but once the month is over do not go back to your old habits, try to keep your new ones.

We are just moments away from this blessed opportunity and when it leaves Ramadan for 1431 it will be over and it will never come back. Then we have to ask ourselves, did we use the time well and did we take advantage of this great opportunity?

Bob Monkhouse used to say, "When opportunity comes your way, don't knock it!"

Previous Ramadan links

Imam Ghazali on fasting
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2007/08/imam-ghazali-mysteries-of-fasting.html


Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad Lecture
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/sheikh-abdul-hakim-murad.html


Imam Zaid Shakir
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2007/10/imam-zaid-shakir.html


Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Ramadan Advice
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2007/10/imam-zaid-shakir.html


Sheikh Nuh Keller advice
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2005/11/sheikh-nuh-ha-min-keller.html


Choice Ramadan Thoughts
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/choice-ramadan-thoughts.html


Considered Ramadan Thoughts
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2008/09/considered-ramadan-thoughts.html


Random Ramadan Thoughts
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2007/09/random-ramadan-thoughts.html




After Ramadan don't forget this.

Satan's post-Ramadan trick
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2009/09/satans-post-ramadan-trick.html

Quranic passages of healing

وَنُنَزِّلُ مِنَ ٱلْقُرْآنِ مَا هُوَ شِفَآءٌ وَرَحْمَةٌ لِّلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
الإسراء 17:82
“We reveal of the Qur’an that which is a healing and a mercy for believers.”


وَيَشْفِ صُدُورَ قَوْمٍ مُّؤْمِنِينَ
التوبة 9:14
“He will heal the breasts of folk who are believers.”


قُلْ هُوَ لِلَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ هُدًى وَشِفَآءٌ
فصلت 41:44
“Say, for those who believe it is a guidance and a healing.”


يَخْرُجُ مِن بُطُونِهَا شَرَابٌ مُّخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ فِيهِ شِفَآءٌ لِلنَّاس
النحل 16:69
“There cometh forth from their bellies a drink divers of hues, wherein is healing for mankind.”


وَإِذَا مَرِضْتُ فَهُوَ يَشْفِينِ
الشعراء 26:80
“When I sicken; He heals me.”


وَشِفَآءٌ لِّمَا فِي ٱلصُّدُورِ
يونس 10:57
“And a healing for what is in the breasts.”

Abu Qasim Al-Qushayri (may Allah have mercy on him) said, “My child was severely ill when I saw the Messenger of Allah in my sleep. He said, “What has come to you?” He replied, “The condition of my child.” He said, “Why didn’t you use the passages of healing?” I said, “I do not know them.”
I woke up and completed one recitation of the Quran. I did not overlook any passage containing healing except that I gathered and it is mentioned six times in the Quran.
Al-Qushayri (may Allah have mercy on him) said, “I wrote them on goblet, erased it with water and gave it to my child to drink; it was as if he was freed from shackles.” (He was cured instantly).


(This was a common action of the tradition of Islamic cultures to write Quranic verses with some edible substance then wipe it (disolve) with water then drink it.)

Original source from Al-Awrad Al-Daimah/Constant Supplications by Sheikh Abu l’Yusr Al-Abideen (may Allah show him mercy).

http://ayat-shifa.tk/

Hasan Le Gai Eaton

The Muslims in the West
Charles Gai Eaton (Hassan Abdul Hakeem)
http://home.pix.za/mf/mfj1/eaton2.htm


Dr. Israr Ahmad may recall that, when I spoke to the Islamic Medical Association of North America some eighteen months ago, I said that it made little difference whether I entitled my talk "Islam in the Modern World" or, alternatively, "Muslims in the West." I explained the reasons for this statement, and I hope Dr. Israr will not mind if I start by repeating what I said at that time.

It seems to me that, today, with the exception of simple peasants and the few Bedus who still roam freely in the desert, all Muslims live "in the West." They live in the modern world, and that means a world built by the West from bricks fired in the factories of Western culture. Our wishful thinkers of whom we have, I believe, all too many, do not like to admit this. They try to make a sharp distinction between modernization and westernization, and this leads them to the claim — which seems to me absurd — that if the Muslims had not fallen asleep and "fallen behind" over many centuries, they would have constructed a world almost identical to the one that now surrounds us; the same worldly dynamism, the same science, the same technology. They are dreaming. Lions do not give birth to wolf cubs, and you are unlikely to pick mangos from a cherry tree.

Certainly, change is inherent in history, and, had Islam remained to this day the dominant world force that it once was, the life of the Muslim in the 15th century Hijrah would have been very different to the life he lived in the 5th century, let alone in the lst. But he would still have lived within a setting, a framework, molded by the spirit of Islam and by the practical requirements of the religion. Change would have taken place within the bounds set by the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The Muslim would still have felt at home in his world.

He is not and cannot be at home in the world as it is today. In the first place, the ground rules have been laid down in terms of beliefs and ideologies entirely alien to Islam. Take as only one example the Charter of the United Nations and the structure of International Law (in so far as such Law may be said to exist). The main provisions of that Charter may be acceptable to us in a general way, but this is coincidental. Not one paragraph, not even one sentence in any paragraph of the Charter is of Islamic origin or could be said to have been inspired by the Islamic ethos. The same, of course, is true of the conditions governing international trade and banking; it is true also of the educational system, especially at university level as it exists in almost every Muslim country. We have had no say in the making of the contemporary world — modern "civilization" — and we are obliged to fit into it as best we can, often as "square pegs in round holes"; an uncomfortable position, and one that might be said to emasculate us, robbing us of that self-confidence which I suggested, in my first talk, is of such profound importance.

The majority of Muslim nations — or shall we say of nations inhabited by the Muslims? — have, it seems, one principal ambition, and that is to become "modern." The Third World nations in general are usually referred to as the "developing countries," which simply means that they are assumed to be on the road to complete modernization in imitation of the Western model. Now whether this process is inevitable or not — whether it is possible or not — and making all allowances for what is commonly referred to as "defensive modernization," the fact remains that this is merely a euphemism for adopting the science, the technology, the weaponry, the political systems and, finally, the way of life practiced in Europe and the United States.

If this process is really inevitable, then we do well to remember a saying of Sayyidena Ali (RAA) which, if I remember correctly, suggests that a poison which you drink is the more dangerous if you take it without knowing that it is a poison; so let us take it, if we must, in small sips and in full knowledge of what it is we are doing. There is a fact of life which is often ignored, but should never be ignored. Effects bring their causes trailing behind them. If you accept the effect blindly, then you also accept what gave rise to it. We cannot enjoy all the benefits of, say, modern technology without, to some extent, taking on board the principles, the suppositions and ideology which produced this technology. I must however add, if I am to avoid being misunderstood, that I am not suggesting that Muslims should entirely reject this technology. That would be totally impractical, and would leave us hopelessly weak and at the mercy of our enemies. What I am suggesting is that we must open our eyes and be fully aware of what we are doing and of what the implications are.

I was deeply impressed by something which Dr. Israr Ahmad wrote in his booklet entitled Islamic Renaissance: The Real Task Ahead. I want to quote that paragraph because I think it should be impressed on the minds of all young Muslims and of all who are active in public affairs. "The domince of Western culture and philosophical thought," he wrote, "is so pervasive and universal that even the point of view of such people as are struggling against it in some countries turns out, on closer examination, to be itself greatly influenced by the West. Indeed, they are themselves to a great extent Western in their approach and method, and even in their purported ideology. They too think in terms of Western philosophy and ideology, with the result that they lose their impact and their efficacy in opposing it."

Dr. Israr has said what I have been trying to say for many years and I must tell you that reading that paragraph gave me tremendous encouragement. I only wish this was a point of view more widely shared and more widely understood by people of influence within the Ummah and, in particular, by the young enthusiasts who believe that they are fighting for Islamic truth but who have, in fact, been dazzled by Western political theories. I might add that it is probably easier for someone born into Western culture than for the oriental Muslim to see how true this is. Again and again in the writings or speeches of certain Muslim reformers and activists, we who were born into the Western culture are in a position to say: "Ah yes, I recognize those ideas, those principles. I know where they came from! This is all too familiar." The fact that these ideas are given an Islamic veneer does not deceive us.

If we are undeceived, then so — I hope — are the intelligent young people, the elite, born to Muslim immigrants in the West. As I hope to make clear later in this talk, it seems to me that the convert such as myself and the young born-Muslim in Europe or America have so much in common that it is unnecessary to distinguish between us. I sometimes say that I have two separate compartments in my mind and that I can switch between them, perhaps as one changes gear in a motor car. Given my upbringing and early conditioning, I have a Western mind or, to use an Americanism, "mindset." That is natural, and I am skeptical of those converts who claim to have eliminated that Western mindset totally from their personalities. Equally, after just over 40 years in Islam, I think I can claim to have a Muslim mind. I can therefore see any event or situation from two different perspectives, the Western and Islamic. These events and situations look very different according to which perspective I adopt. The same is true for these young Muslims of whom I spoke, although I must again emphasize that I am speaking of the most intelligent and the best educated among them, the elite who think deeply about their dual identity.

This, I hope, makes of us a bridge between two mutually incompatible structures of belief and ways of life. That, I think, can be a useful function. It is also a privilege. After I had talked to the Muslim doctors from North America, several of them came to me saying how disturbing and even how painful they found their position, situated between two different worlds, participating in two different cultures, the Islamic and the Western. I could only say to them that I, personally, rejoiced in this duality because I found in it a certain richness. It appears to me that the more one can understand and the wider the area one surveys, the better placed one is to see both sides of any question objectively and to appreciate the variety to which a single human nature gives rise. But to rejoice in this situation does not permit any mental or moral laziness or self-indulgence; it requires mental and imaginative effort and it requires sound standards of discrimination.

We are, in any case, in the forefront of the confrontation to which I have referred more than once. As such, we have an obligation, not only to inform Western people about Islam, but also to attempt to interpret the West to our fellow Muslims who have less immediate contact with the centers of Western culture. I mean to speak later of the ignorance of Islam and the misunderstandings current in Europe and the United States, but I must add that the majority of my fellow Muslims have very little understanding of modern culture, which is why I took this as the theme of my first talk.

Let me now turn more specifically to the question of Muslims living in the West. It might be said that we have, in Britain and the United States, a microcosm of the Ummah as a whole. This is less true of continental European countries. In France the vast majority of Muslims come from Algeria, in Germany the vast majority from Turkey and, in Holland most are from Indonesia. But in Britain, as in the U.S., we do indeed have something of a cross-section of the Muslim peoples. What happens to this "microcosm" may offer some hints as to what is likely to happen to the Ummah as such if the process of "modernization" continues. So let me speak first of the Muslims in Britain. For convenience I propose to divide them into a number of different groups:

I. The older generation of poor and relatively uneducated immigrants.
II. The more educated, wealthier middle-class immigrants (a minority, but an important minority), who are frequently modernists in the full sense of the term.
III. The intelligent and more privileged young people of whom I spoke, who are trying to rediscover Islam for themselves.
IV. The young Muslims, usually of a humbler background, who are commonly described as "fundamentalists" and who tend to be angry and frustrated, even disturbed.
V. The young who have, in effect, left the Faith of their parents and been absorbed into the host community.

Let me start with the first two groups. The uneducated immigrants, often doing humble jobs, are, I believe, in a painful situation. They really knew nothing before departing from their homes about the country to which they were going and were totally unprepared for such an alien and, in many ways, hostile environment. In many cases they speak very little English and the women have no English at all. This in itself is a terrible handicap and a source of weakness. It is always frightening to live in a country where one does not understand the language or speak it adequately. For the most part, they try to live a Muslim life as they lived it in their village in Pakistan or Bangladesh. To take only one example, the position of the women, sometimes driven to suicide by the loneliness and isolation of their situation: in their country of origin they would have belonged to a large extended family, with a wide circle of female relations amongst whom they could move freely. In London or elsewhere in British cities, they are likely to be shut up in a small apartment, day in and day out, deprived of normal human contacts, and tormented by the realization that their children have moved away from them into a different world. Imagine just for a moment the situation of a mother who speaks no English when she listens to her own children talking and joking together in this foreign tongue.

What then of the second group, the more fortunate among the immigrants? I asked a Pakistani friend recently whether I was right in suspecting that class differences in Pakistan are greater than in most countries. After some thought he agreed with me. I asked this question because I had just been to a party given by a very wealthy family from Pakistan. I looked around at these successful men in their smart business suits and at these grand, bejeweled ladies in their beautiful dresses, all of them speaking perfect English, and they seemed to have nothing in common with the poor, working-class Pakistanis. I had the impression that they had very little interest and very little understanding of their poorer compatriots. One day a young man who had come to Britain to do a post-graduate course visited me at the Islamic Culture Centre, and we talked. He said to me, regarding the immigrants: "Where do these people come from? I never met such people at home!" I resisted the temptation to say to him: "Of course you have met them! You met them as your servants at home."

I hope that I have not offended anyone in making this point. I have made it, although I hesitated to do so, because it is relevant to our subject. It seems to me that, under ideal circumstances, the poor and uneducated immigrants would be in the care of their more fortunate brothers and sisters, who might offer them the leadership that is so desperately needed. As it is, the community in Britain has no real and effective leadership, although there are hundreds of self-appointed "leaders" who compete with each other and denounce each other. I might add that the situation in the United States is very much better on account of the large number of professional people among the first-generation Muslims.

The bulk of the community is divided by many different factors. The Pakistanis, of course, are divided politically between what might loosely be called the pro-Zia and pro-Bhutto factions. But this is less important than the differences in cultural habits. Among the Pakistanis, for example, the man who comes from a village in the North of this country and another man who comes from the South or even from a village a few hundred miles distant have different customs which they believe to be a part of the orthodox practice of Islam. What they know of their Faith is derived, in all probability, from an ignorant village Imam. On this basis they readily condemn each other as kafirs. It is common, for example, for the followers of one madhhab to refuse to pray behind the follower of another.

One result of these divisions is that there is hardly a mosque in Britain that has not had to summon the police to deal with conflicts and quarrels, even with violence. I would hope that you find this as disgraceful and as shocking as I do, for it shames us all as Muslims, and it is little wonder if the authorities in Britain regard the Muslims as inveterate trouble-makers. The police certainly do not enjoy being dragged into quarrels which they do not remotely understand by people who seem to them like madmen.

I am speaking, however, of a generation which, in the nature of things, will soon die out. It is the young who matter; the second and the third generations. I have been told (I do not know whether this is true or not) that, in the United States, some forty percent of the young are leaving Islam altogether. That is disturbing, and one hopes that some will come back when they grow older, but there seems little that can be done at present about this situation. Let me speak first, then, of the third and the fourth groups I mentioned earlier. Those I described as "fundamentalists" find themselves, like their parents, in an alien environment which seems to them inherently hostile. They react with bitter anger, but they do not really know against whom to direct this fury.

I remember an occasion some time ago when there was violence in the London Central Mosque, due partly to the fact that the Chief Imam had accepted Salman Rushdie’s supposed conversion (or "re-conversion"!) and partly on account of the Gulf War. There was a great deal of noise, shouting of slogans and threats. I walked around among these people, trying to understand their anger. I realized after a while that this was completely unfocused anger. They themselves did not really know what it was that made them so furious; all they knew was that they were possessed by very powerful emotions.

On this occasion or on a similar occasion, an incident occurred which seems to me significant. It was Friday, and the noise had started the moment the Jum‘ah Prayer ended. An elderly man who wished to perform his Sunnah prayers came up to one of these young men and said very politely: "Please! Could you not keep quiet for just a little while and allow us to pray?" The young man turned on him and said: "Go and pray somewhere else if you want to!" What sort of Islam is this? It happened, after all, in the prayer hall of a mosque on a Friday. What does one make of it? I hope to return to this question, in the context of "political Islam," in my final talk. For the moment, I leave the question with you.

Now we come to what I have described as the "intelligent young," and this is where I place my hopes. I have seldom been more impressed than I have been by some of these young people, both the boys and the girls; but they too have their problems. I have lost count of the young people who have come to me saying something like this: "I want to be a real Muslim. That is my heritage, isn’t it? But my parents’ Islam makes no sense to me. It seems to be just a matter of custom, and they can’t answer the questions I ask. All they can tell me is what I must not do. Surely there must be more to Islam than that!"

I try to tell them that there is indeed more to Islam than that, a great deal more: a storehouse of traditional wisdom, of mysticism and philosophy and the rich speculations of some of the greatest intellects the world has known. I try to encourage them to read and to study; in other words to rediscover Islam for themselves. That is what many of them are doing, and when I meet those who have been successful in this and are truly young people of faith, of Iman, with a good understanding of Islam, then I am indeed filled with hope for the future of Islam, at least in Britain and in the United States, where I have met boys and girls of the same calibre.

I noticed, when reading the booklets published by Dr. Israr, that he mentions the possibility that Allah (SWT) may "bestow the favour of upholding the banner of His religion on an entirely new people." When I read that I found myself wondering whether these good young Muslims growing up in the West and understanding both cultures might, conceivably, form the nucleus of such a people, Insha Allah.

But let me return briefly to the problem of the parents, the first generation. I mentioned earlier that some forty percent of the young are said to be leaving the Faith in the U.S. I am told that a considerable number in Britain are leaving, as they are in France, where the remark, "Islam? That’s for the old people!" is heard only too often. The Muslim child going to school in the West is taught to ask questions, encouraged to be both sceptical and enquiring. These children or young people, when they go home, ask questions. If the parents are sensible, they will admit that they do not have simple or informed answers to these questions. They had always taken Islam for granted. Questions make them uncomfortable. If the children are less fortunate in their parents, the answer will be a slap across the face. There is then an inevitable alienation between parents and children.

It is therefore little wonder that many of the young are simply walking out of the door into the secular, profane world. At the same time, there is among most of these parents a failure to understand the temptations which their children face, temptations which they never encountered in their youth. The father of the family discovers that his teenage son has visited a "pub" with English friends. There is a tremendous scene, much anger and shouting. The son walks out of the house. Worse still, it is reported to the father that his daughter has been seen talking to an English boy with whom she had been at school. There is an even worse scene, and perhaps the girl walks out. Perhaps she becomes a prostitute or she comes into the hands of the police as a "delinquent teenager" or perhaps she marries her English boy and forgets all about the strange, narrow religion of her parents.

The attitude of such parents may be understandable. Most human behavior is understandable if one has any powers of imagination. But I am not sure that it is excusable. I remember an occasion some years ago when I gave a talk to a Students’ Islamic Association at a University. They provided me with a bed for the night in the student house, and we talked until late in the night. In view of the problems they all seemed to have with their parents, I finally said to them (there were ten or twelve boys and girls present): "I would like you, each in turn, to answer me one questions. When your parents made this extraordinary decision to emigrate from their home to this strange country, how much thought did they give to the effect this would have on their children’s religion?" One by one these young people said: "None! They gave no thought to the matter at all." I find that deeply depressing, and we are now seeing the results of this lamentable irresponsibility.

To whatever group Muslims in Britain may belong, we are all constantly irritated and often angered by the treatment of Islam in the media — press, radio and television. Sometimes these attacks are founded on some basic knowledge of our Faith; we may not like this, but I for my part would be even more worried if this did not happen. Faith is indeed the enemy of unbelief and Islam is inevitably opposed to a secular, irreligious way of life. One must expect the unbeliever to attack his enemy, particularly when that enemy is weak. If we always met with approval, this might indicate that we were being less than true to ourselves.

Most of the hostile comments are, however, based upon complete ignorance, and these comments are often profoundly insulting to the Muslims. This ignorance is almost total, but one has to remember that these people are almost equally ignorant about Christianity. Religious belief seems to them rather absurd. Some of us try to correct these errors by polite but, one hopes, informative intervention, but we do not have much success. There are also items relating to Islam which are characterised by appalling bad taste. I remember a case a few years ago when the British Queen had been on a visit to the Emirates. There was a cartoon drawing in the "Daily Express" which showed the Queen, surrounded on either side by sinister, hook-nosed Arabs, and with a dish of food in front of her, rising from her chair several feet into the air with a look of horror on her face. One of the Arabs says to another: "But we thought she liked dogs!" In other words, since the Queen is well known to be fond of dogs, the implication was that the Arabs had tried to please her by cooking a dog for her enjoyment. I wrote to the Editor and, although he had the grace to reply, he did not understand what my objection was. "My colleagues and I thought the cartoon was very funny!," he said.

The caricatures of the Arabs in this cartoon reminded me of the cartoons of Jews in the German Nazi press before the war. It is no longer possible now in Western Europe for anyone to insult the Jews or to make such jokes at their expense. This readiness to mock and to denigrate has therefore been focused on the Arabs and, sometimes, the Pakistanis. The mockers can get away with that, whereas the Jews, though small in number, are powerful and will not allow them to get away even with the smallest insult.

This raises the question, much debated during the campaign against Salman Rushdie’s "Satanic Verses," of the Blasphemy Law in England. The majority of British Muslims want to see this law extended to cover Islam. I am against this. The situation now is such that I do not believe that any charge brought for blasphemy against Christianity would succeed in the Courts. The whole notion of blasphemy has become meaningless in a secular society. It follows that, if the law encompassed Islam, a great many Muslims would rush to Court with their accusations, and all would fail. They would then, quite naturally, feel that they had been cheated, unaware that cases brought by Christians would have been equally unsuccessful.

Perhaps I should say something about the Rushdie affair which caused so much anger and pain among the Muslims. Speaking personally, I must say that I have been more angered by serious books, often written by distinguished academics, which attempt to undermine the very foundations of our Faith and to cast doubt upon everything in which we believe. But such books do not come to the attention of the vast majority of Muslims. This book did. It is, indeed, an outrageous novel and a sick one, but the fact that a few pages concern a dream that one of the characters has concerning the Prophet (SAW) is only one aspect of this sickness.

You may not understand — there is no reason why you should understand — what form the modern novel takes in Europe and America. It is a literary form in which the writer pours out his own sickness, his neuroses, his anger, and his pain. I have sometimes likened this to vomiting in public. The idea of the novel as a story is no longer acceptable in intellectual circles; it is expected, instead, to delve into the darkest recesses of human corruption. As I mentioned in my last talk, art in the contemporary West aims not at beauty, but at ugliness, the implication being the human life, when seen truthfully, is ugly by nature. Perhaps it is, when completely lacking the religious dimension. I wonder sometimes if such novels are not a powerful indication of the human need for religious faith!

I will now turn to a question which is often asked. Now that they have Muslims in their midst, why is it that more British people do not accept Islam? Why are there so few "converts"? I could, of course, say rather unkindly that there is nothing surprising in this, considering the way many of our brothers behave. In the years since the Second World War Muslims have killed a great number of men, women, and children. Were these the enemies of Islam? By no means! The Muslims were too busy killing their fellow Muslims to pay attention to their real enemies. We can point out that, until recently, the Christians were no less dedicated to killing each other, but that is dismissed as ancient history. So far as Muslims in the West are concerned, the host communities see them constantly quarreling, backbiting, abusing each other. This can hardly be said to present Islam in a very attractive light, and references to the "brotherhood" of the Muslims can only provoke rude laughter. In addition to this, the media always report incidents which show us in the worst possible light. Recently a young woman alleged to have committed adultery was murdered by her two brothers. This, of course, made headlines in the press, and it was presented as typical behavior on the part of these savage, "barbaric" Muslims.

We are not helped by the village Imams often imported by Pakistani or Bangladeshi communities in Britain. The "Islam" which they offer to anyone who shows interest is not — to say the least! — the Islamic Faith that I recognize or share. The Divine Mercy is conspicuous by its absence. Some while ago I gave a talk to the teachers in a large London school. When I had finished, the headmaster told me a story which in no way surprised me. "We have Muslim pupils here," he said, "and last year I decided we ought to learn something about the religion, so I invited the Imam of a local mosque to come and talk to us. When he had gone, we looked at each other in dismay, and one of my colleagues remarked: If that is Islam, then Christianity isn’t so bad after all!" I knew exactly what he meant.

But there are other, more profound reasons for the distaste which Islam arouses. Perhaps I can best illustrate this by taking my own case as an example. Brought up as a complete agnostic, I became intensely interested in religion at an early age and this led, by the time I was in my early twenties, to a study of Hindu Vedanta, Chinese Taoism, and certain forms of Buddhism. As a result, I wrote a book which, through a chance contact with the poet T. S. Eliot, was published and met with some approval. Now the interesting thing is that, in writing this book, I never even considered Islam. My interest was in spirituality, and on the basis of the very little that I had heard of Islam, I assumed that this was a purely formal, legalistic, harsh and narrow-minded religion without any real spiritual quality. In making this assumption, I was thinking as a typical Westerner. I was not attracted by Christianity perhaps because of its Semitic origin. Islam seemed to represent all the most unattractive aspects that I found in Christianity, the "Old Testament" element in particular. The broad pastures of Hindu Vedanta had far more appeal. In my own case, circumstances obliged me to change my mind when I discovered Sufism and understood how inadequate was my view of Islam.

At this point some explanation is required. So far as "intellectuals" are concerned, particularly in France, but also to some extent in Britain and Germany, Sufism is the gate through which they have entered Islam. This surprises many born-Muslims, it shocks others, and some it amuses. For the born Muslim, assuming that he does not dismiss and condemn it altogether, Sufism is, so to speak, the crown of piety. It is Ihsan which is inconceivable unless preceded by the perfecting of one’s Islam and of one’s Iman. What do these young people think they are doing, embarking on a Sufi path before they have learned to walk on the highroad of the Shari‘ah and while they are still ignorant and immature?

There are, I think, two main reasons for this. In the first place, the Western agnostic or atheist, when he begins to doubt his own doubts and to feel the need for a religious explanation of his own existence, is less concerned with outward observance and a set of rules for his daily conduct, than with finding a spiritual path, a path towards illumination and towards personal awareness of the Divine presence here and now. What impresses him about the "mystics" is that they speak from personal experience. They do not say: "Believe this because I tell you to do so"; a command which carries no weight with the Western intellectual. They say: "We know this is true because the Truth has been shown to us in our own hearts in such a way that we cannot doubt it." That, rather than any orthodox preaching, is what persuades and convinces.

Secondly, the intellectual is by his very nature someone who asks questions and seeks answers that satisfy his needs. He finds answers to these questions in the writings of the great Sufi Masters, answers which satisfy him, banish his doubts, and justify faith. Whatever may be said about Ibn Arabi and however bitterly certain Muslims may condemn him, the fact remains that he provides reasonable answers to the very questions that are commonly asked by modern man. It is almost as though he had been writing for us rather than for his contemporaries! If, in practice, he cures us of our doubts and brings us to Islam, then who dare condemn him? Those who are truly versed in his metaphysics may ask: "How much do these people understand of his writings?" Very little, perhaps; but enough. I must however tell you a little story which might amuse you. A dear friend of mine who is now dead, Titus Burckhart, lived in Fez in the early 1930s when he was a very young man. It was there that he accepted Islam. Having learned Arabic, he had a longing to read the Futuhat and, to his great joy, he was able to purchase the first two volumes. He was returning home with these books under his arm, when he saw approaching him in the street an aged Sheikh whom he knew, so, in embarrassment, he tried to hide the books behind his back. The old Sheikh greeted him and then said: "Young man, show me what you have there in your hands!" Titus Burckhart — Sidi Ibrahim, as I always called him — showed what he had. The Sheikh smiled and told him: "When you can understand those books, you will no longer need them!"

But does this initial attraction to Sufism always lead to Islam, to true, total Islam? On the whole, I think the answer is in the affirmative. There are certainly false and aberrant tariqas in the West which allow their adherents to think of themselves as Sufis without demanding full adherence to Islam. But, in general, the man or woman who has entered through the gate of Sufism is compelled, as though by the force of gravity, to journey on into Islam as such, realizing that Sufism, unless well rooted in the Shar’iah, is without substance. What matters, surely, is where one finally arrives; not the route that is taken to arrive there.

Our position as Muslims in the West is not an easy one, but it is my belief that this position is easier in the United States and in Britain than it is in France or Germany. Particularly in France, the situation appears to be extremely dangerous. The British will on the whole tolerate strangers in their midst. They may not like them and they certainly do not understand them, but they tolerate them. The French do not, unless these strangers integrate themselves completely into French society and French culture; in other words, unless they abandon Islam in everything but name.

Whatever our position and whatever our problems, it seems to me that the Muslims in the West deserve the sympathetic support of the Ummah as a whole. At the same time, we are in the forefront of the confrontation of which I have spoken, and, since we are obliged to find means of dealing with this, I hope that we may have something to teach those who live within the borders of the Dar-ul-Islam. We deserve your attentive concern.

But this concern must be accompanied by understanding. Some years ago the Chief Imam at the mosque where I work was summoned to a conference organized by Rabita in Belgium to discuss the problems of Muslims in Europe. I expressed my delight and said I hoped they were now going to give full attention to these grave and complex problems. "Oh no!" said my friend; "They are going to discuss the sighting of the moon for Ramadan." Now I do not imply that the sighting of the moon is an unimportant question, but its importance will be diminished if, eventually, there are no practicing Muslims left in Europe! There are — if I may indulge in typical British understatement — more urgent matters requiring attention.

But those who do feel concern for us must understand that they will only do harm if their motive is to force Western Muslims into any particular mold. I have already mentioned the village Imams imported from Pakistan and Bangladesh. I might mention also those of our Saudi brothers who would like us all to adopt a Wahabi — or should I say Muwahid? — understanding of Islam. No one, I believe, should involve himself in this matter unless he is able to adopt a very broad and tolerant view of the Faith and unless he is prepared to make allowances for the difficulty in following the Shari‘ah fully in such an alien environment. What we most need is unity between the different communities of Muslim immigrants and also their offspring. We do not need the creation of further divisions and further conflict.

The essential, so far as Muslims in the West are concerned, is an agreement to differ. It is pointless to expect the majority of Muslims in Europe and America to practice Islam exactly as they did or should have done in their country of origin, and to insist that they do so is a sure way to drive the young out into the wilderness.

So far as the future is concerned, I would not dare make any predictions. If history ran in a straight line, then one might at least attempt to guess. But it does not run in a straight line. The only certainty we have is that the unexpected will always happen, and the unexpected is, by definition, unforeseeable. Change comes from the direction in which we were not looking. Allah (SWT) constantly takes us by surprise. The disasters we most fear do not occur. Those which do occur are the ones to which we had given no thought.

What matters most as we move into that uncertain future is the faith, the Iman, with which we face it and with which we accept it. Tawakkul is not only a religious duty; it is a practical necessity. Do not ask me for solutions to the problems I have outlined. I have no solutions. For my part, I can only do what little I am able to do and put my trust in Allah (SWT), who will not leave His people without help provided they make some humble effort to deserve this help. Insha Allah!

Imam Zaid Shakir

An clip of Interview on Domestic Abuse

Hasan Le Gai Eaton

The Roots of Western Culture
BY Charles Gai Eaton (Hassan Abdul Hakeem)
First published in "The Qur’anic Horizons"
January-March, 1998
http://www.tanzeem.org/resources/articles/articles/rootsofwc.htm

Almost fifty years ago two great armies faced each other in the desert on the borders of Egypt and Libya: the British, under General Montgomery, and the Germans under General Rommel. Preparing for the decisive battle which he knew must soon begin, Montgomery sat in his caravan gazing at a photograph of his opponent and reading all that he could about Rommel’s life, opinions and attitudes. Looking at the photograph, he tried to read his face and to understand what kind of mind lay behind it and what thoughts might occupy that mind. In short, he was following one of the basic maxims of all conflict: "Know your enemy" — know him, study him, try to understand him.

To describe the contemporary West as the enemy of Islam and of the Muslim Ummah may seem a little extreme. Very well, let us say rival or competitor. But, whatever word we choose, the fact remains that there is a confrontation between the secular world of Europe and America on the one hand and, on the other, the still — if only just still — religious domain which we call the Dar Al-Islam. This is nothing new, although it remained "underground" during two centuries of colonialism. It was and remains today an inevitable fact of history. If we leave aside Buddhism, which is a special case, only two religions have claimed a universal mission encompassing the whole world and have cherished the hope that all mankind might be brought under the God-given canopy of the "one true Faith" — Christianity and Islam. Only one thing has changed. Islam is confronted today, not by Western Christendom, but by Western secularism, agnosticism, and unredeemed worldliness. Where Christendom failed, the civilization which replaced it has achieved almost total success and complete dominance of the planet.

Formerly, this confrontation was between men of faith who had more in common than they could ever have acknowledged. That likeness, that shared devotion to an almighty and unseen God, no longer exists. The gulf has become infinitely wider and mutual comprehension has become far more difficult. The believer to whom the transcendent reality of God is the most compelling fact known to him cannot really understand unbelief or imagine its sterility. The unbeliever, try as he may, cannot even guess what the experience of faith is; his imagination is baffled by this strange, other-worldly phenomenon.

Nonetheless, if Muslims are to act effectively in this situation and to see it clearly and objectively, then they must understand what it is that they confront. In my experience, the Muslim, even if he lives in the West, has very little understanding of the enemy or of the true nature of the threat he faces. Certainly in Britain, the majority of Muslim immigrants still refer to the people around them as "Christians" and many think that they are in some way threatened by Christianity. Much, of course, depends upon how you define "Christianity." and no doubt most British people, when asked to name their religion on some official form, will write down "Church of England" or "Roman Catholic." But let me say this: in a long life in which I have met and known a very great number of people, I met no convinced, believing Christians until, in recent years, I found myself lecturing Christian groups on Islam. The threat to the Muslims is no longer from a rival religious faith but from a sector of the world that has lost the gift of faith and no longer knows where to seek it. In practice, this is a more dangerous threat than was represented by Christianity in the past; a more subtle and insidious threat, because it appeals to the traitor within our own breasts, the whisperer who whispers: "How can you be sure? How can you be sure that there is anything beyond this world of the senses? How can you believe in something unseen, unheard, unfelt?"

Moreover, this danger is all the greater because of the worldly success of the unbeliever. Muslims in general, like most other people in what is commonly called the "Third World," have an ambivalent attitude to the West. On the one hand there is bitterness and resentment induced by the history of colonialism and now by the brute fact of Western hegemony; on the other hand there are feelings of admiration and envy. Inherent in human nature is the readiness to be overawed by successful power, and there is no denying the dominant power of the West. This power derives in part from industrial might and technological expertise, but what is most admired is Western efficiency in getting things done.

And yet admiration for these organizational skills should be tempered by caution. No race, no people, no human group can be good at everything. That is the nature of our life in the world. It is therefore always a question of priorities. If we can only be successful in a few aspects of this life, a choice has to be made. Which aspects are the more important? Those who are skilled in one field are likely to be inadequate in another, for we are very limited creatures and, if we develop one side of our nature to its fullest extent, this is usually at the expense of other aspects of the personality. If you are prepared, as Western man has been prepared, to turn your back on God (I say "God" rather than "Allah," since this is of universal application), if you are prepared to devote all your energies and all your talents to the affairs of this world and to the successful execution of these affairs, disregarding every other consideration, then you are likely to be very successful indeed. Devote every waking moment of your life to devising ways of making money and then more money and still more, you may even end up as a millionaire. The question, of course, is whether you are prepared to pay the price in spiritual impoverishment and, through blind greed, to sink below the level of the animals, whose hunger does not extend beyond that which suffices to fill their bellies.

Let me take two simple examples. As Muslims, our daily prayers interrupt our daily work. The successful businessman or civil servant in the West cannot afford to divert his attention to prayer or to anything of the sort in the course of the day. He would, as it is said, "lose out." Well, you make your choice; our lives are composed of choices. Secondly, there is the total divorce in the West between professional life and private life or personal relationships. The traditional Muslim way of conducting business — the polite greetings, the friendly questions, the serving of coffee or tea — is, from the Western point of view, time-wasting. Westerners, when they come together to do business, leave their humanity behind and keep an eye on their watches. They must conclude this business in the shortest possible time. They do not meet as persons, although the meeting of persons is something of tremendous significance in the sight of God. No. They meet only as professionals who have come to do a deal. They wear their official masks. The deal is done and they part without ever really having met. This too is part of the price paid for efficiency. Do we really wish to abrogate our humanity for the sake of some brief success?

I have no doubt that, in the course of these talks, I shall be asked: Are you suggesting that the Muslim world should always remain "backward" in comparison with the West? I am, I believe, a realist. In realistic terms we have to live in the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. But since Muslims evince such fear of being thought "backward," there is a question I must pose in this context. What is wrong with "backwardness" when others are hastening forward to disaster? Is not a healthy old man, though "backward" in comparison with another of the same age who is sick and dying, in the better position? We must all die, but we need not rush towards that end.

However, before proceeding to discuss the roots of that powerful and, from our point of view, menacing and invasive culture, there is one further point that must be made. Do not overestimate that power! It has been said by the historians of colonialism that, until the invention of the Maxim gun (the early machine gun), in the middle years of the last century, the British Empire was held by bluff rather than by force. The white man held at bay a mob of "natives" with nothing more than a stick in his hand, perhaps because of his supreme racial self-confidence. He did not believe that they would dare to attack him, so they did not attack him. Self-confidence is the key, and, indeed, one might say that it was the key to the unprecedented success of the Muslims in the early centuries of Islam. It is the lack of this quality which may be seen as the greatest weakness of the Muslims today. It would be impossible to overstress the power of self-confidence. Look, after all, at the British, the inhabitants of a small and unimportant off-shore island, who nonetheless conquered and dominated half the world; this was no giant subduing pygmies, but a pygmy persuading giants to submit to him!

Let me offer you the example of an individual case. The newspapers in England have recently been full of stories about a Jewish businessman called Maxwell who died recently under mysterious circumstances. With no real security to offer, this man had borrowed more than a hundred million pounds from the banks. How did he do it? By sheer bluff and because of his overwhelming self-confidence. Shrewd he was and the bankers could not doubt his word because he himself was entirely free from self-doubt.

The Muslims’ lack of self-confidence may be attributed in part to the experience of colonialism, but it still endures chiefly, I think, because the West has bluffed the Muslims into accepting it at its own valuation and has succeeded in hiding its weaknesses, its vulnerability. It seems to me that this was exemplified in the early 1970s, during the so called "oil crisis." The oil producers — the Saudis in particular — had what amounted to a stranglehold on the Western world; they had very great power, which might have been put to use to their own advantage and to the advantage of the Ummah. What they lacked was the self-confidence which would have enabled them to use that power wisely and effectively. They lacked also that spirit of daring which encourages the powerful to make full use of their power. The opportunity was missed and may not come again.

When I talk with my fellow Muslims about the nature of Western dominance, one of my principal aims is to persuade them that this power rests upon very shaky foundations. Be that as it may, understanding on the part of the Muslims of exactly what it is they confront — what it is that threatens us — is of the utmost importance. This is why I have chosen to start this series of talks with a discussion of the roots of Western culture; very tangled, very complex roots. That is perhaps the first thing that the Muslims should understand. The origins of Muslim culture and civilization are clear and simple. They have one source, the Revelation combined with the Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW) and are therefore easily identified. The roots of Western civilization lie in different lands, different cultures, different periods of history.

We must, inevitably, start with ancient Greece. We — that is to say, the children of the West — were taught at school about something described as "the Greek miracle." This "miracle" was the emergence of a people who, unlike any other people on earth, had turned their backs upon what we were told was "superstition" and discovered the supremacy of human reason, devoting themselves to rational enquiry and to philosophical speculation which left no space for the supernatural and took as its basis this world as it appears to the senses, not as it is in terms of its Divine origin. In other worlds, the Greeks — so we were told — were "advanced" in relation to all others of their time; a beacon of light in an otherwise dark age.

Now at this point I want to make a short digression which has, I think, an important bearing on the subject we are considering. As Muslims we must acknowledge that no people was ever left without a messenger bringing them the Truth, therefore no people was, in origin, without a religion reflecting the Truth in terms accessible to them. The origins of Greek culture lie out of sight, but I think it is clear that, by the time Greece became a significant factor in human history, Greek religion had degenerated into idolatry. This, after all, is the form which religious degeneration commonly takes or, at least, took in the past. And this, surely, is why Islam, as the final Revelation, is so fiercely opposed to every trace of idolatry. One feature of idolatry as we find it, for example, in classical Greece, that is to say the presence of many rather absurd "gods" often fighting among themselves, is that it is difficult for sensible people to believe in this. There is therefore a reaction against the very notion of religion or of any supernatural reality, a reaction in the direction of rationalism. This rationalism is, precisely, the "miraculous" Greek legacy so honored in the West. The Muslims, as we know, discovered this legacy in the early Abbasid period, but Islam as an integrated faith and culture, rooted in a single Revelation, was able to take from the Greek tradition what it found useful and what it could assimilate without harm to itself, and to reject the rest. In particular, it rejected the philosophical basis upon which the so-called Greek wisdom rested. The Muslims, however, handed the poisoned cup, the Greek legacy, to the Christians, to whom it proved profoundly destructive.

After Greece comes Rome, the monstrous civilization of imperial Rome. Here again, by the time ancient Rome appears as a real force in the world Roman religion, whatever it may have been in earlier times beyond the reach of history, had followed the same course as Greek religion. In other words, it had fallen into total decadence, and, if a people’s religion is decadent, then they themselves are inevitably decadent. It is therefore the sick face of Rome that has endured and that has had such a dominant influence upon the West; so dominant, for example, that I was compelled as a schoolboy to learn Latin because that was the language of the great civilization upon which we had attempted to model ourselves in our days of imperial grandeur. It is perhaps ironic that these Romans should have bequeathed to us a term very commonly used today, the term "barbarian." The British press frequently describes the Muslim way of life as "barbaric," and this always upsets Muslims. It should not upset us! Those to whom the ancient Romans referred as "barbarians" were, in every quality that really matters, their superiors; superior in virtue and in their way of life, free from the hideous corruption which characterized and ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire.

In ancient Greece and in ancient Rome therefore are planted some of the roots of contemporary Western culture. Then Christianity penetrated this world of corruption, gradually gaining ground, at first savagely persecuted but finally triumphant. Oil and water, we are told, do not mix, and there was nothing that could be acceptable to Christians in the Latin world as they found it. The slate had to be cleaned, for a religion of Jewish origin had nothing in common with what had gone before; and it was indeed wiped clean. There were elements in the Arab Jahiliyyah which could be absorbed into Islam — the Hajj is an obvious example — but there was nothing in the Roman Jahiliyyah that could be allowed to survive.

As I suggested earlier, the Christian of the early Middle Ages and the Muslim of the same period could have understood each other without difficulty if they had allowed themselves to do so; beyond their differences in doctrine and dogma, the fact remains that Christendom, like the Dar Al-Islam of that time, lived entirely by the light of religious faith; and yet this structure, governed by faith in God, had within it an inherent weakness. With its origins in Judaic Palestine, Christianity was in a sense a "foreign body" inserted into Western Europe, particularly in relation to the shamanistic traditions of the northern areas. It was utterly opposed to everything that had previously been thought or believed in that part of the world: a radical break with the past. The Arabs of the Jahiliyyah, on the other hand, had been in sense ready for the coming of Islam, which dawned less as a rejection of their past than as a fulfilment of what was best in their past.

This inherent weakness — this "fissure," as it has been called — became fully apparent when we, the Muslims, handed Christendom what I referred to as the "poisoned cup" of the Greek legacy. This led in due course to what is known as the "Renaissance," the "Rebirth," an event which every European child is asked to believe was one of the most glorious and fruitful events in human history. What was it that had been "reborn"? The old paganism, surely, now called humanism: the exaltation of the human above the Divine, the concept of man as a little god who inevitably realizes eventually that he has no need of a greater God. It would be difficult to exaggerate the difference between the early medieval Christian ideal of servanthood and the Renaissance ideal, typified in the titanic paintings and sculptures of Michael Angelo. The fact that these can be found in the Sistine Chapel in Rome indicates how effectively this humanistic ideal infiltrated the Christian Church, then, of course, the Catholic Church.

The adjective "Promethean" is often applied to the Renaissance ideal, and the Greek myth of Promethius has great significance if we wish to understand Western culture. It is a myth that could never conceivably have arisen or been tolerated within the sphere of Islamic thought and the Muslim imagination. Promethius stole the gift of fire from "the gods," or, let us say simply from God, from Heaven. In this way, although he was punished for his sin, he brought inestimable benefit to mankind. You will note the profound implications of this myth. The great gift was not bestowed by the Almighty upon humanity; it had to be taken from Him by force, an act of radical defiance, an act of revolt against Heaven which had not chosen to give what there was to be given. The myth of Promethius dominated the Renaissance mind and, in a sense, dominates Western culture today: God does not give, man takes.

The exclusion of the Divine and of the view of this world as totally subordinate to That which infinitely transcends it, gave rise, in due course, to an entirely secular philosophy, and the first of these "modern" philosophers was Descartes (1596-1650). To anybody who has any feeling for religion and any belief in the possibility of Revelation, the contrast between the great theologians and religious philosophers of the Middle Ages on the one hand and, on the other, the new philosophy, is astonishing. It might be compared to the contrast between a wise man and a clever child. Seen from an Islamic point of view, what could be more absurd than the ambition to spin out of an unenlightened human mind all wisdom and all understanding of the heavens and the earth? Yet this is what Descartes proposed with his Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), offering this as the only truth that could be known with certainty and as the basis upon which to construct other certainties. I remember someone suggesting that what Descartes should have said was Cogitor ergo sum (I am thought therefore I am); in other words, because God "thinks" me, therefore I exist.

It is from Descartes that Western culture and, above all, science, have inherited the dualistic view of the world which is contrary to Islam in root and in branch. This represents a total separation between — I will not say the spiritual, for what Descartes was talking about was solely the mental — but between, let us say the immaterial and the material, the unseen and the seen. It is precisely on the basis of this Cartesian dualism that the modern mind operates, and that is the philosophical basis for what is commonly called the "scientific method." One is bound to ask whether a method which has its origins in such a doubtful proposition can lead to the discovery of any sure truth.

In the common view and for the educational textbooks, Descartes is the first "great Western philosopher." Those who followed him might or might not make some allowance for a spiritual dimension, and their views differed from his in many respects; but the fact remains that they were still purely secular, unidimensional, excluding the possibility of knowledge through Revelation from the mental processes through which they reached their conclusions.

And so we come — a century and a half after Descartes — to the so-called "Enlightenment," indeed a strange term to apply to what was, in fact, a darkening of human intelligence and human imagination. The French "philosophes" of the 18th century of the Christian era finally cast aside the bonds of what was then described — and is still described — as superstition, that is to say the religious understanding of the world and of man’s destiny. The Renaissance had presented the image of man as self-sufficient, even as superman; the Enlightenment brought this image to its logical fulfillment, the supremacy of the human mind as the measure of all things. Man’s concepts and speculation, quite divorced from Revelation, become the arbiter of Truth. The Western mind is still dominated by that "enlightenment."

There is an aspect of all this that often goes unnoticed. That is the divorce between theory and practice. The Christian philosophers had taken it for granted that knowledge and virtue must go together. Belief and action could not be separated. The philosophers of the Enlightenment were purely theorists whose personal morality and conduct had no necessary connection with their theories. This might be illustrated by the example of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of its principal figures. In his writings he propagated a new view of children, of their value and of the duty to treat them well. He himself was so busy theorizing about children that he could not be bothered with his own offspring. He dispatched them to an orphanage to be rid of them.

Within a few years there followed the French Revolution, which attempted to put into effect the concepts of the "philosophes." If I may again revert to the lessons I learned as a schoolboy and which other schoolboys received in the West, this, in spite of its monstrous cruelties and its destructiveness, was seen as a just revolt against an aristocracy which no longer fulfilled any useful function and against social injustice. That is a very partial view, and it misses the essential. The Revolution was above all a revolt against religion, a revolt against God in the name of a new God, or rather goddess — the "Goddess of Reason." Now reason is a tool comparable to other tools which enable us to work on the material before us and by which we maintain our lives on this earth. But rationalism as an attitude of mind — I might even say a dogma — which proclaims that reason is more than a tool, that it has within itself the means of establishing all truths. There is a curious fallacy here. We can reason only on the basis of given facts or of universally accepted assumptions. If the facts have been misunderstood and if the assumptions which have been taken for granted are false, then you may reason as carefully and meticulously as you like; you will still be wrong. Perhaps I might employ in this context the example given by the ancient Hindu sage, Shankara. Supposing — he says — that a man sitting in a dark hut puts out his hand and touches a coil of thick rope. He mistakes this for a snake, indeed it feels to him like a coiled snake. From then on he acts entirely rationally, running away or shouting for help. The fact remains that there is no snake and that the man's reasonable actions bear no relation to reality. In the same way, if one mistakes the material world for the only reality, which is the thoughtless assumption made by modern man in the West, then no amount of sound reasoning on this premise can ever lead to Truth.

The triumph of rationalism was now complete so far as the intellectual leaders in Europe and the principal formers of opinion were concerned; but, of course, in any civilization or any culture, the mass of people is slow to move and difficult to change in their basic view of the world. What finally broke the hold of religion on the minds and hearts of ordinary people was science, or rather the emergence and development of an exclusively materialistic science which reduced all reality to mathematical concepts and a blind mechanical mechanism.

The final blow however was undoubtedly Darwin’s theory of evolution, promulgated in the middle years of the last century. And yet to call this a "scientific" theory is incorrect. It was and still is more in the nature of a myth, without any secure foundation in the observed facts or in any kind of experiment. It was however a myth which explained the given facts in a way which excluded every notion of a reality beyond this world and which had — and still has — an immense appeal for minds already conditioned to a purely materialistic view of the cosmos. It was inevitable that someone should invent such a theory at that precise moment in history. Darwin happened to be the man who did so. This theory, still entirely unproven in scientific terms, dominates the contemporary mind and has reinforced a myth of human progress that was already emerging.

Let me illustrate this by a small incident which occurred some years ago when I was serving in the British Foreign Service in Trinidad. I was a guest at a diplomatic dinner. The young woman beside me was talking with a Christian priest, an Englishman, seated opposite. I was only half attending to their conversation when I heard her say something to the effect that she was not entirely convinced about human progress. The priest answered her so rudely and with such contempt that I could not resist saying to him: "She’s quite right! There is no such thing as real progress." He turned on me, his face contorted with rage, and said: "If I thought that, I would commit suicide this very night!" Since suicide is as much a sin for the Christian as it is for the Muslim, I found this a very revealing remark. I understood for the first time the extent to which faith in progress has replaced religious faith.

I mention this because it seems to me that few Muslims, least of all those who constantly proclaim that Islam is a "progressive" religion, seem to grasp the full implications of the myth of progress. If it is true, at least as it is understood in Western culture, then it follows that we in our time are wiser and better than the people of earlier times and that our understanding of our religion is superior to theirs. This opens the way to radical change, bida‘ in the proper sense of the term. That is precisely what has happened to the Christian Churches, and I am frequently asked why Islam does not "evolve" in the same way. When we behave badly, as we so often do, when Muslims fight each other and accuse each other of heresy, this is assumed to be a sign, not of our decadence, but of our backwardness, and people who are well disposed to us say: "Of course, we understand. You are only in your fifteenth century. You will evolve and mature as we have done in the course of time."

Since faith in progress has become such an unquestionable dogma and since belief in any kind of afterlife has declined, the notion of paradise and, for that matter, of hell as we understand these terms has been replaced by the bleak conviction that everything will come right in the future, long after we ourselves are dead and gone. There will arise a kind of heaven on earth, though we —unfortunately! — shall not see it. Many lives have been sacrificed on the altar of this false faith. Those who are most opposed to religion always claim that, in the past, religion led to ceaseless wars. Yet I do not believe anyone has succeeded in counting how many millions of men, women and children have been slaughtered in this century in the name of progress and of "creating a better world." This false faith reached its fulfillment in Marxism-Leninism.

The fact that Marx’s theories, his pseudo-scientific theories, were already out-of-date by the early years of this century did not, as we all know, prevent a great number of intelligent and well-intentioned people from adhering to them with passionate conviction; this in itself is proof of man’s need for a total truth to which he can give total devotion. Yet in terms of this theory, when put into action, no amount of human suffering counted for anything in relation to the glorious future when the Marxist paradise on earth was achieved. Human creatures, with their private interests, their customs and their stubbornness stood in the way of the realization of this Utopian dream; but they were no longer seen as human, they were merely obstacles in the middle of the road, obstacles to be destroyed and bulldozed into mass graves. This is the way of all Utopian dreams when we try to bring them to fruition. That is why I am sometimes appalled when I meet young Muslims who dream of re-creating in our own time the perfect Islamic society as it was in Madinah in the time of the Prophet (SAW) Except at that time and then only for a very short while, there can be no perfect society in this word.

Basic human nature does not change. How could it, since the words of Allah (SWT) are not subject to change? There is within it an empty space which can only be filled by faith in God. When mankind is deprived of a transcendent object of worship, an object guaranteed by a direct revelation from above, then it will always find something in this world upon which it can focus adoration. As I have suggested, we have seen this in the fanaticism which has characterized the great political movements of our century, including Nazism. We have seen it in the ambition of Huxley, the most distinguished scientist of the 19th century, to create what he described as a "priesthood of science." For many in the West, faith in scientific truth or in what purports to be truth has the qualities which we would normally associate with religious faith.

Now, however, faith in political solutions is diminishing, as too is faith in the irrefutable truths of modern science. There is therefore a widespread hankering for religious faith in the proper sense of the term. But this does not necessarily mean a readiness to return to traditional religion; in effect Christianity since I am speaking of the Western world. Satan is not so easily diverted from his purpose. The addiction to personal freedom to the extent of ignoring all bounds and, in accordance with humanism, exalting the nafs, the ego, makes traditional religion, with its constraints and its humbling of the ego, unpalatable. It is easier, less demanding and more comfortable to invent new religions, and this is why we have, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon sector of the world, a proliferation of cults designed to assuage this hunger, though with plastic food, not real nourishment.

The cults which are often related to "New Age" religion take various forms, but they have one thing in common. They deny transcendence, or rather they ignore the possibility of a transcendent Reality. They are therefore likely to take the form of some kind of nature religion, such as belief in the "Earth Goddess," or else they borrow some elements from Buddhism, from Hindu Vedanta or even from Sufism. These borrowed elements are, so to speak, brought down to the horizontal level, that is to say the dunyawi level, and incorporated into doctrines which flatter the nafs and encourage it to roam where it will. They may also include elements of erotic mysticism, seeking in sexuality a substitute for religious experience. They have not broken free from the errors of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

The Westerner today does not know who he is or where he is going. He seeks an identity, even a religious identity, and he seeks an orientation, but the decay of traditional religion has led to a situation in which the average man or woman is astonishingly ignorant of religion as such. This is why cults which you would not expect to attract even a foolish child are often accepted by mature people who are by no means foolish.

Meanwhile, so far as the majority is concerned, faith in science has not really diminished, although it may have changed in nature because of changes in the scientific perspective itself. We call this "scientism" because it is not in fact based upon the complex theories and speculations of contemporary physicists, many of whom leave some space for the "unknowable" or even for the Divine dimension, but upon a vague notion that science can explain everything and answer every possible question. This is said to be "the Age of Knowledge;" it is in truth the age of ignorance; ignorance, that is to say, of everything that really matters. The denial of Revelation and the denial of intellectual intuition (which is dismissed as a subjective feeling, not as a glimpse of authentic Truth placed in our hearts from above) has impoverished modern Western humanity to an almost unimaginable extent.

There is no longer any sure guidance. The Christian Churches have failed the people because they have themselves fallen under the spell of every modern illusion and have readily absorbed the errors of the time. They have, so to speak, followed in the footsteps of the mob, instead of standing aside and offering an alternative and radically different perspective. They have for the most part, accepted the general view that faith is something irrational and contrary to common sense; they have lost their intellectual dimension. At the same time, despairing of ever persuading their flocks to believe in a transcendent Reality and in an afterlife "better and more lasting" than our brief existence here, they have given themselves almost exclusively to the affairs of this world.

I should hardly need to add that, for those who are sickened by the errors of modernism, of rationalism, and of scientism, and who wish to break free from theses illusions, there is a home, a shelter always available: Islam. Let us hope however that the leaders and the wise men of our Ummah do not fall into the trap into which Christianity has fallen and do not, from a desire to be "up-to-date" and "progressive," follow in its footsteps. We must pray that Allah (SWT) will protect us from committing any such betrayal.

Technology is Man's greatest fallacy

Technology is Man's greatest fallacy

We live in a time where man thinks that technology can save him. All this is means man is progressing. I watch movies on my phone, I can see the people who I am talking about, I use this machine to this and that. One of my friends said have you noticed that all this technology is about "i"? We seem to think that technology is man's yard stick for progress and this is somehow making us better. Technology can help us save lives yet look at the arms industry why are we learning of more ways to kill people?

We sit on machines wondering what to do with them. We move from one machine to another without realising what is going on. Man is alone but cannot communicate because he can speak using his laptop better than he can with his own lips.

Is this progress? Is man progressing? Making great strides thanks to a machine that is made obsolete. As soon as it reaches you there is another piece of rubbish to take its place.

If man is so advanced as a race then why are making bombs to kill other people. All these countries who take pride in their wealth and their advanced societies are the same ones teaching and training others to kill their own.

In this time that people are deceived into lying to their people and themselves in some sort of vain belief that if people follow them then this will vindicate their lies.

We are lost using our machines whilst the machines of war kill innocent people in the name of democracy. Freedom is spelt differently in those lands possessed by foreign invaders it’s spelt free-doom because that’s what it is, doom for free. Except it’s not for free it’s at a cost, the greatest cost, is the loss of human life and the next is their natural resources.

They come to liberate you from your bodies, liberate your families from this earth, and liberate your homes from the ground. Lets us cheer as they blame religion and join in their lies.

Bombs made in factories that people don’t care; exported to military bases all over the world then dropped on the heads of the innocents. It was an accident, it is collateral damage? No, that’s a lie. They massacre innocent people as their natural resources are stolen from them as you set one against the other.

This is mans great progress? Isn’t it? Well to me this is the lie of the last century and this new one that everyone is asleep watching our DVD’s as they kill claiming its for you and me.

They kill to exploit and they kill to mock. We sit here and don’t even question. When will they enter the dock?

Just because you have your iphone means nothing because I can speak and communicate to real people. Don’t cry if they take it away from you.

Technology means nothing even these words mean nothing because I am using this medium to contact you.

Is there another way? Yes there is, get rid of what you don’t need and realise what Orwell wrote, “Freedom is slavery, War is peace and Ignorance is strength.” We are all ignorant and we are happy. We think invasion is freedom and war is setting things right. Who gave us the right?

Wake up people this is the looking glass and you are not going to like what you are going to see just like Alice.

Technology is not going to help you into Paradise, is it?


Sheikh Hmza Yusuf - Planning for Tomorrow
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2010/07/sheikh-hamza-yusuf.html

The Life of this world
http://sheikhynotes.blogspot.com/2010/05/life-of-this-worlddunya.html

Imam Zaid Shakir

Friends of Allah parts one to five

Hasan Le Gai Eaton

Living by the Book (Quran)

Audio Link

http://www.livingislam.org/imfl.html#hge1