Imitating the Practice of Ancient Jews
A hadith tells us that in later times, the ummah of the Prophet Muhammad will definitely imitate the Jews. The Prophet said: “You [Muslims] shall definitely follow the ways of those before you, span by span, cubit by cubit; so much so that if they entered inside a lizard’s hole, so would you.” The Companions asked: “O Messenger of God, is it the Jews and the Christians?” The Prophet replied: “Who else!” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 7320)
This, actually, has to do with a law of nature, which is expressed in the Quran (57:16) as the hardening of hearts with the passage of time:
“[…] whose hearts with the passage of time became hardened [...]”.
That is to say, degeneration sets in among later generations of a community as a result of the passage of a long period of time, resulting in various forms of ills. The most deadly form of this phenomenon of degeneration among present-day Muslims is their imitating of the practice of the Jews of ancient times with regard to the responsibility of witnessing to the Truth. God had appointed the Jews as the witnesses of His religion. This is mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah 43:10) as follows:
“You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after Me.”
When, in later times, degeneration set in among the Jews, they abandoned this task of calling people to God’s religion. This was because their degenerated psyche had engendered in them a narrow communal mentality. This is the phenomenon that is known in history as ‘Jewish supremacism’. Because of this, their concern was now limited to their community alone. They no longer remained well-wishers of others. In fact, they viewed others as the enemies of their nation because others did not accept their self-styled claim of superiority. And so, the Jews abandoned the task of being witnesses to God’s religion, being concerned now only with themselves and their own communal affairs. But along with this, in their extreme self-righteousness, they kept up with the claim that they continued to follow the religion that was taught by their prophet, the Prophet Moses.
This fact about the Jews is mentioned in the Quran (3:187-88) as follows:
God made a covenant with those who were given the Book to make it known to people and not conceal it. But they cast it behind their backs and bartered it for a paltry price: what an evil bargain they made! Those who exult in their misdeeds and love to be praised for what they have not done should not suppose that they are secure from punishment; they shall suffer a grievous punishment.
A study of present-day Muslims reveals that they have become complete followers of the ancient Jews in this regard. They have abandoned the task of dawah, of calling people towards God. Instead of this, they are engaged in affairs that concern their own community alone, which they wrongly consider to be dawah. They have changed the concept of shahadah or witnessing, taking it instead to mean ‘martyrdom’. They are engaged in communal politics, and when in pursuing this self-styled politics of theirs, some of their people are killed, they bestow on them the title of shahid and go about claiming that they are engaging in the task of dawah and shahadah in the manner that God wants them to.
People’s actions reflect the underlying psychological impulses or factors that lead them to act in a particular manner. To engage in the task of dawah, you need to have the spirit of well-wishing for others. But in their age of degeneration, an extreme form of communal supremacism took root among Muslims, because of which they began viewing other communities as inferior to them and as their enemies. A result of this mentality was that no longer did they have any well-wishing for others. Present-day Muslims are, generally speaking, victims of this Muslim communal psyche.
This is the major factor that has robbed present-day Muslims of the enthusiasm for engaging in dawah. They claim that their activities are geared to promoting the Nizam-e Mustafa (‘The System of the Prophet’), but whatever they are engaged in has no relationship with the Nizam-e Mustafa at all.
The present-day Muslims’ predicament is exactly the same as that which the Quran (3:188) describes with regard to the Jews who had fallen prey to degeneration:
Those who exult in their misdeeds and love to be praised for what they have not done should not suppose that they are secure from punishment; they shall suffer a grievous punishment.
These words of the Quran apply fully to present-day Muslims. These Muslims want the title dawah and shahadah for their communal activities, but, in line with the law of God, this will never happen. This sort of attitude is, without any doubt, punishable by God, and is definitely not something that merits any reward whatsoever.
