Religion Without Revelation
When the majority of the members of a society come to accept the Islamic concept of God in their lives, a tremendous change takes place in social matters. This awareness that God is watching puts an end to double standards and hypocritical stance that inside a man is different from what he is outside. Believers do not exploit others as they know that they will have to account for their deeds in God’s court. Their lives, instead of remaining self-oriented, become God-oriented. To believe in God is to believe in an Almighty being who has access to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and who will take an account of all acts done openly or covertly. In this way belief in God takes away a person’s ego and haughtiness. The believer is totally sincere and is a realist in the true sense. This is the secret of all kinds of reform. If a man is sincere and realistic, he will perform all tasks in the most proper way, but if he lacks these qualities, he will mar everything that he undertakes. The Islamic concept of God produces this sincerity and realism in man.
All human beings in our world are not equal. Here some are weak, others strong; this difference is the cause of all the injustice prevalent in the world, for those who feel themselves powerful tend to exploit those who appear weaker than themselves.
Belief in God roots out this evil from man. Belief in God tells man that the actual issue is not between man and man, but between God and man. Here, on the one hand is God, the all-powerful, and, on the other is man who has no power as compared to God. It is as if the division here is not between the less powerful and the more powerful, but between power and powerlessness. (35:15)
Belief in God transforms man’s thinking. He begins to look at things not in relation to human beings but in relation to God. This is because, ultimately he knows he has to face his Maker. This is an attitude, which cause the disappearance of whatever tyrannical mentality had artificially surfaced as a result of seeing everything, not in relation to God but in relation to man. The believer thus comes down to his actual level. He becomes a man cut to size.
In a controversy arising between two persons or two nations, both in most cases, are at fault. In such a state of affairs, if one party admits its mistakes the other party too follows suit. On the contrary if one party remains adamant, the other party becomes equally unwilling to admit its own faults. This leads to an escalation of the strife, until it reaches a point of no return.
In all such cases, the actual problem is that no sooner does a quarrel start than both the parties turn it into a prestige issue. Each party knows that it shares the blame, yet it refrains from saying so, for any such outright admission would be humiliating in the extreme.
But if one of them were to take the initiative in admitting its mistakes, the state of affairs would change drastically. That prestige issue would now turn into an issue of balance. Now, with the admission of a mistake by one party, the other party, in admitting its errors would not be eating humble pie but simply following what the other party had already done. That is to say such an admission by one of the parties would induce its rival to adopt a balanced approach in advance.
Such realism, the mainspring of a reformed life, is attainable only through sincere worship of God, self-effacement before His greatness and avowal of one’s own insignificance and lack of perfection. This realism is the mark of the true believer, one who believes in God when God in fact is not visible before us, how could a person of such faith and practice deign to occupy himself with matters of worldly prestige?
The system of nature follows the principle of balance. One of the strategies resorted to by nature to maintain this balance is diversion, or the redistribution of excessive amounts of force or energy. For instance, if all the water that comes down to earth in the form of rains were stored in the fields and settlements, an immeasurable strain would be placed on the environment. What nature does in this case is to divert all the spare accumulated water to the rivers and seas.
It is this principle of diversion, which has been followed in the building of dams. Designed mainly for storage purposes, dams have a regulatory role in the environment, controlling floodwaters and diverting them to useful ends. Such as irrigation and the production of hydro-electricity. The same principle is followed in machines, like the steam engine. When the quantity of stream exceeds the required amount and too much pressure builds up, the steam is in a sense diverted by being allowed to escape through a safety valve.
In social life, there is a somewhat similar build-up of stresses and strains. When a number of people live together, it is but natural for complaints and grudges to surface between them. If these negative sentiments are allowed to escalate, discord and enmity are bound to develop. When that stage is reached, it becomes almost impossible to reform a human group or society.
In such a state of affairs some such thing is required towards which these harmful feelings may be diverted. Belief in God and the Life hereafter serves this very purpose in life. It diverts those feelings, which are harmful to society, to God.
In the early history of Israelites, there is the story of Joseph, who was separated from his father by his stepbrothers. Later, the same happened with Yamin, another real brother of Joseph. He too, without his father’s knowledge, was separated from him. These were terrible losses for Yaqub, the father, and it was but natural that he should be intensely miserable. Had he vented his negative feelings on his stepsons, there would have been great dissension and discord in his family. Instead, he diverted all this flood of feelings to God saying: ‘I express my grief and sorrow to God.’
There was a similar diversion of negative feeling when caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab dismissed the Islamic General Khalid ibn al-Walid. It was a rude shock to Khalid, but he redirected his hurt feelings to God, saying: ‘I fight not for the cause of Umar, but for the cause of God.’
Belief in the life Hereafter is the greatest gift to human society. It enables man to turn to God to seek compensation for the wrong done to him. Whatever he has failed to find in man he can expect to find that in God. In this way a God-worshipper’s negative feelings keep getting diverted to God instead of to man. The flood superabundance of water that would have caused great harm in the form of a flood is canalized into a diversion pool. I should like to conclude this with an observation made by George Bernard Shaw: “If a man like Muhammad were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would solve its problems in a way that would bring it much-needed peace and happiness.”
The life of Prophet Muhammad was a perfect example of what a true believer’s life should be. But we need to go further than Bernard Shaw and say that “If true believers were born in this world, peace would certainly prevail—which should be our first priority.”
