NOVEMBER 4
Revival of Islam
in the Modern Age
In modern times the history of human belief has once again reached almost the point that it was at fifteen hundred years ago. In ancient times shirk so dominated human thought that it became an inseparable part of the historical process, leading to a situation where every child born was an idolater. Now, by a process spanning the last several hundred years, atheistic thoughts have come to vitiate human thinking. In all intellectual activities atheistic thinking has so prevailed that once again in human history, atheism has set in as a historical process. Now every child born in any part of the world is under its influence. Atheism is the dominant “religion” of today. Hence the revival of Islam in modern times will not be possible so long as atheism continues to enjoy its ideological dominance.
To render the revival of Islam possible in modern times, it will be necessary to employ the same methods as were formerly adopted when shirk dominated world thought, i.e., the conditioning of individuals and the subjugation of the opponents of truth.
For the first task to be accomplished, our own human resources are sufficient. But for the other task, God has once again in modern times, just as in the first phase of Islam, taken appropriate measures on a very large scale. The need of the hour is to exploit these opportunities so abundantly created for us.
1. A workforce is a pre-requisite for the successful outcome of any Islamic revival campaign at the present time. The basics are the same as those needed to execute the mission entrusted to Abraham, although the training of the individuals may differ in view of the requirements of our age.
The individuals required for launching a campaign of Islamic revival in modern times are not just ordinary Muslims, but those for whom Islam has become the ultimate answer to a great exploratory quest. What activates a person more than anything is this event of discovery: all of a sudden a new personality is born within him, marked by conviction, courage, determination, manliness, generosity, the spirit of sacrifice and the desired unity—all qualities required for the performance of great tasks, and all part of the questing spirit.
All the best qualities found in western nations in modern times are linked with this urge to explore. The western nations may be said to have discovered the world in the scientific, as opposed to the traditional sense, and it is this urge to understand all aspects of truth which has produced individuals of such high calibre in western nations.
The same was true of the companions of the Prophet in the first phase of Islam. God’s religion came to them as a discovery: Islam as against jahiliyah (period of ignorance); monotheism as against shirk; Akhirah (Hereafter) as against this present world. It was this which was responsible for producing those extraordinary qualities in them. If today the campaign of Islamic revival is to be effectively launched once again, such people will have to come forward as conceive of Islam as a fresh discovery rather than as an inheritance by birth.
2. Islam came to the world fourteen hundred years ago, setting in motion historical processes marked by cultural grandeur and political conquests. Those who call themselves Muslims today are the products of those processes. But any group of people which has such a brilliant past is invariably preoccupied with its recent history. It fails to go back through history to drink afresh from the original springs of inspiration.
This is true of Muslims today. The Muslims of present times, consciously or unconsciously, derive their religion from history instead of from the Quran and sunnah, the true sources of Islam.
This is why Islam has become for the Muslims of today a matter not of responsibility but of pride. This psychology so pervades their thoughts and actions that its effects are visible everywhere. Islam as set forth in the Quran and the hadith stands out as a religion of responsibility and accountability, but if viewed in the mirror of its cultural and political history, it appears to be an object of pride and glory. All the great revolutionary movements of Muslims in modern times have been influenced by this sense of pride. That is why they all lost their original lustre after very brief periods of activity. This is because a sense of pride leads one to showy activities, while a sense of accountability leads one to genuinely serious action.
For any campaign of Islamic revival to be effectively managed, its promoters should have derived Islam from the original teachings in the Quran and the hadith rather than from the cultural and political history of later times. Only those who have derived their religion from the Quran and the hadith can sustain a true campaign in all seriousness and with a sense of responsibility.
Those who derive their religion from history will only glorify their own sense of pride, and no result-oriented action will follow from their activities.
Muslims in modern times have turned into a defeatist nation, thanks to the entire Muslim world suffering from a persecution complex. This is what ensues from deriving religion from history. Awed by the grandeur of the history of the “Red Fort” and “Granada”, they chose to derive their Islamic identity from these objects of historical significance, and since in present times these things have been taken over by other nations, they have never ceased in their lamentations. Yet, if they had considered divine guidance to be their religion, they would never have felt themselves the victims of deprivation. For divine guidance is something which can never be taken away by anyone.
Since we consider those things to be Islam, which may be taken away by others, we have become compulsive bewailers of our own fates. How strange it is that we are engaged in lamenting over a very small loss, and demanding reparations, while completely unaware of the far greater treasure of which we are still in possession.
Muslims consider Islam as an emblem of their national greatness, and as a result of this mentality, they are engaged in clash and confrontation with other nations all over the world. That is why, when they find people robbing them of their glory, they rise against them. This reaction can range from verbal castigation to armed confrontation. This negative attitude continues to mar Muslim relations with others. Whereas, if they had received Islam as a matter of divine guidance, they would have felt that they had something to give to other nations. They would have considered themselves as the giver and the others as the taker. They would not then have became obsessed with recovering the irretrievable. The actual relationship between Muslims and other nations should be that of da‘i and mad‘u, not of depriver and deprived. But the result of holding the historical Islam to be the true Islam is that other nations are now seen simply as rivals. So long as this rivalry continues between Muslims and other nations, no real work of Islamic revival can be started.
It is not possible in the very first stage to cleanse all Muslims of this antagonistic psychology. Yet at least one such team should be assembled, the members of which have rid themselves of this mentality of rivalry. This transformation in thinking will help them to regard other nations as their mad‘u, instead of as their material competitors and national adversaries. To establish the relation of da‘i and mad‘u, it is essential to forget all complaints and grudges, and to be willing to bear all kinds of material losses. This relation of da‘i and mad‘u can be founded only on the basis of unilateral sacrifice on the part of the da‘i. There is no doubt about it that this is the most difficult of tasks, one for which one has to forfeit a great deal.
The willingness to make sacrifices and other such attributes must be possessed by those who come forward for the mission of Islamic revival. For the preparation of such individuals in modern times, again the same planning is required as was carried out in the first phase.
In modern times we are in need of a high standard training centre with all the latest facilities. Set up in the pure surroundings of nature, far from the corrupting centres of civilization, such a training centre would respond fully to this exhortation of the Quran:
...some should stay behind to instruct themselves in religion and admonish the others when they return, so that they may take heed (9:122).
The training of talented individuals in such an isolated location would be the equivalent of the setting of Haiar and Ismael in barren, uncultivable terrain, so that their religiosity would grow and be strengthened.
For this proposed training centre to give the maximum benefit, parents like Abraham should be willing to sacrifice talented children, in the sense of taking them away from the lure of economic opportunities and putting them in surroundings where, even by giving of their best, they would have nothing in return save the concept of reward in the Hereafter. The successful running of such a training centre would be akin, in the words of Philip Hitti, to producing a nursery of heroes.
But unless a considerable number of such individuals are made available, no real steps can be taken towards the revival of Islam. That is to say, a group of intelligent, talented individuals of the nation should be brought to a different, special environment, set apart from mundane things, where they are given training and education specially to prepare them to successfully undertake the revival of Islam in modern times, thus becoming warners and givers of good tidings for the peoples of the world.
In order to facilitate the Islamic revolution in its the first phase, God made the special provision of setting the mighty Roman and Persian empires—the greatest opponents of monotheism—on a collision course, and consequently weakening them so considerably that it became easy for the Muslims to subjugate them.
This same succour of God for the believers has taken another form in modern times, i.e. the flow of such information about the universe as proves religious realities at the level of miracles. The superstitious way of thinking dominated the world in ancient times, as a result of which man had formed strange opinions about divine creation. The universe has been called the ‘miracle of God’ in the Quran. But this divine miracle lay hidden under the veil of superstition. One of the results of the Islamic revolution is that the phenomena of nature, which had been subjects of worship, now became subjects of research and investigation. In this way, for the first time in human history, the occurrences of nature began to be studied in a purely academic manner. This fresh approach went on gaining ground until it spread to Europe where it was given the great boost which helped it develop into the scientific revolution of modern times.
It is as if science, having removed the Veil of Superstition, has proved the miracle of the universe to be a miracle of God. By displacing the phenomena of nature from the status of objects of worship, man has ultimately been able to set his foot on this moon, which has been worshipped throughout human history from the time of ancient man, who considered it an object of divinity
If the new arguments furnished by science are properly employed, the call of monotheism can be presented to the world on the same, if not a greater scale, than that for which miracles had earlier been given to the prophets as a testament to the uniqueness of the Creator.
All things of the heavens and the earth are there to remind man of God. But man on his own began to deify those things. This was a major deviation from God’s original intention.
In modern times we have witnessed another kind of deviation as regards scientific information. The facts that have come to light through scientific investigations are all proofs of the divinity of God. They are there to remind man of God. But the atheists of modern times have distorted those very revelations of science, which were proofs of the existence of God, to show that there is no God. By giving the wrong direction to these facts, it was held that the entire system functioned on its own through a mechanical process of action and reaction, cause and effect.
The universe discovered by science was, however, an extremely meaningful and purposeful universe, as modern discoveries have shown: it is not a haphazard assemblage of matter. Rather it is a highly organized and sophisticated factory of a very superior standard. All the things of the world inevitably move along the purpose-oriented course which will produce the best results. The discovery of organization and purposefulness in all things is certain proof that the hand of God, albeit invisible, is behind the working of the universe. But what the atheist thinkers did was divert the causes of scientific discovery towards atheism. They held that whatever has been proved is an end and not the cause. But what is the proof that it is an end? It is quite possible that it may simply be an effect. The atheists nevertheless maintain that, it is not necessary that there must be a mind which, through will, is guiding events deliberately towards a particular end or conclusion; it may be possible that, through the blind, interplay of some physical and chemical forces, certain things on their own are being produced which may, by chance, be meaningful. When this meaningless explanation itself has been produced through the exercise of will (human will in this instance), how strange it would be to believe in the functioning of a meaningful universe without a will behind it.
After the emergence of science, atheist thinkers have, on a very large scale, attempted to point science in the direction of atheism. On the contrary, the attempts of religious thinkers to utilize scientific evidence to support the claims of religion have been extremely few and far between. Over the last one hundred years thousands of books of a high academic standard have come out which aim, quite wrongly of course, at producing atheism out of science, while few academic efforts worth mentioning have been made on the part of religious thinkers. One of these books, The Mysterious Universe, by Sir James Jeans, is notable for the impact it has had on both religious and scientific thinking. In this book the author has ably demolished through purely scientific arguments, the principle of causation as the acceptance of the mechanical substitute for God.
In the latter half of the present century innumerable new facts have come to the knowledge of man, which prove the truth of religious beliefs on an extremely elevated plane. But so far no religious thinker has come forward to harness, this scientific information in support of religious truths. If this work could be performed at a high intellectual level, it would amount to an academic miracle in support of the religion of monotheism.
As we learn from the Quran, the prophethood of all the prophets of the past was doubted by their contemporaries (11:62). Initially, the same fate befell the Prophet Muhammad, (38:10).
However, the Quran declared: ‘Your Lord may exalt you to a position of praise and glory’, (17:79). This divine proclamation meant that his prophethood would pass from the stage of doubt to the stage of full acceptance. The stage of Mahmud (worthy of praise) is the final stage of recognition and acknowledgement.
Whenever a Prophet is born, his good faith becomes a subject of doubt to his people. “Is he really a prophet, or does he just claim to be one?” To the end, such thoughts keep coming to people’s minds. Prophethood, in its initial stage, is merely a claim. It has no such in-built proof as people will be forced to acknowledge.
That is why, whenever a prophet comes to any community, he becomes in their eyes a controversial personality, established historical proofs not having been gathered in his support. Supportive arguments do come into existence, but always only after a certain time has elapsed. Generally, the Prophets did not reach this second stage of full acceptance.
All other prophets came to the world and also left the world in what was a period of controversy. They were not, therefore, able to leave behind them a group of sincere and dedicated individuals who could preserve their traditions and prophetic sayings. If these prophets were never wholly acknowledged by their contemporaries, either at the outset or in the later stages of their careers, it was because their teachings were never fully borne out by advances in human knowledge.
Of all the prophets, the only exception in this respect is that of the Final Prophet, although, like the other prophets, he too began his prophethood amidst controversy. It was at a later stage that he achieved such extraordinary success, and along with his companions, came to hold sway over a major part of the globe. In a period of less than a century his religion, Islam, had subjugated the great empires of Asia and Africa.
The Prophet of Islam emerged successful in all the challenges he faced: all his predictions proved true and all the powers that confronted him were vanquished. These events during his lifetime established his reputation not just in the eyes of his contemporaries, but for all time to come. Throughout the history of the Prophets he alone secured such extraordinary success that his prophethood soon left all controversy behind, reaching the stage of firm establishment referred to in the Quran as mahmud. His sayings as well as his achievements remained so perfectly preserved that there could be no room for any doubt.
In the present world the da‘is of the True Religion have an exclusive advantage such as no other da‘i group had ever possessed in the earlier phases of Islam history. That is, we are in a position to present the call to monotheism before the world from the pre-eminent position of established prophethood.
We are the inheritors of the certainties of established prophethood, while the followers of other prophets are still floundering in controversy.
God has provided all kinds of favourable opportunities for presenting the divine message before the nations of the world. If, in spite of all such provisions, Muslims do not perform this task of bearing witness to the Truth, or if they engage in communal, political and worldly disputes with other nations, they will find themselves on the Day of Judgement in the serious predicament of being unable to justify this lapse before their Lord and Creator.
