The Example
of the Prophet
A strong team of competent people, men of character, is required to form a good government. These can only emerge from a society whose members have become receptive to Islam and where the political factors necessary for the stability of such a regime are present.
Abdullah ibn Abbas narrates an incident from the early Makkan phase of the Prophet’s time. One day, he relates, the leaders of the Quraysh gathered near the Kabah. They decided to send one of their men to the Prophet to call him to talk to him to settle matters. When he received this message, the Prophet went to meet them.
When the discussion started, the representative of the Quraysh told the Prophet that he had become a source of great trouble for their tribe and accused him of abusing their forefathers, defaming their religion, calling them foolish and insulting their idols. After going on in this vein, they told the Prophet that he should desist from what he was doing, in return for which the Quraysh were ready to give him whatever he wanted. The Quraysh would even concede to making him their ruler if he wanted that. (Sirah Ibn Ishaq, Vol. 1, p. 207)
The Prophet did not accept this offer of the Quraysh and, instead, continued with his missionary efforts. Later, when he shifted to Madinah, he established a city-state. Now, the question arises as to why the Prophet did not accept the offer of heading the government earlier, in Makkah, which the Quraysh had made to him, while he established a city-state fifteen years later, in Madinah? Why didn’t he establish this state in Makkah fifteen years earlier?
This is because establishing an Islamic government is not for any Islamic personality, using any means whatsoever, to occupy the seat of governance. The establishment of any regime is very closely linked to the prevailing external conditions. In the case of establishing an Islamic polity, there must already be a society whose members have become receptive to Islam and where the political factors necessary for the stability of such a regime are present.
During the stay of the Prophet in Makkah, these favourable factors had not come together. That is why the Prophet did not try to establish a state governed according to Islamic teachings there. However, later, in Madinah, these factors had crystallized, which is why the Prophet established a state governed according to Islam.
The difference in the two contexts is apparent from the fact that in Makkah, the wife of Abu Lahab could condemn the Prophet and even publicly sing verses criticising him and proclaim that she refused to accept the message he was propagating. On the other hand, when, in the 13th year of his prophethood, the Prophet, along with his companion, Abu Bakr, arrived in Madinah, he was greeted by the children of the town singing verses that celebrated his arrival and his message.
The life of Prophet Moses gives us a similar example. The Quran tells us that the Children of Israel, the people of Moses, had been destined to acquire political power once again. Thus, after the demise of Moses, the Children of Israel fought with the Amalekites and established their government over Syria and Palestine, under the leadership of Joshua, son of Nun.
Here, the question arises as to why, when the Israelites had every opportunity to establish a government half a century earlier, at the time of Moses, they had to wait for so many years before they finally did so?
At the time of Moses, the Pharaoh of Egypt and his entire army were drowned in the sea, which cleared the field for Moses. Moses could have returned to the Egyptian capital, Memphis, and the Children of Israel and occupied the vacant Egyptian throne. After the miraculous destruction of the Pharaoh and his army, the denizens of Egypt must have been so awestruck that they might have readily accepted Moses as their new ruler.
However, Moses did not do this. Instead, he left the vacant political field of Egypt and, along with his people, went into the Sinai desert. The Israelites faced forty years of harsh life there, with many older generations dying off. Only the new generation, reared in the desert, survived.
Now, the only reason for this delay was that the generation of Israelites who had earlier lived in Egypt had fallen prey to moral decline for specific reasons. This is why all the Israelites were kept in the Valley of Tih so that all the community’s older people should breathe their last and a new generation could be reared in the desert, develop a reliable character, and then gain political power and establish an Israelite government.
These two instances very clearly prove that a new regime can only be established when the necessary collective conditions favourable for it prevail. The example of Prophet Muhammad tells us that if a favourable environment does not prevail in public in the real sense, even a prophet cannot establish a government in such a context. Moreover, if he did establish a government despite the absence of such a favourable environment, it would soon collapse, and the result of this would be fruitless.
The example of Moses shows that a strong team of competent people, that is, men of character, is required to form a good government. In the absence of such a team, establishing an Islamic government is impossible if there is a political vacuum in the country and there are two prophets to fill this vacuum.
Keeping this prophetic example in mind, it will be apparent that the agitations that swept all across the Muslim world, driven by the slogan “Establish Islamic Government!” were simply naive. Their logical result could only be—and it turned out to be precisely so—terrible self-destruction, with their goal remaining as distant as before.
