If you have God-centred thinking, you will develop an incentive to act. This is because God will question you and you will have to be accountable to God. If you think about the Prophet and about your religion, you will take the Prophet as your model and think about the teachings of the Prophet. So, the problem is that Muslims are engrossed in their community's historical past. Their thinking has not yet reached God and the Prophet. The solution to this is that people should be told that the Companions of the Prophet are the model in Islam. You should think whether the religious ideas prevalent among you were also in existence at the time of the Companions of the Prophet. If you see that your ideas were not in existence at the time of the Companions of the Prophet, then you must abandon those ideas. You must consider those ideas as false and distance yourself from them. If Muslims do not develop the attitude of judging based on the model set by the Companions, they will not be reformed.
Pride can never urge a person to act. Where there is pride, no worthwhile action can exist. Then, how does a person develop pride over Islam or one's religion? We must try to know whether the Companions of the Prophet had pride. Has any Companion ever been reported to have said: "I am proud that I found Islam. I am proud that I am a Muslim." No Companion ever said so. Saying so is bidah, or innovation. To say that I am proud to be a Muslim is an innovation. It is entirely an innovation, a deviation and an error. Rather, I would say it is a sin. How can one perform any worthwhile action when one has such an attitude? First of all you have to remove the obstacle of pride. Only then will you be able to perform any action. The mentality of pride is a killer of worthwhile action. Why do people become proud? What is it over which they take pride? People take pride over their historical past. That is, Muslims have invented self-styled political glory.
The history over which Muslims take pride is something which they themselves have conceived in their minds; it is not actually the real history over which they take pride. They take pride over their historical past, not on God and the Prophet. What happens if people have pride over their history? Will history tell you to perform good deeds? If you have God-centred thinking, you will develop an incentive to act. This is because God will question you and you will have to be accountable to God. If you think about the Prophet and about your religion, you will take the Prophet as your model and think about the teachings of the Prophet. So, the problem is that Muslims are engrossed in their community's historical past. Their thinking has not yet reached God and the Prophet. The solution to this is that people should be told that the Companions of the Prophet are the model in Islam. You should think whether the religious ideas prevalent among you were also in existence at the time of the Companions of the Prophet. If you see that your ideas were not in existence at the time of the Companions of the Prophet, then you must abandon those ideas. You must consider those ideas as false and distance yourself from them. If Muslims do not develop the attitude of judging based on the model set by the Companions, they will not be reformed.
