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Jawdat Said, What are the main stages in your
intellectual progress? Jawdat Said to Current Islamic Issues |
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Thank, you, brother Rifa'ee, for this question. I feel obliged to let you know
that it is not with great readiness that I usually answer questions. However,
your questions seemed to me to reflect a sound comprehension of my
intellectual endeavor, that you have already fathomed the nooks and crevices
of that world. I likewise compliment your journal for your efforts in
fostering thought. Now when you inquire about
the stages on my intellectual path, I find your question significant and
subtle; but can I ever give a satisfactory answer to such question? Can
anyone? Indeed, no matter how I try to reconstruct with any exactness the
influences on my development, I don't think I can do justice to that.
However, the mere attempt is not unuseful; it is our duty to try to
recollect such factors. Let me mention for
instance that one day, and I was in the second elementary grade, we had taken
a class about prayer, and had learned what a worshipper had to say during the
last sitting; the textbook listed two versions of 'al-tashahhud, the set supplication in that posture',
one reported by Ibn Abbas, and another reported by Ibn Mas'ood (two companions of the
Prophet.) Anyway, I did not have at the time the experience of distinguishing
one from the other. So, on my arrival home, I asked my mother to tell me
about the difference. So she peered long, and at last she said, indicating
one version: "It is this version that we adhere to; it is this that the
Great Imam, Abu Hanifah, has chosen; this is our
way, and the other version belongs to the Shafi'ite school." That was her answer; so
can you imagine the impact on my tender mind of that answer! At that time we
did not have the boldness to ask; we felt too shy to ask the teacher or the
father but we did ask the mother. That is why it was my mother that I
turned to, and she asserted that we adhered to the version chosen by the
Great Imam Abu Hanifah. But the question that
occurred to my mind after that I did not dare to declare even to my mother.
It occurred to me that should a child from the Shafi'ite school of law return home and ask his mother, she would reply
that they adhered to the version chosen by the Great Imam, Al-Shafi'ee. So I started to wonder how one could distinguish
between what was right and what was wrong; I may add that that early enquiry
is still the basic philosophical question that the world is yet to solve.
Later, of course, the question was not just how to discriminate between the
various sunni or shi'ite schools; it widened to an inquiry about the
different religions, to believers and non-believers, to a general inquiry
about the way to finding the truth. That childish and at the same time
philosophical question has led me to what you ask in your fourth question,
about my taking history to be a source of knowledge, besides the Qur'an. But I find it quite hard
to bring within the reader's reach how it came by that I traversed all the
wildernesses until I came to take history to be the source of knowledge. It
took me more than half a century, mauling over the question: How can I come
to know, and how can I know that I know? I ranged my vision over
the skies seeking the qibla (metaphorically speaking,
seeking the north star of truth.) That inquiry is a human one. Every human
being must encounter that same question, the mind-boggling question: how to
know the truth in all that ocean? How to get beyond empty talk? There have
been people who tried to find their outlet in asserting that the truth was
unattainable; there were such people in ancient Greek philosophy and in
modern philosophy; and they have bumped into the wall of annihilism. And the simple uneducated man grapples
with the same question; you hear the ignorant say: had we been born in such
and such land, then our religion would have been that other religion they
do not deny it. It is as a hadith (tradition) of the
Prophet's puts it: "Each newborn is born receptive to truth (upon the fitrah); it is his parents who make of him a Jew or a
Christian [or whatever]." We find here the culture and
patriarchal-glorification-and-infallibility (Aaba'iyyah in Arabic) as the source of knowledge. We find the Qur'an condemning the forefathers' being the source of
knowledge. The ancestors and the environment should not be the source of
knowledge. Rather, the situation must be reversed: An individual must possess
the criterion of right and wrong, and then determine where the forefathers
and environment were right and where they were wrong. Here, inadvertently, we
touch on your question 8, about
"patriarchal-glorification-and-infallibility", and whether that
would mean breaking away with the Islamic heritage. Perhaps the last
intellectual stage I reached, and I do not claim to have issued from, was the
discarding of the ancestors' authority. This issue of the ancestors'
authority bears a lot of analysis I mean the intellectual authority of
ancestors, aba'iyyah, (i.e. patriarchal
glorification and infallibility.) Indeed, to accept ancestors as a source of
knowledge is a problem, but the consequences are equally dire should we
ignore them; they are rather human beings, as we read about human beings in
the Qur'an: "You are but men, -
of the men He has created (5, 18)". You know my habit of choosing
clauses of Qur'anic verses to be titles of my
books; and I wish I could write a book entitled: " You are but men, - of
the men He has created (5, 18)". This dilemma of idolizing ancestors
harks backs to the fact that without the ancestors we would be nothing; it is
in this context that you asked, very rightly, " Is not any growth
without roots an illusion?" You see how ideas are called up through
association; your questions link to each other, and on to other topics. You
remind me of a revolutionary idea that I came across in a book by Malik bin Nabi (which, it seems to my
mind to be The Birth of A Society), when he, in the course of a note
introducing history, said: "History is change and development, since the
passing time in which no development or growth takes place is a dead
time;" and he illustrated with examples from the communities of ants and
bees. In millions of years their life has remained unchanged; should we have
eliminated a million years from their life, and pasted the earlier to the
latter part, we would not have felt anything missing; but this is not so in
the case of man. Man is continually in the
process of being shaped; we read in the Qur'an, "He adds to
Creation as He pleases (35, 1)", " He creates other things of which
you have no knowledge (16, 8)". Well, my brother Abdul-Jabbar, how badly
we are in need of the truthful word and light! How deep is the darkness and
dimness in which we live! How heavy are the shackles that pull us down and
impede our progress and mobility! We read that the task of a prophet is
" He releases them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are
upon them (7, 157)". Another intellectual
juncture in my life took place towards the end of the forties, and I was then
a student in Al-Azhar, in Such reasoning brought me
to wonder whence that idea of "the end of time" stemmed? Was there
in the Qur'an such idea? I did read the
Qur'an with that question in
mind, but could not find it; instead I found " Anyone who has done an
atom's weight of good, shall see it (99, 7)", " We will, without
doubt, help our Our Messengers and those who
believe (40, 51)", " If any think that Allah will not help him in
this world and the Hereafter, let him stretch out a rope to the ceiling and
cut himself out (22, 15)", and " Allah has promised, to those among
you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He will, of surety, grant them,
in this land, inheritance of power (24, 55)"; but when societies cease
to see the 'process' of forming, when they cease to develop, they are
frustrated. It is then that the idea of the end of time prevails; it is true
in their case that time has come to an end. Well, my brother
Abdul-Jabbar, I am not one of those who can express their thought concisely
and precisely; hence my many words which do not bear much sense. I find that
I am addressing you and not the reader it is so because it was you who stirred
things and touched some soft spots and unhealed wounds. The Muslim World has lived
and is still living in wilderness. It is rising most slowly out of its
slumber; that is how it appears to us who long to see the Muslim World shake
off its sleep. But it does not appear like that to those who gloat over our
sleep for them we are moving fast towards wakefulness and understanding. Well, brother, it is a
difficult problem, that of ancestors. Without the forefathers, we are
nothing, since it is the accumulated experiences of past generations that has
brought us where we are; without them we must return to the cave and the
food-gathering stage, when man lived in the forest, unable to cultivate the
land. On the other hand, to be content with what the ancestors have left us,
to stay where they have put us, is also a halting of history, and a return to
the cave, though it is a different cave and in a different sense it is
bringing time to a standstill. The right relationship with the ancestors is
as expressed in the Qur'anic verse, " From whom
We shall accept the best of their deeds and pass by their ill deeds (46,
16))". But we seem to have put ourselves in a grave predicament we are
unable to go beyond the ancestors. Give us light, O God, give us light! We need
to see things not in the way they were seen by our forefathers. It is a fact
that over fourteen centuries the ancestors have been declining; it is a fact
that with every new defeat the previous defeats appear slight. Please do not take me
wrong; I do not have any malice towards the ancestors; they did do their
share; they did not have before them for guidance the history the we have
before us; we should forgive them, but we should rid ourselves of the
shortcomings we have inherited from them. We have to perceive that God's
creation is a continuous affair (see the Qur'anic
verse: He adds to Creation as He pleases '34, 1'.) As it is, those who forged
ahead have been other nations, and the Qur'an teaches us that they must
have the fruit of their effort: "Such days of varying fortunes We give
to men by turns (3, 140)". We still fail to comprehend the realities of
life and history they seem to mean nothing to us; that is because we think
that the Scripture precludes reference to them. The truth is that history and
the Scripture work as a pair, like man and wife; life will be barren with
either of them in isolation of the other. The technology of writing
and transmission of experience is a new phase in the life of man man is
indeed unique among living things in the world; other species have the germ
of their behaviour in their genes; but man
is not born with all his behaviour and future predetermined
as is the case with the rest of living things. A human being is born knowing
nothing, and learns his behaviour after that. Logicians
used to say that man is a speaking animal, in the sense that he transmits
experience through spoken words. We do not know when precisely man started to
talk, but we do know with precision when he started to write. We know that
exactly because man left his traces on stones, parchments, and paper five
thousand years ago; this is what we call a text. There is something sacred
about writing because it is this technical innovation that preserved human
experience. Before writing, experiences were lost with the death of the
person; an individual stored his experience in his brain, and the brain goes
with the death of the human being. Eons of time passed in which man lived in
the oral stage. God did not reveal a book
until people learned reading and writing (incidentally, Muhammad, the last
prophet, could not read and write.) What God says about Adam is " And He
taught Adam the names of all things (2, 31);" He says He taught him the
names, not revealed a book to him. When man discovered speech, he started to
give vocal symbols to concepts, he started to name things. Man can name
something or a concept after gaining the experience and understanding; that
is the way with all new physical and intellectual additions. Therefore when
God says: " And He taught Adam the names of all things ", it does
not mean He taught him all languages. Later, man acquired that skill of
writing. The first word of the first sura of the Qur'an, which is God's final message to mankind is 'Read
(sura 96)', an indication that
the written symbol has no inherent value; it is we human beings who provide
the specific relationship between the symbol and the referent. This puts us
face to face with the problem of the text a text, any text, has no value
except in so far as it relates to the actual state of things; at the same
time, the actual state of things will soon evaporate unless it is given some
permanence in the text. In this way the text has acquired a vital role in
man's life; man is unable to live without texts; and the techniques of
storing knowledge have not been confined to writing; later the voice and the
various sounds were added to it; and, later still, the visual dimension was
introduced. It is very, very slowly
that we begin to appreciate the relation between the text and the real state
of things, or the name and the referent. It is for such consideration that
the Qur'an teaches us that if we get
to know the world we shall believe in the Scripture's truth. It is so because
to know the Book in isolation of the world we shall be misled we read:
" Soon will We show them Our signs (42, 53)", " but they threw
it [the Book] behind their backs (3, 187)". For instance, if we
continued to argue about cosmology on the basis of the revealed evidence, our
argument could have lasted for ever; what cut the argument short is not the
text, but explorations of the sky. There are so many facts in the earth and
in the whole world that provide abundant evidence; the Qur'an urges us to examine both the evidence in the
world around us and the evidence in our own being, in the nervous systems
which stores experience, 'evidence of the selves in Qur'an terms'. Unless we realize and acknowledge that
relationship between the revealed text (the Scripture) and the world of
matter, which is the referent of the Scripture, we shall continue to dwell in
the wilderness and to charge each other with blasphemy. Another juncture in my
intellectual life has been the reading of one line written by Muhammad Abdoh. He wrote: "Let those who lash out against
religion lash out against their love of worldly pleasures." These few
words seemed to tear apart another taboo; it dawned in on me that we could
understand things in a new light. It was also shedding new light on things
when I read a book, Islam at Crossroads, by Muhammad Assad. I realized again that things that seemed
intractable really had solutions. I was beginning to realize that all
problems could be solved. The crowning evidence of all that was when I read a
verse of the Qur'an: " And He has
subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth:
behold, in that are Signs indeed for those who reflect (45, 13)." The
phrase, "subjected to you" signifies offering a service without
compensation. It means that we should be able to give the command, and have
the universe obey; if the universe does not obey our command, then there is
something wrong, not in the world, but in us. The development of ideas,
however, was very slow, though there were glowing moments. I was a student at
the time, with my eyes and ears quite open, receiving signals that kept
bombarding on my senses all the time; at the same time I analyzed those
messages. Then in the middle of the fifties of the twentieth century I
graduated from Al-Azhar. Around that time, I
happened to come across a book by Malik bin Nabi, The Conditions of Revival. That was a really
major stage in my growth. I did not at first reading understand what Malik was driving at, but I did realize that here was a
new method of seeing and analyzing things. So I kept reading and reading, I
read every line with great concentration; I brought points together, peered
closely, then from a distance, then reflected and reflected. For instance, I
read his book The Afro-Asian Idea more than thirty times. I taught it to
others, starting with the chapter, 'The Afro-Asian Idea and the Muslim
World'. The idea in Malik bin Nabi that had perhaps the most impact on my mind was
'proneness to being colonized'. This concept is a massive and pivotal one,
and must be developed and elaborated beyond where Malik left it; it really is an echo of a Qur'anic concept "Whatever evil happens to you, is
from your own soul (4, 79)." Malik was striking a note
discordant with what we used to hear from Al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdoh, or even Iqbal. It was really a shaking,
a violent shaking when he reversed the direction from blaming things on the
enemy, the colonizer, imperialism, the crusaders, Zionism, free-masonry, and
all the other enemies to blaming ourselves. Indeed, all those who stood up
to discuss things, religious, agnostic, or atheist, would blame the others
for our suffering, some or all of the above enemies. How muffled and murmured
was the voice, if at all there was a voice, that spoke of our ills that give
the others the chance to exploit us. Malik's was a giant step; it
would throw the whole situation in a different cast; the responsibility for
our ills was now put in the right place. Malik was similarly galvanizing when he said:
"When people in the Muslim World meet in conferences to discuss
problems, they deem Palestine to be the prime problem of the Muslim World;
this is a mistake, because, proneness to being colonized and the backwardness
in which we live are the real disease, while Palestine, Eritrea, Cashmere,
etc. are no more than symptoms of the real disease." I did have a jolt
when he said: "The 'proneness to being colonized' took root in our world
long before it occurred to the colonizer to come and occupy our land."
He described a curve which he started with the emergence of the Islamic idea,
from the call at the He proved himself to be
very perceptive of the source of our predicament when he said: A person who
is ignorant of what the twentieth century has added to human knowledge will
bring disgrace and derision to himself every time he opens his mouth to say
something. So you see, my brother
Abdul-Jabbar, how slowly we grow, indeed at a snail's speed. It is not merely
exceeding sloth with us; it is that we attach a sacred meaning to the sources
of our backwardness, and we are even prepared to die in the way of preserving
things the way they are. So let me remember other
stations in my intellectual growth. One of these has certainly been Muhammad Arkoun. He is a man that can talk in terms other than
the sacred or condemned. (Malik used to say that the
Muslim World can perceive things to be either pure and sacred or vile and
condemned; that one can pass from one state to the other in a moment a
fighter for the truth now can very easily be said to be a traitor the next
minute; a believer now can be condemned as a heretic and infidel the next
day.) My experience with Iqbal has been quite different from that with Malik. The latter was an electric engineer; the former
was a poet, a mystic poet, who communed with human beings and (in his
imagination) with the jinn, and soared in the heavens, having communion with
angels and Redwan, custodian of the It was Iqbal who fathomed the significance of the 'seal of prophethood' and its importance. It is history which
will reveal the importance of that idea. We do say that Muhammad, peace be
upon him, is the last of prophets, but how deeply do we realize the
significance of that fact? The whole line of prophets, from Noah until
Muhammad, appeared within a period of five thousand years; that is the story
of prophethood from beginning to end.
But how will people be after a million years? Iqbal
says in this connection: It was right that prophethood should come to a halt, because the signs in the world around
and the world inside were coming to be the source of revealing the truth. It
was Iqbal who helped me
discriminate between right and wrong. That was when Iqbal said: the way to discriminate and assess the
various systems, religions, philosophies and civilizations, is to study the
kind of individual who is the outcome of any particular religion or
philosophy. Iqbal's scope was limited from the factual aspect; and
yet, his intellectual scope was supreme. His perceptive vision solved for me
the problem of shari'ah; he had massive ideas in
this respect he said that God's shari'ah, or law, is justice;
whatever is shown to be just is God's shari'ah; it is around the axel of
justice that the shari'ah revolves. But as to the
details of jurisprudence they vary as the time varies; and people can come
close or drive far from justice. He said this in the course of analyzing the
history of the Turks and the Turkish thinkers during the Ottoman revolution. There must be other
original thinkers, but the few that I had access to all allot to man a vital
place and give him a high role. So what must I say next?
How much do you discern of all that, and all the darkness surrounding us, and
all the internecine killings among us? So where is the lamp? Where, in
Heidegger's word, is the light? Let us say that so far I have tried to answer
two of your questions, One and Two, that is, (1) the intellectual stations
and (2) the intellectual components. At the beginning, my affiliation was
with 'salafi' school (doctrine of
first two or three generations of Islam;) another stage was with Al-Afghani
and Abdoh; next it was Iqbal and Malik bin Nabi. Arkoun opened up the world of
modernism. That was a challenging stop, since the West occupies a predominant
place in the world; it would not be easy to discover its drawbacks. It was Iqbal again who helped me there; that is when he said,
addressing the West: "That civilization of yours will be like the mother
bird which will suffocate its little newborn; that is because the nest which
is built on a feeble branch will not stay long. Your fire has not scorched
me, because I follow Abraham's faith. Your glamour does not dazzle me, for I
have lined my eyes with Al-Madinah antimony." How to deal with the West
is a problem; what we should do is to accept their best production and to
bypass their blunder. What happens is that modernism is being served to us
wholesale, with its good and bad aspects, and the problem with many of us is
that they would either take it to be no more than delusion and corruption,
and others would not and will not turn their attention to the Westerners'
innovations and what avenues they have opened for mankind. Indeed, the
Westerners have not only invented transportation means to replace the donkey,
the mule, the horse and the camel; they have found a way for changing a ruler
without bloody struggles. This latter is a more remarkable achievement
accomplished in the West than the material things we are so keen to buy, to
buy rather than to produce even today. We show no interest in the
transferring of government in a civilized way; we are not yet ready for that.
Not many among us,
secularist or Islamicist, believe in the power of
ideas, that it is better to persuade people than to intimidate them. We are
still below the level of acquiring the Western democracy, where governments
are transferred through persuasion, though there is an amount of fraud,
rather than through overpowering with the whip, with iron and fire. This
democracy is a really new thing in the world, although it is also old from
another angle. Muslims did have the upright way of rule, 'Al-Rushd' in Islamic terms, and when they lost that they
somehow felt that something enormous was lost as one Muslim scholar put it:
"Would you like to have the Caesarian way of rule, every time a Caesar
is gone another Caesar replaces him?" But then mankind marched on, for
it is God's law that He enhances creation with new creations; He creates new
things, as new means of transportation were created to replace the donkey,
the mule and the horse. The modern innovations
have revolutionized people's conception of the universe; people's concept of
the sun rotating around the earth, and the earth as the centre of the
universe, this geocentrism, has all gone. People
received that new concept with great alarm; men were ready to have others put
to death, and to sacrifice their own life, rather than to let go of the old
concept of things. This cosmological revolution was the beginning of all
modernism; a new picture of the world was being drawn. There were then the
steam engine, and the combustion engine, there were new means of
transportation to replace the horse and the mule; new vehicles were being
introduced that never occurred to the ancients, not even to their fancies.
Then there was the telescope, and man could see the stars and constellations
and galaxies. There was the microscope, and man was able to see the germs and
the cause of many diseases and epidemics; man overcame many of those diseases
and epidemics, and is still defeating others. But there was another
Copernican revolution in sociology, although we have not yet perceived its
impact. There has been a politico-socio-human revolution when men, not all
but some, realized that the phenomenon of day and night did not come about by
the rotation of the sun, but by the rotation of the earth. Before that, the
sun appeared small, and so it was conceivable that it should run round us,
but the earth appeared huge, and people did not even know its ends, so it was
inconceivable that it should move; it had to be immobile. It is through a reflection
on history that one gets to understand the social phenomena. We have seen
great, very great monarchs, apparently irremovable, and even if assassinated,
they were just replaced by similar monarchs. We have seen the nations
ignorant, passive masses, without a voice, prostrating themselves before
whoever happens to occupy the seat of rule. But then, on the heels of the
cosmological revolution, there was a social revolution. Monarchs were
dwindling in size; they are no more in the advanced world than relics that
are preserved as a curious remnant of the past, some still holding their
post, but it is void of any power. Power and rule have been transferred to
the hands of nations, though very slowly, and the trend is spreading over the
whole world. This is really a remarkable achievement in social life. The
ordinary man seems to increase in stature; or, which is saying the same
thing, his awareness of history has increased. People used to offer human
sacrifices: It was Abraham who put a stop to offering human beings as
sacrifices, and replaced that with a sheep. Indeed, I find in the Muslim
ritual sacrifice of offering a sheep in devotion during the Greater Eid a symbol of the ovolution, the slow process in mankinds comprehension. Another giant step forward
initiated by Abraham was advanced during his argument with the tyrannical
ruler who bragged: I can give life, and can give death. Abraham's reply was:
" But it is Allah that causes the sun to rise from the East: do you then
cause it to rise from the West, (2, 258)." It was a decisive reference
to the laws of nature. If the infidel in Abraham's story is stunned, the
whole world was similarly overwhelmed and dazzled by the social revolution
announced during the 'Farewell Pilgrimage' by Prophet Muhammad, when he
referred to Abraham and the cutting off of the practice of offering human
sacrifices. He said: "You all descend from Adam, and Adam was made from
clay. No Arab has priority over a non-Arab, or a non-Arab over an Arab, no
white over coloured or coloured over white, except through piety." He
commanded that believers must not regress to a state of disbelief or
aberration, cutting each other's throats. He admonished men to be kind in
their dealing with women, who were in their custody, so to speak. Well,
things have changed since then, in theory, though in practice the change has
been all too slow. Well, I have digressed a
lot from your questions. But then, your questions are focused on our Islamic,
and human, crisis. It appears to me that we view things from the angle of
texts, and those texts have been emptied of their significance, and it is our
duty to give back to those texts their significance. The message of all the
prophets has been one and the same, no matter how we denigrate Christianity
or Judaism as supporting polytheism and racism. The messages themselves are
the same in essence: the gist of all prophets' teaching is 'al-tawheed: the Oneness of God.' It is al-tawheed which, if realized, no sin is too serious, and,
if violated, no devotion avails. Let's refer to the Qu'an again: " For We assuredly sent amongst every
People a Messenger, with the command: 'Serve Allah, and eschew al-taghoot (16, 36)." For each people there was a
messenger; and they all had the same message to convey: Worship God and shun
the taghoot. Now the word 'taghoot' has not received due attention in the Islamic
culture, in the commentaries on the Qur'an and the sunnah; it was conceived vaguely as synonymous with the
devil or an idol. Now the root 'tagha' from which 'taghoot' is derived, has been used in God's command to
Moses: " You go to Pharaoh, for he has indeed 'tagha: transgressed all bounds', "; in another
verse about Pharaoh and his supporters " And with Pharaoh, Lord of
Stakes; all these 'taghau: transgressed beyond
bounds' in the lands (88, 10-11)." One can infer that Phaoah has been the archetypal 'taghoot'; the man who stood up for Pharaoh, Moses, is
mentioned next in number only to God's name 'Allah', and Pharaoh himself is
mentioned more than seventy times. This encounter between Moses and Pharaoh
has been a confrontation with the greatest contemporary civilization. The Qur'an makes Pharaoh express all the attitudes and
feelings of dictators, explicit and implicit. Equally, the Qur'an makes Moses utter his exhortations to a community
that had succumbed to the dictator. The story is all there in the Qur'an, with various details from the same story
sprinkled throughout the Qur'an, varying in length and
detail. It is worth our while to study this story, to comprehend the reality
of 'tughyan' (abstract noun from the
same root as taghoot), its genesis and
components. When the story of Moses and Pharaoh occupies such a place in the Qur'an, as all aspects of it are presented everywhere in
the Qur'an, it must have the
importance that justifies all that attention. Even a partial analysis of this
story will take us some way to understanding the socio-political dilemma.
Well, my respected friend Abdul-Jabbar, you have stirred my mind with your
questions. This issue of tawheed: the Oneness of God, and idolatry, should not be
viewed as a theological or metaphysical issue; it should rather be viewed as
a social and human issue, with all its political and relational implications.
The 'Tawheed: Oneness of God' was not
unknown to the tribe of Quraish when they rejected the
teachings of the Messenger; they believed in the Oneness of God in the same
way we now believe. The conflict was about a society that gave to some
individuals a prestige, exempting them from the rule of law (shari'ah). A society that applied the law to Fatimah (the Prophet's daughter) in exactly the same way
as it was applied to any common Bedouin woman was inconceivable to all
mankind at the time. But then, the law is even today not applied to all on an
equal basis we all see how the right of veto is accepted as lawful in the
most distinguished organization in the world, and nobody resists that; rather
those who are not given the prestige dream of being endowed with the same
prestigious position; it is not that they wish to see that idolatry removed,
with one leading 'taghoot' and many minor 'taghoots'. It is with such a concept
in mind that Iqbal used to say that tawheed must not conceived of as the opposite of
multiplicity, that is multiplicity of gods; it is rather the opposite of
'shirk: taking other gods beside God' in the sense that some people are
exempted from the enforcement of law (or shari'ah),
when some people are raised to a status above the shari'ah. When Pharaoh declared " I am your Lord,
Most High (79, 24);" he meant that he was the sole source of
legislation, as we read his declaration in the other verses: " I but
point out to you that which I see myself; nor do I guide you but to the Path
of Right;" or " No god do I know for you but myself (28, 38),
" " If you put forward any god other than me, I will certainly put
you in prison (26, 29), " when he says to his magicians: " Do you
believe in Him before I give you permission? Surely this must be your leader,
who has taught you magic! Be sure I will cut off your hands and feet on
opposite sides, and I will have you crucified on trunks of palm-trees: so you
shall know for certain, which of us can give the more severe and more lasting
punishment (20, 71)." There are in these stories landmarks that must
point the way for us. In the same way as the chemist has his laws by which he
understands the unification and dissolution of matter, man has the means to
demolish and rebuild, and then rebuild and demolish in the social sphere; we
have a support of this in the Qur'an: "Truly he succeeds
that purifies it [his soul], and he fails that corrupts it (90, 9-10)". This
is true in the present as it was true in the past. When God says of the
sorcerers that they " they showed a great feat of magic (7, 116), "
that their ropes and stick seemed to their eyes, with their sorcery, to be
like crawling snakes the missiles and warheads of today are the same as
those ropes and sticks, both have chemical and atomic components. They can be
under man's control, rather than have control over man. But indeed we have
been bewitched; we fancy that those things can have control, but we forget
that the rockets and missiles did not avail the Let's consider electricity
and the atom; they are enormous energies, and they can give great service to
man. In the past, electricity came down in the form of thunderbolts, but then
man harnessed electricity, though in the past it had (in the form of
thunderbolts) the upper hand over man. So many energies have been brought
under man's service, it is so in innumerable ways. All those energies are at
man's service. So it is a change in man's attitude that reversed the
relationship, and brought those powers under his control. The greatest marvel has
been what the prophets taught; they propounded a revolutionary new
relationship among people, on the political and social levels, and a new economic
relationship in which neither side loses, giving for free and taking for
free. The prophets reversed the conventional relationship of power, and
killing, the relationship of 'I give life and death (The Qur'an, 2, 258),' to 'I give life, but not death', from
the relationship of killing in reaction to killing, to a relationship of
refraining from killing. It has been a novel and unthought-of change, a
complete reversal of things. That was the essence of causing men to replace
the worshipping of men with a worshipping of the Lord of men. In this
equation, God does not say: 'Kill the taghoot'; He says rather: "
Eschew the taghoot (The Qur'an, 16, 36), "; God says: " Those who
eschew the taghoot, and do not fall into its
worship and turn to Allah in repentance, - for them is Good News (39, 17),
" " Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths
of darkness He will lead them forth into light. Of those who reject faith the
patrons are the taghoots: from light they will
lead them into the depths of darkness (2, 257), " and " Those who
believe fight in the cause of Allah and those who reject Faith fight in the
cause of the taghoot (4, 76)." As we said, modernism
started in cosmology, and then it appeared in social life, when people
started to write about 'Voluntary Slavery', meaning that people began to
realize that no one can enslave us unless we choose to yield; that no one can
enslave us if we decide not to be enslaved. This is particularly true when
there is a multitude; you cannot enslave a huge crowd except through sorcery
and jugglery, as it is mentioned in the Qur'an: " So it seemed to
him on account of their magic (20, 66)." It is through sorcery that
people are being convinced that they can be put to death; this is a sorcery
that prevails over our minds; we need now to change the intellectual
atmosphere in which such illusions grow, to break the spell. It is through
our writings that we make the sorcery possible, that we perpetuate our
slavery. I sometimes say: what the
prophets taught has not descended yet from the heaven to the earth; what the
prophets taught is not to kill the taghoot; it is rather to refrain
from killing when the taghoot commands you to kill.
This subject has been neglected, not debated or explored; it may be right to
say of this undiscussed subject, in the modern
terminology that Arkoun uses, that it is
unthought-of , or an unthinkable subject. But, again, the earth's rotation
around the sun was at one time unthinkable, by the contemporary 'givens'. In
the same way, it is unthinkable at this moment, that the solution lies in
declining to carry out the command of killing. I just hope that we come out
from the darkness of the unthinkable to the area of discussion and
exploration and reflection and shedding light. Bilal,
Sumayyah, Ammar and Yaser (Prophet's companions)
succeeded in getting out of obeying the taghoot and complying with his
commands. This indeed is the mainstay of realizing tawheed 'Onennes': to stop obeying the taghoot and to shun worshipping him. And that is why I
say, rather than have the Muslim youth be put to death because they endeavour to kill someone, I urge them to be ready
to receive execution, or to be imprisoned and perhaps tortured for refusing
to kill. Isn't it odd that we inspire the youth to kill the taghoot? How many times did we have the taghoots killed, and had their graves abused? And then,
they did not really disappear; their killers replaced them by becoming taghoots. How long will it take us to understand this? You see how the armies of
all the world train their soldiers to obey without protest, inculcating that
the authority takes the responsibility for the decision this is human
legislation. But in God's law, in the tawheed system, you may not obey
any command if it clashes with God's command. The very first sura that was revealed from heaven directed a believer
to disobey unjust decrees: "Do you see one who forbids a servant (of
God) when he turns to pray
Nay, do not obey him: but bow down in adoration,
and bring yourself the closer to Allah! (96, last few verses)." It is
prohibited now in many Islamic states for soldiers to openly perform their
prayer in their barracks. But a believer has to learn to obey when the
command issued is in harmony with God's command and to disobey when the
command is in conflict with God's command, as in the matter of prayer. This
is knowledge that makes the individual realize that it in his power to effect
change, with no loss for any party, with profit for all parties. A good deed
here is rewarded with ten times its value. In the news we hear that
the Turkish army dismissed more than thirty of the highest ranking offices
for being indisciplined, in reference to their
not concealing their worship when in their barracks. When you learn how to
challenge the taghoot and perform your prayer;
when you learn how to disobey the taghoot if he commands you to
kill Muslims, who are just like you, then you will be a model for them to
follow. You act upon " Nay, do not obey him (96, last verse)." The
others are waiting for you to start, as you are waiting for them; so be the
first to obey God and disobey the taghoot. Is it not odd how we keep
silent at the troops which occupied The issue of tawheed and idolatry has remained nebulous and vague; we
have not fulfilled the injunction of spreading the word; indeed, how can we
spread the word when we have not yet understood the message, nor taken
responsibility for the message? The message of each one of the prophets has
been, as asserted by the Qur'an: " Worship Allah and
Eschew the taghoot (16, 36)"; likewise,
we read in the Qur'an, " It has already
been revealed to you, as it was to those before you 'If you were to join
gods with Allah, truly fruitless will be your work in life, and you will
surely be in the ranks of those who lose all spiritual good (39, 65)."
Cannot we understand that our deeds have been in vain, how we are losers?
Indeed, is there a nation anywhere in the world which is more of a loser than
we are? Every day some kind of affliction befalls us that must make us feel
disgraced. Indeed, we are disgraced to such a degree that we are unable to
raise our heads before others. My reading of the world
and the way I perceive it are different from others. Indeed, I find in the
developments in the world a new light by which the Qur'an is illumined more than ever. It is that
understanding that gives me support and provides me with the moral courage to
face the world, and to speak out about what my mind can comprehend. It is a
cogent sensibility of the accord of God's law in the world and God's law
revealed in the Book. In fact, the laws of the world and the law taught in
the Qur'an both emanate from the
same source; when their accord is perceived, that will send in the soul a
great tranquility and peace. The principle of 'Let
there be no compulsion in religion (The Qur'an: 2, 256)' neutralizes
power; God is proclaiming that the material power has no dominance over man's
heart. Man's conscience has been protected from coercion; that is so because
faith that comes about through coercion is not faith, nor is disbelief that
comes about through coercion disbelief. When you defeat someone who is an
unbeliever, he has the right to adhere to his disbelief you accept his
disbelief and respect him. What we endeavour to do is not to have a
hypocritical proselyte. It is a good thing in modern systems that they admit,
at least in theory, that no one has authority over an individual's conscience
hence they admit in their constitutions the freedom of conviction; such an
article exists to protect man's conviction; that he may not change his faith
by coercion, but through persuasion. Ruling out force as the means to dictate
man's conviction has taken root at a time when the material power has reached
a point when it can destroy the earth and life. This enlargement of force has
brought into play new important and clear responsibilities. It is true that
the old habit of resorting to force is still in effect, but it shrinks
continually. Since the exploding of the first atomic bomb, sixty years back,
something new has taken place, the significance of which the world has not
yet realized; people go on talking the old language, the language of threat,
which is outdated, and virtually invalid, in practice though not in words.
This is the opposite of what happens to many ideas, which are admitted in
theory, though not applied in practice. In the case of ruling out the
resorting to force, it has been applied in practice before being admitted in
words. The society of the big powers can no longer fight among themselves, and
they know this clearly enough, and they act on this. Violence and fighting
are ruled out in the disputes of the big powers, though they still conduct
and control fighting in the other parts of the world, in the parts where
force is still accepted as an efficient way of resolving matters. We should
be mindful of the fact that when small parties, like ourselves, wage war
among themselves, the same old way, it will be to the benefit of the big
parties, in such a way that we may say with confidence that anyone who, in
the world of the small, tries to solve his problem through force will have
played in the hands of the big, whether he be the first to resort to violence
or the last. As for the world of the big, they will have their casualties,
without an outside enemy that is what happened to the former Soviet Union:
it crumbled from inside "Allah took their structures from their
foundations, and the roof fell down on them from above (16, 26); " it
wasn't that an external enemy attacked them to cause their fall through
aggression. On the other hand, we see
that Japan, a country that had surrendered unconditionally, under the effect
of the atomic bomb, rose to its feet. It rose without the nuclear bomb, and
without a civil war, to stand on a footing with the Big Seven in the world.
These events are of significance; they take place by the laws of God. The
Japanese are human beings, and they are not Jews, nor Christian, nor Muslim,
and there is more reason in that to urge us to think of what happened and how
it happened. That is why, my brother
Abdul-Jabbar, I say that to acquire power is not to acquire the material
weaponry. What the Qur'an urged the Muslims at one
time to secure, " make ready your strength to the utmost of your power,
including steeds of war (8, 60)," is no longer operative, in the sense
that we all know that no one would like now to build more stables for horses
to be ridden by fighters; it is the same in the case of spears and swords; it
is the same with tanks; and it is the same with nuclear and tetron bombs they all are no longer needed. What is
needed is man, who has control, through thinking: so glorified by God, the
best to create (reference to the Qur'an, 23, 14;) He created man
to be a creature unlike any other creature, capable of choosing to purify or
debase his soul, and capable of having control. It is also after the
outmoding of material force that the European Union emerged. The European
Union did not come into being through force, but through its abolishment, the
realization that force may not be a reason for privileges "lest one
people should be more numerous than another (16, 92)." What made it
possible for Europe to unite was not a Hitler or a Napoleon, though each had
reached Russia in the east, and reached the Arab world; and yet one died
through suicide and the other as an exile. When Europe unites now it
is not on the principle that Germany is above all or France is above all.
Germany or any other nation is equal to any other party, that despite any
residue of old bragging which sounds discordant when this or that leader
utters it; it sounds like what the Messenger said about racism: "Leave
it off; it stinks." Such words when uttered seem to smell foul and
obnoxious. I am aware of what will occur
at this point, that Israel has come into existence and sustains and enhances
its purposes through force; but there is an illusion here, even if it is said
so loud that it deafens our ears. Malik bin Nabi likened Israel to a red cloth that is waved by a
matador, which he waves to enrage the bull, and the bull would, instead of
attacking the matador, attack the red cloth, and, when the time is ripe, the
matador would stab the bull fatally in the neck, despite its great fury. So
one can learn much by studying history. Those who cling to the
force of arms, in fear of Israel, have, by the acquiring of arms, fulfilled
the purpose for which Israel came into being. It was created to divert
attention from the real problems, to distract our attention with secondary
problems. It was a shock to me when Malik bin Nabi did not consider Israel as the prime problem; but
I came to understand new things, and my comprehension was increasing more and
more. And then the second Gulf War came, and it was the last straw: it exposed
the Arabs and Muslims, and all the backward nations; we forgot about Israel
when we faced the problems that now emerged. There was exposed the fallacious
traditions we had inherited from the Pre-Islamic period, as expressed in a
line of poetry: "And we often assail the tribe of Bakr, who are our next of kin, when we find no other
enemy to assail." We also awakened to the fact that there is a Western
power which backs Israel and poses a greater threat for all Arabs than
Israel. It still is true that Israel is not the disease, but a symptom of the
disease. There is a proof of this in that Israel's war did not awaken us: in
1948, we accounted for the defeat by lapping it on the backward and traitor
rulers who sold Palestine or abandoned it; we admired the coups d'ιtas, which came with a hue and a cry, one after the
other; but they are no less backward than the backward governments they
toppled. The Muslim and the
secularist are the same in their mental structure, despite the bitter
hostility they have for each other: they are governed by the same culture,
the same tradition, a tradition that has no foundations, no enlightenment, a
fanatic tradition that clings to a past that they have not analyzed, or to a
present that they do not discern. Therefore we see that the secularists have
played their part, and then are fading out. But are the Islamicists more far-sighted, or more profound of
vision and analysis? It may be that the later comers will benefit from the
experience accruing through previous events; hence, though the Afghan and
Algerian phenomena are unfortunate and painful, the phenomena of Iran and
Turkey are indicative of unexpected hopes. We have not given the
Iranian phenomenon the attention it deserves. For my part, my reading of the
events of the world leads me to have special views of both Iran and Turkey.
As for Iran, what happened there has been unprecedented; indeed nothing like
it happened in the Muslim World since the days of the Upright Caliphs (the
first four caliphs after the Prophet.) Such change of dynasties as took place
before in the Muslim World was internal struggles, something like the four
generations described by Ibn Khaldoon; coup d'ιtas that happened changed a
dynasty to another dynasty. Nations were absent from those conflicts; it was
armies that undertook to bring about the change. But the Iranian Revolution
was a popular revolution, a woman's revolution before a man's. It has been a
remarkable event, a radical change in perspective and execution, and a marvellous model. The sheer enormity of the
achievement might be the cause of our failure to fathom and interpret it;
some may be inclined to interpret it in Divine terms: that it has been a
Divine concern, a miracle that may not come under the laws of the universe.
When the Shah used to impose a curfew, Khomeini used to command: You must
defy that edict and go to the streets, women and men, the women to go ahead
and offer flowers to the soldiers of the Shah. In such confrontation, woman
is more effective than man; no one would need here military drills or to
practice the use of arms. All an individual would need is to announce: I am
free in choosing my faith. I believe in this and disbelieve in that. You can
put me to death for that. Many were actually killed, but when a martyr fell,
his or her place was not left vacant, a substitute would take his or her
place at once. It was in this way that the Shah was expelled, without any
bullet or a missile being shot. The government was handed over, and the
authority and dominance now belonged to the new power, a popular power. It
has been a novel power, new in the full sense of the word. The success was
also different from the success in Algeria, through the ballot-box; it was
quite different. It was also different from the Afghani way, where they
sought to keep women at home. The local government in Iran was helpless, even
with outside support, in resisting the rising power. Popular wakefulness is not
likely to be frustrated by external powers. And let me dream here,
apologizing to Abdul-Jabbar and to the readers, by saying: The Iranians could
have taken Iraq over too, in the same way as they faced the Shah, but they
did not. Iran's other challenge,
the democracy and democratic elections is an added achievement, though it
stems from the first vision. What happened in the last elections in Iran has
been a fresh surprise for the whole world. The Iranians have successfully
gone beyond the peaceful revolutionary stage, and have marched on, in firm
steps towards democracy. This event is replete with significance; the
international media were betting against the Iranian democracy that even if
Khatami should succeed, he would
not be allowed to rule. But he did succeed and did rule. And now, despite all
predictions to the contrary, the Iranian people will not give up democracy
it has tasted the sweetness of success; it now believes that it shapes its
own future. They will lead the way to a solid Islamic cooperation, a
cooperation that its neighbours can feel secure in its neighbourhood. This is your real capital, a capital
which far surpasses the possession of property and riches to feel that your
neighbour feels security in your
contiguity, that you will not play treacherously against it, that you will
support it, even when it does not show itself to be a good neighbour. Such relationship is a new phenomenon
that no hostile parties can corrupt: it is our hope that the sagacity of the
wise will prevail. And I am aware of the dissenting voices in that sphere. We can think also of the
Turkish people. It is Turkey who rebelled against Islam, leading the way for
the rest of the Muslim World to follow in that direction. It is they who
abolished the corrupt caliphate. But, in the same way as they led the Muslim
World in challenging Islam, after Muslims had lost 'al-rushd: uprightness', Turkey is being a pioneer in
challenging secularism and secularist democracy. Such developments prove that
God's promise will be fulfilled, that His light will prevail, locally and
universally. Those who call to a complete dissociation with the others or to
war no longer receive the support they used to receive; supporters to such
trend are on the decrease, and opposers are on the increase;
opposition to such trend are gaining in firmness and confidence. God's
purpose in creating man will come to pass His decree that man (as declared
in the Qur'an, 2, 30) will get over
mischief and will stop bloodshed. Problems are now solvable, without the need
for human sacrifices. It will come to pass, when we understand such simple
facts; some may thing it unlikely, but we believe it is a certainty: I do not
say that by just believing in the unseen, but that unseen has now for us some
visible evidence. But let's return to the
problem of Israel, the state that has done the part assigned to it
efficiently: it has distracted Arabs from their prime responsibilities, their
deep internal problems, which they have inherited over the centuries. Let me discuss something
which seems unthinkable from the Arabs' point. There is much talk about peace
with Israel, the state which has no basis for its existence, which has no
foundations, but there is still much talk about peace with Israel, and it
seems not to enter our heads to have peace among ourselves. Malik bin Nabi used to say: When we grow
to talk more about the proneness for being colonized than about colonization,
it is then that we would have taken the first step towards a solution. God
has said, and so has the Messenger, and Adam, and even Satan, (in reference
to various Qur'an verses) that we are
accountable for our problems. We read in the Qur'an:
"What! When a single disaster smites you, although you smote your
enemies with one twice as great, do you say 'Whence is this?' Say to them:
'It is from yourselves,' (3, 165). " By the way, the Qur'an is the only book that rebukes the victim more
than the persecutor. That is so because the oppressor is enabled of
oppression only through our compliance and assistance; should we withdraw
that assistance he would fall. In the course of a long tradition of the
Messenger's, peace be upon him, he says: "Anyone who receives good
recompense, let him thank God; but anyone who receives foul recompense, let
him blame no one but himself." In contrast, we seem to blame anyone but
ourselves. More about that. Adam, peace
be on him, after he had eaten with his wife from the forbidden tree, and God
admonished him (as recounted in the Qur'an): " Did I not forbid
you that tree (7, 22,) Adam and his wife said: "We have wronged our own
souls (7, 23.)" Neither of them mentioned the Devil, how he had enticed
them; it was God who told us about his seduction. Adam and his wife took all
the responsibility; and it was for that that they merited to be given custody
of the earth. We may even cite Satan in this context: on the Day of Judgement he will address those who followed him
with the words (as the Qur'an reports): " I had no
authority over you except to call you, but you listened to me: then reproach
not me, but reproach your own souls. I cannot listen to your cries, nor can
you listen to mine (14, 22)." We have also the testimony
of Toynbee, who learned from history that civilizations do not come to their
demise as martyrs, but as suicidors. It is after they are a
corpse that eagles and hawks attack them, for they find their nourishment in
corpses. So that is the lesson of history. But what is it that
prevents us from having peace among ourselves? It is worth our effort to
explore that problem. There has been a long history of strife among us, and
that strife has barred our way to achieving things in other spheres. I have
investigated this issue; those who I have asked would not consider even the
possibility of peace among ourselves, I mean a peace in which there is no
losing party, in which all are winners: leaders, monarchs, princes,
land-owners and the wealthy; nothing will be taken away from them, but it
will increase. When I say this to people, they do not imagine it to be
possible at first: it is so because they have an a priori rule, that the
problem cannot be solved except by annihilating the other, or by confiscating
his property. But what I am advocating here is a situation where all parties
are winners, what each of the parties possesses thrives. The proof of this
can be witnessed not on a remote galaxy but here on this earth, and in our
traditional neighbours, since the time of
Alexander to our own day (the Europeans). If history can teach us something,
it teaches that perdition awaits the wrong-doer, and prosperity is the reward
of good doers. We must, every time Israel impedes the progress to peace
reinforce peace among ourselves, we must each one of us own our guilt, not
hasten to directing accusations against each other. I do not address these
words to the political leaders, who are too preoccupied with their immediate
problems. I am only addressing the ordinary man and woman, to say to him and
to her: There is a solution in which no one loses anything, and every one is
a winner. I would like to give every one of them a word that they can utter
without feeling that they are being traitors or guilty or agents of foreign
parties. We oscillate and swing, not because of Adam's sin, as the Christians
put it, but because of the culture we grow in, which we absorbed even before
we learned to talk. In this culture, we think that to unite Muslims we need
to annihilate those we do not approve of: a culture that validates treachery
and applauds the traitors, as if treachery would eliminate treachery.
Crookedness in fact cannot be eliminated with crookedness, but with
uprightness. We need to talk and reiterate to the Muslim these ideas, to
realize that he must confess his sins. I say if the call to peace among
Arabs, where each party is a winner and no one loses anything, is not a sin,
then I call to that in the open, not in secret, but loud and clear. And if
some people consider that call sinful, then I am prepared to commit that sin:
I only call to that and make it clear that peace among us is possible, and no
one need to be a loser. Indeed no one will oppose that except he who will
expose his own guilty conscience, the one who denies the right of the others.
Therefore, we need to learn the words and utterances that we need to make. We
do not even want to start applying democracy at this stage: we want to start
with the possible, so that people are calmed down with the feeling that there
is a different view, that there are some who uphold this view, and others who
oppose it. These are few simple and
glowing words; but we need to say them again and again until they become
familiar. Let us get over people's saying: Never did we hear the like of
this! (a reference to the Qur'an, 28, 36); let them get
familiarized to these ideas, and start to talk about them. At least we will
feel in the depth of our heart the possibility of peace and security among
Muslims and believers, for, otherwise, how can peace and security have any
sense? If we believe in that, it will thrill us to see someone trying to
establish peace and security among Arabs and Muslims, and will be repelled when
someone tries to unite Arabs and Muslims with the sword. Let us remember,
Arabs, that when two Arab countries joined hands for a short while during the
October 1973 war with Israel, even those who had no direct involvement
cooperated with them, which surprised the rest of the world, while the Arabs
were ecstatic, and the price of their oil rose: they had pierced the terror
wall. Let us remember, on the
other hand, that when two Arab states fell apart in the Second Gulf War, they
came to grief, and they lost much money; and they are still driving further
and further apart; after ten years they cannot face each other and cannot
greet each other. But the Messenger taught us that the better party is that
who greets first. Regaining confidence will not happen overnight, of course.
Arabs did try to unite, Egypt and Syria united for some years, but it was
broken, and more than forty year passed after that. When there is a call to
union now, it is received with vexation, for how can a structure be erected
without foundations? Let us understand first, and talk after, words that
express sound reasoning. We need to discover the
way to peace, and to pave such way that people find it passable. The way to
peace is not sketched yet, even on maps, so how can we talk about realizing
it on earth. There are preconceptions
that are not uttered, but work potently among us, more than any signed
agreement. There is complicity that Muslims have lost al-rushd (the upright way to politics, more or less the
same idea of 'no compulsion in religion' mentioned in the Qur'an, 2, 256, which is true in the sphere of politics,
too,) when they substituted it with delusion (opposite of al-rushed,
compulsion in religion and politics.) When this took place, Muslims were
alarmed, but did not know the way to regaining the upright way in religion
and politics; so they unanimously agreed, without words, to substitute
delusion for al-rushd, that whoever had the
means to regaining al-rushd with treachery and
violence can resort to that. Such reasoning was never expressed in words,
because that way of thinking cannot be articulated, but they all had it clear
and it was publicized to everyone: it was the norm, the accepted way. And
down to our own day we have not challenged that implicit complicity with any
consciousness, which is the first step to being cured from it; we have not
gone one step on the way to upright religion and politics (al-rushd in Qur'anic terms as in the verse
" Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from
Error: whoever rejects taghoot and believes in Allah has
grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks (2, 256)." In the clause "Let
there be no compulsion in religion", God is drawing the line between
uprightness and delusion, and the demarking line is stated in the second
clause: that compulsion is an error, and non-compulsion is uprightness; in
the third clause it is further elucidated that a person who rejects the taghoot for the taghoot is the prototype of
compulsion, whose life and existence are based on compulsion so he who
disbelieves in the taghoot and believes in God
(meaning God's system of non-compulsion), that person has held to the firm
hand-out, which will not break. Another thing in which
Muslims have tacitly and unanimously agreed upon, to a point of taking it to
be indisputable, is that should right and wrong, or goodness and evil, be
given equal chance, then it is wrong which will triumph over right and defeat
it, that people will choose what is wrong. Now for one thing such belief is
thinking poorly of God, as expressed in such Qur'anic
verses as: " Moved by wrong suspicions of Allah suspicions due to
Ignorance (3, 154)," and " But this thought of yours which you
entertained concerning your Lord, has brought you to destruction, and now you
have become of those utterly lost! (41, 23)." For another thing, God
says that should truth and falsehood be in conflict, it is falsehood that
will collapse, because it is in its nature to collapse: " And say:
'Truth has now arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is by its
nature bound to perish (17, 81); " He does not say that when falsehood
comes truth will collapse, and yet we have it deep in our hearts that wrong
will prevail. We have been taught to be scared of falsehood in an exaggerated
and unjustified way. We can read further about that God's words: " Say:
The Truth has arrived, and Falsehood neither creates anything new, nor
restores anything (34, 49), " and " Now We hurl the Truth against
falsehood, and it knocks out its brain, and behold, falsehood perishes! (21,
18).". The attitude described
here is thinking ill of God; that is in the first place. It is also thinking
ill of Islam and truth. It presupposes that when people are given the choice
they will desert truth and Islam, and truth and Islam will have no one to
side with them. That is in the second place. In the third place, such
attitude is thinking ill of man, that falsehood appeals more to him than
truth. But in fact, man finds truth more congenial than evil; that is why God
says: " But most of them do not know the Truth, and so turn away (21,
24)." This tells us that it is through the spread of ignorance that men
will take their faults to be justified. It is for this reason that there must
be articulate and full clarification of things, so that no lack of knowledge
should be the reason for delusion; there will be those who are still
condemned, but those are a minority, and even they are there because of the
large number of deluded people. When truth is revealed and brought to the
notice of people, most people will choose the truth: that is God's law. |
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