Difference between revisions of "1: The major stages in the intellectual progress"

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Jawdat Said, What are the main stages in your intellectual progress?

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 Cairo. It occurred to me one day that our instructors seemed to suggest to us that the end of time was drawing near, and that there would be not a day but worse than the previous day; so I reasoned to myself: "How can I devote myself to a system doomed to be worse today than it was yesterday, and worse tomorrow than it is today?" Indeed, had man's need for religion been less compelling, then religions would have been abandoned; as it is, no matter how twisted and warbled religions are represented, they remain grounded in the human intuition that this world is not there for nothing, that it exists in order to establish the truth, although for some the truth is put off until the Hereafter, since they cannot see it as feasible in this world.

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 Cave of Hira' to the Battle of Siffin; and then to Ibn Khaldoon, and then it declines to colonization and backwardness. He was unusual and astonishing when he said: "the proneness to being colonized did not take shape in Paris, London, Washington or Moscow. It rose and took shape under the mosques' domes of the Muslim World, in Bukhara, Samarqand, Delhi, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Al-Qairawan, in sum across the Tanjah-Jakarta axel."

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 Paradise; he argued with the colonizer and the devil. Iqbal used to say: "My vision can perceive the very pulse of stars, and the blood circulation of the full moon." He fathomed the world, quantitively and qualitatively; to him man is the arm of the Divine Will. It was he who taught us that though the Qur'an and Islam appeared before the age of science they did herald the scientific way. It is he who awakened us to the value of the signs of the world around us and the world inside us when he said: The Qur'an counts the world around us and the world inside as a source to indicate the truth. It was he who illuminated, and still illuminates more, the Qur'anic verse: “Soon will We show them Our Signs in the regions of the world, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things (41, 53)?”

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 mankind’s 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 Soviet Union and did not deter its collapse. They gave homage to those weapons in the Soviet Union, but the weapons did not come to their succour at the time of collapse. It is idolatry to put your confidence in the muscles rather than in an idea.

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 Kuwait, treating them like heroes? It is this silence which made Arab troops be mobilized to defeat Iraq. Why don’t we learn to disobey the tyrants? They will persist in giving their commands of killing as long as the soldiers say: Yes, Sir! But Bilal exercised his freedom, he, formally a slave, who is supposed to obey his master. But Bilal learnt that he had another Master, a Master who had priority of obedience; so if the earthly master's commands accord with the Master's, then a Muslim will obey; if the earthly master's commands are in conflict with the Master's commands, then no obedience is due " Decree whatever you desire to decree (20, 72);" that has been the defiant attitude of Pharaoh's magicians.

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'étas, 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'étas 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.