This article isn't belong to me. It is a good article to read anyway.
It was 1400 years ago when in 613
CE a mortal man by the name of Muhammad preached that there is only One God and
that he is His Messenger for all mankind. He brought teachings that would soon
change the whole entire world and brought upon not only a spiritual
enlightenment but carried with himself everlasting message of peace, justice,
compassion and humanity which were long lost in the dark desserts of Arabia.
The world witnessed a magnificent
Islamic Golden Age emerged afterwards in 150 years, from the majestic city of 8th
Century Baghdad. It was truly a global capital of knowledge and wisdom, the
ultimate centre of multidisciplinary scholarly learning ranging from natural
sciences, religious studies, medicine, humanities, philosophy, literature,
engineering and cultural arts. Along with Córdoba and Cairo, Islamic
Civilization created an intellectual movement unparalleled in over 500 years
that undoubtedly contributed to the European Rebirth or the Renaissance.
Under the reign of Suleiman the
Magnificent, Islam would later rise as a mighty empire at the peak of its
dominion. It was a universal empire which consisted of more than 47 of today’s
modern-day nations spanning across three continents. Makkah, Medina and
Jerusalem, three of Islam’s holiest cities were all united under one single
sovereign. Islam under Ottoman Empire was a global superpower both at sea and
land, unmatched, feared but above all admired by the rest of the world. It was
an Era of Pax Ottomana.
But this was many, many centuries
ago, centuries of remarkable Islamic history. This was Islam of yesterdays, not
Islam we have today unfortunately.
Along with the civilisation
itself, Islam’s rich culture of human exploration and creativity fades together
in history. Great scientific minds like ‘Abbas ibn Firnas, Jabir ibn Hayyan,
al-Razi and countless others who made great scientific discoveries are now just
nostalgic remnants of the past. Today, it is the West and not Islam who is at
the forefront of scientific inquiry and technological innovations.
The Western world has produced
more Nobel Laureates in the four scientific fields of the prize than any other
nations on Earth combined. From Islam’s 1.62 billion-strong population, only
two Muslim scientists have ever received science’s most prestigious honour
since it was first introduced in 1901. Theories of relativity, Apollo 11, Human
Genome Project, MacBook, Google, Large Hadron Collider and Curiosity Rover are
all major scientific ideas and technological breakthroughs achieved by the West
and in the West.
The glorious days of excellent
Islamic scholarship from the madrasahs of
Timbuktu to Malacca are long over as well. Today, universities such as Harvard,
Oxford and Cambridge are just some of the many outstanding Western institutions
that supremely dominate the intellectual world. The West currently boasts more
universities and researchers, libraries and PhD holders and has more R&D
output than the rest of the Islamic world. It is a race where the Muslims was
once leading so far ahead but is now been left so far behind.
The Islamic world was also the
focus of global trade and commerce. Muslims would live under immense wealth and
prosperity but today, the same Islamic world is struggling to be the same
economic giant it used to be. No Muslim countries are in the world’s ten
largest economies and even the combined total GDP of all 57 states of the OIC
could not match US’s 15.6 trillion USD economy. Together with the European Union,
the West owns almost half of today’s global wealth while most Muslim population
live with hunger and poverty.
In the same Islamic world,
Muslims exists in a society as if been cursed into continual conflict and
corruption. Since the turn of the second millennium, more than 30 armed
conflicts, civil wars and military confrontations have occurred on Muslim soil
and more than 20 conflicts are still ongoing today from the insurgencies in
Chechnya to the brutal civil war in Syria, amounting up to nearly 3 million
deaths and counting.
Islam has lost its power to
dictate and effectively influence international relations since the end of the
First World War. It could not prevent the Western invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan, the genocide of Bosnia nor the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. The
long bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict still remains highly unresolved with millions
of Palestinians suffer every day at the hands of murderous Zionist regime and
there is nothing Muslims today can do about it.
Once upon the time, women were
equal to men in all aspects of life in 12th Century Spain as
commented by Ibn Rushd, a famous Andalucian philosopher. Indeed, women were
emancipated since the arrival of Islam, freeing them from the chains of
patriarchal enslavement and cultural oppression. Women’s rights were legally
institutionalised and championed. History proudly records that women in Muslim
societies were eminent scholars, brave warriors, brilliant physicians, generous
patrons and wise politicians.
But in the same Muslim societies
today, all of this seems to be absolutely impossible. Today, the same chains
have shackled women again in countries where it is deemed to be most dangerous
of places for women to live. Most Islamic nations have very little or no
enforcement of laws consonant with the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as women’s rights appear to be of
little or no priority at all for these governments.
These same countries have Muslim
governments who have also been accused of human rights violations, persecution
of minorities and encroachment of basic freedoms from time and time again. The
Achtiname of Muhammad is an exemplar of Islam’s religious tolerance but it was
in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that a Muslim threatened to burn copies
of the Bible, a book sacred to the faith of Christianity. It seems peace, justice,
compassion and humanity is lost once again amidst in all of this chaos and
insanity.
What have the Islamic world
become? What have we, the Muslims become?
Muhammad Abduh, a 20th
Century Egyptian reformist once said, “I went to the West and saw Islam, but no
Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam”. Since then,
perhaps things are still very much the same. After the collapse of the Ottoman
Caliphate and centuries of vicious colonialization which subjugated the Islamic
world, have left the Muslim Ummah
psychologically paralysed and uninspired. Further series of brutality and
humiliation experienced by the Muslim populace further terrorises an already
traumatised society.
To make things worse, Muslims
today confronts a world of perpetual distractions, drowning them in an ocean of
irrelevance which leads them astray from Quranic Revelations. Highly addictive entertainments
from Hollywood to South Korea’s K-pop sensations are trapping postcolonial
Muslims in a mind-control scheme where only sex, pleasure, materialism and
popularity are its inescapable reality. The Islamic world is cornered by both
military and mental occupation in which the latter is the most powerful of
weapons.
Again I ask myself this question,
what have the Islamic world become and what have we, the Muslims become?
I was deeply, deeply disturbed
when a sweet, young girl by the name of Malala Yousafzai was targeted for
assassination by the Talibans. They claimed that Malala was opposing Islam
while in fact she was only opposing injustice. For opposing them actually, a 15
year old girl was shot in the head and neck, a girl who only believes that young
girls like her deserves to get an education.
A despicable barbarity often perpetrated today falsely in the name of
Islam.
Muslims today are the unconscious
actors in their own film where Islam has become the tragic antagonist of global
terrorism. Suicide bombers, bearded gunmen and al-Qaeda are the star-studded
cast in this Western-produced motion picture of which only fear, hatred and
lies are acted about a religion that has been terribly misunderstood since the
attacks on 9/11. Islamophobia haunts the minds of the audience as the result
from watching this blockbuster deception.
These are the greatest dilemmas
which confronts the Muslim Ummah at
the moment. Imperative issues which will determine the fate of this religion,
whether or not there will be a progressive future for Islam tomorrow. Now, the
question we must ask ourselves is this; after all that has befallen, after
seeing all of the moral corruption which plagues our Muslim nations, is there
any hope left for Islam and for the rest of the Islamic Civilisation?
If it was more than eight hundred
days ago, maybe there is no such thing as hope in the Islamic world but now, hope
is the newfound human spirit that drives Islamic revivalism in the Arab region.
Decades of totalitarian regimes and dictators were toppled in a wave of people-inspired
revolutions. From the ashes of old Ottoman memory, Turkey too rises as a new
hope and become the shining model for the successful harmony between Islam and
modernity.
Egypt elected Muslim
Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi, the first hafiz
as the head of state of a Muslim country in centuries. In Tunis, 217
lawmakers lead by the Ennahda Movement, a moderate Islamist party, are writing
a new constitution for more than 10 million Tunisians while Tawakkol Karman, a
woman, became the Mother of Yemeni’s Revolution. Elsewhere in the Islamic
world, nations like Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia are all seen as emerging
powers in a changing global environment.
Yes, I believe there is hope for
the Muslim Ummah, in a post-revolution
Islamic world that has planted the seeds of hope for a better tomorrow. Hope
that peace, justice, compassion and humanity would once again be the prevailing
values in our Muslim societies. It is the inevitable end of history for mankind
as Prophet Muhammad (saw) once foretold. In a hadith narrated in Musnad Ahmad
on the authority of Huthayfah ibn al-Yaman (r.a), the Prophet (saw) said:
“The Prophethood will last among
you for as long as Allah wills, then Allah would take it away. Then it will be (followed
by) a rightly-guided Khilafah upon the way of the Prophethood. It will remain
for as long as Allah wills, then Allah would take it away. Then there will be a
biting rule which will remain for as long as Allah wills, and then He will lift
it if He wills. Afterwards, there will be oppressive rule, and it will last for
as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it if He wills. Then there will be a
rightly guided Khilafah upon the ways of the Prophethood, and then he kept
silent”.
The Caliphate will return and the
Arab Spring is just the beginning of an age of Islamic Awakening. Islam’s
destiny is certain but how soon Islam would rise will entirely depend on how
soon the Muslim Ummah transforms to
be the same famous generation which helped established this religion. I shall end
with an excerpt from an address given by Caliph Umar (r.a) in Jerusalem which
holds the key to unlocking our Muslim Ummah’s
true potentials:
“O ye people I counsel you to
read the Quran. Try to understand it and ponder over it. Imbibe the teachings
of the Quran. Then practise what the Quran teaches. The Quran is not
theoretical; it is a practical code of life. The Quran does not bring you the message
of the Hereafter only; it is primarily intended to guide you in this life. Mold
your life in accordance with the teachings of Islam, for that is the way of
your well-being. By following any other way you will be inviting destruction.”
May peace be upon all of you and
may Allah forgive me for my words. Truly, only the Almighty Allah knows best.
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