The Awakening of a Giant

The Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century witnessed an unorganized tribal structure devoid of any king of state structure or progressive civilization. In the focal point was Mecca, the host of the shrines manifested by idols built around the Kaba’ and the Black Stone. At the leadership was Quraysh, the legal custodian of the holy shrines, with Bani Hashim assuming a de-facto leadership role in Mecca.

Next to the Arabian Peninsula, the Romans reached as near as Tabouk in the Northern parts. The Roman empire, with a sophisticated governing structure, state organization, and Divinely (Christian) rooted culture, made no visible impact on the Arab tribal societies. On the Eastern part of the Arab lands, the Persians extended another form of a civilized society with a well-defined ruling structure, an army, and carefully planned objectives. The Gulf of Arabia enjoyed loyalty to Persian rule.

Christians lived mostly in areas dominated by the Romans who came to adopt the Christian Religion during the era of Constantine 300 years after the Birth of Christ. Jewish believers, the followers of the Prophet Moses, lived in much smaller quantities in the Arabian Peninsula as well as in Sham, Palestine, and Egypt. In this environment, a new religion was revealed by the Almighty Allah. The carrier of the Message of Allah was born in Mecca, the central and focal point of the Arabs. Born to a well-established leading family among Bani Hashim, Muhammed (saaw) had natural potentials for leadership. The Message he received carried the seeds of a universal system, as well as the root of mercy for all humanity and the pillars for a comprehensive and global system with all of its structures.

The newly revealed ideology did not go through any infancy period, but acted no less than a giant from the very beginning of its revelation. In his first encounter with the angel Jibreel (as), Muhammed (saaw) described him as a great phenomenon covering all the horizons of the sky in every direction. He was so large that Muhammed (saaw) could see him wherever he looked across the skies, and his wife Khadijah accepted the description of the scene as “something great for which Muhammed was being prepared.” The first revelation read by Jibreel into the heart of Muhammed (saaw) roared like thunder to Muhammed (saaw) and shook him altogether:

“Read in the name of your Lord, the One Who created. He created the human being from the clot. Read and your Lord is the Most Honorable. The One Who taught with the pen. He taught the human that which he did not know.”

The revelation continued to stress the strength of the new message, as well as the universality of the message itself:

“We shall reveal to you a heavy word.”

“It is nothing but a Thikr (reminding message) to all the worlds.”

There was no doubt from the early days of the revelation that Islam inherently contained a serious call for all humanity to adhere to the Creator in all acts of worship. It carried a universal message to the societies to change the structure and foundations upon which they were built. Hence, it was imminent that a confrontation would occur between Islam and the existing structures and those who supported them. Islam did not wait for the people and nations to initiate any confrontation, but laid down the rules of the confrontation and paved the grounds for what would inevitably follow.

Muhammed (saw) was explicitly told that those who stood fast against the message of Islam would wish to soften the tune of the Islamic Call in return for softening their response:

“They wish that you be soft, so they will also be soft.”

Ibn Ishaq narrates in the Seerah of Muhammed (saaw) that his kinsfolk did not part away from Muhammed after he had called them into Islam until he began to obscure and ridicule their gods. Some of the elites of Mecca falsely claimed that what Muhammed was telling them was nothing but fairy tales of the past, rather than divine revelation. The response to such claims was a severe attack and assault upon the elites by Allah (swt):

“Obey not the one who swears and is humiliated....”

The Qur’an revealed in Mecca fully describes the struggle of the prophets and messengers who preceded Muhammed (saaw). It described the intense struggle between the truth carried by the prophets and the falsehood of the disbelievers led by the elites. The stories were told so that Muhammed (saaw) and his companions would be encouraged by the greatness of the struggle carried by their predecessors. Mecca witnessed yet a more severe struggle of its own. Muhammed (saaw) and many of the early Muslims were tortured, harassed, and persecuted by the elites of Mecca as a result.

The outcome of the struggle was revealed to Muhammed (saaw) who narrated to his companions that the Message of Islam was meant to prevail and to achieve victory. The victory of Islam provided by Allah (swt) was imminent, and the mercy of Islam would eventually encompass the entire world. In one narration, Muhammed (saaw) says, “Allah shall provide victory to this deen such that the traveler between Hadramout and Sana’ will fear nothing but Allah and a wolf.” He also narrated that the Muslims will conquer the Byzantine capital city of Constantinople and later the city of Rome. In addition, he also promised one of the kafirs of Mecca the bracelets of the Czar if Persia of he would stop chasing him and his companion Abu Bakr during their migration to Medina.

The prophecies of Muhammed (saaw) began to materialize immediately after his migration to Medina. In Medina, the Muslims, under the leadership of Muhammed (saaw), established the cornerstone of the first comprehensive political structure based entirely on the Islamic rules revealed by Allah (swt) to His Messenger (saaw). During the first thirteen years, Islam witnessed the birth of the ideology, the birth of a unified and strong group closely coupled with the ideology of Islam, and the birth of a state built entirely upon the basis of Islam. The three components -- the ideology, the ideological group that carries the ideology, and the ideological state of Islam under the total leadership of the Prophet and statesman Muhammed (saaw) -- gave rise to the surge of Islam the Giant.

Indeed, Islam surged from the heart of Medina as a formidable giant. Neither withheld by the small number of the Muslims nor the lack of striking power, the Islamic State provoked the Quraysh, the leading tribe of the Arabian Peninsula, and pushed military confrontation to its limits. In less than two years, the Muslims had more than twelve encounters with the Quraysh.

By the time the life of the Prophet (Saaw) was coming to an end, the message of Islam was roaring through the entire Arabian Peninsula and bordering the lands controlled by the Persians and the Romans. Muhammed (saw) had already sent delegations to the leaders of Persia, the Romans, Egypt, and other major powers in the area. The delegations carried an explicit invitation for the people of Persia, Iraq, Sham, Egypt, Yemen, Hadramout, and other regions, to enter the ideology of Islam. Military encounters with the Romans took place at Tabouk and Moutah. The armies of Islam were given clear orders to conquer the lands created by Allah and to dominate these lands with the merciful ideology of Islam. The armies brought into the conquered lands dignity, liberation, justice, and all that makes a human live with dignity, peace, and self-coherency.

The spread of Islam among the conquered lands and nations won the astonishment of all those who looked into the history of Islam and earned the respect and admiration of even the most hateful enemies to Islam. The ideology of Islam under the leadership of the great Khalifahs of Islam provided a sincere and just melting pot for all nations. The Arabs practiced no sign of superiority above other nations. And the nations that embraced Islam felt no inferiority complex of any kind; there was simply no room in Islam for a superior and an inferior nation. Slavery was uprooted altogether except for the slavery of human beings to Allah (swt).

As Islam expanded towards the limits of the established horizons at that time, so did justice and the well-being of humanity. The society did not recognize the classes of the “haves” and the “have nots.” During the Era of Umar Ibn Abdul-’Aziz, the great Muslim Khalifah, it became a problem to locate those who would accept the Zakat fund, and throughout the history of the Islamic State, one central concern was finding ways to spend its excess wealth. Today, it is a problem all over the world to locate funds that can be used to feed a portion of the hungry population of the world.

In less than a hundred hears, the Islamic State of Khilafah, the sole administrator and carrier of the ideology of Islam, had dominated most of the known world at the time, and all the nations that fell under the dominance of Islam embraced the Islamic ideology and culture. Even the Tatars (Mongols), who anihilated every culture and civilization in their path and destroyed the Islamic State’s capital, were eventually repelled by the Muslims only to embrace the Islamic ideology and carry Islam all the way to the shores of China. The Muslims continued to look outward to the conquest of the entire globe as promised by the Messenger of Allah (saaw). Attempts to conquer the city of Constantinople were frequent, and the conquest of Europe began with the conquest of Andalus.

The Giant ruled the world for over twelve centuries. During these years, the Islamic Giant had very short falls. The world order under the dominance of Islam was a stable one. The world witnessed wars and fierce fights, but nothing on the level of the world wars fought in this century. Under the dominance of Islam, conquests always benefited the conquered nations. The world under Islam never knew the concept of a developing nations that never develops. Mass genocidy, blitzgrieg tactics, exploitation of nations, colonization and imperialism, did not exist in the Islamic world order. Under the Islamic rule, the most prominent and famous leaders, scientists, and famous ones were produced from nations that were conquered by Islam. Today, nations that come under the occupation of a superpower continue to live as slaves even years after the occupation has left them. In the non-Islamic world order, as soon as the occupation is lifted, the occupied nations turns to be the worst enemy of the occupier. Bosnia and the Serbs form a striking example; Russia and Afghanistan are yet another example.

Being Part of the Promise

The Islamic Khilafah will eventually be reborn again. It will return a giant as it was for over 12 centuries. The U.S., the UN, Europe, and their puppets will want to put out the light of Islam, but they will not succeed. They will plot, conspire, and spend their resources, but only in vain. Were their plans to succeed, then Islam would have been eliminated many years ago, but all of their conspiracies, their military suppression, and systematic attempts at eliminating Islam, have only strengthened Islam in the minds of the Muslims. All the oppression and torture of the Muslims under the Communists did not stop Islam from returning to the people of Tajikistan, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Azerbejan, and the other former Soviet territories. If Islam and its movement was to be eliminated, then it would have been crushed under the regime in Egypt where the British and later the Americans spent hundreds of billions of dollars in order to Westernize Egypt, but today all that remains as a result of those decades of planning and those hundreds of billions of dollars is the influence of Islam in the streets of Egypt. If Islam were to be eliminated, then it would have disintegrated in North Africa where the Europeans have put forth all of their resources in order to marginalize Islam, but today the very same countries, such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, that were once thought as extensions of Europe, are witnessing the rise of Islam. The secularization of Turkey for the past 70 years have not ended the struggle for Islam. On the contrary, Islam continues to be a growing concern for the Turkish secular government.

The truth that no one can argue with or deny is that Islam and its movement is gaining more momentum in every place with every passing day. There are Muslims who gave, and continue to give, the dearest things for Islam. There are Muslims who have placed the work for the Islamic revival at the top of their agenda. And it is their work that is making a difference today. Indeed, the victory of Allah (swt) is inevitable, and the ever-increasing Islamic revival -- in spite of all obstacles and attempts to eliminate it -- is only a sign of such an impending victory, but the Ummah must be at a level that deserves the victory.

Today, we call upon the Muslim Ummah to be prepared from within for the return of the Islamic giant, to prepare themselves for the victory of Allah (swt), and to be part of this great event that will shape the world of tomorrow. Eventually, the world will witness the return of this giant, which will also be a return of mercy, justice, and progress for all humanity. We do not seek the wealth and the resources of the world; the wealth and resources belong to Allah (swt) to be collected and distributed to all human beings for the benefit of all people based upon the just Islamic laws. We want to see a world where the gods named money, authority, UN, White House, 10 Downy Street, Kremlin, and the like are no longer worshipped. We want to see a world that does not exploit, abuse, or rape the woman, and does not exploit the woman’s body as an advertising tool for the corporations, but elevates the woman to the status that she deserves. We want to build a world safe for the mother, the daughter, the wife, and the struggling woman. We want to create a world where the ruler is the last one to eat during hard times, where the ruler does not act as the beneficiary of the state or sponsor wars and conflicts to secure a personal or national interest. We want to live in a world where the ruler is the first to abide by the law and not the one who breaks the law in the name of the people.

We want to create a world where justice on earth will be upheld by the just balance sent by Allah (swt) to all humanity. That is the mission of the Muslim Ummah, and those who take part in this construction deserve to be called the best Ummah ever delivered to humanity:

“You are the best Ummah ever delivered to humanity; you enjoin Al-Ma’ruf (Islam and all that Islam allows or commands), you forbid Al-Munkar (Kufr, and all that Islam prohibits), and you believe in Allah.”

[Extracted from the book ‘The Awakening of a Giant’ by Khalifornia Publications]