About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

16 Mar 2009

Seeking the Victory from Allah (swt)

Islam and Muslims are under constant attack globally, an onslaught that appears to be accelerating as we see more lands coming under secular dominance and hegemony. Against this backdrop we do witness the efforts of Muslims in the cause to re-establish Islam, efforts which have been continuing for many years. Despite these efforts the question can come to mind of "when will the victory of Allah come?". And more importantly in the absence of this victory, what are the tangible steps that can be taken to try and bring forward this victory from Allah (swt)?

The Victory of Allah

Allah (swt) has described the victory which He gives in several places in the Qur'an. This victory can be for an individual such as the victory given to earlier Prophets such Nuh or Ibraheem, for the State such as the victory (or conquests) in Jihad experienced in the past, or for the Ummah via an Islamic political Party which re-establishes the Khilafah which we are seeking today. This Party is seeking the victory of Allah in establishing the Khilafah, to establish a State with power to rule and to implement the Deen. For this noble objective we have been given the promise of Allah (swt) that He will indeed establish this authority as set out in Surah al-Noor:

"Allah has promised, to those amongst you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He will, of a surety, grant them in the land, inheritance (of power), as He granted it to those before them; that He will establish in authority their Deen, the one which He has chosen for them; and that He will change (their State), after the fear in which they (lived), to one of security and peace" [Surah al Noor (24): Ayah 55]

This verse sets out the promise of Allah that He (swt) will grant the victory, but He puts two important conditions: a) the strong belief, and b) the good (righteous) actions ('amil as-saalihaat) and it is the evidence for a group seeking the victory and a clear admonition to concentrate upon these matters as a condition to achieve that victory. But we need also to study this matter more deeply. The Prophet (saws) certainly had the strong belief and the best actions, and he (saws) established a group from the time the revelation came to him (i.e. the Sahabah who undertook the Da'wah with him). We can also see that the Sahabah (ra) had a strong belief and the best of actions. So, why did the victory (establishing the State in Madinah) take 13 years to accomplish? If the two conditions were met why did it not take 10 (years), or 5 or less, particularly as they were of the best in meeting these two criteria?

The answer can be gained from the following hadith of Rasool-Allah (saws). It is narrated by Bukhari (ra), from Khabbab ibn al-Aratt (ra) that he came to the Prophet (saws) to complain about the difficult situation the Muslims were enduring. By way of background, Khabbab ibn al-Aratt (ra) was inflicted with the most severe torture imaginable; red hot irons from the furnace would be placed on his head and he was regularly taken to the open area of Mecca when the sun was at its highest and the ground was baking hot. He (ra) would be stripped of his clothes and dressed in iron armour and placed on the ground then they would place a large hot stone on his back. Khabbab narrated: "I came to the Prophet (saws) while he was leaning against his sheet cloak in the shade of the Ka'ba. We were suffering greatly from the pagans in those days. I said (to him): "Will you not invoke Allah (to help us)?" He (saws) sat down with a red face [i.e. became angry] and said: "(A believer among) those who were before you used to be combed with iron combs so that nothing of his flesh or nerves would remain on his bones; yet that would never make him desert his religion. A saw might be put over the parting of his head which would be split into two parts, yet all that would never make him abandon his religion. Allah will surely complete this [deen] (i.e. Islam) so that a traveller from Sana to Hadra-maut will not be afraid of anybody except Allah or the wolf lest it should harm his sheep. But you are in too much of a hurry."

It is only natural that the carrier of Da'wah will want the victory to come quickly. The above Hadith indicates that there is another important element i.e. the first two are not enough. When appealed to [invoke] (make Dua) to Allah to bring near the victory, the Messenger (saws) angrily responded that Khabbab (ra) was impatient using the word "Tasta'jiloon" - you want to achieve it quickly. The key element the scholars took from the Hadith is that the patience indicates the importance of the scale of work required i.e. the victory will come but it requires continuous perseverance [and patience in Allah's cause] until sufficient strength of belief is evident and sufficient volume of good actions has been reached. It indicates that the victory will come when a limit of work has been reached or exceeded. This limit is the limit that Allah (swt) has determined and once we reach this limit with the two conditions of belief and good actions then definitely Allah (swt) will give the victory. Of course the level of the limit is unknown to us, but we can imagine it if you think of a cup which you are filling with your strong belief and good actions (for this cause). To achieve the victory the cup needs to be filled completely to its edge and overflowing. The implications are clear, we must constantly strive to strengthen our Iman and maximise our efforts in the good actions. This will speed the filling of our cup.

Taking the Qur'anic ayah and the Hadith together provides the only way forward for us which is to maximise these two matters. Other evidences supporting this argument include:

1. The delay of the victory of the Prophets, including Muhammad (saws), though they were completely committed to the Iman and the righteous deeds and were far from holding any doubts. Allah (swt) says:

“(They were reprieved) Until, when the messengers gave up hope (in their people), and thought that they were treated as liars, then came to them Our help” [Surah Yusif (12): Ayah 110]

He (swt) also says:

"Or do you think that you shall enter the gardens of Bliss (al-Jannah) without such (trials) as came to those who passed away before you? They encountered suffering and adversity and they were shaken (severely such) that even the Messenger and those who believed with him cried: When will the help/victory (nasr) of Allah (come)? Verily, the help of Allah is near!" [Surah al Baqarah (2): Ayah 214]

2. The necessity of the da'wa carrier to show patience and perseverance in hard work until Allah (swt) fulfils his promise of help and grants inheritance can be seen in Surah Al-Imran where Allah says: "You shall certainly be tried and tested in your possessions and in yourselves. And you shall certainly hear much that will grieve you, from those who received the book before you and from those who worship partners besides Allah. But if you persevere patiently, and guard against evil, then that indeed is a determining factor...." [Surah al Imran (3): Ayah 186]

And in Surah Al-An'am: "Messengers before you were rejected, so they showed patience and constancy towards their rejection and their persecution until our help reached them. And there is none that can alter the words (and decrees) of Allah" [Surah al An'am (6): Ayah 34]

3. Many ayaat and ahadith warn against impatience, anger or despair in waiting for the victory. Allah (swt) says: "So wait with patience for the command of your Lord, and be not like the companions of the fish..." (referring to Prophet Yunus (as)) [Surah al Qalam (68): Ayah 48]

The command of Allah is in the following context, that He (swt) gave time to the people of Quraish and delayed the help to the Messenger of Allah (saws) against them. He (swt) also said:

"If their turning away is hard on you, then if you were able to seek a tunnel in the ground or a ladder in the sky to bring them a sign, (what good ?). If it were Allah's will, He could gather them together on true guidance. So don't be of those who are ignorant" [Surah al An'am (6): 35]

The strong Iman, persistent and growing good actions must come from the members of the group, all members, no matter where they are based. The Prophet (saws) was angry when he answered Khabbab (ra) and he did not make dua in response to his request as it was not the solution for the issue at hand. He (saws) made a comparison with the earlier generations of Muslims and their unflinching commitment regardless of the problems or persecution. So the focus is clearly upon the work (good actions) to be done and in the same path of the earlier Prophets and their followers and not the question of for how long we wait, or when the victory will come.

The Historical Perspective

The history of Islam is punctuated with many examples of those that have achieved tremendous results from perseverance in difficult and often lonely circumstances even in cases far away from the mainstream of the Prophet (saws)'s party. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (ra) embraced Islam whilst visiting Makkah. After a short exposure to the Prophet (saws) in which he memorised but a few ayaat, Abu Dharr (ra) returned to his people of the tribe of Ghifar and tirelessly passed to them the message of Islam. After the establishment of the State in Medinah Abu Dharr had brought two whole tribes to Islam. The Prophet (saws) referred to him saying: "The earth does not carry nor the heavens cover a man more true and faithful than Abu Dharr." He brought to life so clearly to us the Prophetic injunction: "Ballighu anni wa law ayah" i.e. give the call even if you know only one ayah. Musab ibn Umayr (ra) suffered much persecution when he embraced Islam and was one of those that also spent some time in Abyssinia. His keen mind and eloquence was put to good use by the Prophet (saws) when he sent him to teach the new Muslims of Yathrib. No one could not be moved with the skill and eloquence he used to pass the message to Usayd ibn Khudayr (ra), Sa'd ibn Muadh (ra)and Sa'd ibn Ubadah (ra). Within a short year the whole of Madinah was talking of Islam. So his Da'wah in Madinah was crucial in establishing Dar al-Islam (the Islamic State) completed by the emigration of the Prophet (saws) there. The fact that Abu Dharr (ra) was far from the Prophet and his Da'wah or that Musab (ra) was not in the "heat" of the struggle in Makkah with the Prophet (saws) did not lessen the importance of their work and should act as a great motivation for Da'wah carriers around the world. The traders that opened the lands of Malaysia, Indonesia and carried the Da'wah for Islam as far as China all showed what can be achieved.

Summary

One matter that the Da'wah carrier has to make sure of all the time, is that his actions should be righteous. In order to be so, it should be pure and correct. The correct action is that which depends on the Shari'ah and does not deviate from it at all. The pure action is that which is done only for the sake of Allah (swt), and not for any worldly reason. Once the matter is such, then the Da'wah carrier should be assured that the promise of Allah (swt) is true and that the Islamic State will be established, even if it takes a long time.

The victory of Allah (swt) is definitely a promised matter, but as Surah al-Noor teaches us it requires strength of belief and the best of actions. While the time for the victory is beyond our control these two key requirements are definitely within our control, and must be part of our commitment wherever we live. So the constant contemplation upon the signs of Allah and the Aqeedah (creedal) matters, making them a direct link and motivator for the best actions.

Together with the actions that Islam specifically requires of us to establish the state (not any vague or general action) are all actions which are filling our cup. Let us all be hard working, yet patient in filling that cup. It was narrated by Ibn Masood (ra) that Prophet Muhammad (saws) said, "There will come after you, days called patience days. To be patient in those days is like being patient over firebrands. The worker for this deen in those days will be rewarded the same as the reward of fifty men combined". The companions (ra) then asked: Fifty men of us or fifty men of them? The Prophet (saws) replied: "Fifty men of you!"

[Article taken from the CD: Islamic Personality]
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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”





[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]





"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"





[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]





"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."





[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]





"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."





[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]



"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."





[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]





“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”





[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]





"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."





[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]





"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."





[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]





“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”





[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]





"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"





[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]





"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."





[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]





"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."





[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']





"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"





[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']





"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.





[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]





"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"





[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]





"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"





[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]





“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”





[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]







“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”





[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]