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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.

21 Jun 2009

Are you a Fundamentalist?

The first time the term fundamentalism appeared was in Europe towards the end of the 19th century. And that was to indicate the position of the church regarding the sciences and new philosophies and their strict adherence to the Christian faith.

The protestant movement is considered the basis of fundamentalism. It set out its fundamental principles in the conference of........in 1878. And also in the general presbyterian conference of 1910 where the basic thought on which fundamentalism is established were crystallised. They were established on principles of Christian beliefs which contradicted the scientific progress arising from the capitalist ideology. Which is established on the creed of separating religion from life.

Though this movement disappeared with the second world war, however it settles in the minds of the Europeans that fundamentalism was an enemy to progress and science. It is intellectual backwardness which does not befit the age of awakening, it must be fought until all its traces/effects are removed from society and life.

Thus, fundamentalism emerged in Europe against the effect of the scientific and industrial advancement, which came after the separation of Christianity from life. As a reaction to the inability of Christianity to respond to the new systems of life which emanate from the creed of the capitalist ideology, the creed of separating religion from life. Which pushed the believers in the Christian faith to adopt a stance refusing the various forms of material progress and the capitalist culture. However this movement, described a fundamentalist, failed and disappeared due to its inability to present practical solutions for the life’s problems. And due to the aim for which it was established, which is the resistance to science, disciplines and thoughts which the Christians did not agree with or believe in.

So the source of describing certain Christian and Jewish movements as fundamentalist is the West. It is a reference to the religious movements which oppose the technical, industrial and scientific progress which took place due to the application of the capitalist ideology.

Today, this description is applied to many Islamic movement and on those who are affiliated to these movements by the western thinkers and politicians, then by Muslims conforming to this. The aim is to fight and oppose these movements by creating a international public opinion against anyone described as such, because fundamentalism for them means backwardness and reactionism. And it means opposing scientific and industrial advancement.

Merely describing a specific group as fundamentalist it is sufficient to consider it a danger to the modern materialist culture and to the lives of people.And this justifies taking necessary measures, however harsh, to struggle and fight against it. And when a state like Egypt or Algeria execute Muslims for being fundamentalists, this action is greeted with support of the western public opinion. No human right organisation is moved by it because those people -according to their claim - are fundamentalists. They are against humanity, especially when all of the ugliest acts are attributed to them such as the mass slaughter of innocent people in Algeria and the killing of tourists and Copts in Egypt.

The description of fundamentalism crossed over to include every movement and party which worked to change the terrible life which the Muslims live in to an Islamic life by restabilising the Khilafah and ruling by Islam. And it has come to include every movement which opposes aggressors and usurpers of Muslims land and their rights such as the Jews, Serbs and Americans and others. So the Muslim Mujahids who fight their enemies who are usurping their land are fundamentalist and terrorists. And those die as martyrs by striking the aggressor foreign forces is a suicidal criminal!

The description of fundamentalism is dangerous for every Muslim and every movement fighting injustice and occupation. It is dangerous to every party working according to the Shari’a methodology to resume the Islamic way of life because the objective of this description is to create legal justifications to strike anyone calling for the reestablishment of Islam in life.Under the pretext that Islam is a fundamentalist movement like Jewish and Christian fundamentalist movements which fought industrial and scientific progress in the age of the capitalist revival. The selection of this term itself is just to brand/stigmatise the Islamic movements with it .......so that the western peoples stand with their rulers in the face of the return of political Islam as a state and system of life.

It should not occur to the mind of any Muslim that the description of Islamic movements as fundamentalist is taken due to their connection with the foundation of the Deen or the foundations of jurisprudence (Fiqh). the foundation of the Islamic ‘Aqeeda is the belief in Allah, His angels, Books, Messengers, Day of Judgement and al-Qadar. And the foundations of jurisprudence are the principles on which jurisprudence is based, which the Mujtahid uses to derive practical Shari’a rules for the detailed evidences.

Fundamentalism, according to its western terminological meaning, and which the Christian protestant movement had brought with the aim for which the movement was founded, cannot be further from the Islamic concepts and the Islamic movements whether they are contemporary or historical. In Muslim history political movements, intellectual schools and legal schools have appeared. However they do not resemble the Christian fundamentalist movements in any way whatsoever. Even thus who called for the closing of the door of Ijtihad in the seventh century did so not to preserve the old and oppose the new. Rather because they thought that the Islamic Fiqh initiated by the predecessors (salaf) contained all the issues that the later scholars (khalaf) could possible face.

Islam is a unique Deen which differs from the divine religions in that it is the last and it abrogates the ones that came before. Allah (swt) has taken the responsibility of preserving it as it was revealed until the Day of Judgement. He (swt) said:’Verily We:It is We Who have sent down the Zikr (Qur’an) and surely, We will guard it’.[Surah Al Hijr (15): Ayah 9] As for it being a complete and comprehensive ideology which is established on a creed which is based on the mind, from which emanates a comprehensive system which solves all the affairs of the human being until the Day of Judgement. It cannot be imagined that the ideology is unable to give a Shari’a rule to any problem faced by man. He (swt) said: ’And We have sent down to you the Book (the Qur’an) as an exposition of everything’. [Surah An Nahl (16): Ayah 89]

The scientific and industrial progress which the Islamic world witnessed in the past was a result of the application of Islam and not a result of separating Islam from life.And the scientific and industrial advancement which the world is witnessing today is indebted to the Muslim scholars who set out many of its theories and basic laws in the shadow of the Islamic life and the Islamic State.

Therefore, describing Islam and the Islamic movements a fundamentalist, which which the Christian movements were described, is a erroneous and biased description. It does not apply to the reality of Islam and nor on anyone who works for the return of Islam to,life. This is because he is striving to change the bad reality in which the Muslims are living. That reality resulting from the rule of man-made systems in life. This is the opposite to the work of the Christian fundamentalist movements which came to preserve the reality in which the Christians lived before capitalism, in form and content.

So America and Europe’s description of the Islamic movements as being fundamentalist is nothing but a war against Islam’s return to life. It is a strategic issue, even a vital issue for the West. They are intent on keeping the third world, especially the Islamic world, backward and far from any true revival. So as to stand as an obstacle to the reestablishment of the Khilafah State which will uproot their system and put an end to their ambitions and greed.

Listen to the testimony of one of these people; he is a visiting scholar at the university of Harvard for middle eastern studies. He submitted a report to the American Congress in which he said: Fundamentalists take the view that the Shari’a should be applied in all its details and that the orders and prohibitions of God must be implemented completely. And that is binding on all Muslims. And it -ie Islam- is the basic source of their strength and the Shari’a is suitable for application today as it was suitable for application in the past.’ Also said: ‘Fundamentalists deeply hate the Western civilisation, they see it as the greatest obstacle which stand in the face of the application of the Islamic Law’. Another says, and he is an American scholar called Esposito, in a report submitted by him also to the American Congress: Those who threaten American interests are the Muslim fundamentalists’.

So the fundamentalism which they attack is the reapplication of the Islamic Shari’a in life. If this is fundamentalism them the Muslims - in their view- are all fundamentalists. This is because they wait with yearning and zeal, for the application of all the rules of their Deen, under the shadow of the Khilafah State, to save them and the world from the misery of capitalism and take them to the goodness of Islam. He (swt) said: "And who does more wrong than the one who invents a lie against Allah, while he is being invited to Islam? And Allah guides not the people who are unjust (zalimoon).They intend to put out the Light of Allah (Islam) with their mouths. But Allah will complete His Light even though the disbelievers hate it".[Surah As Saff (61): Ayat 7-8]

[Extracted from the book ‘Dangerous Concepts]
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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]