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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.

10 Jul 2009

Remembering the Khilafah

This Rajab the ummah should not just mourn the destruction of the Khilafah but also remember that the Khilafah for centuries was an unrivalled power like no other and it has a track record proving this.

Islam under the Khilafah produced wondrous achievements which are still with us today.

The development of Nanotechnology by the US is considered the cutting edge of scientific research. The US by many standards is considered decades ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to technology. However Muslims were once, by some estimates, over two hundred and fifty years ahead of the rest of the world. A simple example will illustrate this superiority. In the year 976CE, the library of Cordoba in Andalus (Muslim Spain), employed five hundred librarians, scribes, physicians, historians, geographers and copyists, contained over four hundred thousand volumes and was backed by a library catalogue of forty-four volumes each twenty sheets long, arranged by subject and order of acquisition.

In contrast estimates of the largest collection of books in non-Muslim Europe at the time vary between four hundred books and just thirty-six. The spirit of learning in the cities of Andalus, such as Toledo, drew many students but various universities had set up in other Muslim lands during the 7th and 8th centuries. Baghdad and Damascus were renowned globally as centres of learning and the world’s oldest university still in operation is Al-Azhar in Cairo built in 971CE. In contrast the university of Oxford was set up late in the 12th century CE, Cambridge in the 13th and even into the 14th century CE, the library at the University of Paris only had around two thousand books.

Islam transformed a collection of largely illiterate desert tribes into a unified civilisation with a firm view upon how the world should be. After taking the Arabian peninsula the Muslims engaged both of the nearest superpowers of the day, the Persians and Romans, crushing both and establishing governance according to the principles of Islam. Soon a relatively small number of original companions of the Prophet of Islam had spread the message wide and Islamic rule encompassed lands from Spain in the West to India in the East by 711CE. This could only have been achieved if others had joined in spreading the message to those nearest them. Later a succession of wars with other powers, notably the Crusaders and the Mongols, left the Muslims unable to focus on further expansion for some time. However they eventually pushed deep into Europe at various points occupying what is now known as Moscow, besieging Vienna and plunging into French territory till the white cliffs of Dover were visible across the English Channel.

The Muslims had a long Golden Age where the scholars were many and the discussion was challenging. The rest of the world looked to the Muslims for advancement and learning and there was no doubt in the eyes of historians of the period that the Islamic civilisation led the world for hundreds of years. It is clear we still owe a great debt to the Muslims of this period.

The strength of the Islamic civilisation stemmed from the implementation of Islam and the high level of understanding of the way of life held by many, many individual Muslims. For a number of reasons over the following centuries Muslims began to neglect the factors that lead to their intellectual strength. The Arabic language and the process of ijtihad when combined meant an Islamic view or rule could be derived for any issue at any time. Once these had gone and a widespread desire for learning had faded those who were leaders in their fields of Islamic sciences were often so distant from each other they could not engage and lift each other. Soon the majority of Muslims were only able to imitate not initiate new thought. They were followers, unable to comprehend the depths of Islamic thought and as the Muslim world faced the age of European colonialism there were too few Muslims able to withstand the cultural onslaught. Confronted with a barrage of questions Muslim were left unable to answer or respond. The scholars who had shied away from new ideas and thoughts and no longer masters of ijtihad were left helpless. They could not approach the texts of the shari’ah directly and their answers were increasingly defensive. This led directly to masses of Muslims losing confidence in them and subsequently the Islamic solutions.

The conquest, partition and colonisation of the Muslim world was accompanied by the installation of new educational curricula and a realignment of the founding principles of each of the newly formed principalities. Gone was an adherence to the shari’ah and in was a requirement rule by other means. Soon Muslims were bouncing aimlessly from solution to solution, ideology to ideology. Pan-Arabism, Marxism, Ba’athism (Arab socialism) and a form of secular democracy without the liberalism have all been attempted and found wanting.

Today Muslims have turned full circle and are increasingly calling for Islamic solutions in their lives particularly in governance. The War on Terror is a consequence of ordinary Muslims losing faith in western nations such the US as honest brokers, a rejection of the interference of intergovernmental bodies like the UN and a wholesale denunciation of the Muslim rulers. Today Muslims increasingly look to non-state actors, groups and political parties for answers for the Muslim world especially those who call for a return to, and revival of, the Islamic civilisation in light of the fact that Islam really has done a lot for the world.

[Extracted from article ‘Rajab is the time to remember the Khilafah’s Track Record’ by Adnan Khan]
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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]