The truth is we
(Muslims) are bankrupt as a religious community
From: "jagbir singh" <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date: Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:20 am
Subject: "The truth is we (Muslims) are bankrupt
as a religious community"
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—- In
shriadishakti@yahoogroups.com,
"jagbir singh"
<adishakti_org@y...> wrote:
>
> Only after reading the entire www.al-qiyamah.org will
Muslims
> understand the depth of centuries-old deception,
falsehood and
> conditioning the Ummah has been led regarding the
Resurrection. So
> my question off the bat: When the ulema are so
erroneous about Al-
> Qiyamah, the heart and soul of Islam explicitly
entrenched in
> numerous surahs, what makes them think there are
correct in even
> more difficult issues? Why talk about purifying Islam
when the
> unsurpassed beauty of His Holy Qur'n regarding the
Resurrection
> has been mutilated beyond recognition by the same
people?
>
BY Hamza Yusaf
Muslims were seen rejoicing in some parts of the world
in a display
of what can only be called shamaatatul 'adai', which is
rejoicing at
the calamities of ones' enemies. This is something
explicitly
prohibited in Islam and was never practiced by the
Prophet of Mercy,
upon him be prayers and peace. We have seen images since
of American flags burning to further arouse the wrath of
a nation filled with grief, confusion and anger. Again,
Islam prohibits the burning of
flags according to the explicit verse, "Do not curse
[the idols]
of those who call on other than Allah, thus causing them
to curse
Allah out of animosity [toward you] and without
knowledge." This
verse prohibits even the cursing of false gods because
of the
consequences. We have also seen image after image of
Muslims with
beards and turbans, who by all outward means look
religious and
pious - but are they really?
Unfortunately, the West does not know what every Muslim
scholar
knows; that the worst enemies of Islam are from within.
The worst of
these are the khawaarij who delude others by the deeply
dyed
religious exterior that they project. The Prophet, peace
be upon him,
said about them, "When you see them pray you will
consider your
own prayers insignificant. They recite the Quran but it
does not
exceed the limits of their throat." In other words, they
don't
understand the true meanings. The outward religious
appearance and
character of the khawaarij deluded thousands in the
past, and
continues to delude people today. The Muslims should be
aware that
despite the khawaarij adherence to certain aspects of
Islam, they are
extremists of the worst type.
Our Prophet said, peace be upon him, "Beware of
extremism in your
religion." Islam is the middle way between excess and
neglect.
Zealots are a plague upon religion. These extremists
come in two
types. The first is a reactionary extremist who falls
far right of a
centre-point. Reactionary extremists do not want any
pluralism; they
view the world in melodramatic, black and white, good
and evil terms.
They are good and anyone who opposes them is evil. From
among the
Muslims these are people who 'excommunicate' any Muslim
who
fails to share their interpretations of the Quran. They
use takfir
and character assassination as a tool for marginalising
any criticism
directed at them. They are used often by the Western
media in order
to scare simple people and cause them to believe that
Muslims are
insane. Unfortunately, our communities provide them with
much fuel to fire their incendiary flames.
The second group are radical extremists, who while they
are almost
identical with the former group, differ in that they
will use
violence to further their cause. They are actually worse
than the
first. They believe like every nefarious secret society
before them
that 'the end justifies the means.' They see any act as
acceptable if it will further their 'cause.' This is
blatantly
anti-Islamic for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Islam's means must reflect its noble ends. Any
means
that does not embody the core truths and ethics of Islam
is not from
Islam and thus denounced as aberration. Secondly, Islam
is not a
secret society of conspirators who no one knows what
they are
planning. Islam declares openly its aims and objectives
and these are
recognised by good people everywhere as pure and
congruent with their
own wisdom and traditions. In the case of many of these
extremists
even the non-Muslims recognise that no religion of any
weight could
sanction the taking of innocent lives. The Quran says
that the Torah
and the Gospel have guidance and light and that the
Quran came to
fulfil these prior dispensations. Good Christians and
Jews who
believe in God and live ethically upright lives have no
frame of
reference for such acts, so how could these acts be from
Islam, which
confirms what has come before it?
Thirdly, they are invariably people who have never taken
a true
spiritual path to God and nor have they studied the
humanities. I can
almost guarantee that you will not find a scholar of
poetry among the
whole vile lot of these people. They have no true
knowledge of
Arabian culture, which is centred in the idea of futuwwa;
a word akin
to the western word chivalry. The terrorists posing as
journalists
who killed Ahmad Shah Masuud were cowards of the worst
type. Killing
themselves was not bravery but stupidity, but killing
one's enemy
in such a way is the worst form of treachery and the
Arabs have many
poems denouncing such type of people.
Our real situation is this: we Muslims have lost
theologically sound
understanding of our teaching. Islam has been hijacked
by a discourse
of anger and the rhetoric of rage. We have allowed for
too long our
mimbars to become bully pulpits in which people with
often
recognisable psychopathology use anger - a very powerful
emotion - to
rile Muslims up, only to leave them feeling bitter and
spiteful
towards people who in the most part are completely
unaware of the
conditions in the Muslim world, or the oppressive
assaults of some
Western countries on Muslim peoples. We have lost our
bearings
because we have lost our theology. We have almost no
theologians in
the entire Muslim world. The study of kalaam, once the
hallmark of
our intellectual tradition, has been reduced to
memorizing 144 lines
of al-Jawhara and a good commentary to study it, at
best.
The reality is we are an Umma that no longer realises
that Allah is
the power behind all power; that it is Allah who
subjugates one
people to another; that He gives dominion to whom He
pleases and He
takes it away from whom He pleases. Our understanding of
tawhid has
fallen into such disarray that we can no longer
introspect when
afflictions befall us and then wonder in amazement at
why the
Americans seem incapable of introspection. Indeed, I
personally
attended a memorial service in San Francisco with over
30,000 people
and the Reverend Amos Brown said in no uncertain terms
that America
must ask herself what she has done either wittingly or
unwittingly to
incur the wrath and hate of people around the world.
Muslims on the
other hand, generally prefer to attack the West as the
sole reason
for their problems when the truth is we are bankrupt as
a religious
community and our spiritual bankruptcy has led to our
inability to
even deliver the message of Islam to Westerners in a
time when they
were giving us platforms to do so.
It is ironic that the Western media while producing many
vile
programs on Islam has also produced and aired material
of the highest
quality with a high level of accuracy only to be
vilified by Muslims
because it was not good enough. Where is our media?
Where are our
spokespeople? Where are our scholars? Where are our
literary figures?
The truth is we don't have any - and so instead of
looking inward
and asking painful questions such as why we don't have
such things
and such people, we take the simple way out by attacking
people whom
Allah tells us will do mean things, say bad things and
plot against
us. And always when we are warned we are told to be
patient, to work
for the good, to trust in Allah, to return to Allah, to
implement our
deen.
Conspiracy or not, we are to blame for the terrible
backlash against
Muslims. The simple reason is that when a crazy
Christian does
something terrible, everyone in the West knows it is the
actions of a
mad man because they have some knowledge of the core
beliefs and
ethics of Christianity. When a mad Muslim does something
evil or
foolish they assume it is from the religion of Islam,
not because
they hate us but because they have never been told by a
Muslim what
the teachings of Islam are all about.
Hamza Yusaf
http://www.chowk.com/
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