Islam: a call to knowledge and progress

In the Muslim world today there are calls which echo from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and which advocate a return to Islam, an Islam which is free of all defects, devoid of all additives, far from all exaggeration and negligence. These calls advocate Islam alone, without partnership and a total Islam without any division: a faith whose essence is oneness, a worship whose essence is faithfulness, and morals whose essence is virtue, a legislation whose essence is justice and a civilisation whose essence is balance.

There are people who bangry when they hear such calls, and whose hearts exwith hatred because they do not like Islam to prevail, and its people to lead, and its glory to return. They are enemies of Islam who are hostile to its people. They do not like its nation to become strong after it had been weak, rise from a fall, or gather after dispersion.

For now we will not discuss such kind of people, because they will not be satisfied until Islam and its people are annihilated. Mu'awiyya was so right when he said, "I am able to win the approval of everybody except the jealous, because he is only satisfied when my blessing is taken away from me."

The poet was also right when he said:

All enmities can be hoped to be solved
Except the enmity of a jealous enemy.

Allah was also ever so right when he described such people as follows: "Neither those who disbelieve among the People of the Scripture nor the idolaters love that there should be sent down unto you any good thing from your Lord" (Surah 2, Verse 105)

There is another kind who are neither hostile to Islam nor hate its people, but they fear the return of Islam. Whenever they hear calls for a return to it, their hearts grow tense from fear, and their flesh trembles from apprehension, because they carry with them the wrong impression about Islam. Such an impression was made up by their ignorance, enlarged by imaginary thaughts, and embellished by passion. It is an idea that they have inherited from the times of retardation, and decadence. These made for them a picture of Islam as a coercive faith, a formal worship, negative morality, and inert thinking and life. With such an attitude it discourages scholarship and activity, hinders progress, denies innovation, kills creativity and drugs people!

Those who resent Islam

Some of these say frankly, "Do you want us to stop the wheel of evolution so that we freeze in our spot? Or stop the train of progress so that we regress?

Do you want us to return to negativism which lets matters take their normal course, and puts the burden of all deviance and defects on the shoulders of fate. Do you want us to return to the end of all resistance to tyranny and tyrants under the pretence of endurance and patience in the face of affliction? It also spreads amongst people expressions which cause them to be drugged and sleepy, expressions such as let the kingdom to the king, and leave creation to the creator, or Allah has made his subjects in the way he wanted them to be?!

Do you want to take us back to the times when the sultans were considered the shadow of Allah on earth? When they do well we thank them and when they do badly we have to endure them, and we have no right to say to them "why" or "no"?

Do you want us as we are approaching the twenty-first century to regress to the seventh century A .D.? In other words, do you want us to regress by fourteen centuries? Do you want us to leave the era of the atom, computers, space travel and Moon landing and return to the time of the camel as the boat of the desert?

No accusation without evidence

What is surprising is that these words are uttered by people who wear the cloth of science. In spite of this they allow themselves to use the styles of public address or of argumentative writing in narration within which no claim or accusation without proof can hold. Important matters can only be dealt with in terms of certainties. Impressions cannot lead anywhere because they do not serve the purpose of truth.

What no reasonable person can ignore is the fact that time, like space, is a container for events, i.e. for the work of man within it, be it good or bad, right or wrong. Time itself cannot be described in terms of good or evil except metaphorically, in the same way as when space is mentioned and its occupant is the aim, as the scholars of rhetoric state.

Thus, our interest should not lie in the comparison of a past time and present or future time. We should concentrate on what used to be in the past and what there is in the present, and what might be tomorrow.

I would like to confirm here a truth that is as obvious as the sun in the middle of the day, which is that Islam is not a past like the past of the Pharaohs in Egypt, or the Phoenicians in Syria, or the Babylonians in Iraq. Islam is the past and the present and the future. It is the eternal word of Allah, and his permanent path, His continuous enlightenment to humanity. It is a light like that of the Sun, it appears everyday as if it were new, but it is as old as time.

As to the understanding of Muslims of this Islam, which is old and new at the same time, and their application of it along the centuries, we accept parts of it and reject parts of it, in accordance with the objective set by the Book of Allah and the Tradition of His messenger. We take from this large and generous heritage the best it can offer and adapt from it what we need to guide our march. We leave aside what we think does not coincide with the truth, or has strayed from the path. We are not obligated to follow anybody other than the messenger of Allah (PBUH), who has been ensured infallibility by Allah in terms of what he reports from Him. Beyond that, we can take from anybody what we think is right and leave aside what we think is not.

Those who search for defects in the innocent

Thus, no reasonable and fair person can select from our heritage its worst parts and say, "do you want us to return to this?" One of them said to me one day: "Do you want us to return to the time of the prince who said: "whoever`. says to me obey Allah, I will cut his throat" ?" I replied: "We should return to the time of the Caliph who said: "there is no goodness in you if you don't say it and there is no goodness in us if we don't hear it!"

We want to return to the time of Omar who said on the Mimbar, "God Bless a man who shows me my own defects...." And he also said to other people, "whoever sees in me something uneven, he should straighten it." We should also return to the time of the caliph before him who said: "If I do good so help me, and if I do badly straighten me. Obey me as much as I obey Allah, and if I disobey Him then you don't have to obey me."

Another person said: "Do you want us to return to the time of Al Hajjaj who threatened his people with a whip that burns the backs, and with a sword that cuts throats. This is witnessed in his famous speech when he said, "By Allah I can beat you like the peculiar camels, I have seen that some heads have ripened and are ready to be picked, I will be the one to take (care of) them!"

I said: "Who from the advocates of the Islamic solution backs the tyranny of Al Hajjaj, or welcomes the return of his likes, when they have tasted affliction and bitterness only from the tyrants and oppressors of this era, these are like Al Hajjaj although he was nobler than these in his arguments and certainly in his behaviour!

Why don't we say, "We want to return to the time of Omar Ben Abdulaziz who said to his people when he took over power, "I am only one of you, with the difference that Allah has made my load heavier than yours!"

In reality, we have found that amongst the defenders of secularism and progress there are ones who set themselves up as advocates of the tyranny of Al Hajjaj, and poured the container of his anger over Omar Ben Abdulaziz, who was considered by the leaders of Islam as the fifth of the Rightly Guided Caliphs!

The Islamic solution calls for a scientific dialogue

We invite such perplexed people about the Islamic solution, who are apprehensive about the return to Islam to a purposeful, cool-headed and scientific dialogue. A dialogue between two parties each of which has the same right to express his views, and to defend them. This should not be a monologue, as the one suggested on the pages of one of the important newspapers, in some countries, about the application of the Islamic legislation. Thus they expressed what they wanted, without allowing the opposing view to be expressed, except within a limited context and to a specific readership. Then what can be the value of a fight whereby the odoes not have the right to enter the field? What is the value of a race, which has only one entrant.

We will not do as they did. We arcalling them with all our might to come and we both have an equal say and time. Let us do an objective and fair search of the truth, which would be far from chauvinism to the old and worship of the new. Let us sit and explore the content of the call to Islam: What is it? What is its gist? Does it consist of taking humanity backwards? Or is it a point of departure towards progress? Is it a cal1 to ignorance and backwardness, or a call to science and progress?

Anybody who knows what Islam is all about will know that it is a religion of science and progress. Whoever reads the Qur'an will realise that it is a discourse that is addressed to "those who understand", and verses to "people who have senses", and guidance to "people who remember" and that the Muslims are "those who have wisdom" and "those who know" and the disbelievers are people "who do not understand", "who do not have senses" and those who "are as the cattle, nay they are of a worse path."

There is no religion such as Islam, in which Allah has put such degree of ease and leniency, as well as the means of strength and elements of permanence that make our life a sound one. It is with the guidance of Islam that man will always progress in time and space wherever he is, in spite of the evolution of societies, and the alteration of situations and the changes in knowledge and thoughts.

It is because the Legislator of such religion is the Creator of man, so it is unimaginable that He Legislates a religion that will hinder man from action, liberation and progress. Such a situation is possible only if this Creator had been unaware of the laws that govern this universe, and what laws govern the instincts of man. The other case is that he would be knowledgeable of all this, but does not want man to achieve evolution, progress and well-being…Allah is superior to all this and that.

The True religion cannot stand against useful progress

True religion cannot stand against useful progress. If history has recorded on account of a few religions and their men their stand against progress, it is because they were not the true religion of Allah. They were deviated and changed, and lost their authenticity and superiority. They were instantaneous religions which Allah had not promised to preserve.

The best illustration of that is Christianity as it was in the west. There, the church used to back ignorance against science, folklore against intellect, the king against the people, and the strong against the weak. When the west perceived a shade of light, which originally came from the Muslim east, the angry populations rebelled against injustice and obscurity. It judged the men of the church in the same way as it judged the men of injustice and tyranny and thus they chanted, "choke the last of the kings with the guts of the last of the priests".

As to Islam, Allah Willed that if be the comprehensive and eternal message for all humanity after it attained full maturity, and deserved that this message be revealed to it. Thus it is no surprise that it was based from its beginning upon the respect of the mind and intellect, opposed to imitation and :inertia in favour of science and wisdom, and dependent on proof and evidence, and the glorification of the benefits of science and its people, the return to the .men of knowledge and expertise, and the incitement to work and action and dread of slackness and idleness.

It is also no surprise that we find that the eternal Book of Islam, the Book of Allah' tells us in the story of the father of Humankind (Adam) about science as the first requisite of representation of Allah on earth, and that it is thanks to it that Adam surpassed angels.

It also tells us in the story of Noah about the manufacture of boats, and the story of David about ironwork and the making of armoury, and in the story of Suleiman about the genie making for him anything that he wants. It also tells us about economic planning - over a period of fourteen years- in the story of Joseph. It also tells us in the story of Alexander the Great about the building of giant dams, it also tells us about the military and civilian uses of iron, in a special Surah named The Iron.

We also find the Messenger of Islam confirming the results of observation and experimentation in the matters of life even if it contradicted his own personal view, as in the case of the pollination of palm trees, that is when he said, "You are more knowledgeable in the matters of the world."

It is for that reason that he used to use statistics to assess precisely the human strength of Muslims that is on his side, it is a knowledge based on actual statistics not on approximation and impressionism, as was mentioned by Al Bukhari and Muslim.

He was also fighting illiteracy - and he himself was the illiterate Prophet to the point that he redeemed the non-Muslim prisoner of war who can write, on condition that he teaches ten Muslim children how to write.

He was also fighting against folklore stories and their spreaders and thus he would organise campaigns against magicians, charlatans and fortune tellers and against those who believe them and listen to them. And he would take medicines and advise people to take medicines and say, "Take medicines, oh subjects of Allah, because Allah has not created a sickness without creating a cure".

He also fought oppression and negativism in the solution of problems, advocating care in one's work, and the taking of precautions, "tie it and rely". When he was asked about motives, "Can you prevent something that is part of the will of Allah?" He said, "That is part of the will of Allah!"

It is also no surprise that under the umbrella of such religion that many states have established themselves and eventually inherited the two of the largest empires which the world has ever known. They were established by some of the followers of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) on the strongest bases and the sturdiest pillars, including a combination of religion and worldly matters. There grew under its sovereignty a civilisation of gigantic buildings and high pillars which benefited from the heritage of the past, refined it, improved upon it, and added to it its own contributions and creation. It did not find anything in Islam that would hinder its advancement, or delay its progress. In fact, it found in it encouragement which made it multiply its efforts and activities. It found in it also security that holds whether it remained or strayed from its path. It is no surprise that the French philosopher and poet Gustave Lebon wrote, "The Arabs are the first to have taught the world how the independence of thought agrees with the uprightness of religion!"

Do you think - after all this - that we need to ask, "What is the position of Islam regarding civilisation and evolution? Or Science and progress?