Muhammed Asad on Islam
Here we show some very important observations made by Muhammed Asad, the Austrian Journalist who became Muslim ,and later on a famous translator, in the 1920's. In his beautifull and important book 'road to Mecca', which i highly recommend to everybody as it gives an insight how todays conflicts between Arabia and Europe started and what Islam is and should be as observed by a intelligent young western man. Next to that, Muhammed Asad met with some of the most interresting figures of the 20th century of the Muslim world. I hope you people will see the important messages he and the people he met want to tell us. What i quote now, will only show a glimps of truth which others have eloborated further:
"In my endeavour to gain a fuller picture of what Islam really meant and stood for, i derived great benefit from the explanations which some of my Cairene Muslim friends were able to provide me. Outstanding among them was Shaykh Mustafa Al-Maraghi, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars of the time and certainly the most brilliant among the ulama of Al-Azhar University.[..] A pupil of the great Egyptian reformer Muhammed Abduh, and having associated in his youth with that inspiring firebrand, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Shayk Al-Maraghi was himself a keen, critical thinker. He never failed to impress upon me that the Muslims of recent times had faqllen very short indeed of the ideals of their faith, and that nothing could be more erroneous than to measure the potentialities of Muhammed's message by the yardstick of present-day Muslim life and thought. 'Just as' he said, 'it would be erroneous to see in the Christians'unloving behaviour toward one another a refutation of Christ's message of love...'
With this warning, Shayk Al-Maraghi introduced me to Al-Azhar. Out of the crowded bustle of Mousky Street, Cairo's oldest shopping centre, we reached a small, out-of-the-way square, one of its sides occupied by the broad, straight front of the Azhar Mosque. Through a double gate and a shadowy forecourt we entered the courtyard of the mosque proper, a large quadrangle surrounded by ancient arcades. Students dressed in long, dark jubbas and white turbans were sitting on straw mats and reading with low voices from their books and manuscripts. The lectures were given in the huge, covered mosque-hall beyond. Several teachers sat, also on straw mats, under the pillars which crossed the hall in long rows, and in a semicircle crouched a group of students. The lecturer never raised his voice, so that obviously required great attention and concentration not to miss any of his words.
One should have thought that such absorption would be conducive to real scholarship; but Shaykh Al-Maraghi soon shattered my illusions: {and now comes the important part, so pay close attention what this man says!}'Dost thou sees those "scholars" over there? he asked me. 'They are like those sacred cows in India which, i am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets...Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat- and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation.''But, Shayk Mustafa,' i interposed, 'Al-Azhar is, after all, the central seat of Islamic learning, and the oldest university in the world! One encounters its name on nearly every page of Muslim culteral history. What about all the great thinkers, the theologians, historians, philosophers, mathematicians it has produced over the last ten centuries?''It stopped producing them several centuries ago.'he replied ruefully. 'Well, perhaps not quite; here and there and independent thinker has somehow managed to emerge from Al-Azhar even in recent times.
But on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering, and its old impetus is all but extinguished. Those ancient Islamic thinkers whom thou hast mentioned would never have dreamed that after so many centuries their thoughts, instead of being continued and developed, would only be repeated over and over again, as if they were ultimate and infallible truths.{read that last one a couple of times}If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought-imitation...'Shaykh Al-Mataghi's trenchant characterization of Al-Azhar helped me to realize one of the deepest causes of the culteral decay that stared one in thy face everwyhere in the Muslim world.
Was not the scholastic petrification of this ancient univeristy mirrored in varying degrees in the social sterility of the Muslim present? Was not the counterpart of this intellectual stagnation to be found in the passive, almost indolent, acceptance by so many Muslims of the unneccessary poverty in which they lived, of their mute toleration of the many social wrongs to which they were subjected?"
As you can see above, how important this quote is. Although Muhammed Asad's last sentence also inclines that the social wrongs were started by Europe's involvement in Arabia. This passiveness he talks about, originated from the alien-layer that has covered Islam over the years. This blind acceptance of scholar opinions. To uphold Historian (repeat:HISTORIAN) books as Buchari, Muslim, Al-Tabari and others as if they were complete truths, Hidden revelations. To follow blindly people as Shafi and other scholars of the past, who were only indivuals in the large mass of Muslim intellectuals of the first centuries, but because they served the Elite's and Priest's purposes were upheld as the only to be followed.The passivenes and downfall of the Muslims comes from these false assumptions. The Shaykh's comment was made around 1920, and is still completely true now in 2006. Shaykh being a student of Abduh and Al-Afghani, scholars who started to see the Ajami, alien layer over Islam, and who, the first in centuries, dared to question hadith and fiqh, because of them, he could made such an honest observation as given above.But as said, this is only the top of the iceberg.
The alien-layer that has covered Islam must be swept away before the scholars will wake up from their endless reading and repeating, before the Muslimworld will wake up from its passiveness. The only Revelation given to our Prophet, was the Quran. All the hadith were collected by historians, who left us history they thought was reliable. So we must start again to approach them as man-recorded history, and thus that they contain forgeries and wrong assumptions.
That alien sources as Persian, Christian, Jewish and Pagan beliefs has entered them, and tried to infect Islam by making people believe our Prophet said or did certain things.All of the Prophet's deeds and behaviour were a result of the Quran. Not of any revelation next to it. So to follow the Prophet, we must follow the Quran and start with the Quran. To use history as guidance is dangerous and misleading in many cases. It is time to be honest, time to admit many mistakes and lies has entered into the idea of what Islam is and tells us. The Quran is Islam, all else is human interpretation and recording of history and creation....
Islam as a Deen, a Divine System by Muhammed Asad
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Arnold Yasin Mol
Islam as a Deen, a Divine System by Muhammed Asad
In this quote, he is sitting with a district governor of a region in Afghanistan, listening to a song on David, Dawud, who overcame the powerfull Goliath, the most intruiging is, Muhammed Asad was not Muslim yet when making these remarks:
"When it ended, the hakim(district governor) remarked: 'David was small, but his faith was great...'I could not prevent myself from adding: 'And you are many, but your faith is small.'My host looked at me with astonishment, and, embarrasssed by what i had almost involuntarily said, i rapidly began to explain myself.
My explanation took the shape of a torrent of questions:'How has it come about that you Muslims have lost your selfconfidence-that selfconfidence which enabled you to spread your faith, in less than a hundred years, from Arabia westward as far as the Atlantic and eastward deep into China- and now surrender yourselves so easily, so weakly, to the thoughts and customs of the West? Why can't you, whose forefathers illumined the world with science and art at a time when Europe lay in deep barbarism and ignorance, summon forth the courage to go back to your own progressive, radiant faith? How is it that Ataturk {The communist Turkish reformer how took over Turkey in the 1920's}, that petty masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to Muslims a symbol of "Muslim revival"?' My host remained speechless.
It has started to snow outside. Again i felt that wave of mingled sadness and hapiness that i had felt on approaching Deh-Zangi.{the Afghan region} I senses the glory that had been and the shame that was enveloping these late sons of a great civilization.'Tell me- how has it come about that the faith of your Prophet and all its clearness and simplicity has been buried beneath a rubble of sterile speculation and the hair-splitting of your scholastics? How has it happened that your princes and great landowners revel in wealth and luxury while so many of their Muslim brethren subsist in unspeakable poverty and squalor-
although your Prophet taught that 'No one may call himself Faithfull who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry'? Can you make me understand why you have brushed woman into the background of your lives - although women around the prophet and his Companions took part in so grand manner in the life of their men? How has it come about that so many of you Muslims are ignorant and so few can even read and write- although your Prophet declared that 'Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty for every Muslim man and woman'[..]
Still my host stared at me without speaking, and i began to thinbk that my outburst had deeply offended him.[..]In the end, the latter pulled his wide yellow sheepskin cloak closer about himself, as if feeling cold; then he whispered: 'But - you are a Muslim...'I laughed and replied:'No, i am not a Muslim, but i have come to see so much beauty in Islam that it maked me sometimes angry to watch you people waste it...'[page 297-8 'Road to Mecca']
"When it ended, the hakim(district governor) remarked: 'David was small, but his faith was great...'I could not prevent myself from adding: 'And you are many, but your faith is small.'My host looked at me with astonishment, and, embarrasssed by what i had almost involuntarily said, i rapidly began to explain myself.
My explanation took the shape of a torrent of questions:'How has it come about that you Muslims have lost your selfconfidence-that selfconfidence which enabled you to spread your faith, in less than a hundred years, from Arabia westward as far as the Atlantic and eastward deep into China- and now surrender yourselves so easily, so weakly, to the thoughts and customs of the West? Why can't you, whose forefathers illumined the world with science and art at a time when Europe lay in deep barbarism and ignorance, summon forth the courage to go back to your own progressive, radiant faith? How is it that Ataturk {The communist Turkish reformer how took over Turkey in the 1920's}, that petty masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to Muslims a symbol of "Muslim revival"?' My host remained speechless.
It has started to snow outside. Again i felt that wave of mingled sadness and hapiness that i had felt on approaching Deh-Zangi.{the Afghan region} I senses the glory that had been and the shame that was enveloping these late sons of a great civilization.'Tell me- how has it come about that the faith of your Prophet and all its clearness and simplicity has been buried beneath a rubble of sterile speculation and the hair-splitting of your scholastics? How has it happened that your princes and great landowners revel in wealth and luxury while so many of their Muslim brethren subsist in unspeakable poverty and squalor-
although your Prophet taught that 'No one may call himself Faithfull who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry'? Can you make me understand why you have brushed woman into the background of your lives - although women around the prophet and his Companions took part in so grand manner in the life of their men? How has it come about that so many of you Muslims are ignorant and so few can even read and write- although your Prophet declared that 'Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty for every Muslim man and woman'[..]
Still my host stared at me without speaking, and i began to thinbk that my outburst had deeply offended him.[..]In the end, the latter pulled his wide yellow sheepskin cloak closer about himself, as if feeling cold; then he whispered: 'But - you are a Muslim...'I laughed and replied:'No, i am not a Muslim, but i have come to see so much beauty in Islam that it maked me sometimes angry to watch you people waste it...'[page 297-8 'Road to Mecca']
-
Arnold Yasin Mol
Islam as a Deen, a Divine System by Muhammed Asad
Here he explains what true Islam is and how its differs with the religions of the world AND most importantly with the Ajami, Alien Islam , the one corrupted by the clergy who were influenced by those religions and philosophy. It is a great summary of what Deen is and what religion is and how they differ with one another.
"Often we would read the Quran together and discuss its ideas; and Elsa {Asad's wife}, like myself, became more and more impressed by the inner cohesion between its moral teaching and its practical guidance. According to the Quran, God did not call for blind subservience on the part of man but rather appealed to his intellect; He did not stand apart from man's destiny but was nearer to you than the vein in your neck; He did not draw any divinding line between faith and social behaviour; and, what was perhaps most important, He did not start from the axiom that all life was burdened with a conflict between matter and spirit and that the way toward the Light demanded a freeing of the soul from the shackles of the flesh.
Every form of life-denial and self-mortification had been condemned by the Prophet in sayings like 'there is no world-renunciation in Islam'. The human will to live was not only recognized as a positive, fruitfull instinct but was endowned with the sanctity of an ethical postulate as well. Man was taught, in effect: You not only may utilize your life to the full, but you are OBLIGED to do so. An integrated image of Islam was now emerging with a finality, a decisiveness that sometimes astounded me. It was taking shape by a process that could almost described as a kind of mental osmosis-that is, without any concious effort on my part to piece together and 'systematize'the many fragments of knowledge that had come my way during the past four years.
I saw before me something like a perfect work of architecture, with all its elements harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other, with nothing superfluous and nothing lacking-a balance and composure which gave one the feeling that everything in the outlook and postulates of Islam was 'in its proper place'. Thirteen centuries ago a man stood up and said:"I am only a mortal man; but He who has created the universe has bidden me to bear His message to you. In order that you might live in harmony with the plan of His creation. he has commanded me to bear His Message to you. He has commanded me to remind you of His existence, omnipotence and omniscience, and to place before you a programme of behaviour. If you accept this reminder and this programme, follow me." This was the essence of Muhammed's prophetic mission.
The social scheme he propounded was that of simplicity which goes together only with real grandeur. It started from the premise that men are biological beings with biological needs and are so conditioned by their Creator that they must live in groups in order to satisfy the full range of the physical, moral and intellectual requirments: in short, they are dependent on one another. The continuity of an individual's rise in spiritual stature depends on wether he is helped, encouraged and protected by the people around him-who, of course, expect the same cooperation from him.
This human interdependnce was the reason why in Islam, religion could not be seperated from economics and politics.{and here he shows the difference between religion and Deen, as Deen is faith combined with ethics, statelaws, economy and politics. Where religion will only effect personal lives and will not go further then marriage laws or rules of personal conduct and nation moral.} To arrange pratical human relations in such a way that every individual might find a few obstacles and as much ancouragement as possible in the development of his personality: this, and nothing else, appeared to be the Islamic concept of the true function of society.
And so it was only natural that the system which the Prophet Muhammed enunciated in the 23 years of his ministry related not only to matters spiritual but provided a framework for all individual and social activity as well. it held out the concept not only of individual righteouness but also of the equitable society which such righteouness should bring about. It provided the outline of a political community-the outline only, because the details of man's political needs are timebound and therefor variable {which again shows we can only follow the Quran and not 12th century by-laws as contained in the fiqh} --
As well as a scheme of individual rights and social duties in which the fact of historical evolution was duly anticipated. The Islamic code embraced life in all its aspects, moral and physical, individual and communal; proplems of the flesh and of the mind, of sex and economics had, side by side with problems of theology and worship, their legitimate place in the Prophet's message, and nothing that pertained to life seemed too trivial to be drawn into the orbit of religious thought--not even such mundane issues as commerce, inheritance, property rights or ownership of land.. All the clauses of Islamic Law were devised for the equal benefit of all memebers of the community, without distinction of birth, race, sex or previous social allegiance. No special benefits were reserved for the community's founder or his descendants.
High and low were, in a social sense, nonexistent terms; and nonexistent was the concept of class. All rights, duties and opportunities applied equally to all who professed faith in Islam. No priest was required to mediate between man and God, for He knows what lies open in their hands before them and what they conceal behind their backs. No loyalty was recognized beyond the loyalty to God and His Prophet, to one's parents, and to the community that has as its goal the establishment of God's kingdom on earth{God's Deen}; and this precluded that kind of loyalty which says 'right or wrong,(i support)my country'.
To elucidate this principle, the Prophet very pointedly said on more than one occasion:He is not of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship, who fights for it or dies for it. {And now play close attention} Before Islam, all political organizations-even those on a theocratic or semi-theocratic basis-had been limited by the narrow concepts of tribe abd tribal homogeneity. Thus the god-kings of ancient Egypt had no thought beyond the horizon of the Nile valleys and its inhabitants, and in the early theocratic state of the Hebrews, when God was supposed to rule, it was neccessarily the God of Israel. In the structure of Quranic thought, on the other hand, considerations of descnet or tribal{or nation} adherence had no place. Islam is postulated as a self-contained political community which cut across the conventional divisions of tribe and race.
In this respect, Islam and Christianity might be said to have had the same aim:both advocated an international commuinity of people united by their adherence to a common ideal; but whereas Christianity had contended itself with a mere moral advocacy of this principle and, by advising its followers to give Ceasar{and thus implying not to form an own state but to comply to other people's rules} his due, had restricted its universal appeal to the spiritual sphere {and thus remained a religion and not a System, a Deen}, Islam unfolded before the world the vision of a political organisation in which God-consiousness would be the mainspring of man's practical behaviour and the sole basis of al social institutions.
Thus-fulfilling what Christianity had left unfulfilled-Islam inaugurated a new chapter in the development of man; the first instance of an open, ideological society in contrast with the closed, racially or geographical limited societies of the past. The message of Islam envisaged and brought life to a civilization in which there was no room for nationalism, no 'vested interests', no class divisions, no Church, no priesthood, no hereditary nobility; in fact, no hereditary functions at all. The aim was to establish a theocracy with regard to God and man, and a democracy between man and man. { and here again he sums up what Deen is in only one sentence, in the Deen, God is the only Ruler and Lawmaker, where all Laws are based on His commands alone.
Man only comes in to apply those Laws in the State, and so a person is chosen to lead this appliance, this is the ONLY man to man relationship allowed in the Deen ruling.} The most important feature of that new civilization- a feature which set it entirely apart from all other movements in human history- was the fact that it had been conceived in temrs of, and arose from, a voluntary agreement of the people concerned. here social progress was not, as in ALL other communities and civilizations known to history, a result of pressure and counterpressure of conflicting interests, nut part and parcel of an original 'constitution'.
In other words, a genuine social contract lay at the roots of things: not as a figure of speech formulated by later generations of powerholders in defence of their privileges, but as the real, historic source of Islamic civilization. The Quran says: "Behold, God has bought of the Faithful their persons and their possesions, offering them Paradise in return...Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made, for this is the triumph supreme."
"Often we would read the Quran together and discuss its ideas; and Elsa {Asad's wife}, like myself, became more and more impressed by the inner cohesion between its moral teaching and its practical guidance. According to the Quran, God did not call for blind subservience on the part of man but rather appealed to his intellect; He did not stand apart from man's destiny but was nearer to you than the vein in your neck; He did not draw any divinding line between faith and social behaviour; and, what was perhaps most important, He did not start from the axiom that all life was burdened with a conflict between matter and spirit and that the way toward the Light demanded a freeing of the soul from the shackles of the flesh.
Every form of life-denial and self-mortification had been condemned by the Prophet in sayings like 'there is no world-renunciation in Islam'. The human will to live was not only recognized as a positive, fruitfull instinct but was endowned with the sanctity of an ethical postulate as well. Man was taught, in effect: You not only may utilize your life to the full, but you are OBLIGED to do so. An integrated image of Islam was now emerging with a finality, a decisiveness that sometimes astounded me. It was taking shape by a process that could almost described as a kind of mental osmosis-that is, without any concious effort on my part to piece together and 'systematize'the many fragments of knowledge that had come my way during the past four years.
I saw before me something like a perfect work of architecture, with all its elements harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other, with nothing superfluous and nothing lacking-a balance and composure which gave one the feeling that everything in the outlook and postulates of Islam was 'in its proper place'. Thirteen centuries ago a man stood up and said:"I am only a mortal man; but He who has created the universe has bidden me to bear His message to you. In order that you might live in harmony with the plan of His creation. he has commanded me to bear His Message to you. He has commanded me to remind you of His existence, omnipotence and omniscience, and to place before you a programme of behaviour. If you accept this reminder and this programme, follow me." This was the essence of Muhammed's prophetic mission.
The social scheme he propounded was that of simplicity which goes together only with real grandeur. It started from the premise that men are biological beings with biological needs and are so conditioned by their Creator that they must live in groups in order to satisfy the full range of the physical, moral and intellectual requirments: in short, they are dependent on one another. The continuity of an individual's rise in spiritual stature depends on wether he is helped, encouraged and protected by the people around him-who, of course, expect the same cooperation from him.
This human interdependnce was the reason why in Islam, religion could not be seperated from economics and politics.{and here he shows the difference between religion and Deen, as Deen is faith combined with ethics, statelaws, economy and politics. Where religion will only effect personal lives and will not go further then marriage laws or rules of personal conduct and nation moral.} To arrange pratical human relations in such a way that every individual might find a few obstacles and as much ancouragement as possible in the development of his personality: this, and nothing else, appeared to be the Islamic concept of the true function of society.
And so it was only natural that the system which the Prophet Muhammed enunciated in the 23 years of his ministry related not only to matters spiritual but provided a framework for all individual and social activity as well. it held out the concept not only of individual righteouness but also of the equitable society which such righteouness should bring about. It provided the outline of a political community-the outline only, because the details of man's political needs are timebound and therefor variable {which again shows we can only follow the Quran and not 12th century by-laws as contained in the fiqh} --
As well as a scheme of individual rights and social duties in which the fact of historical evolution was duly anticipated. The Islamic code embraced life in all its aspects, moral and physical, individual and communal; proplems of the flesh and of the mind, of sex and economics had, side by side with problems of theology and worship, their legitimate place in the Prophet's message, and nothing that pertained to life seemed too trivial to be drawn into the orbit of religious thought--not even such mundane issues as commerce, inheritance, property rights or ownership of land.. All the clauses of Islamic Law were devised for the equal benefit of all memebers of the community, without distinction of birth, race, sex or previous social allegiance. No special benefits were reserved for the community's founder or his descendants.
High and low were, in a social sense, nonexistent terms; and nonexistent was the concept of class. All rights, duties and opportunities applied equally to all who professed faith in Islam. No priest was required to mediate between man and God, for He knows what lies open in their hands before them and what they conceal behind their backs. No loyalty was recognized beyond the loyalty to God and His Prophet, to one's parents, and to the community that has as its goal the establishment of God's kingdom on earth{God's Deen}; and this precluded that kind of loyalty which says 'right or wrong,(i support)my country'.
To elucidate this principle, the Prophet very pointedly said on more than one occasion:He is not of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship, who fights for it or dies for it. {And now play close attention} Before Islam, all political organizations-even those on a theocratic or semi-theocratic basis-had been limited by the narrow concepts of tribe abd tribal homogeneity. Thus the god-kings of ancient Egypt had no thought beyond the horizon of the Nile valleys and its inhabitants, and in the early theocratic state of the Hebrews, when God was supposed to rule, it was neccessarily the God of Israel. In the structure of Quranic thought, on the other hand, considerations of descnet or tribal{or nation} adherence had no place. Islam is postulated as a self-contained political community which cut across the conventional divisions of tribe and race.
In this respect, Islam and Christianity might be said to have had the same aim:both advocated an international commuinity of people united by their adherence to a common ideal; but whereas Christianity had contended itself with a mere moral advocacy of this principle and, by advising its followers to give Ceasar{and thus implying not to form an own state but to comply to other people's rules} his due, had restricted its universal appeal to the spiritual sphere {and thus remained a religion and not a System, a Deen}, Islam unfolded before the world the vision of a political organisation in which God-consiousness would be the mainspring of man's practical behaviour and the sole basis of al social institutions.
Thus-fulfilling what Christianity had left unfulfilled-Islam inaugurated a new chapter in the development of man; the first instance of an open, ideological society in contrast with the closed, racially or geographical limited societies of the past. The message of Islam envisaged and brought life to a civilization in which there was no room for nationalism, no 'vested interests', no class divisions, no Church, no priesthood, no hereditary nobility; in fact, no hereditary functions at all. The aim was to establish a theocracy with regard to God and man, and a democracy between man and man. { and here again he sums up what Deen is in only one sentence, in the Deen, God is the only Ruler and Lawmaker, where all Laws are based on His commands alone.
Man only comes in to apply those Laws in the State, and so a person is chosen to lead this appliance, this is the ONLY man to man relationship allowed in the Deen ruling.} The most important feature of that new civilization- a feature which set it entirely apart from all other movements in human history- was the fact that it had been conceived in temrs of, and arose from, a voluntary agreement of the people concerned. here social progress was not, as in ALL other communities and civilizations known to history, a result of pressure and counterpressure of conflicting interests, nut part and parcel of an original 'constitution'.
In other words, a genuine social contract lay at the roots of things: not as a figure of speech formulated by later generations of powerholders in defence of their privileges, but as the real, historic source of Islamic civilization. The Quran says: "Behold, God has bought of the Faithful their persons and their possesions, offering them Paradise in return...Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made, for this is the triumph supreme."
-
Arnold Yasin Mol
Islam as a Deen, a Divine System by Muhammed Asad
This comes directly after his explanation on Deen, where he shows what a Deen-State is about:
"I knew that this 'triumph supreme'-the one instance of a real social contract recorded by history-was realized only during a very short period; or, rather, only during a very short period was a large-scale attempt made to realize it. {i believe this is one of the best definitions of what the first Deen-state was about, it was a large-scale attempt.I like this definition, as it immediately shows us that what we are doing, all Quran-upholders, is a small-scale attempt of creating that which the Quran gives=the perfect State} Less than a century after the Prophet's death, the political form of pristine Islam began to be corrupted and, in the following centuries, the original programme {what a beautifull definition! programme}was gradually pushed into the background.
Clannish wranglings for power took the place of a free agreement of free men and women; hereditary kingship; as inimical to the political concept of Islam as polytheism is to Islam's theological concept, soon came into being- and with it, dynastic struggles and intrigues, tribal prefernces and oppressions, and the usual degradation of religion to the status of a handmaiden of political power {The Islamic Deen became a religion, purely occupied with 'worship' and personal moral}
In short, the entire host of 'vested interests' so well known to history. For a time, the great thinkers of Islam tried to keep its true ideology aloft and pure; but those who came after them were of lesser stature and lapsed after two three centuries into a morass of intellectual convention, ceased to think for themselves and became content to repeat the dead phrases of earlier generations-forgetting that every human opinion is time-bound and fallible and therefor in need of eternal renewal {read that a couple times over!} The original impetus of Islam, so tremendous in its beginnings, sufficed for a while to carry the Muslim commonwealth to great culteral heights-to that splendid vision of scientific, literary and artistic achievement which historians describe as the Golden Age of Islam;
but within a few more centuries this impetus also died down for want of spiritual nourishment, and Muslim civilization became more and more stagnant and devoid of creating power.I had no illusions as to the present state of affairs in the Muslim world. The 4 years i have spend in those countries had shown me that while Islam was still alive, perceptible in the world-view of its adherents and their silent admission of its ethical premises, they themselves were like people paralyzed, unable to translate their beliefs into fruitfull action.
But what concerned me more than the failure of present-day Muslims to implement the scheme of islam were the potentialities of that scheme itself. It was sufficient for me to know that for a short time, quite at the beginning of Islamic history, a succesful attempt HAD been made to translate that scheme into practice; and what had seemed possible at one time might perhaps become really possible at another. What did it matter, I told myself, that the Muslims had gone astray from the original teachings and subsided into indolence and ignorance? What did it matter that they did not live up to the ideal placed before them by the Arabian Prophet 13 centuries ago-if the ideal itself still lay open to all who were willing to listen to its message?
And it might well be, i thought, that we latecomers needed that message even more desperately than did the people of Muhammed's time.
They lived in an enviroment much simpler than ours, and so their problems and difficluties had been much easier of solution. The world in which i was living-the whole of it-was wobbling because of the absence of any agreement as to what is good and what is evil spiritually and, therefor, socially and economically as well. I did not believe that individual man was in need of 'salvation': but I did believe that modern society was in need of salvation. More than any previous time, I felt with mounting certainty, this time of ours wa sin need of an ideological basis for a new social contract: it needed a faith that would make us understand the hollowness of materail progress for the sake of progress alone-and nevertherless would give the life of this world its due; that would show us how to strike a balance between our spiritual and physical requirmentsa; and thus save us from the disaster into which we were rushing headlong."
"I knew that this 'triumph supreme'-the one instance of a real social contract recorded by history-was realized only during a very short period; or, rather, only during a very short period was a large-scale attempt made to realize it. {i believe this is one of the best definitions of what the first Deen-state was about, it was a large-scale attempt.I like this definition, as it immediately shows us that what we are doing, all Quran-upholders, is a small-scale attempt of creating that which the Quran gives=the perfect State} Less than a century after the Prophet's death, the political form of pristine Islam began to be corrupted and, in the following centuries, the original programme {what a beautifull definition! programme}was gradually pushed into the background.
Clannish wranglings for power took the place of a free agreement of free men and women; hereditary kingship; as inimical to the political concept of Islam as polytheism is to Islam's theological concept, soon came into being- and with it, dynastic struggles and intrigues, tribal prefernces and oppressions, and the usual degradation of religion to the status of a handmaiden of political power {The Islamic Deen became a religion, purely occupied with 'worship' and personal moral}
In short, the entire host of 'vested interests' so well known to history. For a time, the great thinkers of Islam tried to keep its true ideology aloft and pure; but those who came after them were of lesser stature and lapsed after two three centuries into a morass of intellectual convention, ceased to think for themselves and became content to repeat the dead phrases of earlier generations-forgetting that every human opinion is time-bound and fallible and therefor in need of eternal renewal {read that a couple times over!} The original impetus of Islam, so tremendous in its beginnings, sufficed for a while to carry the Muslim commonwealth to great culteral heights-to that splendid vision of scientific, literary and artistic achievement which historians describe as the Golden Age of Islam;
but within a few more centuries this impetus also died down for want of spiritual nourishment, and Muslim civilization became more and more stagnant and devoid of creating power.I had no illusions as to the present state of affairs in the Muslim world. The 4 years i have spend in those countries had shown me that while Islam was still alive, perceptible in the world-view of its adherents and their silent admission of its ethical premises, they themselves were like people paralyzed, unable to translate their beliefs into fruitfull action.
But what concerned me more than the failure of present-day Muslims to implement the scheme of islam were the potentialities of that scheme itself. It was sufficient for me to know that for a short time, quite at the beginning of Islamic history, a succesful attempt HAD been made to translate that scheme into practice; and what had seemed possible at one time might perhaps become really possible at another. What did it matter, I told myself, that the Muslims had gone astray from the original teachings and subsided into indolence and ignorance? What did it matter that they did not live up to the ideal placed before them by the Arabian Prophet 13 centuries ago-if the ideal itself still lay open to all who were willing to listen to its message?
And it might well be, i thought, that we latecomers needed that message even more desperately than did the people of Muhammed's time.
They lived in an enviroment much simpler than ours, and so their problems and difficluties had been much easier of solution. The world in which i was living-the whole of it-was wobbling because of the absence of any agreement as to what is good and what is evil spiritually and, therefor, socially and economically as well. I did not believe that individual man was in need of 'salvation': but I did believe that modern society was in need of salvation. More than any previous time, I felt with mounting certainty, this time of ours wa sin need of an ideological basis for a new social contract: it needed a faith that would make us understand the hollowness of materail progress for the sake of progress alone-and nevertherless would give the life of this world its due; that would show us how to strike a balance between our spiritual and physical requirmentsa; and thus save us from the disaster into which we were rushing headlong."