Our Decline

There is an awe in the minds of many Muslims who settle in western secular liberal societies and often buried within themselves is a self-defeated mind-set. This self-defeated mind-set is one that finds comfort in praising the institutions, infrastructures and sense of order in western countries. When observing our own state of affairs, we are only able to refer to our own "Muslim countries" which are in turmoil, war, poverty and dictatorships.

This type of thinking is known as shallow thinking - i.e. the observance of only that which is apparent and the inability to address or understand the root causes that cannot be seen at first glance. This is a neglect of our roots, our history and the civilisations we had once built, all so that we know only to refer to the realities and scripts our colonial masters had imposed upon us. Our current state of affairs and our inability to see beyond our desperate situation is a result of 300 years of decline, complemented and accelerated by decades of colonialism and policies to divide, conquer and secularise.

It is clear from our history that by and large, Muslims did not look for inspiration in the context of ideological modernisation and reform - even in the times when civil war, destruction and defeat dominated the lands of the Ummah. The Muslims never questioned the Aqeeda of Islam or the systems that emanate from the Aqeeda of Islam. This did not happen when the Crusaders were knee deep in Muslim blood for over 200 years; this did not happen during the brutal Mongol invasions and this did not happen when Salahuddin Ayoubi came in the midst of Muslim factions in civil war, in his mission to liberate Al Quds.

Never have the Muslims been impressed by other ideologies to the point that they looked at Islam and felt it was no longer relevant or capable to offer solutions to the desperate problems they faced.

This is why the thoughts of a nation are the greatest wealth that one generation can inherit from the previous generation. It is not our morals, good behaviour, charity or our constant urge to please our colonial masters, by readjusting Islam to a declined secular level that ever gave us victory and honour in the sight of Allah(swt). It was our thoughts - the confidence that Islam is the truth, the confidence that Islam can solve every problem and the belief and ambition that the ideology of Islam is the best system for mankind; the system that the Muslims have been obligated to carry to every corner of the Earth.

If the minds of the Muslims are shackled, colonised and enslaved - the effect is far more damaging than anything that the colonialists could have achieved through physical takeovers and military strategies. The truth of the matter is that history demonstrates that the Muslims never truly fell; the fall of Islam never took place - in every century of pain and struggle the Muslims re-emerged victorious because their thoughts were intact; they knew how to get it all back.

The age of shallow thinking needs to end. We must unlearn what our enemies taught us. It is not fitting that we trust those who came to our lands and carved them apart so that they could scramble Africa and then claim that Islam has a "us and them" division. It is not right that we bow our heads to hypocrisy and conform to their beliefs while they say that Islam is backwards and barbaric.

This declined thinking must be reformed in this generation so that the future generation do not inherit this victim mentality and battered housewife syndrome. If the current generation are to pass on these ideas of victimhood, shame and despair to the future generations of Muslims, then these thoughts would not be the greatest wealth for this Ummah but rather they will be the greatest shame and burden for our people. The confidence in Islam must be reinstated.

Our loss of confidence in our own deen and our selective programming to refer to Islam only for ritualistic aspects of Ibadaat did not happen by mere chance overnight. The last attack on Islam was more than just physical occupation and oppressive armies ransacking the resources of the Muslims. The readjustment of the Islamic education system within the Muslim lands by the colonialists was to ensure that over time nothing remained except for the basic Fiqh of Ibadaat.

The dividing and conquering of Muslim lands followed with the call of nation states and institutions built to transport the secular liberal ideas to a people who always referred to Islam to solve their problems - in essence, the understanding of Islam was completely secularised while the Ummah was being fed solutions from a new secular liberal ideology that they had never encountered before. This method of secularisation, slavery and control was further enhanced after they had established home trained "Muslim" puppets to carry on their dirty work.

Make no mistake about it - colonialism never stopped; it has only become more enhanced. What we have today is a new form of "wireless colonialism"; one where the colonial armies need not occupy or display a presence because the armies and the leaders of the Muslims will do that for them. This is further strengthened by the capitalistic economic policies around FDI and debt to enslave our people.

It takes rigorous work and poison to get an entire Ummah to recite the Quran and completely ignore the 300 or so ayat around foreign policy, economic policy and transaction laws and reduce Islam to mere academics and "spirituality".

This stance is not from Islam - we inherited this stance from our colonial masters who taught us individualism and secularism and it is they that taught us that the Quran is not to be implemented. It is they that categorise us as "Extremists" and "Islamists" for calling to the whole of Islam.

“We were the most humiliated people on earth and God gave us honour through Islam. If we ever seek honour through anything else, God will humiliate us again.” - Umar Ibn Khattab(ra)

Too many times people will quote this and they will quote attractive slogans like "we must go back to the Quran and Sunnah" but in reality their call manifests as no more than perfecting oneself and the Fiqh of Ibadaat that our education curriculums were previously restricted to. The honour of Islam that Umar Ibn Khattab(ra) spoke about also becomes restricted to the Fiqh of Ibadaat ignoring the rest of Islam as if Islam is nothing but this.

Our entire outlook of Islam today is not from Islam itself. Our framework is one that we inherited from the secular liberalists who claim that individualism is that which will sanctify the individual. It is not for them to tell us what Islam is and what Islam isn't.

"It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their decision. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed in a plain error." - Surah Al Ahzab (33:36)