International Conference of Mahdism Doctrine - Our Social and Political Responsibilities while Awaiting Imam al-Mahdi (as)

The Scientific Committee of the Second International Conference of Mahdism Doctrine , 5 Aug 2007 22:11

I want to commence by posing a question: where is the ’Ummah going? The forces of kufr, led by the United States , have declared War on Islam. As we meet here tonight, the Muslims in Somalia face murderous attack from an invading Ethiopian army at the behest of the United States . Just as in Lebanon and Iraq , this is justified in the name of ‘democracy’. As the US folksinger David Rovics puts it: “Bombs falling over Baghdad , And each one cries ‘democracy’”.

As a Political Scientist I get asked to speak about ‘controversial’ topics. Few are as ‘controversial’ — and as important to the ’Ummah — as the presents topic. I propose to begin by sketching the political context in which this debate occurs. This will lead to a comparison of the two great opposing systems: man’s law versus the law of Allah (swt). It will then be possible to look at some of the central ideas of ‘moderate’ Islam. Finally, the ramifications of these ideas will be looked at and an alternative suggested.

I want to commence by posing a question: where is the ’Ummah going? The forces of kufr, led by the United States , have declared War on Islam. As we meet here tonight, the Muslims in Somalia face murderous attack from an invading Ethiopian army at the behest of the United States . Just as in Lebanon and Iraq , this is justified in the name of ‘democracy’. As the US folksinger David Rovics puts it: “Bombs falling over Baghdad , And each one cries ‘democracy’”.

My ‘own’ Government has enthusiastically joined in many of these massacres. Australian Prime Minister John Howard says Israel as a ‘right to defend itself’ (that is, exterminate Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims). Australian troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan and full support has been given to the escalating war drive against Muslim Iran.

Australia actively supports the Israelis who murder, torture and humiliate Palestinian Muslim men, women and children daily – once again in the name of their Godless ‘democracy. Islam is under attack everywhere not because it is a source of terror, but because true Islam is the framework of genuine justice. Exploiters and evil-doers really do fear authentic Islam. Islam grasps that humanity today is on the brink of a precipice, centrally because humankind is devoid of the vital values which are necessary for its survival. The Holy Qur’an warns us: ‘[2.217] and they will not cease fighting with you until they turn you back from your religion, if they can’.

Sayyid Qutb explains the threat that Islam’s Divine system represents to Godless capitalism:
It is Islam that stands for a universal and articulated theory of the universe, life, and mankind, and which sets up the idea of the mutual responsibility of society in place of the idea of hostility and struggle. It is Islam that gives to life a spiritual doctrine to link it with the Creator in the heavens, and to govern its direction on earth; and it is Islam that is not content to allow life to be limited to the achievement of purely material aims, even though material and productive activity is one of the Islamic modes of worship.

The kufr media subjects Muslims to an unrelenting barrage of hate. In Sydney, where the largest concentration of Muslims in Australia live, this has duped many non-Muslims into fearing that youth of so-called ‘Middle Eastern appearance’ are ‘rapists’, if not ‘Muslim terrorists’. The events at Cronulla (a beach suburb in Sydney , Australia ) – when up to 5,000 racists and anti-Muslim bigots attacked a handful of persons of ‘Middle Eastern appearance in December 2005 – were merely the logical continuation of this campaign.
This was not a riot but a consciously orchestrated pogrom – that is, a violent attack by a majority against a minority, aiming to drastically escalate anti-Muslim tensions, while simultaneously terrorising the Muslims.

The anti-Muslim crusade is being fought at all levels, including at the levels of theology and psychological warfare. The cartoons of our Holy Prophet (S) aimed to further demoralise the Muslims, while at the same time further whipping up anti-Muslim hatred.

The recent lengthy diatribe by Cardinal Pell was a carefully calculated rant against Islam. Given Pell’s senior status in the Catholic Church globally, moreover, it is probable that his attack was made at the request of Pope Benedict XVI, who has a track record of demonising Islam. That’s why Joseph D’Hippolito wrote gleefully in the Jerusalem Post (9 May 2005): ‘The era of de-facto appeasement under Pope John Paul II is over. ‘The era of subtle, discreet, yet firm confrontation has begun’. And yet, so many Muslims still do not get it.
Sadly, many of Australian Muslim community ‘leaders’ are refusing to stand by the truth, however. This is why the anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic offensive is succeeding, even though there is no shortage of Believing Muslims wanting to ‘do something’.

The truth of the matter is that our ’Ummah has a severe shortage of pious leaders in Australia who are prepared to rally us to challenge the oppressors. Instead, many of our leaders sit on committees with the oppressors (the Government’s ‘Reference Group’ and its sub-committees), that plot against Muslims. Such misleaders want Muslims to become like the Christians: to resign ourselves to submit to oppression, by leaving our religion at the masjid door.
This is a blatantly secular perspective. The secular Muslim misleaders are determined, that our Divine ethical and moral code should on no account be applied to how we actually live our lives. The consequences of this for the ’Ummah should be obvious: it would mean submitting to kufr across the board. And, in the context of a global War on Islam, it could result in the destruction of the ’Ummah.

And yet, this so-called ‘moderate’ perspective has the support of many Muslims. It appears very ‘reasonable’. And it appeals to those among us looking to fit-in with the dominant system, to find a little niche in it, by not rocking the boat. This is the outlook known as so-called ‘moderate Islam’, which buys the central strategy of the enemies of Islam.

A very conscious game is currently being played by the enemies of Islam. They are attempting to divide us even further into so-called ‘moderate (or ‘Australian’) Muslims’ and ‘extremist’ (or pious) Muslims. The next stage of this operation will be to totally marginalise all those Muslims who insist on following their religious obligations and do not bow to man’s desires, instead.
Then those marginalised Mumineen will be subject to ferocious repression. Meanwhile, the enemies of Islam will point to the ‘moderate’ and ‘Australian’ Muslims as ‘good Muslims’ whom they accept. Then, if all the so-called ‘extremist’ (or pious) Muslims are successfully crushed or marginalised, even the so-called ‘moderate Muslims’ could face a frontal assault.

We should never forget what the founding father of the contemporary anti-Islamic Crusade, Samuel P. Huntington, wrote in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order:

Some Westerners … have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise (p. 209).

And: The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam… (pp. 217-18).

At the heart of this perspective is the con-game of ‘democracy’. Many Western-educated and ‘modernist’ Muslims are staunch advocates for Western liberal democracy, which they tell us is an integral part of Islam. But the word ‘democracy’ has come to mean all things to all people. It has become so vague that it is virtually meaningless, even in the West.

Western politicians are fond of using this term to describe any policy they favour. For them, it has no agreed terms of reference, no fixed points of definition. Whether something is ‘democratic’ or not in their eyes depends only on who is doing it — the West’s allies or its opponents. A military regime such as Algeria’s can be ‘democratising’, to give just one example, while a popular revolution such as that in Iran can be ‘anti-democratic’.

Western academics and idealist political activists are increasingly concluding that democracy might be an ideal that can only be aspired to — and never actually achieved. And yet many Muslims, the main victims of the West’s self-serving and ‘undemocratic’ conduct, seem unable to grasp this reality.

Unfortunately, the West’s dominance in every aspect of modern life — political, economic, cultural and intellectual — has convinced many Muslims that the West has the only viable foundation for success. These Muslims try to find equivalents for Western ‘democratic’ concepts in Islam. After all, Islam is not opposed to the rule of law; Islamic rulers and governments are supposed to be law-abiding. They are also supposed to promote and protect the rights of their people, not to oppress anyone, and to consider public opinion in decision-making.

What then, some Muslims say, is the difference between Islam and democracy? However, when Muslims talk in terms of ‘democracy’, even if they do not mean to be pro-Western, the effect is:

• to give the impression of endorsing Western values and Western claims to represent universal values, and

• to lay themselves open to accusations of being undemocratic by Westerners.

Then suddenly, instead of being able to simply accept the parts of ‘democracy’ that are common to Islamic political thought, and criticise the rest, Muslims find themselves having to explain why they do not accept all of democracy, at which they tend to be extremely apologetic and ineffective.

They are put on the defensive and find themselves talking about democracy instead of Islam. And, infatuated by the West’s supposed ‘superiority’ in all things, they find themselves apologising for the idea of Shari’ah law not to mention the very concepts of the Islamic state or global Muslim community, the ’Ummah. These are universally denounced by the West as ‘backward’, if not ‘medieval’, and the ‘moderate’ Muslims concede that they are ‘outmoded’ in the 21st century.

I have been at Muslim forums where this has been asserted from the podium — even though no-one in the room had even mentioned, let alone proposed — that striving for Shari’ah law should be an immediate perspective in Australia . The lecturer was simply determined to lay his so-called ‘moderate’ credentials on the table. In the process, he denounced central aspects of Islam. By denying Allah (swt)’s Divine framework for human society, and importing foreign concepts, the ‘moderate’ Muslims are then tempted to work alongside non-Muslims who claim to be ‘democratic’, on the basis that they have common agendas and principles.

This also dilutes the Muslims’ ability to put Islam first in their thoughts and actions. Muslims who work in the Muslim political arena, for instance, too often know little of Islamic teachings and scholarship, and are too deeply immersed in Western political thought. They are frequently quite unaware that the Western political terms they bandy around are inevitably laden with Western meanings, implications and other baggage that obstruct attempts to think clearly in Islamic terms.

I first remind myself that Allah (swt) commands and warns us:
[3:28] Let not the believers take the unbelievers for advisers [awliya’a] rather than believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing of (the guardianship of) Allah, but you should guard yourself against them, guarding carefully; and Allah makes you cautious of (retribution from) Himself; and to Allah is the eventual coming.

Then again, later, in the same Surah:
[3:118] O you who believe! Do not take for intimate friends from among others than your own people; they will not fail to corrupt you; they love what distresses you; vehement hatred has already appeared from out of their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater still; indeed, We have made the communication clear to you, if you will understand.

And the command of Allah (swt) is indeed crystal-clear. Yet still we frequently prefer the lure of the kafirs’ so-called ‘modernity’, to the straight path of Allah (swt). We are beguiled by the central lie of Western — i.e., man-made — ‘modernity’, that it is inherently ‘superior’ to any Eastern civilisation.

This lie has been around for literally hundreds of years. The West has long assumed that its technological and scientific progress — not mention its secularism and democracy— mark it as ‘superior’ to the poor benighted and backward East. We in the West are brought up to believe that the rest of the world absolutely must learn how to imitate us in these respects (technological and scientific progress, secularism and democracy).

The East is branded as ‘underdeveloped’, if not ‘backward’. Citizens in the United States and Australia are both convinced that they live in the ‘best country in the world’. We are still told that it is the secular West’ mission to bring ‘modernity’ to the backward East. And that to even question this is to supposedly ‘rebel … against the very law of nature itself’ (Maryam Jameelah, Is Western Civilization Universal?, 1966 edition, 4-5).

It follows from this analysis that along with all the long-established religions, Islam, its civilization and its institutions, are condemned and rejected on the pretext that any order based on Divine law revealed fourteen hundred years ago, could not possibly be valid and relevant to modern life (Ibid).

In opposition to traditional society, the West has erected the god of ‘unrestricted accelerating change’ (Is Western Civilization Universal?, 1966 edition, 8). Yet, as Shariati argues, Western ‘civilisation’ is really a systematic process called ‘modernisation’. Like Jameelah, he does not oppose technological advances. But he is very concerned about the social and cultural consequences of the West’s so-called ‘civilising’ mission. He questions precisely what it is that the West wants so urgently to ‘modernise’. He concludes that the West’s goal is ‘modernisation’ in consumption.

He comments:
And while the non-European is happy with the idea that he has been modernized, the European capitalist and bourgeois laugh at their success in converting him into a consumer of their surplus production.

Shariati believes that what has happened is that the West has succeeded to a very large extent in depriving the individuals in the East of their very personality. They would deprive him of his personality… He must be forced to believe himself related to a humbler civilization, a humbler social order, and accept that European civilization, Western civilization and the Western race are superior… The poor man does not realise that he is being modernized instead of being civilized…

I stated earlier that Muslims need to be careful when they bandy Western political terms and concepts laden with Western meanings and implications that obstruct attempts to think clearly in Islamic terms. ‘Democracy’ is perhaps the Western term that most needs to be avoided, if Western — i.e., man-made — ideological baggage is to be successfully excluded from Islamic political thought. The confusion being caused by the importing of ‘democracy’ into Muslim political discourse, and the damage this trend is doing to Muslim political thought and the Islamic movement, is immense and is likely to prove a great a problem in the future.

For it is Islam — pure and unadulterated Islam, with its system of Divine values — alone that stands for justice and an end to all oppression. By diluting these values in the name of being ‘modern’, the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims undermine their ability to defend themselves from the attacks of the enemies of Allah (swt).

This is why the sworn enemies of Islam such as Cardinal Pell focus on such matters. Cardinal Pell writes about the so-called ‘totalitarian nature of Islamist ideology, and the brutality and rigidity of Islamist rule’. Yet the Holy Qur’an includes and entire chapter called ‘As-Shurah’, or ‘Consultation’.

Here and elsewhere in the Holy Qur’an, [3:159] Allah (swt) recognises that humans possess strong moral virtues, including the character to accept each others’ views and counsel. But He (swt) also recognises that weakness is inherent humans — our tendency to give in to our desires. Allah (swt) therefore provides us with Divine values:

[2:177] It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteousness is this that one should believe in Allah and the last day and the angels and the Book and he prophets, and give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for (the emancipation of) the captives, and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate; and the performers of their promise when they make a promise, and the patient in distress and affliction and in time of conflicts — these are they who are true (to themselves) and these are they who guard (against evil).

It cannot be stressed often enough, that Islam is under attack everywhere because its system of Divine values is the framework of genuine justice. Exploiters and oppressors oppose Islam because it utterly negates their man-made and therefore unjust systems. Allah (swt) commanded us:

[3.104] And from among you there should be a party who invite to good and enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong, and these it is that shall be successful.

In other words, it is not only a ‘good idea’ for Muslims to unite to defend ourselves from oppression; it is also a religious obligation for us to do so! This could not be otherwise, given the undisputable fact that the entire universe must submit to the One and Only Creator – Allah (swt), who instructed the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S):

[18.110] Say: I am only a mortal like you; it is revealed to me that your god is one God, therefore whoever hopes to meet his Lord, he should do good deeds, and not associate anyone in the service of his Lord.

The doctrine that there is no other god but Allah (swt) – the doctrine of Tawhid – teaches us that there is no part of our deen that we can ignore. Everything is interconnected. Those who merely pray and fast, while ignoring the oppression of their fellow-Muslims (and, for that matter, the oppression of any living creature) are shamefully defective Muslims.

Humanity stands at the crossroads. On one side stands a world system that believes in nothing except immediate advantage for the privileged elites, while humanity as a whole faces endless wars, environmental degradation, and the humiliation of dictatorship, poverty and worse.

On the other, the Divine system of Islam offers humanity a clear, broad and deep worldview which offers society legal and economic bases that have proved both practicable and systematic. We Muslims can either join the Western caravan, which calls itself ‘democracy’, or we can return to Islam and make it fully effective in the field of our own life: spiritual, social and economic. If we make this choice, we can draw strength from our religion and promote its growth.

Allah (swt) promises us [3: 120] that if we place our trust in Him, our enemies will be unable to defeat us:

They may wage wars but they cannot cause a dent in our deen. Allah’s enemies will suffer even if they are armed to their teeth with the latest weapons and the most advanced technology. When they go against Allah (by fighting those humans who have become the will of Allah on earth) they are doomed (Imam Muhammad al-Asi, ‘Introducing the Fourth juz’ of the Holy Qur’an’, in Crescent International, July 2006, 32).

More than ever before, the world stands in need of Islam and its social system – our practical and spiritual system of life. But we must first demonstrate these values in practice.

This is possible even in Australia , by Muslims applying these principles in our own lives, and by striving fearlessly for social justice. An increasingly vibrant Islamic movement is beginning to once more re-emerge globally, struggling to take up this blessed challenge – and not a moment too soon.

It is time for all Muslims to unite together in this struggle for justice, and in the collective striving for the knowledge needed to obtain this.

In some Australian cities, Muslims are beginning to come together, across the divides of madhab and ethnic origin, to energise their iman and to systematically engage in a process of mutual learning. They are forming halaqas (study circles) which seek to collectively understand the principles and methods of Islam for the creation of a world in harmony with Allah (swt), in a country where Muslims comprise a tiny minority.

Prayerful, systematic reflection is the indispensable precondition for effective action to obtain social justice. Muslims in several cities are staying in touch with each other, in an effort to begin to systematically acquire the knowledge that is needed, so that Muslims can begin to once again take charge of our destinies.

This is our social and political responsibility at this point in time, while Awaiting Imam al-Mahdi (as). Imam al-Mahdi (as) will only reappear if the Muslims themselves first initiate a movement for justice. And the indispensable precondition for such a movement is for the Muslims to systematically acquire the knowledge that is needed, if they are to initiate such a movement for justice, inshaAllah.

We can be confident that these efforts will bear good and plentiful fruit, inshaAllah. Allah (swt) tells us:

[2:143] And thus we have made you a just nation that you may be the bearers of witness to the people…