primarily because it had given peace a chance and an opportunity for Islam to win the battle for hearts and minds.
Similarly, before the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet (pbuh) had directed everyone to avoid unnecessary conflict and bloodshed and declared the day as a ‘Day of Mercy’ when a Muslim group commander had reportedly uttered some vengeful words.
The unfortunate degeneration of Muslims today is due primarily to a disproportionate emphasis on symbols and rituals with no or little regard for the underlying spirit and substance. The ultimate purpose of Islam as a religion is to strengthen one’s relationship with Allah; all else is just the means to attaining this end.
Imam Ghazali in Ihya-ul-Uloom (the revival of sciences) and Shah Waliullah in Hujjatullah-e-Baligha (the conclusive proof) have elucidated the inner meaning and purpose of various rituals that Muslims are supposed to perform. Any form of worship (prayer, pilgrimage, and charity etc) without understanding its spiritual and practical utility leads to lacklustre conformity and dogmatism.
Contentment with superficial conformity is what hinders self-fulfilment and social change. The scientific breakthroughs in the west over the past three centuries are the result of challenging conventional wisdom and conducting rigorous research into natural and social phenomena.
Paradoxically, contemporary Muslims have turned their backs to science notwithstanding their ancestors being its founders. All our problems – political, economic, and social – that we attribute to others are largely the outcome of our deep slumber. We have failed to catch up with the times by investing almost nothing in education and research.
Are we not fooling ourselves by waiting for some miracle to occur to uplift the ummah from an abyss of backwardness to enduring glory without doing the necessary soul-searching and hard work? If this is the case, rest assured, we are doomed. The condition of a people is never changed for the better until they change their condition themselves.
Our future generations, if they turn out to be different, will remember these contemporary Muslims in general as a stigma on human civilisation rather than as the embodiments of truth, honesty, and justice that Islam so earnestly enjoins.
The writer teaches at FAST-NU, Peshawar. Email: zeb.khannu.edu.pk