Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
How could then the rest of the world not join such a group of people? Or how could any enemy defeat such a people or put them to flight in combat or destroy them? And that is exactly what happened: people joined and followed them in wave upon wave – Afwaajaa. And those who out of their arrogance or greed picked a fight with them without just cause or reason were pushed back and made to change their ways. They were reduced to dust on the pathways of history.
Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam did all this using the two-fold strategy of character transformation and educational reform and restructuring. Using this strategy, he changed a nation starting out with the Arabian Peninsula and he changed the world. We can do no less. Or we can’t and shouldn’t be called Muslims. For, Muslims without character is an oxymoron just as Muslims without education is also an oxymoron and anomaly. These are contradictions in terms. And yet, unbelievable as it may sound, that is precisely what we have happening today: Muslims with flawed and questionable character and Muslims with no education worth the name. “Does Not Compute!” some may say.
So, that is the short answer to the question how to change the condition of Muslims in India and everywhere else: We need to change Muslim education and we need to change Muslim character. Ta’aleem. Tazkiyah. Right now Muslims have neither. So, we need to start at the ground level and build the whole edifice up one brick at a time.
Let us now go to the long answer. To the details of what we mean by education and character and let us see how we can go about making them both happen in Muslim lives in our beautiful and beloved India – and all over our beautiful and beloved world that Allah made for us and placed at our disposal.
KNOW ISLAM AND KNOW THE WORLD
So, how do you change the condition of Indian Muslims? Nothing could be easier or simpler, given a little bit of common sense; a little bit of courage and confidence; a little bit of imagination and creativity; and a little bit of understanding of what Islam really is. And of course a little bit of understanding of how Allah’s world works.
For, Islam came so that we will apply it to human lives, needs and situations right here in this world on Allah’s earth. If we don’t understand how the world works, we will never understand how Islam works. And right now that is one of the most serious problems with Muslims: Muslims do not understand the world of Allah.
At the same time, it is also a serious problem with the world that the world does not understand Islam and Muslims. The world does not ask and the Muslims don’t tell. Or show. So they both live in a fool’s paradise of their own making. Except that being a fool is not an excuse in the eyes of God and the place where they live right now is anything but paradise. The result has been that both Muslims and the rest of the world have taken enormous pains to turn God’s beautiful earth into a virtual hell.
So if we don’t understand Islam, we will never know how to run the world well and successfully. For, that which we refer to as Islam is actually the name given by God Almighty to the formula – a set of beliefs, rules and practices – that he designed to make his world run smoothly and well. So, for as long as Muslims followed that formula, God’s earth came close to being a paradise.
But when Muslims forgot or misplaced that divine formula, and replaced it with their own whims and fancies and fantasies, they handed Allah’s earth over to the Devil and his minions who then pillaged and plundered and abused God’s earth and its human, animal and plant inhabitants and turned it into a burning hellhole for all. And that is part of the problem with the Muslims, including Indian Muslims. In all too many cases, they either don’t know Islam, or the world, or both. As a result, in more ways than one, Muslims are part of the problem, both in India and globally, and not part of the solution.
We need to change that. We need to make Muslims, both in India and overseas, part of the solution, not only to their own problems, but also to the problems of humanity and the entire world. Thus, Muslims must be part of the solution to their own educational and character problems. They must be part of the solution to the challenge of educating the rest of humanity about Islam and the world. And at the same time Muslims must also be part of the solution to such world issues as sustainability and the environment; global warming and the melting of the Polar icecaps; world hunger and poverty; killer diseases like AIDS, malaria and cancer; nuclear proliferation and landmine saturation in former battlefields; growing water shortage and rapid deforestation.
So, how do we do that? How do we change the condition of Muslims? How do we change Muslims from being a part of the problem to being a part of the solution? From being perpetual victims of all kinds of enemies and adversities, real as well as imagined, to becoming masters of their own fate and captains of the ship of human wellbeing on earth? Here are the two requirements for changing the condition of Muslims and making life better for them, and for everyone else, which are really two interrelated dimensions or aspects of what we mean by knowledge or ‘Ilm: Give Muslims a proper and clear understanding of Islam. Give them a proper and clear understanding of the world.
Sadly, most Muslims are deficient on both counts. Knowledge of the world is at best spotty for most Muslims, which makes knowledge of Islam problematic for them as well.
I am tempted to cite a powerful Aayat of the Qur’ān in this context – and all Aayats of the Qur’ān are powerful – Khasirad dunya wal aakhirah, which in paraphrase means “thus incurring the loss of this world as well as the next world.”
Or as a poet once put it: Deen bhi gayaa, dunya bhi gayee! So, know Islam and know the world and you will be able to change everything in the world, including the condition of Muslims, in India as well as everywhere else. As a bonus, you will also be able to change the condition of the rest of the world.
WHAT DOES KNOWLEDGE MEAN?
But Muslims won’t let things be that easy. Even though taking things easy is the very essence of Islam. No one can put it better than the man who was himself the personification of Islam. Ad-deen yusr, said Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam. That means Deen is doing things the nice and easy way. It is simple. It is easy. But Muslims like their Deen a bit hard and difficult and challenging. Otherwise it wouldn’t be Deen, they seem to think. Look at the Jews. Look at the Christians and the Hindus. Look at the Buddhists. See how difficult their Deens seem to be.
Catholics say if you want to be a priest you shouldn’t marry. Instead, you must practice celibacy and remain alone and unmarried forever. Paul, whom many consider to be the real founder of Christianity, says everyone should be like him: unmarried and celibate. But if you cannot do that, says Paul, it is better to marry than to burn. That means the institution of marriage and conjugal relations, the only guarantee humans have for the continuation of their species on earth, is a necessary evil. So, marriage is evil. And the human child, every single one of them, is born a sinner, as a result of the original sin that Adam the first man committed in Paradise. The Christian credo is if you love God you must give up the world, for, you cannot love God and this world both at the same time.
Now, this is a difficult social and psychological scenario for anyone to live with in this world. The highly demanding and stringent teachings of Puritanism and Calvinism were to a large measure a product of this mindset. They made life difficult for people in the name of religion. If Christians would like God-seeking people to be monks and nuns, Hindus too offer the same broad concept in the form of Sanyas and Vanvas as the pathways to the Divine. As for the Jews, their entire history is filled with the trials and tribulations they had to go through to please, placate or make peace with their God. Rigors and complications of religious demands and strictures in Hinduism make life difficult for most ordinary people.
Buddhists too point to the suffering that fills this world and call for eternal sacrifice and self-denial as a means to Moksh or Nirvana or salvation. When Siddhartha Gautama found enlightenment, and became Buddha, he walked away from the world leaving behind his wife, his child, the responsibilities of his kingdom and the care of his people.
So, what is wrong if every now and then Muslims too want a little bit of flavour in their Deen, right? What is wrong if they too like their Deen to be a bit challenging? Just like the Deen of the Hindus, the Christians, the Jews and the Buddhists?
Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, however, predicted this scenario: Muslims mimicking non-Muslims in everything. He said Muslims would do what the people before them had done. If those earlier people had dived into a lizard’s hole, Muslims would do it too.
So, Muslims too would perhaps like their “religion” of Islam to look a little bit like a “real religion,” the kind of religion everyone else has, complete with priests, holy water and all kinds of intricate rituals that only a selected few have knowledge of or can perform. They already refer to their Deen of Islam as “religion,” just like those other people do. And they call the Qur’ān “their” Holy Book just like some others say the Bible is their Holy Book. Some of them even refer to their Islamic Scholars with Christian titles such as “His Eminence.” I am holding my breath and waiting for the title of “His Grace” to make its appearance among Muslims. That is the address mode Christians use for the pope.