Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, / Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
Islam is communication, no matter how you look at it. Islam is communication with yourself and it is communication with God Almighty, with the Qur’an, with your fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation. It is communication using the Qur’an, the Hadith and all the innate and acquired faculties, abilities and skills with which your maker may have blessed and endowed you. So, Islam is communication. No matter how you look at it.
At the same time, Islam is also all about life, in every sense of that expression – life in this world as well as life in the next world.
And, of course, Islam is all about the Qur’an – and vice versa.
The Qur’an, God’s own communication with and to his creation – the worlds – the best and finest and most complete that there is or can be.
And Islam is about the Hadith, the communication with and to his companions and the world of the man, Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, the most perfect and influential communicator in all of human history, whom God Almighty sent down into this world to invite and guide human beings – all human beings – to him and to a world of perfect bliss both in this world and the next world.
Thus, life, communication and Qur’an, together, are a matchless triple token of love from God the life-giver, God the master-communicator, God whose immortal and timeless miracle-message the Qur’an is and forever will remain.
From God whose most favorite and the most miraculous description of himself is Ar-Rahmaan: the most loving, the most kind, the most compassionate, the most merciful. This simply does not have a parallel in so-called “religious” lore of the world or in the annals of human discourse and communication in general.
The Qur’an asks: Do you know anyone else with that name?
I certainly don’t. Do you? Does anyone?
Hal ta’lamu lahoo samiyyaa?
Paraphrase: “Do you know anyone else with that name?”
That is right, that is the paraphrase of that Aayat. Doesn’t anyone ever wonder how simple and clear and yet how profound and powerful a most simple passage of the Qur’an can be?
At the same time, let us not forget that when we talk about life, we are talking about life not only in this world (Dunya) but also about life in the next world (Aakhirah). For, to me it makes absolutely no sense for people to worry all the time about this life and yet to worry not even a little bit about next life. Especially, smart, thinking people.
To me it does not make any sense at all.
What, as Caliph Ali is reputed to have remarked, if it does turn out that there indeed is life after death? What then?
GREATEST HUMAN GENERATION EVER!
Ali was the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam. He was a man of extraordinary physical, intellectual and scholarly abilities and talents. At the same time, he was also one of the most honest, fair-minded, just, and God-loving individuals known to humanity.
Along with Abu Bakr, Omar and Uthman – may Allah love them and be pleased with them all – he was also one of the four men who, after the death of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, continued, expanded and consolidated the most fair, just, honorable, truthful and God-fearing society, government, culture and way of life that Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, established in this world.
These four men were the closest companions, associates, friends and pupils of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, who along with tens of thousands of other men and women that he called his companions, helped him to bring into existence this most marvelous and miraculous period in human history.
Each one of these male and female Companions – Sahaabah Kiraam as they are called – was a marvel and miracle of human greatness in his or her own right.
They were a most amazing group of people, mostly born and bred in the burning sands and life-giving oases of Arabia, most of them without much formal education or training of any kind except what the trackless deserts and its many challenges had to teach them. There is no better way to describe them except as warrior-saints.
They were warriors by day and saints and monks by night.
Their days they spent battling all kinds of tyrants and bad people in an effort to establish peace, liberty, equality and justice for all people, while their nights they spent in tearful prayers, penance and prostration before God with the greatest devotion and humility.
They were, thus, the most perfect examples of warrior-saints that this world has ever witnessed.
And they did whatever they did with the greatest sense of honour, decency, fairness, justice, integrity, truthfulness, kindness and compassion.
While nations and societies of the world all have their own special cohorts of people that they proudly refer to as the greatest generation, which may be true of those particular nations and societies, and of those particular generations and cohorts, the companions of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, were absolutely and without a doubt the greatest generation for all of humanity for all time past and present.
For all time to come, all other human beings will be judged in their greatness, as well as in their goodness, both as individuals and groups, in comparison to these most wonderful human beings, and this greatest human generation, that God Almighty’s mercy and love produced as one of his living miracles on earth: the noble companions of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
Individually as well as collectively, they were and would forever remain the touchstone of human excellence no matter how it is measured.
GOD’S KINGDOM ON EARTH
The result was that they constructed with their own hands, right here on earth, God’s Kingdom in this world.
The society, the government, the culture and the way of life Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, and his noble companions created in the city-state of Madinah in the Seventh Century lasted, in near-pristine purity, for nearly 50 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
And it is the closest thing that this world has ever come to an example of human perfection on earth. It was as perfect a reflection of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is possible for human beings to have while still on this side of their graves.
It was a repeat in a number of ways, thousands of years later, of the divine kingdoms of David and Solomon, just as it was also a fulfillment in real life of how pious and God-fearing Hindus hope and pine for the mythical ideal of Ram Rajya.
This was a society in which right was might, no questions asked. In this society, the meek were mighty if truth and justice were with them and the mighty were meek if truth and justice were against them.
This was a government of laws based on the consent and full participation of the citizenry that enforced the rights of every citizen without fear or favor. At the same time, it was a culture in which truth, honesty and integrity were the reigning currency and in which service, neighborliness, charity and compassion carried the day.
Over and above all, these were times in which human beings loved and feared God more than they loved or feared anyone or anything else; in which everyone in society was everyone else’s keeper and brother and sister; in which the divine message of the Qur’an was the supreme law of the land, untrammeled by the whims, desires or personal interests of the rich, the powerful and the well-connected.
This was an unparalleled period in history in which human beings were all treated as equals regardless of race, class, wealth, social connections or gender; in which the age-old shackles and chains that enslaved women and relegated them to second-class if not subhuman status were finally removed; in which heaven smiled and showered its blessings and bounties upon earth; and in which peace and prosperity, safety and security ruled the realm.
That is the society, the culture and the times the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, and his most noble companions built right here on earth, and that is the social and political order – and the government and the administration – they put in place1400 years ago, during the Seventh Christian Century, using the Qur’an as their law and the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, as their teacher, mentor, friend, leader and guide.