Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, / Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
To a world darkened by lies and deceit, a loving God Almighty raised up a nation of believers conceived in truth and dedicated to the proposition that they will live and die by truth and nothing but truth.
Haqq is what God Almighty called it in the Qur’an. He also called it Sidq. Furthermore, God calls himself The Truth – Al Haqq.
This was a nation of believers. That is what he calls them in the Qur’an: Believers. For, their belief was self-evident and their commitment clear.
And God Almighty called them the best nation in the world (Khair Ummat): for who they were and for what they did – for what they were raised up and trained to do. For what their mission was in life: telling people to do the right and the good thing and telling them not to do the wrong and the bad thing.
And it was their mission and purpose in life to show people, through their individual and collective example, how to do the right and good thing. Just as it was also their purpose and mission in life to set up all kinds of economic, social and political institutional structures and arrangements to make it possible for people to do the things that were right and good.
So Muslims were raised up and sent into this world as the People of Truth. And they were told to live in this world as the Good People.
That means Muslims were also raised up as a free people.
For, in the human equation, truth and freedom are inseparable. A slave people can only watch truth from a distance, while a free people embody it in their everyday word and deed.
And many Muslims continued on this path of truth. For generations on end. The world came to see and know them as the People of Truth. As the Good People. The world over.
Wherever these people went, they came to be known as upright, honest, truthful and honourable people.
That is the kind of people Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, trained them to be. He hand-moulded them to be that. One at a time.
He himself was an embodiment of truth. Even his enemies called him As-Saadiq, Al-Ameen.
Those Arabic words meant truthful and trustworthy: Truthful in Speech and Trustworthy in Character.
How many of you in India, for example, have heard a non-Muslim say to a Muslim things like: “How can you tell a lie like this? You are a Muslim!”
But as time passed, the Muslim character took a beating. Lust for wealth and power corroded the spiritual arteries of many Muslims diluting the Muslim people’s legendary commitment to truth and uprightness.
MUSLIMS AND THE CHARACTER ISSUE
In a cyclical process of cause and effect, the weakness of character in the Muslim people led to their military defeat at the hands of their enemies. That in turn led to their political and economic subjugation, which further eroded the core of their character and infused it with all the flaws that a slave people are heir to.
As a result, many Muslims, from being a people of truth, ended up becoming a people of lies. From a people of action they became a people of excuses, rationalizations and cover-ups. From being a solution to the problems plaguing God’s earth, they themselves became part of those problems.
And the world of God Almighty pretty much reverted to the deep darkness of lies and deceit and corruption – Fasaad, as the Qur’an calls it – as it used to be before Islam rescued it from that plight.
Latter-day well-wishers of the Muslim people, like the famous Indian poet Iqbal, sang in the wilderness about deteriorating Muslim character. “Relearn the lessons of truth!” they admonished the Muslims, the erstwhile people of truth.
But Muslims heard the cry, shrugged and went on.
A flawed character and a darkened soul is never comfortable in the glare of truth. A body pampered by greed and rendered wretched by lust cannot endure truth, honesty and integrity any more than the mythical vampires of Transylvania can endure sunlight.
Whereas Muslims as a free and truthful people used Islam as a dynamic and comprehensive way of life, and invited the whole world to join them in the joy and excitement of being Muslim, many latter-day Muslims as a degenerate people of lies and deception turned Islam into a set of empty rituals and dogmas.
This helped many of them to cover up their guilt, dull their conscience and keep up the fraud of pretending to be Muslim while their entire individual and collective lifestyle negated that claim at every step.
When entire nations and societies ensnare themselves in a web of lies, fabrications and cover-ups, then it does not matter how you characterise them. Islamic these actions and their perpetrators are not, if the word Islam has any meaning at all. All the perfumes of Arabia, as Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth says, will not sweeten their little hands.
THE ENEMY WITHIN
Part of this culture of lies and deception many Muslims built in more recent times are these Muslim Black Sites.
The world generally calls them the CIA Black Sites or some similar name. It makes many Muslims furious: to hear that the hated CIA has built black sites around the world in which to throw its mostly Muslim captives to be tortured and ill-treated.
But Muslim culture is not always a culture of knowledge and inquiry. And Muslims in general are not a people trained to think calmly and investigate and discuss things rationally.
And they have a leadership that is in many instances ignorant, ill-informed, selfish, backward and repressive. How many Muslim leaders in how many places have sold out to foreign powers and money is an open question.
And how many Muslim leaders have fallen victim to their own weaknesses of character and intellect is obvious for all to see.
But seeing requires having good eyesight. And in Islam, it requires having sharp minds and healthy hearts. And it requires being in possession of souls that are not blackened by a long history of dark deeds.
For, the Qur’an says most clearly and emphatically, it is the hearts that go blind, not the eyes.
So, the Muslims never asked and their leaders never told. The question as to who all are involved in the running of these deep, dark torture chambers around the world is never really addressed openly or brought to light by Muslims and their leadership.
I have tried to point out from time to time that Muslims have many enemies whom they should not overlook. It is obvious. And it is only logical and natural that it should be so.
But at the same time, I have suggested repeatedly, Muslims should also take a closer look at themselves: who they are and what they do. Muslims must carefully analyze and understand their own reality.
As someone said: We have seen the enemy, and a lot of times, it is us.
The Qur’an tells the Muslims to look to themselves to see what they have done wrong.
Here is the Qur’an: Wa maa asaabakum mim museebatin fa-bimaa kasabat aydeekum. Paraphrase: When a calamity befalls you, it is due to what you have done.
Here again is the Qur’an: …Qultum annaa haadhaa. Qul huwa min ‘indi anfusikum. Paraphrase: When a disaster befalls you, you say: How did this happen? Where did this come from?
Say: It is from yourselves. It is the result of what you have done. You brought it on yourselves.
Hadith gives Muslims immunity against being obliterated from outside, that is, by other nations, forces and societies of the world. But in the same Hadith Muslims are clearly warned that they could be their own worst enemy. If they are bent on destroying themselves, then God Almighty will simply allow them to do so and will not intervene.
He will simply replace an errant generation with a better one. Clean the stables and bring in new horses.
[Write to the author at Drsyedpasha@aol.com. Also visit www.IslamicSolutions.Com and Listen to Pasha Hour International.]