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Dear friend,
Assalamo Alaikum,
The House of Islam is at a turning point today.
Muslims around the world are asking themselves:
should they reinvent in the new situation
or else, allow themselves to perish on the
margins of history? As for this sharp-edged
vital question, the Muslim mind is alarmingly
confused.
Those aware of our centuries long history
can rightly point out that the danger was
not new though unique it may be, that earlier
too we had grappled with such situations of
gloom. Confronted yet again with a major crisis,
probably the fifth one in our history - the
earlier four being; the civil strife leading
to the death of the third Caliph, the sack
of Abbasid Baghdad, the fall of Grenada, and
the termination of the Ottoman Caliphate -
we however appear to be a lot devoid of a
vision for the future. The psychological fall
out of 'war on terror', the direct occupation
of Iraq, the colonization of Afghanistan,
the subjugation of Libya and Iran, the continued
humiliation of Pakistan and other Muslim nations
in the face of American imperialism and the
ever changing stance of our Ulema/ intellectuals
on issues of strategic importance have reinforced
the notion that our intellectual crisis is
more acute and religious thought more muddled
than what meet the eye. In fact, we do not
know where do we go from here?
Our waywardness is a logical outcome of our
self-engineered dismissal from the seat of
authority and guidance, the God-ordained status
of the chosen Ummah. The very first crisis
of our history, the civil strife leading to
a situation when center could not hold, eventually
set our caravan to a road to perpetual crises.
With the murder of Othman not only the political
authority was lost but the very 'spatial atmosphere'
of Revelation was sent to exile in which Muslims
of the first generation breathed. Since then
onward we Muslims have been journeying centrifugally
away from the pure revelatory weltanschauung.
The message of Islam, that sharp-edged revolutionary
dicta of human dignity and liberation that
once had taken the world by storm was no longer
that attractive owing to the new Muslim colour
it had acquired. Confronted with technological
prowess of western imperialism, today when
we desperately need, more than ever before,
that sharp-edged revolutionary dicta, the
mesmerizing nay, rather sublime power of revelation,
we find it transformed into a set of lifeless
rituals. Having been assigned to lead the
history till the end of time, we have yet
to realize in full that our crisis is of a
cosmic dimension. The world without us is
doomed to fail. But before we go ahead to
reinstate ourselves once again in the seat
of leadership and guidance we need to set
our own house in order, or so to say, rediscover
the divine light of revelation that once had
shown our way.
The movement for Islamic Awakening so vociferously
launched in the latter half of the twentieth
century and the general mood of jubilation
that marked the fifteenth century Hijra celebrations
made us believe as if a new dawn was imminent.
The emergence of pan-Islamic forums in the
heartland of Islam further strengthened the
belief that a future Muslim Common Wealth
can set our caravan to the road to glory.
The 1979 revolution in Iran, the expulsion
of the Red Army from Afghanistan followed
by the dismantlement of the 'Evil Empire'
and the miraculous recovery of Central Asian
Muslim states were yet other factors that
contributed to our delusion. Amidst hectic
political developments we conveniently ignored
the fact that our ideological candor had waned,
that our return to the seat of authority and
guidance would be a mere dream without mending
our ideological fabric, without recapturing
the essence of revelation. Even those who
considered it necessary to revive the Ummah
on religious grounds, they too, were caught
up in outer manifestations or at most ended
in the implementation of a fiqhi worldview
of the bygone days. Neither the alien Common
Wealth type model nor a fiqhi Islam can be
a substitute for divine revelation that alone
has the potential to transform the Ummah into
one unit, the bunyanum marsoos, and the vanguard
for the unity of mankind. The fiqhi mind is
essentially divisive. It likens to send more
people out of the Islamic fold than welcoming
them inside it. The full-scale display of
fiqhi Islam, or fatawaic thinking, not only
put the Islamic awakening to a halt, it also
pushed us to a head-on collision with other
faith groups and civilizational models. The
newly founded Islamic centers in western cities
remained at their best the protected forts
of sectarian strife representing more of the
founding sect than the universal message of
Islam. The broad based Qur'anic dicta of kalimatun
sawaaun for forging alliance with other like-minded
nations found little support from those already
succumbed to sectarian thinking. The Muslims
presence in the West had offered us a unique
opportunity to take the 'revelation-revolution'
to western homes. But this wonderful opportunity
was conveniently lost amidst a plethora of
hairsplitting fiqhi questions aimed at establishing
cultural islands of traditional Islam. The
fiqhi mind has now brought us to such a pass
that despite our intense romantic hankering
for the revival of the House of Islam we find
ourselves trapped in a false dawn.
Caught in the imperial ambitions of Bush-Blair
nexus, today Muslims are vulnerable to any
label that one would like to throw upon them.
Having noticed that those fighting a survival
battle around the world are none other but
Muslims, many among us are asking if Islam
is yet another name for anarchy or mindless
terrorism? Even those actively busy in survival
struggle have strong doubts if this strategy
can eventually take us to the glory of a just
world order, the mission statement of Islam.
The fiqhi mind, trained to think in black
and white, in terminologies that capture the
social milieu of the Abbasid era, fail to
realize the complexity of the new situation
and its far-reaching impact on the Muslim
psyche. It is split not only into four parallel
perceptions but also into innumerable conflicting
reportage of mere historical import. Unless
it goes back to the pristine purity of revelation
it can only add to our woes by monopolizing
its perception, as it did, as the only authentic
version. If in the past Shia-Sunni dispute
and Hanfi-Shafei bloody civil wars caused
the fall of the Abbasid Empire, today too,
our internal strife is a constant source of
inspiration for our enemies. Our Ulema are
so rigidly trained to think in sectarian terms
that for them a universal identity of Islam
without a sectarian mooring is almost impossible
to comprehend. The Abrahamic model of Muslim
Haneef is a thing of the past.
Our dismissal cannot be taken as a mere internal
issue. It has put the entire human history
into a wayward mode. A frank, honest and passionate
discussion on the causes of our decline, then,
is the need of the hour. Instead of relying
on the wisdom of the dead souls or mindlessly
quoting from this scholar or that seer, the
time has come to apply our own minds, to look
into the Qur'an for a fresh guidance in our
time. Some might consider this idea abhorring
or almost a blasphemy to approach the Quran
afresh, without solely relying on the great
minds of the past. But those aware of the
Prophet's primary mission, so explicitly mentioned
in the Qur'an, to liberate human mind from
all kinds of colonial impulse - the asr wa
aghlaal - be it intellectual or otherwise,
will certainly appreciate this call. The Qur'an
does not confer on any person, whosoever it
may be, the sole right to interpret God's
word. In Qura'nic weltanschauung any attempt
to monopolize interpretative activities is
highly undesirable and amounts to polytheism.
The agency of Ahbar wa Rahban is simply unacceptable.
Anyone attempting to intercept God's message
or for that matter come in between God and
man is condemnable, be he called a Rabbi,
an Ahbaar, a Pope, a Maulvi or a Shaikh. No
one is authorized to decide whose faith is
valid or who can be taken as an authentic
Muslim. Leave Muslims alone, the Qur'an warns
us of falling in this evil trap, ever. It's
God's prerogative, we are told: innaAllah
yafselo bainahum yaum al Qiyamah.
As stated earlier, our dismissal has caused
the greatest crisis of all time. To redress
the situation it is imperative to think what
shall we do now? How to do it? Who should
do it? And when? To address these and many
more such vital questions of our time we have
decided to establish a global forum of thinking
Muslims. Taking advantage of the Internet,
which has rendered geographical boundaries
meaningless, we have decided to launch a bi-monthly
international journal exclusively devoted
to these issues. The journal will be mainly
in English with simultaneous translations
of important articles into Urdu, Arabic and
other languages. The language should not be
a barrier for participation in this greatest
ever debate in human history.
Please accept our sincere invitation to contribute
to this global forum of future Islam.
May Allah shower His blessings on us all.
Amen!
Your brother,
Rashid Shaz
Editor
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