A Note on Our Literature
Dr. Pasha
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
For decades now, we have been working on writing.
And on speaking.
Using every opportunity Allah brought our way.
All along, our goal has been to create authentic literature on Islam, Muslims and the World, for new generations of Muslims -- and non-Muslims -- around the world in the late 20th Century and early 21st Century. And who knows for how long thereafter.
And do so using the written and spoken word -- but not pictures of any kind: still or video or film.
And do so in original English. And not in the form of second- and third-rate translations from this or that language that Muslims habitually used such as Urdu or something else. Or even Arabic for that matter.
The translations were almost invariably cumbersome, difficult -- and poorly done.
Reading them was torture -- may Allah bless and reward their authors -- and using them to educate the world was a challenge beyond normal human endurance.
We waited; and waited; and waited -- for good people to come along and fill this gaping void in Muslim life. And in the world.
But nothing happened.
So, we decided to do it ourselves. And here is what we decided.
1. As for as possible, use for our sources nothing but the Aayaat of the Qur'an: plain, simple, beautiful, eternal and unbelievably relevant, fresh and timely.
2. And, where necessary, the Hadith of Sayyidina Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, which we found much to our surprise and sadness we barely had the time, or the need, or the occasion to go to, given how self-sufficient and how all-embracing we found the Qur'an turned out to be.
3. And mainly focus on clarifying and explaining the immortal core concepts and practices of Islam and not allow ourselves to be distracted by all the ephemeral -- that is fleeting -- social, political issues of the day, except where we considered those issues to be of such universal and abiding relevance and pressing urgency that ignoring them would only come at the peril of causing confusion about the cardinal message of Islam itself.
When that happened -- when a really now-or-never important issue came along and we could not brush it aside with some silent rationalization in our own mind -- we decided to address that issue frontally -- our time and resources permitting of course.
For, not doing so would have amounted to turning our back on Allah's Deen. Worse still, it would have meant our betraying Islam.
The rise and fall of Ikhwan rule in Egypt during 2013 -- or something -- was one such issue. It was clearly the coming of Islam in our own time and place. It was something not too many Muslims would have expected in their most sanguine moments.
It was obvious for anyone to see -- talk about a Believer's ability to see things: Firaasah -- that Egyptian elections that put Dr. Muhammad Morsi of Ikhwan in power as the first democratically elected president in Egypt's 5000 years history, other than Sayyidina Umar, Uthman, Ali and Umar Bin Abdul Aziz, were the Badr of our time.
Ignoring it would have meant running away from the Battle of Badr. It would have meant the end of our Islam -- at least in our own eyes.
So we tried to write about the situation in Egypt -- as much as we could: about the elections; about the peril facing the Ikhwan and Islam and Muslims in Egypt; and about one or two other small related matters.
But we could not bring ourselves to name names, even though we talked about the role of Mufti of Egypt Gomah and the Director of Azhar Tayeb in destroying Islam and Ikhwan in Egypt. And we alluded rather elliptically to the role of Muslim governments and societies and leaders in putting an end to this latter-day Islam through their wealth and intrigue.
But we failed -- utterly and miserably so -- in identifying by name some of the worst culprits among them, such as what passes by the bizarre name of Saudi Arabia -- who names a whole country after their own father and grandfather? -- and Emirates, which has become a den of thieves and a citadel of all kinds of anti-Islamic forces in today's world. Those who see this failing on our part as a sign of our weak Iman -- and our downright hypocrisy and Nifaq -- will not be too far off the mark. But fail we did.
So, time goes on. Islam came and did its thing. And Muslims did their thing: Muslims Killed Islam!
Even though Islam never dies and nothing can kill it.
And yet, Muslims killed Islam! They did everything in their power to do so.
And everyone played a role and drove a nail in the coffin. Regardless of whether the role we all played was large or small, prominent or subtle. But we all colluded in putting an end to Islam in Egypt -- and thereby around the world. Even if our collusion and nail-driving took only the form of silence.
But that silence was deadly, culpable and criminal.
And the point is the Muslims will pay a price for their culpability in killing the Ikhwan -- and Islam. And most likely they will do so for a long time.
For, the minimum expectation Allah has from the Believers is that they will speak the truth when they need to. They will look at the world as Shu-hadaa-a Alan Naas, and they will call things the way they see them. They will tell the truth -- plain and unvarnished.
Just like the Qur'an demands of them:
Qooloo Qawulan Sadeeda!
Paraphrase:
Speak the plain truth. Tell it the way it is.
So, that is what our literature is today: both written and spoken, both audio and print.
It is a feeble and very flawed attempt to fill what the world left empty:
Knowledge on Islam, Muslims and the world, in original English, using as far as we can only Qur'an and Hadith as our primary sources.
Aiming -- and hoping -- to bring back to the minds of the Muslims a degree of clarity with regard to some of the most essential and basic ideas, concepts and practices that Allah sent Islam into this world to impart.
END
