Just get hold of a list of all the places where people from around the world are sent to be tortured when they are taken prisoner in so many of the so-called wars or when they are kidnapped from their homes or streets on one charge or another, and you will begin to get a sense of what I am talking about.
Often, it is people with Muslim names and backgrounds that are set to catch Muslims and keep them in serfdom and bondage and deny them their lawful Islamic and human rights, liberties and dignities.
Muslim Problems: Muslims’ Own Doing
So, there is little surprise if Muslims in much of the world today live in bondage and fear, much of which, they must understand, is of their own doing. Yes, you can and should always blame the Devil for your own shortcomings and failures of omission and commission. It is a given, for in the lives of human beings, both Muslims and non-Muslims, the Devil is always the default.
Yes, there are a lot of non-Muslims who wish Muslims ill and have seldom passed up an opportunity to rob them of their wealth and power. But that is their job in a sense: to fight for their own self-interest and target those who they see as a threat to them.
So, from that point of view, the Muslims can continue to blame any or all of the following for everything that went wrong with them without undertaking any serious analysis of the causes and effects of their own life and without taking any responsibility for their own role in their own decline and downfall. Here is a rich list of enemies to blame, but this list is only a partial one: Crusades; Colonialism; Imperialism; Hindu Chauvinism; America; Israel.
I am not denying that any or all of these have been a source of trouble for Muslims in the past or happen to be so in the present. What I am saying is that Muslims seem to be remarkably incapable of analyzing, understanding and coming to terms with the role they themselves played in relation to any or all of these presumed sources of their trouble.
Also, Muslims conveniently forget that they were given a broad immunity of sorts against total domination or annihilation from external sources such as non-Muslims. It is the Muslims themselves against whom they were supposed to be vigilant.
Some Real Threats Facing Muslims
From that point of view, among the real internal threats Muslims would face in the world would be the following:
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Muslims’ own problems of faith or Iman in its broadest sense and with all its theoretical and practical implications and underpinnings.
That includes the kind of beliefs Muslims hold with regard to God, the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, Day of Judgment, the angels, heaven, hell and everything else of that kind. At the same time, it also includes their beliefs with regard to this world as well as with regard to their own role in this world.
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Muslims’ own problems of character or ‘Amal in all its various individual and collective dimensions.
By this I not only mean their Siyaam and Salaah, Hajj and Zakaat, but also the full gamut of their Akhlaq and Mu’aamalaat. That means how Muslims view and treat everything and everyone in this world: Muslim, non-Muslim, human, animal, plant, water, environment, everything.
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Muslims’ own lack of education in its most comprehensive sense looked at from a worldly (Dunya) as well as from other-worldly (Aakhirah) point of view.
On the one hand, that means Muslims’ knowledge of the Qur’an; the Hadith; and all else of that nature. On the other hand, it means the educational level of Muslims in the sciences, arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering and technology and in all other branches of knowledge and expertise as currently understood and available and as the future brings.
Education in Islam means all of the above and more. And to talk of “Islamic” knowledge and education without reference to a full formal or informal understanding the world in which Islam is supposed to work and operate is to utter empty words that have no meaning. That means, those of us who make claims of expertise on Islam, must at the same time also be experts on the world.
One of the major reasons for the decline of Muslims – and for the troubles of the world in general – is the fact that we separated the knowledge of “Islam” from the knowledge of the real world.
Missing Organization and Management from Muslim Societies
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Muslims’ own lack of organization and management at different levels from their own personal and family affairs to the affairs of their Mohallahs, Masaajid, schools, colleges, universities, other organizations, communities, governments, institutions, businesses and societies.
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Muslims’ own lack of honest, competent, enlightened and genuinely elected and truly accountable leadership in all walks and at all levels of life and society.
Islam recognizes only one kind of leadership: the one that Muslims themselves put in place by their own free will and choice. In other words a duly and properly elected leadership that is fully and continually accountable to the electorate. Muslims of course said goodbye to that kind of leadership a long time ago and replaced it with various forms of personal, military, feudal and dynastic tyrannies and dictatorships.
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Muslims’ own lack of proper knowledge, understanding and skills in all worldly and other-worldly matters at a number of different levels. A people whose mother’s milk was “Read!” have now become a people in whose midst literacy, knowledge and education are serious problems.
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Muslims’ own lack of proper understanding of Islam on the one hand as well as of the world on the other hand and their lack of ability to fuse the two together correctly and intelligently in a fully successful and functional whole.
