Businesses want to make profit. Associations and organizations serve specific organizational goals and membership interests.
Social clubs provide entertainment and good society.
Projects have purposes they want to accomplish, targets they strive to meet.
Islam is none of this. And yet it is all of these and more.
What Islam is really after is the hearts and minds -- and souls if you will -- of the people: every single individual male and female on this earth.
And Islam is a movement, because it starts with small roots on earth and grows to shoot its branches into the sky.
Asluhaa Thaabitun wa Far'uhaa Fissamaa'!
It seeks out individuals, not for what they can do for Islam -- call it Islamic Work -- but for what Islam can do for them.
And in return, Islam wants nothing from them.
Except, their soul of course, which Islam wants for Allah, and not for people to rule over and take advantage of.
Here is how Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, put it:
Qooloo Laa Ilaaha Illallah, Tuflihoo!
My paraphrase:
People, just say Laa Ilaaha Illallah, you will have all you want.
And this movement of Islam, generally starts out with a team of one, and then grows and gathers momentum by multiplying the individual -- the "archetype" if you want to call it that -- who is the initiator and the core of the movement.
That archetypal individual could be a Rasul, a Sahabi, or just about someone in our own time.
Basically, it is a person who starts the movement; invites people; trains them, by putting them through the twin processes of Tazkiyah and Ta'aleem; and then knits them into a team.
Basically, and in a manner of speaking, the efforts of the archetypal individual are focused on multiplying himself -- clones himself, if you want to use more modern diction.
The job of this team, whether it is a team of one or 100, then, is to take this movement of Islam forward -- to every home and heart that needs it, and which one does not?
This is how it was 1400 years ago. That is how it is today. And that is how it shall be 1000 years from today.
Qur'an:
Wa Lan Tajida Li-Sunnatillahi Tabdeela!
Paraphrase:
"Allah's ways never change."
That is why when people came to Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, offering him practically everything in the world, if he would only not use Islam as a movement, but more as a social or service effort and tool, he turned it all down, because it was their souls he was after, not their possessions or talent or services.
And what a glorious movement Islam is -- for precisely that reason.
For, while everyone wants the worldly wealth and things that you may have to offer, the archetypes inviting you to become part of the movement of Islam, want nothing from you.
All they want from you is you. And that too not for themselves, but for Allah!
Their message to you is: Turn to Allah, say Laa Ilaaha Illallah and see what happens.
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