Islam

Below is a draft of somethings that came in to my mind rushing. Read it today after a long time. This is a rough draft that I want to make into several articles that are based on understanding threats that Islam faces today and their possible solutions. It would be of great help if you please share your thoughts, suggestions, critics and any resources here.
I finally found my muse in the article I just read by Robert and an article written by khawaja ahsan-ul-haq and a reheard lecture of Dr. Asad Zaman.
Economics is talked about like there is nothing else matters. What any country country needs to prosper is a healthy growth rate of GDP, a well accumulated pool of foreign reserves and a peaceful environment to sustain this development. Any country that needs to cater the rampant corruption or that needs to take care of governance has to yield to the conclusion that economic growth means everything for mankind and all else stays behind. Some might say this out of their empathy and pity for the poor and they would say ‘roti k bgair insaan khuda ko yaad nhi kr skta’. This is the zeitgeist of modern world that Islam is in contrast with in totality.
To analyze this argument we need to delve into what ideology rules the modern man and what is it that nature actually calls on man to do. Simply put, a duel between the modern ideology and the ideology of Islam. The economy of today rests on consumerism. The idea of eat, drink and enjoy. The idea that there is no higher purpose of humans as they, are, a mere accident and there is nothing other than what they can feel through their five senses. There is no soul and there is no afterlife. There is no morality except of what is offensive to any other human being. The idea that religion is a very personal matter and no one can tell anybody to believe in anything one doesn’t want to believe in. That everyone has the right of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The idea that everything primitive is bad and everything new is good.
The idea that happiness is something that resides in the material world and there is no spiritual side to it. That man can himself be the master of his own destiny and can conceive universal human values, while science can develop a methodology probabilistic or deterministic that would eventually explain everything and anything there is in the universe. The idea that women are equally obliged to earn and there are no limits to what they can do. There is no room to think of a selfless act in this world as people are essentially selfish. The idea that world is in chaos and that ‘might is always right’ and so is the majority of people.
These ideas represent a specific class of people that is rapidly growing in the world and in fact they are growing at a rate that is faster today, even, from the spread of Islam. These atheistic and secular ideas rule today and Islam addresses these issues in a very balanced and wholesome manner. It takes into account the nature of lust and tells us to not be spendthrift. It takes into account the needs of humans like food but tells us to be modest. It tells us to control ourselves. It is not void of any aim, it gives a higher perception of the creation of humans and directs humans to spread peace by making people believe in oneness of Allah and takes away from humans the burden of making laws that they could never perfect without what has been revealed divinely. The idea that man will ever reach to the conception of these universal laws that could eventually help prevail peace without taking into account the divinely is impossible, because evil is always there and it will always conspire against good, no matter what.
Islam gives a purpose to the creation of humans that they are created for nothing except to please Allah through actions that are higher in ranks in eyes of Allah. Islam guides humans to a unity that nothing else could ever create between humans. It opens the bounties of Allah through which everybody could quench their thirst on earth. It guides of fairness in dealings. It tells to be honest and to be truthful. It tells to leave no stone unturned to help your neighbors and fellow humans. It tells all this not to have more customer satisfaction but to succeed in the hereafter. It creates inside humans the fear of biblical pursuits.
It takes off fear from people of everything except their creator. It frees them of worries of building their lifestyle and of building homes, and owning clothes that they might never wear. It dresses women in modesty of being the ones who could standby in their homes as the protectors of the future generations and to instill character in them for a brighter and a more harmonious future.
Revivalists of Islam always point to the fact that we have forgotten what we have and are blindly following West in everything that they have including education, development and science. There are many things that we could consider to better our society that does not involve ideologies of the West. It is very simple to say but hard to implement but I want to say it and will not hold back. We need to see the threats first that are today being faced by Muslims and Islam all over the world and then to come up with the solutions that are completely indigenous to Islam and Muslims.
After we have seen the threats we could move on to find their solutions. According to me the biggest threat to Muslims is ignorance. The second threat is their massacre that is happening in different parts of the world. The third is the absence of will to act. The fourth is the absence of unity. The fifth is the incapacity of there being able to support themselves economically.
The ignorance has multiple levels and is the most dangerous threat for Muslims. We don’t know our religion, our history, our purpose, our role in today’s world, the complete ignorance of the hidden motives that west has, the ignorance of understanding what is happening in the world and who is who really.
The solution is to think of a society where Islamic principles are implemented in their purest form. Then we have to see what kind of needs would come about and how would we have to cater these needs. In this way we could glimpse of what is necessary and what needs to be done.

Magnum Opus

Chirping of hummingbirds, indefinable boundaries of blue sky, that first drop of rain in summer, those cold evenings in winter, explicit beauty in aromatic springs, those grey leaves in autumn, that bliss of coldness in scenic valleys, soothing waters of the streams, those indefinite sands in deserts, fires, floods, lightening, auroras, are an integrate part of the Grandeur of our Creator.
Those warm tears sprinkling from the eyes of a son at her mother’s demise, those merry moments of one’s prestige, those gutty feelings of doing things for the first time, that unconditional love of father for his child, that innocent look on novel face of a juvenile little girl, love, dedication, sacrifice and satisfaction, serenity, joy and felicity, dignity and morality, rage in frustration, confusion in turmoil, and fear of unknown also reflect mastery of the Sustainer. But there is a line that divides God’s Creations; the ones with brains and the ones with not.
In the vastness of this mighty picturesque of universe, we are like a tiny speck of sand in the ocean. But it is us who can think and choose and pacify or activate things. No other creation can have notions or intuitions. They don’t have the burden of sacrificing. They don’t feel happiness. They don’t break down or hang over. They don’t have to repay their debts. They don’t have to invent or to discover. They don’t have to repent or be sincere in any relationship. They don’t question other’s sentiments.
So, these are the most exuberant, vivacious and convoluted creation of our God. That eats, sleeps, and has kids as well. Albeit, it is the only creation with wisdom and soul, it still culminates qualities of many of other creations of God; rage is like a burning fire, love is like a bird in flight, care is like soft whisper of the wind, sacrifice is like a seed that buries beneath the earth, lust is like a vicious ravenous tiger; ambition like an eagle souring above all other.
It is in fact a higher form of creation that God has created and it has a purpose, similar to other creations, but with a mortal physical being. It seems like every other creation is made for us; humans. Rains for crops, animals for food, iron to build, fuel to run our engines on, and what not have we used for our benefit? We still continue our legacy of discovering new elements and utilizing them in a better way. But yes it is us who have the burden of choice that we have to make in every single passing moment of our lives.
After decades of development and persistence what we have discovered is that we live on 1 of the 170 billion galaxies and we exist in a solar system with a star that is 1 in 300 billion; such little is our existence in contrast to the Magnum Opus of our creator.
We have become arrogant of the little knowledge we have acquired through the course of history and in our arrogance we have renounced God. We have dejected His existence. And we aspire to be the ‘commander of our own destiny’. So petty is our presence in the vastness of this universe and still we stand up to God, while actually we cannot. This aura of our race is in fact also a creation of Allah.
It is a dire need for us to understand our place in the grand scheme of Allah who is the Almighty. There is no running away from what He has decided for us. But it is our choices that result in the projection of our destiny. The peace inside of us can only be achieved if we embrace our destiny. It is the need of our conscience to understand our place in this magnum opera of our creator without which we will not be able to bring our rightful place and purpose to fruition.
We are cynical about the good that is left in us. We no more have time for others. We are promulgating macabre vices of our kind and our higher and once inveterate qualities have faded into the looming darkness of liberty; Liberty that extracts every possible characteristic innate in humans, creating chaos if not tamed by shackles of our conscience and moralities. It is this inner captivity of one’s self that can evolve into a beautiful amalgam of diversity in harmony amongst each other that can result in peace and serenity of every one on this planet. That can solve our gravest problems of today like these economic depressions, strategic relations of nations, world wars, indecency, and vanishing values. It can give us the solution to the place of women in society. It can outline the true human rights and can give voice to the unheard.
“

He causes the night to enter the day, and He causes the day to enter the night and has subjected the sun and the moon - each running [its course] for a specified term. That is Allah, your Lord; to Him belongs sovereignty. And those whom you invoke other than Him do not possess [as much as] the membrane of a date seed.

[Quran 35:13]

Infliction!

Infliction
In January,2010, Professor Mubashar the Vice Chancellor of UHS said while delivering a lecture on ‘suicide prevention’ that in Pakistan approximately one million people commit suicide every year. “This represents one death every minute, almost 3,000 deaths every day, and one suicide attempt every three seconds.”, and also he said that the suicide rates have increased by 60 percent worldwide over last half century, while suicide has been in the top 10 causes of death in every country. This is only the ecstasy of infliction, the obsession rates of infliction are far from imagination.
Everybody is in a state of war with everyone, against every one. Starting from individuals to the nations everybody is involved in inflicting pain and distress on each other. Whether it is the imperialistic wars, or the egoistic approach of individuals towards life, we see outrage and menace in people throughout. Being practiced by every group of individuals and races without any discrimination; infliction of pain, negligence, abuse, hatred and wickedness is now a very common and every day spectacle of one’s life in the present age of modernization.
Some things are there that we do knowingly and some we do unconsciously, today we practice infliction obliviously. In our heedlessness we inflict suffering to the whole of humanity by not doing something for it, by not acting for a change, by not doing in favor of human souls, by procrastinating everything important to mankind and doing everything that is just for the material well being of one’s own self. In serenity and peace of some, there is distress and havoc for others. Enjoying lotteries in Las Vegas or Dubai while nearly 11% of the world’s population lives on less than 1$ a day. Some are enjoying a tan in summer on beaches while people are being bombarded with bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Corn, wheat and rice is being used to fuel up the exclusive rides while people are dying of hunger in Somalia and Liberia, some are living in castles and homes that are worth billions while people are being dragged out and looted from their houses, the only heaven on earth. Enjoying your success in McDonald’s while many have slept without food. Leading a luxurious life is certainly not possible in this world without being ignorant of what is happening around in the world. This is the infliction, caused by some, that, when taken to an extreme level causes people to dispose off their lives by their very own hands, this makes them to cut and bleed themselves to relieve and weed out the vicious memories and experiences they had in their lives due to this very unbalanced life of so-called modern world.
‘Survival of the fittest’ is now a common saying and this itself represents infliction of pain and suffering for those who are not ‘fittest’. And without asking thyself, people are beginning to question God. This evolution of human fabric has left us to stop and ponder over our sentiments, actions and logic. ‘Rethinking the future’ is a phrase that is being associated with a ‘greener tomorrow’, while the need is to rethink and reshape the entire purpose of perseverance of humanity as a whole. This heedlessness is the strongest infliction of everything bad that is happening in this world. Starting from the individual and spanning over the nations, from the very minute abuses and fights to the severe words of egoism and individualism, humanity, standing at the brink of destruction, moving towards the third or maybe the fourth world war, captivated by corporatocracy and private enterprise, is in the tentacles of infliction being borne by every person without knowing, is declining without question until or unless humans don’t stop to ‘rethink the future’.
I heard about a suicide of a soldier who killed himself because he couldn’t manage to fulfill the queued and enormous desires of his mother who wanted him to send her money for the dowry of her sister and other unending desires of his family. Economic pressure, poverty, discrimination and absence of law are the common reasons of suicides. After hearing about a suicide, one thing that comes into the minds of people is that there must be an economic pressure on that person which compelled him to kill himself. The unequal distribution of wealth is causing the loss of lives in the whole of the world. And every individual whether knowingly or unknowingly is contributing in this racism of wealth and personal gain.
Without caring for anybody because of your progress and neglecting the ones close to you and being unable to understand and comprehend them is the root of the infliction that causes mass wickedness and mischief. This when exaggerated becomes the face of the society which reflects utilitarianism and Marxism. In its very basic, these ideologies inflict pain and loss to a certain group of people while giving a bounty of privileges to others. This is natural for the later group to experience infliction of pain, anxiety and depression. If and only if there is a sound machinery of judicial system in place and accounts for the ways of earning of the elite and stops them from exploiting the poor, it is possible for the society to move on with both the groups side by side.
“We often do not know why we do what we do”
This question must be answered by everyone while doing or thinking anything in his life. Spending 2,3 hours in watching movies, or spending a whole bunch of time on the networking sites, we must stop and ponder about the purpose of our actions. Have we thought about it that our actions might be hurting someone, our vain actions, that may have become one of our attributes. This confusion has led us to the loss of many hearts and minds of very talented people around us, who might have done important contributions to human knowledge and who might have brought important things to notice for humans. If we would just have given them a buck up of whatever they are interested in and had taken an interest in their aspirations, their fate might have been different. This is not only a spectacle experienced by me. Instead it is our common experience that people don’t appreciate others, even the virtuous ones who do something good. This behavior injects infliction of negligence in people who are not self motivated and who are not strong in their belief of what they are doing.
So, working for the world where ‘survival of every one’ is the slogan and where everybody enjoys tranquility without any classification, striving for good and standing against the wicked is a common practice, where removing differences and practicing patience is the daily meditation of everyone, is indeed required to root out infliction in all of its horrific forms. We must think and act to root out this infliction which must not be the heritage of the generations to come, where, ‘every body will be in peace with everyone for everyone’ InshaAllah!