IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE BENEFICENT, THE MERCIFUL

 

MUSLIM UMMAH -THE FOCUS POINTS OF ITS DECADANCE

 

[Shamim A Siddiqi, New York]

 

Amongst every five humans, there is one Muslim walking on the surface of this earth. In fifty-six countries around the world, Muslims are in dominant position. But Allah’s Deen is nowhere the law of the land. Human and material resources are in abundance in these countries but they are not used to get their countries modernized. Most of the strategic waters of the world’s sea roots are under their control but they are of no “strategic” use to them. Valuable minerals including oil and gas deposits are available to these countries but they are harnessed and used by others. In spite of these basic resources, Muslims have no say in the affairs of the world. They are treated by their adversaries like pieces of “garbage”. The cheapest thing on the surface of this earth is the blood of Muslims. It is being shed in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, Bharat, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places in Asia, Europe, Africa and America. Social, economic and political “slavery”, one way or the other, is rampant somewhere in disguise and somewhere openly at almost all places in the name of “enlightenment”, “advancement”, “liberalism”  liberation and “gender-gap”  promotion. Muslims are fast loosing their identity as Ummah that stands only for justice and peace and guarantees the rights of the oppressed, the down trodden and the have-nots.      

 

Many a times this question occurred to my mind as well in the minds of many other Muslims around the world as why it is so. What is cause or the causes of a continuous decadence and down fall of the Muslim Ummah? Where we are lacking and what we could not do so far to put the “fall” in the reverse gear. After giving a thoughtful consideration of the issues at stake, I have worked out the following points of focus. If they are removed and the rebuilding process is started, there is every possibility that we can turn the table of decadence and humiliation towards progress, recognition, self-respect with values that are loved and promoted by all the Abrahamic faiths in the body politics of Muslim societies.   

They can be briefly summarized as follows:

 

1. In the bipolar age of American domination in the name of “war against terrorism”, constant threat of “preemptive” attack against Muslim lands and ever-increasing Euro-American “greed” for oil and gas fields, the No 1 “culprit” is Bush-Blair-Sheron axis that has entrapped Gen. Musharraf, the Sheikhs of ME and many other despotic and undemocratic rulers of the Muslim world. They all are playing in their hands like the fools of the first water. It is a menacing point of focus and the Muslim Ummah has to get rid of it through a united stand against the hegemony of the modern-age Czarists and Zionists.

 

2.  No 2 “culprit” is the opportunist leadership of Muslim Ummah that includes secular parties, political factions, secular media and the self-seeker businessmen that are opposing the emergence of Islam as a political identity throughout the Muslim world.

 

3.  No. 3 “culprits” are the Muslim masses and their continuously adopting negative or dead attitude towards Islam and its system. They are just Muslim in name only. They “cry” for Islam but at the time of voting, they cast their votes in favor of the secular parties in their respective countries. They are divided into different innumerable sects, unfortunately, have left the Qur’an behind and their love for Rasulullah (S) is marginalized.

 

4.  No 4 “culprits” are the people at the helm of affairs in the Muslim world as a whole. They look to London, Washington and UNO for guidance not to Allah and His Book of Guidance, the Qur'an and the Seerah of Rasulullah (S). They are the hypocrites, claiming to be Muslims but behaving, in the words of the Qur’an like “Zalemeen”, “Kafireen” and “Faseqeen [Al-Maida: 44, 45 & 47]

 

5.  No 5 “culprit” is the Muslim “intelligentsia”, the so-called educated people who claim vociferously that they are the "masters" of Islam whereas, in fact, they are suffering mostly from the evil designs of modern Jahiliyah [ignorance], with inferiority complex about Islam and the Islamic system of life. Truly speaking, they want to change or modernize Islam but not to change themselves as Allah ordains.

 

6. The main cause of all these evils is that we do not have a trusted leadership in the Muslim world that could unite the Ummah around the Qur'an and the one that we have is not doing its job "properly" and effectively. I worked with late Brother Salahuddin of Takbeer, and Hakim Mohammad Sayeed of Hamdard Dawakhana to tour the Muslim world, meet the Muslim leadership of each country and organize them on one platform. They agreed and took some initiative but unfortunately, both were killed by the vested interests within a year in 1994-95 in Karachi.

 

7.  No 7 point of focus is the most important and crucial one. Our job is not to find fault with the Muslim leadership but to strengthen their hands and reform them both from inside and outside by being an integral part of it. Mere criticism, as very often people do will do no good, rather, it will create frustration in Muslim masses and we must avoid it, if we are really sincere to Islam and Muslims, The MMA in Pakistan has put a glaring model example in this respect by uniting the Islamic party’s one platform and under one banner. If other countries follow suit, it would open a new era of unification process of Ummah and fulfill the dream that I envisioned a decade ago. The suffocating environment that is being created against Muslim Ummah in today’s bipolar world of Bush-Blair-Sharon axis may pave the way for the Ummah to rise and start marching towards its revival in the aftermath of their blunders committed first in  Afghanistan and then in Iraq 

 

Shamim A Siddiqi                                                                             

April 25, 2004