Message to the Muslim World

by Omar Kandeel

Something is wrong. We Muslims are the weakest nation on earth. Muslims around the world are being killed, raped, tortured, stolen and humiliated. This is true in Palestine at the hands of the Jews, in Chechnya at the hands of the Russians, in Kashmir at the hands of the Indians. Not to mention Kosovo, Bosnia, Liberia, Nigeria Burma and China. Their only crime being that they are Muslim. Unfortunately Muslims also face wrath in supposedly Muslim countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Algeria and secular Turkey. Islamic parties that try to spread and establish Islam are fiercely fought in these countries (the Muslim Brotherhood is a famous example.) Individuals are unlawfully arrested and put in jail (especially in Egypt) just because they are true practicing Muslims. (1)

The majority of Muslims are also one of the most ignorant (if not the most ignorant) nations in the world. This is the case for the Muslims in what is known as the Middle East (2), in Asia and in Africa. The literacy rate in Africa for example is just around 50% in average. In Asia it reaches just around 40% (3). These are very low numbers in my opinion. These numbers also refer to the ability of simply reading and writing. Numbers concerning people getting proper and effective education would definitely be far less than these numbers.

Along with the ignorance the Muslims are also one of the poorest. Some Muslim countries have about 30% of their population below the poverty line in Africa and 35% in Asia (4). And again these are people below poverty line; which means that there are probably similar numbers who are not but still very poor.

Muslims have also been stripped of their free will. While Muslims all over the world demanded their countries to go to war against Israel, cut relationships with Israel and the United States, aid the Muslims in Chechnya, their regimes ignored their will and sometimes oppressed it through security forces that barbarically beat people and sometimes shot them during their demonstrations (5). And that is not a strange reality since the Muslims are ruled mostly by dictatorships where the people have no say and no freedoms. And even worse than that, these regimes follow policies that clearly indicate that they are puppet regimes to the Western Powers; namely the United States.

With all that in mind I can confidently proclaim that the Muslims are not doing well at all. This remarkable downfall has occurred in a number of stages. It all started with the abandoning of Islam. For example, the Umayyad dynasty, which started with the rule of Moawiya Ibn Aby-Sufyan, had a lot of tyrant rulers and governors like Al-Hajjaaj Ibn Yusuf Al-Thaqafy (who was the governor of Iraq.) Also the choosing of the caliphate since then stopped being by election by the Muslims, and instead became a royal system where the rule was inherited. This led to open struggles between different rulers in order to rise to the throne and overthrow and defeat rivals (6). The Ottoman Empire was no different. One of the founding principles of the Ottoman Empire was to spread Islam to the non-Muslim lands. Despite that they eventually pointed their guns towards the Muslim lands (although they were ruled by Muslims.) This is a clear sign of greed and political corruption.

The result of this is that a social revolution emerged that called for westernization and the abandoning of all the irrationalities of ‘traditions’ (i.e. Islam.) Women started to take off the hijab as a sign of "liberation of women" After all; hijab is an "old fashioned" lifestyle, and is a symbol of oppression against women (7). Polygamy became perceived as treason and a sin. Anyone who tries to be a good Muslim and follow the teachings of Islam is a strict, ignorant, narrow-minded terrorist (which is not strange since people have become ignorant of the Islamic teachings.) Indeed this is the image that is always portrayed in Arabic movies and soap operas (8). Furthermore, now there are loud and open calls all around the Muslim world to separate Religion from State, and thus not rule by the Quran and not rule by the law that God has decreed. All these are clear in the majority ‘Muslim’ societies today.

The main reason why I think people are abandoning Islam is because they don’t really know it. All the examples I have mentioned above show that fact. People clung into imitating the West and praise its achievements, but they forgot that that Western civilization has evolved from Islamic civilization. They used to live in darkness when we used to be in light. They used to come to our lands to take the light of knowledge from us. The difference between them and us is that we fell asleep and they took the knowledge from us and used it to their own advantage and built upon it and expanded it until they eventually became our masters. We must understand the true worth of our faith so as not to be repulsed from it. Islam invited people to worshiping Allah and Allah alone at a time when the whole world worshiped other than Allah. The Arabs worshiped idols from stone that they made themselves. The Persians worshiped fire. The Romans worshiped Jesus (PBUH) (9) and added aspects of their pagan civilization to the Message that Jesus (PBUH) delivered to them (10). Islam invited all these nations to rise from the darkness of enslavement and humiliation to creatures to the light of freedom and pride: freedom and pride of being enslaved to the Creator alone. Islam transformed the Arabs from ignorant, naked and barefooted barbarians into being the rulers of the world. Islam demonstrated tolerance and mercy that world hasn’t known. Some nations of different parts of the world (like Egypt and Syria) aided the Muslims against their own armies and helped the Muslims enter their countries and rule it. Non-Muslims had enormous faith in the Justice of Islam that they went to the Muslim courts to resolve their own disputes. The people of the countries that the Muslims ruled freely embraced Islam and continue to be Muslims to this day.

Allah has punished us for abandoning His righteous path. And we deserve such a punishment. It is time we wake up from our long sleep and realize the worth and preciousness of the extraordinary heritage that we have. It is time that we go back to reading the Quran and live by it rather than let dust cover it in our shelves, or simply decorate our homes or shops with it. It is time we realize that we have God’s Word and it is inappropriate to neglect it, for who can afford the unimaginable prices of neglecting what God says. It is time we get to truly know our prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and study his Sunna, learn his teachings and realize the greatness of the legacy he left us. It is time we stop blindly imitating the West and realize that they are not smarter than us and that we can beat them. It is time we admit we have been defeated and that we are weak in order to start a new path of correction. It is time we stopped worrying about the pleasures of this world and seek the Pleasantness of the path of Allah and the blessings of the next world. It is time we stopped worshiping money, power or lust. It is time we stop mixing between Islam and tradition. It is time that we unite and let go of all of what separates us like nationalism. We are brothers and sisters regardless of our countries and our ethnicities; for we are the clingers to the "rope of Allah." It is time we change and remember what Allah said: "Allah doesn’t change the reality of people till they change themselves." (11)

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