Edward Gibbon, the renowned British historian, writes in the last part of his famous history book ' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' that "...at any rate, for you l have reinforced the victories and the gains of barbarism and religion....
And he continues, that after the death of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire began its downward trend. Everything began from there and has continued to the present. This pitiable and sad state of affairs persisted for a few centuries...
History is a strange thing but stranger than history is the fact that people do not learn a lesson from it. Yet stranger than both is that today's mankind has yet to understand the true meaning of religion. Today's man still does not know the difference between "religion" and "barbarism". He does not know that these two words are not synonymous and that, in fact, they are diametrically opposed.
Perhaps in simple terms which could be understandable by all "Religion" could be said to be any system which would define a man's way of life. Such a wide definition of religion could perhaps include the ideologies and social systems based on materialism, atheism, Freudianism, nihilism, capitalism and communism.
The Holy Qur'an too gives us such a definition of religion where it says to the non-Muslims, be they Jews, Christians, polytheists or idol-worshippers that "your religion for you and my religion for me." With such an interpretation, each human being who has his own ways in life and is following certain goals has a religion. It is not within the scope of this article to discuss the question of righteousness of these religions and their affinity with the ideals of justice. Suffice it here to say that we Muslims consider Islam as the only valid religion before God.
Hence, such statements as "Religion is a tool for bringing about boodshed, tears and endless suffering... and one should not fight for the sake of religion" are made in order to dissuade naive people from the path of religion. The people who make these types of statements only aim to attack the divine religions that are rooted in revelation. The general meaning of religion, however, includes all persons and societies. Whoever fights in order to reach his goals in this life is seeking his own religion. For some, religion means the country. For others, it might mean the tribe or the ethnic group to which an individual belongs. Still for others, religion might mean material interests. For us the Muslims, religion means the path in which all of us should be treading upon in life, a path which is based on divine orders and injunctions.
If we accept this definition, then we could say that all the people struggle throughout their lives in order to make their religion reign supreme. But the enemies of Islam only try to dissuade the Muslims from the struggle to make Islam the governing rule of their social life. Hence, in a hypocritical manner, they would implore others to give up their "religious squabbles" and to fall, instead, into the great abyss that is the Western civilization.
They intend to insinuate that in the Western civilization there is no room for religion and that the comfort and stability that these societies are experiencing is due to the fact that they have kept religions at bay.
Many of the high officials and great thinkers in the West were of the opinion that the West is the alter ego of Christianity. Winston Churchill has said in this regard, "Without understanding Great Britain it would be impossible to understand Europe and understanding Great Britain would be an impossible task if we fail to understand Christianity."
Of course, this point has been obvious in the events of different periods of history but it has become abundantly clear today since the societies that were supposedly secular and against the interference of religion in the sphere of politics coalesced under the umbrella of the historical heritage of Europe and put up a united front against Islam in abandoning Bosnia and Kosovo to the criminal Serbs, which was the same stand that they took vis-a'-vis the crisis in Algeria.
But despite all of the contemptuous treatment of Islam and the Muslims, the religious way of thinking and especially the Islamic way of thinking is growing among the societies and people are becoming and more and more attracted to these manners of thought.
Today the Islamic way of thinking is finding its followers around the world as a rational way, a new approach to life and an ideology which is both attractive and dynamic. As opposed to Islamic dynamism, the Western civilization, despite its political power and the military-industrial complex that it has at its disposal, cannot win even a fraction of devout followers that Islam is winning everyday in the four corners of the world. Moreover, even though the West seems to have bought the loyalty of a number of non-Western countries, it has not been able to control the Islamic world.
A Western writer recently wrote, "the Ottoman Empire which was a great power in terms of its infantry divisions was ruling over a good number of lands. This made the Westerners focus on the naval forces, thereby compensating for their weakness on land. Later, they also reigned over the dominions of the air and space, achievements that we all have witnessed today. Despite all of these developments, we are still behind Islam in the war to win hearts and minds. We do not seem to control the hearts and minds of the people.
The problem of the Christian civilization and the Western imperialism lies here. They see themselves miserably defeated against the power of Islam in the war to win hearts and minds, but we the Muslims are unaware of our own power and have lost sight of the immense potential that we possess.