The causes of the Islamic State's Weakness
Allama Shaikh Taqiuddin An-Nabahani Rahimullah
The Islamic State is based on the Islamic ideology and derives its strength solely from that ideology. It is its main cause of progress and prosperity and the basis of its existence. The Islamic State came into existence and established itself in a powerful fashion due to the strength of Islam. It conquered wide areas of the world in the space of less than a century despite the fact that horses and camels were its only means of communication, and all its conquered peoples, countries and nations embraced Islam within a short period of time despite the fact that its means of spreading the Message were limited to the word of mouth and the pen. Islam made all this possible by being the driving force behind the State.
The enemies of Islam realised this and knew that the weakening of the Islamic State would be impossible as long as Islam remained strong and deeply rooted within the hearts and minds of the Muslims, and as long as the understanding of Islam remained sound and its implementation accurate and comprehensive. They therefore resorted to finding the means which would weaken the Muslims’ understanding of Islam and their implementation of its rules.
The methods which the enemies of Islam used to weaken its understanding were numerous. Some were related to the texts and others to the language used in conveying and teaching it, still other methods used were related to Islam’s conformity with reality. They set about adding false narrations to the ahadith of the Messenger of Allah (saw) which were never said, and they managed to fabricate and include in them non-Islamic meanings and concepts that contradicted Islam in the hope that these would be adopted by the Muslims thus deviating them and alienating them from Islam. Indeed, they managed to do just that, and they spread these false ahadith among the people. The Muslims came to be alarmed by this and they in turn divulged the evil schemes of those zanadiqah. The Muslims smashed their evil ring and aborted their conspiracy. Scholars and hadith experts then rose to the challenge and began gathering and listing the hadith by relating each hadith to the narrator, his qualification, and the date each hadith was narrated, underlining each hadith and classifying it into its correct category. The hadith was then classified as sahih (genuine) and da’if (weak) and they then came to be protected. The narrations of the hadith were restricted to the three generations after the Sahabah and no other narration reported after them was accepted. The narrators were all identified individually and the books of ahadith were also classified accordingly until the Muslims were able to relate the genuineness of any hadith or the weakness or falsehood of any other by relating to its evidence and its narrator. The Islamic State dealt harshly with those zanadiqah and most of them were actually executed for their part in falsifying the ahadith of the Messenger of Allah (saw). Overall then, the conspiracy did not have any damaging effect on Islam nor on the State. The enemies of Islam then resorted to attacking the Arabic language as this is the language by which Islam is conveyed and they attempted to separate it from Islam. They did not succeed at first because the Muslims went forward in their conquests armed with the Book, the Sunnah and the Arabic language and they would teach the people all three. The people embraced Islam and became fluent in Arabic and some of them actually became distinguished mujtahideen like Imam Abu Hanifah, others became exceptional poets like Bashshar ibn Burd and some became eloquent writers like Ibn al-Muqaffa’. The Muslims devoted a great deal of attention to the Arabic language. Imam Shafi’i disallowed the translation of Qur’an and disallowed praying other than in Arabic. Those who did endorse the translation of Qur’an, like Imam Abu Hanifah, in any case did not call the translated text Qur’an at all. Arabic remained the focus of attention because it is the fundamental part of Islam and a necessary precondition of ijtihad. The understanding of Islam from its sources does not come about but in Arabic and the extracting of the Divine rules cannot be accomplished except in Arabic. However, the attention, care and importance given over to the Arabic language diminished by the end of the sixth century Hijri when the rulers, who did not appreciate and realise the importance of the Arabic language, came to power. They therefore neglected that area and as a result ijtihad was stalled as the exertion necessary to deduce the Divine rules became impossible due to the lack of fluency in the Arabic language. At this stage the Arabic language became separated from Islam and the State’s understanding of the Divine rules became blurred and blurred and as a consequence the implementation of the rules also became blurred. This contributed a great deal towards the ailing of the State, it diminished its ability to understand and tackle new issues thus leading to its failure to solve the problems that arose or to solving them in an erroneous way. As a result, problems accumulated in the face of the State and this caused it to wane and to dwindle.
This was as far as the Islamic texts and the language were concerned. As for the applicability of Islam to the realities of life, the trend of merging Indian philosophy with Islam emerged. This was translated into asceticism and the seeking of the Hereafter and this led to many young people turning away from life’s pleasures and to their adopting a passive life. They renounced their role of being active members of society and consequently this resulted in a big loss to the Islamic State and Muslims in general. As a result of this the State lost many talented young men who could have devoted themselves to the Message of Islam instead of resorting to asceticism and self punishment. Later the cultural invasion by the West brought with it a culture alien to Islam, the West duped the Muslims by claiming that they took this culture from them and that the systems which it brought did not contradict with the Islamic rules. The West had brought legislation which contravened the Divine laws and still it managed to persuade Muslims that they did not. This affected the Muslims a great deal and led to the Western culture creeping in and influencing the Muslims. The Muslims began to see life as being based on benefit. During the ‘Uthmani rule some Western laws were adopted, a Western banking system was established, riba justified, and the penal codes stalled and replaced by Western penal codes.
Despite the fact that fatawa were issued to justify the lawfulness of such acts they had a disastrous effect on the State and led her astray from the Islamic rule. This deviation from Islam extinguished the strong Iman Muslims once had, took the State away from the right path and subsequently led to its weakness and disintegration.
This was as far as understanding Islam was concerned, as for its implementation, many factors contributed to the maladministration of the Divine laws. One such factor was the political parties, each in turn wanted to impose their own opinion and they resorted to military means in order to seize the authority and rule, in order to implement that opinion. The Abbasids did just that by seizing Persia and Iraq and using them as a platform until they had managed to seize total power and restrict the ruling clan of Bani Hashim. Then came the Fatimids, they took over the wilayah of Egypt and established a state there so as to use it as a support point with the ultimate aim of transferring the rule of the Islamic State to the sons of Fatimah daughter of Allah’s Messenger (saw). Their action caused a setback to the Islamic State and stalled the Islamic conquests, whilst it resulted in the establishment of a second power vying for control over the Khilafah despite the fact that the Islamic State is a state of unity and it is forbidden for the Muslims to have more than one Khaleefah at the same time. The Messenger of Allah (saw) said in reference to this, "If a pledge of allegiance is taken for two Khaleefah’s, kill the latter of them." These factors contributed greatly to the weakening of the State, as well as leading to a suspension of the conquests and thereby resulting in neglect towards conveying the Message of Islam.
However, what in fact led those political parties to resort to that type of methodology in order to seize power, was as a result of what took place during the rule of the Ummayads. The Ummayads introduced the method of handing over the Khilafah to the heir apparent, who was then given the bay’ah. This turned the bay’ah into a mere protocol and killed the hope of reaching the position of ruling by its means. Mu’awiyah for instance passed on the authority to his son and took the bay’ah for him later. Then every Khaleefah followed in the same trend, taking an oath for their heirs and then asking the people to give them the bay’ah. The people were restricted to giving the bay’ah to whoever the Khaleefah had nominated, rarely did they give the bay’ah to anyone else. This method pushed those political parties to resort to force in order to seize power. Despite the fact that Abu Bakr adopted the method of nomination, its maladministration by the Ummayads led to those problems arising. Abu Bakr had in fact consulted the Muslims over this issue and as a result ‘Umar and ‘Ali emerged as the two candidates. Nomination was then given to ‘Umar and he was elected as Khaleefah after the death of Abu Bakr and took of the bay’ah from the Ummah. This was actually in accordance with the Divine rules. The Khulafa’ of Bani Umayyah instead maladministered this rule and nominated their sons, brothers or relatives. In some cases they even nominated more than one person. Such maladministration led to the deprivation of the Muslims from giving the bay’ah to whoever they wished and this in turn led to the weakening of the State because of the alienation that it entailed. At first though this did not have much effect on the State because it was so powerful, but the signs soon emerged when the State weakened.
Maladministration was not simply confined to the State, the Wilayas came to be infected by the same malaise. The Abbasids’ silence over the action of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil in Andalus ensured this. His action led to the amputation of a big part of the State when he ruled Andalus independently, as did the governors who succeeded him - some of them even acquired the title Amir al-Mo’mineen. Although Andalus did not declare total independence from the Islamic State, it was, nevertheless, ruled over separately and this resulted in weakness creeping into the State’s structure. Eventually this facilitated its seizure by the disbelievers while the Islamic State was at the height of its glory and at its most formidable strength. The State could do little to save Andalus’s downfall and this was due to the disintegration of Andalus’s administration. That was on the Western front; in the East the Walis were given general and wide mandatory powers which triggered their desire of leadership and authority. They therefore ran their Wilayas according to their own way and the Khaleefah agreed to this state of affairs. He was content with the praise which he received from their podiums and by the mention that decisions were taken on his behalf or by the issuing of currency bearing his name or with the continued receipt of Kharaj revenues from them. These Wilayas became, as a result like little independent statelets, this was the case with the Wilayas of Saljuqiyyeen and Hamdaniyyeen and many others. This too became a contributory factor in the weakening of the State.
Then came the ‘Uthmanis and they transferred power to themselves and united most of the Muslim land under their leadership. They took up the Islamic conquests throughout Europe and resumed the conveyance of the Message of Islam. However, this outburst in activity was only backed by the solid Iman of the first ‘Uthmani Khulafa’ and the military might of the army, it was not based on a clear understanding of the Islamic concepts and a comprehensive implementation of Islam. Therefore, these conquests did not achieve what the conquests of old had achieved, and the strength of the rulers did not embrace all areas of the Islamic State, consequently the State soon waned, then collapsed until finally it ceased to function. This was as a direct result of the factors mentioned and of the many other conspiracies woven against the State.
The contributory factors which led to the weakness of the State can thus be summarised as follows, weak understanding of Islam and maladministration of the Divine rules. Therefore, what would bring back the Islamic State would have to be the clear understanding of Islam; and what would preserve its strength would have to be the safeguarding of such a clear understanding, and the proper implementation of the Divine rules at home and the conveying of the Message of Islam to the world.
Extract from 'Al-Dawlatul Islamiyyah,' by Taqiuddin An-Nabhani.
Available in Arabic, English and Turkish - Al-Khilafah Publications.
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