Difficulties facing the Re-establishment of the Islamic State

Allama Shaikh Taqiuddin An-Nabhani Rahimullah

Re-establishing the Islamic State is by no means an easy or straightforward task, because resuming the Islamic way of life is not a simple matter. There are several colossal obstacles facing the re-establishment of the Islamic State which need first to be removed and dismantled, and there are several major difficulties standing in the way of the resumption of the Islamic way of life which also need to be overcome. This is so because the issue is not merely the existence of just any state, nor the founding of a state simply calling itself Islamic; the issue is in fact the existence of an Islamic State which implements Islam as a system emanating from the Islamic ‘aqeedah, a State which implements Islam according to the Shari’ah rules, since these are the rules of Allah (swt). Thus the Islamic way of life would initially be resumed at home and then the Islamic Message would come to be conveyed to all the peoples abroad.

This Islamic State should be founded on the Islamic emotions, fashioned by the Islamic ‘aqeedah and what emanates from the Islamic concepts and rules, and on the Islamic mentality, nurtured by the Islamic thought and rationally shaped by the Islamic ideology and method, so that it would exist first and foremost with the Islamic personality as its foundation, as well as the rules and systems which emanate from the Islamic ‘aqeedah, so that the incentives of this life originate from the inner soul producing therefore the Islamic mentality and the Islamic disposition and temperament which would ensure the voluntary implementation of the systems and rules with passion, zeal and peace of mind equally within both the ruler and the subjects.

This State must be Islamic both at the level of the Ummah and that of the people in authority, who undertake the running of the Ummah’s affairs. It must be Islamic in all aspects of its life, securing the resumption of the Islamic way of life in a manner which would enable her to carry its Message to the whole world; this in turn would enable the non-Muslims to witness the light of Islam from within its State so that they enter the deen of Allah (swt) in flocks.

This is why the difficulties, which stand in the way of resuming the Islamic way of life, or stand in the path of the re-establishment of the Islamic State, are numerous. They should be diagnosed, and endeavours should be made in order to overcome them.

The most serious of these difficulties are:

1. The presence of the non-Islamic concepts and their invasion of the Islamic world. This is so because the Islamic world - while undergoing a period of decline with the level of thought being low, knowledge scarce and rationality very weak due to its state of decline - was invaded by non-Islamic concepts, which contradict the Islamic concepts and which are based on an erroneous understanding of life both before and after it, in the midst of that state. These concepts found fertile ground free of any resistance and they became deeply rooted, thus the mentality of the Muslims, especially the educated ones, came to be infested by these concepts. A mentality hugely influenced by imitation, therefore, emerged which lacked any sense of creativity and which was unprepared to accept the Islamic ideology politically nor was it able to realise the essence of this ideology, especially the political side of it. It transpires that the Islamic call must therefore be a call to Islam and a call to the resumption of the Islamic way of life; non-Muslims should be called to Islam by demonstrating the Islamic concepts to them and the Muslims should be called to work towards the resumption of the Islamic way of life by properly explaining Islam to them. This would entail divulging the shortcomings of non-Islamic concepts and their dangerous consequences and thus the da‘wah should take its political course with endeavours made in order to provide the Ummah with an Islamic culture where the political aspects would be apparent. This is how the first obstacle would be overcome.

2. The presence of the educational programmes which the colonial powers set up and the method by which these educational systems are implemented in the schools and universities; knowing that those who eventually take up positions in Government, the Administration, the Judiciary, the teaching profession, medicine and students of other professions who graduate from such institutions have adopted a distinctive mentality that works in harmony with the plan which the colonialists have laid down. This is clearly reflected in the ruling system as we see it today whereby the colonial employees were replaced by Muslim ones whose task was (and is) to safeguard the laws, the culture, the policies and the systems which the colonial powers had established, and to defend them as the colonialists did or with even greater vigour. The way to overcome this obstacle would be to divulge these actions to those rulers, civil servants and all the whole people so that the ugly face of colonialism comes to the surface and so that they cease protecting those policies and systems allowing therefore the da‘wah to find its way to those Muslims.

3. The continued application of the educational programmes according to the basis which was laid by the unbelieving colonialists, and according to the method which he selected, a matter which made the majority of the graduated young people and those who still in the educational institutes, proceed in a direction contradictory to Islam. We do not mean with the educational programmes the scientific and industrial ones, as these are universal which do not relate to a specific Ummah, but they are universal for all peoples. We mean the cultural programmes which affect the viewpoint towards life, as they are responsible for making the educational programmes stand as an obstacle in the face of resuming the Islamic way of life. These subjects include the history, literature, philosophy and legislation. This is because history is the real explanation of life, and literature is its emotional portrayal, and philosophy is the basic thought upon which the viewpoint towards life is built, and legislation is the practical solutions to life’s problems and the tool upon which the organisation of the individuals and communities relationships stands. These are the culture with which the disbelieving colonialist made the mentality of the Muslims sons in a specific way that made some do not feel the necessity of Islam in their life and the life of their Ummah. And it made some of them hostile to Islam, denying its capability to solve the life’s problems. Therefore, it is necessary to change this mentality, by culturing the young people outside the schools and universities, in concentrated and public circles, with the Islamic thoughts and the divine rules, so as to overcome this difficulty.

4. Giving some cultural matters, such as sociology, psychology and education science, too much respect and considering them to be universal sciences. Most people recognise these informations (skills) as being scientific and that the facts which these studies establish have come by way of experimentation, as a result they treat them with high regard and they consider the findings of such studies to be indisputable. In so doing they turned to them in order to solve their life’s affairs and they taught them in our schools and universities as sciences, as well as implementing them in various aspects of life, and referring to them when solving their problems. Consequently, whatever the psychiatrists, sociologists and educationalists say is taken as a guide and reference ahead of the Qur’an and hadith, and thus we carry today erroneous concepts and viewpoints because we give a lot of respect and admiration for such informations (skills), hence we refer to them in order to solve our problems in life. It has thus become extremely difficult for people to accept anything which contradicts this state of affairs; knowing that it generally leads to the separation of the deen from the temporal life and that it stands in the way of establishing the Islamic State.

The truth of the matter is that those skills cannot be scientific, because they are drawn from observation and inference and they are not based on experimentation. Simply to implement them on people cannot be referred to as experimentation, but merely repetitive observations carried out on different persons in different situations and circumstances, and therefore they are just observations and inferences and nothing like the experiments carried out in laboratories where something is tested or indeed put to the test. Thus they are classified as cultural studies and not science, and besides, the findings are always doubtful with some considerable room for error. Furthermore, these informations (skills) are based on a false premise because they are based on viewing the individual as such and the society also as such, i.e. they are based on the individualistic viewpoint and therefore their vision moves from the individual to the family, to the group and then to society on the basis that society is formed by a group of individuals. This leads to the understanding that societies are split and that what is valid for one society is not necessarily valid for another. In fact society is formed by the human (individual), the concepts, the emotions and the systems, and what is valid for the human in terms of concepts and solutions in one place should be valid for him everywhere else. These concepts and solutions would transform several societies into one single society for which the concepts, emotions and systems would be valid. It is therefore the wrong conception of society which has led to erroneous theories in education and sociology because they are based on that misconception. It is also the wrong conception of society, because it is based on psychology which in turn is false for two reasons: Firstly because it considers the brain as being divided into segments with each of these segments having a distinct function or aptitude and claiming that some brains have certain aptitudes which other brains may not have. The truth of the matter is that the brain is one unit and the disparity of concepts and their difference come as a result of the disparity of things, which are perceptible through the senses, and of the previous information and its variability. There is no aptitude in one brain which is not found in another, but all brains contain the ability to think about every matter whenever the tangible reality, the senses and the previous information, were made available to the brain. Brains however differ in their ability to assess and link, and in the ability and the power of the senses - just like the natural variation in eyesight. It would be possible therefore to feed any person with any type of data and he would have the ability to digest such data; thus the claims which psychologists make about those aptitudes are groundless. Besides, psychology considers the instincts to be numerous, some of which have been discovered and others which are yet to be discovered; some theorists went on to establish false theories based on this concept about the instincts. In reality, if we observe the human reaction one can perceive through one’s senses that the human being possesses a vital energy which has two aspects; one which needs to be satisfied, otherwise the human would perish, and the other which needs to be satisfied otherwise the human, although he would survive, would become agitated and troubled. The first one represents the organic needs, such as hunger, thirst and the call of nature, and the second represents the instincts, which are the instinct of spirituality, the instinct of the species and the instinct of survival. These instincts reflect the feeling of weakness, the feeling of the preservation of species and the feeling of survival, and there are no other instincts except these three. Anything other than these three instincts would be merely aspects of these instincts; as for example, fear, supremacy and ownership, which are aspects of the instinct of survival; sanctification and worship, which are aspects of the spiritual instinct; and parenthood and brotherhood, which are aspects of the species instinct. Evidently, psychology’s vision of the instincts is false and its claims about the brain are also incorrect, which in turn leads to the falsehood of the theories upon which it is based and consequently to the falsehood of education which has all along been influenced by psychology.

Sociology, educational science and psychology are therefore educational matters which contradict the Islamic ideology and which are in general false. Thus, to continue to hold them in high esteem and to refer to them to solve our problems constitutes an obstacle in the face of working towards establishing the Islamic State. We ought, therefore, to demonstrate that these are merely educational matters and not sciences, and that they are controversial and not established facts. Because they are based on false premises they should not be running our lives, instead Islam should be.

5. Society in the Islamic world leads a non-Islamic way of life and lives according to a pattern which contradicts Islam. This is so because the governmental structure and the ruling system upon which the structure and society are based, as well as the principles upon which society as a whole stands, and the emotional trend which Muslims follow and the intellectual shape on which their way of thinking evolves, all this is based on concepts about life which are alien to the Islamic concepts. As long as these fundamentals remain unchanged and as long as these erroneous concepts are not corrected it would be difficult to change people’s way of life in society, and it would be difficult to change the government’s structure, the society’s basis and the emotional and rational trends which control the Muslims.

6. The wide gap between the Muslims and the Islamic rule, especially in the areas of ruling and financial policies. This makes the Muslims’ vision of the Islamic way of life remote, and makes the disbelievers’ illustration of the Islamic way of life negative due to the fact that Muslims had witnessed a period during which Islam was not properly implemented on them by the rulers. They also spent about thirty years being ruled by their enemy with a system which contradicted Islam in every department, specifically in the ruling and financial policies. It is therefore imperative that people should realise that this transformation to the Islamic way of life must be comprehensive and not partial, and that the implementation of Islam must be simultaneous and comprehensive, i.e. in one stroke, not gradually or partially or in a patched up manner. This would bring them closer to visualising the reality of life at the times when Islam was mighty.

7. The presence in Muslim countries of governments founded on a democratic basis, implementing the whole of the Capitalist system on the people, having strong political ties with Western countries and founded on localism and division. This makes the task of resuming the Islamic way of life hard to achieve because it cannot be brought about unless it is comprehensive since Islam does not allow Muslim land to be divided into statelets, but commands the unity of the land under one single state. This entails the universality of the da‘wah, the efforts and the implementation, which would be met by the resistance of the representatives of these regimes even if they happened to be Muslims. The da‘wah should therefore be conducted in every province even if it means enduring difficulties and hardship as a result of opposition from the regimes in the Muslim countries.

8. The presence of a strong public opinion in favour of nationalism, patriotism and socialism together with the rise of political movements based on nationalist, patriotic and socialist ideas. This came about due to the fact that the seizure by the West of Muslim lands, its resuming of power and its implementation of the Capitalist system over the land, triggered the tendency of self defence. This helped the sentiment of nationalism, in order to defend the land, and touched on the raw nerve of racialism and tribalism in self defence and in defence of the family and tribe, and which led to people to work and compete towards gaining the rule on that basis. This led to the rise of some political movements which carried the banner of nationalism to repel the enemy from the land, and others which carried the banner of patriotism in order to confine the rule within the people. Then the corruption and shortcomings of the Capitalist system became flagrant and the call for socialism spread, as a result groups carrying the banner of socialism were established in order to patch up the Capitalist system. These movements did not have any clear vision of the system of life, their vision was offhand and this led them astray from this principle and from Islam being a universal ideology.

Excerpt from "Dawlatul Islamiyyah," Taqiuddin An-Nabhani - Al-Khilafah Publications.

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