On one occasion, the agent reports having seen a detainee left in an unventilated, non-air conditioned room at a temperature "probably well over a hundred degrees." The agent notes: "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
The above is just one of many, many stories and accounts of what is happening to (primarily) Muslims across the world today. The most likely emotion that passes through the heart of a Muslim who reads such a thing is outright anger, fury and hatred for these satanic perpetrators. Every time that a Muslim comes across such a thing, his temper rises, he gets frustrated and he wants to lash out at America and the impetus to get on a plane to “go out there and take the fight to them” is temporarily strengthened. He asks a brother, “Brother, what do you want to do about this?” The likely reply is along the lines of “we have to do something. All those brothers out there who are actually defending the Muslims, and we are just sitting here!”
After hearing a great many scholars and practitioners of tasawwuf about the states of our hearts and the imperative need to combat the growing radicalism of the Muslims due to the actions of the barbaric neo-colonialists, we need to balance the legitimate grievances of the Ummah with the directives of our Beloved Guide (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam). We cannot afford to employ the attitude that this has never happened before and that the Holy Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) has not dealt with these issues. Nay, he has clearly dealt with them, the ‘Ulema have clear lessons to teach us and it is for us to listen and internalise.
Any human who is aware of what is taking place at this very moment in time must, at the threat of losing his humanity, acknowledge the truth of these crimes. But what can we do about it? This is the question that we all are begging an answer for. Oh our Allah, tell us what to do about this state of affairs, a state of affairs that sees the Muslims (supposedly the best nation in history) in a condition of utter subjugation and oppression, our lands conquered, our people being massacred, tortured and (apparently and ONLY on the surface of it) being humiliated. A Muslim going into Iraq or Afghanistan or Chechnya to fight a few soldiers and hopefully defeat them will not, despite its merits, change our overall condition. He, however, will say, “I am promised one of two things: victory or martyrdom.” I am unable to argue with him, for it is absolutely true that one of these outcomes, if gone in with the correct intention, will be achieved. Again however, this will not change our global malaise even if a thousand Muslims went to fight today. How are we to be superior, Allah? Tell us how.
I believe that there are two main questions that need to be asked here?
The answer to the first question, He gives:
"And whatever strikes you of disaster - it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much." [Surah ash-Shura 42:30]
Well, we are in a disastrous situation; Allah is informing us that it is because of our own actions that Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, etc, are in such a condition. If you study the Book of Allah, subhanu wa ta’ala, you will find that a nation is only ever destroyed or put into tribulation after they have persistently left the commands of Allah, and this is the reason that we are in the current state of affairs. Many Muslims today are Muslims just by name, who just pray on Fridays (like Christians pray on Sundays), who pray on the day of Eid (like Christians at Christmas). There are many things that the Muslims have done wrong and are doing wrong, but I think that the most fundamental problems are the lack of true faith (imaan) and the fear of Allah (taqwa) and the leaving of the five daily prayers, the zakah, the Hajj among others. Hadhrat Salahuddin al-Ayoubi (radi Allahu anhu), the night before the decisive battle that liberated al-Aqsa during the Crusades went around the army camp and exhorted his soldiers to stand and pray the night vigil prayer (tahajjud salah) if they wanted a victory from Allah. Today, Transcendent is Allah, the tahajjud prayer aside, we don’t even manage to pray the isha prayer at night that is arguably the easiest of the five prayers. A brother once told me that how do you expect a victory from Allah when the majority of the Ummah do not even fulfil their fundamental obligations to their Creator, let alone optional ones like tahajjud.
Our lack of good deeds is not in themselves the reason for our condition, for it is the states of one’s heart that drive a person to neglect his duties before his Most Forgiving and Most Loving, Almighty Creator, Allah, the Sole Sovereign of Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, the Universe and the whole of Creation. If a person truly knew, understood and felt the realities of his obligatory duties, then he would automatically not only carry them out but also look forward to carrying them out every time. If a person had a true taqwa of Allah, he would never willingly neglect his duties. The hearts of Muslims today are deprived of this spiritual realisation and connection with God for the very reason that the heart has been shrouded in darkness, in diseases such as pride, arrogance, apathy, the love of trivial things, love of the world, with incorrect priorities, attitudes and perspectives. A Believer (mu’min) is one whose heart is open to the impact of the guiding light of revelation (wahi), whose heart is shed of the shrouding covers of falsehood and which is imbued with humility, faith, trust in Allah, love of Allah and love of His Messenger.
The Holy Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) has informed us that our hearts today are filled with the love of the worldly life and the dislike of death, the dislike of meeting with Allah to whom we are to return to. As I have pointed out in an earlier article, the problems we have are deeper than just disunity, lack of good actions, and weakness in strength. The main problem is in fact the sickness of our collective heart. No matter how many mujaahideen go into battle, no matter if a few generals carry out a coup d’etat somewhere in the Muslim world to install a Caliph, at the end of the day the (both Islamic and secular) philosophical principle holds: People get the leaders they deserve. If we are not spiritually ready for a change in condition, then we will not attain it in the first place. These actions will not change the global condition of the Ummah, because the displayed symptoms of the Ummah are a result of a penetrating disease within the hearts.
This brings us to the looked-forward-to answer to our second question from Almighty Allah that is that what do we do to alter our standing in the world. At this juncture, we must be prepared to swallow a bitter pill, for our real enemy is not the disbelieving armies rampaging through the Muslim lands or the devils encouraging them on, for we can identify them easily. Our real enemy is ourselves.
“…Surely God does not change the condition in which a people are in until they change that which is in themselves." (al Ra’d 13:11)
The wisdom in the Holy Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) saying “we have come from the greater jihad to the lesser jihad” is exactly that our real enemy i.e. the self (nafs) of a person is much harder to identify and thereafter take on. Muslim armchair politicians all too readily point a finger at Bush, yet once you point a finger at someone else there are three pointing back at you. Hence the five-time Hajji being the most arrogant, deceitful and mean person in the neighbourhood. He has carried out the worship required of him (ibaadaat) but it has not benefited him at all. Like the Holy Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) saying, “you do not benefit from the prayer except that which you understood from it.” If we were truly humble, then when we do carry out our acts of worship (when we do eventually end up carrying them out!!) they would change us and expel even more of the satanic traits settled within us. And this is partly the answer to the second question: we have to carry out our worship but we have to allow it to change our personal spiritual condition because if we do not then all we have achieved is a bit of exercise, hunger and thirst.
Speaking of hunger and thirst, take, for example, the fasting of the blessed month of Ramadhan. The reason we are to fast is that so we become God-conscious, according to the Qur’aan. Now, if we were God-conscious (which is tied to a strengthening of one’s faith) then we would automatically be supercharged in fulfilling our duties for the rest of the year. However, because we fast for the wrong reasons in the first instance, we do not gain anything and this is similar to other deeds like praying, etc. We should worship for the right reasons, therefore, enabling the worship to benefit us but we should utilise the worship properly in order for it to correctly align our hearts, the process coming full circle.
“So do not become weak, nor be sad, and you will be superior if you are indeed believers. ” (Al-‘Imran 3:139) (my emphasis)
His answer is a promise: if we fulfil our part of the bargain, then He (as attested to by history) WILL fulfil His part of it and give us victory and authority over the disbelievers BUT we have to be believers first. It is like an algebraic formula in mathematics:
If (condition=true); then result.
I.e. if we are actually in truth believers then we will be superior. Re-written, this can be as:
If (we are in reality believers); then the disbelievers will be under our authority.
The answers are plain and clear for every Muslim, that the reason we are in this condition is that we are (collectively as an Ummah) not truly Believers. If we are to come out from under this terrible condition we are in then we have to be Believers. What constitutes a Believer, however? Below I list just a handful of traits and characteristics of a Believer and we have to ask ourselves whether we have these or not. If we do not have them, then we need to start doing some serious pondering:
A Believer is one who:
If one does not hold these sorts of qualities, then do not lose hope and throw your hands in the air and forget about the whole thing. If one is sincere in wanting to be a Believer you must believe that Allah can help you to change your condition. In spite of this we must take the first step! Our strength is NOT with guns, tanks and nuclear warheads; this is the secular and kaafir worldview. True strength as attested to by history time and again is with these noble qualities above and as Allah says, if we truly have them then we will be superior on this planet.
It is said that all problems have one root cause: Pride. This may be derived through the root incident of all our problems, i.e. Iblis’ prideful self (nafs) not allowing the humility to enter into the heart of Iblis that would have driven him to obey Allah and prostrate to Sayidinna Adam (alaihi salaam).
It is said that tasawwuf is the science or art of “scrubbing the heart clean”; the processes of tasawwuf are deep affairs in themselves that if carried through change a person from lower than a devil to higher than an angel. Taking one self to account every day, actively remembering Allah constantly (dhikr of Allah), sitting with and keeping the company of the righteous people of Allah and contemplating the beauty and reality of the Creation of Allah are all part and parcel of the path of tasawwuf. We need to collectively scrub our hearts clean of the filth of these satanic characteristics, particularly pride, that we have, but it will be difficult to acknowledge the presence of traits like pride in one’s heart. Mind you, if you have pride and arrogance in your heart whether you admit it or not, you know that you have them; it is bound to be an uphill spiritual struggle but it must be done.
Imam al-Ghazali (radi Allahu anhu) said that tasawwuf, unlike the knowledge of jurisprudence (fiqh), is obligatory on every one of us (fard 'ayn). A person only has to know the fiqh that directly involves him in his daily life e.g. prayer, fasting, Hajj, Zakah, buying a house, finances, running a business. As for the rest, unless he is studying to become a scholar (‘alim) he does not need to know this. However, tasawwuf or self-purification is obligatory on every Muslim. Reason being that other than the Holy Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) everyone else has these diseases in our heart and since a person with even an atom’s worth of pride will never enter Paradise it is, therefore, incumbent upon us to clean our hearts by learning the arts of tasawwuf and acting upon them. It is to be noted that up until the fall of the Khilafah, tasawwuf was a standard discipline in the Islamic educational curriculum, hence the dismantlement of the traditional Islamic educational system being a prime target of the colonial powers.
Furthermore, in terms of our global condition and given the fact that we are in the end of time (without doubt) I would also like to address the attitude propounded by the following statement made by some people:
“No need to worry, when Hadhrat Isa and Imam al-Mahdi come we shall all be saved.”
I can categorically say that this is absolutely wrong and sitting and waiting for these great men is not the answer to our ills, I promise you this. They could come in 10 years, they could come in 100 years. We have to deal with our situation and only until we change ourselves will Allah change our condition through Sayidinna Isa and Imam Mahdi. These esteemed personalities will only help the Believers when they come. I repeat, for effect, that these two esteemed and most respected personalities (be on them peace) are to help, aid and be with the Believers ONLY when they come. So, if we do not possess believing attributes we are doomed in this world and the next.
Let this be a warning that until we are humble enough to recognise and acknowledge the pride and other diseases in our hearts and to seriously endeavour to act upon the greatly needed (especially in this age) and rigorous spiritual sciences of tasawwuf (self-purification and what have you) I promise the reader we will remain in this condition that we are in today. Seething with anger at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and having pity for our raped brothers and sisters will not change a thing and until we make that connection between these atrocities and the attitudinal diseases close to us in our hearts we shall continue to suffer and be subjugated.
This is a very, very long and deep topic, but insha Allah, I hope I have got the point across of what is the reality of the situation and what we need to do to rectify it. Our humiliation is not that we are being bombed, murdered, tortured and raped all over the world. Our humiliation is that we have left the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Rasool (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam). Our humiliation is that our hearts are ravaged with disease and we cannot see that. The one who knows himself and is honest with Allah knows his shortcomings and is therefore able to start remedying himself. Take account of yourself, reader, be honest with yourself and with your loving Creator and begin cleansing the heart by treading the path of purification (tazkiyah).
I end with a prayer to Allah to give the brother cited at the beginning of this article, who pulled his own hair out due to the fierce heat of his detention room, strong and excellent faith, patience, perseverance and forbearance. Likewise to all the brothers and sisters (Muslim and non-Muslim for we are all part of the same family) who are on the receiving end of America’s (and other countries') barbaric, imperialist adventures. I especially want to make a du’aa to Allah that He forgives all the brothers and especially sisters (who are being savagely raped) that have committed suicide out of the stress of their incredible, tortuous ordeals. I know suicide is haraam, but Allah is also The Just, The Forgiving and we should always ask forgiveness for our brothers and sisters for we may have done the same thing if we were in their positions. Unless we start curing our hearts and demonstrating our conviction in the testification (shahaada) that we say countless times a year, there will be many more stories like these to read.
Allah has made us a Promise and has challenged us: let us, for own sakes, rise to the task and earn the good pleasure of our Allah and show that we are worthy of being called members (ummatis) of the Nation of Sayidinna Muhammad (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam). At least, let us not let him (sallallahu alaihi wa aalihi wa sallam) down.