Muslim Ummah Facing the Challenge

The present slate of Muslim Ummah is not encouraging. In fact it is sad. A very large part of the Ummah is illiterate, poverty is steep. It is under a strong challenge from several quarters in the cultural, educational, social, political and economic field.

What should we do to build a strong Ummah, create Islamic societies and stales? One of the important things is to face the challenge posed by the West and other quarters. In the cultural arena we are being inundated by western permissiveness, the basic characteristics of immorality and nakedness. In politics, the West and the others want to dominate us, want us to always obey their dictates. In the economic field, they want us to be their markets and follow the capitalist model in totality. In fact they want us to follow their secular model.

However, the western challenge is basically intellectual. In essence, they are telling us that we should accept their model in all aspects, that the Islamic state is unsafe for minorities and women, that in Islam there is no fundamental or basic right, that Islamic law is too rigid, etc.

We cannot really develop Islamic lines without satisfying the Muslim population on all such issues which require many first class works on all these fields.

Let us look back and see what is the cause of Muslim decline. The basic reason is the neglect of knowledge. It is surprising that Muslims gave up the pursuit of knowledge after so much contribution in the fields of Science and Humanities in their early history. To me it appears that Taqlid (or blind following) encouraged in the Madrasah is largely responsible for this. If you want to see the level of Taqlid, look into the Fatwa-e-Alamgiri which contains discussions of thousands of legal issues without any reference to the Qur’an and Sunnah. Only reference is of the earlier books of Fiqh like Shami, Muhit, Bahrur Raik, Tatarkhania, etc.

We will have to build up a strong Islamic educational system. At the same time till we have such a system at individual level we should acquire and spread authentic knowledge. Programmes of self-development should be taken. The slogan should be “read, write and disseminate dawah”. Intellectual challenges can not be faced without preparing first class Islamic intellectuals, leaders and workers.

Women should be involved fully in Islamic activities. They have the same potential for Islam, they have the same “ruh” (soul), same excellence (surah at-Teen) and they belong to the same family of Adam and Hawa (same human qualities -Surah an Nisa) We need to do many things at political, state and organisational level to build a strong Ummah.