According to
Abu Dharr, the Prophet (may God give him blessings and peace) said, reporting the
words of God, ever praised and exalted is He:
“O My servants, I have
forbidden injustice to Myself and I have made it forbidden amongst you. So be
not unjust to one another.
“O My servants, all of you go astray except the one whom I
guide. Ask guidance of Me, and I shall guide you…”
[Part I, Hadith No. 1; Muhyi-ud-din
Ibn Arabi, Mishkåt al-Anwar: 101 Hadith Qudsi, written in 1202-03;
Oxford: Anqa Publishing (2008); p.18.
---------------------
Renewal of Faith is through Divine Revelations
You
must know that whenever a religious society became corrupted, then it was
without fail, that a person came from Allah who revived the message and started
a movement of great sacrifice for the sake of religion. Not taking other
people’s lives but offering their own lives. Not destroying other people’s
property but putting themselves in a precarious position where their property
were destroyed and looted by others. So following through this hard path of
sacrifice, religion was revived whereby you find these phenomena come one after
the other (after religion has been trampled by stupid high
priests/Mullahs who destroy the essence of religion). Our Holy
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is thus the most dependable source of light for us
(Muslims).
In
fact after every other prophet and his religion became a thing of the past,
Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) is the only source of light available to us. How did he revive religious values? It
is through walking in the streets of Mecca and being stoned and being abused
and being maltreated in the worst possible manner, by the sacrifices of his
followers when they being dragged in the hard stony streets of Mecca and them
being beaten almost to death and sometimes to death just for the sake of the
true faith upon which they held firm till they tasted death or till they
witnessed the victory of Islam.
The
atrocities committed against them are enormous and yet as they walked through
the path of blood and fears and toil, they were purified at the same time, they
were spreading instead of decreasing in number. They were not conquered in
reality but they were turning into victors because they were winning other
hearts, other souls, other people joined this procession of those who offered
sacrifices, and in that process they were purified.
Islam is designed like
this. There is no short-cut to glory and victory and that is done always
through the Messengers of Allah. If they came
in the past, is present in this era, likewise Messengers of Allah will always
come till the Day of Judgement in the light of perfection of the Holy Prophet
Muhammad (pbuh). When the religious
leadership becomes corrupt, Allah takes the leadership in His Own Hands, that
is the phenomena of “Nabuwwah”.
Ulema presides over religious
decadence
If
a law remains intact but without Allah sending someone from Him, Himself
without giving him support, without making him change the character of the
people through constant sacrifice, no religion has ever been revived, not
through the Ulema. In fact the latter are the cause of this destruction and
deterioration. There is a saying in Creole (English translation): “If
you put a cat guard over milk, you know what will happen to your milk”.
So
the values which have been destroyed have been destroyed by the religious
authorities themselves. The poor masses are blind people, they do not know what
is happening; some people follow blindly. It is always the leadership which is
responsible, so the deterioration sets in because of them.
Removal of Divine Light
and Sectarian Divisions
And
now you are looking to them with hope that they will put you right. If that is
your view and if that is based on that tradition which you quoted at the
beginning, I have another tradition to point out to and that tradition by the
Holy Prophet (pbuh) that: “A time will come when people of my Ummah
will begin to differ and there will be very great and fundamental differences
of opinions and the common people would go to the Ulema to seek guidance from
them and lo!, they would find instead of Ulema, monkeys and pigs”.
These
are the words of Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) speaking of a time much later than his
time of course, and describing a situation of differences and he says that when
differences would appear then the common people would naturally seek guidance
from the Ulema and instead of the Ulema they would find monkeys and pigs. What
does it mean?
Now
this tradition was never challenged by anyone otherwise the Ulema of the
previous days would have rejected this in agony because this was a tradition
spoken directly against the Ulema of sometime, because they were pious people,
they knew it did not apply to them so they accepted it as a future time would
come when this would happen.
Apparently,
their mosque will be full but will be completely deserted of truth and righteousness.
Allah (swt) has told Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) that in those days apparently
people would be saying their prayers in the mosque and they would look like
full of
worshippers but in the sight of Allah they would be without truth,
without righteousness and they would be totally deserted of what is good. So
now one turns to the Ulema in the hope that may be they would be saved. It is
their task of course, they’re made for this but the end part of the Hadith
is: “Their scholars would be the worst under the firmament of the
heaven”. Under the firmament of heaven there is so many things, every
type of animal, every type of beast, every type of creatures, plants, and
things.
So
the Holy Prophet (pbuh) does not say they will be worst under the firmament of
heaven. The word ‘man’ applies to life, conscious being. ‘Man’ is not
applicable to vegetative life. So this Hadith exactly concords with the animal
group, to which man belongs. People would go to the Ulema and find them these
two animals (monkeys and pigs) and they are the worst as far as the human
beings are concerned, they are shown to be the worst as an example to draw our
lessons from them. This tradition which speaks of the Ulema being turned into
monkeys and pigs is based in fact on the Holy Quran because according to the
Holy Quran, when the previous Ummah, that is, Judaism and Christianity were
corrupted, God removed His light from them in the end, and their Ulema were
also turned into these two creatures, according to the Holy Quran.
So
the Holy Prophet (pbuh) speaks of an unfortunate time when apparently his
followers will not be his true followers, they would follow suit of the Jews
and Christians before them, then the Ulema of “Islam” (for they are not truly
Muslims, so to speak) shall become similar to them. And according to the Holy
Quran these were their scholars in the end. It is not calling someone by bad
names because the prophets do not do it. The truth is that when they
say something it carries a very deep significant, potent message.
The metaphor of "Monkeys"
Now
to explain what becomes of the Ulema, why it is said that they would be like
monkeys and pigs. Monkeys have a habit of imitating others, even human beings,
it is done in every country, you must have seen some in your childhood, be it
in zoos or in the wild.
So
a monkey sometimes behaves so much like a human being with a hat on and all the
costumes like human beings and a bride and a bridegroom that they apparently
look just like human beings, but inside they’re completely animals. The
humanity is just skin deep, the imitation is just apparent. So when the religious scholars imitate the
prophet, that is, the founder of the religion, they do so apparently, only in
skin, not in depth. Inside they’re not touched by that imitation, they’re
like monkeys.
So
that was the message given, their Salwaars, their Qameez, their Jubas,
their turbans and things made to appear religious were in fact just mere show.
They would give the message that they’re behaving (God Forbid) like
our Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) but there would be a difference of integrity between
their characters and the character of Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh). His beard was a
source of light, whereas their beard would be the source of hatred, corruption
and everything dark.
Our
Holy prophet (pbuh) attracted, he was humane, he loved others, he sacrificed
all he had for the sake of other human beings. These Ulemas would be exactly
opposite, they would create hatred, they would spread the message of hate, they
would like people to be burnt alive and they would laugh, scoffing: “Now
we got our revenge”, they would order people about to destroy other
people’s properties and loot innocent people and kill innocent children and
women and insult them. That is the difference between an apparent pious man and
a true pious man.
True
pious people are the prophets, the holy prophets of Allah. And their religion
is completely different from those who follow much later by the way of
religious scholars. Their attitude towards human values, towards God, towards
everything, appearance is the same but in essence is entirely corrupt. This is
the state of affairs we find having been reached by the latter part of a
religion.
This
is the state of affairs which we find was positively predicted by Hazrat
Muhammad (pbuh) about the end part of his Ummah. This is the state of affairs
in which we find the Muslims of today and the scholars today. Yet some people
expect that out of nothingness a revolution will take place and this entire
corrupted manner will be rectified automatically and people would start
sticking to the Holy Quran and tradition and become one Ummah.
If
this is not the definition of a fool’s
paradise what else is? I don’t know. The only active phenomena is that of
Allah sending some Messenger, everybody turning against him and his followers,
and putting them to the same trials as people before them were put, bringing
them to such sacrifices as act as purity of souls and conducts and attitude in
life.
Renewal
of Faith and Divine Guidance
So
a new Ummah emerges from an Ummah surrounding it and it begins to spread like a
spurt of yoghurt in milk and it continues to spread and spread light along with
it. That is the only phenomena known to me. So Imam Mahdi and Messiah,
the concept of these two fits into this concept, this philosophy as supported
by the Holy Quran.
May
Allah give us Muslims around the world to ponder over the state of Islam
nowadays and to take action by not refusing to recognise the Chosen One of
Allah who has come among you to direct you to Allah, to reform your lives in
the best of ways, so that this transformation may reflect positively in you,
your families, environment, in Islam and the world as a whole. Insha-Allah,
Ameen. And may Allah protect you from the bigoted Mullahs, who are the
monkeys and pigs of the Muhammadan Ummah like prophesised by the Beloved of
Allah, Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh). Ameen.
- Extracts from the Friday Sermon of April 4th, 2014 delivered by the Khalifatullah Hadhrat Munir Ahmad Azim Sahib (atba) of Mauritius.