Arab 'Winter' and the Euro 'Spring'

 

The Arab Spring is a term used to tag the wave of protests and civil unrest that swept the Arab world back in December 2010 when a street vendor in Tunisia, Mohammad Bouazizi set himself on fire when the police came to seize his vegetable stall after his failure in obtaining a permit to exercise. He furthermore faced harassment and humiliation by a municipal officer and her assistants.

 

He unfortunately set himself on fire as an open defiance against the autocratic regime, and this act of his was hailed by the West as a mighty sacrifice for democracy in the Arab world and he and those who followed his example to self-immolate themselves - nearly a dozen of them in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania – were granted such praiseworthy titles such as “heroic martyrs of a new North African and Middle Eastern revolution”. This was published in the New York Times, in the article “How a single match can ignite a Revolution” published on 21 January 2011 by Robert F. Worth.

 

This act which the world deemed as a sacrifice for democracy is in fact suicide which is highly condemnable in Islam. No matter how hard a situation may come upon man, he has no right to take the life which does not belong to him. This act of suicide may be deemed by the West as a heroic act but unfortunately it is not so! Islam encourages revenge as per the same degree of torture that one undergoes, reaffirming the Mosaic Law “an eye for an eye” but being more just and lenient in its application. Islam is the Best Model, the Middle Way, between the extreme and the laissez-faire. The leaders who don’t follow the tenets of Islam while proclaiming themselves as Muslim States are accountable in the worldly court of justice as well as the Divine Court of Justice, but no Muslim – I clear and firmly state – NO MUSLIM SHOULD EVER TAKE HIS OWN LIFE! No matter how hard a situation gets, Allah has forbidden His servant to take this satanic step towards self-destruction.

'Halloween' in Arabia

   

The Holy Prophet Muhammad (sa), in an astonishing tradition (Hadith), presciently foretold the Muslim Ummah that just like communities before them faced different trials in their times, the Ummah will also face real tests of national character in the ebb and flow of time. The Holy Prophet (sa) specifically warned the community against major sins that singed earlier peoples: spread of immorality and open injustice in the social order; unfair dealings and selfish indulgence of the rich, neglect of Divine commands and pursuit of amusement; factionalism among the elites leading to foreign intervention and eventual cultural subjugation under other peoples.

The world of Islam today bear witness to the essential truthfulness and fulfillment of those grim forewarnings. Under the ideological dominance of 'Godlessness' or hedonistic individualism, the social elites in the Muslim world are playing lip-service to sublime spiritual values; they are enamoured of Satanic temptations at amusement avenues and the economics of entertainment opportunities is driving the shifts in national policies. Hence, the Westernization process seems to grip almost all walks of everyday life in the Muslim nations in recent times. In his Friday Sermon of 11 November 2022~16 Rabi’ul Aakhir 1444 AH, Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam International Hazrat Muhyiuddin Al Khalifatullah Munir A. Azim (aba) of Mauritius points to the pitfalls of this process for the community and society at large.  

The Freedom of Women

In his Friday Sermon of 07 January 2022~ 04 Jamadi’ul Aakhir 1443 AH, Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam Hazrat Khalifatullah Munir A. Azim (aba) of Mauritius speaks about the evils and dangers lurking beneath contemporary conceptions of women's freedom. The prevailing Western cultural model, or the unbridled pursuit of individual ecstacy at any quest, has twisted people's thoughts on women's liberation.  Hence, the current notions of 'freedom' in the West, ironically and actually, 'enslaves' women within a consumerist, capitalist, and hedonistic cultural milieu of commodification- literally trapping them within a male-centric world of objectification, with its constant need on its victims to 'fitting in' to the male-gaze, and worst abuses (treating women as 'use' and 'throw' chattels; sexual anarchy, abortions; break-down of family system, with increase in divorces and drug addictions) all around.  As true freedom indicates the ability to make well-reasoned choices  in a fully-informed manner about the good and the bad in life, Hazrat Khalifatullah (aba) calls attention  to the well-balanced Islamic values that safeguard women's role, agency and rights within the social order, and underscores the need for infusing true values of Islamic life in the younger generation so as to prepare them for cultural encounters in the West. 

Read the Friday Sermon Below:   

Islam and the West: Beyond Identity

More than ever before, individual and social identities are in flux. Ways of life as understood in both tradition-bound societies, and also in the advanced industrialized nations, are shifting under the strong currents of economic globalization and associated transformations. The usual lense of 'spiritual' East and 'materialist' West does not really explain the creeping changes around the world. In his Friday Sermon of 04 January 2019~ 27 Rabi’ul Aakhir 1440 AH,  Imam- Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam Hadhrat Muhyi-ud-Din Al Khalifatullah Munir Ahmad Azim Saheb (atba) of Mauritius spoke about the growing churning happening in the Arab-Islamic world and in the West, pointing to a deep irony: whereas a 'god-less' Europe increasingly appreciates the values of diversity and humanitarianism at the root of a spiritual outlook; the rich-Arab States-despite their claims of faith in God- are increasingly turning to materialism and are virtually indifferent to the solidarity obligations of core Islamic values. Pointing to the inherent limitations of synthetic materialism to sustain human interest over the longer term and the profound appeal of the spiritual path in the inner quest of people for lasting happiness; Hadhrat Khalifatullah (atba) highlights the major opportunity it represents for Islam to fill the growing 'emptiness' in the West, even as the Speech underscores the profound need for the Muslim societies' in our times to appreciate and reclaim their pure faith/spiritual legacy from corrupting influences that grip their social orders: the 'worship' of riches;  denial of human rights; mindless extremism, internecine violence, etc. 

Read the Friday Sermon Below:   

SPIRITUALITY AND MATERIALISM

There is a common belief among us that the Arabs and Muslims in general are spiritual while the West, i.e. industrialist and capitalist American and European societies, is materialistic. But how true is this claim?

'Muslims, Stand Up for Refugees'

THE THREAT TO ISLAM

Islam does not accept the idea, widespread amidst the West (mainly the non-Muslims), of a boundary between the inner life of man and his public actions. This belief (i.e. the Islamic belief that there is no boundary between the inner life of man and his public actions) may become a sure force that will convince non-Muslims to rediscover the link between daily life and a moral order. But in doing so it goes against the current conventional Western wisdom. For some time already, the very notion of Islam makes the non-Muslims tremble. They think that the Muslim world is heading towards a confrontation with the other parts of the world who do not share its beliefs. This thus makes the European and even the US (Americans) very nervous. A quick analysis of the current situation where Islam is seen as a blood-thirsty religion only reinforces this fear. But they forget the many wrongs, the murders of poor and defenceless Muslims which they committed in order to conquer lands and properties, but primarily to eradicate Islam from these places.

In Europe, more than twenty years ago, Bosnian Muslims were, for a long brutally mistreated by the Serbians who theoretically are Christians. On the border between Europe and Asia, Armenians Christians annihilated Azerbaijanis (Azeri) Muslims, and Jews and Muslims to this day continue to kill each other in Palestine. Further to the East, there is the brutality of the Indian army in Kashmir, and the destruction in 1992 of the Ayodhya mosque by the Hindus. Such bitter experiences suggest to the Muslims that the world is against them. If this is the case, so they are against the world. This explains the xenophobia that foreigners are murdered by terrorists who brandish Quranic verses in Iraq and Syria and in other Islamic states.

When the Qur'an spoke English

The earliest direct English translation of the holy book is a testament to its translator's resourcefulness

The first Muslim member of Congress assumed office in January 2007. For his swearing-in ceremony, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., chose to pledge on the Quran. The copy he used, specially loaned by the Library of Congress for the occasion, had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. [Inset: The Qur'an once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Photo by  Haraz N. Ghanbari /AP] 

Why did Jefferson own a copy of the Quran? The third president was interested in Islam for many reasons, as Denise A. Spellberg explains in her book “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an.” He was able to read the holy book of Islam in the first place, however, only thanks to a recent translation, the first direct one from Arabic into English, a copy of which he purchased as a law student in 1765. That translation, by a young English lawyer named George Sale, would prove to have an outsize role in the Western study and understanding of the Quran. 

European interest in Islam

Long before Europeans governed Muslim colonies, interest in Islam and its cultures ran high in Europe. Part of the reason was political. Three Muslim empires dominated large parts of Asia: the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Mediterranean and Arabia; the Safavids in Persia; and the Mughals in India.

These Muslim dynasties were not just powerful but were also admired for their refined arts and culture — music, poetry, gardens, ceramics and textiles. Moreover, books in Arabic offered knowledge of many fields to those who learned the language. Not just the sciences and philosophy but even Arabic literature enticed European translators. Thus, in 1704 a Frenchman first translated the “1001 Nights,” whose tales soon became an enduring classic of European as well as of Arabic letters.

Above all else, the religion of Islam itself seemed an especially compelling field of inquiry to a variety of European scholars and thinkers. How had a handful of Muslims emerged from the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century to conquer so much of the known world? This was one of the great questions of world history, as both the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire and the English historian Edward Gibbon agreed. In addition, philosophers and freethinking Christians deemed the central tenet of Islam, the unity of God, more rational than the mystery of the Christian Trinity. Thus, many different Europeans attributed singular importance to Islam and the language of its revelation, Arabic.