We Should Blame Ourselves - I
By Dr Basheer Ahmed Khan
Garden Grove, CA  

Allah says in the Qur’an that everyone is a hostage to his own deeds (Ch74 V38). Whatever happens to us as individual or as a community is because of our own deeds (Ch4 V79) and it will not be changed by Allah unless we work to change it ourselves (Ch13 V11). Ignoring the teachings of the Qur’an and following our own ways we allowed deterioration in our lives and in our societies for long. We were running in vain behind mirages in the hope of water. We believed in every lie told to us. And no one could be blamed for our own inane behavior.   

One thing which has harmed us most is that we allowed incompetent people to be elevated to important positions. Allah had advised believers to hand over the trust (of responsibility) to people who are capable of handling it (Ch4 V58). Capability means both competency and sincerity, and we have sacrificed one for the other or both to be where we are. We in our arrogance believed that we are better than the others to hold the position held by others and tried to take it over by hook or crook. The attitude which Satan adopted against Adam and his progeny that he is better than Adam (Ch7 V12) is being adopted by the power-hungry progeny of Adam. They are making sure that those who are holding the position fail and they get the chance to replace them even if it is over the ruins of the country they claim to love. Some of them lure the people in the name of liberalism and others in the name of religion and thus these power mongers have divided their countries and the world on ideological ground. By inviting their liberal and conservative friends in this fight these power-hungry people have plunged their country, their people and the world into chaos.

Incompetent rulers who come to power on extraneous support prefer incompetent advisers as they are afraid that competent people will replace them. They appoint only sycophants from their clans or elsewhere, and we see plenty of them in every government. Through such people they succeed in achieving their political ends and dump them later, but they fail to establish an order which is conducive for the advancement of the human civilization. This attitude, which has continued for hundreds of years, has damaged our world and damaged the image of Islam and devastated the Muslim countries. What we are seeing now is the culmination of 1400 years of this misrule in our history about which Nabi SA had forewarned and had given his recommendation to avoid in the following narrations.

Abdullah Bin Masood RA narrates that Nabi SA said: You will see after me favoritism and lot of other things you dislike. When he was asked what they should do in those times, he SA said: Give to those in authority their due and ask for your rights from Allah (Nazarath un Nayeem NN P3774). When a companion asked him as to when is the last hour, he SA said: When trust is lost. He SA explained that trust is lost when power is entrusted to incompetent people (Riyad us Saliheen1837). To the adventurists who are skeptical about this “passive” attitude and “hollow advises”, Allah reminds them that He provided the Children of Israel leaders that led them at His behest because of the patience they showed in face of adversity (Ch33 V24). The problem with man is that he wants to do things which God has kept it to Himself (Ch3 V26), and is negligent of things which God wants him to do, and that is to become an honest and sincere person and His real servant. If we are honest and sincere Allah will give us honest and sincere leaders. We don’t do our part and we blame God and governments for it.

At a time when the world was ruled by emperors and local warlords, it was Muhammad SA who instituted the system of consultative government in the area under his authority. For the first time in history people were empowered as participants and were not dealt with as subjects of their governments. This participatory democracy (Consultative System) was a responsible one. Every God-fearing Muslim was afraid to accept the leadership position for the fear of responsibility that comes with it. The advisors were honest and gave genuine and selfless advice for the good of masses. People understood their limits. They believed that their Creator had created them equal in opportunity but not in their capacity. Those who were successful would succeed on their own merit and would not reach success though dubious means and would not exploit the less fortunate for their success. Those that did not succeed understood the limitation of their capacity. For them both success and failure was a test (Ch6 V165). We promoted the concept that sky is the limit for everyone who tries, not to advance their dreams but to promote our leadership by becoming champions of the downtrodden without having the capacity to honor the promises. Through this farce we kept people engaged in what is impossible. These people who were raised on high hopes and who have fallen now are bitter and are promoting class, color, cast, and religious wars which seem to be heading for Armageddon.

The just system which Nabi SA had established was derailed soon, and replaced by the old authoritative dynastic system with emperors taking up the Islamic title of Khalifa to hoodwink the masses. The history of Muslims since then has been a slippery slope. In the present-day world the influential and powerful people trump over the ordinary people. The fate of Muslim masses in their countries is more miserable than ever. The powerful manipulate the political system, both in democratic and dictatorial systems. In the democratic system the disenfranchised are exploited on the promise of empowerment, and in dictatorship it is done by suppressing the disenfranchised people through the rule by Mukhabirath (Secret Service).

The masses in the Muslim world are God-conscious and keep away from the power politics and keep themselves engaged in economic activity and raising good families. They want to succeed in their role of vicegerent in the domestic domain which is their foremost responsibility (Ch66 V6), and have no desire to be the leaders. As their leaders could not give them good leadership for the reason in the aforementioned paragraphs, Muslim countries remained backward in terms of scientific and economic progress.

The material advancement which Europe achieved made them the leaders of the world and the entire Muslim world became their colony. While the other colonies took advantage of the colonial rule by learning material and social sciences from the colonizers, Muslim by and large wasted this opportunity by going into a confrontation mode because of the age-old hostility between their countries and the colonizers. Worse still, instead of gaining knowledge and skills from the colonizers, Muslims learnt all the wrong things from them and this cost them dearly. Europe learnt good things from the 800 years of Muslim rule in Spain to emerge out of the Dark Ages. Muslims who were exhausted by wars and regimental life engaged in enjoying life when they were rulers. Now the hatred between the Muslim rulers and the Muslim masses has led them both to look up to their colonizing masters for benevolent support which has worked for the advantage and disadvantage of all the three over a long period of history and it is still playing out. 

One of the alibis which Muslims advance for their condition is that their narrative is a victim of a biased media. True that Muslims are in the defensive against Muslim-bashing in the media to which Muslims have practically no access. It is a fact that media picks up only such Muslims and other “experts” who are ignorant of true Islamic teachings and are willing to portray Islam and Muslims negatively to strengthen their narrative. This is half-truth and the other half of the truth is that even those Muslims who claim to champion Islamic cause and appear on media do not present the true and complete picture. (Continued next week)