Contemporary Identity-Issues within the Islamic World
We have despoiled the inheritance that we from our fathers won.
The heaven from the zenith has dashed it down
-Iqbal
Ever since the second World War and the subsequent emancipation of various colonies of the west, the affected people have been groping in the wreckage to find their identity, a sense of belongingness to where they came from, a sense of history which was mercilessly denied to them. One of the major groups affected by this phenomenon is Muslims. Muslim psyche has been undergoing this phenomenon for more than fifty years now wherein they've been, not exclusively so, conditioned to believe that anything the west does not approve of is categorically inferior including their own civilization. The Muslim youth unfortunately has yielded to the diligent attempts of the west to pull asunder the strings that bind them with their ancestors. Everything Western is appealing to them, from sartorial choices to year-round celebrations of various kinds. This overwhelming western influence has seeped into all corners of the globe, so much so that entire cultures are losing their sense of identity. Muslim youth are confused and frustrated because of the two warring ideals–how the west wants them to be and how Allah wants them to be. Even places considered twice removed from the western influence have given in to it. The cause of this frustration is unfamiliarity with our history and religious and cultural rootlessness. Since we don't know the beauty of our past we revel in the ugliness of our present in want of a better alternative. We see the seemingly luxurious life that's been presented to us via different media and ignore the ugliness they are embedded within. We are quite unaware of history and that is our problem. If we merely skim through the pages of history we would be presented with an unbelievable chain of events.
The progress in the West for the past couple of centuries has been stellar. It's not the progress that affects the psyche of the Muslims but rather the discourse on the very existence of Muslims. The adjectives deployed to describe them have been inflammatory to say the least. Over the years the incendiary language led to the conditioning of the Muslims- it is unsurprising that today the Muslim youth believes in the lies peddled about themselves. Be it the fallacious categorizing of the crimes perpetrated by them as terrorism or in more informed settings discrediting them even where their remarkable contribution deserves some acknowledgement.
The stories of the glories of the western world need no mention. The telltale monopoly of the West on intellectual, social, political, scientific, and technological traditions is quite apparent. In contrast to this splendor and glory, the Muslim world is the world’s sickman. Has it always been the case? Did the Muslim world always live in the dungeons of ignorance?
Legend has it that when the West was drowning in the sea of darkness, the sun shone brightly on the Islamic world. The term ‘age of darkness’ was coined by Cardinal Caesar Baronius to refer to the intellectual, and cultural decline of the western world. A trained historian by profession, Baronius bemoaned the lack of historiography and intellectual tradition. The dark age of Europe was the golden era for Muslims. From intricate architecture to inventing an analog calculation device now known to us as astrolabe. Basically, the Islamic world during the Middle Ages reached its zenith. Not only materially but also ethically and spiritually.
The centuries of intellectual, social, and spiritual enlightenment were marred by the onslaught of bloody Mongol invasions leading to the decimation of entire populations. During the renaissance period, while the muslims were grappling with pillage and massacre, the West confiscated and developed the theories and discoveries of the intellectual giants of the Muslim world, without acknowledging their indebtedness to the Muslims. It was an intellectual theft that changed the world for the better– for the West and for the worse– for the Muslims. Things have only been going downhill since then.
The term ‘dark ages’ is a eurocentric view of the world. It not only denies that other communities were making remarkable progress but also their significance entirely. The concern of this blog is not to address the wrongs done by the Europeans but its impact on Muslim youth today. As subcontinent Muslims, it is naturally ingrained in us that the ‘others’ are somehow better than us. The desi Muslim community all over the world including the Arabs are still going through a colonial hangover. ‘The Arabs’ here requires qualification— the Arabs, although never been colonized, participated as subsidiaries in the wake of the two world wars. The insurmountable influence of the British in particular and the West in general is still a force to be reckoned with.
While it is true that the developments made by the West are remarkable in their own right, to believe they are at the zenith of human civilization, couldn't be further from the truth. The roots of the western civilization are anything but human. On the other hand, Islamic Golden Age was as well-rounded as human society itself. Coupled with the impeccable teachings of Islam, the comprehensible intellectual development in fields like Mathematics, Science, Physics, Astronomy, etc was cherry on top. The Muslims not only made significant technological developments but also spiritual developments. The concept of the State Welfare system was in fact put into effect by the second Caliph of Islam– Umar Ibn Al Khattab RA. He was not only an exceptional Muslim but also an outstanding leader. He set the bar too high for the leaders to come. There is a plethora of such concepts that were originally developed by the Muslims but seldom do they get acknowledged. The birth of Western Civilization took place in Iraq and Egypt and yet today they are not even considered a part of the West.
I shall attempt to track the root of the inferiority complex the Muslim youth in particular is suffering from. A hadith comes to mind:
This hadith is more relevant now than ever.
This prophecy of the Prophet pbuh is a proof for not just his prophethood but also his message i.e. the Quran and that Sunnah is our moral compass, if we stray from it we will be among the losers.
What is truly striking is the difference between the psyche of the earlier generations of the Muslims compared to ours, especially the Salaf. They saw the reality of the hereafter as clearly as the sun. We are fazed by the dazzle and the glamor of the world. We participate and invest in this life as if we are never going to be taken to account. We forget the purpose of our existence. We forget that this world is merely a testing ground. Allah likens the life of this world to the ‘enjoyment of delusion.’ We forget the basic nature of the life of this world : its transience. It is this forgetfulness that is the root of most of the evil that we commit without realizing their enormity. What causes some Muslims to betray Allah and their messenger pbuh, what makes riba, fornication, extravagance easy? I believe it is the dismissal of the basic reality that the life of this world is temporary but the fruits of the seeds we sow here now would be eternal.
I cannot help but recall Iqbal’s Shikwa Jawab e Shikwa, wherein he raises the most pertinent questions a thinking person can raise. He not only laments the decline of the Islamic civilization, bemoans the downfall of the Muslims but also makes us aware of the cracks and fissures in the frame of the community.
Since, the current discussion is beyond the scope of this blog I shall stick to getting to the root of the inferiority complex that plagues our youth.
As DeShanne Stokes says, “Lies sound like facts to those who've been conditioned to mis-recognize the truth.” It’s this deep-rooted conditioning that we as muslims want to counter. As with most of our problems that keep gnawing at us this too can be quelled only by educating ourselves and our youth about our history viz. Our ancestors, the miraculous and glorious conquests and victories imbued with an ethos of God-consciousness and love for humanity.
The most telling of all the differences between the western civilization and the Islamic civilization is the very purpose of the two civilizations. The western civilization is rooted in a systemic pillage, plunder, and mass extermination of entire ethnicities– the genocide of Red Indians in America, the looting of India and Africa among the most infamous of them. All this in the guise of civilizing the barbarians–their non-western counterparts. The irony is too glaring to be missed. Civilizing the barbarians was merely a ruse, the actual intentions were revealed to the world only after they had wreaked havoc on their colonies. It’s the same west that now screams of ‘human rights,’ which also brings me to the very origins of the concept, violating every single basic human right possible–entire populations were hunted down, looted, and killed only to satisfy the bloodlust and avarice of the West. The human rights movement goes back to the slavery in the US, the two great wars, anti-colonial movements,etc. This tug-of-war continues even to this day. Think of the refugee crisis– the question is who is responsible for creating the refugees in the first place. The purpose of revisiting this history bedaubed with blood and deception is to remind ourselves that without Islam, without divine guidance the human being is bound to unleash the devil inside him.
To reiterate what I said earlier about educating ourselves about our history and its dynamics with the world, we must read. As the Spanish-American Philosopher George Sanatayana said, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We need to look back at our civilization and check for ourselves what went amiss and how it can be amended. As Iqbal says in Jawab e shikwa:
Who now forgetfully neglect My Rasool’s Law sublime? And whose lives write them clearly down As servers of the time
We need to cling strongly to our history which means to go back to the ways of the salaf, for what emerged therefrom was truly spectacular. The Islamic civilization is entrenched in excellence i.e. Ihsan which is reflected in the works of our predecessors notwithstanding their field of work. The splendor of Islamic architecture remains unmatched to this day. Unfortunately we lost most of our heritage to war and theft. If we only truly start appreciating and aligning ourselves to the deen of Allah the way our salaf did most, if not all, of our problems would slowly and gradually dissipate. We need to understand we are not made for this world, this world and what is in it has been subjected to us by Allah,
Luqman 31:20 -
Do you not see that Allāh has made subject to you whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth and amply bestowed upon you His favors, [both] apparent and unapparent? But of the people is he who disputes about Allāh without knowledge or guidance or an enlightening Book [from Him].
No tree survives without its roots. Unearthed roots cause the whole tree to collapse regardless of how strong they are. The deeper the roots go the more indestructible the tree will be. Our guide is the Quran and the sunnah of the prophet pbuh. We must bear in mind the early days of Islam when Muslims were few and yet their faith in Allah and the hereafter was so strong that it revolutionized the world. These are our ancestors, this is our history, we don't count numbers or dirhams, we place our trust in whom everything in creation turns to. Only with the awareness of who we are and who we are supposed to be, will we be able to truly envisage the role of the vicegerent of Allah in this world. To conclude with another couplet of Iqbal which seems quite apt:
No glitter of Western science could dazzle my eyes
The dust of Medina stains, like collyrium, black.
May Allah SWT grant us taufique Ameen
Nice Post Mr RuH, and Jazakallahu Khairan!
ReplyDeleteAllahumma barik!
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