DISARMAMENT VERSUS MORAL REARMAMENT – PART 2

Muhammad Yakub Khan

This discussion will be incomplete without touching upon some other related points. The most important of these is that there can be no true moral rearmament without religion. Religion alone supplies a complete and conclusive answer to the riddle of life. All philosophical explanations, however highly spun, amount to but groping in the dark. Religion alone is competent to turn the searchlight on the whence and whither of human life – its origin and its destiny. Unless we have this complete picture of life and know its deepest intent and purpose, the result is bound to be mal adjustment. This mal adjustment is at the bottom of all conflicts and contradictions in individual as well as collective life.

Religion tells us that all life emanates from one Fountainhead we call God, that it can thrive and flourish only if lived in harmony with the will and purpose of that Supreme Creator. That is the significance of the word Islam that is, life lived in harmony with God´s will. It further tells us that the slightest deviation from the Divine will and purpose recoils upon us in the form of injury to our own proper growth and development. In other words, religion alone provides the dynamism which can move the wheels of life along the tracks leading to peace, prosperity and true happiness.

The fact is that whatever moral consciousness we find among the nations of the world is in the last analysis traceable to the light of spiritual illumination that comes through religion. But for these spiritual luminaries, the Founders of the revealed religions, this world would have been a dark and dismal place, with the law of the jungle reigning supreme, unrelieved by any ray of moral or humanitarian light. God-consciousness is thus the only bedrock on which a moral structure of any abiding value can be reared.

This explains why modern man, with all his advancement in the domain of knowledge and enlightenment, has failed to live up to the moral standards in private or corporate, national or international life. He lacks the restraining and ennobling influence of faith in the Divine dispensation which alone can provide a motive force for right living.

The question arises: How is it that the Muslim peoples of the world who are so much wedded to religion are in the grip of a whole tide of corruption? How is it that Islam which claims to be a perfect code has not been able to instil into them any high moral standards? This is a pertinent question. The reason is, as often emphasised in these columns, that religion is not a name for religious lore, books, rites, rituals, forms and formulas. Religion, at the root, is a living throbbing faith in God´s existence and the supremacy of His laws. That is the essence, the basis from which stems all the superstructure which men have built thereon in the shape of outer forms of worship. These devotional observances are a means to that end of God-consciousness, and carry little value, if shorn of that inner kernel.

To test whether religion in the sense of a live spark of faith can at all work out a moral transformation one has only to look at the early history of Islam, when the whole face of Arab society was changed almost overnight, and a people steeped deep in all kinds of vices, and lost to all sense of morality were redeemed, and ennobled into veritable angels walking on earth. A Muslim vendor, unlike our present-day merchants, would make it a point to show all the defects of his commodity to the customer, while those occupying administrative positions looked upon themselves as the servants of the people. The Caliph in person carried sacks of flour to starving families.

To argue, therefore, that religion has failed as a force for moral uplift is to deny the facts of history. Likewise flimsy is the argument that religions have caused war. The wars were thrust on Islam by the evil forces of the day. Despite this Islam humanised war by banning all wanton destruction of life and property. The modern concept of total war with bombing of civil population, was considered an abomination is Islam. Non-combatants, old men, women, children, priests, crops, fruit-bearing trees were not to be touched. These were explicit instructions to Muslim soldiers. War, as we said in our last, was a necessary evil and was thrust on Islam. But there seemed to be a Providential wisdom behind it. The idea was that Islam should set for mankind an example of how war, even if it becomes unavoidable, can be divested of much of its horrors. Modern man will profit immensely if he should turn to Islam for guidance as to the declaration and conduct of war, and treatment of prisoners of war.

The other pertinent question is which religion to adopt, since there are so many in the field. This again is a misconception. Religion has been just one throughout the ages – viz., to know and realise God and do His will. That was the sum and substance of the teachings of every religious Founder. The word Islam literally connoted self-surrender to God´s will. When Jesus said: Thy will, not my will, he was only proclaiming the essence of Islam. The difference that we find in the various religions pertain to external forms and observances, which, according to the Quran, are immaterial.

Religion in the sense of books, and letter-worship no doubt leads to quarrels, but religion provides the only basis for human fellowship, goodwill, peace and a moral life.

M.Y.K.

(The Light – December 1, 1958)