Id-al-Adha sermon at the Shah Jehan Mosque Woking
Muhammad Yakub Khan
Imam,Woking Mosque.
Faith: the sustaining Force behind States and Civilizations
Communist menace can only be met on ideological plane
Islam’s role in the making of the new world
(The text of the Id-al-Adha sermon at the Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, England, delivered on July 8th, 1957, by the Imam, Maulana Muhammad Yakub Khan)
The Id-al-Adha, as you know, commemorates the eternal conflict between the spirit and the flesh, as symbolised in the lives of two great men of God – Abraham and his son Ishmael – some 4000 years ago. The sacred House of Ka’ba, the two barren hills of Safa and Marwa, the annual Pilgrimage, and the animal sacrifice which coming as the coping stone to those scenes of self-dedication to the One True God – all these are to this day standing monuments to those eternal Truths for which the illustrious Father and the illustrious Son stood, fought and suffered. Forty centuries that have since elapsed have witnessed the rise and fall of many a civilisation, many a kingdom, many empires, many revolutions in the destinies of mankind, but they have failed to be-dim the glory that Abraham’s thorough, unhesitating, unwavering self-dedication to God was.It is, however, not as a mere pious story of the past that this institution revolving round the Ka’ba, the first House of God on earth, has been preserved. The Quran is not a story book, nor a treatise on history. The only use the Quran has for the preservation of outstanding historical events, especially the rise and the fall of nations and their civilisations, is to light the path of contemporary history. A Muslim is supposed to be a history-maker – not a blind worshipper of the past.
تِلْكَ أُمَّةٌ قَدْ خَلَتْ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتْ وَلَكُم مَّا كَسَبْتُمْ وَلَا تُسْـَٔلُونَ عَمَّا كَانُوا۟ يَعْمَلُونَ
(Al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:141)
i.e., “They were a generation that is dead and gone. For them was the reward of what they did, for you will be the reward of what you do.”
The Ka’ba which is the centre of the picture in this Festival of sacrifice associated with the Haj pilgrimage is a fingerpost pointing towards the great destiny in store for mankind. The whole of the historical process, with its invariable travails, and its ups and downs has been but an onward upward march of man towards that destiny. That destiny is none other than the unity of the whole of mankind under the loving Fatherhood of One God.This is a destiny that can only be built up on the foundation of the concepts of universal human fellowship, human equality and human sympathy. When Abraham and Ishmael were rebuilding the Ka’ba, they prayed to God to raise from among their progeny a great Teacher who would implant these great spiritual values in the hearts of men. The appearance of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ 2500 years afterwards was a fulfilment of that prayer, and his mission was aptly described by the Quran as Rahmat-ul-lil-alamin i.e. “A mercy to the whole of mankind.”
Never before in the history of man was there a pronounced and persistent cry rising from the depths of the human soul for a social order based on moral values and universal social justice, exactly the concepts which Islam came to up-hold. The world needs, not dictators, not empire-builders, not inventors of destructive weapons, but a Rahmat-ul-lil ’alamin – “A mercy unto the nations.”
The modern scientific inventions which have conquered space, and pulled down barriers between nation and nation, seem to have set the stage of that great consummation. There lies the significance of this occasion for the present generation of mankind.Human societies and civilisations even States are sustained by the moral and spiritual substratum that underlies them. In our own day, mighty men with dreams of world domination rose and were smitten down as withered straws by the hand of Nature. The voluntary liquidation of the British empire is perhaps the most spectacular homage of all history which physical force has paid to the superiority of the moral force. The creation of Pakistan in the face of tremendous opposition was, likewise, a thumping victory for the forces of human rights over vested interests. This is a thread which will be found to run throughout the stories of the numerous successive States and civilisations that made their appearance on this world stage. They showed vitality and flourished so long as they had some dynamic moral purpose behind them, and with the weakening of that driving force, they gradually withered away and made their exit. The Quran which visualises these big epochs as so many specks in man’s history likens this phenomenon to the rolling up of paper-sheets, one after another. In another parable, comparing the ephemeral temporal values to the abiding moral values of life, it conjures up the picture of a hill torrent with swarms of foam floating on its surface. The foam, ultimately, disappears, it says, as something worthless, whereas “that which is of good to men carries in the earth.” That is what has happened in the conflict and encounters between the various cultures, civilisations churches and states, each contributing to the sum-total of human culture what was of abiding value to man, and then disappearing, like the worthless foam.
In the present-day inter-bloc conflict, the democracies find it difficult, despite their superiority in armaments, general prosperity and nuclear weapons, to stem the tide of Communism. The reason, so little realised, is that ideas are more deadly than bombs, and the socialistic philosophy of life under which facade Communism infiltrates into other lands grips the people’s minds wherever it goes. Paradoxical as it may appear, Communism which can see no higher than the material amenities of Life goes about with an ideology to sell, whereas the democracies which want to reconstruct society on moral and spiritual foundations, in the war for people’s minds, place far greater reliance in dollars. The emphasis under democracy, on the freedom of the individual, is fostering trends of self-seeking and self-indulgence which is hardly the path to the making of a virile humanity, a flame with a chivalrous conception of life, capable of standing up to any challenge and braving any storms. An ideological appeal alone can rise to the high pitch where man can stake his all for what he considers to be just and right. Between calculating enlightened self-interest which is the highest guiding principle and the only binding tie between the democratic bloc, and the fire and fervour of a burning faith in right and wrong there is a world of difference. As, a poet, commenting upon Abraham’s daring stand against Nimrud, puts it:
بے خطر کود پڑا آتش نمرود میں عشق عقل ہے محو تماشائے لب بام ابھی
(اقبال)
i.e., ”Recklessly did Love plunge into the Nimrud’s flames, While Reason is yet just watching from the balcony.”
This explains the relative positions of the two blocs – cohesion, unity of thought the solidarity of ranks behind the Iron Curtain, and intellectual confusion, mutual distrust, lack of teamwork, even, at times working at cross-purposes on the other.
This is what makes the present cold war an unequal fight. The democracies must rake up the embers of their Faith to impart the warmth of life to the cold bones of their structure if they would hold their own against the challenge of the Communism. An ideology can only be matched by an ideology. And Faith – the kind of Faith which made Abraham jump into flames, which made Jesus don the crown of thorns, which made Muhammad ﷺ stake his all to establish God’s glory on earth – this kind of Faith is decidedly a far superior, and more impelling and dynamic force than the bread-and-butter philosophy which is the highest flight of Communism’s imagination as to man’s destiny. It is for lack of this steadying bedrock of human life that the Kremlin hierarchy has been going through repeated violent convulsions, and cracks are already showing in the red citadel.
It was a spark of Faith which made a handful of ill-equipped Muslims of the Prophet’s Day rout the united forces of darkness, ranged against them. Muslim soldiers knew no strikes for higher wages or shorter hours. Nor did they insist on their lives being insured before marching to the front. To fight, suffer and fall in the cause of God was a coveted boon, and Muslim youth vied with one another in grabbing it. When an undersize youth was refused enlistment as a volunteer in the Army of Islam, he was greatly distressed, and insisted on being given a chance to measure his strength against a taller fellow who had been accepted. On one occasion a young man, leisurely watching the engagement from a side of the battlefield, saw his fellows hard-pressed. While rushing to their rescue, he flung away what was left of the handful of dates he had been enjoying, saying “Well! Those I will eat in paradise.” Life-after-death was to him a hard reality, and he had not a moment’s doubt that death in God’s path was the surest path to Heaven. It was a common sight for Muslim warriors, when one of them entered the lists against the enemy, and possible death, to ask him to carry a message to the Prophet ﷺ in the Hereafter that they were finding all the promises made by him being fulfilled.
Now that, after centuries of Western domination, a free world of Islam has taken birth, it should be the foremost concern of those at the helm to rediscover these values of their Faith. The blind aping of Westernism which is already a dying cult will only prove a dead weight on them and drag them the same way.The basic value of that Faith, as symbolised in the Haj pilgrimage is the universal brotherhood of man, transcending all racial, national or geographical bounds. To give way to these trends, and in this atomic age, think in terms of Arabism, Turanism, Africanism or any other ism would be not only to be false to the whole essence of Islam, but also to swim against the tide of the times which call for amalgamation of men into larger and larger groups.
It is in the glowing, burning idealism of Faith as preserved in Islam that lies the hope of saving the present civilisation against the threat of the gross materialistic philosophy which, if it has its way, will mean a relapse into the primitive conditions when crude cravings of the flesh were the only forces that swayed mankind. But for a spirit to live for the higher values, whatever the cost, man’s life would hardly be worth more than that of lower animals. Indeed, life itself would lose all charm if it knows nothing better and higher than eat, drink and be merry. The animal sacrifice is but a reminder that on the corpses of the animals within us, we must rise to the high destiny ordained for us by the Hand of God. Shorn of that spirit, and wedded to the low passions of the flesh, we are hardly a bit superior to the animals we slaughter.
لَن يَنَالَ ٱللَّهَ لُحُومُهَا وَلَا دِمَآؤُهَا وَلَـٰكِن يَنَالُهُ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ مِنكُمْ
(Al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage) 22:37)
i.e., ”Neither flesh nor their blood reaches God. What does reach Him is how far you imbibe the underlying spirit of killing the animal within you.”
That was the path – the higher path – blazed by all the world Prophets. It was in pursuance of that ideal that Abraham faced the fury of Nimrud. Moses challenged the might of the Pharaoh, Jesus mounted the cross and Prophet Muhammad ﷺ suffered persecution, torture and exile. The final round, in the present conflict, will inevitably have to be fought on the ideological plane, and there it is a revival of the live spark of Faith as exemplified in the lives of all world Teachers, that can take up the challenge.
If the world is moving and moving pretty fast towards the goal of one-world, one-humanity, sanctity of human personality, universal human rights, social justice, and the rule of the law – it is time these concepts passed from the sphere of cold academic speculation to living, throbbing principles of daily life. This live touch they can receive only through World Teachers like Abraham whose exploits in the path of God we are celebrating today. Islam is no more than the last surviving specimen of this defunct species – something like the Commonwealth of religions. As such it is up to Muslims to rise to the high role that Islam has to play in the making of a new world, based on the sovereignty of God and fellowship of man – an ideal symbolised by the Ka’ba and the annual pilgrimage.
(The Light – August 1, 1957)
