ID-UL-FITR ADDRESS AT WOKING

Imam,Mohammad Yakub Khan,The Woking Mosque, England.

THE QURAN ON THE PRESENT WORLD CRISIS

The following is the text of the Address (Khutba) by the Imam, the Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, on the occasion of Id-ul-Fitr Congregation Prayer on May 1, 1957. The Address was based on the Quranic text (3: 101, 102) in which Muslims have been enjoined to live up to the ideology of Islam, to hold fast to the ”Habl-al-Allah”, and not to give way to fissiparous tendencies. After the recitation of the text in Arabic, the Address was delivered in English, which runs as follows: –

The festival we are celebrating today is one of rejoicing and thanksgiving. Muslims throughout the world are likewise celebrating this great day. We are rejoicing that we were able to undergo the month-long privations of hunger and thirst in obedience to the will of God. Paradoxical as it may sound, a Muslim’s greatest happiness lies in renouncing the good things of life, facing hardships and sufferings in a good cause with a smiling face, courting death itself when truth, duty, or honour calls as the highest fulfilment of life.

وَكَيْفَ تَكْفُرُونَ وَأَنتُمْ تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْكُمْ ءَايَـٰتُ ٱللَّهِ وَفِيكُمْ رَسُولُهُۥ وَمَن يَعْتَصِم بِٱللَّهِ فَقَدْ هُدِىَ إِلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ حَقَّ تُقَاتِهِۦ وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنتُم مُّسْلِمُونَ

وَٱعْتَصِمُوا۟ بِحَبْلِ ٱللَّهِ جَمِيعًا وَلَا تَفَرَّقُوا۟ وَٱذْكُرُوا۟ نِعْمَتَ ٱللَّهِ عَلَيْكُمْ إِذْ كُنتُمْ أَعْدَآءً فَأَلَّفَ بَيْنَ قُلُوبِكُمْ فَأَصْبَحْتُم بِنِعْمَتِهِۦٓ إِخْوَٰنًا              

 وَكُنتُمْ عَلَىٰ شَفَا حُفْرَةٍ مِّنَ ٱلنَّارِ فَأَنقَذَكُم مِّنْهَا كَذَٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمْ ءَايَـٰتِهِۦ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَهْتَدُونَ             

(Al-Imran 3:101 to 103)

This exactly is the ideal put before a Muslim in the Quranic verses I have recited: “Let not death come to you”, we are told, “but it must find you with a spirit of complete self-surrender to God’s will”. In other words, a Muslim’s highest ideal in life must be to seek and do the will of God. With that ideal he must face life; with that ideal he must face death.

Historians often wonder at the rise of Islam, and suddenness with which it swept the then known world, like a meteor which in the twinkling of eyes, illumines the whole firmament and leaves a trail of bright flash behind. They marvel at this strange phenomenon, which, they confess, they cannot explain on any known historical principles. The explanation lies in this glowing, burning idealism whose flame was kindled in the hearts of the handful of people whom the Prophet’s call brought around him – the ideal to look upon this earthly life as a trust to be devoted to doing God’s will.

The discovery of this higher loyalty, replacing the petty tribal and clannish loyalties of the day, led to a wholesale revolution. On the ashes of a society based on false pride and lust for power, there sprang up a social order where the yardstick to measure the worth of the individual was how far he walked in the fear of God. The false gods of clannism, superstition, custom and social tyranny were knocked off their pedestals. People, given from generation to generation, to mutual conflicts and feuds in a mad race after the pleasures of the flesh, were welded into bonds of goodwill and brotherhood unknown in the annals of man. In the verses I have quoted, the Quran describes that state of things as a pit of fire with the people standing on the brink of it. “Remember God’s gift to you”, say the verses. “That (by means of the new ideology God gave you), He rescued you from that impending doom, and forged links of goodwill and sympathy between your hearts.”

This sense of brotherhood, we are told, is Islam’s greatest gift to Muslims. This was made possible by uplifting man’s vision from the mean, sordid, petty objectives of life, fixing it on his high destiny as God’s vicegerent, and the moral and spiritual values that flew from that interpretation of life. To that great covenant and ideology, we are warned, we must hold fast, if we are not to throw away that great destiny.On this great day when we are celebrating the annual struggle between the spirit and the flesh during the month of Fasting, we must hearken back to this message – the message of putting God’s will at the top of all our loyalties, which, indeed, was the message of all the religious founders of the world. Along this trail blazed by Divinely inspired Teachers of the world lies the only path to the new social order of justice, peace and human fellowship which the modern world must rediscover for its very survival.The acquisitive philosophy of life upon which the present-day Western civilisation rests – whether of the Democratic or Communist brand – could not but raise a whole crop of the demons of discontent, greed, jealousies, and conflicts, threatening to engulf in their flames all that man has laboriously built up through the centuries. The deadliest of atom bombs lies within the heart of modern man, and unless the demon is laid to rest at its source, no human wisdom or device can save us from the impending doom. The institution of fasting is a reminder that the path to peace and true bliss lies in overpowering that biggest of demons within us.

Throughout the ages, mankind has dismissed this call to the higher interpretation of life as make-believe superstition, and useless raving of what they called “unhanged” minds. All talk of God and God’s will was scoffed at as idle myth. Modern man is in no better mood. His unprecedented mastery over the forces of Nature has, indeed, made him more swollen-headed. His sense of self-sufficiency seems to have blinded him to any use for the higher significance of life, so that while his materialistic eye has put on unusual dazzling shine, his eye of the spirit has been afflicted with stark blindness. But there are more things in heaven and earth than our little wisdom dreams of. As if to subject this blind eye to a surgical operation, and take the scales off it, Providence in His profound wisdom has unleashed the dreadful ginn of the Hydrogen bomb. The grim shadow of this new weapon of mass destruction is already making itself felt and thinking minds, everywhere, are awakening to a dim realisation that, after all, what the Prophets and sages of old called people to was no idle talk, and that life without Faith cannot but lead to the doom they warned against, in this very life.That is the crossroad to which humanity finds itself driven today. It must either rediscover the life of the spirit and the supremacy of God or perish. These basic concepts of life determine in the long run, what shape the destinies of nations and civilisations are going to take. The scriptures aptly compare these basic concepts to good and evil trees, whose inherent values become apparent only when they bear fruit. It was not for nothing that they warned man not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree. Already we witness what bitter fruit the materialistic philosophy of life which has swayed human mind during the last centuries, has borne. I am a great admirer of Western sciences and the wonders they have wrought. But he must be a very bold man who would claim that for all the comforts and plenty they have placed at our disposal, they have made any material change, so far as peace of mind is concerned. Perhaps never before was man so distracted in mind as today. Discontent is writ large on the face of this civilisation, breeding a whole crop of social maladjustments – shattered nerves, frustration, suicides, broken homes, loss of respect for authority and old age, forsaken children and deserted aged parents. On the international front, we find a mad race for power and mounting tension, all posing the grim question whether all the achievements of modern technology are, after all, not the death dance of this great civilisation.

The only redeeming feature is that there is a growing awakening to the fact that unless we rediscover the spiritual basis of life, we will be building on the foundations of sand, and the collapse cannot be far off. For the first time there is some talk of rediscovering the spiritual content of life. It is, however, not sufficiently realised that for a true spark of Faith, we must perforce turn to revealed religions, which alone can furnish a positive and firm clue to the existence of God. Faith is not a commodity that can be made to order. Nor can mere philosophical theses, however well-spun, can take us out of the cloud lands of doubts into the sunshine of Faith. Human intellect, by itself, may take us to the outer fringes of the realm of the spirit, but there ends the highest of its flights. There is something like the eyes of the soul which alone have the power to penetrate through the curtain of the material, and have a glimpse of a whole new, unexplored world of the spirit. This is where revelation comes in.To supply this basic human need, God has been raising Prophets throughout the ages. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, to name but a few, were such spiritual luminaries. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ came as the last link of that long chain. The truth he brought, viz. the Quran, claims not only to have rescued and summed up all previous Truths but also to have brought them up to date, to answer the needs of everchanging social conditions. Islam may, indeed, be described as the revised edition of Judaism, Christianity and other revealed religions – say the latest model in religion.

It is time the Western world which is leading the van of human progress should give earnest thought to the problem of religious revival, which is becoming an imperative need for the very survival of civilisation. It is unfortunate that Judaism, Christianity and Islam which scientific objectivity it normally brings to bear upon explorations in every other sphere. A religion which extols Moses and Jesus and speaks of their scriptures as containing “guidance and light”, and which made the acceptance of their Divine mission part and parcel of a Muslim’s faith, should, in all fairness, have had a respectful hearing, rather than the distrust and suspicion with which it has been regarded.The Quran claims to be the Word of God. Even non-Muslim critics are all agreed that it has come down intact, word for word, as it was in the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ day. Here is something substantial to serve as a clue to God, and to impart the much-needed faith-injection to our crumbling, materialistic, social structure. Should Western scholars devote half the attention and energy they do to the splitting of the atom, to tapping this source, they are sure to hit upon some more profound mysteries of existence, which should help span the present big gulf between the realms of the matter and the spirit. I hope I will not be accused of being superstitious or dogmatic when I say that the Quran, in some of its snaps of the coming social developments, turns the searchlight on this very epoch of our own, spotlighting in unmistakable terms some of its salient features – such as the introduction of mechanical power and power-driven transport (31 : 4), the conquest of the air (81 : 11), the spate of paper publicity (81 : 10), the blowing off mountain (81 : 3), mixing up of peoples (81 : 7), vindication of the human rights of down-trodden nations (81 : 8, 9), the joining up of seas (81 : 6), the network of irrigation canals (82 t 3), the archaeological excavations (82 : 4), the world-wide ascendancy of the nations commanding these forces of nature (21 : 96), the rising of nations against nations (18 : 99) all these leading to some big catastrophe described as the “kindling of hell” (81 : 12), to the extent that the torture and burning associated with hell becomes a palpable imminent reality (18 : 100). All this would come to pass, rings out the Divine warning, because of the closing of eyes and ears to the realisation of the sovereignty of God (18: 101).

These are hints too broad to be dismissed lightly. The whole scene depicted in these verses being that of the Western civilisation, they obviously have a pointed message for the people of the West – something like showing the red danger signal to the current drift of events and driving home the need for the revival of the life of the spirit.Judged even on a purely intellectual level, Islam should have been found to make exactly the kind of contribution to the religious quest of the human mind which can end the present confusion and disintegration. If inter-religious harmony and goodwill is to be an essential ingredient in the foundations on which a better social fabric must be reared, Islam will have to be given a place in the vary centre of the new picture, inasmuch as it proclaimed the essential unity of all religions, and the truth of their Founders at a time when the various peoples of the world were given to thinking in terms of national and racial Gods, and the very concepts of one-world and one-humanity were unknown.In the face of the deepening crisis, and the world-wide hankering after some of society.To the Muslim peoples of the world, the call of the Quranic text I have quoted carries a special urgency in the present-day world context. One of the greatest events of contemporary history is the rise of Islam as a world force over again, after centuries of intellectual stagnation, social petrification, political subservience and economic depression. Quite a galaxy of independent Muslim States have arisen, covering a whole belt stretching across the heart of the old world. We hope before long to see added to that list another great country, Algeria, to whom our deepest sympathies go out in her heroic struggle for independence. We also hope that the wrong done to ten million Arab refugees will be righted, and they will be rehabilitated in their homeland.

The emergence of this free world of Islam is both an opportunity and a challenge. It is an opportunity to make our contribution towards the making of the new world, Islam is essentially a bridge-builder between nations and nations. Muslims may have lost their grip on the deeper life-giving springs of their faith and culture. But the universal brotherhood of Islam is still a living reality. Its very touch pulls down all geographical, racial, linguistic and colour barriers, making Muslims from the farthest ends of the globe pulsate with a common feeling of one organic whole. Even Muslims from behind the iron curtain, despite their long segregation and regimentation, cannot help showing a special warmth of feeling towards brother-Muslims, from the free world, if they have the good luck to come across any. This universal human outlook and universal human sympathies, transcending all bounds and barriers, is just the kind of reorientation which the modern world needs. And there lies the opportunity of the renascent Muslim states to make the impact of their culture felt in international counsels and on international relationship. The 15 or so of Muslim States who are members of the United Nations can be a great force for world peace, if they speak with one voice. This is the role that awaits them in the new world, which they will be able to effectively play only if they hold fast to the Hubi-al-Allah and turn to the Quran for light and inspiration.

The opportunity is also a challenge how far the resurgent Muslim world can show that the tree of Islam can bear good fruit. The greatest stumbling block in the path of a non-Muslim’s appreciation of Islam is the all-round backward condition of Muslims themselves in the race of life. Poverty, ignorance and disease which have been stalking the lands of Islam are mistakenly attributed to the people’s religion. The fact is the Muslims were great when they held fast to the Habl-al-Allah i.e.so long as they had the Quranic ideology as their highest loyalty. Their decadence started when they substituted their own fancies and superstition for that practical code of life. The very first fruit of Islam was a Welfare State when the Caliph in person carried provisions to starving people, and social justice in every shape and form followed wherever the flag of Islam went. The watchword for Muslims in this new era of freedom must be to underline these social implications of their Faith.

The very first thing, Muslims need is to set their own house in order, and for this, they must take from the West whatever scientific and technical knowledge they can. The way Muslim theologians frowned on Western sciences in recent past was perhaps the greatest travesty of Islamic teachings. The Quran not only encourages the study and subjugation of the forces of Nature, it calls the pursuit of scientific knowledge as a form of worship. Every new secret wrested from the bosom of Nature is supposed to deepen a Muslim’s faith in God’s power and majesty and glory. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ charged a Muslim to look upon every good thing found anywhere as his stray camel and get hold of.In this respect, it must be confessed, we find more of Islam in the Western countries than in the lands of Islam. Their huge libraries, their well-equipped laboratories, their research institutes, and their buzzing industries, reflect the kind of devotion to the pursuit of knowledge which was the hallmark of Islamic society in its hey-days. A great Egyptian savant of the last generation who paid a visit to Europe summed up his impression in the words; “I went to Europe and saw Muslims in deed, though not in name. I came back home and saw Muslims in name but not in deed.”

The other great need of the reconstruction of Muslim society is to formulate a cut-and-dried socioeconomic system in the light of the Quran and the Sunnah, a system that can provide an answer to the problems of modern life. It is easy to run down the systems evolved in the West. But unless Muslim scholars and statesmen put their heads together and find better substitutes for the social services and economic system of the West, our youth will understandably be lured away from Islam. Herein lies perhaps the greatest danger to Islam as an ideology in the present-day ideological conflict. Empty stomachs can hardly be expected to appreciate the beauties of religion. Nor can the feudal institutions political instability, social injustice, low standards of public Life, and corruption which are still going strong in Muslim countries reinforce faith in the ideology of Islam. The fact is these are dark spots of our own making on the fair face of Islam, and our foremost concern must be to declare a war on these evils and build a new our whole social structure on the basis of true Islamic standard of integrity and social justice.

In this atomic age, humanity stands at the threshold of a new epoch – an epoch which holds the promise of precedented prosperity, as well as the threat of utter annihilation. It is up to us to make of it what we would. Neither the West nor the East can afford to turn a blind eye to this challenge. Both must face up to the realities of life. The West should find in the East much to provide a cure for the spiritual vacuum created in its life. The East must wait upon the West to fill up the big gaps in its social fabric created by the lack of scientific knowledge and technological skill.It would be the wish and prayer of men and women of goodwill everywhere to see a better world emerge out of the present welter of tensions, conflicts and confusion – a world informed and inspired by the highest ideals of the sovereignty of God and fellowship of men which is the sum and substance of all true religion.