Islam fills the Spiritual Vacuum in the Modern Materialistic Setup of Life
Muhammad Yakub Khan
Director Woking Muslim Mission
Western People urged to bring an Objective view upon the Teachings of Islam
“…he would rather forego his pet dream of the Aswan Dam than be a party to demolishing the invulnerable spiritual Dam of Islam…”
In the context of modern social conditions, however, when mass movements and mass demonstrations are the order of the day, the month-long fasting by the world’s one-fourth or one-fifth total population may aptly be described as a mass spiritual movement…… the eternal truth that the spirit is more than the body, and that it is one’s Faith that is worth living for and dying for.
(Full text of the Eid sermon delivered at the Lawns of Shah Jehan Mosque, Woking, Surrey, England by the Imam, Maulana Muhammad Yakub Khan on 10th April 1959).
Fasting, a Mass Spiritual Movement
Our first impulse as we meet today after a month of fasting is one of thanksgiving to God. Fasting as a means of spiritual purification was enjoined and practised by all the world Prophets. It is no small privilege that of all the world it is we Muslims alone who, as a people, are perpetuating that greatest spiritual heritage of mankind. We cannot be too grateful for the great trust God has reposed in us choosing us for keeping this great spiritual torch burning.
Islam has been defined as a religion of submission to God’s will. In the context of modern social conditions, however, when mass movements and mass demonstrations are the order of the day, the month-long fasting by the world’s one-fourth or one- fifth total population may aptly be described as a mass spiritual movement, a mass spiritual upheaval, proclaiming silently but emphatically, in the midst of an all-round mad rush after things of the flesh, the eternal truth that the spirit is more than the body, and that it is one’s Faith that is worth living for and dying for.
Imagine millions of men and women rising at the dead of night, kneeling and praying to God and partaking of meals at that odd hour, and then not allowing a crumb of bread or a drop of water to go down their throats the whole day long – imagine this strange drama going on day after day for one long month, so that God’s commandment may be fulfilled. What else can be the coming on earth of the Kingdom of God? What an awe-inspiring spectacle of the sovereignty of God’s will? Without a policeman’s baton a vast section of mankind, even in the hottest months in the tropical countries, would not think of wetting their parched throats during a whole month of fasting. This is the Kingdom of God in actual fact established by Islam in the deepest depths of the human heart.
There is a great deal of talk these days about the revival of spiritual values if this matter-ridden civilization is not to go to pieces by tensions of its own creation. But talk alone cannot take us very far towards that revolutionization of outlook and life. Islam, as a religion rooted in human psychology, follows the method of teaching by doing. The daily round of prayers in the Mosque five times a day opens up so many windows, as it were, for the light of the Divine to illumine the highways and byways of our mundane life. The month-long fasting brings a most intensive training in God-mindedness. Every second of the daytime for a whole month, when we put ourselves under the surveillance of God, and subject ourselves to the sovereignty of his will, voluntarily and cheerfully carrying out His behest to abstain from all food and drink, we assimilate in our system the ultra-spiritual rays of the Divine, till we get steeped in Divine attributes. That is what the Quran describes as the baptism in God, and declares:
وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ صِبْغَةً
Al-Baqara (The Cow) 2:138
Wa man ahsanu-minal laa-hi sibgha? i.e. “There is no better baptism than this baptism in God”. This is the only royal road, though a very narrow road to the much talked about but little worked out spiritualization of life.
A Big Spiritual Vacuum
Another wide-spread feeling in the West is that there is something lacking in our lives, that there is a big spiritual vacuum therein, which causes all the frustrations, conflicts and clashes, resulting in a whole crop of broken hearts and broken homes. Where to look for the remedy? Surely, you cannot fill a spiritual vacuum with picture shows, dances and drinks, nor with such ingenious devices to make life easier, as electric cookers and electric washing machines. For that we must take God more seriously than the one-day a week service. To shut God out six days a week, and just let Him in for a fleeting Sunday morning is to treat God as a back-bencher in the scheme of life. Here again, life in the West can profitably take a leaf out of the example of Islam, which takes good care to bring in more of God into the work-a-day life of the people. It was an ominous day for the West when it had to take to the path of secularisation, which, to all intents and purposes, led to the banishment of God from life. That is what is wrong with the Western civilization. It is suffering from a deficiency in spiritual vitamin in the mental fare on which it has been nurtured during the last two centuries or so.
An objective View of Religion needed
It is high time the West should cease thinking in terms of creeds, and winning more and more converts, and approach the problem of religion with the objectivity which marks its investigations of truth in the realm of the physical sciences. For good or for evil, the worlds of Islam and Christianity have been thrown into the same boat, so far as the threat of` the dark forces of Godlessness now making a desperate bid to capture the Middle East is concerned. We sink or swim together. Sanity dictates that if Islam has something worth while to offer, it should be judged on merits and accepted.
Why ‘the religion with God is Islam’?
In so many spheres of life, you have had to draw upon Islamic truths, because you simply could not do without them. Take the case of the huge defence potential that you are building up. The creed of absolute non-resistance and non-violence has failed to stand the test of practical life. Even the peace-loving Lamas of Tibet have discovered that in the lives of nations there does come a time when the prayer wheel has to be exchanged for the rifle. The other day, the Head of the Anglican Church was confronted with this very glaring disparity between the precept and practice in this country so far as the nuclear bomb testing issue was concerned. And the reply was an all too evident attempt to wriggle out of a tight corner. The statesmen were duty-bound, it said, to go ahead with the testing, if they, in their judgement considered it necessary for the country’s defence, but the Church would still go on calling it an un-Christian conduct. This does not make much sense. A thing is either right or wrong. It can not be that the same thing is right for the goose, but wrong for the gander. If H-bomb testing is un-Christian, the Church must firmly put its foot down, and tell the statesmen, you can’t do it in this Christian country. The fact, however, that the Head of the Church gives the statesmen his blessings to carry on the testing in the interest of the country’s defence, is a confession that the Church teaching on this issue has failed to work. That is exactly what the Quranic verse I quoted at the beginning says – viz., that the religion with God is the religion of Islam which has been so designed as to fit in with the demands of human nature, and whoever follows a way other than that, it will not be accepted from him. Could there be a louder proclamation of the failure of the creed of absolute non-violence than the H-bomb making and testing by a Christian people in this country and America, and the exchange of the monk’s robes for the soldiers’ uniform by the peace-loving, harmless Lamas? It is a homage to the teaching of Islam, which while banning all aggressive wars, not only permits defensive warfare, but makes it the highest duty when freedom, conscience and honour call for it.
……A Religion in keeping with demands of human nature
Coming to the social field, the concept of matrimony as something indissoluble was found to result in untold social hardships, and the State had to put its foot down to legalise divorce and the re-marriage of divorced persons. The Church is still frowning upon this violation of one of its basic creeds. But that is exactly where comes in Islam’s claim that it is a religion in keeping with demands of human nature, and this Christian country, willy-nilly, had to practise Islam in giving legal sanction to divorce and re-marriage of divorced persons.
……Universal equality of man
The Apartheid in South Africa is another glaring failure of the Church to enforce the Gospel of love. Here again it is Islam which stands for the universal equality of man that has sounded the death-knell of all colour and caste distinctions. The negro Bilal was one of the bosom friends of the Prophet ﷺ and the most honoured among his Companions, remembered to this day by every Muslim as Sayyedena Bilal. The pigment of his skin was no bar to his human dignity. As lqbal the philosopher-poet of the East rapturously sings of the Prophet ﷺ:
با سیہ فاماں ید ییضا کہ داد مثدہ لا قیصر و کسریٰ کہ داد
Ba siyah faamaan yade baiza ke daad Muzdaye la Qaisar-o-Kisra kis daad
(Javed Nama -24, Pegham-e-Afghani Ba Millat-e-Roosia)
”Who (but the Prophet ﷺ) extended his white hand (of fellowship) to the dark-skinned?
Who (but the Prophetﷺ) sounded the death-knell of individual rule of Kings?”
In the economic field, this welfare State has been made possible only by taxing the rich in the interest of the under privileged – exactly the principle underlying the Islamic institution of Zakat, described in a Hadith as – i.e. “It is a tax taken from the rich and reverted to the poor”.
Turning to the Communist ideology, whatever social justice is claimed for it has been made possible at the price of reducing the whole country behind the iron curtain to a vast concentration camp, where regimentation is the rule, and the slightest deviation from the Party line is visited with summary trials, forced confessions of uncommitted guilts and liquidation. The steady daily influx of thousands of refugees into West Berlin from across East Germany, the fate visited upon Hungary and now Tibet should give some idea of the kind of world peace and democracy which Red agents and fellow-travellers are boosting about in the outside world.
Believe me I am not out for converts. There are already more than enough Muslims in the world. But I do plead for justice and fair-play for Islam, which claims to be no more than the recapturing and preservation of what the foregoing Prophets in their day taught but was lost or distorted by human hands through the centuries.
Salient features of Islam
Here are some salient features of Islam – universality of revelation, equality of man, rejection of the chosen people idea, acceptance of all the World Prophets, freedom of conscience, toleration of differences of opinions and religious beliefs. A man who runs can see all these writs large in the pages of the Quran. And yet the myth fabricated during the Middle Ages, painting Islam as a religion of fanaticism, wanting in human understanding and co-operation, still persists. A religion which tells its followers that they can not become Muslims unless they profess faith in Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and all the World Prophets cannot, in all fairness, be charged with fanaticism or lack of charity and understanding? Indeed the Quran, at its very inception, extended a hand of friendship and co-operation to all revealed religions saying:
قُلْ يَـٰٓأَهْلَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ تَعَالَوْا۟ إِلَىٰ كَلِمَةٍ سَوَآءٍۭ بَيْنَنَا وَبَيْنَكُمْ أَلَّا نَعْبُدَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهَ وَلَا نُشْرِكَ بِهِۦ شَيْـًٔا وَلَا يَتَّخِذَ بَعْضُنَا بَعْضًا أَرْبَابًا مِّن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا۟ فَقُولُوا۟ ٱشْهَدُوا۟ بِأَنَّا مُسْلِمُونَ
”Say, O people of the Book; Let us come to an agreement on what is common ground between us and you viz., that we shall worship nought but one God, and that we shall not take fellowmen as deities besides God.”
Al-Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:64
A religion that for the first time gave humanity the message of universality of Divine revelation and inter-religious harmony and co-operation can not very well be accused of narrow-mindedness.
Another common misconception about Islam is that it has no room for God’s grace, that its God is more like a stern Eastern potentate, who has no soft corner for man, and no patience with the frailties of human nature, and that His dealings with men are characterised by the cold callous standards of the iron rod. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
God’s grace is the very breath of a Muslim’s life. He never sets his hand to anything, but he does so with the word Bismillah on his lips, which means ”I invoke God’s grace”. When he has done a thing he says: Al-ham-do lil-laah ”God be praised”. If there is an achievement that he scores, he attributes it to God’s grace. In the smallest details of life, a Muslim is taught to turn to God and ask for His grace. There is an appropriate invocation while going to bed, while rising from the bed, while setting out on a journey, while riding on a conveyance even while going to the toilet. Grace of God is the very warp and woof of a Muslim’s life., While starting our meals, we say we do so in the name of God. After finishing eating, we say ”Praise be to God Who gave us to eat and drink and made us of those who are Muslims”. Mark the beautiful blend of the food physical with the food spiritual. When we have partaken of the good things which God has created for us to eat, we are reminded that there is such a thing as the life of the spirit for which too God, out of His grace, has provided us nourishment. That nourishment is Islam or in plain language, doing God’s will. This parallelism between the needs of the body and those of the spirit forms the repeated theme of the Quranic teachings. Speaking of the favour God has done us in providing us dress as a protection as well as embellishment, the Quran forthwith transfers our minds to its spiritual counterpart, saying:
وَلِبَاسُ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ ذَٰلِكَ خَيْرٌ
Al-A’raf (The Heights) 7:26
wa li-baa-sut-taq-waa hee-ya Khair – “And better still is the apparel of inner piety and purity”.
At the highest moment of success and triumph, a Muslim attribute it to the grace of God, and bows in all the greater humility before Him. History tells us that when, after long years of persecution and war-unto-the-bitter-end, the Prophet ﷺ entered Makka as a victor at the head of a devoted God-fearing band of 10,000, his head touched the saddle of the camel he was riding on, by way of bowing in gratitude to God Almighty. Self-exultation is unknown to the spirit of Islam which ascribes all good that comes our way to the grace of God. Even doing a good deed is ascribed to God, and self-righteousness is considered a sin.
It is in that spirit that we stand before God in this vast multitude to render thanks to Him for having blessed us with the great Spiritual blessing which fasting brings. If we have been able to observe this commandment of God, we did so with the grace of God Who gave us the will and the health and the strength to do so. To Him therefore, goes all our thanksgiving. If some of us, for any reason or negligence, have not been able to fulfil this obligation we turn to Him for forgiveness. God’s grace is indeed the sheet-anchor of a Muslim’s life. That is the assurance He gives mankind in the Quran:
Wasiat rahmatee kulla shaiyin
وَ رَحۡمَتِیۡ وَسِعَتۡ کُلَّ شَیۡءٍ
”My compassion encompasses all things”.
Another distinctive feature of Islam is to canalize the feelings of Godliness along concrete practical channels of love of mankind and giving to helping hand to the under-dog. This is how this is underlined in a Hadith (saying of the Prophet ):
On the Judgement Day, God will say to man, I was hungry, you did not give Me food, I was thirsty you did not give Me water to drink. Man will say, how can that be? You are God you can not be hungry or thirsty. God will say, such a poor man came to you for food, you refused to give him any food. Such and such a man, on a hot day, was very thirsty, and asked you for water, you refused to give him water. In both cases when you refused help to My creatures, you refused it to Me (Hadith 18, 40 Hadith Qudsi).
In keeping with this, it has been made obligatory for a Muslim on this happy day of thanksgiving to God to make some sort of practical sacrifice for a good cause or the help of the poor. That is why, before saying the thanksgiving prayer that we did, every one of the congregations had to part with some cash as compulsory charity.
There is yet a better form of thanksgiving. Each one of us when we go home must go with a clear understanding of our duty towards our ideology. The grim cold war that has the two blocs in its grip is a fight for men’s minds. We must clearly understand that ideas are more deadly than bullets. In this ideological war, Islam, as a dynamic mass spiritual force is the only effective anti-dote to the virus of the Godless cult of Communism. In this East-West conflict, the West is already losing ground, because of its very lukewarm religious loyalties. A creed, which, instead of standing the test of reason, seeks refuge in mysteries and dogmas, can not be expected to inspire much enthusiasm and stand up to the challenge of Communism. A dynamic materialistic philosophy of life can only be countered by a more dynamic, live spiritual force which Islam is. This is, already becoming abundantly clear. While country after country in Eastern Europe, in the Far East, and in South-East Asia is falling a prey to the Communist propaganda, Communism is already meeting its Waterloo in the Middle East. Gamal Abdul Nasser only voiced the deepest feelings of the whole of the world of Islam when he bluntly called upon Khrushchev (Nikita Khrushchev) to keep his hands off the Arab World, making it quite clear to him that he would rather forego his pet dream of the Aswan Dam than be a party to demolishing the invulnerable spiritual Dam of Islam, which is the only bulwark of the free world against the avalanche of Communism and the disaster it spells, to all that mankind cherishes most sacred and dear.
The final round between the forces of Godlessness and Godliness, on behalf of the free world, is likely to be fought by Islam. For Islam, unlike the lukewarm attitude of the Democracies towards the spiritual values of life, is a live dynamic spiritual force. As demonstrated by the strong man of Egypt, a Muslim will not take lying down a challenge to his God, his Prophet, and his Quran, whom he holds dearer than life itself.
That is the significance of the mass spiritual force released during the month of fasting in the present-day world context, which we must take to heart. Islam is a practical code. It has no use for the cheap peace of mind which people so often seek in a cloistered life, away from the dust and din of life. That is escapism and a denial of life. Islam seeks its destiny in the mid-current of life, and that is where true peace of mind must be looked for. Islam is a force to shape the course of history. There is no bifurcation of life into the spiritual and the mundane in Islam. Islam as a live dynamic spiritual force must rise to the full vision of its destiny in the present-day world context and in collaboration with all other revealed religions, meet the greatest-ever threat of all history posed to the very foundations of society and civilization by the daily rising tide of a Godless materialism which is sweeping both the West and the East.
(The Light – May 8, 1959)
