Mental Revolution
إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ
(Ar-Ra’d (The Thunder) 13:11)
Of a certainty, never does Allah alter the condition of a people until they alter their own mentality – Al-Quran
The other day when we happened to be at the hill station of Abbottabad on a week-end trip, we saw what is a common thing at most hill stations. One fine morning when the sun was shining bright and brilliant, all the bedsteads were taken out in the open and well-heated. And then with a brawny hand and a big brandishing club one of the men gave each a few, hard blows. Another came with a can of boiling water and poured it into the several joins and chinks. And thus were these bedsteads purged of the numerous bugs that night after night, gave the occupants of that lovely villa, especially the children, such restless sleep.
Abbottabad
As we watched the whole process, how the bugs clung to their hiding places within the holes and chinks and refused to come out. Unless treated to hard knocks and hot water, by a quite understandable transfer of thought, our mind jumped from the physical to the mental bugs that swarm the brains of men, instead of their bedsteads. The analogy was so natural and so fitting that no sooner it flashed on us then we chuckled to our friend beside us, an over-conservative-minded young man with whom we had had hours of rather heated discussion on the false and foolish notions that go by the name of religion – we chuckled to him in a rather triumphant tone – “This is how most brains harbour swarms of religious bugs. It must be a hard process but unless cleansed of these, you can have no healthy brains any more than you can have comfortable bedsteads.”
The analogy as we said, came to us by a flash, but we turned it round and round and the more we did so, the more were we convinced that nothing could more aptly describe the hundred and one prejudices, whims and superstitious, so deep-rooted in the mind of man. Like the bugs in the bedstead, they keep lurking in the dark and dismal cells which no rays of reason have ever penetrated. It is a herculean task to shake these from their hidden abodes where under the influence of the Mulla they have found a most fertile breeding ground for long years. You are up against the almost impossible, if you want to relieve a brain so afflicted of just one bug. You are really at a loss what to do, what club to use and what hot water, in order to liberate mankind from the dangerous grip of these mental bugs.
Islam was one such club. When it came, it threw in full flood the light and sunshine of reason on the priest and prejudice-ridden mentality of man. With the cold club of reason, it exposed the falsity of most absurd notions passing for religion, notions gnawing into the very vitals of society and knocked them out. The message of Islam was one such hot water treatment to disinfect human mind of the mushroom of such germs. And only when thus restored to normal healthy mental outlook on God and life, did it become possible for those early sons of Islam to build up a world of their own – a world where peace, prosperity and plenty vied with equity, justice and fellow-feeling. A veritable Utopia, which makes history still rub eyes!
There is these days a good deal of talk of freedom in the air. There is a growing discontent with the present lot and an earnest longing for change. Happy symptoms these no doubt but will mere talk or mere longing bring us the much-coveted freedom? The Musalmans think they are the chosen people of God and He will do it all for them. This is the most dangerous mental bug preying upon their national vitality. God simply will not. The sooner they got rid of this bug the better. Just throw on it the flashlight of the Quran which, as quoted at the top, says that mental healing must precede physical healing. Our malady is mainly mental. Slaves in mind, subject to thousands of mental bugs, we cannot very well expect to be free and better off in body. Let therefore Muslim mentality be the first point of attack. Purge it of all unhealthy microbes. Let it be imbued with the manifold qualities that go to make a race of strong healthy manly men and that would be the end of our misery. Then, not until then! Mental change before physical change! That is the writ of the hand of God.
M.Y.K.
(The Light Thursday, July 11, 1929)
