What I saw in England (Part 1)
Imam, The Woking Mosque
I saw there much of Islam in action as against the lip service in Muslim Countries.
A glimpse of the fulfilment of the Prophet`s glad tidings as to the sunrise (of Islam) in the West in the latter days, carrying the sad implication of sunset in the East.
By Muhammad Yakub Khan
The following is the substance of a lecture on the occasion of the Annual Conference of the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat-i-Islam, Lahore by Maulana Muhammad Yakub Khan recently returned from the U.K. after about a year´s stay as Imam of the Mosque, Woking.
The very impression that a man from the East has on landing in the West is a completely changed social context. He finds himself transplanted into a congenial atmosphere where people are most polite, well-mannered, always on the look-out to be helpful to others, where telling a lie – the mother of most evils – is unknown in business dealings or private or public life. There may be black sheep here and there. But generally speaking; the high standard of integrity, the spirit of social service, the higher sense of sportsmanship and fairness in dealings with others are virtues which were in olden days the pride of Muslim society. When upon my return home friends asked me what difference I found in life in the West and the East, I said I would sum it up in one sentence: If a man given to lying goes to the West he becomes truthful, while an Englishman to whom anything false or mean is unknown loses these virtues when he comes out to the East.
If you are in a hurry to catch a train, and have no time to buy a ticket, you just get in, and pay the fare at destination. Nobody would question the veracity of your statement as to the station of entraining, and nobody would make a false statement. If you board a bus but have to drop down before you can get a ticket from the conductor, you just drop the few coins due as fare into the small box fixed at the exit and walk off. It is unthinkable for anyone to go away without payment. I have heard many a young man from the East confess that whenever, the thought of quietly slipping away crossed their mind, they had a sting of conscience. In a country where nobody cheated, they must not be the black sheep, they said to themselves, and they dropped in the coins due.
This is to say a great deal. It is a great compliment to any people where the social atmosphere itself makes people honest and straight and fair in all their dealings. There was a time when the very moral climate of the Muslim society transformed even men of base metal into pure gold. Today we actually find something of that golden touch in life in the Western world. As to the state of things in the present-day Muslim lands, you have to be on guard at every step lest you are done in.
Another great Islamic virtue which has made the English people what they are is their sense of duty. They live up to the maxim that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. They do their jobs just like that of a humble road scavenger with the devotion and absorption of an artist. They are a nation of workers. Everybody works and takes pride in working and earning. With the dawn of the working hour, the whole atmosphere puts on an air of seriousness and earnestness. All gaieties are gone. In the shop, in the office, at the stall, at the ticket window – everywhere you find everybody all attention, alert, doing his or her job with a smiling face. This conscientious discharge of duties has become a second nature with them, and if you put someone on a job, you may rest assured it would be done and done well.
In this country, it is a regular torture as we all know, to have to deal with government offices and officials. Even a petty clerk looks upon himself as something superior, and his main reaction to a client is how to obstruct him and put spokes in the wheels of official routine. Files take ages to move from one office to another. Just the opposite is the state of things in that country. You need hardly to go to any official or put in long petitions. You just ring the official concerned, be his Minister or a clerk, and within a matter of minutes you know where you stand. The officials are in the true sense servants of the people.
There is so much talk of an Islamic State in this country. In the U.K., one can actually see an Islamic State functioning. There is no unemployment. There are fixed hours of work and terms of service. There is old age pension and widow pension. There are old people´s homes. The school education is free. Besides the education, every child gets free meal. Medical advice is free. Bread, milk and other basic needs are subsidised to bring down the cost of living. This sense of economic security, in turn, gives the people the independence of character without which there can be no moral fibre in an individual or nation. There lies the secret of the initiative drive and a spirit of enterprise which generally mark the Western people.
(To be continued)
(The Light, Jan 24, 1958)
