What I saw in England (Part 3)

Mohammad Yaqub Khan
Imam, The Woking Mosque
Surrey, England.

Spiritual vacuum – discontent in the midst of plenty earnest quest after God

The Quran refers to this latter-day ascendance of the Western nations as the unleashing of the Yajooj Majooj, the Gog Mogog of the Scriptures. This discovery was the first time in the history of Islam made by the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement. Like all of his other interpretations of some very knotty points in the texts of the Quran and the Hadith, this identification of the Quranic Yajooj Majooj with the Western Nations was also widely accepted (though without acknowledging the source) by the Muslim intelligentsia. No less thinker of Islam than the Allama Iqbal, who came into very close impact with the   Founder of this movement from his very childhood, re-echoed this interpretation in his well-known line about the rise of the Western nations:

کھل گئے یاجوج اور ماجوج کے لشکر تمام

چشم مسلم دیکھ لے تفسیر  حرف ینسلون

 i.e.” In full force have been unleashed the hosts of the Gog and Mag

        Let the Muslim´s eye note that interpretation of the (Quranic) word Yansiloon”

The Hadith describes this very phase of Western history as the rise of Dajjal who would sweep the face of the earth. These prophecies in the Hadith, it must be noted, are based on the prophetic vision of the Holy Prophet Muhammadﷺ. Future events or epochs of which glimpse are caught in dreams, visions or spiritual illuminations known as Kashf are usually close in the garb of symbols. The Dajjal is no more than a symbol to give some idea of the present epoch in Western civilisation. It has been depicted as a being with two eyes – one dazzling bright which so aptly fits in with the wonders wrought by the West in scientific achievements, the other stark blind which signifies the eye of Faith.

In the last two instalment of this series I dealt with the bright eye of the Western Civilisation, which I described as Islam in action. Now I turn to its blind eye.During my stay in England and very close association with the currents of thought at all levels I had a vivid realisation of the West´s bright and blind eyes existing side by side – one so bright as to dazzle the eyes of an on-looker, the other that of faith – bereft of all light. Western sciences, Western technology, Western plenty and prosperity, no doubt represent the bright side of the Western picture (The bright eye of the Hadith), but in their very process, these achievements tended to give the western mind a sense of false self-sufficiency, making this life of the flesh and matter all in all, resulting in developing spiritual cataract, so to say. Under this materialistic-cum-atheistic wave, westernism was installed as a regular deity. Toynbee, in his latest book, An Historian´s Approach to Religion, describes this phase of Western civilisation as the setting up of technology as a new idol which the Western nations took to worshipping, turning a blind eye to the higher spiritual values of life. It was against this deadly influence of the Dajjal that the Hadith warned Muslims.

But neither the “bright” eye nor the “blind” eye is the last word in the picture of this latter-day western civilisation. Both are two passing phases, culminating in a third and bigger phase – that of the emergence of the sun of Islam out of this very dual context. And this is what I witnessed looming larger and larger day by day on the intellectual horizon of the West.

Out of the womb of this very duality – wonderful achievements on one hand and widespread of discontent on the other – is emerging a widespread hunger for things of the spirit which alone, it is being dimly realised, can give the Peace and content of mind which western life,  despite its plenty and prosperity, despite its unprecedented amenities of life, so badly feels lacking. The two World Wars have pricked the bubble of the new false deity of Western Technology, which, like the genii in the stories, threaten to destroy the very hands that have conjured them up. The shadows of a nuclear war already looming large have driven that last nail into the coffin of this attitude towards the higher values of existence taught by revealed religion.

It is at the threshold of this new awakening that I found the West standing. In the metaphor of prophecy, I saw definite glimmerings of a new dawn – the dawn of the Age of Faith. There is a wide spread feeling, especially among the sections which constitute the leaders of thought, that Western Society is suffering from a big spiritual vacuum, and unless this vacuum is filled, it is realised, the whole civilisation may be drifting towards its own crash. A whole new wave of earnest quest after the spiritual substratum of life has already set in. And since the Quran as the word of God furnishes the only substantial clue to the reality of that higher realm of spirit, the rise of the sun of Islam in the West in full brilliance as foretold in the Hadith, is now matter of time. But more of this in my next.

(To be continued)