Chapter Fourteen
The Problem of the Nation’s Backwardness and the Charge of Moving Away from God
It is He Who made the Earth submissive to you. So, walk around its regions, eat of His provision, and to him is the resurrection (Al-Mulk LXVII: 15).
Yes, by themselves, religion and ethical values bring neither material progress nor technological superiority, unless religion is combined with adoption of the means to accomplish scientific progress and industrial and technological superiority. Yet, it should be remembered that efforts for the settlement of the earth and maintaining life and adoption of the means to do so, is weighed in God’s scale as acts of worship. On the basis of this understanding, I have divided worship into two parts:
1. spiritual worship, and
2. constructional worship.
Spiritual worship includes the performance of everything that God has made obligatory for Muslims, whether it is an action, a ceremony, or a rite related to faith, the foundations of belief, or the five pillars of Islam. It includes prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage, as well as compliance with all what God has ordered and avoidance of everything that He has forbidden. It includes belief in death, resurrection, accounting, reward, punishment, paradise, hell, and other things which it would take long to mention and elaborate on.
Constructional worship includes compliance with God’s command to settle the earth:
“My people, worship God; you have no other god! He it is who brought you into being out of the earth and settled you therein. Seek His forgiveness and then turn to Him in repentance. My Lord is ever near. He answers all” (Hood XI: 61).
It includes every effort made to maintain life:
Believers, respond to the call of God and the Messenger when he calls you to that which will give you life (Al-Anfaal VIII: 24).
It also includes every step taken to realize interests and make one’s living:
So, walk around its regions, eat of His provision, and to him is the resurrection.
It includes, as well, every effort made to ward off corruption of the earth and bring benefits to people.
And had it not been for God using people to check each other, the Earth would have been corrupted. God is limitless in His bounty to all the worlds (Al-Baqarah II: 251).
Cooperate in charity and piety and not in sin and aggression, and fear God; God is severe in His punishment (Al-Maidah V: 2).
All this and other assignments of maintaining life and realizing everything that protects human dignity and sustains environmental safety come under the heading of duties performed to meet the responsibilities of the great divine assignment embodied in the statements of God, the Most Sublime, “I am appointing a vicegerent on earth (Al-Baqarah II: 30)” and “He it is who brought you into being out of the earth and settled you therein (Hood XI: 61).” The mission of vicegerency on earth, settling it, and exploiting its resources for the benefit of human life and dignity is what we refer to as constructional worship.
On the basis of this belief in the need for the integration between spiritual worship and constructional worship, full worship of God, the most sublime, in this life is based and is attained. Any failure of flaw in either or both of the two components of this worship has implications for the nation in the form of backwardness and weakness in its material and technological progress or in its ethical performance. Within the framework of this belief, or this interpretation of the meaning of worship in Islam, one can understand the statement of God, the Most Sublime, “God does not change the fortune of people unless they change inside (Al-Ra'd XIII: 11).” The phrase “unless they change” has to be understood as valid in both directions, that is from good to evil, strength to weakness, or progress to backwardness, or else from evil to good, weakness to strength, or backwardness to progress. Likewise the word “inside,” meaning their way of life and their approach, has to be understood as covering two possibilities, good and evil, strength and weakness, or progress and backwardness. The “fortune of people” indicates that when a nation goes through one of these possibilities of good and evil, it will be undoubtedly in one of two situations: either it is in a situation where if copes well with one or both of the components of worship, the spiritual and constructional, or a situation where it deals badly and fails with one or both of these components.
A nation may be advanced in constructional worship, but withdrawn or lanky in spiritual worship. On the contrary, it may excel in spiritual worship and be, at the same time, weak or backward in or completely absent from, the fields and niches of constructional worship. According to Islamic standards, it is in a state of weakness and backwardness in both cases. Material progress with ethical backwardness is absurd and destructive, and ethical refinement with material backwardness is a state of inferiority and humiliation. Traditions of the prophet confirm and clarify this rule. God’s Messenger, peace and blessings are upon him, told his companions, may God be pleased with them:
“Nations will almost call each other against you [i.e. against your future Muslim brothers] as eaters call each other to a bowl.”
Someone asked, “Will we [i.e. Muslims] be too few then, God’s messenger?”
God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “No, You will be numerous on that day. But you will be scum, like the scum of a flood.”
The cause of this humiliating weakness, then, is not the small number of Muslims and their poor belief and connection with God, as it is diagnosed by some people in explaining the situations of Muslims today. The cause is rather their light weight and skinny figure among nations when it comes to material things. The conversation of God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, with his Companions, concerning what will befall Muslims in future days, continued, and what is said, I am convinced, describes well our situation today. He said:
“God will remove [because of this inferiority] from the hearts of your enemies all fear from you. He will cast [because of this weakness and humiliation] feebleness into your hearts.”
He was asked, “What is feebleness, God’s Messenger?”
He said, “Feebleness is love of this life and hating to die.”
In other words, feebleness is cowardice, horror, and humiliation. How can a weak and skimpy person avoid experiencing such fright and humiliation?
This tradition is very clear and specific in pointing out that the problem of the Islamic nation is in its life, rather than its belief or compliance with God’s commands. The problem is in its lagging behind in the fields of life, its weakness in the fields and niches of constructional worship. If it desires to change its conditions and be in a situation of strength and dignity, it has to get rid of its scientific backwardness, industrial illiteracy, technological ignorance, and alienation in the areas of research, exploration, and meditation of the signs of the universe and walks of life.
Say, “Look to see what the heavens and earth contain!” But of what benefit could all signs and warnings be to people who will not believe? (Yunus X: 101).
We will show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, until the truth is evident to them (Fussilat XLI: 53).
At one time, I had a conversation with the great Muslim creative thinker Mr. Malik Ibn Nabi, may God have mercy on him, and about this particular question after a lecture he gave on “The Concept of Civilization” at the auditorium of King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah in 1971. He stressed in his lecture that civilization was the outcome of interaction between human beings and the soil and that all civilizations were the same, with nothing that distinguishes one from another. He was, in saying so, answering the outstanding and famous Muslim thinker Sayyed Qutb, may God have mercy on him, who used to insist on a different statement in which he stressed that “Islam is civilization,” which meant that in the absence of Islam and its values, there is no civilization. To support his hypothesis that civilizations are identical, Malik Ibn Nabi cited the chemical formula:
Hydrogen + Oxygen + a spark = Water
He then commented that the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen took place when the spark acted as a catalyst. “This reaction produces the water that you know and drink,” he said, and I think he used the expression “life water of life.” He went on to say that the formula of civilization was similar, but its elements were different:
Soil + Human beings + Time = Civilization
Naturally since the first formula produced water, which is an element unlike any other, the second formula, according to Malik Ibn Nabi, produced one and the same civilization for all human beings.
By virtue of my specialization in chemistry, I found that such simplification (Soil + Human beings + Time = Civilization) is extremely deficient. The process was much more complex. At the end of the lecture, I asked for and was granted his permission to comment. I said:
This chemical reaction that you have cited is one case of the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Undoubtedly, ordinary hydrogen in reaction with ordinary oxygen, under specific circumstances, produces ordinary water, water of life, as you have put it. But if we change the conditions and replace hydrogen with one of its isotopes, the result of the reaction will change. It might be either what is called “oxygen water” or “heavy water.”
I wrote on the board the following formulas:
· Oxygen + ordinary hydrogen under ordinary conditions produces normal water, good for life.
· Oxygen + hydrogen isotope 1 under different conditions produces something called oxygen water, which is undrinkable but serves other purposes known to specialists.
· Oxygen + hydrogen isotope 2 also under different conditions produces what is called heavy water, which is undrinkable but serves other, industrial purposes.
Thus, in reaction with hydrogen under different circumstances and with various types of hydrogen used, oxygen produces three kinds of water, all of which are useful, but only one, ordinary potable water, has all the properties needed for life. Therefore, let us follow the example this reaction with the reaction of human beings and the soil, or rather with matter because soil is only one type of matter and there are other types, such as water, air, other gases, and other types. Let us, [I told him,] modify the formula to become:
Human beings + Matter + change in method civilization variety
Since the method is what determines human behavior and determines his competence and skill in coping with matter. There are a normal human being and an abnormal one, a correct one and a mistaken one, a responsible one and an irresponsible one, and a learned one and an ignorant one. There are an experienced scientist and an inexperienced one, a skillful one and an unskilled one, and a creative one and a traditional one. With this variation of attributes, it is the human being that will in the end determine the outcome of the formula. It is he who will determine the nature and identity of its civilization outcome. Yes, there is a civilization variety. I am with you and I support your view that every human reaction with matter produces a civilization outcome, but the outcomes are not the same. There are benevolent civilizations and more benevolent ones. On the other hand, there are malignant and corruptive civilizations. There are also brilliantly creative civilizations, civilizations with a variety of creativity and production, and ones that are limited in their creativity and production.
I wanted to show him by this that I disagreed with Sayyed Qutb in his claim that there is no civilization without Islam, and I disagreed with him, Mr. Nabi, in his claim that civilizations are identical. I said, “Yes, I am with civilization variety; there is a common ground that civilizations share, but they are not identical.” He was very furious and slammed the desk he was standing behind while giving his lecture. He said, “This is a nonsense philosophy. Civilizations are identical and have no differences between them. I resorted to silence, being surprised by his fury. The audience was divided into two groups, each supporting one of the two opinions.
This was the beginning of my interest in civilization. I wrote later an article entitled “The Chemistry of Civilization,” and it was my first on the subject. I dealt with the chemistry of civilization within the human soul and in society. I began to be interested in the concept of civilization. Later, I read some books by Mr. Malik Nabi and discovered that he had changed his mind and started to write about the variety of civilizations, stating that religion remains the main influence in forming sound civilizations. I supported that view of his and wrote a paper on the subject, which ended as book called The Complementarity of Civilizations. In it I introduced a formula for civilizations based on the following definition: civilization is the outcome of every effort made for the settlement of the earth and the maintenance of life according to a certain culture. Since cultures are varied and not identical, civilizations then are varied and not identical. I illustrated that with the following compound formula:
Atheist approach corrupt civilization
Human beings + matter + approach of faith secure civilization
Secular approach unstable civilization
This formula illustrates that it is culture that steers towards a certain type of civilization and produces the ethical civilization performance. The more positive a culture is – the more congruent with human dignity and security, and with international justice, security, and peace – the more secure, stable, and constant in its rise and growth the civilization is.
The formula also makes it easier for us to read the scenes of civilization mentioned earlier in this chapter, which are,
1. the scene which was represented by the atheist empire, i.e. the fallen Soviet Union, and the followers of its approach;
2. the secularist scene represented today by the United States of America and the followers of its example; and
3. the scene that the Islamic empire represented, which is trying to revive itself today, rise, and go forward in the international procession of civilization building.
On the basis of an understanding of the civilization formula above, based on the belief that civilization is founded on two essential factors;
· a material factor, and
· an ethical factor,
It is clear that the scene of civilization of any nation has two vantage points:
· an industrial and technological one, and
· A human behavioral one, a vantage point of values.
The strength and survival of any culture and the continuity of its contribution and rise are contingent upon full complementarity between the strength of its technological production and the firmness and refinement of its ethical and methodological performance. Technological performance requires ethical performance if the civilization outcome is to be positive and safe. If, however, technological performance is accompanied by poor ethical and methodological performance or no such performance at all, the civilization outcome will be negative and perhaps destructive. If, on the other hand, ethical and methodological performance is accompanied by poor technological performance or no such performance at all, the civilization outcome will only be romantic dreams and hopes, and the formulation of false theories.
These are facts that we should fully grasp and understand, and we should also deal with them seriously and objectively. They are part of the nature of the motion of the universe and the progress of life, determined by the Will of the Creator of all universes, the Lord of Creation. The Glorious Qur'an and the immaculate Sunna confirm and emphasize this. Ancient and modern histories testify to it and support it. History tells us of civilizations that started and were creative according to the conditions of their time, but they declined and disappeared due to a flaw in their performance and a decline of their values. Examples include the civilization of Hammurabi as well as the Babylonian, Confucian, Manu, Ancient Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman civilizations. The Glorious Qur'an tells the stories of 'Aad, Thamood, and others that established great civilizations and unique architectural monuments, but they were unjust, oppressive, and corruptive of the earth. Therefore, their states collapsed, their monuments fell down, and they themselves became extinct. Nothing is left of them, other than the remains of a rock or a stone tablet that tells generations some aspects of their history. God, the Most Sublime, says:
Have they not gone through the land and seen what the end of earlier nations was, who were mightier than they and tilled in the land and built it up even better than these are doing. Their messengers brought them all evidence of the truth, for God would not wrong them. It was rather they who wronged themselves (Al-Room XXX: 09).
As for modern history, it provides us with statements spoken by well-known leaders, who assert that the worst threat for humanity and its progress is flawed civilization performance and a flawed relationship between the process of technological creativity and the value and behavioral performance. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt says on the problem of performance:
It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.
John Foster Dulles says:
It is not a matter of material things; we have the greatest production of material things in the world. What we lack is sound, strong faith, without which all what we have remains too little.
He stresses that the power of nations is not only in the industrial and technological production they have, or the nuclear stockpiles they have hidden in the ground; the real power is in the belief and values needed to control that enormous material power.
Former President Mikhail Gorbachev of the defunct Soviet Union deals with the same subject in his book Perestroika, which I believe all of you have read. Here are samples of what he says:
§ Our rockets may reach Halley’s Comet and fly to Venus with astounding accuracy. But beside these scientific and technological advances, we find an evident shortage in the competence to use scientific achievements for economic needs. Moreover, many Soviet house appliances are of poor quality. Unfortunately, that is not all. A gradual decline of our ideological and moral values has started. Corruption has invaded public ethics, and the rate of alcoholism and crime is rising, and we will determinedly continue the struggle against intoxicants and alcoholism (pp. 18-19).
§ Our main mission today is to enhance the individual’s morale, respect his privacy, and give him moral power. We are striving to make the intellectual abilities and all the cultural potential of society work to create a socially-active, spiritually-rich, straightforward, conscientious individual. Every individual must know and feel that there is a need for his contribution, that his dignity will not be molested, and that he will be treated with trust and respect. When he sees all this, he will be able to achieve a lot (p. 29).
§ Through the years of our heroic and brilliant history, however, we failed to give attention to the special rights of women and the needs arising from their roles as mothers and housewives, and from their educational function which children cannot do without. While women work in research, on construction sites, and in production and services, and while they contribute to creative activities, they no longer have the time to perform their daily household duties, i.e. housework; educate their children; and establish a healthy family atmosphere. We have discovered that many of our problems – in the behavior of our children and young people, and in our morale, culture, and production – are partly due to the decline of family relations and of the lax attitude we have towards family responsibilities. This is a result opposite to our sincere and politically-justified desire to have women equal to men in everything. Now in the Perestroika process, we have started to control this situation. For this reason, we are having hot debates in the press, in public organizations, at work, and at home, over what we should do to ease another problem, which is the employment of women in strenuous jobs that are hazardous to their health. This is the heritage of the war in which we lost huge numbers of men. Now we are beginning to cope seriously with this problem. One of the most pressing social problems for us and most serious missions is the campaign against intoxicants, which will reflect on the improvement of family health and the augmentation of the role of the family in society (pp. 138-39).
§ It is crystal-clear that in the world in which we live, the world of nuclear weapons, any attempt to use these weapons to solve Soviet-American problems will mean suicide. I do not believe American politicians are unaware of this fact. Moreover, now a really paradoxical situation has developed. Even if one of the two countries works hard on continuously increasing its weapons, while the others do nothing at all, the side that is arming itself will gain nothing. The weaker side might simply detonate all its nuclear loads, even if on its own land. This will mean suicide for it and slow death for the enemy. Therefore, any effort for military superiority will mean going around in a vicious circle. This cannot be pursued in a realistic policy (p.265).
§ The major part of nuclear weapons is centered in the Soviet Union, and at the same time, ten or even one per cent of their potential is sufficient to make irreparable damage to our planet and to human civilization as a whole (p. 272).
How ironic! Will we need to destroy and damage the earth more than once? That is if destroying it becomes one day a joint goal and end. Whose interest, then, is served by this absurd increase of nuclear weapon production so much that it's nine times more than is needed to explode the whole earth? Is it not absurdity, or rather compound absurdity, in the performance of technological production? Some harness nuclear technology to manufacture death, destruction and misery, instead of harnessing it in the interest of life, construction, development, and prosperity. Then they go to an extreme in their depravity; they exaggerate and produce the product of destruction many times more than needed at the expense of food, medications, and clothes, and at the expense of hundreds of millions who live below the line of poverty and destitution. It is even at the expense of dealing with the causes of deprivation, unemployment, and disease, which are suffered by millions of the population of the very countries of nuclear inflation and stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, which are forbidden by all the values of heaven and all traditions of the earth. We are, then, facing a technological absurdity, as well as an absurdity in utilization and application.
This technological absurdity is what controls the progress of civilization today, which confirms the danger of a flawed relationship between the process of technological production and the ethics of civilization behavior. There is great instability in the relationship between science and values. We sit on the throne of material, industrial production, but in utilizing this industrial production in the fields of life, we, regrettably, suffer horrifying backwardness in ethical and behavioral values.
Faced with this horrible disorder, Gorbachev tries to forestall the consequences and listen to reason, to deal objectively with the serious and painful reality which his country, as well as the whole world, has come to. He cautions and warns people, telling them the only chance they have is to be up to the collective responsibility that would keep them from the threat of drowning and destruction which everybody faces. He says:
§ In spite of all the contradiction in the world today, the variety of social and political systems it has, all the different options on which countries have been founded through the ages – this world is one entity, and all of us are passengers on the same vessel, the Earth. We must not allow it to sink, for there will be no second Noah’s ark.
Having reviewed selected passages from the testimony of President Gorbachev, the leader of the fallen monument of civilization – a testimony from contemporary reality concerning the flaw in the delicate relationship between the factors of true civilization, a flaw that is represented in the flawed relationship between faith, science, and work, or between the cultural and the material sections of civilization – I will review now selections from the testimony President Richard Nixon, former president of the United States, which is another monument of civilization, ready to fall, unless its leadership acts before it is too late or the divine grace rescues it with guidance and rationality. The selections are chosen from his famous book Seize the Moment, in which he says:
§ The United States will lose its economic and technological edge if it fails to perform better in getting young Americans ready for the duties that await them on the occasion of moving from industrial economy to that of sophisticated technology. More than 25% of the American people fail to graduate from high school. Many of those who do graduate are so lacking in skills, such as mathematics and science, and our young people rank behind students of all other industrial countries. It is true that some of our public schools are performing well, but many of them are less effective than schools in many countries of the world. Most of the content of school curricula is so easy that students no longer feel the need for hard work. That is why two thirds of school students spend one hour or less at home in preparing for their classes, reading ten lines or even less. Then they watch at least three hours of mind-stupefying television programs.
§ America is now moving downward in a vortex towards scientific and technological illiteracy, not because Americans have lost their ability to learn, but because part of the knowledge they receive has been bypassed by time. We are raising – whether in the heart of cities or within the Middle and Upper Classes in the suburbs – a new generation which can be called the MTV generation. The amazing ignorance of many members of this generation does not result from the limited intelligence of young people, but from the failure to exploit their intelligence. They live in the world of loud music, which is played at such a volume that it pierces the ear, and of television that displays fast-changing images that can hardly be followed by the eyes, and successive, sexually arousing scenes. Mottoes, which used to be displayed as stickers on bumpers, are now printed on shirts, but they are still as hollow” (p. 259).
§ The richest country in the world cannot possibly accept that its drug consumption is almost equal to the consumption of all the countries of the world together, although its population is not more than one twentieth of the world population. The richest country in the world cannot have the highest crime rate in the world , nor can it accept that the number of people who die in America is twenty times the number of those killed in the Gulf War over the same period” (p. 267).
§ The richest country in the world cannot possibly accept to have a class of villains that make our major cities so unsafe that life becomes unbearable.
§ Our most serious social problems are crime – drugs, and dependence on others in education – revolve around the values of attitudes and behavior. Such things do not depend on dollars or on the programs planned to cope with them, which are calculated in dollars and often lead nowhere. The need is not for dollars as much as for a set of values and rules which are accepted and self-imposed by society (p. 168).
While in his book 1999: Victory without War, President Nixon says:
§ In the twenty-first century, Man is going to reshape the world, and we have to undertake a pivotal role in this great project. Materially, we will reshape the world by virtue of an eruption of technological inventions. We have to try to reshape the world politically through a strategy that aims at the realization of real peace. At the same time, we should not neglect to cope with the question of the spiritual human dimension (p. 325).
§ While we are changing the material world, we should strive to reshape the world politically. In the twentieth century, our technological progress took a few steps ahead of our political progress, and that is something we should not allow to happen in the next century. Our material progress has reached the point where if it is not combined with political progress, this might lead to total destruction. If we want maximum material progress in the twenty-first century – not to serve our interests alone, but the interests of all humanities, we have to reach for the means that would make our scientific conquests combined with a political one, thus we reduce the chance of war and enhance the participation in the benefits of peace (p. 327-28).
§ The might of the sword in Moscow cannot defeat the might of the spirit in the West. One day Stalin, mockingly and with contempt, questioned the Church power in influencing world events, saying, “How many brigades are under the Pope’s command?” This comment shows his failure to understand the world and what drives it. Ultimately, history is determined by ideas not arms. This is particularly true when politicians, who know the world and how it works, are armed with strong principles (p. 331).
Within the same context the great Indian poet Tagore said in a conversation with a Western thinker, “It is true that you have been able to soar in the air like birds and to dive in the sea like fish, but you have not managed to walk on earth like human beings.”
American novelist John Steinbeck says, “America’s problem is in its wealth. It has too many things, but it does not have an adequate spiritual message. We need a blow on the head to make us wake up from our wealth. We have conquered nature, but we have not conquered ourselves.”
The well-known former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles says, “It is not a matter of material things; we have the greatest production of material things in the world. What we lack is sound, strong faith, without which all what we have remains too little.”
Alexis Carrel, a scientist and Nobel laureate, says in his book Man the Unknown: “Our knowledge of life and of how a human being should live is a far distance behind our knowledge of material things, and this lagging behind is what makes us suffer.”
Professor Judd, head of the Department of Philosophy at London University, says, “Physical sciences have given us a power that is worthy of the great, but we use it with the mentality of children and beasts. This discrepancy between our amazing scientific conquests and our embarrassing social infanthood is something we face at every turn in our lives.”
Mr. Eden, well-known in contemporary history as a former British prime minister, says, “It is absurd that countries and nations spend millions of pounds to protect themselves from a lethal machine that frightens them, but they spend nothing to control it.”
Former U.S. President Roosevelt says, “It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.”
I conclude these quotations by citing once more the statement of former U.S. President Nixon that “In the twentieth century, our technological progress took a few steps ahead of our political progress, and that is something we should not allow to happen in the next century, in order to reduce the chances of war and enhance the participation in the benefits of peace.”
§ a component of values, principles, and modes of behavior, and
§ A component of material elements, means, and skills.
Those who care for earthly life and its embellishment, We shall pay them for their work in it, and they will not be underpaid there (Hood XI: 15).
We will show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, until the truth is evident to them (Fussilat XLI: 53).
He also says:
Those who strive for Our sake We will guide to our right paths. God is for the righteous (Al-'Ankaboot XXIX: 69).
Striving (jihad) here is used in its general sense, which is to strive in order to maintain life. The truth and the ways that lead to it do not become clear for a person without effort, search, and thought, nor without competence, skill, and creativity.
We can, on the basis of the relationship of complementarity between material production and creative performance, read clearly and objectively the three cases of civilization listed above.
The American nation, as well as the West in general, has chosen for its way of life a neutral course between religion and worldly interests, which it called “the secular approach.” It is based on the separation of religion and religious and moral values from life’s material and political concerns. It regards religion and morality as personal matters, convinced that a conflict exists between some religious teachings, on the one hand, and science and creativity, on the other. It makes religion a concern of the church and temple alone. Upon this foundation, the United States has been seriously involved in teaching and educating its successive generations. It focuses on the approaches of research, creative talent cultivation, and development of competence and skills. A large margin is allowed for applied sciences in the American educational process in schools, institutes, and universities. Great attention is accorded to research center, creative workshops, and specialized industrial cities. Brains and creative talents from all over the world are welcomed, and skills from all peoples and cultures are invested.
Thus, the United States has built a production network with various orientations and specialization, with its integrated and harmonious units working towards one end and one goal, which is the construction of an industrial infrastructure, unceasing in its production, development, and creativity, and unaffected by the social, political, and other climates. This infrastructure is independent in its concern, independent in its performance, and independent in its budget, which increases and never diminishes. It is an infrastructure that continuously encourages and supports new abilities and skills, as well as diligent, specialized studies and research.
Thus, America and other Western countries have managed to bring about a great transformation in the progress of their productive, scientific life. They have initiated an enormous and prevailing industrial and technological revolution in contemporary history. Now the United States is the leading country of the world in creative technological production in various fields of life. There is no doubt that it is the leading industrial and military, and perhaps economic, power on earth. However, it suffers today a “spiral decline,” as President Nixon puts it, and it faces an internal threat that might devastate and destroy its lofty technological monuments. The reason for that is a flaw in its performance and ethics, and its political and cultural backwardness. The famous President Theodore Roosevelt expressed this when he said:
It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.
President Nixon also made a warning, saying,
In the twentieth century, our technological progress took a few steps ahead of our political progress, and that is something we should not allow to happen in the next century. Our material progress has reached the point where if it is not combined with political progress, this might lead to total destruction. If we want maximum material progress in the twenty-first century – not to serve our interests alone, but the interests of all humanities, we have to reach for the means that would make our scientific conquests combined with a political one, thus we reduce the chance of war and enhance the participation in the benefits of peace.
This warning clearly means that the American civilization is facing a danger that threatens to destroy its giant civilization, unless its people hasten to correct the situation and strike a serious balance between its technological performance and its ethical and political performance. This supports our idea that material advance remains threatened unless it is combined with an advance in ethics and values.
· Meanwhile, the Islamic nation’s approach to civilization has been based from the beginning on the delicate balance and close tie between religion, values, and morality, on the one hand, and, on the other, the promotion of science, skills, research, and development in order to utilize the resources of the universe for the purposes of settling the earth, maintaining life, and safeguarding human dignity and environmental safety. When the Islamic nation observed this delicate balance between the bases of science and of values – or of belief, values and principles, on the one hand, and matter, instruments, and skills, on the other – it was able, with great competence and ability, to build lofty monuments of scientific and technological excellence combined with a benevolent history of civilization performance, ethical behavior, and equitable humanitarian approach. When it retreated from the fields of matter, skills, and instruments, due to a general disorder that affected the way it understood the true message of its religion and its objectives in life, is suffered retreat and decline in its scientific and technological progress. Later, it was weakened and withdrew in some of its countries, perhaps fully, from the fields of research and technological production. Yet, in spite of its scientific weakness, material and industrial backwardness, and the fact that it lacks the means and the materials, and in spite of the injustice and attacks it has suffered, it remains – thanks to God, the Most Sublime, and to its adherence to its values and the moral approach inherent in its educational makeup – coherent and alive, resisting and defending itself, and insisting to survive. It has not been wiped out, nor has it become extinct as the case was with earlier civilizations and nations.
Today it is trying to rise and soar once more. Awareness of the reality of its crisis and the causes of its backwardness is becoming more and more evident in its approach. True recognition of the mission of its belief in its religion, which is settled in the hearts of its rising generations, is flowing once more in its veins. These generations are beginning to recognize the defective points in its erroneous way of coping with the objectives of the mission of its religion. One of the most prominent of these defective points is the flawed relationship between spiritual worship and its varied rites, on the one hand, and, on the other, its mission in life and the consequent responsibilities, after having been for a long time unaware of the objectives of the great, immortal divine call:
Believers, respond to the call of God and the Messenger when he calls you to that which will give you life (Al-Anfaal VIII: 24).
This call confirms that the mission of Islam is to maintain life, and that spiritual rites of worship, piety, fear of God, and purity of behavior do not, as supposed by some people including perhaps some Muslims, bring material progress. Their actual function is to prepare upright qualified people who are needed to meet, with adequate competence and ability, the responsibilities of maintaining the material and technological aspect of life.
The nation has also been unaware of the great divine reminder:
He it is who brought you into being out of the earth and settled you therein (Hood XI: 61).
and of its great responsibilities. This great divine reminder and instruction clearly confirms that the settlement of the earth and investment of the resources of the universe are an assignment from God. Carrying it out is a religious obligation and worship, before being an interest and benefit. Based on this way of understanding, and after long contemplation with the attempt to discover the causes of the nation’s backwardness, I was guided by God, the Most Sublime, and thanks and praise be to him, I came up with the term constructional worship to be complementary with and inseparable from spiritual worship in the life of a Muslim individual. This is confirmed by the frequently reported tradition of God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, which says:
Belief is seventy-odd departments; the highest is “There is no deity other than God,” and the lowest is removing a harmful object from a road.
What evidence can be clearer and stronger in argument than the assertion that concerns of life and of settlement of the earth are among the most intimate types of servitude to God, the Most Sublime. This is what has made me stress in my former books, and stress in this one, that worship in the Islamic approach is of two types:
1. Spiritual worship and
2. Constructional worship,
and that their complementarity and inseparability is an imperative and urgent matter for the course that a human being follows on earth to be correct and straight. It is also an urgent obligation for the attainment of God’s satisfaction and for the sincerity of following the whole, right approach which He has chosen for His servants. I assert that any defect that occurs in this complementarity and inseparability between the two types of worship in God’s religion is a defect in dealing with that religion; it is a departure from the right approach of Islam’s mission and its grave, divine objectives. Thus, it is a fundamental cause for the setback in the being-best quality of the Islamic nation and a basic cause for the retreat of its model of civilization among nations, as well as its task of serving as a witness for other people. In fact, suspension of the complementarity and inseparability between spiritual and constructional worship is a basic cause for the development of the case of painful and humiliating inferiority, as well as its disgraceful consequences, from which our nation suffers.
Another painful and regrettable thing has been produced by the nation’s negligence of the obligations of constructional worship, shaped by the phenomenon of its abandonment of the niches of exploring the treasures of the universe and utilizing their resources, and imposed by the obstruction of the competence, skills, and talents of the nation’s successive generations in the fields of life. That thing is the tendency, and even mania, of self accusation and accusation of the other to justify the condition of backwardness and decline which the nation suffers:
1. A tendency, and even mania, of self accusation of remoteness from God.
2. A tendency, and even mania, of embracing the conspiracy explanation of its condition of weakness.
I have already discussed this mania that goes to extreme in self humiliation and accusation of defective belief and remoteness from God. I have said before and say here again that there is no doubt that belief goes into ebb and flow, and that hearts rust the same way that iron does, but the root of faith and the momentum of servitude to God, the Most Sublime, remains the normal and dominant condition in the course followed by the Islamic nation. It remains an outstanding characteristic, embedded in the identity and affection of its generations. As for conspiracy, I do not believe any rational person who is aware of reality and of the vehement conflict between nations would deny its existence and negative influence on the life and interests of societies. However, what is unacceptable and deplorable is the exaggeration in the phenomenon, sometimes amounting to an absurd mania, of the general conspiracy-based interpretation of the nature of event development in the lives of people and societies. This reduces and facilitates for promoters of this interpretation the task of search for the causes and reasons of the crises and maladies which they and their societies face. It is regrettable that the common explanation repeated by many Muslims, when talking about the causes of the nation’s weakness and backwardness, is one of two, with no third option suggested:
1. remoteness from God, and
2. conspiracy and conspirators.
With either explanation, people make things easy for themselves and clear themselves from any responsibility. A person who advances the charge of remoteness from God definitely refers to somebody or some group or institution within the nation, while he himself, as suggested by his argument, is at best terms with God.
As for conspiracy and conspirators, the charge is readily and with certainty made against rulers and their entourage, and even any person who shoulders some responsibility in the nation. An advocate of the argument, however, is definitely innocent of any conspiracy or complicity with conspirators, as he suggests. Yet, if by chance this person becomes in a position of responsibility himself or gets to be an associate of a ruler, the charge of conspiracy miraculously disappears from his discourse and vocabulary when addressing other people. Why? I do not know. Is it because he has discovered that the charge is just an obsession? Or is it because he has discovered the real causes of the nation’s backwardness? Or is it a matter of interests and gains? Or is it piety, sense of responsibility, reason, and wisdom? I do not know.
What I know and am convinced of is that accusing the nation of insufficient faith and of being remote from its religion and its Lord and then accusing it again of submission and complete surrender to conspiracy and conspirators is a cardinal sin. A person who has fallen victim to this disease and has been covered with the mud of such a vice should hasten to rescue himself and seek remedy for what he suffers from, through repentance and appeal for forgiveness, before it is too late. He should think well of others the same way that he thinks well of himself. If he must accuse someone, a person should accuse himself before anybody else.
Rather, man will be a witness against himself (Al-Qiyaamah LXXV: 14).
To get out of this case of sickness, the sickness of faith-related self accusation of being “remote from God” and conduct-related self accusation of “conspiring” with god’s enemies, I arrived at the methodological diagnosis that led me to the notion that the majority of the nation is, unintentionally, oblivious of the flaw in the relationship between spiritual worship and constructional worship and of the flaw represented by the absence of complementarity and inseparability between them in the greater part of the nation’s life. I find that I have to go back and make clear again my point of view in regards to the question of civilization and the superiority of the Islamic approach to it.
An analogy for me and the prophets before me is that of a man who built a building, which was well done and beautifully ornamented, except for the location of one brick at one of its corners. People would come, walk around it, admire it, and say, “Why do you not put that brick in?” Well, I am the brick, and I am the last of the prophets.
The Prophet thus confirms that the divine system of vicegerency is one and the same. It was preached by all prophets and messengers, each in accordance with his mission and the conditions of his age and geographical location. All of them, peace be upon them, spoke of worshipping God alone and of belief, ethics, and behavioral standards.
As for the component of material elements, means, and skills, it is reflected in God’s words, “So, walk around its regions, eat of His provision, and to him is the resurrection,” and in all the material elements, means, and skills that come under the idea of “walking.”
So we have a system of vicegerency on earth comprising knowledge and action; we are between “learn then” (knowledge) and “so walk” (action). If a delicate balance is established between the principle of “learn then” and that of “so walk,” the right approach for the settlement of the earth will be launched and an equitable and secure civilization will be set up. If, however, imbalance occurs between the two components, a flaw will occur in the behavioral performance of civilization.
We suffer today, in our contemporary history, a problem of civilization-related performance. There is a flaw in the production performance as there is a flaw in applied performance, a flaw in dealing with the “learn then” component and a flaw in dealing with the “so walk” component. Some nations have mastered walking on earth and excelled in the skills it requires, and have deservedly managed to invest the universe and its resources, but they have failed with the “learn then” component, i.e. with values, principles, and ethics. This has caused a failure and an absurdity in its production and technological performance, both in quantity and quality. Other nations excelled in dealing with the “learn then” component– i.e. with values, ideals, and ethics – but have failed and lagged behind in the fields of the “so walk” component, which has caused a major imbalance in the scales of civilization progress in their lives. This defect has negatively affected the nation’s power and status, and the security, stability, and prosperity of its people.
Each of these two cases is a defect. One involves excellence in technological creativity with a failure in regards to values, principles, and behavioral standards, and the other involves a terrible defect in the “so walk” component, i.e. in material things, means, and skills, but a firm stand on values, principles, and behavioral standards. We have, therefore, to solve this problem of performance: performance in production, with which we mean the absurdity of production, and performance in application, with which we mean the failure to uphold values, ethics, and interests. When we are able to solve the problem and restore the balance between the two components of the vicegerency system (the component of values and the component of material things), when we are able to adjust the standards and values of production and application – we will have placed the performance of civilization on the right track that maintains human dignity, environmental safety, and equitable and secure human coexistence.
In my estimation, the problem of performance in production and application has been, since old days, the major threat to the safety of civilization progress. It reverses the yields of civilizing efforts and turns them into an agent of ruin, destruction, and misery, rather than being a herald of life, construction, and prosperity. History confirms this and the present supports and verifies it. I have already cited evidence of that earlier in this chapter.
In short, the problem of the Islamic nation’s weakness, and the problem of explaining its weakness and the technological backwardness it suffers by accusing it of remoteness from God, need serious and objective reconsideration by promoters of this negative attitude towards the nation’s religiousness and fail to recognize the true and serious tie it has with its Lord, and its adherence, unique among nations, to the values, principles, and ideals of its religion. Probably I would not be exaggerating if I claim that the nation’s attitude towards its religion today is much better than it was in some past periods of history which are regarded by some as prosperous.
Nevertheless, the nation’s weakness and the fact that it lacks the elements of material strength is due to its departure from the niches of constructional worship, withdrawal from the fields of research, and negligence of walking around the regions of the earth and exploiting its resources. It is also due to its failure to carry out the duties of vicegerency on earth. It is my estimation that the nation’s withdrawal from the fields of material things, means, and skills, and its absence from or backwardness in the fields of production and the high levels of scientific and technological creativity is the bitter fruit of a disrupted relationship between the elements of the civilization progress formula within the great Islamic approach: the element of belief, values, and conduct, and the element of science, research, means, and skills. But what is the source of disruption in that relationship?
In contemplating this central question about the state of the nation today, I find myself getting more and more convinced that the source and the reason of its inferiority and for the obstruction of the revival of its being-best quality and resumption of the progress of its civilization is the captivity of its will. Of course this captivity is not absolute; it is relative, with degrees that differ from one country to another. Nor is it an inclusive captivity. It is rather a captivity of different kinds: cultural, social, political, economic, scientific, creativity-related, civilization-related, etc. What is regrettable is that there is, I believe, no Arab or Islamic country that is not subject in some degree to one of the types of captivity of the will, except those favored by God. It is certain, however, that the will of the whole nation is captive.
But what is it that holds the nation’s will captive and its resolve hostage, suspends its values and principles, chains its energies and abilities, conceals its quality of being a middle nation, blocks the revival of its mission, and deprives it of the honor of carrying out the task of being a witness for others and the task and responsibilities of vicegerency on and settlement of the earth?
In my view, it is its division and failure to take a unified stand.
It might be asked, “What then is the cause of its failure to take a unified stand and the source of its division?”
I do not hesitate, after all my contemplation and scrutiny in exploring that cause, to say that the cause lies in the confusion of conceptions suffered by the nation’s elite groups of scholars and thinkers in regards to the true mission of religion in the lives of people, the concepts of the Law of their religion and its relationship with other religious laws, and the bases of the objectives of Islam’s international message.
Naturally, the questioner has the right to go on and ask further, “But what are the causes of the confusion of the conceptions held by the nation’s elite groups in regards to the true mission of religion in its life and the bases of the international message of that religion?”
Again I do not hesitate to say that the basic and major reasons of the confusion of the conceptions held by the nation’s elite groups is due to the absence or poor quality of their concepts of
1. the relationship between faith, the Law, and the mission;
2. arrival at a common jurisprudence (Fiqh) that covers the general objectives of the message of Islam;
3. the relationship between the jurisprudence of individual religiousness and that of the state’s religiousness – or, if you will, between the jurisprudence of policies and interests and that of beliefs and acts of worship – and the disruptive overlapping between them;
4. a shared view of the jurisprudence of international relations; and
5. The distinction between difference in faith from the other and constructional ground shared with him.
Unfortunately, the nation’s elite groups of scholars and thinkers have neglected to address these disorders and have been citing two items to explain the nation’s weakness and backwardness, and the inferiority of its status among nations. These are:
1. conspiracy, to which the major responsibility for the nation’s weakness and humiliation is attributed, and
2. The charge against the nation of being remote from God, the Most Sublime, and of the poor religious restraint that the nation’s generations have.
To begin with, I say:
· I do not believe any rational person in the world would deny the influence of conspiracy and intrigue in the movement of civilizations while checking each other and in the conflict of interests through the long history of the human race. The thing that rational people find objectionable and unacceptable is the phenomenon of infinitely using conspiracy to interpret the events that occur in the lives of people and societies. This is combined with the phenomenon of claiming innocence from any behavior that facilitates the task of conspiracy or creates some, if not the majority, of its factors. “Say, ‘It comes from you, yourselves’” (Aal ‘Imran III: 165). What is also objectionable and far from objectivity is the phenomenon of attributing to conspiracy all the causes of the nation’s backwardness and the setback in the progress of its civilization.
· Next there is the argument of remoteness from God, the Most Sublime, and the poor religious restraint among the nation’s population, as well as the accusation of the nation as a whole that questions the truthfulness and credibility of its faith and belief, both of which (the argument and the accusation) are given as the definite cause of the nation’s lack of unified stand, its weakness, and the captivity of its will. I believe that making such a serious and destructive accusation against the Islamic, faithful nation is, in itself, a fundamental cause of the lack of a unified stand. It destroys its fortifications from inside. It is indeed one of the most lethal weapons used to destroy the nation’s structure and dwarf its identity. It is true that belief ebbs and flows, and that people become feeble and negligent. But to claim that this is a general malady of the whole nation in order to arrive at a brief and easy explanation of the nation’s backwardness and the setback of its status among nations is exaggerated and objectionable.
I have already discussed this accusation earlier in this chapter and showed it as lacking in objectivity. I have opted for restricting the search for the causes of any flaw in the nation’s progress to the aspects of human performance on the part of the nation’s rulers and subjects, and to keep it away from the labyrinths of accusations that touch on faith and belief. It is true that conspiracy exists and will continue to exist: “They will go on fighting you until they turn you away from your religion, if they can” (Al-Baqarah II: 217); “They plan and God plans; God is the best of planners” (Al-Anfaal VIII: 30). It is also true that human weakness is a condition that no human being, other than prophets and messengers, is free from. The Prophet said, “Some of you seek worldly things and some seek what is in the Hereafter.” One of his Companion, may God be pleased with them and make them pleased, said, “By God, I had never thought that any of us desired worldly things until this verse was revealed.”
The story of Hatib Ibn Abu Balta'ah, may God be pleased with him, on the Day of the Conquest of Makkah is well-known to everybody. People of learning know how God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, dealt with the situation, although both Omar Ibn Al-Khattab and Ali Ibn Abu Taliban, may God be pleased with both of them and make them pleased, indicted Hatib with high treason. Omar said at the time, “God’s Messenger, let me wrench his neck out. He has betrayed God and His Messenger.” God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Let him go, Omar. Perhaps God has considered the case of the fighters of Badr and said, ‘Do what you will; I have forgiven you.’” This confirms that the question is one of comprehension and interpretation rather than of the basis of belief and the soundness of faith.
Therefore, I differentiate between coping with the belief and faith aspects relevant to an individual Muslim and coping with the aspects of conduct, comprehension, and performance which concern the way he deals with worldly affairs. I find that it is a type of assuming deity characteristics above God when a person appoints himself a judge of the belief and faith of other Muslims, disregarding the signs of belief that appear in their behavior and practice. When something of this sort occurs, and it is a terrible thing, it is a type of shirk (assigning a partner to God) in the quality of knowing the unknown (“Have you opened his heart and looked in it?”). In an inclusive, exclusive, frequently quoted, and unanimously cited tradition, with unanimous interpretation of its significance, the Prophet says:
Actions are judged by intention, and to each is what his intention is.…
Therefore we have to assume that other Muslims have good intention and trust their declaration of belief and their belief-indicating practices. We leave their inner thoughts and feelings to God, Most Sublime is He. In this, God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, gives us a good example, for he accepted the public declarations of hypocrites, although he knew for certain that they were hypocrites. He left their inner thoughts and feelings to God, and that was to serve one end, which he, the master and leader of all creatures, expressed by saying, “… so it will not be said that Muhammad kills his companions.”
Let us contemplate together the words of this lofty and refined tradition and its significance as a grand attitude and even as a great legislation. It relates to the jurisprudence (Fiqh) of the state in its concern for social unity and the unity of stand, being two basic objectives of Islamic Law and the great mission of Islam. “… So it will not be said” bears a clear indication of the interest in the informational aspect of the jurisprudence of the state in Islam. The phrase also indicates the effort to fill gaps and preempt any attempt by the other to exploit an opportunity to weaken the unity of stand (“kills his companions”). After all, are hypocrites, who are identifiable by name and known for their hypocrisy, Companions of the Prophet?
I believe nobody would deny that to delve into the implications of this tradition requires seminars and a lot of contemplation. It is sufficient for me to state here that companionship to God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, is of two types; one is the companionship of faith, devotion, allegiance, and everyday living, and the other is one of allegiance and everyday living with divergence in belief. This encourages me to say, and I hope to be correctly understood, that the common denominator of these two types of companionship is allegiance. This implies that allegiance to the Islamic state is a basic criterion in determining the relationship between ruler and subjects. This, of course, brings us to the way Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh) deals with the question of where a non-Muslim citizen stands in a Muslim state. It also brings us to the jurisprudence of variety of considered religious opinions and of political opinion within the framework of general allegiance to the system and the ruler. This, I believe, is something on which the nation still suffers some confusion, and it is, as I see it, a basic source for the disunity and division of the nation.
One more word with which I conclude this chapter, which deals with a very interesting subject and offers a very interesting discussion. Some devoted Muslims have taken up a nice, highly expressive, and very impressive slogan, which is “To die for God’s cause is our highest desire.” Undoubtedly, this is a legitimate, adequate, sincere, and desirable expression. Yet, many people understand it out of its spatial and temporal context. It is an expression to be used and chanted at times of war in the battlefield. It is not a slogan for all times and places. A Muslim should not make death his constant obsession, as if the nation has nothing else to do other than falling dead, while life is the concern of some other nation.
Those who repeat this slogan morning and evening seem to have forgotten that life and the settlement of the earth are an essential and more general objective of the concept of jihad in Islam. They seem to have forgotten that that fighting and death are an exceptional case necessitated by the nation’s defense needs. This case ends with the end of its causes and justifications, i.e. aggression against the nation. Meanwhile, the permanent slogan that should never be absent from the lives of Muslims and be continuously repeated by their tongues and in their hearts while they live is “To live for God’s cause is our highest desire.”
Say, “Work, for God will witness your work, and so will His messenger and the believers” (Al-Tawbah IX: 105).
From His Book (Partners ... not Guardians) Part Four / Chapter Fourteen
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To the Nation’s leaders - To the Nation’s scholars and intellectuals - To leaders of the world |
All Rights Reserved For The Author Prof. Dr. Hamid Al-Rifaie