A strange ‘obsession’
with Islam explains the Euro-world order’s relentless war
on Islam and the ‘biting’ questions that continue to
be posed concerning the continuing failure to establish constitutional
democracy in the Muslim world.
We believe that an explanation of that strange ‘obsession’
is located in Islam’s view of the End of History, and, in
particular, in the prophecies in both the Bible and the Qur’an
concerning Gog and Magog.
We respond to the questions, however, by reminding
critics that modern political democracy originated in modern secular
western civilization, and required the adoption of political secularism
as the basis for the establishment of polity and State.
Political secularism, however, like all other applications of secularism,
denied religion any significant role in the public order. This,
in turn, facilitated the decline of religion and of absolute moral
values, and, around the world, has led to the emergence of ever-changing
secular values and, eventually, to an essentially godless way of
life.
Let us recall that when the British colonized countries
such as India they found Muslims with a political culture derived
basically from Islam.
British colonial rule imposed European political secularism ‘at
the point of the sword’ as the alternative to Islam. Both
Hindus and Muslims eventually challenged the new European religion
of ‘secularism’, and sought to restore and to preserve
their own indigenous political culture.
This led eventually, and alarmingly so for the British, to an ominous
political alliance of Muslims and Hindus in what was called the
Khilafat Movement – a struggle to preserve the institution
of the Islamic Caliphate located at the very heart of Muslim political
culture. Gandhi himself forged the alliance with the Muslim Khilafat
Movement since he, also, wanted to restore (for Hindus) indigenous
Hindu political culture and a Hindu model of a State.
The Khilafat Movement threatened to topple the
entire system of European political secularism and constitutional
democracy that the colonial West was forcing upon the non-White
world. And so a British strategy was devised, in collaboration with
Mustafa Kamal's newly emerging secular Republic of Turkey, to abolish
the Turkish Caliphate and, in so doing, to sabotage and to bring
about the collapse of the Khilafat Movement with its alarming Hindu-Muslim
alliance.
The strategy succeeded. The Caliphate was abolished in Turkey in
March 1924. By the end of that same year the old Indian Muslim leadership,
comprised of men who knew and lived Islam, went into irreversible
decline. They were replaced by the secularly inclined ‘All
India Muslim League’, led by men who neither knew nor lived
Islam. They presided over the cleverly disguised passage from Islam
as the basis of political culture, to the new European political
secularism.
It was deceptively spirited in by way of religious nationalism,
and emerged as a curious creature named ‘Muslim nationalism’.
The passage from the one to the other was so cleverly disguised
that it is still not discernible to many Muslims in India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh.
The turbulent history of secular European constitutional
democracy in the Muslim world cannot be understood without recognition
of that effort at fundamental change in political culture from Islam
to the European model of political secularism. Indeed the passage
from the one to the other has not as yet been accomplished in any
final way even in Pakistan or Turkey. Time and again the religious
beliefs of the Muslim peoples in Africa, the Arab world, South and
South-East Asia, etc., have impacted on politics in such wise that
the West has been forced to continuously resort to devious means,
including brute force and barbarism in present-day Iraq and Afghanistan,
to thwart the effort to restore Islam as the basis of polity.
Will Muslim society be secularized and constitutional
democracy finally established in the Muslim world? Or, will destiny
witness the restoration of the Islamic Khilafat?
Before we attempt to answer that absolutely fascinating
question which will eventually emerge at the very heart of political
discourse in contemporary international affairs, let us briefly
describe the Khilafat or the (Sunni) Islamic model of polity and
State.
It would surely surprise some of our readers to
learn that Islam has never claimed to be a new religion. Rather
it has consistently proclaimed that it is the original religion
of Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus (peace and blessings
of Allah be upon them all).
It was therefore natural that Prophet Muhammad
(s) should have preserved in the Islamic State of Madina the essential
model of a polity and State that was established by the Prophet-Kings,
David (s) and Solomon (s) in the Holy State of Israel. What was
that model?
Firstly, political culture in Holy Israel tolerated
no secular separation of politics from religion. In both David (s)
and Solomon (s), the religious/spiritual head of the community (i.e.,
the Prophet), was also, himself, King or Head of State.
Secondly, the polity and State recognized God as Sovereign (al-Malik),
and to Him belonged the Kingdom (al-Mulk), and hence Israel was
the Kingdom of God on earth.
Thirdly, God’s authority and law were both supreme in this
model of a State.
In the secular European model, on the other hand, sovereignty was
taken away from God and vested in the polity and State. That was
blasphemy (Shirk). God was further stripped of supreme authority
and law and these, also, were vested in the people and the State,
and were institutionalized in secular government (administration,
judiciary and legislature).
That, also, was blasphemy (Shirk). The people not only assumed supreme
authority and installed their own man-made law as supreme law, they
even went on, and recklessly so, to make legally permissible that
which God had Himself prohibited.
Such was the case, for example, with the Divine prohibition of ‘lending
money on interest’, gambling and lottery, etc. The Qur’an
has described all these efforts to ‘play God’ as blasphemy
(Shirk), which is the one sin that Allah Most High has warned that
He would never forgive. I guess that someone would respond by accusing
God of being fundamentalist.
When a people turn away from God, as they most
certainly do in political secularism and the secular State, the
Qur’an has warned that they would eventually forget Him and
would pay the price of forgetting themselves (i.e., their human
status). Their conduct would eventually become worse than that of
wild beasts. Prophet Muhammad prophesied that they would eventually
engage in sexual intercourse in public like donkeys.
There is an abundance of evidence that mainstream society in this
“progressive” modern age is heading down that road and
is already approaching the fulfillment of the prophecy of roadside
sex.
The Islamic Khilafat differs in no way whatsoever
from the model of the Holy State of Israel except that Prophet Muhammad,
the Prophet/Head of State, was recognized as Servant of Allah rather
than King!
Prophet Muhammad (s) has prophesied that the Islamic
Khilafat would be restored at that time when Jesus (s) returns.
I believe that we may have to wait for less than 50 years to witness
the return of Jesus (s) and the restoration of the Islamic model
of a State (Khilafat).
My book, ‘Jerusalem in the Qur’an’
has explained the subject.
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