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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