Islam Yesterday, Islam Today & Islam Tomorrow By: Ahmad Amir Azfar It was 1400 years ago when in 613 CE a mortal man by the name of Muhammad preached that there is only One God and that he is His Messenger for all mankind. He brought teachings that would soon change the whole entire world and brought upon not only a spiritual enlightenment but carried with himself everlasting message of peace, justice, comion and humanity which were long lost in the dark desserts of Arabia. The world witnessed a magnificent Islamic Golden Age emerged afterwards in 150 years, from the majestic city of 8th Century Baghdad. It was truly a global capital of knowledge and wisdom, the ultimate centre of multidisciplinary scholarly learning ranging from natural sciences, religious studies, medicine, humanities, philosophy, literature, engineering and cultural arts. Along with Córdoba and Cairo, Islamic Civilisation created an intellectual movement unparalleled in over 500 years that undoubtedly contributed to the European Rebirth or the Renaissance. Under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Islam would later rise as a mighty empire at the peak of its dominion. It was a universal empire which consisted of more than 47 of today‟s modern-day nations spanning across three continents. Makkah, Medina and Jerusalem, three of Islam‟s holiest cities were all united under one single sovereign. Islam under Ottoman Empire was a global superpower both at sea and land, unmatched, feared but above all ired by the rest of the world. It was an Era of Pax Ottomana. But this was many, many centuries ago, centuries of remarkable Islamic history. This was Islam of yesterdays, not Islam we have today unfortunately. Along with the civilisation itself, Islam‟s rich culture of human exploration and creativity fades together in history. Great scientific minds like „Abbas ibn Firnas, Jabir ibn Hayyan, al-Razi and countless others who made great scientific discoveries are now just nostalgic remnants of the past. Today, it is the West and not Islam who is at the forefront of scientific inquiry and technological innovations. The Western world has produced more Nobel Laureates in the four scientific fields of the prize than any other nations on Earth combined. From Islam‟s 1.62 billion-strong population, only two Muslim scientists have ever received science‟s most prestigious honour since it was first introduced in 1901. Theories of relativity, Apollo 11, Human Genome Project, MacBook, Google, Large Hadron Collider and Curiosity Rover are all major scientific ideas and technological breakthroughs achieved by the West and in the West. The glorious days of excellent Islamic scholarship from the madrasahs of Timbuktu to Malacca are long over as well. Today, universities such as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge are just some of the many outstanding Western institutions that supremely dominate the intellectual world. The West currently boasts more universities and researchers, libraries and PhD holders and has more R&D output than the rest of the Islamic world. It is a race where the Muslims was once leading so far ahead but is now been left so far behind. The Islamic world was also the focus of global trade and commerce. Muslims would live under immense wealth and prosperity but today, the same Islamic world is struggling to be the same economic giant it used to be. No Muslim countries are in the world‟s ten largest economies and even

the combined total GDP of all 57 states of the OIC could not match US‟s 15.6 trillion USD economy. Together with the European Union, the West owns almost half of today‟s global wealth while most Muslim population live with hunger and poverty. In the same Islamic world, Muslims exists in a society as if been cursed into continual conflict and corruption. Since the turn of the second millennium, more than 30 armed conflicts, civil wars and military confrontations have occurred on Muslim soil and more than 20 conflicts are still ongoing today from the insurgencies in Chechnya to the brutal civil war in Syria, amounting up to nearly 3 million deaths and counting. Islam has lost its power to dictate and effectively influence international relations since the end of the First World War. It could not prevent the Western invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocide of Bosnia nor the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. The long bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict still remains highly unresolved with millions of Palestinians suffer every day at the hands of murderous Zionist regime and there is nothing Muslims today can do about it. Once upon the time, women were equal to men in all aspects of life in 12th Century Spain as commented by Ibn Rushd, a famous Andalucian philosopher. Indeed, women were emancipated since the arrival of Islam, freeing them from the chains of patriarchal enslavement and cultural oppression. Women‟s rights were legally institutionalised and championed. History proudly records that women in Muslim societies were eminent scholars, brave warriors, brilliant physicians, generous patrons and wise politicians. But in the same Muslim societies today, all of this seems to be absolutely impossible. Today, the same chains have shackled women again in countries where it is deemed to be most dangerous of places for women to live. Most Islamic nations have very little or no enforcement of laws consonant with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as women‟s rights appear to be of little or no priority at all for these governments. These same countries have Muslim governments who have also been accused of human rights violations, persecution of minorities and encroachment of basic freedoms from time and time again. The Achtiname of Muhammad is an exemplar of Islam‟s religious tolerance but it was in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that a Muslim threatened to burn copies of the Bible, a book sacred to the faith of Christianity. It seems peace, justice, comion and humanity is lost once again amidst in all of this chaos and insanity. What have the Islamic world become? What have we, the Muslims become? Muhammad Abduh, a 20th Century Egyptian reformist once said, “I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam”. Since then, perhaps things are still very much the same. After the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate and centuries of vicious colonialisation which subjugated the Islamic world, have left the Muslim Ummah psychologically paralysed and uninspired. Further series of brutality and humiliation experienced by the Muslim populace further terrorises an already traumatised society. To make things worse, Muslims today confronts a world of perpetual distractions, drowning them in an ocean of irrelevance which leads them astray from Quranic Revelations. Highly addictive entertainments from Hollywood to South Korea‟s K-pop sensations are trapping postcolonial Muslims in a mind-control scheme where only sex, pleasure, materialism and popularity are its inescapable

reality. The Islamic world is cornered by both military and mental occupation in which the latter is the most powerful of weapons. Again I ask myself this question, what have the Islamic world become and what have we, the Muslims become? I was deeply, deeply disturbed when a sweet, young girl by the name of Malala Yousafzai was targeted for assassination by the Talibans. They claimed that Malala was opposing Islam while in fact she was only opposing injustice. For opposing them actually, a 15 year old girl was shot in the head and neck, a girl who only believes that young girls like her deserves to get an education. A despicable barbarity often perpetrated today falsely in the name of Islam. Muslims today are the unconscious actors in their own film where Islam has become the tragic antagonist of global terrorism. Suicide bombers, bearded gunmen and al-Qaeda are the star-studded cast in this Western-produced motion picture of which only fear, hatred and lies are acted about a religion that has been terribly misunderstood since the attacks on 9/11. Islamophobia haunts the minds of the audience as the result from watching this blockbuster deception. These are the greatest dilemmas which confronts the Muslim Ummah at the moment. Imperative issues which will determine the fate of this religion, whether or not there will be a progressive future for Islam tomorrow. Now, the question we must ask ourselves is this; after all that has befallen, after seeing all of the moral corruption which plagues our Muslim nations, is there any hope left for Islam and for the rest of the Islamic Civilisation? If it was more than eight hundred days ago, maybe there is no such thing as hope in the Islamic world but now, hope is the newfound human spirit that drives Islamic revivalism in the Arab region. Decades of totalitarian regimes and dictators were toppled in a wave of people-inspired revolutions. From the ashes of old Ottoman memory, Turkey too rises as a new hope and become the shining model for the successful harmony between Islam and modernity. Egypt elected Muslim Brotherhood‟s Muhammad Morsi, the first hafiz as the head of state of a Muslim country in centuries. In Tunis, 217 lawmakers lead by the Ennahda Movement, a moderate Islamist party, are writing a new constitution for more than 10 million Tunisians while Tawakkol Karman, a woman, became the Mother of Yemeni‟s Revolution. Elsewhere in the Islamic world, nations like Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia are all seen as emerging powers in a changing global environment. Yes, I believe there is hope for the Muslim Ummah, in a post-revolution Islamic world that has planted the seeds of hope for a better tomorrow. Hope that peace, justice, comion and humanity would once again be the prevailing values in our Muslim societies. It is the inevitable end of history for mankind as Prophet Muhammad (saw) once foretold. In a hadith narrated in Musnad Ahmad on the authority of Huthayfah ibn al-Yaman (r.a), the Prophet (saw) said: “The Prophethood will last among you for as long as Allah wills, then Allah would take it away. Then it will be (followed by) a rightly-guided Khilafah upon the way of the Prophethood. It will remain for as long as Allah wills, then Allah would take it away. Then there will be a biting rule which will remain for as long as Allah wills, and then He will lift it if He wills. Afterwards, there will be oppressive rule, and it will last for as long as Allah wills, then He will lift it if He wills. Then there will be a rightly guided Khilafah upon the ways of the Prophethood, and then he kept silent”.

The Caliphate will return and the Arab Spring is just the beginning of an age of Islamic Awakening. Islam‟s destiny is certain but how soon Islam would rise will entirely depend on how soon the Muslim Ummah transforms to be the same famous generation which helped established this religion. I shall end with an excerpt from an address given by Caliph Umar (r.a) in Jerusalem which holds the key to unlocking our Muslim Ummah‟s true potentials: “O ye people I counsel you to read the Quran. Try to understand it and ponder over it. Imbibe the teachings of the Quran. Then practise what the Quran teaches. The Quran is not theoretical; it is a practical code of life. The Quran does not bring you the message of the Hereafter only; it is primarily intended to guide you in this life. Mold your life in accordance with the teachings of Islam, for that is the way of your well-being. By following any other way you will be inviting destruction.” May peace be upon all of you and may Allah forgive me for my words. Truly, only the Almighty Allah knows best.