http://homepage.ntlworld.com/masud/ISLAM/misc/shhamza_sep11.htm
A
Time for Introspection
by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
This article
first appeared in Q-News, the Muslim magazine,
www.q-news.com.
On September 11th our lives changed forever. We witnessed an
act of aggression that in many ways does not have a parallel in
past or present times. There are several elements that make this
act unique, from the use of civilian planes as weapons of mass
destruction to the attack on the most widely recognised
skyscrapers in the world. Nor have we ever witnessed the terrible
indictment of Islam as having a part to play in such a heinous
crime, writes Hamza
Yusuf.
Muslims were seen rejoicing in some parts of the world
in a display of what can only be called
shamaatatul 'aadai',
which is rejoicing at the calamities of ones’ enemies. This is
something explicitly prohibited in Islam and was never practiced
by the Prophet of Mercy, upon him be prayers and peace. We have
seen images since of American flags burning to further arouse the
wrath of a nation filled with grief, confusion and anger. Again,
Islam prohibits the burning of flags according to the explicit
verse, “Do not curse [the idols] of those who call on other than
Allah, thus causing them to curse Allah out of animosity [toward
you] and without knowledge.” This verse prohibits even the cursing
of false gods because of the consequences. We have also seen
image after image of Muslims with beards and turbans, who by all
outward means look religious and pious - but are they really?
Unfortunately, the West does not know what every Muslim scholar
knows; that the worst enemies of Islam are from within. The worst
of these are the khawaarij who
delude others by the deeply dyed religious exterior that they
project. The Prophet, peace be upon
him, said about them, “When you see them pray you will consider
your own prayers insignificant. They recite the
Quran but it does not exceed the
limits of their throat.” In other words, they don’t understand
the true meanings. The outward religious appearance and character
of the khawaarij deluded
thousands in the past, and continues to delude people today. The
Muslims should be aware that despite the
khawaarij adherence to certain aspects of Islam, they
are extremists of the worst type.
Our Prophet said, peace be upon him, “Beware of extremism in your
religion.” Islam is the middle way between excess and
neglect. Zealots are a plague upon religion. These extremists come
in two types. The first is a reactionary extremist who falls far
right of a centre-point. Reactionary extremists do not want any
pluralism; they view the world in melodramatic, black and white,
good and evil terms. They are good and anyone who opposes them is
evil. From among the Muslims these are people who ‘excommunicate’
any Muslim who fails to share their interpretations of the
Quran. They use
takfir and character assassination as a tool for
marginalising any criticism directed at them. They are used often
by the Western media in order to scare simple people and cause
them to believe that Muslims are insane. Unfortunately, our
communities provide them with much fuel to fire their incendiary
flames.
The second group are radical extremists, who while they are almost
identical with the former group, differ in that they will use
violence to further their cause. They are
actually worse than the first. They believe like every
nefarious secret society before them that ‘the end justifies the
means.’ They see any act as acceptable if it will further their
‘cause.’ This is blatantly anti-Islamic for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Islam’s means must reflect its noble ends. Any means that
does not embody the core truths and ethics of Islam is not from
Islam and thus denounced as aberration. Secondly, Islam is not a
secret society of conspirators who no one knows what they are
planning. Islam declares openly its aims and objectives and these
are recognised by good people everywhere as pure and congruent
with their own wisdom and traditions. In the case of many of these
extremists even the non-Muslims recognise that no religion of any
weight could sanction the taking of innocent lives. The
Quran says that the Torah and the
Gospel have guidance and light and that the
Quran came to fulfil these prior dispensations. Good
Christians and Jews who believe in God and live ethically upright
lives have no frame of reference for such acts, so how could these
acts be from Islam, which confirms what has come before it?
Thirdly, they are invariably people who have never taken a true
spiritual path to God and nor have they studied the humanities. I
can almost guarantee that you will not find a scholar of poetry
among the whole vile lot of these people. They have no true
knowledge of Arabian culture, which is centred in the idea of
futuwwa; a word akin to
the western word chivalry. The terrorists posing as journalists
who killed Ahmad Shah Masuud were
cowards of the worst type. Killing themselves was not bravery but
stupidity, but killing one’s enemy in such a way is the worst form
of treachery and the Arabs have many poems denouncing such type of
people.
Our real situation is this: we Muslims have lost theologically
sound understanding of our teaching. Islam has been hijacked by a
discourse of anger and the rhetoric of rage. We have allowed for
too long our mimbars to become bully
pulpits in which people with often recognisable psychopathology
use anger - a very powerful emotion - to rile Muslims up, only to
leave them feeling bitter and spiteful towards people who in the
most part are completely unaware of the conditions in the Muslim
world, or the oppressive assaults of some Western countries on
Muslim peoples. We have lost our bearings because we have lost our
theology. We have almost no theologians in the entire Muslim
world. The study of kalaam,
once the hallmark of our intellectual tradition, has been reduced
to memorizing 144 lines of al-Jawhara
and a good commentary to study it, at best.
The reality is we are an Umma that no
longer realises that Allah is the power behind all power; that it
is Allah who subjugates one people to another; that He gives
dominion to whom He pleases and He
takes it away from whom He pleases. Our understanding of
tawhid has fallen into such
disarray that we can no longer introspect when afflictions befall
us and then wonder in amazement at why the Americans seem
incapable of introspection. Indeed, I personally attended a
memorial service in San Francisco with over 30,000 people and the
Reverend Amos Brown said in no uncertain terms that America must
ask herself what she has done either wittingly or unwittingly to
incur the wrath and hate of people around the world. Muslims on
the other hand, generally prefer to attack the West as the sole
reason for their problems when the truth is we are bankrupt as a
religious community and our spiritual bankruptcy has led to our
inability to even deliver the message of Islam to Westerners in a
time when they were giving us platforms to do so.
It is ironic that the Western media while producing many vile
programs on Islam has also produced and aired material of the
highest quality with a high level of accuracy only to be vilified
by Muslims because it was not good enough. Where is our media?
Where are our spokespeople? Where are our scholars? Where are our
literary figures? The truth is we don’t have any - and so instead
of looking inward and asking painful questions such as why we
don’t have such things and such people, we take the simple way out
by attacking people whom Allah tells us will do mean things, say
bad things and plot against us. And always when we are warned we
are told to be patient, to work for the good, to trust in Allah,
to return to Allah, to implement our deen.
Conspiracy or not, we are to blame for the terrible backlash
against Muslims. The simple reason is that when a crazy Christian
does something terrible, everyone in the West knows it is the
actions of a mad man because they have some knowledge of the core
beliefs and ethics of Christianity. When a mad Muslim does
something evil or foolish they assume it is from the religion of
Islam, not because they hate us but because they have never been
told by a Muslim what the teachings of Islam are all about.