The Divine test, the Muslims’ failure & the enemy occupation

 Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The crucial issue & the failure

A true Muslim is never known for his race, land, or language, but for his distinctive survival agenda. He lives every moment of his life with full submission to the command of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Any disobedience disqualifies him to be a Muslim. Hence living with the full alignment with His agenda is crucial in Muslim’s life. He has to follow siratul mustaqeem (the right path) in every segment of his life; any deviation takes him to hellfire. Here a Muslim fundamentally differs from a non-Muslim. But to develop such an all-time full alignment, it is most crucial to have the Qur’anic knowledge. Since the Holy Qur’an is the only source that tells about the wishes, rules, and roadmap of Allah Sub’han wa Ta’la, any ignorance makes it impossible to make that alignment. This is why iman of a believer never survives or works with ignorance. This is why learning the Holy Qur’an was made the first obligation on every man and woman more than a decade earlier than other obligations like five-time prayer and fastings. The enemies understand the key importance of the Holy Qur’an in Muslim lives. To make iman dysfunctional or non-functional, taking away the Muslims from the Qur’anic education is their prime agenda. And the strategy has given huge success to the enemies. As a result, the Muslims themselves have turned against Islam and the Muslims. And it has given them a huge harvest of collaborators in keeping the cultural and ideological occupation in the Muslim lands. This is why the Muslims no more live with Prophet (peace be upon him)’s Islam that entails sharia, hudud, Islamic State, jihad, trans-ethnic Muslim unity, and shura-based rule.

The successes of the early Muslims entirely owe to their full belief in Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la and the full adherence to the Holy Qur’an. But today’s Muslims are highly deficient on both counts. Since the Holy Qur’an is the only guiding rope that connects humans with the Almighty Allah Sub’han wa Ta’la, they considered it the most important task in life to hold fast this Holy Divine rope. They considered it a key to get success both here and in the hereafter. And holding fast to the Holy Qur’an means understanding it. Otherwise, it remains only as a dream. In those days, Arabic was not the mother tongue of the people living in Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and many others. But their intention to align with the mission of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la was so intense that led them to quickly learn the language of the Holy Qur’an. Later on, the Arabic language replaced their mother tongue; all of them thus become Arabised. The Holy Qur’an thus brought the largest linguistic revolution in the history of mankind. As a result, the Muslims of those formerly non-Arab countries could join and hugely contribute to the great civilizational march of Islam.

But today’s Muslims make history in other ways. They recite the Holy Qur’an but don’t bother to understand it. Nor do they bother to follow it. And those who are not Arab, show little interest to learn the Arabic language. Those who don’t understand the roadmap, how can they follow it? As a result, although they claim to be Muslim, but can’t function as Muslims. This is why today’s Muslims show deeper incongruence with the agenda of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Although they can take part in 5-time prayers, fasting, hajj, zakat, and other rituals, but can’t align with the prophet’s (peace be upon him) complete Islam. Rather their congruence with kuffar ideologies like secularism, nationalism, tribalism, liberalism, autocracy, and capitalism is much deeper. Such incongruence with Islam indeed works as the key to all failures.

Even an ignorant man keeps fasting, does prayers, and gives charity. But it needs deeper level of motivation to align with all segments of siratul mustaqemm. For taking part in life-long jihad and to embrace martyrdom in Almighty Allah’s way, it needs much deeper enlightenment with the Qur’anic knowledge. It is a massive job. Islam could generate such people in significant numbers only after the full Islamisation of the state and its institutions. Living in an enemy-controlled corruptive milieu of education, culture, and ideologies, it is extremely difficult to attain such a depth of enlightenment. This is why under the kuffar occupation, Almighty Allah’s plan to take people to paradise can’t operate. Rather, the satanic project overwhelms to take people to the hellfire.  Then, committing a catastrophic crime against mankind becomes the formal agenda of statecraft. Therefore, the best benevolent deed (amalus saleh) on earth is not to build millions of houses or donate billions of dollars but to release people from such shackles of satanic occupation? It indeed amounts to opening the road to paradise and obstructing the gates of hellfire. The reward is immense in the hereafter. The early Muslims realized the worth of such works. Therefore they left their homes and crossed mountains, rivers, seas, and extremely harsh deserts and become shaheed in the distant war fronts to end such satanic occupation. They delivered the message of Islam and could save millions of people from the hellfire. Thus, in the whole of human history, the early Muslims are the only people who could deliver the greatest beneficial service to mankind. Hence, the Prophet (peace be upon him) could rightly label these early Muslims as the best people in the whole history of mankind. But the failure of today’s Muslims is huge. They failed to end the satanic occupation even in their own homeland! They are living without the Qur’anic Islam. This is indeed the difference between the two distinctive brands of Muslims.

The Divine strategy of punishment and blessing

Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la has His own strategy vis-à-vis giving victory to the believers and punishing those who stand against Islam. The Holy Qur’an is very explicit on it. Almighty Allah could crush the power of Arab kuffars in seconds by sending some angels or earthquakes. But that was not His strategy. Instead, He asked Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to raise an army of believers to do the job. Hence, the believers are ordered, “Fight them; (as the part of the strategy that) Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and (this way He will) satisfy the hearts of the believing people.” –(Sura Taubah, verse 14). So, victory doesn’t come by mere supplication or prayers. The believers must engage in war and present sacrifices in terms of money, time, talent and blood to achieve that. Hence, if there exists no fighting Army for Islam, there is no victory for Islam either. Then, the Muslims stand defeated and humiliated –as is the case of the Muslims today. Only with serious engagement in the war against the enemies, the believers qualify for genuine help from Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Such a strategy has been repeatedly revealed in the Holy Qur’an. So it comes, “Allah intends to establish the Truth by His words and to cut off the roots of the unbelievers. That He should establish the Truth and abolish the falsehood, even if the criminals disliked it.” –(Sura Anfal, verse 7-8). So, Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la loves to cut off the roots of the wicked unbelievers; but it should happen by the hand of the believers. This is indeed the testing ground of iman of the believers. The angels are only to play a supportive role -if the need arises. Whoever does the job that Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la likes the most, also gets His love. And whoever gets His love, definitely gets a place in paradise. Such a solemn principle of Almighty Lord still operates to punish His enemies. But today’s Muslims utterly failed to be part of that Divine project. Instead, many of them live in the fantasy world that their rituals and supplication will do the job.

Intoxication & the missing tool of purification

People need an effective tool for the continual purification of their souls as well as the state and the communities. For Muslims, such a tool is jihad. It works as a filter to keep the human garbage out of the Muslim polity. If the tool of purification stops working, the people get impregnated with the toxic waste. A man can’t survive an obstructive gut that stops eliminating the excreta out of the body. The same is true with the Muslim ummah. The downfall of the Muslims indeed owes largely to the absence of such a purifying tool. Even in the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) time, the dischargeable human waste in the ummah was huge. At the time of the Ohud expedition, it was about 30 percent of the Muslim community. The rough estimate comes from the figure of 300 who departed from an army of 1000 at the starting point of the war rally. They are called munafiq –the worse and most damaging elements than the kuffars. Thus, jihad at Ohud helped the Muslim ummah to eliminate this harmful waste out of their body. As a result, the ummah stayed healthy. Another purge took place when Abu Bakar (RA) took the charge of the ummah and some people rebelled against paying zakat and some others claimed false prophethood. Now the ummah looks huge, but it owes mostly to the accumulation of harmful waste. Because of the embedded garbage, the great number of Muslims didn’t add up any real strength, rather caused more weakness.

In the Holy Qur’an, Jihad has been described as a tool of purification of the believers. On that issue, the All-knowing Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la has made His Own unequivocal statement: “And that He may purify (through jihad) those who believe and destroy the disbelievers (kafirs).” –(Sura Al-Imran, verse 141). So jihad has two-prong objectives. Firstly, to bring purification to believers’ hearts and secondly to purify societies by destroying the disbelievers. Therefore, to build a peaceful civilized society, the importance of jihad is immense. Without it, neither a human can attain his own purification, nor can purify societies. Obligatory five-time prayer, month-long fasting, zakat, and hajj can’t do this job. Hence, the absence of jihad can only lead to the corruptive rule of the disbelievers. In such a jihad-free world, the wicked people get supremacy. Then people get killed in millions by the racists, tribalists, genociders, ethnic cleansers, colonialists, imperialists, fascists, and war-mongering state terrorists. The history gives enough testimony to that. These evil people killed 75 million people only in two World Wars. Whereas when the Muslims engaged in jihad, they could eradicate the wicked and build the finest civilization on earth.

But later on, the Muslims took a different route. The Divine tool of purification of individuals and societies has been denied the opportunity to operate inside the Ummah for centuries. They didn’t have jihad but had a lot of bloody wars for tribal, racial, and national causes. Instead of purging the devils from societies, they have been given safe sanctities. As a result, they could occupy almost all Muslim states and could take the whole ummah as a hostage. The ideological, conceptual, cultural, and political intoxication of the ummah indeed owes to these toxic devils impregnated in the polity. Because of heavy intoxication, Prophet (peace be upon him)’s Islam has died long ago. His Qur’anic Islam with its indispensable elements like sharia, hudud, khilafa, shura, judiciary, jihad, and Islamic state is found only in the Holy Qur’an and in history books, not in any part of the Muslim World. Like the Jews and the Christians, the Muslims too practice their own concocted brands of religion.

An intoxicated man loses even common sense. Under the spell of intoxication, even the perfect jihad looks like terrorism. Even a genuine war of liberation against kuffar occupation looks like a crime. Such intoxicated men even embrace the worst enemies as friends and kill genuine mujahids as enemies. This is why those who occupied Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq and killed millions of men, women, and children and bombed many cities to rubbles, get subservient collaborators to celebrate their occupation -as was seen in Baghdad in 2003. With the intensity of occupation, the intoxication also gets deeper. Because of such intoxication, the oil-rich Arabs invest trillions of petrodollars to enrich the enemy banks and the enemy companies in the West. As a result, the USA can invest more money to occupy more Muslim lands. Thus they fry fish in fish’s own oil. Since it is easy to rob and rule the intoxicated people, the enemies want that the Muslims must live with the current level of intoxication. With the same evil objective, the British colonialists spread opium freely among the Chinese. But the ideological and cultural intoxication is much more lasting and incapacitating than opium. Moreover, opium can’t make people mercenary for the masters, but the corruptive ideologies do. Jihad is the sole and the most powerful antidote to fight against such intoxication. This is why the enemies of Islam are deadly against jihad. Hence, it is their key policy that jihad must not be allowed to work in any of the Muslim countries.

 The trial and the failure

The early Muslims didn’t attain their golden days by mere five-time prayer, fasting, zakat, hajj, and other rituals. They needed to form an Islamic state, the Prophet (peace be upon him) had to take on the seat of the Head of State and all his companions had to engage in life-long jihad. Nowadays, those who perform obligatory rituals are a thousand times more than the early Muslims. Could they bring any victory or add any glory? Rather, they made ugly history by making the enemy’s cultural, political, and ideological occupation much deeper. To emerge as the number one World Power, the early Muslims needed to end the deep-rooted kuffar occupation from a vast area of Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is true that every victory comes as a blessing from Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. But such blessing never comes to any people unless they qualify for that. They need to fulfill the precondition. The believers need to invest their wealth, talent, time, and even blood in His cause. Almighty Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la never helps those who don’t help themselves. Jihad is the field of best investment, and the believers make investments here to harvest in the hereafter. It is the believers’ investment that brings down the promised blessing from Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. And by failing to do so, people qualify only for defeat and humiliation. The continual defeat and downfall of the Muslims indeed testify that Divine principle.

A practical test itself is the best learning and value-adding process that adds knowledge, experience, and perfection to the participants. Hence, more tests generate more knowledge, more experience, and more perfection. In fact, no school or institution achieve any progress without test. Jihad is the practical test for iman. It is indeed the inbuilt process of continuous tests to help believers attain moral progress. In absence of jihad, the ummah quickly degenerates and turns weaker and defenseless. In the early days of Islam, the relentless jihad did the most remarkable job to enhance the moral strength of the ummah. They lost many of their best men in jihad, but that didn’t make them weaker. Rather the blood of martyrs transfused more moral strength to the survivors. In fact, the weakness and the downfall started when they withdrew from jihad. Such cowardice withdrawal could save them from dying in the war fronts; but brought defeat, destruction, and genocidal massacres in their cities and villages –as happened in Spain, Palestine, Balkans, Chechnya, Iraq, Kashmir, Syria, and now in Arakan in Myanmar.

The paradise never gives entry to those who detest jihad. In the field of jihad, Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la not only testifies the level of iman but also picks up His true helpers and friends –the martyrs. The fake ones get filtered out from the ummah of the true believers. Such a test can’t happen in an assembly in a mosque, nor in the congregation of Arafat. Jihad comes with a huge life and death issue; it shakes people’s hearts like earthquakes. The early believers were shaken, too. Those who withstand such terrible shakes in the way of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la and fight back the enemies get the pass mark for paradise. So, it is revealed, “A calamity has afflicted you (at Ohud), similar calamity like it already afflicted the unbelieving people. We bring these days to men by turns, so that Allah may know those who believe and may select from you the martyrs; and Allah doesn’t like the wrongdoers.” It is also revealed, “Or do you think that you will enter Paradise while Allah hasn’t made it evident those of you who fight in His cause and made evident those who are steadfast.” –(Sura al-Imran, verse 142).

In any exam, every participant wants to know the pass mark and get focused on achieving that. Likewise, a believer must know the pass mark for getting an entry to paradise. It is not a hidden issue in Islam. In the above verse and also in many other verses of the Holy Qur’an, Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la made it clear about the pass mark for paradise. Performing the rituals like five-time prayers, fasting, hajj, and giving charity is very important, but not mentioned in the above verse. The key issue goes much deeper. It is indeed the full alignment with His agenda. It is the ever-readiness to stand up as His soldier to bring victory to His agenda. A munafiq can also perform five-time prayers -as munafiq leader Abdullah bin Ubai and his followers could do even by standing behind the Prophet (peace be upon him) in Medina. But such people can’t align with the vision, mission, and agenda of the Almighty Allah Sub’hana wa Tala. Because of the non-alignment, they can’t go to jihad. Those who have already aligned with the USA or Russia-led international coalition of the imperialists, monarchists, nationalists, secularists, and other despots to stop Islam’s resurgence, can they align with Islam? Are they any better than Abdullah bin Ubai –the munafiq leader and his comrades?  Prior to presenting the account in the court of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la, Muslims must do an audit of their own works. Only such an audit will help them understand their own failures. Otherwise, they will continue with the ongoing decline. 03/06/2021