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CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the
ummah.
Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of
the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any
more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and
warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of
science and mathematics etc. as giving no merit for the akhirat,
today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence.
We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. This is
what comes from the superficial interpretation of the Quran,
stressing not the substance of the Prophet’s sunnah and the Quran’s
injunctions but rather the form, the manner and the means used in
the 1st Century of the Hijrah. And it is the same with the other
teachings of Islam. We are more concerned with the forms rather than
the substance of the words of Allah and adhering only to the literal
interpretation of the traditions of the Prophet.
We may want to recreate the first century of the Hijrah, the way of
life in those times, in order to practise what we think to be the
true Islamic way of life. But we will not be allowed to do so. Our
detractors and enemies will take advantage of the resulting
backwardness and weakness in order to dominate us. Islam is not just
for the 7th Century A.D. Islam is for all times. And times have
changed. Whether we like it or not we have to change, not by
changing our religion but by applying its teachings in the context
of a world that is radically different from that of the first
century of the Hijrah. Islam is not wrong but the interpretations by
our scholars, who are not prophets even though they may be very
learned can be wrong. We have a need to go back to the fundamental
teachings of Islam to find out whether we are indeed believing in
and practising the Islam that the Prophet preached. It cannot be
that we are all practising the correct and true Islam when our
beliefs are so different from one another.
Today we, the whole Muslim ummah are treated with contempt and
dishonour. Our religion is denigrated. Our holy places desecrated.
Our countries are occupied. Our people starved and killed.
None of our countries are truly independent. We are under pressure
to conform to our oppressors. wishes about how we should behave, how
we should govern our lands, how we should think even.
Today if they want to raid our country, kill our people, destroy our
villages and towns, there is nothing substantial that we can do. Is
it Islam which has caused all these? Or is it that we have failed to
do our duty according to our religion?
Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people
cannot think properly. And so we find some of our people reacting
irrationally. They launch their own attacks, killing just about
anybody including fellow Muslims to vent their anger and
frustration. Their Governments can do nothing to stop them. The
enemy retaliates and puts more pressure on the Governments. And the
Governments have no choice but to give in, to accept the directions
of the enemy, literally to give up their independence of action.
With this their people and the ummah become angrier and turn against
their own Governments. Every attempt at a peaceful solution is
sabotaged by more indiscriminate attacks calculated to anger the
enemy and prevent any peaceful settlement. But the attacks solve
nothing. The Muslims simply get more oppressed.
There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and
their people. They feel that they can do nothing right. They believe
that things can only get worse. The Muslims will forever be
oppressed and dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will
forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I have said,
this is the Will of Allah, that the proper state of the Muslims is
to be poor and oppressed in this world.
But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves?
Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save
themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon them
by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger?
Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow
themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our
own people?
It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot
be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can
only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and
our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter attack. As
Muslims we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of
the Prophet. Surely the 23 years. struggle of the Prophet can
provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.
We know he and his early followers were oppressed by the Qhuraish.
Did he launch retaliatory strikes? No. He was prepared to make
strategic retreats. He sent his early followers to a Christian
country and he himself later migrated to Madinah. There he gathered
followers, built up his defence capability and ensured the security
of his people. At Hudaibiyah he was prepared to accept an unfair
treaty, against the wishes of his companions and followers. During
the peace that followed he consolidated his strength and eventually
he was able to enter Mecca and claim it for Islam. Even then he did
not seek revenge. And the peoples of Mecca accepted Islam and many
became his most powerful supporters, defending the Muslims against
all their enemies.
That briefly is the story of the struggle of the Prophet. We talk so
much about following the sunnah of the Prophet. We quote the
instances and the traditions profusely. But we actually ignore all
of them.
If we use the faculty to think that Allah has given us then we
should know that we are acting irrationally. We fight without any
objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because
they hurt us. Naively we expect them to surrender. We sacrifice
lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more
massive retaliation and humiliation.
It is surety time that we pause to think. But will this be wasting
time? For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine.
What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before. If we
had paused to think then we could have devised a plan, a strategy
that can win us final victory. Pausing and thinking calmly is not a
waste of time. We have a need to make a strategic retreat and to
calmly assess our situation.
We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply
wiped out. The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million.
But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to
fight and die for them.
We may not be able to do that. We may not be able to unite all the
1.3 billion Muslims. We may not be able to get all the Muslim
Governments to act in concert. But even if we can get a third of the
ummah and a third of the Muslim states to act together, we can
already do something. Remember that the Prophet did not have many
followers when he went to Madinah. But he united the Ansars and the
Muhajirins and eventually he became strong enough to defend Islam.
Apart from the partial unity that we need, we must take stock of our
assets. I have already mentioned our numbers and our oil wealth. In
today’s world we wield a lot of political, economic and financial
clout, enough to make up for our weakness in military terms.
We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are
welldisposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies.
Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the
Israelis are doing.
We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds.
We must win them to our side not by begging for help from them but
by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves. We must
not strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their camps
through irresponsible and unIslamic acts. Remember Salah El Din and
the way he fought against the so called Crusaders, King Richard of
England in particular. Remember the considerateness of the Prophet
to the enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the
struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge.
We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed
might. Our countries must be stable and well administered, must be
economically and financially strong, industrially competent and
technologically advanced. This will take time, but it can be done
and it will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion to
be patient. InnaLlaha ma’assabirin. Obviously there is virtue in
being patient.
But the defence of the ummah, the counter attack need not start only
after we have put our houses in order. Even today we have sufficient
assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains for us to
identify them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the
carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible if we stop to
think, to plan, to strategise and to take the first few critical
steps. Even these few steps can yield positive results.
We know that the Jahilliah Arabs were given to feuding, to killing
each other simply because they were from different tribes. The
Prophet preached the brotherhood of Islam to them and they were able
to overcome their hatred for each other, become united and helped
towards the establishment of the great Muslim civilisation. Can we
say that what the Jahilliah (the ignorant) could do we, the modern
Muslims cannot do? If not all at least some of us can do. If not the
renaissance of our great civilisation, at least ensuring the
security of the ummah.
To do the things that are suggested will not even require all of us
to give up our differences with each other. We need only to call a
truce so we can act together in tackling only certain problems of
common interests, the Palestine problem for example.
In any struggle, in any war, nothing is more important than
concerted and coordinated action. A degree of discipline is all that
is needed. The Prophet lost in Jabal Uhud because his forces broke
rank. We know that, yet we are unwilling to discipline ourselves and
to give up our irregular and uncoordinated actions. We need to be
brave but not foolhardy. We need to think not just of our reward in
the afterlife but also of the worldly results of our mission.
The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react
positively. True the treaty offered is not favourable to us. But we
can negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah. And in the end he
triumphed.
I am aware that all these ideas will not be popular. Those who are
angry would want to reject it out of hand. They would even want to
silence anyone who makes or supports this line of action. They would
want to send more young men and women to make the supreme sacrifice.
But where will all these lead to? Certainly not victory. Over the
past 50 years of fighting in Palestine we have not achieved any
result. We have in fact worsened our situation.
The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude
that the promoters are working for the enemy. But think. We are up
against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not
by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully
promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that
persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal
rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the
most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a
world power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use
our brains also.
Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have
become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people will make
mistakes, will forget to think.
They are already beginning to make mistakes. And they will make more
mistakes. There may be windows of opportunity for us now and in the
future. We must seize these opportunities.
But to do so we must get our acts right. Rhetoric is good. It helps
us to expose the wrongs perpetrated against us, perhaps win us some
sympathy and support. It may strengthen our spirit, our will and
resolve, to face the enemy.
We can and we should pray to Allah S.W.T. for in the end it is He
who will determine whether we succeed or fail. We need His blessings
and His help in our endeavours,
But it is how we act and what we do which will determine whether He
would help us and give us victory or not. He has already said so in
the Quran. Again Surah Ar-Ra’d verse 11.
As I said at the beginning, the whole world is looking at us, the
whole Muslim ummah is placing their hopes in this conference of the
leaders of Islamic nations. They expect us not just to vent our
frustrations and anger, through words and gestures; not just to pray
for Allah’s blessings. They expect us to do something, to act. We
cannot say we cannot do anything, we the leaders of the Muslim
nations. We cannot say we cannot unite even when faced with the
destruction of our religion and the ummah.
We know we can. There are many things that we can do. There are many
resources that we have at our disposal. What is needed is merely-the
will to do it, As Muslims, we must be grateful for the guidance of
our religion, we must do what needs to be done, willingly and with
determination. Allah has not raised us, the leaders, above the
others so we may enjoy power for ourselves only. The power we wield
is for our people, for the ummah, for Islam. We must have the will
to make use of this power judiciously, prudentlhe 10th Session of
the Islamic Summit.
I pray to Allah that this 10th Conference of the OIC in Putrajaya,
Malaysia will give a new and positive direction to us, will be
blessed with success by Him, Almighty Allah, Arahman, Arahirn.
The speech was delivered by Dr Mahathir Muhammad during the 10th
Session of the Islamic Summit Conference.
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