Quantum Note
March 11, 2005

Invincibility of Islam

Is there relationship between enlightened Islam of the kind that takes away the fundamentals of Islam and the rabid construction of Mullas that drives the educated Muslims away from Islam? Is it possible that these are two sides of the same coin? Are Muslims now hopelessly shackled by these two kinds of deviation—one made in Washington DC and the other in the minds of men who shout from the pulpit? Is there any genuine Islamic space left in a world mired in blood and violence?

These are not rhetoric questions; they constitute the most important issue of our time. These are fundamental questions, not only for more than one billion Muslims, but for the entire world which is now dominated by an Islam phobia of the kind never witnessed before. This new tyranny, borne out of post-9/11 violence and carried to the far corners of the world, now reigns supreme in lands as far as Uzbekistan and Yemen.

Yet, mercifully, between the two extremes, Islam remains what it has always been: a faith anchored in an incorruptible Book, safeguarded by none other than the One who sent it down on a blessed night. Between the empty rhetoric of the generals and kings and ministers and the yelling from the loudspeakers of the mosques, an almost underground space exists where the devout bow down to the Creator in the recesses of their homes. This silent community of worshippers on the middle path has always remained the foundation of the Muslim community throughout its history: The old man from Bukhara quietly praying in the basement of his home during the era of Soviet oppression not only kept his own faith alive, he passed it on to his children, just as the beardless middle-aged man from Halab, who kept teaching Qur’an secretly when Hafiz al-Asad’s secret police was sending hundreds of Syrians to concentration camps in deserts preserved a tradition that originated in Madinah during the life of the Prophet of Islam.

So, what is this about Islam that cannot be destroyed? What keeps this faith so strong even when the most resourceful and most powerful country of the world has put billions of dollars behind a program to undermine its foundations? Why can enlightened Islam not be more than what Deen-e Akbari was?

The answer is rather simple: a faith rooted in a Book and the Sunnah of the Prophet cannot disappear from the face of the earth because the Book cannot be corrupted; no amount of interpretation of the verses of the Qur’an can take away its basic, clearly understood message: each and every human being has been created by Allah for a fixed amount of time and after this life, there is the Day unlike any other day, when all that we did on this earth will be laid bare and we will be held accountable for what we did. The ultimate result of this simple belief is so grave that no one can simply forget that on that Day nothing will avail; no trick of rhetoric and no helper from the Pentagon would come forward to pay for what has been committed in this world.

This is, indeed, an extremely grave realization that one has to live with the outcome of that Day’s accountability forever; in one of the two abodes that await us: the blessings of Paradise or the Fire of Hell. No Muslim can deny this basic message of the Qur’an and no Muslim can live without a constant awareness of this coming Day. This self-awareness, which often works unconsciously, can become dim, but it cannot be erased from a believers’ heart and hence, all interpretations of Islam, whether by generals or by Mawlanas, become exterior to this existential reality. This is the true enlightenment of the soul, the light of the intellect, the guiding spirit of the heart. And this is not a piece of information that can be distorted, recast, destroyed, or altered. The resilience of Islam is really based on a thing as simple as this. Had it not been so, Islam and Muslims would have vanished from this planet long ago.

This is not to say that the enlightenment of the Deen-e Akabri kind and a made-in-Washington DC Islam cannot mislead individuals; it is a time-tested phenomena and there is no reason to believe that human caprice and greed has ceased to exist on this planet. What is important is that those who accept anything other than what the Book of Allah teaches know that they have taken something against nature, for there is in each and everyone of us an inner scale, a most impartial personal accountant who informs us when we fall short. We can ignore this judgment at our peril, but this does not erase the verdict.

This is the true meaning of Islamic enlightenment; it is an inner light that can never be extinguished by winds of change. No matter how much money is spent on altering the fundamentals of Islam, they will not be altered simply because human nature (fitrah) cannot be altered. Yes, one can create a society whose qiblah is toward Washington DC, but on the Day when members of such a society will stand in front of a Just and Mighty Creator, they will have nothing but regrets. So, ultimately, the current winds of destruction that are tearing apart Islamic values and ways of living are merely destroying lives of those who are following these caprices, not Islam which remains invincible.

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