Rayees Ahmad Kumar
The history of the Muslim world has been bright enough to enlighten the whole of the globe. The golden period of Muslim history ranged from 8th to 11th centuries when Muslims dominated the world scenes. An epoch, when there used to be brothels in the western world, the Muslim world used to have libraries, street lights, macadamized roads and scientific laboratories. However, the truth of the current era is that whole of the Muslim world is confused about the situation that has befallen on them. There are 57 countries that have accepted the membership of “Organisation of Islamic Cooperation” (OIC) and thereby have declared themselves as the Muslim nations. But the situation of everyone among them is not good.It doesn’t need proof to explain if really there is a crisis in the Muslim world. Since 1901 there have been more or less 881 noble prizes in different subjects of world academia and Muslim world has bagged not more than 13, and most of them are in peacemaking and not science technology and medicine. The figure speaks about the intellectual crisis of the Muslim world. The ethnic genocide of Rohingya Muslims, the stories of Afghan destruction, the death of a million Iraqis , day to day killings in Palestine and Syria are the self-speaking facts of this crisis that we as an ummah are going through. Arnold Toynbee after studying the history of different world civilizations makes an important comment on the reasons that make the civilizations rise to excellence or go down the hill into oblivion. To him, civilizations don’t die because of murder but because of suicide. To him, it’s about challenges and making a timely response to challenges that make civilization go to heights. Talking about the response to challenges, he argues that there are two types of responses that the civilizations make while coming out of those challenges, one being “heredities response” wherein the civilization tries to search for methods of revival in the past and the other being “zealots response” wherein the civilization understands the opponents secrets and strengths and their own weaknesses and then works upon those to come over successfully. Therefore there is a need to revisit the traits that had once led to our rise and also to search out for the secrets that make the current western world to stand with a beating stick around the Muslim globe.
Quran had the power to elevate the ummah then, why can’t it make our rise now? Japan is the biggest example that can be taken as another case study to comprehend what the traditions of the prophet can do to make this ummah emerge great.
It’s really important to make it here that there can be no rise of Muslim nations unless there is no Islam. It’s not a traditional orientalist thinking here. The fact of the matter is that the success of the Muslim world lies in being faithful to the lord and his apostle. To understand this in a lucid way the case of Umar ibn Khattab can be taken as a case study. When the caliph Umar succeeded Abu Baker as the caliph of Islamic state centuries ago, he called the citizens of the Meccan state into the masjid and made an interesting announcement. Umar spoke out about the days of his life when he used to tame the camels of his aunt in the warm deserts of Arabia for few dry dates that he used to earn the evening as the reward of taming the animals. Umar lamented being so ignorant. The companions asked for the puerile reason of calling people to the masjid for such trivial announcement. Umar made a thought-provoking point and said that he was an unwitting guy and was elevated as the ruler of half of the globe by Islam only. The Quran had polished his personality that he was chosen as the ruler of half of the globe then. Quran had the power to elevate the ummah then, why can’t it make our rise now? Japan is the biggest example that can be taken as another case study to comprehend what the traditions of the prophet can do to make this ummah emerge great. After the World War II, Japan was destroyed because of the use of nuclear weapons on its two important cities¬¬¬ Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were the economic hub of Japan then. Japan, concerned about its downfall, called out a meet of intellectuals to discuss the remedy for coming out of the crisis. Two points of those various suggestions put forward are worth mentioning here. The first “Japan tomorrow should be far greater in success than today,” and secondly “the mistake once should not be repeated again.” Within a few years after the destruction of Japan, a group of thousands of islands emerged as a successful nation on the world scene. Currently, Japan is the largest growing economy after China. It would be much interesting to mention it here that both of the above-mentioned suggestions are the prophetic tradition’s (hadiths) mentioned in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. These were meant for the people of faith. And when we left the way to others, they succeeded to earn those gains that were meant for us.
(Author teaches at Govt BHS Anderwan Ganderbal. Views are his own) [email protected]
