It’s a very simple thing, if we Muslims collectively understand it, it won’t take long for Islam to return to its heyday. In general, when the question arises, how can Muslims develop? So the answer is through educational development. And it’s a valid roadmap, but it’s long-term and full of obstacles. Because the developed nations themselves are aware that this is the possible means of the resurgence of Muslims. So since the time of Lord Macaulay, our education system has been directly targeted by them.
After our nuclear program, their biggest target is our education system. The nuclear program has been safe from day one, but the education system has been in constant disaster since the independence war of 1857. Their actions here are not complicated. All they want is that their education system does not produce a generation that has a basic awareness of their religion. When this awareness is not available, then it will be easy for the “intellectuals” and the media to instill contempt for religion in their hearts. Therefore, we see that many young people make fun of religious teachings as a result of this.
If you think about it, after 9/11, one of the major attacks on our contemporary education curriculum was to remove such and such Quranic verses from it and replace such and such a Muslim figure with such and such a Sikh figure. Even Iqbal was not spared in this regard. Along with this, for the first time, there was a big invasion on the curriculum of religious schools. The cover of “madrasa reforms” was a major offensive in this regard. And this myth called “Madrasah score” is also a continuation of the same. The Pakistani franchisor of this discourse was just sitting on the plane on his way to America when I had written a detailed post on Facebook telling that this person was on a trip of selling the religion.
The question is that after 9/11, why the people of the West did start opposing madrasahs? The reason is that they understand very well that the gap between the two distinct generations coming out of the institutions of religious and contemporary education is not widening, but shrinking rapidly. In the 20th century, the situation was that the madrassas used to expel a student who was giving a private matriculation exam. While the situation has completely changed in the first twenty years of the 21st century, now a large number of madrassas-certified youths are coming to the universities of contemporary education and request: “Please! Fill the gap in our contemporary education”
Now, this is a very dangerous situation for the people of the West from their point of view. Therefore, new methods are being devised to remedy it. One can say that madrassa discourse is doing the same. So, our question is that when the students and scholars of religious madrasas started going to universities themselves, why did the need for madrasa discourse suddenly arise? Madrassa discourse is nothing but a scheme to create intellectual slaves among madrassa people.
This light background was only intended to give you a glimpse that progressive education is the real road map, but this road is constantly under attack. Therefore, there is another way in this situation, that the West will fail to break unless liberalism’s “idea of freedom” is greatly modified.
That way, the need for debate and argument about the right or wrong of something is only so long as that thing is only mental, not existential. Muslims are having to argue about the truth of Islam because our religion has become only mental, even for a scholar of it. He presents arguments on the topic that Islam is a religion of peace on one Friday. And on the next Friday, he declares someone liable for murder and presents the reasons for his murder. This is the problem with the religious scholar who says that inheritance of waqf wealth is forbidden. But he himself calls the waqf institution “the fortress of Islam” as his father’s estate and handed it over to his sons, leaving on the journey of the hereafter with the belief that his portion of the reservoir of Kausar has been preserved till his path. As if there is a big contradiction in his knowledge and practice. In this situation, a non-Muslim can say: “Can you show me your claim in a practical form that Islam has the highest model of justice and fairness?”
So, this is a sign of the poorness of today’s Muslims that they have to turn around and present their analogies from the history of the Middle Ages and Early Ages. They have no current example. And this is called the mere mental of a thing, that thing in its proper state exists in the mind but does not exist externally. There is no doubt that our religion is still present in its correct state in the mind of Mufti Taqi Usmani or Mufti Muneebur Rahman. But this religion does not exist at the social level. For the convenience of the less literate readers, state the meaning of mental and existential, that Islam being in one’s knowledge is Islam being mental. While the embodiment of Islam by joining the individual’s actions is called the existence of Islam.
Therefore, Muslims have to understand this great secret that they will have to give arguments for the truth of Islam only as long as Islam is mental. The moment it came into existence, even Einstein would not be fit to ask for an argument. Because the whole world of knowledge agrees on this scientific principle without distinction, theory, and belief that an existential thing does not need any argument for its affirmation.
Let us tell you a living example of this. A Latino gangster in America suddenly converted to Islam. His mother was shocked to see that at first, he was just a hooligan, now his misfortune has reached such a level that he has also become a Muslim. So she would call him: “Look, son, if you can’t give up bullying, don’t give up, but for God’s sake, give up Islam.”
Her son kissed her on the forehead and left the home. A year and a half later, his mother became a Muslim. The locals asked: “Your only shock was that a son becoming a Muslim is a worse tragedy than his being a hooligan. And now you yourself have become a Muslim? Isn’t this an open contradiction?”
Mother smiled and replied to this: “I have seen the embodiment of the blessings of Islam in the form of my son. The son who used to harshly speak to me, and used to abuse me every time, now washes my feet and drinks, and not a single human being is suffering from him. So now I don’t need any argument for Islam to be the right religion. I have seen with my own eyes that Islam is the right religion.
Just consider if someone was like us and he wanted to bring this woman to Islam, would he have taken the path of debate and argument or not? Islam, which we could present to him only with the help of scientific argument, he saw embodied in the actions of his son, so there was no need for any argument. What is the difference between us and his son? That is, our Islam is mental, while the Islam of this woman’s son is existential.
