In the previous chapter we were saying that
apart from Zakat there is another charity called Sadqah, which
is not mandatory like Zakat, however it
Is part of essence of Islam. Here one
incident may not be out of order. A European scholar was
traveling around the world to find truth, during which, in
Libya, he met an Arab traveler. When it was meal time, his
companion, took out the only one bread he had and offered half
of it to the European traveler. The action made him think of
the religion that teaches to share the one bread that one has.
This thought provoking action helped him to convert to Islam and
by grace of ALLAH; today he is one of the leading preachers of
Islam. Now did you see the magic of half bread? It is the
practice that impresses the people and not merely talk.
Each one of us is an ambassador of Islam.
If you do not express the teachings of Islam with your actions
and etiquettes, you can not expect any positive results
either. For this very reason The Qur'an says that “Do not
preach what you do not practice”. On the contrary, these days
our situation is such that we talk a lot but do not practice it
or not enough. Do we have such etiquettes, sincerity or sense
of sacrifice within us? Let me and you think about it and we
will find the answer. We have been shirking from teachings of
Islam due to our economic slavery and so-called open
mindedness. We do not want to practice Islam neither for our
lives nor in our country.
We do say that Qur’an has the answer to all
our problems, however when asked about which of the Islamic
countries have established the Islam, then we do not have any
answer. Even if some of the Islamic principles are established
in a country, the heads of these states are usually exempt from
these and these are considered only for the common people. It
is written in various countries’ constitution that sovereignty
lies with Allah.
If the chief governance is by Allah then
how can any body else be exempt from accountability and presence
in the court of ALLAH? We have various examples of our reverend
leaders of Islamic state (Khulfa-e- Rashidin) that they
themselves were brought to justice and they had to prove their
innocence. However in Umayyad and Abbasid periods, they were
khalifa in name only and were autocrats except Omar bin Abdul
Aziz (RA). We have still a few examples of such excellence and
these have become parts of our history.
In actuality we brag a lot but practice
very little. What I mean to say is that we cannot change a
community without changing its individuals. We are wrong if we
think that we can gain power to bring about change. Our prophet
(PBUH), first of all, presented his own character as an example
and only then he changed the character of people around him
before he established the Islamic government at Medina.
If the establishers of a system first do
not have belief in it and do not practice it themselves, they
cannot have its impact on others. A machine cannot work if its
essential parts are not in place. Let us come back to the
Ideals of goodness presented and practiced by our prophet (PUBH).
You have all heard that once a companion of his came and
complained that her son eats too many sweets. He told her to
come back the next day, and she did that.
Then the next day he (pubh) told the child
“son do not eat this much sweets”. This took that lady aback
and she asked the prophet (PUBH) that he could have given this
advice to the boy on the first day. Prophet told her that he
himself used to like sweets till then. First I quit eating
sweets too much myself and then gave the advice to the boy to do
that. Crux of the story is that if you do not practice it
yourself giving advice to others is of no use. We have done
this time and again. In spite of governing for centuries we
could not make any difference, rather things got worse. We
established Islamic governments; however we could not establish
the spirit of Islam there. We gave opportunity to others to
taunt us and caused bad name to Islam.
At times our elders got tangled in local
traditions. For example we adopted the practice of
discrimination in India. The untouchables remained untouchable
in spite of converting to Islam. We also abstained from eating
with them and marrying them. So much so that even in a mosque
we made them to stand in the back rows. In Shahjahanpur there
were Muslim janitors who were called Halal Khoor, and were made
to pray separately. In Punjab there is a group of new Muslims
called Mussallies with whom no Muslim even shares meals, what to
talk of intermarrying with them. Even now our preachers do not
like to mingle with the new Muslims or like to eat with the
untouchables. Do we share their grief? If not then why would
they like to join people with such mannerism? When they
convert, usually there own kin disown them.
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