|
We were discussing the importance of
following the ways of our prophet Muhammad (pbuh). No sect of
Islam can deny this irrespective of what else they may believe
in. This is the only way to the salvation of Islamic nations.
We will have to name the month of Ramadan the month for Allah,
and Rabi ul Awal the month for the prophet (pbuh). The month of
Shabaan was called his month by the prophet (pbuh) him self,
however it failed to gain the significance it was meant for.
His objective was that people would carry on the sanctity of
Ramadan in this month by non-obligatory fasting and correcting
their ways and gain more piety. Alas! our nation has started
celebrating it with fireworks and other such nonsense, which was
not the way of Muslims. However; the month of Rabi ul Awal got
established as the prophet’s month over centuries and we should
take advantage of that. Islam is a religion of rationality and
requires preaching of Islam, so we should use this month for
preaching and not get into controversy about the significance of
the month. We should not get tangled in this schism. If
celebrating a day or a month was wrong then Allah would have
stopped us from celebrating Eids, and the prophet (pbuh) would
not have called Shaaban as his month. It is a tradition that
when some thing has to be promoted then a day, month or year is
designated for that cause and efforts made to achieve that. For
example the year 2002 was designated for Allama Iqbal (the
renounced national poet of the east). United Nations also
designates certain years for promotion of certain causes, such
as a year of recognizing volunteer work etc.
The objective of all this discussion was
that the scholars should encourage such objective as they have
encouraged me to say all that is written in this book by at
times encouraging me and at times just staying quiet. This has
given me courage to say what I want with out any fear; otherwise
this would not have been possible. Even, not creating
hindrances to good causes is a welcome change so that people who
are trying to build bridges in society do not get discouraged.
Now that I am nearing the end of this book, I sincerely would
request our scholars to seriously try to find solutions for the
problems facing the nation of Islam. Absurdities like objecting
to use of loudspeakers etc. should not be encouraged. We cannot
call it bad what ever was not practiced by the prophet (pbuh) as
the world has progressed further and many new helpful inventions
have been made and we should make use of these in our
development. We should designate only those things heretic for
which clear instructions have been given in Islam, otherwise
every addition is innovation (biddah) which has happened after
prophet (pbuh). It is a saying of our prophet (pbuh) that,
“the difference between me and other prophets is that I was sent
to prohibit only few things and allow all others, while other
prophets came to allow only few things and prohibit the rest.”
For sake of Allah, do put your heads together and find the
solutions lest the enemies of Islam play their tricks on us. So
far they have been successful to create rifts among us. One
insider told me that object of one particular university is to
produce 40 books a year which are controversial for Muslims to
meet this objective. This is a university of a country hostile
to Islam. Thus we should not get tangled in rights and wrongs,
which are figment of our imagination so that we could promulgate
the views of Islam. We should make efforts to remove ignorance
of Muslims, and with the strength of knowledge progress
further. We seem to have changed our priorities. Instead of
leaving the forbidden thing we have bogged ourselves down in
minor details and semantics. We cannot be a united nation
unless we adopt the common basic principles of Islam. Allah
says that, “He does not change the fate of a nation until they
change themselves”.
I present to you the balance of
self-assessment. Unless both the sides of this balance are not
equal this balance will not stay straight and our faith will not
be safe. The two values (hadith) in this balance are that “we
base our actions on good intentions” and that, “We wish for our
brother what we wish for ourselves”. |
