THE PLAGUE WITHIN-- SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF -- ZAYTUNA COLLEGE
The Plague Within
According to a good
hadith related by Ahmad and al-Tabarani, the Messenger of God, may God’s peace
and blessings be upon him, said, “You will never believe until you show mercy
to one another.”
“All of us are
merciful, O Messenger of God!” his companions responded.
The Prophet, God’s
peace and blessings upon him, explained, “I’m not talking about one of you
showing mercy to his friend; I’m talking about universal mercy—mercy towards everyone.”
For those Muslims
and people of other faiths who lost loved ones in the recent tragedies in
Baghdad two days ago, in Bangladesh last Friday, in Istanbul the day before
that, in Lebanon and Afghanistan last week, and in Yemen and Orlando last
month, I am deeply saddened and can only offer my prayers, even as I am
painfully aware of my state of utter helplessness at what has befallen our
global community. As I write this, I learned about yet another bombing outside
our beloved Prophet’s mosque in Medina, as believers were about to break their
fast yesterday, unjustly killing four innocent security guards. Fortunately,
due to the blessings of the place, the sound of the explosion was thought to be
the boom of the cannon used to announce the time has come to break the fast, so
the people in the mosque were not frightened nor panicked. The Prophet, God’s
peace and blessings upon him, said, “Whoever frightens the people of Medina has
the damnation of God, the angels, and all of humanity.” Needless to say, the
horror of these atrocities is compounded because they are being carried
out—intentionally—in the blessed month of Ramadan.
A plague is upon us,
and it has its vectors. Like the brain-eating amoebas that have struck the warm
waters of the Southern states in America, a faith-eating plague has been spreading
across the global Muslim community. This insidious disease has a source, and
that source must be identified, so we can begin to inoculate our communities
against it.
New versions of our
ancient faith have sprung up and have infected the hearts and minds of
countless young people across the globe. Imam Adel Al-Kalbani, who led prayers
in the Haram of Mecca for several years, has publicly stated
that these youth are the bitter harvest of teachings that have emanated from
pulpits throughout the Arabian Peninsula, teachings that have permeated all
corners of the world, teachings that focus on hatred, exclusivity,
provincialism, and xenophobia. These teachings anathematize any Muslim who does
not share their simple-minded, literalist, anti-metaphysical, primitive, and
impoverished form of Islam, and they reject the immense body of Islamic
scholarship from the luminaries of our tradition.
Due to a
sophisticated network of funding, these teachings have flooded bookstores
throughout the Muslim world and even in America, Europe, and Australia. For a
case study of what they have spawned, we might look to Kosovo.
Our “Islamic” schools are now filled with books published by this sect that
lure the impressionable minds of our youth at an age when they are most
susceptible to indoctrination. This sect of Islam, however, is not the sole
source of our current crisis, and it would be wrong to place all blame on it
alone; many of its adherents are peace-loving quietists, who want only to be
left alone to practice their faith as they see fit. Their exclusivism is a
necessary but not sufficient cause for the xenophobic hatred that leads to such
violence. The terroristic Islamists are a hybrid of an exclusivist takfiri
version of the above and the political Islamist ideology that has permeated
much of the Arab and South Asian world for the last several decades. It is this
marriage made in hell that must be understood in order to fully grasp the
calamitous situation we find our community in. While the role that Western
interventions and misadventures in the region have played in creating this
quagmire should not be set aside, diminished, or denied, we should, however,
keep in mind that Muslims have been invaded many times in the past yet never
reacted like these fanatics. Historically, belligerent enemies often admired
the nobility Muslims displayed in their strict adherence to history’s first
humane rules of engagement that were laid down by the Prophet himself to insure
that mercy was never completely divorced from the callousness of conflict.
We need to clearly
see the pernicious and pervasive nature of this ideological plague and how it
is responsible for the chaos and terror spreading even to the city of our
Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him, in all its inviolability. Its most
vulnerable victims are our disaffected youth who often live in desolate
circumstances with little hope for their futures. Promises of paradise and
easy-out strategies from the weariness of this world have enticed these
suicidal youth to express their pathologies in the demonically deceptive causes
of “Islamic” radicalism. The pictures they leave behind—showing the
supercilious smiles on their faces, even as they hold in their hapless hands
their Western-made assault rifles—are testament to the effective brainwashing
taking place.
The damage being
wrought is not only within Islam but also to Islam’s good name in the eyes of
the world. These now daily occurrences of destructive, hate-filled violence are
beginning to drown out the voices of normative Islam, thereby cultivating a
real hatred in the hearts of those outside our communities. In the minds of
many around the world, Islam, once considered a great world religion, is being
reduced to an odious political ideology that threatens global security; that,
in turn, is proving disastrous for minority Muslim communities, who now abide
in increasingly hostile environments in secular societies.
What we need to
counter this plague are the voices of scholars, as well as grassroots
activists, who can begin to identify the real culprits behind this fanatical
ideology. What we do not need are more voices that veil the problem with
empty, hollow, and vacuous arguments that this militancy has little to do with
religion; it has everything to do with religion: misguided, fanatical,
ideological, and politicized religion. It is the religion of resentment, envy, powerlessness,
and nihilism. It does, however, have nothing to do with the merciful teachings
of our Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him. Unchecked, we will see this
plague foment more such violence, until one day, God forbid, these hateful and
vile adherents obtain a nuclear device, the use of which has already been
sanctioned by their “scholars,” including one currently imprisoned in Saudi
Arabia. If such a scenario unfolds, it is highly probable that the full wrath
of Western powers will be unleashed upon a helpless Muslim world that would
make even the horrendous Mongol invasions of the 13th century look like a
stroll in the park.
Invariably, some
will remark that a fear of Western retaliation is a sign of cowardice. For
those zealots, I would recommend turning back to the Qur’an, specifically to
reflect on the undeniably brave Messenger Moses, peace be upon him, who
unintentionally killed an Egyptian after striking him with his powerful blow,
only because he was considered an enemy, and then asked God’s forgiveness and
“fled vigilantly out of fear” (28:21). This is a cautionary tale, and it
behooves all of us to reflect upon it as a lesson of what not to do when
oppressed, especially when we are without political authority or the means to
redress our grievances. Imam al-Sahrwardi stated, “To flee from calamities is
the Sunnah of Prophets.” It is best not to let our baser self, our lust for
revenge, get the better of us.
We would do well to
acknowledge that much of what is happening in the Muslim world and to Muslim
communities in the West is from what our own hands have wrought. Muslims have
been in the West for a long time and have done little to educate people here
about our faith; too many of us have been occupied in our wordly affairs, while
some of our mosques and schools have been breeding grounds for an ideological
Islamism rather than Islam. The Qur’an clearly instructs us that when faced
with calamities, we ought to look first at what we may have done to bring them
upon us. Introspection is a Qur’anic injunction. Until we come to terms with
this Qur’anic truth, we will remain mired in the mirage of denial, always
pointing fingers in every direction but at ourselves. “Verily, God does not
change the conditions of a people until they change themselves” (Qur’an,
13:11).
As Ramadan comes to a
close, let us pray for the oppressed and the guidance of the oppressors, for
those who have been killed, and for those who lost their loved ones, and most
of all, let us heed our Prophet’s call and want mercy for everyone.
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