I start by praising Allah, who created us as caliph of the earth and showed us the right path, who rescued us from racist mindsets and made us an ummah, and by sending peace and blessings upon his Prophet, who created a strong ummah with the difficulties he endured day and night, and by sending Salam to all my brothers and sisters, who work hard to resurrect this ummah.
How did the community, which is responsible to establish a civilisation that suits humankind, to establish justice and prevent injustice, i.e. the ummah – our ummah – come to this state? How did those, who are responsible to avoid oppression, come to a state in which they are oppressed, and their blood is shed everywhere? How did those, who are responsible to avoid the haram, come to a state in which they commit or watch haram themselves? According to which rule did our ummah regress or fall? Which of the rules, that were applied to the ummahs before us, were also applied to us?
In His Book Allah (jj) speaks about the human and societies. He knows the psychology and nafs (desire) of the human. He teaches how a human can be superior to angels and how he can purify his nafs. At the same time, He explains how outrageous a human can become when he does not purify his nafs and that he can reach a state lower than animals. Allah explains societies and teaches about crowd psychology. He points out the reasons for societies to be distorted and to collapse. Further, He tells under which conditions societies proceed and rise and due to which reasons they are punished and overthrown.
Allah swt. tells the stories of the prophets in the Quran to show His laws concerning societies, i.e. His sunnah. The stories of the prophets serve to make us understand Sunnatullah and take the necessary precautions. For that reason, I can say that without understanding the Quran you can neither be a psychologist nor a sociologist! How could it be right, that those who work on humans and societies, do not gain knowledge of Allah, who created humankind and gives absolute and faultless information about the human and societies? How could it be right, that they do not learn Allah’s sunnah regarding societies from Allah himself? How could psychology and sociology, that do not base on the Quran and do not take their basic principles from the Quran, be reliable?
Just as Allah (jj) has physical laws like the law of gravitation, there are also sociological and metaphysical laws that He established for societies. According to these laws, He rules over societies and makes them rise, fall, or vanish. By reading the Quran from this point of view it is possible to understand these divine laws. Those, who want to rescue society from its present situation or improve it without understanding these laws, i.e. Sunnatullah, are like people, who want to go into space without knowing the law of gravitation.
In Surah Al-Araf Allah swt. states: “Unquestionably, His is the creation and His is the command”1. This means, that just as Allah is the only creator, He is also the only legislator of the universe and of all beings, the living and the non-living. The whole universe and all populations bow to His command, they must do so. It is impossible for them to change these laws. In His Book Allah (jj) says: “But you will never find in the way of Allah any change, and you will never find in the way of Allah any alteration.”2. Hence, if they do not want to collapse, they must live in accordance with these metaphysical laws. According to these laws (Sunnatullah) they rise or are punished. These laws are Allah’s mercy and they are beneficent for them. If these laws would not exist and if they would not be told in the Quran or if the punishment would come arbitrarily, how could we know when Allah is going to punish the ummah and make it fall? The fact that there are these laws, enables to adhere to them and to take necessary precaution against being punished.
A farmer knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly obeys the laws which Allah set for the land, the water, the air, the seasons, and the seed. The same applies to animal husbandry. Actually, this applies to all professions and all people who work in nature. The work of those, who do not know the laws of nature or know them but do not obey them, will come to nothing. In the same way must those, who work for the salvation of the ummah without knowing Allah’s sunnah regarding the human and society, know, that their work will come to nothing. That we know, what we must to, depends on us knowing Sunnatullah. For those, who do not know these divine laws, no matter how good their intention might be, their good intentions alone will not be sufficient. Those, who do not know the laws of social change will always be putty in the hands of those who know these laws. Ikbal said:
“A nation shall possess the Quran, and still be unwilling, spiritless, and unmotivated, Astonishment, again astonishment and again astonishment shall be to them.” Likewise, do I say: A nation shall possess the Quran and still not know the divine laws, that are applied to societies, so that what happened to the previous ummahs happens to them, as well.
Astonishment, again astonishment and again astonishment shall be to them.
A nation shall possess the Quran, but still not know the recipe and laws for salvation, and still chase wrong solutions.
Astonishment, again astonishment and against astonishment shall be to them. And shame be on them!
This civilisation has damaged humankind, destroyed their values, oppressed, exploited, and erased. This civilisation brought ruin on humankind. Each day the problems increase. It is a state of emergency. We must know all divine laws about the falling and the resurrection of societies, all of Allah’s sunnahs concerning societies, for our own salvation and the liberation of humanity from western civilisation.
Such as a human can die in his youth by a disease, an accident or attack, a state can also fall in its strongest time due to similar reasons. However, usually, societies die slowly as cancer patients die. They do not die suddenly while they are healthy like in a traffic accident. Indeed, most of the people are like this. There are few people, who die due to external forces like an accident or attack. Most people die due to disease and old age. While it is possible but difficult for a person to avoid falling ill, it is impossible that they avoid growing old. However, for societies this is different. If necessary precautions are taken, a society can avoid falling ill and growing old. Ibn Khaldun said about states: “The lifetime of a state does not exceed three generations: The founders, the sustain ers, and the imitators. Then the destroyers come and the state collapses”3. Postponing the explanation of these words, I would first like to state, that even if this analysis of Ibn Khaldun is true in general, it is still possible for wise and astute leaders, who know the divine laws about societies and states, to make the first generation of their state maintain continuously through the precautions they take and the policies they pursue. Even if they do not always succeed in this regard, they can at least uphold the second generation and avoid passing into the third generation. Because if the third generation comes, the fourth generation, i.e. the destroyers’ generation, is inescapable and this process is unstoppable. This means it is unstoppable by humans. It is unstoppable by a leader, scholar, or movement. Because a society, that has reached this state, loses its inner dynamism and is not able to deliver ideas or movements to rescue itself anymore. This is due to the fact, that in such societies real thinkers and intellectuals do not, or not sufficiently emerge. At best, people who are called thinkers and imitator intellectuals might emerge.
This analysis, that is true for a state, is also true for an ummah. Perhaps the most important duty of the caliph as head of the ummah is avoiding that the ummah reaches the third generation. Because this Sunnatullah is generally valid for all societies of the world and will not disappear just because we do not know about it. Consequently, that the third generation is followed by the fourth generation is only avoidable by external interference. This interference can be through the wise and almighty hand of Allah. Such as it was in World War I… Leaving the wisdom (not reasons) for our loss in World War I to another article, I would like to state this for now:
Even if those, who planned World War I and intended to tear the Ottoman Empire apart, targeted to destroy and erase the ummah, Allah had also His plan. And Allah swt., who enabled them to put their plan into action and attack the Ottoman Empire, has allowed the world state to fall and die, but He has rescued the ummah from death.
If the western world would not have carried out this attack, the ummah would have died. This attack was a huge slap for the ummah, that made it fall into coma and collapse but rescued it from dying. As our ummah was shocked by western technology, it started to admire and to imitate the west. Not only did our ummah take theirtechnology. It also started to adopt their justice, clothing, culture and arts, ethical and human values, laws, and even political system and ideology, i.e. the ummah even started to adopt their belief. Our ummah had started to confuse technology and material development with civilisation. They could not see, that even if the west was developed materially, ethically the west was in a huge collapse, having wrong human and ethical values, and leading the world into the abyss. Moreover, they did not see, that western technology was the fruit of the Muslims and that the west had taken sciences such as maths, physics, chemistry, medicine and astronomy, which are the fundament of their technology, from the Muslims. In such a state the ummah was rapidly proceeding towards death until the divine power interfered and slapped us with the hand of the west. Otherwise, we would not have understood the difference between technology, science and civilisation, we would not have seen their real face, would not have stopped imitating them, and would not have become conscious again.
If the west had let us alone and had not attacked, the Ottoman Empire might not have been destroyed, but it would have lost itself nevertheless. It would not have been destroyed, but it would have died. The Muslims would have lost their identity. Allah (jj) did not allow that to happen. Because this ummah is the ummah of that great Prophet and it is the last ummah. No other ummah will come. Because no other prophet will come and only prophets can put forth ummahs. In the Quran it says: “And for every ummah there is a messenger”4. This is one of the reasons why Allah swt. has still not allowed this ummah to be emptied completely, i.e. to die or to be murdered, despite all these deadly mistakes it has committed. Because it is the last ummah and its duty lasts until the Day of Judgement. If it had died or been killed, a resurrection would not have been possible for us today.
They could not kill this ummah, because they could not erase the Quran. Even if they managed us to leave the Quran for some time, they could not remove it. And the Quran - like a tree with dried and broken branches and a wounded trunk, but strong roots - flourished again.
With the wish to continue in the next edition with the reasons for our decline…
1. Surah Al-Araf, 54
2. Surah Al-Fatir, 43
3. Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, p. 346, 431
4. Surah Yunus 47
