Living in the Past cannot help Muslims
by Dr. A.H. Mahate, M.H. Ashtiker and Abdullah Desai, Cape Town, South Africa
Al-Ahmadiyya, September/October 1980 Issue (Vol. 2, Nos. 9–10, pp. 23–25)
Cape Town
South Africa
It was a great joy for us in Cape Town to hear about the Eighth Ahmadiyya Convention to be held in Trinidad. May the spiritual sun of Islam shine brightly from the Western Hemisphere through the efforts of our Movement.
It was equally gratifying to know that one of the aims of this Convention is to make Muslims aware of how Islam is being “misrepresented on a colossal scale” and to make the light of Islam shine in our lives.
We are sure that as long as our thinking is honest, and open-minded, and humble and prayerful, the Most Compassionate God will always guide us.
When we consider this misrepresentation, we must admit in all fairness that the lifestyle and the attitude of some of our Muslim brethren are partly responsible for this. Fortunately, the Ahmadiyya Movement has always emphasised that
“the tree will be judged by its fruits,”
and we, who follow the greatest example and mercy to mankind, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him!), should be a true example to the world in our way of living.
There are few conceits as unpleasant as doctrinal arrogance.
In the Quran we have a complete code of life. But this code of life or divine guidance needs continuous expansion, explanation and application, and we must remain open to our conceptual growth in understanding the Quran. When religion becomes a merely backward-looking exercise it begins to lose its relevance to life, its power and its attractiveness. Anything that is static is dead and lifeless.
Living in the past and ignoring the present and the future only gives a false sense of security and rightly brings an accusation against us of having a closed mind.
The awareness of the continuation of divine guidance in human affairs and the use of ijtihad (exercise of judgement in the light of the Quran and the Tradition of the Prophet) so that we can go forward with the Quran is a very great contribution the Ahmadiyya Movement has made towards the proper understanding of Islam.
Religion is the ultimate source of ethics and morality. As Muhammad Asad rightly says:
“So far no alternate source of ethics has been discovered nor is there the slightest indication that non-religious ethics is possible at all. For whatever today goes by this name is in reality a subconscious heritage of past religious thought.”
Yet there comes a stage in the history of every creed when its followers put an overemphasis on rituals and external forms without understanding the essence and the purpose behind these teachings. There comes a time when they get their priorities all mixed up, and they display a confusion between means and ends. Backward looking and dogmatic teachings can become fossilized.
Religion has to be reinterpreted and applied to meet new challenges, by divinely inspired guides like Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Mujaddid (Reformer) of our times.
Thus, though we have our roots in our past values, which are eternal, and we are aware of the consistent pattern in which God works, yet at the same time we have to remember that we are not a rural community living in the Middle East 1400 years ago; we are a modern state living in the highly sophisticated twentieth century. This means we have to do a lot of thinking to adapt and make relevant the principles of Islam in statecraft and socio-economic issues. There should be more emphasis on the spirit of the law than the letter. There should be flexibility without altering the principle and the purpose of the law. There is no greater law than the law of compassion. There can be no greater example of this than the life of our Prophet [Muhammad (pbuh)]. We must be clear in our minds about the difference between a truly religious attitude (which is full of compassion and selflessness) and religiosity.
We are here on this earth with a definite purpose which, in the terminology of the Quran, is ibadat (service; worship). To serve Allah and imbue divine attributes in our life is the object of our existence in this world. The greatest and oft-repeated attributes of Allah in the Quran are Rahman and Rahim (Gracious and Merciful). We cannot, therefore, adopt a callous attitude towards human suffering and human rights. We cannot separate politics in the broad sense from the fundamental teachings of Islam which uphold these rights and condemn man’s inhumanity to man.
One of the most distressing reports by Amnesty International comes about slavery, torture and exploitation in some of the Muslim countries. Many of these corrupt governments, supported by imperialist Western forces for their own ends, prevent the true implementation of Islamic values and their ruthlessness has dehumanized people of those areas.
To overcome this sad state of affairs we find in the Muslim world two extreme attitudes. There is one group (like the Jamaat Islami, Muslim Brotherhood, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers) who want to establish a religious state where religion rules as understood by the ulama [clerics], and their interpretation of Islam will be enforced upon the people. To achieve their ‘Islamic’ ends at times they adopt un-Islamic means. Religion becomes a tool in their hands and they interpret and twist it to suit their own whims.
The other group is of the so-called radicals who are secularist to a fault. They will have nothing to do with religion and they even consider it as a stumbling block to progress. In short, they intend to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
Let us hope that the pendulum will soon swing to the middle.
No community can progress if it is not ideologically motivated and there can be no greater motivating force than the deep-rooted religious convictions which are divinely guided and inspired.
We are sure that the members of the Ahmadiyya Movement will shun from politicising religion but will take an active part in spiritualising politics, which influences all our activities today.
Let us remember the saying of the Prophet:
“Seek knowledge even if you have to go to China.”
Assalamu alaikum.
Your brothers in Islam,
Dr. A.H. Mahate
M.H. Ashtiker
Abdullah Desai