ISLAM YESTERDAY,

MUSLIMS TODAY: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? Mahfouz A. Adedimeji, Ph.D.

Director, Centre for Peace

and Strategic Studies (CPSS), University of Ilorin, Ilorin.www.mahfouzadedimeji.c

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I want to thank the Obafemi Awolowo University Muslim Graduates Association (UNIFEMGA), through the National President and former Chairman of Academic Staff Union, University of Ilorin, Prof. AbdulWahab Egbewole.

I appreciate the host of this programme, an exemplary Muslim figure and notable philanthropist, Mallam Yusuf Ali, SAN.

I also want to congratulate our distinguished elders who have represented Islam so well that they are considered worthy of honour by this leading Muslim organisation.

May Allah continue to put barakah in our efforts and count us among His own chosen people.

I condole with the Ummah on the death of the late King Abdullahi bin ‘Abdul ‘Azeez of Saudi Arabia. He died yesterday, Yaomul Jumuah, the most blessed of all days.

May Allah forgive him and overlook his shortcomings.

What the world find most striking was his burial. Despite all the billions, he was buried in a public cemetery, his grave unmarked.

The subject of this discourse is broad but given the constraints of time, a general appraisal will be done here. The presentation is mainly in three parts:

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Somebody said, “Yesterday, Islam and

Muslim were walking together, then Islam overtook Muslim, with the latter trudging lazily behind. Islam soon got to a T-junction and took the right path. Muslim got to the same junction and wondered where Islam went. He took the left path thinking that he was following Islam.”

ISLAM YESTERDAY

Islam is the complete submission to Allah, the Almighty, basically. In his Islam in Focus, Hammudah Abdalati is apt: “The word Islam is derived from the Arabic root ‘SLM’ which means, among other things, peace, purity, submission and obedience.” This is the original or basic sense of it.

In the religious sense, the word ‘Islam’ means “submission to the Will of God and obedience to His Law”. Abdalati points out the connection between the original and the religious meanings, by which he means the denotation and connotation of Islam, and submits that “only through submission to the Will of God and by obedience to His law can one achieve true peace and enjoy lasting purity.”

Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi, in his Let Us Be Muslims, conceives Islam functionally as that which firstly consists of knowledge and secondly putting that knowledge into practice.

According to him, “Islam is not a birthright…A Muslim does not become truly a Muslim simply because he is born a Muslim. A Muslim is not a Muslim because he belongs to any particular race; he is a Muslim because he follows Islam. If he renounces Islam, he ceases to be a Muslim”.

Syed Iqbal Zaheer quotes Imam Shatibi as defining Islam as “the system by which a man is persuaded to submit to Allah in that area of existence in which he enjoys free will, just as he has already submitted in the area in which he has no choice but to live by his instincts.”

The Prophet, Muhammad (SAW), defined Islam from the viewpoint of its five pillars. In a famous tradition in Bukhari and Muslim collections, Abu Abdir rahman Abdallah bin Umar bin al-Khattab, said:

“I heard the Apostle of God say: ‘Islam has been built upon five things: testifying that there is only one God and that Muhammad is His Apostle; saying the prayers (salat), giving legal alms; pilgrimage to the hose (Mecca); and fasting during Ramadan.’ ”

Islam is all about five pillars and whoever upholds the pillars is a Muslims and whoever renounces them is not.

During the time of the Prophet (SAW) and the golden era that followed his, Muslims understood what Islam stood for in its ramifications.

Operationally speaking, this understanding involved the conception of Islam as an acronym.

I- Ideology S- Sacrifice L- Love A- Action M- Manners (of Muhammad)

When Muslims practised Islam, Allah stood by them and He fought of their behalf. Their commitment to Islam was total and there was no network failure between them and Allah. (i.e. Q:2:208).

The Battle of Badr was fought by a weak Muslim army but Allah fought on the side of Muslims. The same thing applied to many of the subsequent battles waged against Muslims.

But Muslims were as strong as their faith. They faced existential challenges but the challenges only increased their faith in Allah and commitment to Islam.

The history of Islam has been that of a perpetual struggle between Right and Wrong.

MUSLIMS TODAY

Lack of faith Lack of education Lack of brotherhood Lack of influence Lack of planning Lack of strategy Lack of information Lack of commitment Lack of unity

The several lacks bedeviling Muslims today can be traced a major lack.

One thing has been missing for several years in Muslims of today. This missing link is key to the problems of identity crisis and its concomitant internal contradiction within many a Muslim.

Muslims are in a hurry to antiquate the past forgetting that our past defines our today as our today heralds our tomorrow.

We are fascinated by many meretricious attractions that modernity offers at the expense of what matters: the path on which our predecessors succeeded on till they got certification of Al-Jannah while alive.

In his book, Mushkilaat Da'wah wa Da'ayah, (“Problems faced by Da’wah and the Daiyah), Fathi Yakan says that Islamic personality = Islamic mentality + Islamic disposition.

There are Muslim personalities today but there were many Islamic personalities yesterday. The difference between the two is as clear as daylight.

An Islamic personality is influenced by Islam, living it in its entirety.

A Muslim personality is nominally affiliated with Islam: he bears a ‘Muslim’ name; sings ‘Muslim’ music; wears a ‘Muslim’ dressing; answers the ‘Muslim’ greeting, etc.

What is Islamic mentality?

According to Yakan, Islamic mentality involves “an accurate understanding of the Quran and Sunnah, full awareness of the goals of Islamic ideology from the point of view of its being a regulator of behaviour and morals, an incentive to strive and a conditioner of human attitudes towards this worldly life and the hereafter, not as a mere collection of theories and ideals” and full absorption of all aspects of Islamic ideology.

What is Islamic disposition? The Islamic disposition is reflecting the ideals of

Islamic ideology in one’s day-to-day activities in terms of instincts, inclinations and physical needs.

In other words, what Fathi Yakan submits is that an Islamic personality is a good blending of theory and practice, the two of which are inter-linked.

Theory without practice is blind. Practice without theory is lame. However, what characterises Muslims today,

generally speaking, is that those who have the knowledge (theory) don’t practise what they know and those who practise Islam don’t know what they practise.

It is crucial to know Islam; it is essential to apply what one knows about Islam. These two are inter-dependent and one without the other is chaos.

This is what Imam Ghazali wrote on putting translating knowledge to action:

“Let it be known very well that knowledge will not save a person unless it is put into practice. Let me clarify this point with an example for you: supposing someone fully armed suddenly met a lion in the mountains, no matter how brave and how good he might be in using a gun and a sword, could not save himself from this lion unless he used his weapon? By the same token, however deeply learned a person may be, his knowledge will come to naught if he does not act upon his knowledge.”

What is the result?

Weakness: We are embarrassingly weak, despite the huge number (1.6 billion; ¼ of humanity)

Disillusionment: Many young Muslims are just confused.

Hypocrisy: Fair weather Islam Distortion: The message of peace that Islam

presents is distorted. Insult as free speech: The Chalie Hebdo saga. The

Pope while in The Philippines, if his good friend “says a curse word against my mother, he should expect a punch in the nose,” adding “It is normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot make fun of the faith of others”

Collective Punishment: Muslims are victims of war and oppression imposed by non-Muslims and pseudo-Muslims alike.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

The future belongs to Islam if Muslims sincerely return to Islam.

According to Imam Ibn Taymiyyah, “the end of this Ummah will not excel except on the basis of which the first generation did.”

If Muslims hold on tenaciously to the Quran and the Sunnah, the two legacies the Prophet (SAW) said we are not going to stray with them, the future will be bright.

Despite the challenges, Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and Europe. The words of Allah will come to pass.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and is the second largest religion in USA (3.7% Muslims), United Kingdom (4% Muslims) Canada (2% Muslims), France (7% Muslims) and Germany (3.5% Muslims).

Contrary to the impression held by many, the Arabs constitute a minority in the world population of Muslims, constituting just 18% while non-Arabs are 82%.

Africans constitute 20% of the world Muslim population and “there are altogether 241 million Muslims in Sub-Saharan Africa, making up about 15% of the world’s Muslim population.”

The October 2009 report of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life2. Muslims are 78 million in Nigeria, constituting 5% of the global Muslim population, and 50% of the Nigerian population; the remaining 50% distributed between Christians and traditional religionists.

According to the July 2014 edition of the CIA World Factbook, Muslims in Nigeria constitute 50 %, Christians constitute 40% and indigenous beliefs constitute the remaining 10% of Nigeria’s estimated 177,155,754 population.

More celebrities and stars will continue to “decamp” to Islam where they will find peace. use the sociol

The scenario can be Illustrated with the socio-political reality of today’s Nigeria where desperate attempts to frustrate and humiliate a candidate are achieving unexpected results.

As the candidate becomes more popular, other efforts are being made, which hopefully will end in failure, which will truncate his destiny.

Yet everyone appears to have caught the bug of FeBUHARI.

The challenges Islam face today will usher in a brighter future when there will be call, quiet, peace and progress in the global community.

Tomorrow is near and the sorrows of today will end up as history.