Generally, nations and peoples suffer from deep-rooted pagan `jahiliyah', which is regarded as the most dangerous one in history. It is ...
Generally, nations and peoples suffer from deep-rooted pagan `jahiliyah', which is regarded as the most dangerous one in history. It is the source of ignorant thoughts and the ill deviations from which the ancient nations suffered. Today, the ignorant diseases and phenomena that afflict different nations and cause them to live in the ugliest scenarios in modern material civilization. In other words, modern man naturally and usually practises unbelief, atheism, moral corruption, oppression, aggression, greed, domination, exploitation, wars, destruction, and social chaos.
Even the Muslims, who believe in Islam, are forced or satisfied to follow these ignorant currents and decline into their deep abysses with the exception of those true believers who have understood this destructive danger, and who avoided it and refused to follow it. Therefore, if we analyse society and its modern civilization, we will be able to divide both the individuals and their societies into three parts:
1. An ignorant society whose life embodies all ignorant aspects such as communism, capitalism, materialism, deviated religions, idol worship,...etc.
2. Society in which individuals believe in Islam, but do not embody its beliefs in their lives nor apply it to their actions.Their society is also deviated and lost. It has no Islamic identity nor does it represent the original ideology. It imitates others in laws, art, literature, concepts, and method of life, in a manner which makes the social aspects and the form of general life similar to the ignorant form and the lost life which does not know originality and discipline.
Therefore, in such a society, it is usual to see nightclubs, bars, dissolute women, prostitution houses, usury banks, the system of the material life, the patterns of art, and the kinds of material culture, immoral literature, etc.
3. The faithful individuals who conform to Islamic beliefs, but are too few to form a social current to enable them to change the regime of life and mark Islam on the personality of the civilization stand apart and isolated in their society. They are deprived of the legitimate benefits of a healthy society.
Therefore, the total application and the full conforming to Islam, as a faith, a way of life, law, and behavior in order to achieve the sincere worship for Allah, the Glorified, are not naturally applied in the life of our societies nor embodied in our public life.
For this reason, in our life, concepts, behavior, regime, and laws, there are many ignorant foundations and non-Islamic concepts which came to us from both Eastern and Western ignorant and material thoughts. Such thoughts feed our own thoughts, our life, and our concepts.
Regarding this cultural invasion and influence, Muslims should sincerely do their best and devote their efforts in order to make essential changes, uproot `jahiliyah' (global ignorance) and demolish its rules and pillars. Therefore, Muslims should build their personalities and their society according to Islamic values, ideas, and principles. The following Qur'anic verse should be their example in life:
"And that there should be among you a group who call (mankind) to virtue and enjoin what is good and forbid what is wrong; and these are they who shall be successful." Holy Qur'an (3:104)
To save a Muslim from spreading the infection of `jahiliyah' and to help Muslims uproot its foundations in their society and civilization, and to achieve prevention and fortification against foreign, civil, and mental invasions, it is necessary for them to follow the following steps:
1. Achieving a full understanding for life according to original Islamic methods so that a Muslim knows the value of his life. He should ask himself:
What does existence in life mean?
What is the value of all beings with whom I deal?
How should my psychological relation be with life?
And how do I organize my relations in it?
A Muslim should consider these questions and take them into account in order to build his life on original Islamic teachings. Islam will guide him in all aspects including his possessions, rule, power, fame, life, death, pleasure, pain, and the human relations. These teachings differ completely from an ignorant understanding and its material viewpoint towards things, the world, and life.
Therefore, the first step to get rid of ignorant concepts is to achieve an aware understanding of existence and life on the basis of Islam and to make a general, psychological change to turn ignorant awareness and understanding, entering our societies, into a believing mental system and believing civil awareness which revolves around the axis of servitude to Allah, sincere loyality to Him, and going directly toward Him.
When a Muslim understands the meaning of life and its value, and recognizes the same right in it for others on the basis of these values and principles, he will see that all aspects of misery and aggression on the earth, such as poverty, aggression, terrorism, corruption, exploitation, enslavement, vanity, haughtiness, making light of man's values and rights, will disappear. Man will live a life of purity and dignity.
2. After this understaning is achieved, the reconstruction of both the Muslim's personailty and the society will fit together. It will cause the purification of the conscience and awareness of a Muslim against ignorant backgrounds and motives hidden in his depths, so that he may achieve the reconstruction and reorganization of the human personality from its inner side on the basis of sound, Islamic understanding. Thus, a Muslim will become honest, self-purified, a lover of good, ready to practise the Islamic life, and ready to accept its teaching.
3. The third method of uprooting ignorant backgrounds is to establish an Islamic society which unifies its individuals within the framework of an organized human unity full of believing spirit and truthful, believing direction and in which a Muslim will practise Islam as a living fact and as a social system, thought, behavior, life, and pure servitude to Allah only under the shade of a lawful authority which believes in Islam and stands on its principles in order to build the society with its foundations, activities, and the aspects of life based on original Islamic rules.
With this method, we are able to get rid of ignorant backgrounds and keep the course of the Muslim individual and society within the boundaries of Islam.
However, if we are satisfied with mere theoretic belief, while all, or most, of our behavior, life system, dealings, and laws of our society are far and deviated from Islam, we will not achieve full belief nor raise ourselves to the level of true Islam as Allah desires for us.
Rather our belief will bend toward `jahiliyah' and servitude at random, though many of us do not feel this contrast, duplicity, and collapse.
