MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-N - Farce Muslims Versus Real Islam

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-N

FARCE MUSLIMS VERSUS REAL ISLAM

The Prophet was already known as the most reliable, the most truthful and the most just among all in Makkah, even before he started preaching the teachings. Whose teachings was he following until Gabriel came with the revelations? Were they not profound truths, preached from the earliest times by the Messengers of God? The Prophet felt no real need to repeat those profound truths in detail, as he was already the greatest adherent to these truths. Need for spiritual elevation and submission to the Almighty was one such profound truth that he preached through practice.

The Prophet fixed certain obligatory rituals, like namaz, roza, etc. so as to reach those ends. Later day Muslims started considering the teachings of earlier Messengers as those of others and not their own teachings. Thus the profound truths that were taught by earlier Messengers and practiced by Prophet Mohammad were forgotten. They took the teachings of namaz, roza, etc. as Islamic dictates and not the need for self-elevation and thus started the drift which made namaz and roza as mere rituals.

As said, namaz, roza and other such obligations prescribed were meant for spiritual elevation of the soul and self-purity. A fast (roza) means not only abstinence from food and water but abstinence from all those acts that are considered immoral and/or illegal. A real practitioner won’t even speak a lie, will endeavour to control his anger, lust, greed, etc., has to essentially control his organs of action and senses from going wayward and will try to do as many good deeds as possible, so as to please his Creator.

Compare this to the present state of Indian Muslims. In a roza iftar organized by the elected representative to Lok Sabha from Rampur, plates were thrown in air, dishes were overturned and this made front page headlines in several of the newspapers the next day.

Over and above the self-control that the 20 days’ previous rozas should have brought about, there are specific guidelines in Islam talking about how to sit on a dastarkhan for dining, the do’s and don’ts of a mehman (guest), how to deal with the host, how to take care of the sensibilities of humans, leave alone the sensibilities of the one who has invited you to iftaar. No whimper was heard from even one maulvi that such an act (like that of throwing of dishes at an iftaar organized by someone who has taken pains to invite you) was far removed from the teachings of Islam.

The humanitarian teachings of Prophet Mohammad were of such high order that the world had to look up to him and his teachings. His Ahlul-bayt (People of the House) and some of his trusted colleagues tried to carry the baton forward after the Prophet’s death. As time passed, it became apparent to all that the true followers of the teachings were few and the rest gradually involved them self into reaping the benefits that the vibrant religion presented by Mohammad had in store for them.

All the conversions that took place during the early period of Islam were due to the lofty humanitarian values that Islam wanted to inculcate and their visual presence in the character of Muslims. In stark contrast to this spiritual and humane character of Islam taught by Prophet Mohammad, the world also got to see an altogether different face of Islam, when self-proclaimed caliphs and rulers distorted the teachings to their advantage and went on territory-annexing spree, all in the name of Islam. Later day Muslim scholars’ reluctance to disown these rulers resulted in building of a militant and cruel image of Islam, altogether different from the original teachings.

The true teachings of Islam started getting distorted in no time after the passing away of the Prophet. There is no doubt that by the time of second Caliph itself, annexation of territories began. Iran and Egypt fell during this period. By the time of the third Caliph, the materialistic tendencies started coming up in contrast to the spiritual development and total subjugation to God that Islam preached. In no time, the name of Mohammad was remembered but his teachings forgotten. Ali tried to check these negative tendencies during a brief period of four and a half years but immediately after his death, Umayyad rulers turned Caliphate into personal fiefdom and ruled over the Islamic world, which had now become an empire, with utter disregard to the teachings of Islam.

The situation was similar to the distortions brought about by the followers of Lord Buddha immediately after his death. It is a well-known fact that Lord Buddha had announced and presented Ananda, during his lifetime, as his successor. Evidently Buddha was confident that Ananda was the one who would not allow distortions and changes to encroach his true teachings. His over-zealous followers, bent upon carving out a religion out of Buddha’s teachings in their own self-interests, discarded the righteous Ananda and we find Kasyapa presiding over the first congregation after Buddha’s death. In book ‘God Rediscovered’, SAHNi Bharati has highlighted the true character of Kasyapa and shown how Buddha’s teachings got derailed the very day he died. As soon as the leadership went into the hands of self-seeking material-minded persons, the true impact of Buddha’s lofty teachings began to wane away. Consequently, Buddhism in the subsequent years was to give more warriors and conquerors than monks. Result is for all to see; as soon as the Buddhist empire collapsed, there was nobody to save the Buddhists from their own infighting and from the enemies that they had created locally.

Same with Islam! After the Prophet, things continued to go from bad to worse. Deceit and treachery became rampant. Hoarding of wealth, blatant misuse of power, annexation of properties, large sized harems, luxury, pomp and show, entertainment, murder and plunder became the order of the day. Hindus who claim that they were wrongly treated by the Muslim rulers have not been told of the utmost miseries inflicted on their own subjects – the Muslims – by the rulers within the Islamic world. Truly speaking, India either saw moderate rulers or rulers who were afraid that if they go overboard, this would unite the local masses against them. In the Muslim heartland, these rulers also had the title of Caliphs; majority remained mute witness to their misrule perhaps because of this. Not entirely so, because even today a good many learned scholars of Islam prefer to look the other way or even justify the misdeeds that these rulers committed while enjoying the titles of Caliphs.

The contrast between the true and pseudo teachings was truly visible at Karbala, where the most righteous followers of the true teachings of Islam were butchered to death merely 50 years after Prophet’s death. Those who butchered Mohammad’s grandson, his family members and colleagues too called themselves Muslims. Husain and his colleagues, through their martyrdom and steadfastness, showed that they were the true followers of Mohammad’s legacy. Yet, the distortion and growing distance from Mohammad’s teachings was evident from the fact that there were merely about a 100 people who came to Husain’s aid, against the hundreds of thousands of forces that the embodiment of evil - Yazid (acting as the Caliph) – mustered, to fight and kill Husain and his companions.

Yet, it remains a sad story that Islam has never been understood truly even by lot many of those proclaiming themselves to be experts on the subject. Several scholars of Islam fail to see the tyranny of Yazid and still hold him in great esteem. They are also the same people who fail to see the terrorism of Osama and Al-Qaida and, at times, have  been found to give moral and all  other kinds of support to these self-proclaimed ‘fighters for Islam’. Yet, they are considered champions and most learned scholars of Islam and even the various political parties in India have been found to buttress them during elections, unmindful of the fact that their support to such people is further deepening the wedge between Islam and rest of Indian citizens. The growing clout of these people further reveal the mindset of the general Muslim, who has been kept illiterate and has been made to understand Islam through filters deliberately induced by these self-created custodians of faith. This Muslim mass is far away from reason and logic and sees Islam not as a joining force, as propagated by Mohammad, but as a tool to create divisions within the community and within the country.