Today, the Muslim community is suffering deep wounds throughout its body.
This body has been struck by every kind of poisoned arrow, coming from all directions:
1. The arrow of prolonged colonialism, which left its dark mark on every Muslim country it reached and occupied.
2. The arrow of Orientalism, the intellectual instrument of Western invasion in the last century.
3. The arrows of intellectual doubts that have flared over the last twenty years. They have been championed by intellectual institutions and cultural clubs, some political regimes, media channels, newspapers, magazines and certain Westernised intellectuals, followed by new, misguided figures who have used social media as platforms to spread their doubts
concerning atheism, feminism, rejection of the Prophetic Sunnah, irreligion, Abrahamism and other matters.
4. The arrow of homosexuality and pornography, whose degradation, vice and terrible spread among young men and women, old and young, through websites and electronic devices have no parallel in human history.
5. The arrow of enforced ignorance, deception, factionalism and racism, planted under the supervision of the Western policies that drew our borders at the beginning of the last century, then implemented and entrenched by powerful hands subordinate and loyal to those Western powers.
6. The arrows of modern state systems that entrenched nationalism at the expense of the wider Muslim community and crushed the individual beneath the wheels of their demands,
wasting lives and energies under the burden of barren education that reinforces mistaken ideas and blind dependency,
and stripping people of dignity through financial domination, poverty, prisons, oppression and the deprivation of freedom and honour in many countries and regions.
7. The arrows of direct and indirect occupation, some of whose fires we see today in Gaza and Sudan.
8. The arrows of powerful, unjust and hypocritical leaders who oppose reform, reformers and every attempt to revive the community.
9. The arrows of their corrupt media, which falsify facts, spread immorality and discredit reformers.
10. The arrows of extremists and fools who have imposed themselves upon the community through accusations of unbelief and religious innovation, division and fragmentation, worsening its existing disunity and disorder.
11. The arrows of trivialities, distractions and the foolish celebrities described by the Prophet ﷺ in his account of the end times. Rising generations have become lost, sinking into swamps of triviality and losing responsibility and meaning.
All these arrows converge on an exhausted body already afflicted by the weakness foretold by the Prophet ﷺ. They have sickened and disabled it until it is bound and powerless.
After all this, what have the community’s people done in response to these calamities and deadly arrows?
What have fathers and mothers done to protect and raise their children, and to bear their responsibility for Islam in them?
What have the community’s wealthy done in the face of these immensely rich, billion-dollar projects of corruption?
What have scholars offered in clear explanation and practical leadership for the community in the face of all these arrows?
Whoever thinks the Muslim community will survive these immense poisoned arrows through modest efforts, scattered hours offered by a few, and spare money donated by some contributors in a few unchallenging areas
is mistaken.
The Muslim community will not rise from its fall or free itself from its restraints without an enormous sacrifice of time, energy and money, and tireless, sustained work by its sincere and loyal members. Here I repeat an idea I have often raised: providing full-time support for people serving the religion. Supporters and families should take the initiative to relieve some gifted, intelligent, sincere young believers of the burden of earning a living and entering the grinding machinery of contemporary life. They can then devote themselves to comprehensive formation that goes beyond memorisation and religious study, bringing together the diverse preparation reformers need at every level affecting the community’s course. They would then devote all their time to serving the religion and supporting Islam. This requires sacrifice from the young people and their families, and understanding from wealthy supporters who direct their resources to good.
The Muslim community today will not be saved without its members developing a deep and broad awareness of its enemies among unbelievers and hypocrites, and opposing them,
and an awareness of sincere, devoted workers, and standing by them.
How else can a community rise if it opposes and abandons those working for it, while aligning itself with and supporting those who attack its religion and morals?
The Muslim community’s condition will not improve if its students of religious knowledge are trained only in memorisation and theoretical precision, without practical education in the realities of faith and purification of the soul, awareness of the world, intellectual strength, and knowledge of the reforming method followed by the prophets and messengers.
Students must therefore receive comprehensive formation combining knowledge and action, purification and thought, awareness and a reforming method. They will then be equipped to act with strength, insight and awareness in the community’s arenas and struggles, becoming devoted leaders through what they teach of the Book and what they study.
The Muslim community’s condition will not change if all we expect of its finest young people is to memorise the Qur’an and pronounce its letters and words correctly, without understanding, reflection, guidance or action.
We therefore hope the generation of promise and its aware leaders will revive gatherings devoted to seeking guidance from the Qur’an, filling memorisation circles with reflection, understanding and practical learning connected to real life, as was the case with the Companions in the Prophet’s school ﷺ.
Today the Muslim community needs its thinkers, preachers and leaders to understand priorities, centre their work on clear foundations, and attend to the central questions of religion and reality. They must give every issue the value and weight assigned to it in revelation, focusing on the greatest problems in actual life, just as the prophets prioritised and gave their utmost attention to the major problems of their times.
Lot, peace be upon him, repeatedly addressed his people’s sexual wrongdoing. Shu‘ayb devoted his call to confronting the economic and commercial injustice his people practised against others. Moses, peace be upon him, arose by Allah’s permission to free the oppressed and downtrodden.
We too need this understanding and attention today.
The Muslim community today also needs unity and the rejection of division and conflict, for this is a condition of revival.
Although we do not expect complete, comprehensive unity of method in today’s Muslim reality, we aspire to something short of that: agreement on the community’s major goals and its support, even where methods and contexts differ. We also need to stop being preoccupied with one another and focus on what benefits our community.
We firmly believe that Allah governs the entire universe, that nothing happens without His permission, and that He has established laws and patterns on earth. Among the clearest is His help for believers who give, endure patiently and follow what He loves.
When such believers arise, follow the prophets’ way, revive the realities of religion and put them into practice with awareness, wisdom and resolve—taking revelation as their authority, the Muhammadan school as their model, purification as their provision, knowledge as their safeguard, wisdom as their method, insight as their guide, action as their path, the community as their focus and the revival of Islam as their goal—while taking practical means and seeking divine help and guidance through reliance, holding fast and following,
then there is no question of the divine support, blessing and opening that will come from the Almighty, the Wise.
In saying this, I am not calling for something remote and unattainable. Alongside this appeal, I bring glad tidings that the first signs of these examples are appearing in reality. We have seen their earliest fruits with our own eyes. We ask Allah to complete the blessing and fulfil the goal.
For the one who waits, tomorrow is indeed near…