The Vision of Islam Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
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The Vision of Islam Maulana Wahiduddin Khan GOODWORD BOOKS Translated by Farida Khanam First published 2014 This book is copyright free. Goodword Books 1, Nizamuddin West Market, New Delhi-110 013 Tel. +9111-4182-7083, +918588822672 email: [email protected] www.goodwordbooks.com Goodword Books, Chennai 324, Triplicane High Road, Triplicane, Chennai-600005 Tel. +9144-4352-4599 Mob. +91-9790853944, 9600105558 email: [email protected] Goodword Books, Hyderabad 2-48/182, Plot No. 182, Street No. 22 Telecom Nagar Colony, Gachi Bawli Hyderabad-500032 Mob. 9448651644 email: [email protected] Islamic Vision Ltd. 426-434 Coventry Road, Small Heath Birmingham B10 0UG, U.K. Tel. 121-773-0137 e-mail: [email protected] www.islamicvision.co.uk IB Publisher Inc. 81 Bloomingdale Rd, Hicksville NY 11801, USA Tel. 516-933-1000 Toll Free: 1-888-560-3222 email: [email protected] www.ibpublisher.com Printed in India Contents § Foreword — 5 Foreword 2 — 8 CHAPTER ONE The Essence of Religion — 9 Worship — 9 The Demands of Worship — 15 Witness to Truth — 23 CHAPTER TWO The Four Pillars — 30 Fasting — 32 Prayer (Salat) — 37 Zakat — 43 Pilgrimage (Hajj) — 48 CHAPTER THREE The Straight Path — 58 What is the straight path? — 58 The Straight Path of the Individual — 62 The Straight Path of Society — 66 The Principle of Divine Succour — 69 3 CHAPTER FOUR Seerah as a Movement — 71 The Beginning of Dawah — 72 The Language of Dawah — 76 The Aptitude of the Arabs — 79 The Universality of Dawah — 82 Factors Working in Favour of Dawah —86 Reaction to the Message of Islam — 89 Expulsion from the Tribes — 96 Emigration — 100 Victory of Islam — 107 CHAPTER FIVE Calling People to Tread the Path of God — 115 The Significance of Calling People to Tread the Path of God — 115 Content of the Call — 121 CHAPTER SIX Modern Possibilities — 126 CHAPTER SEVEN F i n a l W o rd — 143 Index — 148 4 Foreword § In Story of an African Farm, Olive Schrieiner (1855-1920) a noted South African novelist, recounts the story of a hunter who goes in search of the beautiful White Bird of Truth. All he had seen of it was its reflection in a lake, once while he was out shooting. He tried to catch the bird in the snares of credulity and the cage of imagination, but he realized that the bird of truth could be obtained only through truth. He left the valley of superstitions and started climbing up the Mountain of Truth. He continued climbing till he reached a high precipice. He started cutting rocks and making steps in the stone. He continued doing this for years, old and wizened, he managed to reach the summit. But, on arriving there, he found another range higher than the previous one. Here, overwhelmed by old age and weariness, he laid himself down to die, but as he lay dying, a white feather fell close to him from above. Now he felt sure that the bird he sought existed on the next range. Even though he could not reach the bird of truth, he died with the solace that those who followed him would not have to cut the first steps. His last words were: “Where I lie down, worn out, other men will stand young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb. They will never know the name of the man who made them… But they will mount 5 The Vision of Islam and on my work. They will climb and by my stair. They will find truth and through me. Perhaps there can be no better allegory for the present work than the above. I was born on January 1, 1925. My father, Fariduddin Khan, died on 30th December 1929, when I was just five. Then I was brought up in my family home, in Azamgarh (U.P., India) in a traditional, religious atmosphere. My circumstances demanded that I look at everything with a curious eye. When I came of age and learnt that the religion which, “in the old days”, had ruled human thought for one thousand years, was languishing in every respect in modern times, I felt that this was an issue on which I should do some research. I then began to make a regular study of the subject. Many people regard me as a University educated person. But the truth is that my formal education was confined to studies in an Arabic school, after which I learnt English on my own. The result of a regular study of books in English was that the modern style came to influence my writing. My educational and intellectual background had given me only a traditional knowledge of Islam, which was obviously insufficient for an understanding of Islam in relation to the modern world. In 1948, therefore, I decided to go directly to the sources of modern thought in order to increase my understanding of it. At the same time, I started to study the Quran and the hadith and related subjects, in order to have a fresh understanding of Islam. If the first 15 years of my life were engaged in traditional education, the next 25 years were taken up by the above-mentioned research. Today, now that I am over fifty, I have the good fortune to be able to offer to the world this book which is the result of my long research. Having cut steps out of the theoretical rock, I was confronted with another range: now it was necessary to give a practical shape to my Islamic endeavours in the light of the discovered truths. I feel that I have exhausted my strength. The hard struggle of the past which this work entailed has aged me before my time. 6 Foreword I have spent all my life in cutting ‘theoretical steps’: but how to cut the ‘practical steps’ now? Yet it is satisfaction enough for me that I have found truth, at least theoretically. Perhaps now I may die, saying: “Those coming after me will not have to cut the first steps!!!” September, 1975 Wahiduddin Khan 7 Foreword for the English Edition § I wrote the first foreword of my book in September 1975. According to the circumstances of those times, I felt that with this book my mission had come to an end. This thinking was reflected in my first foreword. But subsequently there was a change of circumstances and by special divine succour a full-fledged mission came to be launched on the basis of the ideology I had presented in my book Al-Islam. Now when I am writing these lines in June 2013, by God’s grace, this mission has become universal in its scope with the establishment of Islamic Centre in 1976 and Centre for Peace and Spirituality (CPS) in 2001. The literature of this mission has been published on a large scale in different national and international languages. This book, the English version of Al-Islam, is a part of this mission. This book offers an explanation of the teachings of Islam in a contemporary style and aims at providing such an interpretation of Islam as will address the modern mind. In 1975 there was just this one book. But today, by God’s grace, a wide range of Islamic literature, written in a contemporary style, has been prepared, which is being disseminated in different languages. New Delhi Wahiduddin Khan June 15, 2013 8 CHAPTER ONE The Essence of Religion § The only true religion in God’s sight is complete submission to God. And those who were given the Book disagreed only out of rivalry, after knowledge had been given to them—he who denies God’s signs should know that God is swift in His reckoning. —The Quran, 3:19 WORSHIP What God most earnestly desires from human beings is worship. The Quran says: “I have not created jinn and mankind except to worship Me.” (51:56) There are numerous such verses in the Quran which elaborate on how the prophets were sent for this very purpose, that is, to warn or to remind man of this responsibility. (16:36). This is so important a matter that if a man cannot find opportunities for worship in his own country, he is enjoined to leave it for some other place (4:97). The dictionary defines worship as bowing before someone and humbling oneself. “The essence of worship is fearfulness and humility,” says Lisan al-Arab. The dictionary meaning of the word is also its canonical meaning. Abu Hayyan says: “Prayer means humility: this is the consensus of religious scholars” 9 The Vision of Islam (Al Bahr al Muhit, Vol. 1, p. 23). That is why the Quran uses the word “arrogance” as the antonym of worship. It says, “Those who are too arrogant to worship Me will certainly enter Hell.” (40:60). Although worship’s real connotations are humility and fearfulness, when the word is used in relation to God, it also includes the concept of love. Ibn Kathir writes: “According to the dictionary, worship stands for lowliness. In the Islamic Shari‘ah it is used to express a condition of extreme love coupled with extreme humbleness and apprehension.” (Tafsir al Quran, Vol. 1, p. 25). Ibn Taymiyah says: “The word worship expresses a mixture of extreme humility and extreme love.” (Pamphlet on Ubudiyah, p. 28) Ibn Qayyem also writes: “There are two components of worship: extreme love and extreme humility” (Tafsir Ibn Qayyem, p. 65). The essence of worship then is the adoption of an attitude of humility before God.