The Ideology 2

There are people who claim that Islam is not an ideology, meaning, it is not a system that could be used to rule the people due to either an absence of any Islamic teachings on the matter of state leadership and government or due to the incompatibility of Islamic law to today's modern world.

Before I start refuting both arguments as to why Islam should not be put in a state of political leadership, I am going to first quickly scan through why Islam, if not in a position of political power, is in a state of absolute vanity. This has been explained in greater details in my Ideology article which I cannot stress enough on the importance to read before reading this article.

First of all, man is defined by his actions which are the reflections of his thoughts. Man's thoughts are the direct consequence of his education and education is any and every information man gathers from his environment from the time he comes out of his mother's womb until the time he parts with this world. Religion, like anything else, would have an effect on the man's thought if it was taught to him, however, the possibility of it being taught to him is subjective.

Political leadership is inevetible. If one system is not in a position to rule then another will be. A religion which lacks political direction will end up being under the mercy of the system that does have political direction. Whether it is taught to the masses, propagated and followed, will all be depending on the decision of the ruling system. Such cases not only weaken and limit the religion's divine honor into being under the mercy of a non-following leadership, but also break and mutilate the religion itself as it's rules will no longer be in consideration to societal matters however small and politically neutral it could be.

There was a time when the Catholic Church was in a position of leadership in Europe. Due to the absence of any political teachings in Christianity, the Catholic rule was completely dependent on the thoughts of the Pope himself, who in turn became nothing more than a dictatorial tyrant due to the complete absence of any form of legislative laws and guidelines in the Christian holy books. Several hundred years of such leadership pushed the Europeans into the Renaissance and the reformation of the church to steralise it of any possible position of actual leadership in the future. Not only were the teachings of the church reformed, but the thoughts of Christians worldwide to this day have been molded into the acceptance of the secondary importance of the church that a lot of Christians pay little attention to the church and a lot more simply officially or unofficially left the Christian faith. The fact of the matter is, people in the West left Christianity and embraced the new faith called the Democracy. No longer do they say “it is ungodly”, but they say “it is undemocratic”. It is the great importance of the ruling system that the people truly embrace and not what they claim to be the followers of.

The fact that a system will not accept competition should come as no surprise as it is only natural for it to protect, promote and propagate itself. In due course, all ideologies with absolutely no exception demand to be protected, promoted and propagated even through war if it has to. At the point where one of these three actions are halted by the government, then the system will begin to retreat and inevitably be defeated.

Changing a system can never come about through reformation. Reformation is using the system to bring change to something that is a consequence to that system itself. Advocates of reformation are people who believe that the current system could be used to bring a better way of life and therefore are advocates of that system whether they claim to be so or not. To change a system you need to completely remove the current system and replace it with a new one – you need a revolution.

Refering back to the Ideology thesis I wrote in another post, it cannot be said enough that correcting man, and thus correcting society, will never come about until the environment is corrected. And the environment can only be changed when the system of rule is changed. And as stated earlier, change can never come through reformation, but through revolution.

Therefore, how can a Muslim say Islam has no political aspirations? When we know that Muhammad (pbuh) is the last messenger from Allah, how can Allah leave his creation in a fragile position without any more guidance? Certainly Islam, unlike any other religion, is more than just a book of values and stories and basic general laws. Certainly Islam was meant to maintain the deen of Allah and to keep man along the straight path after the death of the last messenger, Muhammad (pbuh). And the only way it could do that is if it was to be put in a position of power and rule, else all it's teachings are completely futile on man under the leadership of laws and regulations that deny Islam it's voice and even go against it.

As for the people who claim Islam's time is long gone and in the 21st century the system we are meant to embrace is the one clearly to be dominant in this day and age; democracy. To them I ask, since when did time dictate what is right and what is wrong? Since when did it make any sense that yesterday man followed this set of rules and because of the passage of time, man is now to follow a different set of rules, most of which contradict the rules he used to follow in the past? Does the value of man change with time? Do his right vary? Technology is a means to make our lives easier, by no means does it interfere with the political leadership and the system of rule. Modernization? What is modernization? What is modern? Is it not the values and ways of the most dominant system imposing itself on the rest of the world? Today the West are in a dominant position and thus modern in the whole world is to dress like the west dresses, eat like the west eats, sit like the west sits and rule like the west rules. If it was the Chinese culture the most dominant today, would not modern be different? If it was the Arabians, would not modern be different? If it was the Indians, would not modern be different? Is it not clearly a subjective issue? And since when was Islam against the advancement and technology? When Islam was in a position of leadership, it was ahead of the world by several hundred years and it didn't change a thing in the political leadership of Islam.

"You will find that in the course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state." - Jinnah In his inaugural speech as first governor general of Pakistan