Thousand Years Late!

Had Prophet Muhammad pbuh lived today, would he be understood differently? Given that culture is a major filter and modifier of our perception, the answer to this question is a definite "yes". Let's repeat the same question for other great messengers of God, for example Jesus pbuh and Moses pbuh; would their teachings be understood differently, had they lived among us today? Again, the answer is "yes". Then, which understanding is more accurate and pleasing to God? The one that we received through the lens of various cultures and history or the one that we would acquire without interference?

The answer to this question is not that straightforward for everyone. If you are someone with little or no relation with religion or if you are religious but have tendency for critical thinking, you would undoubtedly go with the direct acquisition. If, on the other hand, you are someone of religious affiliation, things are more complicated. First possibility is that you would have mixed thoughts. Why? On one side, your reason would say that being the direct addressee of a messenger of God is the way to go. On another side, you would ask "is there a difference", since the companions who lived with the messengers of God were also select individuals who did their best in imbibing and conveying the messengers' teachings. Second possibility for a person of religious affiliation is that you would not question in any way what has already happened, since they all have been designed and created with the perfect wisdom of the All-Mighty God. Who are we to question its alternatives? What happened is what happened, and it's the best of what could happen!

If you think of the Islamic history, you can come to the conclusion that the second group depicted above are the majority and dominant. Even today, this situation prevails. If you dig deep enough, if a person is religious, they may utter words like sharia and necessity of a religious order, etc. If you dig deeper, it would turn out that many of such people do not really know what they are saying. What's worse, they would not know what's a clear order of God and what's a practice of people that is disguised as an order of God over time. This is why some scholars say "if those people learn about what they are saying, they would run away from it or they would fail in the system they are hailing."

Consider those who have received a share of the Book. When they refer to the Book in order to judge amongst themselves, a group of them turn away with disregard. (3/23)

Nevertheless, ignorance is bliss! You just keep some words in your mouth, but you continue your life as the circumstances require. If asked, you defend yourself saying "I am not a scholar". If you ask the scholars, they say "I am not qualified enough to override the legacy of the prophet and his companions". As a result, a legacy that contains the reception of the word of God and life of His messenger is photocopied without real critical thought. This is how we are still suffering from certain troubles, even after 1400 years.

A major one of such troubles is "being power centered". This notion is expressed as, but in crude words, power worshiping. Although this crude description needs some tailoring, it points at some serious essentials as well. In Islam, worshiping anyone other than God is shirk, and is reason for you to fall out of the confines of Islam. In daily life, a believer may not do such a thing, but if they act in a way that hails the authority or power of something above God's, this is called minor shirk, and is still a problem that needs to be addressed. The funny thing is what I just told is exactly what a complete traditionalist/conservative believer would tell you in order to justify their yearning for a religious order involving the practices that have never really been questioned for the past thousand years. But what they fail to see is that by not critically thinking and by not trying to become a direct addressee of God, they are treating the human practices at the same level as the word of God, which is a form of minor shirk!

When you read the Quran, no where would you come across with a command to establish a government that dictates religious orders. Rather, you would see commands to stop evil and to race for the good. In this context, state or politics can be one way of stopping the evil and doing good, but they are definitely not the only one; and in fact, state or politics are ways that are proven to be extremely susceptible to gross errors. One such error is the replacement of the original intention with the intention to keep the power. Even if you end up using this authority properly, such replacement is a two-layered fault. One, you get into a competition with other people who are also trying to do good, but this competition is not for the good, it is for the authority. As a result, unfair actions occur during this fight. Two, what enables you to do good is God's help and accordance, not power or authority. As you focus more on power and authority, they become a thick veil covering your heart, and you start seeing God as a distant-beneficiary of your affairs, where you are the ultimate doer of the good! This is a clear path of shirk from minor to major.

It is the same power-centered mentality that gave rise to the state-controlled and/or state-oriented interpretation of Islam and a merciless clash between Islamic groups, which is still destroying virtually all social endeavors in the name of God. Looking from outside, you cannot distinguish what they are doing from a fight without a regard for God's approval, This situation can perhaps be depicted by a person who prostrates towards the Kaaba with an intention to worship it, rather than orienting towards it only because God says so. On the outside, such a person looks like a Muslim, but has nothing to do with being a Muslim. Why is this happening? Let's see this through an example.

In the Quran, the Lord instructs the believers to place their trust only in God's power, whereas the daily life events tell us that God does not miraculously interfere with what is going on. For example, you want to get a job, and you have all the qualifications for it, but someone who has significantly lower qualifications than you, even not enough for the job, gets the position due to their affiliation with a political party or due to the influence of someone at a higher level in the hierarchy of that company/organization. You are crushed due to this unfair treatment by an entity that portrays itself as Islamic. However, your misery or the injustice of the situation remains untouched in the end. That is God doesn't do anything about it! After all, it is Him who tells that He is going to give respite to the wrong-doers until death. Then, what are you going to think about your own situation and your personal affairs? For your short term benefit, you better obey the people, whether they order you to do good or evil. You do as the circumstances require, whether licit or illicit. In the long run, you can defend yourself as being innocent, since you did not deliberately seek evil, you just obeyed the system.

Is the above the description of a Muslim? Clearly not! It is the depiction of a believer who has significant confusion in their belief so that they are living like a hypocrite. That is, by surrendering to the authority of the wrong-doers with full submission, they are associating partners with God, and so, they are involved in shirk without even being aware of it.

In order to seek a way out of this misfortune, it is important to know the neurophysiological roots of this behavior. Self protection is a manifestation of the fight-or-flight response, and it is one of the quickest and automatic activities of the brain. That is, if you are not careful enough, if you are not deliberately monitoring your behaviors, you can obey this biological drive of your autopilot, i.e. brain. Fortunately, our brain is also equipped with other tools that enable willful action, even if against the basic instincts. These extra tools are slower but they have long-lasting effects. Accordingly, they require deliberate actions that last for a long time in order to take effect. So, if you want to escape the power-worshiping attitude and embrace God-worshiping solely, then you must monitor your actions before and after, and exercise your will power to stand against the fight-or-flight instincts.

There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejects false deities and believes in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower. (2/256)

Needless to say, such difficult undertaking is not done by most believers. What's worse, since their conscience cannot justify being a believer with power-worshiping, they create rational constructs to defend their position. This is why still the Muslims seek to acquire authority as a means of serving God's religion. This is how the "scholars" come up with fatwas that justify the unjust actions of the khalifa. This is how the believers flock into one-man-shows, and retire their brains. This why, despite a millennium-long demise of the Muslim civilization, the believers cannot understand what's wrong with them.

surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition; and when Allah intends evil to a people, there is no averting it, and besides Him they have no protector. (13/11)

This situation is not going to get out of the stage until and unless the believers achieve a conviction with which they can say good bye to aspirations about high number of followers or influential public positions. They are not going to breath freely until and unless they give up the misguided belief that Islam's ultimate goal is to establish a religious state. Such interpretations started circulating among people soon after the death of the prophet Muhammad, and eventually killed a vibrant civilization. When are the believers going to say a definitive good-bye to such nonsense and become true believers who submit only to God?

Has not the time yet come for those who believe that their hearts should be humble for the remembrance of Allah and what has come down of the truth? And that they should not be like those who were given the Book before, but the time became prolonged to them, so their hearts hardened, and most of them are transgressors. (57/16)