Table of Contents
Political causes
1. Monarchy and aristocracy prevail in the Muslim world and, unlike early Muslim Caliph and ruler, the contemporary ruler are selfish and corrupt. That’s why the Islamic gold rules for governance is seldom applied in Muslim countries.
2. The People in Muslim world are less aware of their right and obligation due to bleak literacy rate. And also the government is reluctant to improve the infrastructure of education.
3. The Muslims have only one international organization; OIC, which is lion without teeth
4. The international powers also willfully push the Muslims against the wall in every field, because they wanted to exploit over power Muslim economically and religiously.
Socioeconomic causes
1 The Muslim world has abundant natural resource, but technological and educational backwardness stalemate their progress.
2. One of the major causes the Muslim stasis is the overwhelming illiteracy rate in the Muslim world.
3. Scientific facts and knowledge was introduced by the Muslim scientist. But now the nation having 1/5 population of the world has no renowned scientist in contemporary era.
Religious Causes
Internal disharmony among the Muslims; sectarianism
Wrong and destructive interpretation of the Quranic verses; the concept of jihad is misunderstand
Involvement of foreign to defame Islam and destabilize the Muslim world
Muslim World and the Contemporary Challenges
The Muslim world faces the challenges of war, poor healthcare, poverty and violations of human rights, illiteracy, and lack of progress, dictatorship, lack of political transparency, ethnic conflict, and regional divisions.
Education curriculum:
The problem at the heart of our educational systems are two fold – firstly the lack of a conceptual basis which does not provide a vision behind our educational strategies and secondly, and perhaps as a consequent of the first, that our education’s emphasis is not on analytical, critical and intellectual development of the students. Curriculum in most Muslim countries seems to emphasize on recollection, memorization and not on critical evaluation, analysis and problem solving. This is true of the science, arts and religious curriculum.
IslamicGlory.com reported the following statistics: In the entire Muslim World (57 Muslim Countries), there are around 500 universities. On the other hand, there are 5,758 universities in the USA alone, and 8,407 universities in India.
In a research done by the UNDP in 2004, not one university in the entire Muslim world was featured in the top 500 ranking universities of the world.
Literacy in the western world, predominantly Christian, is 90%, whereas the literacy of the Muslim world is 40%.
Bad Health Conditions:
Bad health conditions of people are due to bad government policies. The good portion of budget is not dedicated to supply people with their basic necessities to maintain a good health. Only the rich part of the population can obtain good health facilities from private sectors meanwhile the poor part of the population has to die due to the lack of good treatment provided at the government sector.
There is a huge gap on the number of sick people to the number of doctors. For example, in Indonesia, there are about 10,000 patients for every one doctor, whereas, in Spain, there are about 500 sick people for every one doctor.
The real fault lies with the Muslim world itself:
Take the examples of 9/11 in New York, 7/7 in London and the Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad, Pakistan. Such events have left a lasting impact on the minds of people and continue to enforce the incorrect perception of Islam being a religion that encourages violence. Muslim Ulema [clergy] appear to propagate prejudice and intolerance not only against other faiths but also against other Muslims as well. Muslims who do not subscribe to their views are immediately branded ‘Kafirs’ [disbelievers] and aggression and violence is promoted against such Muslim communities.
In the Western perception, Sharia Law is seen as law of intolerance which promotes the denial of basic human rights and is intolerant of other faiths. It is also presumed that Sharia Law does not give any rights to women and treats them as second-class citizens. This perception is based on the stories that are published in the press about the practices of honour killing and the treatment of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Hadhrat Abu Ubaidah(ra) when he was the governor of Syria in the time of Hadhrat ‘Umar(ra). In those days a tax was levied on the Syrian Christians and in return they were exempted from military duty and their protection became the duty of the Muslim rulers (even in this, Hadhrat ‘Umar(ra) had forbidden to tax the poor). However, when a moment came when there was a danger of war from the Constantinian forces of the Roman Empire, Hadhrat Abu Ubaidah(ra), as a Governor of Syria, returned all taxes to the Christians telling them that because he might not be able to provide protection, he had no excuse to retain their taxes. The Christian were so impressed by this gesture of honesty and justice that they said with one voice that they prayed that Muslims become victorious over Romans and then come back to rule the country of Syria once again because Muslims not only do justice but also do good to Christians.
The ‘Jihadi’ movements and suicide attackers have disfigured the image of Islam all over the world.
In 1995, the average yearly income per citizen in Pakistan was $300, whereas in Britain it is more than $ 12,000.
Of course there is a problem with the Muslim world, in fact two problems – one the cause of another. The problem with the Muslim world is the decline of the intellect and the rise of shallow thinking, which is causing the second problem – the lack of the implementation of Islam, both at state level, and consequently, at the social level.
The new generations of Muslims, under Western imposed education systems, promoted secularism and nationalism as the solution for the Muslim world.
Many Muslim countries, once given independence, adopted (and copied and pasted) wholesale chunks of their constitutions from France, Belgium and many other European countries.
One clear example of the Muslim world’s problems being sociological, not theological, is evidenced that even non-Muslims, whether for example, Arab or Pakistani Christians (or even Atheists) behave and think indistinguishably from their Muslim neighbours, including the backward practices. The problem then is not one of Muslim theology, but the mentality of people.
So it is a sociological certainty that the Muslim world would consist of ignorance, infighting, sectarianism, wars, superstition (which comes from an inability to understand causality), bad cultural practices and traditions – all ‘justified as Islamic’ by their respected protagonists
Solution to Muslim World problems:
The solution is simple for the Muslim world. The Holy Prophet Muhammad(saw), gave us the five pillars of Islam. Zakat, or spending of one’s wealth in the way of Allah, if truly followed can eliminate poverty from the Muslim world in a very short time thus removing the real reasons of violence and militancy. Allah the Almighty has blessed the Muslim world with immense wealth and resources. If only this God-given wealth were used properly, in accordance with the guidance given in the Holy Qur’an and as practised by our beloved Prophet Muhammad(saw) and his rightly guided Khulafa! They practised the true Jihad-e-Akbar – that is, Jihad against inequity, against social injustice and against poverty. The time is now for the Muslim Ummah to practise this Jihad-e-Akbar once again.
Where Does It Come From?
As far as I know, “Islam is the solution” is a saying that one of the Islamic reformist groups is taking as its slogan, but I didn’t realize that it has reached that far to India.
Since this motto was coined, a lot of controversy has been made around it. Some think that it is rather idealistic emotional motto that has nothing to do with reality.
Others think that it is an inapplicable principle based on an abstract spiritual idea which does not conform to the materialistic nature of the existing problems, and they wonder how a religious conception can help out with such deteriorating economic, political and social realities.
They accuse the slogan of being a sentimental maneuver designed to dupe Muslim people who are attracted to anything related to Islam.
Islam and Value System
I assume that those who can not perceive the relationship between Islam as a strong value system and the contemporary crises are not quite aware of the nature of such crises. Therefore, it becomes necessary first to identify the problems which are in need of Islam as a solution.
Almost all Islamic nations do suffer from the same syndromes of backwardness and underdevelopment which are manifested in facts like poverty, illiteracy, health problems, dictatorship, low cultural awareness, absence of national sovereignty, violation of human rights, misunderstanding and misusing religion, and so on.
In fact such crises are not of a materialistic nature, as they appear to be, but are rather of a moral one as a result of the devastation of the whole value system either on the level of the rulers or the citizens themselves.
Many values which are essential to the advancement of any nation such as the value of seriousness and perfection in work, loyalty to one’s nation, justice, mutual respect among people, word of honor, compassion, sacrifice, courage, modesty, appreciation of beauty and cleanliness, and so on, have been lost leaving the Muslim nation into a terrible state of moral vacuum.
Law + Application= Success
To overcome a problem of any kind we need laws to establish civilized societies and regulate the relationship amongst citizens and between the rulers and citizens themselves to be based on respected rights and responsibilities. We need also application in order to put the laws into effect.
As for the laws and constitutions, the Muslim world is not in want of models. The models are quite many. Some Muslim countries choose the Islamic paradigm; others have the modern western paradigms either republican or monarch, and so on.
But do we really have any application of those paradigms? You can hardly see any civilized societies in the Islamic countries in the complete sense. Because the theory is not the problem which needs a solution, as the problem lies in the implementation which requires a great deal of ethics and self censorship on the part of both the ruler and the citizens.
The law is not enough if not supported by a strong value system to make it viable and you will not be able to accomplish the constitutional except through the moral.
It is easy to challenge laws, but it is impossible for the true believers who have faith in Allah and the Hereafter to wrong others. They know that Allah is watching over them and will judge them for every minute mistake they do.
They will be judged for everything either on the simple individual level like stealing, hurting neighbors, domestic violence towards spouses, neglecting elderly parents, taking salaries for no work in return, messing up public properties, cowardice, preventing the children from going to schools, or discriminating against girls in favor of boys, for example.
Likewise, they will be judged for things on the more complex communal level of rulers like coming to power, waging wars for personal glories and killing millions of innocent civilians in other countries to steal their wealth, lying to people, oppressing people, and committing atrocities against opponents.
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