Dr Murad Wilfried Hofmann,
Ex-German diplomat and author of ‘Islam: the Alternative’, ‘Islam 2000’,
‘Voyage to Makkah’, reverted to Islam in 1980. This article is an
excerpt from his recent lecture on ‘Islam and the Future of the World’
delivered in New Delhi and printed in the ‘Radiance Viewsweekly’. (Editor)
Any objective study of the history of mankind will show that man cannot
but pose the questions: where do I come from? Why am I here? Where do I
go from here? These unavoidable questions make a philosopher of each of
us, whether we know it or not.
The search for answers to these fundamental issues have produced many different
myths, foundational legends, and other visions. In the end, these visions
– attempts at interpreting the world – developed into religions proper.
The oldest surviving ones we know are Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, not
to forget different forms of Shamanism.
Polytheism arose when people associated
supernatural forces with individual aspects of nature – thunder and lightning,
sun and fire, fertility and death. In a way, such polytheism is peaceful
because it has no universalistic aspirations; everybody is content with
his particular family of divinities.
Nevertheless, in polytheism there
is a built-in trend towards monotheism. When one tribe conquers his neighbouring
tribe, the victor imports his deity and relegates the local deities to
a lower rank. We had such a situation in pre-Islamic Arabia where secondary
goddesses – Lat, Manat and ‘Uzza
– were worshipped
in addition to al-Ilah, the supreme deity whom the Muslims address
as Allah.
Religious history entered a new stage
when monotheism appeared, first – for a very short period in Egypt during
the reign of Echnaturn – and later with the Israelites. The Jewish idea
that there is only one God Who is their tribal God, is of course a contradiction
in itself. If there is one single God, it must be everybody’s, not God
of a particular Chosen People. It was therefore only logical that Jesus
(sws), and after him St. Paul, insisted on the universality of the belief
in Jahwe, the One and Only God.
At that moment, with the advent of
religious universalism, mankind entered one of the bloodiest phases of
its history. The Christians thought in terms of One God and One Church,
outside of which there is no salvation. To this dogma called in Latin extra
ecclesiam
nulla salus, the Catholic Church hung on for 1900 years, until the
2nd Vatican Council in 1965/66. On the basis of this dogma,
Christianity – supposedly a religion of love – became aggressively virulent.
It engaged in the physical suppression and elimination of any other denomination
or religion, be they Christian in outlook, Jewish, or Muslim. Thus Germanic
tribes were massacred for Christ; Muslims were slaughtered in al-Quds
during the Crusades; witches and so-called heretics were burned; Orthodox
Eastern Christians were outlawed; and all the Muslims and Jews in Spain
expelled.
It is obvious that during this painful
phase, lasting beyond the 17th century, the Christian religion
was first used as an ideology, ie, as a political instrument for the legitimization
and motivation of power projection. To some extent the same thing happened
to Islam. It, too, became a power-conscious empire, expanding in all directions
from Madinah to Damascus, Baghdad, Morocco and Istanbul. True, there
was a religious basis for these wars which led Muslims all the way to Southern
France and the suburbs of Vienna. Therefore, for that period only, it is
not entirely wrong to project on to Islam the Christian notion of ‘holy
war’ (sacrum bellum) for what we call lesser jihad (al-jihadal-saghir).
Whether we like it or not, Islam, too, was used as an ideology, an instrument
for power projection.
But only from the 18th
century onwards, following the proclamation of the Age of Reason and the
Project Modernity, do we enter the real ideological era. To the extent
that religion disappeared from public consciousness and view after the
Enlightenment, ideologies functionally replaced them. Secular ideologies
divorced from religion, now became pseudo-religions. This was as well true
of the 19th century romanticism as it was of positivism, also
called scienticism. Nevertheless, Marxism – as developed by Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – may be considered as the
first modern ideology, as its very prototype.
Marxism posed as a complete world
view, a monistic, materialist ‘Weltanschauung’ which through its dialectical
Materialism (Diamat) explained the functioning of nature and through its
Historical Materialism (Histomat) explained the functioning of society.
Marxism, like a religion, tried to engage and control its adherents totally
with a moral commitment worthy of any cause. Clearly, there were many religious
overtones within an otherwise atheistic environment. The Communist Manifesto
and Das Kapital became holy scripts: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin
turned into Apostles of the socialist faith. The Communist Party acted
like an infallible church and the Politbureau members as its priests. Heaven
was replaced by the wonderful vision of a classless future where everyone
would receive according to his requirements and work would turn into fun.
The different branches of Fascism,
in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Greece simply repackaged this socialist
vision with a strong dosis (dose) of racist chauvinism – justifying
and motivating the most atrocious crimes against hated outsiders, be they
Jews, Gypsies, or Eastern European Slavs. Again, religion was ever present.
‘Mein Kampf’ became a holy scripture in Germany and Adolf Hilter
a saviour who would lead the country into a prosperous future: an empire
lasting 1000 years. Again it was the Nazi Party which, like a church, determined
what was right and what was wrong, and SS-troupers were organized like
religious orders.
In reaction of Marxism and Fascism,
counter-ideologies grew up strongly. I am referring here to Western liberalism,
incorporating capitalism, and French type laicism – the complete elimination
of religion from public life. In the post-colonialist Arab world, every
one of the Western ideologies mentioned was tired; nationalism, liberalism,
fascism, socialism – and all failed miserably.
In view of all this, the 20th
century can be called the ideological century.
Typical Feature of 19th/20th
Century Ideologies
We should now focus on one common element typical for all 19th
and 20th century ideologies: they were all materialistic, secular
in outlook, without any transcendental vision. Therefore, none of them
could answer the basic human questions of wherefrom? why? and whereto?
During and shortly after the Enlightenment,
thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegal believed that man, liberated from religion, could master his world
with his rational faculties alone. Rationalism would guarantee in the end
a prosperous, peaceful, humanitarian world.
We know better now, and are not surprised.
We know that the Project Modernity failed miserably in its endeavour to
tame destructive human instincts by reason alone. Instead of post-religious
paradise on earth, we had the most incredibly savage world wars, chemical
and nuclear warfare, the holocaust, and ethnic ‘cleansing’ – to name only
a few disasters.
We are not surprised because it is
obvious that only religions can motivate people to such an extent that
they can overcome their base instincts, their sexual desires and their
monumental egotism. When man became the measure of all thing, dethroning
God, all laws were at man’s disposal. In the process, the very idea of
divine law was discarded, but all efforts finding a binding ‘natural law’
failed.
Shrewd western observers already a
generation ago came to the bitter conclusion that mankind will destroy
itself, and the globe with it, unless it rediscovers religion. Deniel Bell,
Harvard professor of sociology, already in 1976 discovered that capitalism
in the long run is self-destructive because its very economic success poisons
the virtues on which the economy is built. In his book
The Cultural
Contradictions of Capitalism Bell therefore pleaded for the re-adoption
of some sort of religion, even if one had to invent a new one for the purpose
of re-establishing morality.
Equally perceptive was another devastating
critique of Western civilization, written by the American ex-diplomat William
Ophuls. In his Requiem for Modern Politics – the Tragedy of the Enlightenment
and the Challenges of the new Millennium in 1997 predicted that
the Occident will collapse, like Communism before it, as a result of its
lack of a compelling vision.
Both observers rediscovered what is
a banality: that no human civilization ever survived without spirituality.
Against this background, it is of
the highest significance that Islam made an unexpected, spectacular comeback
as from the 70s of the 20th century. What could one expect from
a religion which had slumbered in a state of stagnation for the last 400
years, personalities like Sirhindi, Shah Waliullah and Muhammad
Ibn Wahhab notwithstanding? What could one expect from a religion virtually
all of whose adherents had been colonized by European powers? Western orientalists
could not be blamed when they studied Islam just as biologists do when
studying a disappearing species threatened to become defunct. Islam was
of merely historical interest for them. Max Henning, when issuing his translation
of the Qur’an into German wrote as late as 1901 that ‘Islam has
obviously played out its political role.’
This was everybody’s view. Nobody
considered Jamalu’l-Din Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduhu
as harbingers of a new Islamic spring. Nobody foresaw the impact people
like Muhammad Iqbal, Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb,
or Mawdudi and Muhammad Asad might have for a world wide
Islamic Sahwa and Nahda.
But today, unbelievably, there is
not a single country on this globe in which one does not find active Muslims,
from Korea to Columbia, from Iceland to New Zealand. Muslims – only 1/7th
of mankind 100 years ago – now make up 1/5th of the world population.
There are now representative mosques in places like London, Paris, Rome,
Vienna, Lisbon, Zagreb, New York and Los Angeles. More importantly: thanks
to labour migration and the attraction of Western universities, there are
now many millions of Muslims active in Europe and in the United States;
everywhere Islam is becoming the second biggest religious community. You
cannot open a newspaper or turn on a TV-program today without running into
Islamic issues. Now, and now only, the wealth of classical Islamic literature
is available in all major European languages. The Qur’an has become
the most frequently translated and most often recited book on earth.
Since all this happened during the
ideological 20th century, since some Islamic movements are primarily
pursuing political aims, and since some Muslims out of sheer desperation
are driven to use violence – for all these reasons Islam, too, is often
now referred to as an ideology. This is true inasmuch as Islam offers a
set of ideas also for running affairs in al-dunya. But we should
avoid referring to our faith as an ideology because that term now smacks
of politics and this-worldliness.
Be that as it may, what counts is
the fact that at the beginning of the 3rd millennium there are
only two worldviews left which compete for the hearts and minds of Western
man: post-modern Secularism and Islam. That is the alternative, and there
are no other option in sight, even though Buddhism attracts a few occidental
intellectuals here and there who would like to have another chance in another
life.
Thus we have arrived at the one-hundred
thousand dollar question: to whom belongs the future? The outcome will
be determined by the answer given to another question: will the 21st
century become a religious one or not? Currently, it looks as if religions
were on their way out, more so in Europe, though, than in the United States.
People are leaving the Christian churches in droves. And these churches
even help speed up their demise by making many compromises, one after the
other, with the spirit and fashions of our time. Thus you have homosexual
priests, abortion of children as and when you like, female bishops and
virtually no period of fasting any longer. Believe me, the churches are
selling out that way. No wonder that a near-majority of the ‘faithfuls’
(and even some Protestant clergy) no longer believe in the divinity of
Jesus (sws) or life after death.
However, this is not the entire picture
because there is still much vagabonding and privatized religion around.
Religion is seeking new niches for its existence away from the established
churches. Go into any occidental bookshop and you will see that the esoterics
section is by far larger than the one of religion. People still want to
know their future, be introduced to all secrets, and become happy. These
basically religious desires have made whole industries boom. People experiment
with anything: Shamanism, Celtic Priestesses, Satanic Cults, drug induced
ego-trips, Indian gurus, fantastic diets and health fads, and even ecstatic
Tango dancing.
My diagnosis is that these people,
mostly from younger generations, are seekers of religion in transit. They
are sick of the meaninglessness, the spiritual vacuum in their lives, and
looking for certainty in a world in which ‘anything goes’. They have been
raised without restrictions and are craving for leadership, real values,
and reliable norms. In short, these people represent an enormous religious
potential. They may turn the 21st century into a religious one.
The question therefore is: will Islam
be perceived as a better choice than Christianity before? And will worshipping
together be preferred to the private type of religion now so prevalent?
As for the first question, it is my considered opinion that Christianity
in Europe is beyond repair. I am equally convinced that the Occident cannot
get its act together through an artificial new religion, an eclectic Esperanto
religion. It won’t work because religion presupposes authority beyond doubt.
Only a religion built on revelation can qualify.
As for the latter question, I am rather
positive because the young generation is again cherishing togetherness
and getting increasingly worried about the fate of ‘singles’ as they grow
older. It is indeed one of the major assets of the young that Islam comes
together with a family, the Ummah, and that brotherhood and sisterhood
in the Islamic community is more real, more touchable, than the idea of
loving-thy-neighbour is among Christians. If the emotional cooling of Western
societies (not the promised ‘Greening of American’ – as Charles Reiches
envisions) is a fact, as I think it is, then the Islamic Ummah in
offering warmth and compassion fulfils the basic need of contemporary Western
kids.
The autistic nature of cyberspace,
the sexually over-heated atmosphere in which Westerners live, and the brutal
competitiveness of life in the West – from school to job, from job to sexual
relations – with the constant pressure to over-achieve have led to a situation
where the average American is consulting at least one psychiatrist, their
so-called ‘shrink’. Such people cannot fail to be impressed by the obvious
fact that most Muslims are self-content, unstressed, not under undue time
pressure, in short in harmony with God, themselves and their environment.
For all these reasons I feel that many people, tired to their daily rat
race routine, will be eager to discover more about Islam.
Whether people will in fact discover
this religion depends a lot on how the Muslims present their Islam, or
misrepresent it. True, it is Allah Who guides those on the right path whom
He wills. And many a convert – like Jeffrey Lang in San Francisco (author
of Struggling To Surrender and Even Angels Ask) – has been
sucked into the fold without any previous contact with Muslims, exclusively
by reading the Qur’an. But on the whole it is Muslims whom Allah
uses as His Da‘wah instruments.
Let me first address what the Muslims
should do in order to propagate Islam. This recommendation can be summed
up in one sentence: present Islam as a major contribution to the healing
of Western society and civilisation and as a precious medication for the
most crucial woes which are about to destroy the Occident. I am calling
for assertiveness and pro-active measures, not for an apologetic posture
and defensive reactions. Not to appear as someone who is asking for something
but as someone who has to offer something.
And to offer we have a lot beyond
what I mentioned already:
a) The Muslim concept of God – the
incomparable One and Unique Divinity, both immanent and transcendent, beyond
time and space, the only being that has real Being – is the only concept
which will satisfy the educated modern man. Tawhid, pristine monotheism
without any frills, is our major asset!
b) No civilization can survive for long the break-down of family structures
as we observe it currently. The family is virtually under assault, even
by the state that does everything to promote extra-marital relationships.
The divorce rates are appallingly high. Half of the households in major
towns are now run by ‘singles’, including women who want a child but no
husband. A large sector of children is growing up without a father. How
unbalanced many kids are shows in their growing propensity to violence.
Their respect for elders and the family is so low that now it is even possible
in America for children to sue for divorce from their unloved parents.
It is obvious that Muslim families are also under strain, given the impact
of globalization, economic pressures and the influence of television. Still,
however, Muslim families in general are much more tightly knit and provide
much more security than the average Western one. This asset Muslims must
bring to bear.
c) The second existential danger to Western society is posed by the spread
of all sorts of addictions – to cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, LSD and other
drugs, but also to TV and the internet. One can say without overstating
the case that the West is structurally addicted. It is so sad to see people
who cannot cope with life without that glass, that pill or that cigarette.
Such people are in fact practicing a modern form of Shirk. They
are slaves to something else but God – and that would become even more
glaringly clear if they attempted to abide by the rules of Ramadan:
they can’t because they are no longer their own bosses.
Muslims can be proud in demonstrating
that they are structurally sober: always ready, always alert, never with
a mind or their language blurred, never guilty of fatal car accidents under
the influence. Hardly anything shows more clearly that Islam is an alternative
way of life, capable of saving the West from self-destruction in delirium.
d) Western societies are all threatened
from within the various forms of ethnic prejudice, racism, chauvinism,
and the discrimination of other religions. Their slave history is still
visible in the United States. All the many wars fought until recently in
Europe and in America were due to such prejudices.
Against this background, it must seem
like heaven to responsible Westerners when they realize that Islam, at
least in theory and mostly also in practice, is the one religion which
has solved the problems of race and religious pluralism: by making piety,
and not colour, important; by accepting anybody in the same Ummah;
and by tolerating other religions whole-heartedly.
When Malcolm X discovered the multi-racial
nature of the Ummah, that was for him a revelation.
Let us make the best of this virtue
by living it, by making colour, caste, language and similar distinctions
irrelevant among us. Millions of Afro-Americans have chosen Islam last
not least because Bilal (rta) was black. Why should not millions
follow for similar considerations?
Equally impressive is of course the
manifesto of religious pluralism contained in the Qur’an (5:48 and
2:256). This foundational tolerance – commanded and practiced 1400 years
before the modern World Ecumenical Movement – is so extraordinary in the
eyes of Western people that they cannot but applaud. All we need to do
is to point out that Greece remained Orthodox during 500 years to Turkish
rule – and then ask where the Muslims are in Spain, where they lived for
800 years before being expelled.
e) Young people feel emancipated,
and want to remain so. They hate hierarchies, sacraments administering
clergymen, mysterious dogmas, and anything that reminds them of the church
institutions. Such people are pleasantly surprised when they find out that
Islam knows no church, no Pope, no sacraments, and no mind-boggling dogmas
like divine incarnation, trinity, salvation on the cross, or hereditary
sin. They are thrilled to learn that there are no more emancipated believers
than Muslims since they do not tolerate any intercession, be it by priests
or saints, when they face Allah, fully individually, in their prayer. They
are likely to be as impressed when learning that each and every Muslim,
regardless of rank, is qualified ad hoc to serve as an imam.
f) You may be surprised to hear that
Muslim discipline in matters of sex strikes a positive note with many young
people nowadays who lean towards modern ‘value conservatism’. Many a Western
woman who feels hunted down by men in the street as a mere sex object admires
Muslims at whose dress and composure send the clear signal that they are
not cheap game. Given the ongoing exploitation of women in pornography,
fashion shows, beauty contests, and sexually explicit commercials, many
Western women, partisans of women’s emancipation, now understand that their
Muslim sisters pursue the same aim – female dignity – but do so more successfully.
In the context, the strict Muslim
position on abortion – ruling in out except if the mother’s life is in
clear and present danger – commands more and more respect in ‘pro life’
Western circles who deplore that even Catholic bishops nowadays permit
abortion for all kinds of reasons. Islam is seen as taking a clear-cult
pro life position in favour of the child.
The Muslim position on homosexuality
also commands respect with the silent majority in the West who condemns
the new Occidental policy of treating same-gender relations as an optional
life style, one ‘orientation’ among others. Many a Western observer fears
that the wholesale public up-grading of homosexuality, including homosexual
marriages, is a symptom of decadence, indicative of a declining civilization.
Such people are scandalized by the existence of two entirely homosexual
city quarters in San Francisco. No wonder that they sympathize with the
Muslim attitude: to show compassion with seemingly ‘born’ homosexuals while
refusing to treat homosexuality as such as a normal affair in public.
In the occident, the pendulum constantly
seems to swing back and forth between a Puritanical demonization of sex
(and even marriage) and sexual licentiousness, without limits or taboos.
Thoughtful Western people are therefore impressed by the more balanced
and sober Muslim approach to the sexual nature and needs of man. Islam
does not sanctify marriage by raising it to the level of a Christian ‘sacrament’
but, with common sense, treats this union rather as a possible non-permanent
contract. At the same time, however, Islam considers the sexual life between
married partners as ‘Ibadah, ie an act of devotion and worship.
People who have been able to maintain a sense for what is natural of man
– for his Fitrah – may well realize that Islam’s approach to sexuality
makes good sense.
g) Even in the field of economics,
Islam might be perceived as a saving grace. At first sight, the prohibition
of riba is likely to be considered naïve and highly unpractical.
But then people may have second thoughts when realizing that this prohibition
may help defend the very spirit of entrepreneurship on which capitalism
is built. How is that? By insisting on profit-and-loss-sharing financial
arrangements, Islam fights the saturation and stagnation which sets in
when capital is mainly used in risk-free modalities.
h) There are quite a few other features
of Islam which might attract Western people to this faith, including the
health aspects of the Ramadan fasting.
But all these aspects, in the end,
boil down to the most basic difference between Occident and Orient: the
quality of life symbolized in different attitudes towards quantity and
quality. The Occident obviously cherishes quantitative aspects to a point
where nothing is of real value, i.e., money value that cannot be quantified.
In fact, there is a general denial of non-quantifiable values and merely
spiritual truths. Seen from this standpoint, Western man’s life is more
oriented toward having while the Muslim’s life is more dedicated to being.
The Orient, including the Islamic
world, is certainly sensitive to the pleasures of consumption, transported
through globalization. But, in this region, qualitative aspects of life
are still frequently valued above quantitative ones. Indeed, that quality
of life – composure, leisure, contemplation, friendship, hospitality –
as a specifically Islamic concern should ring a bell with many Westerners
frightened by crass materialism.
As we have seen, there are a lot of
reasons why Islam should and could be perceived as an antidote against
most Western short-comings. Thus, Islam might become the leading ideology
of the 21st century.
But there are also factors working
in the opposite direction. Muslims have not yet realized anywhere a true
Muslim economic system. Their positions on the decisive questions of democracy,
human rights, and women’s rights are still too vague to be convincing.
And their educational systems in several respects are still medieval.
In addition, their behaviour is frequently
counteracting their Da‘wah efforts. In the West, many Muslim immigrants,
especially if illiterate, are hardly able to project their faith. They
naturally tend to form tightly knit ethnic groups, thereby causing a sort
of ghettoization. By defending the civilization of their home country –
its food, dress, music, social mores, and language – they turn Islam into
something of folkloristic interest only for their environment.
Worse, many immigrants seem only interested
in their countries of origin, to which they want to return at the earliest.
A Turk in Germany who wants to re-Islamize Turkey is of course pretty much
lost for Da‘wah in his guest country.
Inasmuch as some do try to propagate
Islam in the West, they frequently give it such a rigid, legalistic, even
Talmudic appearance that Western people are startled about the absence
of spirituality. So much form seems to be valued over substance, and so
often marginal issues seem to be treated like central ones.
For all these reasons, the mere presence
of Muslim guest workers in terms of religion is making too little impact
on their Western neighbours.
And there is one more factor that
may keep Islam from becoming dominant: the human talent to avoid issues
by conveniently looking the other way. A sick man – and the Occident is
sick – must not only admit to being sick; he must swallow the prescribed
pills rather than leaving them on his night table. Insight is one thing,
acting upon it another. As the former German State President Roman Herzog
put it: ‘our problem is not cognitive but one of application’.
The
Qur’an abounds with stories
of nations of old who failed to read the signs on the wall, rejecting all
warnings until their civilizations collapsed in tragedy. It is possible
that the contemporary Western world too will not have the courage and determination
to change direction in mid-course and opt for the Islamic way of life.
If so, after having triumphed over Communism only recently, the Occident,
too, may go down in an orgy of self-destruction: as a victim of its internal
contradictions of which the most destructive one is the deification of
man.
This is bound to happen unless the
West re-admits the Sacred, Transcendental Reality, Allah that is, and starts
all over to live in accordance with the absolute values and divine norms
as revealed in the Qur’an and reinforced by the Sunnah of
Allah’s last and final Prophet (sws).
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