The Revolution of the Prophet (SAW) - Pre-requisites and stages of the Revolutionary Process

The Pre requisites and Stages of the Revolutionary Process:

The only example of a Complete Revolution : The Revolution of the Holy Prophet (SAW).

A complete revolution is composed of 6 or 7 stages:

1. Revolutionary Ideology:

The first prerequisite of any revolution is a revolutionary ideology and a revolutionary philosophy that will hit like an axe on the pre-existing Politico-Socio-Economic system. And unless it has the bite to slash through the political system, slash through the economic system and slash through the social system it is not a revolutionary ideology; it is merely a sermon or an academic discourse. 

Secondly, if the revolutionary philosophy and ideology is new then it is an easy matter as regards its presentation. The new ideology will devise its own terminology and determine their meanings itself. But if it is an old ideology then its modern version will have to be presented and its explanation will have to be according to the modern terminology of the present era compatible with the concurrent level of knowledge and intellectual achievements. 

Then this ideology should be spread and made popular and for that all available means of communication of the present time should be utilized. Formerly one could walk through streets and bazaars gathering people and invite them to a cause or people would be invited for a dinner and the message would be conveyed to them. But now one can hold assemblies, address meetings and write books. Hence, along with the print media and the electronic media all means of communication available should be utilized for publicizing the revolutionary ideology.

2. Organization:

At the second stage, the people who accept the revolutionary ideology, should be organized as a collective entity. There are two conditions for the formation of this group or party. 

Firstly, it should be a well knit group with very strong discipline because when a confrontation occurs and you enter the field to put an end to the current system, the elite who have interests associated with the system, will stand up against you to crush you to ensure the continuity of the system. That is why you will require a military discipline against all odds. Merely a mob will not be able to stand against them, rather what will be required is a strong group which will be organized on the principle of "listen and obey" and their discipline should be such that:

Their' s not to reason why?

Their's but to do and die!

Secondly, the rank and cadre of its workers within the party would be determined on the basis of their loyalty to, and sacrifices for, the movement and not that a person enjoys a high rank in the party because he is a Brahman and if he is a Sudra he should be low on the hierarchy. If the latter is the case then the parry that we are talking bout is not a revolutionary organization. In a revolutionary organization the rank and status of a person is determined by the depth of his commitment, his association with the movement and loyalty. The extent of his sacrifices will also be taken into consideration. It is quite possible that a Sudra may reach the top cadre in a Communist party and a Brahman might be in the lower rank.

3. Training (Tarbiyyah)

The third stage is that of training the workers. At this stage the revolutionary ideology should not be allowed to lapse from the minds of the workers of the revolutionary organization for even a short span of time. For it is on this ideology that the whole revolutionary struggle depends. If the revolutionary ideology has unwaveringly and solidly taken root in the mind then the will to act will also be sustained but if that ideology were to fade away from the minds of the workers then the passion to act will also disappear and steam away. Alongside this they should be trained and inured to discipline so that they listen and obey. This is not an easy task; in fact it requires a great deal of fortitude and a strict regime of training and inurement. 

But the habituation of acceptance and obedience is not an easy task. One's own ego becomes a very potent and insurmountable obstacle in this process; in fact more than the ego it is the inflated egoism and extreme ego-centeredness that becomes a hurdle. 

The third target of revolutionary training will be to develop a zeal amongst the workers of the party to sacrifice everything for the sake of the revolutionary ideology. A revolution can not be brought about without this zeal and ardour. 

These three are the most fundamental and essential components of the revolutionary training process. Apart from these the fourth component of this training process for the revolution by means of which you wish to institute a particular system is additional. If the development of the spiritual facet of the human life is required in the ideology then the workers must be trained spiritually as well. Without the spiritual training of the workers how can spirituality permeate the revolution?

4. Passive Resistance

This is so to speak the 4th stage but is actually initiated alongside the first stage. Passive resistance means that the workers of the revolutionary movement should remain steadfast to their principle or stand, should not retreat from their stance but should not retaliate in any way to the violence and persecution they face. There is a very logical reason for this. First of all, conflict is created in a society by these revolutionary people. Otherwise the people are generally quite content and satisfied with the existing state of affairs. There were the rich and there were the poor; the poor accepted their lot in life as fate and the rich were living in the lap of luxury. The slave is fulfilling his duties, he knows that this is his fate, God has made him a slave. This is why Marx has said that religion is the opium of masses, because generally the masses remain contented for whatever their lot in life may be and do not seek to stir a ripple in the prevailing conditions. In other words, they do not rebel against the system. 

Hence, the scenario is much like your throwing a stone in a placid pond and creating a frenzy of waves where there were previously no unrest or disruption. Likewise, revolutionaries raise the voice of dissent against the established system and assert that this system is wrong and that it is an exploitative and repressive system. It is creating discrimination among the people. So who throws the stone? Obviously those who advocated the revolution! Now when the stone hits the water it is bound to generate a few waves. Hence, the waves that rise in society are a natural consequence of the revolutionary message. Even this reaction has different levels and stages. 

There are two very important stages in its retaliation. In the first stage an effort is focused on the character assassination of the person who spread the word about the revolution. In one way or another they try to tarnish his personality, to shatter his determination and to subdue his will power. Hence the main focus of violence and persecution becomes the person of the instigator and preacher of the revolution. Initially this persecution is verbal; that 'this person is mad, he is crazy, our system is just fine and has been in operation for centuries, it has been enforced since the days of our forefathers and he says that it is wrong. He has either lost his mind or is under the influence of some evil spirit'. If this verbal persecution is successful in crushing the preacher's will power then his determination will simply give away. Now no one else has to be troubled anymore. If the root, the origin and source, of a tree is cut off the tree will automatically wither away and die. But if the revolutionary preacher manages to stay, survives the attempts of character assassination and has not retaliated and the opponents see that the message is spreading and people are rallying around him then the second stage of the retaliation begins in which verbal persecution gives way to physical violence, torture and persecution. 

And this time the target or focus of persecution will not simply be the preacher hut all workers of the revolutionary movement particularly the weak and the youth from the respected families. Now they are physically abused, deprived of food and kicked out of their homes. They are jailed, murdered and made to face the firing squad where hundreds of them are killed. Now, at this point Passive Resistance is required so that all the physical violence and torture is tolerated without any retaliatory action. This is so because initially the number of followers of the revolutionary party is small. If this small group of followers is to retaliate with violence the established order would have the right to crush them, thereby finishing them off. But if they do not retaliate then they will still be made the targets of such violence and persecution but the establishment will not gain the right to crush them completely. In this manner they will gain time to act so that they can get their message across to the maximum number of people and expand their organizational base. They will only be able to confront the existing system if they have the power to do so and to acquire this power they need time which I call "buying time". Hence at this stage they should not even raise their hands in self-defense. This mode of action will have a very important consequence for the followers of the movement in that they will gain the sympathies of the public — the silent majority. 

You see in a society where there are Chaudhris, Sardars, Industrialists and Feudal Lords there is also the common man. The Chaudhris, Sardars, landlords, the capitalists and industrialists think that the revolutionary struggle is against them. That is not how the public views and understands the situation but they do not have the guts and courage to stand shoulder to shoulder with the revolutionaries; they cannot even speak up for them. These are the people whom we call the silent majority. The majority of the public is silent but they are not blind and deaf They can see what is happening; they question as to why are the revolutionaries being persecuted? Why are they being killed? Why are their houses being blown to bits? Why are their entire families being tortured? — They think about and ponder on what is their crime? Have they committed some kind of theft or dacoity? Nothing nothing at all! - they only believe in an ideology and wish to remove cruelty, injustice and repression from the society. Gradually, the common man starts feeling that this group is truly being subjected to unjustified and outright cruelty. Hence quite imperceptibly the sympathies of the people are turned towards the revolutionaries, thus exemplifying the wise adage: "He who conquers the hearts is the true conqueror".

5. Active Resistance

The fifth stage of the Revolutionary struggle is that of putting up active resistance. This is a time for making an extremely crucial decision and a test of the leadership's intelligence. It is very essential to determine the appropriate time for initiating this phase. If you are not fully prepared and you take the plunge prematurely you will be wiped out. On the other hand if in spite of being ready you delay in taking the step, you loose an opportunity. In other words - 'You have missed the bus'. Hence whether you loose the opportunity to initiate the forward action for the revolution or take the final initiative prematurely, in both cases you will be unsuccessful The decision to start active resistance should be made when it is felt that our numerical strength is enough. The meaning of enough will be different in different circumstances In a small country where the entire population consists of one billion people, perhaps fifty thousand people would be considered sufficient whereas in a country with a population of 15 billion people, 3 to 4 million trained and disciplined members would be required. 

Secondly, at this stage they should abide by the discipline to which they have been trained. They should be inured to the principle of 'listen and obey' that is to say, they will only act when commanded to act and will stop only when commanded to stop. They should not be the sort of revolutionaries who initially do not act at all and if they do act, they do not stop. A case in point would be the movement for the implementation of Shariah initiated by Sufi Mohammad Sahib in Malakand in which the followers fired bullets prior to any specific command from the leader. Then his followers had made pickets on the mountains and when their leader commanded them to come down the general consensus amongst the followers about him was that he had betrayed his principles. Hence this was not an organized group, it was not disciplined. In fact it was a mob that had responded to an emotional appeal. In this regard a third condition is that the revolutionary workers should be prepared to sacrifice their life and wealth for the sake of the mission. Only when these three conditions have been fulfilled the Revolutionary Movement can move forward from the stage of Passive Resistance into the stage of Active Resistance. 

Now you must be very clear as to what the term Active Resistance means. For explaining this I will give examples from outside the Islamic context for die time tang. I am not going to give any example from the seerah of the Prophet (SAW). This is because you can, by means of Modern terms and terminology, form and draw out a Sketch and then we shall add concrete details from the life of the Prophet (SAW) into this sketch. Let this be very clear that I claim no other source for gaming information about the correct methodology of bringing about a revolution than the life of the Prophet (SAW). 

Active Resistance is when you prod a weak and ailing nerve of the society even though you have neither out rightly or directly challenged it and neither have you given an ultimatum. For instance it was Gandhi who for the first time raised the slogan of "non-violent non-cooperation against the British rulers. In fact Gandhi and his followers maintained that we will not indulge in violence or killing and carnage but we will boycott and not use the cloth made in the mills of England. Instead we will use our spinning wheels, weave our own cotton, prepare khaddar and wear that. They declared the spinning wheel to be their national symbol. Just think about a nation and an organized party within that nation that it declared the spinning wheel their symbol in the 20th century. Now can there be a law that you have to wear English cloth only? And did they harm anyone? Nobody's life or wealth was harmed but it created a frenzy in the corridors of power because the mills in Manchester started closing down. India was a huge market for British textile industry and there was a heavy trade of cotton, woolen cloth and Muslin from England here. But now it was only khaddar that was being used by the nationalist protestors. This was the first step of Active Resistance against the British. The British rightly guessed from this step taken by Gandhi that something serious was about to happen. The second step taken by this party at this stage was the Civil Disobedience Movement based on non-violence: 'we will not perpetrate violence, we will not indulge in killing and plunder but will break the law'. And now consider the manner in which the laws were broken. They argued: 'The sea belongs to the Parmatma, the Parmatma has created salt in the sea, we are simply going to extract the salt from the sea created by the Parmatma. We have not said anything derogatory to anyone'. But covertly and indirectly they had actually challenged the British Government's Taxation Policy because there was an excise duty levied on salt. Hence batons were charged, prominent leaders were beaten up and injured and jails were crammed on a large scale even though the members of the party themselves did not resort to violence of any kind.

6. Armed Conflict

After the stage of Active resistance, the sixth and last stage will be that of direct confrontation. That is there will be an actual physical clash between the defenders of the existing system and the revolutionaries. Because when you have started Active Resistance you have basically challenged the whole system. Hence, the dominant repressive system and its custodians will go all out in taking measures to crush the followers of the revolutionary movement. It is at this stage that the revolutionary movement will be put to the test. If the movement has prepared properly for the revolution, the organization and training of the members was done along the right lines and steps were taken timely then this movement will be successful. And if steps were taken in the context of Active Resistance without prior preparation: neither is there a sufficient number of the followers nor had they been trained or groomed to the discipline of "listen and obey"; the movement will as a natural consequence fail. In other words after the clash it will be either the throne or the bier, there is no middle position. There can be many forms of this conflict, I will mention these later. If you would like to understand in a poetic form whatever I have said so far with regard to the methodology of revolution, you can understand this by means of the following Persian couplet of Allama Iqbal : 

In this couplet Allama Iqbal is explaining a dialogue (in Paradise Lost) with God and presenting his viewpoint. He imagines that, God asked me 'O! Iqbal, is the world to which I have sent you agreeable to you? Do you like it? I replied, "No, I do not like it"! Over here there is cruelty, the poor and the deprived are being crushed. Here the capitalist sucks the blood running in the sinews of the labourer. And due to the injustice of the feudal landlord the harvest of the farmer is perishing. His children are hungry and his family is not benefiting from whatever he has harvested. This is an epic poem by Allama Iqbal in which he has raised the cry for a revolution. So, Iqbal says when I replied that I do not like this world of yours, it is not favourable to me; Allah (SWT) then decreed "Barham-zan" i.e. Ravage it! Destroy it! Bring a revolution here! 

Now, what should be the methodology of this revolution? That question was also addressed by Iqbal. He has answered this question in the following couplet in which he has mentioned four stages in the first line and two stages in the second line of this couplet: 

First adopt the mode of life of an Islamic ascetic and derwesh and continue doing your work. Continue the mission of inviting to and propagating the message. If somebody calls you insane or if somebody tries to disgrace or humiliate you, respond to it gracefully with a prayer. This is saintliness (derweshi). That is to say, you are like the monks of Buddhism. You are being thrashed but you are not retaliating. And when you are ready i.e. you have a sufficient number of followers, the training has been under-taken properly, you have been habituated to obey the discipline of the organization and are ready to sacrifice everything, then this is the time to go ahead for a head-on collision with the bastion of power. A revolution cannot come about without this clash and confrontation. Mere sermonizing does not bring about revolutions. In the course of this confrontation lives will be lost, blood will be spilt. Revolutions do not come about serenely and placidly. The six stages that I have explained above must be traversed for the completion of a revolution in any country.

7. Outward expansion of the Revolution

Apart from the above mentioned 6 stages there is a seventh stage of revolution and it is a litmus test for a true revolution. A true revolution is never limited to the geographical, national or governmental borders. This is so because if the revolutionary ideology is powerful, convincing, strong, logical and rational, it will definitely succeed in gripping the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Hence, a true revolution will always be exported. It can never stay within the geographical boundaries of a particular region or country. 

This is the blue-print of the revolutionary process I have gleaned from the life trajectory of the Prophet (SAW), and presented before you in very general terms, without using any technical terms. Now I will place in this theoretical gestalt the concrete details and specifics from the seerah of the Prophet (SAW). 

Source: The Prophet's Strategy for Islamic Revolution

To be continued ....