The Strategy of Mass Education
A strategy of mass education is
required. The objective situation must be described with candor. The world of
Islam today suffers from grave weakness! So weak is that world that enemies are
raping Muslim women with contemptuous disdain. Masajid are being razed to the
ground. Muslims are becoming refugees all over the world. They are held in
concentration camps. They are being tortured. They are being killed. An
innocent blind Shaikh, a scholar of Islam who is also a hafiz of the Qur'an, is
being sexually humiliated in an American prison. But the helpless, weak, and
despised world of Islam can do nothing to respond to such insults. Millions and
millions of Muslims live in abject poverty, in destitution. Muslim women are
forced to sell their bodies in the streets of cities located within the world
of Islam. Millions of children are forced, because of poverty, to labor in the
work force from morning to night. And a paralyzed world of Islam seems helpless
to do anything about this.
We must explain that we Muslims are
helpless because we have betrayed Almighty Allah (SWT) and His Messenger (SAW).
Nowhere has this betrayal had more devastating consequences than in the great betrayal
over riba. This betrayal has occurred despite the clear command in the Qur'an:
O you who believe, betray not the trust of Allah and His Messenger, nor knowingly betray that which you have been entrusted (i.e., the mission, for example, of struggle for the triumph over falsehood).
(Al-Anfal 8:27)
Muslims are helpless because they
lack power. They lack power because they lack freedom, including economic
freedom, and that is, most of all, freedom from exploitation and enslavement
inherent in riba. Riba has impoverished the masses in the entire Muslim world.
Riba has rendered Muslims powerless to resist financial blackmail. Because of
riba Muslims now live a collective life not entirely dissimilar to slavery. He
who pays the piper continues to call the tune. Riba has paralyzed us!
Riba has even created within our
very midst a predatory Muslim elite who control the economy, the military, and
political power around the world of Islam. Their way of life mirrors the Jewish
moneylender in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." They literally suck
the blood of their own Muslim brothers and sisters. It is because he challenged
those oppressors that the innocent blind Shaikh, Omar Abd-ur Rahman, is now in an
American prison.
Clearly the most pressing need of the
moment is to restore freedom and power to the Ummah so that Muslims may struggle
by any means necessary, and permitted by Allah (SWT), to extricate themselves from
the poisonous embrace of their enemies. How can freedom and power be restored? Our
view is that freedom and power can be restored only when Muslim society realizes
the need to struggle to extricate itself from the modern shirk of the sovereign
State and to restore the sovereignty of Allah (SWT) in respect of both private and
public life. The secular model of society rejected the sovereignty and supreme authority
of Allah (SWT) in its public life and replaced Allah (SWT) with the sovereign
State. And that secular model of society has today taken control of all of
mankind, including the world of Islam!
Our view is that the economic
sunnah (i.e., the sunnah of the Prophet as it pertains to economic affairs)
today provides the most appropriate area for initiating a successful effort
towards challenging the secular model of society, reviving faith, and restoring
freedom and power to the Ummah. And in that economic sunnah, the struggle to
extricate the Ummah from the curse of riba is first in importance. We need to
embark on an urgent effort at mass education in respect of the economic sunnah
in general and the prohibition of riba in particular.
It surely will have an impact on
the religious consciousness when we remind the believers that in His very last
word which He revealed in the Qur'an, Almighty Allah (SWT) has informed those
who persist in consuming riba, even after the Revelation of that verse, that
they are a people who belong to hell-fire and will remain in it forever and
ever! Thus those who own or possess shares in the ownership of banks, those who
manage banks and other such financial institutions, and those who consume riba
which they earn from fixed deposits in banks and other financial companies, are
not a people to be respected. They belong to hell-fire.
It will surely have an enormous
impact on the religious consciousness when a billboard or a flier reminds the
believers that the Prophet (SAW) has cursed all four and declared that they are
all equally guilty — the one who takes riba, the one who gives riba, the one
who records the transaction, and the two witnesses. My own experience in the
greater New York area where I have been lecturing on the subject for the last
two years to Muslims who belong to all parts of the world has been positive and
most encouraging.
But the subject of the prohibition
of riba in Islam must first be studied with greater urgency and seriousness
than any other subject. Those Muslim scholars who do not possess an adequate
grasp of the subject — and they appear to be the majority — should turn for
guidance to such scholars of Islam as not only possess that grasp of the
subject but are, themselves, living a life which conforms, as much as possible,
with the Islamic prohibition of riba, and are actively involved in the struggle
against riba.
My teacher of blessed memory,
Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari, used to constantly emphasize the
need to adopt a particular methodology for the study of all subjects related to
truth. First study all the verses of the Qur'an directly and indirectly related
to a subject, paying careful attention to the chronological sequence of
Revelation as well as such historical circumstances as are described. Then
study all the relevant ahadith of the Prophet (SAW) on the subject, as well as
the application of the particular subject by the Prophet (SAW) in the concrete
world in which he lived. Then turn to the study of relevant knowledge from
history or from nature, and this will include the most important works on the
subject by the authentic ulama of Islam. Only then should the student turn to a
critical examination of other data including other works on the subject.
All through this exercise, however, the student should constantly strive to discover the system of meaning which links all that material together as a unity and as a harmonious integrated whole. Only such a methodology will deliver a grasp of the subject in its totality and admit the possibility of a penetrating insight into its very substance. The prohibition of riba in Islam needs to be studied with that methodology.
All through this exercise, however, the student should constantly strive to discover the system of meaning which links all that material together as a unity and as a harmonious integrated whole. Only such a methodology will deliver a grasp of the subject in its totality and admit the possibility of a penetrating insight into its very substance. The prohibition of riba in Islam needs to be studied with that methodology.
To Be Continued....
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