Reviving the Ummah

By Meinhaj Hussain

A diagnosis of the circumstance of the Ummah and how the Islamic civilization may insh'Allah (God Willing) be revived. The book is an application of Islam to the socio-political condition of Muslims today.

The book attempts to find the central problems that are challenging the Ummah and find solutions to those problems. The book is a synthesis of knowledge and the subject matter is equivalently diverse, ranging from philosophy to politics, sociology to law, and more.

The book sketches perhaps a contemporary Islamic economic alternative model, rationalizes the problem of Islamic law, considers a new political paradigm and touches upon the central sociological problems of the Ummah. It proposes a new science, naming it the "Science of Civilization".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Meinhaj Hussain
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476423111

Book preview

REVIVING THE UMMAH

A Diagnosis of Our Circumstance

Version 1.9S

By

**Meinhaj Hussain**

**Copyright © 2012 by Meinhaj Hussain. All Rights Reserved. **

GrandeStrategy

3rd Rajab 1433 Hijri

Smashwords Edition

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All content, trademarks, tradenames, and other distinguishing marks, plus cover art and cover text, are the intellectual property of **Meinhaj Hussain**. Cover art and design by **Meinhaj Hussain**.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Bismillah-ar-rahman-ar-raheem. All praise to Allah, my Creator, my Sustainer, my Best Friend, my Forgiver, my Savior who has allowed this servant of His to write this book. To my honorable parents, my father and my mother, who have nurtured me with their love and care.

This book is built on the intellectual foundations of such thinkers as Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Asad, Alija Izetbegovic and Malek Bennabi and represents a synthesis of thought: my gratitude and acknowledgement to them. To the raw materials of history and general wisdom of Ibn Khaldun is also due a deep acknowledgement. To all the others that have helped proofread, comment and otherwise assist in making this book a reality.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2: THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM

CHAPTER 3: TWO OPPOSING SIDES

CHAPTER 4: THE INCOHERENCE OF THE THEOLOGIANS

CHAPTER 5: A POLITICAL FRAMEWORK

CHAPTER 6: ECONOMIC MODEL

CHAPTER 7: EDUCATION

CHAPTER 8: THE LAW OF ISLAM

CHAPTER 9: THE HEART OF THE BREAKDOWN

CHAPTER 10: UNDERSTANDING PROBLEMS OF SEXUALITY & SOCIETY

CHAPTER 11: DEFENSE POLICY

CHAPTER 12: ISLAMISTAN

CHAPTER 13: AFTER THE REVOLUTION

CENTRAL PRINCIPLES

PROOF OF RIBA AND MONEY

GLOSSARY

FOREWORD

Brother Meinhaj is an honest writer whose tenor of prose quickly reminded me of the opening scene in "The Gladiator’, where Maximus (Russell Crowe) addresses his troops before scientifically decimating a Germanic horde. In a nut shell, the book is an oasis of sahih courage and refreshing common sense.

Our warrior casts a rough hewn stone at the Goliath of global perplexity, yet in the reading, divine grace transforms it to a javelin of synthesis that pins hearts to the backbone of unambiguous truth. Here’s an example:

… during the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the sahabah, students would read a portion of a surah, reflect upon it, apply it, and lastly memorize it. Today, we have skipped all the steps except the last, destroying the value of our faith and turning it into a meaningless prattle . . . We need to ensure that the Chinese foot binding equivalent of brain damage on our children does not continue.

According to Meinhaj, Adam Smith or even Hadrat Umar would fail to qualify for a PhD in today’s horrific educational system, and the sahabah would fail to acknowledge much of Muslim Education today as Islamic — in the true sense of the adjective. He states that education has advanced the repression of brain compression to Western mind-molding as purposely designed by elitists who prefer servants and slaves rather than fellows of global constituencies; a conclusion I myself came to during independent research.

I have attended and edited proceedings from many an Ibn Khaldun Seminar, all of which have been ‘politically correct’ celebrations of wheel re-invention taking no thought for application to roads of authentic reform. In addition to useless redundancy, they were marked by impotence and protectionism which the author also decries. However, his dismay allowed him to construct a bridge between deen and the dunya by actually destroying the illusion that one exists. His axe-wielding assault replaces mundane mimicry with an Islamically-correct and incredibly keen edge of forthright logic and erudition, minus the academic mumbo-jumbo. What a treat. Alhamduillah!

The alert reader will embrace the offerings of fresh solutions to surplus falsehoods, while bureaucrats of comfort-seeking adab will likely shun the book. They shouldn’t however, because it’s a mirror that would have been embraced even by Khalid after the chastisement of his vanity. Our non-indulgent guide gives correct admonitions married to well-considered restorative tonics.

This book honors the blood, sweat and tears of the common man but is not written by a skilled literary craftsman. Nevertheless, the prose flows like a coffee-shop conversation with a respected, well-read neighbor. The author also abstains from the offensive sanctimony that abounds in today’s flailing Islamia. Never does he offend sober sense-makers with obscure passages that favor self-worship. In a sense, the book is like a lifebuoy thrown to those drowning in hopeless disorder.

From the ‘Magian Crust’ of Iqbal to Benabi’s ‘Colonizability’ and Al’Attas’s correction of adab, at times one must run and gasp as our host forges ahead to include Tariq Ramadan and Mahathir Mohammad, among others. His summary of relevant thought weaves throughout the chapters to reveal a tapestry that rewards the reader with conviction. But it is the hammer of Ibn Khaldun that is skillfully handled and best utilized, in my view, to bring the reader to the soberest of contemplations regarding the present day wherein Muslims are consigned to subservience, both knowingly and not; whereupon our guide forwards us to the pen of Mohammad Asad who also desired to ‘un-complicate’ fikh and return us to the simplicity of a unified, nass legal code. Indeed, brother Meinhaj clearly shows us how it can be accomplished by the humble, the willing, and the obedient.

In another vain, Meinhaj takes a broadsword to the ummah’s mimicry of the Western Economic System and boldly announces the failure of IOK with regards to education and especially with respect to so-called ‘Islamic Banking’. He provides unencumbered references to the Sunnah in order to gradually transform today's banks from caterpillars to butterflies" with a plausible plan and exquisitely poignant analogy. Our guide to much desired reforms limits himself to reason, practicality and the wise counsel of seers throughout; especially his recommendations for a systematic transition to ‘sunnah money’.

His use of the ‘Ferrari’ as an economic analogy paradigmatically and shamefully illustrates vested incompetency and pretense. His discussion of riba is complete, concise, articulate as well as convincingly authentic and appropriately reproachful. As for the ‘corporate personhood’ of many economic sheikhdoms, any child worth his fitrah knows it is un-Islamic because limited liability is haram — so says the author. We must redesign corporations to incorporate halal liability, banks included. We have no choice but to remove the riba of fractional reserve banking and allow depositors to give the bank consent to invest their money: People would have the option of storing or investing their savings, which is the Sunnah of course, but is now made impossible by those who pretend halal economics.

His approach devastates the present order and presents halal mandates that few Muslims—especially ‘one-percent elitists’—would ever endorse or seek to maintain with their life’s blood as did the sahabah. Brings to mind the ‘black thread on the side of white cow’ analogy doesn’t it? Are there alternatives to GDP assessments as a measure of economic success? You bet, and the author boldly goes where Harvard, Chicago or London schools of thief-o-nomics have never gone; especially when indicting Muslim academics: those men of no consequence for mimesis and small-minded intellectualism; the mindless reworking of Western economic models into so-called ‘Islamic frameworks’ because they’ve inherited a legacy that is fundamentally un-Islamic. Meinhaj is tough, brothers and sisters.

As for Islamic Education and Educators, I can sum his accurate assessment of the IOK movement in one phrase: ‘it has miserably failed’. But I’ll write a bit more on his analysis of Muslim education in general because it’s superb, esoterically and historically sound, mercilessly frank, and needs to be taken seriously by the ‘vassals’ most readers have become: referring to those who can recite, memorize and obey commands of one-percent elitists but rarely offer the alms of authentic contemplation or comprehend an oft lip-synced parroting of faith – meaning the majority of ninety-nine per-centers.

His section on the significance of knowledge is nothing less than profound and brilliantly informative:

In the great contemporary battle between the Wahabis/Salafis who nominally uphold tauheed and Sufis who nominally uphold tasawuf, both sides have missed the essential symbiosis of these poles with that of scientific enquiry . . . Genius does not need to be engineered; we only need to stop destroying it.

I wish I’d written that. His views on education and the present system’s gross injustices are ‘shocking’ for the uninitiated, which, unfortunately, means most of you. Do not miss this.

He also supports Ibn Khaldun’s poignant perception—as do I—that the self-centered guys and gals of Mysticism ‘enjoyed killing the power of the brain’; so to speak, and most unfortunately so when what followed is that the West took our light and went forward and through their hands, perhaps Allah is showing us how we have gone astray. The good brother then compares Muslim stifling of mental rigor and fruition to the torture of Chinese foot-binding or the head-binding of children sacrificed to idolatrous worship of rather peculiar Sufi-saints. The reactionary superstition he cites had helped Muslims create a form of secularism even before the arrival of British Bayonets; notwithstanding the crass innovations that followed Al’Ghazali’s misunderstood wake—ventrally giving birth to the impotent class of clerics that abound in today’s mosques:

They are today the equivalent of the priests, monks and rabbis of other religions … this Muslim clergy never develops the ability to analyze and think critically and hence, cannot consequently address social problems effectively . . . Islam has to be lived, it cannot be parroted.

Going further, the author clearly demonstrates that Muslim Scholars have unnecessarily complicated matters of Islamic Law out of sectarian vanity and misplaced piety. He argues that the ‘Interpretive’ outlook has superseded, even obscured, the ‘simplicity of the Law’ as expressed by the first three generations of Muslims. Our ‘neo-ulema’ has since been worshipped becoming a kind of ‘priesthood’ of unqualified censors, something Islam forbids. The author’s solutions are to be found in the works of Imran Hosein, Mohd. Asad, Malek Benabi, Tariq Ramadan and others whom he summarizes, expertly canonizes or de-canonizes, and remains bold enough to enhance to the detriment of 999 out of 1,000. ’ The greater balance appears to be ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ sectarians for whom ‘reform’ is little more than a word they find suitable as long as votes come their ‘manifestly evil’ way.

In any case he convinced this reader that my opinion of the majority of Muslim Scholars, Mullahs, Imams and sundry academics is correct: they need to find real work.

Our Author even expands the science of sociology to give Goetherites a dose of gestalt Tauhid. The chapter is well worth the read, especially for those who seek understanding and real knowledge: a mix of the tender meat of authentic reform to antidote the rigidity of rigor mortis now confronting the ummah. His approach is systematic, demanding, at times difficult, but always promising what is delivered as a final course.

… (Benabi) the point of failure comes in the overindulgence of its core; for Islam it is the overindulgence of mysticism and for the West it is the overindulgence of materialism.

On defense and related matters, Meinhaj runs the risk of losing the reader lest the latter be a military man or strategist. The chapter is saved when he comes full circle to the Koran and its wisdom in these matters, showing grave relevance for today’s Muslim soldier. The author’s thesis on a Khurasani force — even absent the Mahdi — comprises Pakistani cum Talibani plus Asiatic units and may be laughable to Westernized pundits of military chauvinism; nevertheless, his analysis is cutting edge and penetrates the popular veil. I’d place it at a ‘Lt. Colonel level’, and as such, only the arrogant senior would dismiss the perspective.

Make no mistake, the West and certain non-western ‘entities’ are at war with Islam. To think otherwise gives evidence of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ — a psychological estate that is haram.

In his approach to Revolution and the Medina ideal, Meinhaj remains undaunted by the threat of typical Muslim academic of governmental censorship when it comes to ‘hard ball’ tactics:

It is of utmost importance to change the fundamental power equilibrium in the country. The first important measure would be to eliminate the power base of the old secular elite. It is of vital import to take drastic measures to ensure these elite, entrenched over ages, choose subservience or flight rather than their fight instincts.

Muslim Robber Barons best take heed, foreign NGOs, NGOs with foreign funding, and IMF/World Banksters may all jump in the lake of fire according to this warrior’s blueprint for his prospective Islamistan . A bit harsh I’ll admit, but not without merit or the due diligence of careful contemplation considering the subversive influences they’ve wielded historically. Still, one must be careful not to make the classic oriental error of inbred protectionism; after all, Islam is meant to universally correct these evils.

Our guide warns against Muslim civilization becoming an appendix to the global order and I agree; though it hardly seems a likely eschatological prediction. Even so, Muslims must ‘act’ and this tome presents a viable plan of action for truly Islamic conclaves of reformers, wherever they me be and whatever is their number.

As I can see it, the only major element missing from this effort is a descriptive of the Hanbali Imamate wherein Patriarchy is restored to its proper role of political, economic and social husbandry. Otherwise, there is much benefit found within these pages, May Allah be praised and both author and readers rewarded according to intention and effort.

Omar Zaid, M.D.

Chiang Khom, Thailand

August, 2012

PREFACE

Bismillah-ar-rahman-ar-raheem. This book is written for Muslims who have woken up to the need for Islam, not as a passive force, but an active force that can transform society and deal with the present extreme circumstances of our peoples. It is written for those who seek to understand where we stand in history and how to make a workable and attainable plan to solve the problems that we face today.

The book is not targeted at non-Muslims, progressive-style Muslims, or extremists and those who condone violence against innocents. Nor is this book a public relations or propaganda effort intended to showcase Islam before the world. It does not represent an inter-religious dialogue or an inter-civilizational one. The thoughts and ideas expressed here are intended solely for our planning and analysis in dealing with the difficult and extreme circumstances that we face today. It is written not as a justification but a guide to how to not only deal with those circumstances but in doing so, revive the Ummah insh’Allah. I have no interest in pleading with the decadent intellects of our times. Rather, I see hope in those whose hearts can still see:

Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow blind. (22:46)

As such, many unconvinced stalwarts of punditry will find this book of little relevance. So be it. The attempt in this book is to rather answer such questions as What is wrong with us? and How do we fix our circumstance? How can we rebuild our civilization? How can we return to Medina? How do we deal with the rising non-Muslim world? How do we effectively compete against the West & Far East while being genuine to Islam?

Some critical axiomatic assumptions this book makes include:

1. Islam is a complete way of life.

2. The Quran is relevant for all ages and not just a specific period in history.

3. The West is an enemy to our civilization but we are internally equally at fault for our circumstances.

4. That Islam is under threat and this threat is a very serious one.

5. That this threat is because of both internal and external factors.

6. That the traditional ulema are not capable of responding to this threat.

7. That an Islamic state can be a critical tool to meet this threat.

A list of Central Principles is also given at the end of the book that elaborates or adds to some of these axioms.

I have found that versions of my thoughts and ideas entailed in this book have invited the ire of numerous personages. The attacks, unfortunately, would have been welcome had they been on the topic at hand and against the ideas I have spoken of. However, the attacks have largely been personal attacks on me and I have been labeled with numerous ignominious titles. This is a symptom of our present circumstance, and the best I can do to help mitigate this prognosis is to give a personal account of how the germs of the ideas entailed in this book originated.

The backdrop is the winter of 2001, when the United States and its lackeys attacked Afghanistan and the Pakistani government keeled over and joined the Allies. I was a young man and had made my first decisive move towards religion. It was Ramadan and I was at the Faisal Masjid doing ithekaf.

The details of how I managed to get into the Faisal Masjid for itheqaf are in themselves interesting in that you usually need to apply one month in advance, but somehow I managed to get in (by the Will and Grace of Allah) on the spot. It felt miraculous. In my heart, it was miraculous. To this day, that time spent in itheqaf then is remembered as one of the most important turning points in my life and some of the most miraculous. When I came out, I was visibly healthier and my skin had transformed and even the very nails on my fingers seemed more alive than I have ever known them to be. The spiritual glow I had was amazing. During the itheqaf I had a constant awareness of Allah. Praying, fasting, reading the Quran all day and all night. It was like living in His Presence, in line with the hadith about ihsan, the perfection of faith. The atmosphere and feeling was overwhelming, no words can explain how it is to live as if He is there with you at every moment. Thinking of it as I write still brings tears to my eyes.

At one point, a CIA operative showed up, pretending to be Italian without an Italian accent (probably new on the job). My guess would be lower middle class Irish-Italian stock from the great state of New York. He was disingenuously pretending to be travelling through from China. He asked me how was it that I could speak English with such fluency and seemed doubtful when I said that I had never been (till then) to the United States. However, since the Faisal Masjid had my passport this could have been easily verified, and