The Vision of Islam

By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

The greatest enigma of present history is how over the last two hundred years, in the entire Muslim world, innumerable great movements were set in motion which gave Muslims immense opportunities to do their work, yet the actual results of their efforts were almost negligible. This failure came about in spite of the Muslims having all kinds of resources for the execution of their programme. God promised divine succour on the condition that we help Him. Helping God means to engage ourselves in the divine mission of making people aware of the Creation Plan of God. Our movements should be aimed not at acquiring worldly rights through protest and demand, but rather should be Hereafter-oriented movements, in which our goal is to make man aware of what he will have to face in the next world. Thus, our movements should be dawah-oriented and not political or economic in nature. This is the only way of ensuring succour from God and unless we obtain God's succour we will not be able to achieve success of any kind—either in this world or the Hereafter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Goodword Books
• Release date: Jun 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393442233

Book preview

Foreword

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In Story of an African Farm, Olive Schrieiner (1855-1920) a noted South African novelist, recounts the story of a hunter who goes in search of the beautiful White Bird of Truth. All he had seen of it was its reflection in a lake, once while he was out shooting. He tried to catch the bird in the snares of credulity and the cage of imagination, but he realized that the bird of truth could be obtained only through truth. He left the valley of superstitions and started climbing up the Mountain of Truth. He continued climbing till he reached a high precipice. He started cutting rocks and making steps in the stone. He continued doing this for years, old and wizened, he managed to reach the summit. But, on arriving there, he found another range higher than the previous one. Here, overwhelmed by old age and weariness, he laid himself down to die, but as he lay dying, a white feather fell close to him from above. Now he felt sure that the bird he sought existed on the next range. Even though he could not reach the bird of truth, he died with the solace that those who followed him would not have to cut the first steps. His last words were:

"Where I lie down, worn out, other men will stand young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb. They will never know the name of the man who made them… But they will mount and on my work. They will climb and by my stair. They will find truth and through me.

Perhaps there can be no better allegory for the present work than the above.

I was born on January 1, 1925. My father, Fariduddin Khan, died on 30th December 1929, when I was just five. Then I was brought up in my family home, in Azamgarh (U.P., India) in a traditional, religious atmosphere. My circumstances demanded that I look at everything with a curious eye. When I came of age and learnt that the religion which, in the old days, had ruled human thought for one thousand years, was languishing in every respect in modern times, I felt that this was an issue on which I should do some research. I then began to make a regular study of the subject. 

Many people regard me as a University educated person. But the truth is that my formal education was confined to studies in an Arabic school, after which I learnt English on my own. The result of a regular study of books in English was that the modern style came to influence my writing.

My educational and intellectual background had given me only a traditional knowledge of Islam, which was obviously insufficient for an understanding of Islam in relation to the modern world. In 1948, therefore, I decided to go directly to the sources of modern thought in order to increase my understanding of it. At the same time, I started to study the Quran and the hadith and related subjects, in order to have a fresh understanding of Islam. If the first 15 years of my life were engaged in traditional education, the next 25 years were taken up by the above-mentioned research. Today, now that I am over fifty, I have the good fortune to be able to offer to the world this book which is the result of my long research. Having cut steps out of the theoretical rock, I was confronted with another range: now it was necessary to give a practical shape to my Islamic endeavours in the light of the discovered truths.

I feel that I have exhausted my strength. The hard struggle of the past which this work entailed has aged me before my time. I have spent all my life in cutting ‘theoretical steps’: but how to cut the ‘practical steps’ now? Yet it is satisfaction enough for me that I have found truth, at least theoretically. Perhaps now I may die, saying: Those coming after me will not have to cut the first steps!!!

September, 1975                                         Wahiduddin Khan

Foreword for the English Edition

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I wrote the first foreword of my book in September 1975. According to the circumstances of those times, I felt that with this book my mission had come to an end. This thinking was reflected in my first foreword. But subsequently there was a change of circumstances and by special divine succour a full-fledged mission came to be launched on the basis of the ideology I had presented in my book Al-Islam.

Now when I am writing these lines in June 2013, by God’s grace, this mission has become universal in its scope with the establishment of Islamic Centre in 1976 and Centre for Peace and Spirituality (CPS) in 2001. The literature of this mission has been published on a large scale in different national and international languages. This book, the English version of Al-Islam, is a part of this mission.

This book offers an explanation of the teachings of Islam in a contemporary style and aims at providing such an interpretation of Islam as will address the modern mind. In 1975 there was just this one book. But today, by God’s grace, a wide range of Islamic literature, written in a contemporary style, has been prepared, which is being disseminated in different languages.

Wahiduddin Khan

New Delhi

June 15, 2013

chapter one

The Essence of Religion

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The only true religion in God’s sight is complete submission to God. And those who were given the Book disagreed only out of rivalry, after knowledge had been given to them—he who denies God’s signs should know that God is swift in His reckoning.

—The Quran, 3:19

Worship

What God most earnestly desires from human beings is wors`hip. The Quran says: I have not created jinn and mankind except to worship Me. (51:56) There are numerous such verses in the Quran which elaborate on how the prophets were sent for this very purpose, that is, to warn or to remind man of this responsibility. (16:36). This is so important a matter that if a man cannot find opportunities for worship in his own country, he is enjoined to leave it for some other place (4:97).

The dictionary defines worship as bowing before someone and humbling oneself. The essence of worship is fearfulness and humility, says Lisan al-Arab. The dictionary meaning of the word is also its canonical meaning. Abu Hayyan says: Prayer means humility: this is the consensus of religious scholars

(Al Bahr al Muhit, Vol. 1, p. 23). That is why the Quran uses the word arrogance as the antonym of worship. It says, Those who are too arrogant to worship Me will certainly enter Hell. (40:60).

Although worship’s real connotations are humility and fearfulness, when the word is used in relation to God, it also includes the concept of love. Ibn Kathir writes: According to the dictionary, worship stands for lowliness. In the Islamic Shari‘ah it is used to express a condition of extreme love coupled with extreme humbleness and apprehension. (Tafsir al Quran, Vol. 1, p. 25). Ibn Taymiyah says: The word worship expresses a mixture of extreme humility and extreme love. (Pamphlet on Ubudiyah, p. 28) Ibn Qayyem also writes:

There are two components of worship: extreme love and extreme humility (Tafsir Ibn Qayyem, p. 65).

The essence of worship then is the adoption of an attitude of humility before God. In the Quran, this is expressed by different Arabic words, such as Khashiyyah, Tadhurru, Ikhbat, Inabat, Khushu, Khudu and Qunut, etc. Enshrined in each of these words is the concept of God-consciousness. To worship God means utter prostration of oneself before Him. The Being before whom the act of worship is performed is no tyrant or tormentor but an extremely kind and compassionate Being, to whom we owe limitless blessings. So this expression of lowliness before Him is necessarily tinged with love.

The relation of man to God is the relation of extreme humility with an extremely beloved Being. At the very moment when man is shivering in awe of God, when his eyes fill with tears at the thought of Him, his best feelings are even then reserved for his Lord, and he draws closer to God in great attachment. Man, then, finds himself rapt in a love of the greatest poignancy. Though his humility in the presence of God is undoubtedly the result of fear, this fear is not of the kind produced by the sight of a fearful object. It is a feeling which no single word can properly convey. It is a mixed feeling of extreme hope and extreme apprehension, and man is never able to decide which of the two is to be preferred—hope or apprehension. It is a situation of love and fear in which man runs towards the very Being he fears, hoping to receive from Him His divine blessings. It is a state of mental anguish, yet at the same time it is a state of complete solace.

Thus we learn that prayer is basically a psychological experience rather than an external event. Man, in the last analysis, is a sensitive thinking being: so in its definitive form, prayer in relation to man, is the expression of an inner state rather than of an external happening. The Prophet has clearly stated that righeousness is a thing of the heart. According to the Quran, the essence of worship is to be God-fearing. This finds expression in a hadith. Once the Prophet observed pointing to his heart, ‘The fear of God lies here,’ (At Taqwa ha huna) (Bukhari).

The Quran states: ‘O men, serve your Lord Who has created you and those who have gone before you, so that you may guard yourselves against evil’ (2:21).

Worship, in terms of external expression, means bowing before the Sustainer, while in its inner sense it stands for that deep realization of and strong attachment to God in which man is so involved that he can experience the very presence of God. The Prophet is reported to have said, Pray to God as if you are seeing Him. (Mishkat, Chapter on Faith). According to this saying, the most sublime form of worship is that in which the worshipper is so lost in thoughts of God that he finds himself very close to Him. His apprehension of the divine presence should be as keen as if God were actually seeing him. This state of psychological proximity is the most sublime state of prayer.

All rites of worship are aimed at arriving at that state. The postures to be adopted in the performance of these rites are ordained by God Himself. Anyone who asserts that it is possible to pray to God independently of these God-ordained rites, is making a false claim. Without performing these rites, no one can become a worshipper, in the real sense of the word. Although man is another name for that particular soul which is not visible to us, it is also a fact that man’s existence cannot be conceived of in this world without a human body. Similarly, worship may be a psychological reality, but it cannot be conceived of without external, God-ordained religious rites.

Although the word ‘worship’ covers the entire Shari‘ah, in the sense that it embraces whatever man does to follow God’s commandments and to seek His pleasure, it is his adoration for God which provides the stimulus for all of his actions. Basically and primarily, worship (Ibadat) denotes this particular relationship between man and God. When a man is saying salat he is directly engaged in the worship of God. He bows before the Almighty Who has no equal. Whereas, when he obeys God’s commandments relating to moral and social dealings with his fellowmen, he fulfils his duties in relation to his fellowmen. From the point of view of performance, these requirements are as obligatory as particular acts of worship. But the difference in nature between the two must be kept in view, for otherwise the true concept of religion cannot be properly understood. While human duties are always contingent upon circumstances, religious duties are absolute.

Let us take an example to clarify the above statement. If, according to God’s law, it is the duty of a Muslim to distribute to certain entitled people whatever he receives in inheritance, this does not mean that everyone must strive to acquire property so that this religious obligation may be fulfilled. It means rather that if a Muslim should receive an inheritance—some property or wealth—his faith demands that he deals with it according to the commandment regarding inheritance. It is a duty which is obligatory only on having inherited something, far from it being incumbent on every individual in an absolute sense, as worship is.

This explanation of worship makes it clear that the relationship of love and fear of God is not just to serve as an incentive in practical life, but is rather the actual goal that we must strive to achieve in this world. All our acts have one aim—to become the means to the psychological discovery which is known as ‘entering into a relationship with God’ and ‘reaching God.’ That is to say that the relation between God and man is not just one of supposition (e.g. if we repeat certain words and actions, God in heaven will be pleased with us). Far and beyond this there is a direct link between God and man. This attitude of adoring servitude, in its external form, is obedience to God’s commandments, but its inner reality means carrying man to the point where he can ‘meet’ God, where he may whisper to his Lord, where he may cry and break down in His presence, where he may feel that he is prostrate at the feet of his Creator. To find God thus in this life is the highest and most sublime reality of religion. The aim of all rites and commandments of religion is to raise man to this level. One who finds God thus in this world, will surely find Him in the next world; one who has failed to find Him on earth should not expect to find Him in the world hereafter.

What are the signs of having found this spiritual wealth? One of the signs is that man begins to receive divine provision (20:131). In complying with God’s commandments, whatever you do is apparently a matter of your own choice: you may or may not carry them out. But during the performance of these acts, or rites of worship, one experiences particular inner feelings which are not a matter of one’s own choice, that is, one cannot produce them on one’s own.

Then where do these inner feelings come