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ISLAM'S GIFTS TO THE WORLD
By Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari
Islam
Islam and Political Theory
Islam and Legislation
Islam
Islam stands for harmony and perfectibility with an
unmatched depth and breadth of scope that comprises all
aspects of spirit and life. It knows all the roads that
lead to blessing and happiness. It has the cure for human
ills, individual and social, and makes them as plain as
the wit of man can devise or comprehend. It sets out to
develop all sides of each person:
and therefore perforce includes every reality which
impacts human existence. It has not given way, in its
doctrine of man, to modern errors or corrupt
institutions. It does not set man in God's place. To do
so is to leave man with only himself to rely on in all
his pride and egotism: or else to reduce him to the
slavery of being a beast of burden for his fellows,
powerless, will-less, helpless before nature's and
matter's tyrannies. This is precisely what modern
heresies do with man. But Islam vindicates man's unique
nature vis-a-vis all other living creatures, affirming
that he is a special creation with a lofty calling all
his own.
Islam holds that a man's personality does not cease to
exist with death, but is continuous and eternal.
Worldly and other-worldly are an
indivisible unity. body and soul can therefore not be
dissolved into disparate elements. Islam, on these
grounds, presents both worlds in shining terms. It both
trains a man for eternity and also finds the guiding
principles for its public institutions on earth in the
sublime destiny inherent in man's creation.
Eternity dictates universal principles, unchanging and
unchangeable. These Islam proclaims as tenets,
convictions, commandments, statutes, in its school of
contentment, in its thrust for progress. It offers man
the perfection of freedom for thought, for concern, and
for exegesis of the divine law on matters of social
necessity. It reverts to first principles which provide
the sure and unshifting basis of rock-bottom truth in all
the chances and changes of this mortal life.
Islam holds that man has certain characteristics which
are his link with the material world and certain others
which connect him with realities that are non-material
and which motivate desires and aims of a more sublime
nature. body, mind and spirit each has its proper
propensities. Each must be duly weighed, so that what one
of these indivisible elements desires does not conflict
with the desire of another. Islam takes all the elements
and facets of human nature into account and caters for
the compound essence of man's combined material and
spiritual propensities. It draws him upward towards the
highest without cutting his roots in the material. It
demands absolute purity and chastity without denying the
flesh and its needs. Its current flows from pole to pole
over a network of live wires - convictions and
regulations which preserve the integrity of all the
innate human instincts while rejecting the Freudian
doctrine of total freedom which treats man as nothing but
animal.
Islam is not a mere set of ideas in the world of
metaphysical speculation : nor did it come into being
simply to order man's social living. It is a way of life
so comprehensively meaningful that it shapes education,
society and culture to heights none other ever aimed at.
It forms a supreme court of appeal and rallying-point for
East and West alike, and offers them an ideology which
can answer their divisive materialisms. It can replace
their inequities and contradictions with a more
universal, more perfect and more powerful idea.
Islam does not concede priority of any kind to
material affluence or to hedonistic comfort as basic for
happiness. It finds its principles in an analysis of
man's true nature. With these principles it constructs a
plan for individual , social and international living,
framed by fixed and all embracing moral standards, aimed
at a goal for humanity far loftier than the modern world'
s limited materialist aims.
Islam does not imprison man in the narrow confines of
the material and the financial. It sets him in a spacious
and expansive air. There morality, principle and the
spirit reign. Its statutes are those which spring from
the nature of man himself. They encourage mutual help and
team-work. They pursue values outside the straitened
boundaries imposed on individual and on community by the
petty pusillanimous pedestrian patterns of materialist
purposes. Instead it yokes man's strength and striving to
the change, advance, progress and perfecting inherent in
his creation.
Islamic training sets out to refine and enhance human
qualities and to harness them to right and reasonable
objectives which direct and dictate every forward step to
the desired end. It focuses a man's motives, which arise
from his natural desires and basic needs, in such a
concentrated and streamlined beam that each talent is
called in to exercise its function in due succession and
order. Impetuous uncoordinated impulses are thus
controlled so that no single instinct overrule
commonsense nor momentary urge replace reason. Instead
man is made master of his fate and captain of his soul.
Excess is obviated and every person is accorded his or
her legitimate share in the common triumph of all. In
this employment every need of body, mind and soul is met
and satisfied.
Whenever in history individuals have united in
harmonious pursuit of such aims, persons and communities
have found themselves. What is right has
ruled thoughts, conduct and character; human living has
been orderly and secure. Reason dictates this training,
and calls to a religion with convictions
superstition-free, canons practical, statutes feasible
and excellencies virtuous. The God-given human
intelligence intuitively and logically perceives their
truth.
No man is asked to perform a task above that which he
is able. But his powers are put at full stretch. Every
possibility within him is expressed to the full. And each
is, at doomsday, judged; then the fire itself shall prove
each man's work of what sort it is.
Islam
and Political Theory
Modern political theory exalts the general
will Democratic government attempts to put that
general will into practice by making law out of the
policy voted for by «'the majority (which need
only be 51%) leaving null and void the will of the
minority (which may be that of as many as 49% of the
voters). The minority is thus not free at
all, even though in some cases its will may be sensible,
and in the circumstances right. But '«Government by the
Will of the People will never voluntarily strip off
the sanctity and splendour with which it has endowed
the general will, giving that concept
precedence over all other material and spiritual values.
Islam, on the other hand, gives precedence to the Will
of the Lord of this world, rather than to the
uncontrolled inclinations and sentiments of a majority of
humans. Islam refuses to strip the Godhead of control of
the legislative and jurisdictional power Islam's
conception of Godhead and of divine government is wide
enough to comprise everything that goes to make up human
life everywhere on this planet. This makes Islam man's
unrivalled guardian. It demands total obedience to its
statutes on the ground that these are God-given and that
therefore no human being has a right to allow his own
desires to dictate any action in breach of these statutes
and rules of life.
How can God be proclaimed worthy of total commitment
by people who arrange their lives on precepts deriving
from other sources than God Himself? No person dare claim
divine authority for a partner for God, nor substitute
another lawgiver for Him. Islam's aim is to champion
truth and right in everything in human society, since
truth does not specialise exclusively in social,
political and financial matters but also clothes the
stature of man himself in its most beautiful vestments.
The human physique is fearfully and wonderfully made.
So are the rules and rights that govern human living.
No-one can claim a complete knowledge of all the
mysteries of man's make-up, or of the complicated social
structure it generates. For this structure comprises the
specialised areas of the body and the spirit of all its
individuals as well as of all their relationships with
each other Nor dare anyone claim to be innocent of sin,
of a shortcoming, a fault or an error. No-one is aware of
all the elements which go to make up human happiness and
welfare.
Despite all the devoted efforts of scientists to
penetrate the mysteries of human being, the area they
have succeeded in covering is still extremely limited. To
quote Dr. Alexis Carrel again ('Man, the
Unknown p.4): 'Mankind has made a gigantic
effort to know itself. Although we possess the treasure
of the observations accumulated by the scientists, the
philosophers, the poets, and the great mystics of all
times, we have grasped only certain aspects of ourselves.
We do not apprehend man as a whole. We know him as
composed of distinct parts. And even these parts are
created by our methods. Each one of us is made up of a
procession of phantoms, in the midst of which strides an
unknowable reality.
Without insight into the human make-up man cannot
frame laws 100% suited to the human condition, nor justly
cure the troubles that arise : witness the bewilderment
of legislators, their constant alteration of their own
statutes in face of today's new problems and unexpected
blind alleys. Motives of personal advantage,
self-interest, profit, ambition, power, and even of
environmental predilections, intrude to distort the
legislators' outlook consciously or unconsciously.
Montesquieu said of legislation that none is ever
wholly objective and impartial, for the personal ideas
and sentiments of the legislator influence his
drafting. Thus Aristotle, because he was jealous of
Plato, influenced Alexander to denigrate his great
predecessor.
Modern slogans of Liberty and Equality and
the Public Will are empty words used by
politicians to win support for their laws, laws which in
fact represent the interests not of the masses but of the
landowners and capitalists.
Henry Ford wrote of England, which boasts itself
the Mother of Democracy. We cannot
forget the 1926 general strike or the way the government
tried to break it with every means in its power.
Parliament, tool of the capitalists, proclaimed the
strike unconstitutional and illegal, and turned police
and army out against the strikers with bullets and tanks.
Meantime the media of radio and press declared the
government to be the servant of the workers, a plain
subterfuge contradicted by the fines imposed on the trade
unions and by the imprisonment of their leaders as soon
as the opportunity offered.
Khrushchev declared in the 22nd Supreme Soviet
Congress: In the era of the personality-cult (i.e.
under Stalin) corruption infiltrated our Party's
leadership, government and finances; produced decrees
which trod the masses' rights underfoot; lowered
industrial output; filled men with fear in their work;
and encouraged sycophants, informers and
character-assassins.
Thus both Eastern and Western systems of government
falsely appear in the guise of the public will,
Parliamentary rule, representation of the masses: while
capitalism and communism alike frame inequitable laws
because they neglect the heavenly decrees which establish
fast what is best for man.
Islam
and Legislation
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote (Social
Contract Book II: Chapter 6: The
Lawgiver):
To discover the rules of society that are best
suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior
intelligence who could understand the passions- of men
without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our
nature but knew it to the roots, whose happiness was
independent of ours but who would nevertheless make our
happiness his concern, . . . in fact a divine lawgiver is
needed.
By these standards the most competent legislator is
the Creator of man Himself, He knows all the mysteries of
man's being, makes no profit out of any human society,
and needs no man. Hence the principles which can shape
equitable social regulations must be learnt from a person
who receives direct guidance from the Creator, whose
teachings are the inspired revelations of that unique
Source, and who is wholly reliant on that Infinite
Wisdom.
Human laws aim only at the ordering of human society.
They do not stray outside those limits, nor touch
non-social matters like personal conditions, attitudes of
mind, spiritual excellence. They do not try to cure
internal pollutions within the personality. It is only
when personality problems issue in social disorder in
action that they enter the scope of legal measures. A
person may be filthy in thought and spirit and still good
in the eyes of Western law, which looks only upon outward
acts and not upon the heart. Islam with its wide outlook
aims not just at redressing what has been done wrong but
primarily at putting individual and society right from
inside, regarding the ethical personality as the basic
unit, and its perfecting as the priority. Islam aims at
an orderly society composed of sound morals, sane
thinking, sensible action, serene psyches. It therefore
legislates for the inner life of the individual in as
much detail as for the outer life of society. It brings
order and congruence between large and small in creation,
the natural laws and the spiritual, the material and the
metaphysical, the individual and the social, creeds and
philosophies. It helps man not to come into collision
with the natural laws which underlie the orderliness of
the universe; disobedience to which collapses and
confounds all human affairs.
Man-made institutions pursue performance of the law.
but in Islam the trustee for the law's performance is a
deep-rooted faith; and a Muslim duly performs his
