لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Section 2
The Holy Prophet of Islam Mohammad (s.a.w) said:
There will arrive a time
for my nation when of the Quran only its lore, meaning
its writing or written word, and of Islam only its name
will remain. The people will be called Muslims by this
name, but they will be the furthest from Islam.
28
That which we wish to bring under discussion and
assessment - as far as God bestows upon us success is
this sentence from the Prophets tradition:
Of Islam only its name
will remain.
The Holy Prophet (s.a.w) made a strange predictions.
When we read this forecast certain questions come to
mind.
1) What was Islam like during the Prophets time?
2) What happened to his Islam afterwards? In other words
how did they empty it of its original content? What form
aid they change it to and how did they change its
realities to reticence?
3) How did the Holy Imams (a.s) return to the people the
true Islam we now possess, in the same form that existed
during the Prophets (s.a.w) time?
By finding and understanding the answers to these
questions we will discover what our responsibility is
towards Islam in the present day and age. The above
questions are summarized in the following sentence.
«What was Islam? What happened to it and what must be
done now?»
In our previous discussion it was said that we
understand from studying Quranic verses that The Lord is
a nurturer that promotes and sustains the development of
the being subject to his tutelage until it reaches
complete perfection or maturity. Providing the
necessities of the creature being nurtured is a requisite
of lordship and nurturing. We also learned that the
Prophets conflicts with their nations and the evil
persons of their time were over who possessed lordship or
sovereignty. According to the Holy Quran most of them had
no dispute over God being Creator.
We read in the Holy Quran:
If you should ask them;
who created the Heavens and the Earth? They would
certainly answer: Allah! 29
Consequently the conflicts and arguments with the
pagans were not for the most part over the matter of
creation but rather mainly over sovereignty. This is the
main center of the prophets wars with the evil persons
and nations buried in ignorance. Victory in this battle
is what makes the prophets successful in the
establishment of religion.
We said that the lord is obliged to legislate for the
life of the beings under his tutelage. This is in
principle the most prominent characteristic of lordship.
Allah creates and then decrees how his creatures should
live. He gives them the laws for living and specifies the
manner of their life, also equipping them with the means
for reaching maturity guiding them in this direction.
The prophets stood by this very basic, fundamental
characteristic saying: O Mankind! Your lord and Nurturer
is the Lord of the Heavens and Earth. He has made laws
for all living creatures. He has given order to the lives
of the heavens and earth and the creatures therein, and
he also created laws for you, ascertaining your way of
life.
We said previously that every creatures way of life
was ascertained according to its own structure and
nature. In the case of one of them the Quran speaks of
subjugation. The Quran sees inanimate objects obliged and
subjugated in the powerful chain of the law of creation.
They follow the way to their perfection in this way never
straying from it in the least because straying from the
way that creation has ascertained for them is equal to
their destruction:
Lo! your lord is Allah who
created the heavens and the earth in six days, then
mounted He the throne. He covereth the night with the
day, which is in haste to follow it, and hath made the
sun and the moon and the stars subservient by His
command. His verily is all creation and commandment.
Blessed be Allah the Lord of the Worlds!
30
This verse begins with the words your Lord
and after giving examples of his lordship such as the
earths rotation and the appearance of day and night, he
is praised with the attribute Lord of the
Worlds
He constraineth the sun
and moon to give service, each running on for an
appointed term.....31 (Holy Quran 35:5)
For another group of creatures Divine guidance is in
the form of inspiration. Animals live under the influence
of Gods inspirational guidance and as thus follow the way
towards their maturity, reaching its absolute bounds. The
precise, subtle and sometimes extremely complicated way
of animal life is all led by the inspiration of their
Lord. From the first moment of life until the
final degree of maturity, and from then until death
animal life continues under the radiation of this form of
guidance.
In the Holy Quran we find an example of animal life as
thus:
And thy lord inspired the
bee, saying: Choose thou habitations in the hills and in
the trees and in that which they thatch. Then eat of all
fruits, and follow the ways of they Lord, made smooth
(for thee).32
However in the case of man, the most superior creature
in these three groups, guidance is by revelation. Divine
organization goes to work and from its fountain-head
revelations are revealed to the prophets by esteemed
Angels and their like. Mans way of life is therefore
ascertained, giving order to all aspects of his life
guiding him towards the way for achieving happiness in
the two worlds.
This order or system and set of laws in Quranic
Culture is called Islam, it is a religion for
mankind based on his nature and the realm of his
existence, collating exactly with human disposition,
coming from his Lord. This is not just the
proper name for the religion and special Divine law of
The Last Prophet Mohammad (s.a.w). That which all of the
prophets proclaimed; Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, all
had the name of Islam This is to the point
where the Quran informs us that no name appeared for it
before Noah (a.s), but from his time onward the name for
all of Gods Divine Laws is Islam.
We discussed this before and we saw that according to
Quranic logic
Lo! religion with Allah
(is) al-Islam (The Surrender to his will and guidance)
Those who (formerly) received the scripture differed only
after knowledge came unto them, through transgression
among themselves. 33
Hence, a description of Islam may be summed up in this
form: «The set of laws that The Lord of Mankind has
expounded for him in proportion to his make-up and
corresponding to human nature».
From here on our discussion will be about Islam in
order to see what this Islam was (meaning mans way of
life and thought, beliefs and morality), and what form it
took after the Prophets death. We will also see how it
was emptied of its original content and what should be
done now.
The Holy Prophet (s.a.w) had announced «nothing will
remain of Islam but its name». What was this
Islam and how did it become so empty and
hollow that only its name remains? With an accurate
analysis of Islam we will discover it has four types of
existence. In other words, Islam in human society, four
types of substances:
A) Nominal Existence
B) Conceptional Existence
C) Practical Existence
D) Islamic Society Existence
