In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

It is important that we Muslims think in an Islamic way - that is, in terms of Islamic ideas and Islamic ideals - and so actively reject, in our very thoughts, the ideas and ideals of the West.

We should strive to do this because the ideas and ideals of the West are at best wrong, and at worst the embodiment of everything that Islam regards as sinful and evil. If we think in terms of Western ideas and ideals we are allowing these ideas and ideals to contaminate us.

Thus, we must stop using - in our speech, writings and thoughts - Western  political and sociological terms and ideas such as 'colonial', 'racism', 'socialism', 'democracy' and even 'politics' and what is called 'human rights'. Any attempt to try and understand the world - its past and present - in such terms as these is simply un-Islamic. For all these terms and ideas represent how the West views the world and the individuals within it - they represent Western thinking, divided as this thinking is into politics, religion, sociology, economics and other subjects.

The Western way is the way of dividing things into subjects and inventing abstract theories in an attempt to understand these subjects. Thus the West has the  political theories of Marx and other 'socialists', as it has the sociological theories of Durkheim, Levi-Strauss and others, and the psychological theories of Freud and Jung. These and other Western theories all have their exponents and those who oppose them with different theories. Thus, in 'politics' there are socialists, of various sorts, described as being on the Left, and conservatives and 'nationalists', described as being on the Right.

What this Western way amounts to is a projection of abstract ideas onto Reality itself - that is, interpreting Reality in terms of these human-derived abstract ideas, theories and forms. For the West, human identity itself is explained, and defined, by such abstract, human, notions. There is thus a concealment of Reality - a covering-up - by these human, abstract, constructs.
 

Properly, Islam regards this concealment as Kufr. What results from such concealment is Ignorance (Jahiliyah) - ignorance of the true nature of Reality. An individual who, for whatever reason, is ignorant of the true nature of Reality is a Kafir - that is, someone who knowingly or unknowingly conceals the nature of Reality, from either themselves, or others, or both.

Islam regards Reality - all being and all beings, including ourselves - as not only created by, but also defined by, Allah.  Kufr is thus a tyranny, a loss of that freedom which Truth - the true apprehension of Reality  - brings. This tyranny of Kufr is a mental one, or a physical one, for instance when someone, or many, try to make one of those human abstract notions real in the world through the creation of a particular type of political State. Quite often, Kufr is both a mental and a physical tyranny.

The Way of Al-Islam is the way of Unity - of thinking only in terms of what is Islamic, and what is un-Islamic. Thus, in Islam there are only believers, and  kuffar, the unbelievers. In Islam, there is only the Truth, revealed to us by the Prophet Muhammad, and Ignorance (Jahiliyah). In Islam, there is only obedience to the Will of Allah  or disobedience.

Reality, according to Islam, is tawhid: the Unity of Allah. This reality is manifest to us in the Shahada. To affirm the truths of the Shahada is to affirm the reality of our relation to Allah. To be a Muslim is to strive to live according to the truths of the Shahada and thus to strive to return ourselves to our natural relation with all life and all existence and thus to our proper, our natural, relation to Allah, the Unity, the One, The Creator. The natural relation with all life is the natural balance, the harmony - the true Middle Way - which Islam is and which the Prophet Muhammad revealed to us.

Thus, there are Muslims - who strive to obey the Will of Allah and thus who strive to be civilized - and there are those who are ignorant of, or who scorn, the Will of Allah. There is the striving for an Islamic Way of Life, represented by the Islamic ideal of an Islamic community governed according to the Shariah, and there is the striving by the kuffar for the ideas and ideals which arise from Jahiliyah. And that is all. There are no 'races', no nations; no politics of Left and Right, no 'exploitation' of workers/racial minorities and no 'racial discrimination'. There is only the Way of Islam, and the way of the kuffar. There is only Islam - and thus the striving to purify ourselves, defend Islam (Jihad), create an Islamic community, and bring the Truth to others - or there is Ignorance. There is only the Quran, Ahadith, pious, learned Islamic scholars - or there is Ignorance.

The Truth is that the solution to life, and all the problems of living - be they so-called 'social', political, economic or whatever problems - is contained in Islam.
 

We as Muslims must view and strive to understand everything in Islamic terms, and in Islamic terms only. Hence, if we need to try and understand, and explain to others, some happening in the modern world, then we must strive to understand it in these Islamic terms of Kufr or the Truth of Allah contained in the Quran and Ahadith. And if we, as individuals, cannot understand some happening, in this Islamic way, then we must ask those more qualified than us  - our pious and learned Scholars,  who will, InshaAllah, guide us to a proper and correct Islamic understanding.

This guidance - given to us by Allah in the Quran and Ahadith - liberates us because it returns us, guides us back, to our real nature: to an understanding of our place in Nature, in the cosmos, and to our duties and responsibilities, to ourselves, to other human beings, and to all existence.

Abdul Aziz