The Inevitability of Muslim Unity by A.R.
After nearly two centuries of the decimation of Muslim power and Muslim self-reliance, as a people we have fallen victim to a sorrow and mourning of a past which is now lost forever. It is a weakness and a horrible pity that the Muslims of this day have simply lost their motivation to continue living or even to better their lives in the hope of holding on to what is dear of pride and honor. We have been indoctrinated since the times of our great grandfathers into believing that our culture and civilization is inferior in every single way to the Western civilization. We have been essentially presented as the antithesis of all noble civilization and constructive works, something which we are not. We are labeled as demons, wrenches, undesirables in every society we find ourselves in. Remnants of the past, of a broken civilization and an obsolete religion. Thoroughly brainwashed and demoralized to the extent that we believe everything that is told to us by the enlightened West, as good children that should listen to their masters. Although the Muslims of the world are lost in despair, there is still hope in the form of the Pan-Islamic unity movement gaining momentum throughout the world.
Muslims have been defeated and have walked the Earth for nearly two centuries with our heads lowered in shame. In our despair, we have reversed every staple of sophisticated governance which we have inherited from our forefathers, the believers of antiquity. Our leaders have adopted the most unfitting types of governance and forced our people to abandon the noble standards and practices which have been central to our lives more many centuries. It has come to the minds of every Muslim, and is slowly making itself aware in the Western mind that Muslims are different. Though the Muslims have been massacred and abused in every country in which they are a minority or even a majority, the resilience of the Muslim masses is extraordinary. Every nation-state has tried to mold the Muslims into what it desired of them, but has failed miserably to move them. Muslims the world over, upon contact with each other, have realized that the cultures of the various ethnic groups are based on the same basic system of ethics inherited from the Prophet's (s) law. There is a new awareness of Pan-Islamic revival taking root.
The most positive and enlightened Pan-Islamic movement in the world has its origins in one country, Pakistan (or its predecessor British India). Pakistan's popular Pan-Islamic ideology is the result of a scholarly descent from the teachings of the older Persian and Turkestani philosophers. Allama Iqbal (rahmat allah alayh) was one great scholar who instilled the idea of Pan-Islamic ideology among Indian Muslims to establish a free, independent Muslim homeland in India consisting of various heterogeneous ethnic Muslim nations. The successful experiment in Pakistan has shown that Islamic unity, at least in respect to working for one common ideal, is realistically attainable. The idea that Muslims of various nations and languages are part of a broad, pluralistic culture which has a greater degree of similarity with other Muslim groups than to Non-Muslim groups which share ethnic, but not religious ties to Muslims is called Pan-Islamic ideology. The key example of this is Pakistanis and Indian Muslims which share some cultural aspects with their Hindu counterparts, yet have a much greater relationship of mutual respect and common culture with the Persians and Turkestanis. In addition, the people of Northwestern India, who are predominantly Muslim today, have had an intertwined history with the Persians and Central Asians thousands of years before the arrival of Islam. After Persia and the Central Asian Turkestanis embraced Islam, Punjab and Sindh, along with its neighboring states, quickly embraced this religion due to a philosophical and moral connection with Persia and Central Asia. Many Persian teachers traveled throughout India and preached the new religion which gained overnight success in much of India's northwestern and northeastern areas.
Thus, we see the inevitability of Islamic unity as the only practical and logical solution for the Muslims of today's era. Muslims must unite in front of the vicious and never-ending onslaught against Islam and Muslim culture gaining more and more popularity among the Non-Muslim nations of the world. The West and its principal allies in Eastern Europe, Russia, Israel, India, China, and Ethiopia are perpetuating an image of Muslims being incompatible with the modern world, hence a hindrance to the progress of world civilization. Beneath the lines of cultural pluralism and democracy, many of these nations are in fact pushing the status quo in favor of their respective materialistic, capitalistic societies with the use of open genocide against Muslim people who are unfortunate to be, at the moment, lacking any real power. This continual degradation of Islamic values and Muslims is at the core of all 'modern' societies, even those with Muslim majorities. Vast numbers of Westernized 'Muslims' are in fact in favor of the murder of millions of religious Muslims to further their respective interests. The mutilation and dismembering of the traditional Muslim society is proceeding at an unprecedented rate in human history. Muslims are proclaimed as the primary threat to all life on earth, and this hate-mongering is accepted as freedom of speech. In all the Western countries and many non-Muslim countries, preaching the extermination and concentration of Muslims into camps is protected under freedom of speech and even encouraged by the governments and presses of these countries. Muslims have so far been exceedingly hospitable to Western norms and have always sought the pleasure of Non-Muslim states to end unnecessary hostilities and return to a peaceful existence, but the Non-Muslim societies particularly the West, Russia, China, Israel, and India have tried to prevent any peaceful, just resolution of the present conflicts they are involved in with Muslims. Muslim power is non-existent in the present climate and Muslim representation in any world organizations is only through the approval of the above-mentioned nations.
Now Muslims are beginning to realize that the present status quo is unacceptable and that the other nations of the world have to make way for the representation of 25% of the world population or this downtrodden, maligned community will change the situation itself without approval from anyone. Muslim unity is not only necessary, it is the only practical solution to the issues which confront Muslims today. Muslim populations across the globe are being genocidally murdered and portrayed as the villains at the same moment. The life of a Muslim is not dearer to these people than even animals whose habitats they push to protect, but what of the places where Muslim people live which are being bombed and whose history and culture is being eradicated. If the current trend goes on the way it is, in a few centuries Muslims will become completely extinct from the planet. In the past century, one billion Muslims have been ethnically cleansed from the Earth and this is nearly half of the Muslims born in this century (Prof. Gideon Polya, Australia). How can we possibly allow this? Islamic unity MUST happen, regardless of the hurdles in the past. It is not about spreading Islam throughout the world, but it is merely about staying alive and escaping extinction. The situation is an emergency. The vast majority of Muslims on the planet are malnourished, in poverty, and on the brink of death. Illiteracy is at its highest peak in contemporary Muslim history, and the educational establishments in many countries are more than a couple of centuries old. Most Muslim countries lack the means to protect their borders from foreign invasion. The majority of Muslim rulers are not concerned with the safety and good-being of their people, some are even complicit in the extermination of Islam and Muslims in their domains. Those Muslim countries who have the means to defend themselves are either being forced by Western governments through sanctions to dismantle their defensive structures and missile technology or have been coerced to use their military establishments to wage proxy wars for the Western governments against those whom the West deems as threats thus wasting the lives and resources of the slave nations.
Islamic unity or Pan-Islamic ideology is the future of Muslim society. These structures must be established and protected from either extreme Westernism or extreme Rejectionism (i.e. Wahabism). Pan-Islamic movement is the idea that all the Muslims of the world attest to the same religion, be they Sunni, Shia, or those who follow the Sufi tehreek of the former two, and thus by virtue of a common religion, share a common civilization (with its various ethnicities, all of which are equally respected). Pan-Islamic unity is viewed according to this ideology as the transcendent solution to all the major political, economical, social ills of Muslim societies. The adherents of this ideology stress the importance of interdependence between all Islamic nations to pursue a common goal. A Pan-Islamic individual can thus be classified by his particular nationality, but representing and pursuing the issues important to his own nation along with the various other Muslim nations of the world. There is also a belief underlining all which is theological in its basis and originated with the first Muslims. This is that Islam is one religion and all adherents are united by the worship of one God and their intellectual descent is from the Holy Prophet Muhammad (s) along with those who have loved and cherished him throughout history. Those Muslims who have been raised as Muslims in the traditional strongholds of Islamic theology also trace the obedience to Islam of their ancestors, the Muslim sultans and great Islamic philosophers, whom they consider as their blood and kin.
The importance of stressing Islamic unity over all those trends and cultural anomalies which may hinder or decapitate it is also important. It is, for example, not in line with the way of Pan-Islamic belief to encourage or to facilitate the support of cultural prejudice against fellow Muslims. Many destructive Western ways and dangerous Pre-Islamic customs have returned in traditional Muslim societies as a result of the mental defeat of our culture with the conquest of the Europeans of our lands two centuries ago. This feeling of being at a loss of the steps to be taken to further our societies in the wake of their destruction has been a major issue of many Muslims alive today. Ancient racism and prejudice has crept into many Muslim societies and often is the direct reason for many problems of these regions for the lack of Islamic unity, this is observable in the Arab Gulf. Another very disastrous problem is the return of some secular Iranians to the feelings of ancient racist and cultural superiority over other Muslims, especially Arabs. It is healthy to be proud of your heritage, yet it is against Islamic religion to degrade other people's language, dress, culture, food, and manners. Pan-Islamic unity is the main vehicle for security and self-pride of the various Muslim societies around the world. Muslims must realize that their first allegiance lies with Allah (swt) and the Noble Prophet (s), over all other allegiances. Allegiances to nation, culture, language, ethnicity should be encouraged, but not to the detriment of Islamic solidarity.
Anyone may join the rising Pan-Islamic movement, it is united by its belief that all Muslims represent one soul and the blood of any Muslim is as sacred as another. The goal of this movement is to secure alliances and goodwill of all Muslim people to gain respect of themselves and their fellow Muslims. The person who professes Pan-Islamic doctrine must allow Muslim unity to be the goal of all political, social, or economic action they take. Pan-Islamic unity is a fundamental teaching of Islam and it should take precedent in every Muslims' life. The problems which the Muslim world is enduring will not solve themselves overnight, so let us join together as brothers for a common goal in securing a place for our children in this world where they may live alongside other Muslims as the best of friends.