The Human Condition

If you look at the human condition, you cannot fail to be moved by the indescribable pain and suffering which many people undergo throughout the world. It is a dead conscience that will not be filled with anguish at the sight of stareved and shrivelled bodies, or at the sight of innocent children disfigured and maimed by chemical weapons, or the sight of people who fight for a patch of pavement on which to rest their heads at night.


In anguish and even rage, you may well ask, for example:

what help is there for the millions of people in various parts of the world who face starvation and death as a result of famine, drought, or being driven out as refugees from their own homes?

What help if there for the millions of people who are uprooted from their ancestral homes through political conflict, racial violence, sectarian strife or the economic greed of plundering industrial nations?

What help is there for the millions of street-children, boys and girls, who roam the megapolises of the world in search of scraps of food by day and shelter from the elements by night?

What help is there for men, women and children in towns, villages and valleys who are besiged by a tyrannical government seeking to impose its own ideology and enforce its authority, who face persecution, oppression, torture and even death, and who are constantly hunted by the vigilant eyes of informers who may be their own fellow workers, students, or kith and kin?

What help is there for the materialists who main concern is their standard of living and not of life as such, who regard their Creator as neither non-existent or irrelevant and unnecessary to their concerns?

What help is there for the flora and funa of the finely balanced eco-systems of our global village which is being deveatated by man's greed and by highly efficient tools of exploitation and destruction?

What help if there for these people whose rulers use these weapons of death and destruction not on their real enemies but for terrorising and subjugating them? And so you can continue asking such questions and addint to the catologue of falsehood, evil, injustice and ugliness in our world.



Should these things concern you and why

Every human conscience that has a spark of life in it ought naturally to be inflamed by the injustice done to and the suffering experienced by other members of the human family and God's creatures as a whole.

As least the sense of concern ought to come from calculations of self-interest. This is so because people depend on one another now more than they ever did in the past. The actions of one person could affect the livlihood and security of thousands of people on the other side of the globe. The world has become more inter-connected. News, goods, and people travel fast and so can disease, economic gain and loss, and destruction from a long-range warfare.


More than this, an active concern for the human condition and enviroment must spring from a sense of trust or amaanah. Man lives on this earth, according to Islam, as a trustee. A trustee is someone who does not own things as of right but is respinsible for their proper management. Man as a trustee of God, has the duty to see therefore that people live in peace and justice, that they are free from hunger and fear. Man, as a trustee of God, has the duty to ensure the rights he enjoys to the resources of the earth are not abused. He is not for example to pollute the drinking water of the earth nor is he to slaughter animals except for food or to prevent the spread of disease.


There must therefore be a strong link between faith and an active social consceince just as there is a link between disbelief and hypocricy on the one hand and callousness and inhumanity on the other. This is well brought out in one of the early surahs of the Qur'an, Al-Maa'un, meaning Small Kindess or Help;

In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful
Have you seen the one who denies the Religion or the Judgment to come?
It is he who repels the orphan with harshness
And does not encourage (or organise) the feeding of the needy.
So woe to the performers of Prayer who are neglectful of their Prayer
Those who want to be seen of men
But refuse even the smallest of help
[Surah al-Maa'un; 107:1-7]

This surah shows that Islam is indeed no mere set or rituals, nor is it lifeless dogma or some musterious cult. It is rooted in belief in God and a universal concern for the human condition. Its concern is for mankind as a whole regardless of creed, race or colour. This is in keeping with the Qur'anic description of the role and message of the Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) as "mercy and a blessing to all creature".