Is the West dominant? Yes: but because it has drawn upon Islam. Did Muslims ‘close the doors of science in their faces’? Yes: but because they abandoned true Islam. This is the interpretation of history of the founder of modern reformism which is still widely subscribed to today.
Last update: 2022-04-22 09:53:23
A Ready Objection It is said by some that if Islam truly came to call diverse peoples into one common unity and if the Qur’ân says: ‘You have nothing to do with those who divide over religion and make parties’ (6:159) how does it come about that the Islamic community has been sundered into sectarian movements and broken up into groups and schools? If Islam is a faith that unifies, why this numerous diversity among Muslims? If Islam turns the believer in trust towards Him who created the heavens and the earth, why do multitudes of Muslims turn their faces to powerless things that can neither avail nor harm, and apart from God are helpless either way, even to the point of thinking such practice part of Tawhîd itself? If it was the first religion to address the rational mind, summoning it to look into the whole material universe, giving it therein the maintenance of the faith, how is it that Muslims are content with so little and many indeed have closed and barred the door of knowledge altogether, supposing thereby that God is pleased with ignorance and a neglect of study of His marvelous handiwork? How does it happen that the very apostles of love have become in these days a people who nose around for it in vain? They who were once exemplary in energy and action are now the very picture of sloth and idleness? What are all these accretions to their religion, when all the time Muslims have the very Book of God as a balance in which to weigh and discriminate all their conjectures and yet its very injunctions they abandon and forsake? If Islam really is so solicitous for the minds and hearts of men, why today in the opinion of so many is it somehow beyond the reach of those who would grasp it? If Islam welcomes and invites enquiry into its contents, why is the Qur’ân not read except by chanting and even the majority of the educated men of religion only know it very approximately? If Islam granted to reason and will the honour of independence, how is it that it has bound them with such chains? If it has established the principles of justice, why are the greater part of its rulers such models of tyranny? If religion eagerly anticipates the liberation of slaves, why have Muslims spent centuries enslaving the free? Contents not available yet. Buy the hard copy issue or subscribe to read all the articles.