The Loss of the Ghetto Mentality

Muslim majority area. The objective in Palestine is to end Israeli occupation and replace it with Arab rule. The aim of politics in Kashmir is to end the domination of India and make Kashmir a part of Pakistan. Similarly, in regions such as Xinjiang (China) and the Philippines, there is a demand to establish Muslim rule once again as it was before. All initiatives of this kind are but the politics of the impossible. Such action can never yield any positive result. The only outcome of such politics is the loss of even what is already in the possession of the agitators and getting nothing in return. This politics of the impossible is not just unwise: it is against Islam. In the field of politics, the demand of both wisdom and Islam is one and the same—that actions should be result-oriented. Where there is no hope of gaining anything, one has to remain content with what one already has. It is only the leaders who benefit from politics. The people have nothing to gain by it. The politics of the impossible is engaged in by exploitative leaders. For the common man to follow such leaders, it is the crassest foolishness. The politics of the impossible is best described as suicidal. Nothing less than suicidal can express the destructive effect of such politics. Furthermore, this kind of politics leads not only to the suicide of the individual: it leads to the suicide of the whole community. Ideal and Practical It is the case with the majority of the people that when a realistic suggestion is made to them, they immediately respond with idealistic notions, such as a demand for justice; or they quote the law of human rights and say things should be like this, or like that, and so on. All utterances of this kind are utopian. In this world, idealism never works. In this world we have to be pragmatic and aim at what is achievable. What the state of affairs should be by our lights is hardly worthy of consideration. What is actually worthy of consideration is what the state of affairs should be according to the creation plan of God. This is not an issue of arriving at an ideological criterion. This is an issue relating entirely to what is practically achievable and what is not. According to the creation plan of the Creator, every man in this world is given freedom of action and that is something which cannot be cancelled out. In view of this, the only course that is practicable is that, in The Loss of the Ghetto Mentality