The Political Interpretation of Islam

other man puts on yellow-tinted spectacles and looks at things. The first man will perceive the object that he stares at as being yellow in colour. If he focuses his attention on the object continuously for a while and then looks at other things, for a few seconds everything else will also look yellow. But this effect will soon wear off and then everything will appear in their normal colours. On the other hand, the second person will perceive everything, no matter what its real colour, as yellow. He will not be able to perceive any other colour, no matter where he looks. The same holds true when the deen comes to be interpreted in terms of the assumed primacy of a single factor such as politics. Then, every aspect of the deen comes to be wrongly seen as being underpinned by politics. What is the difference between stressing, from the point of view of dawah, a certain aspect of the deen, on the one hand, and making this aspect the basis of the interpretation of the deen, on the other? This question can be answered with the help of the following analogy. Suppose someone says, “For every Muslim, it is a must that, in addition to being a Muslim, he should develop within him a martial spirit.” This statement appears to be a considerable exaggeration, because, obviously, it is almost impossible for every Muslim to become a soldier. After all, Muslims include men and women, children and old people, the weak and the strong, the sick and the healthy.