Challenge, Not Danger

Challenge, Not Danger

1990 4 April 8 Challenge, Not Danger (408) A reader of Al-Risala writes: “During a train journey I met a Hindu doctor who said that whenever non-Muslims alleged that Islam had been spread by the sword, Muslims became enraged and retorted that it had spread on the strength of its truth.

He noted that while they were quick to make this assertion, they did not appear to do so with total conviction. Otherwise why keep proclaiming that Islam was “in danger” at the slightest sign of any threat to its integrity?”

What the Hindu meant was that if the power of Islam did indeed rest on the fact of its being a true religion, it could not ever be said to be “in danger.” Its innate strength should be armour enough. The frequent raising of a hue and cry by Muslims that their religion is under threat would appear to indicate, that Islam is actually obliged to fall back on the sword in order to perpetuate its existence. There is the insidious suggestion that if, today, the power of the sword has been taken away from Islam, Islam is then really in danger. But since Islam’s real power is truth there is no question of its being in jeopardy. If a man once possesses the truth, it will remain with him for ever. Truth is not something which can be usurped. Especially not by the sword.

Islam must be seen as an ideology. As such, it would be under threat only if it were proved wrong ideologically. But Islam has never been proved wrong on such grounds, having maintained the truth of its ideology right throughout its history. Islam, therefore is in no peril.

It will, however, continue to be faced with challenges, as it was in the past, and it will continue to meet them as it did the challenge of Greek thought during the period of the Abbasids – to quote but one example.

At that time no one raised the slogan: “Islam is in danger.” Whatever challenge there was, was met on an academic level. In the present age too, Islam has been faced with challenges which are purely ideological. But the Muslims of the present age have not shown themselves competent to answer modern challenges. That is why they resort to raising the slogan of Islam being in danger. What is really under threat is Muslim leadership, and Muslim leaders, in order to save their leadership began saying that Islam was in danger.