Under God’s Protection

Under God’s Protection

1991 2 February 18-20 Under God’s Protection (978) Islam is a religion which, from the outset, has been sedulously preserved in immaculate, pristine form – the Muslims being both its beneficiaries and its bearers. It is this bearer-status enjoyed by the Muslims which gives them the singular privilege of being a people who will never face extinction. If it is impossible to obliterate Islam from the face of the earth, then it is equally impossible to extirpate the Muslims, for God’s protection of Islam and the Muslims will last until Doomsday itself.

Time and again, the Almighty has given concrete expression to His will to protect the Muslim community (Ummah). For example, in the first phase of Islam, it became impossible after a certain stage for the Muslims to remain in Mecca. At that very point in time, God created a powerful centre for Muslims in Medina. Then again after the passing away of the Prophet, all the Arab tribes united against Islam, an event recorded in Islamic history as the apostasy (Fitna-e-Irtidad).

With the special succour of God, however, this massive revolt was administered a crushing defeat. Another instance of God’s support for His servants was the victory he gave them over the Roman and Persian empires when the latter tried to exterminate the Muslims. Later, too, the Christian countries of Europe united to attack the Muslim world in order to capture Syria and Palestine. But, again after a war spanning 200 years, they had a crushing defeat inflicted upon them. Similarly, during the last Abbasid Caliphate, the Tartar tribes overran and devastated the Muslim empires. They demolished all the mosques from Samarqand (now in the U.S.S.R.) to Baghdad. But within just fifty years, the whole course of history changed with the Tartars accepting Islam. They reconstructed the mosques that they themselves had demolished, and therein prostrated themselves in all humility before God.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Mughal empire saw its dissolution. And at the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman empire disintegrated. At that time, it appeared that the Muslims had no future in the world. But after the Second World War, Islam was again on the world map with more than fifty independent Muslim countries, in which Islamic activities were being engaged in with even greater zeal, and on a much vaster scale than ever before.

Muslims are called a blessed community, or a community which has been shown mercy. This is not strictly accurate. It would be more true to say that the Muslims are a protected community. That is to say that despite their straying from the straight and narrow path, they will never have to suffer total annihilation as a matter of divine retribution. No nation will ever have the power to wipe them out completely. This does not depend upon any superiority, or upon their being the chosen people, but rather upon the protection God affords them by virtue of their being followers (Ummah) of the final Prophet.

This divine will (sunnah) has been very much in evidence in modern times in the context of a redressal of the kind of Muslim woes which stemmed from inadequate and misguided leadership. The Muslim leaders of today had so misled their own people that the latter had failed to establish any solid base for themselves in the modern world. Innumerable movements, conducted in such a way as to cause public disturbances, had only amounted to a waste of their energy. Sad to say, none of these movements had been truly aimed at providing them with any of the things which are considered to be of value in the present day. Then, too, as a result of wrong leadership, Muslims had failed to find their place in the field of modern economics. They had almost descended to the level of the Harijans (the lowest caste who are regarded as untouchables) of modern times. But then, God stepped in and with His superior arrangement, provided for them in a manner befitting the servants of the Almighty. For example, He blessed the Muslim countries with fifty per cent of the world’s oil resources. Petroleum being one of the most coveted of natural treasures, the Muslims’ economic backwardness was compensated for by their being given possession of such a large share of it.

Such facts were hidden in the universe as were to testify to the truth of the Qur’an being a divine book. But Muslim leaders, thanks to their preoccupation with futile activities, were not in a position to give their time to discovering them. It was not they, but western nations who, through God’s instrumentality, made these momentous discoveries in their stead. By discovering great treasure troves of natural resources they provided factual evidence in support of the following Quranic verse:

We will show them our signs in all the regions of the earth and in their own souls. Until they clearly see that this is the truth (41:53).

God wanted the message of this religion to be communicated all over the world. He had, therefore, provided a superior means of communication which lay hidden in nature, waiting to be discovered. But our Muslim leaders, in their misguided way, failed to discover any of these things. That was why God engaged other nations in this work of research, until all those methods of data propagation which are known as the print and electronic media, came into existence. With the invention of these means of communication, it is becoming increasingly easy to spread the message of Islam all over the globe.

There are many such instances of God’s compensating for the Muslims’ neglect of their own interests. Muslims should come to a full realization of how much God has done for them, and, in this awareness, should devote themselves whole heartedly to the service of Islam. It is for this that God has granted them His special succour and protection.