DESTRUCTIVE POLITICS — Political Interpretation of Islam

The direct result of this negative politics is that instead of becoming a history of progress and development, human history became a history of destruction. Why is it that almost the whole of human history turned into a history of this sort of Satanic politics? The reason for this is that the Creator has given man an exceptional feature and that is the ego. It is actually the ego that provides man a special status in the whole of the cosmos. This sort of so-called ‘revolutionary politics’ can by no means whatsoever, be considered as Islamic politics. There are two aspects of the ego — the positive and negative. In collective life, be it within the family or in the wider society, it always happens that people face experiences that prick their egos. On such occasions, if a person can control himself — if he can properly handle the issue of ‘ego management’ — he would have used his ego, as it were, in a proper manner. But if his ego is provoked and he lets it affect his entire personality, he will create immense problems for himself, and for others, too. He will have failed in the art of ‘ego management’. One has to always face this issue of managing the ego. When this problem occurs in the political sphere and one fails to manage one’s ego properly, it is what is called the ‘politics of opposition’. This is what challenging the political authorities is about. Because most people fail in the art of ‘ego management’, almost the entirety of human history presents a picture of political destruction. The solution to this problem is explained in the Quran and Hadith in terms of what can be termed as the 'politics of patience' or sabr. The politics of patience is no politics of defeat. It is but another name for political status quoism — that is to say, to accept, in practical terms, the status quo as far as the issue of political power is concerned, and, without confronting the political authorities, to avail the opportunities present in the non-political sphere. It is this formula that is expressed in a Hadith report, according to which the Prophet indicated that: God grants to non-violence what He does not grant to violence. o