ISLAM AND THE MODERN MAN - PART II

Man’s feeling of helplessness cannot be soothed unless he has a God to whom he can turn. In such a state of affairs these harmful feelings may be diverted. Belief in God and the Life hereafter serves this very purpose in life. It diverts those feelings—which are harmful to society—towards God. In the early history of Israelites, there is the story of Joseph, who was separated from his father by his stepbrothers. Later, the same happened with Benjamin another brother of Joseph. He too, without his father’s knowledge, was separated from him. These were terrible losses for Jacob the father, and it was but natural that he became intensely miserable. Had he vented his negative feelings on his elder sons, there would have been great dissension and discord in his family. Instead, he diverted all his flood of feelings towards God saying: ‘I express my grief and sorrow to God.’ There was a similar diversion of negative feeling when Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab dismissed the Islamic General Khalid ibn al-Walid from his post of the Commander of the army to the position of an ordinary soldier. It was a rude shock to Khalid, but he redirected his hurt feelings to God, saying: ‘I fight not for the cause of Umar, but for the cause of God.’ Belief in the life Hereafter is the greatest gift to human beings. It enables man to turn to God and seek compensation for the wrong done to him. Whatever he has failed to find in man he can expect to find in God. In this way the negative feelings of a worshipper of God keep getting diverted to God instead of to man. In other words the superabundance of water that would have caused great harm in the form of a flood is canalized into a diversion pool. This can be concluded with an observation made by George Bernard Shaw: “If a man like Muhammad were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would solve its problems in a way that would bring it much-needed peace and happiness.” The life of the Prophet Muhammad was a perfect example of what a true believer’s life should be. We need to go further than Bernard Shaw and say that “If true believers were born in this world, peace would certainly prevail—which should be our first priority.” o This is the concluding part of the article ‘Islam and the Modern Man’. Part I of this article appeared in the May 2015 issue of Spirit of Islam.