All praises be to Allah, and
prayers and peace be upon His chosen Prophet, and His other
Prophets and Messengers.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Though
I meditated long on the words style and politics, I
found no difference in sense between them, because both indicate
following a certain method for reaching somepurpose.
Politics, however, might be more particularized nowadays,
for it has become a science to be studied. It also frequently
means The art of plotting and deceiving others . The word
politic , or politician , does not mean merely policy in
its general sense. Both also refer to The Cunning man and the
opportunist politician.
From this perspective we have to
discern the attitude of religion - when it is really considered
as religion - toward politics, and politics attitude toward
religion.
We had better first get acquainted with the
encyclopedic and comprehensive meaning of the word
religion.
Religion inclusively means: The
absolute submission to TheAbsolute Possessor, bearing
in mind that the absolute submission is, undoubtedly, worship,
and that The Absolute Possessor is, certainly, Allah. I am sure
that this definition comprehends both religions: Islam and
Christianity. Religion, therefore, is the behavioral and
doctrinal practice of what the human s identity demands, being a
servant of Allah, The Great and The Almighty. In other words,
religion is the human s practice of his servitude to Allah
through optional behavior, the same as he has been created as a
servant through the reality of necessity.
Being one under
the dominion of this truth, religion has been split into several
religions by way of human judgments regardless of the extent of
their justifications. The important point in this regard is that
religion in the human s life is a purposeful demand and a truth
which is settled and fixed. It is not an approach to an
aim, a style or policy for realizing an aim.
Policy under
the dominion of the economical, cultural and civilizational
neocolonialism - has become nowadays an art of plotting. It is
also the art of the styles of enticing which is followed by
trapping. Such arts are used as instruments in the hands of the
strong greedy minority to dominate the feeble majority coveted
for. This bitter and awful reality is interpreted by the emblem
of The New WorldSystem, followed by the emblem of
Globalism!
The political plotting utilized today,
which aims at realizing this aim, practices miscellaneous styles
which all in all meet at one broad methodology springing from the
policy of division, disuniting powers and instigating the
categories of the single society against one another. The most
valuable tool and the most dangerous weapon used to this end is,
certainly, represented in inventing sectarian sensitiveness,
reviving racial disputes and rousing the doctrinal points of
view.
Let us in this regard hearken to a testimony
declared by a Jewish Western researcher, called Bernardo Lewis,
when he says in a book he entitled The Middle East and the
West, As a matter of fact, it was impossible to append the
Arab area to the West but by means of dividing it and disuniting
it. Had any politician in the whole world been asked to seek
appending the area to the West, he indeed wouldn t have selected
a style other than that selected by the West; i.e. disuniting the
area with sectarian tumults, social and cultural tearing,
inventing differences and conflicts, expanding the issues of
controversy and the exaggeration in giving special prominence to
them. Those who strive to do this are displeased with witnessing
peace prevailing among the sects, and pleased with sighting fight
erupting among them, whereas he who believes it unlikely for the
West to play the role of setting fire to the primer of such
tumults will be, certainly, either deceiving himself or being
deceived.
But we never believe it unlikely for the
discourse of that Jewish British researcher when he tries to make
us love peace and take care of the fight which the West never
stops heating its ardor- to be for promoting peace in the form
that Israel is calling for today. But the sage Arab listener to
the above mentioned extract has to pick the testimony which
represents the kernel and essence of the discourse and turn away
from the sequence which the researcher aims at.
*
* *
Having discerned these facts, it
gets clear enough that religion, which is a demand and a goal, is
to be far supreme above politics, which is an instrument and
approach. This makes it clear that the logic of reality demands
employing politics as being at the service of religion. It never
demands employing religion as being at the service of the
plotting and tricks of politics.
Should the followers of a
religion be veracious in embracing it, religion then ought to be
the strongest means of reuniting, creating cordiality and
cooperation, and overcoming the factors of disunion and dispute.
Moreover, multiple religion will never result in decaying a bit
of its inclusive dominion, or in annihilating any of its secrets
which develop true intimacy and cooperation when based on
veracity in embracing it, because the single solid pillar of
religion is able to overcome the controversy in its minute points
and matters.
Religion, therefore, should have caused the
souls of its followers, who represent that efficient role, to
overcome the policy of division, tearing and the tools of wasting
powers. It also should have been strong enough to reunite its
followers in the face of the attempts of alienation practiced
nowadays, the same as it was at the time of their predecessors in
Sham lands when they faced the invasion of the crusades in the
past. In reply, I may say, These two prerequisites of religion
should have been realized if many of those who call themselves
Islamists had not sought politicizing Islam, and if many
Christians had not inclined to respond to the policy f
alienation.
I would like first to make the sense of
politicizing Islam clearer in order not to make what I mean
(though I reject it) equivocal with what I believe in, throw
light on it and call others to it. The verdicts of the Islamic
law undoubtedly comprehend what is called today the
constitutional regimes, the relation between the nation and the
governing power and the relation between the Islamic nation and
other nations in war and peace.
Accordingly, the Islamic
System incorporates a religion and a state. The books of the
Sultanic Verdicts (Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyah, as it was
called before) are abundant with clarifying this in detail.
Such
characteristic in Islam will never appear clearly when Islam is
allowed to rule and when its verdicts are made operative. But the
first and most important warrant of the success of such strife at
the stage of the call to Islam and paving the way to
understanding it and realizing conviction of it, just before
applying it to the Islamic societies the stage within which the
Islamists and the Islamic governments operate is represented in
exalting the Islamic Call affairs over the political windings
that lie up on its way and the political ambitions represented in
taking hold of the reins of control. Alas! It is a point of view
which a lot of Muslims hitherto have not been convinced of. Hence
the term of The IslamicCall, according to their
activities, is interpreted as creating the political movements
which hold the purpose of attaining the seats of power. This is
what I imply when I say politicizing Islam, whose more
exact term might be politicizing the Islamic Call.
Two
serious ailments lie up on the path of this approach:
The
first ailment is represented in the fact that the political
aspiration to the seat of power necessarily causes the bearers of
this aspiration to incline to one or another of the political
trends, which will certainly entail antagonizing, or conflicting
with, the other trend. Moreover, it is well known that the
political schools in our area are exposed to foreign powers which
may creep stealthily into them, control them and move them in
consistent with their interests even if those powers are unable
to get them under their c. It will be then so easy for the
foreign powers to make the differences among those schools into
struggle and dissension, and it will be so easy for them to
exploit such dissension to open a gap through it in order to
creep and rob us of whatever they find useful of our rights and
wealth. But I see that due to the above mentioned known fact, the
Islamic powers participating in this struggle will certainly turn
into what may almost be as a piece of apparatus inside that
circle, where it possesses no voluntary movement of the least
value, but moves automatically with the whole set. The reality we
sight represents the most evident witness for that.
The
second ailment is that such political aspiration will change
those who work in the Islamic field into miscellaneous groups,
far from one another, by means of the various, and even
contradicting, political windings. How great is the number of the
people who watch and wonder about the reality of Islam! It
gathered the scattered Arabs in the past and then interlaced the
Muslims and the Christians in the Islamic society by deep
intimacy and serious cooperation. At last Islam itself has
changed into a cause which divided it and tore it into
pieces!!
But the one who meditates well will realize that
Islam as a religion has not changed. It was, and is still,
bearing the components of union and reunion. It was, and is
still, joining and taking care of the society with all its sects
and categories; a fact testified by the prolonged centuries and
the golden time of the Islamic civilization. But outsiders have
crept and divided. Had there been no politicization assimilating
the Islamic Call, those outsiders would not have crept and
crumbled its known single approach into miscellaneous separated
paths which seem to the observer as schools in the Islamic
affairs, but they are indeed political paths.
The Western
efforts, which aimed at splitting the single Islam into
contrasting Islamic schools, have failed. They have also failed
in resurrecting the buried Islamic groups, which prevailed and
extinguished before the golden time of the Islamic civilization
came to an end. Instead, the pioneers of those efforts have
induced politicizing the movements of the Islamic Call. In other
words, they substituted what they had not been able to do by
directing the Islamists to turn away from the Islamic Call
affairs such as identifying Islam, endearing it to the others and
removing the dubieties which may affect it and strove to replace
them by political Islamic activities. Having connected directly
or indirectly to the manufacturers of the political plotting in
the West, the leaderships of politics, which move in the Middle
East, have therefore caused the activities of those Islamists
willy nilly to fall in the range of the Western attraction.
When
we review the antagonizing Islamic intellectual views, the forms
of exaggeration which Islam disowns, the schools of accusing of
disbelief and how much diverse they are and the non-Islamic
malicious attitudes in the name of Islam towards the adherents of
the other religions here and there, we have to bear in mind that
such situations have all been the outcome of the fall of many
organizational Islamic activities in the orbit of the Western
politics. Had they not descended from the peak of the Call to
Allah to the field of the intricate political battles, that
attraction would not have been given way to reach the Islamists
movement and activities.
*
* *
I still have to say a final short statement about the
Christians who are pleased with responding to the policy of
Westernization. I suppose that those Christians are faithful to
their Christianity and proud of their religion. In this case, I
can say: Had the West been interested in religion and in the
belief in Allah at the political and leadership level, I would
have said that the policy of Westernization to which some
Christians incline might not have been of evil results on their
religion. Nay, it might be an assistant for them to grasp it more
firmly, and to be more faithful to it. But the manufacturers of
the Western policy are not interested in religion as a religion.
Nay; they take the path of sacrificing any religion and striving
for exploiting the biggest Christian Religion establishments in
the world and subduing them to their interests and
frivolities.
It does not mean the West anything to prefer
one half of our Arab World to the other, because it does not want
to bear the expenses of taking care of any. What concerns it is
to strike both parties, one by the other, disregarding the
defeated party whatever it might be, and it consequently wins the
advantages resulting from their quarrel.
Anyone can
discern the truth of what I say when he/she reads the secret
report of The American National Security Council issued in 1991,
and whoever reads Who Protects the Christians from the Arabs?
by Victor Sehab, can pick more details and proofs.
Our
Islamic Nation, therefore, has to seek immunity within the hedge
of its religion and make a barrier from its tissue to protect
itself from the desires of every outsider. Should they all be
veracious in their belief in Allah and in clinging to His
teachings and guidance, plurality among the faithfully rising
schools which are veraciously seeking Allah s Pleasure and making
their way to the field of servitude, will never disturb its
unity, blemish the feeling of cordiality which joins its
categories or deprive it of the mutual cooperation.