The chaos that we see around us in the Muslim world at present is the same old, unending battle between good and evil. The evil knows what is good but, for strange reasons, keeps rejecting it. This to me is the most mysterious mystery of the human mind.
Those unto whom we gave the scripture recognise (this revelation) as they recognise their sons. But lo! A party of them knowingly conceals the truth. (Al-Quran 2:146)
Seeing the present state of the world, one is reminded of what Mughira Ibn Shu‘ba once said of Abu Jahl, one of the staunchest opponents of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him):
“One day I was with Abu Jahl in Mecca. Allah’s Messenger came over and invited us to accept Islam. Abu Jahl rebuked him saying, ‘If you are doing this so that we will testify before Allah in the other world that you performed your mission of prophethood, we will do it. Leave us then, O man, to ourselves.’ When Allah’s Messenger left us, I asked Abu Jahl if he accepted Muhammad’s prophethood. He said that he did, and then added, ‘I know he is truly a prophet. Nevertheless we compete with the Hashimites in everything. They have been boasting of providing food and water to the pilgrims. Now if they begin to boast of having a prophet I won’t be able to endure it all.’
Thanks to the Crusades, this legacy of Abu Jahl passed on to the modern world and the West was crowned as ‘the heir’.
“…When, in his famous speech at Clermont, in November, 1095, Pope Urban II exhorted the Christians to make war upon the ‘Wicked Race’ that held the Holy Land, he enunciated – probably without knowing it himself – the charter of Western civilization…”
“…The damage caused by the Crusades was not restricted to a clash of weapons: it was, first and foremost, an intellectual damage – the poisoning of the Western mind against the Muslim world through a deliberate misrepresentation of the teachings and ideals of Islam.”
Since the age of the Crusades up to this particular day, the air has been full of misunderstandings.
“We remain strangers
Even after so many meetings
Blood stains remain
Even after so many rains”
Tolerance: The word ‘Islamist’ in the present world has been made synonymous with intolerance. Yes, some elements might be there. But the way the media blows things out of sane proportions is disturbing. Creating a poster girl out of an innocent girl, selective and biased reporting of events, these are the filthy tools of maligning Islam. Islam by itself is most tolerating. Did the Prophet of Mercy not allow a delegation of Christian priests to pray inside the Masjid-e-Nabwi? And to talk of the tolerance that the west so boasts of; it is this: Taliban should be brought down from the ruling chair because they have not been elected ‘democratically’. So bring in NATO. And when it is Morsi or General Sisi – well, you know! eh! This duplicity and the reason behind it are so explicitly expressed in this excerpt:
It is incredible how an author can ignore the carnage being performed by Muslims in the Muslim world today and somehow justify it by comparing to western Christians over 1000 years ago…has your society not learned anything in a thousand years…the west is certainly different than it was then and tolerance is common in western countries…you say the prophet allowed Christians to pray in Islamic holy places but today non Muslims cannot even travel to Mecca…it appears that the prophet had tolerance that today’s Muslims ignore…I think it is the lack of this true following of Islam and dependence on radical uneducated mullahs that have brought you to this disaster…the carnage of sectarian violence must be corrected by the ummah…no outsider can do it for you…alter yourselves or you will not live peaceful lives…
this article deals vd ‘propaganda abt islam’ – u havn’t perhaps got dat right. It is gud u talkd abt the voilence by muslims in the Muslim world (no one is trying to justify dat) but please dig a bit more – u will see a western hand in almost all the cases. And ya it is true dat we muslims havent learnt much from history.
P.s western tolerance is a good myth and the crusades (and their effects) are ugly, undeniable chapters f human history that continue to haunt the modern world.