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We are well into the month of Ramadan. We Muslims have once again launched headlong into starving ourselves every day from dawn to dusk. In all our religious obligations we have become so ritualistic that the substance is almost forgotten and the form has been kindled into worship itself. We have become past masters at missing the woods for the trees.
Like all the Ramadans before, the prices of daily commodities have sky-rocketed. One is led to believe as if on a cue the fields have started to yield less, the cows to hide their milk and the hens to lay fewer eggs. The common man is left with just enough skin by the traders to re-grow for the next Ramadan.
Yet the same traders will go back to their Iftaars and prayers with a solemnity the like of which is not seen the year round. After each prayer, they will implore Allah for forgiveness and prosperity for self and their brethren. Refreshed from heavy Iftaars, they will get on with renewed vigor to add tap water to milk, used engine oil to edible oil and ground bricks to spices. They will sell what they can without a qualm and hoard the rest to exact a scalding price from their customers in the days to come. That leaves them with just enough time to be present for Taraweeh and once again beseech Allah for mercy. Somewhere in between all these rituals they will still find enough time to watch the media con men that alternate between religious scholars and circus clowns in one act, performing on their TV sets. Their consciences, of course, look on through the eyes of a dead fish all this while. To be fair, though, the traders are not alone in this.
The rest of us are not much different the year round and in the month of Ramadan. No amount of prayers has been able to instill discipline, harmony, genuine piety and a quest for knowledge in us. We continue to inconvenience others by miss-parking our cars, throwing refuse out in the streets, honking horns at each other, jumping red lights at the traffic signals, slamming doors in people’s faces, telling blatant lies for petty profits, disrobing women by unashamed ogling, spitting huge globs of saliva in a to-whom-it-may-concern fashion, never turning up on time for appointments and keeping taped sermons on the whole night blaring at full strength from mosques’ minarets long after the maulanas themselves have gone into a deep snooze.
One rarely sees anyone imploring others to stand in a queue, run to give a helping hand to the disabled, vacate a seat for ladies or the elderly, take care of personal hygiene, or keep his immediate surroundings clean and pollution free. We are busy instead in quibbling over the length of facial hair, where to tie our shalwars for offering prayers and hold our hands while in prayers, the number of Rakaats in certain prayers, digging up relevant Ahadeeth to suit our individual agendas, declaring more Muslims as non-Muslims, pronouncing non-Muslims as Wajib-ul-Qatal (liable to be slain), issuing fatwas on non-issues, finding short-cuts to Jannat, declaring jihad on everything but on purification of self, illiteracy, poverty, backwardness and hunger.
We continue to think of ourselves as Allah’s chosen people while our conduct shows anything but. We are busy instead in looking down upon all other religions and people with a royal contempt, censuring the West for all our ills, finding a Jew at the root of all our miseries, blaming every one but our own selves for our wretched state and conjuring up conspiracy theories out of thin air to validate our gripes. Some hypocrisy—self included.
If cleanliness is half the faith then the West of today, the Viking brutes of yester-years, have beaten us to the claim hands down. If the other half is the rights of others on us then again we need to turn our heads westward to behold the sight.
Islam is not just about prayers and worship. A significant number of ayahs in the Holy Quran deal with purification of self, interaction with others, knowledge of the universe and what is contained therein. The West is busy conquering the same universe, solving its riddles, harnessing the nature for the benefit of mankind and finding time to be their sole competitor. From medicines to cure our diseases to the cars we drive and the airplanes we fly in to visit our holy places, we are dependent on the same West.
Yes, a handful of powerful Western leaders holding the reins of brute political and armed power have indeed pursued vested interests in the Muslim world. And yes, as a result innocent human beings are surely being trampled upon ruthlessly. And yes, even genuine liberation struggles now stand deluged by the dam burst of venom against our religion. And yes, terrorism certainly has become a whip with which Muslims are now being flogged the world over. And yes again that Muslim countries are undeniably being either invaded or threatened with invasion on the flimsiest of pretexts.
But how does the Muslim world propose to counter that? Can we restore ourselves to our glorious past by suicide bombing or beheading of innocent human beings? Or by issuing Fatwas to that effect? Or by continuing to pray for divine intervention? Or by hating the whole West for the stupidity of just a few of their leaders? Has it occurred to us that the only, repeat only, way to walk tall and strong in the comity of nations is to come on a par with the West in education, technology and economy?
Let us pause this Ramadan and ask a few questions from ourselves. Who were we? Where do we stand today? What happened to us along the way? Which way are we going?
