Lessons From History - Foreword

Foreword

The substance of this book is based on the ideas published by Dr. Israr Ahmad in 1993 in the columns of the Urdu daily Nawa-e-Waqt of Lahore. The series of write-ups continued for a few months and were widely read with interest. The entire material, after slight editing, was published in a book form in October 1993 under the title Sabiqa aur Maujuda Musalman Ummatun ka Mazi, Haal, aur Mustaqbil, and has since gone through many re-prints. Dr. Ahmed Afzaal rendered these ideas  into  English and  part  of  it  was  serialized in  1995-96  in  the monthly Hikmat-e-Qur’an published by the Markazi Anjuman Khuddam-ul-Qur’an Lahore. For putting it into a compact book, he further revised the entire material, added his own sub-titles, and made it more authentic by giving quotations from the Old and New Testaments. Indeed he took great pains to make the citations of quite a few historical events and landmarks, particularly of early Jewish history, more authentic by giving dates and references from reliable sources. Moreover, he  suggested a  much more telling title for the book — Lessons from History — and the sub-title — Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of Two Muslim Communities — puts in a capsule form the whole spectrum of ideas covered in the book.

Dr. Israr Ahmad, as a true believer, is absolutely convinced of the indivisibility and essential identity of the Messages of all prophets. All Scriptures stem from and are parts of a single Source, the Mother of Books and the Hidden Book. According to the Qur’an, Prophethood is indeed an indivisible office: one cannot believe in some and not in others without giving the lie to the very source of Revelation. From the very beginning of the prophetic career, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was himself absolutely convinced of  the  Divine character of  the  earlier revealed documents and the Divine Messengership of the bearers of those  documents. This  is  why he  recognized without a  moment of hesitation that Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other Old and New Testament religious personalities had been genuine prophets like himself.  Thus  the  true  followers  of  Moses  were,  according  to  the Qur’an, also Muslims as were the true followers of Prophet Jesus, until they deviated from the Right Path and adopted certain beliefs central to their  creeds.  The  most  important of  these  are  the  Jewish claim to election and equally exclusivist claims to truth adopted by Christians.

The Qur’anic assertion in the unity and universality of Divine Guidance and the proclamation that Allah (SWT) had left no nation or people on earth without sending guidance to them directly ran counter to these claims. 
(For example Surah Al-Fatir 35:24.) Further “neither Jews nor Christians will be happy with you until you follow their religion; Say, Guidance is God’s Guidance” 
(Al-Baqarah 2:111). And again, “Jews say, Christians have nothing to stand on, and Christians say, Jews have nothing to stand on — while both recite the (same) Books” 
(Al-Baqarah 2:113). It is true that between Jews and Christians, the Qur’an prefers the latter as we read: “Among them there are priests and monks and they are not a conceited people” 
(Al-Ma’ida 5:82), and “We cast in the hearts  of  his  (Jesus’)  followers  kindness  and  mercy”   
(Al-Hadeed 57:27). Nevertheless, Christians’ belief in incarnation and Trinity is castigated in the severest terms throughout the Qur’an.

The ultimate outcome of this line of thought is the eventual religious disassociation of the prophets of these two communities — particularly those of the Jews — from their followers. 
   “Abraham was neither Jew nor Christians, but an undeviating monotheist and Muslim” (Aal-e-Imran 2:67). 
     “They say, ‘Become Jews or Christians, you will find right guidance.’ Say, ‘Rather the religion of Abraham, the non- sectarian, non-deviant monotheist.’” (Al-Baqarah 2:140).   

The  entire line  of  Biblical  personages  is  then  claimed  for  Islam,  
 “Say  (O Muslims!) ‘We believe in God and in what has been sent down to us (i.e., the Qur’an), and what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and what was given to Moses and to Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We set no partition between any of them and we surrender ourselves to God.’ If then, Jews and Christians believe as you believe, they are on the right path, but if they turn their back, they are in a wide divergence among themselves….” (Al-Baqarah 2:136,37). 

It is in light of these Qur’anic teachings that Dr. Israr Ahmad speaks of Bani Israel — the true and non-deviant followers of the Guidance given to Prophet Moses until the advent  of  Prophet  Muhammad  (SAW)  —  as  the  former  Muslim Ummah. Indeed, according to the Qur’an, there has been only one true religion throughout human history, i.e.,  Islam;  all  other  systems of belief and worship, as they exist today are nothing but corrupted and distorted versions of the originally pure and fitric teachings of various Messengers of God. However, from the standpoint of detailed law (i.e., Shari ‘ah), Qur’an clearly regards Bani Israel an Ummah distinct from the Ummah of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and the change of Qibla has a great symbolic significance in this.

For the committed and convinced Muslim, neither the flow of history itself nor the study and interpretation of it can be considered apart from the realm of the sacred and the workings of the Divine. God as  Creator  is  also  the  Maker  of  history;  His  Hand  controls  every moment in time, every historical event. History is the arena in which His Will is made manifest, His Dominion is expressed, and His Commitment to the fulfillment of its Divinely ordained rules is evidenced. And yet, in the Islamic understanding, it is not God alone who is responsible for the historical process. 

Every individual shares in the responsibility insofar as he has assumed through his heritage and according to the verification of the Qur’an a part of the God-given legacy to be a vicegerent, to represent the Divine Will on earth. That role which the Jews and Christians relinquished by veering away from the true worship of the one God is assumed by Muslims as their full and final responsibility. Islam thus bears the obligation to make known to the world the reality of the historical revelation of the Qur’an, that which provides for the proper understanding of God’s continuing action in history. 

Thus the claim of the immutability of “historical laws” — a tenet of the Marxist dogma — cannot subsume the historicity of the Ummah. Islamic faith — the Deen of transcendent norms and values — cannot  be  interiorized  to  the  extent  that  Muslim  history  becomes nothing but a quest for some meta-historical salvation. Neither can the dictates of the Islamic faith be sacrificed at the alter of some unproven and whimsical set of “historical laws.” It is so because history for a Muslim is not only a search for theoretical meaning but a spur for practical action as well. His faith dictates that the process of history be subdued to the Will of Allah. To be part of the historical process is to be aware and to be active, bearing fully the responsibility placed on man by his Creator.

Islam exhorts the Muslim to see not only the outward manifestations of the different happenings of the human life, but to study the undercurrent of ideals and motives which have shaped those happenings.  The  historical  references and  the  accounts  of  the  past events are given in the Qur’an, not so much to fill in the gaps of our factual knowledge, but to systematize and generalize it and to take lessons from it. The Holy Qur’an treats the events of the past not only with a view of reviving them in our memory but for making them meaningful and instructive to us. 

It selects the significant events, interprets them in the light of moral laws, and then evaluates them according to ethical judgments; and in the whole process of selecting, interpreting, and evaluating the facts it provides answers to the crucial questions about the destiny of mankind. The attitude of Islam towards historical knowledge of different civilizations and cultures is of great significance in human understanding. The Muslim historians generally not only kept the high ideal of objectivity and exactitude in surveying the entire course of human development, but they also sought to determine its origin and goal as well.

The Holy Qur’an and the Hadith urge us to review the past events, both reported and experienced, as indications that they should awaken in us a strong moral sense and at the same time enhance its ability to act according to the commands of God, to penetrate into the apparently meaningless succession of events and discern the ever- present Design and Will of the Creator and perceive that all being and happening in the world is the outcome of a conscious, all-embracing Power, and unless one is in spiritual accord with the demands of that Power, one cannot fulfill the Divine purpose for which he has been sent to this world. It is not without a purpose that God gives dominance to certain people at one time, and deprives them of this position at another occasion. This ebb and rise of the people has a Divine purpose to serve. Thus Qur’an observes: “If a wound has afflicted you, a wound like it also afflicted the disbelieving people, and We bring these days to men by turn, that Allah may know those who believe and take witnesses from among you and Allah loves not the wrong-doers” (Aal-e-Imran 3:140).

Histories of the Jews and the Muslims, being typically woven around Divine Revelation, should provide a Muslim scholar ground for a thoughtful and perceptive comparative study of them. Though in the present day political climate, Jews and Muslims form two totally divergent peoples, yet striking similarities in their temporal histories are found and pointed out in this book. In particular, there is a strong parallelism regarding the two phases of rise and decline experienced by the two religious fraternities during the long course of their histories thus proving literally a tradition of the Holy Prophet (SAW) on this subject reproduced in this book.

The view of history in the Muslim mind is, and should be, a prophetic one. In the Qur’an over and over again the historic sequence is repeated — a warning, followed by either repentance or destruction, as God sends His messengers to one nation after another. The Qur’an provides a basis for a moral interpretation of history. The course of history is a moral agency through which the morally superior elements rise to the top, while those who are morally inferior sink to the bottom. That virtuous living, which is the outcome of a healthy religious faith, must  inevitably  lead  to  success.  This  interpretation  is  deeper  and broader than that of Karl Marx because it covers both the moral and material  aspects,  while  that  of  Marx  concentrates  entirely  on  the material aspects, being greatly influenced by the materialistic evolutionary philosophies of his time. 

Religion is definitely not opium for the people. The impulse towards social emancipation is surely found in  Islam.  It  always aimed at  a  society where equality, justice, and prosperity would prevail. Islam teaches that God is concerned not only with moral and spiritual life of man but also with total emancipation, justice, and betterment of economic conditions. The Holy Prophet (SAW) left for us not only a theory that is preached, but also concrete experience and historical facts.

In the last part of the book, Dr. Israr Ahmad with reference to the predictions of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) reported in authentic traditions, discusses the events which will take place prior to the Doomsday. He is convinced that the global happenings are already moving in that direction. In the Middle East the stage is gradually being set for an ultimate World War between the forces of Good and Evil. Even though in the hard facts prevailing today we generally see a state of humiliation of Muslims and their virtual enslavement by the forces of the New World Order, the author — on the basis of authentic prophetic traditions — has a staunch belief in global domination of Islam. One notes with dismay that very few Islamic scholars nowadays pay heed to these authentic prophecies, according to which four major episodes will take place before the end of the world. In chronological sequence they are as follows:

1.       the ultimate World War (Al-Malhama) of human history, which will be fought  predominantly in the Middle East;

2.       the appearance of Anti-Christ, or Dajjal, in the final phase of that War — a leader of the evil forces who will inflict great sufferings and destruction on the Arab Muslims;

3.      the re-appearance of Prophet Jesus Christ (AS), who will cause the extermination of Dajjal and his Jewish followers; and finally,

4.       the establishment of the System of Khilafah, or the domination of Islam, over the entire globe.

The world order as Pax Islamica will be an order of peace where no ethnic group, nation, or religious community would be in conflict with another. Even though it will be an era of the ascendancy of Islam as a socio-political order, individuals will be allowed to adhere to their particular religious beliefs.

The most significant point of Dr. Israr Ahmad’s presentation is that he considers the future Muslim leader in the person of “Mehdi” and the re-appearance of Prophet Jesus Christ (AS) — beliefs generally dubbed by modernist Muslims as Messianic ideas — to be not only based on genuine and authentic Ahadith, but also quite rational and logical implications of the Qur’anic asseverations with regard to Islam’s global domination. The noteworthy point in this context, however, is that despite these beliefs his view of Islam is thoroughly dynamic and active. The prophecies of the Prophet (SAW) in respect of Islam’s domination do not absolve Muslims of discharging their religious obligations in the right earnest. Only true belief, i.e., Iman, and maximum possible  effort  in  the  way  of  Allah  (SWT)  guarantee salvation and eternal bliss in the Hereafter.

Absar Ahmad

Source:Lesson from History (Book) by Dr. Israr Ahmad