(ISLAM AND MODERN AGE)
Recently a book has been published by an American Scholar Graham.E.Fuller titled A World Without Islam. Graham Fuller is a scholar and has worked with CIA for long. It is an interesting book and quite scholarly too. It is worth reading. The author’s point is that even if there were no Islam, world would not have been without violence and war. He has given account of various wars fought much before Islam appeared on the scene.
However, I am not dealing with the contents of Fuller’s book here. The idea of the book itself is quite interesting and I want to deal with it in a different way. The Western powers through its media are maintaining that Islam believes in violence and jihad is a religious obligation and hence violence in the modern world is due only to Islam and if Islam were to be tamed or if it had not come into existence there would not have been violence in the world. Ridiculous though it is, many western scholars seriously believe in it. For them the book is really quite revealing.
However, I propose to deal with this idea on a different way. What our world would have lost if Islam had not come into existence. Would our world have been better or worse without Islam? What would our world have been like without Islam? I would like to make it clear that this can apply to other religions also like Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity and so on.
Every religion has contributed a lot to enrich our world in the sphere of ethics, morality, creative arts and spirituality. Islam has also created very richly in these spheres though in a different way. Islam’s greatest contribution, in terms of ethics and morality, has been the concept of justice and equality. Both are quite central to Islam. Qur’an equated justice with piety and act of worship. One cannot be pious without being just and one has to practice justice even if it goes against ones own interest or ones own nearest ones.
Also, equality and human dignity was not emphasized as much as in Islamic morality through its pronouncement that all believers are each others brothers and that all human beings have equal dignity and put it in practice. Its prayers system was also devised in a way as to emphasize equality and equal dignity. All believers have to stand in one line before their creators to pray. No distinction could be made between high and low. Also, the words Allahu Akbar (the God is greatest) symbolize this. Only God is the greatest and all other human beings are equally humble before Him.
No one, no ruler also can ever claim any privilege over other human beings (though in practice when feudal rulers came into existence who began to impose their regal authority over other human beings which destroyed this concept of equal humility before God). The early Caliphs maintained this equality and equal accountability including before their slaves.
Islam was not merely a spiritual religion which it undoubtedly was. It was much more than that. It set out to establish a just order in the world. Though certain distortions occurred due to development of monarchy and feudal order Islam as an ethical system asserted itself through other channels, especially that of Sufism. Islam originally was revealed in tribal Arabia which had neither any religion nor any written code of morality and since Mecca, where the Prophet (PBUH) lived, was a centre of trade, had no code of mercantile morality. Lying, cheating and fraudulent deals were common. Qur’an gave them whole code of mercantile morality. It denounced speculation, hoarding, all forms of unfair and unjust dealings. It also stressed just weighing and not giving less and taking more.
The Arabs were just not interested in acquiring knowledge, let alone in science and technology. The Qur’an stressed ‘ilm (knowledge) and that too knowledge of whole universe. The Prophet of Islam said, ‘The first thing which God created was knowledge or reason’ Such was importance of knowledge in Islam. It invited Muslims to reflect on everything in universe, how it was created and what causes behind the natural phenomenon a