Reliance on Allah The Cure For An Ummah in Crisis
By Abdal Hakim Murad | 2026-01-13T23:25:05.852655+00:00 | Topic: Allah
Reliance on Allah: The Cure For An Ummah in Crisis
Opening
السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى أَشْرَفِ الْمُرْسَلِينَ سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ
Main Khutbah
I get to dip in and out of quite a variety of Muslim communities and I always think it's one of the strengths of Islam in the West that we have so many bands of the Muslim spectrum available to us. But one thing that I've noticed that most communities have in common now that certainly Muslims of earlier more peaceful generations would have regarded as a serious worry is that people are in a state of agitation. When I became Muslim 20, 21 years ago one of the things that attracted me and held my attention was the peacefulness, serenity and acceptance of ordinary Muslims.
That you would step into a mosque for Jumu'ah prayer and there was a genuine sense that this was an oasis of tranquility, serenity and calm that was a welcome indeed essential place of rest from the agitations and stresses of people's ordinary lives outside. And although many things have certainly improved for Islam in the West over those 20 years, the thing that I've noticed most conspicuously has been that people are starting to lose that beautiful criterion of Muslimness that is known in the Qur'anic vocabulary as the virtue of Rida. Rida means tranquil serene acceptance of Allah's will and it's alarming I think that Muslims should feel so agitated, disturbed by the state of today's world.
The Nature of True Religion
Not that they should approve of today's world. In fact it would be a worrying indictment of the legitimacy of the religion if the modern world outside were to approve of us. We complain about negative stereotypes and hostility but in fact that's always been the way of the believers against the uncomprehending outside world.
That in a sense is a sign of our legitimacy not something that we should worry and campaign against although obviously false information has to be corrected and those religions that are approved of and patted on the head by secular consumerist capitalistic modernity are by that very same token really interrogated in a source of worry from the point of view of a legitimate traditional perspective because true religion is about Akhira, it's about transcending the self, it's not about gratifying or discovering the self which is the watchword of today's world. So we should be proud that the modern world doesn't like us, that's a sign of authenticity. Nonetheless it's also the case that Muslims when they view this incomprehension or hostility from the outside world don't find solace in the traditional virtue of Rida in the way that often we did.
The Loss of Rida and Its Consequences
We find forms of agitation, we find insecurity and the necessary consequence of that which is that instead of being so relaxed that we're forgiving and inclusive and we see the best in everybody we increasingly judge because the slightest difference between ourselves and the doctrine or the practice of another Muslim somehow makes us feel even more insecure. We want the religion to be an oasis of monolithic consistency that gratifies our sense of insecurity. Now that's very dangerous for communities because the religion itself is supposed to provide a sense of absolute constant assurance and relaxation and serenity that everything that happens is by the core of the Qur'anic message.
Tawheed and Divine Decree
It's a necessary consequence of Tawheed that Allah is not just the one who winds up the cosmic clock at the beginning of creation like an 18th century deistic God and just lets it happen. So we have to be profoundly agitated by the vicissitudes of time. Allah is the one who is not just al-Khaliq but al-Khalaq.
He is the one who is constantly creating at every moment. There is nothing that is not the direct consequence of the divine power. He is the one who is overwhelmingly powerful over the actions of his slaves.
"You did not throw when you threw but it was Allah who threw."
And this is one of the reasons for the extraordinary solidity of Islamic theology that we don't have a realm of the action of God and a realm that is the realm of some alternative dark force, a satanic force that almost is as powerful as Allah. That the world is a cosmic battle between good and evil.
We don't see it in those terms because the message of Tawheed which is written throughout the Qur'an is that there's just one agent in creation.
The Miracle of Kasb (Acquisition)
Now what raises us above just being part of the scenery as it were, what really makes us human, is not as some religions hold, suffering, but rather the ability to choose and thereby to affirm the divinely gifted miracle and paradox of autonomy. And this is what we refer to in our theology as kasb.
Modern scientists increasingly point towards a very deterministic view of the cosmos that we are all basically predictable, that our actions can all be deconstructed and interpreted in terms of our education, our upbringing, genetic factors. And there's very little scope left it seems for genuine human independence and hence humanity. But the miracle of Islamic religion is that on the one hand it affirms that Allah is everything is in his hands.
And on the other hand it genuinely considers us accountable and responsible for our own actions. So that at the moment when we authentically rise above our genetic programming, our education and everything else and take a moral decision, a decision for Allah, then we are stepping outside the mechanics of the universe and genuinely becoming Allah's khalifa on earth. And that's the moment that we refer to as kasb.
We don't create our own actions, there's only one creator. But in an instantaneous, miraculous fraction of a second we can acquire actions. And this is from the mystery of the ruh, which is what sets us apart from the rest of creation.
"They ask you about the spirit, say: The spirit is of the command of my Lord and of knowledge you have not been given but little."
But we know that we all have that.
- Allah breathed something of his spirit into Sayyidina Adam alayhi salam.
So that moment of kasb and of acquisition of actions is something that immediately sets us up above and beyond the world and makes us potentially Allah's khalifa. Now this extraordinary awareness that we have of history as being the unfolding of Allah's knowledge and we don't believe in a god who is in time, we have a timeless God because past, present, future, they're all the same to Allah. Everything is one single cosmic act.
The Historical Virtue of Rida
That this attitude has historically bred amongst the Muslims a wonderful sense, first of all of the necessity to act because this is the prophetic way. (اعْمَلُوا - Work, act)." And on the other hand a sense that everything that happens is good because the purposes of Allah are good.
And this virtue of rida historically created Muslim communities whose visitors were always struck by the sense of contentment and serene resigned acceptance of Allah's decree. And the fact that that's slipping away from us even though so many other aspects of Islam may seem to be prominent or even coming back to us is I think something that we need to think about because it's an impugning and a compromising of our tawheed to suggest that what's happening in today's world is not the direct will of Allah.
Understanding Divine Attributes
Sometimes we see in the world manifestations of the divine beauty and grace and forgiveness and that's preponderant. Sometimes we see in the world manifestations of the divine rigor and wrath and this is one of the big differences between our understanding and say the Christian understanding. Christians say God is love and immediately they can't explain the meningitis virus or concentration camps or whatever and that's a major source of loss of faith amongst them. Now we say that Allah is indeed Rahman and Rahim and he is Al-Wadud, he has those beautiful attributes and they do predominate and at the end when good and evil are finally differentiated we will see that the Rahma predominates over the divine wrath.
Nonetheless we also believe that Allah is Al-Jabbar, the overwhelming, Al-Muntaqim, the avenger, the judge, Al-Hakam and that's one reason why Islamic theology hangs together so well when confronted by the paradoxes of evil and suffering in the world, that we believe that the world is the endlessly subtle interaction of 99 names that include names of rigor as well as names of beauty. Which also means that the perfected human being, the Adamic human being, sometimes and predominantly manifests mercy and forgiveness but sometimes can manifest rigor as well which is why the Prophet ﷺ forgave the people of Mecca but he also went to war against them because he is the true Khalifa, he has those names and he also he has within himself something of the Rahma and he has within himself also something of Al-Muntaqim, the avenger, that the true representative of Allah on earth is not just the woolly minded kind benevolent saint who always turns the other cheek but sometimes has to uphold Allah's rule in the world through those names as well and that's part of the completeness of Sayyidina Muhammad ﷺ that in him we can see manifested in so far as is possible for created mortal human beings all of the names of Allah not just the names of beauty and the names of mercy.
Prophetic Examples of Rida
So we look at the world and we see in some periods of Islamic history divine providence opening the floodgates of blessings to the Muslim ummah invariably in proportion to the extent to which we deserve it.
The Sahaba, everything they did and saw was miracles, the conquests and the conversions and that extraordinary period in history was because they merited it and at other times of Islamic history we see other names of Allah manifested, names of rigor and there can be times also of Qabd, of constriction and the sign of the true mu'min is that when he is given manifestations of Allah's beauty and grace and generosity he gives thanks and when he sees manifestations of the divine rigor he is patient he has sabr and if he is truly one of the Khulafa of Allah he has this virtue of Rida which is one of the highest of the prophetic virtues.
Now Rida is a Quranic concept and we can see it in the lives of so many of the great prophetic figures that are held up for our admiration. We see it for instance in the story of Sayyidina Yusuf who has a life which is a kind of sequence of extraordinary catastrophes followed by amazing unexpected honorings so that after being the favored son of a prophet he is cast into a pit in the desert and apparently has no hope whatsoever but he has Rida, he doesn't complain to Allah, he's taken to Egypt hundreds of miles from his family in the desert and he's sold into slavery but he doesn't complain, he accepts Allah's will and then Allah gives Yusuf a standing, a position in the world and then another calamity befalls him and he's sent to prison for several years because of a false allegation and then he comes out again having had Rida and never complained once and again the Quran says and all of that comes as it were and the message for us is that if we have Rida and serene acceptance and we don't just panic and bang at the cell doors screaming to be let out and complaining about our situation that Allah in his extraordinary omnipotence and power can turn our situation over so that from being in the depths of a prison we become second in command of the most powerful state in the world which was the position of Sayyidina Yusuf, it's one of the messages of that story.
And also Sayyidina Ayyub, another classic example:
"And Ayyub when he called to his Lord: Indeed, adversity has touched me, and you are the most merciful of the merciful."
It's not like the biblical book of Job where he kind of gets into an argument and a debate with God saying is this fair what do you mean putting me through these misfortunes no Sayyidina Ayyub the real Sayyidina Ayyub says this is my situation وَأَنتَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ and then Allah takes him out and gives him family and health again.
And of course Sayyidina Muhammad also a superb example of Rida much of his life was lived in states of tragedy bereavement in particular losing his sons which is for any man a catastrophe when his son Ibrahim died there's a very touching image in the seerah about how he addressed his dead son and said:
"The eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say nothing except what pleases our Lord, and indeed we are grieved by your departure, O Ibrahim."
(Sahih al-Bukhari 1303)
So this is a fundamental Quranic virtue and it's not just a moral virtue it's a theological virtue because it reflects your consciousness that everything is the action of Allah and if you can't see the reason for it well so what we're just human beings with limited contingent created minds in the mind of Allah we don't need to understand it we just accept and know for sure that the rahmah will predominate in the end.
The Ant and the Carpet: A Parable
There's a story that Sayyidina Jalal ad-Din Rumi tells of an ant that's creeping across the carpet in a mosque and the ant in of course beautiful Persian strophic verse complains to God saying what is this these bumps and strange colors and patterns and this must have been created just as a meaningless obstacle course and what a futile thing to have made but of course the carpet maker looking at it from above can see the patterns and can see the purpose of it and see that the whole thing is perfect and it's
good and our lives are often like that we often can't make sense of the misfortunes because we're two- dimensional we're at ground level we can't see what it all means but the khalifa of Allah knows even if he can't always see that this is a manifestation of Allah's will which is always good and is always perfect and is always beautiful.
The Danger of Judgmental Attitudes
Now one implication of this loss of ridah that we now find our communities very often in is that we tend to judge others perhaps because we're not content with the way Allah is arranging history at this particular moment that we get jumpy and agitated and our tawheed and even our iman seems to be challenged and so we like to attack others and we are often extremely judgmental and one of the greatest errors that one can make in this time according to the ulama is the error of assuming that this is a time for perfection for rigorism that the harder the world becomes for the believers the more perfect we have to demand everybody is so that if you come into a mosque and you're not dressed in a thawb and a kufi i've come across mosques where they won't even let you in which from the point of view of traditional fiqh is completely haram and completely disgraceful but illustrates the fact that we get panicked about the imperfections of the outside world and we want to make our own communities a space of absolute rigorous perfection.
The Era of Ease and Difficulty
Sometimes we find that people are alienated from the religion altogether quite often those brothers and sisters who attribute themselves to the great lofty maqam of dawah will actually scare off a hundred people for every one person that they attract and the people that they attract are often not the best people not the people who are spiritually and morally the most impressive or the most educated.
I remember once meeting an English woman in Cairo who had converted to Islam more or less nominally when she married a secular Egyptian and she'd started to get interested in the religion as sometimes happens and somebody had given her a tasbih prayer beads and she was clicking away at these one day not knowing much about the religion but wanting to know more when an angry purist came along and said don't you know this is bid'ah this is haram and he pulled them out of her hands and broke them so the beads flew all over the floor and she was so damaged by the harshness of that moment then she said i don't want to learn anything more about Islam and that's been her state for the last 20 years she's just alienated and put off whereas she might have come in and by now she might have been an asset to the community there's too much of that going on there is too much judgment of others and not enough judgment of ourselves there is too much self-righteousness and not enough self-knowledge.
Understanding Our Times
And one way in which we can heal that is to remember that people's weakness in this age is very understandable it's an age in which it's difficult to do even the basics let alone the perfections that are
demanded of us if you look at the time of the sahaba they had no excuse for being weak because everything was blazing before them they saw karamat particularly in the medina period it was as if the normal laws of causality had been suspended and everything was a karama public miracles of Sayyidina Muhammad recorded in the sound hadith.
For instance the famous instance of the rasul used to give his khutbas and his addresses standing but holding on with his hand to one of the pillars which were made of the trunks of palm trees in the mosque when the minbar was made and he started to preach on the minbar this is the sahaba saying we heard that column moaning like the moaning of a camel until it split and cracked and Allah's messenger put his hand on it and it was silent witnessed by I don't know how many sahaba in the mosque and it said that that same jihd that same palm trunk is still there buried underneath the minbar.
Prophetic Miracles and Contemporary Challenges
Now when you see things like that you don't have excuses to be weak and feeble and lazy and not to go on jihad and not to attend five times a day the prayers other examples that show how the animate and inanimate world were more or less speaking because of the extraordinary presence of the vehicle of revelation amongst them is a hadith from Sayyidina Ali where he says we were in Mecca with the rasul so this is early and he went out to one of its neighbouring areas and this is one of the aspects of the prophet's teaching method that is so beautiful that he didn't just teach in the mosque but he used to go out hiking as it were in the hills and mountains around Mecca and Medina because he loved virgin nature and he went out to some of its environs and not a single tree or stone met him without saying to him peace be upon you this is from an eyewitness Sayyidina Ali.
Another famous story from the Medina period this time is perhaps even more extraordinary and existent in a number of versions it's a hadith narrated by Sayyidina Abu Sa'id al-Khudri and it's called the hadith of the wolf and it concerns a pagan shepherd who is out in the back country near Medina and a wolf came and fastened its jaws on one of the man's sheep and he drove it off and then the wolf turned to him and spoke and said don't you fear Allah you've come between me and between my rizq between my provision and of course this rough Bedouin was amazed and the wolf speaks again and he says shall I not tell you about something that's even more extraordinary than that there is a messenger of God between the two lava plains in other words in Medina telling people the news of past peoples so of course the man came and found the prophet and explained this to him and the prophet told him to tell it to the others because this was a miracle and this was a form of honoring that man.
The Mercy for Later Generations
So the sahaba were seeing this all the time that was an age of miracles and those who saw those miracles and still were lazy or didn't get it right or didn't believe were really in a position akin to the position of pharaoh who saw so many miracles custom-made for his attention the staff that turned into a snake the
hand that came from his pocket glowing white the seven plagues and yet still wouldn't go along with it because he was so pleased with his own self and it's only the self and the nafs and the desire to be one's own precious identity that can cause you to hold on in the presence of a sainted human being because you can't argue with sainthood or light or truth it's there there's no logic that can overwhelm it it's proof it's there it's only the nafs that can cause you to hold on.
But now we live in very different times this is the meaning of a number of hadith which are there is a mercy for us blessed the strangers those who come and haven't seen haven't had the blessing of seeing even the sahaba and hearing their stories but come so many generations so many eons later on and a sound hadith says:
(Sahih al-Bukhari 7068)
"You are living in a time when whoever abandons a tenth of what has been commanded to do will be destroyed, but there shall come upon people a time when somebody who does a tenth of what has been commanded to do will be saved."
Now that doesn't mean that we can just sit back and say well we can be lazy because i mean how many of us can say that we're doing a tenth of what the sahaba were doing it's probably not even a hundredth it's not an opportunity not an excuse to be lazy but it is a prophetic indication if the hadith has any purpose at all that we need to be merciful with people in this time either when people are hesitant and stumbling um in most cases that's not their fault that's the fault of the world it's the fault of their upbringing it's the fault of us very often for not being a good example for being beautiful and being attractive and we need to be endlessly forgiving of those people.
The Call for Mercy and Inclusion
When we see somebody at the Eid prayer whose we can conjecture uncharitably probably not been there since the previous Eid prayer we mustn't rush up to him and say brother your trousers are too long or brother your wife is wearing lipstick or something like that because the chances are if we do that he won't come next to Eid prayer we need to make his acquaintance make him feel welcome very gently as it were take his hand and reassure him that everything's all right and the mosque is his place as much as it is anybody else's and befriend him and show that we can't pass judgment when it's not to our credit that we're muslims because faith is a gift he gives the gift to whoever he wills we can't say that we're better than others because we've achieved it we don't achieve faith we don't achieve anything everything we have is allah's grace and he can snatch it from us at any moment.
I think we need to be aware that outside the mosques and outside the circle of our islamic societies there is a huge shadowy area of people who often very strongly identify themselves with Islam but we don't see them very much and sometimes we don't see them at all you could call them as it were the b team you know they're still muslims they'll stick up for muslim causes if they're oppressed or on the right side of
the palestinian israeli dispute they sympathize with muslims in bosnia maybe sometimes they'll come to eid prayer most of the time they'll try and avoid pork and alcohol and so forth but they don't come to the mosques and i would say that most of the mosques have done a very poor job of opening their doors to those people that like all human beings those people feel a need for dhikr for worship for having moments of quiet in their lives but somehow the muslim community is presently structured doesn't have a lobby or a hospitable area in which they can come and not feel under pressure not feel judged not be made to feel inferior that if they're not doing everything perfectly the moment they step in the mosque then we get come up to them angrily and shout so that we never see them again and i hope that will improve because those people represent a majority of the communities not just in the west but also in the muslim world increasingly people who identify themselves culturally politically with Islam but can't quite find a habitable space within it for them to be religiously.
Rida as the Key to Unity and Dawah
Now this virtue of rida i've been suggesting really is the key to unlocking all of these possibilities possibilities of dawah possibilities of being beautiful and attractive so that we can attract the world as the prophet melted the hearts of the world and rida really has to be taught as a necessary entailment of la ilaha illallah because if you believe that there is just one force acting creating guiding in creation then at the depths of your being however legitimate may be your sense of grief at some of the misfortunes of the world and of course the prophet as he said in that hadith when his son died was sad it doesn't make us into robots that we have no emotion but at the depths of our being there has to be stillness there has to be a sense of serene acceptance and knowledge that everything is all right that history is in good hands.
Poetry of Rida
And this virtue of rida is focused on particularly by some of our great devotional poets one of my favorite poems is by imam khaddad the great south yemeni poet died about 250 years ago who wrote a poem that goes oh my friend oh my friend don't panic don't be aggrieved and submit just submit to allah's decrees so that you can be praiseworthy and rewarded and be pleased with what the lord has arranged and distributed and decreed and do not be angry at allah's decree because he is the lord of the great throne if you're angry with the way allah has arranged things then you don't have this great state of rida.
Now another of my favorite poems is by a more recent writer sheikh ali bin muhammad bin hussein al- habshi rahmatullahi alayh who was writing about a hundred years ago i suppose another yemeni and he has a fairly long qasida that begins and i've actually put together an english translation here and i'll read some of it because it is i think absolutely correct it hits the nail on the head and somehow as the poems of all of the great ones do it not only instructs but somehow it breathes the principle that it's trying to convey:
Should you not gain your wants my soul then be not grieved but hasten to that banquet which your lord's bequeathed and when a thing for which you ask is slow to come then know that often through delay a gift's received find solace in privation and respect its due for only by contentment is the heart relieved and know that when the trials of life have rendered you despairing of all hope and of all joy bereaved then shake yourself and rouse yourself from heedlessness and make pure hope a meadow that you never leave your maker's gift take subtle and uncounted forms how fine the fabric of the world his hands have weaved the journey down they came to the water of life and all the caravan drank deep their thirst allevied my lord my trust in all your purposes is strong that trust is now my shield i'm safe and undeceived all those who hope for grace from you will feel your reign too generous are you to leave my branch unleaved may blessings rest upon the loved one muhammad who's been my means to high degree since i believed he is my fortress and my handhold so my soul hold fast and travel to a joy still unconceived
And that i think sums it up that we need to be saddened legitimately as the anbiya were saddened when we see the misfortunes of the shadows of the world interacting and human incomprehension that their meaning but at the same time at a much more deeper level the level of tawhid which would be the bedrock of our personalities we need to be absolutely in a state of rida.
The Meaning of Islam
And this is actually a concept that's written into the name of the religion itself it's one of the meanings of the word islam it means to surrender to submit to be in a state of ease with how things are of course it has the other meaning as well the muslim is the one from whose hand and tongue other muslims are safe so he's muslim he conveys safety to his brethren but also the muslim is the one who is in a state of taslim of handing over everything to allah and knowing that things will work out in a just and appropriate and proper way.
Seeing the Blessings of the Ummah
Now when we have this perspective we can look around us with a different perspective entirely and we
can start to see not just the misfortunes but also the expressions of allah's extraordinary and continued generosity and grace and guidance to the ummah sometimes because of our sense of agitation or panic or nervousness about our situation we tend to be blinded to the extraordinary blessings that continue to come from the divine presence into our lives and into the life of the ummah and the virtue of gratitude sometimes seems to be a little bit eclipsed.
But if we just take a few minutes to think about the state of the present day ummah and to stand back a little bit from the current panicky debate about this regime and that regime and so and so being oppressed and really worrying as the secular mind would be worried about the secular political process rather than looking at everything with optimism with having a good opinion of allah's purposes then we can start to feel the scales dropping from our eyes and we can see that actually despite our perception and the perception of other communities the ummah is actually fundamentally in very good shape.
What i mean is this that we alone have access to the wellspring of revelation other ummahs no longer have new testament scholarship means that anybody's guess on their arguments as to what say now Isa actually taught or considered himself to be the life of the buddha well who knows shrouded in mystery and myth but when you come to say now muhammad you see the spotlights of history and we can actually tell and by reading the seerah you get a sense of the absolute authenticity and the human reality particularly the period in medina if you read the seerah regularly you almost feel that you're a character in that play it is so believable and so true and the interaction of the miraculous and the human and the sahaba were often extraordinarily human ordinary human beings is something that can transport us back 1400 years and to give us a genuine window into the moment of goodness and wisdom and forgiveness that was the opening story of our community no other ummah has that so however decadent individuals and communities might be at least we know the road back nobody else knows the road back and that's extraordinary gift that we have and it should make us feel alhamdulillah that we are still the center of allah's providence in this age.
The Chain of Ulama
Another thing that it might be worth bearing in mind is that we still have amongst us guides who can lead us back just opening the quran and the hadith and trying to figure out what to do under our own steam often gets us lost somewhere along the and certainly it doesn't lead to unity because what happens is that the quran and the hadith are read according to the perceptions the preferences the insecurities of every individual reader which nobody can screen out but what we do have in islam which no other ummah continues to have is ulama who stretch in a continuous chain from our generation back to the blessed foundation of the religion so that i can go to a sheikh in mauritania or cairo or yemen or wherever and i can take his hand when i study a discipline and i know that his hand has held a hand that held a hand that held a hand that held the hand of sayyidina muhammad and in no other ummah is that chain intact and that's an extraordinary thing which means that not only do we have the texts that
are the blueprint for a humane decent life but we also have people who can help us to read those texts which is just as important so that's another thing to rejoice about that we still have those precious ulama with their ijazas and the madhahib system without which religion is just a kind of diy exercise do it yourself islam and the result will be thousands of different madhahib so that's an extraordinary blessing that we still have and we have to defend as one of our most precious legacies from the past.
The Continuing Faith of the Ummah
Another thing is the simple brute fact of the extraordinary overflowing of iman throughout the muslim world that however hopeless the structures the political or economic or social structures may be nonetheless just about everybody still believes and in many cases all that's required is for them to be given a key and a way and a guide and they can get back onto the path the number of people who are profoundly existentially corrupted in the muslim world is relatively small compared to other ummahs despite the superficial catastrophe and sometimes one can think that the west is form without content the muslim world is content without form and that can sometimes be the basis of our sense of agitation and worry about our situation it's much better to have content without form than form without content because the content can produce the legitimate form the form can't on its by itself generate a content so that also is good news that we have hundreds of millions of believers and often very strong very pure very dedicated believers and that gift of iman because it's a gift is sure irrefutable proof that allah is still looking with favor on our ummah because this iman is not self-generated it's not something we give to ourselves it's his gift it's always a sign of his favor.
The Growth of the Ummah
Another source of optimism and of contentment satisfaction with the divine decree in our age might be the fact of the proliferation of the ummah now we all know that there's a hadith in abu daud that says towards the end of time but you'll be many but you will be like the scum on a flash flood in other words there's a lot but it has no substance no ability to resist but it's also the case that the rasool takes pride in our numbers for any mubahin bi kathratikum al ummah yawm al qiyamah marry and multiply because i shall boast before the other ummahs of your numbers on the yawm al qiyamah this is part of allah's sign of his unique status as bearer of a message that he will have more followers than the other ummahs because he is khatam al anbiya and he will intercede for more than then or be interceded for by any other prophet and numbers do carry with them strength however you look at it.
And one of the extraordinary transformations that's taken place in the ummah over the past hundred years or so is the growth in its size through conversion to some extent but also through natural increase is one of the ironies and paradoxes of secular or non-muslim elites that on the one hand they want to keep muslim communities typically economically depressed as in many parts of the balkans as in india as in china other places they really don't want muslims to be in positions of power but when you do that you also put them in a position of poverty which in most cases will lead them to have larger families so in
india the muslims have bigger families than the hindus on average in bulgaria the muslims are now 11 percent of the population it's calculated that within 30 years they will be the majority of the population because bulgaria has the world's second highest abortion rate and the women aren't reproducing whereas that the muslims there all have families of six or seven kids.
And this phenomenon means that a hundred years ago muslims accounted for about 12 percent of the world's population now we are reckoned to be about 20 percent which is an extraordinary growth in absolute terms and the growth continues so that it's estimated that within about 25 or 30 years we'll be 30 percent of the world's population at which point we will be outstripping christianity as the world's principal religion and already in some places you find that islam is the kind of default setting for religion that because islam there's more to it than other religions there's more civilization there's more belief there's certainly more practice than in any other religion it's a big religion in that sense that islam is being regarded as the kind of normative religion even in countries that are traditionally historically christian.
I often find that i'm invited by companies in britain to talk about religion in the modern world because they assume that islam is more important in the modern world than christianity if you go to british airports now you'll see that the symbol that indicates the prayer room it's no longer the cross which it used to be 10 years ago but it's now somebody in the prostration position the outline of a kind of pin man sitting in the prostration position and only muslims pray like that because they know their experiences that it's the muslims who use those prayer rooms and maybe there's a catholic mass once a week at the chapel at gatwick airport but basically it's the muslims who are the religious ones even in traditionally christian countries particularly in europe.
And this process can only continue the church of england two years ago commissioned a survey from the university of surrey which discovered that there are more observant muslims now in britain than there are observant members of the church of england in other words somehow or other they counted people are going to juma prayers and they found that there are more than christians anglican christians who are taking communion every week which is probably the biggest religious change to have happened in britain since the reformation and of course the process continues because the church continues to age churches are declared redundant the number of priestly vacations continues to decline and the number of muslims continues to increase because for whatever reason the young people come to the mosques in england and of course asylum seekers refugees and primary immigration marriage continues conversion continues and this is for me at any rate a source of extraordinary optimism and hope.
The Historical Perspective
Now it is true of course that what counts is quality and not quantity but quantity as well is important and that's why it's indicated by the hadith as being something that the rasoolﷺ is proud of because brute numbers do count in history god is often on the of the largest battalions and we now find that in every western country islam is the second religion which 20 years ago would have been unimaginable and that
process continues to grow so that should give us a sense that not that allah is somehow veiled from this time and the ummah has been left to its own devices and that catastrophe follows catastrophe which is what some of us implicitly seem to think but rather actually this is an age of extraordinary retrenchment and regrowth and renewal for the ummah.
Nobody could reasonably expect the ummah to spiritually and intellectually and in sharia terms retool from the essentially medieval perspective that we had in many muslim countries just a couple of generations ago and suddenly develop a form of islam that was able to negotiate not to make concessions to but to negotiate to understand to succeed in the conditions of late modernity or post- modernity that would be absurd it took the west 400 years to adapt to modernity 400 very difficult years and to expect the islamic world really to understand what the modern world is in a couple of generations is absurd and all of the problems that we see around us nowadays basically they're just problems involved in trying to turn a very sharp corner very quickly so they're not the problems of the people who mess up they're not the problems of those who are as it were thrown out of the vehicle and can't figure out how to hold on to it because the situation seemed to be changing so fast it's basically the road which we don't design any longer but which we are careering down that has generated this sense of disorientation that the ummah feels.
And i would say that historians if the world continues in 100 years or 200 years time will not be saying that the 15th century our century was a time of failure for the ummah but rather taking all factors into account they will be saying that this was a time of extraordinary success for the muslim world despite superficial problems because the ummah retained its iman it lost many of the beautiful aspects of the crafts and the architecture and those things that's for sure but that's because of the speed of change which leaves craft guilds and a certain serenity temporarily behind but as the ummah gains its breath again gains its equilibrium those virtues will necessarily be recovered because they're the necessary virtues of any mu'min if you really practice islam in the correct way in the traditional way for long enough those virtues will come back even if you don't deliberately understand or cultivate them you can find them perfectly in illiterate villages in egypt or in india even though they probably never heard of the names of those virtues but they just flow naturally from the muslim spirit so they will come back.
The Metaphor of the Supertanker
So the ummah is if you like rather like one of those super tankers that take like 20 miles in order to change course because they're so big and ponderous and carrying so much and they've been underway for so long that you can't suddenly turn them on the new course overnight of course that's not possible if you're a tiny little ship you can do that a new religious movement a new cult or whatever well it can change and adapt because it's lightweight there's nothing much to it but a great world religion and particularly islam which is freighted with so much well of course if it has to change course which we have to because that's what ijtihad is about and that's what living in changing worlds is about and that's what
the universality of the religion is about then it's going to take a long time and there will be some people who are thrown overboard other people who are seasick other people who start fighting because they think that the direction should be another direction that's natural.
And when we see that we have to first of all be confident one hundred percent that allah's purposes for the ummah are good because the rasul says in the hadith:
"This ummah is the best community brought forth for mankind."
(Sahih Muslim 221)
"This umma is an umma upon which there is mercy."
And in the famous poem it says it's good news for us company congregation of islam because we have a column a pillar that can never be overturned and never be destroyed what is that pillar the pillar is rasul his sunnah his example his opening of our eyes to human possibilities to richness of soul to forgiveness to rigor to upholding the rights of the poor and the weak and of course his concern for us his ongoing concern for us his intercession for us even on the yawm al qiyamah that rukun that pillar is always with us it's good news for us nobody else has a pillar like that.
And when we have that awareness then inshallah we won't be so seasick maybe we will a little bit and we'll say what on earth is going on to the ummah and this period of its history why aren't we laying siege to vienna any longer or why isn't argentina converting to islam the way that say somalia converted to islam a thousand years ago those aren't realistic expectations because the crew is feeling a little bit dizzy seasick disoriented but the crew is still on board and the ship is still afloat and that's the miracle the ship is still afloat and the other ships basically have sunk they may have a few life boats a few denominations and a few people who are still trying to cultivate lives of fasting and prayer and giving there are a few remnants of other ummahs but the great show that's still on the road is the ummah of sultan muhammad because it's still there we're not in the lifeboats we're still in the ship.
Working Together with Good Hearts
And when we have that perspective when we realize that we're being buoyed up and carried out of the waters of the stormy waters of chaos and secularity and meaninglessness by this ship of the sunnah then inshallah when we have that perspective we will be less inclined to fight with our crewmates because the fact that somebody is afloat with us is a sure sign that on some level he is pleasing to allah because we are resurrected according to our intentions and that people often who are victims of severe error are excusable because if you look at it it's not their fault it's the fault of their upbringing their education or whatever and what allah really wants is good intention is pure-hearted sincere honest people and when we make that the basis on which we create relationships with others then we will succeed not when we say is his aqidah absolutely identical to myself and what does he think about the pre-existent attributes and their relationship to the divine essence well we're not ulama you know we can't arbitrate and say these ulama are wrong because that's for the ulama which is a very high level of ijtihad if everybody says
i'm a mujtahid and i can see these ulama are right and these ulama are wrong chaos will ensue if everybody's a qadi and everybody's a mujtahid we don't need ulama.
But what we can be certain of is that الْقَلْبُ السَّليم - the sound heart" is important. Allah says that what matters at the yawm al qiyamah will be مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبِ سَلِيم - "the one who comes to Him with a sound heart." [Quran 26:89]
And when we detect as intuitively as human beings we should be able to the presence of a sound heart for decent good intention in somebody else then that's a person we can work with and as for the details of fiqh and how i hold my hands in the prayer well that's for the ulama and there are different ijtihads and they're the ones who are accountable to allah i'm not answerable if i don't know the six or seven hundred dalils that might be behind every single detail of the salat allah's mercy has dispensed me from that.
So when we see people who have the essence of islam properly understood that they are constantly aware of the presence of allah his action his providence his goodness and they have a good opinion of allah a good opinion of his purposes towards this age those are the people we should be working with but if we're constantly so nervous about our own identity and convinced that what's required in our age is complete perfection not just in ourselves but in others then we'll just be like communities in a state of brownian motion individuals moving at random away from each other towards each other but there's no coherent substance there what we need is something that will draw us together magnetically and make us something strong and something resistant and that thing is only the recognition of good intentions in other people.
Conclusion
So looking back over 20 21 years as a proud member of the ummah i would say that the greatest surprise for me has been people's pessimism that somehow they're so preoccupied with their own insecurities in their own communities that they can't see the big picture firstly the theological big picture which is that everything's in allah's hands just as it always has been and that this may be an age in which there is a lot of rigor and sometimes beauty is not immediately discernible but rigor is also equally an attribute of allah and we should be content with his decree because as the poem says we can benefit from allah's withholding just as much as we benefit from his giving and the little picture which is that the state of the ummah when compared to other ummahs is actually remarkably miraculously good that we have the basic outlines intact the doctrine is still there the practices are still there five times prayer in the mosque everywhere still ramadan is still in its essence intact the hajj is still the hajj that the basic bedrock of the faith is alhamdulillah intact and a source of radiant happiness and unity and goodness for so many people giving hope and a sense of beauty and meaning to people who otherwise would have nothing at all that is still there and that's the great miracle in this age.
This is an age in which miracles are continuing but they are big miracles because there is no miracle greater than a religion that comes to us from an utterly different age but does not make compromises with this age everybody else is making compromises the dalai lama says that maybe buddhism isn't against homosexuality after all the christians seem to invent new forms of worship every year and they're just in a sea that constantly changes but we're the rock we're the rock of ages and if we hold on to that which is fundamentally the mercy that is rasulullah he is رُكْنٌ غَيْرٌ مِّنْهَدِمٍ - "the column that can never be demolished" then it is بُشْرَى لَنَا - "good news for us" and we can be proud and anybody from another ummah who really knows what religion is about rather than just turning it into a kind of woolly minded social service will have nothing but respect for us they may not agree with us they may oppose us but they will respect us because we still see things in proportion we know what counts we know that what counts is truth is allah.
And if the world shouts about us because they don't like our attitudes to criminal law or to gender or whatever we are not shouted down we are never shouted down we don't change because of anybody else protesting this is the verse in the bible that the christians seem to have forgotten apart from a few conservatives "be not conformed unto this world" we're the only ones who uphold that we are the ones who continue to maintain a complete sacred beautiful vision of life amidst the shouting meaningless of late modernity and the shallowness of consumer advertising nihilism that is the modern human condition and that is why our ship is going to pull through these stormy waters and everybody else realizing that their ships have given in and have let in too much water and have foundered they're going to come to our because we're all that's left only we have that only we have that radiant figure at the center of our faith the other human being who is the perfected human being who is still accessible who can still be known we're the only ones who have that.
So all of this to me is the source of extraordinary optimism and hope and inshallah thankfulness to allah that despite what many of us think this is an age of extraordinary divine giving of extraordinary divine gifts and preservation of the ummah that under conditions under which everybody else has given up basically and gone with the secular preoccupations and priorities of the modern world we continue to be going عَلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِيمٍ - "upon the straight path" inshallah.
So my conclusion would be that rida despite the manifest misfortunes of the modern world the modern ummah should be something that is instinctual to us that there has not been for many centuries a more direct proof a more clear miracle then the present condition of the ummah we tend to assume that it's a catastrophe in fact in terms of what matters it's like a gem that may have a bit of mud on it but the gem is still there it's a diamond that hasn't been cut and hasn't been rearranged all we need to do is superficially dust it down in our hearts and in our communities and the gem is still there whereas other people it's been eroded and rearranged to suit secular discourses and until there's nothing left except a few fragments so we have that gem and for that gem we have to be saying:
"Alhamdulillah for the blessing of Islam and it's enough as a blessing."
Whatever else we might have or might not have unless we have what really matters we haven't really got it anyway because if you don't have gratitude you can't really enjoy any of allah's gift you just want another if you've got a billion dollars you can't sleep at night because the guy next to your millionaire's row has got two billion dollars we're not into that game at all that's the dunya that's like the salt sea the more you drink the thirstier you get we take what we need and alhamdulillah for us it's sweet because we give the zakat and it's been purified and we give thanks
"if you give thanks I will give you even more."
So we need to maintain this virtue this virtue of ridah of good pleasure with allah's decree and we need to recognize that there is good for us even in god's rigor just as there is obvious good for us in allah's giving his generosity his rahmah the beautiful aspects and we need to recognize that the paradigm for all of this is in the lives of the prophets alayhimusalam those who faced difficulties infinitely more terrifying than those we face in our world being thrown into prisons being persecuted being alone in strange countries that who did not doubt for an instant because they knew because they saw the truth الحق - al- haq" they were not capable of doubt and we need therefore to reacquire this virtue this virtue of ridah and we need to be saying alhamdulillah at the beginning and at the end it's alhamdulillah because he is
"predominant over His affair" and as it says وَاللَّهُ غَالِبٌ عَلَى أَمْرِهِ - "Allah was in command all along" and it's the same with all of us and we need to feel at the bottom of our souls that sense of the absolute perfection of allah's decree even if we can't always see it.
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
References
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(Sahih al-Bukhari 1303)
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(Sahih al-Bukhari 7068)
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(Sahih Muslim 221)
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