Friday Night Lights

Well, its everybody's favorite day of the week and yet here I am cracking away at some work that I obviously have had to take home with me from the schoolweek. What am I working on you may ask? I am currently working on a series of articles for a Muslim business magazine. The first article I'm working on Abu Bakr (RAD), the leading companion of the Prophet and the first of the four authentic Caliphs of Islam. Its funny becuase you spend your life hoping that you can just get a chance to spread word of the goodness and excellence of such people, and then realise the wealth of information you would like to share with the audience is not something that can have justice done unto it so easily. Where to start? Where to finish? What to highlight? The possibilities are endless.

While on the theme of our heroes, I recently spent an entire weekend just brushing up on my history while also indulging myself in the impressively expansive database possessed by Wikipedia online (an all free online encyclopedia). Just reading through the series of objective articles, I could not help but think how far things have come alhumdulillah. Times were once that you would pick up a history text book and it would say that Islam was 'spread by the sword'. Now I goto an online encyclopedia and it tells me that Khalid Bin Walid is 'one of the greatest generals known to mankind'. Where you would once pick up an Oxford University publication and be subjected to a most reprehensible depiction of Umar Al-Farooq, the pious second Caliph of Islam, now you can read about the brilliance of Imam Abu Hanifa in finding a school of jurisprudence within Islam. Alhumdulillah. Alhumdulillah ala kulli shay. Praise Be to God, for everything.

Yet nevertheless this experience also raised the question in my mind of Muslims being objective about their own history. This is an issue similar to a point that Imam Zaid raised at the 4 day retreat in December: Why do Muslims feel that anyone and everyone in their history is a saintly figure who has done and could do no evil, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is committing something just short of heresy?

What may be the source of my contemplation on this matter you might ask? Its just the idea of us not looking objectively at our legendary figures. Of course, some are, by virtue of Prophetic tradition, beyond reproach. There are others however, who are not standing on such lofty grounds and must be subject to the same questions that we direct at ourselves and our leaders today.

Examples? The Ottoman Sultans. Let us start with Mehmet the Conqueror, widely famed for his annexation of Constantinople in 1453. Brilliant General? Absolutely. Admirable statesman? The record would probably thus corroborate. Pious Muslim? He prayed five times a day, was known to be outwardly religious, so the case can certainly be made. Quasi-divine saintly figure? Well, he had his younger brother strangled upon accession to the throne, as per Ottoman custom, so as to preclude a power struggle...

Example number two? Haroun Al-Rashid. Great Abbassid Caliph whose reign (786-809) is fabled enough to be given the title Asr Al-Dhahabi or "Golden Era". An excellent delegator of administrative responsibility. He was a leader so conscientious that he personally pranced the streets at night to ensure his citizens happiness and contentment and to hear their unveiled grievances. Yet here was also a man who had executed his brother in law for the reason that he had NOT given him permission to consummate marriage to the Caliph's own sister...

Then there is also Suleyman the Magnificent, undoubtedly one of the greatest Islamic figures in our storied narrative, referring to himself as "Shadow of God on Earth", a proclamation that borders on blasphemy if not Shirk (the assosciation of a deity with God, the worst sin in Islam).

These were great men who left undoubtable legacies on the world in which we live, and did so as pre-eminent Muslims. Were they heroes? Absolutely. Were they perfect? No, but only God can judge their account as he can only ours. God knows best their blameworthiness (or not) based on their circumstances.

Look past this however, and you realise the parallels to the present. How often do you hear people saying, too bad we don't have anymore (insert historical figure here) today, it would make such a difference. By creating these icons of perfection we have lost sight of the fact that you and I are in fact the Saladins and the Umar ibn Abdul Aziz's (look up on wikipedia.org for more info on both figures)'s of today. We have frailities, and they did too. We are human, they were too. We make mistakes; they undeniably did too. Yet while holding ourselves accountible, we must also cut each other some slack. Nobody is perfect, and really, nobody ever has been. However, this does not mean that great achievements of monumental significance cannot be had in perfection's absence. Our historical figures attest to the contrary.

Hence, we cannot continue to use the lack of these perfect legends of our past as an excuse for inactivity or passivity today. The idea of Islamic civilisation going downhill, a notion supported by theories of the near perfection of our historical figures and the non-existance of such figures today, is one that needs to be critically reassessed. Our predecessor's weren't perfect but they still made a huge difference in the world, a difference to humanity. Why can't we? Where do these apocalyptic ideas come from? In reality, I submit that we are just as capable of creating legends and heroes in our times as those people before us. Its simply a matter of acknowledging that nostalgic revisionism of our historical figures will only cloud our perspective of a possibly bright and prosperous future for ourselves, a future of hope, and a future of contribution to mankind.