It is an unfortunate reality that humanity has always woken up to fix things only after being hit by an unprecedented tragedy. History is replete with such examples. Let us not go back too far into history and talk about the developments of the last few centuries.
Humanity towards the end of the 18th century started testing and trying the idea of constitutional democracy which kept maturing and establishing itself towards the beginning of the 20th century. It keeps refining itself by experimenting different methodologies.
The biggest setback to democracy, I believe, happened in the last few decades when the political inclination moved more towards party democracy under the garb of constitutional democracy.
The party democratic system across the globe is rapidly transforming and driving nations and societies towards the oligarchical system, in which a select group or politicians and capitalists pull the strings of the political parties of the countries and control the political, economic and social discourse through their immense money power and control over the propaganda machinery.
The world needs to wake up to this reality and curtail the sufferings and deterioration in the quality of lives of the people across the globe which comes at the cost of greed for money, power, control and luxuries of a select few.
If not curtailed soon, this could eventually lead to an unprecedented economic inequality between the rich and the poor.
History tells us that every time that gap has disproportionately ballooned, humanity, civilizations and societies suffered destruction and chaos and had to rebuild itself from scratch. Each cycle of destruction puts humanity and human progress behind by at least 5 centuries.
Now is the time the world wakes up to realize where the ship of human consciousness is breaking apart and mend it before it is too late. We need to revert to constitutional democracy and get rid of the party system.
We need to bring back our attention towards the constitution and keep working towards refining and bettering it through scientific and rational discussions and debates.
We need to introduce and teach constitution as a fulltime subject in our schools and universities so that the future generations grow up with a realization of what binds every individual of the society together and that every person of the society is responsible and accountable to the constitution/law of the land and to no one else.
Even the head of the state holds accountability to the constitution. On that basis we need to enable leaders and leadership of the future from within the society, of people with intellect, who are committed to upholding the laws, values, ethics, morals and principles of the constitution.
We need to teach and impart honesty and accountability as part of the education system of our societies so as to bring up people and leaders who, if strayed from the constitution for some unfounded reason, would accept responsibility and go through the necessary course corrections.
This could be the most realistic set-up for our societies and nations that holds the potential to bring the entire world under its ambit and is in fact not something new to be realized.
Every messenger of God had challenged the corrupt man-made social setups of their times and practically implemented the God’s constitution, or the constitutional democracy based on God’s constitution during their times.
The last messenger of God had successfully uprooted the oligarchies and monarchies of his times and established this system in almost half of the then existing global population.
Humanity has always longed for an ideal peaceful society for all of us and I believe that we are rapidly advancing towards re-establishing that system, but our slumber in a few disciplines and trial and error approach in others is delaying our dreams from becoming reality.
This process can in fact be accelerated by exploring and realizing the message of Quran: God’s constitution for entire humanity.
“Realizing the message of Quran God’s Constitution” is not a straightforward adventure.
Today 1442 years later (2021 CE) the option to implement God’s constitution continues to face challenges as it is seen by the misinformed to be draconian, the fact that it constitutes “Sharia Law”; in other words, “God’s Law”. The moment the word “Sharia” is mentioned it can easily be misconstrued and misrepresented by the controlled digital media (Ref: To Kevin Rudd ex-Prime Minister petition to the parliament on lack of media diversity in this country alone – how about the rest of the world?)
Yes, I agree with Muqeem Rauf that this is the ultimate solution to save us and the generations to follow but the pathway faces huge obstacles and spiritual challenges within the Muslim world itself. For instance, take a close look at the Sunni, Shia fault-line widening as we speak, the use of several versions of aHaddeth compilations, the diverse sects and the list goes on and on. Let us pin ourselves on the positive trajectory and hope and Pray for God’s mercy (Ar Rahman and Ar Raheem) for mankind to prevail and persist In Shaa Allah Tallah.
Quran 25:30
وَقَالَ الرَّسُوۡلُ يٰرَبِّ اِنَّ قَوۡمِى اتَّخَذُوۡا هٰذَا الۡقُرۡاٰنَ مَهۡجُوۡرًا
(25:30) And the Messenger (Muhammad SAW) will say: “O my Lord! Verily, my people deserted this Quran (neither listened to it, nor acted on its laws and orders). – Muhsin Khan
Thanks for the comment Mr. Tuan Packeer.
I agree with you that it is huge challenge for the Quranic order to be enacted and implemented mainly because of the baseless global propaganda of misinformation and ignorance made commonplace with regards to Muslims, Islam and the Quran. A part of the problem lies within the Muslim society; and the Muslim leadership, I believe, has not done the needy to address the problem.
As you have rightly mentioned – The use of several versions of Quranic interpretations and ahadith – is where the problem lies but I believe the solution to this problem is not so complex.
It only requires 1 basic correction in our THINKING – “a book cannot have multiple interpretations”. No human written book for that matter has multiple interpretations and we are talking about God’s book here. The Quran carries its own interpretation and explanation. There could be faults with the intellectual integrity and wisdom of the person reading it if he/she interprets it their own way. The message of any book can be comprehended by understanding the meanings of its words – “in the right context” and contemplating its essence in its wholeness.
Once we adopt this approach, we will be able to sift through, and set aside, the unislamic misinformation that was planted into Islamic literature in the name of tafseer and ahadith attributed towards Mohammed(P). This will help separate the authentic tafseer’s and ahadith from the corrupted ones. If we look closely, all the sects and divisions within the Muslim ummah are the direct outcome of each group adhering to some self professed concepts and belief’s emanating from the misconstrued tafseer’s and ahadith.
A PRAGMATIC TEST of the Islamic literature, tafseer and ahadith with REFERENCE to the teachings of the Quran is what is needed to solve the problem. Once this is achieved, everything else will follow. Muslims equipped with the right knowledge of the Quran would start to excel in the fields of education, science and knowledge. They would lead humanity towards progress and success and would become the most rationally and intellectually adept people. The challenge to rest of the world population “then” would be to present a better ideology to lead humanity which they would have NO answer to because – Quran is the source of God’s constitution for entire humanity.
In fact – Quran is the source of knowledge of every discipline of education, science and learning one can imagine.
I would conclude with the verse you quoted – Quran 25:30. Yes, we DO NOT want to be among those who have deserted the Quran.
thank you and best regards,
Muqeem.