Islam and Fascism? What Next?

by Dr. S. Khurshid

  Islam, Religion of Peace, Moderate Islam, Fundamental Islam, Fundamentalist Islam, Islamism, Radical Islam, Militant Islam, Osamaism, and now Islamic Fascism!  A maze of slogans and names coined by hair-splitting scholars, both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who are constantly escalating their vilification of what they do not understand or do not want to.

  For a simple Muslim it is just Islam, the submission of a human’s will to one Transcendental Truth.  Call Him Allah or by any other name.  A rose smells just as sweet by any other name. This is the message of all higher religions, because the source is the same.

  The secular “Judeo-Christian” West is full of fearful people who are vilifying the Truth because they have moved far away from their true faith, so it becomes a question of Us against Them.  It’s also because their scientific, rational temper forces them to do this micro-analysis. Muslims do this also because of their training in the West, or perhaps they have no personal experience of the soul-elevating Absolute Reality (Ma’arifat).  They think they must talk in an apologetic language imposed by their Non-Muslim peers.

  The seekers of Truth know that Islam is all that humans can put into words and much more.  Allah can take from any people whatever of their works He wants.  “For had it not been that Allah checks one set of people by means of another, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the Name of Allah is much mentioned would surely have been pulled down” Surah al Hajj, 22:40.

  All the believers in all religions should work together to make the word of Allah supreme on this planet.  Allah must be laughing at the Secular West going into an End of History mode.  “They intend to put out the Light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will bring His light to perfection even though the disbelievers hate it.” Surah al Saff, 61:8.

  So an ordinary Muslim does not want to be mired in semantic or mimetic warfare.  He just waits and watches the turn of events.  Fukiyama rightly observed when he invented the “end of history” that only the voice of Islam is resisting the technological leap to a grand finale of Western triumphalism.  No other religion stood in the way of this technologically supreme, yet empty, hedonistic, and god-less post-modernity scenario. This burden fell on the shoulders of Muslims, unfortunately!

  The Qur’an describes the spiritual history of mankind through the ages, the fight of Moses (a.s.) against the Pharoah or that of David (a.s.) against Goliath.  A believer does not fully understand the high-sounding names of Islam.  He knows, however, that as a servant of Allah he has to fight untruth and injustice in the world by promoting the human rights and responsibilities known in Islamic jurisprudence as justice, ‘adl, a concept apparently disappearing in the West, in order to preserve human dignity and freedom.  An ordinary Muslim also knows for sure that God is in full control of His Creation.