Clarifying the Reality of “The Unifying Thread in God’s Book” in al-Sakran’s Article
Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is no deity but God alone, without partner, God of the first and last generations, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger, sent as mercy to the worlds. May God bless him, his family, and all his Companions.
“The Unifying Thread in God’s Book” is an article by Ibrahim al-Sakran, may God guide and rectify him, first published on Rua Fikriyyah [23/11/1432]. Websites and forums quickly circulated it, and readers showed considerable interest. This demonstrates people’s great need for religious discourse grounded in faith at a time when materialism and love of worldly life dominate, and pure reminders of the exclusive right of the Lord of earth and heavens are rarer than red sulphur! I therefore judge this article to be the product of spiritual clarity, a state of faith, and an hour’s connection with God’s Book. It is filled with noble verses, drawing attention to great realities of faith, self-evident to people affirming God’s oneness, yet so urgently needing discussion today that we write as though announcing a momentous discovery. I wished the writer had been more explicit and clear about his article’s conclusion and purpose, rather than ending with ambiguous words returning readers to the doctrinal and intellectual structure from which it supposedly sought to free them and remove its influence. I therefore wished to contribute clarification, seeking God’s assistance and success.
Perhaps the best beginning is a quotation from another study al-Sakran published about four years earlier, “The Outcomes of Civilisational Discourse”. In a section on ‘the human function’, he wrote:
“What is the human function? This is the question and starting point underlying intellectual trends’ fundamental disagreements. There are two main answers:
The first, the ‘civilisational tendency’, regards development as humanity’s purpose in creation, everything else being a means. Revelation, religious laws, and worship serve development, civilisation, and civil life. Development is humanity’s essential goal and principal priority. Accordingly this discourse focuses on civilisation, directs all other elements towards it, and tolerates everything else, assessing societies, cultures, and personalities by their position in this worldly civilisation. Here ‘civilisation’ is comprehensive, including everything promoting human welfare and happiness across worldly life, advancement in philosophical, human, and natural sciences and the arts, and the like.
The second, the ‘religious tendency’, regards the human function as servitude: God created humans, sent messengers, and revealed books to direct people to God and worship of Him, explain precisely what befits Him and what does not in dealing with Him, and set rules regulating people’s rights. Everything in this world is enjoyment, play, and diversion. Whatever is needed from it must aid servitude to God. Anything not helping or leading to that purpose falls into one of only two categories: forbidden and to be avoided, or superfluous and appropriately renounced.
Development, civilisation, and civil life are merely means to manifest religion and establish its rites and laws. Only what fulfils this purpose is praiseworthy…” He continued: “In reality, God’s Book did not leave this issue fluid, open-ended, or relative. It settled it certainly, clearly, and explicitly, identifying human creation’s purpose in exclusive language: {I created jinn and humans only to worship Me} [al-Dhariyat: 56]. He explained that He began human creation in this world and resurrects people after death to account for this purpose, fulfilling servitude: {He begins creation and then repeats it to reward justly those who believe and do righteous deeds} [Yunus: 4]. In many places God explains within the verses that creation’s function and purpose are testing people in this servitude: {He created death and life to test which of you is best in deeds} [al-Mulk: 2]. Good deeds here and in similar verses mean faith and righteous action according to their religious ranks. Had developing the earth through civilisation and worldly sciences been the primary meaning of good deeds, God would never have sent messengers throughout human history. He already affirmed those nations’ excellence in developing the earth and deep worldly knowledge: {They were stronger than them, tilled the earth, and developed it more than they have developed it} [al-Rum: 9]. Of their civilisational knowledge: {They know an outward aspect of worldly life} [al-Rum: 7]. God explained that prophethood, revealed books, and religious laws all aim to affirm worship of God and preparation for future life after death, not global competition in worldly civilisation. Concerning messengers’ function: {We sent a messenger to every nation: Worship God}… [al-Nahl: 36]. He mentions the divine question about fulfilling this purpose: {Company of jinn and humans, did messengers from among you not come recounting My signs and warning you of meeting this day?} [al-Anam: 130]. Concerning religious laws’ function: {They were commanded only to worship God} [al-Bayyinah: 5]. Many other decisive revelations conclusively explain human creation’s purpose. Here we seek only to mention examples, not exhaustively survey them.” End of quotation.
Abu Maslamah, may God pardon him, says: This is a sound and well-guided exposition, written in refutation of secularists and liberals who weigh everything only by material utility. He spoke truly: they seek worldly life and worship matter, and contemporary Western civilisation rests upon this conception. Its adherents differ, however, in their stance towards religion. Some exaggerate atheism and hostility to religion, making combat against it their concern and purpose. These are extreme secularists, or advocates of extreme secularism, as Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi calls them. Others regard religion as a product of human thought, part of human civilisation that can serve civil life, guide its values, and regulate ethical conduct. It is unsurprising to find a European atheist simultaneously praising Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and pagan religions, describing their virtues and beneficial effects on individuals and society.
I do not think explicit secularism, interpreting religion materially and utilitarianly, threatens Muslims’ creed and religion. The real danger lies in Islamic movement thought, deeply and profoundly influenced by that materialist, utilitarian tendency. This has shaped movement discourse, its conception of servitude to God, religion’s overall principles and objectives, and what should dominate Muslims’ minds and concerns in politics, society, and all life’s affairs.
Since movement thought wears an Islamic colouring, mixes with religious discourse, cites verses and hadiths, and addresses matters important to Muslims, such as applying Islamic law and reforming society, this materialist tendency and utilitarian interpretation of religion have become subtle and obscure, wrapped in calls to implement Islamic law, support religion, and establish it. It resembles ostentation, described as “more hidden than a black ant’s footsteps upon a smooth rock on a dark night.” Despite this, it is intensely dangerous and destructive. The Messenger’s greatest fear for his community was therefore “minor association: ostentation” [Sahih al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib: 32]. We are thus justified in fearing most the materialist and political interpretation of Islam, movement thought’s hidden face. We devote our efforts to uncovering its hidden threads, exposing it, and warning against its subtleties and entry points more than we do with secularism and liberalism. Our example is the Messenger, who came out while his Companions discussed the Antichrist, a manifest evil like secularism and liberalism, and asked: “Shall I tell you what I fear for you more than the Antichrist?” They said yes. He replied: “Hidden association: a man stands to pray and beautifies his prayer because he sees another man watching.” [Sahih al-Targhib wa-l-Tarhib: 30.] If a subtle deviation in someone’s intention during prayer is hidden association, is it not hidden association when a Muslim thinker, preacher, or intellectual discusses worship and then, ambiguously and deceptively, interprets it as ‘developing the earth and establishing the virtuous society’? When addressing pure acts of worship, for which God created creation, sent messengers, revealed books, and established Paradise and Hell, he implants in listeners’ subconscious that these are training methods and physical exercises preparing humans and connecting them to the project of developing the earth!
I will cite only one passage from one of al-Mawdudi’s best-known books, may God pardon us and him: Principles of Islam, a fundamental influence upon successive generations of Muslim youth, translated into more than thirty world languages. Through intelligence and ingenuity, al-Mawdudi infused his presentation of Islam’s principles and overall purposes with a political and materialist interpretation. Calmly, through lengthy coherent prose, he implanted the idea that religion’s purpose and worship’s goal are confined to directing humans to develop the earth according to the divine project. Recognising that this materialist interpretation deprives Islam’s pillars and fundamental acts of worship of importance, strips their true value, and destroys their centrality in religious discourse, he qualified it while discussing servitude and Islam’s pillars:
“In summary, fearing God in every affair and moment of life, keeping His pleasure before your eyes, following His law, rejecting every benefit obtained or obtainable through disobedience, and patiently bearing every harm caused or potentially caused by obedience, all belong to worship of God. Your whole life, beginning to end, becomes worship. Eating, drinking, sleeping, waking, sitting, standing, walking, speaking, and silence are all worship in such a life. This is worship and its true meaning. Islam’s purpose is only to make humans worship God in this manner at every moment. For that purpose it imposed a group of acts of worship preparing them for this greater worship. These obligatory acts are, as it were, training for the desired greater worship. Whoever receives this training well performs true worship as intended. Thus these acts were made the very obligation of Islam and called religion’s pillars, the supports upon which its structure stands. Just as a building rests upon supports, Islamic life’s structure rests upon these. Whoever demolishes them demolishes Islam’s structure itself.”
Abu Maslamah, may God pardon him, says: See how al-Mawdudi stripped Islam’s pillars, the foundations of pure worship intended intrinsically, of intrinsic importance. He made their importance and standing dependent upon being causes and means to what he called the desired greater worship, namely developing the earth according to the divine project. He and those influenced by him, such as the famous writer Sayyid Qutb, may God pardon us and him, therefore concentrated on implementing Islamic law. Sovereignty became movement discourse’s central issue as the sole legislative authority for developing the earth and building the ideal city, supposedly revelation’s, prophethood’s, and messengership’s ultimate purpose and greatest reality. There is a difference between godly scholars’ concern to apply Islamic law because it belongs to religion’s rulings and duties, whose fulfilment is obedience and neglect sin, and Islamist thinkers’ concern with it as the legislative reference for developing the earth, alongside Marxist, capitalist, and other reference systems.
Movement thought’s deviation in interpreting religion and its purposes is subtle and obscure. To my knowledge only two outstanding men perceived its danger: the great Indian thinker Wahid al-Din Khan, may God grant him a good end, and the scholar Shaykh Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi, may God have mercy on him. Both possessed extensive reading, diverse culture, and thorough knowledge of Western ideas and philosophies. The former wrote An Error in the Interpretation of Religion, later summarised in The Political Interpretation of Religion; the latter published The Political Interpretation of Islam. I introduced al-Nadwi’s book and highlighted his work in earlier articles entitled “A Trial with No Abu al-Hasan to Confront It!”, making repetition unnecessary.
Abu Maslamah, may God pardon him, says: Let us now fulfil our promise to clarify the reality of ‘the unifying thread in God’s Book’:
1. Religious discussion should adhere to the expressions of the Book and Sunnah and those used by the righteous early generations and earlier Muslim imams. Through attention to these expressions, their meanings, and their use in scriptural texts, Arabic, and the earliest generations’ understanding, we correctly know what God wants of us, not through speculation, deduction, and modern styles and terminology. I searched thousands of religious books for the phrase ‘cultivating souls’, using textual search in al-Maktabah al-Shamilah and Jawami al-Kalim. The result was zero!
2. Al-Sakran said: “There is a unifying thread connecting all these issues. The Qur’an’s topics vary, but this thread remains the same. The issue around which the Qur’an revolves and to which it connects everything is cultivating souls through God.”
Abu Maslamah says: Everything in the researcher’s long article provides evidence and explanation for this statement. Overall it is good and commendable, but it must be defined and clarified to avoid false concepts. What he identifies as a unifying thread and central Qur’anic issue, ‘cultivating souls through God’, admits more than one interpretation and can be used for more than one purpose:
(a) People of devotion and sound faith understand it as preparing, educating, and refining souls to fulfil their duty of worship devoted exclusively to God, Lord of the worlds. Foremost are Islam’s pillars: prayer, fasting, zakat, and pilgrimage. These are remembrance, supplication, intention, turning towards and humbling oneself before the true object of worship through love, fear, and hope. They are pure acts of worship intended intrinsically, a binding right of the supreme Creator, not means to develop the earth and reform society. Whoever intends or interprets them thus has adulterated worship and inverted religion.
Certainly, fulfilling worship devoted to God produces good results, fruits, and effects upon individuals and society that may develop the earth and reform society. These may occur or fail to occur. They are intended secondarily as outcomes, not primarily as premises.
(b) Adherents of movement thought, those raised in its institutions or influenced by it, understand ‘cultivating souls through God’ as preparing, educating, and refining souls to undertake developing the earth, building the ideal city, and hastening to revolution and change. This is what the utilitarian Islam preacher Amr Khaled expressed through ‘Development through Faith’ and ‘Development through Pilgrimage’. In some lectures he explicitly addressed Muslims and Christians equally, saying he made no distinction. Faith, for him, is “the greatest thing present in the consciousness of the region’s peoples; their civilisational inheritance is called faith,” as I documented in “Al-Qaradawi and the Disobedient Pupil”.
3. Because of upbringing and environment, movement activists’ devout wing gives great importance to worship and religious rulings as means, training courses, and exercises directing and motivating souls to work and give for developing the earth according to God’s methodology and rescuing humanity from bewilderment and loss. The less devout wing sees such emphasis as wasting time and effort, and considers general Islam sufficient as an intellectual reference and overall life methodology. They therefore avoid detailed creed, seek concessions in religious rulings, and pursue anomalous fatwas they deem better suited to reality. The latter resemble the Mutazilah; the former resemble the Kharijites, though neither the Kharijites nor Mutazilah were contaminated by the political and materialist interpretation of Islam!
4. The noble verses cited for ‘cultivating souls through God’ fall into one of two cases:
(a) Cultivation means worship itself: cultivating through servitude to God. Love, fear, hope, reliance, seeking help and rescue, God-consciousness, sincerity, intention, and other acts of the heart, along with remembrance, supplication, Qur’an recitation, prayer, fasting, and so forth, all cultivate souls, tongues, and limbs through pure worship, the highest and most precious purposes and ends.
(b) Cultivation is a means to something else, one thing alone: fulfilling servitude to God, the highest purpose, noblest goal, and greatest desired reality. God explains repeatedly that the pure worship and righteous deeds He prescribes, and even the trials He brings through His will and wisdom, seek ascent to higher degrees of servitude, intention, turning towards Him, and humility before Him. Concerning signs and circumstances testing the Children of Israel, He says: {So that you may be grateful}. Concerning prescribed retaliation and fasting: {So that you may become God-fearing}. Gratitude and God-consciousness are among servitude’s highest ranks. The writer cites many other such verses. Their presentation required highlighting this meaning, rather than settling for the ambiguous ‘cultivating souls through God’.
5. The writer spoke well and was well-guided in saying: “Unfortunately, materialist preaching discourses came to us, exhausted by confronting Westernisation. They broke, absorbed the opponent’s own culture, immersed themselves in reminding people of this world, and made the Hereafter secondary.” Also: “See how the Prophet cultivated attachment to the mosque in his Companions’ souls, and compare this with some professed preachers who now attach people to what lies outside it! They shun mosques’ tranquillity and adore worldly clamour…” I nearly considered this explicit statement sufficient, dispensing with commentary. But I found he had not escaped movement interpretation’s influence. He concluded with words implying that cultivating souls through faith prepares them for work, revolution, and movement towards renaissance, civilisation, and civil development:
“If some preachers today advised revolutionaries against corrupt Arab governments to increase remembrance of God, many Westernised people would call it dervish-like naivety, though Moses makes remembrance the overarching framework of his great mission, and God insists that both brothers not slacken in remembrance. How many contemporary examples show the estrangement of Qur’anic concepts and Muslim youth’s distance from them, except those God assists!” Elsewhere: “Can anyone comparing the Qur’an’s demands with contemporary intellectual books on renaissance and progress doubt that our distance from renaissance and civilisation corresponds to these books’ distance from the Qur’an’s aims, purposes, and demands? By God, have you seen a book on renaissance deriving its theory from the verses of establishment and succession?…”
Abu Maslamah, may God pardon him, says: A preacher guided by the Book and Sunnah should not conclude ambiguously. He must identify his intention clearly:
(a) If he means cultivating souls through God is a means to renaissance, progress, and revolution, let him state it without deception or obscurity.
(b) If he means cultivating souls through God, through pure servitude by prayer, zakat, remembrance, supplication, Qur’an recitation, and righteous deeds accompanied by intention and seeking nearness to God, is the unifying thread of God’s Book, the greatest purpose and fundamental objective of revelation, prophethood, messengership, creation, Paradise, and Hell, let him dedicate his pen and raise his voice to it. Let him avoid every expression or meaning diminishing the clarity, beauty, and radiance we read in God’s Book: {I created jinn and humans only to worship Me. I desire no provision from them and do not desire them to feed Me. God is the Provider, Possessor of strength, the Firm} [al-Dhariyat: 56-58]. Consider how He first confines the purpose to worshipping Him alone, then explicitly undertakes their provision, so none imagines that provision, upon which life and existence depend, should be their ultimate purpose and concern.
Elsewhere God says He commanded them only what fulfils creation’s purpose: {They were commanded only to worship God, devoting religion sincerely to Him as upright believers, establish prayer, and give zakat; that is the upright religion} [al-Bayyinah: 5].
Once this is established and rooted in souls, there is no objection to highlighting servitude’s fruits, blessings, and merits: reform of individuals and society, good life, goodness, tranquillity, justice, security, and prosperity. Our Lord says: {Had the towns’ people believed and feared God, We would have opened blessings from heaven and earth for them, but they denied, so We seized them for what they earned} [al-Araf: 96]. God’s Messenger Noah reminded his people: {Seek your Lord’s forgiveness; He is ever Forgiving. He will send abundant rain upon you, support you with wealth and sons, and provide gardens and rivers for you. Why do you not accord God due majesty?} [Nuh: 10-13].
The writer’s general reference to ‘verses of establishment and succession’ concerns themes movement activists repeatedly discuss and interpret through the theory explained above. Detailed treatment belongs elsewhere. Here it suffices to note that God’s words explicitly attribute establishment in power to Him. It belongs to His exclusive disposal of the universe. He has neither charged servants with what they cannot bear nor commanded what distracts from creation’s purpose. If establishment occurs by decree, its recipients’ exclusive duty is fulfilling servitude: {Those who, if We establish them on earth, establish prayer, give zakat, command right, and forbid wrong. To God belongs the outcome of affairs} [al-Hajj: 41].
Likewise, succession is purely a matter of divine decree and a blessing of fulfilling servitude to God. Its recipients must persist in fulfilling the divine purpose for which they were created: {God has promised those among you who believe and do righteous deeds that He will make them successors on earth as He made those before them successors, establish for them the religion He approved, and replace their fear with security. They worship Me, associating nothing with Me. Whoever disbelieves thereafter, those are the defiantly disobedient} [al-Nur: 55]. Cultivating souls through God is therefore not intended to attain succession on earth. Rather, succession is a blessing arising from that cultivation, God’s favour to His righteous, God-fearing servants. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.
Written by Abu Maslamah Abd al-Haqq al-Turkmani.
Britain: Tuesday, 27/11/1432 AH, corresponding to 25/10/2011 CE.