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PROBLEMS FACING MUSLIM STUDENTS BY OMAR AUSTIN
The Muslim
The problems facing Muslim students living in the West are of two kinds of factors:
1. Primary problems, i.e. the problem and influences which tend to threaten the faith and integrity of the students' Islamic identity and allegiance.
2. Those problems which are of a practical nature and concern the ability or otherwise of the student to live as Muslim a way of life as possible.
I will deal with the primary problems first, since however important the practical, secondary problems may seem at the moment they occur, the major problems are far more serious and all the more dangerous in that they work slowly and insidiously upon the student's faith, and thus threaten to distort and pervert the whole structure of his Islamic upbringing.
In order to understand the true nature of this problem it is necessary first to clear tip a misunderstanding. Many students think that in coming to the West they are coming to the Christian West. They also think that they have come from countries which are Muslim countries. On both counts these are only half truths-half truths which help to obscure the real problem.
The countries to which the Muslim student has come to study are no longer Christian countries, they are secular, humanistic, scientific countries with small Christian minorities struggling to maintain their faith and identity against 'he assaults of materialism and atheism. Neither are the countries from which the Muslim students have come are any more strictly speaking Islamic, since for the past sixty years or so they have come increasingly under the influence of Western secular ideas in almost every field, especially Law and government. So much is this the case that many Muslim countries have become carbon copies of Western states, except for the continuing faith of the people.
The Modern View
Thus the main problem for the Muslim student, not only in the West but also at home is Modernism, which is to say materialism, humanism, secularism and atheism. The only difference is that in the West the deterioration of faith and religion has gone much further than in the Muslim world.
Whether the Muslim world can in fact reverse the trend and salvage Islam is a debatable question. The Modern spirit believes in the Ego and matter and rejects God and the Unseen. Thus Islam and Christianity, with all their many differences, have far more in common with each other than they have with Modernism. Most importantly both put God at the centre of their view of life. Both Islam and Christianity represent as religions something which the Modern world is trying to change and destroy. The Modern world and what it represents, namely purely human aims and goals, is something which Islam and other religions have always tried to contain and limit.
This is not to say that there are not serious differences between Islam and Christianity, but they are from the Muslim students' point of view not dangerous in that they are clearly stated differences of doctrine and practice, which the Muslim may reject or accept. This is not the case with the Modernist outlook which is expressed not in clear black and white terms which are obviously contrary to the teachings of Islam, but often in ways which are vague and ambiguous, in ways which appeal to human nature and its perennial desire for comfort and freedom. The insidious doctrines of Modernism so lethal to religious faith are not preached at you from the street corners by missionaries, or forced upon you, except in Communist countries, by any government propaganda, but they are offered to you in a thousand subtle ways through almost every aspect of life in the Western world, especially through the various communications media which are so much a dominant Part of life here. In the press, books, magazines, T.V., radio, advertisements, and also in the process of education; for the schools, colleges and universities of these countries are less and less concerned with imparting eternal values and truths, less and less with educating the individual or society to take up the real functions and obligations of Man, and more and more with involving the individual and society in the quantitative and superficial aspects of life, with purely physical sciences, with purely human ideologies, with purely materialistic values, relegating any concern with religion to the study of outmoded superstitions and psycho- logical problems.
I make no apology for dwelling at some length on this main problem since I seriously consider it to be the most important aspect of life in the West which the Muslim student must understand clearly if he is to avoid a slow and inevitable erosion of his faith and religious integrity. Let me now list the actual beliefs and teachings of the Modern view which are implicit in and underlie the many apparently reasonable expressions of the Modern point of view, and then let me contrast them with what Islam teaches on the same points. One must not forget, as I have indicated before, that Muslim students do not come here already unaffected by the impact of the Modern world and that therefore, to some extent, your minds are to some degree predisposed to accept some of these things.
1. Firstly the Modernist view holds that matter and mind are the only realities, that only that is true which is tangible and can be experienced by the senses.
2. That all Truth is relative and that there is no Absolute Truth. That one opinion is as good as another and that religious doctrines are merely one set of opinions which are refuted by others.
3. That religious beliefs and spiritual realities are only the fantasies of uneducated, simple people. That it is not God who creates Man in his own image, but rather primitive man who invented God in his own image because he did not understand things as well as modern man. God is now dead!
4. That the Science created by the human mind through the human senses represents the highest authoritative truth about man and the Universe and that ultimately man's Science will solve all man's problems.
5. That man, far from being the servant of God, is the master of his natural environment and may exploit it as he wills.
6. (and this contradicts the last), that man is not a spiritual being who shares, as Khalifah, in the command of God, but merely a higher animal who for all his cleverness is still the plaything of evolutionary mechanistic forces. This is why modern man is so fond of apes and fascinated with ant-hills.
7. That all the people of the past, and those of the present who are not fortunate enough to have been educated in the West, are ignorant',, naive and primitive and that modern Science has refuted and made obsolete all the wisdom of the past.
8. That there is no authority except collective or individual greed for more and more and more comforts, T.V. sets, refrigerators etc., etc., etc. That there is no decree of destiny, only the opportunity or otherwise to get more of what one wants or thinks one needs.
9. That the only criterion of good and evil is convenience, comfort and physical well-being. It doesn't matter what one believes or thinks, so long as one is comfortable and healthy. Thus modern man has set himself up against God and Nature. He treats the rest of creation like a God and treats God as if God were man's creation.
The Islamic Answer
Fifteen years ago Western man was very confident and optimistic about these doctrines of his, now he is not so sure and there are signs that the very confidence, efficiency, and cleverness which are so essential to a highly complex technological society are beginning to break under the crushing weight of human individual and collective in- ability to bear the burden of playing God. Modern man may have eradicated many physical diseases, but half of his hospital beds are filled by mental patients. He may have made tools of the most amazing sophistication, but he is quite unable to properly use the time they have given him for leisure. This is the problem of leisure. The fruit of human arrogance and triumph over God and Nature is beginning to turn sour.
One of the problems to which you should all give careful and concentrated thought is the question as to how the Muslim peoples can be prevented from making the same mistakes and thus from facing the same dilemma which now faces modern man. Islam has a very precise and clear answer to each of the modern beliefs outlined above:
1. That God is Real and that matter and mind are only real as creations of God and on His terms, as ayat of His Truth.
2. That Truth, God's Truth is Absolute and irrefutable (hujjah) and that the opinions of men of God, Prophets, Saints and learned religious scholars are clearly of more value than those of the man-in-the-street.
3. That religious beliefs and spiritual realities are revealed by God independently of Man. That Man is made in God's image and exists on God's terms and that modern man is ignorant by rejecting this truth.
4. That the Sciences produced merely by the human mind are inferior to the wisdom revealed and inspired by God, and false to the extent that they ignore or reject the supremacy of God in the Universe.
5. That as a creature Man is utterly the servant of God and dependent upon Him for every- thing. That Man was made to worship God and that if he refuses to do so he is no longer truly human and forfeits the privileges of true Man.
6. That as a spiritual being Man is the representative of God (Khalifah) who is entrusted by God with the proper ordering and welfare of the world. That Man, true Man, unlike the animal creation, shares in the freedom of God and is, as a spiritual being, free from the captivity of evolutionary process.
7. That many of the peoples of the past and those of the present who still believe and have faith are wiser and more fortunate. That Science cannot possibly refute the revelation of God which is eternal and for all time to come.
8. That all the natural desires and wants of man are subject to the Divine Hudud and decree, and that each man and each society will enjoy of the world and its fruits no more and no less than what God has decided for them.
9. That divinely revealed Truth is the only criterion of good and evil and that unless men and societies believe in God and His Messengers they will pay the inevitable penalties described so often in the Qur'an.
This then is the answer of Islam to the Modernist view and it must be clear to you all that basically the two viewpoints are irreconcilable. In considering the claims and assertions of the modern world which you will hear and see from every direction you must, as Muslims, choose which of them is right, which of them is true to man's nature, which of them best fulfils the total potentialities of man.
Two quotations from the Qur'an are relevant here: 1. The vile is not the same as the good, even though the immensity of the vile should amaze you.
2. Satan always makes promises, but his promises are always false ones.
This then is by far the biggest problem for the Muslim student, namely the problem of recognising clearly the choice he has to make in facing the challenge of living in a modern environment, of recognising the real message of the modern world and of protecting his Islamic faith from its influences. All other problems are secondary ones and are indeed of no importance unless the reality and spirit of Islam remains safe in your hearts.
Some Practical Problems
For many Muslim students, of both sexes, the question of the degree to which they ought to mix and associate with each other is an important problem. This is all the more a problem for Muslim parents with daughters living in the West. For Muslim girls there is the additional problem of dress.
The basic Islamic attitude to the whole question is that anything which leads to, provokes or encourages intimate and ultimately sexual contact between man and woman should be treated with the greatest care and reverence, since sexual relations usually lead to the creation of new life and thus to the responsibilities and obligations which the care of the new life impose on the parents. Thus in the matter of man-woman relations, and especially in their sexual aspects, Islam legislates to protect not only the expected new life of the child but also the bearer or potential bearer of that child, seeking to ensure that an act with such important results should be surrounded with careful protection and strict limitations. Islam is aware that in conceiving new life Man to some extent shares in the divine creative act to a greater degree than in any other sphere of life and it is deeply concerned in its legislation that such an act, or the relationships which lead to it should not become a matter of whim and fancy, that it should not become a game to be played at trivially.
Men are enjoined to treat women with great respect as gifts of God and not to seek in them objects for their pleasure by ignoring the tremendous obligations God has placed upon them. The modern attitude is very different, as any visit to the newsagent or cinema will tell you. Modern man has turned his back on God and therefore arrogates the divine prerogative to himself.
The philosophy of sex in the modern world is: if one wants it, one must be able to have it. As I have said elsewhere, sex in the West is not just a problem, it is an industry. There is no surer evidence of the satanic nature of the modernist view than the way in which the modern world has made of the divine-human act of conception a source of entertainment, sport and public stimulation. One might almost say that sex has become for many a sort of substitute religion. Everywhere, in magazines, films, books, the nude female form is paraded as a stimulant, a drug, a toy.
I have dealt more fully with this problem, since it is perhaps one of the more threatening aspects of life in the West to Islamic morality. If you wish to avoid the temptations and influences which this offers to you, you must become very discriminating in what you read and watch. As to the problem of pork and alcohol it is simple enough to avoid eating or drinking these things. When you are invited to meals with non-Muslims, explain to your host that you are a Muslim and that YOU cannot eat pork. Pork fat is also much less used now in cooking and baking than it used to be. Also useful is the fact that in selecting food in shops, all products have the ingredients listed on the package.
Other meat is a more difficult problem. If there is a halal butcher nearby there is no problem. Other- wise the best thing is to avoid eating non-halal meat.
As for the problem of ablutions, I really do not see that anyone who has access to a bathroom has any problem. If water is unavailable sand, earth, or a clean stone will serve. One should keep a stone for emergencies.
Concerning prayers there is often a problem about keeping the correct times. With regard to knowing the correct times of the prayers in your area, there are available from Muslim organisations good calendars with accurate information on the subject. If one is not able to pray at certain times, one must try to make up the prayers later in the day. The main thing to remember is that the essence of prayer is not the frequency with which one performs them or the perfection of the conditions in which one performs them, but rather the remembrance of God and the living of one's life in accordance with what one knows to be the will of God. It is no use performing the five prayers regularly and then leading an un-islamic life the rest of the time.
In all these practical matters it is important to remember that you are all in a sense on a journey, away from your home Muslim communities, living in what Islamic scholars have technically called the 'House of War'. In times of war, and in view of what I have said today, you cannot doubt that you are fighting an inner war, the rules are more flexible and the spirit of Islam becomes of prime importance. What you Muslims who are living in the West must strive to do is not to exert all your effort to keep every little rule as you would at horse, because it will not always be possible in this busy, hectic world, but to preserve at all costs the integrity of your allegiance to Islam and its Prophet.
For Islam, as for the other religions, in each individual as well as in society as a whole the problem is one of survival, and I suggest that if you think that I have exaggerated the danger, please consider that I am not only a Muslim but also one who has grown up from childhood in the West and who has watched the rapid and inexorable decay of most of the spiritual values in this society.
Source: http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/index.php?file=students.html |
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