A Dream Assembly, Comparisons Between the Shari‘A and Modern Civilization, and the Genius of Modern Science and Guidance of the Shari‘A
In a true dream on a Thursday night at the beginning of the Armistice Period following the First War, I was asked by a vast assembly in the World of Similitudes:
“What will the Islamic world’s situation be following its defeat?” I replied as the deputy for the present age, and they listened to me:
This State, which by undertaking from early times the religious obligation of jihad to maintain Islam’s independence and uphold the Word of Allah,
considered itself bound to sacrifice itself for the undivided unity of the Islamic world and saw itself as the standard‑bearer of the Caliphate –
this State’s, this Muslim nation’s, past calamity will certainly bring about Islam’s prosperity and freedom. The disaster of the past
will be made up for in the future. One who loses three and gains three hundred makes no loss. The zealous will transform its past into the future.
For wondrously this calamity has made unfold compassion, Islamic solidarity and brotherhood, the leaven of our lives, and has expedited the shaking, the destruction, of civilization.
Present‑day low civilization will change form, its system will fall apart, then
Islamic civilization will emerge. Muslims will certainly be the first to enter it voluntarily. If you want a comparison, look closely at the principles of the civilization of the Shari‘a and those of present‑day civilization,
and consider their results: The principles of present‑day civilization are negative. Its foundations and values are five negative principles.
Its machinery is based on these. Its point of support is force instead of right, and the mark of force is aggression and hostility, and their result is treachery.
Its goal is mean self‑interest instead of virtue, and the mark of self-interest is rivalry and dispute, and their result, crime.
Its law of life is conflict instead of co‑operation, and the mark of conflict is this: contention and mutual repulsion, and their result, poverty.
Its principle for relations between peoples is racialism, which flourishes through harming others and is nourished through devouring others.
The mark of negative nationalism and racialism is ghastly clashes, disastrous collisions, and their result, annihilation.
The fifth is this: its alluring service is to excite lust and the appetites of the soul and facilitate the gratification of whims, and their result is vice.
The mark of lust and passion is always this: they transform man into a beast, changing his character; they deform him, perverting his humanity.
If most of these civilized people were turned inside out, you would see their characters in the form of apes and foxes, snakes, bears, and swine.
They appear to the imagination in their pelts and skins! Examples of its products are these. The Shari‘a, however, is the balance and equilibrium of the earth.
The mercy in the Shari‘a comes from the skies of the Qur’an. The principles of Qur’anic civilization are positive. Its wheel of happiness turns on five positive principles:
Its point of support is truth instead of force, and the constant mark of truth is justice and balance. Security and well‑being result from these, and villainy disappears.
Its aim is virtue instead of self‑interest, and the mark of virtue is love and mutual attraction. Happiness results from these, and enmity disappears.
Its principle in life is co‑operation instead of conflict and killing, and its mark is unity and solidarity, and the community is strengthened.
Its service takes the form of guidance and direction instead of lust and passion. And the mark of guidance is progress and prosperity in a way befitting humanity;
The spirit is illumined and perfected in the way it requires. The way it unifies the masses repulses racialism and negative nationalism;
It establishes in place of them the bonds of religion, patriotic relations, ties of class, and the brotherhood of belief. The mark of these bonds are sincere brotherhood,
general well‑being; defence in case of external aggression. You have understood now the reason Islam was affronted, and did not embrace civilization.
Up to the present, Muslims have not entered this present civilization voluntarily, it has not suited them, moreover it has clamped on them fetters of bondage.
While it should be the cure for mankind, it has become poison. It has cast eighty per cent into penury and misery, and produced a false happiness for ten per cent.
The remaining ten per cent it has left uneasily between the two. Commercial profits have been the tyrannical minority’s. But true happiness is happiness for all;
Or at least salvation for the majority. The Qur’an, revealed as a mercy for mankind, only accepts civilization of this kind,
Happiness for all, or at least for the majority. In its present form the passions are unrestricted, caprice too is free; it is an animal freedom.
The passions dominate, caprice too is despotic; they have made inessential needs essential, and banished comfort and ease.
In primitive life, a man was in need of four things, civilization has put him in need of a hundred and has impoverished him. Lawful labours are insufficient to meet the cost.
This has driven mankind to trickery and the unlawful. It is on this point that it corrupted morality. It bestowed wealth and glitter on society and mankind,
but made the individual immoral and indigent. There are numerous witnesses to this.
This malignant civilization vomited all at once the combined savagery and crimes, all the cruelty and treachery, of former centuries, and its stomach is still queasy. The Islamic world’s holding back from it is both meaningful and noteworthy.
It has been loath to accept it, and has acted coldly. Yes, the distinguishing quality of the divine light of the Illustrious Shari‘a is independence and self‑sufficiency.
It will not give up that quality, that light of guidance, so that the genius of Rome, the spirit of civilization, should dominate it. The guidance of the former
cannot combine with the philosophy of the latter, nor be grafted onto it, nor follow it. The Shari‘a has nourished the compassion and dignity of belief in the spirit of Islam.
The Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition has taken the truths of the Shari‘a in its shining hand; Each is a Staff of Moses in that shining hand. In the future that sorcerer civilization
will prostrate in wonderment before it.
Now, note this: Ancient Rome and Greece were two geniuses; twins from a single stock. One fanciful, the other materialist.
Like oil and water, they never combined. It needed time, civilization worked at it too, and so did Christianity, but none was successful at combining them.
Both preserved their independence. Now it is as though those two spirits have changed their bodies; one has become German, the other, French.
They experienced a sort of metempsychosis. O my dream‑brother! This is what time has shown. Like two genius oxen those twins rejected any moves to combine them;
They still are not reconciled. Since they are twins, they are brothers and friends, companions in progress; but they fought..
and never made peace. How could it be that with its different source, origin, and place of appearance, the light of the Qur’an and guidance of the Shari‘a
should be reconciled with the genius of Rome, the spirit of modern civilization, and should join and combine with it?
Their origins are different: guidance descended from the heavens, genius emerged from the earth. Guidance works in the heart, and works the mind.
Genius works in the mind and confuses the heart. Guidance illumines the spirit, making it seeds sprout and flourish; dark nature is illumined by it.
Its potentiality for perfection suddenly advances; it makes the carnal soul a docile servant; it gives aspiring man an angelic countenance.
As for genius, it looks primarily to the soul and physical being, it plunges into nature, making the soul an arable field; the animal potentialities develop and flourish;
It subjugates the spirit, dessicating its seeds; it shows up satanic features in mankind. But guidance gives happiness to life, it spreads light in this life and the next;
it exalts mankind. Antichrist‑like genius, blind in one eye, sees only the domain of this life; it is materialist and worships this world. It turns men into beasts.
Yes, genius worships deaf nature, it is submissive to blind force. But guidance recognizes conscious art and looks to purposeful power. Genius draws a curtain of ingratitude over the earth; guidance scatters the light of thanks.
It is because of this that genius is deaf and blind, while guidance is hearing and seeing. In the view of genius, the bounties of the earth are ownerless booty;
It provokes the desire to seize and steal them thanklessly, to savagely snap them off from nature. In the view of guidance, the bounties scattered over the breast of the earth and face of the universe are the fruits of mercy;
it sees a gracious hand beneath every bounty, and has it kissed in gratitude.
I cannot deny that there are numerous virtues in civilization, but they are neither the property of Christianity, nor the invention of Europe.
Nor are they the product of this century; they are common property, produced by the conjunction of minds and ideas, from the laws of the revealed religions, out of innate need, And particularly from the Islamic revolution brought about by the Shari‘a of Muhammad.
No one can claim ownership of them. The leader of the Dream Assembly asked another question:
“Man of the present century! Calamities are always the result of treachery and the cause of reward. Divine determining dealt a blow and issued its decree.
“With which of your actions did you issue the fatwa to both divine decree and determining so that they decreed this calamity and gave you a beating?
“The error of the majority is always the cause of general disasters.” I replied: Mankind’s misguided ideas, Nimrod‑like obduracy,
Pharaoh‑like pride, swelled and swelled on the earth till it reached the skies. It upset too the sensitive mystery of creation. It caused to descend from the heavens
the plague and storm of the last war’s quakes; it caused a heavenly blow to be visited on the infidel. That is, the calamity was the calamity of all mankind.
The joint cause, inclusive of all mankind, were the misguided ideas arising from materialism. Bestial freedom, the despotism of the appetites.
The reason for our share was our neglect and giving up of the pillars of Islam. For the Exalted Creator wanted one hour out of the twenty‑four.
He demanded of us, and for us, only one hour for the five daily prayers, and commanded this. But out of laziness we gave them up, neglected them due to heedlessness.
So we received the following punishment: He made us perform prayers of a sort these last five years by constant twenty‑four hour drill and hardship, being driven on and made to strive.
He also wanted of us one month’s fasting a year, but we pitied ourselves, so in atonement He compelled us to fast for five years.
As zakat, He wanted either a fortieth or a tenth of the property He had given us, but out of stinginess we did wrong: we mixed the illicit with our property, and did not give it voluntarily.
So He had our accumulated zakat taken from us, and saved us from what was unlawful. The deed fitted the punishment. The punishment fitted the deed. Righteous acts are of two sorts:
one positive and voluntary, the other negative and enforced. All pains and calamities are good works; but negative and enforced. The Hadith offered consolation.
This sinful nation took its ablutions with its blood; it repented actively. As an immediate reward, four million, a fifth of this nation, were raised to the degree of sainthood.
It gave them the ranks of martyrdom and veterans; it obliterated the sin. The lofty dream assembly appreciated these words.
I awoke suddenly; rather, with awakening I went to sleep. I think the waking state is a dream and the dream state a sort of wakefulness. There was this age’s deputy, and here is Said‑i Nursi!