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by Said Sadain, Jr.
December 1993
With the Yuletide season fast approaching, a lot of people are warming up to a
holiday mood.
Not that the Yuletide
matters to us Muslims. We do however feel that Yuletide is generally a nice season. We
feel good about Christmas just as the millions of Christians feel good about it. Not
exactly for the same reason, and certainly not because Islam condones Christmas. On the
contrary, Muslim scholars will argue that Christmas celebrations border on the shirk
(idol worship) and will resolutely advise Muslims not to even return the Christmas
greetings of the Christians.
The truth of the matter is
that the Christians are doing a very good job at marketing their religion and their
culture. This, combined with the fact that modern-day progress is being measured by the
standards of the mainly Christian West, is like putting up that colorful glass window of a
candy shop for the children to behold.
Muslims,
especially minority Muslims in a Christian society, have to live by these same standards
and measure up against these standards to gain acceptability. Precisely because Islamic
society uses different metrics for measuring itself , sometimes with values that directly
clash with western society, that Muslims are looked upon by the rest of the world
indifferently, and at worst, contemptuously.
A lack of knowledge of
what Islam is really all about is at the heart of this predicament. Muslims can be faulted
in two ways for this predicament while non-Muslims can be faulted in only one way:
Firstly, a lot of Muslims
are taking their own Islamic existence for granted and are often times less knowledgeable
about Islam than they should be; secondly, Muslims take for granted the importance of
reaching out and educating the non-Muslims about Islam. As for the non-Muslims, they
simply do not take the time and effort to transcend above their preconceived notions of
Islam which, having been formed through centuries of conflicts, are more often negative
than positive.
For granted here is
the key phrase for the Muslims' faults because Muslims do know about Islam and
Muslims do try to educate the non-Muslims about Islam. Five times a day, the
mosque, wherever it may be, gets filled up with worshippers in solemn prayer; in many
corners of the world, da'wah (Islamic propagation) work is being carried out; in
Islamic schools and universities and libraries all over the world, the Qur'an is being
read by all kinds of people. But are these efforts adequate? Like the salesman who goes
around selling his wares, at some point, he must ask if his effort is indeed yielding the
desired profit margins.
In degenerative cases, a
Muslim who believes that the mere fact of his being born to Muslim parents earn him the
cognizance of being called Muslim and no less, would be insulted if somebody, especially a
non-Muslim, suggests to him that he should open the Qur'an or read the Hadiths
(Traditions of the Prophet) so he could better practice being a Muslim. To him, his being
a Muslim is as plain as the sun in the sky; thus, he need not make any extra effort to
prove this. He goes by superficially, learning what little Islam he can learn from the
practices of his Muslim family and society. When that family or society happens to be
ingrained on a corrupted Islam over decades and centuries of colonial subjugation, or
imbedded in the midst of a very pervasive un-Islamic society, then such cases can only be
retrogressive to Islam. This is particularly true for Muslim minorities, but generally
true for all Muslim communities which have to measure their successes or define their
developments against the benchmarks provided by the more progressive western culture.
In such situations,
Muslims must first educate themselves about Islam, raise their own awareness of what God
expects of Muslims, correct themselves if they must and conduct themselves as true
believers of the faith. Hopefully then, their societies will at least survive the
buffeting of outside forces much like a lighthouse against the waves. At this stage, the
lamp of the lighthouse may pierce the darkness, though the darkness will remain dark. The
Muslim society which can arm itself with the proper knowledge, behaviors and convictions
may then attempt to reach out to the non-Muslims not so much to spread Islam as much as to
simply make them aware about Islam as a viable alternative to their own systems.
Overcoming the negative attitudes of the rest of the
world toward Islam will however entail more than the normal missionary and charity work of
preachers and volunteers. A non-Muslim, steeped in the values of western society, will not
be inclined to listen to an Arabic-chanting imam who would impose on him the duties
of prostrating on the ground five times a day and abstaining from food, drinks and sex
periodically. He will not easily open up to stories about the persecution of ancient
prophets and the heedlessness of ancient civilizations he could hardly relate to in the
context of his present realities. And since the perception that Islam is backward
is already so deeply lodged in the western mind, he will not even be willing to listen to
arguments about Muslims having a better life to offer.
Even when
Muslims have a better story to tell, a non-Muslim will not necessarily feel good about
Muslims simply because Muslims have a better story to tell. And because feeling good about
something is essential for the acceptability of that thing, it is therefore important for
Muslims to understand what it is about Islam that Christians and other cultures can
positively relate to, and primarily work up on these areas. It is also important to
understand what non-Muslims feel good or bad about their own societies in order to deal
appropriately with their strengths and weaknesses. These should then be the focus of
efforts toward developing a strategy for educating the non-Muslim world about Islam, if
Muslims can ever hope to bring down the barriers between them and the rest of the world.
In this respect, Muslims
will likely find out that they may need media of mass communications like CNN or Times
Warner, or an industry like Walt Disney, or a product such as Coca Cola or IBM PC, or a
franchise such as MacDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a jingle from John Denver or
MTV, or a science such as the space shuttle or cancer therapy or waste recycling, in order
to appeal to the western way of thinking and gain acceptability to a wider world. To be
more effective, Muslims may even need a full-time organization as purposeful as the
Vatican.
This is not a proposition for the corruption of
Islam.
Definitely, Muslims do not
need any of these trimmings - Christmas or Valentine's or otherwise - in order to practice
Islam. These trimmings however are the very fabrics and institutions to which western
societies cling in order to keep their sanity in a world that has relegated the worship of
God to an hour-or-so Sunday exercise.
These are the things
that make the West feel good about its kind of living! If Muslims, in promoting Islam, can
find a way of harnessing the positive energies knitted into these fabrics to work
favorably for them, it will be like turning on the stars in the night sky to brighten up
the darkness while the lighthouse lamp glows persistently till the light of dawn. ¤
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