Alija IZETBEGOVIC

President of the Presidency of Bosnia and Hercegovina

THE ISLAMIC DECLARATION

A Programme for lslamization of Muslims and the Muslim Peoples
 THE ISLA M IC DECL·A R A TI0N

A PROGRAMME FOR THE lSLAMIZATION OF MUSLIMS

AND THE MUSLIM PEOPLE

OUR GOAL: The Islamization of Muslims

OUR M0TTO: Believe and struggle

BISMILLAHIRAHMANlRRAHIM!

The Declaration which we today present to the public is not prescribed reading
intended to demonstrate to foreigners or doubters the superiority of Islam over any
particular system or School of thought.

It is intended for those Muslims who know where they belong and whose hearts
clearly tell them which side they stand on. For such as these, this Declaration is a call to
understand the inevitable consequences of that to which their love and allegiance bind
them.

The entire Muslim world is in a state of ferment and change. Whatever form it
eventually takes when the initial effects of these changes is felt, one thing is certain: it will
no longer be the world of the first half of this century. The age of passivity and stagnation
has gone forever.

Everyone is trying to take advantage of this time of movement and change,

particularly foreign powers, both East and West. Instead of their armies. They now use
ideas and capital, and by a new mode of influence are once more endeavoring to
accomplish the same aim: to ensure their presence and keep the Muslim nations in a state
of spiritual helplessness and material and political dependence.

China, Russia and the Western countries quarrel as to who among them will extend
patronage and to which part of the Muslim world there is pointless dispute. The Islamic
World does not belong to them, but to the Muslim people.

A world of 700 million people with enormous natural resources, occupying a first
class geographical position, heir to colossal cultural and political traditions and a
proponent of living Islamic thought cannot long remain in a state of vassalage. There is no
power which can check the new Muslim generation from putting an end to this abnormal
state of affairs.

In this conviction, we announce to our friends and enemies alike that Muslims are
determined to take the fate of the Islamic world into their own hands and arrange that
world according to their own vision of it.

From this point of view, the ideas contained in the Declaration are not absolutely
new. This is rather a synthesis of ideas heard with increasing frequency in various places
and which are accorded about the same importance in all parts of the Muslim world. Its
novelty lies in that it seeks to promote ideas and plans into organized actions.

The struggle towards new goals did not begin today. On the contrary, it has already
experienced shihada* and its history contains pages of the suffering of its victims. Still, this
is mainly the personal sacrifice of exceptional individuals or courageous minor groups in
collision with the mighty forces of the Jahiliya*. The magnitude of the problem and its
difficulties, however, required the organized action of millions.

*shihada: martyrdom. Jahiliya: the godless. Period of darkness prior to Islam. (Translator's
note).

Our message is dedicated to the memory of our comrades who have fallen in the name of
Islam.

Sarajevo, 1970

Jumadi-l-awwa1, 1390

Do we want the Muslim peoples to break out of the circle of dependence, backwardness
and poverty?

Do we want them to step out confidently once more on the road to dignity and
enlightenment, to become the masters of their own destiny?

Do we want burning courage, genius and virtue to burst forth again in all their force?

Then we can clearly show the way which leads to this goal:

The generating of Islam in all areas of personal individual life, in the family and society,
through the renewal of Islamic religious thought and the creation of a united Islamic
community from Morocco to Indonesia.

This goal may seem remote and improbable, but it is nonetheless realistic, because it is the
only one located within the bounds of possibility. In contrast, every non-Islamic
programme may seem to be close and within range of its target, but for the Islamic world
this is pure utopia, because these programmes lie in the realm of the impossible.

History demonstrates one fact clearly: Islam is the single idea which has been able
to excite the imagination of the Muslim peoples and to instill in them the necessary
measure of discipline, inspiration and energy. No other ideal, foreign to Islam, has ever
managed to hold sway in any meaningful way either in the culture or at state level. In fact,
all that is great or noteworthy in the history of the Muslim peoples has been done under the
banner of Islam. A few thousand tried warriors of Islam forced Britain to withdraw from
Suez in the 1950s, while the combined armies of the Arab nationalist regimes are now for
the third time losing the battle against Israel. Turkey as an Islamic country ruled the world.
Turkey as a plagiary of Europe is now a third-rate country, like a hundred others
throughout the world.

Just like an individual, a people that has accepted Islam is thereafter incapable of
living and dying for any other ideal. It is unthinkable that a Muslim should sacrifice himself
for any king or ruler, no matter who he might be, or for the glory of any nation or party,
because the strongest Islamic instinct recognizes in this a kind of paganism and idolatry. A
Muslim can die only in the name of Allah and for the glory of Islam, or flee the batt1efield.

Periods of passivity and stagnation in fact mean the absence of an Islamic

alternative or unreadiness on the part of the Muslim population to take the uphill path.
They are the negative expression of the spiritual monopoly which Islam holds over the
Islamic world.

While accepting this situation as an expression of the Will of God, we positivity state
that the Islamic world cannot be renewed without Islam or against it, Islam and its deep-
rooted precepts on man's place in the world, the purpose of human life, the relationship
between God and man and between man and man, remains a lasting and irreplaceable
ethical, philosophical, ideological and political foundation for every authentic action taken
towards renewal and improvement of the state of the Muslim peoples.

The alternative is stark: either a move towards Islamic renewal, or passivity and
stagnation. For the Muslim peoples, there is no third possibility.
 I

THE BACKWARDNESS OF THE MUSLIM PEOPLES

CONSERVATIVES AND MODERNISTS

The idea of Islamic renewal, which understands Islam as capable not only of
educating human beings but also of ordering the world, will always have two types of
people as its opponents: conservatives who want the old forms, and modernists who want
someone else's forms. The former drag Islam back into the past, the latter push it towards
an alien future.

Despite differences, both categories of people have something in common; both see
Islam only as a religion, in the European sense of the word. A certain lack of feeling for the
finesses of language and logic, and an even greater failure to grasp the essence of Islam and
its role in history and the world, lead them to interpret Islamic belief as religion, which for
a very special reason is quite erroneous.

Although it may seem a reconfirmation of the fundamental truths on the origin of

man and his mission, the Islamic approach is quite new in one aspect - that of its demand
for the conjunction of faith and knowledge, morals and politics, ideals and interests. By
recognizing the existence of two worlds, the natural and the interior, Islam teaches that it is
man who bridges the chasm between them. Without this oneness, religion tends towards
backwardness (the rejection of any kind of productive life), and knowledge towards
atheism.

Starting from the viewpoint that Islam is merely a religion, conservatives will
conclude that Islam should not, and progressives that it cannot, organize the external
world. The practical result is the same.

The main, if not the only, proponent of the conservative idea in the Muslim world
today is the class represented by the hajis and sheikhs who, in contrast to clear dictates on
the nonexistence of a clergy in Islam, have emerged as an organized class which has
preempted the interpretation of Islam and set itself up as an intermediary between man
and the Quran. As clergy, they are theologians; as theologians, they are invariably dogmatic
and, as the faith has been given once and for all, in their opinion it has also been interpreted
once and for all. Therefore the best thing to do is to leave everything as it was handed down
and defined a thousand or more years ago. The unavoidable logic of these dogmatists
turned theologists into bitter enemies of anything new. Any further remodeling of the
Sharia as law, in the sense of applying Quranic principles to new situations which continue
to emerge from world developments, is equated with a an attack on the integrity of the
faith. Perhaps even here there is a love of Islam, but it is the pathological love of narrow-
minded and backward people, whose deathlike embrace has strangled the still living
Islamic idea.

It would, however, be wrong to think that Islam has remained a closed book in the
hands of the theologists. Increasingly closed to knowledge and ever more open to
mysticism, theologists have allowed much that is irrational to be written in this book,
things totally foreign to Islamic learning, including sheer superstition. It will be
immediately evident to anyone who knows the nature of theology why it has been unable
to withstand the temptation of mythology, and why it has seen even in this a certain
enrichment of religious thought. The monotheism of the Qu'ran, the purest and most
perfect in the history of religious learning, has been gradually compromised, while in
practice a distasteful trade in belief has emerged. Those who call themselves interpreters
and guardians of the faith have made a career of it - a very agreeable and profitable one -
and without many qualms of conscience have come to accept a state of affairs in which its
messages have not been implemented at all.

Theologians have turned out to be the wrong people in the wrong place. Now, when
the Muslim world is giving all signs of an awakening, this class has become the expression
of all that is gloomy and sclerotic in that world. It has shown itself to be quite incapable of
taking any kind of constructive step towards making the Islamic world face up to the
adversities which press upon it.

As far as the so-called progressives, westerners, modernists and whatever else they
are called are concerned, they are the exemplification of real misfortune throughout the
Muslim world, as they are quite numerous and influential, notably in government,
education and public life. Seeing the hajis and conservatives as the personification of Islam,
and convincing others to do likewise, the modernists raise a front against all that the idea
represents. These self-styled reformers in the present-day Muslim countries may he
recognized by their pride in what they should rather be ashamed of, and their shame in
what they should be proud of. These are usually "daddy's sons", schooled in Europe, from
which they return with a deep sense of their own inferiority towards the wealthy West and
a personal superiority over the poverty-stricken and backward surroundings from which
they spring. Lacking an Islamic upbringing and or any spiritual or moral links with the
people, they quickly lose their elementary criteria and imagine that by destroying local
ideas, customs and convictions, while introducing alien ones, they will build America - for
which they have an exaggerated admiration - overnight on their home soil. Instead of
standards, they introduce the cult of a standard; instead of developing the potential of their
own world, they develop desires, thus opening the way to corruption, primitivism and
moral chaos. They cannot see that the power of the Western world does not lie in how it
lives, but in how it works; that its strength is not in fashion, godlessness, night clubs, a
younger generation out of control, but in the extraordinary diligence, persistence,
knowledge and responsibility of its people.
 The main problem, therefore, is not that our westerners used alien forms, but that
they did not know how to use them, or - to put it better - that they did not have a
sufficiently developed sense of what was right. They failed to choose the useful product and
took over instead the harmful, suffocating byproduct of another civilization.

Among the props of doubtful value which our westerner takes home with him are to
be found various "revolutionary" ideas, reform programmes and similar "rescue doctrines"
which will "solve all problems". Among these "reforms" are examples of unbelievable
shortsightedness and improvisation.

Thus, for example, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, who was obviously a greater military
leader than a cultural reformer and whose services to Turkey should be reduced to their
proper measure, in one of his reforms prohibited the wearing of the fez. It soon became
evident that changing the shape of their caps cannot change what is in people's heads or
habits.

Many nations outside the Western sphere have been facing the problem of how to
relate to this civilization for over a century: whether to opt for outright rejection, cautious
adjustment or total unselective acceptance. The tragedy or triumph of many of them has
hung on how they have responded to this fateful question.

There are reforms which reflect the wisdom of a particular nation and others which
signify betrayal of itself. The examples of Japan and Turkey are classics of modern history
in this respect.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both countries provided a
picture of very similar "comparable" countries. Both were ancient empires, each with its
own physiognomy and place in history. Both found themselves at approximately the same
level of development; both had a glorious past, which indicated both great privilege and a
heavy burden. In a word, their chances for the future were about equal.

Then followed the well-known reforms in both countries. In order to continue to live
in its own way and not in another. Japan tried to unite tradition and progress. Turkey's
modernists chose the opposite path. Today, Turkey is a third-rate country, while Japan has
climbed to a pinnacle among the nations of the world.

The difference in the philosophy of Japanese and Turkish reformers is nowhere

more evident than in the question of the alphabet.

While Turkey abolished Arabic writing, which because of its simplicity and just
twenty-eight characters is one of the most perfect and widespread of alphabets. Japan
rejected demands by its Romaya to introduce the Roman script. It retained its complicated
system which subsequent to the reforms, contained 880 Chinese ideograms in addition to
46 characters. No one is illiterate in modern-day Japan, while in Turkey - forty years after
the introduction of Roman letters - over half the population cannot read or write, a result
which should cause the blind to regain their sight.
 And that is not all. It soon became evident that what was issue was not simply the
alphabet as a means of register. The true reasons, and thus the consequences, were much
deeper and more significant. The essence of ail human civilization and progress lies in
continuation, not in destruction and negation. Its way of writing is the way in which the
nation "remembers” and endures in history. By abolishing the Arabic alphabet, all the
wealth of the past, preserved in the written word, was largely lost to Turkey, and by this
single act the country was levelled to the brink of barbarianism. With a series of other
"parallel" reforms, the new Turkish generation found itself with no spiritual prop, in a kind
of spiritual vacuum. Turkey had lost the remembrance of its past. Whom did this profit?

The supporters of modernism in the Islamic world, then, were not wise men who
sprang from the people, who would know how to implement in a novel way the old ideals
and values under changed circumstances. They rose up against the values themselves and
often with icy cynicism and astounding shortsightedness, trampled on what the people held
sacred, destroying life and transplanting an imitation in its stead. As a consequence of such
barbarity in Turkey and elsewhere, plagiary nations emerged, or are in process of
emerging: countries where spiritual confusion reigns, featureless and with no sense of
where they are going. Everything in them is derivative and artificial, lacking in force and
enthusiasm, like the false glamour of their Europeanized cities.

Can a country unsure of its identity, of where its roots lie, have a clear picture of
where it is bound or what it should be striving for?

The example of some of Attaturk’s reforms may seem drastic. At the same time, they
represent a pattern for the western to approach to problems of the Islamic world and the
way in which westerners think to “correct” it. This invariably means alienation, fleeing
from real problems, from painstaking work on the true moral and educational elevation of
the people, an orientation towards the external and the superficial.

What was meant by the independence of a Muslim country in which the

administration of public life fell into the hands of this type of person? How did they make
use of that freedom?

By accepting foreign modes of thought and by seeking political support from

foreigners, whether East or West, each of these countries voluntarily, through the mouths
of their new administrators, acquiesced to re-enslavement. A spiritual and material
independence was created, embracing an alien philosophy, an alien way of life, alien aid,
alien capital and alien support. These countries formally achieved independence, but they
did not achieve real freedom, since freedom of any kind is primarily spiritual. The
independence of a people which has not first won this is soon reduced to an anthem and a
flag, two very minor factors for true independence.

The struggle for true independence of the Muslim peoples then, must begin anew
everywhere.
THE ROOTS OF HELPLESSNESS

These two types – conservative and modernists – provide the key to understanding
the current state of the Muslim peoples. However, they are not the only cause of this state.
Taken further, both facets are the manifestation of a deeper cause, the degradation or
rejection of Islamic thought.

The history of Islam is not only, or even mainly, the history of a progressive
affirmation of Islam in real life. It is just as much a story of incomprehension, neglect,
betrayal and abuse of this idea. Thus the history of each and every Muslim people is
simultaneously a chronology of brilliant achievements and victories, of grievous mistakes
and defeat. All our successes and failures, political and moral, are only the reflection of our
acceptance of Islam and how we have applied it to life. A weakening in the influence of
Islam on the practical life of the people has always been accompanied by their degradation
and that of social and political institutions.

The entire history of Islam, from its first beginnings to our day, unfolded under the
inexorable influence of this coincidence. Something of the unalterable fate of the Muslim
peoples and one of the laws of Islamic history is to be found in this parallel.

Two characteristic moments in Islamic history - one from the age of its ascendancy,
one from the age of decadence - very clearly illustrate this effect.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) died in 632 A.D. Less than a hundred years later,
the spiritual and political power of Islam extended over a huge area, from the Atlantic
Ocean to the river Indus and to China, from Lake Aral to the lower reaches of the Nile. Syria
was conquered in 634, Damascus fell in 635, Ctesiphon in 637, India and Egypt were
reached in 641 , Carthage in 647, Samarkand in 676, Spain in 710. Muslims were at the
gates of Constantinople in 717, and in 720 in southern France. There were mosques in
Shantung by 700 and about 830, Islam arrived in Java.

This unique expansion, to which no other can be compared before or since, provided
a space for the development of Islamic civilization in three spheres of culture: Spain, the
Middle East and India, a period of history covering about one thousand years.

What do Muslims mean in the contemporary world?

The question could be phrased another way: how far are we Muslim?

The answers to these questions are linked.

We are enslaved: at one point in 1919, no single independent Muslim country

existed, a state of affairs never registered either before or after that date.

We are uneducated: in the period between two world wars, no Muslim country had
a literacy rate of over 50 per cent. At independence, 75 per cent of the people of Pakistan,
80 per cent of Algerians and 90 per cent of Nigerians could neither read nor write. (In
contrast, no one in Islamic Spain of the tenth and eleventh centuries, according to Draper,
was illiterate.)

We are poor: gross national income per capita in 1966 in Iran was 220 dollars, in
Turkey 240, in Malaysia 250, in Pakistan 90, in Afghanistan 85, in Indonesia 70, as against
3000 in the USA. The share of industry in the national income of most Muslim countries
varies between 10 and 20 per cent. The number of calories in the daily diet is an average
2000, compared to 3000-3500 in Western Europe.

We are a divided community: instead of a society without either misery or luxury,

Muslim society has turned into the opposite. In contradiction to the Qu'ranic command
"...that this wealth should not remain within the circle of the rich among you" (Qu’ran
39/7), property gradually passed into the hands of a small number. Prior to agrarian
reform in Iraq in 1958, out of 22 million dunum * of arable land, about 18 million dunum
(82 per cent) were held by the great landowners. Meanwhile, 1.4 million peasants had no
land at all.

This was the state of affairs which some have called with reason "the night of Islam".
In fact, that night began with the twilight of our hearts. All that has happened to us or is
happening to us today, is only the echo and repetition of what has previously happened
within ourselves (Qu'ran, 13/12).

We as Muslims cannot be subjugated, uneducated, estranged from one another. We

cannot be renegades from Islam. All our defeats, from the first at Uhud to the latest on
Sinai, confirm this.

The phenomenon of the abandonment of Islam, most frequently seen in the

suppression of Islamic thought from active and vigilant life and its reduction to transience
and passivity, can be most clearly observed by taking the Qu’ran, the central truth of
Islamic ideology and practice.

*dunum: about one-tenth of a hectare (translator's note)

It should be remarked that every advance of the Islamic peoples, every age of
refinement, began with the affirmation of the Qu’ran. The expansion of early Islam, whose
miraculous course I have already mentioned and which in the course of two generations
brought it to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in the West and to the outer reaches of China
in the East, is not the only, but is the most glorious example. All major swings in the course
of Islamic history confirm this parallel.

What was the position of the Qu'ran at the time preceding the age of stagnation and
retreat?

Devotion to the Book did not cease, but it lost its active character while retaining
what was irrational and mystic. The Qu'ran lost its authority as law while gaining in
sanctity as an object. In study and interpretation, wisdom yielded to hairsplitting, essence
to form and grandeur of thought to the skill of recitation. Under the constant influence of
theological formalism, the Qu'ran was read less and “learned" (recited) more, while
commandments on struggle, uprightness, personal and material sacrifice - harsh and
repellant to our inertia - dissolved and vanished in the pleasant sound of the Qu'ranic text
learnt off by heart. This unnatural state of affairs came to be accepted as the norm, because
it suited an ever more numerous group of Muslims who could neither break with the
Qu'ran nor summon the strength to order their lives according to its dictates.

The psychological explanation of the exaggerated importance given to recital of the

Qu'ran may be found in this fact. The Qu'ran is recited, interpreted and recited, then
studied and recited again. One sentence is repeated thousands of times in order not to have
to apply it once. An extensive and pedantic science has been established on how the Qu'ran
should be pronounced so as to avoid the issue of how to practice it in daily life. Ultimately,
the Qu’ran has been turned into naked sound without visible sense or meaning.

All the reality of the Muslim world, with its discrepancy between word and deed; its
debauchery, dirt, injustice and cowardice; its monumental, empty mosques; its great white
turbans, devoid of ideals or courage; its hypocritical Islamic catchphrases and religious
posing; this faith without belief is but the external reflection of the fundamental
contradiction in which the Qu'ran found itself, in which burning allegiance to the Book was
gradually combined with total neglect of its principles in practice.

The situation of the Qu'ran is the first and most important cause of backwardness
and helplessness among the Muslim peoples. Another cause of universal importance is
education, or rather the system of upbringing in the broadest sense.

For centuries now our peoples have been deprived of educated people. Instead, they
have two other types, equally undesirable: the uneducated and the wrongly educated. In no
Muslim country do we have a system of education sufficiently developed and thus capable
of responding to the moral understanding of Islam and the needs of the people. Our rulers
either neglected this most sensitive institution of any society, or left it up to strangers.

The schools to which foreigners donated money and personnel, and thereby
curricula and ideology, did not educate Muslims, not even nationalists. In them, our
budding intellectuals were injected with the "virtues" of obedience, submission and
admiration for the might and wealth of the foreigner; in them foreign tutors fostered a
vassal mentality in the intelligentsia, which would in the future replace them with
extraordinary success, because the latter would feel themselves to be foreigners in their
own country and behave accordingly. It would be most informative to discover the
number of schools and colleges which are held, directly or indirectly, by foreigners, and to
reflect on the reasons for this extraordinary generosity. The curricula of these institutions
should be gone into in depth and examined for content, perhaps even more so for what
they fail to contain. It would soon be clear that the real question is not whether our
intelligentsia wishes to find a path to its people, to their real inclinations and interests, but
whether, constituted as it is, it can find that path at all. What is at stake are the values and
ideals which have been imposed on it, and the psychological gap which has been created.
Iron chains are no longer necessary to keep our peoples in submission. The silken cords of
this alien "education" have the same power, paralyzing the minds and will of the educated.
While education is so conceived, foreign wielders of power and their vassals in Muslim
countries need have no fear for their positions. Instead of being a source of rebellion and
resistance, this system of education is their best ally.

The tragic gap between the intelligentsia and the people, which is one of the
darkest features of our overall position, is re-entrenched from the other side. Sensing the
alien and non-Islamic character of the schools on offer, the people instinctively reject
them, so that the estrangement becomes mutual. Absurd accusations are constructed as to
the disinclination of Muslim environments towards school and education. In fact, it is clear
that this is not a question of rejecting schools as such, but of rejecting alien schools, which
have lost every spiritual link with Islam and the people.

INDIFFERENCE OF THE MUSLIM MASSES

The about-turn effected by modernists in a series of Muslim countries was, almost

as a rule, anti-religious and led by slogans on the de-clericalization of political and social
life. From this aspect it is reminiscent of the struggle between the awakening national
states and the church in Europe on the threshold of the Modern Age. But what meant
progress and constitutionality for the West, represented an unnatural process in the
Islamic world, one which was incapable of effecting constructive change. Declericalization
and nationalism had no positive aspects here, and were in fact merely a negation. Foreign
in origin and matter, they were the reflection of a pervasive spiritual sterility. With them,
the curtain rose on the last act in the drama of the Muslim world.

From the situation which ensued, this act could be called: “a dual”

Every renaissance occurs as the result of creative contact, affinity or internal

concord between the thinking and leading elements in a society on the one hand, and the
populace at large on the other. The leading group represents will and thought, the people
the heart and blood of any great undertaking. Without the cooperation or at least consent
of the ordinary man, all action remains superficial, lacking in strike force. The sluggishness
of the masses can be overcome if it is merely the consequence of a natural resistance to
hard work, danger and struggle. It is impossible to overcome if it represents a rejection of
the very ideals of the struggle, because it perceives that ideal as opposed to the most
intimate wishes and feelings of the masses.

It is the latter case which may be observed, to a greater or lesser extent, in all
Muslim countries where modernists attempt to implement their programmes. They flatter
and threaten, plead and goad, organize and reorganize, change names and personalities,
but run up against the stubborn rejection and indifference of ordinary people, who make
up the majority of the nation. Habib Bourgiba - mentioned here simply as being
representative of a widespread tendency - wears European clothes, speaks French at home,
isolates Tunisia not only from the Islamic but also from the Arab world, restricts religious
training, calls for the abolition of the Ramadan fast "as fasting reduces productivity", while
he himself drinks orange juice in public in order to set a suitable example. After all this, he
wonders at the passivity and lack of support as the part of the Tunisian masses for his
"learned" reforms. Modernists would not be what they are if they did not demonstrate this
type of blindness.

The Muslim peoples will never accept anything which is expressly opposed to Islam,
because Islam is not just a collection of ideas and laws but has transcended into love and
feeling. He who rises up against Islam will reap nothing but hatred and resistance.

By their acts, modernists have created a state of internal conflict and confusion in
which any programme - Islamic or foreign - becomes impracticable. The masses want
Islamic action, but cannot carry it through without the intelligentsia. An alienated
intelligentsia imposes a programme, but cannot find enough people prepared to contribute
blood, sweat and enthusiasm for this paper ideal. The opposing forces cancel each other out
and a stage of powerlessness and paralysis sets in.

There is an order, a dynamic, a prosperity, a progress which could be brought about

on this ground and in this part of the world, but this is not the order, progress or prosperity
of Europe or America. The indifference of the Muslim masses is not indifference at all. It is
the way in which folk-Islam defends itself against outside, alien assault. Wherever there
was the least prospect of an Islamic struggle, the ordinary man proved his readiness to
fight, suffer and die. This was the example given by Turkey in the liberation struggle
against Greece, following defeat in World War I, the heroic resistance in Libya against
Italian occupation, and the recent examples of struggle against the British in Suez, the war
for the liberation of Algeria, for the retention of Indonesia and for Islamic influence in
Pakistan. Wherever the masses had to be aroused, Islamic slogans were used, however
temporarily and insincerely. Where there is Islam, there is no indifference.

The manifest feelings of the Muslim masses need an idea which would move and
direct them, but this cannot be just any idea. It must be one which corresponds to their
deepest feelings. It can only, therefore, be an Islamic idea.

There is no chance that the Muslim masses and their present intellectual and political
leadership could agree on someone among them renouncing his ideal, regardless of how
long this state of expectation and indecision may last. There is only one possible way out:
the formation and grouping of a new intelligentsia which thinks and feels Islam. This
intelligentsia would then fly the flag of the Islamic order and, together with the Muslim
masses, take action to bring it about.
 II
THE ISLAMIC ORDER
RELIGION AND THE LAW

The Islamic order: what does this mean, translated into the language thought,
spoken and felt by our generation?

The briefest definition of the Islamic order defines it as a unity of religion and law,
upbringing and power, ideal and interest, the spiritual community and the state,
willingness and force.

As a synthesis of these components, the Islamic order posits two fundamental

assumptions: an Islamic society and Islamic governance. The first is the matter and the
second the form of the Islamic order. An Islamic society without an Islamic authority is
incomplete and without power; Islamic governance without an Islamic society is either
utopia or violence.

Generally speaking, a Muslim does not exist as a sole individual. If he wishes to live
and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, a system. He must
change the world or himself submit to change. History has no instance of any truly Islamic
movement which was not at the same time a political movement. This is because Islam is a
religion, but it is at the same time a philosophy, a moral system, an order, a style, an
atmosphere — in a word, an integrated way of life. One cannot believe in Islam and act, do
business, enjoy one’s leisure or rule in a non-Islamic way. This state of discordance creates
hypocrisy (praising God in the mosque, betraying Him outside it), or unhappy people full of
conflict (unable either to break with the Qu'ran or to find the strength to fight and change
the circumstances in which they live), or a monk-like, eccentric type of individual (who
withdraws from the world because the world is not Islamic), or, ultimately, those who in
their dilemma break with Islam and accept life and the world as find them, or rather, as
others have made them.

The Islamic order is a society freed of this conflict, a framework of relations in which
the Muslim finds himself in complete harmony with his surroundings.

To the question: what is a Muslim society? we would say it is a community

composed of Muslims, and we think that this says it all, or almost all.

The meaning of this definition is that there is no system of institutions, relationships

and laws disparate from the people who are its object of which it could be said:' this is an
Islamic system. No system is Islamic or non-Islamic of itself. It is only so because of the
people who compose it.
 A European believes that society is ordered by the rule of laws. Since Plato's
‘’Republic", and the various utopian ideas which followed up to the most recent - Marxism -
the European spirit has been searching for one scheme, one pattern, which, by simply
altering the relationships between people or groups, would give birth to the ideal society.

In the Qu'ran, on the other hand, there are relatively few real laws, and much more
religion, and requirement for practical action in keeping with this religion.

A multiplicity of laws and a complex legislature is usually, a sure sign that something
is rotten in a society and that it should stop passing laws and start educating people. When
the rottenness of the environment surpasses a certain point, the law becomes impotent. It
then falls either into the hands of corrupt executors of justice, or becomes the subject of
open or concealed trickery on the part of a corrupt environment.

Wine, gambling and sorcery - once widespread and deeply rooted vices throughout
the entire Middle East - were eliminated for a lengthy period from an enormous region by a
single Ayet of the Qu'ran, and by a single explanation: God had forbidden them. As soon as
religion weakened, intoxication and superstition returned with unabated vigour, to which
the incomparably higher level of culture by now obtaining offered no obstacle. America s
Prohibition Law, proclaimed in the name of contemporary science and implemented with
all the force of one of the most highly organized communities in the world, eventually had
to be abandoned in the 'forties, after thirteen years of futile attempts, full of violence and
crime. An attempt to introduce prohibition into Scandinavian countries ended in similar
failure.

This and many similar examples clearly demonstrate that a society can be improved
only in the name of God and by educating man. We should take the one road which surely
leads to this objective.

While in principle confirming the spiritual, interior approach in all of its

manifestations, Islam, however, did not content itself with that. It endeavored to tear the
devil's weapon out of his hands. If, in what concerns man's relationship with the world,
Islam did not start with man, it would not be a religion; if it were to remain at that, it
would be simply a religion, merely repeating Jesus's teaching on the ideal and eternal
aspect of man's being. Through Muhammad, (peace be upon him) and the Qu’ran, Islam
addressed the real man, the outside world, nature, in order to evolve as a teaching on the
complete man and on all aspects of life. Faith allied itself to the law, education and
upbringing to power. Thus Islam became an order.

ISLAM IS NOT JUST A RELIGION

In this particular, which marks an indisputable turning point in the evolution of

religious teaching. Islam differs from all other religions, doctrines and philosophies. It
provides a new point of observation and a special approach, reflecting its entirely original
philosophy. The lynchpin of this philosophy is the requirement that man must
simultaneously live an interior and exterior, moral and social, spiritual and physical life, or
more precisely, that he must willingly and in full awareness accept both these aspects of
life as the human definition and meaning of his life on earth (Qu'ran 28/77). Translating
this requirement into the language of everyday life, we could say; he who believes that life
should be ordered not only by faith and prayer, but by work and knowledge, whose vision
of the world not only allows but demands that temple and factory stand side by side, who
considers that people should not only be fed and educated, but that their life on earth
should be facilitated and promoted, and that there is no reason to sacrifice either of these
objectives to the other - this man belongs to Islam.

This, together with faith in God, is the main message of the Qu'ran, and in it is all of
Islam. All else is mere development and explanation. This aspect of Islam, besides
containing the principle of the Islamic order, the conjunction of religion and politics, leads
to other significant conclusions of enormous fundamental and practical importance.

First and foremost of these conclusions is certainly the incompatibility of Islam with
non-Islamic systems. There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic
religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions. The failure of these institutions to
function and the instability of the regimes in Muslim countries, manifest in frequent change
and coups d'etat , is most often the consequence of their a priori opposition to Islam, as the
fundamental and foremost feeling of the peoples in these countries. By claiming the right to
order its own world itself, Islam obviously excludes the right or possibility of action on the
part of any foreign ideology on that terrain. There is, therefore, no lay principle, and the
state should both reflect and support religious moral concepts.

Every age and every generation has the task of implementing the message of Islam
in new forms and by new means.

There are immutable Islamic principles which order relations between people, but
there is no Islamic economic, social or political structure which cannot be changed.

This is only the first and most important conclusion in approaching Islam as an
integrated order. The remaining three, equally important but less preclusive, are:

First: by opting for this world, Islam has opted for the best possible ordering of that
world. Nothing which can make the world a better place may be rejected out of hand as
non-Islamic;

Second: to be open to nature means to be open to learning. In order to be Islamic,

any solution must fulfil two conditions: it must be maximally efficient and maximally
humane. It must therefore reflect the reconciliation of religion and science in its highest
form;

Third: by pointing to one link between religion and learning, morals and policy, the
individual and the collective, the spiritual and the material - questions which divide the
contemporary world - Islam regains its role as the intermediary of ideas, and the Islamic
world as intermediary among nations in a divided world. By promising "religion without
mysticism and learning without atheism", Islam can interest all people, no matter who they
are.

THE ISLAMIC ORDER IN OUR DAY - ARGUMENTS

There are immutable Islamic principles which define the relationship between man
and man, and between man and the community, but there are no fixed Islamic economic,
social or political structures which have been handed down once and for all. Islamic
sources contain no description of such a system. The way in which Muslims will carry on an
economy, organize society and rule in the future will therefore differ from the way in which
they carried on an economy, organized society or ruled in the past. Every age and each
generation has the task of finding new ways and means of implementing the basic
messages of Islam, which are unchanging and eternal, in a world which is not eternal and
subject to constant change.

Our generation must accept that risk and make the attempt.

Aware of the inevitable imperfection of definitions of this kind, and restricting

ourselves to principles which at this moment seem to be of greater importance, I present
them here in the following order:

1.

(MAN AND THE COMMUNITY)

Islamic society is an organized community of believers. There is no purely scientific,

revolutionary, socialist or other solely external salvation for man and society. Any salvation
which does not imply a turning towards the interior life, the reshaping of man, his spiritual
rebirth - impossible without God - is fallacious.

An Islamic society cannot be founded simply on social or economic interest, nor on

any other external, technical basis. As a community of believers, its nucleus contains a
religious and emotional factor of belonging. This element may be most clearly seen in the
Jam'aa,* as the fundament of Islamic society.

In contrast to a society, as an abstract community with external relationships among

its members, the Jama ‘a is an internal, tangible community, founded on spiritual
membership, where contact between people is maintained by direct, personal
acquaintance. This is man to man, not an anonymous member of society towards another
equally anonymous member of the same society. As a means of recognition among people
and of bringing them closer together, the Jama'a contributes to the solidarity and internal
harmony of society, while helping to free the spirit of the loneliness and alienation
resulting from technology and growing urbanization.
 Besides this, the Jama‘a creates a kind of public opinion which acts without the use
of force, but nonetheless efficiently, against potential violators of social and moral norms.
In the Jama'a , no one is alone, and this is so in a double sense: he is not alone to do
whatever he likes, nor is he alone, left to himself to find his own moral and material
support. If one Muslim does not feel the closeness of others, that Muslim society has failed.

* Jama'a: Muslims, the Muslim society (translator’s note}

Islam wants man to offer his hand to man, naturally and sincerely. Until this is
accomplished, nothing has really been achieved. Islam does not agree to the perpetuation
of a situation in which the state must intervene by force to defend people from one
another. This is a situation which Islam may accept only conditionally and temporarily.
Force and the law are only the tools of justice. Justice itself is to be found in the human
heart, or it does not exist.

2.

(EQUALITY OF PEOPLE)

Two facts of major importance - the oneness of the Deity and the equality of man -
have been laid down so clearly and explicitly by the Qu’ran that they allow of only a single,
literal interpretation: there is no god but the One God; there is no chosen people, race, or
class - all people are equal.

Islam cannot accept the division and grouping of people according to external,
objective measures such as class. As a religious and moral movement, it finds unacceptable
any differentiation between people which does not include moral criteria.

People must be distinguished - if they are indeed different - primarily by what they
really are, which means by their spiritual and ethical value (Qu'ran, Surah 49/13). All just
people, regardless of how they earn their bread by day, belong to the same community, just
as blackguards and wrongdoers of all kinds belong to the same "class", regardless of their
political affinities or place in the work process.

Class distinction is equally unjust, morally and humanly unacceptable, as national

and other division and differentiation among people.

3.

(THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUSLIMS)

“Muslims are brethren" (Qu'ran, 49/10). In this message, the Qu'ran points to the
goal, which because of its distance, provides a source of inspiration for a constant surge
forwards. Enormous changes must take place within people and without, in order to reduce
the distance on the road to the brotherhood so proclaimed.
 In this principle, we see both the authorization and obligation of the Islamic
community to establish appropriate institutions and undertake specific measures, so that
the relationship between Muslims and real life may assimilate an increasing number of the
elements and features of brotherhood. The number and kind of measures, initiatives and
laws, which a truly Islamic administration could introduce by referring to the principle of
brotherhood of all Muslims, is practically unlimited.

I would mention here great differences in social standing, in property, with

feudalism as the most drastic case. The relationship between the vassal and his feudal
overlord is not a brotherly relationship, but one of subjugation and dependence. As such, it
is in direct contradiction to the Qu’ran and this principle.

4.

(UNITY OF MUSLIMS)

Islam contains the principle of the umma, i.e. a tendency towards the unification of
all Muslims in a single community - religious, cultural and political. Islam is not nationality,
but it is the supra-nationality of this community.

All that divides people in this community, whether related to ideas (sects, mazhab,
political parties etc.), or material (great differences in wealth, social standing etc.), is
opposed to this principle of unity and as such must be restricted and eliminated.

Islam is the first, and pan-Islamism the second point which defines the boundary
line between Islamic and non-Islamic tendencies in the Muslim world today. The more
Islam orders a community's internal, and pan-Islamism its external relations, the more that
community is Islamic. Islam is its ideology, and pan-Islamism its policy.

5.

(PROPERTY)

Although Islam recognizes private property, the new Islamic society will have to
unequivocally declare that all major sources of social wealth, particularly natural
resources, must be the property of the community and serve the welfare of all its members.
Social supervision of sources of wealth is essential in order on the one hand to prevent the
accumulation of unmerited wealth and individual power, and on the other to ensure a
material base for development programmes In various areas, which the community will
undertake in keeping with the increasingly greater part played by an organized society.
Although differently disposed and implemented, the participation of society in solving an
ever greater number of common tasks is equally great in the USA, the Soviet Union or
Sweden, which shows that this is not a question of ideological or political approach, but a
necessity which springs from the life of human communities in the contemporary world.
 Private property is subject to yet another restriction based on an explicit command
of the Qu'ran - the need to use it for the common good (Qu'ran, 49/34). Islam, therefore,
does not recognize private property as understood by Roman Law. In contrast, private
property in Sharia Law has one privilege less (ius abutendi - the right to abuse) and one
obligation more (that of using wealth for the common good). The practical consequences of
this difference for a truly Islamic government are far-reaching. Based on this and the
dictate of the Qu’ran cited above, all legal and practical measures may be taken against
abuse or failure to use private property. The elimination of injustice, inequality and
particularly luxury and extravagance in the midst of misery, as something which devastates
the community and separates people, will become at one point the criterion for the survival
of the Islamic order and a gauge of the real values of the ethical and social standpoints it
represents.

6.

(ZEKAT* AND INTEREST)

Of all socially-charged Islamic regulations, one commandment and one prohibition

are especially significant: the commandment of Zekat and the prohibition on charging
interest.

The Zekat evidences the established principle of mutual responsibility and concern
people evince for the fate of another. Once proclaimed, this principle can become the basis
for new and various forms of solicitude in keeping with society's rate of development. Its
needs and contingencies.

In the Muslim world today, the Zekat is the private affair of each individual. In the
present social and religious climate, it has ceased to function. Its absence is evident at every
turn. In the Islamic order, the Zekat is an institution of public law, whose functioning must
be guaranteed by all available means, including the use of force.

By forbidding the charging of interest (Qu'ran. 278/279), an' invariable norm of the
Islamic order was established, involving the banning of any income from annuities and of
parasitic lifestyles, i.e. the achievement of wealth purely on the basis of land as
contradictory to the moral basis on which the Islamic public order rests.

*Zekat: poor-rate (translator’s note)

7.

(THE REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLE)

Apart from affairs of property, Islam does not recognize any principle of inheritance, nor
any power with absolute prerogative. To recognize the absolute power of Allah means an
absolute denial of any other almighty power (Qu'ran, 7/3, 12/40). ’’Any submission of a
creature which includes a lack of submission to the Creator is forbidden" (Muhammad,
peace be upon him). In the history of the first, and perhaps so far the only authentic Islamic
order - at the time of the first four Caliphs - three key aspects of the republican principle of
government may be seen. (1) an elective head of state, (2) the responsibility of the head of
state towards the people and (3) the obligation of both to work on public affairs and social
matters. The latter is explicitly supported by the Qu'ran '(3/159, 42/38). The first four
rulers in Islamic history were neither kings nor emperors. They were chosen by the people.
The inherited caliphate was an abandonment of the electoral principle, a clearly defined
Islamic political institution.

8.

(THERE IS NO GOD BUT THE ONE GOD)

Insofar as we consider the establishment of an Islamic order an incontrovertible and

invincible aim, the more assuredly do we reject the immunity of public personalities,
regardless of their merits or the positions they may occupy. The Islamic order in this sense
is a synthesis of absolute authority (related to the programme) and absolute democracy
(related to the person).

Islam does not recognize any man as all-seeing, all-knowing, infallible and immortal.
Muhammad himself was fallible, and as such was reprimanded (Qu’ran 80/1-12). From this
point of view, the Qu'ran as a book is realistic and almost .anti-heroic. The adulation
accorded to personalities, as frequent these days as in the past, both East and West, is
absolutely foreign to Islam as it represents a type of idolatry (Qu'ran, 9/31). The true gauge
of each man’s value is his personal life and the ratio between what he contributes to the
community and what he receives from it. All glory and thanks are due only to God, and the
true merit of man can only be judged by Him.

9.

(UPBRINGING)

As religion is the basis of the Islamic society, upbringing is not only one of its
functions, but the state of its existence. This is above all a religious and moral upbringing
through the family and then through all stages of schooling.

The special task of the Islamic order is to fight for the successful elimination of all forms of
anti-upbringing. Islam forbids, and the Islamic order will take specific measures to
eliminate:

- all forms of alcoholization of the people

- public and secret prostitution

- pornography of the spoken word, in pictures, on film and television

- casinos, night clubs, dance halls and all other forms of entertainment incompatible with
the moral tenets of Islam.
 10.

(EDUCATION)

An important part of this type of integrated upbringing is the schooling of the new
generation, the instilling of habits of work and training. Along with unity, education is the
second most decisive factor for the faster emancipation of the Muslim world from its
present inferior position. The Muslim countries do not have sufficient capital. This being so,
they should invest what they have in that most profitable of all investments: education.

There can be no true independence without the ability to apply and use the advance of
science while continuing to promote it. When it first made an appearance, Islam studied
and amassed without prejudice the collective knowledge left behind by earlier civilizations.
We do not know why the Islam of our day should behave differently towards the processes
of Euro-American civilization with which it shares such a long border.

This is not a question, then, of whether or not we want to accept science and
technology - as we shall have to accept them if we wish to survive - but whether we shall do
so creatively or mechanically, with dignity or with inferiority. The question in this
inevitable development is rather if we will lose or keep our individuality, our culture and
our values.

In the light of these facts, we can with certainty say that education in the present-
day Muslim world is the institution most in need of urgent and radical, qualitative and
quantitative change. Qualitative - for education to be set free of spiritual, and sometimes
material dependence on strangers and that it may begin to serve for the upbringing of
Muslims as people and members of the Islamic community. Quantitive - to remove chronic
shortages in this respect and in the shortest possible time to create conditions where
schooling and training will be within the reach of all young people and all strata of the
population. In the initial stages, the mosque can again serve as a school. If our educational
programmes do not fail, there is no field in which we can be defeated.

11.

(FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE)

The upbringing of the people, and particularly means of mass influence - the press, radio,
television and film - should be in the hands of people whose Islamic moral and intellectual
authority is indisputable. The media should not be allowed - as so often happens - to fall
into the hands of perverted and degenerate people who then transmit the aimlessness and
emptiness of their own lives to others. What are we to expect if mosque and TV transmitter
aim contradictory messages at the people?

This, however, does not at all mean that a spiritual dictatorship can be created out of
the Islamic order, where only the powers-that-be would proclaim truths to a drab, mass-
produced younger generation. It only means that there are some elementary standpoints
and basic rules of behaviour, which must be respected in all circumstances. Because of the
proclaimed principle of freedom of religion (Qu'ran, 2/266), Islam expressly forbids any
physical or psychological enforcement in questions of faith and conscience. Furthermore,
the principle of ijma (consensus) renders this unnecessary. (“My people cannot agree in
error" Muhammad, peace be upon him). However puritanical Islam may be from the moral
aspect, its openness to nature and joy makes it free-thinking, as all its history bears
witness. As it recognizes God, but no dogma or hierarchy, Islam cannot turn into a
dictatorship and any form of inquisition or spiritual terror is thereby done away with.

The Islamic rebirth cannot begin without a religious

revolution, but it cannot be successfully continued and
completed without a political one.

Our road does not begin by winning power, but people.

12.

(ISLAM AND INDEPENDENCE)

There is no Islamic order without independence and freedom, and vice versa: there
is no independence or freedom without Islam. The latter has a double sense: first,
independence is real and lasting only as the result of winning spiritual and ideological
independence and if it is a sign that a people has found itself, discovered its internal
strength, without which the independence it has gained cannot be meaningful or' long-
lasting. In the affirmation of Islamic thought in practical life, each Muslim people
experiences this identification with the self, a spiritual emancipation, as a condition of
social and political liberation.

Secondly, the real support which a Muslim people gives to the regime in power is in
direct proportion to the Islamic character of that power, the further the regime is from
Islam, the less support it will receive. Un-Islamic regimes remain almost totally deprived of
this support and therefore have to seek it, willy-nilly, from foreigners. The dependence into
which they sink is a direct consequence of their non-Islamic orientation.

These facts determine the character of the Islamic order as a democracy, not a
democracy in form, but as reality, as a consensus of opinion. This kind of democracy exists
only where the government turns ideas and action into what the people feel, where it acts
as a direct expression of their will. The establishment of an Islamic order is in fact a
supreme act of democracy, because it means the realization of the deepest inclinations of
the Muslim peoples and the ordinary man. . One thing is certain: regardless of what some of
the wealthy and the intelligentsia may want, the ordinary man wants Islam and life in his
own Islamic community. Democracy here does not come from principles and
proclamations, but from facts. The Islamic order does not use force simply because there is
no need for it. On the other hand, the unIslamic order, sensing the constant resistance and
hostility of the people, finds a solution in having recourse to force. Its transformation into a
dictatorship is more or less the rule, an unavoidable evil.

13.

(WORK AND STRUGGLE)

The Islamic society must take upon itself the task of mobilizing both human and
natural resources and pass measures which will encourage work and activity. The survival,
power or weakness of an Islamic society is subject to the same laws of work and struggle as
any other community and enjoys no God-given privileges in this respect (Qu’ran. 5/57).

Two things must be eliminated from the psychology of our public opinion: belief in
miracles and expectancy of help from others.

There are no miracles, save those brought about by people, through work and
knowledge. There is no *mahdi who will rid us of our enemies, banish misery and sow
enlightenment and prosperity as if by magic. Mahdi is the word for our own laziness, or
rather for the false hope which grows out of a sense of helplessness in a situation when the
magnitude of the difficulties and problems are out of all proportion to the means of fighting
them at our disposal.

Relying on the help of others is another form of superstition. We have gained the
habit of searching for and finding either unselfish friends or sworn enemies among certain
non-Islamic countries, and calling this foreign policy. When we realize that there are
neither real friends nor real enemies, when we begin to blame ourselves more and the
"cunning plans of our foes" less for our problems, the signs will be that we have begun to
mature and that a new age, more free of disappointment and misfortune, is at hand. In any
case, even if there were people prepared to give aid without seeking disproportionate
political and material favours in return, this would not change our position. Wealth cannot
be imported into a country. It must be earned within it on the basis of work and effort.
What we wish to accomplish we must do alone. No. one can - or wants to - do it for us.

This foundation for this programme of work and activity can be the source of
supreme encouragement. The natural wealth and prospects of the Islamic world are
enormous. Only one part of it - Indonesia - is the third wealthiest compact territory in the
world, after the USA and the USSR. The Islamic world taken as a whole occupies first place
in this regard.

*mahdi: religious leader, messiah ( translator's note)

By announcing a rebirth, we are not announcing an age of peace and security, but
one of unrest and trial. There are too many things crying out to be destroyed. These will not
be days of prosperity but of self-respect. A people which is asleep can be awakened only by
blows. Whoever wishes our community well will not try to spare it struggle, danger and
misfortune. On the contrary, he will do his best to ensure that that community begins to use
its own forces, test all the possibilities and take risks as soon as possible - in a word, not to
sleep but to live. Only an alert and active community can find itself and its own road.

14.

(WOMAN AND THE FAMILY)

The position of woman in Muslim society must be changed everywhere in keeping

with her task as mother and natural educator of the younger generation. An uneducated,
neglected and unhappy mother cannot raise sons and daughters capable of instigating and
leading the rebirth of the Muslim peoples. Islam must take the initiative of recognizing
motherhood as a social function. Harems must be abolished. No one has the right to refer to
Islam as a reason to keep women disenfranchised; abuse of this kind must be brought to an
end.

Such attitudes do not represent a Western feminism, which has displayed a

tendency to impose the measures, whims and mastery of a depraved element among the
female sex. Neither is this equality in the European sense. It is an underlining of the equal
values of men and women, together with the underlining of the differences between them,
which should be preserved. The principle of equal values is a direct result of the rules on
equal religious and moral duties explicitly referred to in several places in the Qu'ran
(particularly Ayet 33/55).

Civilization has made of woman either an object for use or one demanding
servitude, but it has taken away her individuality, which alone may cause her to be valued
and respected. By neglecting motherhood, it has deprived woman of her most basic and
irreplaceable function.

In these times, when the family is in serious crisis and its values are being
questioned, Islam reaffirms its allegiance to this form of human life. By contributing to the
security of the family nest and excluding external and internal factors which destroy it
(alcohol, immorality, irresponsibility), Islam protects in a practical way the real interests of
the normal, healthy woman. Instead of an abstract equality, it ensures women love,
marriage and children, with all that these three things mean to a woman.

Family and marriage law, as formulated in the early centuries of Islam, needs to be
re-examined in conformity with present-day requirements and the point reached in the
human and social consciousness. The tendency should be to curb polygamy as much as
possible so as to eventually eliminate it completely from practical life, while restricting
divorce and working towards the more efficient protection of women and children in both
cases.

15.

(THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS)

 In the struggle for the Islamic order, all means are permissible except one - crime.
No one has the right to defile the good name of Islam or the struggle by the uncontrolled
and superfluous use of force. The Islamic community should once more confirm that justice
is one of its keystones. The Qu'ran does not command us to love our enemies, but it
categorically tells us to be just and to forgive (Qu'ran, 4/135 and 16/126). The use of force
must comply with this principle.

Formula: the aim justifies the means has become the cause of numberless crimes. A
noble aim cannot command unworthy means; on the other hand, the use of unworthy
means may diminish and compromise any aim. As our moral strength increases, the need
for force declines; when it comes to taking sides, this is the weapon of the weak. What
cannot be accomplished by force may be achieved through generosity, consistency and a
courageous bearing (Qu'ran, 16/125, 26/34-35).

16.

(MINORITIES)

The Islamic order can only be established in countries where Muslims represent the
majority of the population. If this is not the case, the Islamic order is reduced to mere
power (as the other element - an Islamic society - is missing) and may turn to violence.

The non-Muslim minorities within an Islamic state, on condition they are loyal,
enjoy religious freedom and all protection.

Muslim minorities within a non-Islamic community, provided they are guaranteed

freedom to practice their religion, to live and develop normally, are loyal and must fulfil all
their commitments to that community, except those which harm Islam and Muslims.

The position of Muslim minorities in non-Islamic communities will always in reality

depend on the strength of the international Islamic community and the esteem in which it
is held.

17.

(RELATIONS WITH OTHER COMMUNITIES)

Relations between the Islamic and other communities throughout the world are
based on the principles of: 1. Freedom of religion (Qu'ran 2/256): 2. Strength and a
decisive and active defence (Qu'ran, 8/61-62. 42/39-42. 2/190-192): 3. A ban on wars of
aggression and crime (Qu'ran, 2/190-192. 42/42); 4. Mutual cooperation and
acquaintanceship among nations (Qu'ran. 49/13); 5. Respect for obligations and
agreements undertaken (Qu'ran.. 94) and 6. Mutuality and reciprocity (Qu'ran. 9/8).
 III
PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS OF THE ISLAMIC ORDER

THE ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE - RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL REVOLUTION?

The Islamic order is a conjunction of faith with the social and political system. Does
the road to it lead via religious renewal or political revolution?

The answer to this question is that Islamic rebirth cannot begin without religious
revolution, but it cannot be successfully continued and completed without a political one.

This answer, which defines Islamic renaissance as a twofold revolution - moral and
social, but where religious renewal has a clear priority - follows from the principles and
nature of Islam, not from the dismal facts characteristic of the Muslim world today.

These facts speak of the seriousness of the moral state of the Muslim world, of
depravity, the rule of corruption and superstition, indolence and hypocrisy, the reign of un-
Islamic customs and habits, a callous materialism and a disturbing absence of enthusiasm
and hope. Can any kind of social or political reformation be directly initiated in
circumstances such as these?

Each nation, before being called upon to play its part in history, has had to live
through a period of internal purging and the practical acceptance of certain fundamental
moral principles. All power in the world starts out as moral firmness. Every defeat begins
as moral failure. All that is desired to be accomplished must first be accomplished in the
souls of men.

What does religious renewal mean as a prerequisite for the Islamic order? Above all,
it means two things: a new consciousness and new will.

Religious renewal is a clear awareness of the real purpose of life, why we live and
for what we should live. Is that purpose a personal or a common standard, the glory and
greatness of my race or nation, the affirmation of my own personality or the rule of God's
law on earth? In our case, religious renewal means in practice the "Islamization” of people
who call themselves Muslims, or whom others usually call by that name. The starting point
of this ''Islamization’’ is a firm belief in God and the strict and genuine observance of
Islamic religious and moral norms on the part of Muslims,

The other component is a readiness to carry out the imperatives imposed by

awareness of the goal. Religious renewal is therefore a quality of moral involvement and
enthusiasm, a psychosis of the power of mind over matter, a state of live, practical idealism
in which ordinary people become capable of extraordinary feats of courage and sacrifice. It
is a new quality of faith and will in which everyday measures of the possible cease to have
value and in which the individual and the entire group rise to a high degree of sacrifice for
their ideal.

Without this new state of spirit and feeling it is impossible to accomplish any real
change in the present-day Muslim world.

When considering these matters, the dilemma inevitably arises - albeit only for a
moment - that a shorter way to the Islamic order would be by taking power, which would
then create the appropriate institutions and carry out a systematic religious, moral and
cultural education of the people, as a prerequisite for building an Islamic society.

This is mere temptation. History does not relate any true revolution which came
from power. All began with education and meant in essence a moral summons.

Besides, the formula which confides the establishment of the Islamic order to some
power or other does not answer the question as to whence that power came. Who is to set
it up and implement it, and of what kind of people will it and its institutions consist? Who
will ultimately check the behaviour of that power itself and how can it be prevented from
turning monstrous and self-serving instead of serving those in whose name it was
instituted?

It is feasible to exchange one group in power for another, and this is an everyday
occurrence. The tyranny of the one can be traded for the tyranny of another, the owners of
the wealth of this world are interchangeable. It is possible to change the names, flags,
anthems and slogans for the sake of which all this is done. But it is not possible by this
means to come one step closer to an Islamic order, as a new experience of the world and a
different relationship between man and himself, others and the wor1d.

The idea of constantly calling on some power or other for help has its roots in the
natural tendency of man to avoid the initial and hardest phase of the jihad - the struggle
against oneself. It is hard to bring up people, and even harder oneself. By definition,
religious renewal means beginning with the self, with one's own life. In contrast, violence
and force always have someone else in mind. That is what makes the idea so seductive.

Any movement, therefore, which has the Islamic order as its main objective, must
above all be a moral movement. It must arouse people in the moral sense and represent a
moral function, which uplifts and makes people better. This is the difference between an
Islamic movement and a political party, which may represent a unity of thought and
interest, but does not include an ethical standard or involve people morally.

The priority given to religious renewal has, inter alia, obvious support in Islamic
sources.

First, the Qu’ran says that interior rebirth is a prerequisite of any change or
improvement in the state of a people (Qu'ran 13 / 12 ).
 Second, this rule was confirmed in practice in early Islam and the struggle of
Muhammad, peace be upon him, to set up the first Islamic order in history. This is indicated
by the fact that the Qu'ran in the first thirteen years discussed and emphasized only
questions of belief and responsibility. During this time it did not begin to consider any
social or political problem or to formulate any kind of social law founded on Islam.

We expect three more important things from religious renewal:

1. Only religious renewal can create the determination that the provisions of the
Qu'ran, particularly those aimed against the more deep-rooted social ills or which are
embarrassing for the wielders of power and wealth, must be applied unhesitatingly and
uncompromisingly. Religious renewal means that they will be carried out without violence
or hatred, as all, or a huge majority of the reborn society, will understand and welcome
them as the implementation of God's commandments and in the cause of justice.

2. The Islamic renaissance cannot be imagined without people prepared for

enormous personal and material sacrifice, with a high degree of mutual trust and loyal
cooperation. What is it that can ensure that effort, self-sacrifice and casualties on one side
will not be used in order to bring about the domination and ambition of another? What can
prevent a recurrence of the tragedy of moral failure, so frequent in recent Islamic history?
Every order, including the Islamic one, will always resemble more closely the people who
establish it rather than the principles they -proclaim.

3. Because of its colossal backwardness, the Islamic world will have to accept a very
fast tempo of education and industrialization. Accelerated development is always
accompanied by symptoms such as: despotism, corruption, destruction of the family, the
quick and unwarranted attainment of riches, the coming to the forefront of resourceful and
unscrupulous individuals, fast urbanization and a breaking with tradition, the vulgarization
of social relations, the spread of alcoholism, drugs and prostitution. The dam against this
flood of anti-culture and primitivism can only be constructed from a pure, strong faith in
God and the practice of religious commandments by all classes of people. Only religion can
ensure that civilization does not destroy the culture. Sheer material and technical progress,
as some cases have clearly demonstrated, can veer into an open return to barbarianism.

ISLAMIC GOVERNANCE

Stressing the priority of the religious and moral renewal does not mean - nor can it
be interpreted to mean - that the Islamic order can be brought about without Islamic
governance. This means only that our way does not start by taking power, but by winning
people, and that Islamic rebirth is first a revolution in education, and only then in politics.

We must therefore be first preachers and then soldiers. Our weapons are personal
example, the book, the word. When is force to be joined to these?

The choice of this moment is always a tangible one and depends on a series of
factors. There is, however, a general rule: the Islamic movement should and can start to
take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough to be able to
overturn not only the existing non-Islamic government, but also to build up a new Islamic
one. This differentiation is important, because overturning and building do not require an
equal degree of psychological and material readiness.

To act prematurely in this regard is just as dangerous as to delay.

To take power due to a fortunate set of circumstances, without sufficient moral and
psychological preparation or the essential minimum of staunch and well-trained personnel,
means causing another coup d'etat, and not an Islamic revolution. (The coup d'etat is a
continuation of the un—Islamic policy on the part of another group of people or in the
name of other principles). To delay in taking power means to deprive the Islamic
movement of a powerful means of attaining its aims while offering the un-Islamic
authorities the possibility of dealing a blow to the movement and dispersing its personnel.
Recent history provides sufficient tragic and instructive examples of the latter.

We shall ignore the “realism" which regulates the Muslim peoples to an inferior
position and leaves no room for any hope.

History is not only the story of constant change, but of the uninterrupted
actualization of the impossible and the unexpected.

PAKISTAN - AN ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

When speaking of Islamic governance, the example of Pakistan, today the only
declared Islamic republic, cannot be omitted.

We applaud Pakistan, regardless of certain failings and difficulties, because it is the

outcome of this desire to establish an Islamic order and because those who conceived and
brought it about were clearly led by an Islamic idea.

Pakistan is the dress rehearsal for the introduction of an Islamic order under
modern conditions and at present rates of development. Islamic protagonists should learn
what should and should not be done from the example of Pakistan.

The negative experience of Pakistan - and negative experiences are always more important
- can be summed up in two points:

1. Insufficient unity and structure of the organizing forces who put Iqbal’s idea of Pakistan
into effect. Soon after the birth of Pakistan, it was obvious that the Muslim League had
gathered together a hodgepodge of different elements, without any unified ideas on crucial
questions such as the ordering of state and society. From this point of view, the League was
hardly more than the average political party. Faced with the great dilemma of Pakistan, it
was unable to maintain unity.
2. A formalistic and dogmatic approach to the implementation of Islamic assumptions in
practice in Pakistan. Scholars and jurists, instead of turning to the burning question of
education, exhausted their energies to the point of division on questions of how rigidly
Sharia criminal and marriage law should be applied. While endless discussions were held
as to whether a thief should have his hand cut off or simply be sent to prison, an
identifiable form of stealing - corruption - became rampant and led to the crisis which
shook the foundations of the state of Pakistan.

The lessons from twenty years of Pakistan's existence are clear:

Firstly, the struggle for an Islamic order and a thorough reconstruction of Muslim
society can be led only by tried and true individuals at the head of a resolute and
homogeneous organization. This need not be any kind of political party from the arsenals of
western democracy, but rather a movement founded on Islamic ideology, requiring
unmistakable moral and ideological criteria from its membership.

Secondly, the struggle for the Islamic order today is for the essentials of Islam,
which means ensuring the religious and moral education of the people along with the basic
elements of social justice. Form at the present moment is of secondary importance.

Thirdly, the function of the Islamic republic is not primarily to declare equality
among men and the brotherhood of all Muslims, but to fight for the implementation of
these high-minded principles. Awakened Islam, wherever it may be, should grasp the flag of
a juster social order and make it clear that the struggle begins with war on ignorance,
injustice and poverty, a war which knows neither compromise nor withdrawal. Should it
fail to do so, the flag will be taken by demagogues and false saviours of society, in order to
bring about their hypocritical objectives.

These lessons have a bitter taste. We still believe in Pakistan and its mission in the
service of international Islam. There is no Muslim heart which will not bound at the
mention of something as dear to us as Pakistan, even if this love, like any other, knows fear
and trembling. Pakistan is our great hope, full of trials and temptations.

PANISLAMISM AND NATIONALISM

In one of the arguments for an Islamic order of today, we said that the tendency to
gather together all Muslims and Muslim communities in the world was a natural function of
the Islamic order. As things stand today, it means a struggle to create a great Islamic
federation from Morocco to Indonesia, from tropical Africa to Central Asia.

We know well that mention of this vision annoys a certain type of person in our
midst - people who call and consider themselves realists. All the more reason to emphasize
this aim loudly and clearly. We prefer to ignore this "realism" which condemns Muslim
peoples to a permanently inferior position, leaving no room for endeavour or hope. Its
source is in cowardice and respect for the mighty of this world. The masters, it says, should
remain masters, and the vassals, vassals. History, as we have said, however, is not only the
story of constant change, but of the continuous achievement of the impossible and the
unexpected. Almost everything which goes to make up the contemporary world looked
impossible fifty years ago.

Obviously there are two kinds of realism.- ours and that of the weak and cowardly.
We think that there is nothing more natural or real than the requirement that Muslims
should unite in various ways in order to solve their common problems and gradually
approach the creation of certain supranational structures - economic, cultural and political
- in order to achieve coordination and mutual action in certain important fields. This idea
seems unreal to our "realists' 1 (read: weaklings). They sanction the status quo, which to
our understanding of realism, is a glaring example of the unnatural and absurd. We find it,
for instance, absolutely unacceptable and unreal that in this day and age of concentration
and association, one people - Arabs - should be broken up into thirteen units of state; that
the Muslim states stand on opposite sides on a number of significant international
questions; that Muslim Egypt is unconcerned about the sufferings of Muslims in Ethiopia or
Kashmir; that at the height of the confrontation of the Arab countries with Israel, Muslim
Persia maintained friendly relations with the aggressor, etc, etc. If anything is unreal, then
it is not the unity of Muslims, but its absence - the state of division and- discord, in fact, we
find today.

There is no historical objective - unless one that is in contradiction to natural or

historical facts - which people cannot bring about through joint will and effort. The utopia
in which they believe and for which they strive ceases to be utopia. Our weaklings, on the
other hand, can neither believe nor work - the explanation for their degrading "real ism".
When they say that Muslim unity is a dream which will never come true, they are only
expressing the helplessness they themselves feel. The impossibility is not in the real world,
but in their hearts. The idea of the unification of all Muslims is not someone’s invention, nor
the vain wish of any reformer or ideologist. It is embedded in the Qu’ran under the well-
known axiom: “Muslims are brothers”, and has been preserved and renewed in men's
minds by Islam through the common fast, the pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaa'ba as a
unique spiritual shrine, thus creating a constant, identical feeling of belonging and
communality throughout the Muslim world. Anyone who has ever gone down among the
ordinary people following a disaster in a faraway Muslim country will see for himself just
how strong this feeling of sympathy and solidarity is.

How is it, then, that this “folk pan-Islamism“, undoubtedly present in the shape of
strong feelings of the masses, does not have much effect on the everyday life and practical
policy of the Muslim countries? Why does'it remain as just a feeling, never rising to real
awareness of a common destiny? How to explain the fact that although news of the
sufferings of Muslims in Palestine or the Crimea, in Sinkiang, Kashmir or Ethiopia arouse
feelings of dejection and unanimous condemnation everywhere, at the same time action is
either lacking or is not at all in proportion to the feelings which exist.

The answer to this lies in a fact which contradicts the feelings of ordinary people:
deliberate action by leading circles, trained in the West or under Western influence, has
been not pan-Islamic but nationalist. The instinct and consciousness of the Muslim peoples
have been divided and opposed. In this state of affairs, any significant action would be and
will remain impossible.

Contemporary pan-Islamism is therefore primarily an endeavour to attune

consciousness and feelings, in order for us to desire what we are and to reject what we are
not.

This situation determines the character and fate of nationalism in the contemporary
Muslim world.

Everywhere in the world nationalism has occurred in the shape of a widespread

movement of the people, the affirmation of their inclinations (music, folklore and
particularly language). The Muslim countries, however, usually evince a stunted form of
this, or even a kind of non-national or a-national nationalism. The explanation should be
sought on the one hand in the fact that the general feeling has absorbed pan-Islamism, and
on the other that nationalism here is conceived as a substitute for Islam and as such has
always represented an anti-Islamic movement. Finding itself in natural conflict with the.
people's past and traditions which are always and only Islamic - nationalist movements in a
number of Muslim countries actually carry on a kind of de-nationalization, very similar to
their colonialist predecessors. The position of the Arab language, for instance, in some Arab
countries - at least as far as the attitude of the nationalist administration is concerned - is
not much better than at the time of the Anglo-French occupation. If anything is done in this
respect, it lack enthusiasm, or it is the work of forces which have yet to be born. (By
comparison, the Jews successfully introduced an almost forgotten language - Hebrew - into
Israel). The reason for this attitude towards Arabic is simple: as the language of the Qu‘ran
and Islamic civilization, it is more the instrument of Islamic than Arabic, pan-Arabic or
other generalized nationalist feeling. The protagonists of nationalism have correctly
assessed (or intuited) this and found an unprecedented solution: they and their
administrations speak the language of the previous occupiers (!) In the Muslim world there
is no patriotism without Islam.

These conclusions confirm in their own way that nationalist ideas in the Muslim
world are of un-Islamic origin. This is most apparent in the Middle East, where the pioneers
of nationalism are Syrian intellectuals and Christian Lebanese, educated at the American
Institute (primarily the Syrian Protestant College) and at the University of St. Joseph in
Beirut. An examination of the spiritual and historical roots of Attaturk’s movement in
Turkey, Sukarno's pancha sila* in Indonesia, the Baath party in some Arab countries
(particularly some of its off-shoots) and a whole series of nationalist and “revolutionary"
groups throughout the Muslim world, confirm this conclusion. Pan-Islamism has always
sprung from the very heart of the Muslim people, while nationalism has always been
imported goods.

*pancha sila: five basic principles (translator‘s note)

 The Muslim peoples, therefore, have no "gift” for nationalism. Should we shed tears
over this?

Even if we were to ignore for a moment the salient truth that the principle of a spiritual
community is superior to that of a nation, we would have to, in view of the moment at
which this message is being written, advise our peoples not to try to attain this '‘ability”.
Even nations who have lived for centuries in national communities will be required in
future to gradually adapt to new forms of common life, on a broader communal base.
Farsighted people in France and Germany are today advising their fellow-citizens to feel a
little less French or German, and a little more European. The creation of the European
Economic Community -although this claim may seem unacceptable at first sight - is the
most constructive event in twentieth-century European history. This supra-national
structure is the first real victory of the European peoples over nationalism. Nationalism has
become a luxury, too expensive for small nations, or even for medium-sized or large ones.

The modern world is facing development which in a certain way bears no

comparison with the past. With its incredibly expensive programmes of education,
research, business, defence and so on, this development demands a hitherto unknown and
unguessed at concentration of people and resources, and objectively speaking, offers a
chance only to the great nations, or to be more precise, to leagues, of nations. Two unions
presently rule the world - the American and the Soviet - while a third is on the way - the
European Union. A community which cannot gather together a population of 200 million
and earn 200 billion dollars in GNP - and these figures show signs of growing - cannot keep
in step and will have to make do with an inferior position. It will not only not govern others
but will be unable to govern itself. The rate of development ceases to be a deciding factor.
Its place has been taken by these absolute figures. China's development is far below that of
France or England, but thanks to an enormous concentration of people and resources,
evidences a certain superiority in the current race. This situation means a chance for the
Muslim world, undeveloped but large.

There is one more thing which urgently calls for concerted effort on the part of the
Muslim countries.

The economic and cultural backwardness of the Muslim countries is deteriorating

from day to day due to a sudden growth in their populations. Two Muslim countries - Egypt
and Pakistan currently have the highest birthrate in the world. According to some
estimates, 20 million Muslims come into the world each year. If growth continues at the
present rate, the Muslim world will double within its present borders by the end of the
century. Can we welcome, feed, school and employ the millions still waiting to be born?
This dramatic demographic development, if unaccompanied by equally swift economic and
social progress, is full of potential dangers and uncertainties. Over the past twenty years,
this "demographic inflation” has mainly absorbed any growth in production, so that GNP in
the majority of Muslim countries is less today than two decades ago. This burst of
population, instead of being a factor of power in a united Muslim world, has become a
source of crisis and despair for the disparate Muslim countries.
 It is clear that the Muslim countries cannot deal singly with this problem. We can
face this situation and simultaneously compensate for the lost years of backwardness and
stagnation only through a new quality - unity. What the Arabs, Turks, Persians or
Pakistanis cannot solve on their own, Muslims can, in one, joint, coordinated effort.

Each Muslim country can construct its own freedom and prosperity only if by doing
so it also constructs the freedom and prosperity of all Muslims. Wealthy Kuwait and Libya
cannot survive as islands of prosperity in a sea of misery. If they do not evince Islamic
solidarity and a desire to assist neighbouring Muslim countries, if they are led by
selfishness, will this not direct these countries towards similar behaviour? And this would
lead to the hatred and chaos so desired by their enemies. By carrying out their Islamic duty,
the wealthy Muslim countries are acting in their own greatest interest.

The alternative facing every Muslim country is clear: either to unite with other
Muslim countries, thus ensuring survival, progress and the strength to face any temptation,
or to lag behind more and more with every passing day, eventually falling into a state of
dependence on wealthy foreigners. The current historic moment give unity a new
dimension: it is no longer just a fine idea on the part of idealists and visionaries; unity has
become essential, a necessity, the law of survival and a condition for self-respect in the
world of today. Those who for whatever reason or motive support the present factionalism,
are to all intents and purposes on the side of the enemy.

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM

For reasons of space, it is not possible here to explain the attitude of Islam towards
all major doctrines and systems outside its own sphere. It is, however, necessary to explain
its attitude towards the two major religions: Christianity and Judaism, and two ruling world
systems: capitalism and socialism.

As far as Christianity is concerned, we differentiate between Christ's teaching and

the church. The former we regard as the pronunciation of God, deformed on some points,
and the latter as an organization, which with its inevitable hierarchy, politics, wealth and
interests, has become not only non-Islamic, but anti-Christian. Anyone who needs to define
his attitude towards Christianity should be asked to specify whether he means Christ's
teaching or the Inquisition. The church in its history has always swung between these two
poles. The more the church is the expression and interpreter of the ethical teaching of the
Gospels, the further it is from the Inquisition, and thus closer to Islam. We applaud the new
tendencies in the church declared by the last Vatican Council, because we consider that to a
certain extent they come closer to the original tenets of Christianity. If Christians so wish,
the future may offer an example of understanding and cooperation between two great
religions for the well-being of people and mankind, just as the past has been the battlefield
of their senseless intolerance and strife.
 The Islamic attitude towards Judaism is based cm a similar principle. We have lived
together with the Jews for centuries, even building a common culture, so that in some cases
we cannot with certainty say what in that culture is Islamic and what Judaic.

However, under the leadership of the Zionists, the Jews in Palestine initiated action
which is as inhuman and ruthless as it is shortsighted and audacious. This policy takes only
a momentary and temporary state of relations into account, losing sight of the constant
factors and the general balance of power between Jews and Muslims in the world. In
Palestine it throws the gauntlet down to the whole Muslim world. Jerusalem is not only a
question for the Palestinians, or even for Arabs. It is a question for all the Muslim peoples.
To keep Jerusalem, the Jews would have to conquer Islam and Muslims, and that - thank
God - lies beyond their power.

We would like to differentiate between Jews and Zionists, if the Jews themselves
summon up the strength to make this difference. We hope that the military victories which
they have chalked up against the divided Arab regimes (not against the Arabs and not
against Muslims), will not totally darken their understanding and that they will start to
eliminate the confrontation which they themselves created, in order to clear the way to a
common life on Palestinian soil. If, however, they continue along the road of pride, which at
the moment seems more likely, there is only one solution for the Islamic movement and all
Muslims in the world: to continue the struggle, to widen and lengthen it day by day, year by
year, whatever the sacrifice or however long it may take, until they are forced to return
every inch of confiscated land. Any bargaining or compromise which might set at risk the
elementary rights of our brothers in Palestine is treachery, which could destroy the moral
system on which our world rests.

These opinions are not the reflection of any new policy of Islam towards Christians
and Jews, dictated by a transitory set of circumstances. They are only a practical conclusion
drawn from Islamic principles on the recognition of Christianity and Judaism and taken
almost word for word from the Qu’ran (Qu’ran 29/45. 2/136, 5/47-49).

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

What are the structural forms and political shapes in which the Islamic rebirth of
our day is to manifest itself? Are any of the forms of organization and society, characteristic
of Western civilization - representative democracy, capitalism, socialism - good for Islamic
society too, and will our society be inevitably obliged to proceed through these and similar
forms?

Over the past two centuries, the idea has taken firm hold that every country must
eventually turn towards representative democracy. Recent developments, particularly in
the inter-war period, have proved the opposite in some cases and shown that classical
democracy is not an unavoidable stage in the evolution of the social and political
community. Similarly, there are those today who attempt to prove that socialism is the
essential direction in which human society is moving, whether it likes it or not.
Contemporary developments in the so-called capitalist countries in Europe and America,
however, quite adamantly deny this prophecy of historic necessity and point to unexpected
aspects of development. On the other side of the world, in Japan, a leap has been made
straight from a feudal economy into what would in Europe' be called a higher form of
capitalist monopoly. The patterns people set in order to systematize historical
development have turned out to be very relative, and if any rules exist for the development
of society, they are obviously not of the kind described by European thought of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This imaginary determinism acted to suppress the conscience of the previous

generations; besides this, it was exploited as a powerful psychological means of spreading
ideas. In effect, the system influences the state of a country only to the extent to which it
instigates or directly organizes work, which is the real source of all wealth.

Freed from the psychosis of historical’ necessity and thanks to the middle ground
which Islam occupies, we can without prejudice consider the good and bad sides of the
existing systems, no longer as capitalism and socialism, but as certain practices of
contemporary societies.

Capitalism and socialism in their pure forms no longer exist. The speed of
development after World War II left them far behind. Only a fossilized Marxist political
economy, which is becoming less a science and increasingly the handmaid of policy,
continues to repeat the original statement, as if nothing had occurred in the world over the
past fifty years. Judging by many significant symptoms, the classic standards of what is
capitalist and what socialist will soon be totally inadequate to denote economic and social
phenomena in the immediate future.

If we accordingly refuse to be led by slogans and terminology and take only the facts
we see in the world about us into account, we must admit the extraordinary evolution of
the capitalist world over the past thirty years: its dynamism, its ability to set science and
the economy in motion, while ensuring a high degree of political freedom and legal
security. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the achievements of the socialist system
either, particularly in mobilizing material resources, in education and in eliminating
traditional forms of poverty.

In the same way, we cannot lose sight of the dark and unacceptable side of their
progress and the deep crises which occasionally convulse both systems.

The pragmatic openness of Islam towards solving questions of world organization

gives it the advantage of being able to study without prejudice the positive and negative
experiences of others, above all the USA, USSR and Japan. These three countries represent,
in principle and practice, three very different approaches to solving elementary questions
of prosperity and power.
 The development of capitalism in the past thirty years has demonstrated the error
inherent in some of the basic assumptions of Marxism. Here we would mention three:

1. The contradiction between productive forces and production relations has not
shown itself to be inevitable in capitalism. Capitalism has not only overcome the
contradiction, but has enabled a hitherto unheard of development and take-off of
production, knowledge and labour productivity:

2. The working class in leading capitalist countries has not opted for a revolution;

3. The relationship between being and consciousness, “base” and "superstructure" is

not what Marx claimed it would be. We have capitalism in Sweden and capitalism in
Argentina. The differences in the base, in these countries are differences of degree; the
differences in their superstructures (forms of political power, laws, religion, ruling
philosophy, art and so on) are differences, in essence.

Development in the world, then, has not followed the path mapped out for it by
Marx. The advanced countries retained capitalism while continuing to develop it, while
socialism came to power in a number of underdeveloped countries, which from the point of
view of Marxism, is an inexplicable anomaly.

How should we interpret the interest evinced by the underdeveloped countries for
certain forms of socialist economy?

In the first place, this has shown itself to be useful when organizing an extensive
economy, appropriate to countries which have no starting point, in that they have neither
capital, expertise, work routines or much else; secondly, more backward environments
adapt more easily to the various types of restriction (a lesser degree of personal freedom,
centralism, strong government etc.) which always accompany certain types of socialism;

Thirdly, although outclassed as a science, socialism has survived as a myth and an

adventure. This very important aspect of socialism more than explains its greatly growing
influence in Catholic and Latin countries in comparison with Protestant and Germanic ones.

In contrast, the pragmatic spirit of capitalism is more suited to the rationalism of a

developed society. It has been proved that developed forms of capitalist economy function
successfully in a society with democratic forms of government, an advanced level of culture
and a high degree of personal and political freedom. In conditions such as these, some of
the more inhuman aspects of capitalist economy can actually be considerably neutralized
without any major impairment of its efficiency.

So the imaginary inevitability of this system or that comes to nothing. What is, in
fact, inevitable is the continuous mobility of the economy, based on the continued advance
of science and technology. The perfecting of the work process and its tools is, it seems, the
only activity in which people “must" engage in this domain.
 Accordingly, neither Islam nor the world at large is faced with the dilemma of
capitalism or socialism, as any such dilemma is imaginary and artificial. There is. however,
the question of choosing and constantly working to perfect a system of relations between
property and production, which will be efficient and in harmony with the Islamic
understanding of social justice; which will stimulate work and activity in the best possible
way and solve the problems posed by the inevitable development of production and
technology.

CONCLUSION

These are some of the main ideas and essential dilemmas of the Islamic rebirth, which is
taking increasing hold of people’s minds as a general transformation of the Muslim peoples
— moral, cultural and political. In the midst of all the defeat and disappointment, the
Islamic rebirth is a name to inspire hope and a way out for an extensive region of the world.

No Muslim for whom adherence to Islam is not sheer coincidence, but rather a
programme and a duty, can reject this vision, but many in their indecision will enquire:
where are the forces which will make it come true?

To answer this unavoidable question, we point to the new Islamic generation who
will soon come of age. This generation of one hundred million boys and girls, born into
Islam, growing up in the bitterness of defeat and humiliation, united in a new Islamic
patriotism, who will refuse to live on old fame and alien help and who will gather around
aims which mean truth, life and dignity - bear within them the strength to bring about this
impossible undertaking and to confront every trial.

This generation could not have appeared before. The epoch of illusion and error had
to be lived through to the end, in order to show the powerlessness of false gods, of various
fathers of the homeland and saviours of society, kings and mahdis, for them to beat us on
Sinai, endanger Indonesia, unsettle Pakistan, talk much of freedom, prosperity and
progress while creating only tyranny, poverty and corruption - all this was necessary in
order for us to arrive at a time of sobriety, for a generation to be born to whom it is clear
that all this was but aimless wandering and that there is only one way out for the Islamic
world: to turn to its own spiritual and material sources, which means Islam and Muslims.

The Islamic world today is an extraordinary patchwork of peoples, races, laws and
influences, but there is one thing which is met in every corner of that world with the same
respect and loyalty: the Qu’ran, one feeling which is the same in Java, India, Algeria or
Nigeria: the feeling of belonging to the general Islamic community. These two loyalties in
the elementary feelings of millions of ordinary people hold reserves of quiet energy and
represent something which is the same throughout the Muslim world today. Because of
them the Muslim world is even now an emotional community of international dimensions,
perhaps the only multinational emotional (but not organized) community in the world.
 As an integral part of these feelings and the result of the long influence of Islamic
ethics, we constantly meet, in the form of folk wisdom, with vital concepts of human
equality, social justice, tolerance and merhama* towards all life forms. These facts do not of
themselves mean a better and more humane world, but they do mean the promise of one.

*merhama: mercy (transistor's note)

These feelings indicate that the Muslim world is alive, for where there is love and
fellow-feeling, there is not death but life. The Islamic world is not a desert; it is virgin soil
awaiting the ploughman’s hand. Thanks to these facts, our task becomes real and possible.
It consists of turning these feelings, now only potential forces, into active ones. Loyalty to
the Qu’ran should grow into determination to apply it; the Islamic community of emotions
should turn into an organized, aware community, and folk humanism into clear ideas,
which will become the moral and social character of future laws and institutions.

Who will carry out this transformation, and how shall it be done?

Every action taken in relation to events is social action. Every successful struggle
can only be a joint, organized struggle. The younger generation will be able to carry out its
task of transformation only if its inclinations and idealism are poured into an organized
movement, in which the enthusiasm and personal value of the individual will be correlated
with methods of joint, coordinated action. The creation of this movement with a single
basic aim and programme is an irrevocable condition and starting point for rebirth in every
Muslim country.

This movement will gather together what is built, raise the unbuilt, elevate and call
on people, define aims and find a way to attain them. It will introduce life, thought and
action everywhere. It will become the conscience and will of a world awakening out of a
long, deep sleep.

In sending this message to all Muslims throughout the world, we wish clearly to
state that there is no promised land, no miracle-workers or mahdis. There is only the way
of work, struggle and sacrifice.

In times of trial let us always have in mind two things: behind us stands God’s
blessing and the consent of our people.

YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SAY THAT YOU DID NOT KNOW!