Caliphate
Caliphate [al-khilāfa]
means the system of government based on the choice of the people. It differs from
the western democratic systems of governments in the sources of its
laws. While western democracies rely on man-made, positive laws, the Islamic
system of government draws its laws from the Qur’ān
and the sunna, using the tool of ijtihad to adapt their universal prescriptions to
the ever-changing realities or, in short, to adapt the text to the context. The
leader of this system is called caliph. He draws his legitimacy from the free
choice of the people. Unfortunately, despotic rulers as of Yazīd
son of Mu’āwiya misused this noble epithet to
legitimate their illegitimate rule. As a matter of fact, Mu’āwiya,
fully aware of the distinction between caliphate and monarchy, honestly
declared that he was the last of caliphs and the first of kings.
Rightly Guided Caliphs
The epithet “Rightly Guided Caliphs” names exclusively the first four
successors of the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace), namely Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthman
and ‘Ali (God bless them all). They were called Rightly Guided because they were
elected and accepted by the community through the process of shūra [deliberative consultation between the
rulers and the ruled], however various may have been
its forms in their election. In contrast, the rulers who followed them called
themselves arbitrarily “caliphs” with a view to maintaining the illusion that
they had been elected by the community. Even as the Prophet (God bless him and
grant him peace) named his four successors as Rightly Guided Caliphs in one of
his premonitory hadiths, so too he stigmatized
the “false caliphs” as kings, with all the pejorative connotations that this
term bears. In Islam, the title “king” refers to any one who has usurped power
without yielding to the principle of shūra,
whose most deciding agent is the free choice of the people.
Mordacious Rule
By Mordacious Rule [al-Mulk al-‘Ād] is meant that
system of government based on hereditary power. The despotic ruler dies and
hands over power to his son or relative. Such rule characterized the Umayyad, the
Abbasid, and the subsequent dynasties that had ruled the umma
(the then-united Muslim community) against its will until the Ottoman rule.
Those rulers were despotic yet generally never expressed antagonistic
sentiments against Islam.
Tyrannical Rule
Tyrannical Rule [al-Mulk al-Jabri] represents the
system of government of the protégés of colonialism, that is, the secular
dictatorial regimes [absolute monarchies or false republics] that now govern
throughout the Islamic world. Unlike their ancestors, they wage war against
Islam in the name of the foreign enemies, and contribute to further
dismembering and weakening the Muslim community through checking any revivalist
endeavors undertaken by the independentist forces of
Islam.
Mujahid
The word mujahid means the person who perfomrs jihad. It names every Muslim, man and woman, who serves the cause of Islam, according to the Method of the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace), and strives hard to unite the dismembered entity of the Muslim community worldwide. The word mujahid does not refer exclusively to the military. All forms of violence or terrorism are absolutely contradictory to the Method of the Prophet.
Uprising
Uprising [qawma]
is the name of the Islamic legitimate revolution against a despotic power as
opposed to rebellion [thawra], which is a
violent revolution against a legitimate Islamic power. The term is Qur’ānic and draws its origins and mode of practice from
the model practice of the Prophet (God bless him and grant him peace) and the Qa’imun, those who rose up against illegitimate
regimes throughout Islam’s history.
Furthermore, Qawma
stands in stark contrast with the capitalist, nationalistic, or socialist
revolution. The latter may occur against legitimate powers, engender
indiscriminate blood-shedding, may be subversive, and driven by worldly
intentions. Qawma, on the other hand, is a
sacred duty, a highly motivated, self-disciplined undertaking carried out
against illegitimate regimes using legitimate force not violence.
Ignorance and Violence
“The word [jāhilīya]
conveys a standard of judgment between Islam and what is contrary to it.
Found four times in the Qur’ān, jāhilīya
resounds with disbelief, malgovernance, the abasing
of women, and the virulent fury of pagan tribalism. Every era has its own jāhilīya, its own form of tribalism, disbelief, malgovernance, profligacy, and injustice. Jāhilīya exists wherever humankind is ignorant of
the purpose of its existence, wherever societies (whether nominally Muslim or
no) are ill-governed, where woman is treated vilely, where violent instinctual
passions win out in disputes, not the spirit of fairness.”
Source: Winning the Modern
World for Islam by Abdessalam Yassine, 2000, p. 103
Mutual Consultation
Mutual Consultation [shûrā] is the Qur’ānic principle of consultative self-government. It
means mutual consultation between the rulers and the ruled ones over all
matters regarding their religious, social, political, economic and cultural
life. With all reservations made as to its Islamic-born philosophical framework,
shûrā may to some extent be compared to
Western democracy.
Jihad
The basic meaning of jihād
is “strenuous effort.” The believers are told in the Qur’ān:
“And strive for the sake of God with all the jihād He deserves.” (Q. 22:78)
When the term is used in the sense of “holy war,” its meaning is all
too frequently misunderstood, especially but not only by non-Muslims.
Sometimes, alas, it is willfully misrepresented-by polemicists hostile to
Islam, as well as by misguided zealots within the Islamic community itself.
It is certainly correct to apply the term jihād
to the sacred struggle against hostile unbelievers. It is a grave mistake,
however, to ignore the saying of the Prophet (God bless him and give him peace)
when he returned from the military expedition of Tabuk:
“We have come home from the lesser jihād to
fight the greater jihād.”
The greater jihād may be understood
to mean “the struggle with the devil, the ego, and passionate desire.” That
struggle is greater, it has been said, because of its constant duration, the
extent of the exertion it demands, and the danger it entails. It may also
signify the jihād of construction, with
reference to all efforts exerted in order for the Appeal of God to reach the
human being, both as an individual and as a member of a society.
Islam’s history related by objective western scholars such as Thomas
Arnold attests to its spread through peaceful means, not forced conversions.
War was waged only against those despotic regimes and empires that prevented
their peoples from embracing, or living in the shade of, this egalitarian
faith.
Method
Method [Minhāj]
is the term used in the Qur’ān (5:48) to mean both
the way, and the means and manner to take that way. Method entails therefore
movement and progress towards a particular end. Among the features of the
Method is authenticity, in the sense that all concepts by which it is
represented are derived from either the Qur’ān or the
sunna. Such careful
choice of words is not performed for the sake of difference per se, but in
order to distinguish the Method from the other worldly methods in terms of the
source, the intention, and the purpose.
Ihsān
Ihsān [Spirituality] is the third and
highest spiritual station of Islam after imān
and islām. It implies
excellence in all aspects of life that build one’s Hereafter. It has the
following three complementary meanings and dimensions:
·
To attain the highest spiritual station
of Islam. The Prophet (God bless him and give him peace) said: “Ihsān is
to worship God as if you saw Him. For if you do not see Him, He indeed sees
you.”
·
To be at the service of people, e.g.:
parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, Muslims, fellow human beings, and all
creatures.
·
To excel in all your deeds, i.e. spiritual,
professional, personal, and societal.
Islam
“Islam is an ascent; it is not a stationary state. The first rung
called also islām is
that of the practicing Muslim, attentive to fulfilling the obligations the Law
prescribes for every Muslim. The second rung called imān,
a higher degree, where worship and moral rectitude are on a par. The third
degree called ihsān is the springboard for the
great spiritual journey and its infinite space. A spiritual guide is needed for
the highest degree, since the path is long and the way is full of snares. A
spiritual guide, a tutor, is required until the plant of the spiritual being
takes root and grows in strength.
I have spoken of rungs and degrees; we
ought to have spoken of bricks and floors, since the image of a building that
is being built slowly but surely is more apt. You cannot build on a void and
with nothing: the progress on Islam’s path to moral and spiritual excellence is
a construction, and the fulfilling of the obligations of the Islamic Law [shari’a] are the bricks and cement, with prayer
foremost.”
Source: Winning the Modern
World for Islam by Abdessalam Yassine, 2000, p. 111-12
Innateness
“Innateness [fitra]
is a Qur’ānic word that denotes the psychological core
of the human being. This core, this profound sense of identity and deep innate
nature, is the place where faith and trust in God repose.”
Fitra may be described
as man’s spiritual genetic code.
Source: Winning the Modern
World for Islam by Abdessalam Yassine, 2000, p. 90
Education
Instruction [ta’līm]
is the kind of teaching that is dispensed to the Muslim mind, while
purification [tazkiya] means the kind of
teaching that is directed to the Muslim heart. Education [tarbiya]
combines both of them.
Jihad vs.Struggle
The renovation of Islam will not take place without Jihad. But Jihad is something quite different from struggle. The latter evokes mixed passions and violence. Jihad means controlled will and organized effort. Struggle is a very recent jahiliyan category; Jihad is a sacred duty that involves the complete effort of the whole society and the solidary, organized movement towards clear ends and according to a well specified law. [K]
The jahiliyan formula of change is: Struggle to seize power in order to change structures. The Islamic formula: One Jihad in the two fronts of education and politics in order to change all together the relationships of man with God, with his fellow men, and with nature, in order to change mentalities, sentiments, attitudes and structures-political, social, and economic.
Two main features distinguish a mujahid from a jahiliyan struggler: noble motivation and self-control in all circumstances.
Source : La
révolution à l’heure de l’Islam [The Islamic Method of Revolution], 1990, p.14
Fitna
“The word fitna, which is a Qur’ānic term, describes the state of disorder that set the
Companions of the Prophet against each other and that ended in what those same
Companions described as cesarism (in the sense of
hereditary monarchy and the rule of the sword). […]
“When the voluntary effort of individuals and societies loses ground
to disorganized struggle, when sublime motivations give way to instinctual
drives and unbounded passions, individuals and societies are in a state of fitna. I will write instead of this word, which has
been misused and thus become insufficiently expressive, the word “disorder” to
name not only the turbulent adventures of that distant age, but also the
syndrome of a chronic disease that the robust constitution of the Islamic umma has been bearing for long centuries. […]
“The third state, the state of fitna,
is mentioned at length in the Qur’ān as a
pathological phenomenon in the individual psychology and the collective history
of men. It is the state where the Islamic ideal of the moral, social,
political, and spiritual conduct does no longer inspire the action as it used
to do in the time of the model [the Prophet’s] lived once and considered as a
norm. Disorder resettles in morals just as in politics by the natural game of
interests, desires, and egoisms.”
Source : La
révolution à l’heure de l’Islam [The Islamic Method of Revolution], 1990,
p.18-19
Knowledge and Science
“I write Knowledge with an uppercase and
do the same with Science (in the singular) so as to shift from a conceptual
universe we have long heard of to quite another universe.
“The word Science does not have the same
sense as what I have meant so far in speaking of vanguard scholars and
philosophers whose multiple certainties of fact and whose notion of the
concrete has been dispelled and volatilized to the level of the theoretical.
Latter-day savants, desperate for some means of solid, absolute knowledge,
resign themselves to stumble about, passing from scientific discipline to
philosophical system in the quest of absolute truth more and more fleeting,
more and more out of reach.
We who have faith by the grace of God
(may God be praised!), we speak of Science and Knowledge to express the
revealed Truth, proceeding from our principles and with recourse to our
notional system, that of the Qur’ān.”
Source:
Winning the Modern World for Islam by Abdessalam Yassine, 2000, p. 103-4
The Affluents of Imān
The Affluents of Imān are acts of
worship (physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual) that strengthen faith [imān] and qualify their authors to start their
journey towards spiritual excellence [ihsān].
Many scholars of hadith, like al-Bayhaqi and al-Hulaymi, have
compiled them and enumerated them in the sixties and seventies. In his Method [al-Minhāj an-Nabawi], Imam Abdessalam
Yassine has grouped them into seventy-seven affluents which are in their turn
arranged in Ten Virtues [al-Khissāl al-‹Ashr] within a context of training the mumins-physically, intellectually, socially,
morally, and spiritually-to ascend the three stages of Islam (islam, imān, and ihsān)
inseparable from serving the other top-priority objective of uniting the Muslim
community worldwide.
Mumin
By mumin is meant not the ordinary muslim who performs the five pillars of Islam. To his observance of the five pillars of Islam the mumin adds moral rectitude through seeking to perfect his faith within a community that concurrently conducts the major jihad [against the ego] and the minor jihad [gainst injustice]. Such perfection can only be acquired through assimilating the Affluents of imgn altogether. Only then can he, man or woman, aspire to ihsgn, that is spiritual excellence, and be of the muhsins.
Companionship and Community [as-Sohba wa’l-Jamā’a]
It is the first of the Ten Virtues arranged by Imam Abdessalam Yassine
within a context of progress and ascension (moral, spiritual, and
intellectual.) Companionship and Community means to have a spiritual guide-who
is also your temporal guide unlike Sufi orders-who shows you the way towards
God through opening to you all the avenues of Jihad without exception.
The inward Jihad of the self in the company of your brothers and
sisters in faith comes in the first place; then follows the Jihad in all
spheres of life, not in the sense of military war exclusively, but rather in
the sense of acquiring all the means (scientific, economic, industrial,
technological, moral, and spiritual) susceptible to qualify our umma to transmit the Last Testament [the Qur’ān] to mankind in peaceful ways.
Thus, Companionship and Community are two sides of the same coin. In
other words, a mumin cannot attain spiritual
excellence in its most perfect form, that of the Prophet (God bless him and
give him peace), without being engaged in a communitarian, revivalist project
similar to that in which the Companions (God be pleased with them) were
involved.