“They (the non-believers) want to extinguish the light of Allah with the winds of their mouths (but unknown to them), Allah has perfected His light even though the unbelievers passionately abhor that fact….”Q. 62: 8
Monologue
It is a fact of historical reality that Muslims anywhere in the contemporary world are brothers and sisters of other Muslims everywhere. Thus, the plight of American Muslims before the outbreak of the pandemic called coronavirus must be a concerned plight of all Muslims worldwide.
And now that some of those American Muslims who have innocently fallen prey to that pandemic are being buried indiscriminately in the rubbles of mass graves, the concern for their plight must astronomically rise in intensity.
This is because, given their numerical weakness and insignificant amount of wealth, the situation of Muslims in that devil’s own country is hardly better than that of a lily by the mossy stone. But before we talk of the plight of those Muslims vis a vis the fortressing resilience that sustains the formidability of their faith, let us examine some fundamental questions that need to be fundamentally answered if only for posterity.
For instance, how did Islam find its way into that country despite the pathological hatred of the imperialists therein for the concept of Allah as the Creator and Protector of the universe? And, how have the Muslims in that so-called ‘New World’ been coping with the implacable apartheid against their faith?
Preamble
Looking at Islam globally today vis-a-vis the multifarious problems incessantly confronting its adherents, there is tendency for some ignorant and parochial people to think vaingloriously that they have succeeded in plotting the end of Allah’s divine religion.
That tendency is particularly manifest in Nigeria where blind imitation has become the culture of certain lotus eaters who have adopted the lifestyle of vultures that are always looking for the carcasses of preys to devour greedily.
From their actions and utterances, the merchants of that obnoxious culture are desperately looking for anything, no matter how devilish, that can pave their ways towards profiting from it.
But because of their untameable avarice and greed, such merchants cannot understand that when a gargantuan institution like Islam is about to take an unprecedented leap towards heightening human civilization, it must undergo a trying moment. Such a momentary trial is an indication that an arrogant power somewhere in the world is about to fall.
This is not new in history. Those who are adequately familiar with the World History will recall that similar scenarios had occurred to certain arrogant powers like the old Greek and Roman Empires as well as many others in the past centuries, at the peak of their arrogance.
At least, we can still see through the spectacles of history that if the sun of the once so-called Great British Empire did not eclipse unexpectedly, at its prime, an imperialist America would not have emerged as a foremost modern day world power. And, we have not forgotten that the latter was once a colony of the former. More will be said about this, in this column, in the near future in sha’Allah.
Essence of Instinct
Instinct is the main cursor of vision. It is the indicator of where today’s cruising ship will anchor tomorrow. A man without instinct can be likened to a blind bull struggling to pass through the hole of a needle.
An example of that assertion is now being exhibited in the United States of America. Without instinct there can be neither projection nor premonition. All visionary prophecies of the past were based on regulated divine instincts.
It was only by divine instinct that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was able to prophesy the signs of the last days when he said: “One of the signs of the last days is for the sun to rise in the West and set in the East….” This prophecy is heavily pregnant with meanings.
Which sun was Allah’s last Messenger to mankind talking about? Was it the physical or the hypothetical sun? Before now, only a few people of visionary posture in the West could comprehend that prophecy as much as the celebrated Irish Christian playwright, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
His Prediction
Based on his understanding of the contents of the above mentioned divine prophecy, George Bernard Shaw decided to study Islam through deep and comprehensible researches. And consequently, he concluded as follows:
“The Medieval Ecclesiastics, either through ignorance or bigotry, painted Islam, which they renamed Mohammedanism, in the darkest colours. In fact, they were trained both to hate the man (Muhammad) and his religion.
To them he was anti-Christ… I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing face of existence which can make itself appealing to every understanding age.
I have studied him, the wonderful man, and in my opinion, far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the saviour of humanity.
I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness”.
“I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today…”
Analysis
America was just emerging as a champion of the modern world when Bernard Shaw made his famous prediction quoted above. Western civilization was then restricted to Europe and Shaw had perceived any emerging civilization from America as an extension of that of Europe.
He had thought that whatever would be acceptable to Europe ought to be automatically acceptable to the emerging power of the New World, the latter being an offshoot of the former. Although, Islam had reached America long before Christopher Columbus arrived in what was then perceived as a New World, very little was known about the Muslims in that country until 1886 when one Moorish immigrant, by name Noble Drew Ali, of North Carolina started to propagate Islamic faith to the black masses in that country.
However, the fact that Noble D. Ali’s jihad became a prominent feature through the growth of media influence in the United States did not necessarily make him the first American Muslim preacher.
A Valid Question
Today, with a Muslim population of about 4 million and almost 4000 Mosques, who says Bernard Shaw’s prediction of the early 20th century has not become a reality? If there is still any country in the world today where Islam is not rapidly growing, the name of that country must be coded in retardation.
Today, the geometrical growth of Muslim population in the US, despite all odds, has confirmed Islam as an official religion in America.
Today, there are about 2000 Muslim associations and over 400,000 businesses as well as about 310 regular publications under the firm control of American Muslims. These are not only providing jobs for the residents, they are also enhancing America’s social security.
The Root of Islam in America
The real historical root of Islam in the US is actually traceable to 1790 when the South Carolina legislative body granted special social status to a community of Moroccans, which gave that community the freedom to practise its religion. And in 1797, President John Adams signed a legal policy declaring that United States had no “character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musulmen (Muslims)”.
And, another American President, Benjamin Franklin’s Position in his autobiography, published in 1791 stated as follows: “ I did not disapprove of a meeting place in Pennsylvania designed to accommodate preachers of all religions”. He concluded that: “even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach ‘Mohammedanism’ (Islam) to us, he would find a pulpit at his service”.
President Thomas Jefferson’s Stand
President Thomas Jefferson, on his own, defended religious freedom in America, including those of Muslims and, he explicitly mentioned Muslims when writing about the movement for religious freedom in Virginia.
And, also, in his own autobiography, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “When the Virginia bill for establishing religious freedom was finally passed,… a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal.
Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’
The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection for the Jews, the Gentile, the Christians and Mahometans (Muhammedans), the Hindus and the infidels of every denomination”.
Thus, as a confirmation of that policy, President Jefferson also joined the Tunisian Ambassador for an Iftar (Ramadan fast breaking) in 1809 making him the very first American President to break fast officially with Muslims in America.
Despite the propaganda through over 60,000 publications by the Western Orientalists between 1800 and 1950, disparaging Islam and denigrating the personality of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), that divine religion continued to wax stronger even as it has consistently displayed unprecedented dynamism as a religion of all times and all ages.
Today, with a global population of about 1.8 billion adherents around the world, and, with certain mundane ideologies and philosophies crumbling like a pack of cards before its illuminating glow, Islam has remained an unstoppable religion, in spite of implacable hostility to it just for pecuniary reason in blind countries like Nigeria.
African American Muslims
The African Americans’ involvement in the propagation of a religion of immigrants though began in 1960s/70s in the American society, Islam had actually made its way into that country in the sixteenth century when Muslims were brought as slaves from Africa but were forced to convert to Christianity.
Those Muslims were followed by a new wave of immigrants who came in the late nineteenth century as labourers from the Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
In the second half of the twentieth century, a large number of Muslims came from virtually every country of the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia who were more sophisticated than their predecessors in Islamic understanding and propagation.
As those immigrants settled in large cities and small towns, they built Mosques, Islamic Cultural Centres, and Schools. Today, indigenous American Muslims, who have grown in number to well over a million, have succeeded in transforming Islam into an American religion.
A Track Master
In 1888, the American Ambassador in Philippines, Alexander Russell Webb, surprisingly became a track master by embracing Islam and by becoming the first prominent Anglo-American Muslim in history. Thus, given his status, he became the only person that represented Islam from the US at the first Parliament for the World’s Religions in 1893. That shows how long it has taken the American Muslims to take Islam through a tortuous path in its journey to success.
New York Times
In an article once published in the New York Times and entitled: ‘Muslim Schools in the U.S.: A Voice for Identity’, one Susan Sachs wrote on the rising demands for Islamic schools in the U.S. thus: “across the country, Islamic schools…that offer religion and Arabic classes…are expanding and flourishing, with many becoming oversubscribed so quickly that principals are scrambling for money to build more.
Thus, the surge in the number of Islamic schools may be attributed to the success and determination of a Muslim community that strives “to define itself as a cohesive religious minority in the secular American society”. That was a testimony by an indigenous American to the rapid growth of Islam in a secular America.
The World Street Journal
Before the referred article, an article had earlier appeared in ‘The World Street Journal’ on August 7, 1887, which reported thus: “At a time when Marxism is so debilitated and is being shored up by capitalism; when Christianity lacks much of the missionary fire that once drove it; when Maoism is all but entombed with its founder and when democracy sounds only a muted appeal to much of the world, Islamic fundamentalism stands out as the movement on the march”.
By and large today, not only is Islam formally recognized as the third official religion after Christianity and Judaism in the US, it has also become a tradition for the President and his cabinet to host Muslim leaders in that country to Iftar (fast breaking) during the month of Ramadan.
Today, with technology virtually reaching its climax, and backed up by over 60% of the world’s oil reserve in the Islamic world, the rising of the sun from the West as prophesied by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is becoming an undeniably vivid reality.
Were George Bernard Shaw alive today he would have nodded with delight to this axiomatic fact.
Conclusion
Given the above historical account, it is unimaginable that a 21st century American President like Donald Trump, who also has personal businesses in many other countries of the world, will want to rubbish his predecessors by destroying the solid foundation which those predecessors had laid for America’s greatness.
But, if, on the other hand, he goes ahead to play a bull in the china shop it will still not be strange. After all, not every child who bears a father’s name can be truly legitimate. With an erratic executive order being signed frequently by fiat, President Donald Trump who has been seeking to ban about 134 million Muslims across seven nations with a view to banishing Islam from America may inadvertently end up being the greatest promoter of Islam in American history.
Meanwhile, for the benefit of doubt, America and other antagonistic countries should know that Islam is like the sun in its full regalia. Any blind person who claims not to recognize its presence is only playing an ostrich. With or without recognition, the sun will always dwell majestically in the orbit with its photosynthesizing rays aglow.
Today is today. Tomorrow is tomorrow. None can take the place of the other. That is a food for thought. When the time comes, history will automatically open up its relevant pages for reading by seekers of the truth. RAMADAN KARIM!
