There is a joke that I read some time ago. It goes 'How many Muslims does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: None, they'd rather sit in the dark and blame the Jews'. Now, on the face of it, that joke is just a mildly offensive renationalisation of Muslims general in-ability to do anything. Or is it? I've been thinking, are we all really just sitting in the dark? Do we really just blame someone else for our problems? And in my opinion, yes, we are. We really are sitting in the dark these days. Muslim countries are generally more backward than their 'western' counterparts, our people are often ill-educated and we seem reliant on the 'west' for so much. Oh, and we certainly spend a lot of time blaming others for our issues, we seem to be attack the 'west' continually while at the same time aspiring to be more 'western'.
Why is this? We have a great history of leading the world in so many fields, our religion encourages development. We are certainly not short on the resources front, nor on the people front. Yes, our old empires are ruins, we lost our libraries, our universities, our great cities but that was centuries ago! Why has no new great Muslim nation risen yet? Why are do we spend so much energy feuding? Why is it that the Gulf region, the 'centre' of our faith squanders it's wealth on palaces while the people live in apathy? Asia is doing better, Malaysia is a good example of a nation that's at least doing some thing right, but it's an exception rather than the norm. What about our 'Leaders'? Dictators rule supreme in our Umnah, something that Islam is against, whether it be the House of Saud or the tin pot despots that used to be in charge of places like Indonesia and Pakistan. Then we have the 'failed states', Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, what happened there? How did that go so wrong?
In my view, the answer is simple, we have lost our faith. We seem to have strayed far from the ideals of our beliefs and we now pay the consequences. Islam warns us of all the mistakes we have made, whether it be squandering our wealth, letting dictators rule, oppressing education or simply not keeping our duties, it's all there!
So, what do we do? Well, the first and most important thing is to discuss the issue and admit it is a problem. In the past, Muslims were encouraged to look at the issues we faced and sort them. There is even record of our leaders ordering this to be done!
That is where you the reader come in. The aim of this blog is to inspire us to start talking about our religion again, to face our issues and solve them. We want you, no not want, NEED, you to contribute, because the only way to solve this is together. So write, speak, make a video, draw, whatever, just do something and send it to us. We have to get our religion back and the only way to do it is to join forces and act! No one is helpless, no one can't do something, we all have something to offer here. We were each given gifts in this life, let's use them...
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