The Next 100 Years

When you sit down to plan your future, how far does your mind take you? A week, a month, a year or maybe ten years? How does your thinking differ from planning your week to planning the next decade? When we consider unpredictable changes in the future, complexities arise as to how we can do effective planning. To overcome the complexities and make more accurate prediction, we must acquire maturity in thinking.

Maturity in Thinking

The ability to make sound judgements and solve problems is necessary and relevant at every stage of life. At times, a young person may be surprisingly mature, while at other times the behaviours and choices of adults testify to their immaturity.

The tribe of Bani Abdul Qays was the first delegation to arrive in Madinah in the fifth year of Hijrah. After embracing Islam, thirteen or fourteen of them came to the Prophet (sa) in one of the Hurum Months. Their chief was Al-Ashaj Abdul Qais, to whom the Messenger of Allah (sa) said: “You possess two characteristics beloved to Allah (swt): forbearance (Al-Hilm) and farsightedness (Al-Anaat).” He asked the Prophet (sa): “Did I develop these traits or did Allah (swt) bless me with them?” To which the Prophet (sa) replied: “Allah (swt) blessed you with these traits.”

Maturity in thinking is a mix of both Al-Hilm and Al-Anaat; therefore, one has to pray to Allah (swt) to acquire these traits.

Our maturity level is directly co-related with our levels of gratification, which determines how we are motivated to action:

Immediate gratification: In such individuals, who seek immediate gratification in any task at hand, often their desires take over wisdom, resulting in bad decisions. Their focus is mostly on their own selves, and they choose “now” over “tomorrow”, which is a poor facilitating factor for planning the future.
Delayed gratification: These individuals are able to conquer their base desires and give preference to long-term goals over more immediate ones. Their level of patience is higher, which results in improved decision making and ability to achieve goals. They generally lead a more successful life than the first category.
Gratification beyond oneself: These individuals address their own needs as well as needs of others. This category proves to be the most successful, when it comes to addressing global issues and putting effort for major changes.

The current weak state of the Muslim Ummah can be strengthened only by developing leaders, who are mature thinkers. We need knowledgeable and sensible leaders like Allama Iqbal, who said: “The new world that is yet to appear has yet to be destined by Allah (swt) but in my eyes, I see the dawn of it showing up from behind the curtains.” Through this he was sharing with his fellow Muslims his excitement about the future of our nation.

Our next 100 years can only be saved by the people who will serve the Ummah by looking beyond themselves and addressing problems before they occur.

Our Ummah at Stake

What enables a nation to overcome crises is not its ethnic, cultural, religious or geographical qualities but its ability to adapt to the challenge and response cycle, whereby it develops new strategies and generates new energies to handle the ever-growing situations.

This is exactly what is lacking in the Muslim world today. Belief in Islam by itself cannot be sufficient to manage social and political problems. Justification by faith alone cannot be a remedy either. The Quran talks about humanity’s destiny in the world and explains how humans can address the trials and hardships that are part and parcel of this transitory life.

Faith is an enormously precious and important source of knowledge, courage and determination. But it should not lead to religious arrogance and intellectual laziness. When this happens, faith provides no answers to our problems on this earth. Islam marked the end of prophecy, not human intelligence.

Prophet Muhammad (sa) used to seek refuge in Allah (swt) from laziness – he used to mention it daily in this Dua: “O Allah, I take refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, weakness and laziness, miserliness and cowardice, the burden of debts and from being overpowered by men.” (Bukhari)

There was a time when Muslims were the greatest inventors in the world, with towering mathematicians, such as Al-Khwarizmi, from whose name comes the term “algorithm”, physicians, such as Avicenna, who became the father of modern medicine, or philosophers, such as Averroes, who introduced Europe to Aristotle. However, unfortunately they have had greater impact on the Western culture than on Muslims.

Intellectual laziness is truly a disease that destroys aspiration and determination and breaks the Ummah’s back. It is the source of our weakness and defeat as an Ummah and the source of our humility. It is time to make serious effort to fight it.

In a time of deep confusion and anger, we must learn to shed our intellectual laziness and awaken in all of us a new spirit of vitality that looks outward to the world.

Learn to See Patterns

Before we start making predictions about the future of the Muslim Ummah, it is very important to learn about what happened to Muslims in the past.

We all have heard the saying “history repeats itself” – does it mean that if America attacked Vietnam during the 1960s, then it will be attacking again in 2020? No! It means that if we do not improve or bring changes in our past behaviours, there is a high probability that we may face the same results in the future – this is how a “pattern” gets developed.

In order to bring change and observe patterns, we must broaden our horizon; we cannot merely predict the future of the Ummah by looking at our individual behaviour or by studying the history of our country. We must expand the playground and study the behavioural patterns of all the Muslims countries across the globe based on certain principles:

Identity

People unite into uniquely identifiable groups. Today, the most popular form of these groups is nation states.
Those under the rule of another people start looking down at their own identity.
Long-term identity is now derived only on the basis of ethnicity, language, and/or faith.

Economy

Whenever the benefits of economic progress were available to a privileged few, the overall economy became poorer over time. The opposite is also true.
Economies grow with trade, manufacturing and innovation.

Strength

The stability of a society depends on the strength of the state or the involvement of cooperative collectives or both.
The strength of a state is measured by its ability to ensure the rule of law.
The involvement of collectives in solving social problems provides support for a stable society.
A strong state and a stable society are the foundation for building national power.

Power

States derive power from what they have and others want or fear.
States at the peak of their perfection begin to decline.

Progress

Progress is the increase in the society’s power. Examples of countries who have experienced progress by starting voluntary programmes to help address the issues of their nation are: Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Patterns of Change and Progress

Geography can limit and enable invasions.
Culture is transient in connected societies.
Culture is molded by new values.
Technology accelerates the pace of growth of an economy.
Development of able leaders prepares societies for their toughest moments.

At present Muslims all across the world are in a situation of extreme difficulties to keep their identity and the honour that comes with it. To the developed world, Muslims are barbaric extremists, who have no contribution to the present civilized world. Moreover, the rise in such opinion and judgments have made Muslims forget what they once were. We need to remember the days of glory.

Muslims need to remember that in its days of glory, Islam was the religion that dominated the world and the Muslim empire expanded to the farthest regions. When the West was in dark ages, it was the Muslim world that was on its peak – making scientific, philosophical, economic and political progress. It is on the remains of this glory of Muslim world that the Renaissance in Europe grew. Therefore, it is imperative that Muslims at present realize their past. However, these memories of the past by no means should be taken as remaining in the past; rather, the Muslim world needs to take the spirit of the past and implement it in their present. Only when Muslims realize what they have once been, then can they understand their potential and work towards achieving it.

Revival of the Muslim Ummah

Despite the existence of uncountable wealth in the form of natural resources, a huge population, and many young people with academic degrees and technical education in the Muslim world, the question arises: why is the Ummah in such a state of disarray? The answer is: a decline in the productive way of thinking.

Muslims no longer refer to Islam for solving the problems of life; rather, they refer to it only in the areas of worship and moral actions, that is, those aspects of Islam which pertain to individual practices.

Some points that the Muslims need to keep in mind:

The way forward for the Ummah in solving problems is not a call for increasing the wealth at the Ummah’s disposal, nor a call for increasing the level of technology, nor is it a call to increase level of academic education.
When the Prophet (sa) brought revival to the Arabs, he focused on none of these things. Materialistic things are in themselves of no value in the shaping of a society or the defining of its objectives. They are merely tools, which can be used for a particular purpose, that purpose being decided by the thoughts and ideas of the people who own the tools. If the thoughts are absent, or unproductive, so too will be the tools.
Accordingly, we see multitudes of young men with Ph.D. waiting on restaurant tables, billions of dollars’ worth or natural resources being wasted and robbed in various parts of the world, and vast armies and arsenals of weapons sitting idly. Therefore, increasing in any of these areas on its own will achieve nothing.
This pointless race for materialistic change is encouraged by the West and their agents in the Islamic lands. They hope this will act as a diversion for the Ummah from carrying out its true task, which is intellectual change.
We should fundamentally change the way of thinking of the Muslims, such that they understand that their Deen is an ideology, which will define their objectives and which they will refer to in all aspects of life.

When Muslims have done this, the Ummah can use all the assets it has to drive itself towards the correct station as the leading nation in the world, progressive more than any other in justice, technology, education and in all other materialistic achievements, just as was the case before. All these will come when Muslims understand that the greatest wealth a nation could hope to have is not the material wealth, but the intellectual wealth with a spiritually stabilized core.

Adapted from “The Next 100 Years”, a workshop by Mr. Kamran Abdur Raoof at Azaan Institute, Karachi