The Peaceful and Military Solutions to the Question of Palestine (4–4)

Al‑Mujtama Magazine posed several questions to leading writers and scholars concerning our contemporary problems. Sheikh Muhammad al‑Ghazali graciously responded to these questions. The magazine is pleased to present the questions and answers in a series. In the past three episodes, he answered three questions.

In this episode, we present Sheikh al‑Ghazali’s answer to the fourth question:

The Question

There are rising tendencies toward unity or federation in our region under the slogans of Arab nationalism or progressive forces, or calls for regional groupings such as a “Greater Maghreb.” What is your view of this kind of thinking? Do you have an alternative or another formula to present to the Muslim community?

Regional Groupings and Islamic Unity

Regional groupings within the framework of economic and developmental integration are not objectionable. Indeed, it may be in the public interest to study the vast lands of the Islamic world to establish many organized groupings east and west, ensuring material and social progress.

The Greater Maghreb, the Nile Valley, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indonesian archipelago, or other coherent economic units can be born and grow within the unified Islamic entity that must return once more to international life. The difficulties imagined before any Islamic grouping are less than those that have already arisen before any Arab grouping.

Yet Muslim strugglers face long stages before they can establish a great Islamic union that gathers Muslims together, heals their wounds, liberates their enslaved, and repels aggression against them. I do not understand why the existence of China is considered a normal reality—800 million people forming a unified state—while the existence of Islam is dismissed as an impossible fantasy, even if only as a federation of states or a confederation of fraternal nations.

Colonialism’s Assault on Islamic Unity

Unfortunately, Muslim affairs are not treated with ordinary reason. Colonial influence and humiliating subservience to cultural invasion are the basis of the strange frown toward any talk of Islam, its great nation, and its longed‑for unity.

The colonial raid launched by Europe against Islam and its followers nearly two centuries ago targeted two terrible objectives:

1.      To reject any meeting upon Islam among its peoples, tearing apart inherited loyalty to the Islamic union, and reviving genuine or fabricated nationalist tendencies that made members of the same family estranged, disregarding one another, and failing to respect the bond of shared religion. Thus Muslims became scattered into 60 or 70 nationalities in the international arena.

2.     To kill faith in the consciences of individuals, separating behavior from belief, so that conduct deviated and faith shrank. Society became a theater for entrenched vices, obeyed desires, and reckless currents. What remained of religion turned into empty forms and petty innovations that availed their owners nothing.

By both means, colonialism succeeded in reaching its goals. Establishing Israel became easy after this double preparation: removing loyalty to Islam in public life, and weakening the bond of creed in worship, morals, and other dealings.

Every Tendency Weakening Islam Serves Colonialism

We can say without hesitation or flattery that every tendency aiming to weaken Islam—whether as a union or as an individual conscience—is nothing but an extension of colonial encroachment and a vile encirclement of the remnants of faith in our hearts.

Israel will find no better aid to its survival and victories over us than these tendencies. I do not know how such religious betrayals spread throughout the Arab nation.

There is an equation every Arab must memorize by heart: “Arabs – Islam = Zero.” Yes, Arabs without their religion are worth nothing.

Arabism and Islam: Indivisible

We Muslims of Africa never distinguished between Arabism and Islam. Likewise, European historians did not know such a distinction when Gustave Le Bon said: “The world has never known a conqueror more merciful than the Arabs.”

Until the humiliating innovation invented by Michel Aflaq appeared, proposing that distancing from Islam was the path to Arab renaissance.

In reality, with that cry the man was digging the Arab grave, to bury in it both a nation and a message.

It is not strange for someone like him to do what he did. What is strange is that some people were seduced by his slogan, hastening to apostatize from Islam and disbelieve in God and His messengers. What did they gain? No call has ever appeared more ominous upon its people, more manifest in failure, and worse in consequence than this apostate call.

Perhaps Arabs will come to reason after the flames of events have scorched their skin, realizing where these deceptions have led them, and how they have smeared their faces with dust.

Islam and Religious Tolerance

One final falsehood must be refuted: Islam does not know fanaticism against other religions, nor does it make religious difference a pretext for fighting and strife.

Had the few million Jews of the world lived among Muslims, they would not have felt injustice nor complained of persecution, as befell them in Europe.

Europe cast its disease upon us and slipped away. It has always made religious and sectarian differences the cause of wars and hostilities. With this mentality, it seeks to tear apart the Arab entity in which Christians lived for long ages as citizens equal to Muslims in rights and duties.

Its aim is either to kill Islam or to create sectarian strife everywhere. The plan is known, and Muslims must despise it, despise its promoters, and expose those behind them.

Arabs Cannot Abandon Islam

The demand that Arabs abandon Islam is a baseness without foundation. I say to my people: you have no choice in the face of clear global conspiracies. You are required to apostatize from your religion and surrender your homelands.

Published in Al‑Mujtama Magazine, Issue 22, Tuesday, August 11, 1970