This column was first published exactly a year back but it is
evergreen. It is being reproduced for those who want guidance
Let us all go back to the Prophet of our time
Karen Armstrong the famous author of ‘A History of God’, in her biography of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) has quoted a Canadian Scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith.
“The western people have a problem”, she repeats Smith’s words. “They suffer from an inability to recognize that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals. Unless Western civilization intellectually and socially, politically and economically, and the Christian Church theologically, can lean to treat other men with fundamental respect, these two in their turn would have failed to come to terms with the actualities of this century”.
The Canadian scholar had written these words shortly before the Suez Crisis. He had also observed in his analysis that “a healthy, functioning Islam had for centuries and centuries helped Muslims cultivate decent values which we in the West share, because they spring from a common tradition.”
More than two decades earlier, French scholar Ballac had observed: “I have excellent reasons to prophetise that the next century will be the century of Islam, and the West should start learning to live with this reality”.
This statement had been made by Ballac in 1938, a year before the Second World War.
In 2015 the world is living in an environment of virtual confrontation between the two civilizations, clash of which had been predicted by Huntington about a quarter of a century back in his best-selling book.
The rise of the IS in the middle east — even if it is a genuine outcome of extremism in the name of Islam (and not a sinister product of some deep-rooted conspiracy against Muslims), is a direct consequence of the two invasions that the mighty US-led West undertook in the wake of the notorious 9/11 which was promptly declared by Bush as an AlQaeda crime, but which in effect resulted in the erosion of the Palestinian cause on the one hand and the Kashmir cause on the other.
Karen Armstrong named her biography of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) as Mohammad—Prophet of Our Time. “I believe, “she has written in the book,” that once the West starts understanding the founder of Islam— and acknowledges that he signified peace and reconciliation, and not strife and conflict, the World will become a better place to live. Mohammad might have lived in the seventh century but he is essentially the Prophet of our Time.”
This view of Karen Armstrong mirrors the tribute that Allah Himself pays to his last Prophet.
“Rahmatulil Aalmeen”.
(The Benefactor of all the Universes)
