Attaining happiness in both worlds depends only, and only, upon following Hadrat Muhammad ‘’alaihi’s-salâm’, who is the master of thisworldand the next. To follow him, it is necessary to have îmân and to learn and to observe the rules of Islam.
The symptom of true îmân’s existence in the heart is to bear hostility against disbelievers and to annihilate the things that are peculiar to them and that are the symptoms of disbelief. For, Islam and kufr are opposites, antonyms of each other. Where one of them exists, the other cannot stay and goes away. These two opposite things cannot stay in the same place together. To esteem one of them means to insult, to abhor the other. Allâhu ta’âlâ commands Hadrat Muhammad, His beloved Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’, who has the attribute khulk-i azîm and who is very merciful, to perform jihâd, to make war against disbelievers and to treat them severely. This means to say that it is khulk-i azîm to behave severely towards disbelievers. The dignity and honour of Islam is in insulting disbelief and disbelievers. He who glorifies and respects disbelievers insults and dishonors the Muslims. [Declaring in the Qur’ân, in the one hundred and forty-ninth âyat of Sûrat-u Âl-i ’Imrân that those who esteem and follow disbelievers are wrong and will repent, Allâhu ta’âlâ states: “O those who believe my beloved Prophet! If you, believing the words of disbelievers, deviate from the way of my Messenger, and if you, taken in by the lurid and mendacious statements of those who pretend to be Muslims, let your faith and îmân be stolen, you will be at a loss in this world and the next.”]
Allâhu ta’âlâ declares that disbelievers are His and His Prophet’s ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ enemies. To love the enemies of Allâhu ta’âlâ and to cooperate with them causesone to become hostile against Allâhu ta’âlâ and His Prophet. A person thinks of himself as a Muslim, expresses the word tawhîd, and says, “I believe,” and performs namâz and every act of worship, but, on the other hand, he cooperates with disbelievers. Yet he does not know that these loathsome actions of his will extirpate his being a Muslim and his îmân.
[Disbelievers are people who dislike the Islamic religion of the Messenger of Allah and who say that it dosen’t correspond with our age, the age and science, and renegades who publicly and basely make fun of Muslims and Islam. Because remaining outside Islam befits their pleasures, lusts and inner secret desires, they call it “retrogression” to be a Muslim. They call disbelief and irreligiousness “modernism, civilization and enlightenment.” Murtadds (renegades) are people who were born from Muslim parents and yet who know nothing of Islam. These people haven’t read or understood any books by any Islamic scholar, dislike Islam and, being seized by the present-day currents, they say that Islam prevents progress, only in order to obtain a favour, some sympathy or something worldly.
Some of them, in order to deceive innocent children, say, “In Islam everything ends in ‘said so’. It is always based upon ‘said so’ by saying, ‘It has been said by so and so.’ It is not based upon a document or a voucher, whereas other branches of knowledge are proved and are based on documents.” These words of theirs manifest how ignorant they are. They have never read an Islamic book at all. Fantasizing in their imaginations something under the name of Islam, they presume that Islam is nothing but these thoughts of theirs. They don’t know that the branches of knowledge and science, proofs and documents, which they consider as different and far away from Islam, are each a section, a branch of Islam. For example, all of the scientific knowledge, the books of physics, chemistry and biology that are taught in high schools today say in their initial pages: “The essence of our lesson is observation, examination and experimentation.” That is, these three things are the basis of scientific knowledge. In fact, all these three are the things which Islam commands. That is, our religion commands us to learn scientific knowledge. In many places of the Qur’ân al-kerîm, we are commanded to see and observe nature, that is, all creatures, living and lifeless beings. One day our Prophet’s As-hâb-i-kirâm ‘’alaihim-ur-ridwân’ asked him, “Some of us who have been to Yemen saw that they budded the date trees in a different way and reaped better dates. Shall we bud our trees in Medina as our fathers had been doing or as we have seen them do in Yemen, thus getting better and more plentiful dates?”
Rasûlullah could have answered them, “Wait a bit! When Hadrat Jabrâil (Gabriel) comes, I will ask him and tell you what I learn,” or “I must think for a while; when Allâhu ta’âlâ lets my heart know the truth, I will tell you.” He didn’t. Instead, he said: “Try it! Bud some of the trees with your father’s method, and others with the method you saw being used in Yemen! Then always use the method which gives better dates!” In other words, he commanded us to experiment and to rely on experimentation, which is the basis of science. He could have learned it from the angel or, no doubt, it might have materialized in his blessed heart. But he pointed out that all over the world Muslims who will exist until the end of the world should rely on experimentation and science. The event about budding the date trees is written in Kimyâ-i se’âdet and also in the hundred and eighteenth page of Ma’rifatnâma. Islam emphatically commands every kind of work, working in all the branches of science, on knowledge and morals. It is written in books that all these efforts are fard-i kifâya (a fard which is no longer an obligation for other Muslims when one Muslim does it. That is, when one Muslim does it, the others no longer have to do it). Moreover, if a tool or a means newly discovered by science is not produced in an Islamic country, and if any Muslim suffers harm for his reason, the administrators, the authorities of that country, will be held responsible according to Islam. It was declared in a hadîth: “Teach your sons how to swim and how to shoot arrows! What a beautiful amusement it is for women to spin threads in their homes.” This hadîth commands us to procure every kind of knowledge and weaponry necessary for war, never to remain idle, and to find useful amusements. Today, it is for this reason that it is fard for a Muslim nation to make the latest weaponry and artificial satellites. By doing so, Islam will be known all over the world. Not striving to make them will be a grave sin.
Source: Endless Bliss (Se’âdet-i Ebediyye) by Hüseyn Hilmi Işık, Nineteenth Edition, Hakikat Kitabevi, 20014
