Volume 10 Surah 12 - 15 - Enjoy Islam

Yūsuf (Joseph) | BROTHERS’ REUNION
Those writers and researchers look for a solution which enables them to advocate
the Islamic system and its institutions, and to operate its values and laws. The first
thing to trouble them is how the members of the Consultative Council are to be
selected if they cannot put their names forward or speak about their own qualities.
How are the right people to be known in communities such as we have today where
people do not know each other’s virtues and are not judged by the right standards of
honesty, efficiency and integrity? They are also troubled by the method of choosing a
head of state. Is he to be chosen by public referendum, or by the Consultative
Council? If he is the one who nominates the members of the Consultative Council,
how are these to select him in future? Will they not feel indebted to him and wish to
return his favour? Besides, if they are the ones to select or elect him, will they not
have leverage over him, when he is overall leader? When nominating them, will he
not choose only those who are loyal to him? Such questions are endless.
The starting point in this maze is the assumption that our society today is a
Muslim one, and that we only need to have the rules and laws ready to implement
them, changing nothing of society’s set-up, values and moral principles. When we
start at this point, we are in a vacuum, and as we move on further into this vacuum,
we will soon feel dizzy as if we are moving through an endless maze.
The present society in which we live is not an Islamic one, and it will not be the
one in which the Islamic system and its rules and values will be implemented. They
are impossible to implement in such a society because, by nature, they neither start
nor operate in a vacuum. Islamic society is composed of individuals and groups that
strive and struggle in order to bring it about, facing all the pressures to which they
may be subjected by the state of ignorance, or jāhiliyyah, that prevails in other
societies. The status and qualities of these individuals come to be recognized during
the struggle. Thus the Islamic society is a newborn society that moves along its set
course, aiming to liberate mankind, throughout the world from submission to any
authority other than God.
Countless other issues are raised along with that of choosing the leader and
selecting the Consultative Council. These are all tackled by writers who try to fit
Islam to the present society with all its principles, moral values, and various
concepts. They preoccupy themselves with questions such as banks and insurance
companies and the usurious basis of their work, family planning and similar matters.
In all these, they either respond to questions which people put to them, or they try to
look at their status in an Islamic society. But they all begin at the point that leads
them into the maze, assuming that fundamental Islamic principles will be
implemented in the current social structures that have their un-Islamic basis. They
think that when this is done, these societies become Islamic. This is both ludicrous
and sad at the same time.
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