When it comes to complaining, we never get tired of it. We see only enemies around, who are out to destroy Islam, plunder our wealth, snatch away our genius, impose wars on us and then send us the contractors for reconstruction to bill us immensely. Share any session with Muslim youth, writers or intellectuals, the West, especially the United States, is the butt of attack for all that is wrong with the Muslim Community. We decry its mischievous moves, its diabolical designs on the oil wealth of the ‘stupid Arabs’, its sinister stratagems to drown the developing world under debts, preposterous policies that ignite wars. We have genuine reason to believe that the US and by extension, the West, is out to see that no challenge emerges to its supremacy around the world. Be it land, oceans or space, they alone plan to dominate the globe and the human imagination. No one should dare approach its economic and military might.
Granted, the US and its agencies, the UN, the NATO, etc. do all that. But all supremacists throughout the history have behaved the same way. Just look around. Aren’t we indebted to them for all that benefits us today? The cell-phones, the spaceships, the curative medicine and the restorative surgeries, the harvest-boosting farming techniques and the food-processing methods, the internet and the iPads, the cars and the jets that zoom through skies, the calculators, the TV and radio that inform and entertain us all through the day, the crime-busting forensic sciences, the sky-high cranes and tunnel-boring machines, the noise-shattering trains and the elevating lifts and above all, the computers that lend efficiency, are after all the gifts to the humanity from the West. Down to the dot pens and zips, nothing that helps us live, move, earn and learn today, is the outcome of the making of the Muslim world.
Just imagine what would be the world like today, if Thomas Edison had not invented electric bulb in 1879 or Ed Roberts had not invented the commercially successful Personal Computer in 1975?
Undoubtedly, the ones who help sustain life, cause comfort, quicken the pace of development, spread knowledge and invent things of use and innovate methods of a better life, deserve to be the bosses, maintain an upper hand and enjoy the maximum say in global affairs.
The Quran has declared: “… that which benefits the mankind, remains on the earth. Thus doth Allah set forth parables.” 13:17
The West has struggled for nearly five centuries, explored the earth, dredged its bowels, scaled the mountains, captured colossal amount of energy from the heart of the atom and the sun and dedicated lives to experiment with new ideas. And the Muslim world have diligently engaged themselves in bloodshed, indulged in corruption, trampled human and gender rights, downgraded everything that does not gel with their own narrow concept of piety and godliness, criticized the scientific discoveries, found fault with every new aspect of management of humanity, lampoon the West selectively for promoting obscenity and vulgarity, violated the rule of the law, made mockery of democracy and suppressed the weak and the voiceless. The West’s beneficence has dominated the five centuries and its mischief started only a century ago. The Master of this Universe, the Almighty Allah is just in his judgment. Those who benefit the humanity will prevail till their mischief surpasses it. All Nations, be they Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, reigned supreme till they were beneficial to the humanity. They attracted the wrath of Allah and together their own ruin when they became unjust, intolerant and turned tyrants. Once the mischief side begins to tip the scale of justice, the West too will begin to lose its supremacy. God extends the rope long enough for nation to engage in introspection. Those who reform, remain steady at the top. The ones, who refuse to see reason, join the heap of the vanquished.
