An excerpt taken from the fifty-seventh page of the booklet Râbita-i sherîfa by Sayyid Abdulhakîm ibni Mustafâ Arwâsî.
Islam is the way and rules which Allâhu ta’âlâ sent to His beloved Prophet Hadrat Muhammad through an angel named Jabrâil. Islam will make people comfortable and happy in this world and the next. Everything superior and useful is within Islam. Islam has gathered within itself all the visible and invisible excellences of the past sharî’ats. All sorts of happiness and success are within it. It consists of that which is essential and moral to unerring, unfailing minds.
People with faultless creation will not refuse or hate it. There is no harm in Islam. There is no benefit outside of Islam, nor can there be any. To think of any benefit outside of Islam would mean
to expect wine from a mirage. The Sharî’at commands us to improve countries and promote people, to love and help one another and to live in brotherhood, and asks us to respect the commandments of Allâhu ta’âlâ and pity creatures, to love the land and the flag of the native land, to obey the laws, and to pay taxes honestly and in time. It bears responsibility towards every creature. It provides for the purification of the nafs, and distinguishes bad habits from good ones. It commands us to have good habits, and severely refuses and prohibits bad habits. It commands us to get on well with non-Muslim citizens, owners of bid’at and those who follow different madhhabs, and it commands chastity and modesty in every respect. It forces us to be completely healthy. It refuses and prohibits laziness
and wasting time. It absolutely commands agriculture, trade and arts. It attaches due importance to knowledge, science, techniques and industry. It asks men to help and serve one another mutually. It forces us to protect the lives, property and chastities of those in other religions, sects and faiths, and severely prohibits to attack them or to form organizations that interfere with politics and state affairs. It teaches us the rights of individuals, children, families and peoples, and it observes a right and responsibility towards the living, the dead and the coming generations, towards everybody. It is Sa’âdat-i dârayn, that is, it includes the happiness of this world and the next.
Other religions are not so. All other religions have been defiled, and ideas and thoughts issuing from the human mind have taken the place of divine rules. For this reason, they have never been lâyataghayyar[1] and have remained only as forms and dead words over against an ever-improving and changing life. Allâhu ta’âlâ has based the Islamic dîn upon principles that will provide improvements to address the progress of life and life’s ever-changing needs. To say that the Sharî’at is the unchangeable rules based on the needs of the Middle Ages would mean to slander the Islamic dîn.
[On Wednesday, June 13, 1962, the morning papers of Istanbul stated as follows:
In 1953, 105 million of Africa’s population of 215 million were Muslims. This number has increased today. Because the Islamic dîn respects everybody’s honour and dignity with no regard to race, nationality, political belief, language or education, it brings
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[1] immutable, unalterable.
Misleading Muslim children with lies and slanders and enticing them by holding them to promises of money and rank, British agents and Jews uprooted the Islamic Ottoman State. They disseminated irreligiousness and made it a fashion among younger generations. They called such atrocities as women’s and girls’ going out without covering themselves properly, fornication, imbibition, immorality and irreligiousness, ‘progressivism’. They annihilated Islamic scholars, Islamic knowledge. British spies and freemasons disguised themselves as religious men and spoiled Islam’s pulchritudinous ethical values and tenets of worship. Islam became absent in essence and present in name. In the time of the Party of Union, even law-givers, beys and pashas became enemies of Islam. They enacted laws destructive
of Islam. Religious piety or devotedness became an offence. They gibbetted numerous Muslims and slaughtered many others. Observing religious practices and prohibitions was called separatism. Those who performed Amr-i ma’rûf, that is, who taught Islam or wrote about it correctly, were called ‘enemies of the regime’. Al-hamdu-li-llah (thanks and praise be to Allah)! Such Christian aggressions did not continue. The Islamic sun is shining again in our cherished country. The enemy’s lies and treacheries have given themselves away. True religious teachings are being published freely. Therefore, every Muslim must show his gratitude for this freedom and endevour to learn correctly this sacred religion of ours for which our ancestors sacrificed their lives. If we do not teach our religion to our children and initiate them into
leading a life of obedience to the Sharî’at, the enemy lying in wait and their fatuous mercenaries will resume their onslaught to defile our progeny. Today, people living in Europe and America believe in life after death, Paradise and Hell. Their churches and synagogues swarm with them weekly. Religious teaching is compulsory in their schools. If a person says that Europeans and Americans are wise, modern and civilized people and boasts about imitating them in lying, imbibition, gambling, fornication and adultery and then does not believe as they do, isn’t he a liar? We, Muslims, say that Europeans are ignorant, idiotic, and primitive because they divinize Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihis-salâm’ and his mother. They worship him. This makes them polytheists. Among them, those who conduct themselves in conformity with hadrat Muhammad’s
‘alaihis-salâm’ Sharî’at in their worldly occupations attain Allâhu ta’âlâ’s blessings, living in comfort and peace. Yet because they do
not believe in this exalted Prophet and his Sharî’at, they shall burn eternally in Hell.]