We see that in every age of history millions of people bearing various different lineages of blood, speaking many different languages and, attached to different customs and traditions have established an empire, gathering around one belief or one idea, paying no attention to such differences.
Chronologically, we come across the greatest, the most beautiful of the empires or states established as such during the Middle Ages. We know that great masses of people of various races became one single ummat and established an Islamic state, and then an Islamic empire, based upon the Islamic dîn, the one and only undefiled, unchanged dîn. The basis that kept this state and empire on its foot was the principles of Islam, such as studiousness, justice, goodness and reverence, which were commanded by Allâhu ta’âlâ. The power that took the Ottoman Turks from the riverside of Sakarya to the gates of Vienna in a short time was the lightsome way, the progressive way of the soul and body: the Islamic faith, to which Sultan ’Uthman and his children held very fast. Since there is no racism
in Islam, each Muslim is a brother to another.
If the Turanian Huns, who went to force open the gates of France, the only fortress of Christian Europe, with a seven hundred thousand strong army under the command of Attila [d. 168 years before the Hegira] had gone there after having been honoured with Islam and had taken Islamic morals and the Islamic spirit with them, would not Western Christians, who had become disgusted with the oppression of priests and the torment of kings, have embraced them, like the Christians of Damascus, who admired the justice, the mercy in Hadrat ’Umar’s army, and become Muslim willingly? And what would have been the religious make-up of today’s Europe?
The Amawîs (Umayyads) introduced the Islamic dîn to Europe through Spain. By establishing the universities of Morocco, Cordova and Granada, they radiated the lights of knowledge and science towards the West. By awakening the
Christian world, they founded the basis of today’s technical progress. As it is written in all encyclopedias, the world’s first university was the University of Kayruwan, which is in the city of Fez, Morocco. The university was established in
It is written in Qâműs-ul-a’lâm, “The Andalusian Sultan Abdurrahmân III enlarged and fortified his country. He supported the Idrissîs, who were reigning in Morocco, against the Fâtimîs. He brought them under his control. He also built up a perfect fleet. He and his State officials were learned and had good Islamic manners. He valued savants and knowledge very much. For this reason, knowledge and science made great progress in Andalusia. His palace and the offices of the State each became a source of knowledge. Streams of people coming from every country gathered in Cordova in order to learn knowledge. He established a great and wonderful faculty of medicine in Qurtuba (Cordova). This was the first faculty of medicine established in Europe. European kings and State authorities came to Qurtuba for medical
treatment, and they admired the civilization, the beautiful morals, and the hospitality which they saw there. He built up a library that contained six hundred thousand books. On the side of the Wâdi-ul-kabîr, which is about three hours from Qurtuba, he built a tremendous palace named Azzahrâ, which was full with fine arts, some wonderful gardens, and a huge mosque. Numerous profound savants were educated in Qurtuba. Abdurrahmân-i Sâlis, the eighth of the Khalîfas of Banî Umayya in Andalusia, died in 350 [961 A.D.] when he was seventy-two years old, after having reigned with justice for fifty years.”
But later on, after having forsaken Islamic morals and the commands of the Sharî’at-they had even defiled the belief of the Ahl as-sunnat and had commenced the base process of demolishing Islam from within- they were not able to pass over the Pyrenees. The Umayra State collapsed in 423 [1031]. After them, Andalusia was dominated first by a state called Mulassimîn or Murâbitîn and then by the State of Muwahhidîn. But the Spanish captured also the city of Granada in 897 [1492], and killed the Muslims. They received the retribution for their dissipation. Had not it been for the catastrophe of Spain, the corrupt ideas of the philosophers named Ibnirrushd (Averroës) and Ibni Hazm would perhaps have spread over the world in the disguise of faith and îmân, and thus today’s picture of melancholy would have appeared hundreds of years earlier.
Then, those who rescued the human race from distress and
calamity were not those states with corrupt beliefs and deeds, such as the Fâtimîs, Rasűlîs, or Wahhabis, who bore Islamic names, but instead they were those states which were sunnî and clung to the Sharî’at, such as the Umayyads, sons of Tîműr, and the Ottomans. These states had shone a light on humanity with the religious and scientific branches of Islamic knowledge. But, it is a shame that later these people, too, began to slacken their hold of Islam. They martyred the Khalîfas. Many business institutions remained under the oppression of ignorant people of religion and Masonic henchmen. They gave up working as Allâhu ta’âlâ commanded. The enemies of Islam cancelled the scientific lessons in the madrasas so that Muslims would lag behind. Educating the men of religion without science,
without knowledge, they began to demolish Islam from within. Knowledge and science having been cancelled, morals and manners as prescribed by Islam, bashfulness, and faith were corrupted. The empire collapsed. In truth, Islam commands experimental knowledge, science, arts and industry emphatically.
In these states also, as faith corrupted and loyalty to the Sharî’at diminished, for those reasons communicated by the experts of Islam, there developed a standstill and a recession. Eventually, they perished. As explained by the hadîth “Ash-shar’u tahtas-sayf,” the Islamic sun set, and the earth took on its present appearance.
If Attilla’s great empire had also been based upon Islamic principles and adorned with a sense of justice, it would not have been undermined, destroyed, and gone in a short time after his death.
Who doubts the fact that we, the Oghuz Turks, who are known as Western Turks and who came and settled in Asia Minor after the victory of the great Seljuki Ruler Muhammad Albarslan, together with forty thousand heroes, against the Byzantine army of more than two hundred thousand soldiers under the command of the Emperor Diogenes in Malazgirt in 463 [1071], are still standing as a great Muslim-Turk nation in the twentieth (fourteenth hijri) century despite the Christian Europeans uniting under a crusading spirit with the purpose of attacking us to drive us out of Asia Minor? This is greatly owed to the strong îmân in the hearts of the people.
In the eleventh (fifth hijri) century, as we know, the Turks spread out in three different directions, like three huge waves.
The first big migration consisted of the Qalach Turks and
other branches of the Turkish race under the command of Ghaznawî rulers. They ruled over India where they instituted the Islamic dîn and civilization. Today the existence of more than a hundred million Muslims in India is the result of this movement. The Ottoman fleet went to India in 940 [1533 A.D.], and returned to Jedda five years later.
The second migration involved the Oghuz Turks crossing Iran and, after the victory of Malazgirt, invading Asia Minor, which had been under the possession of the Byzantines. The Oghuz Turks also came here after having been honoured with Islam. Today, despite the elapse of centuries since then, they have still been living in Asia Minor and have been partaking in world politics only owing to their remaining as Muslims.
The third invasionary movement was towards the Balkan Peninsula through the northern Black Sea. The Turks of Pechenek and Koman, which included a number of Oghuz Turks, also settled on the Balkan Peninsula. They, it is a shame, went there without having been honoured with the Islamic dîn. With the oppression of the Christian states surrounding them, they soon forgot about their national character. They lost their traditions. They melted and perished. They were not like the other members of their race, who have been living in India, in Asia Minor, and in other places today. Why couldn’t they survive? Who and what remained from them? Why was it so?
As it can be understood, the great and principal power that keeps the Turkish states and nations living and standing is îmân, and it is the power of justice, goodness, righteousness and devotion, which are very strong in Islam.
[It is not an act of civilization to imitate the West’s beliefs, customs, traditions, and immoralities. It would be a matter of damaging the constitution of the Muslim nation.]
Ignatiev, who worked as the Russian Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire for a long time, divulges in a letter written to the Russian Czar Alexander by the chief plotter of the Byzantine rebellion of 1237 [1821] Patriarch Gregorius, who was hanged in front of the Phanar Patriarchate in the time of Sultân Mahmood the second. The letter is a warning lesson:
“It is impossible to crush or demolish the Turks materially. Being Muslims, the Turks are very patient and enduring people. They are utterly proud and majestically faithful. These qualities originate from their devotion to their faith, their contentment
with destiny, their traditionalism, and their loyalty to their Pâdishâs [State authorities, commanders, superiors].
“The Turks are intelligent, and studious as long as they have chiefs to lead and conduct them in a positive direction. They are utterly content. All their merits, even their feelings of heroism and bravery, come from their traditionalism and strong character.
“First it is necessary to blunt their feelings of obedience, to exterminate their spiritual bonds, and to weaken their religious firmness. And the shortest way of doing this is to accustom them to foreign thoughts and actions incompatible with their national customs and faith.
“The day their faith is undermined, their real power, which has brought the Turks to victory against forces which in outward appearence were by far superior to them in power and in number, will be undermined, too; and it will then be possible to topple them by the ascendancy of material means. For this reason, victories merely won in battlefields will not suffice for the elimination of the Ottoman State. In fact, walking in this way alone will stir the Turks’ dignity and honour, and so it may cause them to penetrate into their own essence.
“What is to be done is, without letting the Turks notice anything, to fulfill the atrophy in their construction.”
This letter is so important that it should be rewritten in schoolbooks for students to memorize. The letter contains many warning lessons, of which the following two are the most important:
1- To accustom the Turks to foreign ideas and customs for demolishing their faith and dîn.
2- To complete the destruction in their construction without the Turks noticing it.
And these goals can be achieved only by making the people imitate the West’s beliefs, fashions, customs, traditions and immoralities.
Certainly, it is necessary to adopt the West’s scientific and technical knowledge and its scientific improvements in every area. Islam commands this. A hadîth-i sherîf states that it is necessary to learn foreign languages. Zayd bin Thâbit ‘radiy-Allâhu ’anh’ says, “Rasűlullah ‘sallallâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ commanded me to learn the Jewish language. I learned it. He used to have me write most of the letters which were to be sent to the Jews. He had me read the letters coming from them.” This report is written in
detail in Tirmuzî. Thus, Zayd learned the Ibrânî (Hebrew) and Suryanî (Syriac) languages. The great Islamic savant Sayyid Abdulhakîm Efendî used to say, “If I knew a foreign language, I could serve the entire world.” Nevertheless, he spoke Arabic and Persian perfectly. He regretted not knowing the European languages, and he was very sorry for it. He used to say, “It is a must to learn foreign languages in order to announce to the whole world the superiour qualities of the Islamic Religion, to inform everyone that it is a source of comfort and happiness, that it reflects light in the direction of civilization and progress in science and morals, and, in short, in order to serve Islam and the whole mankind.”
A British man of knowledge, Lord Davenport, who studied all the religions very well, says in his book, Hadrat Muhammad and the Qur’ân, which he published in London in the beginning of the twentieth century:
“It is Islam’s being utterly strict on morals that caused it to spread in a short time. Muslims have always met those men of other religions who surrendered to the sword with forgiveness. Jurio says that Muslims’ behavior towards Christians can never be compared to the behavior which the Pope and the kings deemed proper towards believers. For example, on the twenty-fourth of August, that is, on the feast day of St. Bartholomew, in 980 [1572], sixty thousand protestants were massacred in Paris and in its neighborhood with the command of Charles IX and the Queen Catherine. Saint Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, was spreading Christianity, when he was martyred in Erzurum in August,
“Islam has been the symbol of a mental and ideal nobility that grew up as purely as a flower among the bogs of superstitions and doubts of other religions.
“Milton says, ‘When Constantine enriched the church, the priests increased their ambition for rank and wealth. Its punishment was suffered by Christianity which was torn to pieces.’
“Islam has rescued humanity from the disaster and nuisance of shedding human blood for idols. By bringing worship and alms in its place, it has imbued men with goodness. It has established the foundation of social justice. Thus, without leaving any need for bloody weapons, it has spread over the world easily.
“It will be correct to say that no nation has ever come which is as adherent and as reverent to the cause of knowledge as Muslims were. Many hadiths of Hadrat Prophet are a sincere encouragement of knowledge and are each full with reverence to knowledge. Islam has valued knowledge more than property. Hadrat Muhammad supported this attitude with his utmost energy, and his Sahâba worked in this way with full vigour.
“The founders of today’s science and civilization, the protectors of ancient and modern works of art and literature were Muslims of the times of Amawîs, Abbâsîs, Ghaznawîs and Ottomans.” Copies of the English book from which we have derived passages and written so far were seized by missionaries and Jews with the view of doing away with them. Jesuit societies, the first organization of missionaries, were founded in 918 [1512 A.D.].
ADDITION: Those who have observed Islamic laws admire Islam, seeing the great importance it lays upon social justice, equality, human rights and freedom. To show how meticulous Islam is concerning human rights and freedom, we deem it appropriate to extract a few chapters from the book Majalla and to write them below:
1192- Everybody uses his property as he wishes. But if another’s right is involved, this usage of his will be limited. For example, in Islam there is the right to own a floor (of an apartment building). But, as the owner of the upper floor has a right upon the foundation of the building, so the owner of the lower floor has a right upon the roof. None of them can demolish his own floor without the other’s permission.
1194- He who owns a plot of land is also in possession of the space above it and of the earth below it. He can build a house as high as he wishes or he can dig a deep well.
1196- If the branches of the trees in a garden go as far as the neighboring house or garden, then the neighbor has the right to ask them to be pulled back or cut off. But, he cannot ask them to be cut off by stating that their shadow is harming the vegetable being grown in his garden. Âtýf Bey, in his explanation of this
clause, in 1330 [1912 A.C] said, “The neighbor, by either addressing the neighbor or applying to the court of law can have them pulled back or cut off. Without making such an application, he can himself cut them off as well. If he causes damage to the parts not crossing the border, then he indemnifies, he pays. If he cuts off branches which can be pulled back, he indemnifies in this case also. After he addresses the owner of the trees, if the owner does not pull them away, then he has the right to cut them off as well as the right to ask the tree owner to pay for the expenses incurred during the cutting.”
1200- If a person’s sewer pipe leaks into his neighbours’ house and harms it, he has to repair it.
1212- If he makes his sewer near his neighbor’s well and causes his water to become najs, the sewer must be removed from the place, if it is not possible to repair it.
1216- With the command of the government, a person’s house can be bought in order to build a road in its place. But his house cannot be taken away from him unless he is given the money for it.
1248- Owning property is possible through either one of the following three ways: It can be transferred from one’s possession to another’s through purchase or by giving it as a gift [or giving it as sadaqa (alms) or as a loan], through inheritance, or by obtaining a mubâh (permitted by Islam) thing which does not belong to anybody.
1254- Anybody can use those plants, trees, and water that are mubâh. No one can prohibit him. If he harms another, he will be prohibited.
1288- If a person’s business suffers harm because another person has opened a store near his store, the latter’s store cannot be closed.
1297- The hunted animal belongs to the hunter. If an animal shot by someone falls down and then gets up and runs away and gets caught by someone else, it belongs to the one who has caught it.
1308- A shared property is to be repaired collectively in proportion to the shares. If one of the co-owners is absent, the one who will do the repair may ask him to give what falls within his share, provided he is granted permission by a judge.
1312- The co-owner cannot be forced to join in repairing a shared property. If he does not want the repairs, he may be forced
1321- The repairing of rivers, lakes and dams is to be done by the Bayt-ul mâl, that is, by the State. If the State’s money does not suffice, the deficit is to be collected from those who make use of the property.
950- The right to buy the property sold to someone else for the selling price is called Shuf’a (the right of pre-emtion). The person who has this right is called a Shafî’.
1008- Three persons can be a shafî’. The first one is the co-owner of the property that is to be sold. The second one is the person who has the right to use the property that will be sold. The third one is the owner of the property which is next to the property that is to be sold. The owners of the flats within an apartment building are next-door neighbors. When a person sells a building which is his own property, a shafî’ who hears of this has to immediately make known that he is a shafî’, then tell the buyer and the seller of his right of shuf’a in the presence of two witnesses, and then go to court within a month. Having done so, the first shafî’ buys it first. It cannot be sold to anybody else. If the first shafî’ is absent or unwilling to buy, the second shafî’ buys it. If the
second shafî’ is not present, either, it must be sold to the third shafî’. If he does not want to buy it, either, it remains under the possession of its first buyer.
1017- There is no right of shuf’a on transportable property or on property that is on a land area which belongs to a waqf (Islamic foundation) or to the State.
It is written in the book Fatâwâ-i Khayriyya: “A two-roomed house has an empty roof. Its owner sold one of the rooms and then died. The inheritors sold the other room to someone else. The roof is to be shared by the two persons on a fifty-fifty basis. One of them cannot build a room here without the other’s permission. If ten rooms of a house belong to someone and one room belongs to someone else, the roof or the garden is shared on a fifty-fifty basis.” It is written in the same book: “Each of the two floors of a building has a different owner. If the lower floor collapses, its owner cannot be forced to repair it. The owner of the upper floor can repair the lower floor if he wants to. The owner of the lower floor will not be allowed to enter his house unless the other, if he has repaired it with the court’s
decision, is given his expense, or, if he has repaired it by himself, he is given the value of the built floor. The owner of the upper floor can build another floor on his floor provided it will not harm the lower
In explaining the disasters incurred by the hand, the book al-Hadîqa writes: “To take another’s property without his permission or by force is called ghasb (extortion). As it is harâm to practise ghasb, so is it to use property extorted. Also, it is harâm to take and use another’s property without his permission even if the property has not been defected or damaged and returned. It is not permissible to use the property or money which has been lent to one as a wadî’a or which another person has extorted, in trade or somehow else, and to make a profit from it. What he earns from it becomes harâm. He will have to give it as alms to the poor. It is harâm to take and hide someone’s property or money even if it is done as a joke, for the owner will be sorry if it is done. It is harâm to torture someone.” In Fatâwâ-i Fawziyya, it is said that, if a father, without necessity, takes and uses the money belonging his small children for himself, the children may ask him to indemnify it when they grow up. If the father is in need, then using the money becomes jâ’iz (permissible).