My Message to the Muslims of Today

Oh Muslims it is now time to understand how we have been failing. So that we can rise up once again and contribute to human progress. So far we have been failing miserably except in two places, Turkey and Malaysia. These two places, and especially Turkey, have been showing great signs of revival and growth as well as prosperity , despite the attempts of the outside powers to push them down (eg the failed CIA coup attempt recently in Turkey). So let us learn from these countries and see what is in common with them that has led to this prosperity and strength.

1. You will not see any wahabi/salafi influence on their ideas. Instead they are close to Sufism. There is more mercy and gentleness in the hearts of these peoples. They are closer to love of humanity and further away from hate and feelings of superiority.
2. Their political systems are not based on dictatorship but secular and democratic. They are inclusive and give freedom to parties of all types to campaign and win elections. You don’t get killed because you decided to leave Islam. People are free regarding their beliefs. The main thing is to obey the law of the country and you are free about what beliefs you take or don’t take.

Point 2 is such a critical point and I believe is the key to the change we need to make in ourselves to get a good nation set up. We need to realize that some of what we have been taught is Islam isnt Islam at all. But instead politically inspired concepts so as to keep corrupt rulers in power who want their sons and their dynasty to inherit the thrown. They introduce draconian, freedom depriving, laws to help keep remove anyone who opposes their unislamic hereditary rule. By branding those who criticise them as heretics they can then easily kill anyone they like because they created a false law that those who become heretic (ie change their beliefs) must be killed. Whereas in the Quran there is no where that says to kill someone who changed his belief. Infact it says the opposite ("Whoever wants to believe can and whoever wants to disbelieve can also", as well as "No compulsion in religion"). So how did these verses get twisted or ignored and replaced with kill (ie force) those who change their beliefs??? We need to therefore clean our understanding of Islam from these corrupted unislamic teachings that have been quietly introduced by false sheikhs who simply work for the rulers instead of for truth. If we cant do that then we will never revive. We will stay in the backward regions unable to think or progress as human beings. This is because we chose not to use our minds and accept logic and truth. So it’s a choice that we now need to make. Do we start to question everything in our tradition and remove anything corrupt that has been inserted into it, or do we resist this and keep to our tradition no matter how corrupt it has become.

The other matter is about our selves. How we are inside. ie our mannerisms and behaviours. Do we harbour love for humanity or do we harbour hate. Hate must be removed. A big source of this hate may come from another corrupt understanding in our tradition, and this is that a human is either a Muslim or a Kafir (infidel). Ie if you arent Muslim then you are a Kafir. And because Kafirs are hated this makes some Muslims hate non Muslims. The truth, I believe, is that there Muslim, Kafir (someone who denies logic or truth) and a Jahil (someone who doesn’t know about any logic or truth). The majority of people on earth are in the Jahil realm, and this includes the majority of the Muslims I think, let alone the majority of the non Muslims. So with Jahil there is no hate, because they don’t know. Here we need to be good with them and interact with them respectfully, harbouring no hate at all. But harbouring love that they are one of Allah's respected creatures (human beings). This ignorance of the real shape of Islam has caused us a lot of problems I believe and a lot of misery. The sooner we can come out of this the better.