Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : CONCORDE HOTEL, KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 14/09/93
Tajuk/Title : SEMINAR ON MUSLIM AND
CHRISTIAN MINDS
I would like to thank the Institute of Islamic
Understanding Malaysia (IKIM) and the Goethe Institute,
organisers of this Seminar, for inviting me today to deliver
this address and to officially open the Seminar.
2. The organisers have made a good choice in selecting the
topics which touch upon the main aspects of human life,
namely philosophy and the state, law, education and family
as well as economics. These topics should be critically
analysed and examined through the mirrors of both Islam and
Christianity, if we want to have a better understanding of
the importance of religions to society.
3. Man is almost schizophrenic by nature, being both a
physical person and a spiritual soul. The holy Qur'an has
clearly described man's creation in two distinct phases.
The first phase being the creation of the body or physical
being from clay. The second phase is the breathing of the
soul into the body of God's Spirit which completes man's
creation. The relevant texts of the verses read as follows:
"We created man from sounding clay, from mud moulded
into shape; while the Jinn race, We had created before,
from the fire of a scorching wind.
Behold! thy Lord said to the angels: I am about to
create man, from sounding clay from mud moulded into
shape; When I have fashioned him (in due proportion)
and breathed into him of My spirit, fall ye down in
obeisance unto him".
Al Hijr (15): 26-29.
"Man did We create from a quintessence (of clay);
Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of
rest, firmly fixed;
Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood,
Then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump, then We made
out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with
flesh, then We developed out of it another creature.
So blessed be Allah, the Best to create!"
After that, at length ye will die."
Al Muminun (23): 10-15
3. This process of man's creation signifies three
pertinent points. Firstly, the breathing of Allah's Spirit
into man. This signifies that man is provided with the
faculty of God-like knowledge and will, if rightly used,
gives man superiority over other creatures. This also
implies that man is created innocent, pure, true, free,
inclined to doing right and to virtue, and endowed with true
understanding about his own position in the Universe and
about Allah's goodness, wisdom and power.
4. Secondly, because of his lowly origin of clay, there is
always the possibility of man being caught in the meshes of
customs, superstitions, selfish desires, and false
teachings. It is this situation that may make him
pugnacious, unclean, false, slavish, hankering after what is
wrong or forbidden, and deflected from the love of his
fellow-men and the pure worship of the One True God.
5. Thirdly is that this evil touches those who yield to
it, and has no power over Allah's sincere servants, purified
by His Grace. This means that sincerity towards submitting
oneself to Allah's will is the best shield against Satan who
is out to destroy man.
6. It is for this reason that men's behaviour keep
fluctuating between good and bad. They turn to God when
they are in distress or in suffering. However, when they
are in affluence or prosperity they forget God and His
bounty. Indeed they should be grateful when in affluence or
prosperity and remain steadfast and patient when they are in
adversity. In order to ensure that man is consistently
inclined to right and virtue, he needs to be endowed with a
true understanding of himself, his Creator and his
environment. Such knowledge can only be obtained through
the continuous guidance of religion. As such religion
provides man with the right frame of mind, encourages him to
do good and avoid evil. Religion is the anchor that
prevents man from drifting aimlessly and being caught in the
meshes of evil.
7. In the real world, we have on one extreme a society
that completely rejects all religions and Godliness. After
about seventy years of practising life without any religion,
the communists in Eastern Europe and Russia have failed
miserably and disintegrated. Clearly, there is no spiritual
anchor in such a society and their failure in achieving
their purely materialistic objectives must in some way be
due to this spiritual emptiness. The failure is total and
complete so much so that a great power is now forced to
literally beg for help from its former enemies. In Albania
where Enver Hoxha, the former President, outlawed religion
and destroyed bibles and Qur'ans and all literature
pertaining to religion, there is now only a shell of a
country.
8. A great people with a proud civilisation is reduced to
being the poorest nation in Europe. But a Government cannot
destroy faith by legislation, or even by force. Today the
Albanians have returned to their religions, to Islam, to
Christianity and to Orthodox Christian beliefs. Peace and
calmness have now returned and there is a new sense of
purpose and confidence in the future.
9. Man does not live by bread alone. The spiritual hunger
must be assuaged also. Otherwise even though the stomach is
full, there will still be an emptiness, a void that renders
life meaningless. To live in order to eat is to be no
different from animals. Surely man is created for a greater
purpose. The world is what it is today because of man. A
creed that ignores the difference between man and animals,
an ideology that is based exclusively on the gratification
of the senses, and nothing more, is decivilising and denies
the greatness of the mind and the superior feelings that man
is endowed with. To reduce mankind to merely existing
without purpose is to deny reason and the rationality of
creation.
10. We have, on the other hand, the predominantly Christian
Western societies which separate religious life from the
secular. Hedonism, the love of pleasure and the
gratification of the senses, has gradually displaced
religion and made it more and more irrelevant. With this
the structure of society has changed.
11. The relation between members of western society is now
largely based on material gains and sensual gratification.
Selfishness dominates in the search for these objectives.
The community has given way to the individual and his
desires. Inevitably the result is the breakdown of
established institutions. Marriages, family, respect for
elders, for conventions, for customs and traditions have all
but disappeared. In their place emerged new values based
largely on rejection of all that relates to faith. And so
there are single parent families which breed future incests,
homosexuality, co- habitation, unlimited and unrestrained
materialism and avarice, irreverence, disrespect for all and
sundry and of course rejection of religion and religious
values. Society and its members have nothing to hold on to.
They are adrift and directionless. Even their hedonism, the
pleasure-seeking lifestyle begins to pall and bore them,
leaving them totally empty or seeking thrills from drugs and
other vices.
12. The west has not yet gone the way of the Communist, but
the decay has begun. We cannot foretell the future but
there is a good chance that, unless sanity and a return to
religion takes place, what has befallen the Communist will
also befall them.
13. The Muslim community suffers from a different malady.
Weak and oppressed, suffering all kinds of psychological
ailments, many seek solace and escape in esoteric religious
practices. In so doing they interpret Islam in ways which
are unIslamic. Because of this, Islam and the Muslim have
acquired a bad name. It is regarded as a millstone around
the neck of the followers, retarding their development. It
has become associated with unprincipled practices such as
terrorism and injustices to their co-religionists and the
followers of other religions. It has split them into
warring factions, causing untold misery and carnage among
them. And it has brought this noble humanising religion to
disrepute. The Muslims are no longer in control of their
destiny. They are being manipulated and made the tools and
proxies for the conflicts of others. And they suffer this
willingly, blaming others and blaming fate.
14. Muslim extremists pride themselves in their adherence
to Islam. But in fact they are the bane of Islam. It is
they who give Islam a bad image, who prevent the world from
understanding the true teachings of Islam, who repel
would-be followers and indeed it is they who exasperate and
drive other Muslims to forsake the faith and succumb to the
blandishments of materialism and ungodly ideologies.
15. The only redeeming feature with the Muslims is
that whether they are practising Muslims or not, they
still consider themselves Muslims, i.e. they generally
believe they have a faith.
16. From the different models of society across the globe,
we can hardly find a society worthy of emulating. We have
on the one extreme the communists who have completely
rejected all religions and have eventually destroyed
themselves. On the other end of the continuum, we have from
time to time the emergence of some extreme religious groups
who devote their whole life and self to the pursuit of their
beliefs to the exclusion of all else. In trying to effect
their escape from a world beset with problems, they
themselves become a problem to the world.
17. In between these two extremes we have three major
categories of societies in relation to religion. First, we
have the predominantly Christian Western societies which
confine religion to only their private and personal life.
Religion has no place in their economic, political or social
pursuits. They claim their state to be secular and that
"God is dead". Whilst they may have achieved tremendous
progress in their economic pursuits, they have failed
miserably in upholding truth, justice and other virtues.
Their societies are suffering from moral decadence. Their
social lives are filled with all kinds of psychological and
physical problems. They are living in stress and fear of
new fatal diseases which their way of life has engendered
and now threaten to spread wildly as they refuse to give up
their hedonistic lifestyles.
18. Secondly, of course we have the East Asian models which
have also demonstrated tremendous success in economic
pursuits whilst at the same time keeping quite strictly to
their own values, traditions and religions. Although they
do not adhere strictly to their religious teachings, they do
not reject or secularise their religions. They adopt a very
flexible approach.
19. Finally, we have the Muslim societies who have a firm
belief in Islam but have now become confused by the
emergence of numerous sects and creeds, some of which
plainly deviate from the true teachings. Their weakness and
worldly failures do not provide humanity with a good model
to follow.
20. History has invariably taught us that the rise and fall
of civilisations has been chiefly due to the citizenry. It
is the people that make up civilisations. It is the quality
of the citizens that is the most important ingredient to
effect dramatic changes to society and nations. Islam, for
example nurtured its earliest community based on truth and
justice such that within a short span of time it had spread
its influence throughout Arabia, Central Asia, North Africa
and even Southern Europe. It was also Islamic civilisation
that had tremendously contributed to the various fields of
knowledge to the world. This was merely because of the
deliberate and concerted efforts undertaken by the early
Muslims to integrate both the physical and spiritual aspects
of life in all spheres. As a complete way of life, the
separation of Church and State and the secularisation
process which had deeply affected Christianity in the Middle
Ages, was never a problem to Islam and the Muslims. However
fear of a loss of influence by the Ulama following upon the
Christian separation of Church and State, led to the
confinement of knowledge purely to religious rites, laws and
duties. With that began the decline of Islamic progressive
civilisation, and the break-up and subjugation of the Muslim
World.
21. From even this cursory review of the realities that
have taken place in different societies, we should find that
religion has a very pertinent role to play. Religion should
never be regarded as simply the rituals which affect people
only at the individual level. Religion which seeks truth to
establish justice in all aspects of societal life should be
regarded as beneficial to society. It is religion which
acts as the anchor or underlying principles that govern not
only the physical and material well-being but also the
spiritual growth and upliftment of man. It is religion that
steers people towards a more balanced life. It is also
religion that provides true guidance and the strongest
motivation towards achieving a more fruitful and meaningful
life.
22. The issue at hand is to find out the ways and means of
how a nation can produce a people or society that has as its
core the deep sense of religious consciousness, committed to
the highest standards of ethical and moral values and yet is
most progressive, industrious, dynamic and dedicated towards
advancement and progress. This is indeed very necessary and
pertinent because we can easily achieve material progress by
physical planning and development. But, the stark truth is
that all the material wealth that we have accumulated can be
completely wiped out if we do not have the morally right set
of values among the people who manage them. We have
repeatedly seen this happening at the individual and family
levels; we have also read in history about the fall of
empires for invariably the same reason. And we are seeing
today the destruction of many civilisations.
23. Secondly, we have to be conscious of the need for a
balanced and integrated development in the sense that
planning and development should incorporate the need for
spiritual upliftment right from the start and not to leave
such ingredient at the end. We have so far completely
ignored this aspect of development especially during the
initial planning stage. If we include them it is only as an
afterthought.
24. Thirdly,it is essential to realise that in the past we
have concentrated almost entirely on physical development.
Of late, we have been incorporating some aspects of human
development in the form mainly of non-spiritual human
resource development. What is most pertinent is that there
is a great difference between human resource development and
human development. The former involves matching of the
demand for different categories and skill levels of manpower
with the supply so that we do not face acute mismatch in
terms of numbers as well as categories and skills. Human
development entails the kinds of education, training,
environment, and the like, that are necessary to develop all
the potentials of the human individual in both body and
soul, that is, his dual nature. This aspect of development
has not been given sufficient attention. It is no surprise,
therefore, that we are faced with numerous human problems.
As the Holy Qur'an puts it:
"Mischief has appeared on land and sea because of (the
meed) that the hands of men have earned. That (Allah)
may give them a taste of some of their deeds: in order
that they may turn back (from Evil). " Al-Rum (30): 41.
25. From the above verse of the Holy Qur'an, we should
realise that we are completely responsible for all the
mischief that have appeared on this earth as well as on the
whole environment. This mischief is the result of our own
proclivity for evil. After all, the result of evil cannot
be other than evil. But Allah will restore the balance in
the end by purging and purifying those that break His
Harmony and Law. We are witnessing some of these today.
26. This meeting of the Muslim and Christian minds should
serve to correct not only the distorted view each has of the
other but to bring back religion to its proper perspective
in the scheme of things.
27. I wish all participants successful deliberations.
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