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Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : THE ISLAMIC CENTRE, KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 17/06/94
Tajuk/Title : THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE WORLD
ISLAMIC CIVILISATION FESTIVAL
I wish to thank the organising committee for giving me
the opportunity to be here today and to officially open the
World Islamic Civilisation Festival 1994, which is the first
of its kind to be held in this country and probably the
region also.
2. A festival of this nature should help to enlighten
Muslims and non-Muslims alike regarding the achievements of
the Muslims in the past. But that is not the main reason
for this festival. The more important objective is to show
to Muslims today that if they are prepared to acquire the
relevant knowledge and use it for the benefit of the Ummah
it is not impossible to revive the glory and the
achievements of the Islamic civilisation.
3. After the death of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
Islam spread widely outside the Arab world, and finally
covered about three-quarters of the known surface of the
earth then. Though military strength and sophistication
played a role, the lasting contribution of the Muslims was
in the fields of mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy
and other areas of human knowledge. This was possible
because in the early period of Islam, the quest for
knowledge was not restricted by narrow interpretations of
the religion. In other words, the early Muslims followed
closely the examples of the Prophet in leadership, in
acquisition of wealth and knowledge while not neglecting the
performances of the compulsory ibadah. It was when
knowledge and skills for the advancement of the Muslims were
neglected that decline set in for the great civilisation the
Muslims had built. Attempts were repeatedly made to revive
the glory of Islamic civilisation after the decline but they
all failed because those who fear that worldly progress
would result in neglect of religion insisted and persisted
in dividing knowledge into the religious and the secular and
regarding or condemning the so-called secular knowledge as
inimical to Islam. Coincidentally, it was about this time
that in the Christian world the church was separated from
the state, with the consequent loss of power by the church.
It was felt that secular knowledge could reduce the
influence of religious leaders on the state and on society.
This may be denied but we know of many instances where
professionally-trained people are persuaded to give up their
professions in favour of what is regarded as a religious
calling.
4. Clearly if we want to regain the glorious age of Islam,
we have a great need to learn the history of the founding
and the spread of Islam. History is the greatest teacher.
Unfortunately because of the downgrading of knowledge that
is regarded as non-religious, Muslim historians
concentrated almost exclusively on the contribution of the
spiritual to the successes of the Muslims. On the other
hand, Western historians tend to be biased. We are thus
left with the artifacts and relics of the Islamic
civilisation in order to learn and to assess the other
causes for the early successes of the Muslims. Still there
is much to be gleaned from these which can help us to
reconstruct the past and teach us about how the greatness of
Muslim civilisation was achieved and how we can go about
trying to revive it.
5. But first there is a great need to debunk some of the
beliefs which had contributed towards the decline.
Principal among these is the teaching that the world is not
meant for the believers. It is meant for the non-believers
to enjoy. While some things which the non-believers enjoy
are things which Muslims should not hanker after, is it true
that we should also not benefit from the abundant bounty
that Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala has bestowed upon this
planet? The world is not a gift of Allah to the
non-believers but it is a gift to the believers. Not to
appreciate and not to use this gift seems to be particularly
ungrateful and Allah does not like those who are not
grateful, not just for His blessings but for anything good
that is done to us, even by mere man.
6. In no other religion is there so much stress on
observing our surroundings; the fields, the mountains and
the seas and the bounty they hold for man; the animals and
the plants and how they contribute to life; the rain and the
sunshine and how they bring to life that which we would have
assumed to be dead.
7. Does observation mean that we should only make a casual
glance and then mechanically praise Allah? Is it not true
that the more we observe, the deeper we study the creations
of Allah the more we would be amazed and beholden to His
greatness? For while our studies into the minutest
structure of matter, the atoms and beyond can contribute to
our understanding of how all matters are formed and
structured, we can never discover why they are so
structured; why they function as they do; why they react
with each other and form substances which are ever more
complex; and most puzzling of all, why they contribute to
life on earth. We can explain at length as to how all these
happen: but we can never understand or explain why they
happen: why one atom of oxygen combining with two atoms of
hydrogen, two invisible gases, would form the ordinary water
that is so tangible and so essential to life? Why not atoms
of other gases? Why water? Why is water a source of life
and its sustenance? We, through the most thorough
observation, i.e. study, can understand and unravel how all
these matter and compounds and actions and reaction take
place, but we can never answer the question why they are so
or they do so. The only conclusion we can make is that it
must be a power beyond human understanding, it must be God,
it must be Allah.
8. Surely our studies would make us appreciate and believe
in Allah even more strongly. Surely the deeper and the more
extensive the knowledge, the greater would be the faith for
what we discover through our studies to be even greater
miracles than we thought after a casual glance; miracles
which only Allah can create.
9. Yet Muslims are afraid to study all the mysteries
around them, to discover the wonders of Allah's creation,
and to utilise them even as we utilise plants and animals
for food and all the other creations of Allah to sustain and
enhance the quality of our life. Because we do not study in
depth, Muslims today have to rely on the results and the
discoveries of those of other faiths. Today many of us are
totally dependent on the results of the non-Muslims'
application of their knowledge for our food, transport,
defence, clothing and the roof over our heads. Indeed, even
in the performance of our religious duties we depend on the
non-Muslims. If this life, this bounty on earth is not for
us, then why do we share the discoveries and inventions of
the non-believers who study the creation of Allah, and use
their knowledge to better their life on earth?
10. Yet we know that during the glorious centuries of
Islamic civilisation, it was the Muslims who led, who
discovered the bounties of Allah through their learning, and
made them available to the non-Muslims then. And the
Muslims led because they were very advanced in all fields of
learning, in the sciences, in medicine, in mathematics,
biology, astronomy and in a whole lot of other disciplines.
11. Unless and until we stop dividing knowledge into
the religious and the secular, unless we regard all
knowledge as faith enhancing and therefore not only
permissible but vital to the Muslims and their faith, we are
never ever going to rebuild Islamic civilisation. Worst
still, we are going to remain in the modern equivalent of
the Dark Ages.
12. And so the first step towards an Islamic renaissance is
to debunk the belief that the world is not for us, that
knowledge, other than spiritual knowledge, is secular and
must be proscribed. Instead, such knowledge should be
sought for they can truly strengthen faith and revive the
greatness of the Islamic civilisation.
13. We know the great scholars of the golden period of
Islamic civilisation were not just specialists in their
fields but almost invariably they were learned in the
teachings of Islam. They were thus able to relate their
knowledge to their faith. Today Muslims either know the
teachings of Islam exclusively or they are learned in other
subjects, equally exclusively. They are therefore unable to
relate the one with the other. As a result they either
become spiritually fanatical and reject anything they do not
know as being secular and proscribed, or having studied
non-religious subjects they find themselves unable to defend
their knowledge as it relates to their faith. When
challenged by religious fanatics as to the relevance of
their knowledge to Islam they are at a loss for an
acceptable answer. They often feel guilty or alternatively
they reject religion because of their inability to reconcile
what they have learnt with the teachings of Islam. For as
long as this dichotomy remains, there will always be a
dearth of scholars, of subjects, which are not specific to
the faith among Muslims, thus condemning the Muslims to
backwardness and preventing the achievement of a glorious
Islamic civilisation.
14. But when we talk of recreating the Islamic
civilisation we do not mean to build a fair copy of the
Muslims' world from the 7th century until the decline of the
Turkish Sultanate. Even when we are enjoined to seek
guidance from the Sunnah of the Prophet we are not expected
to reproduce exactly the achievements and the life of the
Prophet. Indeed the golden period of Islamic civilisation
was not brought about by the reproduction of the life and
times of the Prophet in Makkah and Madinah. The Islamic
civilisation was the result of following the true teachings
of Islam which the people in the lifetime of the Prophet
were not able to benefit from fully because of time. In
size and in the span of knowledge and achievements, the
Islamic civilisation that was built after the demise of the
Prophet was far greater than the Muslim world in the
Prophet's time. This is because the application of Islamic
teachings and creed over the centuries was able to bring
about the maximum results.
15. Similarly, the building of the modern Islamic
civilisation should be in the context of the achievements of
humanity at the present time. It should reflect
contemporary life and thoughts which are relevant to modern
times but still compatible with the teachings of Islam. If
we believe that Islam is for all ages, then we will be
contradicting this belief, if we consider Islamic
civilisation possible only in conditions prevailing in the
7th century of the Christian era in Madinah.
16. But even if we have disabused ourselves of the
restrictive compartmentalisation of knowledge into the
religious and the secular, and if because of that we have
the knowledge compatible with modern civilisation, there are
still many conditions to be met before a great civilisation
can be achieved. Chief among these is the establishment of
a workable system of administration and Government
compatible with both Islam and the needs of modern times.
Again it must be remembered that the forms of governments in
the Muslim empires were not identical with the Madinah or
the Makkah Governments of the Prophet, peace be upon him.
Many different forms of governments were practised without
in any way making these un-Islamic. It is not the form of
Government that matters. It is whether they are compatible
with Islam or not.
17. It is sad that anarchy or at least bad Government
prevails today in most Muslim countries. We are quite
unstable. Unseemly struggles for power take place
everywhere, resulting in millions being killed or forced to
migrate, properties being destroyed, anarchy prevailing,
food being so short that death from starvation becomes
almost a regular feature of some Muslim countries. Still
the fighting and the conflicts go on simply because one
person or one group wants to grab power. It is to our utter
shame that the faithful have to appeal to the non-believers
to help bring about peace or to feed the starving.
18. Are we incapable of administering our own people? Are
we incapable of using modern concepts of Government, of
administering justice, of dealing with an ever more
sophisticated society with its complex social and economic
imperatives? If we look around, it would seem so. For so
many Muslim countries are unstable, insecure and unable to
develop. Yet the modern systems of Government are more in
keeping with the sunnah of the Prophet than the
authoritarian governments which existed during the past
Islamic civilisation.
19. Of course we need not accept systems developed by non-
Muslims wholesale. Like everything else there are good and
bad points. And the bad points can be as damaging as any.
We see anarchy and moral collapse in the Western democractic
system which has brought about their decline. But we can
avoid them and practise only those that are not against our
own beliefs and values. But we cannot recreate the society
as it existed in the Prophet's time or even those which
prospered during the golden age of Islamic civilisation as a
prerequisite for the revival of the golden age.
20. The civilisation that we build must not be for
the purpose of confronting other societies or civilisations.
It should contribute towards the sum total of human
progress. It should show the compatibility and balance
between the spiritual and the material, between progress and
moral values, between religion and worldly concerns. It
should provide the alternative to a world that has so
obviously lost its direction. It should be a viable and an
acceptable alternative, based on reasoned arguments rather
than blind faith in certain tendentious interpretations of
Islam.
21. Islam can still show the way. There can be a modern
Islamic civilisation which is not an attempt to reconstruct
life in the Arabian Peninsular in the 7th century nor a
slavish copy of a decadent Western system. There can be a
modern Islamic civilisation which can provide both the
spiritual and material answers to modern man's needs. If we
say that these are but dreams, that they are worldly and
irrelevant, that the only way is to recreate the life in the
7th century, then we should accept that Muslims will forever
be oppressed and impoverished. In that state we can be
separated from our faith. If therefore the faithful
decrease in number and in some places are wiped out
completely, then we must only blame ourselves. It is we who
have sinned, for we insist on doing what is obviously wrong
because we dare not question the correctness or otherwise of
the popular contemporary interpretation of our faith.
22. Perhaps it is too much to expect that our Islamic
Civilisation Festival would awaken us all from the stupor
that we are in. But we would be failing in our duty to our
religion if we do not try to seize the opportunity to learn
from the lessons that the history of Islamic Civilisation
holds for us. There is more to this exhibition than to bask
in the glow of a great past. Those who harp on the
greatness of the past are in fact admitting and accepting
their present decline. This exhibition is not for
reflected glory. It is a reminder and
lesson on how a great faith can lead to greatness, to the
establishment of one of the greatest, if not the greatest
civilisation on earth.
23. What has been done once by man can be done again. It
is for us to decide.
24. Insya-Allah, we will awaken and we will decide.
25. With this, I declare open the World Islamic
Civilisation Festival 1994.
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