Islam-Stagnant
The Message of Prophet Muhammad
By Swami Ranganathananda, Belur Math
The character of Prophet Muhammad has been misrepresented, not only by many prejudiced non-Muslim critics, but also by the violent, ambitious, and worldly-minded faithful Muslims as well. In his personal life, the prophet shines as a man of high character, integrity, and humanity.
But, after the Mongolian invasion of the thirteenth century A.D. and the complete destruction of Baghdad in 1258, when many millions were killed, whole areas were laid waste, and political rule in the centre of the Islamic world passed into the hands of barbarian infidels, leaving only Egypt and Spain to nourish Arab culture for another two centuries. There set in the slow and steady erosion of these universal and rational elements and the rising, to dominance, of its dogmatic and intolerant elements. The Mongol invaders, and later the Turks, were soon converted to Islam and became the carriers of Islamic religion, culture, and political power. With some great exceptions, these new Muslim groups came under the influence, less of Islam’s rational and universal, and more of its dogmatic and intolerant elements. This led to the increasing exploitation of the name of Islam by several military conquerors to destroy and rob and pillage other countries and cultures, which has given a bad name to this great religion.
The stagnation and decay of Islam commenced, as in the case of Sanatan Dharma in recent centuries, with the dominance of the Smrti over the Sruti elements. It was a dominance of the fundamentalist group over the ever-diminishing rational and humanist group which advocated the scientific approach and the stressing more and more of the eternal, universal, spiritual elements and the soft-pedalling of the temporal and local elements, in response to the advance of history.
Since the destruction of Baghdad, there has been an increasing dominance by its rigid and intolerant Sariah or Smrti elements, and the consequent exploitation of Islam, as referred to earlier, by power-hungry worldly-minded individuals to cover their own greed and bloodthirstiness.
If Islam is to become creative once again, and help in the human development and fulfilment of its followers, it has to capture once again the rational and universal temper of its early period, by taking inspiration from the
spirit of Islam and not from its
letter.
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