ACCENT ON COLLECTIVISM

Jafar Wafa   

Global attention has suddenly turned on the religious beliefs of the adherents of Islam, the world over, and their collective behaviour as a mass of people subscribing to the tenets of this faith. It is a post-9/11 phenomenon.

While Islam is distinct from other religions in so many respects, its one main distinctive feature is that, apart from working for one’s personal salvation, a Muslim is supposed to seek the salvation of the entire community of human beings. Salvation, not of the soul alone in the Hereafter but also in the present life.

The very opening Surah (or chapter) of the Quraan begins with the supplication by the reader to the “Creator/Sustainer of all the worlds to guide us (me included) to the right path.” The Quraanic supplication to Allah, the only God, precisely forty in number, that are addressed to “Our Creator (Rabbanaa),” not my Creator, are prayers to the Almighty, not from an individual, but from a community of human beings. One such supplication, which is on the lips of every believer during the ritual five-time prayers every day, can be rendered in English thus:

“Our Lord and Creator! Give us in this world that which is good and also in the Hereafter that which is good and guard us from the doom of Hell” (Surah 2, Verse 200).

This prayer, in fact, sums up the whole purpose of the Prophet’s mission on earth - uplifting the humanity to a high moral and spiritual level through prayers, fasting and charity and also alleviating the sufferings of the less fortunate ones, arising from penury, poverty, political subjugation, or any other mundane cause hurting them in this world.

If one agrees with this sequence of argument, one can discover the blending of the moral and the mundane aspects of earthly existence in the performance of all the four basic tenets of Islam: 1) The ritual prayers, or Salaah, are to be offered five times a day in Jamaa’ah (a congregation). Nothing can better serve the purpose of creating Allah-consciousness by bending and bowing before Him with such frequency and, at the same time, inculcating the spirit of belonging to one community. The Quraan says that “the believers are naught else than brothers” (49:10). But what it says are not just empty words like many sayings of the wise and holy men.

The institution of congregational prayers, five times consecutively from dawn to dusk, has been prescribed to ensure that the dictum of fraternity or collectivism is a practical proposition in Islam. It is unfortunate that some organizations have been dubbed as subversive outfits, although they owe their origin to the noble and well-meaning doctrine that the believers are brothers among themselves who cooperate with one another in all pious and worthy fields instead of being selfish or jealous and unhelpful.

2) All those acts of charity that are meant for the welfare of the deprived and the depressed sections of the community are Sadaqah and Zakaah. Although giving alms to deserving individuals is permitted, yet collection of Zakaah, the religiously mandatory poor-tax, is required to be organised by the Islamic state and deposited in the State Treasury, or Bait ul Maal, to be spent on financial help to the “poor and the needy, to offer money to those whose hearts are to be won, to free the captives and debtors, and for the cause of Allah, and for the wayfarers.”

These categories of persons who have to be helped from the Zakaah fund were laid down in the Quran (9:60). Although a believer is permitted to disburse Zakaah indiv-idually, the recommended and more rewarding course is praying and paying collectively through Bait ul Maal, in case Islamic Emirate is there.

Quraan explains in Surah 70 (Verses 18-25) that anxiety and irritation, which are inherent in human nature, will not afflict those who are constant in offering prayers and who do not hoard and withhold their wealth but acknowledge that the needy and the destitute have a share in it.

3) The denial of food and drink while observing Saum (Fasting) in the month of Ramadhaan is a personal inconvenience experienced by each individual who fasts to comply with a religious obligation. But by nominating a particular lunar month for the purpose of fasting by the believers all over the world, it has acquired the status of a collective observance of self-abnegation, as every one undergoes it in unison with the entire community dispersed all over the planet.

4) Hajj (Pilgrimage), the fourth pillar of the faith, is again a kind of harmonious blending of the individual believer with the representative of almost each and every race of the global community. Each person, wearing the same kind of unstitched simple robe, performing together all the ritualistic chores, gravitating to a common centre, Ka’bah (the House of Allah), is a practical demonstration of the collectivism of the world Muslims on an unmatched massive scale.

In this piece an attempt has been made to paraphrase in simple English a portion of the early Makkan Surah 90 of the Quraan to show that it was a manifest Divine intention, right from the inception of Islam, to induce the believers to make concerted efforts for uplifting human society by helping “the poor and the needy” and others, as given in Surah 9 (excerpted and reproduced in one of the foregoing paras) which was revealed in the later period of the holy Prophet (SallAllahu alaihe wasallam)’s life in Madinah al Munawwarah.

Zakaah was made compulsory in about 8 A.H. and it was institutionalised then and thereafter. But, as we will see, very high priority in the list of virtues was assigned to help the needy of the society. How this priority has been relegated to the back burner and how the faithful consider clinging only to formal worship and outward piety taking it as the be-all and end-all of religion or vice versa, like any other religious community, is really pathetic.

These are the Almighty’s words, in plain language, for those who think and ponder: “Has man not been assigned two eyes, a tongue and two lips (i.e. the five senses) and shown the gorge where he mountain paths intersect (i.e. where the paths leading to virtue and vice take off). To ascend the summit, one has to free a slave, feed the hungry, look after an orphan, near of kin and help the poor wretch out of his miserable predicament.”

Eternal and abiding success can only be achieved by devoting oneself tirelessly to personal piety as well as but by playing one’s role in the collective social effort to mitigate human sufferings.

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