Sunday, October 13, 2013

Islam Has No Interest in Politics; No Issue with Democracy or Woman Rulers

By Nastik Durrani, New Age Islam
August 20, 2013
(Translated from Urdu by New Age Islam Edit Desk)
I was reading the globally renowned book, Muhammad, by Dr. Muhammad Husain Haykal. On the page 308, I stumbled upon the text of the letter from the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to Heraclius, the Emperor of Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire). The text of the letter, that is really thought-provoking, was as follows:
 “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. This letter is from Muhammad the slave of Allah and his Apostle to Heraclius, the ruler of the Byzantines. Peace be upon him who follows the right path. Furthermore, I invite you to Islam and if you become a Muslim you will be safe, and Allah will double your reward, and if you reject this invitation of Islam you will be committing a sin by misguiding your subjects. And I recite to you Allah's statement:
 “O People of the Scriptures! Come to a word common to you and us that we worship none but Allah and that we associate nothing in worship with Him, and that none of us shall take others as Lords beside Allah. Then if they turn away, say: Bear witness that we are Muslims (those who have submitted to Allah). (Qur’an: Surah 3, Ayah 64).”
If we ponder over the text of this letter, we will come across many considerable aspects of it. While addressing Heraclius, the Messenger of God called him “the Emperor of Rome” but he did not call himself “the Emperor of Arabia”, because he was a prophet, not the emperor. Since Heraclius was a statesman, it was due to give him titles of honour, but unlike Heraclius, the Prophet (pbuh) was not even the least interested in the politics, rather he was greatly worried about preaching the message sent to him from God without any addition or deletion. Therefore, the Prophet did not ask Heraclius for any political surrender or change in the politics, or economy, or administration structure or governance system. This is because governance has never been among the areas of interest for either the Prophet (pbuh) or Islam. That is why the Prophet confined himself to calling for the only thing assigned to him, and that was inviting people to Islam. 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment