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.
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