The Strategy of Mass Education
A strategy of mass education is required. The objective situation must be described with candor. The world of Islam today suffers from grave weakness! So weak is that world that enemies are raping Muslim women with contemptuous disdain. Masajid are being razed to the ground. Muslims are becoming refugees all over the world. They are held in concentration camps. They are being tortured. They are being killed. An innocent blind Shaikh, a scholar of Islam who is also a hafiz of the Qur’an, is being sexually humiliated in an American prison. But the helpless, weak, and despised world of Islam can do nothing to respond to such insults. Millions and millions of Muslims live in abject poverty, in destitution. Muslim women are forced to sell their bodies in the streets of cities located within the world of Islam. Millions of children are forced, because of poverty, to labor in the work force from morning to night. And a paralyzed world of Islam seems helpless to do anything about this.
We must explain that we Muslims are helpless because we have betrayed Almighty Allah (SWT) and His Messenger (SAW). Nowhere has this betrayal had more devastating consequences than in the great betrayal over riba. This betrayal has occurred despite the clear command in the Qur’an:
{quran 8:27}
O you who believe, betray not the trust of Allah and His Messenger, nor knowingly betray that which you have been entrusted (i.e., the mission, for example, of struggle for the triumph over falsehood). (Al-Anfal 8:27)
Muslims are helpless because they lack power. They lack power because they lack freedom, including economic freedom, and that is, most of all, freedom from exploitation and enslavement inherent in riba. Riba has impoverished the masses in the entire Muslim world. Riba has rendered Muslims powerless to resist financial blackmail. Because of riba Muslims now live a collective life not entirely dissimilar to slavery. He who pays the piper continues to call the tune. Riba has paralyzed us! Riba has even created within our very midst a predatory Muslim elite who control the economy, the military, and political power around the world of Islam. Their way of life mirrors the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.” They literally suck the blood of their own Muslim brothers and sisters. It is because he challenged those oppressors that the innocent blind Shaikh, Omar Abd-ur- Rahman, is now in an American prison.
Clearly the most pressing need of the moment is to restore freedom and power to the Ummah so that Muslims may struggle by any means necessary, and permitted by Allah (SWT), to extricate themselves from the poisonous embrace of their enemies. How can freedom and power be restored?
Our view is that freedom and power can be restored only when Muslim society realizes the need to struggle to extricate itself from the modern shirk of the sovereign State and to restore the sovereignty of Allah (SWT) in respect of both private and public life. The secular model of society rejected the sovereignty and supreme authority of Allah (SWT) in its public life and replaced Allah (SWT) with the sovereign State. And that secular model of society has today taken control of all of mankind, including the world of Islam! Our view is that the economic sunnah (i.e., the sunnah of the Prophet as it pertains to economic affairs) today provides the most appropriate area for initiating a successful effort towards challenging the secular model of society, reviving faith, and restoring freedom and power to the Ummah. And in that economic sunnah, the struggle to extricate the Ummah from the curse of riba is first in importance. We need to embark on an urgent effort at mass education in respect of the economic sunnah in general and the prohibition of riba in particular. It surely will have an impact on the religious consciousness when we remind the believers that in His very last word which He revealed in the Qur’an, Almighty Allah (SWT) has informed those who persist in consuming riba, even after the Revelation of that verse, that they are a people who belong to hell-fire and will remain in it forever and ever!
Thus those who own or possess shares in the ownership of banks, those who manage banks and other such financial institutions, and those who consume riba which they earn from fixed deposits in banks and other financial companies, are not a people to be respected. They belong to hell-fire. It will surely have an enormous impact on the religious consciousness when a billboard or a flier reminds the believers that the Prophet (SAW) has cursed all four and declared that they are all equally guilty — the one who takes riba, the one who gives riba, the one who records the transaction, and the two witnesses.
My own experience in the greater New York area where I have been lecturing on the subject for the last two years to Muslims who belong to all parts of the world has been positive and most encouraging. But the subject of the prohibition of riba in Islam must first be studied with greater urgency and seriousness than any other subject.
Those Muslim scholars who do not possess an adequate grasp of the subject — and they appear to be the majority — should turn for guidance to such scholars of Islam as not only possess that grasp of the subject but are, themselves, living a life which conforms, as much as possible, with the Islamic prohibition of riba, and are actively involved in the struggle against riba.
My teacher of blessed memory, Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari, used to constantly emphasize the need to adopt a particular methodology for the study of all subjects related to truth. First study all the verses of the Qur’an directly and indirectly related to a subject, paying careful attention to the chronological sequence of Revelation as well as such historical circumstances as are described. Then study all the relevant ahadith of the Prophet (SAW) on the subject, as well as the application of the particular subject by the Prophet (SAW) in the concrete world in which he lived. Then turn to the study of relevant knowledge from history or from nature, and this will include the most important works on the subject by the authentic ulama of Islam. Only then should the student turn to a critical examination of other data including other works on the subject.
All through this exercise, however, the student should constantly strive to discover the system of meaning which links all that material together as a unity and as a harmonious integrated whole. Only such a methodology will deliver a grasp of the subject in its totality and admit the possibility of a penetrating insight into its very substance. The prohibition of riba in Islam needs to be studied with that methodology.
The Strategy of Public Confrontation
After a program of public education has been effected, a mobilization of the latent faith in the bosom of the oppressed masses should be the next goal. The oppressed have to be roused to participate in a mass struggle for liberation from economic oppression. When that struggle is led by Muslims it will lead to the restoration of the sovereignty of Almighty Allah (SWT), which is dar al-Islam, and a rejection of the sovereignty of the State. The Islamic movement has to earn such credentials as would result in its being perceived by the oppressed as a force which can liberate them from oppression. We cannot earn those credentials without the following: making the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed our first priority; educating the oppressed; confronting, denouncing, and challenging the oppressors; waging an active struggle — even an armed one if all peaceful efforts fail — for the liberation of the oppressed. Nor should we ever hesitate to remind the world that the United States of America was born out of precisely that same struggle.
If anyone entertains any doubts concerning the legitimacy of waging war for liberation from the oppression of riba, he should recall the very last Revelation of the Qur’an, sent down when the Prophet (SAW) was about to die, and sent down after Almighty Allah (SWT) had announced the perfection of Deen and the completion of His favor to the believers, in which Allah (SAW) and His Messenger (SAW) declare war for that very purpose!
from: imranhosein.org