To the Cure !

Diagnosis

Brother, know and learn that nations, in terms of their strength, weakness, youth, old age, health, and sickness, are like human individuals, without exception. For even when you look at a human being, strong, sound, and enjoying good health, you will see him at another moment in time, seized by illness and beleaguered by maladies. Ailments and pains undermine his strength, and he continues to complain and groan until Allah’s mercy (SWT) overtakes him by the hands of a skilled physician and well trained specialist who knows the locus of the complaint and diagnoses it expertly, discovering the area of the infection and working with dedication to cure it. And lo and behold, after a time you will see the same patient with his strength returned and his health restored to him. He may even be in better condition after his treatment than before it. Imagine exactly the same situation with respect to nations: the changes of time confront them with threats to their very existence, breaking apart their solid structure while disease infiltrates the surface appearance of their strength. It continues to work away at them without interruption until it wreaks its damage upon them, and they turn out weak, the covetous eyeing them with greed, and the spoilers robbing them. They have no strength to repel the spoiler, and cannot ward off the greed of the covetous.

They can only be cured by these means: knowledge of the locus of the ailment, endurance to put up with the pain of the treatment, and an expert who will undertake it until Allah fulfils his will through his hands, and brings the cure to a successful conclusion.

The Symptoms

Experience has taught us, and events have given us the knowledge, that the disease afflicting these Eastern nations assumes a variety of aspects and has many symptoms. It has done harm to every aspect of their lives, for they have been assailed on the political side by imperialist aggression on the part of their enemies, and by factionalism, rivalry, division, and disunity on the part of their sons. They have been assailed on the economic side by the propagation of usurious practices throughout their social classes, and the exploitation of their resources and natural treasures by foreign companies. They have been afflicted on the intellectual side by anarchy, defection, and heresy which destroy their religious beliefs and overthrow the ideals within their sons’ hearts. They have been assailed on the sociological side by lewdness of manners and morals, through the sloughing off of the restraints of the humanitarian virtues they inherited from their glorious, fortunate ancestors; while through imitation of the West, the viper’s venom creeps insidiously into their affairs, poisoning their blood and sullying the purity of their well being. They have been assailed through the workings of a positive man-made law which does not restrain the criminal, chastise the assailant, or repel the unjust; nor does it even for one day take the place of the divinely revealed laws which the Creator of creation, the Master of the kingdom, and the Lord of souls and their Originator, has set down. They have been assailed also through disorder in their policy of education and training, which stands in the way of effectively guiding their present generation, the men of the future and those who will be responsible for bringing about their resurgence. They have been assailed on the spiritual side by a death dealing despair, a murderous apathy, a shameful cowardice, an ignoble humility, an all pervading impotence, a niggardliness and an egocentricity which prevent people from making any effort, preclude self-sacrifice, and thrust the nation from the ranks of earnest strivers into those of triflers and gamesters.

What hope is there for a nation against which all these factors, in their strongest manifestations and most extreme forms; imperialism and factionalism, usury and heresy and licentiousness, disorientation in education and legislation, foreign companies, despair and niggardliness, impotence and cowardice, and admiration for the enemy, an admiration which prompts one to imitate him in everything he does, especially his evil acts.

One of these diseases alone is sufficient to kill off numerous proud nations, and how much longer, now that it has spread among all, in every nation without exception? If it were not for the resistance, imperviousness, hardihood, and strength of those Eastern nations whose enemies have been contending with them and assiduously inoculating them with the germs of these diseases for a long time, until they finally imbedded themselves and hatched, if it were not for these qualities, their traces would have been long ago swept away and wiped out of existence. But Allah and the believers will not tolerate this.

Brother, this is the diagnosis which the Brotherhood make of the ailments of this Ummah, and this is what they are doing in order to cure it of them and to restore to it its lost health and strength.

Hopes and Feelings

Brother, I would like you to know, before I talk to you about these means, that we do not despair of ourselves, that we hope for a great good, and that we believe that only such despair stands between us and our success. For if hope grows strong within us, we shall arrive at this great good, Allah willing, and therefore we do not despair, nor does despair force its way into our hearts, Allah be praised!

Everything around us gives glad tidings of hope, despite the forebodings of pessimists. If you were to visit a sick person, and found him declining gradually from speech to silence and from motion to immobility, you would feel that he is close to the end, that his cure would be a difficult matter, and that his disease was gaining ground. And if the reverse took place, and he began to move gradually from silence to speech, and from torpor to mobility, you would feel that he was close to being cured, and that he was making progress on the way to health and vitality. A period of time had come over these Eastern nations during which they had grown torpid, and inactive. But now they are seething with a waking consciousness is embracing all aspects of life, and they are flaring up with a vital and forceful awareness and sharpened sensibilities. If it were not for the weight of their shackles on the one hand, and their lack of direction on the other, this awareness would produce the most striking results. But these shackles shall not endure forever: time is change, and in the twinkling of an eye Allah changes things from one state to another. The directionlessness shall not remain so forever; guidance comes after bewilderment, and stability after anarchy, for Allah’s is the command before and after! Therefore we never despair the verses of Allah (SWT), the Traditions of His Apostle (PBUH), His Sunnah (SWT) as regards the teaching of nations and the exaltation of peoples, and all He has related to us of these matters in His Book all of these proclaim an immense hope for us, and guide us toward the path of a genuine resurgence, for the Muslims know this if they have studied.

Just read the noble Qur’anic verses at the beginning of Surat-al-Qasas:

‘Taa-Seen-Meem. These are the verses of the clear speaking Book. We shall relate to thee part of the story of Moses and Pharaoh in truth, to a believing people. Lo, Pharaoh was exalted in the earth and made its people into groups rendering weak a party among them, slaughtering their sons and keeping alive their women. Lo, he was of those who spread corruption. And We desired to show favour to those who had been rendered weak in the earth, and to make them leaders and to make them inheritors; and to make them strong in the earth, and to display through them, to Pharaoh and Haman and their soldiery, what they were guarding against’

(Surat-al-Qasas (28), ayahs 1-6)

Read these noble verses and you will see how the vain one oppresses through his brutality and exults in his strength, satisfied with his tyrannical power and forgetful of the Eye which observes him. But just as he is rejoicing in his fortune, God seizes him with the grasp of the Mighty, the Powerful, for it is Allah’s will invariably to succour the wrong and to help the downtrodden and those rendered weak. For the vein crumbles at its very foundation, but the truth is solidly built and firmly supported, and those who cling to it will be triumphant. After reading these noble Qur’anic verses and their like in the Unassailable Book, not one of the Islamic nations believing in Allah, His Apostle, and His Book, has any excuse to give way to despair and hopelessness. When will the Muslims apply themselves to God’s Book?

For similar reasons brother, and there are many of such in Allah’s religion the Muslim Brotherhood do not despair of Allah’s succour being sent down to these nations, despite the difficulties which can be seen before them. In the light of this hope, they carry on the task of the earnest and the hopeful, for it is Allah of whom aid is sought!

As for the means which I promised you I would discuss, they are three basic principles about which the ideology of the Brotherhood revolves.

The proper program of action: The Brotherhood have found it in God’s Book, the Sunnah of His Apostle, and the precepts of Islam, when the Muslims will understand these as they should be: fresh, pure, and far removed from the spurious and the untrue and when they devote themselves to the study of Islam on this basis, simply, broadly, and comprehensively.

Believing workers: For this reason the Brotherhood have taken it upon themselves to apply what they have understood of Allah’s religion without indulgence or slackness. God be praised, they believe in their ideology, are satisfied as to its goal, and are confident that Allah will sustain them while they remain devoted to Him, and so they will forge ahead under the guidance of Allah’s Apostle (PBUH).

A determined, trustworthy leadership: The Muslim Brotherhood have found their leadership to be of this character, and so they are obedient to it and work under its banner.

This, Dear brother is a summary of our mission. It is a general description which has a more in-depth explanation. A dream which has to be turned into reality and you are like the ‘Joseph’ of these dreams. If the path we are treading on appeals to you, place your hands on ours and join with us on this path. May Allah grant us success, for only on him do we depend. He is our best of trustee, protector and helper!

Allahu-akbar, wa lillahil-hamd.

Allah is Great and all praise is due to him.

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