(Surah an-Najm...

(Surah an-Najm, 53:23) The gods which man conceives, the creed which he fabricates and the ideal which is a result of human imagination cannot form the basis of any sound religion. They cannot be the means of human progress, for man can never create his own God. We have said that the societies and the nations adoring inferior ideals lead their lives in a circle. In other words the movement of history for them is monotonous and circular.

A nation which draws by artificial means its past to its present condition and its present condition to its future, will not in fact have a future, because its future will be like its past. That is why when we study and analyse the condition of the nations which have adopted inferior ideals, we find that they soon become tired of their ideals and lose interest in them.

Society gradually ceases to take interest in such ideals when it realizes that they have no practical value, for they can do no good and as practical experience will show, they have been unable to push the caravan of humanity forward and have failed to help society make any long term progress. With the disappearance of these ideals the legal unity among the vast groups of masses based only on these common ideals is eroded and disappears soon.

When a nation loses its link with its ideal, it is afflicted soon with disunity, confusion and decay as the Qur'an says: Their adversity among themselves is very great. You think of them as a whole, whereas their hearts are diverse. That is because they are people who have no sense. (Surah al Hashr, 59:14) Their adversity among themselves is great because they have no common ground for unity. They are apparently close to each other, but they have no common ideal.

Each one of them goes a different way. Their hearts are disunited and their inclinations diverse. Their spirits are incongruous, and their minds are stagnant. In such circumstances national unity can no longer exist.

All that remains is the apparition of a nation under the aegis of which each individual soon makes himself busy with his own personal affairs or some other petty affairs, for there exists no great ideal which may mobilize all forces and attract all talents and abilities for which sacrifice may be made. When its ideal thus falls, the banner of the unity of the nation falls also.