Everybody becomes busy with his limited affairs and personal...

Everybody becomes busy with his limited affairs and personal interest and begins to think only of his limited problems, such as how to pass time, how to eat, how to drink and how to provide means of comfort to himself and to his family members.

He keeps himself engaged in establishing himself, in the cheap sense, that is short-term establishment which keeps man occupied with his material needs for ever and makes him a prisoner of his immediate needs and desires to the extent that he ceases to think of anything beyond them and all his efforts begin to revolve round them only, for he finds nothing else in his life. When a nation loses its ideal, it may be said that virtually its ideal has fallen.

As we have already said, such a nation on account of its not having a superior ideal becomes a mere apparition without having a real existence. How History Behaves with the Nation Having No Ideal?

History shows that in such circumstances one or other of the following three historical developments takes place: (i) A nation having no ideal may collapse in the face of an external military attack, as the result of being decayed from within and having no coherent existence, for such a nation consists of only disunited individuals gathered together. Each member of such a nation cares for his own food, clothing and shelter and does not think in nationalistic terms.

In these circumstances such a nation collapses in the face of an external military invasion. Exactly this is the problem with which our Muslim ummah is confronted today. In the past when the Muslims lost their supreme ideal and withdrew themselves from the favour of Allah, they fell a prey to the invasion of the infidel Mongols. The Islamic Civilization of that time was destroyed, and the Muslim world which was subjected to a foreign invasion, was disrupted internally also.

(ii) The second situation which such a nation may face is its absorption in a foreign and imported ideal. A nation which loses its natural ideal that sprouted from within it, tries to fill the vacuum by an ideal which is imposed on it from outside and which henceforward guides its destiny. This is the second possible historical development.

(iii) The third historical development is the return of the nation concerned to its original ideal, the gradual implementation of this ideal in its life and its march on the route of progress anew. The Muslim ummah is at present standing on the cross-roads of the second and the third possibilities.