While the world at large is a gainer...

While the world at large is a gainer, the Muslims are the losers and the loss is more pathetic than tragic: on the one hand, the people of the world are cashing in on the fruits of our intellectual efforts and unparalleled scientific investigations; and on the other hand, they have made Islam and its followers the butt of their indiscriminate ridicule.

The Muslims are stuck in their narrow, unenlightened grooves and the irony is compounded when we realise that they are not even adequately aware of their crumbling condition. Some of them are reconciled to the inevitability of their decline --- a dangerous condition as it discourages any attempt at recovery and recuperation. Consequently, disgrace and humiliation seems our immediate destiny. We have strayed away from our real goal and are hopelessly trapped in the cobwebs of irrelevance.

The people who were supposed to lead the world by breaking through the crust of stale ideas have become a hostage to these ideas. Muslim community has lost its bounce and its élan to spearhead a world whose moral fibre is in tatters because it is itself morally shattered. Its cultural heritage is a heap of cinders; its towering designs are a fuel of inaction and impracticality, its ideals are a pile of ash.

The Muslim community is splitting hair while the wolves of capitalism are honking the world. There is no doubt that we do not discriminate against people and treat them on the plane of equality, but our present lack of vision has made us squint-eyed and as a result, we are setting Muslims against one another.

We are embarked upon a dangerous course as we are measuring Muslims against un-Islamic criteria, and those who do not come pat to these self-styled standards, we chuck them out as non-Muslims. The reason is that we are locked in a vicious circle of mental slavery, which has estranged us from the real problems of life by shuttering us up in frivolous issues. And this has become our second nature.

The blatant irony is that the western nations have taken over the leading role, and the nation that was supposed to lead is now imprisoned in its own false egoism. It has sacrificed its unity to self-fabricated differences authenticated neither by history nor by the central message of Islamic faith.