The Concept of Iḥsān
Section 5 of 22 · Foundations of Islam · Hamza Yusuf
When Socialism Fails
So what happens is that as communism begins to crumble, people ask: what are we going to do? Socialism fails. It fails in Algeria. It fails in Egypt. It fails in Iraq. It fails in Syria. Well — Islam! Oh, why did we not see this before? We used to be great. We had the Banū Umayyah. We had the Abbasids. We had the Ottoman Empire. We had — hey, we were great. We were ruling the world. People looked at us. We were the superpower. We were the big guy on the block. And how, why was that? Well, because God's grace was on us.
And a lot of Americans believe this. Reagan was very much in that vein of manifest destiny: America has a divine mission; the Americans; God bless America. There is an idea that when somebody is up at the top, God sheds His grace on them. This is divine grace: we would not have all this stuff if God was not pleased with us. Which is alien to the Qurʾānic worldview, by the way. The Qurʾān says that if God gives man a lot, then man says: oh, God is pleased with me; and if He gives him a hard time, man says: He is angry at me, He is upset with me:
فَأَمَّا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ إِذَا مَا ٱبْتَلَىٰهُ رَبُّهُۥ فَأَكْرَمَهُۥ وَنَعَّمَهُۥ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّىٓ أَكْرَمَنِ وَأَمَّآ إِذَا مَا ٱبْتَلَىٰهُ فَقَدَرَ عَلَيْهِ رِزْقَهُۥ فَيَقُولُ رَبِّىٓ أَهَـٰنَنِ
“As for man, when his Lord tests him, and thus gives him honour and bounties, he says, “My Lord has honoured me.” But when he tests him, and thus straitens his provision for him, he says, “My Lord has disgraced me.”” (89:15–16)
Whereas from the Qurʾānic worldview the testing is good and evil. One is tested with want and with abundance; they are both tests from God:
كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَآئِقَةُ ٱلْمَوْتِ ۗ وَنَبْلُوكُم بِٱلشَّرِّ وَٱلْخَيْرِ فِتْنَةً ۖ وَإِلَيْنَا تُرْجَعُونَ
“Every one has to taste death, and We test you through bad and good (situations) with a trial, and to Us you are to be returned.” (21:35)
So what happens within the Muslim world is that suddenly all these people who were Marxists in the 1970s are becoming the radical Islamists of the 1980s. Quite literally. And the vocabulary is changed, because it is very similar; the political slogans are not that different. One could start shouting about freedom in Islam — well, one can shout about freedom as a communist, and there is not a whole lot of difference. And so what happens is that a lot of young people come into these movements, these political movements that are basically emphasising social justice, with very little emphasis on the traditional teaching of Islam, which deals with three dimensions. There is a focus on one dimension, which is Islam. And this is why there is a great deal of one-dimensional Islam in the Muslim world.