The Orientalists Who Could Not Enter

There are people called orientalists — whether they still exist as such is another matter, but at the turn of the last century into this one they were a dime a dozen, and orientalism was a speciality at the universities. In their superior attitude as colonial masters who had invaded the Muslim world — the British, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and the rest — the colonial powers formed think tanks of scholars and gave them millions of dollars and pounds to study Islam in order to destroy it: to study Islam, to disprove the Qur'an, to disprove the hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him). But they studied, and studied, and studied, and produced a great quantity of work. They learned the language, Arabic; they learned the Qur'an; they learned hadith — more than the Muslims of that time. There is an index, a fihrist, that these disbelievers prepared, which some Muslim scholar has since taken over from them and which Muslims now use: the best possible index, concise — a database in which any word of any hadith can be looked up, like a dictionary, and the source found, which hadith book, exactly where, and what number. It is fascinating work, and it was done by the orientalists.

An orientalist is a non-believer. Sometimes they say good things about Islam, and sometimes very bad things. Shaykh Maḥmūd Esad Coşan used to say that these orientalists are people standing in awe of the palace of Islam — amazed by it, studying it day and night, pouring millions of dollars into it, going round and round the palace and describing it — but Allah (swt) does not allow them to enter it through lā ilāha illallāh Muḥammadur rasūlullāh, because in their hearts they do not believe. The key to this Paradise is therefore not given to them; this faith, īmān, is not given to them; this guidance, hidāyah, is not given to them, because they do not believe in it. Everybody has a choice, even an orientalist who has studied Islam inside out, who knows the whole Qur'an and thousands upon thousands of hadith inside out — and he cannot enter Paradise. It is not the knowledge; it is the conviction, the belief in the heart, that is īmān, and the key to īmān, its foundation, is lā ilāha illallāh. That is why the Prophet (peace be upon him) says thaman al-jannah: the value, the entry price, the ticket price of Paradise is lā ilāha illallāh. It is that simple.