Islamic Brotherhood: A theory or an action?

[LixAfar iyo Nus]

In March 3rd 1924 brotherhood has ended and was divided. Unless is rectified and revived, it will remain as a theory for Muslims who utter the words and do injustice to its meaning. You will encounter many Muslims who are in love with the concept of brotherhood and when the time to put it in practice or the opportunity presents it self they fail to entertain it. One would ask him/her self why is brotherhood romanticized by many who claim to follow the religion of Islam? "Brotherhood", the term upon which much of the first Muslim state was built on, no longer has the same meaning and strength. Now it relates to your friend, your mate, the people in your group or gang. It has become a very narrow definition that needs to be revived and placed in its proper context by the scholars and teachers of Islam.

 

Brotherhood in the west is seen as ‘chilling’ long hours in trivial matters and traveling far places together that you do not have a clear objective of why you have to be there. If questioned, one would argue for brotherhood and use the hadith (…..you get to know someone by traveling with him) out of context and with no proper intention. When asked for help, the notions of what have you done for me lately or what’s in it for me appears. Sharing your plate of food or drink is seen as peculiar thing to do. Doing favors or giving money is done with the intention of receiving them back without delay. One who talks about Allah and his messenger is seen as boring and not a ‘fun’ person to hang with. ‘Fun’ has been the basis of brotherhood. As a result, No fun, no brotherhood attitude has become the common theme amongst Muslims in the west, specially the youth.

 

On the other hand, you have the educated Muslims who in their pursuit of modernization have led them to think that this could be achieved only by westernization. For that reason, older educated Muslims have adopted the impression of ‘when in Rome, do as Romans do’ and the younger generation simply have entertained the saying ‘Monkey see, Monkey do’. This is not to undermine those few Muslims who created a healthy atmosphere of true brotherhood and the others whom their efforts have failed them due to the type of brothers/sisters they have to deal with.

 

Brotherhood is impaired because of two unfortunate developments in this century. The First was the abolishment of the Khilafah and the emergence of independent nation-states in the Muslim world. "National interests" became the idea of each Muslim country that is at cross-purposes to the interests of the Brotherhood. . The second development was the emergence of the United Nations Organization and the participation of individual Muslim nation-states in it, solely at its terms. The U.N. was and remains an organization of unequal powers, designed to maintain that inequality. Its purpose was to establish dominance of the Western alliance over the rest of the world--- not for any higher moral purpose but solely for economic exploitation. Its very structure (with real decision making in the hands of a few in the Security Council) guaranteed the disenfranchisement of the weak, and the entire Muslim world found itself in that category at the end of official colonialism.

 

Does brotherhood exist anymore* If Somalilanders see the other Somalies as enemies and ally themselves with the non-Muslims...than you wonder is there Brotherhood in Somalia....could there be one and how*

 

P.S:Brotherhood is a concept refering to both gender.

[Pacifist]

brother i think it is a theory because their is no action taken.. We are full of talk nothing...

Gosh its so sickening..

 

To be honest the only thing i can think of is not to lose hope..

IN theory too we live for the akhira but trully we live for this dunya..

 

we are so weak that their is no Shyness in front of Allah

 

Trully if we really ask would you die for Islam i think that mostly everyone would say yes yes i would, but trully when push comes to action absolutely their would be second thoughts..

 

I think shaytan is getting what he wants and he is ruling our minds.

 

we need to purify our hearts and minds...

 

Are we all for islamic brotherhood and sisterhood???

 

Its seems like we are occupied on worldly stuff and we need to think like we are going to die this minute.

[Haseena]

I belive brotherhood will come into existens, there's changes going on now that speak of it. Every where a muslim stands today he or she is oppressed as the first muslims was. But the diffrence here is that the first muslims relied on their Faith and that's the strongest weapon. As to the muslims living in this time, faith is often a stranger. So what muslims all together should do is to "get to know" Faith and to "adapt" it on their lifes, only then will real brotherhood come to existens.

[Medley of extemporanea]

what happend on March 3rd 1924?

[Conscious Manipulation]

March 3, 1924 was the day the Islamic state was officially abolished by Mustafa Kamal in Turkey. Although intellectually/spiritualy dead a 100yrs prior, it was still a blow to the Muslims as it ended the official brotherhood/unity of the ummah.

 

It was after the abolishment of the khilafah that the kufar took out their pen and started carving the Muslim lands to divide the ummah. They handed each "nation" a peice of cloth (a flag) to replace the Islamic flag (simple black or white with la ilah ila lah written on it) and told them to wave it and be proud for they are now an independent entity, seperate from the rest of the ummah. The detrimental effects can still be felt today in the Muslim lands (even on this forum as it is common to see nomads with pics of flags as their avatar) in the form of nationalism.

 

The basis for unity in Islam has always been the Islamic aqeedah. The reason why there's a lack of unity in the ummah today is because we have either lost or watered down our aqeedah. If we want unity then of course we have to go back to our deen and work for it. We can start by liberating our selves from anything that detaches us from the spirit of brotherhood, this includes letting go of nationalistic tendencies and ignorant stereotyping of other Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds.

 

salaam

[Qac Qaac]

masha'allah good topic bro. i love how u all answered well done guys, but if i may add my 2 cents.

 

i think, we lost not only brotherhood, but everything that we claim we are, i agree with CMani.. we need to go back to our aqeedah, and get our spritual side back, i think it is our spritual side, our god concious side is where we took lots of shots, and we are suffering. u see the muslims before us had brotherhood and more, but how they reach that, it was because they all had good relationship with allah. but us nowadays all we care about is the History of islam, the philosophy side of islam, science side of islam. and if u compare to us to the first generation muslims they were only after the spritual side of islam, and to go to heaven, not to say we once conquered Spain. u know what i mean.

so until we go back to islam, especially the Quran and Hadith, we will go no where, let's get our spritual side Up, then we'll get all these other things like Brotherhood and etc....

[TIIMBARO]

To lix afar:

 

Brotherhood is a concept most Muslims around the world want to have. The sad part is that most people only pay lip service to it. The Ummah is divided along the lines of nationality, race, and class. I know Islam lays a great emphasis on unity but the opposite situation prevails today.

Brother lix afar I know this is a useful topic for us to discuss but come on. Do you really think Somalis should be having this discussion? What the hell do we know about brotherhood? If we had that kind of approach it would be great, but we all know that isn’t the case. Anyway, Let me go back to the point I was trying to make. Is brotherhood in Islam possible in this day and age? I will say yes. It’s possible and exists in some parts of the world, just not in our part of the world...lol…

Somaliya Ilaahey ha’u naxariisto!

[Nur]

A good question!

 

Whatever happened to the concept of Brotherhood?

 

Are we enemies to each other or brothers/Sisters to each other in Faith?

 

 

Nur