Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Islam Today | Al-Risala November, 1987
In April 1986, Dr. Abdul Haleem Uways, a well-known author of the Arab world, visited our Centre and spent a few days with us. One day, as he was putting his coat on a hanger, he was reminded of an Arab personality who had said, “All our own faults we put on the hanger of the imperialist powers,” He may have smiled as he said this but, it is a most apt commentary on the Muslims of today. One has only to read and listen to Muslim writers and speakers to realize that they do little other than lament the ruination of Muslims. And for this, they lay the blame at the door of other nations.
This tendency has become so commonplace that even those who ostensibly have a different tale to tell are basically following the same trend. Once, in the course of conversation, I mentioned the name of a Muslim leader who had, in his speeches, exposed the anti-Muslim plotting of other nations, emphasizing how damaging this had been for the Muslims. The gentleman I was addressing to promptly said that mine was an unfair assessment and that I should read another speech by the same leader in which he laid the blame for Muslim ruin fairly and squarely on Muslims’ shoulders. “This only goes to show,” I replied, “How this leader contradicts himself in his own thinking. It means that he has not got at the crux of the matter. Taking his work as a whole, one is left with the impression that he offers explanations to suit the occasion!”
In this world, one reaps as one has sown, and fulminations against others are little better than a waste of time and energy. Blaming others for one’s own unsatisfactory condition is moreover a sure indication that things are not going to improve. They cannot, for, nine times out of ten, the malaise lies within oneself.