Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Islam and Muslims
They think that by closing a door here and a window there, they have done enough, and that the rest will come about by wishful thinking.
“Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the window.”
This rueful remark, made by a western writer, Ashleigh Briluan, could well be applied to Muslim attitudes today. Deluged as they are by a flood of new realities, they close their front doors only to find the flood waters pouring in through the back door, the windows, over walls and through gates. There is no stopping their turbulent ingress. In other words, the national existence of Muslims is under attack on all sides, but, without their attempting to make a prompt and objective assessment of the challenge, they can never make their position secure. They think that by closing a door here and a window there, they have done enough, and that the rest will come about by wishful thinking. They even imagine that simply by asking the flood waters to take a different course, their problems are going to be solved. But by now, the flood has so penetrated each and every corner of Muslim existence that there is no aspect of their identity which has not been eroded.
The starting point for Muslim reconstruction is the open-minded acceptance of their own backwardness. It is only when they have adopted this position that they will be able to take their first genuine steps towards updating themselves as modern denizens of the world of today.