1.4 THE MULTITUDE OF THE MOVEMENT’S FIELDS OF ACTION, AND WHICH IS MORE DESERVING
Diversification of Fields of Work
The fields of work awaiting the Islamic Movement in the coming phase are wide and expansive. The activist leaders and intellectual theorists of the Movement should make a careful scientific study of these fields. Such a study must be based on documented and confirmed statistics and data.
There is Educational Work
This field of work is important for forming human “cadres” and Islamic vanguards bringing up the aspired generation of victory, whose members will understand and believe in Islam in full, including knowledge, work, call and struggle. Members of this generation will carry the call of Islam to their Nation first and then to the rest of the world. They will be able to do that only after they commit themselves to Islam as a clear – cut perception in their minds, a deep – rooted doctrine in their hearts, a line of behaviour governing all aspects of their life, worship of Allah and dealing with other people, and a path of culture that will improve the state of affairs of the Nation and bring it together on the Word of Allah and lead the confused humanity to what is best and most proper.
There is Political Work
This kind of work would be aimed at extricating the rule from the hands of weaklings all traitors to place it in the hands of the powerful and honest who seek neither to be high and mighty on the land nor to corrupt it, who, if Allah establishes them in the land, establish prayer and give alms, enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong.
There is Social Work
This work would be aimed at remedying poverty, ignorance, disease and vice, and facing up to those suspect institutions that make social and philanthropic work a tool for altering the Nation’s identity and weakening its ties with its creed.
There is Economic Work
This sort of work would contribute to the development of the community to free it from subordination and lift off its burden of usury – based loans, as a prelude to building Islamic economic institutions.
There is the Work of Struggle (Jihad)
It would be aimed at liberating Muslim land, fighting the forces that oppose the Islamic Call and the Muslim Nation, and preserving the freedom of the Muslim will and the independence of the Muslim decision.
There is Media and Propaganda Work
It would be aimed at spreading Islamic ideas and explaining the teachings of Islam in such a way that would restore their middle – course nature and comprehensiveness and eliminate all the ambiguities and lies that may mar their clarity. It should use all the types of media available, from publications to audio and visual aids.
There is Intellectual and Scientific Work
It would be aimed at correcting the perception of Islam in the minds of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and setting right those wrong concepts and deficient fatwas (legal Islamic opinion) which have proliferated among some groups of the Islamists themselves, so as to lay down a mature, inspired understanding of the Islamic Movement. Such understanding will be based on a legal foundation derived from the texts and goals of Sharia, and it must be especially established among the elite of educated and cultured Muslims who did not actually have a chance to know Islam in a right and proper way.
Distribution of Forces Among the Fields of Work
I believe that all these fields are necessary and that none of them should be neglected or put off. What must be done is to distribute forces and capabilities among them according to what each of them needs on the one hand and what forces and capabilities we have on the other hand.
The Holy Quran forbade that all of the Muslims at the Prophet’s time should go to the field of jihad – and what a holy field it was! – and neglect another field that was no less sacred than the field of jihad, and might even have been more sacred at some times because it paved the way for it and reminded Muslims of it and warned them against neglecting it: it is the field of learning their religion well.
In Surat Al-Tauba [Repentance], which denounced those who held back from jihad and promised severest punishment for those who dragged their feet on the way to the battlefield, Allah the Almighty says “Nor should the believers all go forth together. If a contingent from every expedition remained behind, they could devote themselves to studies in religion and admonish their people when they return to them, so that they (may learn) to guard themselves” [122].
This is a strong call for specialization and for distribution of forces among the fields that need them.
What should be Emphasized and Given Priority?
The Islamic Movement should address several matters that. have a particular significance in the next phase in the light of the fiqh of priorities already mentioned. These matters are:
-Focussing on certain concepts that have to be clarified, generalized and deepened in the intellectual field. This is what we call the “new figh .
-Focussing on certain social brackets to which the Movement should spread and which the Awakening should include in the field of Muslim call.
-Focussing on a certain qualitative standard in the preparation and qualification of the readerships of the future in the educational field, particularly where the nurturing of faith and thought are concerned.
-Focussing on the development of ideas and practices with regard to local and world political relations, so as to break the Movement’s domestic isolation and external blockade and ensure its universality and flexibility in the political field.
We will deal separately with each of those four fields of work.
Source: Islamic Basics by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
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