SPIRIT OF ISLAM JULY 2O18

34 Spirit of Islam Issue 67 July 2018 Another failure that the Muslims have had to face was that the whole Muslim ummah developed a negative psyche. Despair, negative thinking, complaint, protest-mentality, hot-temperedness, violence, considering the rest of the world as enemies, imagining conspiracies lurking everywhere, gun culture, and, finally, an extreme manifestation of a sense of failure—suicide-bombing: this is the general image of the Muslim ummah in the 21 st century. Because of this, the whole community has come to be embroiled in a violent psyche—some of its members are engaged in active violence, while others are engaged in passive violence. This is a situation of general destruction. There is only one way for the ummah to come out of this destruction—and that is for it to completely stop negative thinking and to replace this completely with positive thinking. It must be prepared to, once again, carry on with its actual mission—that is, the mission of inviting people to God. No excuse that seeks to avoid this mission is acceptable. Dawah Efforts In the past, Muslims established political empires. Today, many Muslims still dream of reviving these empires. But this is an anachronism. Muslims should understand God’s plan for human history and chalk out their aims accordingly. The fact is that the age of building political empires has gone. But there is now another, bigger opportunity for Muslims that is fully available to them—and that is, to work at the global level for peaceful dissemination of the divine message. In the past, deadly wars were fought to establish political empires, resulting in much loss of life. But today to establish a ‘ dawah empire’, to invite people across the whole world to God, there is no need for war at all. In the new conditions, it has become fully possible to engage in dawah globally in a peaceful manner. o USA Centre for Peace and Spirituality 2665 Byberry Road, Bensalem, PA 19020 kkaleemuddin@gmail.com