The impact of the modern West on Islamic countries has clearly demonstrated that the current religious concepts held by most Muslims all over the world, are inadequate to serve as an inspiration towards progressive effort and dynamic activity. Islam has been reduced by its followers to a symbol of the past. It is no more an ideal to be realized for the future. Only native conservatism keeps the Muslims of today attached to the rituals of Islam. Isolated and torn away from the organic whole of its multi- facet teachings, and even this attachment is half-hearted and unenlightened by a conscious understanding of its real import and its quality as a dynamic social force.
In the wider field of social, political and economic life, Muslims have ceased to derive inspiration from Islamic ideals. From being a code of practical guidance in day-to-day existence of the community, Islam has become only a happy memory of the past, which provides an easy means of escape from the harsh realities of the present and the necessity of facing them squarely face on. How can such a doctrine, which does not look forward, no vision of a new future and no clue to the next step in the march of history, survive the incessant changes in the external conditions of life? A social creed to be capable of acting as a live force, must have a bearing on the present and the future, and yet all the religious creeds, Islam included, merely carry us back to the past without showing the way to what is yet to come.
This conservative attitude towards Islam is at the bottom of all the evils and misfortunes from which the Muslim world is suffering, and the Islamic countries will never get out of their present stagnation unless they decide to consciously and intelligently follow the social theory of Islam in all its organic wholeness, carrying out all its demands and fulfilling all its requirements. The only practical alternative for the Muslims is to cast away the few lifeless remnants of Islam that they cling to and arm themselves with a new socio-political understanding, capable of giving them an effective lead in the complexities of life. Thus for every Muslim who intelligently believes in the Message of Muhammad (Peace be upon him), Islam is not only his past, but also his future. Also apart from it, the Muslim can conceive of no future for the Muslim world. If Islam represents merely the past of a people and has no message for the present and the future; if it is incapable of furnishing guidance in the social, political and economic situation confronting Muslims today, there is no meaning in continuing our lukewarm adherence to its principles out of sheer conservatism and love of the past.
Half-hearted attachment to an ideology and the eclectic attitude of retaining some parts of it, which fit in with our easy-going habits and adding to it extraneous elements drawn from different social theories, can only produce a hybrid mixture lacking organic combination, and therefore, unable to impart vigour and life to any sort of corporate existence. The great trouble with Muslims is that they would mould Islam to suit their own convenience rather than allow their own lives to be shaped by it. WHAT SOCIAL THEORY CAN REFORM A PEOPLE ON THESE TERMS?
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