Personal view: A Sleeping Generation – by Hussein

Today, the religion of Islam becomes a burden for our society and hard to acknowledge its basic fundamentals as we speak. The growing concerns vary from its fundamentals to its known laws. For instance, some of them have the complete opposite misrepresentation and misinterpretation of its pillars against its pure teachings.

In case, if someone being asked about the third pillar of Islam majority of us will have a mixed feeling and would misinterpret the pillar incorrectly. Not only the third, but the rest would be misinterpreted wrongly. As I know, the last three pillars of Islam renders with conditions based approach unlike the first two pillars.

However, recently, I have been confronted a question about the third pillar of Islam by some friends. Before anyone confronts this question I have been asked myself the same question and had an opportunity to get its scholarly views.

In a debate we had between friends, the question was raised whether the Fitr Zakah is the main pillar of Islam – as known as the third pillar. With convinced tone, I told them that the mandatory giving or the ‘Farulh’ Zakah is the ‘Mudhaluge Zakah’ which is the third Pillar of Islam. Unlike the ‘Fitr Zakah’ the ‘Mudhaluge Zakah’ is the annual payment of a fortieth of one’s capital and this is obligatory to every Muslim who is capable of giving parts of their wealth to the poor. This happened to be the end of Ramadan and people were giving their portions as Zakah considering that they were substantiation the obligatory Zakah.

However, by giving that answer, the crowd’s reaction was unbelievably mind blowing. They all believed that by giving Fitr Zakah they can fulfil the terms and conditions of the obligatory Zakah - ‘Mudhaluge Zakah. In fact, if anyone who discontents this Zakah would be skipping the third pillar of Islam as if they were deliberately skipping the rest of the pillars. After hours and days of discussions with scholarly views it became evident to them that ‘Mudhaluge Zakah’ is the Zakah which makes the third Pillar of Islam.

The other burning issue is that whether women should wear Hijab (veil) or not and we have seen many interpretations and discussions within the youths of today. With reference to the Quran and Hadith, it is quite obvious that Muslim women should wear Hijab. There are lot of other issues but it will be impossible to articulate all the issues in one article. Instead, I will focus on the hostility and disintegration that exists in our community as we call ‘the 100% Muslim nation’.

The disintegration of this community didn’t happen overnight but it started to occur from decades back. Our parents, Muslim groups, schools and governments or the supreme authority have been failed to address the issue when it started to emerge before their eyes. The misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Islam has become the searing issue of this community. Everywhere the youth and the young generation turn, they see the same old arguments within their own families and communities that they live in. Therefore, they find the religion contradictory with these mixed feelings. In fact, the religion is not a contradictory religion but their parents’ lack of knowledge, faith and carelessness results the burden of intolerance, divergence and indecent upheaval within our society. Parents are the main stakeholders of their children but they have been failed to act responsibly by ignoring their parental duties which results enduring affect of turmoils in the society.

The other group is the religious affiliated groups and scholars. We see many religious figures and groups who are distant from the society without knowing the gravity of its negative impact on the Muslim community and its generations. However, they have forgotten the importance and values of Da’wah (spreading the message of Islam). Just behaving as if they were alien to the community would not fulfil their obligation of delivering the perfect message of Islam. On the contrary, they must be soft spoken, forbearance, high esteem and bringing others into conversations and spreading the message of Islam but we see a complete opposite behaviour from these groups. For instance, as they walk pass their brothers on the side of the road they pretend they don’t see anyone or just look down on the people as if they were seen Antichrist on the bright day lights.

This is not the Islam that the prophets have been conveyed to their people and the last Prophet (PBUH) himself. The generation is slowly secluding from their faith because of such behaviour within the society. Different groups are alien to one another as if they were from the African Sub-Sahara tribes. What if they approach these kids with good hearts without giving sudden burst of theological lessons while keeping the brotherhood to make them feel as part of the community? Hence, God is the one who gives the faith but His slaves have to keep on trying to bring them into the faith no matter how hard it is.

The last but not the least is the government where it has been failed to deliver the message of Islam resulting significant damage to this society. However, they were busy in playing their political games with their counterparts rather interacting community problems and issues. As we speak, the Parliamentarians are having quite hard time to implement some of the portion of the Shariah. As a customary of this Parliament House, they are quarrelling with bills to achieve their dirty political objectives by forgetting the covenants they made in the name of Allah before the very eyes of the public.

While they were into this fight, the President of Maldives Mr Mohamed Nasheed, who suppose to be the Muslim supreme leader of this nation gave a confusing message to the public about the capital punishment during his weekly radio show-off. He acknowledged that the Maldives judiciary system has got some serious flaws and lacked potential to be fair to give capital punishments.

My advice to the President is to make all his effort to create an unprejudiced judicial system to execute laws fairly rather going for the series of public stunts. As people may recall, one of the recent stunt was gathering his cabinet in under the sea as if Maldivians were mermaids - I remember one of his interviews to the 9 News Channel and he called Maldivians are ‘sea creatures’. When a known famous scientist publicizes his covert environmental operations then he came up with the twenty first century pretense making all educated Maldivians are Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists. Mr President, what’s next in your list? I guess you have run out of all options?

To be honest, the overseas meetings he attends, the medals he receives and the stunt he does will never be a good remedy to the society. Since, history has proven us that those archived medals and the unique stunts have not been accomplished a single objective of the public but leaves the country in debt and slavery.

With all that, the baby boomers and generations y have fallen back with religious knowledge. With few authenticate religious books available to the public, people have been fallen into the trap of this ignorant society. Moreover, schools were the main gates for their religious education but it was limited to a certain grades with limited standards. As people might have known, the Thauleemudiyanah 1 and 2 were widely available to the community for religious references. As today we understand it has got some serious inconsistencies in terms of religious scholarly or theological views.

For the debate I had with my friends, one of my friends brought this ‘Thauleemudiyana’ and read the whole chapter about Zakah and it revealed a confusing view about the obligatory Zakah. The confused status of the generations are the results of all these peoples’ actions and this will continue to worse if unless we take immediate actions to shape up the community. This is the status of this nation and if we do not address these issues now, there will be serious consequences with conflicts of intolerance, disintegration and beyond belief social predicaments in the community.