To the Muslims of the Twenty-First Century: by Dr. Rafey Habib

To the Muslims of the Twenty-First Century
Dr. Rafey. Habib

Sweet children of the future,
Do not follow us:
We are the old generation, tired, disabled corrupt.
Find your own path.

All we had to do
Was follow the Book. But we
Did not even read it. We recited it
Without knowing what it meant.
We were commanded to read:
But we cannot read.

We were blessed with oil, but we
Bled it into a curse:
We could have created Colleges, filled with the
Light of the worlds highest scholars;
Libraries, centres of the highest learning,
Schools to bring our people forward, returning to
Our glittering past; educating and
Enlightening:
Financing the learned traditions of Islam
Throughout East and West.

But we have not built even one,
Not one renowned college:
All the great scholars are in the West:
Where are our scholars?
Who comes to us to learn
Any science or art? Our colleges are
Beautiful on the outside only; inside
They are prisons of
Dullness, and decay of intellect.

Where are our great philosophers? They are
All in the past: al-Farabi, al-Ghazzali,
Ibn Arabi: they are sleeping, and we
Dare not wake them; we
Dare not hear their voices.
We have no great philosophers today, not one:
No great thinkers; our novelists
And poets speak with a
Lonely voice.

We could have forged alliances
In all spheres, culture, economics, religion:
We could have fostered science and art;
We could have built our own cars, our own
Satellites, our own space ships;
We could have renewed our great traditions
Of medicine, astronomy, science;
We could have spread Islams ideal of charity
Through Asia and Africa; we could have
Shown the world a different path, a
World consumed in darkness
And the greed of Capital: we
Could have shown the world
A path of light.

But instead, we plunged into the worlds
Darkness; we traded the poetry of our desert heart
For the urban prose of circumstance; we fostered
Ignorance and backwardness and
Utter dependence on
Western corruption. We built
Luxury hotels and playgrounds for
The playboys of the West,
While our own playboys played in Europe

But instead, we tried to be like them
Driving luxury cars, wearing
Their clothes, watching their films, listening
To their music, pretending all the time
To the strictest forms of faith, veiling
Our populations in night, in the stubborn
Gloom of a feudal past.

We cared nothing for our peoples voices;
Or for the Prophetic past which taught
Consensus and community. Our politics are
Mired in fogs of self-interest, blind to
Any broad picture of the world : we cannot
See ourselves, cannot think for ourselves:
Our ignorance mires us in blind imitation,
In the night of unreason.

We financed the narrowest Islam in many nations,
We financed activists, whose actions for half a century
Have achieved nothing; less than nothing: we are
Worse than before.

And we have done nothing for
The Palestinians: they suffer
Even more oppression,
Even more cruelty
Than before: the
Whole Muslim world lies asleep
Beneath the feet that tramp the world
In freedoms name.

Sweet children of the future,
You are orphans: your parents are dead,
They left you nothing.
Muslims of the future, beautiful
Dark-eyed men and women, be beautiful
In your words and deeds,
In your clothes and manners, beautiful
In intelligence and love:
Awake from the past centuries slumber!
Awake, to find your own freedom;
Awake to your true dream.

And do not follow us:
Our dreaming is not over, we cannot wake.
We cannot tell you which path to take:
We do not know.
We have fallen into endless night, the deep forest:
We are lost.

Seek your own path;
Seek the true dawn of Islam, which
We did not find.

Seek the true Light of the One God.

Filmed by: Chris Barrett

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[MsThemuh]

@rehan376 Muslims invented algebra and math in the path. Cough cough with out them the west would be in the middle ages.

[rehan376]

Muslims contributed nothin in this 21st century for the mankind... Frm roadways to vehicles... Frm submarine to space ships ..Frm radio to satellite ...Frm medicine to major vaccine Frm Telephone to Internet...Frm typewriter to Computer...This is all the great innovation of West ... Whome these Mulvi and Jahil curse.. And shamefully use all their product for basic need.. Pathetic

[StopTheElite]

@linmgo last prophet was s.a.w Mohammed (pbuh) .Its written in quran clearly so all muslims should know that prophet muhammad is the last prophet and the muslim who say that it isnt true then they are on the path of jahil.Hazrat Ahamad was a great personality but he wasnt a prophet ..

[khayser200]

@shivrajvishnu Have you read the Quran? have you read The so called 'Criminals' Biography?...No yeah thats what i thought, now go plug yourself back into those Hate Groups and Hate channels You get your info from.....

[shivrajvishnu]

Stop following the criminal Mohammad and his unholy book Koran, everything will be alright only after that.

[saraliciousgirl]

''seek the true dawn of islam that we didnot find'' beautiful!

[tchaikovsky1979]

I love you

[mhabib3]

@Adnowwwwn Thank you for your very balanced response.

[Adnowwwwn]

Amazing poem.

I think elders are afraid to tell the youth what you are telling them in this poem.

Our problems don't end with Israel or the US. If we miraculously defeated these two forces our world would still be riddled with corruption, slavery, ignorance and war.

The change must come from within, taking lessons from our rich history to solve our problems today. We should resort to the fundamentals of our great religion, starting from the Qur'an.

There should be a Muslim Renaissance.

[mhabib3]

@MrChickybee1 That has nothing to do with Islam, only the abuse of it by people who are uninformed and motivated by political reasons. Your own foul and semi-literate language says nothing about Islam but only about the kind of person you are.