THE STORY OF Musa (as) appears as scattered scenes throughout the Qur’an so it might not be clear where it starts and where it ends.
It is easy to think that the story ends with Pharoah’s fall, a fitting end for a man considered to be the worst of all tyrants.
But we forget that his end isn’t the whole story. It is only half the story.
We can miss the ayat where Allah sets out the end goal:
وَنُرِيدُ أَن نَّمُنَّ عَلَى ٱلَّذِينَ ٱسْتُضْعِفُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَنَجْعَلَهُمْ أَئِمَّةًۭ وَنَجْعَلَهُمُ ٱلْوَٰرِثِينَ
وَنُمَكِّنَ لَهُمْ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَنُرِىَ فِرْعَوْنَ وَهَـٰمَـٰنَ وَجُنُودَهُمَا مِنْهُم مَّا كَانُوا۟ يَحْذَرُونَ
And We wished to do a favour to those who were weak (and oppressed) in the land, and to make them leaders and to make them the inheritors. And establish them in the land and show Pharaoh and Haman and their soldiers through them that which they had feared. (Qasas 5-6)
Pharaoh’s death must have brought great relief and joy to Bani Isra’il. He was a man who had enslaved them and it was on his orders that their newborn boys were taken away and slaughtered.
Indeed, Bani Isra’il celebrated the day of Pharoah’s fall by fasting on Ashura, a practice Muslims also adopted after coming to Madinah.
When the Prophet ﷺ came to Madina, he found (the Jews) fasting on the day of ‘Ashura’ (i.e. 10th of Muharram). They used to say: “This is a great day on which Allah saved Musa and drowned the folk of Pharaoh. Musa observed the fast on this day, as a sign of gratitude to Allah.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “I am closer to Moses than they.” So, he observed the fast (on that day) and ordered the Muslims to fast on it. (Bukhari)
However, whilst a necessary step towards freedom, Pharaoh’s drowning was not the conclusion. The goal was for the followers of Allah to be victorious over the followers of Shaytan, iman to triumph over kufr, Truth to prevail over Falsehood. It was to establish the Believers on the land and make them the leaders who would rule with Allah’s law and justice.
Unfortunately, ingratitude and an unwillingness to change stopped that generation who crossed the Red Sea with Musa (as) to achieve that goal. They refused to enter the Promised Land fearing its people even though they had just experienced Allah’s miraculous help.
Their failure to do so left them wandering the deserts until all of that generation had passed away.
A lesson for today.
This year we rejoice at the fall of Hasina in Bangladesh and al-Assad in Syria. We cannot deny the people the joy that they feel when we know the heavy price that so many of them have had to pay. Their joy is our joy. Their victory is our victory.
Free!
From the tyrant yes. But just as with Musa (as) and his people, that is only half the story.
True freedom is when we are mentally and physically free of the chains of man-made ideas and impositions that stop us from doing what we were all created for, the worship of Allah. This is what Islam aims to do. It frees our minds to worship Allah alone by establishing the truth and exposing the falsehood. It creates a physical way of life that gives humans a real choice to worship Allah alone without impediment (or not if they so desire).
Replacing a tyrant with any other ‘-ism’ or way of life apart from Islam distracts or misleads us from that purpose to worship Allah alone.
Anything less than that fundamental change will inevitably result in a new oppression, sooner or later. Have we not learned from Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, and Egypt in recent years and our history of the last hundred years? The faces changed, but the system and all the institutions remained the same maintaining the status quo. Today, Bangladesh is struggling after its ‘second liberation’ and is uncertain about its path. In Syria, we are already seeing internal and external forces making their moves like some elaborate game of chess to secure their interests.
The fall of a tyrant is a reminder to not lose hope that change can happen. But we cannot lose sight of what we need to achieve.
We need a reset in our thinking. Bani Isra’il were free of Pharoah but they weren’t free of the mentality that they had become accustomed to under years of slavery and a way of life that they still looked up to. We can’t be stuck on the same old colonial ideas of nationalism, secularism, Arabism etc that have led to our enslavement and suffering thus far. We need to build our own institutions and structures based on the Islamic way of life.
Some may say but I’m not Bangladeshi or Syrian. I live here and not there. What can I do? To say this is to fall again into the trap of nationalism the colonialists set for us. It was they who drew lines in the sand and divided us into these weak nation-states, not caring for those beyond our lines. But we have to break free from this mentality. We are Muslims first, we are one ummah and we have every right to speak about the matters of the ummah for so long it comes from the basis of Islam.
To that end, there needs to emerge a unity of purpose and opinion across the ummah that arises from our Deen alone. A call that we can all participate in and echo. A call to establish the Islamic way of life and thought on the land.
Living For Islam 