SURAH AL-RUM BEGINS with an emphatic statement:
غُلِبَتِ الرُّومُ
The Romans have been defeated. (2)
The Arabs at the time of the Prophet ﷺ were aware of the rivalry between the two great powers of the age, the Byzantine Romans and the Persians. They followed closely events between the two as their own trade and prosperity was linked to them.
The defeat of the Romans appeared decisive. Yet Allah immediately follows it with a remarkable declaration:
وَهُمْ مِنْ بَعْدِ غَلَبِهِمْ سَيَغْلِبُونَ
Yet after their defeat, they will overcome. (3)
And then:
فِي بِضْعِ سِنِينَ
Within a few years. (4)
This is not a vague statement that things might eventually improve. It is a specific prediction about a major geopolitical power that had just suffered a devastating defeat. From the perspective of the visible circumstances, how could such a reversal happen?
Allah gives us the key:
لِلَّهِ الْأَمْرُ مِنْ قَبْلُ وَمِنْ بَعْدُ
To Allah belongs the command before and after. (4)
The circumstances, the defeat and the balance of power were all real. But none of these realities possessed an independent power to determine what would happen next.
Allah is teaching the believers something about how reality itself should be understood. We see the means. We assess the circumstances. We observe patterns and make predictions. But Allah is the One who created the means and determines the outcome.
Then Allah reinforces the point:
وَعْدَ اللَّهِ لَا يُخْلِفُ اللَّهُ وَعْدَهُ
It is the promise of Allah. Allah does not fail in His promise. (6)
And then comes a striking contrast:
وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
But most people do not know. (6)
What is it that they do not know? The following verse explains:
يَعْلَمُونَ ظَاهِرًا مِنَ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا
They know an apparent aspect of the life of this world. (7)
At first, this seems almost contradictory. Allah says they do not know. Then He says they know. So do they know or do they not know?
They know one layer of reality while remaining ignorant of another.
They know the ẓāhir, the apparent and outward dimension of worldly life. They can observe, calculate, predict and understand many of the mechanisms operating around them. But they do not see the whole of reality.
The Qur’an is speaking here about people whose knowledge of worldly life remains disconnected from the Hereafter. But the warning has an uncomfortable relevance to the Muslim intellectual today.
The Problem Is Not Intelligence
Allah is not describing ignorant people. He does not say they know nothing. He says they know.
Their observations may be accurate. Their calculations may be sophisticated. Their understanding of worldly affairs may be extensive. The problem is not knowledge itself. It is the framework within which that knowledge is understood.
Which brings me to a particular kind of Muslim intellectual today who presents an interesting paradox.
He may have studied history, economics, political science, medicine, engineering, international relations or the natural sciences at the highest levels. He may understand the rise and fall of civilisations, the distribution of global power, military capabilities, economic dependency and the institutional weaknesses of Muslim societies. He may be able to explain with great precision why the Muslim world is weak.
And yet, when the subject turns to the future of the Muslim Ummah, something changes. He looks at the present condition of the Muslim world and asks, in effect: How could the Muslims possibly prevail?
His reasoning may appear entirely rational. The Muslim world is fragmented. Institutions are weak. Economies are dependent. Political leadership is often corrupt or tyrannical. Educational systems have serious deficiencies. Technological capacity is limited, while rival powers possess overwhelming military and economic advantages.
None of these observations are necessarily false. The question is whether they constitute the whole of reality.
A Muslim can note all of those weaknesses, and they may all be true.
But there is another step: Therefore Muslim victory cannot happen.
That conclusion does not necessarily follow.
Part of the reason it feels so compelling is that human beings naturally extrapolate from the present. We see what has been happening and project it forward.
If something has been happening for ten years, we unconsciously expect another ten. If one civilisation is dominant, we assume it will remain dominant. If another is weak, we begin to treat its weakness as permanent.
The more detailed our analysis becomes, the easier this can be to do. We can build such a sophisticated picture of the present that the picture itself begins to look like the future.
But the future is not simply the present extended forward. The Roman defeat was real. Yet the future was not determined by what could be seen at that moment.
But this is where the deeper problem begins.
When the Islamic Worldview Is Displaced
The issue is not simply that some Muslims have become pessimistic. Something more fundamental has happened.
The intellectual framework through which many Muslims understand the world has been increasingly shaped by a secular and materialist way of thinking.
The Islamic way of thinking begins from a different understanding of reality. Allah is not simply the object of belief. He is the Creator, Sustainer and Sovereign of the universe. Revelation is therefore not confined to questions of personal worship. It is part of the believer’s understanding of reality itself.
The means, human action and material conditions matter. But none of these operate independently of Allah.
The modern secular-materialist framework works differently.
It seeks to explain reality primarily through what can be observed, measured, predicted and traced through material causes. Religion may be permitted as a private belief, but it is increasingly removed from the explanation of how the world itself works.
A Muslim can absorb this framework without realising it. He can retain his creed while adopting a different intellectual framework for understanding history and reality.
Allah remains in his aqidah. But the framework through which he interprets history, politics, economics and human possibility has been borrowed from elsewhere.
He studies power without asking what place Allah has in his understanding of history. He studies political structures without considering revelation as part of his account of reality. He studies the rise and fall of civilisations through material forces alone. Eventually, material factors become more than an important part of his analysis. They become the boundary of what he considers possible.
Once that happens, extrapolation from the present becomes almost inevitable. The intellectual can look at the current balance of power and say: Given the reality we can see, there is no realistic path to victory.
But the Qur’anic worldview asks a more fundamental question: Who gave these means their power, and who determines their effects?
The answer is of course:
لِلَّهِ الْأَمْرُ مِنْ قَبْلُ وَمِنْ بَعْدُ
To Allah belongs the command before and after.
The believer does not deny the means. He knows that the means matter, but the outcome belongs to Allah.
The Change in Our Thinking
Perhaps this is where the problem ultimately lies.
The Muslim intellectual does not need less knowledge of the world. As an Ummah we certainly need people who understand the reality and the challenges we face. We need people who can analyse economics, politics, military power, technology and international relations with seriousness and precision.
But that knowledge has to sit within an Islamic conception of reality.
The danger is not seeing the ẓāhir. The danger is seeing the ẓāhir and believing that there is nothing beyond it.
The Roman defeat was real. Yet that defeat did not determine what Allah had already decreed would happen next.
The lesson is not that circumstances do not matter. It is that our understanding of circumstances must not become our measure of what is possible.
The Romans were defeated. Then they won. Both were part of the same reality above which stood the command of Allah:
لِلَّهِ الْأَمْرُ مِنْ قَبْلُ وَمِنْ بَعْدُ
To Allah belongs the command before and after.
Before, after and always. The command belongs to Allah.
|QUR’ANIC REFLECTION · SURAH AR RUM 1-7|
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