3. INTRODUCTION:
• Civilizations rise and decay, empires rise and fall.
• Empire building involves domination or control over
people.
• Civilization is the flourishing of excellence of a civic idea.
• Empires may rise and fall precipitously, but civilizations
take generations to rise and recede.
• Empires require the power of arms, while the civilizations
require the power of ideas.
4. • The glory days of the Islamic civilization spanned more than a
thousand years.
• Muslim intellectuals have been searching for the reasons of
decline of the Islamic Civilizations for at least the last three
centuries.
5. Popular opinions on the decay of Islamic
Civilizations:
• The decay of Islamic civilizations fall in two categories.
• The most popular view seems to be that the Muslims have
veered away from the teachings of Islam.
• The second conventional view is that our travails started with
the ascendance of the West.
• Both observations are partly correct but confuse causes and
effects.
6. A brief historical survey:
• On closer survey of history, it appears that the veering away
from the teachings of Islam started immediately after the
death of the Prophet (S.A.W) in 632.
• Many tribes rebelled at the time of the first Caliph Hazrat Abu
Bakr (RA).
• The second Caliph, Omar (RA) after ten years of rule was
assassinated by a Persian slave.
7. • Twelve years later, the third Caliph Hazrat Uthman (RA) was
assassinated because of deepening political machinations and
accusations of mismanagement.
• The fourth caliph Hazrat Ali (RA) was contested resulting in
Islam‟s first civil war.
• Hazrat Ali (RA) was assassinated by a purist intolerant group
known as “Kharijites”.
• In spite of all these dissentions, Islam grew by leaps and bounds
and had spread to Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia within
twenty years after the Prophet (S.A.W).
8. • In 1661, Muawiya the governor of Syria, became the fifth
Caliph.
• Muawiya learned and adapted methods from the Byzantines and
Persians to consolidate the Islamic Empire further.
• He also founded the Umayyad dynasty.
• In 750, Abul Abbas with Shia support destroyed ninety years of
expanding and at times turbulent Umayyad Caliphate, to
establish the Abbasid Dynasty.
9. Reason for the spread of Islam:
• Islam is the religion of tolerance and liberation.
• The defeated people of Byzantine and Persian empires, and later
the people of the Indian subcontinent were quite used to being
oppressed by the rulers.
• They found much more liberty under the Islamic egalitarian
system.
• The lives, properties and beliefs of the defeated people were
protected and they were allowed unhindered commerce.
• Muslims had to pay Zakat.
10. • The non-Muslims called Dhimmis in Arabic were levied Jazia.
• Zakat was distributed among the poor, but Jazia was a source of
income to the state.
• By the dawn of the 12th century, Al Ghazali by his powerful
writings brought about a synthesis of Sufism with the orthodox
Islam, gaining much wider acceptance and eventually great
popularity.
• Sufis, by their humane service oriented practices, became the
main evangelists of Islam.
• Freedom of intellectual pursuits continued to be celebrated by
many Sultans
11. Decline of Islamic Civilization
• Islamic civilizations declined because of the rise of the West.
• The Mughal Empire declined because of the weak leadership and
involvement in wrong activities such as drug addiction and
inefficient leadership.
• The Ottomans, on the other hand , declined due to the weak
leadership , corrupt government and tremendous European
advancement.
12. Rise of the West
• The 15th century saw intellectual awakening in Europe
now known as „the renaissance‟.
• The writings of Arab scientists and philosophers were
translated in European languages
• The maritime supremacy and race towards colonization of
the Americas took place from the 15th to 19th centuries.
• The colonization of the Islamic lands, North Africa, India
and Indonesia by Christian Europeans became established
in the 18th century and reached its zenith in the late 19th
century.
13. Challenge of our times:
• The challenge for our times is to emerge out of narrow
nationalism to a truly worldwide acceptance of laws based on
freedom, equality and justice
• It is time to nurture and fully develop the idea of Darul Aman
(the house of harmony), where citizens of all countries under the
treaty obligations of international law live in peace and equality
and justice as preached by the early Islam before its political
success, and it is imbedded in the modern understanding of the
fundamental human rights.
• Civilizations cannot go back in time to some imagined golden
age. Successful systems draw sustenance from the past, but
accept the challenge of the times to adjust and innovate
14. Time for a new paradigm
• It is time to learn and adapt from the Islamic celebrated past as
well as the developments in other civilizations
• The pioneers and the great scholars instrumental for the golden age
of Islam did not shun the ideas and lessons from the great
civilizations that preceded them. They thoughtfully considered
new, even seemingly alien ideas from Indian, Persian and Greek
civilizations, not with timidity but with confidence and courage
15. • When all religions and ideologies have a level field without the
coercive and corrupting power of the state supporting one over the
other, the best would flourish.
• All religions and irreligious ideologies claim to be the best.
• It is time to strengthen the international institutions of laws and
practice what we preached, but were afraid to practice.
16. • All new or foreign ideas are not necessarily good or bad. It is
important to consider them thoughtfully
• It is time for a civil, thoughtful and fearless debate within the
Islamic polity
• In „devoutly proclaimed‟ religious countries, the religion is
misused to suppress all freedoms and in „devoutly secular‟
countries the religion is suppressed at the altar of secularism.
• Muslims in democracies have the freedom and opportunity to
take this challenge.
• It is time for a new paradigm to aspire and work for - a complete
universal freedom of religion as enshrined in the UN charter
