Cartoon caricature of Prophet reflection

It’s been a couple of months now and the uproar of our beloved prophet (peace be upon him) cartoon caricature is still ongoing until now. How about Iraq war? Iran nuclear issue?? Never ending story of Palestinians and Israelis conflict?? So what is the reflection from all of these events really, not in the western point of view, but for us as a Muslim??

We are just hopeless. Yes, we are so weak and always at the mercy of West. Do all the demonstrations really help even our brothers killed in those demonstrations? A little I guess (one Italian minister quits from govt). Do the boycotts help? Probably a little (considering Arla foods company from Denmark lost 1.5 million USD/day). Do the suicide missions really effective? No, it makes the rest of Muslims suffering even more. All these things are the short term solutions to protest the West and we will always be at the mercy of West as long as we can’t reform our community. We have ourselves to blame for all the bad things that happened to us now.

Firstly, most of Muslim countries are so poor with uneducated population everywhere. It’s a tragedy really considering most of these countries have abundant of natural resources but still could not manipulate that god’s gifts to transform the country. As long as the country governed by the greedy leaders, we are nowhere to compete with the West politically, socially and most important economically. Look at Libya, only 6 millions of population with abundant of oil and gas resources but still, poverty are common to most population. I’m not suggesting that West is the best example to follow in order to prosper. In fact, the capitalist system founded and employed by them is really punishing majority of people in the world today. While Westerners are getting richer everyday, majority of Africans, Asians or South Americans are standing still economically or getting poorer. In addition, putting the West as an example would not lead us to total victory since they are the one setting the rules, the followers will always be the second best. We should not play by their rules, instead we should play by our own rules. However, neither am I suggesting that West is a bad example. There are certain good values so called Western values could be incorporated into our values. After all, Islamic empire flourished once by learning from Greek civilisation. During the Islamic Golden Age, we were the one prospered politically, socially and economically. One should note that the Islamic empire prospered while keeping the faith in religion intact. In fact, Quran and Sunnah were the inspiration of Muslims to prosper. For over 1000 years, sciences, philosophy, medicine, architecture, mathematics blossomed under Islamic empire. Al-kindi, Al-farabi, Ibn Sina, Al Khawarzimi, Al Jabr, to name a few, were all famous in their respective field. And now, Muslims are almost unnoticeable in every field. From economic point of view during the Islamic golden age, business oriented system was common where trading was the main driver for economy to prosper. And guess what, they prospered even by trading within the empire and without the foreign influences. So in today perspective, I’m pretty sure if we do business and trading heavily among Muslim countries, we all can prosper. That’s what cooperation means. After all, they are over 1 billion Muslims and 57 Muslim countries in the world today. Singaporeans prosper because they emphasise on human capital and they really capitalise their 4 millions population in every field even without natural resources to start with. We have the resources, we have over 1 billion human capital ready to be exploited in order to begin the Islamic revival. What I’m trying to say is we should look in our own Islamic perspective, what we have now, what we have achieved in the past, on how to prosper politically, socially and economically. Our past proved that we could do it. So there is no way it couldn’t be achieved again.

To gain a respect and claim our honour back is not at the mercy of Western world. We are the one should reform our community, educate our people, remove the greedy and idiotic leaders, have a 100% faith in Quran and Sunnah, strengthen our brotherhood, etc and etc, then we would climb back and regain our honour. Western Renaissance has made them prosper today, Islamic Renaissance now will make sure our future generation be respected and prosper. Western civilisation took almost 500 years to flourish as they are now. We still have hope and better to act now than never. Please stop this darken age of ours! And to all present and future leaders of the Muslim world, please and please, don’t look on how to get yourselves and people around you richer. Look after everybody please….