News & Comment
Taking a Close Look at the Progress of the "No Religion" Country

News:

In the last few weeks, the public of Indonesia were surprised by the decision of a Muslim celebrity to take off her veil. She admitted that she did that because she has found many virtues beside Islam from many countries she visited for the traveling television program she guided. Three months before taking off her veil, she expressed her admiration to Japan through her Instagram account. After her two-day visit to Japan, she concluded that without any belief in a certain celestial religion, the Japanese society highly upholds moral values, humanity, neatness, and discipline. She closed her notes with a question: if your life is as good as this without religion, then why do you want to seek God and want to have a religion?

Comment:

Nowadays, many Muslims are so fascinated by the Western civilization, including Japan as a developed Eastern capitalist country. The physical progress and greatness achieved in the developed countries have dazzled many Muslims like this celebrity. On the top of that, she rashly concluded that if we have had many goodness in life, why should we embrace a religion? A hasty conclusion came after a two-day short visit to Japan, which actually emerged from the inferior mentality due to an identity crisis!

In fact, it is the inferiority and identity crisis desired by those who are hostile to Islam. They are concerned about promoting Islamophobia so that Muslims see their own religion with embarrassment and insecurity, as well as for the Muslim women to abandon their hijab attributes, then turn to adore and worship the secular and liberal life order. The "no religion" civilization, which is actually extraneous, is eventually treated with respect and reverence by some Muslims, whereas Japan once colonized this country, tore apart its sovereignty, plundered its wealth, and defiled the honor of women of this country.

An article from The Independent last October could be one of our magnifying glasses in looking at the profile of this no-religion country. The article entitled "8 signs Japan has become a 'demographic time bomb'" indicated that there is a chronic problem within their civilization. It is extinction. In the last five years, the issue of demographic time bomb in Japan met many international media. The advanced technology it has achieved is accompanied by social crisis, the collapse of family institutions, the high number of suicides, as well as the falling number of births and marriages due to the massiveness of women's involvement as the labor force. The advancement and modernity that Capitalism offers have become a powerful recipe for the mass flow of dehumanization for mankind. Capitalism is making its society more respectful of materials and physical pleasures than its societal institution, and ignorant of humanity, kinship, and of the preservation of the human race.

So, what is the meaning of progress of science, technology, and infrastructure if the people are extinct? What is the meaning of all these if kinship is lost? What is the meaning of all these if humanity vanishes? Is it true that the physical development is for enslaving the human beings by technology development? This is the root of the failure of secular civilization that offers toxic advances to Muslim countries. It is said so because in the midst of the abundance of science, amid great technological advances, there are so many people who fail to organize their private lives and fail in building civilization.

Indeed, it is the fact that the Islamic world is staggering to rise from its decline and backwardness, with a myriad of internal problems and challenges of its awakening. A Muslim indeed needs to take lessons from any people. However, he still must have a filter and a frame of identity, as well as a strong commitment to study the teachings of Islam itself instead of leaving Islam and desperately studying to the West. Unfortunately, the Qur'an and Sunnah are not studied as seriously as studying the science from the West. Thus, it is no wonder when they become inferior with their shallow understanding of Islam, their own religion. They even feel threatened by Islam, just like the Western regimes that have been blindly trying to silence the da'wah of Islam, labeling the da'wah carriers as radical, extremists, and terrorists. Even the recipe of "deradicalization" is copied by them from Western solutions in order to eradicate the threat to nationality, just like their role models in the West!

Remember the sayings of the 'ulama: Muslims are back down because of abandoning their religion, while the West is progressing because of leaving their religion. Indeed, Islam brings a million hopes for the solution of civilization, and its Sharia is the grace of the universe that is timeless, and its da'wah carriers are those who dedicate their lives to studying the Qur'an and struggling to carry the future ideals of the Ummah of Muhammad (saw), the role model for all mankind. It is the return of Islam as a unity of system that will be both a shield and a cure from an epidemic of identity crisis that has been engulfing the Muslim youth around the world, as the saying of Rasulullaah (saw):

«الإِسْلامُ يَعْلُو وَلا يُعْلَى عَلَيْهِ»

“Islam is the highest and nothing higher than it.”(Narrated by Daruqutni)

 Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Fika Komara
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir