The key to his position lies in something he said shortly after he came out of khalwa. He said, “I would like to make a comment, if I may. I would like just to say that from the day I became Muslim until now there has only been one point at which I changed my position and views, and that was when I was put into khalwa by Shaykh al-Fayturi. When I came out of the khalwa I was in a state of what you might call bewilderment, and I said, ‘What am I to do?’ Shaykh al-Fayturi said ‘After you have been to the House of Allah, there is nowhere to go except Madina.’ It was from that point on that I realised that the very foundation of Islam had been abandoned.”
To understand how this applies to the shaykh’s insistence on the need to restore the pillar of zakat, it is necessary to go back in history a bit and look at how the prevailing viewpoints of the modern world came into existence. It is not stretching it to say that the worldview dominant in the world today found its origins in the profound changes in the understanding of the human condition that started with the Renaissance in 15th century Europe, morphed into the Reformation and later into the sadly misnamed Enlightenment with its accompanying intellectual, philosophic, economic, technological, political and social consequences. It all ended up with the ethos of scientific-materialism, banking capitalism, and overt secularism, which now dominates the world and has been exported to, and adopted by, every part of the globe. What, however, was the nature of the world where all this happened before it happened?
It was a society in which the Christian religion governed almost every aspect of people’s lives. Although, as we know, Christianity is seriously flawed in several fundamental ways – indeed, it was largely these flaws that allowed the new world view to overcome it so speedily and comprehensively – it, nevertheless, found its roots in revealed scripture and there was virtually no area of political, economic or social activity that was not heavily permeated by Divine legislation. Religious teaching impacted directly on even the most mundane of human activities.
The great monastic foundations of the Middle Ages clearly illustrate this interconnection between religion and ordinary life. The monasteries were, of course, focussed on the spiritual practice of the monks who inhabited them but also they filled many other functions. They were centres of education, hospitals, orphanages, places to stay, important economic hubs, employing and training large numbers of the local population in many trades, and a vital source of food production. In other words in them religious and ordinary daily activities were integrated in an organic whole; and this applied to a greater or lesser extent to the whole of society.
This was the ethos within which the “new philosophy” began to make itself felt and it had a truly devastating impact. Devastating because it turned completely upside down the understanding that almost everyone had had, up until that time, of themselves and the world they lived in. All the old certainties were thrown into doubt. Civil war, revolutions and ever growing state control were the political fallout. Rampant sectarian division followed by increasing secularisation was another outcome. A new social order based on money rather than land was a further development. It is not the time or place to go into any of this in detail, although I have, elsewhere, gone more deeply into the process of how all these societal upheavals unfolded.
What I want to highlight here is something that inexorably accompanied all the other changes that took place. Over time, stage by stage, step by step, all religious involvement in the day-to-day transactions of people’s lives was gradually eliminated. This was sometimes conscious and intentional and sometimes just a by- product of the ongoing process. But the end result is that we moved from a time when virtually every human activity was to some extent governed by religious precepts to a time when, now, religion plays no part whatsoever in the ordinary activities of people’s lives. Religion is now a total irrelevance in what is mistakenly called the “real world”. Put in Islamic terms mu’amalat have become totally disconnected from ‘ibadat.
But what, it might be asked, has this transformation process, which all happened in Europe, got to do with the Muslims. Unfortunately, almost everything. Under the twin scourges of the outright colonisation, which was the fate of the greater part of the Muslim world, and the indiscriminate modernisation of those areas that were not colonised, the “new philosophy” flooded almost unchecked into every Muslim land. Foreign political and educational systems were imported wholesale, wiping out the traditional forms that had existed previously, and, more significantly, the ubiquitous usurious economic system of banking capitalism which underpinned, and was in reality the engine that drove, the whole European project.
It must be remembered that the Ottoman Empire and Egypt were conquered by debt, not force of arms, and the Moghul empire was overpowered by a commercial enterprise. The end result was that what had happened in Europe also now took place throughout the Muslim world. All the ordinary worldly activities, the mu’amalat, which had until that time been under the direct governance of Islam, were now governed by a system in which Islam had no say whatsoever. The ‘ibadat remained mostly in place but had become totally disconnected from the mu’amalat.
Madina was where Allah’s deen found its final form. The tremendous fund of spiritual energy generated by the gruelling early years in Makka was made manifest in every aspect of the life of the Illuminated City. It was as much apparent in the marketplace as in the mosque. Divine guidance permeated every part of people’s lives. No area of human activity was outside the remit of Islam.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was there as a reference point in every situation. All of life was comprehensively incorporated in the Book and Sunna. ‘Ibadat and mu’amalat, both equally subject to Divine regulation, formed an indivisible whole, together performing an integral role in the functioning of that best ever expression of human social organisation.
So by following the European model of removing religion from a huge area of human activity, what the Muslims were actually doing was jettisoning more than half of Allah’s deen. The strange thing is that the vast majority of Muslims, including the ulama, entirely failed to realise that this had happened. It fell to Shaykh Abdalqadir, after his emergence from khalwa and his subsequent exchange with Shaykh al-Fayturi, to see with absolute clarity what had taken place. His profound insight – expressed in his words: “It was from that point on that I realised that the very foundation of Islam had been abandoned” – was precisely that by condoning the separation between the ‘ibadat and the mu’amalat the Muslims had actually disowned Madina and the holistic life pattern of Islam as practised there by the Prophet ﷺ and his noble Companions, may Allah be pleased with them. From then on, as we know, the Shaykh May Allah have mercy on him, spent the whole of the rest of his life doing everything he could to repair the terrible damage that had been done and see Islam restored to its original unadulterated form.
The Shaykh’s first response was to literally call people back to Madina in his series of talks about the ‘Amal Ahli’l-Madina, which were then published in his seminal text Root Islamic Education. And this was followed up by the unsparing efforts he put into uncovering the pernicious effects of riba, his promotion of the gold dinar and silver dirham as the currency of the Muslims, his work to re-establish correct Muslim trading practices and much more besides. All these matters need to be followed up, studied in depth and wherever possible implemented. However, it was his continuous and untiring persistence on the restoration of zakat, as the fallen pillar of Islam, that was the constant theme accompanying all these other concerns.
Shaykh Abdalqadir’s first great insight had been to see clearly that by following the European model of secularising the mu’amalat and severing their connection with the ‘ibadadat, the Muslims had succeeded in completely emasculating Allah’s deen. By expunging direct Divine involvement from the realm of governance and administration, from the commercial and economic spheres of human activity, from great swathes of the law, and from numerous other areas of ordinary life, the Muslims had, as he said, abandoned the very foundation of Islam.
His second great insight was to see that the key to setting things right lay in the restoration of the pillar of zakat. He saw that zakat is that pivotal point at the core of Islam where the indissoluble connection between the‘ibadat and the mu’amalat is made absolutely explicit. As we know Allah ta’ala in many ayats of the Qur’an joins together the performance of the prayer and the payment of zakat to the point that a lot of ‘ulama have made them interdependent. To make a rather crude geometric metaphor you might say that salat is the vertical axis which gives every individual direct access to the light of Divine guidance and zakat is the horizontal axis which disperses the light of Divine guidance throughout the Muslim community.
In his exhortation to the Muslims to re-establish zakat in its original Madinan form, the Shaykh lays great stress on the ayah in Suratu’t-Tawba: “Khudh min amwalihim sadaqah...” which orders the Prophet ﷺ to take zakat from the Muslims’ wealth. Some detractors of the Shaykh have tried to weaken his position by saying that quite early on it was made possible for some Muslims to distribute their zakat individually. This completely misses the point. The point lies in the word “Khudh” – “Take” – itself. It is a Divine command. By making it Allah tabaraka wa ta’ala is engaging Himself directly in both the governance and the economic life of the Muslim community. And then, after listing the categories to whom the zakat must be distributed, Allah says it is: “Faridatun min Allah” – “A legal obligation from Allah” – thus involving Himself directly in the social welfare of the Muslim community. This makes zakat a very different matter from the semi- voluntary charitable donation that it has now at best become.
With zakat Allah ta’ala positively asserts, right at the heart of His deen, His direct involvement in the daily affairs of human existence. And as we have seen it is precisely by denying this reality that the enemies of Islam, aided and abetted by the Muslims themselves, have been able to reduce the Muslim Umma to its present state of miserable subjugation. By his unwavering insistence on seeing the pillar of zakat re-established in its original Madinan form, Shaykh Abdalqadir was not only determined to restore to zakat its crucial political and social role as the third and central pillar of Islam but also, by doing that, to reintegrate ‘ibadat and mu’amalat at the very heart of Allah’s deen and thus take a real step towards repairing the terrible damage that has been caused to Islam by their disconnection.
This is a very important part of the legacy he has left, to us as his community and to the Muslim Umma as a whole. May Allah reward him immensely for it and cover him with mercy and make us people who, in Allah’s words: “Seize hold vigorously” of our inheritance from him and do everything in our power to see our Shaykh’s high aspiration for Islam and the Muslims realised in every way we possibly can.
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