This comes directly after his explanation on Deen, where he shows what a Deen-State is about
"I knew that this 'triumph supreme'-the one instance of a real social contract recorded by history-was realized only during a very short period; or, rather, only during a very short period was a large-scale attempt made to realize it. {i believe this is one of the best definitions of what the first Deen-state was about, it was a large-scale attempt. I like this definition, as it immediately shows us that what we are doing, all Quran-upholders, is a small-scale attempt of creating that which the Quran gives=the perfect State}
Less than a century after the Prophet's death, the political form of pristine Islam began to be corrupted and, in the following centuries, the original programme {what a beautifull definition! programme}was gradually pushed into the background. Clannish wranglings for power took the place of a free agreement of free men and women; hereditary kingship; as inimical to the political concept of Islam as polytheism is to Islam's theological concept, soon came into being- and with it, dynastic struggles and intrigues, tribal prefernces and oppressions, and the usual degradation of religion to the status of a handmaiden of political power {The Islamic Deen became a religion, purely occupied with 'worship' and personal moral} In short, the entire host of 'vested interests' so well known to history. For a time, the great thinkers of Islam tried to keep its true ideology aloft and pure; but those who came after them were of lesser stature and lapsed after two three centuries into a morass of intellectual convention, ceased to think for themselves and became content to repeat the dead phrases of earlier generations-forgetting that every human opinion is time-bound and fallible and therefor in need of eternal renewal {read that a couple times over!} The original impetus of Islam, so tremendous in its beginnings, sufficed for a while to carry the Muslim commonwealth to great culteral heights-to that splendid vision of scientific, literary and artistic achievement which historians describe as the Golden Age of Islam; but within a few more centuries this impetus also died down for want of spiritual nourishment, and Muslim civilization became more and more stagnant and devoid of creating power.
I had no illusions as to the present state of affairs in the Muslim world. The 4 years i have spend in those countries had shown me that while Islam was still alive, perceptible in the world-view of its adherents and their silent admission of its ethical premises, they themselves were like people paralyzed, unable to translate their beliefs into fruitfull action. But what concerned me more than the failure of present-day Muslims to implement the scheme of islam were the potentialities of that scheme itself. It was sufficient for me to know that for a short time, quite at the beginning of Islamic history, a succesful attempt HAD been made to translate that scheme into practice; and what had seemed possible at one time might perhaps become really possible at another. What did it matter, i told myself, that the Muslims had gone astray from the original teachings and subsided into indolence and ignorance? What did it matter that they did not live up to the ideal placed before them by the Arabian Prophet 13 centuries ago-if the ideal itself still lay open to all who were willing to listen to its message?
And it might well be, i thought, that we latecomers needed that message even more desperately than did the people of Muhammed's time. They lived in an enviroment much simpler than ours, and so their problems and difficluties had been much easier of solution. The world in which i was living-the whole of it-was wobbling because of the absence of any agreement as to what is good and what is evil spiritually and, therefor, socially and economically as well. I did not believe that individual man was in need of 'salvation' but i did believe that modern society was in need of salvation. More than any previous time, i felt with mounting certainty, this time of ours wa sin need of an ideological basis for a new social contract it needed a faith that would make us understand the hollowness of materail progress for the sake of progress alone-and nevertherless would give the life of this world its due; that would show us how to strike a balance between our spiritual and physical requirmentsa; and thus save us from the disaster into which we were rushing headlong."
