Muhammed Asad
The most important feature of that new civilization a feature which set it entirely apart from all other movements in human history was the fact that it had been conceived in terms of, and arose from, a voluntary agreement of the people concerned. Here social progress was not, as in ALL other communities and civilizations known to history, a result of pressure and counter pressure of conflicting interests, nut part and parcel of an original 'constitution'. In other words, a genuine social contract lay at the roots of things not as a figure of speech formulated by later generations of power holders in defence of their privileges, but as the real, historic source of Islamic civilization.
The Q? uran says "Behold, God has bought of the Faithful their persons and their possessions, offering them Paradise in return...Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made, for this is the triumph supreme."
"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 Islamic State was about, it was a large-scale attempt. This term is very thought-provoking, as it immediately shows us that this attempt can be repeated whenever mankind decides too. The idea that we cannot re-create the bliss of the first Islamic society, is false idea created by the Elite of the Islamic world that wants Muslims to believe they can never live in peace again.
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 beautiful definition! programme} was gradually pushed into the background. Clannish wrangling 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 preferences and oppressions, and the usual degradation of religion to the status of a handmaiden of political power
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 therefore in need of eternal renewal.
The original impetus of Islam, so tremendous in its beginnings, sufficed for a while to carry the Muslim commonwealth to great cultural 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.
