Tariq Mehanna
In Surat al-Baqarah, v.61, Allah reminds the Children of Israel: {"And remember when you said: "O Moses! We cannot endure having just one kind of food. So, invoke your Lord to bring forth for us what grows from the ground - its herbs, cucumbers,wheat, lentils, and onions." He replied: "Do you exchange what is better for what is lower? Go to any town, and you will find what you want!" And they were stricken with humiliation and misery..."}
Any group or nation that is subject to continuous injustice will eventually become comfortable and accustomed to a state of subjugation. if the period of injustice is extended, this will become a quality ingrained in the heart, infused in the character and mindset, deeply.
The oppression and injustice of Pharaoh deeply affected the Children of Israel and ingrained in their characters this quality of subjugation. This occurred despite the fact that Allah had sent Prophet Moses to bring them out of Egypt as a means of taking them from a state of slavery to one of freedom and honor. On their way shortly after leaving Egypt behind, they felt tired and hungry. So, they began to complain and actually blame Moses for taking them away from Egypt and the food they would enjoy therein! It's reported in Exodus 16:3 that the Children of Israel said to Moses and Aaron: "If only we had died by the Lord's Hand in Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." And this is when they made the complaint in the verse from Surat al-Baqarah to have Allah provide more types of food. Despite what they faced in Egypt, they still longed for it because of these pleasures! Furthermore, when Moses left them for a few days to converse with his Lord, they took the ornaments of Pharaoh they'd been carrying and constructed a golden calf that they proceeded to worship! This is how much veneration they had in their hearts for the very masters who had enslaved them.
So, while they had been freed physically, they were still very much enslaved & subjugated psychologically. This was to the point that when they were told to enter the Holy Land promised to them, they literally said to Moses: "You and your Lord can go fight for it. We'll sit here." They had no sense of honor.
The first way to revive & rejuvenate a person or group or nation that's been subject to injustice & oppression is to bring about a new character and mindset that is free, independent, and based on honor - what we can call an 'uncolonized mind' - and combine that personality with knowledge of the Shar' and the application of that knowledge, in that order. Our primary problem is not ignorance or deviations here and there. We see many du'at and a'immah who are very educated & well-read in the Sunnah, but there's still that feeling that something is missing.
What we need to understand is that any person - regardless of the beliefs he adopts & lives by - can fulfill wonders so long as he is free in both body and mind. That's just how the world works. So, for the Children of Israel, and likewise with us today, the first step towards our goals is not to obtain knowledge or engage in worship rituals. The first step for us is to learn how to be true human beings, to know our worth, to free ourselves from psychological subjugation. These are the signs of life: for us to retrieve our sense of pride and reject weakness & mental submissiveness. Otherwise, we are walking corpses.
So, the first problem & the first solution have to do with this internal deprogramming that must occur. The first problem is not ignorance (academic), deviation in secondary matters, lack of unity - although these certainly are major problems. We must begin with the most basic, universal, human issue, otherwise we will get nowhere when it comes to true da'wah, and our lives as Muslims in general. The Children of Israel believed in Allah, they prayed, etc. But mentally, they remained in a state of subjugation to the masters that weren't enslaving them physically. So, as soon as they became hungry, they longed for the food & drink that came along with slavery, and preferred that over the hunger that cam e with their freedom.
