Allah Almighty has given human beings a variety of forms and personalities, some are either leaders, others are followers by nature. Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم said: “All of you are guardians and are responsible for your wards, and the ruler is a guardian and responsible for his subjects”. The Beloved Prophet of Allah was undoubtedly the best leader that ever existed, and his Sunnah is enough to give all the guidelines on how to be, as well as produce great leaders. He the Prophet of Allah was able to produce amazing leaders as well as remarkable followers.
After him صلى الله عليه وسلم we have Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali and Umar Ibn Abdul Aziz as shining examples for the entire world. They were all unique in their abilities and techniques, yet astonishingly similar in their leadership qualities. The noble companions of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم used to say, that the secret of leadership is to deny yourself completely; put everyone before you and think of your own interest and benefit last. In other words, a leader has to have pure sincerity.
The Muslim leaders around the world today are a far cry from the leadership qualities expected of them by Islam. One of the major disasters the Muslim Ummah is faced with today: is a lack of quality leadership. We, as a nation, are bereft of leaders and the vacuum in Muslim leadership can never be more blatant as is evident in the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. The response from the so called Islamic countries to the plight of Aafia Siddiqui is a crying shame. The brutal incarceration of the Pakistani neuroscientist clearly highlights the lack of political will, and the impotence of an incompetent leadership, who display a lack of Islamic honour, dignity, courage, and hypocritical support for the cause of Islam and Muslims globally.
Muslim leaders in the world often play the blame game just too well. They blame each other, blame Muslim parties and movements, blame the ignorance and illiteracy of their own people, blame the impotence of the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC: better named “Organization of International Cowards”), and are geared more to protecting their hides than in promoting the true principle of Islam. They scramble and pay their allegiance to Uncle Sam, and do everything possible for themselves, their regimes, their cronies, and their media; everything except the wisdom and courage to stand up for Islam.
The Muslim world, all 56 nations, has been on an autopilot of lies, myths, and ego trips for the sole purpose of its leaders. Their motto, damn the masses, damn Aafia Siddiqui and let the oppression continue unchallenged. We are saddened to tears to think about our young sisters around the world, preyed upon, subdued, smacked around, assaulted, losing their dignity and honor and raped continuously. The Muslim leaders of today and the heads of State in the Muslim lands have failed our sisters. They sit still in disgrace and treachery: while the daughters of the Ummah continue suffering at the hands of brutal and barbaric criminals. They do absolutely nothing: carry on like silent bystanders watching the ordeal of torture and savagery against Aafia Siddiqui, and they remain deaf to the cries and tormenting screams of a helpless sister. Through their deafness and dumbness, they are all guilty by omission and commission of their own atrocities, yet they lay claim to possess the gift of “truth”, which they sell cheap for lies and a “few dollars more.” In short they have sold their souls to the devil.
There was a time when the great leaders and Caliphs of the past, would send armies into battle for the supremacy of Islam and the protection of the oppressed. There was a time when Salahuddin Ayubi pushed back the Crusaders: when the armies of Mu’tassim and the son of Qasim, were rolling through Asia and up to the gates of Rome to rescue the dignity of an oppressed sister. There was a time when the army of Tariq bin Ziyad left the shores of Africa, to respond to the call to assist the daughter of a nation who was not even Muslim, which gave birth to one of the great Islamic Empires in Spain.
Today the cries of the Palestinian mother goes unheard, the silent genocide continues against the daughters of Kashmir at the hands of the savagery of the Indian armed forces, the 20 000 Bosnian sisters who were raped and impregnated by the brutal Serb forces are still ashamed to disclose to their offspring the true identities of their fathers, thousands like Fatima at Abu Ghraib carry on beating their heads against the prison walls to end their shame and loss of dignity, and hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslim girls remain banished in China forced into shamelessness and prostitution.
These sisters have been stripped off everything: just like Aafia Siddiqui’s captors who stripped her of all she owns. They stripped her of the protective hand and shadow of her beloved mother, the love and warmth of her brother and sister, the joys of motherhood by separating her beloved children from her, every material belonging she possessed, her dignity and honor, in a nutshell “strip searched naked and taken away with nothing but her body”. Today the Rose of Pakistan wilts away and like broken glass she remains shattered as she languishes in solitary confinement.
The trauma: bleeding: death: and humiliation that has been surrounding our Ummah for years without a Khalifah is hard to bare. The leaders of the Ummah have spent years teaching the Muslim community not to question their incompetence or evil deeds in the name of Islam. Never once did they think that their silence was destroying Muslims and Islam, and never once did they learn from the words of Umar and Abu Bakr who demanded accountability from the Muslims they led. In a Hadith narrated by Abu Talha Al-Ansari and Jabir Bin Abdullah, the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “No man forsakes a Muslim when his rights are being violated or his honor is being belittled except that Allah will forsake him at a place in which he would love to have His help. And no man helps a Muslim at a time when his honor is being belittled or his rights violated except that Allah will help him at a place in which he loves to have His help”.
The freeing of prisoners is one of the greatest compulsory deeds and spending ransom money and other means towards that, is one of the greatest ways to come close to Allah. By the blessing of Allah we all are living in the comforts of our home, we can go where we want, and do what we like, but there are people who are our dear brothers and sisters that are imprisoned and are alone sitting in between four closed walls, and they have no one to talk to. They are separated from their families and kids and at times abused and tortured or killed. From this it is clear that the leaders and rulers should be removed, and the Islamic State should be re-established. A leadership that leads the Ummah into honour and peace and the Muslim world needs leaders who fear Allah Almighty alone.