Once Again: The Question of Revival and the Separation of Religion from Life
(Translated)

https://www.al-waie.org/archives/article/19869

Al-Waie Magazine - Issue No. 467

Thirty-Ninth Year, Dhul Hijjah 1446 AH corresponding to June 2025 CE

A questioner asks:

The West only advanced after it separated religion from the state.

In contrast, Muslims have separated religion from society, the state, and politics for decades and decades, so why have they not advanced as the West did?

The answer:

In the dawn of their history, Muslims rose with a spiritual and political Aqeedah (doctrine) from which a system for life, society, and the state emerged. This aqeedah provided them with a worldview derived from a comprehensive concept about the universe, man, and life, defined for them the meaning of life, and guaranteed them a way of living and a unique civilizational model through comprehensive and integrated legislation that regulated man’s relationship with his Lord, with himself, and with other people.

When their understanding of Islam weakened, they misapplied it, and then the systems of Islam were removed from their lives, and were replaced by secular capitalist Western systems, such that they stepped out of the Islamic way of life. However, they did not move into the Western way of life either. Instead, they were greatly influenced by it. As a result, they ended up without an identity, or a defined viewpoint, neither retaining their own identity, nor fully adopting the Western one, so their inevitable fate was decline.

As for the West, before its new civilizational birth, it embraced a spiritual creed from which no legislation or system for life emerged. Their creed led them to despise worldly life, viewing it as a place of punishment, rather than happiness, and so they condemned themselves to a decline that lasted a thousand years.

When they separated this negative creed from their lives, and adopted the creed of separating religion from life, they formed for themselves a new concept of life and happiness, material benefit, obtaining the greatest possible share of physical pleasures. From this new creed emerged a system for life, society, and the state, and they moved to a new civilizational identity and a different way of living, which made them eager to realize their concept of life and happiness in this worldly life.

Thus, Muslims rose with a political aqeedah from which a system emerged, and similarly the West rose with a political creed from which a system emerged. The difference between the two is that the Islamic aqeedah is a spiritual aqeedah in addition to being a political one, because it agrees with human nature and convinces the mind, whereas the creed of the contemporary West separates spirit from matter, that is, it separates man’s worldly life from his Creator. This contradicts human nature and fails the intellect, as it does not resolve the question of creation, the Creator, and His relationship with worldly life.

Therefore, Islam’s revival was a path to happiness, whereas the contemporary Western renaissance was a path to misery.

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