The intellectual debilitation of the Islamic State began in the fifth century A.H. At this time, some scholars called for the phasing out of Ijtihad, proclaiming that the doors of Ijtihad were closed and that all of man’s problems had been addressed. This signaled the downfall of the State. Although there were still some Mujtahideen left, deintellectualization had already taken root and this greatly affected the State. By the time the crusaders launched their campaign, the State was in no position to face the challenge. The State became engaged in continuous battles with the crusaders, lasting two centuries. The crusaders emerged victorious at first and managed to occupy parts of the Islamic State. Then the State managed to recapture the occupied lands and vanquish the crusaders. Rule and authority were taken over by the Mamluks who neglected the Arabic language and the intellectual and legislative side of ruling. The door was slammed in the face of Ijtihad and the understanding of Islamic concepts weakened considerably. Scholars were forced to be content with Taqleed (imitation) and the ailment worsened.
This, however, only affected the State from within, since the State remained strong and its international standing remained intact. The Islamic State remained a superpower feared by all other nations, consolidating the largest and strongest part of the world at the time. The ‘Uthmani State took control of most of the known world. In the 10th century Hijri (16th century CE), it united Arab lands under its rule and its dominion stretched over vast expanses of territory. The ‘Uthmani State concentrated on its military might and the expansion of its authority as well as the glamour of its rule and power. It also focused its efforts on the conquests and neglected the Arabic language (despite the fact that it is essential in order to understand Islam and one of the conditions necessary in order to effect Ijtihad). The ‘Uthmani State never paid attention to Islam from the intellectual and legislative point of view, consequently its level of thought and ability to extract rules for unprecedented situations was lacking. At the time, this weakness was not noticed by the Islamic State because it was at the apex of its glory, power and military might. Its ideology, legislation and culture when compared with that of Europe was superior in every respect. This comparison reassured the State and served to make its weaknesses seem both bearable and negligible. Europe was still plunged in total darkness, chaos and unrest. Europe attempted to launch a renaissance but it failed each time. The ‘Uthmani State was in a much better situation compared with Europe and as a result it viewed itself as being superior in its culture and system of ruling. This caused the ‘Uthmani State to ignore the internal malaise that it was suffering from.
What turned the ‘Uthmani State’s attention from internal problems was its sweeping victory over Europe, its seizure of the Balkans and the Southeastern part of Europe. This victory sent shock waves to the rest of Europe and everyone became resigned to the fact that the Islamic army could never be defeated and that nobody could ever successfully face the Muslims. This was when the issue of the Eastern Question first surfaced. Its meaning then was to abort the danger of the ‘Uthmani invasion headed by Mohammed al-Fateh in the 9th century Hijri (15th century). The invasion continued until the end of the 11th century Hijri under the leadership of Sulayman al-Qanuny (The Magnificent). The conquests were concentrated up until the middle of the 12th century Hijri (18th century) during which time the continuity of the struggle remained a major source of strength to the Islamic State.
The strength of the ‘Aqeedah of the Muslims and the specific concepts that they carried - although those concepts were not clear in their minds - had given the State a great moral boost and this helped to maintain their military might. Additionally, the presence of the Islamic ruling system, despite its misapplication, and the state of affairs in Europe contributed to the continuity and superiority of the Islamic State. At that time the Islamic State could have attempted to understand Islam properly and devoted much more effort to the teaching of the Arabic language and the encouragement of Ijtihad. The State could have devoted more effort to understand the intellectual and legislative side of Islam so that it established a strong foundation with which to launch its conquests. This would have enabled the State to liberate the rest of the world through Islam. The State would have been in a position to strengthen its structure and inundate the world with Islamic culture and in the process save the world from corruption and mischief. However, none of this actually happened. Encouragement of the Arabic language was limited to giving the Arabs a few teaching posts and other minor positions of jurisprudence which had little effect on improving the knowledge of the Arabic language and had no effect in awakening the intellect. In order to revive the Arabic language, the State should have made it the official language, as should have always been the case. But this was not carried out. Again, because nothing was done on the intellectual and Fiqhi (jurisprudence) fronts the feeble and misguided efforts of the State resulted in the status quo continuing and the State remaining on the wrong track.
As soon as the second half of the 12th century Hijri (18th century) came the trend was reversed and the internal weakness became apparent because the State was founded on the remains of the misapplied Islamic system. The rule as a whole was more within the Islamic system’s milieu rather than being an Islamic system itself. This was due to the lack of understanding of Islam and its misapplication due to the lack of Ijtihad and Mujtahideen. In the 13th century Hijri (19th century) the scales of history swung between the Islamic State and the non-Islamic countries. The awakening of Europe had just begun and this became evident. Meanwhile, the consequences of the intellectual stagnation coupled with the misapplication of the Islamic system finally caught up with the Muslims.
The 19th century CE witnessed an intense intellectual revolution in Europe. Considerable efforts were made by European philosophers, writers and intellectuals and a comprehensive change in the European concepts occurred with the aim of uniting the people of Europe. Many movements were established and these played a great part in the emergence of new opinions about life. Some of the most significant events that occurred were the change of the political and legislative systems. The specter of the despot monarchy gradually disappeared to be replaced by republican systems based on representative rule and national sovereignty. This had a tremendous effect towards triggering the awakening of Europe from its slumber. The industrial revolution also had a telling effect on the European scene. There were numerous scientific discoveries and inventions springing from the minds of Europe. These factors boosted Europe’s intellectual and material progress. This material and scientific progress resulted in swinging the scales of power in Europe’s favor at the expense of the Islamic world.
On the international scene, the issue of the Eastern Question came to be altered so that it was no longer simply a question of containing the impending Islamic danger to Europe, but whether the Islamic State should be left as it was or whether it should be divided up. The European countries had different opinions due to the differences in their interests. This change in the Eastern Question and in Europe’s fortunes - reflected in its intellectual and scientific progress (e.g., the Industrial Revolution) - triggered a political swing between the Islamic State and the disbelieving states in favor of fragmenting the Islamic State.
The cause of the political revolution in Europe stemmed from intellectuals that sought to establish a new way of life. They adopted a specific viewpoint concerning life and embraced a new doctrine. Based on this revised outlook, they founded a system. This led to the change of thoughts and the set of values, creating a general transformation in their lives and this catapulted the industrial revolution into motion. Instead of looking and reflecting deeply on its ideology, instead of stimulating new concepts and resorting to Ijtihad to solve its problems according to the rules emanating from its ‘Aqeedah, instead of taking up science and industry, the Islamic State fluttered and became perplexed about how to react to Europe’s change of fortunes. It remained idle due to this confusion and this further led to its backwardness in science and industry. It therefore lagged behind other European countries in terms of material progress and prosperity.
The ‘Uthmani State was the Islamic State, the Islamic ‘Aqeedah was the basis of the State and its systems, the concepts of Islam were its concepts and the Islamic viewpoint about life was its viewpoint. It should have in fact looked into the new concepts that were emerging from Europe and measured them against its own ideological criterion. It should have studied the new problems from an Islamic perspective and given its verdict on those concepts and problems with the help of adequate Ijtihad according to the Islamic viewpoint. Finally, the validity of such concepts would have to be judged. But the State did none of this simply because in their minds, Islam was not clear. It did not have any well defined thoughts because it did not take the Islamic ‘Aqeedah as an intellectual foundation on which all concepts are to be based. The ‘Aqeedah became lifeless because its lifeblood, Ijtihad had stopped flowing. The Islamic culture - the collection of concepts concerning life - was not crystallized in the minds of the Muslims. The culture was not linked to the State’s actions. This led to a steep intellectual decline, thereby causing regression.
As a result, the Islamic State was taken aback by the intellectual, cultural and industrial revolution they witnessed in Europe. However, they did not react because they were intellectually paralyzed, as they could not come to a decision about adopting or rejecting Europe’s achievements or culture. They could not differentiate between what is allowed to be taken from science, discoveries and industry and what is forbidden to be taken from a particular culture, since the latter determines the viewpoint about life. They became stagnant and it was this which led to the backwardness of the Islamic State while the European progression gained momentum.
The Muslims failed to realize the contradiction between the Islamic and European concepts. Another cause was their failure to distinguish between science, industry and inventions which Islam encourages Muslims to acquire, regardless of the source, and culture and ideology which can only be adopted from Islam.
The ‘Uthmanis did not properly understand Islam. Such blindness led the Ummah and the State to live haphazardly. Meanwhile its enemies held onto a specific system and carried it out. Europe became the possessor of an ideology, regardless of the validity of its creed, and the Islamic Ummah with its correct ideology was incipiently being relegated to live in the shadow of Europe’s ideology. The Islamic ideology, seemed remote from the people’s lives and a thing of the past because the Ummah resided in a State where it was misapplied. Despite the fact that the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said, “I have left with you two things, if you hold on to it, you will never go astray, the Book of Allah and my Sunnah” and despite the fact that the State was Islamic and the Ummah was Muslim, and despite its vast intellectual repository and wealth of Fiqhi knowledge being accessible to everyone, the State did not grasp the meaning of that Hadeeth and did not take the necessary steps to return to the roots of Islam, i.e., the ‘Aqeedah. The State did not make use of this wealth, a wealth which no other nation possessed, possesses, or will ever possess.
Indeed the Islamic State did not benefit from this wealth because as soon as Ijtihad was stalled and intellectual activity ceased the Islamic concepts became blurred in the minds of the Muslims and Islamic cognizance declined. Books and other cultural and intellectual artifacts were kept on shelves and only very few learned people and scholars were left in existence. The desire to study and research diminished. The large amount of cultural and intellectual wealth within the State and society was not sought after because the State never encouraged the pursuit of it. Intellectuals sought knowledge for the sake of knowledge, or they sought knowledge to earn a living. Rare indeed were the ones who sought knowledge to benefit the Ummah and the State. Consequently, the scientific, cultural and legislative momentum did not exist and the understanding of Islam was in disarray. The Muslims understood Islam in a spiritual sense rather than intellectually, politically and legislatively.
The original idea of Islam and the method by which this idea is implemented had become vague. The Muslims could not correctly perceive the Qur’an and the Sunnah and began to think that Islam was merely a spiritual religion. They began comparing Islam with other religions from a spiritual point of view, instead of looking at Islam as being an ‘Aqeedah and a complete way of life. It therefore came as no surprise when the Muslim Ummah, under the leadership of the ‘Uthmani State, stood idle and confused before the European revolution. It remained visibly behind without being affected by the economic progress which Europe was enjoying nor by the multiple inventions that took place there, nor by the industrial revolution that had been launched all over the continent. The effect that this European material progress had on the State was somewhat minimal and never resulted in any notable benefit nor did it generate any material progress or any gain. Most Muslims perceived Europe’s achievements as being contradictory to Islam and called for the prohibition of adopting such elements of progress.
A vivid example of this was when the printing press was invented and the State decided to print the Qur’an. Some scholars prohibited its printing and they began issuing Fatawa prohibiting anything new and of accusing anyone who studied the natural sciences of being a disbeliever. They accused every intellectual of being a Kafir and Zindiq.
Conversely, a small group of Muslims at that time envisioned the need for adopting everything from the West, their science, education, culture and civilization. Those were the ones who had been educated in Europe or in missionary schools that had infiltrated the Islamic world. At first, that small band of Muslims made little impact on society. In the last years of the ‘Uthmani State the notion stating that the West adopted its culture from Islam and that Islam does not forbid the adoption of what conforms to it and that which does not contradict it, was spread amongst the Ummah. The West succeeded in spreading this concept until it was adopted by the majority of the Muslims, especially the educated ones - the scholars and jurists, who came to be known as “modern scholars” or “reformists”.
However, due to the real contradictions between the Western and Islamic cultures and because of the obvious differences between the Western and Islamic concepts about life, the attempts to harmonize the teachings of Islam with Western culture were doomed to failure. The reformists lost their way and in the process alienated themselves from Islam. Their misguided pro- Western approach failed because they could not correctly perceive the Western concepts and they neglected in the process the inventions, science and industry as they moved further away from Islam. The Ummah relied heavily on those reformists and as a result, confusion was exacerbated. The State was unable to take a decisive stand and the Ummah rejected all means of material progress, ranging from science, inventions and industries. She became weak and unable to stand or defend herself. This weakness encouraged the enemies of Islam to mutilate the powerless Islamic State piece by piece.
The missionary invasion, disguised as scientific cooperation, began infiltrating the Muslim land. At the same time the various movements that emerged succeeded in destroying the structure of the State. The concept of nationalism was implanted and avidly encouraged by the West, taking root in the Islamic State, such as the Balkans, Turkey, Arab regions, Armenia, Kurdish reqions and many other places.
In 1914, the State was on the verge of collapse. It entered the First World War and emerged defeated. Then, finally it was destroyed in 1924. Therefore, the Islamic State disintegrated and the dream that had eluded the West for many centuries was finally fulfilled. The West wanted to destroy the Islamic State in order to destroy Islam. With the disintegration of the Islamic State, the system in the Muslim land became non-Islamic and the Muslims have lived ever since under a non-Islamic banner. Since that time they have lived under disbelieving regimes ruled over by laws of disbelief, they have become unsettled and their situation has deteriorated.