أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ۔

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

اللہ کے نام سے شروع جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم کرنے والا ہے

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Self Infused Destruction: Healing Touch?

"Self-infused destruction" can refer to several concepts across different fields, ranging from behavioral psychology to fiction and, in some cases, a misinterpreted technical term. It generally refers to the deliberate or automatic process of an entity (a nation, a tribe, a person, cell, or device) causing its own destruction or even to ruin. There is a verse in Urdu from a poet namely Mahtab Rai Taban (اس گھر کو آگ لگ گئی گھر کے چراغ سے : is ghar ko aag lagi ghar ke hi chiraag se) meaning by it's ironically sad that "the house was burnt down by the lamp that was supposed to illuminate it".

Self-inflicted wounds in history have served as extreme methods of escaping enemy capture, or acts of ritualized suicide. Common historical contexts include soldiers during wartime wounding them to be evacuated from the front lines, and ritual practices like seppuku in Japan or self-flagellation in religious practices. An ancient ritual practiced by Samurai, often performed to avoid a dishonorable death at the hands of enemies or as a forced suicide sentence. Throughout history, self-injury has been linked to mental distress, with studies noting its presence in historical medical records, though definitions of self-harm have shifted significantly over time.

Self-inflicted destruction, often driven by arrogance, failure to innovate, or ethical collapse, is a common theme in business history, where once-dominant entities go into oblivion due to their own actions. The history of business and organizational management is replete with instances where dominant entities have gone into oblivion or suffered disastrous downfalls due to their own self-inflicted destruction, often driven by arrogance, failure to innovate, or unethical leadership.

Kodak dominated the photographic film market for most of the 20th century. Ironically, a Kodak engineer, Steve Sasson, invented the first digital camera in 1975. Management shelved the technology because they feared it would threaten their lucrative film sales, a classic case of failing to disrupt them. By the time they adapted to digital, competitors had taken over, leading to their 2012 bankruptcy.

The history is full of stories where the enemy, adversary or foe had brought various kind of devastation and destruction upon the defeated people and their lands. However, the destruction brought were mainly one time temporary action and defeated but self preserving people or nation used to manage the process of restoration in due course of time after departure of the adversary. However, it will be interesting to note the occasion when an entity may have gone into oblivion or disaster due to its own "self infused destruction". Are there instances where the "lamp meant for illumination" might have caused fire and total disaster upon a house hold? Let's see!

The European nations arrived as colonial masters on Muslim's lands with little in numbers but were carrying "gun powder" and bags full of golds (the carrot and stick paradigm employed to max). The Muslims in Asia with different back grounds but mainly in driving seat of the power (were mostly rulers of the areas) faced an uncomfortable reality. The Muslims were not just rulers with a certain pedigree but were part of an established civilization (Muslim Civilization- based on the rule spread since 7th century from state of Medina tur Rasool PBUH).

The Muslim civilization, which flourished primarily between the 8th and 14th centuries (the Islamic Golden Age), expanded across Asia, North Africa, and into Europe, becoming a global leader in administration, arts, and science. Centered in bustling cities like Baghdad, Cairo, and Córdoba, the empire developed a sophisticated society that exhibited immense brilliance, setting the stage for advancements in diverse fields of life.

European colonial expansion, particularly from the 18th century onward, was characterized by a dual strategy of military conquest—facilitated by superior gun technology (gunpowder)—and a deliberate attempt at intellectual and spiritual domination. This process, which contributed to a "colonized mind" in parts of the Muslim world, involved the following key strategies:

Scientific Knowledge as "Divine Truth": Colonial powers often presented modern Western science and empirical, materialistic knowledge as objectively superior and universally true, displacing traditional local educational systems that integrated science within a spiritual, Islamic worldview. This was used to suggest that Muslim societies were backward or irrational.

Bible and Religious Substitution: Alongside technical education, colonial missionary societies were active, with schools often designed to introduce Christian-based ideas and secularism into societies that were historically and structurally Islamic. This was aimed at eroding the role of Islam in public and intellectual life.

Cultural and Educational Hegemony: Colonial administration and education systems, particularly the British and French, were designed to create a "class of persons" who were local in blood but Western in taste and intellect. This resulted in an intellectual crisis where some local elites admired the colonizers while holding their own culture in disdain.

This strategy allowed European powers not just to rule, but to create "admiration and awe" in the minds of the colonized, leading to a profound transformation of Muslim intellectual and cultural life.

The colonist believed that Western civilization was superior due to its mastery of coal and steam technology, scientific/intellectual advancement, and a "divine right to rule" (or civilizing mission) is a foundational concept of 19th-century European imperialism and industrial expansion. Therefore, sane and free Muslim Souls felt challenged as they considered themselves part of a superior civilization that had once led the world in every meaningful sense. Such Muslims when sensed being administered and restructured by people they considered culturally inferior in almost every meaningful sense felt humiliated; however, a lot majority went with flow and left themselves to the perils of destiny. Therefore, the Muslims were colonized and slaved on their own lands and ironically, they allowed the colonial masters to subjugate them into mental and psychological bondage too. This moment of shame must remain a dark spot for Muslims in the history for times to come.

Destiny, if left uncharted, doesn't provide solace to bystanders and fools. Life's path or purpose must be actively decided, planned, and pursued. Honour and dignity is earned through effort, resilience, and taking ownership of one's journey. The history highlights that those who choose not to participate in their own lives—by merely watching (bystanders) or failing to take ownership (fools)—will not find comfort. In the context of the "destiny of a community", one may phrase the ethos "the wise man knows his fate; the fool merely finds it". It implies that inaction and passivity lead to unwanted outcomes, while wisdom lies in actively shaping one's own destiny. Now let's read about Malik Bennabi’s Thoughts on "Colonisability" to learn the problem being faced today by Muslim world.

Malek Bennabi (1905–1973) was an Algerian thinker who focused on the civilizational decline and renewal of Muslim societies, diagnosing their stagnation as a "colonizability" crisis rather than just colonial oppression. He believed civilization is created by combining Man, Soil, and Time through a central "religious idea" (or spiritual impulse). He referred "colonialism" as a cause due to internal psychological, social, and cultural vulnerabilities that make a society susceptible to foreign domination. He argued that colonization is not just an external imposition but a symptom of a society’s internal decay and readiness to be colonized, highlighting that "lousy little seed" of colonialism only sprouts in fertile, prepared ground.

Key Aspects of Bennabi's Thought:

Colonizability (Qābilīyyat al-Istiʿmār): Bennabi argued that Muslims must look internally at their own deficiencies and intellectual stagnation to understand their fall, rather than focusing only on the colonizer.

Civilization Equation (Man + Soil + Time): He defined civilization as a synthesis of these elements, catalyzed by spiritual values (religious ideas) that unite people.

Culture as Foundation: He defined culture as the "system of moral and aesthetic values through which human behaviour is regulated". He believed Muslim culture needed to move away from mere formalism towards active, creative, and ethical behavior.

Shayʾiyyah (Reification/Trinification): Bennabi critiqued the tendency to turn ideas into objects (reification), prioritizing material accumulation, rituals, or blind imitation of Western technologies over intellectual and spiritual growth.

Three Stages of Civilization: He believed civilizations grow in three stages: spiritual (spirit), intellectual (mind), and instinctive (instinct).

Societal Renaissance: His works, including The Conditions of the Renaissance, proposed that the solution for Muslim stagnation lies in changing the human element and restoring moral and cultural values to rebuild society.

Bennabi’s work is recognized in post-colonial studies for providing a sociologically grounded, critical view of Islamic civilization's challenges and potential for renewal. Bennabi's analysis shifts the focus from simply blaming colonial powers to examining how societies must change to prevent or overcome colonization.

(Borrowed from Dr Iftikhar Ahmad Khan as received on Whatsapp)

Allama Iqbal, the visionary who dreamt of this land, left us with a haunting warning that feels more relevant today than ever:

وائے ناکامی! متاعِ کارواں جاتا رہا

کارواں کے دل سے احساسِ زیاں جاتا رہا

​Iqbal isn't just mourning the loss of "Mata" (wealth/resources). He is mourning the death of the collective soul. When unconstitutional rulers and plunderers drain a country’s wealth, it is a tragedy. But when the people of that country witness the theft, the injustice, and the decay—yet feel nothing—it is a catastrophe.

Why we are at a crossroads:

​The Plunder: Our resources are treated as personal spoils, and our laws are bent to serve the powerful.

The Normalization: We have become so accustomed to the "abnormal" that we no longer react with outrage. We have traded our indignation for indifference.

The Vanished Feeling: As Iqbal noted, the greatest failure of a "caravan" (a nation) is when it loses its Ehsaas-e-Ziyan. Without the feeling of loss, there is no urge for reform. Without the pain of being wronged, there is no struggle for rights.

A nation can survive poverty, but it cannot survive apathy. If we no longer feel the sting of our national wealth being stolen or our constitution being trampled, we aren't just a struggling nation—we are a sleeping one.

The above may be thoughts expressed for one country; however, the same is true for almost all the other Muslim countries. The degradation of Ummah as a whole has been eloquently expressed earlier by another Urdu Poet Khawaja Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914) in his famous poem "Musadas Hali" (high and low of Islam: مد و جزرِ اسلام). Let's see a quatrain from that poem reflecting the main topic here.

پستی کا کوئی حد سے گزرنا دیکھے

اسلام کا گر کر نہ ابھرنا دیکھے

مانے نہ کبھی کہ مد ہے ہر جزر کے بعد

دریا کا ہمارے جو اترنا دیکھے

"Let us not see any excess of degradation,

Let us not see Islam fall or rise,

Let us not ever believe that there is a tide after every ebb,

Let us not see the river's descent.

Khawaja Altaf Hussain Hali laments the plight of Muslims and their lack of national pride, saying that if anyone wants to see how humiliated and abject nations can be, then look at the current state of Muslims. This is a nation that, once fallen, is not going to rise again. Khawaja Altaf Hussain Hali wrote this poem "Masadas Hali" in 1879 at the request of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. In terms of poetic genre, it is a Masnavi poem. This poem is in the form of a Masada (a stanza consisting of six lines); in which the glorious past (rise) and the reasons for the present backwardness (decline) of the Muslims are described in a painful manner.

The central message of Khawaja Altaf Hussain Hali's Masadas (The Ebb and Flow of Islam) was that of an immortal educational and reformatory mission. In this Masnavi, by reminding the Muslims of their glorious past history, it was to awaken them from their present decline and backwardness (scientific, societal and practical decline) and to encourage them to rise again through modern education, unity, and hard work. Hali told the Muslims the story of their civilization through this Masnavi; he told how Islam had dispelled the darkness of ignorance; and the foundation of a stable civilization was laid. The poem depicts the intellectual, moral, and cultural progress of the Muslims. But then the negligence of the Muslims pushed them into the depths of decline.

Hali's aim was to awaken the dormant pride of the Muslims and to liberate them from their sense of inferiority. He had seen that the decline of the Muslims at that time was incredibly deep. But Hali was also sure that this plight of the Muslims was temporary and they would soon achieve ascendancy. Hali stressed the need for modern education and scientific and academic progress in line with the demands of the changing world. Muslims were taught to avoid sectarianism and adopt national unity. In about half a century time, the Muslims started to get liberation from colonial slavery as independent UNOs nations. However, since then, they are caught into a web of "self infused destruction"; for which they are solely themselves to be blamed.

The history of last two hundreds years reveals emergence of two distinct groups in Islamic World. One was the "Traditionalists Group" supported by theologist, religious scholars and soothsayers. When the colonialist were imposing their will and western education system, the traditionalists rejected forced western influences and advocated for adhering to classical scholarship to maintain their religious lineage and traditions. The problem occurred when they developed narrow vision and dogmas based on classical scholarship. The products rolled on from such ideas were religiously sound but they lacked acumen to address challenges offered by modern time’s innovations and problems. The technically sound religious scholars remained clueless to the complex national and international relations and were not able to provide leadership to political economy (modern commercial businesses and governmental institutions), which are foremost necessary elements to run the state affairs in these perpetually evolving times.

The second group namely "the Modernist" were lesser in numbers but were powerful and resourceful because they remained in power in most of the Muslim lands. These were the Western-educated Muslim intellectuals. They advocated for seeking modern education and abhor dominant local population as backward, who reject reason and progress. The immersed into Western rationalism, science, and institutional models. They just borrowed Western epistemology wholesale and then tried to justify it with Islamic vocabulary. They were thinking in Western categories while speaking Islamic language. The result was modernized Muslim states that were structurally Western, culturally confused, and spiritually empty. That was the whole postcolonial experiment that brought all the Muslim lands into present day chaos where the modernist amassed wealth from their own Muslim Population and stacked in foreign accounts. The Muslim countries thus became poor, weak and laughing stock of the world.

In all the tussle between the traditionalist and modernist to adopt the Islam to modernity or classical tunes, none was able to develop decent Islamic methodology; which may be presented to the world of Islam as a practicing model. Both groups had the same root problem neither rebuilt the Islamic methodology of knowledge. Neither produced a living, breathing intellectual tradition capable of generating original answers to new questions. Neither has the intellectual infrastructure to actually govern or lead a civilization. As a result, all kinds of factions arose in Muslim Countries including "the secular political groups and governments" and "the Jihadist movements." The serious damage done by both groups to the polity of territorial nation and Ummah is that they divided the people into many warring factions thus creating fissures causing damage to the body of nation itself.

The survival of Islamic civilization, the people of Islam, and Muslim-majority countries against both internal conflicts and external pressures is often attributed to a combination of spiritual resilience, a strong community identity (Ummah), and historical capacity for renewal. Despite facing profound challenges—including the fall of the Ottoman Empire, colonialism, and ongoing sectarian or political strife—the faith and its community have demonstrated long-term endurance.

The fundamental teachings of the Qur'an and Sunnah are still seen as a source of solace and endurance that allow Muslims to withstand adversity. Islamic history shows a trend of bouncing back from severe challenges, revitalizing intellectual and cultural life after periods of decline. Islamic teachings emphasize prioritizing justice over aggression, which serves as a moral anchor for communities during times of turmoil. The sense of a global brotherhood (Ummah) provides a support network that extends beyond national borders, enabling communities to survive when specific governments or regions are weakened. Islamic practices have remained firm even when political structures were destroyed, demonstrating that the community is not dependent on a single entity for its existence.

While internal strife has often led to the collapse of specific empires, the overarching civilization has remained. Historically, the weakness of Muslim states has often been attributed to the deviation from the ethical principles of Islam, particularly through internal fighting. The resilience has been tested by external invasions (such as the Mongols) and colonialism, yet the core religion remained robust, often enduring despite forced political changes. The endurance of institutions like mosques and schools has helped maintain the transmission of faith, even when political instability was severe.

The Muslims must always remember that ALLAH is the ultimate Teacher, as stated in Surah Al-Alaq: "Who taught (with) the pen, Taught the human being that which they did not know" (96:4-5). In Islamic belief, it is a fundamental tenet that all knowledge emanates from Allah (Al-Aleem, The All-Knowing). This concept emphasizes that He is the source of all truth, both apparent and hidden, and that human knowledge is merely a small fraction granted by His grace. As the Quran states: "...and you have not been given of the knowledge except a few" (17:85); therefore, all the Muslims must strives for seeking knowledge including modern scientific, social and management strings of knowledge as per the decree mentioned in the Quranic prayer: "O my Lord! Advance me in Knowledge" (20:114).

Therefore, we must undo current content of our education system; which seems to teach, how not to know nature, principles of living and ourselves (humans), but how to admire, absorb and relive Western society, instead of understanding it. Similarly, we must treat the "sciences" as just an arm or branch of knowledge; so that it becomes a source for comprehending the "nature and natural creations" and not a source or basic foundation for building a national agenda; as it will be lacking guiding ideological context. It’s high time that all able Muslim minds from all shades of wisdom and creativity shall come together and develop a workable model for progress and advancement while maintaining Islamic Identity.

In the end, it s also important to know that almost all the Muslim countries fall in the category of third world.; therefore the recommendations made by @NativeLandgrab (Dr. Nadeem Ul Haque) must be followed; which argues that PhD research must prioritize indigenous knowledge and actionable, localized studies to drive national progress, moving beyond solely international academic benchmarks. The discourse emphasizes tailoring doctoral work to solve specific, local challenges rather than abstract theoretical goals. This will be an honourable way of getting the healing touch from the self infused destruction. The IR of Iran in recent days have shown a workable model is available for challenging the adversary and surviving as a dignified nation against all odds.