Muslim majority area. The objective in Palestine is to end Israeli
occupation and replace it with Arab rule. The aim of politics in
Kashmir is to end the domination of India and make Kashmir a part
of Pakistan. Similarly, in regions such as Xinjiang (China) and the
Philippines, there is a demand to establish Muslim rule once again
as it was before. All initiatives of this kind are but the politics of
the impossible. Such action can never yield any positive result. The
only outcome of such politics is the loss of even what is already in
the possession of the agitators and getting nothing in return. This
politics of the impossible is not just unwise: it is against Islam. In
the field of politics, the demand of both wisdom and Islam is one
and the same—that actions should be result-oriented. Where there
is no hope of gaining anything, one has to remain content with what
one already has. It is only the leaders who benefit from politics. The
people have nothing to gain by it.
The politics of the impossible is engaged in by exploitative
leaders. For the common man to follow such leaders, it is the
crassest foolishness. The politics of the impossible is best described
as suicidal. Nothing less than suicidal can express the destructive
effect of such politics. Furthermore, this kind of politics leads not
only to the suicide of the individual: it leads to the suicide of the
whole community.
Ideal and Practical
It
is the case with the majority of the people that when a realistic
suggestion is made to them, they immediately respond with idealistic
notions, such as a demand for justice; or they quote the law of human
rights and say things should be like this, or like that, and so on. All
utterances of this kind are utopian. In thisworld, idealismneverworks.
In this world we have to be pragmatic and aim at what is achievable.
What the state of affairs should be by our lights is hardly worthy
of consideration. What is actually worthy of consideration is what
the state of affairs should be according to the creation plan of God.
This is not an issue of arriving at an ideological criterion. This is an
issue relating entirely to what is practically achievable and what is
not. According to the creation plan of the Creator, every man in this
world is given freedom of action and that is something which cannot
be cancelled out.
In view of this, the only course that is practicable is that, in
The Loss of the Ghetto Mentality
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