Purification and Cultivation as the Path to Change

True change rests on two fundamental and inseparable tasks: purification and cultivation, or education. Purification means clarifying Islam from the falsehood that has entered belief, worship, and behaviour. Cultivation means educating people alongside that work of clarification. Neither task can be dispensed with, and neither is sufficient without the other.

Doctrinal clarification is itself a great achievement. If correct doctrine were clarified for even one group within the wider Islamic society, that would be remarkable. Yet reform cannot stop there. Correcting doctrine alone does not address everything that requires purification, because falsehood may also enter worship and behaviour. The work must therefore extend beyond belief.

Worship requires a particular correction: abandoning narrow-minded allegiance to one school of thought and returning to the true Sunnah. This does not diminish the importance of doctrinal clarification. Rather, it shows why clarification must be joined to education and applied across the different parts of religious life.

Purification and cultivation therefore belong to one program of change. Islam must be clarified from falsehood wherever it appears, while people must also be educated. A reform concerned only with doctrine leaves worship and behaviour unaddressed; a reform that seeks education without clarification lacks the purified understanding upon which that education must proceed. The two tasks cannot be separated.

The work of reform is too extensive to be carried by a handful of scholars. Eminent scholars who truly understand Islam may be present, but one individual—or even two, three, ten, or twenty—cannot fulfil the whole obligation of clarification. They cannot by themselves identify and remove everything false that has entered Islam in matters of belief, worship, and behaviour.

Even accomplishing doctrinal clarification among a portion of the wider Islamic society would be a great achievement. Yet clarification does not complete the work. After errors have been exposed and the sound understanding made clear, those connected to this effort must also receive a sound education. They need to be cultivated according to what has been clarified.

This creates a task with two immense dimensions. First, Islam must be clarified from the falsehood that has entered its different areas. Second, the people affected must be educated upon the resulting sound understanding. A few people cannot comprehensively perform the first task and then carry the second task through among all those affiliated with them.

The difficulty is made more serious because both clarification and cultivation are now lost. This directly affects political efforts. In an Islamic society that does not govern by Sharee’ah, political activity will meet with disappointing results when these two essential principles have not first been established. Political work cannot compensate for the absence of purified religious understanding and sound education. Hopes for change therefore confront disappointment before the foundational work on belief, worship, and behaviour has been secured.

Reform should be pursued through sincere, evidence-based teaching, far removed from captivating speech and the pursuit of name or fame. The message should be conveyed with proof, thereby fulfilling one’s responsibility. People should then be directed toward work that truly benefits them, rather than toward activity that leaves their religious condition uncorrected.

This beneficial work addresses the principal areas of a person’s life:

• the correction of belief;
• the correction of worship;
• the correction of behaviour;
• the correction of social interaction.

Where political movements are concerned, the sincere advice is that they should be replaced by governance through Islamic consultation, or by the establishment of a consultative council founded upon the excellent principles of Islam. This work is not based upon fame or impressive speech, but upon proof and the practical cultivation of people.

The intended scope must also be understood realistically. Clarification and cultivation do not mean removing every disagreement from the whole Islamic society. Such an expectation is impossible. This limitation is indicated by Allah’s statement that He could have made people one nation, yet they will not cease to differ.

The attainable aim is therefore closer to home: a person should understand Islam truly, cultivate himself upon it, cultivate his family upon it, and extend that cultivation to those around him. The program does not depend upon first transforming the entire Muslim world. It begins with correcting what lies within one’s reach and educating the people for whom one can realistically care.