If we are realistic and honest we will have to agree that militarily the whole Muslim world bunched together would still be no match for just USA on its own; if they really wanted to they could just nuke us to kingdom come with the push of a few buttons. After all, the weapons which Muslim countries DO have are sold to us for profit by the USA and other Western countries anyway! So what will we achieve by being confrontational? Realising one’s strengths and weaknesses is also wisdom and at the present time in history the Ummah is in no position to militarily challenge anyone!

What we DO have and what is OUR supermeapon if you like -- or superweapons-- are the awliya and the love of Allah and His Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam and it is with these weapons that we must fight.

(Of course this does not imply that if we are attacked we do nothing but we should try our utmost to avoid conflicts; it achieves nothing but destroy our already poor countries. What has 9/11 achieved? What have the mujahideen achieved in Kashmir except to make life even more wretched for the innocent Muslims? What did the Taliban achieve except the destruction of their nation? Ditto Iraq last time round? )

With the weapon of love and superior moral and ethical behaviour we can convert the hearts--just like Hazrat Khwaja Muinuddin Hassan Chishti quds sirruhu who converted 9 million (yes million!) Hindus to Islam by himself!

Naats and Sufism in general are the way forward for us, ’the forgotten spiritual revolution’ as Shaykh Abd al Hakim Murad puts it that we need to find again. And at the centre of any spiritual revolution will be the LOVE of Allah’s Darling, the Alpha and the Omega, the Logos, the raison d’etre of Existence, the Light from Allah’s Light, the Prince of the Worlds, Our leige-lord and Master Sayyidina Muhammad al Mustafa sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam.

You see the kuffaar are very clever. They know that the real strength of the Muslims is their love of the Prophet alayhisalatusalam. Which is why when they colonised our countries in the last century and earlier they tried to lower the status of the Prophet alayhisalatusalam in the eyes of the Muslims by forming and supporting new Muslim sects and individuals who all had one thing in common: their belief that Allah’s Habib sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam
was ’just a man’ and nothing else and their denial of the super-normal and non-human qualities of Allah’s Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wasallam. This is true of all the ’reformist’ movements in India, in North Africa, in Egypt and most visibly in the Arabian peninsula itself with the Wahabis who were supported fully by the British.

The great Muslim poet-philosopher Iqbal (and the traditional ulama everywhere--who were all Sufis too) realised this and he wrote:

Abru-ye-maa zi naam e Mustafa ast

Our honour is from the name of the Chosen One...

If you notice these reformist movements generally had another thing in common too: their opposition to ’popular’ or devotional Islam of the masses (which invariably meant the Islam linked to the Sufi tariqats and the shrines of the saints) and their desire to reform it by returning to a more ’pristine’ Islam!

Thus these groups attacked anything to do with the elevation and praise of the Beloved Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam and the awliya connected with him, shrines, saints’ anniversaries, mawlid etc. etc. And this has lead us to the pathetic situation we are in today as an Ummah. Of course there are many other factors too in the decline of the Ummah but in my view this is the most important one.

After all the love of the Prophet is the soul in the body of the Muslim Ummah and if the soul is lost the body is just an empty shell. Alhamdulillah the traditional scholars and mashaikh realised this and saw the consequences with their foresight and insight and that is why everywhere you will notice that the traditional Sufi khanaqahs and zawiyas--and those associated with them--never supported these reformist parties and groups from the start. In India the most prominent person who lead this resistance was Ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Riza Khan in addition to many many others such as Hazrat Pir Sayyid Mihr Ali Shah Golrawi, Hazrat Sayyid Amir al Millat Sayyid Jama’at
Ali Shah and Hazrat Imdadullah Mohajjir Makki, may Allah be pleased with them all. I am sure in each Muslim country equally illustrious awliya and ulama of the traditional schools did the same.

Alhamdulillah, today the movement back towards traditional Islam is gaining momentum (I have read that in Arab lands it is termed "Raju’al al-Rasul (sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam)"-Return to the Messenger) everywhere and not least in the Western countries especially Europe and the USA. This is in no small part due to the efforts of scholars such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad and many others; also the efforts of the traditional mashaikh who came originally from Muslim countries such as Pakistan and India should not be forgotten who, although perhaps not as well known amongst the youth or the media, have ensured with their quite-yet traditional-approach that the candle of the ardent desire for Allah’s Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam has never stopped burning in the hearts of the Muslims.

Therein lies our greatest weapon in the most important war of all: the war for the capture of hearts! Our commanders-in-chief in this war must be Rumi, Ibn Arabi, Hafiz, Sa’di, Jami, Ahmad Rifa’i, Junayd, Bayazid, Shah Naqshband, Gharib Nawaz, Ahmad Zarruq, Ibn Ataillah, Abu Madyan, Ibn Farid, Bulleh Shah, Ganj Bakhsh, Ganj e Shakr, Ala Hazrat and of course Imam Ghazali etc. (may Allah be pleased with all of them!) and not people like Osama and Ibn Abdul Wahab and groups like Hizb ut Tahrir or al Qaida or Lashkar e this-or-that. Then assuredly we will be truly victorious and ready for the arrival of Hujjat Allah al Mahdi al Muntazar Imam Mahdi alayhisalam when he finally appears.