A religion is a set of customs and traditions where as a deen is a complete code of life.
Currently there are two ways of life prevailing in this world.
1. Islam
2. Secularism
Islam means submission to Allah’s will on the way of Prophet Muhammad SAWS in every macro and micro aspect of life.
Secularism is a way of life which advocates slavery of nafs and one’s desires. Whether it is democracy, monarchy or dictatorship in political realm. Capitalism or Communism in economic realm. Individualism, liberalism, conservatism, collectivism or any other ism in philosophy. The basic theme of secularism is worship of one’s nafs, no matter what the outer manifestation is.
Islam is the only way of life which has divine guidance in regards to the Political, Social, Economic and Personal life of a person and a state.
Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and the rest of the religions only deal with some rituals like birth and death rites, marriage and divorce, some form of moral guide lines in a limited sense and some form of concept in regards to afterlife.
No country can be called a Hindu country or Christian or Jewish country because no religion provides guidance for how to run a state. Therefore, every religion and every civilization has bowed their heads down to secularism. Most of the world is under the spell of some kind of democracy where the “representatives” decide how to run the state. What to do and what not to do. Their agreed upon wish is the law. They can legalize homosexuality if they think it’s right. One day they might legalize incest. Some places like China are ruled by one party dictatorships and yet some others are monarchies.
Muslim Countries?
I am astonished when our educators from the religious as well as secular circles use this term. There is either a secular state or an Islamic khilafah. How can we define a country by the religion of it’s majority’s population? An Islamic country is not that country which has Muslims in the majority but that country which derives her laws from Quran and Sunnah in letter and in practice, regardless of what religion the majority follows.
In the times of khilafah vast regions were being controlled by Shariah even though the population was mostly non-Muslim. Would we say that those regions weren’t the part of Islamic Empire?
However today, despite of many countries having Muslims in majority, are run under secular laws. This means that they are as secular as India or USA. So what does a Muslim country mean?
I can only say that it is a kind of deception like nationalism to fool the Muslims into thinking that they are living in “Muslim Countries” where as the truth is that they are living in poorly managed and corruptly governed secular countries run by the puppet governments and only khilafah can solve the problems of this ummah.