Allah's Guidance!

What Allah says about Racism!

Thus, the notions that the two will ultimately meet the same end, is utterly false. In the end, the believer has been likened to the living, and the stubborn, disbeliever to the dead. That is, the believer is he whose feeling, understanding, and perception are alive and whose conscience is making him aware of the distinction between the good, and the evil every moment. Contrary to this, the person who has been, wholly lost in the prejudices of disbelief is even worse than the blind person who is wandering about in darkness. Nay, he is like a dead person who has no sense or feeling left in him.Thus, the notions that the two will ultimately meet the same end, is utterly false. In the end, the believer has been likened to the living, and the stubborn, disbeliever to the dead. That is, the believer is he whose feeling, understanding, and perception are alive and whose conscience is making him aware of the distinction between the good, and the evil every moment. Contrary to this, the person who has been, wholly lost in the prejudices of disbelief is even worse than the blind person who is wandering about in darkness. Nay, he is like a dead person who has no sense or feeling left in him. That is, as for the powers of Allah, they are unlimited. He can even make the stones to hear. But it is not within the power of the Messenger to make those people to listen to him whose consciences have become dead, and whose ears deaf to every call, to the truth. He can only make those people to hear him, who are inclined to listen, to every reasonable thing. This same variety and difference, in fact, point to the reality that this universe has been created by a Wise Being with great wisdom. Its Maker is a Unique Creator and a Matchless Fashioner, Who does not have the same model of everything before Him, but has a variety of countless and limitless designs of everything.
Then if one ponders over the differences in human temperaments and minds, in particular, one will see that it is not a mere accident, but in fact the masterpiece of the wisdom of creation. If all human beings had been created with the uniform temperaments, desires, feelings, inclinations and ways of thinking, and no room had been left for any difference, it would have been absolutely useless to bring about a new creation like man in the world. When the Creator decided to bring into existence a responsible creation, a creation having power and authority, the necessary inevitable demand of the nature of the decision was that room for all sorts of differences should be provided in its nature and structure. This is the main proof of the fact that the creation of man is not the result of an accident, but the result of a wonderful and wise plan and design. Obviously, wherever there is a wise plan and design, there must necessarily be a Wise Being working behind it, for the existence of wisdom without a Wise Being would be unimaginable. The more a person is unaware of the attributes of Allah, the more he will be fearless of Allah. Contrary to this, the more a person is aware and conscious of Allah’s powers, His knowledge, His wisdom, His vengeance, His omnipotence and His other attributes, the more he will fear His disobedience.
Thus knowledge in this verse does not imply knowledge of academic subjects like philosophy, science, history and mathematics, etc. but the knowledge of divine attributes, no matter whether one is literate or illiterate. The one who is fearless of Allah is illiterate as regards this knowledge even if he has all the knowledge of the world. The one who knows the attributes of Allah and fears Him in his heart, is learned even if he is illiterate. In the same connection, one should also know that in this verse the scholars does not imply scholars in the academic sense. It means the religious scholars because of their knowledge of the Quran, Hadith, Fiqh and Philosophy. However, they will prove true to this verse only when they possess fear of Allah in their hearts. The same thing has been said by others: “Knowledge is not due to one's narration of Hadith but due to much fear of Allah.”

“The scholar is he who fears Allah though he has not seen Him, and turns to what is approved by Allah and keeps away from what makes Allah angry.” That means that Allah is All-Mighty, and therefore, can seize the disobedient as and when He likes. No one can escape His grasp. However, He is All-Forgiving also, and is, therefore, giving respite to the wrongdoers. Allah says: O mankind, We created you from one man and one woman, and then divided you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another. Indeed, the most honorable among you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most pious of you. Surely, Allah is All-knowing, All-Wise. [49 Quran: 12-13] In the last verse the whole of mankind has been addressed to inform it of the great social evil that has always caused universal disruption in the world, that is, the prejudices caused by race, color, language, country, and nationality.

On account of these prejudices leaders in every age have rejected the humanity of all the people and drew around himself small circles and regarded those born from within those circles as his people and those outside them as the others.  The circles have been drawn on the basis of unplanned birth circumstances, and not on rational, educational, and/or moral grounds. In some cases their basis is the accident of being born in a particular family, tribe, race, or in some particular geographical region, or in a nation having a particular color or speaking a particular language. The discrimination between one's own people and others is not only confined to this that those who are looked upon as one's own people are shown greater love, forgiveness, and cooperation than others, but this discrimination has assumed the worst forms of hatred, contempt, and tyranny.
New philosophies and religions have been invented for it, new rules of law made and new moral principles framed. So much so that nations and empires have made this distinction a permanent way of life with them and practiced it for centuries. The Jews on this basis viewed the children of Israel as the chosen people of Allah and even in the practice of their religious rites looked upon non-Jews as inferior to the Jews in rights and rank.  This discrimination also gave birth to class distinctions among the Hindus, according to which superiority of the Brahmins was established. All other human beings came to be viewed as inferior, and unclean and are cast into the depths of disgrace, degradation, and made untouchable.
Every person can see for himself in this 21st century what atrocities have been committed against black people in Africa, and America on account of the lies told on Allah making a distinction between the white and the black in the Biblical story of Noah, where his son Ham was described as being black-skinned and cursed.  The treatment that the Europeans meted out to the Red Indian race in America, and to the weak nations of Asia and Africa had the same concept underlying it. They thought that the life, property, and honor of all those who had been born outside the frontiers of their own land, and nation were lawful for them, and they had the right to plunder, take them as their slaves, and exterminate them, if need be.  The worst examples of how the nationalism of the western nations has turned one nation against the others and made it their bloodthirsty enemy, have been seen in the wars of the recent past. Even in the present time with the massacre of darker-skinned people in the Middle East.
In particular, it was made clear that the racism of Nazi Germany, and their concept of the superiority of the Nordic race, was the cause of World War 2. One can easily see how devastating this error is, and the serious necessity for reform that this verse of the Qur'an was revealed.  In this brief verse, Allah draws the attention of all mankind to three basic truths:

1. The origin of all of you is one and the same. Your whole species has sprung up from one man and one woman. All your races that are found in the world today are, in fact, branches of one initial race that started with one mother and one father. In this process of creation, there is no basis whatsoever for the divisions and distinctions in which you have involved yourselves because of your false notions. Allah alone is your Creator. Different men have not been created by different Gods. You have been made from one and the same substance. It is not so that some men have been made from some pure and superior substance and some other men from some impure and inferior substance. You have been created in one and the same way. It is also not so that different men have been created in different ways. You are the offspring of the same parents. It is not so that in the beginning there were many human couples that gave birth to different populations in the different regions of the world.

2. The 2nd basic truth is that: In spite of being one in origin, it was natural that you should be divided into nations and tribes. All the men on the earth could not belong to one and the same family. With the spread of the race, it was foreseeable that countless families would arise, and then tribes and nations should emerge from the families. Similarly, it was foreseeable that after settling in different regions of the earth, there should be differences of colors, features, languages and ways of living among the people. It was also natural that those living in the same region should be closer in affection and those living in remote regions not so close. However, this natural difference never demanded that characteristics of inequality, of high and low, of noble and uncaring, should be established as its basis. There is no concrete evidence that one man or group of men should claim superiority over another. Nor the people of one color should look down upon the people of other colors. Nor that one nation should take preference over the other without any other reason than appearance.

3. The only basis for superiority and excellence that there is, or can be, between one man and another man is that of moral excellence. As regards birth, all men are equal, for their Creator is One, the substance of creation is one, the way of creation is one, and they are descended from the same parents. Moreover, a person's being born in a particular country, nation, or clan is unplanned. Therefore, there is no rational ground on account of which one person may be viewed as superior to the other.