this saying is attributed to the great thinker, taha hussein, “the nation that fights poverty with supplications, ignorance of religious methods, backwardness with fatwas, fights corruption with speeches from pulpits, fights the division of society through sectarianism and atonement, and fights unemployment through marriage and childbearing is a dead nation, and honoring the dead is by burying them.”
poverty gives birth without thinking, randomly, to needier, and everyone says they are born, and their livelihoods are with them, but i have seen nothing but homelessness, unemployment, hunger, nakedness, and people walking barefoot and millions of prisoners.
therefore, it was not difficult to see why the nation of one and a half billion people failed in almost every field.
we have seen, as stated in an anonymous letter, old and prestigious universities such as al-zaytouna and al-azhar, the hawzas of najaf, qom, and karbala, and dozens of similar religious institutions.
this is in addition to hundreds of thousands of religious schools in which billions of muslim children are taught annually by hundreds of thousands of religious teachers and billions of hours of religious radio and television broadcasts, friday sermons, preaching lessons, and guidance, and yet there is no successful muslim country, with two known exceptions.
there is also no democratic muslim country, other than two or three cases, and most of them lack a fair judiciary and human rights, but they are famous for their countless prisons, and the “insult to human dignity”.
we were also separated from the countries of the world for refusing to accept the universal declaration of human rights, without reservation. none of our countries is famous for being a haven for asylum seekers, after we crushed lebanon, as a country of asylum, all of us turned into asylum seekers.
there is no country among us that forbids the death penalty or gives minorities their full rights, or allows them to practice their rituals freely. we also have no influence internationally, except when the world is affected by an oil crisis.
on the other hand, we are the most tolerant of lies, and we call it the “salt of men,”. even the man selling melons at the street corner is willing to swear by the solemn oath that it is red when he knows it is not.
there is no muslim country that produces its own food, clothing, and medicine, and there is no real nuclear country except for pakistan, which lives with anxiety and is also a source of concern to the world.
also, most of the students on scholarships to study in non-muslim countries are residents of muslim countries, yet they curse the countries from where they get their education, and all muslim countries are sectarian, racist, and biased, and none of their people live comfortably and happily, and the few that live comfortably lack happiness.
all of them consume what is produced by other countries but curse these countries under their breath for their inventors and their products because of the false sense of “moral superiority” over them. child labor is widespread in our countries, and health and social security systems are lacking.
despite the spread of corruption in muslim countries, they are proud that their people do not eat pork, yet you know very well that hundreds of products you use or consume contain a lot of pork.
and when you wake up in the morning and hear the call to prayer from dozens of mosques around you, you think that you are in the cities of virtue, yet you cannot buy half a kilo of meat without being cheated!
finally, we are almost the only nation in which the situation of non-muslim minorities is better than that of the majority, at a time when the situation of muslims as a minority in other countries is worse than others.
some say that we are not the only ones who complain about all these scourges, and this is true, but none of them has boasted its glorious history and praiseworthy glory, and that it is the land of religions and the best of nations.