Foreword

By (Haji) Zabar Baksh, CPA (London)

We have in our hands the latest book by brother Pasha, as Trinidad has affectionately called him for upwards of three decades

I have had the pleasure and “fun” of knowing brother Pasha and his family all these years – in the sense brother Pasha calls Islam fun: “something that combines the best and the finest feelings, experiences and achievements of life, following a path of service to Allah and to his creation.”

These are also the years I have experienced the joys and thrills of working for Allah on our beautiful island of Trinidad.

The present book is called Still Working for Allah in the West: Theory & Methodology.

The book is timely, interesting and extremely useful. It is fair to say that in my four decades of scouting Islamic books I have not really seen or read anything quite like it before.

Many of us in this part of the world went through years of wondering, asking one another and even joking what the work was all about – what it really meant to be working for Allah. Some of us were not even clear what to call it. Often we simply called it “the work,” “the effort” and a few other similar things.

Brother Pasha’s focus on working for Allah brings a clearer perspective to a lot of things. It makes us see more clearly what it is that we should be doing as Muslims – and as human beings.

Like the rest of the Muslims everywhere, I am greatly distressed and saddened by the state of the Muslim Ummah right now. I have been that way ever since I became aware, going back 30 years, what Islam really was – and what our role as Muslims was in this world.

I am deeply pained and embarrassed to say this, but the fact is that the Muslim community in Trinidad has not done much better than most Muslims in so many other parts of the world – even though Allah has given us here in Trinidad such wonderful opportunities to do things differently and better.

Trinidad Muslims today, sorry to say this, are in a state of considerable turmoil and confusion on the one hand and apathy and indifference on the other hand. What is truly sad is that not too many of us seem to understand this fully – or even care about it deeply and personally.

Everyone seems to be happy doing their own thing and doing things their own way. Not too many of us seem to be keen on supporting or helping one another – or finding ways to work together for common goals.

Some of us with little knowledge of Islam, and even less understanding of the world, as brother Pasha would say, seem to be doing a lot of damage to our common social fabric in a multiracial, multicultural society such as ours – and to the long-term interests of Islam and the Muslim community on the island and in the region.

Islam in the amateur hands of some of us has become a tool for dividing, distancing and alienating people, rather than for bringing them together on a common platform in a spirit of cooperation and shared human fellowship. And as brother Pasha says, uniting people in a “common Qur’an-based fellowship of faith.”

If corruption, lack of clear direction and divisiveness are burrowing through our broader body politic, the Muslim community itself is under growing pressure to become more insular, opinionated, narrow-minded, isolationist and divisive. Solutions some of us suggest to some of our problems seem to be worse than the problems themselves.

Our leaders generally seem to lack a clear sense of direction, focus and purpose. They are often divided and at loggerheads with one another, even though among them are some really bright, dedicated and sincere individuals who have nothing but a long-standing love of this community and of Islam at heart.

I know all of them well and have worked with many of them closely for years – some of them for decades. It hurts me a great deal to see the present condition of infighting and ineffectiveness in which we have descended.

The community as a whole appears confused as to what its proper role is in society. Many are asking what exactly Islam means in this time and age, in a multiracial and multiethnic society like Trinidad, especially in a post-Nine-Eleven world.

Instead of being a solution to the problems of others, as was expected of them, Muslims themselves appear to be licking their wounds and sulking in small corners. They seem, by and large, unable to forge a coalition of the willing and the able (if I may borrow part of that phrase from a former American President Mr. George Bush) among a wide range of the fellow-faithful working in concert to usher in a better society for all of Trinidad.

Crime is on the rise in society, reaching alarming and completely unacceptable levels, and Muslims are busy fighting among themselves.

Unwed pregnancies have reached unprecedented levels throughout society, and AIDS is eating away our people, and Muslims are busy mudslinging on one another.

Men in all of society, instead of being the champions and protectors of women – as their creator meant and ordained them to be – have become their exploiters and abusers, and Muslims are busy fiddling in remote regions of their own choosing.

Poverty, disease, lack of security and social problems plague society, and Muslims are far from playing a serious and effective role in addressing these issues.

By and large, Muslim concerns, issues and preoccupations seem to have very little to do with the broader social issues that agitate and concern society today. The Muslim community seems to have very little interest in the fate of the ship – our larger Trinidad and Tobago society as a whole – on which they have been placed as passengers of some importance by Allah.

It is sad; it is heartbreaking; but it is true.

At a time like this, the world has a right to look to the Muslims for answers and solutions – and for leadership. After all, Allah created them as a solution to the problems of the world. As brother Pasha points out, that is what it means to be working for Allah – to work to solve the problems of the world. To work to make this world a better place for all its inhabitants. But the tragedy is that Muslims themselves appear to have a noticeable lack of solutions in their pocket, either to their own or to other people’s problems.

What is worse, Muslims do not even appear to have a firm handle on what the real, the right and the important questions and problems of the day are, leave alone make a concerted effort to solve them. That is how lacking the Muslims’ understanding of the world and its affairs seem to be these days!

That is why I think this latest book by our dear brother Dr. Pasha is a valuable tool for Muslims of Trinidad – and for Muslims everywhere – to reassess their role in society. It should help Muslims realize that Allah did not make them and place them in Trinidad – and elsewhere – to attack, fight and destroy one another and to turn their back on the society when society appears to need them most.

Instead he made them and placed them in their respective societies to work for him in those societies – with the people in whose midst they find themselves. This has been the tradition of the prophets and messengers of Allah from time immemorial.

It is my hope that this book will make Muslims of Trinidad, and Muslims everywhere, understand in a big and clear way that Allah made them, and stationed them in their respective parts of the world, so they would all work for him with the greatest sincerity, devotion and togetherness.

Allah made Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago members of a free, democratic, affluent, and literate society so that they themselves would be the best people that they could be, and so that they would, at the same time, help the entire society to know Allah, to love him, to understand his Deen and to work for him.

As the Qur’an puts it:

Li-Takoonoo Shuha-daa-a 'Alan-Naasi wa
Yakoonar-Rasoolu 'Alaikum Shaheedaa

(2:143).

So that you can be the witnesses and standard
for The People and the Rasul, Sallallahu Alaihi wa
Sallam, can be the witness and standard for you

(Dr. Pasha’s translation).

The present book makes clear to Muslims of Trinidad what the obligations of membership in a racially, religiously and culturally mixed society like Trinidad and Tobago are and how to go about meeting them. I have not seen this done before by anyone with such clarity and effectiveness and yet in such a simple manner.

Not that it is a topic that the book addresses directly.

But in making the meaning of Islam clear as working for Allah, and in turn by defining that idea as working for the best interests of the people in whose midst you live as well as globally, the book leaves no doubt in our minds that we cannot love Allah without loving Allah’s people on earth.

And that we cannot work for Allah as his slaves without slaving, at the same time, in the service of his people – that is, without working for the welfare of the people in both their Deen and their Dunya. That is, without working to make their life a good one in this as well as in the next world.

Working for their Hayaat Tayyibah (all-round good life), as Dr. Pasha calls it borrowing the terminology Allah uses in the Qur’an.

If this book accomplishes that goal – the goal of making our role and our responsibility as Muslims and as human beings clear to us, Muslims as well as non-Muslims – even “an iota,” as brother Pasha has taken to saying lately, in Trinidad and Tobago as well as in other parts of the world, it would be ample reward for all of us.

It would be – I am sure he would agree with me – reward enough for brother Pasha for writing this book; and it would certainly be reward enough for all of us who are ready to help him in getting this book in the hands of the people.

We must also bear in mind that although Dr Pasha put these ideas together for the purpose of a seminar/camp in U K in 2001, the advices he gives in this book, Still Working for Allah, are beneficial and relevant for general audiences now and for decades to come. Hence, you will observe that periodically he refers to participants in a seminar/camp.

May Allah bless and reward brother Pasha, his parents, his ancestors and his family for writing this book.

And may Allah accept the efforts of all of us in his behalf and in the service of his people!

And may Allah help Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago – and elsewhere – to see their role in society clearly and enable them to rise to the highest levels of their responsibility in our own society and in the world.

Let us hope and pray this book will be a much-needed shot in the arm to all of us – Muslims as well as non-Muslims, in Trinidad and Tobago and in other parts of the world – to be able to know Almighty God a bit better than we did before and move a little closer to him than we were before.

Hopefully the book will also help us all to work for Allah better and with greater understanding, enthusiasm and dedication than we were able to before.

For, as the book says, it was for that purpose that God created us in the first place: To Work for Him!

Or, as the Qur’an puts it:

Wa Lidhaalika Khalaqahum (11:119).

(Haji) Zabar Baksh, CPA (London)
Bamboo Settlement
Trinidad, West Indies
2010