Lo and behold there was an influx within recent times of missionaries from Africa, Middle East and India. Instead of uniting our Muslim people into a harmonious whole, they formed splinter groups which did tremendous damage to our Muslim people: not that we never had fragmentation-but this was to a small extent. Today, a feeling of independence has taken hold of small groups in every village and hamlet and in the urban areas. I have heard it said repeatedly by leaders of these small jamaats that they are independent and want to remain that way. I have reminded them unceasingly that they are only destroying the Muslims by having this false feeling of independence.  In my view the very word independence is an anachronism and a danger to human society. Is there anyone or anything that is wholly independent on this earth? We are dependent on each other and on everything. Cohesion of ideas and the channelling of our thoughts in harmony tempered with tolerance is the only true answer to a well regulated Islamic life.

Our failure to realise that Allah Pak has granted to us the facility to think and to use our minds has brought degradation to us as individuals and as a community. Our teachers and parents have taught us that our presence I on this earth is an examination for a hetter or lesser form of life in the great beyond. If we do good and live a righteous life then we will surely he blessed by Allah and rewarded with an eternally happy life. This could he achieved by following the code of life handed to us through the Holy Quran, a Quran that is resilient and allows us the freedom to think and to act according to the dictates of our conscience.

Life on this earth would have been dull and uninteresting if our Quran was complete in every detail and had regimented us all into a specific mode and manner of life. We would not have had to look into the future for a goal, a destiny, a day of judgment when we would be either rewarded or punished.  A lesser form of life surely awaits us if we infringe upon the tennets of  Al Quran and do not use our faculties for ourselves and our fellowmen.

The intelligent mind listens to everybody but decides for itself that which it must accept and that which it should reject, but how many there are whose minds are weak, who do not care to develop their ability to think properly? These are the gullible ones who accept innovations without thinking.