Islam's Brave New World

Islam's Brave New World

by Huma Ahmad

Can you imagine it?

March 17, 2050 or thereabouts--Muslim Youth would be very active, with MYNA having gone global in 2028. The Muslim world would be together. The United Nations of Islam (est. 2010) would help all other Muslims countries (especially Malaysia since it became the new economic power in the world). Many Muslim countries would have excellent governments and everyone would communicate more and be more educated. The World Court would have four Muslims on the bench, including two women, both from industrialized Sudan. The forming of the second United Nations in 2038 would restructure the world's power balance and all security nations would have been dissolved.

The Islamic Center would now include a school, prayer areas, dining halls for weddings, get-togethers and Eid dinners, a section for stores and boutiques, swimming pools, a fitness room, and tennis courts (all suitably segregated, of course!).

There would also be a huge library with multi-media computers, with many on line to MIS (the Muslim Internet system). Hundreds of books would line the walls and shelves. Muslim children stories, adult fiction, `intelligent' books, all kinds of magazines (maybe some old copies of the mosque newsletter), the latest books on Islamic theology, Hadith, Muslim life, Muslim women.

Offices would be located in the pleasant low-rise in the back: doctors for Muslims who can't afford the 89th revised health care system, lawyers to help answer legal questions, professionals to help with marriage problems, adolescence, anything. Muslims would try to be a real community for each other and have many outreach programs to help all Muslims and Non-Muslims in need.

Is this the future?? No, unfortunately, it isn't. This is all my Star Trek cum European History AP class mixed with my imagination _picture_ of the future. The real future will be totally different than anyone planned (just read 1984 or Brave New World).

But the morals are there for anyone to see. The real idealness of my future isn't the swimming pools or the neat video-telephone hookups, it's that Muslims will really have faith and despite differences will communicate and work together.

Community, community, community...that's what its all about, whether global or village. Backround, people in charge, economics, aren't issues anymore. It's on helping others, teaching, placing value on every life, male or female, child or adult, regardless. It's on bettering your life, living real Islam in a modern world, not culture or what others before us did.

In fact, it's truly a shame that I can only picture this fifty-odd years from now, especially since I think this could be achieved by our community today.