The guest struggled desperately to open the lock,
and as he went on and on twisting and twisting and
turning the key, and trying to jerk the lock open, his
vexation finally turned to fury. “This lock is
defective!” he shouted to anyone who cared to
listen. Then he muttered under his breath that his
host had been a fool to buy such a lock. The next to
have his wrath vented on it was the lock-making
industry, which produced worthless goods, not
caring whether they worked or not and not caring
whether people were put to trouble or not. Their
business was only to make money out of
unsuspecting consumers! By this time he was at the
end of his tether and had decided he was going to
break it open with a hammer. Just then, his host
arrived and tried the key in the lock himself. “Oh,
I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed.” I quite forgot I had
changed this lock, but I just momentarily forgot,
and gave you the wrong key.” He then produced
the right key and the lock opened instantly. So the
guest’s ire had been quite misdirected and he had
ultimately achieved nothing by it except reduce
himself to a state of utter exhaustion.
How many latter-day Muslims find themselves in
this sorry predicament, faced as they are with one
impasse after another, finding areas which they
urgently need to enter, difficult of access, nay,
impenetrable, because the way is barred by locks to
which they have the wrong keys. This modern age
has changed the locks to life’s doors, but we still
carry the same old keys around with us, hopefully
fitting them here and there, staring in
incomprehension when locks do not snap open for
us, and then frittering away our energies in
senseless rage. We curse first of all the lock-makers,
then the environment. But it is all to no avail,
because you just cannot unlock new locks with old
keys.
Our leaders, in their frustration, have thought fit to
identify certain “enemies of Islam” and to trace all
their woes to them—as if they were the sole
purveyors of these impregnable locks. But in this
world of God, there is no attitude more insensate
than this. Here, if we feel deprived and thwarted, it
is because we are already suffering the punishments
for our own negligence and shortcomings. In this
world, most of our afflictions are due to our failure
to live up to the standard of the times. The day we
realize how much we are out of step with
modernity, we shall be in a position to remove all
obstacles from our path. We must fit the right keys
to the locks on life’s gates, and all avenues will open
before us.
--Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
( Ref - The Moral Vision)
