The Condition of Our Ummah

In one of his Friday Khutbahs (sermons), Imam Yasser Fazzaga described the condition of our ummah in a very interesting manner, and I think it's definitely worth the space on my blog.

A social research organization once conducted a research on a group of ten monkeys. The monkeys were locked up in an empty room, and a bunch of bananas was hung from the ceiling (and we all know - when monkeys see bananas, they go bananas!). A table was placed in the middle of the room so that the monkeys could climb on it and reach for the bananas. Ten hosepipes were also brought in, and they were connected to a supply of ice-cold water. Now, as the monkeys were let loose, one of them jumped onto the table and started reaching for the bananas. As soon as he tried to do that, he and the rest of the nine monkeys were hosed with the ice-cold water. The same thing happened a few times, and all the monkeys were hosed each time. The monkeys were quick to learn, and they soon gave up their attempts to get the bananas. The next day, they removed all the hosepipes, and replaced one of the monkeys with a new one. The new monkey obviously went nuts after seeing the bananas and started to climb the table to reach for them, but before anything else could be done, the rest of the monkeys ganged up on him and beat the living daylights out of the poor fellow, who had absolutely no idea why he was beat up. The next day, they did the same thing, i.e. replaced an old monkey with a new one. The same thing happened. The rest of the monkeys, including the monkey from yesterday (who didn't know anything about the hosepipes) beat him up. They repeated the process again and again until all the monkeys from the original group had been replaced, and they kept getting the same result. None of the new monkeys in the room had witnessed the original event, but just 'cause they saw the others doing it, they joined in without thinking. The threat no longer existed, but instead of analyzing the situation and thinking it out themselves, they were contented to follow the crowd.

I don't know if the story is true or not, but it is definitely a classic example of the 'herd mentality' we find in our Ummah.

In my next post inshaAllah, I'll discuss why the 'ulema think that this is the root of most of our problems, and how it affects our Islam and the way we live it.



The khutbah was on "The Fiqh of Priorities", and the khateeb made several interesting points in it. InshaAllah, if I find the time, I'll post about them as well in the near future.