And this is one of the results of the intense estrangement that Islam is suffering from today—something unknown in the earliest period. In that first age the estrangement lay between open polytheism and a monotheism free of every trace of impurity, between flagrant disbelief and genuine faith. Today, by contrast, the problem lies within the Muslim community itself: most people’s profession of monotheism is marred by impurities; they direct acts of worship toward others beside Allah while still claiming to be believers.

This issue deserves our attention first of all. Secondly, no one should claim that we must now move on from the stage of tawḥīd (pure monotheism) to a different stage—that of political activism. The call of Islam is, before anything else, a call to truth. It is therefore unfitting for us to say, “We are Arabs and the Qur’an was revealed in our language,” especially when we remember that today’s Arabs, unlike non-Arabs who once adopted Arabic, have themselves become distant from their language; that very estrangement has driven them away from the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Prophet.

Even if we—Arabs—were to understand Islam correctly, it would still not be obligatory for us to engage in political work, to mobilize the people politically, and to distract them with politics from what they must devote themselves to: grasping Islam in matters of creed, worship, transactions, and conduct. I do not believe that any nation numbering in the millions has truly understood Islam—in creed, worship, and behavior—and been reared