Softly... and Morning Will Break

The West can rob the East of everything. It can rob it of its freedom, its land, its treasures, its oil, its wealth, its monuments. But one thing it cannot rob it of. It cannot rob it of its past, with its imperishable treasures and its undying monuments. And so long as this immortal heritage lives in us and we live in it, by it we can withstand time itself.

We may envy others among mankind their abundant riches, their multiplying wealth, and their greatness of station. And when we look at the deserts that hem in our Arab lands on every side, we feel sorrow and defeat before these vast, barren distances, denied the means of livelihood and prosperity, dividing peoples that strive toward cohesion and contact. But we forget to remember that these parched and desolate deserts have overflowed with the most splendid gifts that any land can bestow. Here is Palestine, with its dry and arid soil, which is but an extension of the desert of the Arabs — and from it have gushed the waters of salvation for mankind. And here is the Peninsula, with its scorching sandy wastes — and it has burst forth with the springs of guidance and the showers of mercy and grace. Had the desert no merit but this, that it gave birth to Christ and to Muhammad and inspired that pure poetry which we find in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran, this alone would be glory enough for it to boast of before all lands in all ages.

Alas for this East! It brought forth men and heroes when the whole earth was barren of them — and it runs barren of them when its need of them is greatest!

The dirham and the dinar have enslaved it in the most brilliant of the ages of civilization and progress — the East which, in time past, scoffed at dirham and dinar and taught men to despise them, whose land teemed with ascetics and hermits, and which kept pointing its hand toward heaven while the faces of all other men were bent upon the earth, sunk in the mire of matter and the slough of error!

Send forth the call, O Muhammad! Cast before the leaders among us, and the would-be leaders, the lesson of sincerity — you who for your principle's sake withstood a whole people, and struggled alone for tens of years to set a nation free and to drive it toward ideals that had never crossed its mind. Cast before them the lesson of austerity and proud refusal — you who, in the very flush of your glory and your power, still wore rough garments and made the bare earth your bed, who stood the night in vigil and strove through the day in labor.

There may be much in this ancient past to which we look up that has today passed into the domain of history, and is of no avail to us, because it does not keep pace with our age and was not made to live in it. But there is one immortal lesson that stands out for us today, embodied in the life of Muhammad, and we find it true of every age: that no real leadership was ever joined with greed and the love of place; that the great reformers are men who forgot themselves and gave up everything in life except the message they lived for; and that there is no deliverance to be hoped for until there arise among us such ascetics as these, whose souls are filled with a sacred call, and whose hearts and lips are made pure by the fire of sacrifice, of detachment, and of the denial of self.

"Softly — and morning will break," said the optimists among the people of the Jahiliyya who awaited the coming of Muhammad. And we, in the darkness of the present in which we flounder, look toward the light of hope and wait, optimists in our turn: "Softly — and morning will break"...