Shah Abdul Hannan: Among the great missions of Prophet Muhammad (SM), establishing ‘Tawheed’ - the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism was the core. Another one was to found an Islamic State in Madinah. I would like to discuss these here. In that period, the whole world including China, India, Europe, Africa, and Arab was occupied by paganism. People used to worship many mythical idols as well as they worshipped nature. Tawheed was not being practiced anywhere. The world forgot the great teaching of Prophet Ibrahim (A). On this ground, Prophet Muhammad (SM) started off the demonstration of the pure Tawheed – there is no God but Allah, He has no partner, spouse or offspring. He looks after all of His creations and for doing so He does not need any help from anyone. This is the way Tawheed abolished the total concept of polytheism.For implementing the plans of Allah, there are angels bound to do their specific duties, no god or goddesses are necessary..

By the grace of Allah, there was an inevitable impact of the prophetic characteristic of Muhammad (SM) on his surroundings. Almost all of the Arab territories had become his tributary and he propelled Tawheed there. The folks surrounding him were fully devoted to Tawheed.

The next important agenda of Prophet Muhammad (SM) was to found an Islamic State in Madinah. Before his arrival, there was no exclusive state in Madinah. There were some tribes and specific tribal leaders. No distinct state was there ruled by one leader. So was in Macca, there were other tribes excluding Quraish and their ruling system was different. In a nutshell, there was not any definite political authority in Arabia. First, Prophet Muhammad (SM) founded a state in Madinah and the whole Arab became his offshoot eventually.

The state system is an inseparable part of Islam and it was proved by the establishment of MadinahState. Prophet (SM) had been inviting people to Islam in Macca for 13 years. He had to face a naked opposition by the dwellers of Macca but some of them accepted his dawah. But they could not survive thrtr because of the brutal torture. The life of Prophet (SM) became in risk over there and there was conspiracy of killing him, Allah ordered him to migrate. Prophet (SM) was bound to do the migration and came to Madinah.

Just after arriving Madinah Prophet (SM) planned for founding a state and he offered a constitution for defining the relationship among all of the tribal and religious people. This is named by ‘The Constitution of Madinah’ or ‘The Misak of Madinah’. All people of Madinah, even the Jewish people accepted this constitution. It was started with ‘Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim’ and according to the Islamic Political scientists, it was the first-ever written constitution of the world. After long 1200 years, the written constitution of the USA was formed in the 18th century.

The Muslims were mentioned as an Ummah in this constitution. All of the Muslims wherever they reside in are the parts of this Ummah. Another type of Ummah is the Jewish people.

An ideology based nation can be named as Ummah. In the Madinah constitution, all residents were also the part of one Ummahs. Moreover, it was mentioned that ‘All people are equal’ in the constitution. So it is proved that all of the citizens of the State of Madinah got equal rights. There was autonomy for the Jewish people. That is how autonomy is an important rule of the Islamic State.

The State of Madinah was a welfare state and this state was the responsible unit for the helpless citizens. There is a famous quote of Prophet Muhammad (SM) in Hafith that if a person dies leaving any property that will be inherited by his successors but if he dies leaving a helpless child that will be the responsibility of the state to look after. This type of state is called a welfare state. It was first founded in Madinah. In Modern age, some European countries are trying to form this type of welfare state.

Islam offers to form a welfare state which is better than the states of modern democracy.

Writer: Ex-Secretary, Government of Bangladesh.