Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) said:
“Verily, Allah will send for this Ummah at the beginning of every century a person who will renew (reform and renovate) for it the Deen.”
Hadhrat Hakimul Ummat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (rahmatullah alayh) was one such Mujaddid (Reformer) as is mentioned in the hadith of Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam).
The condition of the Ummah at all levels and in all spheres of life is dismal and deplorable. The Ummah is grounded in the quagmire of decadence. It’s state of dishonourable existence is indeed heart-rending to those who understand the value of Islam and the true position of the followers of Islam. The way of life of the Ummah in present times and the Islam handed down by Muhammadur Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) fourteen centuries ago are entities widely divergent and poles apart. There is extremely little affinity between the present Ummah and the Islam of the Sahaabah of Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam). Spiritually, morally, culturally, socially and politically, the Muslim Nation has fallen to the lowest ebb. The Muslim Nation is bankrupt in all spheres of its life in relation to Islam.
The pitiable condition of the Nation of Islam besides its stagnation in the morass of corruption and degeneration in which it flounders, is its steady sinking into greater destruction. The Ummah is smitten with some incapacitating disease which had destroyed its moral and spiritual fibre, which had sapped its lifeblood and which has made Muslims the slaves of the kuffaar. The disease has brought the Ummah crashing from its position of grandeur and glory which once was its capital.
The former grandeur of the Ummah was raised on the foundations of the highest kind of spirituality and morality. This spirituality and morality which constituted the springboard from which the Ummah of Islam took off in its flight of glory to attain the loftiest pedestals and pinnacles of grandeur and power, was the Rope of Allah Ta’ala that Hablullaah stated in the following aayat of the Qur’aan Shareef:
“And hold on firmly all of you onto the Rope of Allah and do not split up (among yourselves).”
Since the Ummah, in the truest sense of the command, in its early stages gripped this Hablullaah with might and power, it took hold of the powerful and unbreakable Divine Bond stated in the following aayat:
“Verify, they grabbed hold of a powerful handle there is no break for it.”
But, alas! The disease has ruined the Ummah. The Ummah is lying sprawled and prostrate, not in Sujood, but on its face at the feet of the kuffaar to be buffeted and manipulated in the conspiracy to fulfil the desires of the kuffaar. No longer is the Ummah holding on to the Rope of Allah.
In Hayaatul Muslimeen or the Life of the Muslims, Hadhrat Hakimul Ummat (rahmatullah alayh) diagnosis the disease of the Ummah and provides the prescription and the remedy for the sure cure of the Ummah. The prescription is the result of the diagnosis of one who has been sent by Allah Ta’ala for this purpose.